"Salon" discusses using courts to punish climate deniers.

Bring it on! Skeptics should be looking forward to this.  A court case would be a great opportunity to expose the hollowness of the global warming scare.  You can see why "Salon" is very tentative about the idea.  For political reasons, the Dutch government could not mount a defense on the basis of the science but other individuals and bodies would not be under that constraint.  Al Gore's movie was declared inaccurate by a British court but it would have much more impact if the whole hoax was declared inconclusive by a court

Last month a court at The Hague ordered the Dutch government to cut its emissions by at least 25% compared to 1990 levels by 2020, the first ruling of its kind anywhere in the world. The victory was the result of a class action lawsuit brought by an NGO called the Urgenda Foundation (short for “Urgent Agenda”), which charged the Dutch government with “hazardous state negligence” in the face of climate change. Along with the rest of the EU, the Netherlands is taking a promise to cut 40% against 1990 by 2030 to the Paris climate talks in December, but they are off track, looking to achieve only a 17% cut by 2020. The court extracted a confession from the government’s lawyers that more could be done, and therefore ruled that not doing more was negligent.

The case has excited activists around the world. This week Marjan Minnesma, Urgenda’s co-founder and director, was in Australia, advising groups looking to emulate her success. “It’s the kind of action we’d love to run and we’re investigating”, environmental lawyer Sean Ryan told the Guardian. Australia is of course headed by the government of Tony Abbott, an aggressive climate change denier. In the face of such apathy, courts may be the best option. The speculative Australian attempt is one of five cases found by RTCC.org that might benefit from the Urgenda example, including one almost identical in its goal and reasoning brought (and recently won) by eight teenagers in Washington State.

Historically, courts seem to have backed away from climate change, preferring to leave it up to legislators and diplomats. In 2008, for example, the tiny Alaskan village of Kivalina sued several major oil corporations, including ExxonMobil, BP and Shell, for putting it under threat of rising sea levels and erosion. It’s handful of citizens wanted compensation to move the entire community to a different location. All courts up to the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the case as an issue for the executive and legislative branches. This refusal to play a role may be about to change. Ceri Warnock analyzing the Urgenda decision for the Journal of Environmental Law, believes that the case and a handful like it may indicate that courts are moving, in the face of an extreme danger such as climate change, to close a constitutional gap between the duty of governments to protect their citizens and their means of doing so. Climate change makes the unthinkable — that courts might be called upon to “re-balance” the constitution — thinkable. Such an internal conflict was on display as far back as 2007′s landmark Massachusetts vs Environmental Protection Agency, where the justices of the Supreme Court clashed over the threat posed by climate change and the causal link with emissions. Declaring that emissions caused climate change and climate change was a threat to the plaintiffs, the majority ordered the EPA to reconsider its refusal to treat carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions as pollutants.

With the nations of the world lining up to promise vague or inadequate emissions cuts, and with no mechanism yet in place to enforce them, is it time to call in the lawyers? Do courts have a duty to push governments to act on the threat of climate change, or is this better (and perhaps more legitimately) left to governments?

SOURCE





Have three climate change scientists been ASSASSINATED? The astonishing claim made by a Cambridge professor

Because they don't actually understand what is going on, Leftists are very prone to conspiracy theories.  Climate skeptics can even control lightning, would you believe?

A Cambridge professor has claimed that three scientists investigating climate change in the Arctic may have been assassinated.

Professor Peter Wadhams insists Seymour Laxon, Katharine Giles and Tim Boyd could have been murdered by someone possibly working for the oil industry or within government forces.

The trio had been studying the polar ice caps - with a focus on sea ice - when they died within a few months of each other in 2013.

Professor Laxon, 49, a director of the Centre for Polar Observation at University College London, was at a New Year's Eve party in Essex when he fell down a flight of stairs and died.

Meanwhile oceanographer Dr Boyd, 54, was out walking his dogs near his home in Port Appin, Argyll, western Scotland, in January 2013 when he was struck by lightning and killed instantly.

Just months later in April, Dr Giles, 35, was cycling to work at UCL where she lectured when she was hit by a tipper truck in Victoria, central London, and died.

Professor Wadhams, Cambridge University's head of Polar Ocean Physics Group, claims that in the weeks after Professor Laxon's death, he was targeted by a lorry trying to force him off the road.

He reported the incident to the police but did not express his concerns about the scientists over fears he would be labelled a 'looney', he told The Telegraph.

'It's just very odd coincidence that something like that should happen in such a brief period of time,' he said.

'They [the deaths] were accidents as far as anybody was able to tell but the fact they were clustered like that looked so weird.'

He added: 'I thought if it was somebody assassinating them could it be one of our people doing it and that would be even more frightening. I thought it would be better not to touch this with a barge pole.'

But his comments have left Professor Laxon's partner, Fiona Strawbridge - also a close friend of Dr Giles - furious and she has labelled it 'outrageous and very distressing'.

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Petroleum power: an eco-revolution

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s "The Long Winter" is generally regarded as the most historically accurate book of her semi-autobiographical "Little House on the Prairie" series. The Long Winter tells the story of how the inhabitants of De Smet (present-day South Dakota) narrowly avoided starvation during the severe winter of 1880-81, when a series of blizzards dumped nearly three and a half metres of snow on the northern plains – immobilising trains and cutting off the settlers from the rest of the world. Faced with an imminent food shortage, Laura and her neighbours learned that a sizeable amount of wheat was available within 20 miles of their snow-covered houses. Her future husband, Almanzo Wilder, and a friend of his risked their lives in order to bring back enough food to sustain the townspeople through the rest of the winter. With the spring thaw, the railroad service was re-established and the Ingalls family enjoyed a long-delayed Christmas celebration in May.

The Long Winter is a valuable reminder of how lethal crop failures and geographical isolation could be before the advent of modern farming and transportation technologies. Not too long ago, subsistence farmers across the West had to cope with the ‘lean season’ – the period of greatest scarcity before the first availability of new crops. As some readers may know, in England the late spring (and especially the month of May) was once referred to as the ‘hungry gap’ and the ‘starving time’. One problem was the cost and difficulty of moving heavy things over often muddy and impracticable dirt roads; three centuries ago, moving a ton of goods over 50 kilometres on land between, say, Liverpool and Manchester was as expensive as shipping them across the north Atlantic.

The development of coal-powered railroads and steamships revolutionised the lives of our ancestors. Among other positive developments, landlocked farmers could now specialise in what they did best and rely on other farmers and producers for their remaining needs. The result was not only more abundant food at ever-cheaper prices, but the end of widespread famine and starvation, as the surplus from regions with good harvests could now be shipped to those that had experienced mediocre ones. (Of course, a region that experienced a bumper crop one year might have a mediocre one the next.)

In time, petroleum-derived products such as diesel, gasoline, kerosene (jet fuel) and bunker fuels (used in container ships) displaced coal because of their higher energy density, cleaner combustion and greater ease of extraction, handling, transport and storage. Nearly two thirds of the world’s refined petroleum products are now used in land, water and air transportation, accounting for nearly 95 per cent of all energy consumed in this sector. Despite much wishful thinking, there are simply no better alternatives to petroleum-powered transport at the moment. For instance, despite very generous governmental subsidies, battery electric, hybrid electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles have repeatedly failed to gain any meaningful market shares against gasoline-powered cars. This is because of their limited range and power, long charging time, bad performance in cold weather, security concerns (especially in collisions), and inadequate electricity production and delivery infrastructure.

While the convenience of cars is obvious, few people grasp their historical significance in terms of public health and environmental benefits. The best historical anecdote on the topic goes something like this. In 1898, delegates from across the globe gathered in New York City for the world’s first international urban-planning conference. The topic that dominated discussions was not infrastructure, housing or even land use, but horse manure. The problem was that just as a large number of people had moved to cities from the countryside, so had powerful workhorses, each one of them producing between 15 and 30 pounds of manure and one quart of urine every day. For New York, this meant well over four million pounds of manure each day, prompting claims that by 1930 it would rise to Manhattan’s third storey. At about the same time, a contributor to The Times in London estimated that by 1950 every street in London would be buried nine-feet deep in horse manure. Unable to think of any solution, the New York delegates called it quits after three days, as they concluded that urban living was inherently unsustainable.

Paradoxically, much of the urban-manure problem had been created by the advent of the railroad, and other technologies such as canning and refrigeration. On the one hand, it had cut into the profitability of manure-consuming farms, located near cities, by delivering cheaper perishable goods (fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy products) from locations that benefited from better soil and climate. On the other, because rail transport was not flexible enough to handle final deliveries, railroad companies often owned the largest fleets of urban horses.

Apart from their stench, urban stables and the manure piles that filled practically every vacant lot were prime breeding grounds for house flies, perhaps three billion of which hatched each day in American cities at the turn of the twentieth century. With flies came outbreaks of deadly infectious diseases, such as typhoid and yellow fever, cholera and diphtheria. Workhorses’ skittishness in heavy traffic also meant that they stampeded, kicked, bit and trampled a number of bystanders. According to one estimate, the fatality rate per capita in urban traffic was roughly 75 per cent higher in the horse era than today. The clatter of horseshoes and wagon wheels on cobblestone pavement was also incredibly noisy. They also created significant traffic congestion, because a horse and wagon occupied more street space than a modern truck, while a badly injured horse would typically be shot on the spot or abandoned to die on the road, creating a major obstruction that was difficult to remove in an age without tow trucks. (Indeed, street cleaners often waited for the corpses to putrefy so they could be sawed into pieces and carted off with greater ease.)

