Scrap carbon tax say British politicians who believe it will have 'devastating effect' on industry

A carbon tax being introduced next year will increase household electricity bills and could have a ‘devastating effect’ on industry, MPs say. In a damning report they claim the ‘carbon price floor’ will saddle businesses with higher green penalties than the rest of Europe while failing to deliver any environmental benefits.

The Energy and Climate Change Committee urged the Treasury to scrap the plan and warned against revenue-raising exercises ‘disguised as a green policy’.

Chancellor George Osborne announced the levy on businesses for every tonne of carbon they emit last March. Starting at £16, it will almost double to £30 by 2020 for users of coal.

By 'going it alone' on setting a minimum levy, the UK faces the prospect of industry relocating to elsewhere in Europe, MPs warned.

Higher carbon costs also mean electricity prices will increase as the UK ends up effectively subsidising other European states, they added.

Committee chairman Tim Yeo said: 'The Chancellor was right to say we won't save the planet by putting the UK out of business. 'Ironically, however, it is the Treasury's decision to set a Carbon Price Floor that could result in industry and electricity production relocating to other EU countries. 'Unless the price of carbon is increased at an EU-wide level, taking action on our own will have no overall effect on emissions other than to out-source them.

'A revenue raising exercise disguised as a green policy won't help anybody, the price of carbon has to be increased at an EU level to kick-start investment in clean energy.'

Energy generators and heavy industry, such as steel and ceramics, face an 'exorbitant' top-up tax of up to £25 per tonne of CO2 under current plans, according to the report. Although UK emissions will be reduced under the Treasury plans, overall levels across Europe may not, the report said.

It calls for EU targets to be toughened up to deliver a 30% emissions reduction target by 2020 and an overall 60-80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Mr Yeo added: 'Instead of going it alone, the Chancellor would be better-off working with other European Governments to make the EU Emissions Trading System more effective as a whole. 'Before phase three starts next year, EU countries must set aside pollution permits to end the glut that has caused the price of carbon to collapse.'

SOURCE





New scholarly book on Bangladesh and global warming

Because much of Bangladesh is close to sea-level, it is often cited by Warmists as threatened by inundation caused by global warming. It is refreshing therefore to have a book which looks closely at the actual Bangladesh situation (Hint: Bangladesh is actually gaining land). Some particulars of the book:

1. Title of the book: Climate Change: Issues and Perspectives for Bangladesh

2. Co-Editors: Rafique Ahmed, Ph. D, Professor, Geography and Earth Science, University of Wisconsin- La Crosse, La Crosse, WI, USA 54601 and ; S. Dara Shamsuddin, Former Professor, Geography and Environment, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh

3. Publisher: Shahitya Prakash, Paltan Tower 87, Purana Paltan Line Dhaka 1000 Bangladesh Phone: (880-2)-935-5058; and (880-2)-935-1657 E-Mail: shahityap@gmail.com Proprietor: (Mr.) Mofidul Hoque

4. Number of Pages (95 plus xvi pages): 111 pages. 5. Book Cover: Hard Cover (shown on the last page of this document)

6. ISBN: 984-70124-0133-0

7. Retail Price: Bangladesh Taka 500/-.

8. Number of Chapters: Eight Chapters Out of the eight chapters, three are contributed by US authors, one by an Indian author, and four by Bangladeshi authors. The first 4 chapters deal with the greenhouse effect, global warming, climate change; uncertainty in climate science & IPCC's role; Global Climate Modeling; and sea level change - with special reference to Bangladesh.

One chapter deals with the major global and national issues & concerns other than global warming/climate change. The other chapters are specific to the climatic and environmental issues in Bangladesh. (Please see the Table of Contents at the end of this document).

9. Authors’ Credentials (A) Five US and Indian Authors Ahmed, Rafique, Ph. D. (Co-Editor): Professor, Geography and Earth Science, University of Wisconsin – La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA; Specialization: Meteorology and Climatology. Wrote an undergraduate climatology textbook in Bangla for the universities and colleges in Bangladesh and West Bengal (India), Revised 4th Edition, 2010, published by Gyankosh Prokashani, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Published many papers in professional journals on various climatological aspects on Bangladesh. Professional Membership: American Meteorological Society (AMS), Association of American Geographer (AAG), Bangladesh National Geographical Association (BNGA), and Institute of Indian Geographers (IIG).

Christy, John R., Ph. D. Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, and Director of Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville; Alabama State Climatologist; IPCC Lead Author: 2001 TAR (Third Assessment Report); Contributor: 1992 IPCC Supplement; Contributor: 1994 Radiative Forcing of Climate Change; Key Contributor: 1995 SAR (IPCC Second Assessment Report); Contributing Author: IPCC 2007 Report (AR4) - Working Groups I and II; NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement; American Meteorological Society Special Award for satellite observations; Fellow, American Meteorological Society; testified to the US House (1996, 1998, 2003, 2006 (2), 2007, 2009) and Senate (1997, 2000, 2001 (2), 2003, 2007) Committees regarding lack of evidence for catastrophic climate change caused by humans.

Legates, David R., Ph.D. Professor, Geography and Physical Ocean Science and Engineering, University of Delaware, Delaware, USA; Climate Scientist and hydroclimatologist; Editor, Physical Geography journal (Climatology Section); Delaware State Climatologist; Director, Delaware Environmental Observing System, testified twice to the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works against an anthropogenic origin of global climate change: March 13, 2002 and July 29, 2003.

Lohar, Debashish, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Atmospheric Science Research Group of the Department of Physics, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India; Recipient of the V. Bhavanarayana Award of the Indian Meteorological Society; Best paper award recipient of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing; Chief Consultant, Express Weather; Life-Member of Indian Meteorological Society (IMS); and served as the Secretary of IMS - Kolkata Chapter during 2007-09.

Soon, Willie Wei-Hock, Ph. D. Astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA; Climate Scientist; worked on the relationship between Arctic surface temperature changes and solar variability; testified to the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works against anthropogenic origin of global warming, July 29, 2003. He is also the authors of “The Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection” (World Scientific Publishing, 2004; with Steven H. Yaskell) and “Introduction to Astronomy— Studying Astronomy Without the Luxury of Telescope” (University of Nigeria Press, 2004 with Pius N. Okeke).





Global Cooling Coming? Archibald uses solar and surface data to predict 4.9°C fall (!)

A fact-based alternative to the British Met Office model-run discussed yesterday

David Archibald, polymath, makes a bold prediction that temperatures are about to dive sharply (in the decadal sense). He took the forgotten correlation that as solar cycles lengthen and weaken, the world gets cooler. He refined it into a predictive tool, tested it and published in 2007. His paper has been expanded on recently by Prof Solheim in Norway, who predicts a 1.5°C drop in Central Norway over the next ten years.

Our knowledge of they solar dynamo is improving, and David adds the predicted solar activity ’til 2040 to the analysis. Normal solar cycles are 11 years long, but the current one (cycle 24) is shaping up to be 17 years (unusually long), and using historical data from the US, David predicts a 2.1°C decline over Solar Cycle 24 followed by a further 2.8°C over Solar Cycle 25. That adds up to a whopping 4.9°C fall in temperate latitudes over the next 20 years. We can only hope he’s wrong. As David says ” The center of the Corn Belt, now in Iowa, will move south to Kansas.”

He also predicts continuing drought in Africa for another 14 years, with droughts likely in South America too.

If he’s right, it’s awful and excellent at the same time. Cold hurts, but wouldn’t it be something if we understood our climate well enough to plan ahead?

Much more HERE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)




Unhappy windmill owners in Shetland

Serious and widespread breakdowns -- and the maker has gone broke

A solution may be on the horizon for owners of Proven P35-2 wind turbines in Shetland nearly four months after they were ordered to shut down their machines following catastrophic weld failures elsewhere in Scotland.

The Microgeneration Certification Scheme, the body that decides which small renewable devices qualify for government power generation subsidies, said this week a way forward had been identified for the flawed £60,000 machines and agreement on the solution should be reached within weeks.

The MCS said: “Once the agreed solution has been finalised MCS will instruct the installation companies to advise their customers of the remedial work that will be required to restart the turbines.”

The long-awaited breakthrough for P35-2 owners, including the handful in Shetland, follows a meeting last week between the MCS’ certification body and the various parties involved with the turbines.

However with hundreds of the machines in existence in Scotland and elsewhere it remains to be seen when a turbine installer will be in a position to attend to the out-of-action machines in Shetland.

The 12.1 kiloWatt P35-2 was suspended from MCS certification on 23rd September after three spectacular main shaft failures. The drastic technical problem brought down Proven Energy itself followed by two of its main installers, Icon Energy and Shetland Wind Power. Proven was later bought by the large Irish firm Kingspan but it washed its hands of the old company’s turbine customers.

Shetland Wind Power’s customer base and some other assets were bought by VG Energy, an Ayrshire-based turbine installer which has been working on a solution to the P35-2 shaft problem.

A new company, still called Shetland Wind Power, has been set up. VG Energy’s founders, farmers Jim Paterson and Stephen Hamilton, also formed two other new companies called Shetland Turbines and Shetland Renewables. VG has ignored several approaches from The Shetland Times for information to provide to its readers.

Until the P35-2 solution is agreed and applied to the turbines the MCS has advised that the brake should be kept on to keep them out of action, although some have been running from time to time since the shutdown was ordered last year.

The news of movement on the P35-2 problem was welcomed by SNP Highlands and Islands MSP Jean Urquhart this week. She said: “I am delighted that progress is now being made and that these machines should soon be working again. “There are many of these turbines in Shetland and a number of owners have contacted me regarding the difficulties they are facing.”

Each owner has been losing potentially thousands of pounds a month from not being able to claim subsidy, enjoy free electricity or sell excess power into the Shetland grid.

