CARIBOU, Maine — A powerful storm is raking parts of northern New England and upstate New York with heavy rain, coating other areas in ice and dumping more than 20 inches of snow on sections of the winter-weary region.
The storm had iced up roads and dumped as much as 16 inches of snow on parts of Aroostook County by 3 p.m. Monday, with additional accumulations expected to continue to make travel conditions treacherous.
Monday, March 07, 2011
Speaking at the Center for American Progress Action Fund today, House Energy Committee ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) railed against the toxic influence of Koch Industries on efforts to fight global warming. Waxman, who fought polluters to pass the Clean Air Act of 1990, is dismayed by the level of outright science denial among the Republican Party today, exemplified by their votes to slash and burn environmental protection, and the Upton-Inhofe bill to reverse the scientific finding that carbon pollution threatens public health:
It apparently no longer matters in Congress what health experts and scientists think. All that seems to matter is what Koch Industries think.
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"Science denial, partisanship, and the rising power of special interests are deeply intertwined," Waxman said, "and they feed off each other." He explained the vicious circle fueled by Koch Industries, the private petrochemical conglomerate, and the Republican Party. "Koch Industries benefits immensely from the rollback of EPA regulations, so it backs Republican candidates who advocate this position. And it funds groups that attack science and it organizes anti-regulation demonstrations. Republican strategists see a partisan advantage in attacking efforts to address climate change, so that leads to a growing acceptance of science denial."
Ms Gillard said in Washington today (Australian time) that she always knew spruiking the initiative was going to be hard but she would win the debate in the end.
"It's one that I am determined to win," she said.
"Every day that Mr Abbott is out there stoking fear, we'll meet it with reason, with facts.
"I know that the Australian people will ultimately be confident enough to take this step of pricing carbon."
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said Labor's dive in the polls showed Mr Abbott was good at fear mongering.
He rejected Mr Abbott's claims that a carbon tax would transform the nation's way of life and make it harder for Australians to drive or turn on an air conditioner.
"That is garbage, honestly," Mr Combet told ABC Radio.
"This guy really is nothing but a mobile scare campaign."
Tying every extreme weather event to climate change may serve Tidwell's argument that we're now in an "age of consequences" from climate change, but it's scientifically inaccurate. The fact is that climate scientists have not discovered any conclusive links between a warming climate and thunderstorm activity, let alone severe thunderstorms.
Furthermore, while there are sound physical science reasons to think that heavy snowfall may become more common in a warming world - a seemingly paradoxical relationship at first glance - no conclusive evidence has emerged here either.
Meanwhile, aspiring president trundle off to Iowa, where wind and solar have craftily set up a major footprint, more aware than the politicos that they are the new ethanol and love for one means you’ve got to love the other. Or be accused of hypocrisy, and also offending the new constituencies in Iowa pulling down wealth transfers and otherwise subsisting on the taxpayer dole.ClimateGate exposed | The wages of green spin | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
And so it comes to this. Today, we see ClimateWire’s story “SCIENCE: Former Bush official defends IPCC,” with the gag-inducing subhead, “Connaughton calls IPPC [sic] findings ‘fabulous.’”Tom Toles - Unfavorable exchange rate
Hello commenters. Seems as though a certain ecosystem is developing in the comments section here. I have misgivings, sure, because I have this peculiar aversion to getting sprayed in the face by spittle from lunatic climate-change deniers. But things seem to have calmed down enough that I can peek in the clubhouse window and say hi.
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And, deniers: The climate evidence isn't perfect, but the overwhelming preponderance is on my side, and it PREDICTED your increasingly erratic behavior. --Tom Toles
MR. MYHRVOLD: The first thing that is not obvious to people is global warming is a less-than-1% effect. It's like being shortchanged at the bank by a penny every dollar. Over a long period of time with lots of transactions, that piles up.
It's hard to predict with perfect accuracy, hard to predict what effect that will have on Earth. The speculation includes things that could be catastrophic, like, oh, Greenland falls into the water. Now there's some people that think that's absolutely going to happen. There's some people that think that's highly unlikely. We don't actually know enough about the physics of that, because we haven't watched it.
MR. MURRAY: So the solution is?
MR. MYHRVOLD:The most dramatic approach is to say, "Can we cool Earth off?" The answer to that, surprisingly, is yes. And the reason goes back to it being a 1% effect. All you have to do is reflect 1% roughly of the light that hits Earth before it comes down, and you've solved the entire problem. It was recognized in the 1960s that sulfur dioxide does this naturally in the atmosphere. For relatively modest amounts of sulfur dioxide injected into the atmosphere, you could easily cool Earth by 1% or more, if you want.
UN pilot scheme will see groups of small-scale businesses in developing countries provided with energy-efficient technologyData reveals carbon footprint of public sector buildings | Environment | guardian.co.uk
Only 568 buildings get 1% or more of their electrical energy from renewable energy sourcesThompson Environmental Network » Climate Change [Scam] Heroes
At the start of the afternoon, the grade 5 students in Mr. Bloom’s class at Bert Edwards Science and Technology School didn’t know much about climate change. By the time they left school for the day, they were ready to enlist their families in the challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.New carbon price vows as polls hit ALP - National News - National - General - The Canberra Times
Fewer than 1000 Australian companies will have to pay the fixed carbon price the Government hopes to introduce in July next year.
But once the transition is made to a market-based emissions trading scheme, it will become an internationally compatible regime.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet gave those commitments yesterday while also assuring householders they would be compensated for higher energy prices once the carbon price kicked in.
"Global warming entails a directional prediction of rising temperatures that is easily discredited by any cold spell," they note, "whereas 'climate change' lacks a directional commitment and easily accommodates unusual weather of any kind."Why climate change is now irrelevant to clean energy | Grist
Clean energy isn't about climate change any more, it's about China. So says cleantech investor Alex Taussig. That's his takeaway from last week's summit of ARPA-E, the government agency tasked with funding energy innovations so crazy or with such far-off payouts that no private company would ever touch them.We need big, brash, nonviolent climate protests. Are you in? | Grist
Taken together, all of this confirms our belief that we need to keep escalating the struggle for climate justice.
