Environment Archives - Page 83 of 89

SHOCK: New paper advocates ‘exaggeration’ & ‘manipulation’ about global warming to ‘enhance global welfare’

April 4, 2014/in Culture War, Environment, Must Read, News, Science, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Marc Morano

A new peer-reviewed paper published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, titled “Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements”, is openly advocating that global warming proponents engage in mendacious claims in order to further their cause.

The paper appears to openly advocate lying or “information manipulation” to further the cause of man-made global warming and “enhance global welfare.”

The authors, Assistant Professors of Economics Fuhai Hong and Xiaojian Zhao, note how the media and environmental groups “exaggerate” global warming and then the offer their paper to “provide a rationale for this tendency” to exaggerate for the good of the cause.

The paper was published on February 24, 2014.

The author’s boldly note in the abstract of the study that the “news media and some pro-environmental have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency.”

“We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA (International Environmental Agreements) which will eventually enhance global welfare.”

The authors of the paper are Fuhai Hong, an assistant professor in the Division of Economics, Nanyang Technological University and Xiaojian Zhao is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. (fhhong@ntu.edu.sg)

The complete Abstract of the paper is reproduced below:

“It appears that news media and some pro-environmental organizations have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency by using a modified International Environmental Agreement (IEA) model with asymmetric information. We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA, which will eventually enhance global welfare. From the ex ante perspective however, the impact that manipulating information has on the level of participation in an IEA and on welfare is ambiguous.”

Reaction to the paper has been very critical. Craig Rucker of Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow CFACT (Climate Depot’s parent company) noted in an April 4 blog: “What will shock you is that two professors not only candidly admit it, but published a paper in a peer reviewed journal touting the beneficial effects of lying for pushing nations into a UN climate treaty in Paris next year!”

Rucker added: “The authors not only believe that their dubious ends justify their shady means, they institutionalize ‘information manipulation’ as a tactic, host panels about it at climate conferences and publish it in journals. They’re shameless.”

CFACT Davi’s Rothbard noted: “Global warming skeptics have long charged that alarmists are over-hyping the dangers of climate change. Now comes a new paper from two economists in Singapore and Hong Kong that actually advocates exaggerating global warming fears to get countries on board international environmental agreements.”

According to Kevin Glass of Townhall.com, the paper claims that the urgency of climate change makes it OK to deceive the public about the projected consequences of global warming. They don’t actually use the word “lying,” but by calling for “informational manipulation and exaggeration,” they certainly think the ends justify these very questionable and over-heated means.”

This is not the first time that global warming advocates have been accused of being deceptive.

The late Stanford University professor Stephen Schneider wrote in 1989: “So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” which we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.” Discovery Magazine (October, 1989, p. 45-48).

Former NASA global warming scientist James Hansen conceded in a 2003 issue of Natural Science that the use of “extreme scenarios” to dramatize global warming “may have been appropriate at one time” to drive the public’s attention to the issue.

April’s Fools: The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

April 4, 2014/in Commentary, Environment, News, Policy, Science/by Richard C. Savage, Ph.D.

On March 31st the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. You probably read something about it in your paper; almost certainly, you heard about it on the evening news from ABC, CBS, or NBC. But, why pay attention to the small fry, like Diane Sawyer or Brian Williams? The Secretary of State, John Kerry, tells us that “the costs of inaction are catastrophic.” Mr. Kerry apparently still believes “climate change” is the greatest weapon of mass destruction we face.

This report was brought to us by the same people who, last September, admitted their climate models tremendously exaggerate warming, as shown in the below graph.

For a larger view click on the graph.

There are thousands of balloon observations of the atmosphere daily, going back to the 1950’s. Since 1980, there have been millions of satellite measurements of the temperature of the mid-troposphere (15 – 30,000 feet). And, as the IPCC (and NASA, and NOAA, and the UK Meteorological Office) admit, there has been no global warming for over 17 years.

Think about that. Science is based on formulating a hypothesis about the cause of a phenomenon in nature, conducting an experiment to test that hypothesis, and then modifying or rejecting, or – rarely – accepting the original hypothesis (at least until you can conduct a more definitive experiment).

UN “climate scientists” – the sort accepted by the UN and John Kerry – have been observing an ongoing experiment in the atmosphere for over seventeen years. Throughout that time, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) has been increasing, by about 10%. The hypothesis is that CO2 “traps” heat in the atmosphere and warms the Earth. But no warming has been observed. How to explain this? Other than to admit the experiment demonstrates the hypothesis is false?

I personally accept that the hypothesis is false. In a previous article, I pointed out that, of infrared radiation emitted from Earth, and absorbed by a greenhouse gas (water vapor or CO2), at least half is re-radiated toward space. The other half (or less) is radiated downward; that’s the “greenhouse effect.” It acts like the insulation in the roof of your house, which helps the furnace keep the house warm, but it won’t set fire to the house. It won’t even heat the house by itself, in the absense of a furnace. You can live in a house with a furnace and no insulation, but a house with no furnace and lots of insulation will still be cold – at least some of the time.

But there are several excuses on offer for the lack of warming, such as the sun is getting colder, or the missing heat is hiding in the oceans, or there’s a lot more volcanic dust in the atmosphere than we thought, or oceanic winds are stronger than modelled, or we just don’t have enough observations in the right places….all excuses that were never mentioned before. Until the last six months, carbon dioxide was the one and only climate control. Now the story is changing; the models were just incomplete, and, as soon as they get their models improved (i.e., keep the “climate scientists” funded), they will figure out what the climate is really doing.

You should not believe this argument, for a fundamental reason. Models of the atmosphere are not reliable beyond about a week. A year? A century? Give me a break! Not a chance.

I’ve been musing over this for a couple of days – the impossibility of modelling the climate. I’m pleased to see that Lord Monckton of Brenchley has written on the same topic. You can read his description of why climate modelling is impossible as well – or you can simply write or call your local weather forecaster. None of this is a secret.

I became a student of meteorology in 1962, at Florida State, and I learned that scientific meteorological forecasting was becoming possible, through the ability of smart meteorologists (i.e., my professors) and the advent of very high-speed computers. The smart meteorologists would write the necessary non-linear partial differential equations in spherical coordinates on a rotating earth and initialize the boundary conditions from the thousands of surface and upper air balloon observations (with satellite observations yet to come) and run (i.e., find the solution that satisfied) the equations and out would come the forecast. Note the word initialize.

The next year, 1963, it all went to Hell. A very smart meteorologist, Ed Lorenz at MIT, started his computer and stepped away for a cup of coffee. When he came back, to his annoyance, he found the computer had stopped for some reason, only part way through. No reason to redo all the calculations, so he restarted the computer, and initialized the calculations with some of the values partway through. This time the calculations ran as far as he wanted, several days into the future. Much to his surprise, when he compared his partial results with the full results, they were very different. Much to everyone’s surprise, the solution to a set of deterministic non-linear partial differential equations depends very much on the initial conditions. Slightly – I mean infinitesimally – small initial condition differences can lead to wildly different forecasts. As Lorenz phrased it, “the flapping of a butterfly’s wings could lead to a tornado in Texas.”