The impact of urban workhorses was also felt in the countryside. First, workhorses ate a lot of oats and hay. One contemporary British farmer calculated that one workhorse would consume the produce of five acres of land, which could have fed six to eight human beings. In the words of transportation historian Eric Morris, ‘directly or indirectly, feeding the horse meant placing new land under cultivation, clearing it of its natural animal life and vegetation, and sometimes diverting water to irrigate it, with considerable negative effects on the natural ecosystem’.

So, while early twentieth-century cars were noisy and polluting by today’s standards, they were a significant improvement on the alternatives. In later decades, advances such as the removal of lead from gasoline and the development of catalytic converters would essentially eliminate their more problematic features. Although not completely green, today’s petroleum-powered cars remain one of humanity’s most underappreciated environmental successes.

Railroads, ships and trucks also delivered significant environmental benefits. One longstanding problem, as the Marxist theorist Karl Kautsky observed in his 1899 classic The Agrarian Question, was that as ‘long as any rural economy is self-sufficient it has to produce everything which it needs, irrespective of whether the soil is suitable or not. Grain has to be cultivated on infertile, stony and steeply sloping ground as well as on rich soils.’ (1) In many locations without much prime agricultural land, primitive technologies ensured not only that at least 40 acres and a mule were required to sustain a household, but also that much environmental damage, primarily in the form of soil erosion, was done in the process. Fortunately, Kautsky observed, modern transportation had made possible the development of regions like the Canadian prairies and brought much relief to poorer soils in Europe, where more suitable forms of food production, such as cultivating orchards, rearing beef cattle and dairy farming, could now be practiced sustainably.

Over time, the concentration of food production in the world’s best locations allowed a lot of marginal agricultural land to revert to a wild state. For instance, France saw its forest area expand by one third between 1830 and 1960, and by a further quarter since 1960. This so-called ‘forest transition’ occurred in the context of a doubling of the French population and a dramatic increase in standards of living. Reforestation – or an improvement in the quality of the forest cover in countries such as Japan where it has no room to grow – has similarly occurred in all major temperate and boreal forests. Every country with a per-capita GDP now exceeding $4,600 – roughly equal to that of Chile – has experienced this, as well as some developing economies ranging from China and India to Bangladesh and Vietnam. (Of course, the replacement of firewood and charcoal with coal, kerosene, heavy oil and natural gas was also significant.)

The modern-logistics industry further allowed the production and export of food from locations where water is abundant to consumers living in regions where it isn’t, thus preventing the depletion of surface waters and aquifers in drier parts of the world. It also made possible a drastic increase in the size of our cities. In the words of economist Ed Glaeser: ‘Residing in a forest might seem to be a good way of showing one’s love of nature, but living in a concrete jungle is actually far more ecologically friendly… If you love nature, stay away from it.’ (2) To put things in perspective, cities now occupy between two and three per cent of the Earth’s surface, an area that is expected to double in the next half century. And in roughly half of the world today, far more agricultural land has been reverting to wilderness than has been converted to suburbia. (3)

Unfortunately, activists are often blind to the environmental benefits of petroleum-powered transportation. Countless local-food activists have embraced the notion of ‘food miles’ – the distance food items travel from farms to consumers – as the be all and end all of sustainable development. However, as has been repeatedly and rigorously documented in numerous studies, the distance travelled by food is unimportant. For one thing, producing food typically requires much more energy than moving it around, especially when significant amounts of heating and/or cold-protection technologies, irrigation water, fertilisers, pesticides and other inputs are required to grow things in one region, but not in another. Reducing food miles in such circumstances actually means a greater environmental impact. The distance travelled by food also matters less than the mode of transportation used. For instance, shipping food halfway around the world on a container ship often has a smaller footprint per item carried than a short trip by car to a grocery store to buy a small quantity of these items. (4)

To most of us, the notion that we can have our cake and eat it too is mind-boggling. Yet, in many respects, this is what petroleum products in general and modern transportation technologies in particular have actually delivered. Until something truly better comes along, they remain essential for the creation of a wealthier, cleaner and more sustainable world.

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Green energy policies are costing us the future

When it comes to energy prices, UK homeowners are being seriously ripped off. But it’s not the much demonised energy providers who are to blame. The real culprit, according to a report from think-tank Policy Exchange, is the spiralling cost of green subsidies, which has led to a £60 increase for the average energy bill over the past five years. The report suggests that energy suppliers are only responsible for approximately 19 per cent of the total cost of household energy; meanwhile, the government has direct control over more than a third of your energy bill, meaning that the cost of the UK’s drive towards renewables is footed by energy customers.

This green revolution – demanded by the quinoa-munching class and paid for by everyone else – has cost the UK more than enough already, with far too little to show for it. People are quick to forget that coal – much maligned by green-energy fanatics – was the fuel on which modern Britain was built. As the fossil fuels burned, families were lifted out of poverty, and life expectancy rose. Now, as developing nations emulate us, burning their own abundant fuel reserves in the process, the developed West has the nerve to condemn them for it.

In doing this, we are cruelly pulling up the drawbridge to cheap industrialisation, from the warmth and comfort of our own developed countries. Are we so blinded by green politics that we ignore how much we owe to our own, environmentally unfriendly, Industrial Revolution? The millions of people in China lifted out of poverty over the past decade were helped on their way by vast quantities of coal. When have wind turbines or solar panels ever lifted anyone out of poverty? As the global energy mix is forced towards a greater reliance on renewables, the opportunities for development in the poorest parts of the world are stifled.

In Britain, it’s time to rethink our own energy mix, follow America’s lead and turn to shale gas for our energy needs. Fracking would increase our available supply substantially, and bolster our energy security with it. Nuclear power presents another opportunity. Uranium is as clean as it is plentiful, and is a tried-and-tested winner in the countries that have embraced it.

If we don’t abandon unreliable wind and expensive solar, we’ll end up paying even more for our energy – with a smaller output to show for it. Britain’s misguided and expensive green adventure has served only to run up an enormous subsidy bill. As the taxpayer forks out, UK politicians pat themselves on the back for their efforts in mitigating the supposed threat of global warming, when, in reality, politicians’ impact on global emissions is negligible.

It’s time we put the wellbeing of fellow humans before green dogma. If more lives can be improved by burning fossil fuels, fracking or pursuing nuclear power, then surely it’s time to tear down the turbines and fire up the power plants.

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Mr. President: The 1970s Called, They Want Their Crude Oil Export Ban Back

Not long ago, during a presidential campaign debate with Mitt Romney, President Barack Obama suggested Romney had, at one point, stated Russia was the number one geopolitical threat to the United States. The president then quipped—with his usual glibness—“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”

Well, Mr. President, you have a phone call, too. It’s the 1970s calling, and they want their crude oil export ban back.

The crude oil export ban was signed into law in 1975 in the wake of the Arab oil embargo that brought long lines for gasoline and high oil prices. Today, by contrast, hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, has made the United States the world’s largest producer of crude oil. The outdated export ban puts U.S. oil producers at a competitive disadvantage with other countries, and may actually serve to increase gas prices at the pump.

Imagine what would happen if we didn’t allow our farmers to export their crops. A farmer has just harvested a bumper crop but he doesn’t have enough room to store it all, so he decides to sell it. But there is a problem: All of his neighbors have bumper crops too, and that has driven domestic prices so low the farmer will lose money if he sells his crop because the export ban prevents him from selling it to other countries for a higher price to make a profit.

In the short term, this might sound like a great deal for people in this country who want to buy the farmers’ crops, because they will get lower prices. But that effect is only temporary, because the low prices cause some farmers to go out of business. Other farmers are forced to plant fewer crops the next year because they can’t afford to buy the seeds or fertilizer to grow more. As a result, we produce less food in this country, and we are forced to import food from other countries, making us more reliant on other countries to meet our most basic needs, often at a higher price than before. This is exactly what our crude oil export ban does to American energy producers and consumers.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is the price paid for American oil, and last month the WTI price was about eight dollars lower than the price for Brent oil, the price the rest of the world pays for oil, putting U.S. energy companies at a distinct disadvantage vis-à-vis countries such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. The price of oil produced in North Dakota is even lower than WTI, because oil refineries in the United States are not set up to process the light, sweet, crude oil produced in this area.

Oil refineries in the United States are geared to run on heavy, sour crude oil, not the light, sweet crude that comes from North Dakota. A report by IHS, an energy consulting firm, states the “United States is nearing a “gridlock” with the mismatch between the rapid growth of light sweet oil and the inability of the U.S. refining system to economically process these growing volumes.”

Additionally, the report suggested the assumption that allowing crude oil exports would result in higher gasoline prices is not accurate because oil refineries are already allowed to export gasoline, meaning the price of gas at the pump already reflect global prices. The report also estimates lifting the ban could lower gas prices by an annual average of 8 cents per gallon, adding to the $675 dollars the average American household is already saving on lower gas prices.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently released its long-awaited report on hydraulic fracturing and found it has “not led to widespread, systemic pollution of drinking water.” This is great news for our energy future. Now, Mr. President, let’s lift that export ban. It’s time to get frackin’.

SOURCE




The 'Hour of Power': Hybrid Motors come to ships

Ships to run off batteries for one hour -- enough to get them out of port and out from under local regulations

In 2015 two significant developments are going to make many operators, owners and builders of professional vessels consider hybrid marine power. Firstly the new emissions laws in ports and secondly there is now an incentive for high technology manufacturers to invest in developing highly efficient batteries.