It is not one event but a wave of actions that trigger social change. Paul Revere was not the only rider to warn of the British advance, and many people refused to move to the back of the bus before Rosa Parks. Actions like DeChristopher's create ripples that spread far and wide.
2010 was the coldest year in Sweden for more than two decades, which made the country into a real outsider in one of Earth´s warmest year so far.BBC News - Carbon tax 'may not reduce CO2'
When the government changed the terms of a new tax on the carbon emissions of large companies in last year's Spending Review, it was accused of hitting firms with a "green stealth tax".The Climate Project - Al Gore Writes Foreword to New Coral Reef Study
Money raised through the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) will now go to the government, rather than to those firms who cut their bills the most, as had been originally planned.
Coral reefs are harbingers of change. Like the proverbial “canary in the coal mine,” the degradation of coral reefs is a clear sign that our dangerous overreliance on fossil fuels is already changing Earth’s climate. Coral reefs are currently experiencing higher ocean temperatures and acidity than at any other time in at least the last 400,000 years. If we continue down this path, all corals will likely be threatened by mid-century, with 75 percent facing high to critical threat levels.The Climate Project - Presentation Search
[Gore's Climate Hoax Project now has a revamped website. Check out the sparse list of climate hoax presentations here.]
My view is that it’s certainly better to hear from scientists than not to hear from them—but “science fight” hearings are rarely very enlightening. Some members of the media, the Congress, and the public are able to parse the flurry of claims and counterclaims. But most walk away with the impression that there’s a big “debate” and a lot of “uncertainty.”Green Math: Let’s Spend a Billion to Save $8 Million « NoFrakkingConsensus
So I guess my conclusion is, “two cheers” for the latest hearing. With so much climate skepticism and denial in the current Congress, it’s probably the best you are going to get.
…Eisenberg’s cost estimates for taking the nine campuses off the grid ranged as high as $975 million — this for a college system that in 2010 spent less than $8 million on power bills.Strassel: Obama's Gas Price Migraine - WSJ.com
…Eisenberg wanted to spend $98 million on hydrogen fuel-cell equipment that had never been put into commercial operation. He called for spending $59 million on untried hydrogen storage devices…
An immutable fact of expensive gasoline: Americans will find someone to blame. We can expect in coming months to hear many sober analysts attempt to explain the complex reasons for rising oil prices: inflation, Middle East tremors, growing demand. Expect, too, for all those reasons to vanish behind what most Americans will see as the far more obvious (and graspable) cause: President Obama's regulatory assault on domestic oil and gas production.
This is, after all, a White House that has put at the center of its domestic agenda its goal of a "green economy," which hinges on making fossil fuels too expensive for Americans to purchase. In January 2008, candidate Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that under his cap-and-trade plan, "electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." Steven Chu, now Secretary of Energy, told this newspaper in the same year: "Somehow, we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." That would be, oh, $10 a gallon.
Christy is one of the nation’s few remaining seriously credentialed disinformers who has arguably been wrong longer than any other serious disinformer and thus deserves our inattention and scornI’ll Bet Hansen And NOAA Will Be Writing A Lot Of Articles This Month About The Cold Temperatures | Real Science
Last year around this time, Hansen was excitedly writing about the “record high temperatures.“Alberta Spending Millions On Washing Machines To Save The Polar Bears | Real Science
As an objective scientist in an important position of responsibility, there can be little doubt he shares the same enthusiasm this year about the cold.
“But I have never been in a Congress where there was such an overwhelming disconnect between science and policy,” he said. “The Republicans in Congress have become the party of science deniers, and that is profoundly dangerous.”Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » Trashing Science is a Bipartisan Effort
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“The new Republican majority in the House has a lot of power to write our nation’s laws, but they do not have the power to rewrite the laws of nature,” Mr. Waxman said. “Republicans in Congress can’t cure cancer by passing a bill that declares smoking safe. And they can’t stop climate change by declaring it a hoax.”
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Mr. Waxman concluded his remarks by comparing the climate change issue to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.
“We are at a pivotal time in which every member of Congress will decide whether they will be on the right side of history or the wrong side of history,” Mr. Waxman said. “Civil rights in the 1960s was a moral issue, and there was a right side and a wrong side. Climate change is an environmental issue. It is an economic issue. But it is also fundamentally a moral issue.”
He warned that if policy makers do not recognize the seriousness of the threat of climate change and fail to act, “history will not judge us kindly.”
As scientists from outside the climate community have begun actually looking at the science, or observing the science via the climategate emails, they are horrified by what they see, e.g. the secretiveness, the resistance to replication, and the flat out shoddy science. Many of them are starting to understand that when they signed these petitions supporting alarmists in the name of science, they were in fact supporting Jenna Jamison in the name of chastity.
Still, the next stage for the drama over ethanol's future will likely be the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which anticipates holding a hearing in April that takes a broad look at multiple facets of U.S. renewable fuels policy. The panel's chairwoman, Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), was one of 17 upper-chamber members who signed a bipartisan letter in November calling for the phaseout of ethanol tariffs and blending subsidies.ALP loses its licence to campaign on global warming | The Australian
And ethanol is one of a few issues that find Boxer aligned with her committee's ranking Republican, Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a longtime ethanol foe who is relishing his ability -- despite a reputation as a vocal climate change skeptic -- to build a partnership with environmentalists who want Congress to reduce support for the corn-based fuel.
"What we're trying to do is reach across the aisle" on ethanol, Inhofe spokesman Matt Dempsey said in an interview. "When you have Inhofe and Barbara Boxer and Friends of the Earth (FoE) on the same page, it's pretty understandable what's coming."
But the greatest loss for Labor is the majority of Australians, including a sudden swath of younger voters to have switched sides, who now oppose a carbon plan with cost rises.Mourning Glory : Nature News
"I understand these things happen with the difficult tasks NASA attempts," Kopp wrote to Nature in a remarkably calm e-mail from the Vandenberg base, where he witnessed the failed launch. "I'm of course surprised that after two years of scrutiny, Orbital evidently does not understand what is causing their Taurus launch vehicles to fail — they've now lost three of the last four."
Scientists are also grieving for data that might have been. The loss of Glory's solar monitor increases the risk of a lapse in the continuous 32-year record of the Sun's total energy output, data that are fundamental to climate-change models. It also complicates efforts to compare solar-irradiance data from different instruments.