So, how does a meteorologist know the initial conditions – always a little uncertain – won’t turn the forecast into nonsense? The National Meteorological Center runs the model several times, with small random variations in the numerical values of the initial conditions, to be sure the forecast doesn’t change drastically. But, over a few days, the inevitable errors – noise – in the initial value data will swamp the valid solution. The forecast always goes wrong.

As I said, every forecaster who has to face real customers in TV land, or the newspapers, or at the airport, or in the Air Force or Navy, is aware of this. That’s one of the reasons most real weather forecasters don’t believe the ivory tower “climate scientists” who offer prognostications of the climate a century from now. Have you noticed the “climate scientists” don’t bother to offer a forecast for next month? Or next year? Gee, I wonder what their verification statistics would look like?

Ed Lorenz discovered a new field of mathematics, called Chaos Theory, a major scientific development. It also includes fractals and fractal art, such as the Mandelbrot set. And the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock (I’m told) contain fractal characteristics. I guess meteorology’s loss is art’s gain. If you wish to know much more about Chaos Theory, The Great Courses (www.teach12.com) offers a very nice 24-lecture course by Professor Strogatz of Cornell.

Ann Curry

Breaking news: the propaganda campaign to control your life and take your money, in the name of saving our children from climate change, will get a fresh hour of nonsense from Ann Curry (NBC News) on Sunday evening, April 6, 7p/6c. Curry will assure us that 2013 was “a year of extremes” that proves …well, I’ll wait to see.

Report: Global Warming Causes ‘No Net Harm’ to Environment or Human Health

April 4, 2014/in Energy, Environment, Featured, Healthcare, News, Policy, Science/by Dr. Rich Swier

Independent review of climate science contradicts “alarmist” views of United Nations report.

The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) on Monday released Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts. The 1,062-page report contains thousands of citations to peer-reviewed scientific literature — and concludes rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels are causing “no net harm to the global environment or to human health and often finds the opposite: net benefits to plants, including important food crops, and to animals and human health.”

Click here to read the full report in digital form (PDF). An 18-page Summary for Policymakers is available here. Print versions of the full report and the summary will be released by NIPCC in Washington, DC the week of April 7th. Individual chapters of the full report can be downloaded at the Climate Change Reconsidered Web site.

Among the findings in Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts:

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a non-toxic, non-irritating, and natural component of the atmosphere. Long-term CO2 enrichment studies confirm the findings of shorter-term experiments, demonstrating numerous growth-enhancing, water-conserving, and stress-alleviating effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 on plants growing in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
There is little or no risk of increasing food insecurity due to global warming or rising atmospheric CO2 levels.Farmers and others who depend on rural livelihoods for income are benefiting from rising agricultural productivity around the world, including in parts of Asia and Africa where the need for increased food supplies is most critical. Rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels play a key role in the realization of such benefits.
Rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels do not pose a significant threat to aquatic life. Many aquatic species have shown considerable tolerance to temperatures and CO2 values predicted for the next few centuries, and many have demonstrated a likelihood of positive responses in empirical studies. Any projected adverse impacts of rising temperatures or declining seawater and freshwater pH levels (“acidification”) will be largely mitigated through phenotypic adaptation or evolution during the many decades to centuries it is expected to take for pH levels to fall.
A modest warming of the planet will result in a net reduction of human mortality from temperature-related events.More lives are saved by global warming via the amelioration of cold-related deaths than are lost due to excessive heat. Global warming will have a negligible influence on human morbidity and the spread of infectious diseases.

NIPCC scientists and experts from Washington, DC-based think tanks will be in Washington the week of April 7th to publicly release the final two volumes of the Climate Change Reconsidered II series: Biological Impacts, which is available online at www.climatechangereconsidered.org, and Human Welfare, Energy, and Policies, which will become available online during the coming week.

ABOUT THE HEARTLAND INSTITUTE

The Heartland Institute is a 30-year-old national nonprofit organization headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit the Heartland Institute website or call 312/377-4000.

ABOUT THE NONGOVERNMENTAL INTERNATIONAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE

The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is an international panel of scientists and scholars who first came together in 2003 to provide an independent review of the climate science cited by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). NIPCC has produced five major scientific reports so far and plans to release one more in the coming weeks. These reports have been endorsed by leading scientists from around the world, been cited in peer-reviewed journals, and are credited with changing the global debate over climate change. No corporate or government funding was solicited or received to support production of these reports.

Scaring the World about its Climate

April 2, 2014/in Commentary, Environment, News, Policy, Politics, Science/by Alan Caruba

Ever since the creation in 1988 of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it has engaged in the greatest hoax of modern times, releasing reports that predict climate-related catastrophes as if the climate has not been a completely natural and dynamic producer of events that affect our lives.

The IPCC was set up by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Program. It has enlisted thousands of scientists to contribute to its scare campaign, but as Joseph Bast, the president of The Heartland Institute, noted in a recent Forbes article regarding the vast difference in the assertions of the IPCC scientists and those of its puckishly named Non Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), “What is a non-scientist to make of these dueling reports? Indeed, what is a scientist to make of this?”

“Very few scientists are familiar with biology, geology, physics, oceanography, engineering, medicine, economics, and scores of other more specialized disciplines that were the basis of the claims…” The IPCC has depended on the ignorance of those scientists outside their particular disciplines and recruited them to be involved in the UN hoax. The rest of us look to them to provide guidance regarding issues involving the climate and, as a result, have been deliberately deceived.

The NIPCC, anticipating the latest IPCC addition to its climate scare campaign, has just issued a new addition to its “Climate Change Reconsidered” reports. The first volume was 850 pages long and the latest is more than 1,000 pages. It represents the findings of scores of scientists from around the world and thousands of peer-reviewed studies. At this point they represent some twenty nations.

I have been an advisor to The Heartland Institute for many years and have been exposing the climate change lies since the late 1980s. A science writer, I have benefited from the work of men like atmospheric physicist, S. Fred Singer, a founder of the NPCC who has overseen five reports debunking the IPCC since 2003.

The Heartland Institute has sponsored nine international conferences that have brought together many scientists and others in an effort to debunk the UN’s climate scare campaign.

I have always depended on the common sense of people to understand that humans have nothing to do with the climate except to endure and enjoy it. We don’t create it or influence it.

The global warming campaign is based on the Big Lie that carbon dioxide (CO2) traps the Sun’s heat and warms the Earth, but the fairly miniscule amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (0.038%) does not do that in a fashion that poses any threat. Indeed, it is the Sun that determines the Earth’s climate, depending where you happen to be on the Earth. Next to oxygen, CO2 is vital to all life on Earth as it is the “food” on which all vegetation depends. More CO2 is good. Less is not so good.

The IPCC has depended in part on the print and broadcast media to spread its Big Lie. It also depends on world leaders, few of whom have any background or serious knowledge of atmospheric science, to impose policies based on the Big Lie. These policies target the use of “fossil fuels”, oil, coal and natural gas, urging a reduction of their use. The world, however, utterly depends on them and, in addition to existing reserves, new reserves are found every year.

One reason the IPCC has been in a growing state of panic is a new, completely natural cooling cycle based on a reduction of solar radiation. As James M. Taylor, the managing editor of Heartland’s “Environment & Climate News”, pointed out recently, “Winter temperatures in the contiguous United States declined by more than a full degree Celsius (more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit) during the past twenty years.” He was citing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data. “The data contradicts assertions that human induced global warming is causing a rise in winter temperatures.”

