Mathematical Analysis reveals six natural cycles driving temperatures, no man-made effect: predicts cooling

Ldecke, Hempelmann, and Weiss found that the temperature variation can be explained with six superimposed natural cycles. With only six cycles they can closely recreate the 240 year central European thermometer record. There is little "non-cyclical" signal left, suggesting that CO2 has a minor or insignificant effect.

The three German scientists used Fourier analysis to pick out the dominant cycles of one of the longest temperature records we have. The Central European temperature is an average of records from Prague, Vienna, Hohenpeissenberg, Kremsmnster, Paris, and Munich.

The dominant cycle appears to be about 250 years. There is also a cycle of about 60 years, corresponding to the Atlantic/Pacific decadal oscillations.

Data is of course, always the biggest problem. If we had 10,000 years of high quality global records, we could solve "the climate" within months. Instead, we have short records, and Ldecke et al, make the most of what we have. The European records are only 240 years long, or (darn) one dominant cycle, and only one region, so to check that the results are valid over longer periods they also analyze a the 2000 year Spannagel Cave stalagmites proxy, where the dominant cycle of roughly 250 years is confirmed. To show that the results apply to other parts of the world, they look at the German Alfred Wegener Institut (AWI), Antarctica series.

Ominously, the temperatures of the dominant cycle (in Europe at least) peaked circa 2000 and if the six-driving-cycles do represent the climate then things are going to get cooler, quickly. Wait and see.

Fourier analysis can't tell us what causes the cycles, but it can tell us the likely frequency, amplitude and phase of those cycles. If these are accurate, it can be used to rule out significant effects from man-made forces and ultimately to predict what will happen next.

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




Green Madness: Do British Ministers Know What They Are Doing?

British leaders are making some truly bizarre decisions in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and comply with European renewable electricity mandates. For example, they are converting a coal-fired plant to burn wood chips that are shipped from the United States. A wood burning plant qualifies under the European rules for meeting electricity generation mandates from renewable energy for the purpose of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from energy producing sources.  But this move is sheer lunacy for it will increase rather than decrease emissions while increasing the price of electricity to consumers. Yet the British parliament has whole-heartedly embraced the move. Have legislators gone mad?

The British Drax Plant and Its Conversion

The Drax plant in Yorkshire, England is one of the biggest coal-fired power plants in the world with an almost 1,000 foot-tall flue chimney, 6 boilers, and 12 very large cooling towers. It consumes 36,000 tons of coal each day, providing 7 percent of the country's electricity. Starting next month, the plant will be converted to burn millions of tons of wood chips a year, costing œ700 million ($1.085 billion). [i]

Most of the wood chips will travel 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, coming from trees downed in the United States. Drax is building 2 plants in the United States that will turn the wood from trees into chips that can be transported by ship to Yorkshire and then hauled to the power station by railway trucks. In order to prevent spontaneous combustion, the wood chips must be stored in domes where the humidity is controlled before they can be pulverized into powder. (Wood is 1,000 times more prone to spontaneous combustion than coal.)

Despite the fact that coal is the least-expensive source of electricity generation in England, the owners of the Drax plant realized that a recently instituted carbon tax on fossil fuels would put them out of business if they continued to burn coal eventually making their electricity become twice as expensive. The political incumbents in Britain decided last year to give any coal-fired power station that switched to `biomass' the almost 100 percent `renewable subsidy' that owners of onshore wind farms get.

A British Carbon Tax and an EU Mandate

A new carbon tax introduced in Britain on April 1 is applied to every ton of carbon dioxide produced during electricity production. While the tax is starting out low, it will increase each year, making the cost of generating electricity from coal double within 20 years, at which point it will no longer be economical for Drax to generate electricity from coal.  Along with the carbon tax, the British government will also be subsidizing electricity produced from its list of `carbon neutral' power sources that will further increase consumer electricity bills.

The U.K. carbon tax is defined as a carbon price floor (CPF) that will increase from 16 pounds per metric ton of carbon dioxide ($24.80) in April 2013 to 30 pounds per metric ton ($46.50) in 2020, in constant 2009 prices. The resulting carbon tax is calculated as the difference between the carbon price floor, adjusted for inflation, and the European Union allowance (EUA) price, which is the 12-month average settlement on the European Climate Exchange for the relevant EUA futures contract. The tax for this financial year is 4.94 pounds per metric ton of carbon dioxide ($7.66) and in 2014/2015, it is 9.55 pounds ($14.80). IHS CERA calculated the 2015/2016 rate at 18.29 pounds per metric ton of carbon dioxide ($28.35) resulting in an annual doubling for two successive years.[ii]

The conversion of the Drax plant to wood chips will significantly contribute to meeting a target imposed by the European Union (EU) that commits Britain to producing almost a third of its electricity from `renewable energy' within seven years. Upon completion, Drax will have the capability to generate 3,500 megawatts of electricity from a qualified renewable source, contributing more than a quarter of the EU target for the use of renewable energy. The reliability of the converted Drax plant along with its size will produce far more generation than the country's wind farms.

The Issues the U.K. Politicians Aren't Confronting

The energy policies that the United Kingdom has put in place have consequences that will affect the lives of its citizens and their pocketbooks. The country's energy policies mean the electricity will cost more, that electric supplies may not be sufficient to meet future demands, and that little will be achieved in emissions reduction because of actions of other countries and the consequences of biomass conversions on the life cycle of the fuel.

It will cost two to three times as much for Drax to generate about the same amount of electricity from wood as it does from coal, i.e. fuel costs will double or triple. The government is providing a subsidy that will eventually be worth over œ1 billion a year that make the Drax conversion to `biomass' economical. But for electricity consumers in Britain, bills have already increased by over œ1 billion ($1.55 billion) a year because of subsidizing wind farms; the Drax subsidies will increase them even more.

Those coal-fired power plants not converting to `biomass' are being forced to close. An EU anti-pollution directive has resulted in the closure of several coal-fired power plants such as Kingsnorth in Kent, Didcot A in Oxfordshire and Cockenzie in Scotland with a combined capacity of almost 6,000 megawatts, which leaves natural gas to back-up wind power that cannot be relied upon to generate power when needed. For example, on a recent windless day, the country's 4,300 wind turbines combined to generate just one thousandth of demand (29 megawatts).

But natural gas supplies from the North Sea are diminishing, making the country dependent on expensive natural gas from Qatar, Algeria, and Russia that will also be affected by the carbon tax when burned to produce electricity. Early in March, Britain's supplies of natural gas in storage were down to 2 weeks of coverage-the lowest amount ever. The low electricity supplies are worrying some that the country may face major power cuts that it cannot endure due to its dependence on electricity not just for home heating, but also computers, traffic lights, and a whole host of other needs.

The irony of the situation is that Britain is moving away from coal as other countries which have been big proponents of reducing carbon dioxide emissions are moving to build more coal-fired power plants. Germany is building 20 new coal-fired power plants to back-up its wind and solar plants and to replace its nuclear plants; the first of which (2,200 megawatts) came on line last September. China, the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, is building at least one coal-fired unit a week and is planning to build 363 more coal-fired power plants to fuel its fast growing economy.  India is also planning to build 455 new coal-fired power plants to fuel its growing economy.

And then there is Japan, who is building coal-fired power plants to replace its nuclear power after the accident at Fukushima in 2011. Japan is currently using idled oil-fired power plants, but expects to build cheaper coal-fired power plants in the future. Tokyo Electric just added 2,600 megawatts of coal-fired generating capacity from two new plants that started operation this month. Other new coal-fired plants are expected to follow as Japan works on decreasing the time for processing permits from up to 4 years to a maximum of 12 months. In order to consume more coal, Japan is planning on revising by this October its Kyoto Protocol commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent from their 1990 level by 2020.[iii]

There is no carbon dioxide benefit to burning wood at the Drax plant.

But the real lunacy in the U.K. is the reasoning for converting the Drax plant to wood. The entire point is a belief that burning biomass would, on net, reduce carbon dioxide emissions, especially compared to coal. But that's not the case in the real world, especially with the Drax plant.  Any carbon reductions would take many years to be realized when dealing with the life cycle of the process of growing trees, making wood chips, transporting them to consumers, and combusting them into electricity. A researcher at Princeton University calculated that if whole trees are used to produce energy, they would increase carbon emissions compared with coal by 79 percent over 20 years and 49 percent over 40 years and that there would be no carbon reduction for 100 years until the replacement trees have matured.[iv]

Conclusion

The result of Britain's energy policy is ever-increasing energy bills and likely power outages. According to the UK Daily Mail, Britain's politicians "live in such a la-la land of green make-believe that they no longer connect with reality - and seem unable to comprehend the national energy crisis now heading our way with the speed of a bullet train. But the sad truth is that we ourselves should be neither laughing nor crying. We should be rising up to protest, in real anger, at those politicians whose collective flight from reality is fast dragging us towards as damaging a crisis as this country has ever faced."

Unfortunately, the United States could follow in Britain's footsteps if we are not ever vigilant in making our politicians aware of the energy system and how it works in this country. Germany's residences already play 3 times what we pay for electricity and almost 20 percent of England is in energy poverty, providing more than 10 percent of their household income to non-transportation energy needs. We need to learn from their mistakes and insist our policy makers do so as well.

SOURCE





A Crisis in UK Energy Policy Looks Inevitable: We Identify the Possible Triggers

Excerpt from an extensive report from Liberum Capital -- warning investors off British government energy follies

When the crisis hits there will be three possible casu alties, the government of the day, the consumer, and the investors who have funded the government's radical energy policy. Whilst no doubt there will be plenty of pain to go around, in our view investors should be under no illusions that the government of the day will seek to protect itself and the consumer (who are also the electorate) by heaping most of the financial pain on to investors.

* UK Energy Policy is not Plausible: in our view successive UK gove rnments have grossly underestimated the engineering, financial, and economic challenges posed by the drive to decarbonise the electricity sector by 2030. Moving from a largely fossil fuel based power system to one dominated by renewables and nuclear in just a decade and a half, whilst keeping the lights on and consumer bills affordable, may simply be impossible.

* Policy Cost: we estimate that the total required investment to deliver policy goals is œ161bn from now to 2020 and up to œ376bn by 2030. Even with the large increase in public support provided by the Energy Bill it is extremely hard to envisage that this finance will be forthcoming given that the large European Utility companies are actually reducing capex. If the inve stment does take place we see electricity bills rising by at least 30% by 2020 and 100% by 2030 in real terms.

* Economic Rationale Looks Weak: the fundamental economic argument for the EU's energy policy is that fossil fuels are scarce, and will therefore become ever more expensive. The belief is that those that move first away from fossil fuels will gain a substantial competitive advantage. But the arrival of unconventional gas and oil makes this assumption look shaky at best. Without clear economic benefits it is not at all certain that the public will be willing to bear the costs. Without public support the policy is bound to fail at some point.

* Re-nationalisation: the decarbonisation agenda has required the government to intervene in the energy market in ever more aggressive ways. The Energy Bill takes this to a new level and effectively re-nationalises the investment-making decision process in the power sector. But it is not clear that policy makers yet appreciate that this also means that the risks and costs associated with these decisions must also transfer to the public.

