The lying never stops.  Now krill are being used to push Warmist nonsense

If you read carefully below, you will see that it's only warming in the Western Antarctic that is at issue.  So if the warming is due to climate change why is the much greater bulk of the rest of Antarctica remaining stable and even gaining glacial mass?  Easy.  The Western Antarctic warming is NOT due to climate change.  It is now well-known that there is extensive vulcanism at both poles -- localized in the South mainly in the Western Antarctic. It is subsurface volcanoes that are causing the localised warming of the Western Antarctic, not CO2 emissions

'Krill is the power lunch of the Antarctic': But now the decline in numbers of the tiny crustaceans caused by climate change is killing penguins

Penguins, seals and whales in the Southern Ocean are being threatened by a declining krill population caused by climate change and melting Antarctic sea ice.

The inch-long crustaceans are considered the 'basis' of the Antarctic food chain and use sea ice to protect themselves and feed from the algae that grows from it.

Penguin-watchers say the krill are getting scarcer in the western Antarctic peninsula, under threat from climate change and fishing

The inch-long crustaceans are considered the 'basis' of the Antarctic food chain and use sea ice to protect themselves and feed from the algae that grows from it

'Krill is the power lunch of the Antarctic. It's a keystone species for everybody,' group leader Ron Naveen said.

Sea temperatures on the peninsula have risen by three degrees in the past 50 years, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature said the threat of declining krill populations was significant and claims 300,000 tons of krill is caught annually and used for farmed fish and 'Omega 3' oil supplements.

However, Norwegian fishing company Aker BioMarine said the amount of krill caught by humans is comparatively small, with just 0.5 per cent of the 60 million tons eaten each year by sea creatures.

SOURCE




Huge coral reef discovered at Amazon river mouth



More evidence of how poorly understood coral reefs are.  Warmists are dogmatic that recent bleaching on the Northern part of Australia's GBR is due to global warming but who knows? This recent discovery was apparently a huge surprise.  There were not supposed to be corals in that location.  So it shows how little we actually know about how corals work

What it does show is that corals are highly adaptable and can survive a lot of challenges.  It might also be noted that there are benthic corals in Icelandic waters that get no sunlight at all.  They have become filter feeders.  Some of the South American corals may be that too

Yup. Science is settled.

Scientists astonished to find 600-mile long reef under the muddy water in a site already marked for oil exploration
Scientists were ‘flabbergasted’ to discover the Amazon reef as coral usually thrives in clear, sunlit tropical waters.
A huge 3,600 sq mile (9,300 sq km) coral reef system has been found below the muddy waters off the mouth of the river Amazon, astonishing scientists, governments and oil companies who have started to explore on top of it.

The existence of the 600-mile long reef, which ranges from about 30-120m deep and stretches from French Guiana to Brazil’s Maranhão state, was not suspected because many of the world’s great rivers produce major gaps in reef systems where no corals grow.

In addition, there was little previous evidence because corals mostly thrive in clear, sunlit, salt water, and the equatorial waters near the mouth of the Amazon are some of the muddiest in the world, with vast quantities of sediment washed thousands of miles down the river and swept hundreds of miles out to sea.
But the reef appears to be thriving below the freshwater “plume”, or outflow, of the Amazon. Compared to many other reefs, the scientists say in a paper in Science Advances on Friday, it is is relatively “impoverished”. Nevertheless, they found over 60 species of sponges, 73 species of fish, spiny lobsters, stars and much other reef life.

SOURCE  





How Manitoba’s ‘green’ power dream became a nightmare of runaway costs

Since the early 2000s, Manitoba’s NDP government has committed the province’s power system to expand and profit from the fight against global warming. With the federal government now developing a national energy plan with the same objectives — and Manitoba’s NDP fighting for re-election on Tuesday — there’s no better time to take stock of the provincial government’s efforts over the last 15 years.

And the results so far are clear: power sold at a loss to U.S. buyers, calls for federal subsidies, new debts and losses for Manitoba Hydro, a less-diversified power supply, and expensive rate hikes forecast to keep rising for the next 20 years. The few winners have been contractors and construction unions and some northern First Nations.

It started with an experiment to replace the fossil-fuel-power that back-up Manitoba’s hydro-electricity with wind power in the province’s gusty south. After that ended up too costly, the government turned its attention to the Far North.

Its first big green initiative there was the 200-megawatt Wuskwatim dam built on the Burntwood Diversion near Thompson. Approved in 2004, the project was expected to cost $900 million and rake in profits from exported power to the U.S. When it was finished eight years later, the capital cost including necessary transmission, came in at $2 billion. After all that, the cost of generating and conveying power came in at roughly 13 cents per kilowatt-hour, but buyers are now willing to pay only around three cents per kilowatt-hour.

The rise of fracking and the collapse in natural gas and spot electricity prices, combined with American solar and wind subsidies and better U.S. energy efficiency all killed any hopes for the “green premium” that Manitoba had banked its renewable-power plan on. And yet Wuskwatim’s failure would not deter the NDP government from pursuing yet more costly additional northern hydro-electric and transmission projects.

After a review and a recommendation from Manitoba’s Public Utilities Board, the government did at least suspend immediate plans for the massive northern hydro dam, Conawapa, planned with about seven times the capacity of Wuskwatim. But it continues to barge ahead with the ongoing construction of the 695-megawatt Keeyask dam, and its massive new meandering transmission line, which runs through valuable farmland. The dam is currently estimated to cost $6.5 billion; the transmission line another $4.6 billion. Given recent experience, it’s possible they could end up costing almost twice as much.

And the government…will see a windfall from the levies it imposes on the utility, leaving ratepayers with decades of higher bills to cover those costs.

Some First Nations have done well thanks to these projects. To win their backing, the government gave them hundreds of millions of dollars in pre-construction inducements, along with one-third equity interests in Wuskwatim and Keeyask, acquired through no-risk loans from Manitoba Hydro.

And the government, as Manitoba Hydro’s sole shareholder, will see a windfall from the levies it imposes on the utility, leaving ratepayers with decades of higher bills to cover those costs. The Public Utilities Board’s review revealed that the provincial government could expect at least $25 to $30 billion of additional levies over the next five decades if these, and various other parts of Manitoba Hydro’s expansion plans all go ahead. The provincial levies include capital taxes, debt-guarantee fees, and water rentals, in addition to normal payroll and income taxes on contractors and Hydro employees and provincial sales taxes levied on consumer and business bills.

But for Manitobans themselves, the green future is looking dark. Thirty per cent of provincial households are lower income and the province has seen no major new industry spring up in 15 years. Meanwhile, there is downward pressure on domestic demand due to rising prices; export prices and demand are in the doldrums; and Manitoba Hydro is already sitting on 30 per cent more generation and transmission capacity than the province’s power demands actually require.

Back when oil was over $100 a barrel, then Manitoba NDP Premier Gary Doer frequently asserted that hydro-generated electricity was Manitoba’s oil. His government crowed about the “Manitoba Advantage” of cheap, green hydro power. Even as export prices and volumes fell, his successor, Greg Selinger, ignored the changing economics and continued to accept massive over-budget construction costs. That “advantage” is now fading fast, while Manitoba Hydro’s debt becomes instead an albatross around the province’s financial neck.

SOURCE




Senators Target U.S. Funding for Kerry’s Prized UN Climate Change Programs

Taking aim at one of Secretary of State John Kerry’s most cherished causes, a group of Republican senators is warning him that the administration will violate U.S. law if it does not cut off funding to the U.N.’s climate change agency and affiliated entities in response to its recent admission of the “State of Palestine.”

In a letter to Kerry, 28 senators pointed out that the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) decision to admit the Palestinians should trigger a funding cutoff in line with a 1994 law.

That’s what the administration – reluctantly – did in 2011 when the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization became the first U.N. agency to admit the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) as a member. The administration has been trying since then to obtain congressional waiver authority to enable it to restore funding to UNESCO, without success.

This time the target is bigger – and even closer to Kerry’s heart. Not only the UNFCCC is in the Republican senators’ crosshairs, but also the affiliated Green Climate Fund (GCF), whose aim is to help developing countries reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to various phenomena blamed on climate change.

While the administration has requested $13 million for the UNFCCC in fiscal year 2017, President Obama has pledged $3 billion to the GCF over four years. The first $500 million of that pledged amount was transferred on March 7.

Many Republican lawmakers also oppose the administration’s domestic and international actions on climate change, including its efforts to circumvent Congress in committing the U.S. to the Paris agreement.

When the administration transferred the first $500 million instalment of the promised $3 billion to the GCF last month, Barrasso questioned how what he called the “handout to foreign bureaucrats” could be justified in the current economic climate.

Challenging a State Department official during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Barrasso also noted that Congress had not authorized or appropriated any funding for the GCF, and charged that the payment violates legislation which prohibits federal agencies from spending federal funds in advance or in excess of an appropriation.

Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom said in response the department had “reviewed our authorities and made a determination that we can make this payment to the Green Climate Fund.”

Kerry, who has championed the climate change issue for decades, said after the Paris accord was struck that he did not believe Americans would ever elect as president a candidate who did not support the international climate change effort.

“I don’t think they’re going to accept as a genuine leader someone who doesn’t understand the science of climate change and isn’t willing to do something about it,” he said.

SOURCE




Scientists Build a Better Incandescent Light Bulb… Six Years After Last US Factory Closes

The bureaucratic way to save power is about to be superseded by a better method -- a technological innovation

Six years after the last incandescent light bulb factory in the U.S. shut down due to strict new federal energy conservation standards, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have come up with a technological breakthrough that could make incandescent bulbs twice as energy-efficient as their replacements.

MIT researchers discovered that by wrapping the filament of an incandescent bulb with a “photonic crystal,” they could “recycle” the energy that was typically lost as heat to create more light.

The new technique “makes a dramatic difference in how efficiently the system converts electricity into light,” said the research team led by MIT professors Marin Soljačić, John Joannopoulos and Gang Chen.

Their results were published online in the January edition of the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

“The heat just keeps bouncing back in toward the filament until it finally ends up as visible light,” MIT post-doctoral researcher Ognjen Ilic explained. “It reduces the energy that would otherwise be wasted.”

In 2007, Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act, which set new energy conservation standards for lighting fixtures and other products by 2014 in order to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

The “new light bulb law”, as it was called, required “25 percent greater efficiency for household light bulbs that have traditionally used between 40 and 100 watts of electricity,” according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The stringent new standards effectively prohibited the manufacture of most ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the U.S. As a result, GE shuttered the last domestic incandescent light bulb factory in the nation in 2010, laying off 200 workers in Winchester, Virginia.