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"The magnitude of the aerosol forcing is a big determinant of where we are going to go in the future," says Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeller at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "We have the technology to pin this down more than it is being pinned down, and yet that technology is sitting at the bottom of the ocean."
Julia Gillard is finished. She will most likely be replaced by Labor before the election, but otherwise by voters at it.
This will make two - arguably three - Prime Ministers and probably two Opposition Leaders who will have lost their jobs primarily over the issue of global warming, and despite allegedly overwhelming support that they Do Something. Never has a single issue caused such carnage among the leadership of a government and Opposition.
Almost overnight, the threat of global warming has seized the imagination of the world with religious fervour.Oregon Dems attack climate skeptic’s children « Green Hell Blog
Global warming I get, to a point, homo-horrendouses (a family-favourite term for humans) gross abuse of the environment I get, but world leaders spending fortunes to get together and debate an issue that doesn’t have exact scientific modelling – that I don’t get.
And now the urgent necessity of imposing another tax on Australian people already doing it tough… that I definitely don’t get.
Democrat-run Oregon State University is apparently retaliating against climate skeptic and congressional candidate Dr. Art Robinson by taking action without cause against his three graduate student children.SSTs Around Greenland Plummeting | Real Science
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This could make Climategate look like a parking ticket.
The blink comparator below shows changes in sea surface temperatures over the last two months. Two things which stand out are that La Nina is not as strong as it was, and that temperatures around Greenland have dropped considerably.Coldest Year Ever : UAH March Temperatures Coldest And Going Down | Real Science
Something interesting is happening with UAH satellite temperatures. Not only is March, 2011 the coldest since at least 2003 – but this is the only year where temperatures have been declining during March.
Terry Tamminen suggests that if humans get injured by fighting roosters, it follows that trace amounts of CO2 are dangerous?
A few weeks ago in Lamont, California, a fighting rooster killed a man, when the bird slashed him with the blades he had attached to its legs. A bizarre one-time oddity? No, just days earlier a man in India was also killed when his fighting rooster slashed his throat. Just what is Mother Nature trying to say?
It erases the House provision that would block EPA from using its budget to regulate greenhouse gases. It restores U.S. contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And it strikes the language forbidding Obama from hiring "czars" for climate change or green jobs or negotiators for global climate talks, such as Special Envoy Todd Stern.
"Such language has no place in a bill that is necessary to keep the government operating," the Senate committee said.
Florida's vegetation has changed its structure over the last century in response to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and ecologists see the change as a plant-based call-to-arms, heralding dry times to come.Greenhouse CO2 generators from Advance Greenhouses
Plants breath in air and breath out moisture through tiny pores called stomata. Comparing a variety of contemporary plants growing in Florida with museum samples and peat bogs dating back 150 years ago, an international team of ecologists found that as the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has increased, the number of stomata on plants' leaves have decreased.
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The team predicts that further increases in carbon dioxide will halve the amount of water lost to the atmosphere.
That reduction in water could have serious effects on rainfall and other weather events.
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is one of the easiest ways to accelerate plant growth. Plants grown with supplemental CO2 can produce up to 40% more flowers or fruit. A propane or natural gas CO2 generator is the most cost effective way to add CO2 to your environment. Many greenhouses use CO2 generators to boost CO2 levels safely and economically.
TONY Abbott has declared Julia Gillard wants to change Australia's way of life by introducing a price on carbon that would make it harder for people to turn on their airconditioners or to drive their cars.Siberian Tiger Population Is Drastically Low, Scientists Report
The World Wildlife Fund reports that climate change may be shrinking tigers' habitat by 96%. Bengal tigers are shrinking in size due to stress over environmental changes. The WWF goes so far as to state that if no action is taken, tigers may become extinct in the next 12 years.
Italy cutting subsidies to the ugly and expensiveBBC News - Frosts wreck Lincolnshire cauliflower harvest
Italy is about to join the growing list of European countries cutting back subsidies to solar and wind energy, so reports the online Berlin TAZ.
Farmers in Lincolnshire have claimed losses to the cauliflower crop caused by severe winter weather may reach £7m.
The county usually supplies about 70% of the UK's crop from March to May, but many growers have lost up to 80% of their harvest.
The Brassica Growers Association said the situation was so bad it could foresee many farms giving up on cauliflower entirely.
It added that production may well move to milder parts of the country.
This could be made for Hollywood – two media giants, one global crisis. It’s the Murdoch/Turner global warming cage match.
Warren Buffett, typical hypocritical left-winger: He suggests that greenhouse emissions are bad; also brags about his company's ownership (and his own heavy use) of a private jet business
Last year BNSF moved each ton of freight it carried a record 500 miles on a single gallon of diesel fuel. That’s three times more fuel-efficient than trucking is, which means our railroad owns an important advantage in operating costs. Concurrently, our country gains because of reduced greenhouse emissions and a much smaller need for imported oil. When traffic travels by rail, society benefits.
... NetJets has long been an operational success, owning a 2010 market share five times that of its nearest competitor...My family and I have flown more than 5,000 hours on NetJets (that’s equal to being airborne 24 hours a day for seven months) and will fly thousands of hours more in the future...Whichever the plane or crew, we always know we are flying with the best-trained pilots in private aviation.
Instead of buying a real car, why not buy a bad-weather-preventing car that takes 18 hours to "refill"?
People who want to share their electricity indicate what type of outlet or charger they have, how to gain access and their preferred method of contact. Given that most outlets are located in locked garages or otherwise behind closed doors, Xatori expects plug sharers will ask drivers to schedule a time to charge by calling or sending a text message.
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Given that it can take as long as 18 hours to fully charge a battery with a standard 110-volt household outlet, Xatori’s founders expect most people to just plug in for an hour or so to extend their vehicle’s range by a few miles.
The commission also gave up its proposal to withhold permits that would amount to about 5 percent of the carbon limits set for energy and manufacturing companies from 2013 to 2020, the next phase of its cap-and-trade program, according to the draft.
When the chairman of the Minnesota Senate Environment Committee says "global warming -- I think it's a farce, I think it's a fallacy," I say, "Yikes."
Sen. Bill Ingebrigtsen, R-Alexandria, used that reason to eliminate funding proposals that had been agreed to by the Legislative and Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources, which advises the Legislature on spending proceeds from the Minnesota State Lottery.
