skip to main |
skip to sidebar
A global warming skeptic has a change of heart | John LindseyThink of it this way, a blood alcohol content of 0.04 percent is half of the legal limit to be considered driving drunk if you're over 21 years of age. This percentage is 400 parts per million (PPM). That is approximately the same level of carbon dioxide that is currently in our atmosphere. Let us not further intoxicate our planet on carbon dioxide, especially for our children's and grandchildren's sake.
[We're saved! Brainwashed people stand in waist-deep water and dance in an attempt to prevent CO2 from causing the ocean to rise 10 inches by 2100?] - YouTube[1-minute video] This is our message to the world that we stand in solidarity against the unwelcomed global reality that is climate change
Al Gore’s ‘sustainable capitalism’ is DOA - Paul B. Farrell - MarketWatchHere’s a skeptic’s observation: Al Gore, the former environmental activist who parlayed his Oscar, Grammy and Noble Peace Prize into a capitalist fortune, is protecting his newly acquired $300 million personal fortune by publishing this new 558-page business calling card about “The Future” to increase his firm’s credibility as successful capitalists, private equity investors and science gurus.
So forget the five solutions. Now Gore has “Six Drivers” that target six strategic macroeconomic trends for investment opportunities. That way, as the world continues down the road of “unsustainable capitalism,” Gore and his billionaire capitalist buddies will keep amassing and hoarding maximum capital before the “end of the world.”
New Ecology Paper Challenges “Tipping Point” Meme : Collide-a-ScapeThe state of humanity is getting better every day. On the whole, people are richer, healthier, and living longer than ever before. We are also a less violent species, it seems. Statistically speaking, my two boys, born in 2004 and 2007, can look forward to a nice long life. Several years ago, a Duke University demographer said:
It is possible, if we continue to make progress in reducing mortality, that most children born since the year 2000 will live to see their 100th birthday — in the 22nd century.
...What if this tipping points meme is a bit overwrought and not as imminent as we have been led to believe? That is essentially the argument five earth scientists have put forth in a study published this week in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.
California in Crisis: Green state chokes off its middle class | WashingtonExaminer.comCalifornia's past leaders built dams, highways and cities, making their state not only a habitable place but a powerful engine for economic growth. Today they are driving out their own middle class by choking off the growth of their cities, taking away their water to save bait fish and wasting their money on vanity projects like high-speed rail. This is the real train to nowhere, and California is all aboard.
Twitter / cascadebicycle: Rep. Orcutt thinks that bicycling ...Rep. Orcutt thinks that bicycling is bad for the environment because of ALL YOUR EXHALING!
Another decline hidden | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt BlogSteve McIntyre nails the latest “hide the decline” trick of warmist Michael Mann, author of the discredited “hockey stick” that so scared the world.
Trapped as Climate Changes, Giant Gusts of Hot Air Trigger Weather Extremes | Surprising Science[Smithsonian Mag.] Under pre-global-warming conditions, the waves might have initiated a short, two-day burst of warm air followed by a rush of cooler air in Northern Europe, for example. But these days, with global temperatures having climbed 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century and escalating particularly sharply since the 1970s, the waves increasingly stall out, resulting in 20- to 30-day heat waves.
Minnesota's Game With Charlotte Has Been Canceled AUBURN, ALA. -- Minnesota and Charlotte, which had been scheduled to play on Saturday afternoon at the War Eagle Classic, have had their game canceled due to cold weather conditions. The temperature prior to the start of the game was 37 degrees, and there were snow flurries during Minnesota's 4-3 win against Auburn earlier in the afternoon. The game will not be made up.
Keystone XL pipeline report slammed by activists and scientists | Environment | guardian.co.ukJames Hansen, a Columbia University professor who is one of the world's most respected experts on climate change, also issued a statement attacking the report's findings. "To say that the tar sands have little climate impact is an absurdity," he said.
Twitter / BigJoeBastardi: Get ready for the wearing of ...Get ready for the wearing of the White on St Patricks day..ECMWF ensembles say colder and snowier than normal ne, lakes
A.F.L.-C.I.O. Backs Keystone Oil Pipeline, if Indirectly - NYTimes.comwhile some union leaders said the federation’s stance stopped short of an official endorsement, the nation’s building trades unions — eager for the thousands of jobs the pipeline would create — issued a statement saying the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s stance was a clear endorsement of the Keystone pipeline.
Twitter / darwinsfxGlobal Warming is a Virus by on
Tom Zeller Jr.: Tipping Points: Can Humanity Break The Planet?In an email message, James E. Hansen, who heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is an adjunct professor at Columbia University's Earth Institute, said that tipping points may unfold more smoothly than people generally understand, but that they represent points of no return nonetheless. He also suggested that dismissing the notion of global tipping points out of hand was a mistake. "Tipping points are real, albeit misunderstood by some people," he said.
...Michael E. Mann, the climatologist and director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, called the new paper "thoroughly unconvincing and implausible."
"We are not talking about random uncorrelated changes around the globe," Mann said, pointing by way of example to human-induced climate change. "We are talking about dramatic, coherent changes in climate around the world, in the form of unprecedented rates of warming, increased continental drought, extreme flooding and wildfires. Moreover, these are not simply additive, but interactive, with a whole array of other stresses on ecosystems around the world due to urbanization and habitat destruction, deforestation and environmental pollution."