In addition to the recent extremely cold winter, there have been others in 2000-2001 and 2009-2010. There will be more.

The IPCC report is full of claims about global warming, now called “climate change” since the world is obviously not warming. In March, Taylor rebutted an IPCC claim that crop production is falling, noting that global corn, rice, and wheat production have more than tripled since 1970. In recent years, the U.S. has set records for alfalfa, cotton, beans, sugar beets, canola, corn, flaxseed, hops, rice, sorghum, soybeans, sugarcane, sunflowers, peanuts, and wheat, to name just a few.

The Earth would benefit from more, not less, CO2 emissions, but the Obama administration has been engaged in imposing hundreds of new regulations aimed at reductions. It targets the development and expansion of our energy sector. The President has repeated the lies in his State of the Union speeches and we have a Secretary of State, John Kerry, who insists that climate change is the greatest threat to mankind and not the increase of nuclear weapons.

Every one of the Earth’s seven billion population are being subjected to the UN’s campaign of lies and every one of us needs to do whatever we can to bring about an end to the United Nations and reject the IPCC’s claims.

Carbon Footprint: Using Unborn Fetuses as “Renewable Energy”

March 30, 2014/in Culture War, Energy, Environment, Featured, News, Policy, Politics/by Dr. Rich Swier

Environmentalists believe that mankind is a scourge, an infestation if you will, upon the earth and must be at the least controlled and at worst eliminated to protect mother earth. Those who are believers in population control embrace the policies of organizations like Planned Parenthood, founded by Margaret Sanger. “The feminist movement, of which Sanger was a major exponent, always identified with eugenics,” wrote Edwin Black.

Edwin Black, author of War Against The Weak, writes, “… Sanger vigorously opposed charitable efforts to uplift the downtrodden and deprived, and argued extensively that it was better that the cold and hungry be left without help, so that the eugenically superior strains could multiply without competition from ‘the unfit.’ She repeatedly referred to the lower classes and the unfit as ‘human waste’ not worthy of assistance, and proudly quoted the extreme eugenic view that human ‘weeds’ should be ‘exterminated.’ Moreover, for both political and genuine ideological reasons, Sanger associated closely with some of some of America’s most fanatical eugenic racists.” Sanger stated, “My criticism, therefore, is not directed at the ‘failure’ of philanthropy, but rather at its success.” [Emphasis added]

One of England’s leading hospitals used the remains of 797 unborn babies in its own ‘waste to energy’ incinerator, for a savings of £18.50 per cremation. Photo courtesy of the Boston Globe.

Fast forward to today. Jeff Jacoby in his column How unborn babies become ‘clinical waste’, writes, “JONATHAN SWIFT was being satirical when he penned his “modest proposal” that destitute Irish parents alleviate their financial woes by selling their children as delicacies for rich landowners. He assured his readers that 1-year-olds are delicious, ‘whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled.’ That was satire circa 1729. Imagine what Swift at his most scathing would write today — say, a 21st-century “modest proposal” to use unborn fetuses for renewable energy. But this — from a prominent story last week in The Telegraph, a British newspaper — wasn’t satire:

“The bodies of thousands of aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated as clinical waste, with some even used to heat hospitals, an investigation has found. Ten [National Health Service] trusts have admitted burning fetal remains alongside other rubbish while two others used the bodies in ‘waste-to-energy’ plants which generate power for heat. . . . At least 15,500 fetal remains were incinerated by 27 NHS trusts over the last two years alone, Channel 4’s ‘Dispatches’ discovered.”

The Wire’s Phillip Bump writes, “American conservatives are very upset. Breitbart’s new UK outlet picked up the story, with commenters linking the practice to the Nazis, to Hell, to environmentalists, and to Democrats, in some variation of that order. The response was similar on Twitter. (“What’s the carbon footprint of burning dead, aborted infants?”). A columnist at RedState identified as “streiff” did the yeoman’s work of delineating the slippery slope.

This is what happens when a society loses faith. Humans lose their humanity. When that humanity is lost, society feels free to use humans in whatever way it perceives will generate the best Return on Investment. In order to justify abortion, the unborn had to be dehumanized.

“While it always to poke fun at the Brits, this is undoubtedly happening today in the United States,” streiff writes. It is like the film Soylent Green, the writer argues, in which people judged not to be useful to society are turned into food.

Burning fetuses is just the first step on the road to perdition. What’s the carbon footprint for a burned baby? What’s the moral price for burning one?

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is courtesy of TShirtBordello.com.

The Next Cold Climate: Surviving politically, materially and socially

March 29, 2014/in Environment, Must Read, News, Policy, Science/by Dr. Rich Swier

An event, hosted by Sarasota Patriots, will be held at the Hyatt Regency on April 8th, 2014 on Climate Change (see flyer below). Two experts will be addressing different aspects of climate change and the policies enacted to address this critically important issue. Knowledge is power. Knowing how the coming changes in climate will impact you on a personal level is essential to your surviving and prospering in difficult conditions.

The featured speakers are John Casey, Founder of the Space and Science Research Corporation, and Craig Rucker, Executive Director and co-Founder of CFACT, both renowned experts on the topic of climate change policy. Casey worked for NASA, was a White House space and science advisor and wrote the seminal book “Cold Sun“. Rucker has attended all United Nations meetings with the G8 nations on climate change since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.

Beth Colvin, founder of Sarasota Patriots, states, “Many people have no idea that Global Warming is a hoax dreamed up by Al Gore in order to redistribute the wealth of industrialized countries to the poorer nations. There are those who propose you measure your ‘Carbon Footprint’ by figuring out how much fuel your car burns, how much electricity your appliances require and how much CO2 you breathe into the atmosphere so you can offset this by donating money to less industrialized countries so they too might prosper. This is called ‘Cap and Trade for the Masses’.”

Go here to calculate how much you need to donate to offset your personal carbon footprint: http://www.nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator/

Those wishing to attend this open to the public free event please email your RSVP to Beth Colvin at becolvin@aol.com.

A History of the Disastrous Global Warming Hoax

March 28, 2014/in Environment, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Regulation, Science, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Alan Caruba

“It is the greatest deception in history and the extent of the damage has yet to be exposed and measured,” says Dr. Tim Ball in his new book, “The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science”.

Dr. Ball has been a climatologist for more than forty years and was one of the earliest critics of the global warming hoax that was initiated by the United Nations environmental program that was established in 1972 and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) established in 1988.

Several UN conferences set in motion the hoax that is based on the assertion that carbon dioxide (CO2) was causing a dramatic surge in heating the Earth. IPCC reports have continued to spread this lie through their summaries for policy makers that influenced policies that have caused nations worldwide to spend billions to reduce and restrict CO2 emissions. Manmade climate change—called anthropogenic global warming—continues to be the message though mankind plays no role whatever

There is no scientific support for the UN theory.

CO2, despite being a minor element of the Earth’s atmosphere, is essential for all life on Earth because it is the food that nourishes all vegetation. The Earth has passed through many periods of high levels of CO2 and many cycles of warming and cooling that are part of the life of the planet.

“Science works by creating theories based on assumptions,” Dr. Ball notes, “then other scientists—performing their skeptical role—test them. The structure and mandate of the IPCC was in direct contradiction of this scientific method. They set out to prove the theory rather than disprove it.”