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It's as if the chair of the Senate Health Committee had said, "Smoking is bad for you? I don't buy into that stuff. I think it's a farce and a fallacy."
Coplan, co-director of the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic, spoke Saturday morning at the summit at Clarkstown South High School in West Nyack about “Avoiding Lazy Environmentalism; Taking Personal Responsibility for Climate Change.”Have warmists Al Gore, James Hansen, Rajendra Pachauri, Andy Revkin, or Barack Obama done any of these five things? If not, why should I do them?
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The West Nyack resident recommended a personal CO2 budget of 4 tons in line with the world average to help reduce climate change. An 80 percent reduction would mean significant changes beneficial both for future generations and personally. His five suggested ways to reduce individual carbon footprints are: downsize to one car per family and walk or take public transportation; stop flying in airplanes and become a local tourist; turn down the thermostat at home; get rid of the TV, and eat less meat.
There are a lot of ancillary benefits to being a climate catastrophist. Allow me to list some:Global Warming Hysteria: It Also Pays to Warn About Global Warming » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog
* People know your name. You enjoy fame.
* The New York Times writes about you. TV people interview you on the news.
* You get to wallow in rectitude as you shout your warnings to all of humanity.
* People pay you to speak at events.
* You enjoy higher status in the Guild that is higher education.
* You get more money for your department and your university than the quiet ones.
* Big wigs and corporate rent-seekers take you to lavish dinners (at least).
* Your journal articles provide fodder for the second-hand dealers and activists.
* You gain the veneration of your peers (if they buy your results).
* You’re “important” and you get to belong to elite clubs (like the IPCC).
Moreover, there is strong (perhaps subliminal) pressure to toe the line on the pro warming side–such as the threat of shunning, not getting tenure, not being invited to symposia, and being blackballed from writing papers in the best journals–the scientific equivalent of excommunication for heresy. (I have certainly seen instances of that in the stem cell/cloning and other debates.) I mean, look how Lomborg has been treated–and he doesn’t even deny the existence of AGW.
According to data just released by the EIA, natural gas production in the U.S. reached an annual record high of 26.85 trillion cubic feet in 2010. That output was an increase of 3.22% above the previous record high last year, which pushed U.S. production in 2009 above Russia's, and made the U.S. the #1 producer of natural gas in the world.INHOFE JOINS UPTON, INTRODUCES ENERGY TAX PREVENTION ACT
On a monthly basis, natural gas production in December surged to 2.386 trillion cubic feet, which was almost 9% above the year-ago level, and set a new all-time record for the most gas ever produced in a single month
Bill Has 42 Senate Cosponsors; Democrats Support in the HouseObama's green subsidies attract do-gooder bandits | Timothy P. Carney | Politics | Washington Examiner
President Obama's green energy push is rapidly proving to be a crooked racket. It works like this: Revolving-door political hires rev up subsidy programs that enrich their former employers. Then they cash out themselves, pocketing taxpayer loot while turning out energy products that range from inefficient technologies to total failures. Faster than the turbine on a subsidized wind mill, the "clean-tech" revolving door spins out green bandits who get rich off the subsidies they helped craft.
Cathy Zoi, an Al Gore acolyte, has left her job as assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy to go to work for a new fund that invests in green energy. It was started by Democratic donor George Soros.
Delving into the literature shows that a different group of folks could set out to examine the same thing even selecting from among the same pool of climate, economic, and epidemiological studies and arrive at a largely different conclusion—a conclusion that the externalities from coal-fuelled electricity are only slightly negative, and perhaps even positive.How the carbon dioxide tax will become a central planner’s dream | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog
This is going to be a disaster, and the greatest scrabble for handouts ever seen in this country.- Bishop Hill blog - Tim Flannery on Andrew Marr
The BBC is back to full frontal global warming propaganda, with Tim Flannery given the promotional treatment on Start the Week this morning. By happy chance, I switched the radio off this morning before the show started.
Someone recently noted that it doesn't matter how often the Flanneries of the world are wrong, or how wrong (and Flannery has banged on endlessly about drought in Australia). They will always get a sympathetic hearing on the BBC.
For programs that bring meals to the homebound and that offer senior citizens lunch at senior centers, spring can't come too soon.THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: L.A. Times: Colleges blow $10 million on 'wildly impractical' green energy
"This has just been much more challenging than other winters have been," said Susanna Sussman, executive director of Meals on Wheels of White Plains.
L.A. community colleges' green energy plan proves wildly impractical. The blunders cost taxpayers $10 million.Well, that lie went well, didn’t it? | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog
Essential Research shows that Julia Gillard just drove her “carbon tax” party over a cliff.
And remember: journalists of the ABC, Fairfax and the big commercial TV outlets were cheering her all the way.
Because they're trying to prevent your grandchildren from getting CO2-induced kidney stones: North Korea wants to trade carbon credits
Some analysts questioned the demand for carbon credits from North Korea, with fears the money might be siphoned off to nuclear arms or other military projects.
Google Sen. Inhofe’s name and one comes up with all sorts of media descriptions of him as a “brazen” “denier” who “abuses climate science.” Witness an American Prospect opinion piece in 2005 that claimed “when it comes to climate change, Inhofe doesn't seem to care whether he has a sound argument to make, so long as he has something contrary to say that takes at least some effort to deconstruct.”Voters ready to punish PM over 'no carbon tax' promise poll reveals | News.com.au
Well, the science is not so certain now. Sen. Inhofe’s criticisms, for good reason, aren’t so lonely anymore, and they are carrying the day politically. Some would say that’s pretty cool.
The survey found 59 per cent wanted Ms Gillard to hold an election to decide the fate of carbon pricing, and just 27 per cent said she had been showing strong leadership by proceeding with the policy.GOP, senators digging in for coal | POLL » Evansville Courier & Press
"Climate policy, such as the emission regulations the Obama administration is implementing, will affect every corner of our economy, from big utilities to family farmers, and every Hoosier ratepayer," Lugar said. "Officials elected by and accountable to American voters, not bureaucrats, should be in charge of making any changes to our energy and environmental laws."