Hybrid is ‘here and now’ technology that is being used by many industries globally. The marine industry is now recognizing the potential of utilizing hybrid power and innovative propulsion systems for vessels in the sub IMO / sub 24 meter professional sector.

 ‘The Hour Of Power’ has been well received by the marine industry worldwide. This simple concept enables vessels to run in and out of port for an hour on electric with battery power - then carry out their open sea work on diesel power. The aim of this innovative hybrid solution is to enhance conventional propulsion systems. Vessels can reduce emissions and improve fuel consumption whilst extending engine maintenance periods and engine life.

This is not just green energy for the sake of it - ‘The Hour Of Power’ focuses on hybrid solutions linked to viable business cases. For commercial and professional organisations the concept of running vessels with zero emissions at up to 10 knots for one hour will shape decisions that lead to improvements of in-service systems and procurement of next generation vessels. The overall objective is fuel saving and improved efficiency by all means.

For the marine industry to move forward it needs to use expertise from aviation and other sectors to drive this innovation and support relevant safety standards. Automotive manufacturers in Europe, the Far East and the U.S. have recognised that hybrid technologies such as PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) using lithium ion batteries will be dominant for the next decade. Reducing emissions from busses and trucks in the world’s major cities has been a major driver for lithium ion battery power storage. The need for self sufficient land based grid applications has further extended the capabilities of next generation battery and hybrid technology.

There are two main types of hybrid system. A serial hybrid is where the engine only powers a generator, and is not mechanically connected to the propeller shaft. A parallel hybrid is where the engine is mechanically connected along with an electric ‘machine’ that can operate as both propulsion motor and generator.

Certain sectors are potentially well suited to hybrid diesel / electric systems. These include wind farm service vessels and pilot boats that have relatively consistent duty cycles. We are entering a period of rapid change and commercial opportunity in the hybrid marine market. End-user organizations, boat builders, engine manufacturers and naval architects are now investigating systems for survey vessels, superyacht tenders, patrol vessels and unmanned craft.

SOURCE

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Jim's latest scare too extreme even for many Warmists

I pointed out some of the problems with Jim Hansen's latest scary sea level prognostications on Friday.  A few more comments below



Former Top NASA Scientist James Hansen Predicts Catastrophic Rise In Sea Levels – ‘Projects sea levels rising as much as 10 feet in the next 50 years.’ – The paper has already ruffled some, including Associated Press science writer Seth Borenstein, who said on Twitter that he would not cover it — primarily because it had not yet been peer-reviewed, a process that allows other scientists to critique the work.

The Washington Post’s Chris Mooney asked other climate experts to weigh in on the paper. While many said it raised key discussion points, Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research called it “provocative and intriguing but rife with speculation and ‘what if’ scenarios.”

Marc Morano comments: “James Hansen’s new paper ratcheting up future sea level rise numbers is consistent with the new strategy of the global warming activists. Given that current sea level rise rates are not alarming, the only way climate activists can claim anything is ‘worse than we thought’ is to make more dire predictions of the future.

Simply making scarier predictions of the future in order to alarm policymakers is not ‘good science.’ Claiming that climate change impacts are ‘worse than we thought’ because predictions are now more frightening is a well worn playbook of the climate movement.
Simply put, when current reality fails to alarm, make scarier and scarier predictions of the distant future.

It is not surprising that James Hansen — a man who has been arrested nearly half a dozen times protesting ‘global warming’ and who has endorsed a book calling for ridding the world of industrial civilization — would continue to make scary predictions. The world needs to take a collective yawn at Hansen’s latest claims and ask how in the world was this man ever allowed to be in charge of the NASA temperature datasets!”

Warmist publication Mashable on James Hansen’s new sea level scare paper: “..red flag..study’s conclusions so contradict [UN IPCC] consensus views expressed last year.”  Mashable’s Andrew Freedman: ‘The godfather of global warming’s scary sea level rise prediction is getting the cold shoulder.”

NYT’s Andrew Revkin on Hansen’s sea level scare paper: “Associated Press, The New York Times, the BBC and The Guardian..among those who steered clear of [Hansen] study”

NYT: UN IPCC Lead Author Kevin Trenberth on Hansen sea level rise paper: “Rife with speculation..many conjectures & huge extrapolation based on quite flimsy evidence.”

Michael Mann admits Hansen’s SLR estimates “prone to a very large “extrapolation error”

More HERE





End of the world is not nigh after all (it's been pushed back till 2100)

The end of the world has been put back by at least 50 years by a team of British scientists.

A doom-laden US study in 1972 predicted that the earth would run out of food and resources, becoming uninhabitable by around 2050.

Now scientists at Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Sustainability Institute have claimed we have a little more grace – until the end of this century, or the year 2100.

To come to their conclusion, the team updated the 1970s computer model used to predict how finite the Earth’s resources are.

The researchers four decades ago failed to take into account a number of factors that mean we are safe for a few years yet.

They include the industrial sector creating less pollution and using less energy than expected based on trends in the 1970s. Industry is also doing more to clean up pollution than the earlier forecasts assumed.

They did not foresee a huge rise in the service sector and telecommunications – making the world’s economy more productive .

And innovations in agriculture have allowed more food to be grown on the world’s land.

Aled Jones, co-author of the study in journal Sustainability, said: ‘They made a good attempt in the 1970s but it might have been too pessimistic.  ‘The limit is pushed back to the second half of this century.’  He added: ‘Many questions remain on exactly when planetary limits will be reached and what the consequences will be.

‘When you run the newly-calibrated World3 model forward in time, society still collapses this century based on reasonable guesses of these limits, although there is of course great uncertainty around exactly what these limits are.

‘Growth cannot continue indefinitely if it is based on material consumption, and not grounded in our understanding that the planet has limited land availability and resources.

‘Society has started to address some of the problems outlined in 1972, but we need to learn lessons from what we have already achieved and focus our efforts on avoiding these limits.’

SOURCE





Environmental Protection Agency Flooded With Lawsuits Over Controversial Water Rule

Twenty-nine states, more than half the stars on the American flag, have filed lawsuits against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for redefining the “Waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, erasing “navigable” and usurping states’ rights by including local seasonal streams, farm irrigation ponds, roadside ditches, and even “connective” dry lands placed under authority of the Clean Water Act.

The WOTUS rule, published the morning of June 29, potentially subjects every food, energy, transportation and manufacturing industry in the nation to high-handed regulation by one of the most reviled and least trusted federal agencies, dreaded for its cadre of “revolving door” officials hired from anti-industry green groups.

The astonishing response began on the afternoon of June 29: states teamed up in clusters to file their lawsuits in a common U.S. District Court. Utah and eight others filed with Georgia in Augusta’s U.S. Court; Alaska and 11 others filed with North Dakota in Bismark. Days later Mississippi and Louisiana filed with Texas in Galveston; Michigan filed with Ohio in Columbus; Oklahoma filed alone in Oklahoma City.

Each state lawsuit asked a federal judge to declare the WOTUS rule illegal and issue an injunction to prevent the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, co-administrator of the rule, from enforcing it. Each state also asked the judge to order both agencies to draft a new rule that complies with the law and honors state authority.

The WOTUS rule is so alarming because it enables agency bureaucrats to control virtually anything that gets wet, including a desert dry wash that gets a “drizzle,” actual EPA language criticized by House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) at a Heartland Institute conference in Washington in June.

Heartland Research Fellow H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D, commented, “Farmers, ranchers, developers, industry, and individual property owners would now be subject to the EPA’s arbitrary, unsound, and often incomprehensible regulatory system. It cannot be trusted.”

American Farm Bureau Federation general counsel Ellen Steen announced the group’s lawsuit with similar distrust: “When EPA and the Corps first proposed the rule in March 2014, they promised clarity and certainty to farmers, ranchers, builders and other affected businesses and landowners. Instead we have a final rule that exceeds the agencies’ legal authority and fails to provide the clarity that was promised.”

More than a dozen national agricultural and production organizations also filed suit against EPA, including the National Alliance of Forest Owners, American Road and Transportation Builders Association, National Association of Home Builders, National Association of Manufacturers, and Public Lands Council.

The non-profit Pacific Legal Foundation sued on behalf of the state cattlemen’s associations of California, Washington, and New Mexico. When contacted for comment, the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association’s president, Jose Varela Lopez, said what many ranchers feel. He told The Daily Caller, “My family has been on our land for 14 generations, each leaving it better for the next. Water is the source of all life and after all our generations, our water is clear and the land lives on. We have the history to prove that we are caretakers of the water and the land without the help of the Environmental Protection Agency.”

The alarm over WOTUS is not just about strangulation by regulation. Corruption has become a primary issue: evidence has emerged that EPA officials unlawfully lobbied crony green groups to send “one million comments” supporting the rule, according to a May 19 New York Times article. The Army Corps of Engineers examined the comments and found that 98 percent appeared to be non-substantive mass mailings.

Three lawmakers from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and two subcommittee chairmen, Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), immediately sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy demanding answers about rigging public input with YouTube videos, Twitter accounts, and many other social media marketing tools.

SOURCE





Gallup Poll: Climate Change Causes Pope’s Poll Numbers to Implode in U.S.

Despite hysterical forecasts by some scientists, there’s been no empirical evidence of climate change for more than 18 years. But that has just changed – dramatically.

In the time since Pope Francis this spring publicly embraced global warming as “real” and “man-made,” his popularity numbers in the Gallup Tracking Poll have plummeted by 17 points. Climate change, Gallup suggests, caused, in large part, that dramatic drop in papal approval.

