Greenie demonstration aqainst fracking in England

It started as a peaceful, middle-class protest against fracking, with music and even a cricket match. But it ended in 15 arrests yesterday as “professional activists” clashed with 90 police officers.

The protest against plans by the fracking company Cuadrilla to explore for oil and gas at a site just outside the sleepy village of Balcombe, East Sussex, began on Thursday.

Local people, including mothers and children, set up gazebos and bunting by the roadside. Tea and cakes were handed out and there was even a singalong.

Activists included Natalie Hynde, the daughter of Chrissie Hynde and Ray Davies of The Kinks. But the mood turned at midday yesterday as a hard core of activists refused to move from the entrance to the drilling site, despite repeated requests from the police.

Around a dozen linked arms on a log rolled across the private access. Officers, who had parked more than 10 cars nearby, appeared in ranks. Mothers and children among the other protesters quickly left, many visibly upset.

In all, 15 people were arrested by the end of the day, many shouting and claiming they were being physically hurt.

Sussex Police said that five were held for causing danger to road users, and nine for attempting to stop workers from accessing the site. There was a further arrest later. None was believed to be from Balcombe. Rafe Usher-Harris, 17, a villager and student at Michael Hall, a private school in nearby Forest Row, said that villagers were shocked.  “It is disgusting,” he said. “People from the village do not want this.”

Helen Savage, a 38-year-old mother, said that villagers were not willing to be arrested but would not give up.

“We are completely committed to protesting through every legal channel we can,” she said. “This goes beyond Balcombe, it is not a Nimby campaign. It is against government policy, which is to frack nationwide. Once people realise what this means they will be extremely concerned. It means a fracking rig every two miles. It will industrialise the landscape.”

Within an hour trucks started arriving on the site, although verbal protests continued from behind police lines.

Cuadrilla said that rigs were being brought in only to drill exploratory wells. All safety regulations would be met and fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, in which water is blasted into rocks deep underground to force out gas or oil, would only happen later if viable and approved, the company said. A spokesman blamed a “small minority” for causing a dangerous situation where arrests had to be made.

“To date, the vast majority of the protesters have been peaceful and good natured,” the spokesman said.

Francis Maude, the local Tory MP, said that Cuadrilla should be allowed to conduct exploratory drilling but that more discussions were needed before any extraction. Fracking has been blamed for earthquakes and contaminated water, but a government study has said that any tremors are minor and that the risks of contamination are insignificant.

A spokesman for Frack Off, an umbrella group, said that activists from other sites around the country planned to come to Balcombe. Tabitha Smith, 28, from Brighton, said: “This is a battle I think will be repeated across the country.”

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Claim that Arctic methane gases are set to cause flooding, droughts and cost 'trillions of dollars' of damage

This is an old chestnut.  It is the product of computer games (modelling) only.  Russian scientists have repeatedly said it will not happen

The world is facing an 'economic time bomb' because of methane gases being produced by shrinking sea levels in the Arctic, researchers claim.

There is a large amount of methane stored in the region around the East Siberian Sea and if it was suddenly released into the atmosphere it could change the Earth's climate causing extreme weather, flooding and drought.

By using economic modelling, scientists from Cambridge and Rotterdam discovered that if the Arctic ice levels continue to shrink at their current rate it could produce enough methane to cause global climate change damage of £40 trillion - the same size of the world economy in 2012.

The groundbreaking claims were made by Gail Whiteman from Erasmus University, Chris Hope, Reader in Policy Modelling at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, and Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean physics at the University of Cambridge.

They calculated - using an economic computer program called PAGE09 - that the thaw would release 50 gigatonnes of methane into the air.

If other factors, such as ocean acidification are included, the cost would be much higher.

Around 80 per cent of these costs caused by the damage will directly affect developing countries as they experience more extreme weather, flooding, droughts and poorer health as Arctic warming affects climate.

It is said to be the first time researchers have calculated the potential economic impact of methane from the East Siberian Sea being released into the air as a result of the thaw.

'The global impact of a warming Arctic is an economic time-bomb,' said Whiteman.

Wadhams added: 'The imminent disappearance of the summer sea ice in the Arctic will have enormous implications for both the acceleration of climate change, and the release of methane from off-shore waters which are now able to warm up in the summer.

'This massive methane boost will have major implications for global economies and societies.'

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The North Pole turns into a lake: Webcam captures melting ice following a spell of warm weather

Arctic melting is nothing new.  USS Skate (SSN-578), surfaced at the North Pole, 17 March 1959.



The North Pole may conjure up images of impressive ice sheets and freezing winds, but scenes from a webcam there reveal a different story.

Two weeks of warm weather in the high Arctic have caused an aquamarine lake to begin forming since July 13, according to the North Pole Environmental Observatory’s camera.

The National Snow and Ice Data Centre has reported that temperatures in early July were one to three degrees Celsius higher than the year’s average over most of the Arctic Ocean.

Two weeks of warm weather in the high Arctic earlier have caused an aquamarine lake to begin forming at the North Pole

July is known as the melting month for the Arctic with the period seeing ice shrink at its fastest rate.

The ice is expected to be further fractured by an Arctic cyclone, which is currently developing over the area. According to CBC, the weather system will strengthen winds to anywhere from 75-100 km/h.

Last August, a similar system developed in the area which destroyed 800,000 square km of ice.

However, the Arctic hit record low ice melt last year on September 16, 2012, the smallest recorded since satellites began tracking the Arctic ice in the 1970s.

But experts are divided over what the recent data will mean for the future sea-levels.

‘I have seen much more extensive ponding,’ James Morison, the principal investigator for the North Pole Environmental Observatory told The Atlantic. ‘Because we use wide angle lenses the melt pond looks much bigger than it is.’

Morison also pointed out that a camera 100 meters away showed the ice looking relatively intact. He added that the scale of these images is also quite small.

Last week a team of researchers led by Dr Bert Wouters at the University of Bristol claimed that long-term data on the melting of Earth’s polar is too weak to suggest alarming decrease is permanent or caused by humans.

The group compared nine years of satellite measurements of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica in an attempt to determine if the melt-off is part of an accelerating trend in ice loss and sea-level rise.

While the study showed a loss of about 300 billion tonnes of ice per year from the Arctic and Antarctic regions, it noted that natural processes cannot be ruled out as the force behind the receding ice sheets.

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British Government energy bungling

SSE, one of Britain's 'big six' energy firms, has warned that the government's energy plans fail to address the risk of power shortages in the near term.

Westminster has announced a draft package of incentives for energy companies to keep plants which might otherwise be shuttered on standby, in a bid to address an acute capacity shortage expected as ageing power stations retire.

However, it will not make them available until 2018/19 - a move SSE said would create further uncertainty in the energy market and "not address the risk of imminent shortages".

The Scotland-based group said the five-year wait for the government's financial incentive package will hold up new investment decisions and delay the construction of new plants.

"[Reforms] will not, therefore, enable investment decisions for new plant to be made," said SSE in its interim management statement.

In the near-term, it could impact decisions over whether old fossil fuel plants, which have become less profitable, should continue to operate.

SSE's warning comes just a day after the coalition came under fire for inadvertently rewarding energy firms for mothballing their existing plants. Under the plan announced this month, the operators of mothballed plants would be offered generous subsidies to fire them up when energy demand is high.

Last month, energy regulator Ofgem warned the risk of UK blackouts has tripled since a year ago, as Britain has failed to build enough new wind farms and nuclear power stations to replace old fossil fuel plants. The problem has been exacerbated by fewer households insulating their lofts and switching to green appliances than hoped, creating higher-than-expected demand for energy in future.

SSE also criticised the government's plans for incentivising longer-term low carbon investment as lacking detail. Westminster has pledged to set a constant price per unit of electricity to level out fluctuations in prices and guarantee generators a constant income from green energy.

"The level of detail underpinning the planned Contracts is not yet enough to allow SSE to determine whether the balance between risk and reward for investing in low carbon electricity generation in the future will be the right one," said the company in a statement.

"In line with its long-standing financial principles, SSE will maintain its rigorous approach to investment decision-making and so will only make decisions to invest on the basis of a clear and appropriate risk and reward balance."

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President’s Men Preach Climate Change As Responsibility of All Mankind

The Obama administration is working climate change into speeches given not only by President Obama, but also by the people who serve him.

In Mumbai, India on Wednesday, Vice President Biden warned that rising sea levels will overcome India as well as Biden’s home state of Delaware, if both countries don’t deal with the “worldwide” problem.