The totality of these stressors, Mann argued, is greater than the sum of its parts.
"It's part of why scientists are predicting a collapse of coral reef ecosystems around the world in a matter of decades -- the combined result of ocean acidification, global warming, coastal pollution, and other factors," he said. "I suppose the authors would deny that this represents a global environmental tipping point."
Ecologists Start to Disengage from Climate Tipping Point Rhetoric | Tallbloke's TalkshopHere’s an article from Science Daily which is important not so much for its subject area as for the line it draws in the soil. These ecologists are explicitly moving away from the rhetoric of global ‘climate tipping points’ so beloved of climate alarmists like Al Gore and James Hansen.
The Difference Between Climate and Weather — The Patriot Post...now we may be facing the coldest March since 1996.
...And
by the way, the cooling that has started will continue as the oceans
cycle back to where they were at the start of the satellite era, the
late 1970s. The solar cycles have some say in it, and in fact there is a
lot of concern that my forecast for a simple return to where we were at
the start of the warm oceanic cycles in the late 1970s is very
conservative. There are people worried that because of the solar cycles
similar to the Victorian Era, our temperatures return to that level.
Mayor Bloomberg Agrees With Marissa Mayer, Says Telecommuting Is Dumb | NBC New YorkMayor Bloomberg, a billionaire former CEO, said on his weekly radio show Friday that he agrees with Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer that working from home is not productive.
"I've always said, telecommuting is one of the dumber ideas I've ever heard," said the media mogul mayor.
"Yes, there are some things you can do at home," he went on. "But having a chat line is not the same thing as standing at the water cooler. And standing at the water cooler is where you get a lot of ideas and information and it's a euphemism for a lot of interpersonal dialogue."
...
As a billionaire with multiple homes outside New York City, he has defended his right to work remotely, without disclosing his whereabouts. He says he can work and stay in touch through his various devices.
After he was criticized for not being in town when a major blizzard paralyzed the city on Christmas weekend in 2010, he said:
"To the best of my recollection in nine years there hasn't been a time when you couldn't communicate, get me on the phone, whether I'm traveling or uptown or downtown."
Flashback: Warmist Nanny Bloomberg's belief in global warming isn't strong enough to prevent him from flying his private plane to his Bermuda mansion a couple of times per month
The Scary Hidden Stressor - NYTimes.com“The Arab Spring and Climate Change” doesn’t claim that climate change caused the recent wave of Arab revolutions, but, taken together, the essays make a strong case that the interplay between climate change, food prices (particularly wheat) and politics is a hidden stressor that helped to fuel the revolutions and will continue to make consolidating them into stable democracies much more difficult.
The Year Without Summer and Climate Change Today - The Daily BeastFrom May through September of 1816, temperatures in New England were “only” 2 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit below normal. Nevertheless, that lower trend contained enough extreme individual events to devastate agriculture and send shock waves through political institutions and economic and social practices.
In New York’s Hudson River valley, a frost in mid-June—weeks past the usual last frost—left the crops of wheat, rye, and vegetables “almost entirely destroyed.” In Quebec, farmers who had routinely sheared sheep to prepare them for summer temperatures watched them shiver to death after a bitter snowstorm struck on June 6. In September, another abnormally timed frost ruined what was left of the impending harvest, “kill[ing] off virtually all the crops that remained north of Pennsylvania.”
United Airlines Screws Polar Bears While Flying Over Them | GristBut that Pringles-size price tag hasn’t stopped Smisek and other airline CEO’s from calling up their favorite senators, John Thune and Claire McCaskill, and their House counterparts and ordering them to throw a climate-killing tantrum. The senators have managed to pass a bill through both Houses of Congress that actually prohibits U.S. airlines from obeying the European climate law. Worse, it puts taxpayers on the hook for bailing out the airlines for the $22 billion in fines they’re expected to accrue as a result of their willful law breaking (full disclosure: I’ve done consulting work with the coalition of environmental groups fighting aviation pollution).
...since it will produce significant pollution reductions (equivalent to taking 30 million cars off the road) and costs so little that no one will notice, it will actually be yet another illustration of a longstanding truth: reducing pollution just isn’t that expensive...In other words, melting Arctic, dying polar bears, and flight-disrupting extreme weather notwithstanding, Jeff Smisek and his colleagues oppose the idea of climate action so much that they’re willing to spend tens of millions of dollars to block it…even when climate action will boost their profits.
A Farewell to the New York Times Green Blog - NYTimes.com the time and effort required to gather, sift, analyze and convey information with authority, particularly on globe-spanning or contentious issues, is expensive.
NYT cancels Green blog : Columbia Journalism ReviewWhen the Times announced in January that it was dismantling its three-year-old environment pod and reassigning its editors and reporters to other desks, managing editor Dean Baquet insisted that the outlet remained as committed as ever to covering the environment. Obviously, that was an outright lie...In an act of total cowardice, the Times clearly timed its
announcement to avoid (for the weekend, at least) having to deal with
what is sure to be widespread criticism.
Jennifer Marohasy » Cooking Books for Hot SummersInterestingly recent “corrections down” to historical global temperatures by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, GISS, have been concentrated in this period [1910 to 1945], Figure 1. The net effect of the adjustments has been to generate a more smoothly increasing global temperature since 1880, and reduce a warming blip that occurred in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Boehner: No reason to block Keystone XL pipeline - TimesDaily.comThe new report "again makes clear there is no reason for this critical pipeline to be blocked one more day," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. After four years of what he called "needless delays," Boehner said it is time for President Barack Obama "to stand up for middle-class jobs and energy security and approve the Keystone pipeline."