Since then, incandescent bulbs have been largely replaced with more energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) and light-emitting diode (LED) lamps. In February, GE announced that due to poor sales, it would no longer make or sell CFLs – which contain mercury - in the U.S., and will focus on the more expensive, but longer lasting LEDs instead.

But a new generation of incandescent bulbs could be twice as energy efficient as LEDs without the drawbacks, including higher initial cost and “inconsistent” white light.

“Whereas the luminous efficiency of conventional incandescent lights is between 2 and 3 percent, that of fluorescents (including CFLs) is between 7 and 15 percent, and that of most commercial LEDs between 5 and 20 percent, the new two-stage incandescents could reach efficiencies as high as 40 percent,” according to a press release from MIT.

The MIT researchers noted that the greater increase in energy efficiency also comes with “exceptional reproduction of colours and scalable power.”

In February, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) introduced the Energy Efficiency Free Market Act of 2016 (HR 4504), which would prohibit states and federal agencies from adopting “any requirement to comply with a standard for energy conservation or water efficiency with respect to a product.”

“This legislation eliminates the overreaching arm of the federal government that continues to force itself into the household of the American consumer,” Burgess said. “When the market drives the standard, there’s no limit to how rapidly manufacturers can respond when consumers demand more efficient and better-made products.”

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), commercial and residential users in the U.S. used 412 billion kilowatthours of electricity for lighting in 2014. Lighting accounted for 15 percent of their total electricity use.

SOURCE





Energy Sec.: ‘Legislative, Economy-Wide Approach’ Needed To Reduce CO2

Fairly cautious stuff.  The Greenies will not be much pleased

U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz says he believes the U.S. can achieve it’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 17% by 2025, but will need “more arrows in the quiver” and “will require a legislative, economy-wide approach” in the future.

Moniz made the comments at the Christian Science Monitor Breakfast in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. There he discussed the 2005 U.N. international climate change agreement and what the U.S. will have to do to meet it’s goals in greenhouse gas reduction of roughly 27% below 2005 levels.

“I think we have the tools to meet something like a 2025 goal,” Moniz said. “But again the very deep de-carbonization is going to require more arrows in the quiver and ultimately, I believe, will require a legislative economy-wide approach.”

Moniz was asked if he thought the risks of failing to reach the 2025 greenhouse gas emission goals were political or technical.

“I think we have the technologies in hand combined with good policy, but policy I’m not talking now about - what I think we eventually need, which will be an economy-wide approach to carbon reductions and a legislative approach,” Moniz said.

“But I mean policies like, continuing to promulgate efficiency standards whether it’s for appliances, equipment or vehicles, buildings – etcetera. Things of that type, I think we have the tools that we need to meet something like the 2025 goal.”

SOURCE

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"Renewables" are alone enough?

The bright-eyed Warmist guy below -- Mark Diesendorf  -- is triumphant in thinking that he has shown that there is no need for hydrocarbon-fuelled baseload power stations. What he  argues below (in summary) has some logic in that although renewable power sources have very uneven availability by themselves, a whole network of renewable sources is more reliable. So if everything is interconnected, you might be able to get power from solar cells when the wind isn't blowing and vice versa.  Because it does happen that all renewable sources are not always  available in the quantities demanded, he does however concede that reliance on other sources -- such as gas turbines -- would sometimes be required.

Clearly, however, such a system would require a lot of very tricky management and good luck for there always be some power source available.  And lot more transmission lines -- which are both costly and eyesores -- would be required to get the geographical spead needed to overcome the localism of things like clouds and wind.  The wind can be blowing in one place and not in another place nearby, for instance.  So to have a useful spread of inputs you would need generators scattered far and wide -- and all sorts of new and expensive transmission lines from them to a central core or elsewhere. And the NIMBYs would block you at every step along the way when you try to build those transmission lines.

And the backup gas-powered generators needed to fill in when nature is unobliging would have to be very powerful.  On those occasions at night when the wind isn't blowing, the gas generators would have to be capable of assuming the whole load.  So in the end you still end up with huge hydrocarbon-powered generators.  So where is the benefit?  A benefit to Warmist ideology only, it seems. You would still have to double up your power generating capacity.

And "renewable" power sources require much larger capital investment per megawatt so you are looking at spending something like three times what you need to in order to get an acceptable electricity service.  But money seems to grow on trees in the Greenie imagination so I suppose they dismiss that with a wave of their hands

I suppose I should briefly mention the main two other sources of "renewable" power -- solar furnaces and hydro-electricity.

Solar furnaces are easy. They do not remotely live up to their promises and the two big ones -- Ivanpah in California and Abengoa in Spain -- have just been hit by huge cost over-runs. Obama may bail out Ivanpah but it would just be pouring money down a hole if he did. Its running costs far exceed what it can get for its power. And the Spanish government will probably just have to switch their installation off -- if they have not done so already.

And building new hydroelectric installations is a laugh.  They all require big DAMS -- and, in their strange superstitious way, there is nothing a Greenie hates more than a dam.

So I think we have to conclude that Mr Diesendorf is up the creek in a barbed-wire canoe without a paddle -- as Barry Humphries puts it


The assumption that baseload power stations are necessary to provide a reliable supply of grid electricity has been disproven by both practical experience in electricity grids with high contributions from renewable energy, and by hourly computer simulations.

In 2014 the state of South Australia had 39% of annual electricity consumption from renewable energy (33% wind + 6% solar) and, as a result, the state’s base-load coal-fired power stations are being shut down as redundant. For several periods the whole state system has operated reliably on a combination of renewables and gas with only small imports from the neighbouring state of Victoria.

The north German states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Holstein are already operating on 100% net renewable energy, mostly wind. The ‘net’ indicates trading with each other and their neighbours. They do not rely on baseload power stations.

A host of studies agree: baseload power stations are not needed

“That’s cheating”, nuclear proponents may reply. “They are relying on power imported by transmission lines from baseload power stations elsewhere.” Well, actually the imports from baseload power stations are small.

For countries that are completely isolated (e.g. Australia) or almost isolated (e.g. the USA) from their neighbours, hourly computer simulations of the operation of the electricity supply-demand system, based on commercially available renewable energy sources scaled up to 80-100% annual contributions, confirm the practical experience.

In the USA a major computer simulation by a large team of scientists and engineers found that 80-90% renewable electricity is technically feasible and reliable (They didn’t examine 100%.) The 2012 report, Renewable Electricity Futures Study. Vol.1. Technical report TP-6A20-A52409-1 was published by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The simulation balances supply and demand each hour.

The report finds that “renewable electricity generation from technologies that are commercially available today, in combination with a more flexible electric system, is more than adequate to supply 80% of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050 while meeting electricity demand on an hourly basis in every region of the United States.”

Similar results have been obtained from hourly simulation modeling of the Australian National Electricity Market with 100% renewable energy (published by Ben Elliston, Iain MacGill and I in 2013 and 2014) based on commercially available technologies and real data on electricity demand, wind and solar energy. There are no baseload power stations in the Australian model and only a relatively small amount of storage. Recent simulations, which have yet to be published, span eight years of hourly data.

These, together with studies from Europe, find that baseload power stations are unnecessary to meet standard reliability criteria for the whole supply-demand system, such as loss-of-load probability or annual energy shortfall.

Furthermore, they find that reliability can be maintained even when variable renewable energy sources, wind and solar PV, provide major contributions to annual electricity generation, up to 70% in Australia. How is this possible?

Fluctuations balanced by flexible power stations

First, the fluctuations in variable wind and solar PV are balanced by flexible renewable energy sources that are dispatchable, i.e. can supply power on demand. These are hydro with dams, Open Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGTs) and concentrated solar thermal power (CST) with thermal storage, as illustrated in

Incidentally the gas turbines can themselves be fuelled by ‘green gas’, for example from composting municipal and agricultural wastes, or produced from surpluses of renewable electricity. More on this below …

Second, drawing on diverse renewable energy sources, with different statistical properties, provides reliability. This means relying on multiple technologies and spreading out wind and solar PV farms geographically to reduce fluctuations in their total output. This further reduces the already small contribution from gas turbines to just a few percent of annual electricity generation.

Third, new transmission lines may be needed to achieve wide geographic distribution of renewable energy sources, and to multiply the diversity of renewable energy sources feeding into the grid. For example, an important proposed link is between the high wind regions in north Germany and the low wind, limited solar regions in south Germany. Texas, with its huge wind resource, needs greater connectivity with its neighbouring US states.

Fourth, introducing ‘smart demand management’ to shave the peaks in electricity demand and to manage periods of low electricity supply, can further increase reliability. This can be assisted with smart meters and switches controlled by both electricity suppliers and consumers, and programmed by consumers to switch off certain circuits (e.g. air conditioning, water heating, aluminium smelting) for short periods when demand on the grid is high and/or supply is low.

As summarized by the NREL study: “RE (Renewable Energy) Futures finds that increased electricity system flexibility, needed to enable electricity supply-demand balance with high levels of renewable generation, can come from a portfolio of supply- and demand-side options, including flexible conventional generation, grid storage, new transmission, more responsive loads, and changes in power system operations.”

A recent study by Mark Jacobson and colleagues went well beyond the above studies. It showed that all energy use in the USA, including transport and heat, could be supplied by renewable electricity. The computer simulation used synthetic data on electricity demand, wind and sunshine taken every 30 seconds over a period of six years.

Storage or ‘windgas’ could also manage fluctuations

The above ‘flexible’ approach may not be economically optimal for the UK and other countries with excellent wind resource but limited solar resource. Another solution to managing fluctuations in wind and solar is more storage, e.g. as batteries or pumped hydro or compressed air.

A further alternative is the ‘windgas’ scenario recently advocated by Energy Brainpool as a greener and lower cost alternative to the UK’s Hinkley C nuclear project. The idea is to use excess wind energy to produce hydrogen gas by electrolysing water and then convert the hydrogen to methane that fuels combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power stations.

In fact, not all the hydrogen needs to be converted into methane, and it’s more efficient to keep some of it as hydrogen, a useful fuel in its own right. Another option is to use the hydrogen to make ammonia (NH3) which can both be used as a fuel, and as a feedstock for the fertiliser industry, displacing coal or natural gas.

In Brainpool’s scenario, the system is used to replicate the power output of the 3.2GW Hinkley C nuclear power station, and shows it can be done at a lower cost. But in fact, it gets much better than that:

    as each wind turbine, CCGT, gas storage unit and ‘power to gas’ facility is completed, its contribution begins immediately, with no need for the whole system to be built out;

    the system would in practice be used to provide, not baseload power, but flexible power to meet actual demand, and so would be much more valuable;

    as solar power gets cheaper, it will integrate with the system and further increase resilience and reduce cost;

    the whole system creates grid stability and cannot drop out all at once like a nuclear plant, producing negative ‘integration costs’.