And speaking at a Ramadan Iftar dinner in Washington on Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke of climate change in a religious context.

“For many of us, respect for God’s creation, in almost every scripture really, demands and translates into a duty to protect and sustain God’s first creation. Our response to climate change ought to be rooted in a fundamental sense of shared stewardship of the earth that emerges from that tradition,” Kerry told the Muslims and others gather at the Ramadan event.

Biden told his Indian audience, “I come from a part of America that -- where we're only about seven feet above sea level. Sea levels are rising. They are rising. It will affect tens of millions of people in India.

“At home, America is working to lower carbon pollution that causes climate change. In fact, we have brought it down to its lowest level in two decades. We have much more to do, and we plan to do more.”

Biden said India, a developing nation that was exempt from the goals set by the Kyoto treaty, also needs to act.

“Of course, India's first priority is and must be lifting its citizens out of poverty. But unless we can develop a sustainable path on a low-carbon path, the consequences of climate change will seriously undermine the development and growth, as well as harm the very health of the people of India.

“You've all observed what's happening in China now,” Biden continued. Allegedly a million people a year dying as a consequence of atmospheric pollution. Reality ultimately intrudes. And the reality is, we have a worldwide problem.”

Obama said India should act, not as a “favor” to other nations, but for its own sake:

“It matters to India -- to the productivity of your farmlands, the availability of water, the risks you face from floods and rising seas. India is already taking steps. But like us, India can do more. And we are anxious and willing to work with you.”

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September Release Planned for Climate Change Reconsidered II

The Heartland Institute and the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) have been hard at work for the past three years on a new edition of Climate Change Reconsidered. The new report, to be titled Climate Change Reconsidered II: The 2013 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), will be released in two volumes, the first on the Physical Science to be released in September, to coincide with the release of the IPCC’s 5th assessment report, and second on Impacts in March or April 2014.

The research effort is led by Craig Idso, Ph.D., chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change; Robert Carter, Ph.D.,  Former Head of the School of Earth Sciences, James Cook University (Australia), and S. Fred Singer, Ph.D., president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project and professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia. An international team of lead authors, section authors, contributors, and reviewers is participating in the effort.

The first two volumes published in the Climate Change Reconsidered series, in 2009 and 2011, were widely recognized as the most comprehensive and authoritative critiques of the alarmist reports of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Reviews and the complete texts of both volumes are available here and here. In June, a division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences published a Chinese translation and condensed edition of the two volumes.

During the next several weeks we will be completing peer review, proofing the final copy, writing the executive summary, and preparing for the September release of Volume 1.

SOURCE

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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.  

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Obama Admin Colludes with Sierra Club to Make Arizona Energy Prices Skyrocket, Against DoE’s Own Science

During his big economics speech, President Barack Obama declared that America is open for business. Laying aside the fact that the president stole that line from Texas Gov. Rick Perry, even as he made the statement he was surely aware that it is not true. The Keystone XL pipeline, which Obama continues to scuttle through political procrastination, springs to mind. ObamaCare’s devastating impact on unemployment wins the argument.

The fact is, the Obama administration is colluding with environmental lobby Sierra Club on a closed-door deal that will drive energy prices in Arizona skyward for the sake, supposedly, of improving visibility at the Grand Canyon. The proposed new EPA rule on the Navajo Generating Station would double or triple water rates, cause electric rates to skyrocket and partially shut down a vital energy plant – despite a federal study that says the rule won’t do anything to help the environment. Jim Thompson, writing in Coal & Energy Price Report, says the EPA-Sierra secret deal is “imminent.” Thompson also names names:

Discussions of this “deal” have been taking place behind closed doors with the federal government, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, Salt River Project, the Central Arizona Water Conservation District, and select tribes since March – without allowing all Arizonans to participate.

The Department of Energy conducted a study that shows that the stunt that the EPA and activists are pulling in Arizona won’t do what they claim that they intend for it to do.  So what’s really going on: They’re enacting Obama’s war on coal behind closed doors. Arizonans get to foot the bill through sharply higher rates on their utilities, without being heard on the EPA’s new rule. Obama’s EPA and the lobbying groups have shut citizens out of their talks, despite the fact that the Clean Air Act mandates open processes and dialogue when the EPA considers new rules.

The DoE study is here, and the relevant part begins on page 5. The DoE found that the “body of research to date…is inconclusive as to whether removing approximately two-thirds of the current NOx emissions from Navajo GS would lead to any perceptible improvement in visibility at the Grand Canyon and other areas of concern.”

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CIA wants to control the weather, climate change

The CIA is funding a study examining various ways mankind can geo-engineer the planet -- blocking or limiting the sunlight that reaches the Earth, stripping carbon dioxide from the skies, seeding the clouds and so on.

The project, a panel called “Geoengineering Climate: Technical Evaluation and Discussion of Impacts,” is backed by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA -- and the U.S. intelligence community.

That’s spy-talk for the CIA, William Kearney, a spokesman for NAS, told Mother Jones.

So why would the trenchcoat troops meet with the eggheads?

"It's natural that on a subject like climate change the Agency would work with scientists to better understand the phenomenon and its implications on national security," Edward Price, a spokesman for the CIA, told Mother Jones. He refused to confirm the agency's role in the study.

Conspiracy theorists love to argue that various world governments seek to control the weather; they cite “chemtrails” and cloud seeding and so on. The topic has even pervaded popular culture, from “The Simpsons” to “The X-Files.”

The group’s first two meetings, May 20 and June 19, were closed-door in their entirety, save for a list of participants.

On July 17 in Washington D.C., closed-door morning and evening meetings book-ended a public session, however, offering a peek into the group’s plans -- and it’s nothing worthy of Fox Mulder’s time, explained Edward Dunlea, study director with the National Academies.

“Nothing involved in this study is classified at all,” Dunlea told FoxNews.com. “We’re doing an evaluation. This is an assessment of what is known in the science literature about some of the proposed engineering techniques -- both solar-radiation management and carbon-dioxide removal.”

Dunlea declined to cite the CIA by name.

“All of our sponsors are interested in this topic as a part of the larger climate-change discussion, which has economic, environmental and national-security ramifications,” he said.

A 2008 study by the National Intelligence Council concluded that climate change posted a serious threat to national security.

“Climate change and climate-change policies could affect … domestic stability in a number of key states, the opening of new sea lanes and access to raw materials, and the global economy more broadly -- with significant geopolitical consequences,” it said.

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Australia: Skeptical professor's  dismissal could face scrutiny

MACQUARIE University's sacking of Murry Salby, a scientist whose work casts doubt on the orthodox climate change thesis, may face scrutiny by the International Council for Science.

Distinguished physicist Marie-Lise Chanin, who is a French representative on the Paris-based council suggested the Salby case was a matter for the council's committee on "freedom and responsibility in the conduct of science".

"I am scandalised by what happened to Murry Salby," said Dr Chanin, a founding member of the Academy of Europe and an expert on the role of the stratosphere in climate.

Cases before that committee have included government threats to scientific freedom, detention of scientists and assassination attempts against physicists.

Macquarie, which recruited Dr Salby from the US in 2008 to fill its chair of climate science, this year refused him permission to travel to Europe to present research findings which he said countered "reckless claims" about the role of mankind in greenhouse gases.

"Modern changes of atmospheric CO2 and methane are -- contrary to popular belief -- not unprecedented," Dr Salby says in an email to supporters detailing his falling out with Macquarie.

He has been a critic of the government's Climate Commission, which includes two Macquarie academics among its members.

Asked about the case, Dr Salby said he could not say much because it was "headed to court".

The university said his sacking had nothing to do with scientific freedom. A Macquarie spokesman said Dr Salby was dismissed for "failure to fulfill his teaching obligations, repeatedly and consistently over several months" and for going to Europe anyway "despite repeated written instruction not to travel".

Contrary to policy, he used a Macquarie credit card to buy a ticket through an external travel agency, the spokesman said.

Dr Salby was refused permission because the trip clashed with his teaching duties, not because of the nature of the research findings he wanted to present, the spokesman said.

Dr Salby said the teaching was imposed "without discussion, in breach of my contract, and reduced my role to . . . menial support". Macquarie disputed this, saying that although Dr Salby was employed under a program to bring in research stars, standard conditions required "a commitment" to teaching.

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Why Is Obama Lying on Climate Change?