TED conference take wing online as enclave ends - The Times of IndiaTopics tackled at the gathering included robots taking on greater roles in society and taking on climate change with ideas such as the shrewd use of livestock grazing to revive desiccated grasslands.
Shell targeted by musical protest at South Bank concert | Culture | guardian.co.ukthe crowd at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London looked nonplussed when a choir of climate activists climbed to the stage in the foyer during the interval to launch Shell Out Sounds, a new campaign against the oil giant's sponsorship.
The group of 20 musicians, singers and music-lovers sang specially written lyrics about the damage they say is caused by oil company's activities in the Arctic and elsewhere, to the tune of the spiritual Down to the River to Pray. Dressed in black with purple sashes, they ended with the chorus "Oh, Shell, not your name! No more oil, no more pain! Oh, Shell not your name! Art not in your name!"
Exxon Mobil’s Carbon Tax Follies...most interestingly, former EPA Administrator William K. Reilly, said at a conference that, “The strongest advocate on our task force for a carbon tax was ExxonMobil. I had previously thought that was a public relations thing — I didn’t think they were quite interested in it.” [Does this mean that I'll no longer receive all that Exxon cash that I'm already not receiving?]
CITES Secretariat recommends rejecting US proposal to ban polar bear trade In its decision not to support the recommendation to up-list the polar bear, the CITES secretariat said an Appendix I listing “would not appear to be a measure proportionate to the anticipated risk to the species at this time.”
CITES said the supporting statement from the U.S. “speaks more of potential population declines in the future, rather than declines that have already occurred.”
Debate About US Shale Gas Exports Splits Corporate America The shale boom has created a rare fissure that runs through the heart of corporate America, pitting manufacturers against energy giants, which have been seeking to raise the price of natural gas by pushing the government to allow them to export to more countries.
Shale Envy: Why North America Is The Global Oil And Gas Sweet Spot With its wide open plains and existing infrastructure, services and workforce, North American oil and gas development is attracting admiration around the globe and prompting other countries to scratch beneath the surface in search of their own shale revolution.
US Getting More Economic Bang for Its Energy Buck | Via MeadiaThis data underscores the fact that economic growth and environmental sustainability are not mutually exclusive ideas. Smart, efficient growth can bring more people out of poverty, raise our standard of living, and help us live within the boundaries nature has set out for us. If greens want to save the earth, they should heed what these graphs are telling us. Growth is getting greener by the day.
A Peek Inside The Distorted Mind Of NASA Climatology | Real ScienceDuring July last year, the Greenland Summit Camp experienced less than 1 mm of melt when temperatures rose just above freezing for a couple of hours. NASA incorrectly hyped this as an “unprecedented” meltdown, and their claim has become an icon of those seeking to destroy the western economy.
Since then, more than 1000 mm of snow and ice has accumulated, and not a peep out of NASA. Current temperature is almost one hundred degrees below the freezing point of water.
Climate change dates back to dawn of first farmers - News from USA TODAYStone Age sodbusters were likely changing our planet’s climate, researchers are now suggesting, long before the greenhouse gas emissions of the industrial era.
...
The clearest signal of this effect comes from the 1500s, when the arrival of Columbus led to widespread depopulation of the New World through diseases such as smallpox, a devastating loss to humanity documented in Charles Mann’s 2006 book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. A series of studies, most recently an October report in the journal Nature looking at ice-core records, tie drops in methane linked to the reforestation of a depopulated New World to cooling periods known as the “Little Ice Age” starting after 1560.
The Downside To Cap-And-Trade For CarbonEuropeans, who boldly venture into every anti-science idea that more reasonable regions avoid, is now scrambling not to kill its economy even more due to its mandated cap-and-trade program.
Photo highlights: Pacific [Carbon dioxide] Warrior Day of Action | 350.orgThroughout the day, photos have been rolling in for the 350 Pacific Warrior Day of Action - not just of the amazing warrior dances in the 14 Pacific Islands nations - but also of the solidarity from people around the world.
Cobb Lab Research Blog: Climate Science Day on Capitol Hill I'm just back from a trip to DC to talk to Congressional offices about climate science as part of the third annual "Climate Science Day on Capitol Hill" (here's a link to the 2012 event). Organized by a consortium of 12 scientific societies, including the AGU, the event saw 50 climate scientists from all walks of the discipline converge on DC for a 1/2 day training session on Tuesday followed by a day full of Hill visits on Wednesday. The highlight of the training session was seeing so many women delivering sage and substantive advice on getting our climate science messages across. Susan Hassol gave a rousing overview of climate communication do's and don'ts, followed by a bi-partisan panel of 4 female Congressional staffers who provided behind-the-scenes tips for making yourself heard through the din on the Hill...I will go back to the Hill in May, with students high on energy efficiency, and again next February, for the 4th annual Climate Science Day on Capitol Hill, to once again shop my wares with an easy smile and an open mind.
Green Jobs Programme To Get Axed In Sequester A controversial Bureau of Labor Statistics program that tracks U.S. green jobs will get the axe, according to Bloomberg News, because of the automatic budget cuts, called the sequester, which are set to take effect today if lawmakers can’t reach an alternative agreement.