“The atmosphere,” Dr. Ball notes, “is three-dimensional and dynamic, so building a computer model that even approximates reality requires far more data than exists and much greater understanding of an extremely turbulent and complex system.” No computer model put forth by the IPCC in support of global warming has been accurate, nor ever could be.

Most of the reports were created by a small group of men working within the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia and all were members of the IPCC. The result was “a totally false picture supposedly based on science.”

The revelations of emails between the members of the CRU were made available in 2009 by an unknown source. Dr. Ball quotes Phil Jones, the Director of the CRU at the time of the leaks, and Tom Wigley, a former director addressing other CRU members admiting that “Many of the uncertainties surrounding the cause of climate change will never be resolved because the necessary data are lacking.”

The IPCC depended upon the public’s lack of knowledge regarding the science involved and the global warming hoax was greatly aided because the “mainstream media bought into and promoted the unproven theory. Scientists who challenged were denied funding and marginalized. National environmental policies were introduced based on the misleading information” of the IPCC summaries of their reports.

“By the time of the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report, the politics and hysteria about climate change had risen to a level that demanded clear evidence of a human signal,” notes Dr. Ball. “An entire industry had developed around massive funding from government. A large number of academic, political, and bureaucratic careers had evolved and depended on expansion of the evidence. Environmentalists were increasing pressure on the public and thereby politicians.”

The growing problem for the CRU and the entire global warming hoax was that no clear evidence existed to blame mankind for changes in the climate and still largely unknown to the public was the fact that the Earth has passed through many natural cycles of warmth and cooling. If humans were responsible, how could the CRU explain a succession of ice ages over millions of years?

The CRU emails revealed their growing concerns regarding a cooling cycle that had begun in the late 1990s and now, some seventeen years later, the Earth is in a widely recognized cooling cycle.

Moreover, the hoax was aimed at vast reductions in the use of coal, oil, and natural gas, as well as nuclear power to produce the electricity on which all modern life depends. There was advocacy of solar and wind power to replace them and nations undertook costly programs to bring about the reduction of the CO2 “fossil fuels” produced and spent billions on the “green” energy. That program is being abandoned.

At the heart of the hoax is a contempt for mankind and a belief that population worldwide should be reduced. The science advisor to President Obama, John Holdren, has advocated forced abortions, sterilization by introducing infertility drugs into the nation’s drinking water and food, and other totalitarian measures. “Overpopulation is still central to the use of climate change as a political vehicle,” warns Dr. Ball.

Given that the environmental movement has been around since the 1960s, it has taken decades for the public to grasp its intent and the torrents of lies that have been used to advance it. “More people,” notes Dr. Ball, “are starting to understand that what they’re told about climate change by academia, the mass media, and the government is wrong, especially the propaganda coming from the UN and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

“Ridiculous claims—like the science is settled or the debate is over—triggered a growing realization that something was wrong.” When the global warming advocates began to tell people that cooling is caused by warming, the public has realized how absurd the entire UN climate change argument has been.

Worse, however, has been “the deliberate deceptions, misinformation, manipulation of records and misapplying scientific method and research” to pursue a political objective. Much of this is clearly unlawful, but it is unlikely that any of those who perpetrated the hoax will ever be punished and, in the case of Al Gore and the IPCC, they shared a Nobel Peace Prize!

We are all in debt to Dr. Ball and a score of his fellow scientists who exposed the lies and debunked the hoax; their numbers are growing with thousands of scientists signing petitions and participating in international conferences to expose this massive global deception.

Wildlife is Thriving Because of Guns and Hunting

March 26, 2014/in Culture War, Environment, Featured, Gun Rights, News, Regulation, Science/by Dr. Rich Swier

Since the late 1930s, hunters, target shooters and the firearms industry have been the nation’s largest contributors to conservation, paying for programs that benefit America’s wildlife and all who love the outdoors.

In fact, the U.S. Department of Interior just announced that firearms and ammunition manufacturers contributed a record $760.9 million in excise taxes in 2013 through the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Program.

National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) has created the below infographic, “How Wildlife is Thriving Because of Guns and Hunting,” to illustrate how “we as an industry and as sportsmen are the greatest contributors to wildlife conservation in America, providing nearly $9 billion over the past 76 years.”

Keystone XL: Who benefits? Who loses?

March 26, 2014/in Commentary, Energy, Environment, News, Policy, Politics, Regulation/by Richard C. Savage, Ph.D.

Last Thursday, 20 March, the Washington Post published an amazing article by Juliet Eilperin, their Environment reporter, claiming the Koch brothers are the major owners of Canadian “tar sands” – the source of oil to be shipped through the Keystone XL . Specifically the article said:

“The biggest leaseholder in Canada’s oil sands isn’t Exxon Mobil or Chevron. It’s the Koch brothers.”

In doing so, Eilperin and the Post relied on a recently issued report from a far-left outfit called the International Forum on Globalization (IFG).

Ms. Eilperin is a longtime advocate of action to save the earth from “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming” (CAGW), the old name before it became “climate change” or “carbon pollution.” It is not terribly surprising that Eilperin opposes the pipeline, whoever is invested in it. The surprise is that Eilperin rushed so quickly and gullibly into an obvious hoax.

The recent IFG report is a supplement to one issued in October, 2013, which became a laughingstock when John Hinderaker of Powerline blog tore it apart, noting that even IFG admits Keystone XL would provide competition for Koch oil sales in the American Midwest, costing them about $120 billion. In addition, Koch Industries has never lobbied for the Keystone XL. Also, one does not just drive up to a Keystone XL terminal – assuming one ever exists – and pour in a truckload of oil. A would-be user has to pay, in advance, for a quota of oil to be shipped, an allowance of a portion to be used (of a total 830,000 bbl/day). Koch Industries hasn’t bought a quota. Needless to say, Hinderaker had a lot of fun ripping the WaPo and Eilperin.

A wise journalist – or, at least, an honest one – would have issued a retraction and an apology to the readers. Eilperin and the Post have done neither. Nor has the Post’s Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, the man who issues “Pinocchio” awards to liars, said anything about the article.

Pinocchios courtesy of the Washington Post.

This lie ought to get Eilperin four pinocchios.

So, what did Eilperin offer in response? She said:

The Powerline article itself, and its tone, is strong evidence that issues surrounding the Koch brothers’ political and business interests will stir and inflame public debate in this election year. That’s why we wrote the piece.

Oh. The fact that someone – not even Koch Industries – tried to rebut a complete lie is justification for printing the lie in the first place – since it “stirs and inflames public debate.”

But wait, as the TV salesmen say, there’s more.

Juliet Eilperin is married to Andrew Light, who formulates environmental policy for John Podesta’s Center for American Progress (CAP). Light is also a member of the Obama Administration, as a Senior Advisor to the Special Envoy on Climate Change in the State Department. As you remember, Climate Change is the most important issue facing the world – according to the Secretary of State, John “A Child Could Understand This” Kerry. Today President Obama is in Europe, discussing with NATO and the leaders of the European Union, what we can do to blunt the Russian control of the EU energy supply.

As you probably remember, John Podesta was recently made a “special advisor” to Obama – and specifically to advise on climate for the guy who once promised to make your electricity costs “skyrocket.” Mr. Podesta strongly and unequivocally opposes the construction of liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals. He wants more study – as has been done for Keystone XL pipeline, for five years.