The fact that President Obama has been spreading lies about climate change to support his actions directing the Environmental Protection Agency to impose costly new restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions was exposed last week at a Senate hearing. The lie? Spoken with his trademark don’t-you-dare-question-me confidence during a November 2012, press conference, Obama said: “What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing—faster than was predicted even ten years ago.” Then at a Chicago fundraiser on May 29: “We also know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago.” He’s likely said the same thing several times in the intervening months.

The hearing: “Climate Change: It’s Happening Now” was held on Thursday, July 18, by the Environment and Public Works Committee—chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). Because Democrats control the Senate, they get more witnesses at a hearing than Republicans. Thursday’s hearing had two panels. Each had three experts (invited by the Democrats) who supported the “alarmist’ position on global warming held by most Democrats and two (invited by the Republicans) who could be called “skeptics.”

During the Q & A time with the first panel—which included the Democrat’s star: Heidi Cullen of Weather Channel fame, Ranking Member Senator David Vitter (R-LA) asked: “Can any witnesses say they agree with Obama’s statement that warming has accelerated during the past 10 years?” After an awkward (to say the least) silence, Cullen tried to change the subject by saying that we need to be looking at longer time periods then ten years and then, ultimately, acknowledged that the warming has slowed, not accelerated. A few minutes later, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) made sure no one missed the point. He repeated Obama’s claim and then asked: “Do any of you support that quote?” Again, silence.

Even the witnesses brought in by the Democrats couldn’t support Obama’s false data. But, there were other interesting aspects of the nearly four-hour-long hearing.

Chairman Boxer, in her opening statement, proclaimed: “Predictions of climate change are coming true right before our eyes.” She added, “We can look out the window and see the evidence of climate change mounting around us.”

I find it interesting that Boxer started off with “predictions.” In preparation for the hearing, the Minority—led by Vitter—produced an important report: “Critical Thinking on Climate Change: Questions to Consider Before Taking Regulatory Action and Implementing Economic Policies.” The 21-page report’s introduction states: “Over nearly four decades, numerous predictions have had adequate time to come to fruition, providing an opportunity to analyze and compare them to

today’s statistics. … This report posits that as the developing world has greatly expanded its use of fossil energy and CO2 emissions have increased, then the predictions and claims regarding human influence on climate patterns should be apparent and easily proven.” The remaining 19 pages are filled with predictions and claims—including Obama’s—that are false or foolish, such as Former Vice President Al Gore’s on December 13, 2008: “The entire north polar ice cap will be gone in 5 years.” And a 1989 statement from the Associated Press: “Using computer models, researchers conclude that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide by two degrees by 2010.” Each set of predictions and claims is countered by “The Latest Science.” Reading the report, you’ll find that the claims often contradict the data.

Back to Boxer. She starts with dramatic predictions about heat waves, tropical storms and hurricanes—which will be more frequent and intense.

The first witness was Cullen, Chief Climatologist at Climate Central—who continued with the “extreme weather events” theme: “The impacts of human-caused climate change are being observed right here and right now in our own backyards and neighborhoods.” She said that warming is happening very, very quickly and that it is expected to accelerate. She talked about extremes seen every day:

    More heavy downpours, (a non-meteorological term)
    More heat extremes,
    Increase in hurricane activity,
    Increase in flood magnitude, and
    Southwest increase in droughts and wildfires.

While Boxer and Cullen set the stage, as witnesses number 9 and 10, Roger Pielke, Jr., and Roy Spencer provided the final act in Thursday’s theater.

Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado and the author of Climate Fix, started with seven “take-home points” that totally eviscerated Boxer and Cullen’s “extreme weather” claims. Showing a series of charts and graphs that can be found in his written testimony, Pielke convincingly proved: “It is misleading, and just plain incorrect, to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally. It is further incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases.” The fact of the matter is (From Pielke’s testimony):

*   Globally, weather-related losses have not increased since 1990 as a proportion of GDP (they have actually decreased by about 25%).

*    Insured catastrophe losses have not increased as a proportion of GDP since 1960.

*   Hurricanes have not increased in the US in frequency, intensity or normalized damage since at least 1900.

*    There are no significant trends (up or down) in global tropical cyclone landfalls since 1970 (when data allows for a comprehensive perspective), or the overall number of cyclones.

*   Floods have not increased in the US in frequency or intensity since at least 1950.

*   Tornadoes have not increased in frequency, intensity or normalized damage since 1950, and there is some evidence to suggest that they have actually declined.

*    Drought has, for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, and has been covering a smaller portion of the US over the past century.

Pielke’s comments are all the more noteworthy when you realize that he generally believes that humans are influencing the climate system “in profound ways.”

Last, but surely not least, was Roy Spencer who holds a Ph.D. in Meteorology and has spent his entire career in research—specifically satellite information retrieval techniques and global temperature monitoring. Spencer has served NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center as Senior Scientist for Climate Studies. He agrees with Pielke—and every other panelist that at least some of the recent warming is human-caused: “We probably are having some influence, but it is impossible to know with any level of certainty how much influence.”

Spencer tore apart the oft-quoted figure that 97% of scientists support the global warming consensus. He explained that it’s actually 97% of the published papers that acknowledge some human influence—which is “therefore rather innocuous, since it probably includes all of the global warming ‘skeptics’ I know of who are actively working in the field. Skeptics generally are skeptical of the view that recent warming is all human-caused, and/or that it is of a sufficient magnitude to warrant immediate action given the cost of energy policies to the poor. They do not claim humans have no impact on climate whatsoever.”

Why is Spencer “skeptical?” For many reasons, but one involves data he showed covering the Roman Warm Period, the Medieval Warm Period and the Modern Warm Period. He said: “While today’s hearing is entitled “Climate Change; It’s Happening Now,” it couldhave been entitled “Climate Change: It’s Happened Before.” He explained: “The last 2000 years of proxy reconstructed temperature variations for the Northern Hemisphere shows that the Modern Warm Period (today) is not significantly different from the Medieval Warm Period of ~1000 years ago, or the Roman Warm Period of ~2000 years ago.

Spencer also demonstrated the failure of the computer model predictions upon which the IPCC based their projections of global warming. He offered a chart demonstrating the 73 models used and their predictions vs. the actual temperature measurement from two satellite datasets and four weather balloon datasets. “The level of disagreement between models and observations is quite striking.” Spencer pointed out: “The magnitude of global-average atmospheric warming between 1997 and 2012 is only about 50% that predicted by the climate models. …The level of warming in the most recent 15-year period is not significantly different from zero, despite this being the period of greatest greenhouse gas concentration. This is in stark contrast to claims that warming is ‘accelerating.’” He concludes: “It is time for scientists to entertain the possibility that there is something wrong with the assumptions built into their climate models. …and so far their error rate should preclude their use for predicting future climate change.”

Spencer’s testimony mentioned the “cost of energy policies to the poor”—which brings up another interesting contrast presented at Thursday’s hearing: the economics. As each of the Senators gave his or her opening statements, the Democrats—who claim to be the champions of the poor—never mentioned the cost, and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) exclaimed: “To save the planet will be expensive!” He proposed: “serious legislation to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions” and called for “bold action,” saying: “the US must lead the world.” He’s introduced legislation for a tax on carbon. (Realize that the same week the hearing was held, Australia’s new Prime Minister announced that he “will ‘terminate’ the country's carbon tax early ‘to help cost of living pressures for families and to reduce costs for small business.”)

Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) addressed “the President’s intent to pursue a costly regulatory roll out” which he said: “demands proof of sound science as well as transparency.”

The economists on the panel where those invited by the Republicans. Diana Furchtgott-Roth was one of them. She’s been chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, chief of staff at the Council of Economic Advisers, Deputy Executive Secretary of the Domestic Policy Council under President George H.W. Bush, and an economist on the staff of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers.

I talked to Furchtgott-Roth after the hearing. She told me: “They don’t seem to be interested in whether or not climate change is really occurring. They are not interested in facts. They want a carbon tax because it will give them unlimited power and unlimited power means unlimited campaign contributions.” Furchtgott-Roth pointed out how a carbon tax would hurt the economy and how the expensive proposed solutions would disproportionately affect low-income Americans. A chart she presented shows, based on Department of Labor data, that “those in the lowest fifth of the income distribution spend an average of 24 percent of income on energy, compared to 10 percent of the income for those in the middle fifth, and 4 percent of income for those in the top fifth.” She presented several less costly options for climate change mitigation—if greenhouse gasses are really the problem—but felt they fell on deaf ears.