Van Jones Reacts to Keystone XL Report - YouTubeVan Jones reacts just hours after the State Department released its draft Keystone XL Environmental Impact Study claiming there would be no significant environmental impact.
Twitter / climatebrad: Not the best day for the papers ...Not the best day for the papers of record -- NYT kills Green blog, WaPo axes ombudsman.
Global warming cools off | The Daily CallerGranted, people like Al Gore will still be able to fly around and live in big mansions and stuff. But that’s okay, because he’s better than us. Everyone else will live in blissful pastoral splendor, free from the burdens of modern life.
Well, those of us who survive, at least.
Global warming is a boutique issue. And nobody can afford boutiques anymore.
The Reference Frame: AGW petition by Ranga Myneni: 1 billion signatures leftAlmost everyone will agree that Mr Myneni is a loon if he really expects to collect one billion of signatures. But similar loons have actually begun to influence the economic and other policies of advanced nations in the world. They have no clue about anything but they are already (mis)directing billions of dollars...
Polar Bear Blog – Volcanoes Help Polar Bears Myth: Probable!!! | Polar Bear Alley – Guide to the Polar Bears of ChurchillHere is the tricky part… over my beer and pizza, I found that in the late 1970s and thru the 1980s, mid-sized, and some quite large, sulphuric eruptions were a lot more prevalent than in the 1990s. Basically, this specific kind of volcanic eruption ‘dries up’ right when the earth starts warming the most rapidly. There was some rebound in the 2000s but not really a whole lot. I’ve been waiting for someone to ‘prove’ this… University of Boulder Colorado just did – by accident, but whatever…
So, if Janus’ deductions are correct, our baseline data for Churchill’s polar bears may have come at a time when the earth was artificially cool. As in, conditions were abnormally favourable for polar bears… the same conclusion I came to a few years ago. Normal carrying capacity for Hudson Bay really could be 900-1000 bears… things might be ‘okay’.
Spring Brings Near Record Cold To The Greenland Meltdown | Real ScienceWe are into the first week of meteorological spring, and Greenland is experiencing near record cold. If the forecast is correct, Tuesday will be within six degrees of the coldest temperature ever recorded in Greenland.
US February Temperatures On The Decline : NOAA Fraud On The Incline | Real ScienceFebruary temperatures were well below normal in the US
...
February temperatures have been on the decline for at least 90 years.
...
By tampering with the data, NOAA turns this cooling trend into a warming trend.
Gee, We Wonder Why The New York Times Is Shutting Down Its Green BlogIt appears the green pages of the Gray Lady were turning out to be more of an embarrassment than anything. As is the case with any operation that gets shut down, it is because either there’s no longer a demand for it, or other sources are simply doing a much better job delivering.
Fossil Fuels: Modern Asbestos?Many are starting to talk in terms of a "carbon bubble." If global governments seek to meet their already articulated goals of minimizing global warming to a certain target, many carbon-intensive projects may be at risk. Under this scenario, projects like Keystone XL could become stranded assets, in that they are no longer economically viable to develop under what would be a new regulatory framework. That would be a material business risk.
March 1, 2013: Unpublished (surprise) letter to the Nation magazine on why"350" is an impossible and undesirable goal.I applaud the moral motivation that drives “350,” and a fear of climate catastrophe justifies such a position. As someone who has taught climate statistics, though, I must dispute advocates’ certainty in their fear. The models that try to divide the one degree rise in global temperature since 1850 between human and natural causes are weak, as are claims that the increase has led to catastrophic weather. The future “scenarios” generated by the climate modelers, in which CO2-driven warming escalates in the next century to dramatic proportions, are even weaker. The positive feedbacks to initial warming that are included in climate models are mostly guesswork. In the lab, at least, the response of the heat-absorbing frequencies of carbon dioxide molecules is a square-root function, meaning that additional CO2 has less and less effect on heating.
The world will achieve the goal of 350 surely but slowly, whatever we do with fossil fuels, because temperature will drop 20 degrees over the next 80,000 years, as part of the recurrent 100,000 year temperature cycles of the past few million years. These cycles, which drive CO2 levels down and up with them, mysteriously yet perfectly follow the “Milankovitch” oscillation of the earth’s orbit around the sun from perfect circle (recently) to 5 percent ellipse (in about 50,000 years). Patience.
Not the hottest ever summer for most Australians in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane. Not “extreme” heatwaves either. « JoNova Nearly 50% of all Australians experienced an average to above average summer, but none of them experienced an extreme summer or a record hot season.
Since there are 100 different ways of measuring a “record”, could it be the BOM is cherry picking whatever record it can find, but ignoring all the non-records, the average measurements, and the ordinary heat?
The Global Cooling Scare Revisited | Power LineAnd then there’s this fabulous one-minute snippet from the late 1970s featuring the late Stephen Schneider, one of the leading warmists of the last two decades, plumping for the new ice age hypothesis back then...
Volcanic eruptions said masking some global warming effects - UPI.comBOULDER, Colo., March 1 (UPI) -- The reason why Earth did not warm as much as expected between 2000 and 2010 could be down to dozens of volcanoes spewing sulfur dioxide, U.S. scientist say.