As Lent begins with Ash Wednesday March 9, the US-based Catholic Coalition on Climate Change wants to remind Catholics that it is not just about giving up chocolate or ice cream for 40 days.House climate science showdown set - The Hill's E2-Wire
Witnesses invited by committee Republicans include researchers who have criticized mainstream scientific views on climate change and proposals to require carbon emissions cuts.The brains behind the anti-carbon tax rallies | Crikey
One is the University of Colorado’s Roger Pielke, Sr. He agrees that humans are having a significant effect on the climate, but claims there’s an overemphasis on the role carbon emissions among the various human “climate forcings.”
Also testifying is John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. He told the House Ways and Means Committee in 2009 that models and data showing warming are off-base.
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The names are familiar in climate policy circles. “Climate change deniers have a short bench, so we were not surprised at their witnesses,” said a Democratic aide.
A disgruntled green loans assessor, a former Victorian public servant turned climate sceptic and a Sydney pacemaker king are the figures behind a national series of rallies planned to shoot down Julia Gillard’s carbon tax.
Councils across the UK are refusing to pick up low-energy lightbulbs from homes as they contain toxic mercury, which gives off poisonous vapours.The New Nostradamus of the North: Putin´s dream of controlling Europe´s energy future is over (2)
But confused consumers are putting the new bulbs – classed as hazardous waste – in their dustbins when they burn out, potentially putting the safety of thousands of binmen at risk.
German Der Spiegel focuses on the coming shale gas revolution in Europe, which will put an end to Putin´s dream of controlling Europe´s energy future:Carbon tax could be disaster for industry: Rio - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Mining giant Rio Tinto has warned the carbon tax is "potentially disastrous" for industry unless a far more generous compensation package is offered than under Kevin Rudd's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
Sunday, March 06, 2011
The ethanol program is efficient only at bidding up corn prices for U.S. farmers while it creates inefficiencies in the agricultural and energy markets that are likely many times larger than the subsidies given to corn farmers.
The time has come for someone to declare that the emperor has no clothes and end the ethanol program altogether.
Gary Wolfram is the William Simon Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Hillsdale College.
While some of us want to be dressed-to-kill, it should not be at the risk of harming our planet.Let them eat cake. In the dark | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog
Yes, it’s the ABC. Quentin Dempster of Stateline can’t believe his ears when the NSW Greens leader David Shoebridge says he wants not just a ban on coal-fired power stations but a ban on fixing up the transmission system taking power from those stations to people’s homes. And note how Shoebridge refuses again and again to give a straight answer to the question: won’t the carbon dioxide tax drives up people’s power bills?
The answer, of course, is “you bet”.
Helmut Schmidt, the respected former Chancellor of Germany, has told an audience at the Max-Plank-Gesellschaft that a full inquiry needs to be held into the credibility of advice on global warming that stems from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.Combet: public "confused" by carbon tax | Australian Climate Madness
Ah, yes, the old excuses are the best. If anyone disagrees with your policy, just say the public are too ignorant to properly understand it, and that all that's necessary is better "communication". Such is the arrogance of Labor that is believes it is beyond criticism, so when the public go ape because their Prime Minister has lied to them about a carbon tax in order to get elected, they go into self-deluding rationalisation strategies - in other words, we're right and the public are just a bunch of stupid bogans. Charming.
HIGHER food costs resulting from a carbon tax inclusive of fuel is “elitist and immoral”, according to SA Farmers Federation southern regional chairman Bill Hunt.If Gore believed in Global Warming why did he sign these oil deals? | thickmudd
“There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that a tax on farmers’ fuel is a tax on food,” he said.
Mr Hunt said sequestering carbon was part of a farmer’s trade.
“Our plants sequester carbon via photosynthesis, to form food which the public eat, then when you breathe, the carbon goes back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, and so the circle goes,” Mr Hunt said.
“Any politician who makes out he doesn’t understand this elemental fact of life is either trying to sneak a new tax in, assumes you, the public, are idiots, or is an idiot himself.”
If Al Gore really believed in Global Warming why did he sign oil deals when he was vice president? Why didn’t he do anything to stop Global Warming when he had the power?The Climate Sceptics (TCS) Blog: Ice Breakers needed - Is history repeating itself?
Look here at this oil deal he signed with Russia while he was VP.
Here is a $15 billion oil deal Al Gore signed in 1995
As the Medieval Warm period came to an end and the Little Ice age started to take hold, Vikings found it harder to cross an ice-filled North Atlantic.Aljazeera : “Climate Change #1 Issue” | Real Science
El Salvador never had bad weather before you bought an SUV.
The AFR reports that Origin, as a gas-fired and renewable energy producer, would benefit from a carbon pollution tax as it would drive consumers to its product and away from coal-fired generation.Woodside wants carbon tax exemption for LNG - The West Australian
Woodside Petroleum has warned that a carbon tax would be passed onto WA natural gas customers.Republicans’ anti-green agenda | Warmist Suzanne Goldenberg
The energy group also wants its LNG exports exempted from any carbon pricing agreement.
IT started on a sultry day in Houston when hundreds of protesters, mostly oil company employees, were bussed to a concert hall in their lunch hour to rally against a historic first step by Congress to reduce the pollution that causes climate change.
The event marked the start of a backlash by wealthy industry owners and conservative activists against Barack Obama’s green agenda. Now it has snowballed into what green campaigners say is the greatest assault on environmental protection that America has ever seen.
Arnold’s Advice to Jerry | KQED's Climate Watch
Ford, who was moderating the on-stage dialog, expressed frustration that apathy toward climate change is "a daunting obstacle to overcome."
Schwarzenegger urged a repackaging of the message. "I'm not a big believer in the guilt trip that has happened; in the Al Gore type of philosophy where you make people feel guilty," he said. "Forget talking about the environment," he said, if that's an obstacle for Republican lawmakers. "Let's talk about green energy. Let's just reframe it."
Even conservative Newport Beach gets serious about rising sea levels | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times
There is nothing 'smart' about rationing electricity
As we have seen before, there are elements in the Green movement who actively want to revive wartime-style rationing and who welcome shortages and inconvenience, because they believe this is the price we must pay for "Saving The Planet."
What is a matter of the direst concern is when such a fringe mentality becomes part of the political and economic mainstream.
Rationing our energy supplies it is not progress. It is a step back – quite literally – towards the Dark Ages.
