skip to main |
skip to sidebar
House votes to kill EPA climate regulations - Robin Bravender - POLITICO.comHouse lawmakers sent a loud message to the White House on Thursday: They want to obliterate the Obama administration’s climate rules.
The chamber voted 255-172, primarily along party lines, to nullify the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations and the scientific finding they’re based on. No Republicans opposed the bill, but 19 Democrats broke ranks with their party to support the measure.
...
The House also easily rejected Democrats' motion to recommit, which would have stipulated that EPA has the "authority to protect vulnerable children and seniors, including kids with asthma and lung diseases, from the ill effects of air pollution."
Upton rebuffed the motion on the House floor, arguing that his bill wouldn't affect the agency's authority to curb asthma-causing pollutants.
Twitter / @David RobertsWill any of the Dems who voted against EPA science suffer for it? Or even feel threatened? At all?
Fish Kill: Thick Ice, Heavy Snow Blamed For Massive Fish Kills Across State - Courant.comWinter fish kills are a natural phenomenon, but the unusually harsh winter caused them to be widespread and, in some cases, more devastating than in past seasons.
"I had never heard of anything like that before. It was a surprise to us," said Kathleen Bagley, director of parks and recreation in Wethersfield, where thousands of dead bass, bluegill and sunfish have carpeted portions of the shoreline at the 1860 Reservoir.
U.S. House Passes Repeal of EPA Carbon Rules Over White House Objections - BloombergThe U.S. House passed legislation prohibiting the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases blamed for climate change, defying an Obama administration threat to veto the bill.
The measure by Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, was approved 255-172 today with 19 Democrats joining 236 Republicans.
Two of the Nation's Biggest Climate Action Groups Unite : TreeHuggerBill McKibben is right: If we're going see any significant progress made in addressing climate change here in the US, it's going to be driven by a major grassroots movement. The ordinary political channels -- the one crammed with special interests, lobbyists, and other defenders of the status quo -- have failed. Relying on the goodwill of corporations to reduce emissions by their own accord isn't so much of a joke as it is an absurdist fantasy. Which is why 350.org and 1Sky, two of the biggest climate action advocacy groups, are joining forces -- to begin to coordinate and grow a movement that could build a populist base big enough to tilt the scales away from big oil, the coal industry, and polluting industries everywhere.
A BIG Announcement. | 350.orgWe will empower and mobilize a grassroots army--individuals, businesses, organizations, and front-line community leaders pushing for climate solutions in the United States.
[April '08]: Gore to recruit 10m-strong green army | Environment | The GuardianAl Gore yesterday launched a drive to mobilise 10 million volunteers to force politicians to act on climate change - twice as many as the number who marched against the Vietnam war or in support of civil rights during the heyday of US activism in the 1960s.
During the next three years, his Alliance for Climate Protection plans to spend $300m (about £150m) on television advertising and online organising to make global warming among the most urgent issues for elected American leaders.
Commentary Series: Kittredge: Tsunami Of Global WarmingThis year I signed up for a Lenten Carbon Fast, cutting back not on chocolate - gracious, no! - but on my own carbon footprint. The New England Regional Environmental Ministries shoots me an email early each morning with a suggestion for the day: turn off one lamp for the duration of the fast; build a compost bin, watch closely what food you throw away as the food discarded annually by an average household adds the equivalent CO2 emissions of 1-5 cars. The suggestions are pretty easy to do and this is both good and bad. Because while I turn off a light, lower the thermostat, heat the stir-fry yet again, the tsunami of global warming continues to rise before us.
...Sitting in our dimly lit, cool houses, munching local, organic food and riding our bikes to work will certainly help but not enough.
Our planet is quaking and we disregard the tsunami of global warming at our grandchildren's peril.
Obama: Expect little short-term relief on gas prices - Fall River, MA - The Herald NewsBut the president said it won’t happen overnight and if any politician says it’s easy, “they’re not telling the truth.”
“Gas prices? They’re going to still fluctuate until we can start making these broader changes, and that’s going to take a couple of years to have serious effect,” Obama said. [But Obama has already been in office for two years. If he knows how to give us lower gas prices in two years, why didn't he do it two years ago?]
Obama needled one questioner who asked about gas prices, now averaging close to $3.70 a gallon nationwide, and suggested that the gentleman consider getting rid of his gas-guzzling vehicle.
“If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know,” Obama said laughingly. “You might want to think about a trade-in.”
Presidential state car (United States) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The limousine is airlifted for domestic and international use primarily by a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III.[9]
The vehicle fuel consumption is about 8 miles per gallon
...
Since 2001, when the president travels out of town, his motorcade has consisted of about 45 vehicles
Federal cuts to blame for less money spent on N.S. environmental projectsHALIFAX - The loss of a federal climate change funding program has had a dramatic impact on Nova Scotia's Environment Department.
The provincial budget, tabled Tuesday, shows spending on environmental management projects has plummeted to $7.4 million from about $33 million last year.
...
With the end of ecoTrust, the province received only $311,000 from Ottawa this year for climate change programs.
No specific standards for offset sellersTHE carbon credit market in Australia is rapidly growing into a multibillion-dollar industry but relies on voluntary standards, where anyone can offer carbon credits for sale.
Attempts to Block EPA Regulations of Climate Change Fail in the Senate - Ecocentric - TIME.comIt was telling that in a major speech last week on energy, Obama barely mentioned global warming and did not talk about defending EPA regulations on carbon.
In any case, it's all hands on deck time for environmental organizations, who've seen a stunning reversal of fortune since the heady days of 2009. Their best hope might be the Republican party itself, simply going too far and inviting a public backlash. "This is a huge overreach," Environmental Defense Fund president Fred Krupp told me on Monday. "The public wants clean air. They want to know that government regulation is keeping them safe from industrial pollution." I think Krupp is right—but wanting clean air isn't the same thing as wanting climate regulation. But there's still plenty of time to find out who's right. More to come...
