Displaying posts categorized under

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE

Kerry Would Sue Trump for ‘the Lives That Will be Lost’ Due to Climate Change By Nicholas Ballasy

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kerry-would-sue-trump-for-the-lives-that-will-be-lost-due-to-climate-change/

WASHINGTON – Former Secretary of State John Kerry, author of Every Day is Extra, predicted that “lives will be lost” due to President Trump’s position on climate change, calling his time in office a matter of “life and death.”

“This is why it’s the anecdote to what Bob Woodward lays out [in his new book Fear: Trump in the White House]. This book describes how we accept and fight, many times unsuccessfully, more times successfully, to make our democracy work and never had we needed to do that more than right now. We’re in trouble,” Kerry said about his memoir during a discussion at the Carnegie Center for International Peace on Monday evening.

“I don’t try to be a troublemonger or to be somebody who tries to scare people, but I’m telling you folks – and I write about this in the last chapter of the book – I mean, I wish I could find legal standing to bring a case against Donald Trump for the lives that will be lost and the property that will be damaged and the billions of dollars because of his decision on climate change. This is life and death. Our democracy matters that much,” he added.

Kerry also criticized Trump’s handling of relations with North Korea and Europe.

“What is happening is the sloppiness of the diplomacy that is going on with Kim Jong-un, the sloppiness of his reckless statements in Europe at a time when Europe is already weakened somewhat, and it matters to us more than ever since the end of World War II. I mean, these things matter, enormously, and we’ve got to fight for them,” he said.

Kerry recalled the “huge division” in the country when he stood up against former President Nixon during the Vietnam War.

“I was arrested for civil disobedience and demonstrating against the war, so it was divisive and I certainly earned some enemies for a lifetime through that experience. And we saw some of them come to the forefront in ’04, that’s what that was about,” Kerry said, referring to the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” ads that aired during his presidential run in 2004. “That wasn’t about my record. It was about them being angry I opposed the war and told the truth.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump’s energy policies are driving Democrats crazy by Rupert Darwall

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/trumps-energy-policies-are-driving-democrats-crazy

The EPA’s recently announced Affordable Clean Energy rule, replacing former President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, is the most significant shift towards energy sanity in more than a decade. And it’s driving Democrats crazy.

President Trump’s new rule finally swings the pendulum back from the moment in 2007 when former President George W. Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act. The absurd aim of that bill was to replace oil from the ground with energy grown from plants.

California governor Jerry Brown, whose state is legislating for 100 percent renewable energy by 2045, blasted the rule change, calling it ” A declaration of war against America and all of humanity.” Delaware Democratic Sen. Tom Carper said it would send clean energy jobs to China, oblivious to the reality that Democrats’ war on coal is already doing exactly that.

Climate scientists are also losing their minds. Forget the Mueller probe, Ben Santer, an atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, blogged. There is no doubting the Trump administration’s complicity in a much more serious offense – “the failure to acknowledge, address and mitigate the risks of human-caused climate change.”

But Santer got his facts wrong. There’s no scientific disagreement. The impact assessment accompanying the affordable energy rule does indeed acknowledge that greenhouse gas emissions impose costs on society. The new rule’s real and important change is that it finally constrains the scope of power station emissions regulation to within current law.

Fall Madness – Hurricanes and Global Warming By Brian C. Joondeph

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/fall_madness__hurricanes_and_global_warming.html

Fall is officially upon us with the passing of Labor Day. After this seasonal landmark, we are not supposed to wear white. I’m surprised CNN’s Don Lemon hasn’t found something racist in this tradition.

Football season has started, kneeling players and all. It’s been a busy week for the media as we are now less than two months away from the critical Congressional midterm elections. The media is not taking a knee; instead, they are on full offense with the Bob Woodward book and the anonymous NY Times op-ed, both full-fledged assaults on President Trump.

Fall is also hurricane season which means not only football jerseys coming out of the closet, but the hackneyed global warming doomsday predictions. The left-wing media, however, may not give hurricane season its due since there are more important stories to cover, like Colin Kaepernick, the Bret Kavanaugh confirmation circus, and Pocahontas wanting to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump.

Tropical Storm Florence is in the Caribbean and heading toward Florida, with early storms Helene and Isaac hanging out off the coast of Africa, deciding whether to huff and puff, or really blow the house down.

Florence, not yet a hurricane, but expected to become one, looks like it will impact the Carolinas. Or maybe up the US coast. Or possibly Florida. Or maybe harmlessly out to sea. The spaghetti models show all the possibilities. Here are the complied guesses from Weathernerds.