* Probable Triggers for the Crisis: we identify a number of possible triggers; a generation capacity crunch in the 2014-17 period leading to a sharp spike in power prices, a lack of dispatchable generation by the end of this decade onwards, and spiralling consumer costs / developer profits that a future government will find untenable.

* Utility Companies & Investors Should Limit Exposure: political risk looks certain to rise sharply in the UK energy space in the coming years as the implausibility and contradictory nature of policy is exposed by events. We welcome recent moves by both Centrica and SSE to take a more cautious approach to allocating capital to UK renewables. UK utility stocks have benefited in recent years by being viewed as having relatively low political risk, this may well change in coming years. Most exposed will be Drax, SSE and Centrica.

Much more HERE





A "Green" British bureaucrat with a storm-trooper mentality

Over-zealous council worker 'rips gate off its hinges' so he can check whether family is recycling

A couple has accused a council worker of ripping their padlocked front gate off its hinges so he could check if they were recycling properly.

The officer from Croydon Council, in south London, was sent to question Bharat and Sheila Gandhi, who had been reported to the local authority for not leaving paper, glass and plastics out for collection.

But when the officer arrived at the house in South Norwood and realised he couldn't get in, he allegedly forced the gate off its hinges.

Unbeknown to him, he was being filmed by the couple's CCTV camera which had been installed after the house was burgled in 2011.

Mr and Mrs Gandhi say they take their waste to Factory Lane recycling centre by hand and have accused the council of 'intrusion'.

Mr Gandhi, 60, said: 'The behaviour by the council person was inexcusable and even dangerous as he left our property vulnerable and without any reason.'

The council, which said the damage was accidental, has offered to refund the œ100 repair costs.

However, Mrs Gandhi, 56, said: 'It is not about money, it is about the principle. It would have taken a lot of force to break the gate.  'There is a bell for people to ring, which he did not.'

The couple run the local Neighbourhood Watch group and lost œ20,000 of possessions when they were burgled.

They also accused the officer of not having ID on him when he visited again on April 17.

A council spokesman said: 'We're waiting for details of the necessary repairs and we will compensate the homeowners appropriately for this accidental damage.

'Staff on the team have been reminded of the importance of carrying their ID at all times and if, as in this case, they have left it at home, a temporary form of identification will be arranged.'

SOURCE





Understanding the Political and Economic Realities of a Carbon Tax

On May 3, the George C. Marshall Institute will release a new study considering efforts to create a national carbon tax.

Authored by James DeLong of the Convergence Law Institute, the study summarizes the political and economic forces that undermine the case for a carbon tax.  DeLong presents five reasons to reject carbon taxes:

*    Lack of Effect on Temperature - A carbon tax is assumed to have the effect of reducing temperature, but DeLong argues the evidence shows the impact "would be tiny" at the tax levels being advanced.

*   Lack of Specificity About Future Energy Sources - Tax advocates fail to show what energy sources will emerge to replace current sources of supply or how this transformation of a capital-intensive energy sector would be accomplished.

*  Neglect of Benefits from Fossil Fuels and CO2 Emissions - The carbon tax debate is solely focused on the "damages" wrought by CO2 emissions, but a fair evaluation must account for the benefits associated with production of CO2.

*    Problems with Models - The carbon tax relies on the veracity of two rounds of complex computer models - one modeling the environment and humanity's purported impact on it and the other modeling the economy and the impact of imposing a carbon tax.  Both sets of models have significant limitations.

*    Political Pressures and Practical Problems - DeLong summarizes the regressive nature of a carbon tax, the negative impact on GDP and jobs, the effects on manufacturing in highlighting some of the consequences of a tax.  Further, he points to managing the interactions with other taxes and regulations, as well as international issues as practical obstacles to the construction of an efficient carbon tax.  Added to these are the inevitable tensions that will arise from the uneasy alliance of "Bootleggers" and "Baptists" (i.e., crony capitalists and environmentalists) that must unite to pass a carbon tax.

"The tax will not be implemented in the politically aseptic world of academic modelers, but in the real world of intense political pressures," DeLong argues.  "Its assumed purity will not survive the onslaught."

Via email





The real Malthus

    "If . . . we come to the conclusion, not to interfere in any respect, but to leave every man to his own free choice, and responsible only to God for the evil he does . . . this is all I contend for."   -Thomas Robert Malthus

I am constantly surprised that defenders of liberty and free markets love to bash Thomas Robert Malthus.

Maybe I shouldn't be, but consider this: Robert Malthus (his friends called him "Bob") was one of the primary interpreters of Adam Smith for the generation after Smith. Indeed, a lot of people who pick on "Thomas" Malthus get Bob Malthus wrong.

That's not to say that Malthus was right about everything. But even more than Smith, Malthus's economics built upon the idea that all humans similarly respond to incentives, and he thereby rejected the idea of natural hierarchy. Writing in a country that had excessive restrictions on labor markets-take a look at the poor laws-Malthus was an advocate of free labor markets. And Malthus argued that private property rights, free markets, and an institution that would ensure that both parents were financially responsible for the children they bore (that is, marriage) were essential features of an advanced civilization.

"Wait a minute," you may be thinking. "Are we talking about the Malthus who claimed back in 1798 in his book An Essay on the Principle of Population that population growth would decrease per capita well-being? Isn't this the guy who argued that the combination of population growth and natural resource scarcity would create catastrophic consequences, including disease, starvation, and war, for much of the human race? And didn't he miss the benefits of entrepreneurship and innovation, blinded as he was by the fallacy of land scarcity?"

That Malthus-let's call this one "Tom"-is more a creature of ideological opponents of markets than of Malthus's own writings. So maybe we should revisit Malthus and see what he actually said.

It all begins with a thought experiment: what would happen to human population in the absence of any institutions?

The answer is the population principle, which is the only thing most people know about Malthus. And it's largely correct. In the absence of institutions, humans are reduced to their biological basics. Like animals, humans share the necessity to eat and the passions that lead to procreation. To eat, humans must produce food. To procreate, humans must have sex. If there are no institutions, human population will behave like any animal population and increase to the limit of its ecology's carrying capacity.

The biological model is simplistic; it treats humans as mere biological agents. It is this biological model that produces all the results people usually associate with Malthus's name. And it's not very far off from people's conditions when their institutions have suddenly been disrupted by things like conquest, revolution, or war. (Consider the dual problems of war and drought that resulted in famine for Ethiopians in 1983-85, for example.)

But for Bob Malthus, the biological model is only a starting point. The model set up his next concern: the incentives created by different institutional rules for families' fertility choices (in Malthus's terms: the decision to delay marriage). The comparative institutional analysis that emerged from his further investigation became the basis for his defense of the institutional framework of a free society.

But to get there, Malthus needed a more complex model of the human being, one that viewed us as more than biological agents.

His more complex model included two additional things:

The first was human reason and foresight. (Darwin's model of natural selection actually came to him when he asked, while reading Malthus, what the biological response to the lack of foresight and reason would be.) Malthus asked, what happens when we recognize that humans have the capacity to anticipate the future and to respond to it? His answer was that individuals prudentially make changes in their choices in order to respond to potential opportunities and threats.

The second thing Malthus introduced was a form of contractarianism and the idea of institutional incentives. When we recognize that humans can contract with others to create rules that will structure our future options, then we are building social institutions that incentivize individual actions.

Malthus first employs both of his models in his criticism of William Godwin's Political Justice, at the end of his original Essay. Using the biological model, Malthus shows that Godwin's call to eliminate all institutions would result in rapid population growth, creating the threat of a population "bomb." But then he stops short of reducing humanity to Hobbes's tragedy of the war of all against all. (Garrett Hardin went further than Malthus would in his "tragedy of the commons" article, which has had such an influence on neo-Malthusians.) Why does Malthus not draw the obvious neo-Malthusian conclusion? Because he begins to employ his complex model instead.

Seeing the prospect of falling into a Hobbesian state of nature, people would rather "hold a convention" and establish property rights. And then, he argues, they would fashion a rule or institution (call it "marriage") that would require parents-especially fathers-to be financially responsible for their children. These institutional moves would allow society to create a sustainable future.

The institutional considerations of his more complex theory really come out, however, in subsequent editions of the Essay. In these editions, Malthus engages in a nascent form of empirical institutional analysis. Between his own travels and traveler reports from around the world, he assembles a comparative study of how different institutional settings handle population growth. His hypothesis is simple: Nations with civilized institutions will depend less on the positive checks on population growth because their citizens are provided with clear signals that allow prudential decisions regarding the delay of marriage. What he found was that in societies with private property rights, markets, and incentives that encourage responsible fertility choices (what he called marriage), the positive checks of disease and starvation never come into play, while in societies without those institutions, the positive checks operate in full force.

It turns out the mainstream view of Tom (as opposed to the real "Bob") was first created by opponents of markets, sustained throughout the nineteenth century by lovers of hierarchy, and resuscitated in the twentieth century by environmentalists committed to the view that there are natural limits to economic growth. These environmentalists picked out the bits they liked and scrapped the rest, as it suited their agendas.

But Bob Malthus thought institutions mattered. For Malthus, the institutions of a free society mattered for prudential fertility choices, as well as for human flourishing.

SOURCE

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

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

Preserving the graphics:  Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility.  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 and here

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

Obama’s smear misfires at GOP 'deniers': ‘The inconvenient truth is Obama & Democrats have made utterly ignorant & comical science claims’‏

Climate Depot Responds to Obama campaign's climate smear of skeptics -- Morano: 'Bluntly stated, a man -- President Obama -- who declared his presidency would result in ‘the rise of the oceans beginning to slow’, has no business whatsoever claiming he understands, let  alone  champions science in any way' -- 'A president who claims Americans can ‘do something’ about floods, hurricanes, droughts tornadoes is not pro-science'

By Marc Morano

President Barack Obama’s campaign to smear and intimidate global warming skeptics in Congress is now in full swing. See: Obama campaign launches plan to shame climate skeptics in Congress: ‘It is time to call out U.S. politicians who deny the science behind climate change’ & Obama Tweets about global warming: ‘Climate deniers in Congress refuse to even debate the issue. Make sure they don’t get away with it’

Obama’s new campaign hopes to silence skepticism, despite the fact that the GOP is the party taking a pro-science stand when it comes to man-made global warming fears. See:  Lord Christopher Monckton defends GOP from Obama campaign attack: ‘Obama climate video stars GOP truthsayers’ — Monckton says GOP ‘talking common sense about climate’

The inconvenient truth for Obama is that he and his fellow Democrats have made many utterly ignorant and often times comical climate science claims. Bluntly stated, a man -- President Obama -- who declared his presidency would result in ‘the rise of the oceans beginning to slow’, has no business whatsoever claiming he understands, let  alone  champions science in any way.

President Obama has also claimed he can “block the Sun’s rays to end global warming.” In addition, Obama made the completely scientifically indefensible claim that the Waxman-Markey climate bill in 2009 would stop global temperature increases of up to five degrees! Obama said on June 25, “A long-term benefit is we’re leaving a planet to our children that isn’t four or five degrees hotter.”  But Obama’s own EPA said it wouldn’t impact global CO2 levels let alone global temperatures.