Climate Lessons: Marches of Madness in May: child victims of climate-scaremongering to take to the streetsThe collective madness of the past 30 years or so centred around airborne CO2 is a remarkable, and a depressing, event. That it will take some time to flush it out of our collective consciousness is due in no small part to those who have chosen to recruit children to support their cause based on climate alarmism, whether it be from political or financial motivations, or both. What it cannot be motivated by is climate data.
#124) THE NERD LOOP: Why I’m losing interest in communicating climate change | The Benshi [Obama] could get the public interested in climate science if he wanted to. He has the chops. He just doesn’t want to right now.
...
But these endless, giant “Communicating Climate Science to the Public” workshops and conferences and symposia and blah, blah, blah … they all need to quit buffing their turds. It is a tragic waste of resources. It’s not working. Start over. Do something new. Take some frickin’ chances for Christ sake. Quit doing the same things over and over again. Surprise us. Break into the climate skeptics computers and steal THEIR emails. Something. Anything. Make it interesting, people. Break out of the Nerd Loop.
Winter Snow Is Caused By Cold | Real ScienceHowever, there is a very good correlation between snow extent and cold. The plot below shows Rutgers North American snow cover vs. the UAH US temperature anomaly. Cold winters have more snow, and warm winters have less snow.
...
This is intuitively obvious. A cold winter brings snow further south.
EU plans to link emissions trading scheme with California | Environment | guardian.co.ukThe estimated value of transactions on the EU ETS was €72bn (£62bn) in 2010 and the California cap and trade scheme could be worth $10bn (£6bn) by 2016, according to Point Carbon.
But the European scheme has been fraught with problems including over-allocation of allowances resulting in windfall profits for energy corporations and allegedly fraudulent "missing trader" transactions worth €5bn. The scheme has also been subjected to cyber attacks.
AMA quacks on climate Since Florida and air and water temps have not changed significantly, they obviously can’t be responsible for respiratory and cardiovascular disease. The comment about the elderly is farcical, since warmer temps is why many migrate to Florida in the first place. So what about dengue fever?
...
Now that Aflac has fired comedian Gilbert Gottfried, the former voice of its famous duck mascot, maybe Aflac can hire the AMA.
Food Prices Stir Concern About Biofuels Mandates - NYTimes.com But with food prices rising sharply in recent months, many experts are calling on countries to scale back their headlong rush into green fuel development, arguing that the combination of ambitious biofuel targets and mediocre harvests of some crucial crops is contributing to high prices, hunger and political instability.
Global Warming More Of A Threat Than Smallpox, The Black Plague, The Potato Famine, WWI, The Nazis, Communism, Nuclear War, Tuberculosis, Polio, Asteroids, And Fresh Fruit | Real ScienceYour “conveyances” Causing Climate To Warm | Real ScienceMann is a scientist. Spencer is a skeptic.
NRDC : CO2 Is “Life Threatening” – 50/50 Vote Is A Clear Mandate | Real ScienceEvery day that goes by, these idiots become more ridiculous.
Green Master Plans Turn Out To Be Mean Disaster PlansDogmatism is a dangerous thing – especially when dealing with economics and when it attempts to dictate markets. Some examples follow below.
1.) EU climate policy leads to more CO2 emissions
Die Klimazwiebel: Climate scientists speak about themselves: Interview series in the Newsletter of AGU's Atmospheric Science SectionSo far, there are nine interviews, three females namely Aristita Busuioc from Romania, Nanne Weber from the Netherland and Gabi Hegerl from (now:) Scotland. The six males were Rene Laprise (Canada), Raino Heino (Finland), Heinz Wanner (Switzerland), Christoph Kottmeier (Germany), Roger Pielke sr. (USA) and Alan Robock (USA).
Catlin Team Shoveling Through Thin, Rotten Ice At -40C | Real ScienceThe Arctic has been ice free for three years already, according to a leading Norwegian scientist. American scientists are more conservative, giving the ice at least one more year.
Greenpeace: witchhunters with $280m dollars to spend « JoNovaGreenpeace took in €200 million in 2009 (page 31 of their annual report) which is $280m USD. They have become the big corporation they so despised. (And so much for transparency, there did not appear to be a list of contributors in the annual report).
GOP-led House rejects [junk] science, 240-184 « Climate ProgressScience is the foundation of progress.
Rejecting science means in essence rejecting hope for Americans and indeed for all humankind: We live in complex times fraught with dangers, many of which are human-made and can be solved only by the application of science backed by resources that, sometimes, only government can mobilize. That is certainly the case with human-caused climate change.
Sadly, tragically even, the US House of Representatives today voted down 240-184 an amendment from Henry Waxman (D-CA) that stated:
...
With this vote, the GOP is attempting to turn back the hands of time to before the Enlightenment, returning us to a new Dark Ages every bit as perilous as the original. With a deafening silence from the White House, the question remains, who will defend science? Who will give humanity a fighting chance against the forces of ignorance, who are accelerating us toward ruin
US: No climate deal without all aboard | AlterNetTodd Stern, the chief US climate envoy, said it was time to lay to rest the concept of a "firewall" between wealthy and developing countries that dates from the early 1990s -- before the rapid economic growth of China.
"Many developing countries, including large ones, continue to be fixated on preserving the firewall between developed and developing countries," Stern told a conference in New York, in a likely reference to China.
"We see this as both unjustified and incompatible with solving the problem," he told the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit. "We are not going to be part of a new agreement with a fixed, bright-line, 1992-vintage firewall."
...
But Stern insisted that China should be part of any future deal, saying it has surpassed France in emissions even on a per capita level.