Who benefits if the Keystone pipeline goes ahead? Millions of Americans who will see gasoline prices decrease. Millions of Canadians who will see taxes flow into their national treasury. Thousands of Americans and Canadian workers. American energy independence, a priority since the 1970’s. Certainly not Koch Industries.

Who benefits if Keystone is not approved?

Tom Steyer, hedge fund billionaire and major Democratic Party contributor. Steyer is offering $100 million to Democrats in 2014 who oppose Keystone. Prior to the Democratic Senators’ talkathon, the leaders visited Steyer’s home in New York. Does anyone believe Mr. Steyer cares for the environment and global warming $100 million worth?

The feature image is a picture of Brad Johnson, a staff writer for Podesta’s Center for American Progress, admonishing the Washington Post against telling lies – when the Post dared print a column by Charles Krauthammer that suggested climate science is not “settled science.”

The American Physical Society (APS) recently appointed a panel of members, including three prominent sceptics, to review its previous endorsement of global warming as a matter of concern. Sounds pretty unsettled. I don’t often agree with Johnson or the rest of Podesta’s gang, but I also wish the Washington Post and its environment writer, Eilperin, would stop telling lies.

Does Climate Change Play a Role in Putin’s Aggression in Ukraine?

March 25, 2014/in Culture War, Energy, Environment, Featured, National Security, News, Policy, Science/by John Casey

1. Russian President Vladimir Putin has bested US President Obama in the Ukraine including the recent annexation of Crimea.

2. Putin is trying to rebuild the former Soviet Union, but may also want Ukraine’s wheat and all the warm water ports of the northern Black Sea because of a potentially dangerous new cold climate.

3. Global warming ended years ago and the next global cold climate epoch has begun because of the Sun going into a reduced state of energy output called a ‘solar hibernation’ – a once every 206 year event.

4. During past cold eras, Russians were heavily dependent on the Ukraine for wheat and the warmer water ports of Crimea. Russia is a cold, far north nation. Most of it lies at the latitude of Alaska.

5. Russian government scientists and their media are free to talk about the new cold climate where US scientists are punished for telling the truth about the climate. The US mainstream media is silent on the coming cold. Russian scientists have said a new “Little Ice Age” begins this year!

6. Russia is no stranger to the ravages of cold and starvation and they are therefore more concerned about the next cold climate. In the US, most have never experienced either. Russian scientists have said their country must prepare for what the new cold epoch will do to them. In the US, just the opposite is happening! President Obama has even said global warming is “accelerating!” – a shockingly false statement.

7. Putin will do what he can to prevent the European Union or the US or western agricultural conglomerates from getting Ukrainian wheat thus depriving Russia of food for its people. The US food conglomerates are well aware of the next cold climate.

8. Putin will try to stop the US or NATO from controlling northern Black Sea ports for its Navy. If the next “Little Ice Age” (LIA) begins as predicted, Russia’s northern ports along the Baltic Sea will be frozen in for most of the year – crippling its Navy.

9. Putin may be listening to what his scientists and his media are saying about the need to prepare for the coming difficult cold epoch. President Obama continues to place US citizens in harm’s way by making sure we are totally unprepared for the coming food shortages and extreme cold weather.

QUESTION: Does Climate Change Play a Role in Putin’s Aggression in the Ukraine?

Certainly, it looks as though the primary reason for the Russian action in Ukraine is part of Putin’s long range plan to reconstitute the former Soviet Union. Is climate change on his mind as he executes his militaristic Ukrainian strategy while taking full advantage of the feckless foreign policy of President Obama? Maybe. Should it be? Absolutely!

Putin, two steps ahead of President Obama on international affairs, is actually years ahead of President Obama on climate change. Our hapless President continues to reinforce the myth of man made global warming and engaging in active deception of the American people on the subject. Putin, however, appears to be doing exactly what he needs to do to prepare for the predicted extreme cold climate that my climate research company, the Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC,) and Russia’s leading climate scientists have warned about. That’s right, for those who haven’t been informed yet; global warming ended years ago and a potentially dangerous new cold climate has begun!

The next climate change to a predicted long cold epoch which threatens Russia’s control over the vital national resources of wheat and its long standing need for a warm water port, may be among the more important and undiscussed drivers underlying the Russian aggression in Ukraine. Securing these resources may cause him to insure he has complete control over all of the Ukraine beyond the just annexed Crimea and as much of the northern Black Sea as he can take. This bold assertion rightfully demands some explanation.

The new cold climate, a once-every-206-year event, is brought on as a result of the Sun making historic reductions in its energy output, which is leading us inextricably down the path to a much colder Earth. This “solar hibernation” has already brought about a stunning reversal from the past global warming to a new colder climate leaving the ‘warmist’ and environmental communities scrambling for new reasons for existence, e.g. ocean acidification. The widely available real world temperature data shows that not only have we had no global warming for seventeen years, but that oceanic and atmospheric temperatures have been declining for much of the last eleven years. Sea ice extent globally has reached record levels. The brutal record cold winter of 2013-2014 is but one example of many, that a fundamental change in the climate has arrived. This new cold is like the solar hibernation that has caused it, unstoppable!

The absence of discussion by our media and government, much less action to prepare for the next cold climate epoch in the US, is completely opposite in Russia! It is ironic and deeply saddening that in what was the former communist Soviet Union, scientists are more free to tell the truth about what is really happening with the Earth’s climate, than are their US colleagues. As a result, Russian climate scientists are way ahead of their shackled US counterparts on the status of this next change to a long cold climate. Tragically, here in the US, it would be a career ending move if a government scientist or government funded university climate researcher told the truth about this new cold phenomenon. President Obama has made it clear that US scientists are to mislead the people about what is happening with the climate. He has done so via executive order and in public statements where he has made public policy. In June 2013 at Georgetown University, for example, he made the statement that global warming was “accelerating” – a shockingly false statement.

Similarly, the Russian media has no problem printing articles from their climate experts about the coming cold climate and its potentially calamitous effects. With the exception of a relatively few like Newsmax and the Orlando Sentinel, major US media outlets are silent on what may become the most important news story of the century. In Russia, the media have reported that researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences are warning that a new “Little Ice Age” is coming, possibly in 2014! It is this new extreme cold epoch and its many ill-effects that could be an important secondary driver behind Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Unlike the US, Russia is no stranger to bitter cold and nationwide food deprivation. Their history is full of such episodes caused by natural forces and augmented by political turbulence and warfare. It is part of their country’s historical, social, and political makeup. There is a stark difference therefore, between the current US and Russian view of the next climate change. In the US, there is no future cold climate threat! Yet many ‘in the know’ in Russian view it as ‘a clear and present danger!’ As a result, while on the surface their rationale for a Ukraine invasion is political, underneath, the Russians well understand what other ‘jewels’ Ukraine has to offer.

I believe one of those jewels and reasons for a Russian takeover starting in the Crimea, is to secure complete access to Ukrainian wheat and other crops as they did in days of the former Soviet Union. In 2012, Russia proper produced 38 million metric tons of wheat, fifth largest in the world. Ukraine came in with 16 million tons about half of Russia’s output yet, making it number eleven in the global rankings. It is possible under current cold climate scenarios published in the Global Climate Status Report©, a product of the Space and Science Research Corporation, that Russia may see a substantial loss of its grain crops during the next cold climate. This could result in them becoming partially or totally dependent on the Ukraine for much of the bread on Russian tables. The quantities are not the only point – the geography matters too.

