RUTHFULLY YOURS

As the nation continues to debate the critical, constitutional question of who can be punched and who cannot be punched (I vote for permitting the punching of slow drivers in the left lane and anyone who drinks Riesling), it appears the “peaceful” Left has a much more expansive list of acceptable human-punching bags. Liberals encourage their mob to assault not only Nazis, white supremacists and conservative speakers on college campuses, they are now advocating violence against people who dare to challenge the reigning dogma on manmade climate change.https://amgreatness.com/2017/09/07/weathering-the-punches/

Two destructive hurricanes in the span of one week have emboldened the climate bullies. One of the most unhinged is actor Mark Ruffalo, best known for his role as Bruce Banner/the Hulk in Marvel’s multi-billion-dollar-earning Avengers movie series. Ruffalo must think that playing a scientist on the silver screen imbues him with some special scientific powers and moral authority, much like Martin Sheen started to think he was the president because he played one on The West Wing. Ruffalo is an outspoken—albeit ignorant and misinformed—climate activist who continues to cling to the thoroughly debunked idea that the country can be fully powered by renewable energy sources. He is also a Trump-hater and progressive rabble-rouser.

On Wednesday morning, as Hurricane Irma began pounding Caribbean islands on its alarming path towards Florida, Ruffalo was less Bruce Banner and more Hulk:
Mark Ruffalo

✔ @MarkRuffalo

I know not all people in the GOP are deniers. But their leadership is and they are in part responsible for these disasters going forward. https://twitter.com/markruffalo/status/905408275734245377 …

(Ruffalo was subtweeting another noted climate expert, Star Trek actor George Takei.)

One could write this off as just another emotional rant from an uneducated Hollywood celebrity. But Ruffalo has quite a following, including 3.4 million Twitter followers and the media’s admiration. So it is not without consequence when the actor invites his minions to attack a Trump Administration cabinet official and anyone deemed a climate change denier. Considering one of Ruffalo’s fellow Bernie Bros tried to assassinate several Republican congressmen earlier this summer, nearly killing one of them, it’s outrageous for a top celebrity activist to fan the flames in this kind of political environment.

It’s also a bit ironic, since he routinely tweets about love, compassion, and tolerance. But Ruffalo’s hypocrisies don’t stop there. Ruffalo claims to be a feminist champion except for conservative women (you can read about that here.) He regularly protests the use of fossil fuels, blasts corporations like Exxon, and demands states such as New York stop fracking, but he works in the entertainment business, one of the most energy-intensive industries. He is also an ardent foe of genetically engineered crops, which have numerous environmental benefits including retaining carbon in the soil and withstanding climate impacts.

His movie character isn’t the only thing about him with a split personality.

Well, it’s a start…

Lucy Smith reports for the Townsville (Queensland), Australia Bulletin:

A RENOWNED climate scientist has been jailed for fraudulently claiming half a million dollars in reimbursements from his employer.

Over seven years, Australian Institute of Marine Science senior researcher Daniel Michael Alongi lodged 129 claims for fictitious purchases totalling $553,420.

When police caught up with him in 2015, he told them he had spent the money on rare and antique books.

One book, about Captain James Cook’s journeys, cost $15,000.

Alongi, 60, pleaded guilty in Townsville District Court yesterday to defrauding the Federal Government agency.

Commonwealth prosecutor Chris Moore detailed Alongi’s “carefully executed” offending, which saw him earn far more than his $4000 a fortnight salary.

“To support the claims he created or modified invoices, receipts and credit card statements, along with drafting fake analysis reports and email trails,” he said.

Climate scientist Dr Daniel Alongi, who worked for the Australian Institute of Marine Science, leaves the Townsville Magistrates Court. (Photo: Townsville Bulletin.)

Compared to the gross fraud of anthropogenic global warming alarmism (that already has cost Australia dearly), this is small beer, even though the total is over half a million bucks (Australian dollars). Compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars squandered on crony green energy schemes, this is not even a rounding error.

Alongi is not some minor figure in the Warmist research establishment.

Eric Worrall comments:

According to Research Gate, Alongi has helped author 140 publications, and has been cited 5,861 times. All in the last few months has been bad for the image of mainstream climate science. First we had the Shukla 20 scandal, and now we have the Alongi fraud case. I’m not saying climate scientists are just in it for the money. I think there is substantial evidence that many of them truly believe. But clearly there is an awful lot of money on the table, which predominantly seems to go to scientists who support the position favoured by politicians. More than enough money to tempt the unscrupulous.