"You cannot build a system that treats China like Chad when China is now the world's second largest economy," Stern said.
Arnold Schwarzenegger Opens Up About 'Governator' - The Hollywood ReporterCANNES - Up close and personal with Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's clear to see that the former Governor of California has a more than a touch of wistful yearning for the life of the Governator, the animated superhero he unveiled this week in Cannes.
...
Still, the Governator is heavy on not-so-subtle eco-messaging, using his superpowers to combat villains who splurge on fossil fuels and leave a trail of environmental damage in their wake. But to be clear, while he may be singing from the same hymnbook as An Inconvenient Truth, Schwarzenegger believes the message should be delivered in a very different way.
"We're not doing in a way that says to people 'You better never do that,'" he says. "That's the old Al Gore kind of a way to do this, to make you feel guilty. Guilt hasn't worked. Making people feel bad hasn't worked. You've got to make them feel good and draw them into the positive rather than keep talking about the negative."
2008: Governor's private-jet commute comes under fireSACRAMENTO, Calif. - Like many of the Californians he represents, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger now spends more than three hours commuting because he lives so far from the office.
But his ride is a private jet.
After flirting briefly with buying a Sacramento abode for his family, then living alone for a while in a 2,000-square-foot hotel penthouse across from the Capitol, the governor has decided to stay nearly every night at his Los Angeles mansion.
Solar Costs May Already Rival Coal, Spurring Boom in Panel Installations - BloombergElectricity from coal costs about 7 cents a kilowatt hour compared with 6 cents for natural gas and 22.3 cents for solar photovoltaic energy in the final quarter of last year, according to New Energy Finance estimates.
The Tourniquet Theory | The Rational Optimist…To translate: sea level is rising more slowly than expected, and the rise is slowing down rather than speeding up. Sea level rise is the greatest potential threat to civilisation posed by climate change because so many of us live near the coast. Yet, at a foot a century and slowing, it is a slight nosebleed. So are most of the other symptoms of climate change, such as Arctic sea ice retreat, in terms of their impact. The rate of increase of temperature (0.6C in 50 years) is not on track to do net harm (which most experts say is 2C) by the end of this century.
The tourniquet paper is from the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons; its author, Indur Goklany, concludes: “The production of biofuels may have led to at least 192,000 additional deaths and 6.7 million additional lost disability-adjusted life years in 2010. These estimates are conservative [and] exceed the World Health Organisation’s estimates of the toll of death and disease for global warming. Thus, policies to stimulate biofuel production, in part to reduce the alleged impacts of global warming on public health, particularly in developing countries, may actually have increased death and disease globally.”
In short, biofuels are doing more harm than good by pushing people into malnutrition, which makes them more vulnerable to disease: a tourniquet round the neck of the poor.
...
Almost every other climate change policy suggested so far is similarly futile. Wind: costs a fortune, kills eagles and does not even reduce carbon emissions because of the need for fossil fuel back-up. Solar: the tariff paid for energy fed into the grid is so high that you might even make money if you shine off-peak electric lamps on your panels at night. Tidal, hydro: far greater impact on natural habitats than climate change. Wave: does not work.
...
As the climate nosebleed dribbles down our collective chin, we will look back in horror on those who proffered a tourniquet for our collective neck.
http://tcktcktck.org/2011/04/partner-spotlight-dr-david-suzuki-co-founder-david-suzuki-foundation/Dr. David Suzuki: I do despair. My wife and I huddle at night and weep for our helplessness. We are losing big-time and I’m enough of a scientist to see we are heading right down the tube. Judging by the past twenty years, we are going backward. I understand why people like Jim Lovelock and Clive Hamilton believe it’s too late. But, if one says it’s too late, then I tell them “Please shut up and go away” because it does no good to say it’s too late.
I think it’s too late to avoid catastrophic climate change, but must we continue to add to it?
More on the Global Cooling event that is taking place. «And I think the BMC is a big cold looking, this implies that the year goes to -.2 or so below normal globally. But there is no denying the model is seeing strongly what was forecasted by me and others last year to happen this year, happening. And there is no el nino being seen, or the response with warming that would occur if there was a nino, which is an admission anyway that it is the ocean that is a prime driver of the climate system.
Chris Mooney | What Motivates a Climate Skeptic?What’s surprising to me is that none of this is, at base, scientific. It’s all about distrusting some kind of power associated with the government, while very much trusting other kinds of power that are unregulated.
Congress on wrong side of history in denying climate change - The Hill's Congress BlogBy Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) and John Abraham - 04/06/11 10:14 AM ET
Right now in our hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, we are preparing for what might possibly be record-breaking floods due to winter’s heavy snowfall and the threat of heavier spring downpours. Minnesota has already experienced two 100-year floods in the Red River Valley within the past 13 years. Local doctors report an increase in cases of children with asthma and other respiratory conditions. Lake Superior has seen record low water levels in recent years, threatening not only drinking water supplies but the Duluth-Superior port that receives more than 1,200 ships and 48 million tons of cargo.
All of these public health, economic, and environmental trends have been strongly linked to climate change. Multiple studies have shown that 97 percent of the most qualified climate scientists are in agreement that humans are causing the planet to warm. If this was an illness, and 97 percent of doctors recommended a certain treatment, we would take appropriate action.
...
This places the climate deniers on the same side as those fringe extremists who denied the harmful impacts of cigarette smoking and DDT, and the causes of acid rain and ozone depletion. Proponents of H.R. 910 are denying science and dangerously on the wrong side of history.
THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: Gavin still doesn't understand scienceGavin Schmidt of NASA/GISS quoted in the new issue of Nature Climate Change (4/11) states, "Of all the things that I can do that are important, is allowing reproducibility of my code on somebody else's computer important? No, that's not important."