A lot of data was presented at the Senate hearing—much of which was obviously unsettling to the “alarmists.” During the Q & A, the “skeptics” were less attacked on the content of their testimony than they were on personal issues.

Boxer called out the two economists: Furchtgott-Roth and Dr. Robert P. Murphy, Senior Economist, Institute for Energy Research, because their organizations receive some funding from the oil and gas industry. Furchtgott-Roth pointed out that she’s been writing on these issues since long before becoming a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) attempted to portray Spencer as a knuckle-dragging Bible thumper for his views on evolutionary theory. Spencer laughed, asked where that was coming from, and then told Whitehouse he’d be happy to show the stronger science arguments for design at another time. Clearly, Whitehouse’s comments were inappropriate, considering the topic at hand.

In his opening comments, Sanders smugly called the hearing an “Alice in Wonderland hearing” because the people within the room were “living in two separate worlds.” Clearly, they are. But those two worlds accurately represent the American population—though in differing percentages. At the “Alice in Wonderland hearing” the Majority supports the “alarmist” view, which encourages a carbon tax and other “expensive” solutions. In the real world, the majority doesn’t see climate change as a pressing problem—hence the shift to dramatic “extreme weather events.” Americans prioritize economic growth over protecting the environment—a recent survey puts climate change at number 21 in a list of top concerns. In her written testimony, Furchtgott-Roth stated: “Americans know that no reduction in global warming will occur if America reduces greenhouse gases without similar action by China and India, and these countries have not agreed to comparable steps.”

The hearing’s “take-home points:” Obama lied. Boxer and Cullen’s predictions are false. The models are inaccurate. So, for this we are going to ruin the economy and disproportionately hurt the poor?

SOURCE




Germany’s Biggest Energy Company Considers Fleeing Europe

European Plants May be Moved to Emerging Markets

German utility E.ON is considering dismantling some European power plants that have been mothballed because of poor profitability and relocating them to faster-growing emerging markets such as Turkey, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal Wednesday.

The radical idea underscores the dire situation facing many utilities in Europe, where the combination of weak energy demand caused by the economic crisis and the rapid expansion of renewable energy is undermining the conventional power-generation business.
E.ON isn’t the only company considering drastic measures. On Tuesday, Swedish utility Vattenfall AB, opened the door to the sale of its power business in continental Europe. E.ON’s main German rival, RWE AG, has warned it could shut down a fifth of its power plants.

One of the plants that E.ON could pack up and ship overseas is the 430-megawatt combined-cycle gas turbine power plant in Malzenice, Slovakia, said a person familiar with the company’s thinking. If E.ON’s calculations prove that a move is economically viable, the plant could be moved to Turkey, which is a more attractive market with stronger energy-demand growth, the person said.

E.ON expanded into Turkey earlier this year in partnership with local conglomerate Haci Omer Sabanci Holding. Together, the companies plan to develop around 8,000 megawatts of power generation capacity by 2020, equivalent to around 10% of Turkey’s overall capacity.

E.ON has invested around €400 million ($526 million) in the gas-fired Slovakian plant, but it will go offline in October less than three years after it was commissioned because it has been making a loss, E.ON said earlier this month.

Power plants fueled by gas are suffering the most in Europe because of a combination of high fuel prices and intense competition from cheaper coal supplies. The surge in production of wind and solar energy is also reducing demand for gas-fired power, because these forms of renewable energy compete directly with facilities like Malzenice in serving peak electricity demand.

Since it began operating in January 2011, the Malzenice plant has operated for only around 5,600 hours, well below its target of 4,000 hours to 5,000 hours per year, E.ON has said.
E.ON isn’t alone in its troubles. Germany’s largest power producer by capacity, RWE, has also warned that it is struggling to operate its fleet of fossil-fuel power plants profitably. Chief Executive Peter Terium has said that around one-fifth of the company’s 50 gigawatt power generation capacity is at risk of being shut down.

Swedish state-controlled utility Vattenfall wrote down the value of its power plants by €3.5 billion Tuesday, blaming low power prices and muted energy demand across Europe.

Oystein Loseth, the company’s chief executive said he didn’t expect the European power market to recover in the foreseeable future. Vattenfall will now consider the full or partial sale of its continental European business, although it will retain full control of its operations in the Nordic region.

SOURCE




UK Energy Companies May Shut Down Power Plants To Receive Subsidies

Tim Webb

The boss of one of Britain’s biggest energy companies has warned that the Government’s new plan to stave off the growing threat of blackouts could increase the risk of the lights going out.

Under the plan announced this month, the owners of mothballed power plants would be offered lucrative subsidies to rush them back into action during times of peak demand.

But Keith Anderson, the chief corporate officer of Scottish Power, said that energy companies could deliberately mothball plants that they would otherwise have kept open to make them eligible for the payments. This would cut Britain’s precariously thin spare generating margin even further.

“Please let’s not create the wrong signals in the market,” he said. “If you put in place a mechanism to encourage mothballed plants to come back on the system, then you are encouraging people to mothball plants. You have to think through very carefully the consequences. We need to have more detailed conversations to make sure we do not have unintended consequences and make the situation worse.”

Other power companies share Scottish Power’s concerns. National Grid, which is carrying out a consulation into the plan, admitted that many believed it amounted to “interference” in the market.

Mr Anderson wants the Government instead to bring forward its so-called capacity auctions, scheduled to start in 2018, which will pay energy companies to provide generating capacity available a long time in advance.

SOURCE

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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 or here

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

Morano on vacation

On Tues 23rd., I put up a note of concern about our apparent loss of the inimitable Marc Morano.  Marc is still pretty much in touch, however, as he did see my note.  He has emailed me as follows:

"Hi Jon,‏

I have been on extended two week plus travelling vacation with family, plus relatives funeral and selling a home. All during same time.

I have been doing updates to my site from smart phone. Normalcy should resume by Monday.

Thanks!"



   
Something is happening to our sun

by astronomer David Whitehouse

Something is happening to our sun. It has to do with sunspots or rather the activity cycle their coming and going signifies. Sunspots – dark magnetic blotches on the sun's surface – come and go in an 11-year cycle of activity first noticed in 1843. It is a process related to the motion of superhot, electrically charged gas inside the sun; a kind of internal conveyor belt where vast sub-surface rivers of gas take 40 years to circulate from the equator to the poles and back.

Somehow, in a way not very well understood, this circulation produces the sunspot cycle in which every 11 years there is a sunspot maximum followed by a minimum. In the last century, the sun's activity may have been the highest for more than 8,000 years with lots of strong solar cycles. But then things turned. The recent cycle – so called 'Cycle 24' - is puny. If history is anything to go by, then the sun's change of mood could affect us all by cooling the earth and throwing our climate change calculations into disarray.

Not all sunspot cycles are the same. They can be long or short, weak or strong and sometimes they can go away altogether. Following the discovery of the cycle, astronomers looked back through previous observations and were able to clearly see it until they reached the 17th century when it seemed to disappear. It turned out to be a real absence, not one caused by a lack of observations. Astronomers called it the Maunder Minimum.

It was an astonishing discovery, our sun can change. There was something different about the sun back then. Between 1645 and 1715, sunspots were rare. About 50 were observed. There should have been 50,000. Ever since the sunspot cycle was discovered, researchers have looked for its rhythm superimposed on the earth's climate. In some cases, it is there but usually at low levels. But there was something strange about the time when the sunspots disappeared that left scientists to ponder if the sun's unusual behaviour could have something to do with the fact that the 17th century was also a time when the earth's northern hemisphere chilled with devastating consequences.

Scientists call that event the Little Ice Age and it affected Europe at just the wrong time. In response to the more benign climate of the earlier medieval warm period, Europe's population may have doubled. But in the mid-17th century, demographic growth stopped and in some areas fell - in part due to the reduced crop yields caused by climate change. Bread prices doubled and then quintupled and hunger weakened the population.

The English preacher John King wrote: "Our years are turned upside down, our summers are no summers; our harvests, no harvests." Ralph Josselin, an English vicar, wrote: "I find nothing but confusions." But while Josselin looked for God's inscrutable purpose, others looked elsewhere. The Italian historian Majolino Bisaccioni suggested that the wave of bad weather and revolutions might be due to the influence of the stars but Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli speculated that fluctuations in the number of sunspots might be to blame. For he too had noticed they were unusually absent.