As well as problems with the rotor heads there now seems to be question marks over the towers that the P35-2 turbines are built on. A machine owned by Norman and Evelyn Leask at Snarness, near West Burrafirth, suffered a catastrophic failure of its tower during a north-westerly storm at the end of last year. The steel tower broke in two, causing the turbine to crash to the ground.



Another leading turbine company, Evoco, is having to beef-up its 10kW turbine designs after suffering machine failures during gales in Yorkshire. There has been a problem with a rotational bearing which causes blades to snap off. Owners were told to shut them down and Evoco pledged to compensate them for lost feed-in tariff subsidy.

SOURCE





Map-makers admit Greenland gaffe

That poisonous Greenie influence is pervasive. Truth is the least of their concerns


The 2011 version of the map, left, incorrectly showed ice-loss

IT APPEARED to provide incontrovertible proof that global warming was accelerating faster than even the most doom-laden scientists had predicted.

There was considerable alarm when the word’s most authoritative atlas printed a map which showed that Greenland was rapidly turning green.

However, experts from around the globe pointed out that the cataclysmic chart had no scientific support and was contradicted by all of the most recent satellite images.

Now the Scottish map-makers responsible for the disappearance of 115,830 square miles of polar ice have admitted publicly they were wrong. As an act of contrition, The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World cartographers have produced a new map which restores Greenland’s ice cover.

Jethro Lennox, senior publishing editor of the £150 tome, insisted lessons would be learned from the episode, which generated headlines around the globe. The Glasgow-based map-maker said: “We’re very disappointed at the way it happened. “But we are now looking to draw a line under the Greenland controversy and move on.”

The latest atlas, which was published in September, showed a reduction in ice cover compared with the previous edition from four years ago.

Accompanying publicity material declared the change represented “concrete evidence” of the effects of global warming, stating: “For the first time the new edition has had to erase 15 per cent of Greenland’s permanent ice cover – turning an area the size of the UK and Ireland ‘green’ and ice-free.”

Publishers HarperCollins originally stood by the accuracy of the map but have since admitted to the mistake after the blunder was exposed by scientists.

Mr Lennox said: “After publication of the 13th edition of The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World it became apparent that we had not represented the permanent ice cover in Greenland fully and clearly. “In failing to do that, this section of the map did not meet the usual high standards of accuracy and reliability that the atlas strives to uphold. “To correct this, we decided to produce a new, more detailed map using the latest information available.” A new, corrected map of Greenland will be inserted into all remaining copies.

The updated chart was put together after the cartographers consulted experts from the University of Arizona, the University of Bristol, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland and the Byrd Polar Research Centre.

The editor claimed the newly established links would prevent errors in future. He said: “We have made some valuable contacts and will be keen to work with them again in the future.”

SOURCE




Global warming down but not out

Campuses teem with “post-docs” – college bums with PhDs for whom there are no jobs. Given adequate finances, marshalling a choir of these sad creatures to chant whatever hymn is not difficult.

What is difficult is forecasting the fortunes of the Climate Change campaign. International climate negotiations gridlocked years ago. There is clear evidence of an orderly standing down by enviro-activists and their media allies. The number of climate alarmist stories appearing in the media is diminishing. Climate Change no longer appears high on the list of ruses deployed by the enviro-activists challenging energy projects. Climate Change suddenly seems so passé; so pre-Copenhagen. Have skeptical nerds been left holding the global warming bag?

One must distinguish enviro-sound from enviro-fury; pretexts from goals. The Climate Change campaign is an effort to impose energy, land-use, and political policies. Regarding energy, it is a war on coal and petroleum. Regarding land-use, it seeks restrictions on the amount of utilized land. Politically, it is an effort to disenfranchise the masses. While Climate Change is placed on the back burner, the underlying effort to impose these policies is heating up.

The EPA’s recent salvo in its war on coal, the December 2011-issued MATS (Mercury and Air Toxic Standards) regulations, hardly mentions Climate Change. Le cause de celebre is mercury poisoning. Mercury is a natural aerosol with a trace presence in our every breath. Less than 0.5% of the mercury floating over America comes from coal-fired power plants. Coal-burning’s alleged thousands of mercury-poisoned fatalities are “virtual people” buried in computers owned by health activist orgs funded by the EPA. MATS forces owners of non-compliant coal-fired power plants to spend billions on retrofits or face plant closure. Non-compliant plants produce a quarter of America’s electricity.

In North America, the war on petroleum’s most active front is the siege of Alberta’s oil sands. In the blocking of the Keystone XL pipeline, the focal canards were property rights, water pollution, and ecosystem destruction. Broadsides against the oil sands’ alleged climate damage, hitherto prominent in the “Tar Sands” campaign, were shelved.

Another proposed oil sands pipeline, Northern Gateway, was recently stuffed by a Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency decision to entertain testimony from 4,500 witnesses at the pipeline’s approval hearings, which consequently will drag on for two years. A miniscule fraction of these witnesses possess expertise on petroleum transport. Pipeline opponents have threatened protracted litigation if authorities do not sufficiently prostrate themselves before the manifest malarkey of “aboriginal knowledge.” Climate Change is not a marquis concern at these hearings, nor is what commercial engineers think is safe petroleum transport. Both are trumped by worries about the emotional well-being of racially-obsessed shamans with wooden boxes on their heads.

Climate Change is not dead nor was it a dud. The campaign is in abeyance and might roar back – depending on AR2014’s reception, depending on the weather. Let no one say the campaign failed. When this campaign was hatched in the mid-1970s, wind power, solar power, and biofuels were novelties. These are now multi-billion-dollar industrial complexes on both sides of the Atlantic. Having their own social momentum and lobbying clout, these industrial complexes, according to plan, make Climate Change too big to suddenly fail.

Much more HERE (See the original for links)

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One of the great cathedrals of Global Warming -- Britain's Met Office -- pooh poohs the effect of falling solar output

They appear to be considering total irradiance only. Despite their great reliance on "multipliers" in CO2 theory, they overlook multipliers of solar changes -- such as Svensmark's demonstration of the effect on clouds. And their whole edifice is built on the demonstrably wrong claim that increasing atmospheric CO2 increases terrestrial temperatures.

The Met office is such a failure at prediction that they have given up trying to forecsast seasons ahead. Piers Corbyn, by contrast is a successful long-range weather forecaster so his scathing dismissal of the Met Office assessment is clearly from someone who really does understand what is going on. I append it at the bottom of the article below

New research has found that solar output is likely to reduce over the next 90 years but that will not substantially delay expected increases in global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases.

Carried out by the Met Office and the University of Reading, the study establishes the most likely changes in the Sun's activity and looks at how this could affect near-surface temperatures on Earth.

It found that the most likely outcome was that the Sun's output would decrease up to 2100, but this would only cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08 °C. This compares to an expected warming of about 2.5 °C over the same period due to greenhouse gases (according to the IPCC's B2 scenario for greenhouse gas emissions that does not involve efforts to mitigate emissions).

Gareth Jones, a climate change detection scientist with the Met Office, said: "This research shows that the most likely change in the Sun's output will not have a big impact on global temperatures or do much to slow the warming we expect from greenhouse gases.

"It's important to note this study is based on a single climate model, rather than multiple models which would capture more of the uncertainties in the climate system."

The study also showed that if solar output reduced below that seen in the Maunder Minimum - a period between 1645 and 1715 when solar activity was at its lowest observed level - the global temperature reduction would be 0.13C.

Peter Stott, who also worked on the research for the Met Office, said: "Our findings suggest that a reduction of solar activity to levels not seen in hundreds of years would be insufficient to offset the dominant influence of greenhouse gases on global temperatures in the 21st Century."

During the 20th Century solar activity increased to a 'grand maximum' and recent studies have suggested this level of activity is at or nearing its end.

Mike Lockwood, an expert in solar studies at the University of Reading, used this as a starting point for looking at the most probable changes in the Sun's activity over the 21st Century.

Met Office scientists then placed the projections into one climate model to see how they may impact temperatures.

Professor Lockwood said: "The 11-year solar cycle of waxing and waning sunspot numbers is perhaps the best known way the Sun changes, but longer term changes in its brightness are more important for possible influences on climate.

"The most likely scenario is that we'll see an overall reduction of the Sun's activity compared to the 20th Century, such that solar outputs drop to the values of the Dalton Minimum (around 1820). The probability of activity dropping as low as the Maunder Minimum - or indeed returning to the high activity of the 20th Century - is about 8%. The findings rely on the assumption that the Sun's past behaviour is a reasonable guide for future solar activity changes."

SOURCE




Corbyn replies

The UK Met Office and BBC promoted statement is extremely delusional and dishonest and a cover-up of reality. Full article: Decline in solar output unlikely to offset global warming

Their 'expectation' that the world will warm by 2C this century 'due to increased greenhouse gas emissions' is proven drivel based on their own failed self-serving fraudulent models.

They deliberately choose to know almost nothing about solar influences on earth's weather and climate and create 'information' designed to deceive.

It is the largely predictable vast changes in solar charged particle flux and sun-earth magnetic connectivity which control weather and climate.

That is why we at WeatherAction.com long range forecasters

1. Confidently predict that the world will continue general cooling to 2035 - see presentation in submission to UK parliament enquiry into Dec 2010 supercold which we predicted -

2. Systematically predict and will continue to predict extreme weather events and situations many months ahead around the world:

The CO2 driver theory of weather and climate is delusional nonsense propagated by a self-serving failed sect. Their 'theory' fails to explain past weather and climate; all its predictions over the last ten years have failed and it cannot and never will predict anything.

The dangerous delusional CO2 sect must be destroyed before it's diktats destroy the world economy and thousands more lives are lost from the chosen refusal of governments across the world to allow the application of scientific advanced forecasting of extreme weather which can help reduce disruption and destruction and save money and lives.