Gavin has apparently learned nothing about reproducibility and the scientific method from McIntyre, McKitrick, and climategate.
Senate Dems reject attacks on EPA climate efforts - WIS News 10 - Columbia, South Carolina |WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Democrats have defeated a Republican effort to ban the Environmental Protection Agency from controlling the gases blamed for global warming.
In a 50-50 vote, the Senate rejected a measure by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma. It would have repealed a 2009 finding by federal scientists that climate change caused by greenhouse gases endangers human health and prevented the agency from using existing law to regulate them. The amendment - to a small business bill - needed 60 votes to pass.
U.S. Cites Flaws in UN Climate Talks, Says Treaty Effort `Unworkable' - BloombergTodd Stern, the State Department official who heads the U.S. delegation at the 192-nation discussions, said this week’s meeting in Bangkok was “marked by struggles over the agenda” that was similar to “bickering over the shape of the negotiating table.”
...
He said a legally binding treaty of the sort envoys sought to write in Copenhagen two years ago is “unworkable,” and national regulations hold the key to stanching CO2 output.
...
“Legally binding international obligations to cut emissions are not necessary,” Stern said at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference in New York. “It is the national plans of countries, written into law and regulations, that count and that bind.”
Obama, Nov 2008: Climate Plan Firm Amid Economic Woes - NYTimes.com...once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations, and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change.
Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high. The consequences, too serious.
Pajamas Media » Senator Boxer: Dangerously Ignorant on CO2It certainly is clear: this woman has absolutely no idea what she is talking about. Terribly, profoundly clear.
...
The remainder of her rant (which you can read here) makes for an amazing read — it is so thoroughly lacking in any understanding, of absolutely anything factual. She was completely clueless as to what carbon dioxide is — she kept referring to it as carbon — and has no idea that the hearing was completely unrelated to carbon air pollution.
And you wonder why people are outraged at what our leaders have given us: a bankrupt, once-great nation now led by uninformed dolts like Barbara Boxer, the EPA, and unscrupulous environmental groups that want to make sure we have no hope of recovering our former greatness.
Her term can’t end soon enough.
BBC News - Wind farm efficiency queried by John Muir Trust studyWind farms are much less efficient than claimed, producing below 10% of capacity for more than a third of the time, according to a new report.
The analysis also suggested output was low during the times of highest demand.
...
But the research found wind generation was below 20% of capacity more than half the time and below 10% of capacity over one third of the time.
...
During each of the four highest peak demands of 2010, wind output reached just 4.72%, 5.51%, 2.59% and 2.51% of capacity, according to the analysis.
The Ghost Park | Men’s JournalIf you think global warming is some distant threat, come visit Yellowstone, our most beloved national park. Acres of trees are dying, trout runs are disappearing, and starving bears are attacking campers. It’s an ecosystem in collapse, and things are only getting worse.
Global Warming Taking The Wind Out Of Tornadoes - James Taylor - Endpoint Analysis - ForbesNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data, for example, show the number of strong to violent (F3-to-F5) tornadoes have been sharply declining since the mid-1970s. From 1967 through 1977 at least 30 F3-to-F5 tornadoes assaulted the U.S. each year, with an annual average of 50. Nearly 120 F3-to-F5 tornadoes struck the U.S. in 1974 alone. By comparison, merely 26 F3-to-F5 tornadoes have struck the U.S. on average each year since the turn of the century. The frequency of strong-to-violent tornadoes has been cut in half during the past 40 years.
These numbers are very important, as F3-to-F5 tornadoes produce the vast majority of damage and inflict the overwhelming majority of human casualties each year.
Gillard says Greens must get rid of extremists | Herald SunEnvironmentalism as a vehicle for extreme anti-capitalist anti-globalisation ideology is reaching its use-by date. What people want is sensible environmentalism, of the type that Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, espouses in his new book, Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout.
...
We're all greenies at heart. But extremists and climate alarmists who have hijacked the green movement have done incalculable damage to the cause of sensible environmentalism.
Mainstream political parties who align themselves with the extremists are destined for extinction.
Environmental Defense: living up to its nameEnvironmental groups are playing defense rather than offense in Washington, said Fred Krupp, the president of the Environmental Defense Fund, during a panel today on climate policy that opened FORTUNE’s Brainstorm Green conference.
...
On climate issues, Fred said: “It’s hard to have a meaningful exchange of viewers, a serious conversation in Washington.”
...
I moderated the panel on climate policy that included Fred, Jim Rogers, the ceo of Duke Energy, Connie Hedegaard, the EU commissioner for climate and Michael Shellenberger, the president of the Breakthrough Institute. It was, unfortunately, a little grim. All of the panelists agreed that despite nearly 20 years of talk at the highest levels of government and business about global warming, global carbon emissions continue to grow. They’re up by 40%, roughly, since 1990. Neither China nor the U.S has agreed to put a cap on emissions or tax fossil fuels.
...
Hedegaard noted that the EU is going forward with cap-and-trade — a regulatory scheme in which governments set a declining cap for carbon emissions, and then auction or give away permits to pollute, which can then be traded among companies — and that its market could soon be linked to others. She was on her way to a meeting with Gov. Jerry Brown of California to talk about linking California’s cap-and-trade regime to the one in Europe and to another under development in China. “Is cap and trade too complicated?” she asked. “It might be for the Americans. it’s not for the Chinese.”
...I had a brief chat about this at Brainstorm Green with the rarest of creatures, a moderate Republican–Theodore Roosevelt IV–and I hope to address that questions soon.