The key point is that looking back through the sunspot record reveals many periods when the sun's activity was high and low - and in general they are related to warm and cool climatic periods. For example, as well as the Little Ice Age there was the weak sun and the cold Iron Age, the active sun and the warm Bronze Age. Scientists cannot readily explain how the sun's activity affects the earth but it is an observational correlation that the sun's moods have a climatic effect on the planet.

The big question is what will happen in the future. Cycle 24 is weak with few sunspots. Could it be that our sun is behaving like it did in the 17th century? Could we be on the verge of a new Little Ice Age? The last decade has been warmer than previous ones. It is the result of a rapid increase in global temperature between 1978 and 1998. Since then, average temperatures have held at a high although steady level. Many computer climate projections suggest that the global temperatures will start to rise again in a few years' time. But crucially those projections do not take into account the recent change in the sun's behaviour.

Some members of the Russian Academy of Sciences say we may be at the start of a period like that seen between 1790 and 1820, a minor decline in solar activity called the Dalton Minimum. It is something we must take seriously because what happened to the sun in the 17th century is bound to happen again sometime. It might even be the case that the earth's response to low solar activity will overturn many of our assumptions about man's influence on climate change. Cold not warmth might be our future. We do not know. We must keep watching the sun.

SOURCE





The latest pontifications of Britain's Met Office

"We predicted the temperature standstill.  We just didn't tell anyone"

The three briefing papers on the recent pause in global surface temperature released by the UK Met Office this week make interesting reading. They can be found here, here and here.

But perhaps unintentionally they say more about the messenger than the actual science, of which there is very little that is new. The overall message (reached with the considerable help of hindsight for no one predicted it) is that the current standstill in global surface temperature is nothing unusual, can be explained quite simply by climate models, has its explanation in the heat uptake by the deep oceans, and ultimately doesn’t make much difference. After many years of denying that the standstill existed the Met Office now seeks to explain it, and bring it into the fold.

The problem with all this is that after such confident assertions, the actual evidence, as the reports eventually confirm, doesn’t merit such conclusions. The reports seem to push their favourite explanation strongly, and then less enthusiastically state elsewhere that such conclusions are premature.

This leads one to question why the reports have been written, as apart from details about a climate simulation model (unpublished in peer-reviewed literature) they contain nothing new. The Met Office recently said it was ‘loosing the PR war’ because it had been concentrating on arguments about global surface temperature. Perhaps this is part of a fight back?

Scientifically it adds nothing, but it is a report stamped with the Met Office’s authority and released to journalists at a press conference at the UK Science Media Centre a day before the reports were available to the public. Wasn’t it the Science Media Centre that recently testified before MPs that ‘sceptics’ had been using the global temperature standstill to undermine climate science?

Pick Your Coincidence

A careful eye sees the lack of internal consistency in the reports. One of the reports says the temperature has been ‘relatively flat’ over the past 15-years to 2013. It is not ‘relatively’ flat, it is flat. Later on the Met Office claims that the standstill is not 15 years, but since 2001.

Part 1 is the ‘State of the Climate,’ and it is interesting to see the range and variation of the numerous climate variables mentioned. There is a lot of disagreement between them. Looking at them makes one realise what a big deal, and a big clue, is the recent temperature standstill.

Part 2 states: “Observations of Ocean Heat Content (OHC) and Sea Level Rise (SLR) suggest that the additional heat from the continued rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration may have been absorbed in the ocean and not been manifest as a rise in surface temperature.”

There are many problems with this statement which are not addressed by this report. It presents SLR from 1992 only – the satellite era. Omitted are the previous 100 years of data based on tidal gauges. It is perfectly reasonable to analyse the SLR data and find no increase in its rate of rise in recent decades (in fact quite the opposite might be happening) and deduce that there is no anthropomorphic signal in the data. So how exactly does the Met Office’s conclusion work given that there is a rise in OHC in recent decades and no increase in the rate of SLR?

The problem with OHC is that the data is not up to drawing good conclusions. It is also contradictory. The Met Office takes the start of the pause as 2001, which is coincident with an observed maximum in ocean heat uptake in 2002 (from what data is available). The problem is that the pause, most of it, has continued long after 2004 when the oceans upper layer heat uptake declines. Despite the explanation of the pause in ocean heating is suffused throughout the report, buried within it is the statement that they, “cannot show definitely that this has been the dominant factor in the recent pause.” So there you have it. The ocean uptake is a unproven hypothesis, like so many others. I bet that wasn’t a headline used in the newspapers.

The report says that the pause could be caused by a combination of changes in the total energy received by the planet and under-surface ocean heating. Explaining the pause this way makes its most interesting property – that it’s statistically constant – seem a strange situation, begging the question how could two competing factors exactly balance themselves for 16 years!

The report states that there have been pauses before, notably between 1940 and the late 1970s. They attribute this to aerosols reflecting sunlight. Their confidence in this explanation is far too strong given that this pause is poorly understood and there are many problems with the aerosol explanation. On this point the report is comparing apples and oranges as the 1940 pause occurred at a time when the IPCC says that greenhouse gasses had only a tiny effect on the climate, wheras the post-1980 warming – which includes the post-1997 standstill – has occurred in the era where climate is dominated by greenhouse gasses. In short, the two pauses are not comparable.

Dancing Like It’s 1998

It makes the old mistake of referring to 1998 – the year of the super El Nino – as some kind of starting point for the standstill. This is a common error. It also says that the start of the current pause is difficult to determine precisely. Well actually it isn’t. It started in 1997. The following year saw the great El Nino, but statistically this was offset by 1999 and 2000 that were La Nina years.

The only new thing in the three reports are the results from a single climate model that was run thousands of times and was in some cases able to reproduce something like the standstill giving a ten-year pause about twice a century. But what does this prove? Than an (unpublished) model kind of works. It would be surprising given the number and spread of results from climate models if some of them didn’t conform to the observations. However, what we have is a 16-year hiatus, not a ten-year one, and that makes a big difference.

Later on the report goes into climate sensitivity and dismisses all recent research papers indicating lower climate sensitivity that was thought. They also, according to Nic Lews one of the authors of Otto et al 2013, misrepresent the findings of that study.

In its conclusions the Met Office states that the pause has not falsified the climate models. If the pause is, as they define it and limit it, from 2001 onwards, then this is true. But if the pause is 16-years, as the temperature data actually show, then the models, already looking unimpressive, are in jeopardy.

We are at the waiting stage. Better and more reliable OHC data are desperately needed. Even if global temperatures were to rise again the climate models have shown themselves inadequate. If the pause continues, however, then the crisis of climate science will become more serious.

SOURCE




Why has global warming stalled?

By BBC science editor David Shukman,  commenting on the Met. Office press conference.  At age 55, it would seem that David is finally getting tired of being taken for a mug.  If they've lost the BBC ...?

Gradually the words 'pause' and 'hiatus' which first featured in the blogs have crossed to the media and then to the scientists professionally engaged in researching the global climate.

Professor Piers Forster of Leeds University has tried to quantify the different factors involved - what's known as their "radiative forcing".

Between 1998-2012, he reckons, manmade greenhouse gases were still the biggest influence, causing warming of 0.48 of a Watt per square metre (a key measure of energy flows to and from the planet).

At the same, he estimates, two other natural influences might have led to some cooling: a relatively quiet Sun might have been responsible for a reduction of 0.16 of a Watt/sq m and volcanic eruptions another 0.06 Watt/sq m.

A big unknown is the effect of aerosols - tiny particles released by industrial pollution which could cause a further cooling effect.

It is thought that the world's massive industrialisation after World War Two contributed to a slight drop in global temperatures in the late 1940s.

But the key factor - according to all the speakers at the briefing - is that whatever solar energy is making it through to the surface, much is being absorbed by the hidden depths of the oceans.

The Argo network of automated monitors has been deployed since 2005 to measure the waters as deep as 1,800m. This isn't a very long period but the data are apparently showing some warming - even in this short time frame.

And readings from satellites since 2000 show how much energy is arriving at the planet, and how much is leaving, so if the energy left behind is not manifesting itself in rising surface temperatures, then it must be going somewhere - and the deep ocean is the most plausible explanation.

Pauses expected

On top of that, the scientists say, pauses in warming were always to be expected. This is new - at least to me.

It is common sense that climate change would not happen in a neat, linear away but instead in fits and starts.

But I've never heard leading researchers mention the possibility before.

Professor Rowan Sutton, of Reading University, said computer simulations or models of possible future climate scenarios often show periods of ten years with no warming trend - some even show pauses of 20-25 years.