Obama goes full witchcraft by telling voters they ‘can do something about’ droughts and floods and wildfires — Climate Depot Responds -- Climate Depot's Morano reminds voters: 'Acts of the UN and the U.S. Congress or EPA, cannot control the weather'

Obama said Americans can ‘do something’ about floods, hurricanes, droughts tornadoes, as though, you can at the ballot box, you vote yourself better weather. He is implying we can legislate better weather.”

The most surprising aspect of this attempt to intimidate the GOP over global warming claims is the fact that on virtually every measure, the scientific claims of the promoters of man-made global warming are failing to stand up to scientific scrutiny. See: Climate Depot Round Up: ‘The great warmist retreat has officially begun. The mainstream media cannot maintain the official man-made global warming narrative any longer' &   CNN Climate Debate! Morano Debates Bill Nye on Piers Morgan  &  Listen Now: Morano Unleashed in One hour UK interview! ‘Do any cursory examination of who is behind this & how this warmist narrative was crafted and you will realize you have been conned by the global warming establishment’

As a result, many high profile scientists continue to dissent or reverse themselves.  See: Top Swedish Climate Scientist Says Warming Not Noticeable: ‘The warming we have had last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all’ -- Award-Winning Dr. Lennart Bengtsson, formerly of UN IPCC: 'We Are Creating Great Anxiety Without It Being Justified'

‘Gaia’ scientist James Lovelock reverses himself: I was ‘alarmist’ about climate change & so was Gore! ‘The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago’              

Climate Depot  has assembled a very small sampling of Obama and Democrats mangling climate science to make cheap political points:

Climate Touchy-Feely: Dem Sen. Debbie Stabenow in 2009: ‘Global warming creates volatility. I feel it when I’m flying. The storms are more volatile’ -- 'We are paying the price in more hurricanes and tornadoes'

Obama’s ‘Climate Astrologer’: Fmr Energy Sec. Chu claimed he knows ‘what the future will be 100 years from now’ – Morano response: 'Shouldn't Chu be touting these scary predictions of the year 2100 on a boardwalk with a full deck of Tarot Cards?'

Obama fails climate science in his 2013 State of the Union address — Climate Depot’s point-by-point rebuttal to the President’s global warming claims -- 'Mr. President, acts of Congress, the UN or the EPA cannot alter storms or weather patterns'

Congressional Weather-Makers: ‘Climate Astrologer’ Boxer warns of ‘droughts, floods, fires, loss of species’ — if Senate fails to pass climate bill – July 11, 2009

Dem Sen. Boxer: 2010 failure of cap-and-trade caused ‘hotter days’ and ‘more and more severe storms’

Sen Boxer: Global warming threatens 'the very lives of our grandchildren'

New York Times Columnist Gail Collins goes full medieval witchcraft! Declares ‘a carbon tax/fee is the key to controlling climate change’ — & keeping Arctic ice!

Carbon tax to keep U.S. safe from terrorism?! NYT’s Friedman urges carbon tax to fix America post Boston Terror!

Flashback 2009 NYT’s Paul Krugman accuses Congressmen who voted against climate bill of ‘treason against the planet!’

Gore Unhinged! Loses it on skeptical claims: ‘It may be volcanoes.’ Bullshit! ‘It may be sun spots.’ Bullshit! ‘It’s not getting warmer.’ Bullshit!’ — Climate Depot Responds! -- Climate Depot's Point-By-Point Rebuttal to Gore's Highbrow Scientific Arguments

Sen. John Kerry as Sec. Of State?! Be Afraid, Kerry’s Poor Understanding of Climate Science Poses Threat to U.S. National Security -- Climate Depot's Round up Debunking Global Warming/National Security claims -- Kerry has called Global Warming the Next 9/11 & Has Equated Soviet Nuclear warheads & Iranian Nukes to threat of Global Warming

Sen. John Kerry: Global Warming Is The Next 9/11

2010: Sen. John Kerry: ‘Equates nuclear Armageddon with fluctuations in a natural trace atmospheric gas’

Sen. Kerry: Climate change ‘as dangerous’ as Iran’s nukes; on the growth of climate skepticism: ‘I have to say it’s been a remarkably effective campaign, you can’t sit here and say it hasn’t worked’

‘Just When You Thought Global Warming Couldn’t Get More Stupid, In Walks John Kerry’: ‘Of all the ridiculous arguments in support of climate legislation, national security has to be the most idiotic’

Democrat Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz: ‘Now we can unfortunately rely on our own experience to confirm that the climate, and the weather, is getting worse’ -- 'Climate change is the challenge of our generation, and Congress must act' Senator Schatz claims government policy can improve the weather!

More HERE  (See the original for links)




The most bizarre prediction of global warming doom ever

Thomas Lifson

When apocalyptic religious cults like Warmism fail the reality test, their devotees get desperate and unintentionally start producing self-parodies. The mass slow-mo mental implosion can be hilarious. We have just such an instance involving a group of House Democrats.  The victim mentality is leaping to the rescue for the cause of global warming. Pete Kasperowicz of The Hill reports:

    "Several House Democrats are calling on Congress to recognize that climate change is hurting women more than men, and could even drive poor women to "transactional sex" for survival.

    The resolution, from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and a dozen other Democrats, says the results of climate change include drought and reduced agricultural output. It says these changes can be particularly harmful for women.

    "[F]ood insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health," it says."

Global warming can make you a whore!

My colleague Rick Moran quipped, "What about transactional sex because of the lousy economy?"

This is so stupid it boggles the mind. Barbara Lee, in case you don't know, represents the good people of Berkeley in Congress.


Lee

SOURCE



Media Display Ignorance and Bias in Warming Debate

Suzanne Goldberg displayed the establishment media’s inexcusable ignorance and/or willful distortion of the global warming debate in a Thursday ‘news’ article in the prominent UK newspaper The Guardian.

Writing about an effort by the Obama administration to politicize the global warming debate and direct public ridicule at Republicans who are skeptical of alarmist global warming claims, Goldberg describes that effort as one that will “shame members of Congress who deny the science behind climate change.”

Expressing skepticism about alarmist global warming claims and alarmist future predictions by one segment of the scientific population whose prior alarmist claims and alarmist predictions have routinely proven to be false is not “denying the science behind climate change.” Subjecting theories, predictions, and scientific claims to critical scientific scrutiny is the lifeblood of science. Attempting to vilify, stifle, and shut down critical scientific analysis of scientific theories, predictions, and claims is the very definition of anti-science.

Goldberg’s distortion and bias merely grow worse as the article continues. Describing an Obama administration video that attacks Republicans on the topic of global warming, Goldberg writes that the video features Republicans “who are notorious for denying the existence of climate change, or positing bizarre notions about its causes.”

A key point made by global warming ‘skeptics’ is the Earth’s climate is constantly changing. The nature and extent of current climate change must be viewed within the context of the nature and extent of climate change that has occurred for billions of years. To the extent any faction in the global warming debate “denies the existence of climate change,” it is the alarmists who contend that any climate change that may be occurring now must be unprecedented and alarming. It is these alarmists – not skeptics - who deny climate change. Both factions agree the Earth’s climate is currently changing, but alarmists deny the longstanding and ongoing existence of past, present, and future climate change.

Regarding Goldberg’s comment about Republicans “positing bizarre notions about its causes,” she does not identify any examples. How convenient for Goldberg that she does not feel an obligation to factually justify derogatory opinions that she inserts in her ‘news’ columns.

SOURCE





Still Another Low Climate Sensitivity Estimate

As promised, we report here on yet another published estimate of the earth’s equilibrium climate sensitivity that is towards the low end of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) range of possibilities.

Recall that the equilibrium climate sensitivity is the amount that the earth’s surface temperature will rise from a doubling of the pre-industrial atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. As such, it is probably the most important factor in determining whether or not we need to “do something” to mitigate future climate change. Lower sensitivity means low urgency, and, if low enough, carbon dioxide emissions confer a net benefit.

And despite common claims that the “science is settled” when it comes to global warming, we are still learning more and more about the earth complex climate system—and the more we learn, the less responsive it seems that the earth’s average temperature is to human carbon dioxide emissions.

The latest study to document a low climate sensitivity is authored by independent scientist Nic Lewis and is scheduled for publication in the Journal of Climate. Lewis’ study is a rather mathematically complicated reanalysis of another earlier mathematically complicated analysis that matches the observed global temperature change to the temperature change produced from a simple climate model with a configurable set of parameters whose actual values are largely unknown but can be assigned in the model simulations.

By varying the values of these parameters in the models and seeing how well the resulting temperature output matches the observations, you can get some idea as to what the real-world value of these parameters are. And the main parameter of interest is the equilibrium climate sensitivity. Lewis’ study also includes additional model years and additional years of observations, including several years from the current global warming “hiatus” (i.e., the lack of a statistically significant rise in global temperature that extends for about 16 years, starting in early 1997).

We actually did something along a similar vein—in English—and published it back in 2002. We found the same thing that Lewis did: substantially reduced warming. We were handsomely rewarded for our efforts by the climategate mafia, who tried to get 1) the paper withdrawn, 2) the editor fired—not just from the journal, but from Auckland University, and 3) my (Michaels) 1979 PhD “reopened” by University of Wisconsin.

Lewis concludes that the median estimate of the equilibrium climate sensitivity is 1.6°C, with a 90% range extending from 1.0°C to 3.0°C. (That’s almost exactly what we found 11 years ago.)

Based on this result, we welcome Lewis (2013) to the growing list of results published in the scientific literature since 2010 which find the climate sensitivity to be on the low side of the IPCC. God knows what the climategaters are emailing today.

No wonder the IPCC is reluctant to lower their best estimate of the actual value of the earth’s equilibrium climate sensitivity. If they did, they would be admitting that the collection of climate models they have chosen (there is choice involved here) to project the earth’s future climate are, well, how should we put this, wrong!…which would mean that so too is the rate at which the sky is falling, according to the USGCRP and the US EPA.

We, at Cato’s Center for the Study of Science, will continue our efforts to portray the evolving state of climate science and to convince the powers-that-be that national and international assessments upon which EPA regulations are founded (and loony proposals for a carbon tax are based) are fatally flawed. Or as we put it, in our recent (April 12) review of the USGCRP’s draft “National Assessment,” in its current form, “the NCA [National Climate Assessment] will be obsolete on the day of its official release.”

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



The Global Warmists' Last Line Of Defense: The Warming Must Be In The Bermuda Triangle

Where is all the rapidly accelerating global warming that is supposed to be gripping the world?  It’s not in the air. Atmospheric temperature readings show global temperatures have been flat for more than a decade.  It’s not in the upper ocean. Sea surface temperature readings similarly show no recent warming.  It’s not in the polar ice caps. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite data show polar ice is currently more extensive than the long-term average.

Global warming activists have finally come up with a last line of defense they know nobody will able to prove wrong: The missing global warming is in the Bermuda Triangle.  No, I am not kidding. This is what they are claiming.

You see, the alarmists have been telling us for decades that rapidly accelerating global warming was imminent and unavoidable. The problem for the alarmists is the warming that has occurred has been modest and decelerating. In fact, it has ground to a complete halt for more than a decade.