Al Gore Still Kicking Climate Deniers In Their Derrières | EarthtechlingWhile it seems like a simple way to get people talking about actual climate science, some wonder whether dangling online badges in front of Facebook game addicts is really the right approach. A brief investigation from FastCo Exist found that people often just copied and pasted comments directly from the Reality Drop website, leaving a string of spammy-looking responses on article forums. “Is gathering people en masse to parrot talking points really effective? If a bunch of climate deniers did the same thing, it’s doubtful that Reality Drop proponents would let it sway them,” points out the author.
Still, it is likely to be a welcome resource to those of us tired of scrambling for a rebuttal every time a curmudgeonly relative throws a Fox News headline into the discussion.
Twitter / Ed_Crooks: Blocking *all* new pipelines ...Blocking *all* new pipelines out of Alberta would by 2030 cut emissions equal to 0.005% to 0.07% of US GHG output, says State. #KXL
I Love The Smell Of Green Apocalypse In The Morning | Tory AardvarkThe Green regression to 2008 continues, by winding back the clock they possibly hope to continue business as usual with a CO2 fearing world hanging on their every word, how it used to be, before Climategate and COP15 Copenhagen delivered the mortal blow to the Anthropogenic Global Warming scam.
BBC News - Tackling northern Japan's record snowOr, as some have suggested, is it another result of global warming?
Significantly the total amount of precipitation over northern Japan this winter is about the same as normal. The big difference has been the temperature. This winter has been a lot colder than usual.
State Dept. says no environmental bar to Keystone XL - Salon.com It’s a dark message to environmentalists, suggesting that the tar sands battle is lost.
Q and A: The Angry Economist - NYTimes.comThe paradox of all this is the Europeans put all this effort into global leadership on carbon emissions, and that has failed. And the Americans arguably have no sensible energy policy at all, and no climate change policy, and have done much better. The reason has got nothing to do with policy. Gas arrived. America has as a result got out of coal and into gas. As gas is half the emissions of coal, you see this really sharp fall in emissions...But [the U.S.] compared with Europe? You’ve got competitiveness, you’ve got cheap energy, you’ve got an economic recovery, and you’ve got falling carbon emissions. And in Europe, it’s just denial. [In the Europeans' view], this is the land of the evil Bush who wouldn’t do anything about climate change.
Best of The Simpsons -Nelson Muntz- Ha-Ha! - YouTube
Green Blog Bids Times Readers Goodbye - NYTimes.comThe Times is discontinuing the Green blog, which was created to track environmental and energy news and to foster lively discussion of developments in both areas. This change will allow us to direct production resources to other online projects. But we will forge ahead with our aggressive reporting on environmental and energy topics, including climate change, land use, threatened ecosystems, government policy, the fossil fuel industries, the growing renewables sector and consumer choices.
Nature cameraman Doug Allan thinks global warming in Arctic is ‘scary’ “Probably, some time between the next five to ten years, we will get a summer where all the sea ice melts in the Arctic before it refreezes in the winter.
“There will be a restriction to the wildlife and it will change the ball game completely.”
Save the planet, sleep with your dogCrazy as it sounds, the Australian government actually suggested this on its Living Greener website, saying that snuggling up with your pet instead of turning up the thermostat is a good way to save energy. Other earth-friendly ideas included playing board games instead of watching TV, and being a regular at the library where you can “share the heating and computers with your community.” The opposition party’s spokesman called the governments’ ideas farcical, but you have to wonder if Australians sleeping with their dogs today might prevent tornadoes in Kansas in 40 years.
The Frozen Mammoth In The Room | Real ScienceAfter many years of above average winters, Arctic temperatures have dropped 15C since January 1. The global warming party is crashing and burning freezing.
Pachauri reduced to recycling “non policy-prescriptive” prescriptions | The View From HereBest get back to your Sustainia bandwagon, Mr. Pachauri!
A Fierce Green Planet | The NationFeaturing commentary from Bill McKibben, Carl Pope, Bob Bullard and Lois Gibbs, among many other other outraged activist voices, and including archival footage of eco-heros like Chico Mendes, Wangari Matthai and David Brower, the film focuses on grassroots resistance: people fighting to save their homes, their lives and the future.
Epa: McCarthy stresses need for climate change action, stays mum on expected nomination -- 03/01/2013 -- www.eenews.net"Climate change is a marathon issue that we all have to run together before we can claim to get over any finish line," she said.
...her remarks painted EPA as the business community's friend and collaborator.
Vital ministries not getting fund for coping with climate changeBangladesh needs about $5.7 billion as adaptation cost to face the increased risks of cyclones and inland monsoon floods in a changing climate by 2050, said an earlier World Bank report.
Climate Change Runs Up Against Green Fatiguehe activists who want a full-stop on CO2, more regulations, more penalties, more taxes and then more subsidies for their pet 'green' projects are living in their own fantasy world, where if they mandate and subsidize something like wind power, capitalism will take over and make it viable.
Outgoing Energy Secretary Could Be Remembered For More Than Solyndra : NPRCHU: We don't expect all those things to work. But we wanted home runs. Now, after three years, have there been home runs? Well, maybe not. But there are people rounding second and third base [like who, specifically?], so it's looking good.
How Green Was the 'Green Pope'?He approved a plan to cover the Vatican's Paul VI hall with solar panels, enough to power the lighting, heating, and cooling of a portion of the entire country (which covers, of course, a mere one-fifth of a square mile). He authorized the Vatican's bank to purchase carbon credits by funding a Hungarian forest that would make the Catholic city-state the only country fully carbon neutral. And several years later, he unveiled a new hybrid Popemobile that would be partially electric.