But in all the flexible, renewables-based approaches set out above, conventional baseload power stations are unnecessary. In the words of former Australian Greens’ Senator Christine Milne: “We are now in the midst of a fight between the past and the future”.

The refutation of the baseload fairy tale and other myths falsely denigrating renewable energy are a key part of that struggle.

SOURCE





FactCheck.org cites Bill Nye’s fake degrees to prove he’s a scientist

Because there are no other more important issues to fact check, the folks over at FactCheck.org decided to investigate Sarah Palin’s claim that she’s “as much a scientist” as the star of the children’s television show, “Bill Nye the Science Guy.”

Of course they found in Nye’s favor:

But check this out. To help prove that Nye is a real scientist, they cited his honorary degrees. You know, degrees that are actually awards and not really degrees at all:

Nye has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Cornell. He also has six honorary doctorate degrees, including Ph.D.s in science from Goucher College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Sorry, guys, but that’s not how it works. Why not cite any of Nye’s numerous peer-reviewed papers instead?

Oh, that’s right … because he has none. From The Federalist:

It does not appear that Nye has published a single paper in a peer-reviewed journal of any kind; his chief scientific exploits of the past 20 years or so appear to be tinkering with sundials and making public speaking appearances to talk about how great science is.

His most recent high-profile contribution to “science” was to publicly debate a creationist over whether the Earth is 6,000 years old—a functionally useless endeavor, though I’m sure it made for a great Twitter hashtag.

Bill Nye: STILL not a scientist.

SOURCE





Earth Day — Signing the Paris Climate Agreement

(Originally posted Apr. 22, 2016)

For this year’s rendition of Earth Day, the stakes couldn’t be higher. More than 130 nations will gather to formally sign the Paris Climate Agreement at the United Nations in New York. Nothing could better signify Earth Day than a global gaggle of government leaders burning fossil fuels on their way to forcing us to spend a lot of green to preserve a little green, all while expanding their control over our lives.

While Congress has not ratified the agreement — nor are there any plans to — the Obama administration argues that its own assent is all that is necessary. Once 55 or more nations that represent 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions sign, the Paris accord can become effective as early as November 2017. The United States and China, which has also pledged to sign, together make up 38% of emissions. Meanwhile, a number of smaller nations are willing to sign in the hope of becoming beneficiaries of the inevitable wealth transfer the UN is sure to facilitate.

We’ve talked about the racket known as Earth Day many times on these pages, but climate alarmists are now shrieking that 2016 will be the warmest year on record, and that we have to DO SOMETHING before the global average temperature rises more than two degrees Celsius from pre-industrial values. “We are at a critical juncture when it comes to preserving our climate,” warned Michael Mann, the “climate researcher” who’s best known for the discredited “hockey stick” graph of global temperatures over the centuries, and for his omission of relevant data that failed to support his theory.

Unfortunately, no one has conclusively proven that our current climate is the optimal or “normal” one, either. Did you know, for example, as “skeptical environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg points out, that about 0.5% of all deaths are heat-related, while more than 7% are cold-related?

It’s worth noting too that climate alarmists aren’t the only ones predicting a record warm year. Climate “deniers” like meteorologist Joe Bastardi have been forecasting higher temperatures this year because of weather patterns.

Despite all that, Barack Obama is plunging head-first into the Paris agreement as a continuation of his quest to wipe out the coal industry through power plant regulations and keeping other abundant energy sources off limits.

Yet not only is there a cost in jobs lost in the energy sector, but also a real increase in what’s known as “green energy poverty,” an economic condition where families spend more than 10% of their income on heating and other domestic energy costs. While the relatively low price of natural gas helps keep heating costs down, government subsidies and outright mandates for “renewable energy,” such as wind and solar power, bend the cost curve upward — sort of like a hockey stick.

Yet a change in administration, such as one to Ted Cruz, or, to a lesser extent, Donald Trump, will provide little relief from the Paris provisions. Buried in the Paris Climate Agreement is language preventing any nation from withdrawing within the first three years after it takes effect, with a further cooling-off period of one year. In essence, given a possible effective date of November 2017, the next president is stuck with this agreement. One silver lining is that there is little in the way of strict enforcement, as that would make the agreement a treaty requiring Senate ratification, something Obama scrupulously sought to avoid.

So let’s recap: Today we celebrate a completely fabricated holiday (which, no small irony, occurs on the anniversary of Vladimir Lenin’s birth) by signing an agreement of dubious legality and limited enforcement mechanisms in order for do-gooders to try to solve a problem that mankind has little, if anything, to do with. Sounds like a perfect example of liberalism to us. (Read more about the Left’s “Real ‘Climate Change’ Agenda.”)

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Obama’s Attack on Oil and Gas

How do you cap an oil gusher? If you were a wildcatter in East Texas during the 1930s, you would fashion a rig using any manner of tools available to contain the gooey liquid until you could profitably deliver it to energy-thirsty consumers. If you were President Obama, however, you might focus on one particular method: plugging up the wild well with the latest edition of the Federal Code of Regulation and hope that consumers didn’t notice at the gas pump. According to Independent Institute Senior Fellow William F. Shughart II, this is pretty much what the White House has done by enacting regulations that erode the benefits consumers would otherwise derive from the recent energy boom.

“The administration has zeroed in on the [oil and gas] industry with new rules on hydraulic fracturing, natural gas flaring, and methane emissions, to name but a few,” Shughart writes in American Thinker. Toss in the president’s nixing of the Keystone XL pipeline and moratorium on energy exploration in the Arctic and Atlantic coastal waters, and you have ample evidence that President Obama dislikes fossil fuels so much that he’s willing to inflict significant harm on the industry. Now the president is proposing to raise taxes on crude oil by $10 per barrel—a move that would push up gas prices about 24 cents per gallon, according to one industry analyst.

The administration sees the tax hike as an opportunity—to bolster his environmental street cred and to fund resource-wasting mass transit projects and subsidies to R&D on self-driving cars—as if Google, Ford and the other corporate behemoths currently pursuing that technology need the money. Doubtless his proposed tax hike will please special interests but not the economy as a whole. “Cronyism, whether to benefit renewables or fossil fuels, is a serious problem,” Shughart continues. “Robust economic growth will return if and only if Washington gets out of the way.”

SOURCE  





Top 5 Reasons Congress Should Reject Obama’s Climate Change Treaty

Secretary of State John Kerry will join leaders from around the world to sign the Paris Protocol global warming agreement this Friday at the United Nations headquarters.

Here are the top five reasons Congress and the next administration should withdraw from the accord:

1) Higher energy bills, fewer jobs and a weaker economy.

The economic impact of domestic regulations associated with the Paris agreement will be severe. To meet America’s commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the administration will need to drive the cost of conventional fuels higher so households and businesses use less.

Because energy is a necessary input for almost all goods consumers buy, households are hit by higher prices multiple times over. Global warming regulations will increase electricity expenditures for a family of four by at least 13 percent a year. Cumulatively, they will cost American families over $20,000 of lost income by 2035 and impose a $2.5 trillion hit on the economy.

2) No impact on climate.

Regardless of one’s opinions on the degree to which climate change is occurring, regulations associated with the Paris accord will have no meaningful impact on the planet’s temperature.

Even if the government closed the doors to every businesses and CO2-emitting activity in the U.S., there would be less than two-tenths of a degree Celsius reduction in global temperatures.

Even Kerry admitted during the negotiations last December that:

If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions— remember what I just said, all the industrial emissions went down to zero emissions— it wouldn’t’t be enough, not when more than 65 percent of the world’s carbon pollution comes from the developing world.

Though the Paris Protocol is an international agreement, there is little reason to believe that the developing world (India, China, etc.) will prioritize reducing cargo dioxide emissions over using affordable energy that provides their citizens with a better standard of living.

Yes, China and other developing countries have serious air and water quality problems from industrial byproducts. But do not associate those problems with carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a colorless, odorless and non-toxic. The focus of the Paris Protocol is to address catastrophic global warming. The developing world has more pressing tangible environmental challenges, which they’ll be able to address when they’re wealthier and have the necessary means to tackle them.

3) Massive taxpayer-funded wealth transfer for green initiatives.

An important part of the Paris agreement for the developing world is money. More specifically, other peoples’ money. In Nov. 2014, President Barack Obama also pledged to commit $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund, an international fund for green projects in the developing world.

The administration and proponents of a Green Climate Fund have repeatedly called for spending $100 billion per year between the United States and other countries in public and private financing to combat climate change.

In March, the Obama administration made a $500 million taxpayer-funded payment to the Green Climate Fund despite Congress never having authorized the funding.

The Green Climate Fund is nothing more than a taxpayer-funded wealth transfer from developed countries to developing ones. The fund will do little to promote economic growth in these countries but instead connect politically-connected companies with taxpayer dollars.

4) Avoids review and consent from elected officials.

The Paris agreement is in form, in substance, and in the nature of its commitments a treaty and should be submitted to the Senate for review and consent. The executive branch has shown contempt for the U.S. treaty-making process and the role of Congress, particularly the Senate.

As my colleague Steven Groves writes and explains in great detail, “The argument that the U.S. Nationally Determined Contribution “targets and timetables” are not legally binding and therefore the Paris Agreement is not a “treaty” requiring the advice and consent of the Senate simply has no basis in law.”

5) A top-down, government controlled push for economic transformation.

To achieve their global warming goals, international leaders want to control an economic transformation. Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has said that:

This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.

A top-down, concentrated effort to shift away from the use of coal, oil and natural gas will prevent millions from enjoying the basic energy needs Americans and the developed world takes for granted. In the industrialized world, the effects of moving away from conventional fuels have been devastating at times. Fuel poverty and pricier energy caused tens of thousands of deaths in Great Britain because families could not heat their homes. The world runs on traditional fuels because they are cost competitive and abundant. If and when any transformative shift away from these natural resources occurs, it will be driven by the market.

The Paris agreement, and U.S. participation in the entire framework convention on climate change is a raw deal for Americans. The next administration should not only withdraw from Paris but the entire United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

SOURCE  



Australian scientists write open letter demanding action on Great Barrier Reef as 93 per cent of the reef has been affected by coral bleaching due to climate change

But what CAN the government do if it's due to climate change?  They want the government to stop all coal usage but that would do nothing for the reef.  The proportion of CO2 added to the atmosphere by the burning of coal in Australia is minuscule.  The whole thing is just a cynical and dishonest attempt to push their usual barrows by exploiting something that is almost certainly due to the El Nino weather oscillation and not to "climate change"
   
Dozens of Australian scientists have penned a letter to express major concern for the Great Barrier Reef, which is currently undergoing its worst coral bleaching in history.

The letter signed by 56 scientists urged the government to make phasing out fossil fuels and coal a major priority to save the reef.