“Pope Francis’ favorability rating in the U.S. has returned to where it was when he was elected pope. It is now at 59%, down from 76% in early 2014. The pontiff’s rating is similar to the 58% he received from Americans in April 2013, soon after he was elected pope,” reports Gallup, on its web site. “Pope Francis’ drop in favorability is even starker among Americans who identify as conservative — 45% of whom view him favorably, down sharply from 72% last year. This decline may be attributable to the pope’s denouncing of ‘the idolatry of money’ and linking climate change partially to human activity, along with his passionate focus on income inequality — all issues that are at odds with many conservatives’ beliefs.”

The pope’s reputation has also taken a hit among liberals and moderates, pollsters said.

Pope Francis fares even more poorly when contrasted with one of his recent predecessors in the papacy, Pope John Paul II, who was highly esteemed.

“Pope John Paul II, who served as the spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church for nearly 27 years, always polled above 60% in the 1990s and 2000s, reaching a high of 86% favorability in late 1998,” the poll said.

One wonders what the gurus of Gaia worship, Jeffrey Sachs and Ban Ki-Moon, at the United Nations, and Francis’s other secular supporters think of this development. Their ham-handed attempt to hijack the Vatican for the progressive cause of sustainable development is now failing spectacularly, and is yet another liberal strategy that will live on, only in infamy.

SOURCE





Britain's disastrous Green Deal is ditched: Flagship scheme to insulate homes is branded a £170million failure

The Government’s flagship scheme to insulate homes has been axed after it was branded a £170million failure.

Ministers set up the Green Deal three years ago to encourage homeowners to save energy by installing loft and wall insulation and more efficient boilers at no up-front cost.

But Energy Secretary Amber Rudd announced yesterday that the scheme would close with immediate effect because of low take-up and to protect taxpayers from further losses.

Miss Rudd said the government was still committed to the goal of insulating homes, and that she would work with the industry to come up with an alternative scheme.

In her first major speech today, she will say that tackling climate change must not be seen as a left-wing issue but a ‘vital safety net for families and businesses’ which can be achieved in a more cost-effective way.

She has undertaken a review of all current energy policies, and cut subsidies for onshore wind and solar power, before turning her fire on the Green Deal which is widely seen as poor value for money.

Which? director Richard Lloyd said the scheme, pioneered by former Lib Dem energy secretary Chris Huhne, had ‘spectacularly failed to take off’.

The Green Deal Finance Company, which delivered, it will close. It offered people loans for up to 25 years to carry out the work, paid back on their energy bills, and has received £59million since 2013.

But take-up was low due to high interest rates, and the fact that loans were attached to a property, like a mortgage, so had to be paid off or passed on to the next owner if the applicant moved.

The Department of Energy and Climate said by the end of last month, around 10,000 properties had installed measures using the scheme.  Another 5,600 which are in progress, will not be affected.

The Green Deal Home Improvement Fund - which offered people cash back ‘vouchers’ for home improvements which householders bought up front - will also shut due to spiralling costs.

Some £114million was allocated for 27,000 energy efficiency measures, an average of £4,200 per job.

When the energy efficiency programme was set up, it was billed as the ‘biggest home improvement programme since the Second World War’ and ministers hoped to eventually reach 14million homes.

But last year MPs on the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee said take-up had been a fraction of what was expected and called the scheme a ‘disappointing failure’.

Miss Rudd said: ‘We are on the side of hardworking families and businesses - which is why we cannot continue to fund the Green Deal. It’s now time for the building industry and consumer groups to work with us to make new policy and build a system that works.’

The government will seek to insulate a million homes by 2020 with a new scheme, she said. Energy companies will still provide energy saving measures to low income households under the ECO scheme.

Labour welcomed the closure of the scheme. Shadow energy minister Jonathan Reynolds said it was a ‘complete and utter failure’.

He said: ‘Installing energy efficiency measures in the home is an important way of getting consumer bills down, but the Green Deal never represented value for money…the Government urgently needs to lay out what plans they have to replace the Green Deal.’

Green campaigners concede the scheme was not a success but Greenpeace said scrapping it without a replacement in place was a ‘false economy’ and accused ministers of ‘giving up on efficiency’.

Energy companies were among the providers of the Green Deal, but one senior figure at an energy firm said: ‘The Green Deal has long been dead, and now needs a decent burial.’

SOURCE





The Australian Left still loves "renewables"

Labor under Bill Shorten seeks to win the next election by re-fighting the climate change issue with a renewable energy spearhead, pledging a fairer nation and using progressive identity politics — yet its fatal flaw is economic policy.

It is an extraordinary situation. Labor intends to recontest the battles of the Rudd-Gillard era, asylum-seeker boats being the likely exception.

Rather than reform itself because of the Rudd-Gillard experience, Labor has decided it was essentially right. It will ask the Australian public to think again and this time vote down Tony Abbott.

The ALP will prioritise climate change action via higher prices, operate in lock-step with the trade unions, flirt with quasi-protectionist economics, downplay market-based reforms and champion a litany of progressive causes: female equality, same-sex marriage, indigenous recognition and the republic.

At a time when Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens warns that Australian growth is falling to permanently lower levels — the implication being that stalled economic reform has diminished living standards — Labor offers phony words and hollow policy.

It is locked into the old politics and mistakes, playing to its loyalists and institutional interests.

Shorten is a weak leader trying to look strong. He is conspicuously devoid of policy strength. The lesson of Shorten’s leadership, illustrated by his speech yesterday, is the limits of leadership. Nearly everything he does is about adaptation to Labor power realities, ideological orthodoxies, trade unions and polling. He is driven to defy party sentiment on asylum-seeker boats for only one reason: the current policy is a veto on election victory.

These tactics overall should deliver Labor a formidable election campaign. It will be competitive. But Shorten’s latest ploy, the 50 per cent renewables electricity target by 2030, reveals all the problems.

This is plain irresponsible policy. It means Labor has no interest in the most cost-effective method of tackling emissions across the next 15 years.

It has no interest in trying to combat climate change consistent with a competitive growth economy. Labor can duck and weave but it cannot escape financial reality: the cost of renewables remains vastly more expensive than fossil fuels.

Anyone with half a political brain sees through this ploy. Because Shorten knows he must fight on climate change and because he knows pricing carbon risks another “carbon tax” scare, he wants to redefine the contest to “who loves renewables the most”.

Abbott’s ineptitude invites such easy exploitation.

The upshot is that Shorten has shifted much of Labor’s policy response on to the single most ineffective and high-cost mechanism.

He will punish Australian households and businesses with high costs in the interests of his own political convenience and vote-buying. It is the essence of trashing the public interest for party political gain.

At least when Abbott was being irresponsible he merely promised to abolish a tax.

In his speech yesterday, Shorten’s election vision was “more solar panels on Australian rooftops” and more farmers “putting wind turbines on their land”.

It sounds like a joke from a satire program. Sadly, it’s not. The party faithful, evidently, think this is terrific. It is the latest example of how far Labor has sunk.

Shorten pretends he’s being bold. In fact, he’s being weak. Expect that the carbon pricing commitment via an emissions trading scheme will be downgraded. Instead of Labor relying on carbon pricing with the renewable energy target becoming less necessary, Labor seems to be moving in the opposite direction. This is Shorten Labor: 100 per cent political expediency and defective policy.

He pretends this will create investor confidence. What nonsense. Investors will know that renewable energy policy is a volatile political war. The proof is the fact the Coalition and Labor cut a compromise a few weeks ago for a 23 per cent RET and Labor has turned that upside down.

In a re-run of history, the climate change lobby, vested interests and much of the political media will applaud Shorten — meanwhile, the Australian public, concerned about climate change but sceptical of costs, will be far harder to persuade than Labor believes. At this point, Labor has no details, no modelling, no analysis. Its self-obsession is revealing.

A fight over renewables is exactly the wrong fight Australia now needs for good policy. It is being staged solely for politics. The need is to reduce the overall carbon footprint by the most cost-efficient method (obviously including renewables) but both sides now have highly dubious policies.

If the Abbott government has the brain and skill to publish a credible study of the massive income transfer this policy involves from the Australian public to the renewable sector then it will ­destroy the policy.

Is Labor actually pledged to the 50 per cent target? Who knows? Shorten called it an “aim”. This implies it is qualified, but qualified ­according to what conditions? Is such a policy feasible? What are its economic consequences? What are the costs? What business and industry groups did Labor consult about such a long-run distortion of financial resources?

None of these questions is ­answered. It is folly for Shorten to conceal the holes in his 50 per cent pledge with phony “bring it on” bravado. Labor has had 20 months since the last election to prepare a structured policy and, to this point, it has failed to produce any such model.

As for Abbott, his mistake has been monumental: his scepticism towards renewables has been projected as prejudice rather than founded in rational policy.

Indeed, his inability to explain himself on renewables has been a free kick to Labor. But Shorten, in turn, has now tried to make too much of the political opportunity Abbott has given him.

Just as carbon policy was pivotal in ruining the economic standing of the Gillard government, so Shorten embraces the same risks. The combined signals Labor sends on economic policy are damaging and point to policy regression.

There was no mention in Shorten’s speech of the core reality — that Australia faces a growth slowdown, that living standards growth is being reduced, that the budget faces a challenge on both the tax and spending side, and that new measures are needed to ­improve productivity.

Is reality too unpalatable for the Labor Party? More to the point, is the platform agenda and party ethos singularly out of touch with the challenges that would face a new ALP government?