I have questions?
Climate story telling angst
The effects of climate change on different parts of the world is seen visually above in a map produced by a PhD student at McGill University. Jason Samson used climate and census data to draw a map of where climate change will likely have the greatest effects on the most number of people.The Threat of Climate Change to Arctic Human Communities
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Not surprisingly, the people closest to the equator are probably going to feel the biggest effects.
Scientists have long predicted that human-induced climate change will have its first and most severe impacts in polar regions. The Arctic is more sensitive to climate change than perhaps any other place on Earth, and its unique physical characteristics help explain why the region is so vulnerable.
The notorious, the fatuous, the misleading claim that '97% of climatologists' believe in ('catastrophic' implied/stated/assumed) anthropogenic global warming has been rebutted many times. Anyone with an elementary grasp of sample-survey techniques would have refused to publish the results, based as they are on a sloppy question, an imperfect frame, and a tiny subset of self-selected respondents of unknown qualifications. But perhaps when you are saving the planet, the means justifies the ends, or more clearly, 'let's not let scientific integrity get in the way of political impact.'Letter: A few questions for global warming deniers » TCPalm.com
So I want the deniers to ask themselves: Do you think the measurements that say the planet is warming up much faster than any prior long-term cyclical warming and cooling are wrong?
At a climate hearing on this week Upton justified his legislation by claiming the threat greenhouse gases pose to air quality and public health is a “myth”:So let’s dispel a myth: air quality and public health will not be harmed or affected in any way by efforts to slow and then stop EPA’s expansive global warming agenda under the Clean Air Act. . . . . So we can stop the EPA from imposing cap and tax and the Clean Air Act will continue to make our families and communities healthier places. So let’s listen to the facts: this issue is not about air quality and public health, it’s about jobs.
See how every screaming cue for scepticism - like the pledge “ to turn off the lights on Saturday, March 26 - whether she’s at her plush New York pad or her luxurious LA digs” - is studiously ignored? Note how the report even claims the event is ever expanding, when the truth is that fewer Australians each year bother to reach for the switch - as even one brave reporter on The Age was last year driven to concede:C3: Donkeymobiles: Obama & Comrades Spend Taxpayer Monies On Electric Autos No One Wants
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The truth is that Earth Hour is not just stupid but a proven dud, with only these Pravdas of the green movement having the hide to declare that Kerr has suddenly made it and the green hype behind it “so hot”.
The Age and SMH would rather print this advertising copy than a sober, clearly written exposition of global warming theory and the serious problems emerging with it - as Quadrant has so responsibly done in its current edition.
Want to buy a GM Volt or Nissan Leaf? Wait a few months and you'll get one really, really cheap on eBay.
December-February averaged 2.73C in England, which was the second coldest winter since 1891.The Silent Giant Coal Monster « JoNova
Greg Combet (our Minister for keeping-the-weather-the-same) can keep a straight face when he tells coal miners that their jobs are protected with him. You might think that’s insane, (especially if you are Green) but he has a point. Even if carbon mattered, our coal exports do not. (Not that Combet seems to explain this point very well, he seems to think people won’t notice the contradiction about supposedly “making the big polluters pay”, even though he’s taxing mom-and-dad and partly-exempting Big-Coal).
The documentation delivered so far by the international group of scientists (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC) has been met with skepticism, particularly that some of the involved scientists have proven to be frauds. In any case the targets publically set by some of the governments have turned out to be less based on science. and based much more on politics.
I suspect PM Julia Gillard's lie may be the latest example. It's rare to see such overwhelming fury from a public at having been so brazenly deceived.
Before the election, as everyone knows, Gillard promised she would not introduce a tax on carbon dioxide in effect, a green tax on electricity and petrol.
"There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead," she said.
But six months later Gillard says she will indeed give us that carbon tax and from next year, without even going to another election for a mandate.
March 7 (Bloomberg) -- Australia risks falling behind countries such as China in reducing greenhouse gas pollution without a price on emissions that will ensure the “health and prosperity” of the economy, Treasurer Wayne Swan said.Is The Next Big Climate Change Solution Just Vaporware? - The CSR Blog - corporate social responsibility - Forbes
“The Chinese are taking dramatic action to reduce their emissions through a variety of mechanisms,” Swan said yesterday on Australia’s Channel Nine television. “It’s not true to say other countries are not moving. We are getting left behind.”
Given the fact that China has been building anywhere from one to three coal power plants per week for the last several years – none of which are CCS-ready – the vaporware label seems pretty fitting.
Winter temperatures in the US are plummeting over the last decade.
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Snow is associated with cold winters, not warm ones. The snowiest winter in the Northern Hemisphere was 1978, which was also the coldest winter on record in the Eastern US.
These people think you're stupid: Starbucks raises coffee prices because global warming is allegedly causing colder nights in Costa Rica?
Last fall, Starbucks raised prices on some drinks to offset rising costs on commodities, notably coffee.
Global warming — more accurately called climate change — poses "a direct business threat to our company," Starbucks executive Jim Hanna told an Environmental Protection Agency panel in 2009 in Seattle.
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On the slopes of Volcano Poás, the biggest threats are colder nights, fiercer winds and rain that falls too hard and at the wrong times. Temperatures at Flores' coffee farms on Poás used to stay above 60 degrees at night, but now are dropping to 52 degrees.
CALGARY — Alone and shivering, John Davis knew he would not survive the night in the bitter cold of his own home.Facebook Shut Down for Earth Hour? : Campaign with video : Online Social Media
On Nov. 23, 2006, as Calgary was gripped in a deep freeze, the 58-year-old man — whose heat remained cut off months after he paid his overdue bill — spoke on the phone to his mother in Edmonton that evening and delivered an ominous prediction: “I’m going to die tonight, Mom.”
His frozen body was found the next morning.