Climate Change | U.S. EPAStudents, educators and school administrators can all play a key role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Here is a directory of some education and action planning resources to help you:
Climate change education can reduce disaster risk and ensure sustainable development | Education for All BlogGlobal experience shows that investments in climate change education, including disaster risk reduction, can change human perceptions and patterns of behavior that reduce the risks and costs of disasters. For example, safe school sites can be selected through participatory risk assessments, ensuring schools are climate-proofed and multi-hazard resilient. Schools can implement school disaster management involving students, teachers and community members in practicing early warning, simulation drills, and evacuation for expected and recurring disasters. At an individual level, climate change teaching integrates not only disaster risk reduction and preparedness but also climate literacy, environmental stewardship, education for sustainable lifestyles and consumption, and green technical and vocational education.
Australian government support at 8-year low: poll - The China PostSYDNEY -- Support for Australia's ruling Labor Party has plunged to its lowest level in eight years, a poll showed Tuesday, as the government battles to introduce a carbon tax which has divided voters.
The center-left party led by Prime Minister Julia Gillard is trailing 45 percent to 55 percent to a conservative opposition, which has pledged to overturn the proposed tax to combat carbon pollution if elected.
“Labor's base has shrunk,” The Australian said in a commentary to the Newspoll published in the newspaper, saying the party's popularity had fallen since the Aug. 21 election.
Arctic Has Been Ice Free For Three Years | Real ScienceObama-Backed Tesla Sues Its Critics - By Henry Payne - Planet Gore - National Review Online Your tax dollars at work.
Subsidized by taxpayers to the tune of a half-a-billion dollars (Obama “investing” your money), Tesla Corporation — and by extension, the feds — has been embarrassed by car journalist Jeremy Clarkson and the Top Gear TV show on BBC. It seems a Tesla Roadster when driven hard on the track (and owners who shell out six-figures for sports cars like to know these things) goes a mere 55 miles. Not the 200 that Tesla’s PR machine claims. What’s more, Top Gear — which does not yet suffer from green political correctness like car mags stateside — says the “car of the future” takes 16 hours to recharge, and recommends (tongue planted firmly in cheek) that buyers shell out another $100,000 for a second Tesla while the other one recharges.
Ouch. Welcome to the real world, electric cars.
Tesla’s response? Sue ’em!
Multi-Year Ice Has Grown More Than 30% In The Last Three Years | Real ScienceNSIDC has changed their color scheme, but you can see that the area of thick, older ice has greatly increased since 2008. The lack of MYI (multi-year ice) in 2008 led Mark Serreze to bet on an ice-free pole that summer.
Bejing has a fling with a cool change «The Bejing Climate Center models have gained my attention over the past couple of years as they have been doing a good job hinting at cold season events in advance of US modeling ( on the order of 6 months to a year. While the model is not yet out into next winter, its forecasted 850 mb global temps this year, and particularly going into the northern hemisphere winter go hand in glove ( you’ll need one) with theories that many of us that believe the backdrop of the coming years is painted with cooling colors.
[On warmist doctors]: - Physician, heal thyselfThe authors are as follows:
* Lionel Jarvis is surgeon rear admiral at the UK's Ministry of Defence, has two homes and four children and enjoys skiing, riding and sailing.
* Hugh Montgomery, is a professor of human health at UCL, has written a book about climate change for chilidren and, erm, climbs in the Alps, Himalayas, and Andes and holds a Cat X skydiving qualification.
* Neil Morisetti, is a rear admiral and is the "climate and security envoy for the UK" as well as being a graduate of UEA. He seems to divide his time between London and his farm in Dorset.
* Ian Gilmore is professor at the Royal Liverpool hospital.
The Reference Frame: Steven Chu: climate modelers should fabricate lots of tipping pointsSteven Chu is indisputably a politician - and the boss of one of the most important U.S. scientific grant agencies - and what he is doing is unquestionably an example of political pressure, a forcible rape, by which he wants to distort the results of the research in a particular direction. He has clearly no research of his own that would imply that the number of tipping points is larger than what is described in the literature - or by the models. He is prescribing the "politically desired" outcomes of the research - something that is incompatible with science.
Martin Rees takes Templeton Prize : Nature NewsControversial 'spirituality' award goes to a scientist for fourth year in a row.
Lord Martin Rees - Interview from Sunday Profile - (ABC) [March 2010] But to put the IPCC issues in perspective let me say that no-one has questioned anything in part one of the IPCC report which is the one on the climate modelling, the ways in which we calculate the effects of the carbon dioxide concentration.
The concerns have been some errors in volume two, the environmental impacts, in a 1,000 page report.
It's unfortunate and we are engaged in a study to ensure that the fifth IPCC study is done in a still more rigorous way. But I don't think any of these events provide any real motive for diminishing confidence in the overall science.
New York Times 1881 : Walrus, Seal, Bison, Elk, Fish, Reindeer – Soon To Be Extinct | Real SciencePawlenty: Science divided on human contribution to climate change | Iowa IndependentScience is still unclear how much humans contribute to global climate change, but the consensus seems to be “it’s a modest amount,” former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Friday in an interview with WHO-AM’s Jan Mickelson.
“I think climate change occurs, but the bulk of it is natural, historic trends in the climate,” Pawlenty said. “There is some suggestion that humans have caused some of it, but the answer is not a government, top-down scheme.”
...
The global scientific community is overwhelmingly unified in the belief that the climate is warming as a result of human actions, among them the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
Global Warming Petition Project 31,487 American scientists have signed this petition,
including 9,029 with PhDs
New [Junk] Scientist: Climate change sceptics: just regular folk, in denialDenial is a "valid response" of people when confronted with tough times, and this response explains climate change deniers. So said Graeme Pearman, a climate consultant at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, during the Greenhouse 2011 conference in Cairns, Queensland, Australia today.
According to Pearman, a large proportion of sceptics are "the type of people" that deny any problems facing them. "It is a normal coping mechanism," he said.