Shortly before Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, meteorologist and climate writer Eric Holthaus unleashed a Twitter torrent confessing his depression about the new president. Holthaus admitted he was seeing a counselor due to his “climate despair” and whimpered that it was difficult to work or do much of anything.

“We don’t deserve this planet,” Holthaus tweeted. “There are (many) days when I think it would be better off without us.”

But Hurricane Harvey has apparently boosted Holthaus’ spirits. He is working at a feverish pace now, churning out a number of “I-told-you-so” articles and interviews. By Monday, Holthaus had already penned an overwrought article for Politico, where he wags a literary finger at us:

We knew this would happen, decades ago. We knew this would happen, and we didn’t care. Now is the time to say it as loudly as possible: Harvey is what climate change looks like. More specifically, Harvey is what climate change looks like in a world that has decided, over and over, that it doesn’t want to take climate change seriously.

There was more back-patting: “If we don’t talk about the climate context of Harvey, we won’t be able to prevent future disasters and get to work on that better future. Those of us who know this need to say it loudly.”

Nothing like a devastating Category 4 hurricane to cure those climate blues!

Of course, Holthaus is not alone. Before the first raindrops started to fall in Houston, climate activists and their propagandists in the media were already blaming Harvey on man-made global warming. But that wasn’t enough. President Trump, his voters, and the Republican Congress are also culpable. Oliver Willis, a writer for the anti-Trump website Shareblue, suggested via several tweets Sunday morning that the hurricane could have been avoided had we listened to Al Gore, honored the Paris Climate Accord, and elected Hillary Clinton:

Even though some cooler heads in the scientific community cautioned against politicizing the hurricane while people were losing their lives, homes, and every possession, activists and the media would hear nothing of it. They persisted. Pope Francis even got in on the action, calling for a world day of prayer for the care of creation: “We appeal to those who have influential roles to listen to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor, who suffer the most from ecological imbalance.”

It’s impossible to catalog all the ridiculous comments and accusations made over the past week, so a few highlights will have to suffice. In a CNN.com article, Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University professor and regular climate scold, demanded the resignation of Texas Governor Greg Abbott over the hurricane: “Once the immediate crisis ends, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, should resign with an apology to his state and his country. Then the Texas delegation in Congress should make a public confession. They have lied to their constituents for too long, expecting the rest of America to keep bailing them out.” Sachs called Texas a “moral hazard state” (he must have missed all the amazing videos of Texans helping each other regardless of color or political persuasion) because “Houston is an oil town, and the American oil industry has been enemy No. 1 of climate truth and climate preparedness.” Despicable.

Some cheered the devastation. George Monbiot, a particularly noxious climate writer for The Guardian, implied Houston deserved what it got:

The storm ripped through the oil fields, forcing rigs and refineries to shut down, including those owned by some of the 25 companies that have produced more than half the greenhouse gas emissions humans have released since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Hurricane Harvey has devastated a place in which climate breakdown is generated, and in which the policies that prevent it from being addressed are formulated.

Cenk Uyger, co-host of a YouTube news roundtable called “The Young Turks” (he’s not so young, as it happens), best represented the unintellectual and unscientific view of the climate cult when he said this on Monday:

So, if you’re one of those snowflakes who is going to get triggered when I say this has to do with climate change, go ahead and cry right now. If you’re gonna say it’s too say it’s too soon, I’m gonna say it’s too late. It’s not too soon to talk about climate change, we should have talked about it a long time ago so these storms wouldn’t be this severe. If you are a knucklehead who doesn’t understand science, and you say, oh well we used to have storms like this before, that doesn’t answer anything.

Chris Cuomo, the amateur climatologist and brother of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, discussed Hurricane Harvey on his CNN show this week. Cuomo suggested that human emissions of carbon dioxide may be “why these storms happen.”

We know cable news suffers from a short attention span, so we’d like to suggest Cuomo take time over the long weekend to read up on hurricanes that occurred even before the Industrial Revolution.

But Cuomo also clearly needs to read some of the scientific literature on weather and climate. He suggested that if the White House focussed on climate policy, “we could figure out a way to reduce the number of these storms.”

No serious person believes that climate policy could bring us into a brave new world of fewer hurricanes. And if the number of large hurricanes we get is determined by policy, Trump ought to do whatever George W. Bush did in 2006 that put the brakes on powerful hurricanes for a decade.

