Displaying posts published in

2016

SEC issues climate chaos “guidance” Paul Driessen

What about risks from anti-energy policies imposed in the name of stopping climate change?

President Obama continues to use “dangerous manmade climate change” to justify a massive regulatory onslaught that will “fundamentally transform” America’s energy, economic, business, industrial, social, legal and constitutional systems before he leaves office.

The more science batters alarmist claims, the more people realize that plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide makes life on Earth possible, the more China, India and other developing countries burn oil, gas and coal and increase their CO2 emissions to lift billions out of poverty, malnutrition, disease and brutally short lives – the more the administration issues draconian climate edicts.

Almost every department, agency and bureaucrat that didn’t eagerly volunteer has been dragooned to aid the campaign: from the EPA and Agriculture, Interior, Defense and State Departments, to the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. The Securities and Exchange Commission is the latest agency to re-up.

Pressure from climate and environmental activist groups “persuaded” the SEC to release its initial “interpretive guidance” on climate change in January 2010. It purported to help companies decide when they must disclose how their business might be affected by actual physical climate change, by direct impacts from laws, regulations or international agreements, or indirectly by effects on business trends.

Shock research finding: Mars has experienced massive climate change By Thomas Lifson

It turns out that Mars, with no help from CO2 or the Koch Brothers, has experienced massive climate change. The findings, based on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter radar data, help make the point that significant drivers of climate change have nothing to do with mankind’s puny influence. Scott K. Johnson reports at ArsTechnica:

Layers in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets record ice age histories on Earth, and the ice caps of Mars’ would tell us a great deal—except we can’t really go drill cores from the darn things. (snip) Working with images around the edges of the Martian ice caps, researchers have been able to catch glimpses of such layering. But without understanding how those glimpses connect together, the information they can reveal is limited.

A team of scientists led by Isaac Smith and Nathaniel Putzig of the Planetary Research Institute used radar data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to stitch together an X-ray-like look at the layering within the polar ice.

Most of the action was found at the northern pole, where the ice is up to 2km thick. The researchers were able to pick out layers of accumulation as well as several major breaks marking periods of disappearing ice. Since the last break about 370,000 years ago, ice has been moving back to the poles—meaning Mars is currently in an “interglacial” period.

The layer of new accumulation at the northern pole was as much as 320 meters thick. That number is much higher than early images had hinted at, but it is close to predictions made using models. This layer is thinner and a bit more complicated at the southern pole, equaling about eight percent of the volume of the northern layer. In total, there is about 87,000 cubic kilometers of newly accumulated ice—enough to cover the surface of Mars with about 60cm of it.

Leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives linked to controversial Islamic charity By Sierra Rayne

There is bound to be tension in any political party with the contradictory name “Progressive Conservative,” but it appears that in Ontario – Canada’s largest province and home of nearly 14 million people having a largely undefended border with the United States – there is little evidence of the “conservative” wing.

Party leader Patrick Brown is actively campaigning against the proposed cuts to socialized medicine by the governing Liberal Party, led by Kathleen Wynne. The party that is supposed to be to the political right of the radical left-wing Liberals is now working with health care unions to oppose a reduction in public health care spending. Under Brown’s leadership, the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario is also a keen supporter of carbon taxation.

Even more troubling is that Brown is apparently supporting a highly controversial Islamic charity. On May 30, he spoke at Islamic Relief Canada’s Ramadan Launch Event. This doesn’t appear to be Brown’s first connection to Islamic Relief Canada. According to the charity, he also participated in the 2015 Nazem Kadri Golf Classic.

In December 2014, the Financial Post removed Islamic Relief Canada from its list of recommended “Charities of the Year” because “its international arm has been banned elsewhere for allegedly funneling funds to the terrorist organization Hamas.” The issues appear unresolved, as the charity was apparently not added back into the 2015 list.

In mid-2014, Israel banned Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) because of its linkages to Hamas. According to Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon, “[t]he IRW is one of the sources of Hamas’s funding and a means for raising funds from various countries in the world[.] … We do not intend to allow it to function and abet terrorist activity against Israel.”

In January of this year, banking giant HSBC revealed that it had cut ties with Islamic Relief because of “concerns that cash for aid could end up with terrorist groups abroad.”