Recently, profiling a typical climate sceptic has become fertile research ground. Behavioural scientists hope to unpick why so many people continue to deny human-made climate change, despite strong scientific evidence [like what, specifically?] of its existence. The research will help policy-makers plan how to change those seemingly unchangeable minds.
Benjamin Preston, currently at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, worked at the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change in Washington DC and was tasked with "educating" Tea Party senators about the risks associated with climate change. At today's conference, Preston said political persuasions influenced climate change opinions more than the mere denial of catastrophe.
Benjamin L. Preston | climatechangescience.ornl.gov Preston received a BS in biology from the College of William and Mary and a PhD in environmental biology from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he also minored in public policy.... He is also a lead author for Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report.
Doctors urged to take climate leadership role | Environment | The GuardianMilitary and medical experts call on doctors to use their position of trust in society to build support for action on climate change
...
[Caption] A woman covers her nose and mouth in an attempt to avoid breathing in roadside air pollution in Hong Kong. Military and medical experts have warned that climate change poses a grave threat to health around the world. [Are we seriously supposed to believe that carbon dioxide qualifies as "roadside air pollution"?]
Roy Spencer questions global warming research at Virginia summit - dailypress.comSpencer, who now works for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, addressed a few hundred people Tuesday at the 22nd annual Environment Virginia Symposium. The three-day event draws a who's who of academics, industry leaders, government officials and activists in Virginia.
While maybe counterintuitive to an environment conference, state officials sought out Spencer to bring "balance to a subject that is generally one-sided," said Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources Douglas Domenech.
Amazon Continues To Get Very Heavy Rain | Real ScienceEach new article about the Amazon drought brings another five inches of rain. This has been going on for months.
Declining Spring Snow Cover : Snowiest March Since 1987 | Real ScienceExtensive northern hemisphere snow cover during the 197os was caused by record cold and global cooling, but now it is caused by record heat and global warming. Like when your broiler starts behaving like the deep freeze.
Obama did not ‘promise’ to veto an EPA-blocking bill | GristI don't see a promise there. I see wiggle room where his advisers can "recommend" a veto and he can ignore their recommendations
Solar is contagious | GristAdam Browning of Vote Solar wrote about a recent study of the peer pressure effect of solar photovoltaic (PV) adoption. The study [PDF] notes that for every 1 percent increase in the number of installations in a single ZIP code, there's a commensurate 1 percent decrease in the amount of time until the next solar installation. As he writes, "solar is contagious!"
Fish kills another legacy of long, snowy winter | kare11.comHundreds of dead fish are washed up on Wahlstrom's property on Schmidt Lake in Plymouth, or floating in the shallow water. He knows the recipe for a fish kill: Early, heavy snow piles up on the ice, making it impossible for sunlight to reach the bottom of a lake. The lack of natural light then keeps plant life from creating oxygen. If the winter is long enough, and the heavy snow lasts, fish eventually run out of oxygen to breathe and die.
Bjorn loser: After grossing $63k, Lomborg’s box office bomb “Cool It” comes out on DVD « Climate ProgressBjorn Lomborg’s effort at mass miscommunication, Cool It, will indeed go down as one of the great box office bombs.
According to Box Office Mojo, after grossing a whopping $58,179 in its debut month of December, it grossed $4, 534 from 12/1 to 12/24 before it was pulled from theaters. That would be $189 per day, or roughly $24 per theater.
...
Lomborg has no natural audience because conservatives don’t like the fact that he pretends to believe in global warming science and progressives don’t like the fact that he doesn’t actually want to do anything about global warming except diss the people who do.
Are State Green Energy Production Quotas Unconstitutional?I’m contributing to a lawsuit, filed by the American Tradition Institute, against Colorado, alleging that the State’s green energy production quota, known as a Renewable Electricity Standard, is an unlawful violation of the Congress’s authority to regulate interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
30 Years Of Warming Erased In 15 Months | Real ScienceAs Hansen always points out – El Nino is climate, but La Nina is just weather.
The BlackboardIn comments here Eli reported that he found a climate skeptics email list on Yahoo groups.
Ice extent [higher than it was in 2006]; ice age increases over last yearNew data on ice age shows that the amount of older, thicker ice has increased slightly over last year.
Coolists 3 – Warmists 0Global temperatures continue their overall stagnation that has taken hold over the last decade or so, and have plummeted over the last three months, defying the global warming alarmists predictions of a temperature spiral as CO2 emissions continue to rise.
Is man-made CO2 different: 1000 years? Try 4 years. « JoNovaThere are a few clues that maybe CO2 doesn’t idle the centuries away aloft, and that (I know you’ll be shocked) the Climate Commission (and IPCC) have overstated things: if emissions are absorbed by the global system in a matter of months, it rather blows the idea that we have to act decades ahead to stop the catastrophe. If CO2 levels adjust quickly, our “sins” will be much more quickly forgiven, and we can wait-and-see.
The thousand year timeframe doesn’t fit very well with NASA’s official carbon cycle, and the empirical evidence.
You can see below in the NASA diagram that plants absorb 16% of all the carbon dioxide in the entire atmosphere each and every year (121Gt of the 750 Gt in the air) and oceans absorb 12%, meaning that 28% of all the CO2 in the global atmosphere is sucked down each year. Let’s call it “one quarter”.
Global Warming Myth? Arctic Ozone Thins by Record 40%Those who think man-made climate change is fiction, consider this -- the ozone layer over the Arctic has thinned by a record 40% this winter. The United Nation's World Meteorological Organization said that's 10% more thinning compared to the previous season.
"The Arctic stratosphere continues to be vulnerable to ozone destruction caused by ozone-depleting substances linked to human activities," the U.N. weather agency's secretary-general Michel Jarraud said.