Popular Technology.net: The 1970's Global Cooling AlarmismDuring the 1970s the media promoted global cooling alarmism with dire threats of a new ice age. Extreme weather events were hyped as signs of the coming apocalypse and man-made pollution was blamed as the cause. Environmental extremists called for everything from outlawing the internal combustion engine to communist style population controls. This media hype was found in newspapers, magazines, books and on television [roundup follows]
Pensioners get carbon tax return this monthAlso from March 20, pensioners will start receiving carbon [dioxide hoax scam swindle fraud] tax compensation each fortnight. Singles will receive $13.50 a fortnight while couples will receive $20.40.
Ms Macklin said the government was delivering $1 billion a year to pensioners across the country through the carbon tax compensation package.
''In contrast, Tony Abbott and the Liberals have promised to claw back the $1 billion a year support Labor is delivering pensioners,'' she said.
Opinion: Meet my kid, an adorable environmental disaster BERKELEY CO., W.V. – Last year, on March 25, my wife Kristin and I made a lifestyle choice, that by all accounts will have the most egregious environmental impact of our lives.
...the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of our child will overshadow by 20 times all of our green do-gooder acts.
...
Our son's environmental impact began well before he emerged from the womb, as we drove weekly to doctors across our region, in Winchester, Va.; Bethesda, Md.; and beyond. Kristin and I joked at one point about naming our son "Carbon Footprint Feldman."
Coal To Win 2013 Battle With Gas, As Coal Regains Significant Generation Market Share EIA is now projecting that natural gas’s generation market share will drop from 30.3% in 2012 to 27.6% in 2014, while coal’s share will rebound to 39.1% in 2014 from 37.4%.
Apocalypse? No. But unless we change tack, the planet is running out of time | Andrew Simms | Environment | guardian.co.ukwe are living through a man-made mass extinction event.
...It's an indicator of the force and speed of the unintended consequences of our economic activity, and something which makes it impossible for many species to adapt. And left unaddressed that could be the case for humanity too.
...instead of climate campaigners being applauded for their actions, they are being hounded with £5 million law suits. [So we're supposed to applaud when people illegally shut down power plants in an attempt to prevent CO2-induced bad weather?]
Bangladesh tackles climate change by fusing rice paddies with fish farms | guardian.co.ukNazrul Islam, former director of information at the ministry of agriculture, told SciDev.Net: "Combining rice and fish farming is the answer to climate change problems, particularly in the coastal areas where saline water intrusion has been phenomenal."
South Carolina Climate Change - Piranha in South Carolina? - EsquireOne of the overlooked elements of the climate crisis is the multitude of little ways it is changing the ecosystem without or really noticing it. The earth is going to burn, or die of thirst, or slip into a new ice age, or we're all going to be eaten by South American attack fish, and those politicians will still be "concerned about new regulations for industry." Those guys go into the farm pond first, I'm thinking.
Green-Jobs Survey Dies as U.S. Readies Sequestration Cuts - BloombergA program tracking U.S. green jobs, faulted by Republican lawmakers, will be scrapped by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as part of automatic budget cuts set to take effect today, according to a person familiar with the decision.
ArcelorMittal, Gold Fields Win Carbon Tax Delay · Environmental Management & Energy News · Environmental LeaderAfter objections from heavy polluters, including metal companies ArcelorMittal and Gold Fields, South Africa has delayed implementing a carbon tax until 2015.
Heavy snow on roof forces evacuations at Kansas City day care - KCTV5More than 100 children were forced to evacuate a Kansas City metro day care Thursday morning after concerns of a possible roof collapse.
Japan's record snowfall still not the deepest ever | World news | The GuardianThis has also been a record year for snow in parts of Russia – a couple of weeks ago snowpiles of more than five metres caused gridlock in Moscow – and Switzerland, too, has been experiencing dramatic snowfalls, with depths of up to three metres.
New York’s Most Powerful Hurricane Occurred More Than 70 Years AgoFortunately, New York City experienced the weaker “left side” of the 1938 hurricane — the City was 75 miles from the eye when it passed over Long Island. The hurricane could have caused far more deaths and damage if it passed closer to the five boroughs.
EDITORIAL: Kerry's global warming crusade - Washington TimesThe paint hadn’t dried on Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s new Foggy Bottom digs before he laid out his agenda for higher taxes and job-killing regulations that would put the United States at a disadvantage with the rest of the world. This was the pressing foreign-policy issue he chose to address in his first major speech as America’s chief diplomat.
The Twisted Ethics of Environmental Protest » Climate ResistanceBut does the ‘right to protest’ really extend to criminal damage, and the unlawful closing down of essential infrastructure? Does democracy really depend on people being able to shut down power stations? And can the NDG campaign really be compared to campaigns to abolish slavery and establish universal suffrage?
Benefits of Keystone XL Pipeline are clear - The Hill's Congress BlogNow is not the time to stall a fully-vetted project for the purpose of avoiding political backlash. I have voted to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline permit and will continue to support the project, which will create jobs and lower gas prices without harming the environment.