The Russian homeland is centered along latitude 60 degrees north. This is the same as northern Canada and Alaska! Russia in the winter is a vast cold land. Even the Ukraine, near the southern most extent of Russia, is about the same latitude as the wheat belt of southern Canada. What if the Russian Academy of Sciences is correct and we see another Little Ice Age start this year or in the next five or even ten years. What if Russia loses much or all its harvest of wheat for years in a row? They will turn as they have before – to Ukraine.

The March 10, 2014 Global Climate Status Report states that this new cold climate will likely “…result in substantial, global, social disruption and loss of life.” The US government, US agricultural conglomerates and the US mainstream media are well aware of the new cold climate because of frequent updates provided to them over the years by the Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC).

Putin cannot allow the western leaning Ukrainian government to permit European, or US agricultural conglomerates to have access to Ukraine’s wheat during the coming cold climate, leaving his people without the food they will be demanding.

History has shown that when the people begin to starve, they take down their government and wars begin. The French revolution of 1789, which eventually placed Napoleon Bonaparte on the throne, took place at the very beginning of the last 206 year solar cycle’s cold phase. Doubtless, President Putin has no interest in seeing any political upheaval on his watch. He will want Ukraine’s crops and will do what is needed to keep European and US agriculture conglomerates out of the way.

But what about the warm water port issue. The world has long known that Russia has historically sought out warm ports where its navy could hold up during winters and to be able to respond year-round to Russian military requirements as they also attempt to project their military force globally. But during this new cold climate, it will be different. The port issue will be paramount!

Again, if the Russian climate researchers are correct, then the far northern waters of the planet especially the Baltic Sea and waters around Russia’s northern ports could be frozen over, not just for a few months in winter, but for most if not all of the year! During the coldest time of the Little Ice Age from 1615 to 1745, the Baltic Sea was so cold for so long that roads, hotels, and shops were built on the frozen sea and people walked between counties over the thick ice. No, this would not be just another cold winter adversely affecting Russia’s fleet for a predictably short few months. This could be a period of time when Russia’s military, especially its navy, could be crippled, making it vulnerable to other foreign designs. Putin cannot permit that either. He will want to hold on to the recently annexed Crimea and its ports and as many other warm water ports along the Black Sea that he can capture, thus prohibiting NATO naval forces from moving in.

All the while, the wily Russian President Putin remains way ahead of President Obama. In the United States, the manmade climate change deception has become a joke. In Russia, as its history of incredible hardships shows, the changing climate may be viewed today as a matter of life and death. The incursion into the Ukraine though essentially political, may also be the first steps the Russians are taking to prepare for the coming cold!

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is of a Russian winter in Arzamas. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

The Green Scam of “Endangered Species”

March 24, 2014/in Commentary, Environment, News, Policy, Science/by Alan Caruba

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal took note of what has occurred since the 1990s when some three dozen gray wolves were captured in Canada and transferred to the wilderness of Idaho. According to federal biologists, this was necessary to restore the ecological balance in a region teeming with elk and other creatures on the gray wolf food chain.

The article noted that more than 650 wolves roam the state today according to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game which has been hearing a lot of complaints that the wolves “are wreaking havoc on Idaho’s prized elk and livestock, and prompted the governor’s office to embark on an effort to wipe out three-quarters or more of the population.”

So the federal biologists bring in the wolves and a few years later the governor’s office says kill them. Why? Because the elk population has fallen about 15% since the wolves arrived, along with 2,589 sheep, 610 cows, and 72 dogs.

Take a moment on contemplate how arrogant and unconscionably stupid it is to take gray wolves from Canada and put them in Idaho in the name of “ecological balance.” The only balance achieved was a significant imbalance in the elk population and witless destruction of sheep and cows which represent a livelihood to ranchers and dinner to the rest of us.

Throughout America we are all paying for the environmental notion of “endangered species” and the quest to “save” some from extinction. The problem with that conceit is that 95% of all the species on Earth have gone extinct over hundreds of millions of years. One paper on this noted that “Mass extinction of biological species has occurred several times in the history of our planet.”

The Endangered Species Act became law on December 28, 1973, just over forty years ago. It’s not about saving species. It’s about providing a vehicle to environmental groups to shut off access to vast areas of the nation in order to prevent drilling for oil and natural gas or mining them for coal and other minerals.

In a December 2013 Wall Street Journal article, Damien Schiff and Julie MacDonald reported that “A law intended to conserve species and habitat has brought about the recovery of only a fraction—less than 2%–of the approximately 2,100 species listed as endangered or threatened since 1973.”

“Meanwhile, the law has endangered the economic health of many communities—which creating a cottage industry of litigation that does more to enrich environmental activist groups than benefit the environment.”

“One reason the Endangered Species Act has spun out of control is that the federal agencies that decide whether to list a species—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—no longer based decisions on what the law calls for: data. Instead they invent squishy standards like ‘best professional judgment.’”

The result of that can be seen in California’s San Joaquin Valley where much of the nation’s almonds, broccoli, onions, watermelons, lettuce and tomatoes have been grown. About 13% of all agricultural production in the nation takes place in the region where some 250 different crops are grown. That is, until the Natural Resources Defense Council won a lawsuit against California’s water-delivery system that they claimed was endangering Delta smelt, on the Endangered Species list since 1994. The result was a manmade drought for the valley’s farmers and ranchers. If you wonder why the cost of everything in the vegetable section of your supermarket costs more, you can thank the NRDC.

Lying about animal species is so much a part of the environmental movement that polar bears have become a fund-raising symbol over the years despite the fact that polar bear populations, said to be threatened by melting Arctic ice, have been thriving since the 1970s. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there are between 20,000 and 25,000 polar bears worldwide, living in Canada, Greenland, the northern Russian coast, islands of the Norwegian coast and the northwest Alaska coast. Hunting them was banned in the U.S. and worldwide with the exception of Alaskan Natives for tribal needs.

Currently almost half the land west of the Mississippi river belongs to the federal government and environmentalists want to expand on that to prevent the nation’s booming oil and gas development. That development could make the U.S. energy independent, create many jobs, and its revenues could significantly reduce the tremendous national debt. At the heart of the environmental movement is an intent to destroy capitalism and reduce the U.S. among other nations to an era before fossil fuels improved life for everyone.

One way to do that is to increase the endangered list by a record 757 new species by 2018. Two species with the greatest impact on private development are range birds, the greater sage grouse and the lesser prairie chicken. Among the environmental groups who specialize in using the Endangered Species Act are the Wildlife Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity who have been party to more than one thousands lawsuits between 1900 and the present. The Center has made no secret of wanting to end fossil-fuel production in the U.S.

The Endangered Species Act should be repealed because it has a pathetic record regarding its goal over the past forty years and because it threatens the economic development of the nation. Unless or until this occurs, environmentalists will continue their assault on America.

England Goes Back to the 17th Century: The Insane Wood Bonfire

March 23, 2014/in Culture War, Environment, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Science/by Richard C. Savage, Ph.D.