'We are now seeing first hand the damage that climate change causes, and we have a duty of care to speak out,' the open letter stated.

'Australia must rapidly phase-out our existing ageing and inefficient coal-fired power stations.

'In addition, there can be no new coal mines. No new coal-fired power stations. The transition to a renewables-led energy system, already underway, must be greatly accelerated.'

The letter, published in The Courier-Mail as an advert, cost the $14,000 to publish and was funded by a the Climate Council successfully raised money from 250 sponsors.

A report by news.com.au noted the letter was published in the same week it was revealed 93 per cent of the world's largest reef was affected by coral bleaching, the worst case in recorded history.

Organisations are demanding further action from the federal government, with WWF Australia pushing for 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2035 and net zero carbon pollution before 2050, according to the report.

SOURCE

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

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

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Blatant and dishonest propaganda from Bill Nye

So Bill Nye, the elementary “Science Guy” (we prefer the more accurate phrase “Science Lie”), is taking on Patriot Post contributor and veteran meteorologist Joe Bastardi. Posing with a fabricated hard copy of a Post publication in his latest video, Nye responds directly to Bastardi’s November column, “Some Questions for Bill Nye Six Years After Our ‘O'Reilly Factor’ Debate.” Nye’s challenge? “Mr. Bastardi, I will bet you $10,000. I predict that the year 2016 will be among the top ten hottest years ever recorded. … I’ll take it up a notch. I’ll bet you another $10,000 that the decade 2010-2020 will prove to be the hottest decade ever recorded.”

Bastardi has been quite public about forecasting a warm 2016 since last year. Nye is apparently unaware of this, so he resorted to a straw man. Why would Joe bet against his own forecast? Note also that Nye did not accept Bastardi’s challenge after the El Niño of 2010. Bottom line: The El Niño spike was predicted well in advance. Isn’t it ironic that Nye is responding to the piece several months later — once the spike occurred as forecasted? He should take the $20,000 he would have lost after 2010 and put it toward helping feed starving people, or the homeless — either is a far more pressing problem. Nobody denies that the climate is changing — in fact, with every breath you exhale, it changes. But on the assumption that global temperatures are warming, the question is, “Why is the climate changing?” Bastardi addresses that question here.

Nye calls Joe a “climate change denier,” which is the Left’s catch-all moniker for those who do not attribute “global warming” exclusively to human activity, or advocate the ecofascist prescriptions for dealing with that change. Recall that when global cooling trends challenged the “global warming” rhetoric of Al Gore and his ecofascists, they adopted the ubiquitous alternative “climate change,” which can encompass the whole range of climate phenomena — colder, hotter, wetter, dryer, calmer, stormier, etc. Of course, the Left’s real underlying political agenda is not about “climate change” at all, but big government control. The real deniers are those who refuse to recognize that the sun, the earth, stochastic events and the very design of the system far outweigh the effects of the increase of one molecule of CO2 out of every 10,000 molecules of air over a 100-year period.

On a final note, Mr. Conservationist printed a faux paper copy of The Patriot Post, which is an online publication. What a waste! Consider all the CO2 that did not get absorbed because a poor tree was butchered for a “climate change” prop.

SOURCE  





Warmists in a tizzy when a leading newspaper breaks ranks

All the critics are long-time Warmists.  Only one has claims to be a climate scientist

Some of the world's most eminent scientists have written to the editor of UK newspaper The Times to complain about its coverage of climate science.

They suggest the newspaper may be unduly influenced by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which, despite its name, denies humans are causing climate change.

Baron John Krebs, a highly decorated biologist is behind the push, writing that the newspaper has become a "laughing stock" for publishing poor quality science.

"The implications for your credibility extend beyond your energy and climate change coverage," he said in the letter.

"Why should any reader who knows about energy and climate change respect your political analysis, your business commentary, even your sports reports, when in this one important area you are prepared to prioritise the marginal over the mainstream?"

The letter was signed by Krebs and 12 other peers, including:

    Baron Robert 'Bob' May, a former chief scientist of the UK

    Baron Martin Rees of Ludlow, the Astronomer Royal

    Baron Julian Hunt of Chesterton, former chief executive of the British Meteorological Office

    Baron David Puttnam, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind Chariots of Fire and The Killing Fields

The peers took particular issue with two articles by environment editor Ben Webster, both of which were republished by The Australian.

One article - Planet is not overheating, says Professor - reported on science which was sponsored by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, which has five peers of its own on its board of trustees, describes itself as "open-minded on the contested science of global warming".

"[M]any of the sub-standard news stories and opinion pieces appear to concern, in some way, GWPF," it said.

"Whether any newspaper should involve itself repeatedly with any pressure group is a matter for debate; it would be deeply perturbing to find that a paper as eminent as The Times could allow a small NGO, particularly one whose sources of financing are unknown, a high degree of influence."

They said the second article - Scientists 'are exaggerating carbon threat to marine life' - misrepresented good science.

A follow-up opinion piece from a Times columnist "in either ignorance or disregard" failed to mention the scientist's criticism of the Times' report on his work.

"As Editor, you are of course entitled to take whatever editorial line you feel is appropriate. Are you aware, however, how seriously you may be compromising The Times' reputation by pursuing a line that cleaves so tightly to a particular agenda, and which is based on such flimsy evidence?" the peers wrote.

"Climate science has proven remarkably robust to repeated scrutiny, and multiple lines of evidence indicate that climate change and ocean acidification pose serious and increasing risks for the future."

SOURCE  





Natural Gas as Environmental Threat?

The community of Warrenton, Oregon, successfully stonewalled the construction of a terminal that would have exported liquefied natural gas overseas in their town. Since 2012, Oregon LNG wanted to build the terminal and an 87-mile pipeline that would ferry the gas that originated in Canada. But over concerns that the terminal would gas the environment and damage the local economy, local government blocked the proposal that would have created 150 jobs in the area. So Oregon LNG decided to drop the project.

Democrat lawmakers like Sen. Ron Wyden celebrated the job-crushing news. “I am relieved that local voices prevailed,” he said in a statement. But Democrats and the Obama administration were not so hostile to liquefied natural gas in the past. Indeed, they used to see the stuff as a future green energy. In 2012, the Obama administration envisioned vehicles running on liquefied natural gas providing a clean-burning alternative to oil-guzzling trucks. But in a few years, gas has turned from hero to villain to the Left.

“Build the terminal in a more jobs friendly location and let them reap the benefits,” wrote Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw. “The good citizens in Warrenton, meanwhile, can smoke their corn cob pipes and stare out across their empty bay, enjoying the sounds of the wind, the waves, and the unemployed people camping out near the beach.”

Some way or another, this nation needs energy. Maybe the folks of Warrenton would like some wind turbines, that energy source that whines all the time and kills birds.

SOURCE  






Global warming is making weather BETTER: 80 per cent of Americans are benefiting from nicer conditions than 40 years ago

The warming concerned is that which took place in the '80s and '90s

For years scientists studying climate change have issued doom-laden warnings about the catastrophic results of burning fossil fuels and emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

But four out of five Americans are experiencing far better weather now than they did forty years ago thanks to global warming, according to a new study.

Researchers say because of this most US citizens believe global warming is beneficial - but they also warn the good weather is not going to last.

Winter temperatures have risen substantially throughout the US since the 1970s, but at the same time, summers have not become more uncomfortable.

This means the weather has shifted toward a temperate year-round climate that most Americans say they prefer.

The study showed that 80 per cent of US citizens live in places where the weather has improved over the last forty years.

This is one of the reasons it has been difficult to motivate US citizens to tackle global warming, the authors of the new study have said.

'Weather patterns in recent decades have been a poor source of motivation for Americans to demand policies to combat the climate change problem,' said Professor Megan Mullin from Duke University, co-author of the study.

Professor Mullin and Professor Patrick Egan from New York University studied 40 years of daily weather data, from 1974 to 2013, on a county-by-county basis to evaluate how the population's experience with weather changed during this period, which is when climate change first emerged as a public issue.

They found that Americans on average have experienced a rise in January maximum temperatures, an increase of 0.58 °C (1.04 °F) per decade. By contrast, daily maximum temperatures in July rose by only 0.07 °C (0.13 °F) per decade.

Humidity in the summer has also declined since the mid 1990s.

This means, winter temperatures have become warmer for virtually all Americans while summer conditions have remained relatively constant.

SOURCE  





Senate Committee Subpoenas EPA Over Gold King Mine Disaster

Senate Indian Affairs Chairman John Barrasso (R,-Wyo.) and Vice Chairman John Tester (D.-Mont.) agreed Wednesday to subpoena Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy or a top aide to appear at an upcoming oversight field hearing on the Gold King Mine disaster scheduled for April 22nd in Phoenix.

The subpoena - the first issued by the committee since its investigation into the activities of former lobbyist Jack Abramoff in 2004 – included Assistant EPA Administrator Mathy Stanislaus.

The committee said Stanislaus was “invited to testify at the field hearing, but the EPA declined to send him.”

Barrasso pointed out that during her confirmation hearing, McCarthy “agreed under oath” to appear before congressional committees with oversight authority over her agency.

 “It troubles me that this committee had to take the extraordinary step of issuing a subpoena to a confirmed federal official,” Barrasso said Wednesday.

“During the confirmation process, Gina McCarthy agreed under oath that if confirmed, she would appear before congressional committees with respect to her responsibilities.

“She further agreed under oath to ensure testimony in other documents would be provided to congressional committees in a timely manner.

"Despite the sworn testimony, the EPA refused to provide any witnesses – any witnesses - to the committee field hearing to be held on April 22, 2016 in Phoenix, Arizona,” Barrasso said.

“That hearing would continue our oversight on the EPA’s response to the devastating toxic spill that it had caused, and of the agency’s responsibility to the Indian communities that it had harmed.

“I am troubled further that the EPA would disregard such failures and attempt to avoid the responsibility by refusing to appear before the committee and answer questions.

"This sort of behavior is unbecoming of any federal official and won’t be tolerated,” he continued. “The subpoena will be served on the EPA later today.”

Mike Danylak, the committee’s press secretary, confirmed to CNSNews.com that the subpoenas were served to McCarthy and Stanislaus on Wednesday afternoon, but that as of noon on Friday, the committee had received no response.

Last August 5th, EPA released three million gallons of toxic wastewater from the abandoned Gold King Mine, contaminating rivers and streams in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah as well as lands belonging to the Navajo Nation and the Southern Ute Reservation.

In a March 16 statement, Navajo Nation president Russell Begaye said that “the Navajo Nation has suffered due to the reckless actions of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other responsible parties, and the Obama Administration has turned down virtually every request we have made for greater assistance, each time referring us back to the EPA.”