Twitter / enviroblack@CHedegaardEU @USATODAY Great to see @USATODAY doing a bull-free piece on #climate - but shame that such basic explainers are still needed
New York: How Sandy became the tipping point for city’s response to climate change - FT.comNew York has emerged from the storm as the poster child for urban vulnerability to rising seas, warming temperatures and extreme weather...A storm of Sandy’s magnitude, now considered likely once in 500 years, could occur once a century by [the 2080s]. [How, specifically, do we know that a storm of that magnitude didn't already occur more often than once per century by the 1880s?]
University Climate Researcher to be investigated for unprofessional conductProfessor Peter Rathjen, Vice Chancellor of the University of Tasmania (UTAS) has ordered an investigation into professional and academic misconduct by Dr Tony Press, the CEO of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre based at the University of Tasmania.
The Free Market Case for World Government | Planet3.0The likelihood of severe and potentially catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is in part a consequence of our inability to enforce any right to protection from the harm to life and property caused by the cross-border impacts of greenhouse gas emissions.
Sudden Climate Change Not Possible, Study ClaimsSudden climate changes can’t really happen, claims a controversial paper published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution authored by scientists in the US, UK, and Australia.
We Told You There Would Be Hurricanes! | Real ScienceThere are always hurricanes, you morons.
Jennifer Granholm: A clean energy proposal -- race to the top! | Video on TED.comKicking off the TED2013 conference, Jennifer Granholm asks a very American question with worldwide implications: How do we make more jobs? Her big idea: Invest in new alternative energy sources. And her big challenge: Can it be done with or without our broken Congress?
Twitter / RevkinInteresting project organizing synchronized campus screenings of "The " 4/17
Why you should sweat climate changeMore American children are getting asthma and allergies, and more seniors are suffering heat strokes.
Food and utility prices are rising. Flooding is overrunning bridges, swamping subways and closing airport runways.
People are losing jobs in drought-related factory closings. Cataclysmic storms are wiping out sprawling neighborhoods. Towns are sinking.
... "It's a mixed bag," says Kerry Emanuel, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about the link between extreme weather and climate change. Though Emanuel once doubted the evidence, he now says it's clear the world is warming beyond its natural variability. He notes that there are clearer links to some weather events than others.
Emanuel, author of What We Know About Climate Change, says rainfall may have the clearest climate link. He says it now occurs less often, but when it does rain, we're more likely to experience downpours. So wet regions will be wetter, causing flash flooding. Dry ones will get drier, resulting in drought. Heat, of course, is another consequence.
At Ice Age End, a Smaller Gap in Warming and Carbon Dioxide - NYTimes.comA meticulous new analysis of Antarctic ice suggests that the sharp warming that ended the last ice age occurred in lock step with increases of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the latest of many indications that the gas is a powerful influence on the earth’s climate.
...
Mainstream climate scientists rejected that view and argued that carbon dioxide, while it certainly did not initiate the end of the ice age, played a vital role in the feedback loops that caused a substantial warming.
...
The trouble is that air does not get sealed in the ice until hundreds or even thousands of years after the snow has fallen, as it slowly gets buried and compressed.
That means the ice and the air bubbles trapped in it are not the same age, so it becomes tricky for scientists to put reconstructed atmospheric composition and reconstructed temperature onto a common time scale.
...
“We’re just entering a new era in earth’s history,” Dr. Shakun said. “It will be an unrecognizable new planet in the future. I think the only question is, exactly how fast does that transformation happen?”
Germany to Add Most Coal-Fired Plants in Two Decades, IWR Says Germany will this year start up more coal-fired power stations than at any time in the past 20 years as the country advances a plan to exit nuclear energy by 2022.
Lawrence Solomon: Not easy being greenAs documented in painful detail in Public Attitudes towards Climate Change & Other Environmental Issues across Time and Countries, 1993-2010, a 17-year study of attitudes conducted by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) in 33 countries, most people in all countries rank global warming way down their list of concerns. In Norway, just 4% considered global warming to be the country’s most important issue — and Norwegians were the most concerned of all of the citizens studied. In Canada, also high up the list, the figure was just 3%; in Great Britain less than 1% and in the U.S. the concern and was less than one half of 1%.
Not surprisingly, in most countries few people even consider global warming — whether or not caused by man — to rise to the level of being extremely dangerous: In Norway, a mere 11.8% of the population fear it, in Great Britain 16.3%, in the U.S. 19.6%. Even in relatively alarmist Canada the great majority take global warming in stride — only 27.8% see it as doom-worthy.
Monckton explains why taking climate extremists to court works (and Uni Tas agrees to investigate). « JoNovaGoing to court works because the Forces of Darkness know they will be cross-examined. They know their lies will be exposed. So they crumble.
US Pummeled By Record Cold And Snow | Real Science
EPA Cuts 2012 Cellulosic Blending Target to ZeroFor several years the EPA has fined refiners for not purchasing and blending ethanol made from switchgrass, wood chips, and other fibrous, non-edible plants. Refiners protested that there was no commercial cellulosic fuel to buy. The EPA argued that didn’t matter because the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) is meant to be “technology forcing.” The agency thus based each year’s cellulosic target on aspirational (rather than realistic) projections of how much cellulosic fuel would be produced. It then cheerfully collected fines for all the gallons of phantom fuel refiners did not blend.
How the USDA plans to plant around climate change | GristShort version: T minus 25ish years until we hit Armageddon-like scenarios for agriculture and forests.