The Brits have decided to Save the Planet by going back to burning wood instead of coal. The giant DRAX power plant in Yorkshire, which provides about 6% of Britain’s electricity – you know, heat, lights, telly – is being converted from burning coal to burning wood, 100 year-old hardwood, the kind prized for making furniture. American wood, from North Carolina.

No, I’m not making this up. No sane person could make this up. I know because I’ve read it in a British newspaper by a proper Brit reporter.

The Daily Mail is a rather skeptical Brit newspaper, meaning they don’t seem to uncritically accept what the Brit upper class tells them is good for them, like Charles, Prince of …let’s not go there.

I’m telling you this because the people who support the claims of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) are so world class stupid that explaining the science to them does no good. Perhaps pointing out the idiocy of their remedies for the non-existent “global warming crisis” will make an impression. The reductio ad absurdum works in math and logic; perhaps it will rouse our voters to get rid of these morons.

Secretary of State John Kerry confuses carbon dioxide, equally diffused through the atmosphere, with ozone, mostly in the stratosphere. Senator Nelson believes sea level will rise enough by 2100 to put 28 million Floridians under water. These are people who believe their highest priority – yes, that’s what Kerry said – is stopping – totally – the increase of “carbon pollution” in Earth’s atmosphere. We all exhale “carbon pollution” with every breath; it’s really carbon dioxide, invisible, odorless, and essential to all life on this planet. I really wish Kerry and Nelson would walk their talk – but, these are politicians – and stop exhaling their “carbon pollution.”

So, what did the Brit fishwrap say? A few quotes:

On a perfect spring day in the coastal forest of North Carolina I hike along a nature trail – a thread of dry gravel between the pools of the Roanoke river backwaters. A glistening otter dives for lunch just a few feet away.

Majestic trees soar straight and tall, their roots sunk deep in the swampland: maples, sweetgums and several kinds of oak. A pileated woodpecker – the world’s largest species, with a wingspan of almost 2ft – whistles as it flutters across the canopy. There the leaves are starting to bud, 100ft above the ground.
The trees seem to stretch to the horizon: a serene and timeless landscape.

Sounds pleasant. Not fast-growing trash trees, like pines for pulp. What else?

The UK is committed by law to a radical shift to renewable energy. By 2020, the proportion of Britain’s electricity generated from ‘renewable’ sources is supposed to almost triple to 30 per cent, with more than a third of that from what is called ‘biomass’.

The only large-scale way to do this is by burning wood, man’s oldest fuel – because EU rules have determined it is ‘carbon-neutral’.
So our biggest power station, the leviathan Drax plant near Selby in North Yorkshire, is switching from dirty, non-renewable coal. Biomass is far more expensive, but the consumer helps the process by paying subsidies via levies on energy bills.

So this “renewable biomass” (from America) will cost much more than coal. It also costs much more than natural gas – of which Britain still has a fair amount. They could have far more, of course, if they began fracking, but the EU disapproves of fracking. But, surely, this will save the planet by reducing carbon dioxide emission, right? No!

In fact, Burdett admits, Drax’s wood-fuelled furnaces actually produce three per cent more carbon dioxide (CO2) than coal – and well over twice as much as gas: 870g per megawatt hour (MW/hr) is belched out by wood, compared to just 400g for gas.

Then there’s the extra CO2 produced by manufacturing the pellets and transporting them 3,800 miles. According to Burdett, when all that is taken into account, using biomass for generating power produces 20 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than coal.

There are additional reasons to believe this is insanity run amok, but why belabor the obvious? These are rules from the European Union. Now you understand why Vladimir Putin can take over Crimea without objection from the EU. Angela Merkel and Germany get 40% of their energy from Russian gas. The BMW production line will not shut down for Crimea.

Surely, the British voters will rise up and sweep out of power the government that fosters such policies? No; there are three major parties in Britain (Labour, Liberal, and Conservatives), who all support this green stupidity. No hope there.

But, no doubt OUR Environmental Protection Agency will step in to protect the home of the pileated woodpecker? No; American wind farms have been given a license to kill bald eagles, golden eagles, other raptors, bats… EPA works for the Marxist thug in the White House, who’s been sitting on the Keystone XL decision for five years. Three more years of stupid.

The word “bonfire” comes from “bonfire”, in the years when the Black Death created dead bodies faster than they could be buried. Now the Green Death is sweeping across Europe – and America. Goodbye, pileated woodpecker.

LA City Council Ignores Science; Claims Hydraulic Fracturing Caused Earthquake

March 20, 2014/in Energy, Environment, News, Policy, Video/by Sean Hackbarth

In their efforts to block hydraulic fracturing, some Los Angeles City Council members don’t want to let the St. Patrick’s Day earthquake go to waste:

Three Los Angeles City Council members want city, state and federal groups to look into whether hydraulic fracturing and other forms of oil and gas “well stimulation” played any role in the earthquake that rattled the city early Monday morning.

The motion, presented Tuesday by Councilmen Paul Koretz and Mike Bonin and seconded by Councilman Bernard Parks, asks for city departments to team up with the California Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, the U.S. Geological Survey and the South Coast Air Quality Management District to report back on the likelihood that such activities contributed to the 4.4-magnitude quake.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/KiB7ny52-xw[/youtube]

National Review Online talked to City Council Member Bernand Parks:

Parks, who seconded the motion, tells National Review Online that while fracking is “reportedly” happening near the epicenter, those who signed the motion weren’t completely sure. However, he adds that “earthquakes are happening in areas that are not historically earthquake prone, but they are in places where fracking is going on.”

No one should be surprised that the ground often rumbles in Los Angeles, a city lying on top of an area prone to earthquakes, but that doesn’t mean city leaders can ignore geophysics.

A scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey stated nicely that Council Members’ theory that hydraulic fracturing caused Monday’s earthquake is hogwash:

Seismologist Lucy Jones, a USGS science advisor for risk reduction, said she would need to know much more about nearby pumping in the area, such as whether someone was changing the water pressure deep in the ground, to say whether it could have been a factor in the Monday temblor.

However, “my first impression is that sounds implausible,” Jones said, “just because the earthquake was so deep. Induced earthquakes are almost always shallower than this.”

According to seismographic data, the quake was six miles beneath the surface.

What’s more, Mark Zoback, professor of geophysics in the Stanford School of Earth Sciences, hydraulic fracturing expert, and a former advisor for the Obama administration’s Department of Energy has said that hydraulic fracturing doesn’t have the oomph to cause earthquakes and poses “no danger to the public”:

The energy released by one of these tiny microseismic events is equivalent to the energy of a gallon of milk hitting the floor after falling off a kitchen counter.

The Daily Caller’s Michael Bastasch reports on other research finding tenuous links between hydraulic fracturing and earthquakes:

A peer-reviewed 2012 study on fracking in the Inglewood Oil Field in Los Angeles County found that “the high-volume hydraulic fracturing and high-rate gravel packs had no detectable effects on vibration, and did not induce seismicity (earthquakes).”

The National Research Council, which is part of the National Academy of Sciences, also found last year that fracking poses a low risk for “inducing felt seismic events.”

…

“We also find that there is no evidence to suggest that hydraulic fracturing itself is the cause of the increased rate of earthquakes,” wrote David Hayes, deputy secretary of the Interior Department, in a 2012 report.