On Dec. 9, 2015, following the Department of Interior’s (DOI) “technical evaluation” of the spill, Sec. Sally Jewell told Congress that “we did not see any deliberate attempt to breach a mine. It was an accident.” Jewell also said that “EPA’s trying to do a job of cleaning up a problem it did not create.”

However, an investigative report released February 11 by the House Natural Resources Committee “revealed that each of the three reports issued by EPA and DOI in 2015 contains numerous errors and omissions and demonstrably false information… [including the] false claim that the EPA crew was digging high when the plug [sealing the mine] somehow eroded on its own.”

SOURCE  





Prof. Richard Lindzen Weighs in on Climate Change, Risking Prison Term?

Whom should one consult on the science behind climate-change alarmism? Maybe Bill Nye, “The Science Guy”? Or maybe Richard Lindzen, MIT Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Physics?

If you’re a politician, activist, or reporter (Group 3 as Lindzen calls it in the video), you should probably stick with Bill Nye.

Granted, Nye’s credentials aren’t nearly as impressive as Lindzen’s, and he often behaves like a rodeo clown, but he buys in to the climate change hysteria that is so beloved by politicians who seek wealth and power, activists who need a grand cause to champion, and those media that thrive on doomsday headlines.

In fact, Nye says he’s comfortable with jail terms for those who dare to challenge climate change “science”!

On the other hand, if you haven’t bought in to climate-change hysteria just yet, you may want to hear first from Lindzen in the Prager University 5-minute video below. After that, if you still want to jump on the climate-change bandwagon, thereby avoiding a Bill-Nye-recommended jail sentence, at least you’ll have done it with your eyes open.

In one sense, I suppose Lindzen has been a fool. He could have sacrificed his integrity long ago by falsifying data, perverting its interpretation, and/or outright lying in print in exchange for massive federal grants to “prove” the mythical “scientific consensus” about anthropogenic climate change (aka global warming).

Sadly, Lindzen has allowed himself to be swayed by hard data, objective analysis, and the scientific method. Apparently he is among those who insist that:

If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. And if it’s science, it isn’t consensus.

Too bad for Prof. Lindzen. He could end up in prison next to the other ‘deniers’.

How about you?



Afterword:

Okay, okay, so this article is kind of sarcastic and silly. Imagine comparing a science clown like Bill Nye to a top-tier atmospheric physicist like Richard Lindzen. No one should take this seriously, right?

Wrong.

See also this link or simply Google “climate change deniers Loretta Lynch” and see what comes up.

This is all deadly serious. The US Attorney General is giving serious consideration to prosecuting real scientists who dare to challenge the “settled science” of climate change. What’s next? Ordinary citizens who ask legitimate questions about it?

If American leftists/neo-Marxists/progressives/statists/Stalinists/Maoists/whatever-ists can criminalize scientific inquiry, what do you think they’ll do with political speech they don’t like?

How about:

Prosecuting Common Core critics for endangering the welfare of minors

Prosecuting Obamacare critics for creating a public health hazard

Prosecuting open border critics for hate speech

And so on, and so on …

SOURCE  

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

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

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Camera traps show animals have reclaimed Chernobyl's radioactive wasteland 30 years after the disaster -- and are in good health

Thus showing as completely wrong the Greenie claim that even tiny amounts of radioactivity are harmful.  Chernobyl shows that even quite high levels are not harmful.  Radioactivity has been much demonized for political reasons. Radioactive leaks from nuclear power plants will not do harm unless you are very close to them.

In other evidence of low harm from radioactivity, Tsutomu Yamaguchi was one of a small number of Japanese to live through  both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear detonations.



He was only only 3 km away from the epicenter on both occasions. He was badly burned by the heat but he recovered from that and lived to 93.  


Exactly 30 years and one week ago, a small town in the former Soviet Union witnessed the worst nuclear disaster the world has seen.

Following a fire in one of its reactors, an explosion at the Chernobyl power plant in the former Soviet Union town of Pripyat leaked radioactive material into the environment and saw the surrounding area evacuated.

But while radiation levels in the region is still considered too high for humans to return, wildlife has moved back into the area and is flourishing.

Studies of the animals and plants in the area around Chernobyl are now providing clues as to what the world would be like should humans suddenly disappear.

The exclusion zone is still in effect around the site of the disaster in what is now Ukraine to protect people from the high levels of radiation which persist in the environment.

But in the absence of human activity, wildlife has flourished ­– making the site a unique habitat for biologists to study.

Scientists are monitoring the health of plants and animals in the exclusion area to see how they react to chronic radiation exposure.

Camera traps set up by researchers have captured a stunning array of local wildlife, including wolves, lynx, mouse, boars, deer, horses, and many others, as they wander through the area.

It shows that three decades on from the disaster, the area is far from being a wasteland. Instead life is thriving there.

Using the motion-activated traps to get snapshots of wildlife at a number of sites throughout the exclusion zone, researchers at the University of Georgia have recorded 14 species of mammal.

In a study published this week in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, the Georgia group reports it found no evidence to suggest that the areas with the highest levels of radiation were keeping their numbers down, and that populations inside the exclusion zone are doing well.

Sarah Webster, a graduate student working on the project and first author of the study, told UGA Today: 'Carnivores are often in higher trophic levels of ecosystem food webs, so they are susceptible to bioaccumulation of contaminants.'

'Few studies in Chernobyl have investigated effects of contamination level on populations of species in high trophic levels.'

The exclusion zone, which covers a substantial area in Ukraine and some of bordering Belarus, will remain in effect for generations to come, until radiation levels fall to safe enough levels.

The region is called a 'dead zone' due to the extensive radiation which persists. However, the proliferation of wildlife in the area contradicts this and many argue that the region should be given over to the animals which have become established in the area - creating a radioactive protected wildlife reserve.

It would be expected that carnivores would receive extensive radioactive exposure, both directly from the environment and water sources as well as ingesting it through eating contaminated animals.

In the long-term, this accumulation of radioactive material would be expected to be harmful to the top predators and would restrict their number, but findings from the latest study don't seem to support this.

'We didn't find any evidence to support the idea that populations are suppressed in highly contaminated areas,' said Dr James Beasley, a biologist at Georgia and senior author of the paper.

'What we did find was these animals were more likely to be found in areas of preferred habitat that have the things they need – food and water.'

Other research groups working within the area, including the TREE consortium, have found that endangered Przewalski's horses – released into the exclusion zone in the 1990s – are breeding successfully.

In addition, the camera studies have identified a number of protected bird species, including golden eagles and white tailed eagles.

SOURCE  





NOAA's monthly deception again

Sure, there's been a recent temperature rise but is it caused by human activity?  They dodge that all-important question.  They admit that El Nino is partly responsible but fail to quantify or correct for its influence.  Scientists quantify.  They don't indulgle in hand-waving dismissals.  Ergo, none of the guff below is science.

So what is the science?  The science is that the first 8 of their 11 months of warming were at a time when there was NO CO2 rise and hence no human cause.  So the recent rise is clearly an effect of El Nino only.  Below is a great coverage of El Nino effects, nothing more (excerpt only)


Last month marked the hottest March in modern history, setting the longest heat streak in the 137 years of record-keeping, US officials said.

The month's average global temperature of 12.7°C (54.9°F) was not only the hottest March, but continues a record streak that started last May.

The combined average temperature in March was the highest for this month in the 1880–2016 record.

The temperature was 1.22°C (2.20°F) above the 20 century average of 12.7°C (54.9°F).

This surpassed the previous record set in 2015 by 0.32°C / (0.58°F), and marks the highest monthly temperature departure on record.

March 2016 also marks the 11 consecutive month a global temperature record has been broken, the longest such streak in 137 years.

SOURCE  





After Receiving $191 Million in Taxpayer-Backed Loans, Spanish Solar Company Files for Bankruptcy

A Spanish solar energy company benefiting from $191 million in financing from the Export-Import Bank declared bankruptcy last month, calling into question whether the embattled agency will see repayment of the tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer-backed loans on its balance sheets.

Abengoa, which operates worldwide, filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., and has until the end of October to restructure its $16.4 billion of debt.

According to Ex-Im’s records, the bank authorized more than $300 million in loans and loan guarantees to Abengoa and its subsidiaries, with more than a dozen transactions approved from 2007 to 2015.

Of the $316 million in financing Ex-Im authorized, the bank disbursed $191 million to Abengoa and its subsidiaries, its records show. The bank cancelled the remaining $125 million of outstanding credit, an Ex-Im spokesman told The Daily Signal.

Ex-Im’s board of directors approved financing for four loan guarantees—totaling $112.8 million—to an Abengoa subsidiary on June 29. The bank’s charter expired the next day, on June 30, marking the first time Ex-Im has experienced a lapse in its authority in its 81-year history.

According to the bank’s spokesperson, Ex-Im’s exposure to the solar company totals $66.2 million.

With Abengoa’s questionable financial future, some question whether the green energy company will be able to repay the taxpayer-backed financing it received from Ex-Im.

“If they’re going under, they’re not going to repay their loans,” Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, told The Daily Signal.

A spokesman for Ex-Im told The Daily Signal the bank is continuing to work with the company to ensure its outstanding debt is repaid.

“Ex-Im Bank has and will continue to closely monitor this situation, and continues to work with all parties and creditors to recoup the outstanding debt,” the spokesperson said in an email. “As with all transactions of this nature, the bank’s exposure is covered by reserves, which are funded by fees assessed on borrowers, not the taxpayers.”

Before Abengoa’s financial woes were made public, the company was scrutinized in media reports for violating U.S. immigration law, workplace safety codes, and environmental regulations, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Additionally, House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, pressed Ex-Im Chairman Fred Hochberg, R-N.Y., on ties between the bank’s advisory board and the Spanish green energy company last year.

In September 2013, the bank approved two loans totaling $33.6 million to Abengoa for solar projects in Spain and South Africa. When the bank authorized the loans, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, was one of 17 members serving on Ex-Im’s advisory board.

Richardson, who also served as secretary of the Department of Energy under President Bill Clinton, was also a member of Abengoa’s international advisory board at the same time.

Such ties between government agencies and private companies benefiting from taxpayer-backed financing are not uncommon, de Rugy said, and often times firms like Abengoa will “double dip” into several government programs.

“I think what we see with Abengoa, it’s a perfect example of decisions and due diligence that is not driven by how sound a project is, but that is driven by politics,” de Rugy said.

From 2007 to 2014, for example, Abengoa received $3 billion in financial assistance from both Ex-Im and the Department of Energy.

Through its 1705 loan program, the Department of Energy awarded the solar company more than $2 billion in loan guarantees for the construction of two solar plants in the U.S.: one in Phoenix, Ariz., and a second in California’s Mojave Desert.

It was through the Department of Energy’s 1705 loan guarantee program that the now-defunct Solyndra also received financing.