Cuomo, packaging his faux science and total lack of historical context together with an ideological smugness, is typical of left-leaning politicians and journalists in the media these days.

Liberals have been crying wolf on this issue for more than a decade. “A link between climate change and more destructive hurricanes hints at the real-world impacts of this administration’s refusal to get serious about tackling the threat of global warming,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said in October 2006. “It’s hard to think of a louder wake-up call than the destruction left in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.”

Former Vice President Al Gore used a satellite photograph of Hurricane Katrina to illustrate the poster for his 2006 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and the movie all but asserted that global warming would produce more Katrinas.

Who says progressives don’t believe in religion? They may not believe in Jehovah or Jesus, but they certainly believe in Old Testament-style wrath against sinners. Real Noah and the Ark stuff. Witness the emerging theme on the media left that Texas, and especially Houston, are at fault for the devastation of Hurricane Harvey.

This has happened even faster than usual, perhaps because the Katrina II scenario of emergency mismanagement didn’t pan out. The state, local and federal governments have done a competent job under terrible conditions, and stories about neighborly charity, racial goodwill, the heroism of rescuers, and Big Business donating money and goods don’t fit into any agenda. Whinging over Melania’s heels also lacks political legs.

So our friends on the left have had to look elsewhere to score ideological points, and they believe they’ve found the right target in the political economy of those greedy Texans. Specifically, Houston is a global hub of the oil and gas industry, and it has allowed “laissez-faire” development without zoning laws. This has brought the righteous wrath of Harvey down on their own heads.

***

“Harvey, the Storm That Humans Helped Cause,” said a headline in one progressive bellwether as the storm raged. An overseas columnist was less subtle if more clichéd: “Houston, you have a problem, and some of it of your own making.” In this telling, Houston is the Sodom and Gomorrah of fossil fuels, which cause global warming, which is producing more hurricanes.

The problem is that this argument is fact-free. As Roger Pielke Jr. has noted, the link between global warming and recent hurricanes and extreme weather events is “unsupportable based on research and evidence.” Mr. Pielke, who is no climate-change denier, has shown with data that hurricanes hitting the U.S. have not increased in frequency or intensity since 1900, there is no notable trend up or down in global tropical cyclone landfalls since 1970, and floods have not increased in frequency or intensity in the U.S. since 1950.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently said that “it is premature to conclude that human activities—and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming—have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity.”

No less than the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it lacks evidence to show that global warming is making storms and flooding worse. But climate scolds still blame Harvey on climate change because, well, this is what the climate models say should happen as the climate warms.

In other words, Houstonians, you’d better go to climate confession, mend your sinful ways, and give up all of those high-paying oil-and-gas jobs. Maybe all those drillers and refiners can work for Google or Facebook .

Imagine waking one day and learning that federal officials have declared your private property subject to federal control as “critical habitat” for an endangered frog, even though the frog does not and cannot exist on the property or, apparently, anywhere else in the state.

That is the surreal fate of the Poitevent family, owners of a parcel of land in St. Tammany Parish, La., that has been in the family for more than 100 years. The family started a lumber business on the property after the Civil War. The land is still managed for timber today.

A few years ago, the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service declared the property “essential” to the survival of the Mississippi gopher frog, aptly named, as it’s found only in Mississippi. Only later, when federal officials decided to expand the frog’s territory into Louisiana, did they give it the name it bears today: the dusky gopher frog.

But there is nothing apt about designating over 1,500 acres of private land “critical habitat” when the property is not used as habitat, is unsuitable as habitat, and has no direct connection to the dusky gopher frog.

Federal regulators don’t deny any of this. Instead, they express the hope that the Poitevents’ property can be modified at some point to become hospitable habitat for frogs. This is pure speculation, because the property is tied up in timber leases for decades and may never be usable habitat. Rather than acquire the property so it can be managed for species protection, the government seeks to impose the cost of species conservation on the landowners, who did nothing to put the gopher frog in peril.

Although the property provides no conservation benefit to the gopher frog, the government estimates that the regulatory restrictions on the landowners could cost them $34 million.

A federal district judge took a dim view of this costly land grab, calling it “troubling,” “harsh,” and “remarkably intrusive,” with “all the hallmarks of governmental insensitivity to private property.” Nevertheless, the judge felt “compelled” to defer to the government and allow the “critical habitat” designation to go forward.