This effort is the latest in the Los Angeles City Council’s anti-hydraulic fracturing crusade. In February, the Council agreed to draw up rules to prohibit hydraulic fracturing, and in March, it followed through by authorizing changes in land-use laws to ban the technology in the city.

It’s apparent that science won’t stop these politicians from exploiting a natural event in order to slam hydraulic fracturing, an extremely beneficial tool for creating jobs and improving America’s energy security.

Solar and Wind Power Losing Worldwide Support

March 20, 2014/in Environment, News, Policy, Regulation/by Alan Caruba

In his state of the union speech in January President Obama claimed that the U.S. was closer to “energy independence” than ever. He was referring to solar energy while ignoring that his administration has been the most anti-fossil fuel energy than any previous one.

The U.S. has the greatest energy reserves, coal, oil and natural gas, of any nation in the world, but Obama has been waging a “war on coal”, delaying the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, and slow to issue permits to explore for new sources of energy reserves on federal lands. The impact on the economy is incalculable, but it is driving up the cost of energy for everyone and every industry.

Meanwhile, Obama keeps talking about “green jobs” and doubling the nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next three years.” This another fantasy to which he clings.

As Taylor Smith, a senior policy analyst for The Heartland Institute, points out “Despite years of favorable public policy, including renewable power mandates and billions in subsidies, solar power still produces only about 0.2 percent of the nation’s electricity. The National Conference of State Legislatures says power from most large, utility-scaled solar installations still costs about 35 percent more than electricity from natural gas plants; many other experts estimate the levelized cost is even higher.”

U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that the United States is producing less electricity now than it did when Obama took office even with the inclusion of wind energy.

From 2008 to 2012, U.S. electricity production declined by 1.7 percent. That’s what happens when Environmental Protection Agency regulations force coal mines to close along with coal-fired plants that previously produced 50 percent of the nation’s electricity.

Suffice to say, Obama is the enemy of fossil fuel production and the energy it provides for electricity production and our transportation needs. That makes him the enemy of the American people.

In February, the National Review had an article, “Europe’s Green Collapse”, by Stephen Moore in which he noted that “Not long ago nearly all the nations of Europe bought into this same dream of a green energy free lunch as they legislated tens of billions of dollars in subsidies for solar and wind power while directly and indirectly taxing and capping carbon-based energy.”

That policy was set in motion by the United Nations Kyoto treaty in 1997. It was based on the global warming hoax that called for a reduction in so-called “greenhouse gas” emissions. The U.S. did not sign onto the treaty and Canada withdrew from it in 2012.

The Earth, however, has been in a natural cooling cycle for going on seventeen years, the result not of any manmade gases, but because of the Sun has been producing lower levels of solar radiation. The hoax is based largely on the utterly false claim that carbon dioxide warms the Earth when, in fact, it plays virtually no role whatever in the Earth’s climate. The Earth is likely to remain cooler for decades.

That fact has been brutally clear in Europe where the cold has been comparable to the temperatures the U.S. has been encountering. Moore reported that “In January Brussels announced with little media fanfare that the European Union is ditching their renewable-energy standards.” It is a matter of economic survival for Europe.

What is astonishing is the way both the U.S. and Europe adopted renewable energy production because it is unpredictable and mindlessly expensive. A major factor why the global warming hoax is collapsing, it has cost everyone here and in Europe billions in loans and subsidies. Both solar and wind require a backup from traditional power sources that utilize coal, oil and natural gas.

“Thanks to about $33 billion a year in government subsidies, Germany currently gets 25 percent of its electricity from wind and solar power, and that is scheduled to rise 40 to 45 percent by 2025.” Watch Germany abandon its plans. “The EU admits that the cost of electric power in member nations is often 50 to 100 percent higher than in the U.S,” noted Moore. “Manufacturers are starting to move plants out of the EU and even to, of all places, the U.S.”

“Here is a textbook case of how centralized industrial planning—or ‘government investment’ as we now say—usually leads to catastrophically wrong bets.” In the U.S. it began in the 1970s when President Carter spent billions on renewable energy and projects like the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, a predecessor of Solyndra and other companies that went bankrupt shortly after receiving loans during the Obama administration’s first term in office.

Under Obama’s “stimulus” program, 83 percent of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Acts Section 1705 loans went to solar energy projects with wind receiving 11 percent of the funds.

“What saved the U.S. economy from replicating the Euro-industrial malaise was the entirely spontaneous oil-and-gas boom driven by technology and billions in investment by wildcat entrepreneurs…” That’s called capitalism. The sooner we get the U.S. government out of “investing” in such nonsense, the better.

As with everything else Obama has to say, his advocacy of renewable energy, like Carter’s, has proven to be a massive, costly failure.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is of a wind farm in the Tehachapi Mountains of California, taken July 2001 by Stan Shebs. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Warning for Floridians: National Hurricane Center to Issue New Storm Surge Map

March 19, 2014/in Environment, Featured, News, Policy, Regulation/by Dr. Rich Swier

If you think your property insurance costs are going through the ceiling, then gird yourself for more rate increases. Florida resident Pat Wayman in an email states, “Hold onto your wallets… the govt is making a map of more vulnerable areas! The insurance companies must love this administration. If you loved the last insurance rate hike, this one should hit you like a tsunami.” Or perhaps a hurricane?

Wayman notes, “Remember that new flood insurance bill that was signed into law? Taxpayers in non flood zones will further subsidize those in flood zones. Both our Senators voted for the bill and Rick Scott went to D.C. to lobby for it. Here is the link to an Insurance Journal article outlining the bill. The journal states, ‘The bill would scale back big flood insurance premium increases faced by hundreds of thousands of homeowners. The measure also would allow below-market insurance rates to be passed on to people buying homes in flood zones with taxpayer-subsidized policies.'”

Beginning with the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season, NOAA’s National Hurricane Center (NHC) will issue the Potential Storm Surge Flooding Map for those areas along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the United States at risk of storm surge from a tropical cyclone.

Developed over the course of several years in consultation with emergency managers, broadcast meteorologists, and others, this new map will show:

Geographical areas where inundation from storm surge could occur; and
How high above ground the water could reach in those areas.

The Potential Storm Surge Flooding Map is an experimental National Weather Service product that provides valuable new information on the storm surge hazard associated with tropical cyclones.

Storm surge is often the greatest threat to life and property from a hurricane. However, many people do not understand this term or the threat it represents.

Here are some things to know about this map:

The first map will usually be issued at the same time as the initial hurricane watch or, in some cases, with a tropical storm watch. The map is based on the latest forecast track and intensity for the tropical cyclone, and takes into account likely forecast errors.
The map shows inundation levels that have a 10-percent chance of being exceeded, and can therefore be thought of as representing a reasonable worst-case scenario for any given location.
The map is subject to change every six hours in association with every new NHC full advisory package. Due to the processing time required to produce the map, it will not be available until about 45 to 60 minutes following the advisory release.

The map will be part of an interactive display made available on the NHC website (http://www.hurricanes.gov) in situations where hurricane watches and warning are in effect for portions of the continental U.S.

The map will be experimental for at least two years, during which time comments from users will be solicited and gathered. Dissemination of the underlying raw data, including the provision of shapefiles, will not be available during the experimental period. At the conclusion of the experimental phase, based on the input, NHC will determine if the map would become an operational product.

For additional information, please visit the NHC Storm Surge website: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/surge.