“It just tells you everything that’s wrong with these programs,” de Rugy said. “The decisions are made based on politics and who you know. The more your know, the more double dipping you’re able to do.”

According to the New York Times, Abengoa said $1 billion of the loans and loan guarantees it has received from the federal government have been repaid. The company did not return The Daily Signal’s request for comment.

Ex-Im provides taxpayer-backed loans and loan guarantees to foreign countries and companies for the purchase of U.S. products.

Bank officials often boast of Ex-Im’s 0.235 percent default rate and say it returns money to the Treasury each year.

But over the last year, Abengoa isn’t the only company to receive taxpayer-backed financing from Ex-Im and face financial woes.

NewSat, an Australian satellite company, benefited from $100 million in Ex-Im loans from 2012 to 2014. The company filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in the United States last year.

The company’s bankruptcy—and the decision-making that led to it receiving Ex-Im financing—was scrutinized by Republicans during a June Financial Services Committee hearing, who said the deal was evidence that the bank is “beyond broken.”

Lawmakers said NewSat handed Ex-Im a “$100-million loss” at the “expense of the taxpayers.”

SOURCE  





Vermont  Group files complaint against wind producers over green marketing claims

A group defending ridgelines against wind energy development has filed a complaint with the Vermont Attorney General’s office and the Federal Trade Commission accusing local wind-power producers of making false green marketing claims.

In a complaint filed March 15, the Irasburg Ridgeline Alliance alleges that Renewable Energy Vermont, Georgia Mountain Community Wind and the Burlington Electric Department engaged in consumer deception in their descriptions and marketing of wind-generated electricity.

The citizen-led alliance claims that the organizations — a trade association, a developer and an electric utility — advertise renewable energy in marketing and promotions despite selling renewable energy certificates, or RECs, to out-of-state entities.

“Despite warnings, industrial wind producers continue deceptive ‘green’ marketing claims,” the IRA said in a statement on Tuesday.

The group asserts that by selling RECs out of state, the organizations lose the basis for advertising their product as “renewable.” The complaint states the three organizations are marketing wind-generated renewable power in violation of the Vermont Consumer Protection Act, 9 V.S.A. § 2453(a), which prohibits “deceptive or unfair practices.”

“As far as what we know today, there is no so-called renewable project in this state that has not sold its RECs out of state,” IRA spokesman Michael Sanville told Vermont Watchdog. “That being (the case), there should not be any company within the state that’s advertising any of their energy generation as ‘renewable.’”

Sanville said at least one neighboring state, Connecticut, recently complained about “double-booking” — a term used for counting renewable energy twice — and considered prohibiting purchases of RECs generated in Vermont. Sanville said the controversy led Sorrell to issue warnings to the Vermont solar industry late last year. Likewise the FTC warned Vermont energy companies in February 2015 not to make deceptive claims.

According to the alliance, the warnings didn’t prevent Renewable Energy Vermont from continuing to promote “clean, green, and local” wind energy in television advertisements. In one ad released in November, Renewable Energy Vermont states that Vermont turbines power 46,200 homes with wind energy, even though certificates identifying that renewable power were sold to out-of-state entities for use in other states.

Also according to the alliance, a recent press release by the Burlington Electric Department makes the claim that Georgia Mountain Community Wind powers the local community with clean energy and provides “enough renewable energy to power more than 5,500 Vermont households.”

The complaint notes that Burlington Electric and Georgia Mountain Community Wind are members of the Renewable Energy Vermont trade association, and questions whether the name “Renewable Energy Vermont” also is an example of deceptive marketing.

The attorney general’s office is currently reviewing the IRA’s complaint. Sanville said the group wants Sorrell to issue a cease-and-desist order on all green marketing efforts, and to award monetary damages.

Sanville said the IRA intends to hold the wind-energy producers’ feet to the fire. He added that it would be hypocritical of the attorney general’s office not to enforce Vermont’s consumer protection laws against renewable energy producers after having investigated anti-big-renewables activist Annette Smith in January for allegedly “practicing law without a license.”

Dr. Ron Holland, of the IRA, said the producers have had “ample time and warning to learn the Federal Trade Commission guidelines.”

“We are tired of Vermont companies making illegal claims that their energy is renewable when it is not. That is why we took our concerns to the Vermont Attorney General and the FTC,” Holland said in a statement.

Watchdog reached out to representatives from Burlington Electric Department and Georgia Mountain Community Wind on Wednesday, but they did not return our request for comment.

SOURCE  





Obama Moves To Bankrupt Energy Companies

“If somebody wants to build a coal power plant, they can, it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” -- President Obama, 2008

It should come as no surprise that President Obama has succeeded in destroying the coal industry.

The latest evidence is the announcement by Peabody, the world’s largest private coal company, that it will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Peabody is one of a number of coal companies hit hard by the drop in demand for coal to make steel as well as the emergence of cheap and abundant natural gas supplied by the shale boom.

This is the conclusion of Nicolas Loris of the Heritage Foundation. Loris explains that the Obama administration’s destructive energy policies go beyond the coal industry by noting that there are two sets of energy companies.

First, there are companies such as Peabody, Arch Coal, Patriot Coal, Alpha Natural Resources, James River Coal and Walter Energy. Second, there are companies such as Solyndra, Abound Solar, Fisker Automotive, Beacon Power, and Vehicle Production Group. Both sets of companies have two things in common. They all have filed for bankruptcy and the federal government had a role in their failure.

“The government’s role in bankrupting energy companies speaks to two overarching problems with U.S. energy policy: overregulation and subsidization,” Loris writes. “Eliminating heavy-handed regulations that provide little to no environmental benefit and eliminating all energy subsidies will enable energy innovations and drive growth and success in the industry. Best of all, families and businesses will be the beneficiaries of the most reliable energy at the most competitive prices.”

Following are excerpts from Loris’s study of how regulation and subsidies destroy energy companies:

* According to a recent report by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), more than 80 percent of the nearly 18 gigawatts of electric generating capacity retired in 2015 was conventional steam coal. The EPA cites the Mercury Air & Toxics regulation, which has enormous compliance costs and minimal direct environmental benefits, with 30 percent of coal retirement in 2015.

* Global warming regulations will prevent the construction of new coal-fired power plants and could cause more of America’s existing fleet to retire. The Department of the Interior recently announced a prohibition on leasing of public land to coal companies while it “reviews” the leasing process (a procedure that will inevitably result in making it more difficult and more expensive for coal companies to lease federal land).

* And the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) in the Department of Labor have promulgated a host of new rules that will increase the costs of mining coal and decision making authority away from individuals and instead empower Washington regulators to micromanage operations. Combined, the federal government’s regulations have had a Shaquille O’Neal-sized hand in driving out coal production.

* Then there’s the second set of companies. Each bankrupt company in the second group received taxpayer dollars as part of the Department of Energy’s loan and loan guarantee programs. The government played a role in their failures by dangling taxpayer dollars for investments in alternative forms of energy technology, such as wind, solar or electric vehicles. In each instance, DOE lent money to companies that could not survive even help from the taxpayer.

* Private investors look at taxpayer-backed loans as a way to substantially reduce their risk. Private companies can invest a smaller amount than they otherwise would have to. The government’s involvement in decisions that should be purely private investments skew the risk calculation and have resulted in economic losers.

SOURCE





Leading Australian conservative politician  questions climate change beliefs

Attorney-General George Brandis has questioned the science of climate change, saying he's not "at all" convinced it is settled.

Labor has seized on comments by the senior Turnbull government minister that there were a number of views about the cause of climate change, arguing it proves the deep climate scepticism in the coalition.

"It doesn't seem to me that the science is settled at all," Senator Brandis told parliament on Tuesday during debate on the tabling of documents relating to the CSIRO.

The attorney-general was addressing a recent CSIRO restructure - undertaken internally - which will move the focus away from collecting climate data.

About 200 jobs are at risk, however the overall head count is expected to return to current levels within two years.

Senator Brandis said he wasn't embarking on the climate debate himself, but challenging the illogical position of the Labor party.  "But I'm not a scientist, and I'm agnostic really on that question."

Senator Brandis said, if the science was settled - like Labor claims - why would Australia need climate researchers.

CSIRO head Larry Marshall said in an email to staff when announcing the restructure that the question of climate change had been proved and it was time to refocus on solutions to it.

However, scientists say without continuous data collection - some of which is undertaken by the CSIRO in partnership with the Bureau of Meteorology - huge gaps could form that could never be recovered.

Labor said the attorney-general's comments were breathtaking. "The commitment of Senator Brandis to addressing the impacts of climate change is so shallow, he hasn't made up his mind whether it actually exists yet," environment spokesman Mark Butler and shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said in a statement.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull lost the Liberal leadership in 2009 in part due to his commitment to climate change and an emissions trading scheme.  As a backbencher, he heavily criticised the coalition's direct action climate policy.

Senator Brandis' office referred AAP to an interview conducted in 2014 in which the attorney-general told a reporter he was "on the side of those who believed in anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming and who believed something ought to be done about it."

SOURCE

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

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Could climate change lead to more food? Increased carbon dioxide could help wheat, rice and soybeans grow more efficiently

This study very cautiously states the bleeding obvious but it is a nice change to see the modellers getting closer to reality  -- after the barrage of one-eyed Greenie claims that global warming will create food shortages
   
Bringing drought and increased temperatures, climate change has been widely portrayed as a force that will leave staple food crops struggling in many areas where they are grown today.

But a new study has shown that increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may actually lead to greater yields of key crops like wheat, rice and soybeans.

Scientists say higher levels of carbon dioxide in the air helps plants build up greater biomass but can also reduce the amount of water needed to help them grow.

While the effects of a complex changing climate makes it difficult to predict exactly how crops in different parts of the world will grow, overall rising carbon dioxide levels could be beneficial.

Average levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen by more than a quarter since 1960, and now sit at around 400 parts per million.  Plants take in carbon to build their tissues through photosynthesis, and if there is more carbon around, the process is easier.

Leaves take in air through tiny openings called stomata, but in the process the stomata lose water. When more carbon is available, they don't have to open up as much, and this saves water.

Until now most research looking into climate change has focussed on changes in temperature and rainfall.

Many studies indicate that as temperatures rise, crops across the world will suffer as average temperatures become unsuitable for traditionally grown crops, and droughts, heat waves or extreme bouts of precipitation become more common.

But a large team of researchers have tried to predict the combined effect of a variety of changing factors caused by climate change to take into account the increase in carbon dioxide.

They introduced artificially heightened levels of carbon dioxide to farm fields, and measured the results on crop production.

Although the results are complicated, their research suggests some crops might grow better in 2080.