Environmentalists Need to Get Real The problem isn’t climate-change denial. It’s doubt that activists have the answers.By Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/environmentalists-need-to-get-real-1536010580

“Many environmentalists fail to grasp that the real problem isn’t skepticism that the climate is changing, or even that human activity is a leading cause of the change. Millions worry about climate change and believe human activity is in large part responsible. But they do not believe that the climate movement has the answers for the problems it describes. Green policy blunders, like support for ethanol in the U.S. and knee-jerk opposition to nuclear power, erode confidence that environmental activists—who too often have an anticapitalist, Malthusian and technophobic view of the world—can be trusted, to as they often say, to “save the planet.”

Last week French environmental minister Nicolas Hulot, once a prominent supporter of President Emmanuel Macron, threw in the towel. “I don’t want to lie anymore. I don’t want to create the illusion that my presence in the government means that we are on top of [environmental] issues,” he said during a live broadcast announcing his resignation.

Mr. Hulot is not alone among environmentalists in denouncing the hypocrisy and inadequacy of government action on climate change. The Paris accords are “a fraud, really, a fake,” said climate activist James Hansen in 2015. “There is no action, just promises.”

Three years later, Mr. Hansen’s words look prescient. Even ostensibly committed countries like Germany and France are on course to miss the voluntary 2020 targets they announced to such fanfare in 2015. The Climate Action Tracker estimates that only Morocco and Gambia are on a “Paris agreement compatible” path.

The climate-change movement is stuck, even after a scorching summer elevated the issue across much of the Northern Hemisphere. It is powerful enough to command lip service from politicians, but too weak to impose the policies it says are needed to prevent catastrophic change.

Peak Oil: A Lesson in False Prophecy By S. Fred Singer

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/peak_oil__a_lesson_in_false_prophecy.html

As recently as 10 years ago, we were told that the world was running out of oil soon. Horrors! Then, directional drilling and fracking opened up the prolific resource of “tight” oil shale. New production records are being set daily; the U.S. now leads the world in oil reserves, ahead even of Saudi Arabia.

Hubbert’s Peak

Geophysicist and noted pioneer of ground water flow in aquifers Dr. M. King Hubbert was being celebrated as a prophet. He had predicted that U.S. oil production would peak around 1970 – and it did! Of course, the price of oil was then only around $2 a barrel; it is now around $75, and will surely go higher.

The National Petroleum Council [NPC], made up of the leaders of the oil industry and other experts, told us, in 1970 as I recall, that if oil prices ever reached $3 a barrel, the vast resource of the Colorado kerogen would become commercial. Some oil companies actually mined some kerogen and retorted it to extract the locked-up but uneconomic oil. The world oil price is now around $75 a barrel — and sure to rise further.

David Archibald That Other Paris Pact, the One We Ignore

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/09/paris-treaty-important/

While our leaders have been eager to impress the world with Australia’s resolve to hobble its economy before the altar of the climate gods, another international accord is observed only in the breach. That’s the one insisting we maintain 90-day fuel supplies.

It seems we are finally rid of Julie Bishop, who resigned in a huff as foreign minister because she wasn’t made prime minister. Apparently, among the slights of her rejection, what particularly rankled was her failure to get a single party-room vote from any of her fellow WA Liberals. Presumably they know her better than anyone, which no doubt explains a lot. For others, those who have not lashed themselves to the mast of the Liberals’ Hesperus, she also uttered this reminder of her lack of fitness for higher office: Australia must honour the Paris Agreement and reduce emissions by 26%. “When we sign a treaty,” , she said, “parties should be able to rely on us.”

Yes, we should honour the Paris agreement — but not the climate one. There is a far more important treaty, also signed in the City of Light, to which are signatory. This is the International Energy Agency agreement of 1974, born out of the OECD in response to the First Oil Shock. The idea was that all the signatories would keep 90 days of fuel supplies on hand and be prepared to share in the event of an emergency.

Australia signed on in 1979 but is not honouring our treaty obligations. We know that because the new Department of Energy, under its new Minister Angus Taylor, says so. From the website (emphasis added):

As an IEA [International Energy Agency] member and signatory to the IEP Treaty, Australia is required to hold oil stocks equivalent to at least 90 days of the previous year’s average daily net oil imports. The Department is working to implement Australia’s compliance plan to address the current shortfall in oil stockholdings. The Department’s priorities for the IEA include working with the IEA to progress Australia’s plan to return to IEP treaty compliance.

Viv Forbes White Elephants Painted Green

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2018/09/white-elephants-painted-green/

By any reasonable standard of environmental accounting, Snowy 2.0 is even more foolish than the prime minister whose brainstorm it was. Not only will it do nothing to lower electricity prices, the likelihood is that it will boost the emissions it is intended to reduce.

Canberra breeds many white elephants, but now they are breeding a gigantic new breed of pachyderm in the Snowy Mountains – a green elephant. Grandly named “Snowy 2.0 Hydro-Electric”, it is just another big white elephant under a thick layer of obligatory green paint.

Snowy 2.0 plans a hugely expensive complex of dams, tunnels, pumps, pipes, generators, roads and powerlines. Water will be pumped up-hill using grid power in times of low demand, and then released when needed to recover some of that energy. To call it “hydro-electric” is a fraud: it will not store one extra litre of water and will be a net consumer of electric power. It is a giant electric storage battery to be recharged using grid power.