The ozone layer is crucial because of keeps ultraviolet radiation from the sun from reaching earth. The thinner the layer, the more rays that get through. Chemicals in air pollutants can eat away at the ozone. The U.N. said very cold weather also contributed to the record thinning.
CTV Montreal - Ozone layer faces record loss over Arctic - CTV NewsGENEVA — The depletion of the ozone layer shielding Earth from damaging ultraviolet rays has reached an unprecedented low over the Arctic this spring because of harmful chemicals and a cold winter, the UN weather agency said Tuesday.
PM won't deny Rudd's ETS revelationPrime Minister Julia Gillard has refused to reveal if she urged her predecessor Kevin Rudd to kill off his government's emissions trading scheme.
Hypothermia Ruled as Man's Cause of Death - KiiiTV3.com South Texas, Corpus Christi, Coastal BendCORPUS CHRISTI (Kiii News) - The medical examiner's office has ruled that a man's death in early February was due to the freezing temperatures. 52-year old David Ramos was a homeless man who was last seen alive early in the evening of February 5th, when temperatures hit a record low of 27 degrees in the city.
U.N. climate-change chief hopes Japan will stick to CO2 cut pledge | TckTckTck | Join the Race to the Future!The head of the U.N. climate change agency voiced hope Monday that Japan will keep its commitment to combat global warming, including a pledge to lower greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020 from the 1990 level, despite the ongoing nuclear crisis in Fukushima Prefecture.
What Could We Have Done To Stop The Horrific Weather Of 1900? | Real Science1900 was an extreme weather year. Forest fires burned up huge areas of the Pacific Northwest, the upper midwest, New England and elsewhere. Australia was having a disastrous drought. A hurricane destroyed Galveston, killing most of the people who lived there. We should have been able to prevent all this.
CO2 levels in 1900 were very low at 296 ppm, so mitigating CO2 wouldn’t have helped. Raising taxes might have fixed the problem, or they could have taken it one step further and started mass human sacrifice – the solution top Aztec scientists came up with.
Climate hawks Boxer, Kerry, Cardin & Merkley confirm opposition to all climate zombie amendments « Climate ProgressNote: I am using Brad’s headline, but I do question whether hawks would defeat zombies in a straight fight.
A crack in the collective’s warming front | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog[video] The 7pm Project gives a both-sides-speak report on global warming - rare on television. And when people finally get to hear both sides, they will realise the extent to which they have been deceived.
-- Press Releases March 2011 - Secretary-General welcomes new report on efforts to green the UN - United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) --Nairobi, 1 April 2011 - The United Nations has released details of its greenhouse gas emissions for 52 institutions, covering 200,000 employees, in a new report published as part of ongoing efforts to reduce the organisation's carbon footprint.
The report, co-ordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), calculates the UN's total greenhouse gas emissions for 2009 at 1.7 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, or 8.3 tonnes per capita.
Over 50 percent of UN's emissions are from air travel (4.1 tonnes per capita) making this the biggest challenge for the organisation in reducing its overall carbon footprint.
Reply to letter: Global warming a convenient hoax by Ed Beauregard, Greenland | Climate RealistsTwo other points on global warming. One, if anyone wants to believe that climate change had anything to do with the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, think again, no connection. Thank you Deborah McDermott for pointing that out. Secondly, two years ago, Portsmouth High School showed Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" to the student body. Did the school attempt to provide opposing views? Not a chance. Don't encourage our young people to explore all aspects of important issues. Don't provide them with the opportunity to form their own opinions. Just brainwash them. That will improve America.
Climate Craziness of the week – Claim: nuclear tests stopped global warming in the mid 20th century | Watts Up With That?From the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics April 2011, these claims:
* Atmospheric nuclear explosions induced the stagnation in global warming in the mid 20th century...
The IPCC’s Pretend Neutrality « NoFrakkingConsensusWe have every right to expect these people – these arbiters of scientific truth – to behave in an upright and impartial manner. It isn’t good enough for them to claim they’re rigorous and balanced. They must conduct themselves as though this were the case. Their behaviour must be beyond reproach. They must give us no reason to suspect they are anything less than scrupulously evenhanded.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), I’m sorry to say, fails this simple test. Its personnel do not remain aloof. They do not treat their assignment with the care and reverence it deserves. Instead they pal around with the red team (environmental activists). Even worse, they invite members of the red team into the deliberation chamber.
Taxpayer-Funded Solyndra Finally Creating Jobs - By Greg Pollowitz - Planet Gore - National Review OnlineIn Europe:
Obama’s disappointing energy plan - Ezra Klein - The Washington Post The truth is that the Obama administration’s energy policy looks more like Sarah Palin’s applause lines than the cap-and-trade program it advocated during the election. That’s not because the White House wouldn’t prefer the plan it pushed in 2008 to the plan it’s pushing in 2011. Congress, not the administration, opposes to cap-and-trade. But we are where we are, and there’s no use dressing it up. You can put lipstick on “drill, baby, drill,” but it’s still “drill, baby, drill.”
UAH Temperature Update for March, 2011: Cooler Still -0.10 deg. C « Roy Spencer, Ph. D.The global average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly for March 2011 fell to -0.10 deg. C, with cooling in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheric extratropics, while the tropics stayed about the same as last month.
Roger Pielke Sr: Is There A Sampling Bias In The BEST Analysis Reported By Richard Muller? | Climate Realists
[Remember when the science was settled?]: Facing a climate of uncertainty | The AustralianIT was a long way from picture postcard blue skies in Cairns yesterday as the nation's top 450 climate scientists gathered to take stock of global warming.
The tropical rainstorm may pale alongside the political cyclone that has been unleashed by the federal government's talk about a carbon tax. But the continued wet weather may prove relevant to this week's scientific discussions, which are expected to have a heavy focus on how much there is still to understand about climate change.