Sleeping with the enemy. | Pointman'sThe alarmists believe there’s a so-called forcing mechanism initiated at a certain theoretical threshold level of carbon dioxide, which will magnify the Earth’s temperature. Nobody’s ever proved such a physical mechanism exists and indeed, nobody’s ever even demonstrated it either. Despite nearly two decades of increasing carbon dioxide levels, the global thermometer has stubbornly refused to move upwards and if anything, looks to be heading in the other direction. The demonisation of carbon is all about belief, which is religion, rather than science, which is about prove it or hit the road Jack.
When they picked on carbon as being the root of all evil, they were mounting an attack on the elemental basis of all life on Earth. If you’ve come to believe as I do that environmentalism has become anti-life, it was somehow inevitable that carbon absolutely had to become their hate object.
Good luck with banning it, by the way.
The First Rule: Eat When You Can, Sleep When You Can, And Don't Screw With The Climate! | ThinkProgressglobal warming is highly likely to be fatal to a livable climate and modern civilization if left untreated
EPA Cuts 2012 Cellulosic Blending Target to Zero“U.S. EPA has altered its cellulosic biofuel requirements for 2012 — from 8.65 million gallons to zero,” today’s Climatewire reports.
Rep. Blumenauer Highlights Bipartisan Support for Climate Change Action WASHINGTON, DC— Today, Congressman Earl Blumenauer spoke on the floor of the US House of Representatives about the perils America, and the world, face from climate change...
“While Congress is dealing with this manufactured sequester crisis, we have a real climate crisis occurring right outside the window."
AAAS Panelists: Sandy a ‘Game-changer’ for Public Perceptions “Nature is bringing climate scientists, kicking and screaming, into the story narrative,” Borenstein said.
Dusty Springs in Asia, Africa Can Increase Snow in Calif. | Climate CentralA dusty spring in Asia and Africa can increase snowfall thousands of miles away in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, according to a new study. [Don't worry, I'm sure that those Fortran climate models flawlessly handle every bit of this stuff.]
Green deniers of the science | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt BlogDo the Greens listen to scientists when they blame global warming for what they clearly think is an increase in cyclones in Queensland?
DropReality: Al Gore’s new campaign to troll the Internet with alarmism | JunkScience.comCheck out Al Gore’s plan for comment board trolling.
Bill McKibben's Battle Against the Keystone XL Pipeline - BusinessweekMcKibben’s message is blunt: The planet is warming faster and changing more rapidly than expected. [Which is an absolute bald-faced Big Lie.]For the past 10,000 years, the number of carbon particles [sic] in the earth’s atmosphere had never exceeded 275 parts per million.
...
Writing a story about Bill McKibben, you become acutely aware of the hundreds of pounds of fossil fuels you are consuming on your way to meet him: the car to the airplane, the airplane, the rental car from the airplane. McKibben is well aware of the same contradiction in his own life and can find no way to reconcile the demands of his role as global speaker on behalf of the environment with the vast amounts of carbon his travel emits. “One of the great ironies of my life is that I have a carbon footprint the size of a small Indian village,” he says.
...
The distributed platform of 350.org has allowed it to spread virally and more efficiently...The organization’s annual budget is $4.7 million, much of it from the Oak Foundation and the Kendeda Fund. McKibben makes his living from his books and is paid an annual salary as a professor by the Environmental Journalism Program at Middlebury, which is funded by the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy.
[McKibben] I’ve gone in 36 hours from an anti-fracking rally in Columbus, Ohio, to an island off Istanbul to meet with the patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church to a meeting in Rio de Janeiro, where they were doing the Rio+20 summit where I helped lead a walkout movement. It’s crazy.”
...
McKibben doesn’t like to talk about Al Gore, but he shakes his head sadly when I bring up the recent sale of Gore’s Current TV to Al Jazeera—a media company funded in part by the emir of Qatar’s fossil-fuel fortune—and how that seems to have diluted Gore’s credibility. McKibben raises his eyebrows, smirks, and says, “You think?”
...We walk over to the Sierra Club’s D.C. offices, where a few dozen activists sit around a table
...
The group piles into an SUV for the short drive to the White House. McKibben looks around the car sheepishly. “They said this was an eco-friendly vehicle.”
“Bill, any vehicle you’re riding in automatically becomes an eco-friendly vehicle,” jokes a fellow passenger.
...
“God has set this up as the most perfect pure test there could be,” he continues. “We have an infinite amount of hydrocarbons. Does man have the self-restraint to save himself? Or it’s like, is the big brain a good adaptation? It got us into this predicament. Will it get us out?”
Global warming debate heats GICIA experts’ testimonyThe debate over global warming has no more heart-wrenching poster child for the pro side than the polar bear.
...
The presentation will outline research data concerning the bears and how the future of polar bears depends on muffling life-choking greenhouse gases.
Can Strong Communities Help Build Solutions To Climate Change? | ThinkProgressWhat might you expect to find in communities where “family values” are the strongest? More churches? More parents helping out in classrooms? Maybe more bake sales? Yes, perhaps. But there’s one thing you would definitely find: solar panels.
Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder shows that one modern marker of communities with greater “family interdependence” — a social science term that indicates the value a person places on time spent with their family — is that more new solar energy businesses take root.
...one idea might be to expand funding for AmeriCorps, even killing two birds with one stone by creating a “climate corps” where young people can weatherize buildings for a year.
Posts