Shorten says higher taxes are a sign of Abbott’s failure. Pardon? Labor tax policies so far involve tightening superannuation concessions at the top end, a new tax on multinationals with the ALP premiers, as their preferred choice, backing a hefty increase in the personal income tax burden via the Medicare levy to fund future health costs.

It is true Shorten pledges to cut tax for small business but Labor’s overall thrust is unmistakable: its strong preference, facing a budget deficit and pressure on core ­services, is for the adjustment to be made via taxation rises.

Shorten says Labor believes in free trade and new markets. Pardon? The ALP conference endorsed yesterday a strong union-driven campaign against the Australia-China free trade agreement on the grounds that it will see Aussie jobs lost to the new Chinese workers coming into this country.

Michael O’Connor, from the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, said the FTA “smashes our labour market”.

Opposition trade spokeswoman Penny Wong is now pledged to improve the agreement, a high-risk ­exercise.

There is no sign the government will seek changes. Labor needs to be careful of these tactics, preserve its flexibility and avoid being trapped in a situation where it has condemned the agreement but cannot change it.

Shorten’s speech signalled his symbolic priorities. His first pledge was to indigenous recognition in the Constitution. His second ­declaration was to trade union ­fidelity. Shorten sang from the Julia Gillard songbook.

After a week that saw many iconic ALP figures call for fundamental reform of the Labor-union relationship, Shorten lauded the unions, mocked the royal commission into union governance and, by implication, repudiated the calls for internal reform.

In truth, Shorten’s position is becoming more dependent on the trade unions, a repeat of Gillard’s situation, and anyone who thinks this won’t have policy conse­quences is a fool.

Shorten depicted his policy on renewables as creating the “jobs of the future” and claimed that it meant “cutting power bills for ­consumers”.

This claim arises because the electricity generation market is currently oversupplied and more renewables will add to supply and reduce prices. That is true.

It avoids, however, the bigger reality that the higher cost of renewables compared with fossil fuels means a higher cost structure that consumers will have to meet.

Labor has switched priorities — it has moved from using price to decarbonise the economy to a massive prioritising of renewables without proper regard for costs involved and the consequences for households and business.

This runs against the real interests of workers, families and capital. It will extract, over time, a fearful toll on Labor.

Meanwhile, try not to be ­deafened by the guaranteed ­applause.

SOURCE

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

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Where has that pesky heat gone?

Warmists are convinced that there is some unmeasured heat hiding somewhere but can't decide where.  First it was in the Atlantic then in the Pacific.  But Whoops! the Pacific actually seem to be cooling.  Never mind.  Voila!  It's now in the Indian ocean. Story below mostly just modelling so mainly for laughs

The extra heat that has entered the Pacific Ocean during the period of slow surface warming since 1998 has been transferred to the Indian Ocean, reports a study published online in Nature Geoscience. The findings reconcile reports of an enhanced heat uptake in the Pacific Ocean over the past 15 years or so with an observed *decrease* in the heat that is stored there. [Which is pretty pesky!]

Global mean surface temperatures have nearly stabilized since 1998 despite observations at the top of the atmosphere suggesting that the Earth has continued to warm. A significant portion of this heat is believed to have entered the Pacific Ocean, but measurements of the Pacific’s heat content indicate that it has actually been decreasing.

Sang-Ki Lee and colleagues analysed observational data along with simulations with a global ocean–sea ice model, and find that the increased heat uptake in the Pacific Ocean has been compensated by increased heat transport to the Indian Ocean, through the passages of the Indonesian Archipelago. The heat gain in the Indian Ocean accounts for 70% of the heat storage in the top 700 m of the global ocean. The authors suggest that if this transport persists, the accumulating heat in the Indian Ocean could be projected into the Atlantic Ocean, which has already heated substantially since the mid-twentieth century.

SOURCE





Amplifying the speculation

Timed nicely for the big climate conference in Paris coming soon. Even Michael Mann thinks the central claim is 'far fetched'.  And their claim of  polar melting is simply a lie. Total polar ice-cover has been growing, not melting.  The key words highlighted

Sea levels could rise by as much as 10 feet in the next 50 years due to 'highly dangerous' global warming, a leading climate scientist has warned.

Dr James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, and 16 other researchers are preparing to publish new projections for how the oceans may respond to climate change.

They warn an increase in average global temperatures of just 1°C could result in dramatic changes in sea level and an increase in powerful storms.

They conclude that 2°C of warming – the international target for limiting global warming – will be 'highly dangerous' to humanity.

The study warns that glaciers in Greenland and the Antarctic could melt 10 times faster than projections put forward by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which predicted sea levels would rise by around one metre (three feet) by the end of the century.

The scientists said: 'Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea level rise could be devastating.

'It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization.'

Dr Hansen, who was Nasa's lead climate scientist until 2013 when he retired and now holds a post with Columbia University's Earth Institute, has described the paper as his most important to date.

Dr Hansen was one of the first scientists to publicly highlight the risk of global warming during evidence he gave to the US congress in 1988.

He said he now plans to take the results of the latest study to policymakers in an attempt to make them realise the importance of taking action to curb climate change.

Last year the UN's IPCC warned world leaders they need to restrict global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial targets by cutting carbon emissions.

However, the new study by Dr Hansen and his colleagues, which is to be published by the online journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussion, suggests even keeping climate change within these limits may not save the world from disaster.

The 66-page long report highlights evidence that ice loss in many parts of the planet is accelerating.

Previous estimates of sea level rise have assumed ice loss would occur at a consistent rate, but the new evidence suggests it can double within 10 years.

They warn that as ice loss increases, the ice sheets could suffer large scale disintegration and it could change the circulation of the oceans due to large amounts of cold fresh water appearing in the seas.

Last winter, widely seen as the warmest on record across much of the world, saw the water in the North Atlantic reaching the *coldest* temperatures on record, perhaps due to ice loss from Greenland.

Dr Hansen and his colleagues claim this could eventually lead to the ocean currents that circulate warm and cool water around the globe shutting down.

This would lead to the tropics warming more without the ocean to pull heat away towards the poles and this could also lead to more powerful storms.

Their paper notes that in the Eemian period, an interglacial period around 120,000 years ago, there is evidence that gigantic waves moved huge boulders from the seafloor to the top of hills in the Bahamas.

At the time sea levels rose by between 16-30 feet (5-9 metres) due to ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland. It is thought that global temperatures were around 1 degree C warmer than today.

According to the Washington Post, Paul Hearty, a geologist at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, who co-authored the study, said: 'During this last warm interglacial, not much warmer than the present, [the world saw] not only a higher than present average sea level, but ultimately a significantly higher sea level that required the melting and or collapse of probably both Greenland and West Antarctica, along with basically this great oceanic disturbance.

'There were storms, and a lot of more catastrophic type events associated with this big climate shift.'

However, some scientists have reacted sceptically to the findings in the paper.

Dr Ruth Mottram, a glaciologist at the Danish Meteorological Institute, said she did not think such large rises in sea level were possible and doubted the rate reported in the article.

Dr Michael Mann, a climate researcher at Penn State University, told the Washington Post that he felt the shut down of heat transport in the oceans 'seems rather far fetched'.

However, he said their arguments for the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet and substantial sea level rise that would result was 'compelling'.

SOURCE





British Warmist Bob Ward loses another one

IPSO has published its latest judgement on a case brought by Bob Ward against David Rose, the third in as many years. This revolved around a story last year about GISS's claim that 2014 was the warmest on record and their failure to note the significant possibility that that it might not be.

I must say this seemed a relatively small point to me, but it clearly got Bob Ward's blood boiling, in the way that the Jesuits would get a bit upset over minor theological transgressions. It's not so much the details of the offence as the source of the challenge to authority that upsets. No quarter for heretics.

As one might expect, therefore, our obsessive climate Jesuit handed the case over to the Inquisition - the press "regulator" IPSO - no doubt hoping that they would condemn Rose to burn at the stake. Unfortunately IPSO were not playing the same game and their judgement, handed down a few weeks ago, was, yet again, a sound defeat for Ward:

"The Committee noted that information about the margin of error had been made available by GISS, but that it was not in dispute that these details had been omitted from the press release. The article had made clear that this specifically was the basis for its criticism of Nasa, and the newspaper was entitled to present its view that this omission represented a failure on the part of the organisation. While the information had been released by Nasa, it had been released to a limited selection of people, in comparison to those who would have had access to the press release, and had not been publicised to the same level as the information in the release. The press briefing images referred to by the complainant were available on Nasa’s website, but were not signposted by the press release. In this context, it was not misleading to report that the information relating to the margin of error had emerged in circumstances where the position was not made clear in the press release. While these details of the margin of error may have been noted in a press briefing two days previously, rather than “yesterday”, as reported, this discrepancy did not represent a significant inaccuracy requiring correction under the terms of the Code.

So Ward's complaint to IPSO has met the same fate as the earlier ones. Which makes the score to date Heretics 3, Jesuits 0.

One wonders how much longer this can go on before IPSO starts treating Ward as a vexatious litigant. Can they award costs against him, I wonder?

SOURCE






Britain moves to slash renewable subsidy costs

Britain’s government on Wednesday moved to rein in the spiralling costs of renewable power subsidies which it said threatened to push up household bills.

The plans include closing support for small-scale solar projects, changing the way renewable projects qualify for payments and modifying subsidies for biomass plants.

The proposals come just a month after the government said it would scrap new subsidies for onshore wind farms from April next year.

“We can’t have a situation where industry has a blank cheque and that cheque is paid for by people’s bills,” Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd said on BBC radio.

Figures published by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) show the cost of renewables subsidies could reach 9.1 billion pounds a year by the 2020/21 tax year compared with a proposed budget of 7.6 billion.