And Professor Stephen Belcher, head of the Met Office Hadley Centre, said observations and models showed that on average there were - or would be - two pauses in warming every century.

I asked why this had not come up in earlier presentations. No one really had an answer, except to say that this "message" about pauses had not been communicated widely.

So where does this leave us, as greenhouse gases emissions keep rising but the temperature does not?

Dr Peter Stott, of the Met Office, pointed out that 12 of the 14 warmest years have occurred since the year 2000 and says that other indicators - like the decline in Arctic sea ice of 12.9% per decade and losses of snow cover and glaciers - still point to a process of manmade warming.

Bad maths

But what about another possibility - that the calculations are wrong?

What if the climate models - which are the very basis for all discussions of what to do about global warming - exaggerate the sensitivity of the climate to rising carbon dioxide?

Dr Stott conceded that the projections showing the most rapid warming now look less likely, given recent observations, but that others remain largely unchanged.

A Met Office briefing document, released at the briefing, says that, even allowing for the temperatures of the last decade, the most likely warming scenario is only reduced by 10% - so "the warming that we might have expected by 2050 would be delayed by only a few years".

Overall, it concludes, the pause "does not materially alter the risks of substantial warming of the Earth by the end of this century."

In other words, global warming is still on.

But until the pause can be properly explained, many people will take a lot of convincing - especially if the pause lasts longer than expected.

SOURCE





We Really Don’t Understand Our Climate

Scientists are still struggling to explain the slower-than-predicted global warming over the past decade. It’s a puzzle with enormous implications: we know that we’re emitting greenhouse gases in record quantities, and we know that these gases trap more of the sun’s heat, yet global surface temperatures are significantly lower than what our climate models predicted. If our models are otherwise correct, then where is this heat going? A group of UK climate scientists have some ideas:

"A range of factors have been pinpointed for what has come to be called the “hiatus” or “pause” in warming, which the scientists said they expected to be temporary.  These include small airborne particles known as aerosols from volcanic eruptions that have a cooling effect as they reflect sunlight back into space; the impact of the regular cycle of solar activity; the sensitivity of the climate to greenhouse gases, and the way the oceans absorb heat."

There are innumerable variables in the climate system that could be responsible for the warming slowdown. These scientists have identified some of the likeliest culprits, but one professor admitted that they “don’t fully understand the relative importance of these different factors.”

That’s a big problem, considering most green legislation aimed at reducing emissions calls for measures to prevent very specific degrees of warming. This recent warming plateau is exposing our limited understanding of climate, and it’s effectively killing the rationale for green policies that limit growth and, at the most basic level, try to force people to do things they would rather not do.

The biggest cause of climate skepticism isn’t evil oil companies and campaigns of disinformation; it is the inability of greens to refrain from overstating their case and insisting dogmatically and self righteously on more certainty than the frustrating facts can give.

SOURCE





When it comes to climate change, we have to trust our scientists, because they know lots of big scary words

Some deserved derision from Sean Thomas below:

Whither the weather? As you may have heard, a conference of national forecasters assembled this week in Exeter: to discuss the future of the British climate, following the spate of harsher than expected winters, and unusually wet summers, since 2007.

Already, commentators are asking if global warming is to blame. In particular, some are wondering if the direction of the Jet Stream is being altered by Arctic ice melt. Others are speculating that natural variations, such as the “Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation”, might be responsible for recent evolutions.

However, most of this reportage has been second-hand. Unprecedentedly, I had direct access to the meteorologists concerned, as I was in Exeter in spirit form, and I managed to speak to the principal actors.

First, I asked Stephen Belcher, the head of the Met Office Hadley Centre, whether the recent extended winter was related to global warming. Shaking his famous “ghost stick”, and fingering his trademark necklace of sharks’ teeth and mammoth bones, the loin-clothed Belcher blew smoke into a conch, and replied,

“Here come de heap big warmy. Bigtime warmy warmy. Is big big hot. Plenty big warm burny hot. Hot! Hot hot! But now not hot. Not hot now. De hot come go, come go. Now Is Coldy Coldy. Is ice. Hot den cold. Frreeeezy ice til hot again. Den de rain. It faaaalllll. Make pasty.”

Startled by this sobering analysis, I moved on to Professor Rowan Sutton, Climate Director of NCAS at the University of Reading. Professor Sutton said that many scientists are, as of this moment, examining the complex patterns in the North Atlantic, and trying to work out whether the current run of inclement European winters will persist.

When pressed on the particular outlook for the British Isles. Professor Sutton shook his head, moaned eerily unto the heavens, and stuffed his fingers into the entrails of a recently disembowelled chicken, bought fresh from Waitrose in Teignmouth.

Hurling the still-beating heart of the chicken into a shallow copper salver, Professor Sutton inhaled the aroma of burning incense, then told the Telegraph: “The seven towers of Agamemnon tremble. Much is the discord in the latitude of Gemini. When, when cry the sirens of doom and love. Speckly showers on Tuesday.”

It’s a pretty stark analysis, and not without merit. There are plenty of climate change scientists who are equally forthright on the possibilities of change, or no change, and of more hot, or less hot, or of rain, or no rain, or of Britain turning into the Sahara by next weekend, or instead becoming a freezing cold Frostyworld ruled by a strange, glistening ice-queen – crucially, it all depends on the time of day you ask them, and whether or not they had asparagus the day before.

So who are we to believe? For a final word, I turned to the greatest climate change scientist of all, Dr David Viner, one-time senior research scientist at the climatic research unit of the University of East Anglia, who predicted in 2000 that, within a few years, winter snowfall would become "a very rare and exciting event".

However, he was trapped under a glacier in Stockport, so was unable to comment at the time the Telegraph went to press.

SOURCE




Climate Alarmism’s 10,000 Commandments

by PAUL DRIESSEN

The United States will "do more," before it's "too late" to prevent "dangerous" global warming, President Obama told Berliners last week. If Congress won't act, he will, by regulating carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, increasing subsidies and reduce environmental overview for wind and solar projects on federal lands, and issuing other rules that will adversely affect economic growth and job creation.

Indeed, his Environmental Protection Agency is already devising new rules that will sharply curtail carbon dioxide emissions, by regulating thousands of facilities that use hydrocarbon energy - and thus ultimately almost everything Americans make, grow, ship, eat and do.

However, the manmade global warming "disasters" exist only in computer models and assertions by scientists who are addicted to billions in government Climate Armageddon grants. Moreover, the "preventative measures" are far worse than the disasters EPA claims to be preventing.

Even the most diehard alarmists have finally recognized that average global temperatures have hardly budged since 1997, even as atmospheric levels of plant-fertilizing CO2 climbed steadily. For many areas, the past winter was among the coldest in decades; the USA and Britain just recorded one their coldest springs on record; and satellite data show that Earth has actually cooled slightly since 2002.

The frequency and severity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts are no different from observed trends and cycles over the last century. 2012 set records for the fewest strong tornadoes since 1954 and the number of years with no category 3 or higher hurricane making US landfall. (The vicious tornadoes of recent weeks underscore how quickly the weather can swing back to normal patterns.) Arctic sea ice is within a few percentage points of "normal" levels for the past fifty years, and the rate of sea level rise is not accelerating.

These facts completely contradict computer model predictions and alarmist claims. Moreover, as Climategate and numerous studies have shown, the "science" behind EPA's ruling that carbon dioxide "endangers" human health and welfare is conjectural, manufactured, manipulated and even fraudulent.

EPA is supposed to protect our environment, health and welfare. Instead, it "safeguards" us from exaggerated or illusory risks - by issuing mountains of costly, intrusive regulations that endanger our health, wellbeing and wildlife far more than any reasonably foreseeable effects from climate change.

This accumulation of anti-hydrocarbon restrictions and penalties is putting EPA in control of nearly every aspect of our lives. Fuel, compliance and business costs will soar. Companies will be forced to outsource work to other countries, reduce work forces, shift people to part-time status, or close their doors.

Poor and minority families will be unable to heat and cool their homes properly, pay their rent or mortgage, buy clothing and medicine, take vacations, pay their bills, give to charity, and save for college and retirement.

With twelve million Americans already out of work, and another eight million working multiple lower-paying, part-time jobs, EPA's global warming and 1,920 other rules over the past four years translate into unprecedented sleep deprivation, lower economic and educational status, and soaring anxiety and stress. That will mean greater risk of strokes and heart attacks; higher incidences of depression, alcohol, drug, spousal and child abuse; more suicides; and declining overall life expectancy.