So how do Al Gore, Michael Mann and the rest of the global warming Chicken Little’s save face when their promised global warming apocalypse fails to occur? Easy, blame it on the Bermuda Triangle.

“Where did global warming go? The deep ocean, experts say,” claimed NBC News in an April 11 headline.

“Where’s the heat? In the oceans!” USA Today claimed in a headline the same day.

The headlines reflect a prominent global warming activist claiming that he developed a computer model by which global warming can bypass the atmosphere, bypass the upper ocean, and be entirely hidden in the deep ocean; you know, that part of our planet where we really can’t measure or find anything. The missing global warming is apparently hanging out at the underwater space alien base in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle, along with the missing files proving the 9/11 Truthers are right that George W. Bush bombed the World Trade Center, along with the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy files proving that Bill Clinton really did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, and along with the missing film footage proving the seven Apollo astronauts and two Johnson Space Center directors who claim global warming is not a crisis really did stage their moon landings on a vacant lot somewhere in the Arizona desert.

The global warming activists, of course, do their best to make their Bermuda Triangle defense sound scientific. The paper claims all this phantom global warming really can directly bypass the atmosphere and the upper ocean if winds start blowing strangely enough and strongly enough to bury the warming deep in the ocean. Thankfully, we can spare ourselves the dizzying asserted logic of such claims by examining recent global sea surface wind data. As Bermuda Triangle-busting science would have it, NASA satellite instruments show global sea surface wind speeds have declined rather than increased during the past decade

. So much for the Bermuda Triangle….

Nevertheless, it has been quite interesting watching the alarmists go into conniptions imploring us to trust them on this final last line of defense. “No, you can’t objectively verify our claims, but you can’t objectively disprove the Bermuda Triangle either,” the alarmists argue. “Just trust us. And if you do, as a bonus, we’ll show you the secret undersea living quarters of Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison.”

SOURCE




Free market energy policies can end economic malaise

Non-comprehensive, none-of-the-below, Washington-dictated energy policies guarantee decline

 Craig Rucker            

“We can’t have an energy strategy that traps us in the past,” President Obama proclaimed in March 2012. “We need an energy strategy for the future – an all-of-the-above strategy for the Twenty-First Century that develops every source of American-made energy.”

At first blush, this sounds like common sense. The US economy and lifestyle “depend on inexpensive and plentiful energy,” the Congressional Research Service noted in a 2005 report, but people tend to forget this until world events cause gasoline prices to spike. Then Washington reacts, CRS continued – passing the Energy Policy Acts of 1992, 2005 and 2007. However, the US still does not have a “comprehensive long-term energy policy” that balances increasing supply with conservation and defines the proper interplay between government and market forces.

Forty years ago, President Nixon announced “Project Independence,” in response to the 1973 oil cutoff by Middle East and other OPEC nations, with the goal of ensuring that “Americans will not have to rely on any source of energy beyond our own.”  His broad-based strategy begat the trans-Alaska pipeline (to get North Slope oil to Lower 48 markets), expanded onshore and offshore oil drilling, an all-of-the-above strategy for electric power generation that brought lignite mining and natural gas into prominence, and a host of conservation measures, including 55-mph speed limits.

President Carter brought very different thinking to Washington – policies that many believe led to declining US oil and gas production and economic “malaise.” President Reagan reversed Carter, but his successors, Congress, courts, environmental activists, regulatory agencies and disparate corporate interests launched American energy policies on a roller coaster ride. This history helps explain why comprehensive long-term energy policies and strategies are less logical and desirable than at first blush.

The term itself suggests policies devised and dictated by Washington, DC politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists and pressure groups – many of whom have no real knowledge of or hands-on experience with energy, economics, science, technology, business or job creation.

In too many cases, the policies, strategies, laws, programs and regulations are crafted to promote specific ideologies, benefit companies and organizations with the best lobbyists, and secure tax breaks, subsidies and preferential treatment for political cronies, campaign contributors and politically correct ideas.

“All of the above” too often means all of the above ground and little or nothing below the Earth’s surface: wind, solar, biofuels and wood, for example – but little or no oil, gas, coal or uranium. In fact, more than any other in history, the Obama administration is using its executive powers to delay, obstruct, hyper-regulate, penalize and bankrupt the proven energy that is the foundation of modern living standards.

Similarly, the notion that proven energy strategies “trap us in the past” fails to recognize that “past” energy technologies (oil, gas, coal, nuclear and hydroelectric) actually provide 94% of the energy that powers America today; are abundant, reliable and affordable; and represent a monumental improvement over the wind, solar, wood, dung and water wheel power that feebly energized mankind for millennia.

Suggesting that we can abandon these vital 94% energy sources – in favor of new variations on antique technologies that Mr. Obama promotes as energy of “the future” – ignores the fact that these politically correct sources are expensive, intermittent, heavily subsidized and wholly dependent on fossil fuels. Moreover, any honest and meaningful cradle-to-grave analysis of wind, solar and biofuel energy reveals that these PC sources are land- and resource-intensive, environmentally damaging, and unsustainable.

The “comprehensive long-term energy policies and strategies” slogan also ignores where the real progress of recent years has been made: in the private sector, especially the petroleum industry, where revolutionary horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies have unlocked centuries of oil and natural gas worldwide. In fact, “fracking” on state and private lands has sent US petroleum production to new heights – even as Washington politics and policies have ensured that production from federally owned and controlled onshore and offshore lands continues to decline.

Hydrocarbon, hydroelectric and nuclear have undeniable problems: oil spills, air and water pollution, radiation and accidents. But laws, regulations, technologies and greater corporate responsibility have greatly reduced their frequency and severity – and errors are quickly and severely punished.

By contrast, human health and environmental impacts associated with wind, solar and biofuel energy are routinely and systematically ignored, and almost never punished. The slaughter of millions of birds and bats annually by US wind turbines is a case in point, and when the impacts are considered in the context of the minimal energy produced via these “renewable” technologies, the damage is especially egregious.

These “alternative” technologies ALSO require perpetual subsidies, taken from hardworking taxpayers and productive sectors of our economy, and given to crony corporatists whose schemes slide repeatedly into bankruptcy. They employ rare earth metals and other raw materials that require vast amounts of fossil fuels, monumental earth removal and widespread land degradation – to build and operate facilities whose energy is so expensive it kills 2-4 jobs for every “green” job created, drives families deeper into poverty, and impairs human health and welfare.

Forty years ago, President Nixon actually sought to develop and utilize “all of the above” energy – every practical source on every list. Today, amid an anemic economy and joblessness far worse than official government figures admit, President Obama balks at approving the Keystone XL pipeline, cancels leasing and drilling on federal lands, tells our budget-sequestered military to buy $26 to $67-per-gallon ship and jet fuel, punishes refineries for not buying cellulosic ethanol that doesn’t exist, and happily lets EPA shut down coal-fired power plants and kill countless thousands of mining, utility and other jobs.

Thoughtful Americans find little comfort in these policies. Twelve million still cannot find work in this moribund, DC-dictated economy. Red-state Democrats like Joe Manchin (D-WV), Mark Begich (D-AK) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) tremble at the prospect of facing voters in 2014. And outrage is properly growing over the massive failures of wind, solar and biofuel startups whose executives (mostly Obama and Democrat campaign angels) skimmed millions of tax dollars for themselves but let their companies go bankrupt and their employees go on unemployment and welfare rolls.

And still President Obama and his minions push for punitive carbon dioxide regulations and carbon taxes, while the European carbon market collapses, EU jobs head to China and India, and thousands die of hypothermia in England. The European emissions trading system is “below junk status,” according to The Economist, and the collapse has been felt as far away as Australia, whose political leaders prepare to reap the whirlwind of carbon taxes that are now 5.5 times higher than in Europe. Is this America’s “future”?

Will ideology continue to trump sanity in the Obama energy and climate policy arenas? The President is putting all his eggs in the basket of “hope” that Democrats will “change” the House leadership and extend their Senate majority in 2014. He has shown little desire to compromise on energy and climate change.

America does not need “comprehensive” energy policies devised and dictated by Washington. It needs policies that unlock our creative genius and allow free enterprise and private sector innovators to operate on a level playing field – one that applies the same reasonable, responsible environmental, endangered species, tax, subsidy and other laws and standards to all companies, investors and energy technologies.

We need simple laws and policies that let our ultimate energy resource (our creative intellect) work – without ideologues, pressure groups and regulators promoting failed, subsidized energy schemes, while continuing to block affordable, dependable energy that actually creates jobs and generates revenues.

Via email

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

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

Preserving the graphics:  Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility.  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 and here

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

New paper finds IPCC models predicted decrease in Antarctic sea ice, which is currently near record highs

A paper published today in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres finds "most climate models from the [IPCC] archive simulate a decrease in Antarctic sea ice area over the recent past," however, "average Antarctic sea ice area is not retreating but has slowly increased since satellite measurements began in 1979."

Further, the authors find the latest generation of IPCC climate models "have not improved" over the prior generation, and "show an unrealistic spread in the mean state that may influence future sea ice behavior."

The paper, co-authored by Climategate co-conspirator Susan Soloman, attempts to save face for the models, claiming the increase in Antarctic sea ice is still within natural variability. With Antarctic sea ice currently near 'unprecedented' high levels, how long can this IPCC model flimflam persist?

Historical Antarctic mean sea ice area, sea ice trends, and winds in CMIP5 simulations

By Irina Mahlstein et al.

Abstract

In contrast to Arctic sea ice, average Antarctic sea ice area is not retreating but has slowly increased since satellite measurements began in 1979. While most climate models from the CMIP5 archive simulate a decrease in Antarctic sea ice area over the recent past, whether these models can be dismissed as being wrong depends on more than just the sign of change compared to observations. We show that internal sea ice variability is large in the Antarctic region, and both the observed and modeled trends may represent natural variations along with external forcing. While several models show a negative trend, only a few of them actually show a trend that is significant compared to their internal variability on the timescales of available observational data. Further, the ability of the models to simulate the mean state of sea ice is also important. There presentations of Antarctic sea ice in CMIP5 models have not improved compared to CMIP3, and show an unrealistic spread in the mean state that may influence future sea ice behavior. Finally, Antarctic climate and sea ice area will be affected not only by ocean and air temperature changes but also by changes in the winds. The majority of the CMIP5 models simulate a shift that is too weak compared to observations. Thus, this study identifies several foci for consideration in evaluating and improving the modeling of climate and climate change in the Antarctic region.

SOURCE





Church of Global Warming feels the heat



It is a bad time to be a global warming believer.  Seventeen straight years of climate stability will straighten even the most ardent true believer's hockey stick.

Russian scientists have even expressed concern that the globe may be facing more than 200 years of global cooling even going so far as worrying about a mini-Ice Age.  How very 1970s of them – maybe they will also be predicting a return of disco and the Brady Bunch.

Environmentalists had a plan on how to bring down western industrialized civilization under the weight of dire prognostications of environmental doom, and the darn planet just refused to comply.  You’d think Mother Earth would be more grateful.