If Brown wasn’t aware of these connections and potential problems, he should have been.

Europe Braces for More Jihadist Attacks “Another attempted attack is almost certain.” by Soeren Kern

Sports stadiums and big music events are especially vulnerable: “This is where you put a small town into a small area for a couple of hours.” — Neil Basu, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, London.

“We know that the Islamic State has the European Championship in its sights.” — Hans-Georg Maaßen, head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.

According to Patrick Calvar, head of the France’s domestic intelligence agency, at least 645 French nationals or residents, including 245 women, are currently with the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Another 200 individuals are “in transit,” either on their way to Syria or returning to France. Around 244 jihadists have already returned to France.

British police chiefs are struggling to recruit enough officers who are willing to carry a firearm, because many fear they will be treated as criminal suspects if they use their weapon in the line of duty.

European security officials are bracing for potential jihadist attacks at public venues across Europe this summer.

In France, officials are preparing for possible attacks against the European Football Championships. The games, which start on June 10, comprise 51 matches involving 24 teams playing in 10 host cities across the country.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that more than 90,000 security personnel will be on hand to protect the 2.5 million spectators expected to attend the games, as well as the hundreds of thousands more who will watch the matches on big screens in so-called “fan zones” in major cities.

Britain’s National Students Union in Crisis by Robbie Travers

Britain’s National Union of Students (NUS) is in crisis. Three major university student associations — Newcastle, Lincoln and Hull — have disaffiliated themselves from the organization.

Bouattia’s role is meant to entail representing the best interests of students in the UK. How does endorsing and legitimizing terrorist attacks in Israel the best way to improve conditions for students in the UK? Is Bouattia trying to radicalise students in the UK?

When students need representation, the voice often heard is that of the NUS. Is it any wonder that when this voice has a history of endorsing terrorism, including sharing platforms with convicted terrorists, that students may want a different voice?

The United Kingdom’s National Union of Students (NUS) is in crisis. Three major university student associations — Newcastle, Lincoln and Hull — have disaffiliated themselves from the organization, and more are set to follow. NUS is struggling even to retain its previous strongholds, such as Exeter’s Student Association.

The Exeter University campaign to leave the NUS managed to increase the number of votes to defect from roughly 200 to 2546. This stampede occurred despite the massive protests by the “stay” campaign, including text messages to thousands of students and visits to the school by more than 10 senior NUS officials, including two Vice Presidents-elect and the President-elect.

Why are students from so many British universities fighting to leave the NUS? Well, take for example statements by its new president-elect, Malia Bouattia.

Tony Thomas The Cream of Our Climate Croppers

The Australian Academy of Science has just honoured a fresh draft of boffins, including a pair whose names will be instantly familiar to all who marvel at Big Climate’s high-volume alarmism. Professors Neville Nicholls and Ian Allison, step forward and take a bow.
At Quadrant we respect winners, so hats off to newly-elected Australian Academy of Science Fellows, Professors Neville Nicholls and Ian Allison. Both are climate catastrophists, each seemingly oblivious to the empirical research which has downgraded the CO2 climate-sensitivity guesstimate (i.e. positive feedback number) from the IPCC’s 1.5-4.5 times to barely more than unity.

These real-world observations suggest that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial levels would generate, all things being equal, a beneficial increase of about 1degC in warming, not the supposed life-frying 4-6deg rise by 2100 on which the whole multi-trillion-dollar climate scare is based.

The IPCC’s fantasy figure for sensitivity to CO2 is one of the reasons why 111 of its 114 climate model runs over-estimated the negligible warming in the 15 years to 2013. However, the main reason why the climate models are duds is that the very notion of complex and chaotic climate forces being controlled by a simple CO2-emissions dial is laughable.[1]

As for the new Academy Fellows[2], I’m not even sure I’d accept a Fellowship, if beseeched. Who would want to be a co-Fellow with Tim “Desal Plant” Flannery FAA, for example,[3] or the ABC’s Robyn Williams FAA, the latter supporting the writing of horror fiction about global warming killing off families’ beloved kittens and spaniels in 2023?