EPA's new 54.5 mpg fuel efficiency standards will force more people into smaller, lighter, less safe cars - causing thousands of needless additional serious injuries and deaths every year - in the name of preventing illusory climate and oil and gas depletion crises.

Federal regulators use the same phony climate change and energy depletion arguments to justify letting wind turbine operators slaughter millions of birds and bats every year - including bald and golden eagles, hawks, condors and whooping cranes. They continue to promote and subsidize $50-per-gallon biofuels, to replace oil and natural gas that the world still has in abundance - thanks to new exploration, drilling and production technologies. This focus on biofuels also means more rainforests and other wildlife habitats are being cut down in the name of "renewable" energy.

EPA and President Obama never consider any of this, in calculating the supposed "benefits" of their onerous regulations. They refuse to recognize that their hysterical claims of climate cataclysms are increasingly indefensible. They ignore the damage that their heavy-handed rules impose on our health, welfare and environmental quality.

EPA finds, punishes and even targets anyone who violates any of its ten thousand commandments, even inadvertently. The agency's climate change actions, however, are not inadvertent. They are deliberate, and their effects are harmful and far reaching. They will affect every American and 100% of our economy.

And yet, these increasingly powerful bureaucrats - who seek and acquire ever more control over our lives - remain faceless, nameless, unelected and unaccountable. They operate largely behind closed doors, issuing regulations and arranging sweetheart "sue and settle" legal actions with radical environmentalist groups, to advance ideological agendas, without regard for their impacts on our lives, livelihoods, living standards, health, welfare and environment.

They know that, for them, there is rarely any real transparency, accountability or consequences - even for gross stupidity, major screw-ups, flagrant abuses or deliberate harm.

We need to save our environment from environmentalists and EPA - and safeguard our liberties, living standards and lives against the arrogance of too-powerful politicians and bureaucrats. How we achieve this, while protecting our lives and environment from real risks, is one of the greatest challenges we face.

SOURCE

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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 or here

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A fitting reputation for the UEA

UEA hosts the Climate Research Unit, where Phil Jones & Co hang out.  The CRU is notorious for producing much fiction about the climate.  A comparison of leading British universities mentions the UEA and says where its strengths lie:

For example, the University of East Anglia tends to drop in and out of the top 20 in terms of overall reputation, yet is considered the best university in the UK for Creative Writing.

SOURCE





European meteorological satellite shows global COOLING, 1982-2006

METEOSAT DERIVED PLANETARY TEMPERATURE TREND 1982-2006

Andries Rosema, Steven Foppes, Joost van der Woerd

EARS Earth Environment Monitoring Ltd, Delft, the Netherlands

Kanaalweg 1, 2628 EB Delft, the Netherlands, Email: info@ears.nl

ABSTRACT

24 year of Meteosat hourly thermal infrared data have been used to study planetary surface temperature change. Thermal infrared radiation in the 10.5-12.5mm spectral window is not affected by CO2 and only slightly by atmospheric water vapor. Satellite thermal infrared data have been converted to brightness temperatures as prescribed by Eumetsat. Hourly brightness temperature images were then composed to corresponding noon and midnight temperature data fields. The resulting data fields were cloud filtered using 10, 20 and 30 day maximum temperature substitution. Filtered data were subsequently averaged for two 10 yearly periods: 1986-1995 and 1996-2005. Finally the change in brightness temperature was determined by subtraction. In addition nine locations were selected and data series were extracted and studied for the period 1982-2006. Our observations point to a decrease in planetary temperature over almost the entire hemisphere, most likely due to an increase of cloudiness. Two small areas are found where a considerable temperature increase has occurred. They are explained in terms of major human interventions in the hydrological balance at the earth surface.

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT VOLUME 24 No.. 3 & 4 2013 (Not yet online)



Global warming has 'paused' because of natural causes but will continue to rise, scientists claim

Same old, same old claim that heat sinks when everywhere else it rises.  Furthermore, deep ocean temperatures are exceedingly stable, varying by as little as thousandths of one degree.  They are therefore the last place to have suddenly become significant heat stores

Global warming has 'paused' but this is not unexpected and temperatures will still continue to rise, climate scientists have claimed.

Heat going into the deep ocean is part of the reason global average surface temperatures have increased at a lower rate in the past 10 to 15 years than in previous decades, they explained.

Recent low solar activity and volcanic eruptions, which send particles into the atmosphere that reflect heat, have also contributed to a slowing in temperature rises, while natural climate variations also play a part.

But Met Office experts and climate scientists say global warming has not stopped but paused - with the average rate of warming just 0.04C per decade between 1998 and 2012, compared with 0.17C per decade from 1970-1998.

They say recent measurements of deep-ocean temperatures indicate heat is being absorbed at lower levels, which the researchers suggest could be due to a period of more circulation within the ocean, taking heat into the deep where it is 'hidden from view'.

The scientists added that periods of slow-down or 'pauses' in surface warming are not unusual in temperature records and are predicted in climate models, which suggests such periods could occur at least twice a century because of natural variation.

Computer models for how the climate could change have not predicted the current slow-down, although Dr Richard Allan of the University of Reading said long-term projections do show decades of slower warming but could not be expected to exactly match when they occur in real life.

Over a 50-year period, the world could expect to see one period of extra rapid temperature rises, Dr Allan said.

The temperatures seen in recent years fall within the range previously predicted, and if models for future rises take into account temperatures from the last 10 years, the most likely warming is reduced by 10 per cent, the experts said.

This would mean that the world would see rises of 2C above pre-industrial temperatures, beyond which the worst impacts of climate change are expected to occur, and only around five to 10 years later than currently predicted.

Professor Piers Forster, at the University of Leeds, said: 'If we do continue on this emissions trajectory we're currently on, we'll reach 2C in 2060 or so. I think it puts it back by five to 10 years.'

Dr Peter Stott, of the Met Office Hadley Centre, said: 'We expect to get periods of slower warming. This is absolutely what we expect.  'Global temperatures remain high: 12 out of the 14 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000.'

The evidence of human influence on the climate has become stronger, including melting Arctic sea ice and reduced northern hemisphere snow cover, he said.

SOURCE  




97 per cent of climate activists in the pay of Big Oil shock!

By James Delingpole

Unless you're a reader of the Guardian Environment's recently added section "Sacrifice your children to Mother Gaia. It's the only way!", you'll probably never have heard of the man who co-edits it, Dana Nuccitelli. But you'll certainly be familiar with his most famous bogus statistical artefact: the one he created with fellow climate alarmist John Cook to prove that 97 per cent of climate scientists really DO believe in global warming.

The claim has been roundly debunked. Apart from the problems with its statistical methodology, its findings are essentially meaningless. As Ben Pile points out in this characteristically measured, thoughtful piece,

    "Nuccitelli’s survey results are either the result of a comprehensive failure to understand the climate debate, or an attempt to divide it in such a way as to frame the result for political ends."

Indeed, adds Pile, they represent:  "a cartoonish polarisation of positions within the climate debate."

How so? Well, as (climate sceptical) Bishop Hill once asked on Twitter: "Isn't everyone in the 97 per cent? I am." When the question was repeated at the Bishop's website by Met Office's Richard Betts, almost all those present agreed that they were. I would have done too, depending, of course, on precisely how you interpret the "consensus position" that "humans are causing global warming."

Well of course they are. Even if it's only down to the Urban Heat Island effect or the methane from beef cattle, humans almost certainly have an influence on climate. But so what? It always astonishes me when I see climate alarmists – even nice, well-meaning ones like Richard Betts – get all excited about this, as if somehow it represents a sudden concession by sceptics to the cause of warmism.

If the alarmists spent any time paying attention to Watts Up With That, Bishop Hill or any of the myriad other sceptical websites out there, they would realise that this is what we've always thought. Our beef with the alarmists is not over the issue "Do humans contribute to climate change?" It's over "Do humans significantly contribute to climate chnage?" "Is there any evidence that this climate change is catastrophic or unprecedented?" "Do we need to do anything about it?" "Can we do anything about it?" "And are we sure that the cures currently being proposed aren't worse than the problem they're supposed to solve?"

But see, here we go again: here I am getting bogged down in a tedious and irrelevant non-argument of the kind the Warmists are always setting up in order to distract lay readers from more pertinent issues: like the fact that wind farms are just crap; that the evidence for catastrophic man-made global warming just hasn't materialised; that the polar bears aren't endangered; and so on.