On appeal, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit also deferred to the government, by a 2–1 vote. However, the dissenting judge argued that if regulators can declare that the Poitevents’ non-habitat property is “critical habitat,” the same could happen to any property owner, anywhere. This outcome defied both logic and the law, the judge insisted.

On an 8–6 vote, the full Fifth Circuit declined to review the panel decision. In a stinging, 32-page opinion, the six dissenters called the panel decision an “execrable” misinterpretation of the Endangered Species Act and said it ran contrary to Supreme Court precedent.

Nat Miller and Jim Bennett didn’t have much time to chat. It was about 8:45 on a sunny Sunday morning in early May, and they were loading their gear onto two boats—a 20-foot skiff with a 115-horsepower outboard, and an 18-foot sharpie with a 50-horse outboard—at Lazy Point, on the southern edge of Napeague Bay, on the South Fork of Long Island. “We are working against the wind and the tide,” Miller said as he shook my hand.

The men had already caught a fluke the size of a doormat and were eager for more. Miller and Bennett are Bonackers, a name for a small group of families who were among eastern Long Island’s earliest Anglo settlers. The Bonackers are some of America’s most storied fishermen. They’ve been profiled several times, most vividly by Peter Matthiessen in his 1986 book Men’s Lives. Miller’s roots in the area go back 13 generations, Bennett’s 14. That morning, Miller and Bennett and five fellow fishermen were heading east to tend their “pound traps,” an ancient method of fishing in shallow water that uses staked enclosures to capture fish as they migrate along the shore. Miller and Bennett were likely to catch scup, bass, porgies, and other species.

If Governor Andrew Cuomo gets his way, though, they and other commercial fishermen on the South Fork may need to look for a new line of work. An avid promoter of renewable energy, Cuomo hopes to install some 2,400 megawatts of wind turbines off New York’s coast, covering several hundred square miles of ocean; a bunch of those turbines will go smack on top of some of the best fisheries on the Eastern Seaboard. One of the projects, led by a Manhattan-based firm, Deepwater Wind, could require plowing the bottom of Napeague Bay to make way for a high-voltage undersea cable connecting the proposed 90-megawatt South Fork wind project to the grid. The proposed 50-mile cable would come ashore near the Devon Yacht Club, a few miles west of the beach on which we were standing. “I have 11 traps, and all of them run parallel to where that cable is proposed to be run,” Miller says. “My grandfather had traps here,” he adds before shoving his skiff into the water. “I want no part of this at all.”

The mounting opposition to the development of offshore wind in Long Island’s waters is the latest example of the growing conflict between renewable-energy promoters and rural residents. Cuomo and climate-change activists love the idea of wind energy, but they’re not the ones having 500-, 600-, or even 700-foot-high wind turbines built in their neighborhoods or on top of their prime fishing spots. The backlash against Big Wind is evident in the numbers: since 2015, about 160 government entities, from Maine to California, have rejected or restricted wind projects. One recent example: on May 2, voters in three Michigan counties went to the polls to vote on wind-related ballot initiatives. Big Wind lost on every initiative.

Few states demonstrate the backlash better than New York. On May 10, the town of Clayton, in northern New York’s Jefferson County, passed an amendment to its zoning ordinance that bans all commercial wind projects. On Lake Ontario, a 200-megawatt project called Lighthouse Wind, headed by Charlottesville, Virginia–based Apex Clean Energy, faces opposition from three counties—Erie, Niagara, and Orleans—as well as the towns of Yates and Somerset. An analysis of media stories shows that, over the past decade or so, about 40 New York communities have shot down or curbed wind projects.

Cuomo started pushing offshore wind because he and his political allies realized that building massive amounts of new wind capacity onshore isn’t going to happen. In January, the governor contended that offshore wind poses none of the aesthetic problems that have made land-based projects so difficult. “Not even Superman standing on Montauk Point could see these wind farms,” he said. Maybe not; and maybe wealthy beachfront homeowners won’t be able to see the proposed turbines, but lots of fishermen will. And that has them spoiling for a fight.