Investors said the government’s u-turn had undermined the industry’s case for investing in renewable electricity production.

“The government has stripped away without warning incentives for projects on which many companies have made major investment decisions in renewable technologies,” said Richard Kirkman, technical director at Veolia UK, a subsidiary of French environmental services group Veolia (VIE.PA).

Other European governments have also curbed generous renewable subsidies.

Last year Germany changed its renewable energy law, seeking to cap support for renewables, while Spain changed its subsidy scheme for solar plants after higher than expected demand.

Britain's DECC also said on Wednesday it would no longer guarantee subsidies offered for biomass conversion projects.

The decision sent shares in power company Drax (DRX.L), which is in the process of converting its coal plants to using biomass, down around 2 percent in early trading but they have since recovered.

As part of extensive reforms of Britain's electricity market, the government has been changing the way it supports renewable energy by replacing direct subsidies with a contracts-for-difference (CfD) system.

Under the scheme, qualifying projects are guaranteed a minimum price at which they can sell electricity and renewable power generators bid for CfD contracts in a round of auctions.

But Rudd on Tuesday cast doubt on whether there would be another auction of CfD renewable support by telling a parliamentary committee she could not confirm it would take place.

Asked to clarify Rudd’s comments, a DECC spokeswoman said only that decisions on any further CfD auctions would be taken in due course.

Under the first round of auctions held last December, the government awarded contracts to 27 renewable projects worth a total of more than 315 million pounds.

Previously, the government said the budget for the next CfD allocation round would be confirmed later this year and that the second auction could take place in the autumn.

SOURCE





Minister Slams German Government’s Green Energy Reform Plan: “Nonsense…Little To Do With Reality”!

As more wildly fluctuating solar and wind energy is fed into the German power grid, the question of how to prevent blackouts has been elevated to urgent.

Germany’s weekly Die Zeit recently published an interview with Franz Untersteller, Environment Minister of the state of Baden Wurttemberg. He claims “electrical power supply will be tight“. The reason is because of the federal government’s latest energy reform plan.

Untersteller believes that Germany is headed on the wrong path and is in the process of repeating California’s 1990s blunders, which led to widespread rolling blackouts and a crippling of the Golden State’s power grid.

Currently Germany’s federal Economics Minister, Sigmar Gabriel is planning a reform of Germany’s electricity market. The aim, Zeit writes, is “to allow growth of the fluctuating share of power generation without the occurrence of blackouts whenever green electricity is lacking due to the weather“.

Untersteller thinks the federal government’s plan will lead to power shortages in some areas, in part as a result of the coming shutdown and/or mothballing of non-fluctuating nuclear and conventional power plants – in combination with the lack of power transmission lines to feed power in from north German offshore windparks. There is now an immediate need for a stable baseload power supply in southern Germany.

However Untersteller sees few investors willing to invest in back-up conventional power plants that can be switched on and off as needed according to fluctuating supply because of their complete lack of profitability: “Why would investors want to build such plants? [..] Talk to the managers of the energy business. Many of them are saying that the investment decisions that they made a few years ago would not be made today because of the falling price levels on the spot power exchanges.”

Untersteller calls the federal government’s latest plan for installing reserve capacity using old brown coal plants “nonsense” because they are unable to switch on and off quickly enough in response to wind and solar power supply fluctuations. Untersteller tells Die Zeit: “Old brown coal plants viewed technically are the crass opposite of flexible power plants.”

Untersteller is puzzled as to why Germany has opted to use solutions that have already failed in other countries, recounting a meeting he had with managers of Cailfornia power company PG&E:

“When I told them what the German federal government was planning, their eyebrows went up. California had a similar system, but only until the year 2000. They had blackout situations.”

As a solution to Germany’s power grid needs, Untersteller proposes a “focused capacity market” where in a complicated process certain flexible and environmentally friendly capacities would be bid on and auctioned off with the aim of fulfilling the requirements for a reliable power supply in a market-oriented manner. It would be costly, but Untersteller says, “Supply reliability has its price“, i.e. the consumer would get stuck with the tab.

On the government’s current plan to reform the power market, Untersteller says that it is based on “ideal conditions – on conditions that in my opinion have very little to do with the daily reality in the energy business.”

SOURCE




GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA

Three articles below

Millionaire British Tory brands Prime Minister Tony Abbott's climate change policies 'illogical'

A lot of rich people think they are obviously superior and therefore should control the "peasants" -- which is what the global warming scare is good for.  He makes no mention of any evidence for global warming, probably because he knows of none

A prominent British Tory MP has lashed out at Prime Minister Tony Abbott over his climate change policies, labelling them a misrepresentation of true conservative values.

Former British environment minister Richard Benyon wrote in an opinion piece for Sydney Morning Herald that Mr Abbott's decision to become the first world leader to abolish a carbon price is 'illogical.'

The conservative MP urged the prime minister to speak for common sense ahead of a global summit on climate change in Paris at the end of the year.

Declaring that Mr Abbott's policies go against the grain of true conservative values, Benyon writes: 'true conservative values include distaste for over-regulation and enthusiasm for entrepreneurialism.

'But they also include a respect for sound science and economics, a belief in protecting the natural world and a responsibility to do the best for the biggest possible number of one's citizens,' Benon writes.

The former British army member said the issue transcended a national scale, urging the prime minister to speak for common sense in the climate change debate.

'This is more about a global issue where many of us want to see sensible politicians on the centre-right recognising that climate change is a clear and present danger to our world,' he said.

The article is one of the most scathing critiques on the government's environmental policies from the a right wing politician to date.

Mr Abbott's government is due to reveal its post-2020 carbon reduction targets in August, ahead of a global summit on climate change in Paris at the end of the year.

Last year, Mr Abbott declared climate change was not the most important problem the world is facing, after UN climate change spokesman Dan Thomas labelled it the 'defining issue of our time'.

In November American president Barrack Obama piled pressure on the Abbott government to act on climate change, declaring that natural wonders such as the Great Barrier Reef were under direct threat from climate change.

SOURCE

Conservative politician To Host 'Carnival Of Coal' To Make 'Eco-Lunatics Lose Their Minds'

The New South Wales government's Whip in the Legislative Council really loves coal, and he’s hatching a plan to “make the left lose their collective mind in impotent rage”.

The Liberal MP Dr Peter Phelps will be hosting a ‘Carnival of Coal’ at New South Wales Parliament next month “to declare support for coal and associated industries and to send a loud and clear message that action is needed now to protect a secure, inexpensive energy future”.

“The event was inspired by a lunch with a couple of mates from my federal staffer days in Canberra,” said Phelps, who assured New Matilda he is “always happy to assist the fourth estate where [he] can”.

“The question came up: what could we do that would make the left lose their collective mind in impotent rage?

“Naturally, there is nothing the green/left hates more than coal, so I thought it would be a nice way of trolling the eco-lunatics and their fellow-travellers, especially those in the left-wing media who are always the first to hit the 'hysterical outrage' button whenever anyone challenges the efficacy of their pet pieties.”

The event appears to be a parody of an earlier invite, to another ‘party with a purpose’, from Greens MP John Kaye.

“I will be hosting a Solar Shindig at NSW Parliament House to declare support for solar and other renewable technologies and to send a loud and clear message that action is needed now to protect the clean energy future,” Kaye said in an email to parliamentarians.

Just a few hours later Phelps followed suit, managing an impressive turnaround speed to offer “I liked carbon before it was coal” stickers for parliamentarians who can’t make it.

Himself an avid distributor of stickers - only, with a slightly different message - Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham slammed the New South Wales Libs for their “complete disregard for all those who want to see our food bowl in the Liverpool Plains saved from coal mining”.

Buckingham, former Independent MP Tony Windsor, the New South Wales Farmers Association and a host of others have unleashed a blitzkrieg of criticism against the Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce over the federal government’s approval of the Shenhua Watermark coal mine in the food bowl of north west New South Wales.

Having declared “the world has gone mad” because of an approval his government issued, Joyce is unlikely to attend. But state Liberal MP Scott MacDonald will be there – he *accidentally* sent an email ostensibly aimed at a staffer to all of Parliament within six minutes.

MacDonald will likely be rubbing shoulders with the big boys of big coal at Phelps’ ‘carnival’, which will be held at Parliaments’ Waratah Room on August 11.

Phelps tells New Matilda there’ll “probably [be] drinks, nibbles, unremitting mockery of green/left lunacy and their hatred of human achievement,” too.

“I also hope that there will be free samples of coal for MPs to be able to take away and place in their office for a display of solidarity,” he said.

“As for industry people, I hope they all come, but I don't have any confirmations from them yet - perhaps because I haven't asked any of them yet. Which I should get around to doing, now that I think of it. Thanks for the reminder.”

Phelps said coal needs mates “because it has been demonised by the extreme green movement, despite it being the safest, cheapest and most reliable source of power in Australia and around the world”.

The coal-loving Coalition member said he does not want to see the industry scaled back in New South Wales, which is a view shared by the Premier Mike Baird.

“I reject the quasi-religious mysticism of anthropogenic global warming, and the increasingly fascistic tendencies of its disciples,” Phelps said.

And yes, he does worry about “what lunatic Socialist governments will do in an attempt to appease the extreme green agenda”.

He said that the response to his event has been “pretty good, so far”.

“But the really interesting thing will be to see how many ALP people turn up, given their putative support for blue collar workers (remember what the 'M' in CFMEU stands for!), especially those that purport to represent miners in the Hunter Valley and Illawarra.”