Of course, the global warming alarmists should have known that they could not trust the Russkies to play along with their clever ruse.  After all, Russia is now going all nostalgic with a back to the 70’s Cold War theme, might as well go all the way and pull up some old Newsweek covers predicting an Ice Age.

In the same new Ice Age report, the Russian scientists reveal something their western European and U.S. counterparts hope no one in Washington, D.C. ever reads:

“According to the scientist, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has risen more than 4% in the past decade, but global warming has practically stopped. It confirms the theory of “solar” impact on changes in the Earth’s climate, because the amount of solar energy reaching the planet has drastically decreased during the same period, the scientist said.”

If man-made carbon dioxide concentrations in the earth’s atmosphere cause global warming, and these Russian scientists assert that the CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere has increased by 4 percent, but global warming has practically stopped.  Then there is clearly zero correlation between CO2 and global warming.

To make matters worse, even the U.S. climate is betraying the alarmists.  With this past three months being deemed one of the coldest in history, and the darned continent of Antarctica is having the audacity of actually increasing the levels of ice on its bottom dwelling surface.  Of course, believe it or not, the church of global warming explains away the growing Antartica sea ice as just one more bit of evidence for global warming.

What is even more shocking is that a cursory review of that revered scientific resource, Wikipedia, in the opening couple of paragraphs on the term “Ice Age” reveals the following:

“Glaciologically, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres.  By this definition, we are still in the ice age that began 2.6 million years ago at the start of the Pleistocene epoch, because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist.”

Woe is me, said the alarmist, even Wikipedia is in on the conspiracy, daring to actually use the real definitions of terms to declare that our current climate period is actually the end of the last Ice Age.

What is a good faithful servant to do with the facts that not even their most ardent leaders can deny?

How about blame weather events like Katrina or Sandy on global warming.  That is the card President Obama pulled out of his hat during the recent State of the Union message to justify his continued administrative assault on so-called “fossil fuels.”

You could just feel the earth move during the speech as Al Gore took time away from counting the $100 million of oil money Al Jazeera gave him for the broadcast footprint his CurrenTV had established.

After all, there is no disputing that a Hurricane hit the mid-Atlantic, and because that hadn’t happened for a while, it must have been due to climate change.

And even though the temperatures haven’t increased for seventeen years,  man-made carbon dioxide emissions have to be responsible for some catastrophic disruption, or else it is hard to justify trying to shut down the U.S. coal, oil and natural gas industries.

Too much time, money and effort have been put into indoctrinating the American public to accept climate change/global warming to allow inconvenient climate truths to get in the way.

So expect a full on assault from the Obama Administration over the next four years in a desperate attempt to wring every political advantage out of the public’s continued acceptance of a theory that has as many holes as the flag that hung over Ft. McHenry.

Perhaps using the same nimbleness that they used in changing the term “global warming” to “climate change” when environmentalists figured out the globe wasn’t warming, they could re-brand their effort once again.

Scientists in Russia might suggest, “Hey, it is getting really, really cold outside, America must be to blame somehow” as the next campaign slogan.

SOURCE




Environmentalism as the spear-point of socialism

Rich Kozlovich

An excerpt from  Yuri Glazov’s "The Russian Mind Since Stalin’s Death"

In 1985, the USSR seemed immortal. Most of the observers of Soviet affairs were aware of the insuperable systemic tensions (in Hegelian-Marxist parlance, “contradictions”), but very few anticipated the regime’s imminent end. In fact, such insights existed especially among the small and beleaguered dissident enclaves in the Soviet Union itself and in East-Central Europe. Most Western academics, however, were too busy to scrutinize the arcane workings of the Politburo and regarded the dissident activities as marred by romantic daydreaming. Dissidents could be admired, but not taken too seriously……

Both thinkers understood that, once the ideological zeal was extinct, the system was doomed. The degradation of faith was a decisive catalyst for the demise of the whole system. From the original Marxist-Leninist utopia nothing remained but cynicism, confusion, and disgust with broken promises. For Glazov, the indication of the revolutionary breakdown was the fact that even party bureaucrats were treating the official mythologies as empty, soporific phrases. Nothing captures better the nature of that system than a joke quoted by Yuri Glazov– Radio Yerevan asks : “What is Marxism-Leninism, a science or an art? The answer: “It is probably an art. If it were a science it would have been tried out first on animals.”

This is one of the more profound articles I have posted over the years since it clearly outlines why leftism fails.  One of my favorite phrases is; “It’s all about the basics!” Socialism in all its permutations such as fascism, communism, and environmentalism are a doomed because they are based on ideological zeal that has no sound moral, logical or factual foundation to support the gigantic structural programs of social engineering they create.  When we give in to the greenies we are merely enablers to concepts that are failures in fact, failures in logic, failures in morality and failures in application.  At some point we reach the "inevitability factor when reality reaches its zenith", which is when the world can clearly see the lack of rational structure because of the totality of their failure.

Leftism has failed everywhere at every point in history because it despises the individual and adores the collective.  That creates a system that is irrational, misanthropic and morally defective.  It has no sound stable moral foundation.  How else can you explain the horrible abuses the left has heaped on humanity?  The socialist monsters of the 20th century like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, Pot Pol have been responsible for the deliberate murder of over 100 million people, many of them deliberately starved to death by these leftist madmen.  The environment movement, through their policies and programs has been responsible for at least that many deaths and they aren’t done yet.

Environmentalism is a true scion of the left.  Currently it is the spear point of the world wide socialist movement, sharing the morally defective views of the left, their claims about concern for human health and conditions are nothing more than the same propaganda that the left has spouted for over 100 years.....and it is no less a lie now that it was when Marx spouted it in his life and the madmen of the French Revolution spouted it during The Terror.

We should recognize their cries about “it’s for the children” as nothing more than an emotional smoke screen to hide their real objectives because we have more than enough historical foundation to know what their schemes do “to the children”!

What we need is clarity of thought and definition.  That leads to understanding.  Understanding leads to solutions.  Give me the history and I will give you the answer.

SOURCE





‘Smart' technology will cost Britons billions - and thousands of lives

The electricity industry is  at the forefront of the Government’s eco-plans to reduce CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, and at least 80 per cent by 2050. To achieve that, our dependence on fossil fuels must be drastically reduced in favour of electricity generated by a mix of nuclear and renewables – which will involve defacing our country with at least 7,000 additional wind turbines.

The obvious problem with this ‘decarbonisation’ is that the wind doesn’t blow all the time.

In fact, it is common during the coldest periods in winter for there to be no windmills turning anywhere in the UK – just when energy demand is at its highest.

The simple answer is to build dozens of flexible gas-fuelled power stations, says Richard North

The simple answer is to build dozens of flexible gas-fuelled power stations to provide near-instant electricity when the windmills fail to deliver,  so guaranteeing cheap and reliable electricity for industry, schools, hospitals and homes. But these have failed to materialise and it has become clear that what is in store for us is ‘demand management’ – effectively an advanced form of rationing.

‘Demand management’ turns the accepted priority of the electricity industry on its head. Rather than adopting a system capable of meeting flexible demand from a varied network of power stations, the nation’s electricity supply will be fixed, even though this means it cannot always meet demand. Instead, demand must be ‘managed’ by stopping customers from using electricity.

This is done by changing the price of energy, at five-minute intervals, according to supply-and-demand principles. Rates at peak times may be ten times or more that of the dead of night, when electricity use is at its lowest. And in an extraordinary Big Brother move, energy suppliers will effectively reach inside your homes to shut down appliances or prevent them being turned on.

To achieve this unprecedented degree of control, suppliers need  to invest billions in a ‘smart’ grid, ‘smart’ meters, and ‘smart’ appliances. Unsurprisingly, consumers will foot the bill.

It is common during the coldest periods in winter for there to be no windmills turning anywhere in the UK - just when energy demand is at its highest

For the National Grid to become smart, it has to be modified at a  cost of an estimated £27 billion – the price of two giant nuclear power plants – to enable it to collect information about the behaviour of  customers and micro-manage power distribution.

This grid will talk to the smart meters, supposedly to be fitted to all of Britain 30 million homes by 2019, at a cost of at least another £12 billion, but probably much more.

When there is not enough electricity to go round – which will be routine in only a few years’ time – power cuts will be avoided by shutting down millions of individual smart appliances, using computer chips fitted by manufacturers.

These appliances will also be  programmed to switch themselves on and off according to the electricity price, leaving the washing machine, for instance, only able to run at  2am or 3am when prices are rock-bottom – unless the  owner pays a punitive premium.

If this all sounds like science fiction, it isn’t ....

At the end of last year,  on the Danish island of Bornholm, a four-year, £17.5 million EU-funded experiment, EcoGrid, was set in motion. More than 2,000 homes were kitted out with smart meters, and washing machines, TVs and computers were networked, ready to be controlled by the local utility company.

The project hopes to tackle the problem of unpredictable wind by providing each household with an electric car. When the wind blows  at times of low demand, the smart grid will divert this ‘wrong time electricity’ to charge the batteries of the cars. When the windmills stop turning and no electricity is produced, the grid finds all cars still coupled to the mains and takes the stored electricity back, a concept known as ‘V2G’ or ‘vehicle to grid’.

This, they hope, means black-outs will be avoided. The consequence is that at peak times, the cars may no longer be available for use.

But then there is the other side  of the coin, the dark side of this ‘seismic shift’ in energy policy (the phrase used by former Energy Minister Chris Huhne before his career came crashing down around his ears.)

The plan is to double the price of electricity by the end of the decade, even though it is already twice as costly as it was a decade ago.

This will be done through George Osborne’s carbon tax, windmill subsidies and other levies, all to make the investment in the technology economically attractive – for those who can afford it.

That is where the fantasy falls down. Already, thousands of pensioners and families are being driven into fuel poverty. As a result of this year’s freezing conditions, more than 6,000 extra deaths were registered in February and March.

Campaigners at Age UK say 26,000 people die needlessly in winter every year, and for every one degree drop in average temperature, there are about 8,000 extra deaths.

The Government’s disastrous energy policies will cripple our industry and prove ruinously expensive for all but the wealthiest  householders. Millions of us will be forced to choose between eating  and keeping warm. But for hundreds of thousands of our most  vulnerable citizens, the so-called ‘green revolution’ could be fatal.

SOURCE




A chill in the air for crony climate cash?

While Europeans bail on climate, Washington presses full speed ahead toward the iceberg!

The past 17 years of flat global temperatures are creating a big chill for lots of global warming doom-premised industries. Those experiencing cold sweats must certainly include legions of climate scientists who have come to depend upon the many tens of billions of taxpayer bucks for studies that would have little demand without a big crisis for the public to worry about….

Cooler temperatures blow ill winds for government bureaucrats, crony-capitalist rent-seekers, and other hucksters whose ambitions depend upon hot air. Even Western Europe, the cradle of carbon-caused climate craziness and cap-and-trade corruption, is feeling a cold draft. As Alister Doyle, reporting from Reuters in Oslo, recently observed: “Weak economic growth and the pause in warming is undermining governments’ willingness to make a rapid billion-dollar shift from fossil fuels. Almost 200 governments have agreed to work out a plan by the end of 2015 to combat global warming”….