SOURCE (See the original for links)





Obama has an epiphany on the road to Damascus this year's election

Backs fracking and more drilling for oil. Whether his rhetoric will translate into action is the big doubt

President Barack Obama pushed drilling for gas in shale rock and support for cleaner energy sources to boost the economy in his final State of the Union address before facing U.S. voters in November. He also pledged more oil drilling.

Hydraulic fracturing, the process of injecting water, sand and chemicals underground to free gas trapped in rock, could create more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade, Obama said yesterday. The process, called fracking, is among a list of energy policies Obama said would fuel economic growth.

“We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,” Obama said.

Obama reiterated support for conservation and cleaner sources of power and pledged more oil drilling as part of an ‘all-out, all-of-the-above’’ policy “that’s cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs.” He said domestic energy production is at an eight-year high and imports of foreign oil were declining, prompting criticism from Republicans.

“It’s just a blind accident, if in fact we are producing more oil or natural gas than in previous years, it’s not because of any of his efforts,” Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican and head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said after the speech.

Republicans also sought to contrast Obama’s pledge to use energy policy to create jobs with his denial of a permit to TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline to connect Canada’s oil sands to refineries on the Gulf coast.

SOURCE




GM in damage control as Volt loses spark

The Volt plug-in hybrid was supposed to signal a new dawn for the world’s biggest car maker, but demand is slumping under the weight of controversy over a post-crash fire.

General Motors has been forced to mount a multi-front defence of its battery-powered Chevrolet Volt amid signs demand for the vehicle is slumping.

GM Chief Executive Dan Akerson told a House of Representatives panel that the Volt had become a “political punching bag” and that a US safety probe of the vehicle in part was politically motivated. The car maker launched national television and print ads defending the car's safety and fielded Volt questions online while the hearing was underway.

"We did not engineer the Volt to be a political punching bag," Mr. Akerson said at a House panel looking into whether US regulators delayed releasing information on a probe of the vehicle. "And that, sadly, is what the Volt has become."

The Detroit car maker reacted strongly to counteract the impact of the probe and the hearing on perceptions of the Volt. Dealer orders for the car are down, the company said, and GM is considering slowing production due to less-than-expected demand.

Congressional critics accused the agency of purposely failing to disclose the investigation for months, arguing that any perception of Volt as dangerous would hurt the White House after President Barack Obama and members of his administration touted the car in efforts to promote electric vehicles.

The Volt "is a halo car not so much for GM but for this administration," said Republican Mike Kelly.

The vehicle has become a polarising issue amid Republican criticism of the Obama administration's financial support of electric and other alternative vehicles.

"For the sake of the Volt and electric vehicles in general it is important we close the door on this issue," said GM spokesman Rob Peterson. The company, he said, launched the ad campaign amid worries that attention the Volt has received because of the safety investigation could deter customers or give them the impression the car is dangerous despite being declared safe by NHTSA.

NHTSA closed its safety investigation last week, saying the car poses no unusual risk of fire. GM from the start maintained the car is safe but took unprecedented steps to reassure Volt owners and the public that it was taking the matter seriously, including repurchasing some vehicles.

The company is adding steel reinforcements around the battery to prevent damage in the case of a crash. It also will add a sensor to monitor coolant levels and a bracket to the top of the coolant reservoir to prevent an overflow.

The Volt was failing to meet demand expectations before safety questions arose. GM fell about 2300 vehicles short of its goal to sell 10,000 in 2011. The company also has backed off its target of selling 45,000 Volts in the US this year.

Several dealers have said they are struggling to sell Volts and some are declining to take all the vehicles offered to them. Earlier this month, Vice Chairman Steve Girsky said the company was unsure how much demand exists for the vehicle and will decide by June if the vehicle "has legs."

Before the probe, the car was hamstrung by supply issues, its high cost and slow sales in California, where the vehicle didn't qualify for a tax credit and unrestricted use in car-pool lanes. GM will soon release a version of the Volt in California that meets those standards.

The car maker has not yet restarted production of the Volt following the holiday shutdown of its factories. Mr. Akerson said he expected production to resume in a few weeks. On Wednesday, he said demand for the car is improving.

GM, in the print ads, touted the car's safety and called the car, "the most significant step ever in GM's history to give customers a choice beyond oil."

Much of Wednesday's hearing focused on NHTSA Administrator David Strickland, who defended the agency's move to wait six months to disclose concerns about a potential fire risk in the Volt amid criticism from lawmakers that the decision was politically motivated.

Mr. Strickland took heat from members who accused the agency of waiting to publicize its investigation into Volt batteries for fear of hurting Obama administration efforts to advance electric vehicles.

"We pulled no punches," in the Volt investigation, Mr. Strickland said. If the Volt was unsafe, he said, “we would have clearly disclosed it”.

NHTSA disclosed in November it was investigating potential fire risk in the Volt because one of the vehicles caught fire weeks after a severe crash test. The announcement came months after the fire incident and immediately following a Bloomberg News report on the incident.

Mr. Strickland said the agency waited to announce the investigation because it took months to determine whether the Volt battery was the cause of the fire -it occurred in a facility with other vehicles - and whether a fire could occur again.

He said the car never posed an imminent threat to drivers as the fire occurred weeks after the crash. In subsequent testing, three batteries sparked or caught fire but only after they were removed from the vehicles and intentionally damaged.

"Not only would I drive one, I would drive one with my wife, mother and baby sister on board," he said.

SOURCE





New Book Looks at Global Warming and Climate Change from a Geological Perspective

Written from a unique geological perspective, Dr. G Dedrick Robinson's new book, Global Warming-Alarmists, Skeptics & Deniers: A Geoscientist looks at the Science of Climate Change, is a 69,000-word book aimed at non-specialist readers interested in learning the latest scientific findings concerning climate change and how great a danger it actually represents.

Written from a geological perspective, Dr. Robinson's book emphasizes key findings and conclusions from peer-reviewed science journals rather than attempting to smear the politics and motives of those with differing views. Its fourteen chapters use an easy-to-understand question and answer format to cover the entire climate-change-global-warming spectrum including the physics of the greenhouse effect, the carbon cycle and why the science of geology is key to understanding global warming.

References and a short summary are provided at the end of each chapter and many graphs and charts are included. The book is about the science of global warming, not the politics or various policy directions the U.S. government might choose. It is not intended to lambaste any political party, branch of government, way of thinking or person.

It presents the science in a straightforward manner in everyday language without uncalled for political bias. It is the authoritative, concise guide to the global warming controversy that has long been needed.

Dr. Craig D. Idso, founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, says the book “...is a refreshing read on a topic of great societal importance...because the authors evaluate key predictions and controversies of the global warming debate using logic and science.”

Professor Robert M. Carter, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia, says “Writing in an easily accessible style for all readers, and using Socratic dialogue, Robinson leads us systematically through the simple science information that is needed to answer the question, 'Are human carbon dioxide emissions causing dangerous global warming?'

And the more surprised you are that the answer to this question is 'no,' then the more you need to read this excellent book.”

G Dedrick Robinson Ph.D., author of nearly fifty science journal articles, is based in the Appalachian foothills region of South Carolina. He has closely followed the climate change debate during the course of his thirty-year career as a geology professor at James Madison University in Virginia.

SOURCE





NASA's Research Substantiates Trend Towards Global Cooling - Human "Global Warming" From CO2 Has Disappeared

Latest data from NASA / GISS confirms the robust deceleration of global warming, revealing the non-significant impact on global temperatures by CO2





The AGW alarmist claim of "accelerating" global warming requires, at minimum, an increasing rate of temperature change as denoted by an increasing slope of a linear trend line. The two above charts plot the rolling 10-year trend (slope) of the annual GISS temperature data - the left axis of both charts represents slope in terms of temperature change per hundred years (century).

The leftmost chart reveals a large variation in speed and level of temperature change since the 1800s. The right chart takes the same data but only plots the last 15 years of GISS "acceleration" and "deceleration."

From the 2001 peak of a +3.48°C/century temperature rate, it has now fallen at the end of 2011 to an almost flat rate of +0.04°C/century temperature increase. Per the actual evidence, the increasing atmospheric levels of CO2 (grey arrow and grey area of charts) has zero influence on whether global temperatures are accelerating or decelerating.

These two charts do not represent predictions of future temperatures, but both clearly indicate that the IPCC and major climate research agencies have been substantially wrong in predicting "accelerating" warming.

Likewise, they have been substantially wrong in their assumption that the climate sensitivity to increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 is positive, growing and nearing a runaway tipping point. The empirical evidence proves all of these assertions to be essentially false.

Conclusions:

* Global temperatures are decelerating, not accelerating

* Rising CO2 levels do not cause global temperatures to continuously increase

* Climate sensitivity to CO2 levels is not robust

* IPCC predictions of "runaway" temps and climate "tipping points" are without empirical merit.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here

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Climate change causing erections in Cambodia

But only among Greenies -- since the climate has in fact been stable since 1998

Cambodia, an exotic land filled with bright colors, city lights and ancient temples is a popular vacation spot. A remarkable country with exquisite culture holds one of the darkest secrets alive today. Very much a real and disturbing reality; we come to unfold this problem and discuss the problems of the sex trade in this area. In fact, children as young as 5 are being sold as slaves in exchange for sex. A problem that has been around for a while is being made worse by the problems caused by climate change.

The sex trade in Cambodia has been around since 1999. The sex trade is happening due to thousands of victims in need of natural resources like food, water and trees. Human trafficking affects 2-3 thousand children and young teens each year. Families are deceived by con artists telling them that their daughters will work for hotels, restaurants, hair salons or complete clerical work in order for them to bring money for their families. Truth is, con artists actually take their daughters into sex industries and force them to have intercourse with older men.

The livelihoods of most families that live in rural villages are affected by the changes brought on by climate change in that area. According to the United Nations, women feel these affects the most. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reports that, “Lifestyle and well being of women is put in greater danger by climate change, associated with a high rate of human trafficking.”

UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner declared, "Women often play a stronger role than men in the management of ecosystem services and food security. Hence, sustainable adaptation must focus on gender and the role of women if it is to become successful." Climate change will take a toll on environmental living especially women development.

Most of women development effects from climate change can result from: increased temperatures, severe weather, rise of sea level and droughts. Three main issues of climate change that can be linked to the sex trade are:

Water: As climate change causes droughts, it would be more difficult to attain water. As women are forced to travel greater distances to find and capture potable water they are at a higher risk of kidnapping and con-artists who are linked to the sex trade industry.

Agriculture: Climate change causes severe weather patterns that could make temperature rise and fall more drastically making seasons shift. As these seasons shift crops will be affected the most. It would be difficult for people to grow food. To offset the decrease in crop output women would be forced to look for better paying jobs to pay for food they otherwise might be able to grow themselves. The need for higher economic stimulation would make these jobs offered by sex trade con artists seem more valuable than they might have before.

Trees: Climate change and the resulting droughts would put a strain on the forests that supply the paper industry in Cambodia with their trees. As paper mill production drops workers may lose their jobs and would in turn be forced to look elsewhere for employment.

The lack of economic growth in Cambodia has made women’s lives even more difficult than before. The lack of education in this area for women makes them think that human trafficking is one of their only ways out. Researchers from the UN have concluded that women in developing countries are likely to be victims when being exposed to exterior threats. In a recent study by United Nations, trafficking has gone up by 30% in Cambodia since 2009 which may be linked to the increase in climate change during that time.

SOURCE






China too had a Medieval Warm Period comparable to temperatures today

Discussing: Zhou, XJ. 2011. "The characteristics and regularities of the climate change over the past millennium in China". Chinese Science Bulletin 56: 2985.

The author, Zhou (2011), - who is with the State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather of the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences in Beijing - writes in an introductory editorial in a special issue of the Chinese Science Bulletin (October 2011) that "research on global climate change has been at the frontier of the contemporary sciences," and within this context he further states that "debate has focused on whether the greenhouse effect produced by human activities is a major factor responsible for modern climate warming."

Against this backdrop, Zhou reports that "in 2009, the major project 'Research on tree-ring and millennium climate change in China' was implemented under the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China." Noting that eight articles published in this special issue of the Bulletin "present partly preliminary results obtained by the project over the past two years," he then goes on to summarize, in the broadest possible sense, their findings.

In the words of Zhou, the eight articles "reveal some characteristics and regularities of changes in temperature and precipitation in China and in East Asian monsoons over the past 1000 years," and he says that "notable conclusions," of which he lists only two, are that (1) "temperatures in the Medieval Warm Period are comparable to those in the current warm period over China," and (2) "the effect of solar activity on climate cannot be neglected in any period of the millennium."

These two findings stand in stark contrast to what is generally claimed by the world's climate alarmists, which is no small matter, as they apply to a significant portion of the planet. Hence, they should give everyone reason to reconsider the climate-alarmist claim that modern warming has been unprecedented over the past millennium or more, which claim is also refuted by many additional scientific studies we have reviewed in our Topical Archive under the heading Medieval Warm Period.

SOURCE






Even the most expansive assumptions about the data refute IPCC modelling conclusions

Discussing: Norman G. Loeb et al. "Observed changes in top-of-the-atmosphere radiation and upper-ocean heating consistent within uncertainty". Nature Geoscience (2012)

An interesting conclusion of that paper is that

We combine satellite data with ocean measurements to depths of 1,800 m, and show that between January 2001 and December 2010, Earth has been steadily accumulating energy at a rate of 0. 50 +/ 0.43 Watts per meter squared (uncertainties at the 90% confidence level). We conclude that energy storage is continuing to increase in the sub-surface ocean.

This is larger than is justified based on the upper ocean heat changes, as has been discussed by myself and others (e.g. Knox and Douglas 2010). The heat accumulation they refer to also has hardly been “steady”. However, lets just use these values.

Jim Hansen concluded in 2005 that the decadal mean planetary energy imbalance at the end of the 1990s was

,…..0.85 Watts per meter squared is the imbalance at the end of the decade.”

This value falls within the uncertainty range of the Leob et al 2012 study. However, we are 13 years since the end of the 20th century, so Jim Hansen’s value for the imbalance must be larger (~0.95 Watts per meter squared from GISS?).

This question about whether or not the IPCC model predictions (as represented by the GISS models) are still consistent even with the large Loeb et al estimate should have been a major part of their article. The Loeb et al 2012 even cited the Hansen paper but did not take the next step and complete model and observational comparisons. That the IPCC models are close to being refuted with respect to the magnitude of global warming even with the large Loeb et al values is an unspoken result of their findings. They missed a major implication from their results.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

William Briggs points out that the statistical critieria in the paper mentioned above have been stretched way beyond what is normally done. Using conventional statistical procedures the result would be even more refutational of the IPCC conclusions




Greenie gag campaign being outed

Much to the chagrin of the Warmist writing below

The network of climate deniers who pollute America’s local newscasts with anti-science propaganda includes Neil Barton, the news director of NBC affiliate KETK-TV in Dallas, Texas. On Monday’s evening newscast, Barton responded with outrage to the Forecast The Facts campaign that challenges the American Meteorological Society to oppose science denial by television meteorologists. Barton complained that Forecast The Facts and ThinkProgress Green are “outing” those who say “pish-posh to the whole idea of global warming”:

Now, a new progressive website is outing weather people who don’t agree with far-left thinking. ThinkProgress.org is outing TV weather folks who have gone on record saying pish-posh to the whole idea of global warming. They put the weather person’s statements about why they won’t get on board under the heading “zombie quotes.”

KETK’s chief meteorologist, Scott Chesner, is a global warming denier as well. “Predicting the weather in the long range is an impossible feat the farther out in time you go, its just another reason why especially in terms of trying to predict man’s influence on the climate — totally preposterous!” Chesner said last December.

SOURCE (See the original for links and video)





UN attempts to re-brand climate change

The usual Leftist faith in verbal magic. See: political correctness

Following abject failures at its previous climate change summits, which always seem to take place in beautiful, faraway locales, the UN is now giving climate change a new name: sustainable development:

Representatives from around the world gather in Rio in June to try to hammer out goals for sustainable development at a U.N. conference designed to avoid being tripped up by the intractable issue of climate change.

But there is concern in the lead-up to the conference, known as Rio+20 or the Earth Summit, that it risks ending up as all talk and little action.

In an attempt to avoid too much confrontation, the conference will focus not on climate change but on sustainable development - making sure economies can grow now without endangering resources and the environment for future generations.

U.N. conferences over the past decade have begun with high hopes for agreements to compel nations to cut climate-warming emissions and help adapt to a hotter world, but they often ended with disappointingly modest results. That was the case last year in the global climate change summit in Durban, South Africa. Participants at that meeting agreed to forge a new deal by 2015 that would go into force by 2020.

The “sustainable” branding for this year’s summit, rather than climate, is by design, said Ambassador Andre Correa do Lago, who headed Brazil’s delegation to the U.N. climate talks in Durban and will be a chief negotiator for Brazil in Rio.

Sustainable development is an easier sell globally than climate change, even though sustainable development is a way of tackling global warming and other environmental issues, he said.

SOURCE (See the original for links)





UN Abuse of Precautionary Principle Lets Them Ignore Corrupt Climate Science

Politicians and lawyers want rules, but include catch-all words or phrases that allow them to do anything. These are necessarily undefined. It’s a good idea to cover unusual circumstances, but assumes it is applied with facts and logic. More frequently, it’s become an excuse to defy facts and logic for an agenda.

Environmentalists quickly faced the problem as they distorted facts and logic for their political agenda. They needed something to deny the need for facts and logic required by science and adopted the Precautionary Principle. Wikipedia says,

This principle allows policy makers to make discretionary decisions in situations where there is the possibility of harm from taking a particular course or making a certain decision when extensive scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking.

What is “extensive scientific knowledge” and how much can be “lacking”?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are 90 percent certain, but they examine only human causes of climate change and produce consistently incorrect climate model predictions. Physics Nobel winner Richard Feynman said,

It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.

A few scientists at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), who effectively controlled the IPCC, corrupted science to prove human-produced CO2 was the cause. Although their malfeasance was exposed, it won’t stop the political juggernaut, because the Principle is part of the UN mandate on environment and climate.

In June the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Rio Conference with RIO+20. They say,

The Conference will focus on two themes:

1. a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication; and
2. the institutional framework for sustainable development.

These are the ojectives pursued from the start, but green economies have failed everywhere. Sustainable development is a political creation that means everything to everyone and nothing to anyone.

Rio 1992 was the political manifestation of the Club of Rome objectives. Scientific evidence, required to ‘prove’ humans were destroying the planet with capitalism and its fossil fuel driven technology, was already underway through the IPCC. The political roadmap was formalized in Rio as Agenda 21. Annex 1 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development lists the basic Principles. Most are specific, but the catch-all is Principle 15:

In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

It’s a naked, incorrrect, application of the Precautionary Principle. As one person said,

Proponents of the Precautionary Principle are trying to smuggle in a default position: The environment trumps all other values.

The vague phrase, “lack of full scientific certainty” easily pushes science aside; then you steal the moral high ground by claiming to protect the environment. It allows the challenge, “shouldn’t we act anyway just in case?” The correct answer is no, as I explained before the Canadian Parliamentary Committee investigating the Ozone question. Scientists can extrapolate a multitude of potential threats from a few facts. Political leaders must determine the most pressing and what they can afford. Lack of scientific understanding makes that infinitely more difficult.

Principle 15 effectively allows action with no scientific evidence. They don’t care if the climate science is falsified as with global warming. What is the purpose of applying the precautionary principle? Wildavsky provides the answer.