The study looked at how rising temperatures and carbon dioxide along with changes in rainfall and cloud cover might combine to affect how efficiently maize, soybeans, wheat, and rice can use water and grow.

The results confirmed heat and water stress alone will damage yields, but when carbon dioxide is accounted for, all four crops will use water more efficiently by 2080.

Based on the current biomass of these crops, the researchers predict water-use efficiency will rise an average of 27 per cent in wheat, 18 per cent in soybeans, 13 per cent in maize, and 10 per cent in rice.

This does not mean more of them will grow, however.

Taking it all into account, the study projects that average yields of current rain-fed wheat areas, mostly located in higher latitudes including the US, Canada and Europe, might go up by almost 10 per cent, while consumption of water would go down a corresponding amount.

But average yields of irrigated wheat, which account for much of India and China's production, could decline by 4 per cent.

Maize, according to the new projections, would still be a loser most everywhere, even with higher water efficiency yields would go down about 8.5 per cent.

'To adapt adequately, we need to understand all the factors involved,' said lead author Delphine Deryng, an environmental scientist at Columbia University's Centre for Climate Systems Research, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the University of Chicago's Computation Institute.

She said the study should not be interpreted to mean that increasing carbon dioxide is a good thing, but its direct effects must be included in any calculation of what the future holds.

Taking it all into account, the study projects that average yields of current rain-fed wheat areas, mostly located in higher latitudes including the US, Canada and Europe, might go up by almost 10 per cent, while consumption of water would go down a corresponding amount.

But average yields of irrigated wheat, which account for much of India and China's production, could decline by four per cent.

Maize, according to the new projections, would still be a loser most everywhere, even with higher water efficiency yields would go down about 8.5 per cent.

Agricultural scientists say losses could be mitigated to some extent by switching crops or developing varieties adapted to the new conditions.

But the researchers warned the uncertainties in the models are high, because field experiments, which involve blowing carbon dioxide over large farm fields for entire growing seasons, have only been done at a handful of sites.

The study is less conclusive on the overall effects on rice and soybean yields - half of the projections show an increase in yield and half a net decline.

Bruce Kimball, a retired researcher with the US Department of Agriculture who has studied crop-carbon dioxide interactions, said the paper does 'a good job on a huge scale,' but 'more data from more crops from more locations' is needed.

He also cautioned that previous research has shown that the benefits of higher carbon dioxide levels tend to bottom out after a certain point, but that the damage done by heat only gets worse as temperatures mount.

'Thus, for greater warming and higher CO2 the results would likely be more pessimistic than shown in this paper,' he said.

SOURCE  





The ‘establishment’ is slow to learn; Senate Republicans pushing for more #GreenPork

By Marita Noon

In this election cycle, we hear a lot about the "establishment." Most people are not really sure who they are, but they are sure that they do not like them. The anger toward the establishment is not party specific and has propelled two unlikely candidates: Donald Trump on the Republican side and Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democrats.

The faithful following these outsiders may be more about "the grassroots trying to teach the establishment a lesson," as Gary Bauer posited last month, than about affection for either man. In an InfoWars video, reporter Richard Reeves, at the University of Texas in Austin speaks to Wyatt, a young man who’d just voted for Sanders. Wyatt indicates that most of his fellow students likely voted for Sanders as well. The surprise is his comment about the students’ second choice: "Donald Trump."  Why? He’s not "establishment." Wyatt admits he didn’t consider voting for anyone else — just Sanders and Trump.

The establishment has been slow to grasp the public’s rejection of an increasingly distrusted political class.

However, one might define the "establishment," it certainly includes long-time Washington politicians like Senators Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Ron Wyden (D-Oreg.), John Thune (R-S.D.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — who have just engaged in the exact tactics that have fed the voter frustration aimed at them. Avoiding a vigorous debate, they are using a must-pass bill to sneak through millions in totally unrelated taxpayer giveaways to special interests in the renewable energy industry—and they hope voters won’t notice.

The bill is the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Reauthorization Act. On April 6, using an unrelated House bill (H.R. 636) that will serve as the legislative shell for the Senate’s FAA measure (S. 2658), the Senate began consideration to reauthorize the FAA for 18 months. It is expected that the bill will be voted on this week, followed by the House — which will take it up when it is back in session.

Funding for the FAA expired in September and received a 6-month extension—which expired again on March 31. Avoiding a shutdown, Congress passed another extension that President Obama signed on March 30. This legislation authorized federal spending on aviation and related aviation taxes through mid-July 2016.

Both the House and Senate have been grappling with a multi-year aviation bill. Now, FAA reauthorization only has about two weeks to be debated and approved before it will be shoved aside to make way for budget proceedings. One major point of conflict is the renewable energy tax breaks. Because the Senate FAA bill includes a tax title, it is open to unrelated tax amendments.

Many renewable energy tax credits were extended in the omnibus spending package that was passed late last year, but Democrats claim that in the chaos of last minute negotiations, some were "unintentionally" left out. According to Morning Consult, Thune said: "This is what [Democrats] always viewed as the best opportunity to get some of these things that were left out of last year’s extender bill." Senate Minority Leader Reid announced: "the inclusion of the provisions is a requirement for the legislation to move forward."

While many Republicans opposed the addition of the renewable energy tax credits, provisions supporting investments in fuel cells, geothermal and biomass were included in the Senate negotiations. Addressing the Senate’s scramble to "settle on a cohesive strategy" regarding attaching the renewable energy tax breaks to the bill, Politico reports: "House Republicans have made it clear they’re not interested in renewing any of the expired tax provisions this year." The bill’s coverage in Roter Daily states: "key Republicans have already warned fellow House members to oppose a deal on tax extenders if it comes out of the Senate, saying they have consistently failed to promote economic growth and create jobs."

As we have seen with the recent demise of government-funded, green-energy projects, such tax credits and subsidies have repeatedly failed to deliver on their promises of long-term job creation and economic viability. It is for this reason that, on April 5, a coalition of more than 30 organizations sent a letter to the Senate Finance Committee expressing our deep opposition to the proposal. The letter, of which I am a signatory, states: "Congress considered the matter of expiring tax provisions less than 4 months ago. … It should also be noted that Congress extended significantly favorable tax treatment to renewable energy in omnibus appropriation legislation that accompanied the aforementioned tax extender package."

Andrew Langer, President of the Institute for Liberty, who also signed the letter, explains his position: "In December, Congress purposefully allowed a series of tax credits for so-called ‘green’ energies to expire. This was not some mere oversight as some have alleged, but a purposeful recognition that as the energy landscape has changed, the need to extend some two dozen of these credits was unwarranted. Others were allowed to continue — but roughly $1.5 billion were not."

If you believe, as all the signatories to the letter do, that American taxpayers shouldn’t have to prop up large, well-connected special interests through tax handouts, carve outs, and loopholes using unsustainable Washington spending, please let your representatives know now. Please urge Senate offices to oppose keeping in the tax extenders, and encourage House offices to oppose adding in extenders.

With our national debt totaling more than $19 trillion, the last thing we need is more corporate welfare. But our legislators are slow to learn. Senate Republicans, like Thune, who is the lead negotiator for the Republicans, have worked with the Democrats to include the renewable energy tax credits. Thune stated: "We’re listening to them and we’re working for them."

No wonder the electorate is angry. But Washington politicians don’t get it. While a battle rages over who will be the next president, unfazed, the establishment continues on.

Langer concludes: "the political ramifications are clear, as history has taught us. Republicans who give in to cronyism, who give in to profligate spending… they get nothing in the end. Worse, they do considerable damage to the concept that Republicans are the party of lower spending and less government. In a political cycle where the future is entirely uncertain for Republicans at all levels, those who are pushing for these tax breaks do their colleagues no great service."

Join us in educating the "establishment" by calling them and telling them: "No more green pork!" #GreenPork

SOURCE





Green Europe is Killing 40,000 Poor People a Year

Europe’s suicidal green energy policies are killing at least 4o,000 people a year.

That’s just the number estimated to have died in the winter of 2014 because they were unable to afford fuel bills driven artificially high by renewable energy tariffs.

But the real death toll will certainly be much higher when you take into account the air pollution caused when Germany decided to abandon nuclear power after Fukushima and ramp up its coal-burning instead; and also when you consider the massive increase in diesel pollution –  the result of EU-driven anti-CO2 policies – which may be responsible for as many as 500,000 deaths a year.

But even that 40,000 figure is disgraceful enough, given that greenies are always trying to take the moral high ground and tell us that people who oppose their policies are uncaring and selfish.

It comes from an article in the German online magazine FOCUS about Energiewende (Energy Transition) – the disastrous policy I mentioned earlier this week whereby Germany is committed to abandoning cheap, effective fossil fuel power and converting its economy to expensive, inefficient renewables (aka unreliables) instead.

According to FOCUS around ten percent of the European population are now living in ‘energy poverty’ because electricity prices have risen, on average, by 42 percent in the last eight years. In Germany alone this amounts to seven million households.

The article is titled: The grand electricity lie: why electricity is becoming a luxury.

The reason, of course, is that green energy policies have made it that way. Many of these have emanated from the European Union, which in turn has taken its cue from the most Green-infested nation in Europe – Germany.

Germany has long been obsessed with all things environmental. Besides having invented the dodgy ‘science’ of ecology in the 1880s it was also, of course, between 1933 and 1945 the home of Europe’s official “Greenest government ever” – the first to ban smoking on public transport, an enthusiastic supporter of organic food, national parks and population control.

The Greens have also since the early Eighties been arguably the most influential party in Germany. Though their percentage of the vote has rarely risen above the 10 percent mark, they have punched above their weight either as a coalition partner in government or as a pressure group outside it.

For example, the reason that after Fukushima, Chancellor Angela Merkel completely changed Germany’s policy on nuclear power was her terror of the Greens who were suddenly polling 25 percent of the national vote.

It was the Greens too who were responsible for Energiewende – the policy which is turning Germany into the opposite of what most of us imagine it to be: not the economic powerhouse we’ve been taught to admire all these years, but a gibbering basket case.

This becomes clear in an investigation by the German newspaper Handelsblatt, which reports the horrendous industrial decline brought about by green energy policies.

    Hit hardest, of course, are the traditional utilities. After all, the energy transition was designed to seal their coffin. Once the proverbial investment for widows and orphans because their revenue streams were considered rock-solid — these companies have been nothing short of decimated. With 77 nuclear and fossil-fuel power plants taken off the grid in recent years, Germany’s four big utilities — E.ON, RWE, Vattenfall and EnBW — have had to write off a total of €46.2 billion since 2011.