….   There is good reason for this cooling climate consternation. As David Whitehouse at the Global Warming Policy Foundation points out: “If we have not passed it already, we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change.” Whitehouse notes that there has been no statistically significant increase in annual global temperatures since 1997. He goes on to say: “If the standstill (lower temperatures) continues for a few more years, it will mean that no one who has just reached adulthood, or younger, will have witnessed the Earth get warmer during their lifetime.” (Since 1997, atmospheric CO2 has increased from 370 ppm to 390 ppm.)

These observed developments have prompted the U.K.’s Met Office Climate Center (the national weather service) to quietly revise its projections. They now say: “The latest decadal prediction suggests that the next five years are likely to be a little bit lower than predicted from the previous prediction.” The predicted increase from 2013 through 2017 was 0.43º C above the 1971-2000 mean, while the previous prediction said temperature would increase 0.54º C from 2012 through 2016. Simply stated, it will be cooler than they expected!

The London Daily Mail published a chart that, as they say, “reveals how [the IPCC’s] ’95% certain’ estimates of the Earth heating up were a spectacular miscalculation.” Comparing actual temperatures against the IPCC’s 95% certainty projections, the lines track closely until recent years, at which point the line representing the observed temperatures “is about to crash out of” the boundaries of the lowest projections. They were supposed to climb sharply after 1990.

Whereas the IPCC has predicted that temperatures will rise by 3º  C by 2050 if CO2 doubles from pre-industrialized levels of 1750, The Research Council of Norway plugged in real temperature data from 2000 to 2010 and determined that doubling would cause only a 1.9º  C rise. Another study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences links temperature changes from 1750 to natural changes (such as sea temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean) and suggests “…the anthropogenic global warming trends might have been overestimated by a factor of 2 in the second half of the 20th century”….

Within the past two years, at least seven peer-reviewed studies published in the scientific literature have concluded that the influence of doubling the amount of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere is likely to be substantially lower than IPCC has determined and have ruled out the high-end projections.

James Annan, formerly a strong defender of Michael Mann’s infamously flawed alarmist “hockey stick” graph and an expert on “climate sensitivity” to CO2 and other influences, recently concluded in his blog that the IPCC is increasingly acting in a wholly unscientific manner.  He referred to a list of scientists polled as largely constituting “the self-same people responsible for the bogus analyses [he] criticized over the years, and which even if they were valid then, are certainly outdated now”.

Annan also said: “Since IPCC can no longer defend their old analyses in any meaningful manner, it seems they have to resort to an unsupported ‘this is what we think, because we asked our pals’…having firmly wedded themselves to their politically convenient long tail of high values, their response to new evidence is little more than sticking their fingers in their ears and singing ‘la la la I can’t hear you’”….

Reacting to hot temperatures in much of the U.S. last summer, former NASA employee and eternal anti-fossil fuel activist James Hansen warned us that August was “the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet.” Echoing this, Al Gore lamented on his website, “dirty weather is created by “dirty energy” …” a lot of people are saying out loud, ‘I’m too hot!’ “. Even NOAA said that the lower 48 had seen the warmest year on record in 2012.

Yet as well-known Climate Depot blogger Marc Morano, recognizes: “NOAA can only claim that 2012 was the warmest single year on record through statistical tricks … including “adjusting” raw data and adding data to the overall data set from stations that did not exist when the record first started being recorded. Absent these illegitimate actions, the measured temperatures from the 1930′s still match or exceed the measured temperatures from the 1990′s and 2000′s.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we haven’t heard much in the media about the fact that in June last year, 46 U.S. cities, including some in the Deep South, set or tied record lows … or that Alaska, which isn’t part of the lower 48, has been reporting some of the coldest winters on record since 2000. According to the Alaska Climate Research Center at University of Alaska-Fairbanks, that record has held true for 19 of 20 National Weather Stations sprinkled from one corner of the state to another.

The New York Times breathlessly reported: ”The temperature differences between years are usually measured in fractions of a degree, but last year’s 55.3º  F average [in the contiguous United States] demolished the previous record, set in 1998, by a full degree Fahrenheit.” But somehow they didn’t see fit to mention that 2008 was 2º cooler than 2006, or that 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 were all cooler than 1998 by a larger margin than 2012 was hotter than 1998. And, by the way, don’t forget that the U.S. isn’t the globe. Those contiguous states, which omit Alaska and Hawaii, represent only 1.58% of the Earth’s surface.

During most of the 2011-2012 winter, the Bering Sea witnessed an ice extent between 20% to 30%  above the 1979 to 2000 average, with the highest February expanse ever measured.  James Taylor reported that Antarctic sea ice also set record, with the largest amount of ice ever recorded occurring on day 256 of the 2012 calendar year. In fact Antarctic sea ice has been growing ever since satellites first began measuring it 33 years ago, and the expanse exceeded the 33-year average throughout 2012.

Much of recent warming alarmism centered upon a temperature trend that began in the 1980′s, occurring less than a decade after our planet came out of a three-decade cooling trend that led many to fear a coming Ice Age. As climatologist Patrick Michaels recalls: “When I was going to graduate school, it was gospel that the Ice Age was about to start. I had trouble warming up to that one too.” Referring to recent alarmism, he observes: “This (greenhouse hysteria) is not the first climate apocalypse, but it’s certainly the loudest”….

It might be worth mentioning that some heavyweight U.S. solar physicists are once again predicting that Planet Earth may very well be heading into a period of protracted cooling due to a lengthy spell of low sunspot activity…potentially another “Little Ice Age”. This announcement that came from scientists at the U.S. National Solar Observatory and U.S. Air Force Laboratory was based upon three different analyses of the Sun’s recent behavior.

One of the world’s leading solar scientists, Habibiullo Abdussamatov, head of the Russian Academy of Sciences Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg and director of the Russian segment of the international Space Station, agrees that Planet Earth may be in for a long cold spell. He points out that deep cold periods have occurred five times over the last 1,000 years. Each is correlated with declines in solar irradiance, much like we are experiencing now.

Dr. Abdussamatov believes: “A global freeze will come about regardless of whether or not industrialized countries put a cap on their greenhouse gas emissions. The common view of Man’s industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect.” He predicts that a new Little Ice Age will commence around 2013/2014, the depth of the decline will occur around 2040, and a deep freeze will last for the rest of this century….

Let’s accept the fact that climate changes for many reasons without permission or help from us…it always has…always will…and not always for the worse. And let’s be skeptical about advice from alarmists who obviously depend upon scare tactics to sell us a hot bill of goods.

SOURCE




Skeptics strike back at campaign aiming to 'smear and intimidate' GOP lawmakers

A climate skeptic blog today denounced a liberal group's new campaign that spotlights congressional Republicans who don't believe in man-made climate change.

On his "Climate Depot" blog, Marc Morano, a former aide to Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), said the activist group Organizing for America was attempting to "smear and intimidate global warming skeptics" in Congress.

A video released yesterday to OFA's member email list showed 12 Republican lawmakers making statements about the science of climate change. These ranged from Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-Fla.) statement that he has seen "reasonable debate" about the role human emissions may be playing in driving global warming to Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) declaring, "I don't think CO2 is a problem."

The video will be part of a larger effort by the group that is affiliated with President Obama to pressure lawmakers in hopes of paving the way for eventual legislation

"OFA believes that it is hard to make progress in Congress without confronting the challenge that there are still a lot of members of Congress who do not believe that climate change is caused by carbon pollution," OFA's Ivan Frishberg said in an email. "Despite the overwhelming scientific agreement that man-made climate change is real, there are climate change deniers all over Congress and we are going to call them out and start exposing just how dangerous and extreme this denial is."

But Morano cried foul.

"Obama's new campaign hopes to silence skepticism, despite the fact that the GOP is the party taking a pro-science stand when it comes to man-made global warming fears," Morano writes.

Morano cites a post by Lord Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, who in December was evicted from the United Nations climate change conference after impersonating a delegate from Myanmar so he could gain access to a microphone

In his post today on a blog maintained by the Science and Public Policy Institute, a skeptic group, Monckton offered a vindication of each of the 12 Republican statements in the OFA campaign. For example, he said, Barton was correct that carbon dioxide is not a problem because "even if CO2 were a problem, the cost of stopping it today would be 50 times the cost of adapting to it the day after tomorrow."

Monckton praised House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans for refusing requests by the "Donkey Party" to hold additional hearings on climate science. "The Eeyores are upset," he said, referring to panel Democrats led by California Rep. Henry Waxman who helped launch the OFA effort on a call Wednesday night.

SOURCE  

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

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

Preserving the graphics:  Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility.  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 and here

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

1,000 words



This is an iron mine. Steel is made of iron, and wind turbines are predominantly made of steel. So when the anti-uranium brigade bemoans the incurable dangers of mining and then bows to wind turbines, they’re not being straight with you. Mining isn't pretty but thanks to modern technology and smart engineers, it's perfectly safe and absolutely necessary.





Fisker: Free to Make Flashy Cars in Finland

With nearly a year’s worth of exclusive reporting on Obama’s green-energy crony-corruption scandal, you might think we’ve covered them all—but the hits just keep on coming. This week Fisker is in the news due to its failure to meet a Monday payment on their Department of Energy (DOE) loan, with $10 million due, and Wednesday’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing: “Green Energy Oversight: Examining the Department of Energy’s Bad Bet on Fisker Automotive.”

Along with researcher Christine Lakatos, who writes The Green Corruption Files, I’ve addressed Fisker before. In last week’s column, I harkened back to an October 2012 report we did on 2009 stimulus-funded projects that were in trouble. We highlighted two companies on that list: Suntech and SoloPower. Suntech was recently put into bankruptcy and, about SoloPower, we said: “SoloPower’s power is waning.” On April 22, the Oregonian’s headline read: “SoloPower moves to power down Portland factory, gut remaining workforce.”

Fisker, the stimulus-funded company making $100,000+ electric cars in Finland, was also on that October 2012 list. At the time, I wrote: “Though the company has balked at Solyndra comparisons, Fisker may well be on ‘death’s door.’”

Despite defaulting “on loans or investment conditions at least four separate times” and squandering more than $1.3 billion in investment capital and government loan money, the company’s founder and former CEO, Henrik Fisker (Fisker left the company in March over  “disagreements with management”), in testimony before the House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday, argued that the company was still viable. In both the opening and closing of his testimony, Fisker used the following statement regarding the company that bears his name: “Fisker still has the potential to build on these achievements if the company can secure financial and strategic resources.”

While Fisker’s testimony indicates that he is proud of the company’s “many notable achievements,” Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), declared in his opening statements: “Fisker should have never received taxpayer money; it was rated CCC+...it was a junk grade investment.”  So why did Fisker get the loan in the first place and continue to receive funding even after it “missed a crucial production target?”

?While Wednesday’s hearing didn’t reveal any smoking gun, and Fisker claimed: “I am not aware and do not believe that any improper political influence was used in connection with the company's loan application or subsequent negotiations with the Department of Energy,” experience in reporting on the various stimulus-funded loan guarantee programs, grants and tax credits indicates otherwise.

True, unlike many of the other stories, no one from the Fisker organization itself served on Obama’s (now-disbanded) Jobs Council, nor is there an obvious connection such as a former DOE staffer sitting on the board. But, surprise, there are political connections nonetheless.