In a free society the individual is presumed to be free to act unless the state can prove harm or the potential to do harm. The precautionary principle says that no individual person is free to act unless that individual can prove to the state that the action can do no harm.

This is a perceptive academic analysis. Green and Armstrong put it more bluntly.

In practice, the precautionary principle is invoked when an interest group identifies an issue that can help it to achieve its objectives. If the interest group is successful in its efforts to raise fears about the issue, the application of the scientific method is rejected and a new orthodoxy is imposed. Government dictates follow. People who dissent from the orthodox view are vilified, ostracized, and may have their livelihoods taken away from them. Consider the case of “climate change”.

It’s another of the many circular arguments. Catch-all words or phrases provide for unusual circumstances, but assume it’s confirmed with facts and logic. Climate change is usual, but IPCC climate science falsely ‘proves’ it isn’t, which allows them to misuse a sound principle.

Related articles:

1. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Has Achieved Its Goal: It’s Time To Repair The Damage.
2. Ernst Georg Beck: A Major Contributor to Climate Science Effectively Sidelined by Climate Deceivers
3. Canada Quit Kyoto, Must Now Quit IPCC
4. Corruption of Climate Science Has Created 30 Lost Years
5. What is the US President Talking About?

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here

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A campaigning "ethicist"

Prof. Brown is at it again. He claims to be doing an ethical analysis of climate skepticism but as you will see from the excerpt below what he writes is all just Green/Left boilerplate, with the usual heavy reliance on "ad hominem" accusations and dubious assertions.

And as is also common on the Green/Left, the one thing he avoids like the plague is discussing the scientific facts. You will find no mention from him of the fact that the climate has warmed by less than one degree Celsius over the last 150 years. The only references he cites are fellow Warmists.

He sounds a bit of a nut to me, displaying the sort of calm but unfounded certitude one often finds among paranoid schizophrenics

Yet the emergence of global warming as an issue in the 1980s with its potential for large-scale social change needed to ameliorate its threat was seen as more threatening to conservatives in regard to industry, prosperity, life-style, and the entire American-way of life, than were traditional pollution problems. (McCright and Dunlap, 2000: 503) In other words, climate change directly threatened the central values of the US conservative movement even more than other environmental problems. (McCright and Dunlap, 2000: 505) As a result climate change denial has become a key environmental focus of the US conservative movement. In subsequent years the disinformation campaign would be taken up in other countries including the United Kingdom and Australia.

The climate change disinformation movement can be understood to be comprised of many organizations and participants including conservative think tanks, front groups, Astroturf groups, conservative media, and individuals. This disinformation campaign, as we shall see, frequently uses the tactics discussed in this series to convince people and politicians that the science supporting climate change policies is flawed. The central claims of the climate change disinformation movement have been:

• There is no warming.

• Its not caused by humans.

• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will cause more harm than good. (McCright and Dunlap, 2010: 111)

To support these basic counter-claims, as we shall see, the climate denial machine frequently has made claims that mainstream climate scientists are corrupt or liars, descriptions of adverse climate change impacts are made by "alarmists," scientific journals that publish climate related research are biased against skeptics, and mainstream climate science is "junk" science. As we shall also see, the climate change disinformation machine also has made frequent ad hominem attacks on those who produce climate change science and sometimes has cyber-bullied both climate scientists and journalists.

The climate change disinformation campaign began in the 1980s when some of the same scientists and organizations that fought government regulation of tobacco began to apply the tactics perfected in their war on the regulation of tobacco to climate change. (Oreskes and Conway, 2010:169-215). According to Pooley the disinformation campaign began "spinning around 1988 in response to the increasingly outspoken scientific community..." (Pooley, 2010: 39) For almost 25 years this campaign has been waged to undermine support for regulation of greenhouse gases.

To say that the campaign has been "waged" is not to claim that it has been a tightly organized, completely coordinated effort by a few groups or individuals or that all participants have the same motives. In fact different participants may have radically different motives including the fact that some may be sincere, some appear to be motivated by protecting free markets without government intervention, and many appear to believe that no restriction on fossil fuel use can be justified without very high levels of proof of harms.

Yet, the different participants, according to Newsweek, since the 1990s for the most part have acted in a well-coordinated campaign among contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks, and industry to create a fog of doubt around climate change. (Begley, 2007) They have accomplished this through the production of advertisements, op-eds, lobbying, books, media attention, and quotations from skeptical scientists often associated with conservative think tanks. They have argued first that the world is not warming, measurements that indicate otherwise are flawed, any warming is natural, that is not caused by human activities, and if warming does occur it will be miniscule and harmless. (Begley, 2007) Different groups created this counter-movement often acting independently of each other, yet connected through the internet to create a denial machine that has effectively responded to any public pronouncement by scientist or journalists that asserted that human-induced climate change is a serious problem. (Begley, 2007) Conservative activists wrote hundreds of documents (including policy briefs, books, press releases, and op-eds), held numerous policy forums and press conferences, appeared regularly on television and radio programs, and testified at congressional hearings on global warming. (Dunlap and McCright, 2008)

SOURCE




Political Activists trying to Gag TV Meteorologists on Climate Issues

Anthony Watts is a former TV meteorologist so has dug deep on this one. He shows that a Soros-funded Green/Left front organization is behind the censorship attempt. An excerpt below

According to WCTV-TV’s story Urging American Meteorological Society to Get Tougher on Climate Change, a program called Forecast the Facts is attempting to lobby the AMS to change their 5-year policy on climate change to a new policy “drafted by a panel of [unidentified] experts”

A new campaign, Forecast the Facts (www.forecastthefacts.org), launches Sunday to pressure TV meteorologists to inform their viewers about climate change. The launch coincides with the kick-off of the American Meteorological Society’s (AMS) annual meeting in New Orleans, LA.

“This is an important moment in the history of the AMS,” said Daniel Souweine, the campaign’s director. “It’s well known that large numbers of meteorologists are climate change deniers. It’s essential that the AMS Council resist pressure from these deniers and pass the strong statement currently under consideration.”

The “Campaign Director” is identified as Daniel Souweine. The Forecast the Facts web site turns out to be a product of “Citizen Engagement Laboratory (CEL).” And who is the Chief of Staff of CEL? You guessed it: Daniel Souweine.

The web site describes CEL as: ”a non-profit, non-partisan organization that uses digital media and technology to amplify the voices of underrepresented constituencies. We seek to empower individuals to take collective action on the issues that concern them, promoting a world of greater equality and justice in the process.”

But as we see elsewhere, in the green incubator building description of CEL at the David Brower Center at 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, that “non-partisan” claim doesn’t match this description. So much for the “truth in advertising”.

And then there’s the usual suspects friends of forecastthefacts.org. The CEL web site lists 350.org as a “Partner,” which describes itself as: “building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. Our online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public actions are led from the bottom up by thousands of volunteer organizers in over 188 countries.”

Sounds like birds of a feather, even though they are both attempting to lobby a major national organization to change a policy that affects all of its members… from the top down. Hardly grass-roots organization. And hardly on behalf of “underrepresented constituencies.”

Evidently, grassroots meteorologists are insufficiently toeing the line when it comes to laying weather patterns at the feet of “global warming.” Someone unnamed wants them to publicly join the global warming bandwagon in blaming human CO2 emissions for observed climate change, ignoring the uncertainty of climate science, ignoring all evidence to the contrary, insisting on one single simplistic explanation for climate change.

More HERE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)




Even the Washington Post finds the censorship attempt distasteful

(It endorsed Barack Obama for President and the writer below is a Warmist)

If you present the weather on TV and you reject that global warming is the result of human activities, the spotlight on you is hotter than ever. But the attention is a colossal waste of energy.

Coinciding with this week’s American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting in New Orleans, the groups 350.org, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Citizen Engagement Lab have launched a campaign that exposes television weathercasters who take a contrarian stance on climate change science.

The campaign, called Forecast the Facts, launched a website that identifies 47 TV weathercasters by name who have publicly expressed climate change views considered outside of the mainstream. (It is also pressuring the American Meteorological Society to strengthen its position statement on the science.)

This confrontational approach is the wrong approach and promises to only further divide TV weathercasters whose views on the issue of climate change are already polarized.

The rationale for the campaign are results from a survey conducted by George Mason University in 2010* that found 63% of weathercasters believe global warming is due mainly to natural causes compared to just 31% who think it’s mostly a result of human causes. Some 27 percent of weathercasters referred to global warming as “a scam.” Whereas, the prevailing view among publishing climate scientists is that the Earth is warming primarily as a result of human activities.

Studies have shown some weathercasters don’t have the most reliable understanding of climate science and uneven levels of education. A 2002 study by Emory researcher Kris Wilson found many weathercasters held misconceptions on a range of climate science issues and their “politics” had the greatest bearing on that knowledge. Furthermore, some weathercasters are not scientists but broadcast journalists. And even for those with meteorology degrees, many of the degree programs do not require coursework in climate change. A 2011 survey of weathercasters at George Mason found only 42 percent of respondents had participated in climate change continuing education courses.

But the “Forecast the Facts”campaign makes no initiative to engage with weathercasters and enhance their education.

The campaign website asserts “viewers turning into their weather report deserve to be told the truth about climate change.” It’s hard to disagree that weathercasters should stay up to speed on climate change and pass along that knowledge to viewers. Maybe “Forecast the Facts” should be providing resources to make this happen rather than conducting a smear campaign.

This is not to say weathercasters shouldn’t bear some responsibility in becoming educated about climate change science. Nor does it absolve them from impartially communicating it.