For Australia, whether the north can expect to get more or less rainfall because of global warming remains one of the great unknowns.
Herr Schellhuber’s Strategy Paper Says: Target Is Global ReignClearly these megalomaniacs are on the Green path to tyranny. And they are not content with running just their own continent. Like dictators, they want the whole planet. How much clearer does this have to get? They don’t say European economy above – they say “world economy”.
Douglas J. Keenan: How Scientific Is Climate Science? - WSJ.comWhat is arguably the most important reason to doubt global warming can be explained in plain English.
More Sad Times for the Greens - By Steven F. Hayward - The Corner - National Review OnlineBut one quotation in Samuelsohn’s Friday story really jumps out, from Frank O’Donnell of Clean Air Watch, who runs a one-man operation that somehow gets lots of press ink from being in every reporter’s rolodex. O’Donnell told Samuelsohn: ”It’s clear the president is running for reelection and that at this point, environmental protection is not on his top list of priorities.”
Say what, Frank? I thought environmental protection was supposed to be popular. Or maybe he’s started looking at the polls
amednews: Editorial - Confronting health issues of climate change :: April 4, 2011 ... American Medical NewsIf physicians want evidence of climate change, they may well find it in their own offices...Spates of injuries are resulting from more intense ice storms and snowstorms.
...
Florida's large elderly population makes it even more vulnerable to climate change. In the last two years, the Florida Keys have seen a tropical disease rarely apparent in residents of the United States -- dengue fever.
Maine, another state in which the AMA hosted climate-change CME, is seeing similar trends in terms of climate affecting chronic conditions, although instead of injuries from hurricanes, it's expected to have a rising rate of heart attacks and problems related to extreme snow, ice and cold.
How to make climate skeptics angry - Global warming - Salon.comLast Friday's post on scorned climate skeptics generated some heat from Watts Up With That?, the website that, (outside of Marc Morano's gibbering mad Climate Depot) is the most angry about Berkeley scientist Richard Muller's surprising testimony before a House panel last week on global warming temperatures.
Andrew Leonard - Salon.comAndrew Leonard has been working at Salon as a technology reporter, editor and blogger for quite a bit longer than he ever anticipated being employed by an online magazine -- 12 years. He's enjoyed the luck of becoming obsessed with the Internet just before it broke into mainstream consciousness and the housing bust just before it precipitated a global economic collapse. Prior to becoming a Salon lifer he freelanced for a wide variety of publications, from Newsweek to Rolling Stone to Wired, and wrote a book, . He lives in Berkeley, Calif., with his two children. He likes to ride his bicycle.
South Pole's First Building Blown Up After 53 Years - FoxNews.comIn the decades since it was constructed in the mid 1950s, the long-abandoned outpost was swallowed up by the ever-shifting snows of the frozen continent. And, after a frightening accident, the original South Pole station had to go.
...
"In essence, the terrain is rising," said George L. Blaisdell, operations manager for the National Science Foundation's U.S. Antarctic Program, who explained that the physics at work at the South Pole makes building there difficult. "The elevation at the South Pole hasn't changed in the last 50 years," Blaisdell told OurAmazingPlanet, "but if you put something on the surface and came back a year later, it would be further down in the snowpack."
That's precisely what happened to the old South Pole station. By the time Rand helped blow the station up in December, it was 30 feet (9 meters) below the surface.
Speaker tells UI crowd Earth is heating up | KLEW CBS 3 - News, Weather and Sports - Lewiston, IDMcKibben is the founder of 350.org, the first global grassroots climate change initiative. He says the need to mitigate climate change is something people have known about for the last 22 years, but isn't something they've taken action on.
"Being human, our hope, I guess, is that it would take awhile because then it would be somebody else's problem to deal with and not ours," McKibben said. "But the story of the last two decades is it didn't take awhile. It is happening in enormous rapidity, it is happening much faster and in a much larger scale than we would have guessed even 20 years ago."
...
"Unless we take dramatic action, that one degree will be four or five degrees before the century is out. If one degree melts the Arctic, we would be fools to find out what four degrees does."
Global Warming Disinformation DatabaseDeSmogBlog thoroughly investigates the academic and industry backgrounds of those involved in the PR spin campaigns that are confusing the public and stalling action on global warming. If there's anyone or any organization, ( i.e. scientist, self-professed "expert," think tank, industry association, company) that you would like to see researched and reported on DeSmogBlog, please contact us here.
40% of Australians don’t believe in man-made global warming (and boy are they irritated) « JoNovaWho knew? CSIRO funded a 5,000 person poll last July and August and then sat on the results for months. Perhaps they were disappointed that only 50% of people thought humans have any role in changing the global climate? Worse, 90% of people acknowledge that the world is warming, and 40% have figured out that that the key issue is not whether it warms but whether it’s natural that matters, and it’s hard to call them deniers. How inconvenient.
Twitter / @CatlinArcticSurvey: [Warmists burn a lot of fossil fuel]Flight plan = 2 hour flight in DC-3 to Ward Hunt Island, re-fuel, 4 hour flight up to the pole...
Climate Lessons: An insight for every school textbook on climate: '...we concluded that the global warming alarm is an anti-scientific political movement.'Schools everywhere have been exposed to, or even immersed in, the ill-founded alarm over CO2 in the atmosphere. It will take some time to get it out of school textbooks and out of the 'off-the-shelf', 'ready-to-go' section of political spin for sundry opportunists in politics and finance. The paper quoted below can but help with this progress.
The Left: Obama Loves Oil and Nuclear - By Greg Pollowitz - Planet Gore - National Review Online If only it were true, but somehow that’s the narrative for Derrick Jackson in the Boston Globe:
Posts