Props to Dana Nuccitelli – he is, like his fellow climate activist Bob Ward – an absolute master of this straw man distraction technique. The term for it is "Clown Dancing" and Nuccitelli is the veritable Coco-and-Ronald-McDonald-in-a-sticky-embrace-with-Nureyev of the coulroterpsichorean art.

Anyway, all this is by the by. Another of the techniques used by Nuccitelli and his ilk is the "funded by Big Oil" meme. This is the silly notion, popularised by the likes of Al Gore and Michael Mann, that the main reason we climate sceptics say the pesky sceptical things we do is because we're paid to say so by various oil interests. Here is Nuccitelli in his Guardian column only last week on sceptical stalwart Pat Michaels:   "Michaels has admitted that his funding comes heavily from the fossil fuel industry"

(Something which, incidentally, Michaels denies. Since August 1 all of his salary has been paid by the Cato Institute. So, add "great fact-checking" to Dana's list of non-skills).

In truth, the exact opposite is more commonly the case. Few corporate interests are quite so heavily in bed with Big Green as Big Oil – as you'll shortly be seeing when I do a number on Shell and its highly dubious behaviour re the UK shale gas industry – and it seems the hypocritical and disingenuous clown-dancer extraordinaire Nuccitelli is no exception.

He has tried to keep it quiet. But there's no – what's the word? Oh yeah…. – denying it: green activist Dana Nuccitelli is in the pay of Big Oil.

SOURCE  





How to impress like Clive Hamilton

Tony Thomas on phony Greenie credentials

A bit of a loser myself, I like perving on the credentials of my betters. For example, I noticed last year that the official biography of the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr Rajendra Pachauri, said that he “obtained...a Ph.D. in industrial engineering and a Ph.D. in economics.”

Wow, I thought, not one but two Ph.Ds, both from North Carolina State University, and both in 1974! I emailed the university to check, and got a prompt reply saying, “Yes, he earned two Ph.D’s.” Silly me, to have doubted it.

But 24 hours later, I got a follow-up from the uni press officer, obviously a decent chap, saying that he had checked more closely and his first reply was wrong . In fact Dr Pachauri was awarded only one Ph.D., for combined study in industrial engineering and economics, he said.

I alerted the IPCC about its misleading claim that Pachauri earned two Ph.D’s but the IPCC has, 18 months later, still not got around to correcting it. Busy people, I guess.

My next foray into credentialism involved everyone’s favorite guru, Dr Clive Hamilton AM FRSA.

Dr Clive AM FRSA is an Australian public intellectual, according to his own website and a host of other sources, including his publisher Allen & Unwin.

As a global warming alarmist, he is part of the Weber-barbecue-like tripod of Australian public intellectuals, the other two kettle legs being of course Dr Tim Flannery and Professor Robert Manne. I wondered, re Clive, who  ‘public intellectuals’ were. I guess Jean Paul Sartre’s definition, “the moral conscience of their age” seems the best fit. After all, Clive stood for the Greens in 2009 and his “AM” [Medal of the Order of Australia] is a clear-cut 2009 honor for his service to the Left on climate-change policy, sustainability and societal trends.

But what’s with that “FRSA”? It looks a bit like that top science gong, “Fellow of the Royal Society” but actually stands for “Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts”, a different UK body. Being an FRSA seems like something special, since it always seems to be tagged to Clive’s profiles.

However, FRSA is a title you can actually buy on-line. About 27,000 people have done this, the current fee being $A123 as a one-off and $A255 a year.

Last March I put in a test application for an FRSA, for convenience using the name Kim Jong Un, of Pyongyang. The RSA website promised a confirmation within 12 working days.

I got emailed back a form from a Michael Ambjorn, Head of Fellowship at the RSA London headquarters, saying “Although we don’t contact all referees, some may be contacted for a character reference request.” I nominated Clive, his bestie Robert Manne and  Ray Finkelstein QC, without knowing of course whether they would support or criticise Mr Kim’s application. “Watch this space”, I told Quadrant Online readers.

“So then what happened?” I hear you cry.  I’m afraid I baulked at the first hurdle, which was remitting the required $378 (Quadrant Online tends to be dismissive of its contributors’ expense claims).

The RSA however remained keen to get the money, and after a pause, I got a pleading letter from its Fellowship Development Coordinator Mark Hall:

“Dear Mr Jong Un,

We noted that you downloaded an application form to become a Fellow of the RSA, and I am just following up to find out if there is anything we can do to help you with your application.

I have included a reminder about the RSA below, but please do not hesitate to contact me to discuss Fellowship in more detail... "

There followed some hard-sell for Mr Jong Un about the advantages of meeting the other 27,000 Fellows, sharing skills for charity, generating ideas “that aim to have a positive social impact”, and so on. Again, I baulked at remitting the $378.

Then  I got a further RSA begging letter for Mr Jong Un, “just following up”, as Mark Hall put it. He invited Mr Jong Un to connect with recent Fellows such as Antoinette Saxer FRSA, who is “currently working on the upcoming Good Fashion Show which focuses on eco-ethical and responsible fashion. She talks about why eco-fashion inspires her and what she would like to connect to other Fellows.”

Well, OK, Mr Jong Un is a bit of a fashion icon with his funky, centre-parted hair-do, and he did star in a production of Grease when a teen at Berne International School.  He would doubtless appreciate my signing him up as a FRSA, but I felt guilty about further wasting Mark Hall’s time. I sent Mark a reply:

“Hi, Mark,

Thanks for your reminder. I have decided not to join your RSA after all as I am very busy smiting the double-dealing imperialist  running-dog lackeys in the United States.

Cheers

Kim Jong-un, Dear Leader of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea.”

As Hamlet put it, the rest was silence.

SOURCE





Britain Scaling Back Wind Power As Shale Revolution Shakes Green Energy Policy

Tim Webb

Gas prices in Britain could halve after 2030 because of the global shale gas revolution, according to a report that is at odds with the latest government forecasts.

Surging shale gas production in the United States and China and lower oil prices mean that gas prices will fall from nearly 70p a therm today to 60p by the end of the decade and then rise gently, according to a report by Navigant.

The consultancy was commissioned by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to study the impact that booming global unconventional gas production will have on UK prices over the next 20 years.

Its findings contrast with DECC forecasts, also published yesterday, in which prices will rise to 73½p over the same period. Under Navigant’s best-case scenario, in which Britain and other parts of Europe become leading shale gas producers after 2020, gas prices would fall to 50p by 2030 and to 35p soon thereafter.

Analysts said that the findings further undermine the Government’s economic justification for building expensive wind farms and nuclear reactors, which is based on an assumption that fossil fuel prices will keep rising so consumers will eventually save money.

DECC’s publication of the forecasts coincided with additional details on how it plans to subsidise a new wave of low-carbon forms of electricity generation to meet ambitious environmental targets and keep the lights on.

Ministers have argued that despite the high upfront cost of building nuclear reactors and wind farms, they will work out cheaper in the long run compared with gas because they believe that prices will rise.

But if Navigant is correct and prices fall, consumers will not fully benefit through cheaper energy bills because under the Government’s plans gas plants will mainly be used as back-up for wind farms when the wind does not blow.

Peter Atherton, a Liberum Capital analyst, said that the Government had failed to take into account properly the impact of the shale oil and gas phenomena of the past few years.

“The Government’s economic case for decarbonising has not changed,” he said. “It’s based on the premise that fossil fuels are becoming increasingly scarce and will push up prices. This argument now looks perilously weak.

“The chance of it not being the case has maybe gone up from 20 per cent to 50 or 60 per cent because of the impact of shale oil and gas. But despite this development, the policy has not changed one iota.”

A DECC spokesman stuck by the Government’s official forecasts, pointing out that its scenario for gas prices is as low as 42.2p by the next decade. “Forecasting gas prices is extremely challenging,” he said. “Most analysts say that gas prices will remain firm over the long term.”

The Government also appeared to scale back its offshore wind programme, which spooked the industry. Last month officials forecast that Britain’s capacity of 3.3 gigawatts could increase to between 12GW and 16GW by the end of the decade. But under one scenario published yesterday, only 9GW would be in operation by the end of 2030.

Even under a central scenario, only 18GW would be installed by then, suggesting that the Government believes the construction of new offshore wind farms will slow markedly in the next decade.

Maf Smith, deputy chief executive of RenewableUK, an energy trade association, warned: “The Government risks undermining confidence by scaling back on its ambitions. The scenarios set out today show that Government is still in mixed minds about the role of renewables.”

SOURCE  

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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.  

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