In an editorial published in the Bulletin of American Meteorological Society several years ago, WJLA meteorologist Bob Ryan and NBC Telemundo meteorologist John Toohey-Morales took some of their peers to task for failing to set aside personal opinions in discussing climate change, writing:

"If we “experts” communicate conflicting information, conveying personal opinions with no scientific basis, the public can become confused and often collectively “tune out” of the issue just when it requires the most attention. The same would happen if we gave conflicting personal opinions during dangerous weather events. When we stray from objectivity in communicating the latest scientific findings, we do the public a disservice."

Ryan and Toohey-Morales took a constructive approach - making a passionate but respectful appeal to their peers when they felt they had gone astray. But when an outside activist group flies onto the scene outing individuals and calling them “deniers,” it’s not going make their targets more open-minded nor motivate them to seek out the latest journals online. Instead, it may alienate them and further entrench a narrow perspective

In my experience talking to weathercasters and other individuals whose views about climate change don’t seem grounded in science, I’ve found it’s most effective to dispassionately approach the subject and simply discuss the evidence. Just as important: treat the person with respect and show you understand their perspective.

For example, I’ve seen some weathercasters fall into the skeptics camp as a result of overstatements by activists, politicians and journalists, who have made predictions of certain catastrophe and blamed global warming for every conceivable natural disaster.

Such hyperbole might be overcome by demonstrating that, in reality, global warming forecasts include a range of possibilities, and, while many are concerning, they are not all dire. And by being clear that, while scientists have found global warming may intensify some types of extreme weather (i.e. heat waves and heavy precipitation events), few if any claim global warming is the root cause.

More HERE





Pew Poll: Global warming finishes 22nd of 22 "top policy priorities of 2012"

The Pew poll also found that some issues – especially illegal immigration and climate change – did not resonate nearly as much with Americans as they did before Obama took office.

A quarter of Americans now find climate change a top concern, down from almost four in 10 in 2007.

SOURCE (See the original for links)





From Canada, Ezra Levant offers a concise summary of the Keystone calamity






Australia: Bats win park war because of Greenie laws

They are not remotely "endangered" so local authorities should be allowed to shoot them if necessary

FLYING foxes [large fruit bats] have officially won the war in Charters Towers, claiming the town's historic park as their own.

Charters Towers Mayor Ben Callcott has conceded defeat against the thousands of bats that invaded Lissner Park about 11 years ago and have since refused to leave.

He said unless state legislation was changed, which prevented the council from interfering with the colony, the council had simply run out of options. Locals claim the bats are a major health hazard, fearing they may spread disease, and are fed up with living with the stench and noise from the colony, which now numbers about 15,000.

Charters Towers Regional Council has been granted 15 damage mitigation permits by the Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) over the years, to disperse the bats using noise, fogging and lighting.

An attempt to muster the bats using a helicopter was scuttled late last year by the Civil Aviation and Safety Authority over safety concerns. The council has applied for a 16th permit to move the bats, but Cr Callcott said their best efforts had simply shifted the animals to other parts of the town, where they had become even more of a problem.

"Charters Towers City Council spent $250,000 harassing them and it didn't do anything other than distributing them into suburbia," Cr Callcott said. "I'm not prepared to spend that kind of money to achieve the same ending.

"We may never get permission to muster them, so in that case, let them lodge in Lissner Park, where at least people can choose whether they get underneath them.

LNP leader Campbell Newman, who visited Charters Towers last year, promised the town "the bats in Lissner Park will go".

Cr Callcott said a law change was the only solution. "The bats under the present legislation have defeated us," he said.

Charters Towers Action Group Against Flying Foxes spokesman Jim Henderson, who lives near the park, said the bats were creating a health hazard and preventing locals and visitors from enjoying public facilities. "Nobody wants to come into the park and sit under those tables," he said.

Mr Henderson said residents' pleas to the State Government for help moving the flying foxes on had fallen upon deaf ears. "They've ignored us and ignored us since I've been fighting it," he said.

Vikki King, who lives opposite the colony, said she wanted the right to remove the bats from her own backyard. "Three or four weeks ago, every tree was chock-a-block in my yard here," she said. "The bat shit is everywhere and it just eats everything."

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here

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Keystone Kops halt US-Canada pipeline, and target another

White House, environmentalists and U.S foundations seek to block all oil sands development. Some little known information about the huge financial investment that US anti-hydrocarbon environmentalist foundations have in this battle

Oilfield workers in Alberta, refinery workers in Texas and countless factory workers just learned that the White House will not allow construction of an oil pipeline that would bring over half a million barrels of oil a day from Canada’s Alberta Province and North Dakota’s Bakken Field to refineries in Texas and Louisiana. The job-killing decision was a victory for radical environmentalists and well-heeled U.S. foundations that have long battled Canadian oil sands companies and the U.S. oil and gas industry.

President Obama says Congress gave him insufficient time to examine environmental issues. TransCanada Keystone Pipeline LP can reapply, he added, if it reroutes the pipeline around Nebraska’s Oglala Aquifer and Sand Hills area and addresses other concerns. In the meantime, the Administration insists, the project “would not serve the national interest.”

Project supporters called the President’s decision “preposterous,” and urged Congress to craft a way to gain approval without White House involvement.

“The rationales for rejecting the project are nothing but dissembling, red herrings and hot air,” CFACT policy advisor Paul Driessen commented. “They are as credible as a Keystone Kops movie.”

The application for this project and pipeline route was submitted in 2008, Driessen noted. The Administration has had ample time to review every aspect. “This is the same White House that demanded passage of a healthcare bill that no one in Congress had a chance to read, much less study and understand, before it was presented for final vote. To claim that two months was not enough time to study a proposal that had already been studied three years is absurd,” he said.

The Keystone XL project would ensure jobs, affordable energy and national security, which Mr. Obama insists he supports. His rejection demonstrates that his real goal is to reduce energy supplies, raise energy prices, and destroy jobs that are not part of the Administration’s government-subsidized and directed “green jobs” agenda, Driessen and others say. Moreover, dozens of pipelines already cross the Oglala region; another well-designed pipeline would hardly pose an unacceptable threat.

Even the Washington Post editorial board says “Obama’s Keystone pipeline rejection is hard to accept” – especially coming one day after the President said the United States still needs inexpensive hydrocarbon energy, pipelines and a strong energy infrastructure. Quoting from government reports, the Post noted that the pipeline would have “limited adverse environmental impacts.”

Few Americans or Canadians were surprised by the announcement. TransCanada spokesman Jim Prescott had previously told a Houston newspaper, “It has become a political piñata ... that the activist community and environmental community have used to drive a larger … anti-oil agenda.”

Killing Keystone is just one part of a grand strategy that includes closing off Asian and U.S. markets from the oil; banning exploration and production across Canada and the United States; and even shutting down existing operations that radical greens call “blood oil,” in an insulting comparison to diamond mining in African regions torn by conflict and brutality.

Indeed, the same coalition fighting the Keystone project has spent hundreds of millions of dollars from U.S. foundations to shut down Canada’s entire vital and profitable oil sands oil operation – even though it increasingly uses less water and energy, emits less pollution and carbon dioxide, and relies more on in situ steam injection than surface mining. Radical environmentalists also oppose Canada’s Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific coast, to facilitate shipment by tanker to Asia.

Canada’s government recently began public hearings on the Northern Gateway proposal. Opponents won a major victory when Chief Hearing Officer Sheila Leggett, Vice Chair of Canada’s National Energy Board, decided to let foreign citizens, foreign lobbyists and even foreign governments take part in what will now likely be a protracted and rancorous public hearing circus.

“The world’s Canada-bashers laughed [at Leggett’s decision], then signed up to testify,” Ezra Levant observed in the Calgary Sun. “Almost 5,000 of them have signed up, including Hugo Chavez’s state-owned oil company CITGO, foreigners from Uruguay to Louisiana to Italy to Austria, Captain Jack Sparrow,” and somebody called “Cave Man.”

“But the biggest threat isn’t the clowns,” Levant added. “It’s the well-paid foreign professional lobbyists who used Leggett’s weakness to take over the process – pros like the New York-based Rockefeller Foundation,” which Levant says spent $200,000 to hire the West Coast Environmental Law Foundation to try to block development of the pipeline and tanker port. But that is just the tip of the iceberg!

Vivian Krause, writing in Canada’s Financial Post, says the thinking behind U.S. funding against Canadian oil was explained in a 2007 strategy paper, “Design to win: Philanthropy’s role in the fight against global warming,” funded largely by the Hewlett Foundation. Even earlier, Hewlett had paid Tides Canada to develop a strategic plan to fight oil and gas development in British Columbia.

Overall, Krause reports, U.S. foundations alone granted at least $300 million over the last decade to various environmental organizations and campaigns in Canada; half went to three campaigns. The Pew Foundation (heirs to Sun Oil!) gave $57 million to the Boreal Forest Initiative, which seeks to place fully one-third of Canada into protected areas and parks – off limits to logging, mining, hydroelectric, new roads, and oil and gas production, while accommodating traditional hunting, fishing and gathering.

Through the George & Betty Moore Foundation, Intel founder George Moore worked with Tides Canada to give $30 million to First Nations to create a Pacific North Coast Integrated Management Area, which targets only that small part of the north coast of B.C. that includes the proposed oil tanker port site. The Great Bear Rainforest Initiative seeks to set aside 21 million hectares (52 million acres – the equivalent of Kansas) from Vancouver Island to Alaska, supposedly to protect the Kermode bear (aka Great Spirit Bear) but really to serve as the Great Trade Barrier against oil exports to Asia.

First Nation groups have received at least $50 million from U.S. foundations, Krause reports, ostensibly to lead the fight against oil pipelines. A newly emerging big player is the Sea Change Foundation, funded by Jim and Nathaniel Simons of Renaissance Technologies LLC, a $15 billion hedge fund.