SOURCE

Astonishing renewable energy target turnaround by the Australian Labor party

In politics nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems, as they say, but Tony Abbott will wonder if it ever gets any better than this.

Bill Shorten has just gifted the Coalition the most simple and effective mantra for the next election - vote Labor and you get higher electricity prices.

Given Labor's intention to return to a price on carbon this was always likely to be the case but it has now been amplified - put up in bright lights if you like - by Shorten himself.

By promising to more than double the share of renewable energy in the economy over the next decade and a half, Labor cannot escape the reality of higher electricity prices.

It is an extraordinary policy announcement - without any detail.

Having voted in parliament last month to lower the nation's guaranteed renewable energy share to about 23 per cent by 2020, Labor is now saying it will boost that share to 50 per cent by 2030.

Labor's spokesman Mark Butler seems to have no idea how the target will be achieved, what it will cost or whether it will increase the country's emissions reduction performance.

"When we get into government and look at putting the finer detail of this," he told SkyNews in an amazing interview, "obviously the cost of power for households and businesses is absolutely the top of the list as well as making sure that energy supply is secure."

In other words, elect us and then we will work out how this policy works and what it will cost you.

On the weekend I wrote that the difference between the government and opposition on climate change was an illusion: "Labor postures as alarmist and evangelical, while the Coalition postures as cautious and sceptical, yet they promise identical emission outcomes through different methods. It is beyond parody."

And I even suggested that despite the rhetoric Labor might not promise to do much more because the downside was obvious; "the higher Labor sets its sights the higher the costs it will have to impose."

Well now Labor has taken a massive risk - and in my view one it will soon regret.

It is promising to do much more on climate change, and it is promising to do it with your money.

Yet, of course, because of Australia's tiny share of global emissions (just over 1 per cent) it can't deliver any discernible environmental benefit. It is all for show.

Just how much extra it will cost is anyone's guess.   But remember these are government mandated targets - if renewable energy was cheaper it wouldn't have to be mandated, investment would flow there naturally.

If wind energy was really more cost-effective than coal and gas, Labor would not have been complaining just days ago about the government directing Clean Energy Finance Corporation investment away from wind projects.

If wind energy really drove down prices, Labor would not have agreed in parliament just weeks ago to not only reduce the 2020 renewable energy target but exempt industries where jobs were under threat.

The cost pressures and threatened job losses that Labor pragmatically tried to alleviate in that decision are now back on the table - with double the impact - thanks to today's announcement.  It is an astonishing policy turnaround.

The sudden change, the lack of detail and the timing all suggest this is about Bill Shorten desperately seeking to appeal to the Green Left of his party in order to head off the aspirations of his deputy and potential leadership rival Tanya Plibersek.

This is Labor turning its back on household costs, manufacturing jobs and economic prosperity in order to appeal to the inner city green left.

For all his problems over almost two years of government, Abbott must be thinking good things really do come in threes: Kevin Rudd destroyed his prime ministership when he dropped his commitment to an emissions trading scheme aimed at meeting what he called the greatest moral challenge or our time; Julia Gillard blew herself up when she broke her carbon tax promise; and now Shorten has put a carbon price and a massive (uncosted) renewable energy target on the table.

Whatever is happening to the climate, politics doesn't seem capable of changing.

SOURCE

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

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

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Sierra Club puts almighty dollar ahead of Mother Earth

One of America’s oldest, most respected environmental nonprofits has traded in one kind of green for another. Some of the Sierra Club’s board members and most important donors have put the almighty dollar before Mother Earth by encouraging the organization to engage in activities that bolster their bottom line.

In a new report, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute reveals that a number of environmental activists, including billionaires Nathaniel Simons, Roger Sant and Michael Bloomberg, benefit richly from their hefty donations to the Sierra Club.

Mr. Simons, a hedge fund baron worth an estimated $12 billion, has donated more than $14 million to the Sierra Club since 2009. Those contributions have largely been earmarked for campaigns to “educate the public about clean energy.” The donations have likely proven quite worthwhile to Mr. Simons. According to Fortune magazine, at the same time he was underwriting the Sierra Club’s efforts to promote renewables, Mr. Simons was quietly creating a clean-tech venture fund that invests in clean energy.

Mr. Sant, co-founder of Applied Energy Services, has donated as much as $4 million to the Sierra Club, according to IRS records. Mr. Sant, who still serves as chairman emeritus of the renewable energy company, is among the most outspoken advocates for a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, and it’s no wonder. Such a policy would mean millions of dollars for Mr. Sant and other Applied Energy Services investors. Few organizations have championed a carbon tax more fervently than the Sierra Club. Those efforts have undeniably been bolstered by Mr. Sant’s contributions.

Mr. Bloomberg, a former New York City mayor, has donated more than $105 million to the Sierra Club since 2011. Mr. Bloomberg, who is well-invested in the renewable energy industry, is able to fan the fire of Sierra Club’s unfounded fossil fuel hysterics. By using his Bloomberg L.P. media empire to give credibility to the organization’s war on fossil fuels, he is able to spur demand for renewables, padding his portfolio in the process.

This isn’t the first damning example of conflicts of interest between the Sierra Club and its directors uncovered by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute.

The Sierra Club’s well-known “Beyond Coal” campaign has been largely discredited because the campaign appears bought and paid for by board members and other donors who benefit financially from the organization’s anti-fossil fuel crusades,

Eight of the Sierra Club Foundation’s 18 directors are involved with organizations that profit from the Beyond Coal campaign, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute discovered.

Those directors are owners, founders and CEOs of renewable energy companies and investment firms that donated millions to the Sierra Club’s war on fossil fuels. These green energy tycoons knew lambasting coal, oil and natural gas would increase demand for renewables like solar and wind … and generate more money for their businesses.

Companies with top executives on the Sierra Club’s board of directors include solar firms such as SolarCity, Sun Run and the Solaria Corp., as well as the green energy investment funds at Barclays, Walden Capital and Boston Common Asset Management.

For those eight board members, earnings, not the environment, appear to motivate their involvement with the Sierra Club.

The organization’s largest donor – ultimately the funder behind much of the Beyond Coal campaign – may have the biggest investment of anyone in strangling America’s cheap and stable conventional energy market. That man, David Gelbaum, has spent $500 million starting, buying and investing in more than 40 green energy companies, from solar panel makers to electric car producers, all of which benefit from the Sierra Club’s attack on fossil fuels. For Mr. Gelbaum, the $100 million he has donated to the Sierra Club is a marketing expense; a way to vilify his competition and entice more people to buy into his expensive green energy schemes.

Obviously, today’s Sierra Club, which seems to operate first and foremost as a political lobbying firm focused on enriching its donors and board members, is a far cry from what celebrated naturalist John Muir had in mind when he created the organization in 1892. As Energy & Environment Legal Institute’s Legal Executive Director Craig Richardson points out, the Sierra Club’s war on fossil fuels is “an effort that clearly benefits the very same people who are donating the money – it’s clear the Sierra Club is now just a mercenary force beholden to the highest bidder.”

The egregious conflicts of interest created when Sierra Club donors and board members use contributions to entice the organization to engage in advocacy efforts that benefit the donors’ pocketbooks aren’t just unethical. They’re also illegal.

According to the IRS, if a nonprofit’s donors or board members intentionally financially benefit from the actions of the organization, it “would lose its tax exempt status for at least one year.”

SOURCE




Obama’s new Americorps Resilience program for climate change preparedness

A "Greenshirts" Sturmabteilung?

This is surreal and frightening. As part of Obama’s Climate Action Plan, he established a Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience. A White House press release issued last week announced it has partnered with Rockefeller Foundation to launch a new Resilience AmeriCorps program and will recruit, train and imbed AmeriCorp Vista members in a dozen U.S. communities this year.

Other new actions the Administration is taking as part of its Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience include:

It is targeting native American tribes and colleges with $11.8 million in grants to indoctrinate tribal youth on climate change and elicit their participation.

HUD is giving $1 billion in National Disaster Resilience Competition grants to communities to “provide amenities that improve the quality of life for all,” with Rockefeller Foundation adding $3.2 million towards the effort.

Kresge Foundation is adding $10 million to support the agenda in low-income communities through community nonprofits.
and more…

Additional actions being taken by the Administration to prioritize resilience in every branch of the Federal government: targeting minority colleges, universities and institutions to focus education on environmental justice and climate change; mandating all federal facilities must be aligned with its climate preparedness and resilience goals; and mandating that all federal programs must also become aligned with its goals.

So, how will AmeriCorps make cities more resilient and prepare for climate change? They must have universal healthcare, sustainable development and “minimal human vulnerability.” The City Resilience Framework report defines “minimal human vulnerability” as:

“This relates to the extent to which everyone’s basic needs are met. Minimizing underlying human vulnerabilities enables individuals and households to achieve a standard of living which goes beyond mere survival. A basic level of wellbeing also allows people to deal with unforeseen circumstances. This is only possible once their physiological needs are met through a basic level of provision of food, water and sanitation, energy and shelter.”

It goes on to say that for a city to be resilient, everyone must have a living wage and “unrestricted access to legitimate occupations.” It would seem that a Resilient city must provide food, shelter, energy and unrestricted access to a job for its inhabitants.”

There is more here about what are very Marxist plans, demonstrating yet again that environmentalism and climate change is not about the environment, it is a political agenda.

SOURCE





Arctic ice was still increasing in 2014

Global cooling?