In the case of Fisker, the cronyism comes first in the form of the venture capital firm with private investments that needed government funds to make their 2008 investment good. The company in question? Kliener Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB)—which, according to New York magazine, “has both former Vice President Al Gore and John Doerr, a very big-ticket Obama donor, on its board of directors.” Doerr has had roles inside the Obama White House since early 2009, from jobs, to economics, to crafting the energy sector of the 2009-Recovery Act, from which his firm—KPCB—has been rewarded handsomely. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), in 2008, reported that the Fisker deal was “one of the first deals in which former Vice President Al Gore provided advice for Kleiner.” KPCB’s Managing Partner, Ray Lane, told the WSJ that their investment was more than $10 million and was “one of our bigger investments.”

In an earlier report, I said: “Doerr jumped on the Climate Change bandwagon in 2005 and credits Al Gore for his ‘environmental awakening’—though his conversion may have been more financial than spiritual, as he saw green-energy as the ‘mother of all markets’ and ‘the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century.’”

Despite a green-energy push from the White House, these funds haven’t “delivered the returns expected on the timeline expected for most venture capitalists.” In fact, Doerr admitted in a November 2009 speech that the government funding saved them: “If we’d been able to foresee the crash of the market, we wouldn’t probably have launched a green initiative, because these ventures really need capital. The only way in which we were lucky, I think, is that the government stepped in, particularly the Department of Energy. Led by this great administration that put in place these loan guarantees.”

Clearly the Fisker “investment” wasn’t going as well as KCBP expected. In Wednesday’s hearing, a 2009 email from Bernhard Koehler, Fisker cofounder and COO was addressed. In it, he pressured someone inside the DOE, regarding the need for the taxpayer-funded loan, because they couldn’t meet payroll.

The Fisker loan had three specific strikes against it: it had a dismal credit rating—a “junk bond” CCC+; it was initially rejected by the credit review board; and the loan was twice the value of the collateral. While the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) program received 150 applications, only 5 were awarded loans—and all had some political connections or ramifications: Fisker—$529 million; Ford—$5.907 billion, Nissan—$1.448 billion; Tesla—$465 million; and The Vehicle Production Group, LLC—$50 million.

Companies without connections didn’t get approved. In November, I reported on XP Technologies, one of those companies whose loan application was rejected. Alleging that “criminal activities did take place by DOE staff and affiliates,” XP Technologies has filed a lawsuit concerning the DOE’s denial. Following the publication of my column on XP Technologies, another applicant, who also didn’t have any political connections, contacted me. This applicant acknowledged that he really didn’t know the system and, therefore, looking back, wasn’t surprised that his application was denied. However, he told me that he received no help or encouragement from the DOE; they did nothing to make it easier for him. It was like they weren’t really interested in anyone but the favored few. Accepting applications was, perhaps, just for cover.

Fisker’s $529 million loan was approved in September 2009, and the first tranche was funded May 2010. But it took a lot of finagling to get there.

Vice President Biden stepped in to move the loan along—we don’t know why, but we know he did. (We also know more about other green-energy projects in which Biden was involved.) In August 2009, Fisker visited in Delaware a GM factory, which was scheduled to be shut down. According to a 2009 WSJ report, once politicians in the state got wind of Fisker’s possible interest, they ratcheted up the pressure. Saving the plant, according to officials involved in the decision, “gave fresh urgency to the DOE’s quest for Fisker.” However, by August, the December 2008 application still wasn’t approved. “Delaware's governor and congressional delegation began peppering U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu with calls on Fisker's behalf. They also had repeated discussions with Vice President Biden and his staff.” Five days after Governor Merkell had a September meeting with Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, “Chu announced the government had signed a provisional agreement” for Fisker’s loan. Part of the deal included, not just the $529 million DOE loan, but also $21 million in grants and loans from the State of Delaware.

On October 27, 2009, Biden toured Fisker’s Delaware plant to tout the DOE's Loan Program. ABC News reported: “Standing in a shuttered General Motors plant in Wilmington, DE, Vice President Biden proclaimed that a half-billion-dollar Department of Energy loan would transform the idled site into a production line for electric cars.”??“Biden heralded the Energy Department's $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company, called Fisker, as a bright, new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs,” and stated: “This is seed money that will return back to the American consumer in billions and billions and billions of dollars in good, new jobs.”

Referencing Delaware’s involvement, the state’s chief of economic development, Alan Levin said: “We had in the vice president a secret weapon.”

In addition to Doerr and Gore championing the Fisker Project, and the Biden “secret weapon,” Fisker had a few other friends in high places. The National Legal and Policy Center reports that Fisker was receiving advice regarding their loan application from Debevoise & Plimpton LLC, a law firm with a history of donating to President Obama and other Democrats—which taxpayers also funded. Too bad XP technologies, and other applicants without connections, didn’t know to hire Debevoise & Plimpton.

Now, we all know that Fisker never made one car in Delaware—or anywhere in the US. The Delaware plant is “absolutely empty.” We know that Fisker lost $557,000 on each flashy sports car it sold and has laid off most of its employees. And we know that Fisker will likely be the next taxpayer-funded green-energy project to go bankrupt.

While we do not know all the political connections that got Fisker a free ride to make flashy cars in Finland, we do know there is crony-corruption. As the WSJ reports: “The Obama Energy Department is keeping tight rein on documents, so we don't know.” We just don’t know.

SOURCE




On Global Warming Advocates and Scientific Consensus

By Victor Morawski

Commenting on John Kerry’s recent trip to China and his emphasis on anthropogenic (i.e. man caused) global warming as one of the most significant problems that the two nations should work together on solving, talk show host Rush Limbaugh voiced an opinion on science and scientific truth that the majority of his listeners and a majority of my readers share: that scientific truth is determined by how much our scientific views conform to the way the world actually is and not by mere human agreement.

Striking back at Kerry’s opinion that the science behind manmade global warming (or climate change if you prefer) is “settled” because a supposed “consensus of scientists” agrees that it is happening, Limbaugh said “science is not up to a vote. It either is or isn’t. Whatever it is, it is or isn’t, but it’s not up to a vote. Global warming doesn’t exist because a ‘consensus of scientists’ agree. Manmade global warming either is happening or it isn’t, but it isn’t up to a vote.”

One main reason for the enormous success that Rush has enjoyed over the years is that he speaks for the common man and, of course, woman.  In his analyses of current events he articulates views his listeners may share but are unable to formulate for themselves with the clarity for which he is now famous.  And this issue is a clear case in point.

To be sure, Kerry has spoken with the Chinese and others about a scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming as the official State Department Press Release on his visit bears out in saying that the “two countries took special note of the overwhelming scientific consensus about anthropogenic climate change and its worsening impacts.”

Investors.com notes that the consensus of scientists claim is a line that global warming alarmists repeat endlessly. And who can forget Al Gore’s continuing insistence on such a consensus as part of his claim that anthropogenic global warming is established science.

Yet it may seem unlikely to readers that these alarmists really mean by the claim what they seem to mean.  Could they actually mean what Rush takes them to mean?  Do they subscribe to the unlikely view that scientific truth is to be determined by the most votes?

Surprising though it may be to some, I am convinced that this is exactly what they mean and what many of them ascribe to as their view of scientific truth.

Most of those who point to consensus among the community of scientists as the determiner of scientific truth do not adhere to the sort of relativism that would make any view true if there is a consensus behind it.

Sometimes called “Cultural Relativism,” this view holds all beliefs to be equally valuable if supported by a cultural consensus.  For science, this extreme form of relativism would set a primitive culture’s view that the earth is flat or resting on the back of an elephant on a par with our own culture’s view that the earth is a sphere, hurtling through space and subject to the laws of Newtonian Mechanics.  Consequences like this make this sort of relativism an implausible candidate for a standard of scientific truth.

Most advocates of truth as consensus in science adopt some form of Instrumentalism, a view that judges the worth of scientific theories not by how well they succeed in describing the world as it actually is but by how useful they are at doing things like making successful predictions.  On this view, the task of a theory is to be a useful instrument in scientists’ hands, not a mirror of reality.  For Instrumentalists, some theories really are better than others not because they reflect reality better but because they are more useful.  So, as science progresses, old theories are rejected and new ones are accepted not because what they say better corresponds to things in the world as they are but because they are more useful and less fraught with problems (anomalies) than the older theories.

But who makes the decision to leave an old theory and go to a new one?  And who decides whether an old theory is too full of difficulties to keep around anymore?  Why, the community of scientists, of course.  Here is where consensus comes in.  Instrumentalism adopts the Pragmatists’ view of truth as usefulness.  As I once heard contemporary Pragmatist Richard Rorty put it, truth is a compliment we pay to theories that we find useful.  It is the community of scientists that pays this compliment to theories that it finds useful.  For people like John Kerry, Al Gore, and a supposed consensus of professional scientists, truth is a compliment we should pay to anthropogenic global warming as a theory.

That he indeed thinks that the theory is very useful in its predictions can be gleaned from Kerry’s recent remarks that “We are seeing the science of climate change come back to us now at a rate that is far faster and with far greater levels of damage than anything that scientists predicted 10, 15, 20 years ago,” Kerry said. “Every prediction that has been made is coming true, but coming true bigger and more dangerously.”

Now if truth really is consensus, then maybe Kerry’s followers would agree with him on the truth of his remarks but for those of us for whom truth is conformity with reality, his remarks are simply not borne out by the reality of the situation concerning the abysmal failure rate of modeled predictions on anthropogenic global warming.  My own piece of a few weeks ago here and on Youtube discusses some of these failures in detail.

To return to Rush, in the same show he discussed a recent release by Reuters which points out that in response to the failure of those predictions scientists need to either cling to their theory that human activity has warmed the planet and hope that the warming returns much like an old girlfriend who has unexpectedly left town leaving no forwarding address, give into an opposing view that ocean oscillations might have a lot more to do with global heating and cooling than they figured or abandon their view that CO2 emissions (especially those that are man-caused) are a significant factor in planetary warming.

Fortunately, those who seek a refuge from objective truth in human consensus cannot hide from the truth of failed predictions.  These failures are now making even the Pragmatists wonder whether the theory of anthropogenic global warming is useful enough to keep around.

SOURCE




Greenies would like natural gas  -- if they liked anything

 New data from the Environmental Protection Agency indicates that drilling for natural gas releases significantly less methane (the main component of natural gas) into the atmosphere than previously thought.

Twenty percent less.

This is not seen as good news for the ultra-environmentalists who fervently believe that any fuel made from fossilized plant or animal matter (coal or natural gas) is bad.

Using natural gas as a transportation fuel (especially for heavy-duty trucks, like 18-wheelers) or for the production of electricity dramatically cuts down on greenhouse gasses from burning diesel or coal, but it doesn't cut them to zero.

At one time - "one time" meaning from the year zero to 2009 - the amount of natural gas that America had available was limited. So limited that the chemical and pharmaceutical industry were worried that using it for anything else, like as a transportation fuel or to generate electricity, was a foolish use of a limited resource.

Since the middle of the last century a group called the Potential Gas Committee, that has a connection to the Colorado School of Mines, has issued a biennial report on how much natural gas is available for development in the United States.