Terence Corcoran of Canada’s National Post added that jet-setting, oil-consuming movie celebrities like Robert Redford, James Cameron, Darryl Hannah and Leonardo DeCaprio have also lent their personas to movements “aimed at shutting down large portions of the Canadian economy.” One wonders if they, too, are being paid with “blood money” from U.S. foundations created through wealth accumulated from fossil fuels, mining and other industries now in environmentalist cross-hairs.

Canada Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Cabinet have taken a far different tack with the Northern Gateway hearings than the White House did with Keystone. While President Obama hemmed and hawed on the central question of whether Keystone XL would be in America’s best interest, Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver made it clear that his government supports both Gateway and Keystone.

In an unprecedented open letter, Oliver asserted, “For our government, the choice is clear: we need to diversify our markets, to create jobs and economic growth for Canadians.... We must expand our trade with the fast growing Asian economies … to help ensure the financial security of Canadians and their families.”

Oliver went on to denounce “environmental and radical groups” whose goal is “to stop any major project, no matter the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth. No forestry. No mining. No oil. No gas. No more hydroelectric dams. These groups ... seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects. “

Oliver lambasted foreign special interest groups for trying to undermine Canada’s economy, and ridiculed “jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world” for daring to “lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources” and using lawsuits as a last resort to obstruct industrial progress.

The opposition has done its research, invested wisely and heavily, and expects to win. The Harper government has pledged to fight for a prosperous future against the eco-imperialists of Deep Ecology, who use industry-based fortunes to control and hamstring the lives and livelihoods of current and future generations. The stakes are high; our very futures depend on the outcome of these twin battles.

President Obama must face the very real likelihood that the radicals he is placating over Keystone XL will be unable to block oil shipment to China or elsewhere in Asia. The net result will be no American jobs and no environmental gains – not even questionable or imaginary gains.

The oil will be extracted, transported overseas and burned under less rigorous pollution rules and controls, to create better jobs and lives for people across the Pacific Ocean. That will leave Americans with none of the energy or employment benefits that Mr. Obama insists he is committed to creating – and the global environment with none of the land use, air and water quality or climate benefits that the White House proclaims will be its lasting legacy.

SOURCE






Fred Singer replies to a critique of the Durban climate festival

His comment published in Nature in response to a Nature editorial‏ of Dec 15; "The Mask Slips"

"The Nature editorial talks about science and policy in parallel universes. Quite correct – if you mean ‘separate’ and ‘disconnected.’ COP 17 in Durban was never about climate, let alone science. It was all about money: (1) How to assure continuing government careers for 200 delegations, with annual vacations paid by taxpayers. (2) How to transfer $100 billion a year from industrialized nations to LDCs (or more precisely, to their kleptocratic rulers), using “climate justice” or “climate guilt” (depending on who is doing the talking). (3) How to gain a national advantage by setting differential emission limits.

By now it should be obvious that (1) the enshrined temperature limit of +2 degC is based on fiction and has no scientific basis. As an annual global average, climate models tell us, it will mean warmer winter nights in Siberia and Canada; perhaps -35degC instead of -40; and little warming in the tropics. (2) It should also be obvious that even strenuous and economy-killing efforts at mitigation, will have little effect on atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, let alone on climate. If a demonstration is needed, just look at the lack of warming since 1998, in spite of rapidly rising levels of greenhouse gases.

So, yes, I would agree with the editorial, if properly expanded."

SOURCE





Scare: Unprecedented, man-made trends in ocean’s acidity

Just another modelling exercise and one based on admittedly poor data. Amusingly, it makes a mockery of its own warnings. Its authors say that "anthropogenic CO2 emissions over the last 100 to 200 years have already raised ocean acidity far beyond the range of natural variations". So where is the evidence of harm from that? There is none

Nearly one-third of CO2 emissions due to human activities enters the world’s oceans. By reacting with seawater, CO2 increases the water’s acidity, which may significantly reduce the calcification rate of such marine organisms as corals and mollusks. The extent to which human activities have raised the surface level of acidity, however, has been difficult to detect on regional scales because it varies naturally from one season and one year to the next, and between regions, and direct observations go back only 30 years.

Combining computer modeling with observations, an international team of scientists concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions over the last 100 to 200 years have already raised ocean acidity far beyond the range of natural variations. The study is published in the January 22 online issue of Nature Climate Change.

The team of climate modelers, marine conservationists, ocean chemists, biologists and ecologists, led by Tobias Friedrich and Axel Timmermann at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, came to their conclusions by using Earth system models that simulate climate and ocean conditions 21,000 years back in time, to the Last Glacial Maximum, and forward in time to the end of the 21st century. They studied in their models changes in the saturation level of aragonite (a form of calcium carbonate) typically used to measure of ocean acidification. As acidity of seawater rises, the saturation level of aragonite drops. Their models captured well the current observed seasonal and annual variations in this quantity in several key coral reef regions.

Today’s levels of aragonite saturation in these locations have already dropped five times below the pre-industrial range of natural variability. For example, if the yearly cycle in aragonite saturation varied between 4.7 and 4.8, it varies now between 4.2 and 4.3, which – based on another recent study – may translate into a decrease in overall calcification rates of corals and other aragonite shell-forming organisms by 15%. Given the continued human use of fossil fuels, the saturation levels will drop further, potentially reducing calcification rates of some marine organisms by more than 40% of their pre-industrial values within the next 90 years.

“Any significant drop below the minimum level of aragonite to which the organisms have been exposed to for thousands of years and have successfully adapted will very likely stress them and their associated ecosystems,” says lead author Postdoctoral Fellow Tobias Friedrich.

“In some regions, the man-made rate of change in ocean acidity since the Industrial Revolution is hundred times greater than the natural rate of change between the Last Glacial Maximum and pre-industrial times,” emphasizes Friedrich. “When Earth started to warm 17,000 years ago, terminating the last glacial period, atmospheric CO2 levels rose from 190 parts per million (ppm) to 280 ppm over 6,000 years. Marine ecosystems had ample time to adjust. Now, for a similar rise in CO2 concentration to the present level of 392 ppm, the adjustment time is reduced to only 100 – 200 years.”

On a global scale, coral reefs are currently found in places where open-ocean aragonite saturation reaches levels of 3.5 or higher. Such conditions exist today in about 50% of the ocean – mostly in the tropics. By end of the 21st century this fraction is projected to be less than 5%. The Hawaiian Islands, which sit just on the northern edge of the tropics, will be one of the first to feel the impact.

The study suggests that some regions, such as the eastern tropical Pacific, will be less stressed than others because greater underlying natural variability of seawater acidity helps to buffer anthropogenic changes. The aragonite saturation in the Caribbean and the western Equatorial Pacific, both biodiversity hotspots, shows very little natural variability, making these regions particularly vulnerable to human-induced ocean acidification.

“Our results suggest that severe reductions are likely to occur in coral reef diversity, structural complexity and resilience by the middle of this century,” says co-author Professor Axel Timmermann.”

SOURCE





The Frackin' Democrats

For every reasonable and responsible solution America comes up with to solve a problem, the frackin' Democrats have to come up with a hysterical response to stop it. Take hydraulic fracturing...

CatFish John wrote: 50 years from now water is going to be more precious than both oil and gas but you know who cares about our children and our children's children. - in response to Scientists Discover Gassy Liberal Pseudo-Science

Dear Comrade CatFish,

Water is always more precious than oil and gas. But we’ve been using oil and gas for over a century and we still have clean water here in the US. It wasn’t oil and gas that killed the Chesapeake Bay.

Liberals always have to act like the sky is falling, because they can’t rely on facts to back them up.

I don’t think we’ll run out of water, any more than the world will deflate from drilling for oil and gas or Guam will tip over from too many people.

Mark Twain once said that he felt about one of his books probably the same way that the Almighty felt about the world: “The fact is, there is a trifle too much water in both.”

Sons of Liberty wrote: The only poll I trust is the one that will be conducted on Nov. 6, 2012. And from past experience working the elections I'm not too optimistic that this President will be voted out of office. I've worked the elections for 6 years now and since then I have wondered if this republic can ever be saved. Example: out of more than 700 registered voters in my district only 100 to 150 voters show up to vote EVERY election cycle, from local to national elections. - in response to With Keystone XL, Obama Mask Slips on Jobs, Energy

Dear Liberty,

Six years isn’t that many election cycles.

I would say that it’s about the normal amount of time it takes the average voter to get completely disgusted with the party in power.

In this case that means disgust with the Democrats.

In 2008, voter turnout was the highest it’s been since 1968 at 56.8 percent of the population. 

The good news is that if you want voter turnout to increase in your district, you only have to contact those 700 voters once during the preceding 30 days prior to the election. If you break it down by households, it probably comes out closer to 400-500 households. That means that you only have to make 17 phone calls per day to voters in your district to positively affect the outcome.

Call your local party for the resources to contact your neighbors.

Ibuh wrote: Here we go again: spreading misinformation about the Keystone pipeline. Preserving the lies that cancelling that pipeline will result in decreased supply of Canadian oil to the US and increased oil prices. - in response to With Keystone XL, Obama Mask Slips on Jobs, Energy

Dear Comrade Ibuh,

If that’s not true than why is the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper threatening to sell the oil to China?

I would think that maybe he knows something- actually many things- about this that you don’t.  In fact, I would guarantee that he knows more about most things than you do.

“Prime Minister Harper expressed his profound disappointment with the news,” that Obama scuttled the Keystone pipeline. “He indicated to President Obama that he hoped that this project would continue given the significant contribution it would make to jobs and economic growth both in Canada and the United States of America.”  

He went on to say that since the US didn’t want the oil, Canada was looking to sell the oil to someone else.

Here goes that whacky Canadian Prime Minister “telling lies again” about Canadian oil.  

Beachgoer wrote: I find it very hypocritical that the president can visit Disney and call for more tourism to boost the economy but slams the door on the pipeline. My business runs on gasoline. I will not be voting to re-elect!! - in response to Expecting the Worst from President Hypocrite

Dear Beachgoer,

That’s because Obama knows as much about economics as Ibuh does.