    RWE and E.ON alone have debt piles of €28.2 billion and €25.8 billion, respectively, according to the latest company data. Losses at Düsseldorf-based E.ON rose to €6.1 billion for the first three quarters of 2015. Both companies have slashed the dividends on their shares, which have lost up to 76 percent of their value. Regional municipalities, which hold 24 percent of RWE’s shares, are scrambling to plug the holes left in their budgets by the missing dividends.

    Thousands of workers have already been let go, disproportionately hitting communities in Germany‘s rust belt that are already struggling with blight. RWE has cut 7,000 jobs since 2011. At E.ON, the work force has shrunk by a third, a loss of over 25,000 jobs. Just as banks spun off their toxic assets and unprofitable operations into “bad banks” during the financial crisis, Germany’s utilities are reorganizing to cut their losses.

Why are the Germans enacting such lunacy? Aren’t they supposed to be the sensible ones?

Well yes, up to a point. As a seasoned German-watcher explains to me, it’s with good reason that one of Germany’s greatest contributions to the world’s vocabulary is the word Angst.

The Germans are absolutely riddled with it – always have been – and it explains the two otherwise inexplicable policies with which Germany is currently destroying itself.

One, of course, is Energiewende caused by a misplaced, but deeply-held neurosis about stuff like diminishing scarce resources and “global warming” and the evils of Atomkraft (Nuclear power).

The other are its similarly insane immigration policies – the result of the neurosis that if it doesn’t replace its declining population with a supposedly healthy influx of immigrant workers, then it will wither and cease to be the great force it was under people like Frederick the Great, Bismarck and that chap in the 1930s and that no one will know or care where Germany is any more.

Ironically, though, if national decline is what the Germans most fear then the two policies they are pursuing to avoid it happening to be the ones most likely to hasten it.

This is sad. Sad for Germany which, for all its faults, has produced some pretty impressive things over the years: Beethoven; Kraftwerk; Goethe; Porsche; autobahns; those two girls on Deutschland 83.

And even sadder for those of us who, through absolutely no fault of our own happen to be shackled politically and economically to a socialistic superstate called the European Union, most of whose rules are decided by Germans over whom we have no democratic control.

Oh and by the way, Greenies: as I never tire of reminding you, you insufferable tossers, not a single one of the “future generations” you constantly cite in your mantras as justification for your disgusting, immoral and anti-free-market environmental policies actually exists.

But the people you’re killing now as a result of those environmental policies DO exist.

Or rather they did, till you choked or froze them to death, you vile, evil, eco-Nazi scumbags.

SOURCE  





German Government ‘Plans To Stop And Reverse Wind Power’

If the green energy plans by the German Federal Government are implemented, the expansion of onshore wind energy will soon come to a standstill and then go into reverse.

According to figures by the Federal Network Agency, in the twelve months from February 2015 to January 2016 new wind turbines with a net capacity of nearly 3,600 megawatts were installed. The 3600 MW correspond to about three nuclear reactors. […]

What is the future of wind energy in Germany?

This depends entirely on political developments. In early March, German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel presented a draft for the amendment of the Renewable Energies Act (EEG). The new rules regulate the subsidy levels for renewable energy. The new regulations are to be adopted in coming months. The draft says, inter alia, that the amount of renewable energy in the electricity mix will be limited to a level of 40 to 45 percent by 2025. At the end of last year the level was already nearly 33 percent.

What does this mean for the expansion of wind energy?

A study by consultants ERA on behalf of the Green Party’s parliamentary group concludes that under these provisions the development of wind energy will collapse fairly soon: A target of 45 percent would mean that only 1500 megawatts could be installed annually after 2018, according to the study. That’s less than half as the average of wind energy installed in the past five days.

How does this affect the amount of electricity produced?

The 1500 MW of new-built wind turbines would be insufficient even to replace older ones against new ones, the ERA-authors write. This means that wind generation capacity is actually shrinking. “As a consequence, there will be an economic stagnation of electricity from onshore wind energy already in the 2020s”, the study claims. From 2022 onwards, the amount of wind power will begin to shrink. With a 1,500 megawatts limit the government would undermine its own goals of a so-called expansion corridor of 2400-2600 megawatts.

What would the 40 percent cap mean?

A 40% cap for wind energy completely stop the construction of new wind farms by of 2019, according to the ERA study. Overall, this would reduce onshore wind power by almost 6000 megawatts compared to the end of 2015 – which would mean a massive slump in wind power generation by 18 terawatt hours.

What does this mean for companies that build the plants?

“The domestic market for many manufacturers collapses completely,” says Julia Verlinden, spokesperson for Energy Policy in the Green Party’s parliamentary group. “With their plan, the federal government is killing the wind companies.” This although wind energy is a cost-effective technology which can replace nuclear and coal power plants, she adds.

Who are the vested interests behind the government’s new plan?

Julia Verlinden claims that Energy Minister Gabriel seeks to protect “old, fossil fuel power plants against green competition”. There is a core of truth in this argument. It’s about power plants by the big energy companies RWE, Eon, EnBW and Vattenfall. All four companies are badly damaged, because they have relied too long on coal and nuclear power. As a result, these sectors are now threatened by massive job cuts. Trade unionists are putting pressure on to support these companies. Moreover, the Quartet are to bear the costs for the demolition of nuclear power plants and the disposal of nuclear waste.

What plans for the transformation of energy mean?

“With the planned EEG amendment Sigmar Gabriel wants to set himself a monument as the wrecker of the green energy transition,” said Green Party Vice Oliver Krischer. While the rest of the world is investing in solar and wind power, Germany’s federal government is going into reverse – just at a time when renewable energy has become so cheap.

SOURCE  





Polish Government Threatens To Kill Wind Industry, Critics Warn

Poland’s thriving wind energy industry has warned that it faces bankruptcies, rapid divestment and an end to growth under a bill that threatens executives with prison.

The wind power sector in Poland installed the largest amount of turbine capacity in the EU last year after Germany, taking total industry investment to €8bn. Turbines, including those owned by EDF, RWE and Eon, produce about 13 per cent of the country’s electricity.

But proposals submitted to parliament by the ultraconservative rightwing administration will tighten regulations to the point of killing off the industry, critics have said.

"For some projects, it will be terminal . . . it will kill them," said Wojciech Cetnarski, president of the Polish Wind Energy Association, an industry lobby group. "This will result in bankruptcies. That is for sure.

"No one will invest any more in this country’s wind energy industry if this law is passed."

The bill will make it illegal to build turbines within 2km of other buildings or forests — a measure campaigners said would rule out 99 per cent of land — and quadruple the rate of tax payable on existing turbines — making most unprofitable.

Another clause in the bill would give authorities the power to shut down each turbine for weeks at a time during monthly inspections, said industry figures. Violations would result in hefty fines or two years’ imprisonment.

Foreign investors are already viewing the bill with alarm.

SOURCE  





GMOs and India: The Mustard Chapter

The oil makes up about 30% of mustard seeds and has long been  used for cooking in India.  Americans will be pleased to know that their wonderful bureaucracy has protected them from mustard oil by banning its sale in America -- as a threat to their health.  A billion Indians can be wrong apparently

Last month, anti-genetically modified organism (GMO) activists engaged in a war in the streets of India’s capital. The agitation is about the genetically modified (GM) variant of mustard — DMH-11 (Dhara Mustard Hybrid 11).

Why?

Proponents argue that it will increase crop yields by 25–30 percent compared to the varieties grown in the country now, a move that could help the country increase its edible oil production.

The opponents, though, put forward various arguments, a majority of which are about the yield percentage and the impact of GM crops on the health of the ecosystem, including on humans.

The DMH-11 variant was developed by The Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants (CGMCP) at Delhi University. It is directly regulated by The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), which comes under the Indian Government’s Environment Ministry. So it is an Indian government project aimed at genetically modifying mustard to increase yield, thereby directly addressing food security. The CGMCP was scheduled to distribute the seeds for free, after the approval for commercial cultivation from the government. It is at this juncture that the anti-GMO advocates have caused the disruption.

The most commonly debated issues are: productivity, economic contribution, and safety.

GM crops and Productivity: The Numbers

Developing countries constitute 54 percent of the total global GM crop area. Over the period of 18 years between 1996 and 2013, farm incomes have increased by a cumulative $133.5 million due to the use of GM crops. The direct global farm income benefit due to GM crops was $18.8 billion in 2012 and $20.5 billion in 2013.

Apart from improving the economic condition of farmers, the biotech crops have also reduced the use of pesticides. The amount of reduction in pesticide usage has been 550 million kg or 8.6 percent. Moreover, the environmental footprint of biotech crops was reduced by 19 percent.

Let us for example consider Bt cotton — the only GM crop allowed for commercial cultivation in India. The farm income benefit from that crop was $16.2 million between 1996 and 2013.

When a developed nation like the U.S. can benefit $58.4 billion from biotech crop-based farm income (1996 to 2013), why should poor countries like India not adopt similar measures?

Economic Contribution: India’s Import of Oil from GM Crops

India imports 14 million tons (mt) of edible oil, 24 percent of which comes predominantly from GM rapeseed oil and soybean oil. Surprisingly, the anti-GMO advocates have not protested against GMO oil imports. Rather they chose to protest against the genetic development and implementation of mustard that contributes to 25 percent of India’s edible oil production.

Even a meager conservative estimate of 10 percent increase in Mustard production (actual projection of 20-30 percent increase in yield) will help in reducing the import of GMO oil.

Safety of GM Mustard DMH-11

Anti-GMO activists have claimed that the GM variant is unsafe. But DMH-11 went through Biosafety Research Level-1 (BRL-1) tests between 2011 and 2013, in Rajasthan, under the coordination of the National Research Centre for Rapeseed-Mustard at Bharatpur, and BRL-2 tests at the Indian Agriculture Research Institute in Delhi and the Punjab Agricultural University in 2014-15.

It was deemed safe.

Yet the Anti-GMO campaigners had the single-minded objective of banning the seed. It is quite amusing, given that the GM variant has not been released for commercial farming, yet they have found “unsubstantiated” reasons to call for a ban. After the recent protests, the government of India ordered eight additional tests which will be included in the seed’s biosafety dossier.

Thus the GM variant of mustard satisfies the important standards regarding its use — productivity, economic contribution, and environmental safety. Far too many voices have been raised against GMO mustard without due consideration of the research behind its development and the role it will play in edible oil production.

The Indian government is neither a proponent nor a villain of GMOs. But it needs to be pro-active about food security. The government needs to stand firm in its commitment to food security and the development of scientific technology that will benefit millions. This should be achieved without risking the quality of the environment and the livelihood of many Indians.

My opinion is echoed by the Environment Minister of India, Prakash Javadekar: “We cannot let our people starve. But if there are other good alternatives available … our Prime Minister has repeatedly talked about organic farming, and using biotechnology in agriculture. But at the same time, scientific methods (GM) are also important.”

SOURCE  

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

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