This is just the latest episode in an expensive and impossible green dream to run Australian cities and industries, plus a growing electric vehicle fleet, on intermittent wind and solar energy and without coal, gas, oil or nuclear fuels. Surely we can learn from the unfolding disaster of a similar German grand plan.

The first stage of Australia’s green dream was to demonise coal and nuclear power, set onerous green energy and CO2 emissions targets, subsidise and mandate the use of intermittent energy from wind and solar, and give electric cars financial and other privileges. All of this costs Australian electricity users and taxpayers at least five billion dollars per year. This destructive force-feeding of solar and wind power is well advanced.

Solar energy peaks around mid-day, falls to zero from dusk to dawn and is much reduced by clouds, dust and smoke. Over a year it may produce about 16% of name-plate capacity. Thus a solar-battery system would need installed solar capacity of six times the demand. These solar “farms” are very land-hungry per unit of usable energy, often sterilising large areas of agricultural land.

Peter Smith Means and Ends in the Climate ‘Debate’

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2018/08/means-ends-climate-debate/

Groupthink among climate scientists — ‘the science is settled’ brigade — has constrained public debate, which was entirely to be expected. You see, believers are predominantly devoted to promoting ‘solutions’ and that, rather than open-minded inquiry, is the warmists’ objective.

Someone among my group of “climate change is real” mates sent me and others a series of those heat-stripe charts from dark blue (cold) to dark red (hot) for various places and showing that it had grown hotter over the past 100 to 200 years or so. The earliest was from central England and dated from 1772. Climate Lab Book is the source for these charts if you want to look them up. One wag responded that these charts made it easier for people who couldn’t read graphs. Uneducated Deplorables presumably.

I can read graphs despite my membership of the Deplorables. As can most, if not all, of those sceptical of the alarmist hypothesis. I responded in a reasoned and diplomatic way that those who thought the charts showed anything of interest or significance were halfwits. Or, I may have said that they had only half a brain. I’d had a glass or two of wine at the time. But leaving this particular way of expressing myself aside, what is my point?

My point is that we are in an interglacial period (thankfully) and, to boot, we are coming off a Maunder Minimum (low Sunspot activity) dated around 1645 to 1715. This is otherwise referred to as the Little Ice Age. Thus, there is no dispute that the earth has gradually — though not evenly — warmed since then. To point this out as though it were profound is profoundly irritating to those with a full quota of wits.

I thought it might be instructive to employ what in the business world is called facilitation. You break an issue down; and then, by approaching it from the least- to the most-contentious parts, you try to forge a consensus among people in a room. A consensus is infeasible when comes to climate. But a process of breaking down the climate change hypothesis into parts might put the debate on a more intelligent footing and, perhaps, deter people from broadcasting banal heat charts. It’s a simplified breakdown. I want a degree of licence on that matter. Only the first three of the six parts listed below would find unanimity among true believers and sceptics.

Global-Warming Advocates Pressure Media to Silence Skeptics By Wesley J. Smith

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/global-warming-alarmists-pressure-media-to-end-debate/

A bit ago, I wrote here that it is a huge advocacy mistake for global-warming alarmists to refuse debating their opponents. After all, if global catastrophe is really coming, one should accept any and every opportunity to persuade doubters.

Now, global-warming public intellectuals have warned the media that if they allow skeptics to have a voice in stories, they will boycott giving comment. From the open letter appearing in the Guardian:

Balance implies equal weight. But this then creates a false equivalence between an overwhelming scientific consensus and a lobby, heavily funded by vested interests, that exists simply to sow doubt to serve those interests. Yes, of course scientific consensus should be open to challenge — but with better science, not with spin and nonsense. We urgently need to move the debate on to how we address the causes and effects of dangerous climate change — because that’s where common sense demands our attention and efforts should be.

How the war on climate change slams the world’s poor By Bjorn Lomborg

https://nypost.com/2018/08/26/how-the-war-on-climate-change-slams-the-worlds-poor/

When a “solution” to a problem causes more damage than the problem, policymaking has gone awry. That’s where we often find ourselves with global warming today.

Activist organizations like Worldwatch argue that higher temperatures will make more people hungry, so drastic carbon cuts are needed. But a comprehensive new study published in Nature Climate Change led by researchers from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis has found that strong global climate action would cause far more hunger and food insecurity than climate change itself.

The scientists used eight global-agricultural models to analyze various scenarios between now and 2050. These models suggest, on average, that climate change could put an extra 24 million people at risk of hunger. But a global carbon tax would increase food prices and push 78 million more people into risk of hunger. The areas expected to be most vulnerable are sub-Saharan Africa and India.

Trying to help 24 million people by imperiling 78 million people’s lives is a very poor policy.