State Department Intentionally Deleted Video of Iran Back-and-ForthBy Felicia Schwartz

The Obama administration had many tense exchanges with reporters as it pursued diplomatic talks with Iran on its nuclear program. But it revealed on Wednesday that at least one of those exchanges, from 2013, had been deliberately deleted from the State Department’s public online video archives.

A State Department editor erased a portion of the Dec. 2, 2013 briefing before posting the footage online, State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.

The editor did so after receiving a phone call from another employee in the State Department’s public affairs bureau transmitting the request, Mr. Kirby said, adding that the deletion probably happened on the same day as the briefing and he didn’t know who specifically requested the footage be erased. Earlier this month, a different State Department official had attributed the deletion to a “glitch.”

In the tape, which has since been restored, a Fox News reporter asked then-State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki whether her predecessor had been truthful when responding to questions in 2013 about secret contacts with Iran.

The backstory: In February 2013, the reporter, James Rosen, had asked previous State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland whether the U.S. was holding secret bilateral talks with Iran outside of the formal channel between Iran and six world powers. She said the U.S. wasn’t.

It was later reported that the U.S. had done just that. CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump Makes Sense on Energy From the mouth of The Donald comes wisdom on America’s climate dissonance. By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Political markets are weird: They cry out for something and yet politicians, with their enslavement to conventional wisdom and careerist caution, are unwilling to supply it.

Then along comes Donald Trump.

Mr. Trump, in his set-piece energy speech on Thursday, did something that might outlast his presidential hopes. In his anti-intellectual way, he made an intellectual contribution. For decades, poorly justified scientific fears of future warming have hovered as an incubus over U.S. energy development. These fears, you’ll notice, have not actually blocked much of anything: Fracking happened. The U.S. continues to export coal to China. But these fears fill America’s leadership class with guilt and cognitive dissonance.

Give Mr. Trump credit for trying to break the spell.

In a speech the media has done its best to ignore or debunk, he said, “From an environmental standpoint, my priorities are very simple: clean air and clean water.” With these words, he relegated back to the land of abstraction the abstraction known as climate change.

His was a model political speech, one that Hillary Clinton might learn from. It set an agenda, with a minimum of windy rationalization, that voters can assess. Mr. Trump, as all politicians do, offered a prayer to the false deity of energy independence but he also offered a perfectly serviceable vision of Americans freely competing in global energy markets based on our own natural and (note) renewable resources and technology.

Mr. Trump hit the climate moment squarely. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Army Corps of Abuse The Supremes rebuke another misuse of the Clean Water Act.

The Supreme Court is divided 4-4 on many issues, but the good news is that all eight Justices can still agree that Americans deserve their day in court to challenge intrusive government. That’s the essence of Tuesday’s unanimous ruling that the Obama Administration’s expansive interpretation of the Clean Water Act can be challenged in court.

In February 2012, the Army Corps of Engineers told the Hawkes peat-mining company that marshy land it owns in Minnesota had a “significant nexus” to the Red River 120 miles away and thus could be regulated under the Clean Water Act. Hawkes tried to challenge this determination in federal court. But the Corps said the company couldn’t do so until it had finished the Corps’s permitting process, which the Corps said would be very expensive and take years (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes).

This amounts to a pre-emptive veto of private land use. The Army Corps said the company must wait to challenge the Corps’ decision. But if Hawkes develops the land on the assumption it would win its challenge many years hence, the company runs the risk of major penalties if it loses in the end. Heads the Army Corps wins; tails Hawkes loses. CONTINUE AT SITE

Judge unseals Trump University docs, accidentally unleashes Clinton bombshell | Tom Tillison

When a federal judge ruled against Donald Trump this week in a lawsuit against Trump University, he inadvertently unleashed a bombshell involving Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel unsealed documentsrelating to the Trump U for-profit real estate program. The documents include information used by the school to convince prospective students to join the program.

Curiel is the same judge the presumptive GOP nominee has called “hostile” and biased against him.

“I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater,” Trump said Friday at a campaign rally in San Diego. “He’s a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel.”

And a bombshell report from American Spectator seems to lend credence to that claim.

The conservative magazine said that one of the firms picked by Judge Curiel to represent plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit against Trump University have financial ties to Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Financial ties to the tune of half a million dollars.