What are your thoughts on the campaign to get Facebook to shut down for one hour on March 26? Surely we could all get by without Facebook for one hour?The economy of carbon footprints » Columns » Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Bluefield, WV
Does anyone remember a former U.S. senator who was a member of the board of directors and an attorney for Occidental Petroleum? I’ll give you hint. He taught law at Vanderbilt University and he was also the chairman of Island Creek Coal Company of Lexington, Ky. His son is a former vice-president of the United States who advocates a global warming theory. Yes the man was Sen. Albert Arnold “Al” Gore, Sr. of Granville, Tenn. The younger Gore is apparently against everything that helped his father become a very rich man, but obviously isn’t against being rich.China won't repeat errors in 2015 emissions goals: NDRC | Reuters
"In order to meet their eleventh five-year plan targets, some regions took a series of extreme actions, even restricting power supplies -- this was not our original intention and this kind of method is not appropriate," said Zhang Ping, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).
Private steel mills in Hebei province told Reuters in December that they were given a day's notice by local authorities before having to shut operations completely.
2008 : Obama Promises Millions Of New Jobs To Fight Global Warming | Real Science
“Few challenges facing America, and the world, are more urgent than combating climate change,” “My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process.”First Impressions of Resolute Bay and South Camp | Catlin Arctic Survey
The wind piles snow against any structure, so that some buildings have drifts over 6 ft deep.
We spent the first 24 hours inside the hotel and I started to feel like I had landed on another planet, I was excited but also apprehensive about going outside in -30oF temperatures...How lucky we are to be able to come back to a warm building, I am left wondering what it will be like when we are in tents at the camp.
India: "Unable to bear the weight of five to ten feet snow that was accumulated over the last couple of days, around three dozen roofs have collapsed or damaged"
MANALI: Making the most of a brief break in incessant snowfall on Saturday morning, residents of Kullu district climbed up their roof tops to clear the snow and avoid any major accidents. Unable to bear the weight of five to ten feet snow that was accumulated over the last couple of days, around three dozen roofs have collapsed or damaged in Kullu and Lahaul-Spiti districts of Himachal Pradesh.
Reporter test drives all-electric Nissan Leaf, experiences "fuel envy" and has to call a tow...
BARRONS 3/5/11: Ouch! The all-electric Nissan Leaf I was driving came to a standstill in downtown Manhattan, its battery pack dead, the closest charging station nearly a mile away. As gas-guzzling Porsches and a Lamborghini rolled by, I mused on my fate. Then I called for a flat-bed tow back to Brooklyn.
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Note even if the reporter made it to a charging station, it takes 21 hours to fully recharge the Leaf on 110 volts, and 7 hours on 240 volts.
Warmists visit the Arctic; find no ice melting
Ice Base scientists and staff pitch tents outside for the night, in preparation for their time at the Ice Base. Temp: -29 C + windchill.
ACCOUNTANTS and lawyers are failing to prepare their clients for new laws forcing them to detail their carbon dioxide emissions, says the boss of an environmental software firm.Klaus L.E. Kaiser: Dirty Coal | Climate Realists
So why do some politicians still hark the tune of the CO2 being evil? Very simply, they hope to create a new taxation mechanism which would enable them to extract a lot of dollars from you and me, in addition to all other existing taxes. This scheme has already resulted in sky-rocketing electricity prices in some jurisdictions. Of course, many levels of government profit from higher prices for anything, directly or indirectly. In other words, it’s in their interest (of taxation) to maintain and propagate these myths.The Reference Frame: Nordhaus, Shellenberger: long death of environmentalism
You can see, the climate realist bloggers and scholars have "toiled in relative obscurity". I think it is a very accurate description what has been going on. Many of us are hard-working people and we've been getting almost no credit for that. The criticism that it's our fault that the green religion hasn't spread more universally is a tribal defense of the green ego.
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Wind power will require lifestyle change
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Holliday has for several years been predicting that blackouts could become a feature of power systems that replace reliable coal plants with wind turbines in order to meet greenhouse gas targets. Wind-based power systems are necessary to meet the government’s targets, he has explained, but they will require lifestyle changes.
Under the so-called “smart grid” that the UK is developing, the government-regulated utility will be able to decide when and where power should be delivered, to ensure that it meets the highest social purpose. Governments may, for example, decide that the needs of key industries take precedence over others, or that the needs of industry trump that of residential consumers. Governments would also be able to price power prohibitively if it is used for non-essential purposes.
The simple solution: stop burning food for fuel, drill for more oil, work on alternate energy system that actually might work, like thorium based nuclear power.An Earth Hour with Miranda would be hot, hot, hot | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog
A question to WWF: If we all emitted as Kerr emits, and not as she preaches, would our total emissions soar or fall?
In light of that answer, were you fools or frauds to make her your Earth Hour Ambassador?
Precious quote from warmist psychologist Doug Craig: "there is no scientific evidence that there is a 'natural cause' for climate change"
What I find fascinating about all this is that they are willing to accept that the climate is changing as long as they don't have to admit that humans are responsible. And even though there is no scientific evidence that there is a "natural cause" for climate change, like a hotter Sun, they persist in their belief. As a psychologist who makes a living trying to figure out how and why people think the way they do, this is extremely interesting.Redding.com: Blogs: Doug Craig's blog
Obtained a B.A. in Journalism and a Doctorate in Psychology. Employed as a clinical psychologist in private practice in Redding for 22 years.
Clarets may soon become a thing of the past, as they have joined polar bears, glaciers and icebergs on scientists' extinction risk list because of global warming.
Munich - A massive tax scam uncovered in Germany a year ago may have netted 1 billion dollars for the brains behind it, a German newspaper reported Saturday, quoting investigators.Young Sharm digs worms, abhors global warming - Times LIVE
In a so-called carousel scheme, more than 150 executives and entrepreneurs are suspected of shunting carbon-emission certificates back and forth across borders so as to avoid value-added tax.
An environmentally conscious eight-year-old boy has started his own worm farm to do his bit to save the world from global warming.5 environmental revelations from WikiLeaks | MNN - Mother Nature Network
Obama leaned on the Saudis to get behind the Copenhagen Accord
In a clear sign of the schizophrenic nature of world diplomacy, just as the Obama administration was colluding with China to dodge binding restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, it was pressuring the Saudis to agree to the non-binding Copenhagen Accord.
The Saudis weren't excited about the idea of signing the accord but were afraid that they would miss "a real opportunity to submit 'something clever,' like India or China, that was not legally binding but indicated some goodwill towards the process without compromising key economic interests."