We live in strange times. Globally, populism is growing in response to a deep-seated anger with so-called liberal elites. Experts are no longer respected over louder voices that support peoples’ strongly held views. There are no facts, only beliefs. http://www.theenergycollective.com/mzconsulting/2411298/advocating-nuclear-power-time-right

While most of the world continues to support the Paris agreement on climate, there is a reluctance by some to include nuclear power in the tool-kit to help meet this global challenge. There is wide spread belief that Germany is going down the right path as it eliminates nuclear from its mix and drastically increases its use of renewables. The only problem is that fossil fuel use is also increasing and emissions are not going down. This has not stopped other countries like France, which has one of the lowest emissions in Europe due to their nuclear fleet, setting out a policy to reduce reliance on nuclear. And now Korea seems to be going down the same path even though it would probably be hard to find another country that has benefited more through successfully implementing its nuclear program.

Does this mean that nuclear power is getting ready to move over and cede the future of energy supply to a fully renewable world? Not even close. With 58 units under construction there are now more new nuclear units coming into service each year that in the last 20 years. The UAE is nearing completion of its first units, a four-unit station as it becomes the newest entry into the nuclear club.

On the other hand, in the USA units are struggling to stay in service in de-regulated states and one of two new build projects has been stopped in the face of Westinghouse bankruptcy.

In the midst of all of this apparent chaos, there is a bright light. People are standing up saying – don’t close my nuclear plants. People are recognizing that removing large low carbon emitting stations from the energy mix is no way to improve the climate. And most of all these people are ready and willing to fight. In the more than 35 years we have been in the nuclear industry I don’t remember a time when there were strong vocal pro-nuclear NGOs. Yes, that’s right – there are those who are not directly in the nuclear industry who have taken up the fight for nuclear. Not because they have any great passion for the technology, but because (as we discussed in May), they see nuclear plants as the ultimate solution to important issues. They want to save the environment. They want plentiful economic energy and they know that nuclear is an important part of the solution.

More vocal pro-nuclear NGOs today than we have had in 35 years

These organizations include a growing list of environmentalists such as Environmental Progress, Energy for Humanity, Bright New World and Mothers for Nuclear – to name a few (this list is not meant to be exhaustive so if your organization is advocating for nuclear power, please comment with your name and a link). What they have in common is an understanding that nuclear power is not the evil that some think it is and that in fact it can help to make the world a better place. And of more importance they are willing to advocate for it.

In Sunday’s New York Times, the paper’s most activist environmental reporter Justin Gillis, who has a knack for getting scary yet inaccurate stories on the paper’s front page, delivered a condescending lecture to the effect that if you believe an eclipse will occur on Monday, then you’d better believe everything “science” tells you about “climate change” as well, in “Should You Trust Climate Science? Maybe the Eclipse Is a Clue.” Of course, neither Gillis nor anyone else could tell you for certain whether there will be clouds blocking your view of the eclipse tomorrow, but they’ve got the weather for the next century locked in?https://www.newsbusters.org/author/clay-waters

It’s the latest climate change article from the Times evidently written for children.

Straight from the lead, you can see where Gillis is going:

Eclipse mania will peak on Monday, when millions of Americans will upend their lives in response to a scientific prediction.

….

Thanks to the work of scientists, people will know exactly what time to expect the eclipse. In less entertaining but more important ways, we respond to scientific predictions all the time, even though we have no independent capacity to verify the calculations. We tend to trust scientists.

For years now, atmospheric scientists have been handing us a set of predictions about the likely consequences of our emissions of industrial gases. These forecasts are critically important, because this group of experts sees grave risks to our civilization. And yet, when it comes to reacting to the warnings of climate science, we have done little.

….

Considering this most basic test of a scientific theory, the test of prediction, climate science has established its validity.

That does not mean it is perfect, nor that every single prediction is correct. While climate scientists have forecast the long-term rise of global temperatures pretty accurately, they have not been as good — yet — about predicting the short-term jitters.

In other fields, we do not demand absolute certainty from our scientists, because that is an impossible standard.

….

When your aging mother is found to have cancer, the recommended treatment will be rooted in a statistical model of how tumors respond to the available medicines. Your family is likely to follow that advice, even though you know the drugs are imperfect and may not save her.

We trust scientific expertise on many issues; it is, after all, the best advice we can get. Yet on climate change, we have largely ignored the scientists’ work. While it is true that we have started to spend money to clean up our emissions, the global response is in no way commensurate with the risks outlined by the experts. Why?

….But a bigger reason is that these changes threaten vested economic interests. Commodity companies benefit from exploiting forests. Fossil-fuel companies, to protect their profits, spent decades throwing up a smoke screen about the risks of climate change.