Until the 2009 report the PGC's estimates were largely focused on "traditional" natural gas wells. In 2009 the PGC began reporting the amount of natural gas that is available from the huge shale deposits under the continental United States.

In 2007 the PGC reported available reserves as 1,321 trillion cubic feet. In the 2009 report, reserves jumped to 1,836 Tcf - an increase of almost 39 percent.

The conventional wisdom of the time suggested that represented a 100 year supply.

As better geology and drilling techniques have been developed, this year's report suggests reserves of 2,384 trillion cubic feet - another 30 percent bump in the amount of natural gas available under the United States. If the 2009 report represented a 100 year supply, we now have natural gas reserves of more that should last more than 130 years.

We have more energy stored in our natural gas reserves than Saudi Arabia has in its oil.

One of the issues with producing all that natural gas is the amount of methane that is released into the air at the well-head. People who want only battery-operated vehicles (recharged with electricity that is produced solely from non-fossil sources), or hydrogen fuel cells have used this free methane as one of their arguments against using natural gas as a replacement for diesel that is largely made from imported oil.

Oil has a minor role in the production of electricity. According to AP reporter Kevin Bego, "Since power plants that burn natural gas emit about half the amount of the greenhouse gases as coal-fired power, some say that the gas drilling boom has helped the U.S. become the only major industrialized country to significantly reduce greenhouse emissions."

Better mechanical techniques will continue to decrease the amount of methane released into the atmosphere even with more natural gas being recovered.

The EPA reported that 145 million metric tons of methane was released by natural gas drilling in 2011.

The next largest factor? "Enteric fermentation," accounts for another 137 million metric tons of methane released by cows when they … well, when cows are being cows. There is nothing to suggest that cows will become more efficient.

A recent New York Times article recently found that major shippers like UPS are moving away from imported diesel to domestic natural gas. Natural gas is cheaper than diesel, it is about 30 percent cleaner, and it is ours.

SOURCE





Support drilling, fracking, Keystone … and exports

We don’t need to restrict oil or gas exports. We need to open more lands to leasing and drilling

Paul Driessen

The interminable war on drilling, fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline has taken some bizarre turns. Now it’s getting worse, as opponents grow more desperate, and the moon again grows full.

Deepwater drilling, 3-dimension and 4-D seismic (the ability to visualize 3-D over many years), deep horizon horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, and other technological marvels have obliterated environmentalist claims that the United States and world are running out of oil and gas – and therefore we need to switch to subsidized, land-hungry, job-killing wind turbines, solar panels and biofuels.

Thanks to free enterprise innovation on state and public lands – and no thanks to President Obama, who has made nearly the entire federal onshore and offshore estate off limits to leasing and drilling – US oil and natural gas production has set an all-time record. The world is on the verge of doing so, as well.

Long-running geopolitics have been turned upside down, as OPEC, Russia and other oil superpowers wonder what hit them. Plastic and chemical manufacturers, steel makers, bus and fleet vehicle operators, and now long-haul truckers are already cashing in on the natural gas bonanza. So are electric utilities, especially with EPA continuing its war on coal, with more unnecessary heavy-handed air and water rules.

Global warming / climate change hysteria is also foundering on the rocks of reality. Average global temperatures haven’t risen in 16 years, seas aren’t rising any faster than 100 years ago, and storms, floods and droughts are no more frequent or severe than over multi-decade trends during the past century.

Evidence and reality simply are not cooperating with IPCC and Mann-made climate models. “Trust the computer models!” the alarmists plead. “If reality doesn’t comport with our predictions, reality is wrong.”

The US State Department has (yet again) said the Keystone XL pipeline poses few environmental problems and should be approved, to bring Canadian oil sands petroleum to Texas refineries – creating thousands of construction and permanent jobs, and billions in economic growth and government revenue.

Unacceptable! rants the Environmental Protection Agency. “State underestimated KXL’s potential impact on global warming and needs to do its studies all over again,” says EPA. Never mind that oil sands production would add a minuscule 0.06% to US greenhouse gas emissions and an undetectable 0.00001 degrees C per year to computer-modeled global warming, according to the Congressional Research Service. Do it over, until you get the answers we want, demand EPA and environmentalist ideologues.

Some 70% of Americans and 60% of Canadians support Keystone – and energy security (and jobs) outrank greenhouse gas reduction as a national priority by a 2-1 margin among Americans – says Canadian pollster Nik Nanos.

However, haters of hydrocarbons, modern living standards, free enterprise and personal liberty are not ready to surrender. They’ve launched a blitzkrieg flanking attack. This time they are outraged that some Keystone oil could be refined into diesel and other products and exported! to Europe or Asia – while some frack-based natural gas might be converted to LNG and likewise exported! around the globe.

Well, yes. When US refiners transform crude oil into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, heating oil, asphalt, waxes and petrochemicals, they ship some of these products overseas. Since Americans use less diesel than refineries manufacture (some parts of each barrel of crude can be converted only into diesel), refiners also export their excess diesel to Europe, which uses more diesel than gasoline, and Europeans ship their surplus gasoline to the USA, mostly to East Coast consumers. It’s a win-win arrangement that will be buttressed and safeguarded by Keystone pipeline transport of Canadian oil.

And yes, Cheniere Energy and other companies want to ship liquefied natural gas to foreign markets. It’s hardly surprising that anti-fracking activists would seize on this as yet another excuse for opposing this game-changing technology. It is hardly remarkable that Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) and other far-Left legislators would sponsor bills to block LNG exports.

What is shocking is that Dow and Huntsman Chemical, Alcoa Aluminum, Nucor Steel and other companies are joining the no-export campaign. They have convinced themselves that such exports will hurt their own selfish economic interests – and for PR reasons have packaged that notion into assertions that exporting any US natural gas is against America’s and the public’s economic interests. Nonsense.

America has barely begun to tap its vast shale gas and conventional natural gas deposits. It has not yet touched its methane hydrates. Together, these deposits will likely last a century or more. In addition, other countries are racing to develop their own conventional, shale and hydrate deposits – while still others will eventually recognize the folly of keeping their own deposits off limits. All this will gradually reduce demand for US natural gas exports, slow and prolong extraction, and keep gas prices low.

This interplay will also help ensure that more factories and power plants in more countries burn natural gas, thereby replacing coal and providing the economic wherewithal to enable China, India and other nations to install modern pollution abatement technologies on their now dirty power plants. That will greatly improve air quality and human health in countless cities, while reducing carbon dioxide emissions and reducing consternation among steadily dwindling numbers of climate alarmists.

American oil and gas development – and exports – will also provide an opportunity for our nation to “give back” to the world community for all the petroleum that our anti-leasing, anti-drilling policies have caused us to take from the world’s petroleum supplies for decades. All this activity will also spur further innovation in technologies to unlock still more energy. It will spur job creation, economic growth and government tax and royalty revenue collection here in the United States … and abroad.

Some 23 million Americans are still unemployed or underemployed; 128 million are dependent on various government programs, including 47 million on food stamps; and the United States is more than $16 trillion in debt. Unemployment in the construction trades is 14.7 percent. Black unemployment was 12.7% when President Bush left office; it soared to 16.7% by September 2011 under President Obama, and remains stuck at 14% today for black adults – and an astronomical 43% for black teenagers!

Drilling, fracking and exports can reverse these horrendous, intolerable, unnecessary statistics.

Misguided industrialists should stop railing against exports. They would do themselves and our nation far more good by putting their lobbyists and public relations staffs to work demanding an end to leasing, drilling and fracking bans that continue to dominate eco-liberal thinking, US energy policy (especially under the current administration).

Of 1.8 billion acres on our nation’s Outer Continental Shelf, only 36-43 million are under lease. That’s barely 2% of the OCS. Offshore territory equal to 78% of the entire US landmass (Alaska plus the Lower 48) is off limits! Even the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill cannot justify that.

Onshore, it’s just as bad. As of 1994, over 410 million federally controlled acres were effectively off limits to exploration and development. That’s 62% of the nation’s public lands – an area nearly equal to Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming combined. The situation has gotten progressively worse, with millions more acres – and vast energy, mineral and economic bounties – locked up in wilderness, park, preserve, wildlife refuge, wilderness study, Antiquities Act and other restrictive land use designations, or simply made unavailable by bureaucratic fiat or foot-dragging.

Drilling opponents claim to be protecting the environment. In reality, they simply detest hydrocarbons, modern living standards, free enterprise and personal liberty. Commonsense policies will rejuvenate our economy, put Americans back to work, and help fund government programs that Messrs. Obama and Reid profess to care so much about – while safeguarding ecological values we all cherish.

Via email




Russian Scientists: ‘We Could Face Cooling Period For 200-250 Years’

Global warming which has been the subject of so many discussions in recent years, may give way to global cooling. According to scientists from the Pulkovo Observatory in St.Petersburg, solar activity is waning, so the average yearly temperature will begin to decline as well. Scientists from Britain and the US chime in saying that forecasts for global cooling are far from groundless. Some experts warn that a change in the climate may affect the ambitious projects for the exploration of the Arctic that have been launched by many countries.

Just recently, experts said that the Arctic ice cover was becoming thinner while journalists warned that the oncoming global warming would make it possible to grow oranges in the north of Siberia. Now, they say a cold spell will set in. Apparently, this will not occur overnight, Yuri Nagovitsyn of the Pulkovo Observatory, says.

"Journalists say the entire process is very simple: once solar activity declines, the temperature drops. But besides solar activity, the climate is influenced by other factors, including the lithosphere, the atmosphere, the ocean, the glaciers. The share of solar activity in climate change is only 20%. This means that sun’s activity could trigger certain changes whereas the actual climate changing process takes place on the Earth".

Solar activity follows different cycles, including an 11-year cycle, a 90-year cycle and a 200-year cycle. Yuri Nagovitsyn comments.

"Evidently, solar activity is on the decrease. The 11-year cycle doesn’t bring about considerable climate change – only 1-2%. The impact of the 200-year cycle is greater – up to 50%. In this respect, we could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years. The period of low solar activity could start in 2030-2040 but it won’t be as pervasive as in the late 17th century".

Even though pessimists say global cooling will hamper exploration of the Arctic, experts say it won’t. Climate change and the resulting increase in the thickness of the Arctic ice cover pose no obstacles to the extraction of oil and gas on the Arctic shelf. As oil and gas reserves of the Arctic sea shelf are estimated to be billions of tons, countries are demonstrating more interest in the development of the Arctic. Climate change will also have no impact on the Northern Sea Route, which makes it possible to cut trade routes between Europe, Asia and America. Professor Igor Davidenko comments.

"The Northern Sea Route has never opened so early or closed so late over the past 30 years. Last year saw a cargo transit record – more than five million tons. The first Chinese icebreaker sailed along the Northern Sea Route in 2012. China plans it to handle up to 15% of its exports".

As Russia steps up efforts to upgrade its icebreaker fleet, new-generation icebreakers are set to arrive in the years to come. No climate changes will thus be able to impede an increase in shipping traffic via the Northern Sea Route.

SOURCE

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

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

Preserving the graphics:  Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility.  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 and here

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