In Thursday's keynote speech on the impact of the oil crisis, Huhne argued that an $100 (£61) a barrel price for oil transforms the economics of climate change in Britain.'The Migrant Mind: You wee people don't really need electricity
One of the more idiotic things to come out of the global warming delusion is the idea that we must get off of fossil fuels in order to save the planet. This has led the politicians to endorse all sorts of energetic nonsense (politicians are not known for having taken lots of physics courses in college). The politicians have endorsed and subsidized wind and solar, even though the amount of subsidy was huge and the return in energy tiny (politicians are not known for their business acumen either). This lunacy in both business and physics traverses the political landscape.
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Right at the end of that interview, Stephen Holliday says rather matter of factly, that the British households will simply have to get used to a 3rd world kind of energy supply. Electricity simply won't be consistently available to cook the evening meal or heat the home. Tough luck if it gets cold. Here is the quote.
A STATE Government initiative to get public servants to car pool has generated only one trip every three days at a cost to taxpayers of $426 per trip."Dr" Roy Spencer is sad and lonely and wrong : Stoat
For the same amount of money, the Government could have paid for a public servant to travel on the bus from Kingston to the city 115 times.
Poor Roy. He has backed himself so far into a corner that he no longer has anyone competent to discuss his ideas with, with the result that he publishes (in a book, because no-one would publish it in a journal) utter twaddle. It is really very difficult to do science all by yourself, and Spencer is certainly failing.Climate Change Dispatch - Apology to Dr. Andrew Weaver
CCD Editor's Note: Dr. Ball asked me to publish this letter. Here it is in it's entirety:
My article entitled “Corruption of Climate Change Has Created 30 Lost Years” contained untrue statements about Dr. Andrew Weaver, who is a professor in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. The article has since been withdrawn from the Internet website of Canada Free Press, where it was originally published in January 2011.
Power companies around the world are planning to spend trillions of dollars building smart grids — next-generation marvels likened to the transcontinental railroad and the Internet because they are seen as revolutionizing society.
It won’t happen. The smart grid is nothing more than a politically driven fantasy that has no economic rationale other than to support politically favoured technologies that themselves have no economic rationale other than to save the world from global warming. And on global warming the public in most developed countries, public opinion polls show, has already spoken: Global warming is a non-problem.
Global Warming Thaw - Reason Magazine
Giant Kites Help Shipping Company Cut Carbon
The loss of the Glory satellite early this morning is another setback for efforts to fill substantial gaps in the understanding of some important aspects of the climate system.Combet admits to the great carbon tax con | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog
Christine Milne is perfectly right - if you really believe man-made gases are destroying the planet, then you must of course end coal mining. Which means the Gillard Government lacks the courage of its own (claimed) convictions
Yes just imagine. All those countless square miles of barren tundra overrun with vast invasive green forests filled with creatures bent on...uh...life.Chills, drills, spills and thrills | Catlin Arctic Survey
Will planet Earth tolerate such an affront to it's territorial rights?
Their mission is to collect data for the third Catlin Arctic Survey – a scientific research programme into the impacts of climate and environmental change in the Arctic.
Catlin Arctic Survey Director Pen Hadow knows firsthand what the group will experience, having led the first Catlin Arctic Survey in 2009. “During the first month explorers, scientists and operations staff will work in the coldest conditions. Temperatures are likely to dip as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius which, with the wind chill factor, could plummet to minus 75 degrees Celsius. The team have all the gear, equipment and training they need, but it will still take time to establish new daily routines in such inhospitable conditions.”
“It’s very difficult getting used to working in the extreme cold. You’re trying to do quite exacting science while wearing anything up to four layers of gloves. It takes time to learn how to avoid the worst of the cold without overheating in too much clothing. That’s an Arctic challenge in its itself.”
I guess having electricity when you need it is sooooo last century … UK families will have to get used to “only using power when it was available”. That constant electricity at home was dangerous anyhow, the unending hum of the wires can drive a man so insane that the only way to cure him is to make him head of the National Grid …
Really? Five days to get it together to realize your sad, motley, rag-tag bunch just might have to get on with your lives now that this climate scam has rendered you all pointless?Clive James on the day it rained all over the alarmists’ parade | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog
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A wave of political energy so all-consuming they can no longer find enough people to camp out near power stations. Something tells me they're running out of useful idiots to underwrite their particular brand of idiocy.
A lovely essay by Clive James on the mass-forgetting in these warmist times of our past and of our poetry - in particular, of Dorothea Mackellar’s lines about this land of “droughts and flooding rains”.The WWF Vice President & the New IPCC Report « NoFrakkingConsensus
To me, this suggests that activist scientists are far from rare. It appears that activism has become the new normal.
The Gulf of Finland is in danger of grinding to a halt from a lack of ice-breaking capacity.Die Klimazwiebel: Carnival for skeptics
The mixing of 10% biofuel E 10 in gasoline turns out to be a failure: the oil industry is forced by law to sell it, Germans don't buy it, gas stations are in trouble.American Thinker: The Global Warming Health Scare
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In today's news, it is portrayed everywhere as another weird and unnecessary climate protection measure; faznet calls it a result of the German "Klimaallergie" ("climate allergy"); even the taz tries to find out the culprit (chancellor Merkel?). Thus, it turns out to be another highly unpopular and questionable climate protection measure (after the introduction of the energy saving light bulbs).
The American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Public Health Association (APHA) have declared Global Warming a serious public health threat. You may resume reading after your laughter subsides.
CO2 being the primary cause of global warming is disappearing – fast.GLOOMIEST WINTER EVER...AND SPRING WON’T ARRIVE UNTIL APRIL by Nathan Rao | Climate Realists
SPRING was put on hold yesterday as Britain began to emerge from the gloomiest winter on record.
Forecasters warned March would be colder than normal, with the risk of frost until the beginning of April.
"Imagine the vast, empty tundra in Alaska and Canada giving way to trees, shrubs and plants typical of more southerly climates," says a summary of the study published by scientists from the University of Nebraska, the Korean Polar Research Institute and Seoul National University. "Imagine similar changes in large parts of Eastern Europe, northern Asia and Scandinavia, as needle-leaf and broadleaf forests push northward into areas once unable to support them."
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"Increasing growth of trees may encroach on the habitat for many birds, reindeer and other locally beneficial species . . . thus adversely affecting local residents," she said.