Lon wrote: Yeah why did he make this divisive decision now? I mean besides because Republicans insisted on his making it now before they agreed to a two month extension of the payroll tax cut. - in response to Expecting the Worst from President Hypocrite

Dear Comrade Lon,

Actually this is the second time that Obama punted on making a decision. His first error was completely unforced by the GOP. In fact, it was probably Democrat-on-Democrat crime that put Obama in this mess to begin with.  

He has had the opportunity to make the decision since the State Department, run by Hillary Clinton, first gave the seal of approval to the pipeline back at the end of the summer.

From HuffPo:

On Friday, the State Department issued its final Environmental Impact Statement, concluding that the proposed 1,700-mile pipeline would have "no significant impact" on the environment and recommending that the project move forward, despite warnings from environmental groups that, among other things, the project would help accelerate the warming of the planet.

Just goes to show you that Hillary has a pair, and Obama does not.

Kilgore Trout wrote: I was curious where your figure of 200,000 jobs comes from. The only place I could find that figure was from the U.S Chamber of Commerce which is a conservative lobbying group. TransCanada itself stated that figure would be more like 20,000 temporary US Jobs with permanent jobs ranging in the hundreds. - in response to Expecting the Worst from President Hypocrite

Dear Comrade Kilgore,

The US Chamber, according to CBS News, says 250,000 permanent jobs. Congress has cited 20,000 construction jobs plus another 130,000 ancillary jobs. Meanwhile, Cornell University, in a flight of fancy, has said that Keystone construction “may actually destroy more jobs than it generates.” But that says more about liberal economists than it does about how many jobs the pipeline would create.

Six percent ($533 billion in payroll) of all labor income in the United States and 5.3 percent of all jobs are either directly tied to or support the oil and gas business. Some of the supporting industries include Services, Wholesale and Retail Trade, Finance, Insurance, Real Estate, Rental and Leasing, Manufacturing, Transportation and Warehousing, Information, Construction, Agriculture, Utilities and Mining. The jobs are good paying, technical positions too.

When you figure in that Keystone will supply another million barrels of oil of the 19 million barrels the US uses- or more than a 5 percent increase- you are looking at a substantial boost to the economy. That’s $350 billion in oil. Certainly the number of jobs created by processing half-a-trillion dollars in oil in the US every year will be in the hundreds of thousands of jobs. I think 250,000 jobs is too conservative an estimate.

But the bigger issue, comrade, is that once the Keystone pipeline is operating, the US will begin to exploit is own reserves of oil, which will make it a net exporter of oil and refined product.

That’s what the Keystone issue is about.

As I have pointed out all along, the Keystone issue isn’t about the safety of a pipeline. Obama and enviro-whacko friends know that if they allow Canadian tar sands oil to be developed via the Keystone pipeline, that the US will also start to develop their own tar-sands and shale oil. The US contains well over 600 years of known reserves and that would allow the US to be a net exporter of oil. If that happens, the green economy ruse that the left has sponsored, already reeling from bankruptcies and cronyism, would collapse. It would show that there is no shortage of oil and “green” energy can not compete with fossil fuels.

Mac287 wrote: Our country is America which has purposely been broken into opposing "camps" and never the twain shall meet...how about coming together for the betterment of the country we love? Parties winning only signifies country losing as we never seem to work toward solutions...now everything is a big campaign...whoever wins, we lose as a country. Any politicians out there with character & integrity and the welfare of our country at heart?- in response to UAW, Occupy and Obama Hang Themselves Together

Dear Comrade 287,

Here’s the dead giveaway that liberals are toast the next election.

Whenever they get in trouble they start singing the Rodney King anthem of “Can’t We All Just Get Along?”

When they had Obama and both houses of Congress, it was: “We won” as they shoved Obamacare down our throats.

But, yes, there are politicians with character and integrity who have the welfare of country at heart. But very few of them now reside in the Democrat party.

SOURCE






DDT myths live on

Times-Picayune celebrates DDT myth as history

In celebrating the recovery of the brown pelican population, the New Orleans Times-Picayune writes,

The brown pelican survived a brush with extinction, and the bird was declared healthy in 2009, 39 years after it was placed on the endangered species list. In the 1960s, the pelican had largely disappeared from the Gulf Coast, primarily because of decades of heavy use of the pesticide DDT in agriculture and mosquito control.

But a ban on DDT and efforts to protect pelican nesting sites led to a dramatic comeback for the Louisiana state bird.

Research in the late 1960s proved that DDT, ingested from the fish pelicans ate, caused eggshells to crack prematurely. The chemical was banned in 1972. In its absence, the osprey, the bald eagle and other fish-eating birds also made comebacks.

By November, 2009, the brown pelican population was estimated at about 650,000 in the Gulf Coast, Florida and California…

But the brown pelican had almost disappeared way before DDT came on the scene and then DDT had no effect on the pelican populations.

Check out the following from JunkScience.com’s “100 Things You Should Know About DDT“:

92. Brown pelicans declined in Texas from a high of 5,000 birds in 1918 to a low of 200 in 1941, three years before the presence of DDT. [Pearson TG. 1919. Review of reviews. Pp. 509-511 (May 1919); Pearson TG. 1934. Adventures in Bird Protection, Appleton- Century Co., p. 332; Pearson TG. 1934 (Discussion of 1918 survey) National Geographic pp. 299-302 (March 1934); Allen RG. 1935. Auk 52: p.199;]

93. Disappearance of the brown pelicans from Texas was attributed to fisherman and hunters. Gustafson AF. 1939. Conservation in the United States, Comstock Publ. Co., Ithaca, NY. (Repeated in U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Report No. 1, 1970)]

94. Brown pelicans experienced no difficulty in reproducing during the DDT years. [See Banks, RC. 1966. Trans San Diego Soc Nat Hist 14:173-188; and Schreiber RW and RL DeLong. 1969. Audubon Field Notes 23:57-59]

95. Brown pelicans did suffer reproductive problems following the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. Oil on eggs is a known cause of embryo death. [See e.g., National Wildlife Federation . 1979. Embryonic mortality from oil on feathers of adult birds. Conservation News, pp. 6-10 (October 15, 1979); Hartung, R. 1965. (Oil on eggs reduces hatch ability by 68 percent). J Wildlife Management 29: 872-874; King, KA 1979. (Oil a probable cause of pelican mortality for six weeks after spill). Bull Environ Contam. Toxicol 23:800-805; and Dieter, MP. 1977. (5 micro liters of oil on fertile egg kills 76 percent to 98 percent of embryos within. Interagency Energy-Environment Research and Development Program Report, pp 35-42]

96. Among brown pelican egg shells examined (72 percent), there was no correlation between DDT residue and shell thickness. [Switzer, B. 1972. Consolidated EPA hearings, Transcript pp. 8212-8336; and Hazeltine, WE. 1972. Why pelican eggshells are thin. Nature 239: 410-412]

97. An epidemic of Newcastle disease resulted in millions of birds put to death to eradicate the disease. [United Press International. "Newcastle disease epidemic in California (April 1972)] The epidemic among U.S. birds was caused by the migration of sick pelicans along the Mexican coast. [Hofstad MC. 1972. Diseases of Poultry. Iowa State Univ. Press]

SOURCE




Australia: "Green" gasoline switch to leave 750,000 NSW motorists out of pocket

UP TO 750,000 drivers in NSW will be forced to pay at least $150 more for petrol each year when the government bans regular unleaded petrol in July.

NSW is the only government in Australia to ban regular unleaded petrol and replace it with fuel blended with 10 per cent ethanol.

But modelling by the University of Queensland and the Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce obtained by the Herald shows 25 per cent of NSW cars cannot use ethanol fuel and will be forced to use premium fuel instead.

With support from the Liberal and National parties, the former Labor government passed legislation in 2007 banning unleaded fuel, arguing that ethanol-blended fuel was better for the environment.

The Coalition supported the laws despite the fact that among those bearing the extra cost would be nearly 100,000 NSW motorists who drive cars made before 1986, many of whom live in rural Australia.

Almost all motorcyclists in NSW and drivers of several popular makes and models, such as all Ford Lasers and many Mazdas made before 2005, will also have to pay more as their vehicles cannot run on ethanol-blended petrol.

Anton le Rutte, of the Boat Owners Association of NSW, said most boats would also be unable to use ethanol fuel because it absorbed moisture and disintegrated and had a risk of starting fires in older boats.

At an average extra of 10¢ a litre for premium fuel, the average motorist will be paying $150 more a year. For a car with a 60-litre fuel tank, filling up once a week, it will cost an extra $300 a year.

The study was prepared for the ethanol industry. It used data from 2009 to project that, as of last year, only 75 per cent of 3 million passenger vehicles and motorbikes in NSW would be able to run on ethanol-blended fuel.

The extra cost to be borne by motorists was scarcely mentioned in the parliamentary debate on the legislation.

Tony Kelly, then the minister for rural affairs, said motorists who had to switch to premium unleaded would "enjoy a higher-octane, cleaner-burning fuel".

Andrew Stoner, the Deputy Premier, supported the legislation, despite airing industry concerns that some motorists would have to pay 12¢ a litre more for "nothing other than government policy".

The Energy Minister, Chris Hartcher, did not respond to questions about whether he was concerned about the extra costs motorists would face or whether he had considered policies to offset them.

Kathleen Cash, a graphic designer from Rosebery, was totally unaware that regular unleaded petrol was being phased out and that she would have to pay more for premium fuel.

Ms Cash is thinking about trading in her 1998 Daewoo, which cannot run on ethanol-blended fuel, but her son looks likely to inherit it. "I don't really understand why it's going to cost more for older cars," she said. "I think it's really unfair that people who have older cars have to pay more".

SOURCE

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