According to the Europe's Cryosat satellite, Arctic sea ice volume has increased by a third in 2013 and that this growth continued into last year. Researchers have been examining data from the satellite to study the loss of Arctic sea ice volume. Researchers involved in the study believe that "shifts in summer temperatures have a much bigger effect on sea ice volume than previously expected," writes BBC News.

Compared to the average of the period between 2010 and 2012, a 33 percent increase in sea ice volume was found in 2013 and and in 2014 there was still a quarter more ice than during that period. The satellite uses a sophisticated radar that is capable of measuring the thickness of sea ice from its orbit in space.

The researchers have been studying sea ice volume over the last five years using the polar monitoring spacecraft to estimate the volume of the Arctic. They used "88 million measurements of sea ice thickness from Cryosat and found that between 2010 and 2012, the volume of sea ice went down by 14%." This is far less than what computer models predicted would happen in the Arctic.

Measurements for 2014 showed there was still a quarter more sea ice than there was between 2010 and 2012. Lead author Rachel Tilling, from University College London, told BBC News, "We looked at various climate forcing factors, we looked at the snow loading, we looked at wind convergence and the melt season length of the previous summer."

The colder temperatures in the polar region allowed more multi-year ice to persist northwest of Greenland because there were fewer days when it could melt. Temperature records also showed that the summer was about 5 percent cooler than 2012. "It would suggest that sea ice is more resilient perhaps - if you get one year of cooler temperatures, we've almost wound the clock back a few years on this gradual decline that's been happening over decades," Rachel Tilling told BBC News.

In 2009, Al Gore predicted the polar ice cap would disappear by 2014. Gore cited new scientific work at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School for his statement. The "computer modeling at the school stresses the "volumetric" and looks at both the surface extent of ice and its thickness."

The Ocean and Ice services of the Danish Meteorological Institute also shows that, "Arctic ice extent is right where it always is this time of year, and is tracking 2006 – the year with the highest extent of the past decade," Real Science notes. This is due to "cold temperatures over the Beaufort sea that is forecast for the next two weeks, making the odds of a big melt occurring pretty close to zero."

And Dr Peiser, from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, says that the poles are "much more stable" than climate scientists once predicted and could even be much thicker than previously thought. The Daily Express also notes that Arctic sea ice volumes in October and November this year averaged at 10,200 cubic kilometres. "This figure is only slightly down on the 2013 average of 10,900 cubic kilometres, yet massively up on the 2011 low of 4,275 cubic kilometres and the 6,000 cubic kilometres recorded in 2012."

SOURCE





Obama’s backward dishwasher rules just more of the same

By Rick Manning

The Obama Administration revealed one more of a string of regulations that have a practical impact of making the problem they claim to want to solve worse.

This time it is a Department of Energy regulation forcing new dishwashers to only use 3.1 gallons of water to wash a load of dishes.

What could go wrong?

Nothing so long as homeowners don’t mind grunge baked onto their dishes due to the failure to have sufficient water to clean off the food. No matter how much Cascade and JetDry you put into the system, not enough water means disgusting baked on egg, and other delights.

The purported reason for the water limitations is to cut those dreaded greenhouse emissions to comply with Obama’s on-going global warming jihad. In Obama’s Ivory Tower world, it is inconceivable that a dishwasher that doesn’t actually get dishes clean might cause people to take alternative action. The most likely of which is to use much more water by hand washing every dish before it goes into the dishwasher and effectively only use the appliance for killing bacteria through the high heat drying process. Or, perhaps people could go full Madge, and only hand wash dishes rendering the modern appliance and convenience useless.

Apparently, regulators at the Energy Department don’t wash their own dishes, so they are unaware of what a real person would do when their dishes come out of the dishwasher disgusting. But this is just the latest of many bafflingly out of touch decisions made by environmental regulators.

The New York Times reported that in 2012, oil refiners were forced to pay about $6.8 million in fines to the U.S. government due to their failure to mix a government decreed biofuel into their gasoline and diesel.

The only problem was that the government mandated biofuel did not actually exist outside of the laboratory. That’s right, the government mandated use of a product that wasn’t in production and still was in the laboratory testing phase, and turned a deaf ear toward those who complained, instead fining companies for failing to use a non-existent product. Eventually, the federal courts disallowed the fines, but left the mandate of a gradual shift to using additional biofuel in gasoline, leaving refiners uncertain about the availability on a year to year basis.

And this is not the only biofuel problem where the federal government pointyheads fail to understand how products like ethanol impact both automobile engines and the overall environment.

For years, the government has attempted to jam gasoline that contains 15 percent ethanol into the marketplace disregarding the damage that this level of ethanol does to the automobile engines themselves.

The perverse effect of ethanol is that according to the Department of Energy it reduces gas mileage by three to four percent, while the higher concentration of ethanol in E-15 reduces it by five percent. This government mandated gas mileage reduction occurs at the same time that the federal government is demanding dramatic increases in fuel efficiency standards.

In practical terms if a vehicle would normally get 400 miles on a 15 gallon tank of 100 percent gasoline, E-10 reduces this amount to between 388 and 384 miles, just under a full mile per gallon less than straight gasoline.

Yet, in spite of overwhelming evidence that corn ethanol is bad for both vehicles and for the environment, the mandates persist due to the apparent extraction of the common sense gene from anyone who works in the Obama Administration.

So, don’t be surprised when Obama refuses to relent on its crazy dishwasher rules that render the appliance obsolete while wasting water. After all, nothing can get in the way of their global warming quest, not even harming the environment along the way.

SOURCE





Pope calls on world leaders to take a 'strong stand' on climate change ahead of UN summit

Popey has merged the RC church with the church of global warming

Pope Francis has urged world leaders to take a 'very strong stand' on climate change ahead of the United Nations summit in Paris this year.  He was speaking at a conference of mayors and governors, who signed a declaration saying it may be the last chance to tackle human-induced global warming, at the Vatican today.

The meeting linked climate change and modern slavery because, according to an introductory paper, 'global warming is one of the causes of poverty and forced migration'.

It is the Vatican's latest attempt to influence the summit in December, which aims to reach a global agreement to combat climate change after past failures.

The cleric, speaking to the group in unprepared comments in Spanish, said he hoped the UN conference would address 'particularly how it (climate change) affects the trafficking of people.'

He added: 'I have great hopes in the Paris summit. I have great hopes that a fundamental agreement is reached. The United Nations needs to take a very strong stand on this.'

Mayors from South America, Africa, the United States, Europe and Asia signed a declaration stating that it 'may be the last effective opportunity to negotiate arrangements that keep human-induced warming below two degrees centigrade.'

It says that leaders should come to a 'bold agreement that confines global warming to a limit safe for humanity while protecting the poor and the vulnerable.'

High-income countries should help finance the cost of climate-change mitigation in low-income countries, it also reads.

In a rejection of so-called climate-change deniers, the declaration also says: 'Human-induced climate change is a scientific reality, and its effective control is a moral imperative for humanity.'

California Governor Edmund 'Jerry' Brown, whose state is suffering a severe drought, urged mayors to 'fight the propaganda' of big business interests that deny that climate change is human induced.

'We have fierce opposition and blind inertia and that opposition is well-financed,' he said.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio called Pope Francis 'the most powerful voice on this earth for those whose voice is not being heard.' He added: 'He did not convene us here to accept the status quo but to indict it'.

De Blasio announced that New York City would commit to reduce carbon emissions by 40 per cent by 2030 on top of a previous commitment to reduced them by 80 per cent by 2050.

Tony Chammany, the mayor of Kochi, India, said coastal areas were already feeling the effects of rising sea levels. 'It is now or never, there may never be a replay,' he said.

The cleric issued an encyclical on climate change, the first ever dedicated to the environment, last month.

The call to his church's 1.2billion members could spur the world's Catholics to lobby policymakers on ecology issues and climate change.

SOURCE





Muscle-man chomps a cigar as he is selected by the French Government to address world leaders on climate change

He has drifted a long way Left since he married into the Kennedys.  He has gained righteousness

Arnold Schwarzenegger was spotted chomping a stogie on the same day he was named an environmental advocate by the French Government.

The 67-year-old star looked in great form as he ran errands in Los Angeles after being selected to address world political and spiritual leaders ahead of a major climate change summit in Paris in December.

Meanwhile 10,000km away in Vatican City, a much more formal looking Arnie was addressing a room full of dozens of mayors from across the world and spiritual leaders of all faiths via pre-recorded video, urging them to get their leaders and followers involved in the fight against climate change.

'I've starred of course in a lot of science fiction movies and, let me tell you something, climate change is not science fiction; this is a battle in the real world, it is impacting us right now,' he said in the six minute clip.

The video appears to have been recorded in the actors personal office; wearing a navy suit and vivid green tie, he is flanked by the American and Californian State flags...while his rearguard appears to be a painting of a naked muscular back, presumably his own.

'I believe the science is in. The debate is over and the time for action is now,' he continued. 'This is bigger than any movie, this is the challenge of our time. And it is our responsibility to leave this world a better place than we found it, but right now we are failing future generations.'

After apologising for not being there in person because of a promotional tour, Arnie admits in the video that he was star-struck when he seen the line-up of who he was about to address.

He claimed environmental advocates were failing to communicate with the masses. 'We should be concerned about rising temperatures, and we should be concerned with the rising sea levels, and the melting ice caps and all of those things, but those are things that will happen down the line.

'But most people are concerned with what is happening right now: people worry about their jobs and healthcare and national security, they worry about putting food on the table for their families, they worry about their survival,' he said.

'And you know something? They should be concerned about their survival - 7million people die every year because of our pollution.'

SOURCE

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

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

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