Saturday, November 16, 2013

Links

America’s Wet Drought | NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
Obama was busy prattling on about “crippling droughts” just a few months ago. Perhaps someone should point out to him that, since then, nearly all of the USA has been wetter than normal.
NASS: Ark. records broken for corn, cotton, soybeans, rice
Despite a soaking start to the 2013 growing season, Arkansas farmers will likely end 2013 with yield records in corn, cotton, soybeans and rice, according to projections released Nov. 8 by the National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Radical Environmentalism vs. Jobs and the Economy | Texas GOP Vote
Congress should recall Obama’s campaign promises to bankrupt America’s coal industry and then use its U.S. Constitutional legislative authority to rein in his radical environment dictates being imposed by Executive Orders and his federal bureaucracies. American jobs and our economy depend on it.
Living on Earth: Beyond the Headlines
DYKSTRA: Forty years of this, back and forth over The Piltdown Man and whether it was a real discovery, happened. It wasn’t until 1953, 60 years ago this month, that it was revealed that some of the bones were fixed. They were chemically treated to look like they were half a million years old when actually they were a few hundred years old.

Links

Heavy snow closing highways around British Columbia
Highways 5 and 16 are closed, with no detour available at this time.
Bipartisan plan to protect an "all-of-the-above" energy strategy | TheHill
[Whitfield (R) and Manchin (D)] EPA has proposed standards for new power plants that are so extreme they would effectively eliminate coal as a source of future electricity generation in America. The rule requires the adoption of costly capture and storage (CCS) technologies that are not yet commercially viable, essentially setting a standard that is impossible to meet. No other country in the world has adopted such an extreme position.
Question Time: No link between climate change and Typhoon Haiyan, says Lord Lawson | UK | News | Daily Express
"If you look at the inter-governmental panel on climate change they say there is absolutely no connection between climate change and tropical storms.

"This is I'm afraid a scare. There is absolutely no scientific merit in it and no statistical merit in it. This is fact."

Friday, November 15, 2013

Links

Top 10: climate change campaigns | Global Development Professionals Network | Guardian Professional
which campaigns have packed the biggest punch?
▶ Climate Change Reconsidered II: A Heartland Institute briefing panel at the Ayn Rand Institute - YouTube
Recorded live at the Ayn Rand Institute, Irvine, CA
October 8th, 2013

Moderator: Dr. Keith Lockitch
Panelists: Joe Bast, Dr. Robert Carter, and Dr. S. Fred Singer
Author Says Some Are ‘Desperate’ to Believe in Global Warming for This Reason | TheBlaze.com
Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the author of Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed, said that some people’s belief in man-made global warming goes back to the same “long-proved human instinct” to assign blame that led to witch trials throughout history.

“Previously, when the crops failed, leading to famine, babies died…you’d blame the witch next door, throw her on the fire,” Horner said on The Glenn Beck Program. “Now, it’s when these catastrophes occur.”
Why Climate Deniers Are Fools
Last spring I interviewed Dr. Louis Uccellini, the head of the National Weather Service. He informed me that, based on weather models, it was likely to be the worst hurricane season on record. The probability for strong storms was great.

Haiyan has proved him tragically correct.

Links

Proof Warren Buffett Doesn't Take Investing Cues From Al Gore - Businessweek
Get out now, Gore is urging us, lest your money go up in a poof of carbon taxes.

But you know who’s not worried? Warren Buffett. He just plunked $3.7 billion into Exxon Mobil (XOM), the biggest oil company in the world.
Could the EPA push a carbon tax on its own? Maybe — here’s how.
Long story short: This is at least in the realm of possibility. But because the EPA can't impose carbon taxes on its own, the state legislatures would have to vote to give their local regulators this authority. And that's far from certain.
Meet the Computer Geek Who Took on Ken Cuccinelli—and Won | Mother Jones
As Mann explains on the show, "The last thing I ever wanted to do was to get involved in politics, to me that was anathema."
Michael Mann's political donations
OBAMA, BARACK
VIA OBAMA FOR AMERICA
08/14/2008 250.00 11972687208
09/27/2008 250.00 11972555452
10/05/2008 350.00 11972440357

Links

EPA Scales Back Ethanol Mandate for First Time!
Specifically, the EPA is proposing to cut the 2014 blending target from 18.15 billion gallons to 15.21 billion gallons.
Arkansas crops shatter records in 2013 - KAIT-Jonesboro, AR-News, weather, sports
Despite frequent rain and cool weather throughout the growing season, Arkansas crops produced record-high yields.
Dear Prudence: Al Gore Warns Of A Carbon Asset Bubble - Forbes
Recalling that his Nobel Prize was not for economics, it should be noted that the former Vice President is only marginally knowledgeable about energy and regulation.

Links

New Moving Billboards In Chicago And New York Demand Better Climate Coverage From CNBC | ThinkProgress
The billboards feature CNBC hosts nonchalantly crouching on their anchor desk as it bobs helplessly in high-water. The hosts smile, whistle, and sip coffee as the waterlogged remains of the studio drift around their desk island. The billboard declares “While business leaders prepare for climate change, CNBC won’t even admit it exists.”
Record-breaking snowfall in Valdez, Alaska
A respectable 24.4 inches (61 cm) of snow fell Sunday, beating the old November 10 record of 19.1 inches set in 1994.
North America’s largest ski resort to open early
A statement from Whistler said: “Thanks to oodles of snow, Whistler Mountain will open 13 days early this season..."
Quite a Plan | Talking About the Weather
Premature conversion to renewables is killing people already, due to the increased prices that it carries, and cold-weather mortality (principally). That animals are heavily impacted by wind and solar only makes the entire enterprise that much more of a grave mistake.

Links

Climate Communicators divulge secrets for effective communication - The Review - The independent student newspaper of the University of Delaware since 1882
“Too many journalists overlearned the point that you have to report both sides,” Somerville says.
I’m Invited | NoFrakkingConsensus
I’ll be making a submission to a UK parliamentary committee examining the latest IPCC report.

Links

Charles Lane / Why are liberals obsessed with electric cars?
For now, all we know is that Elon Musk, backed by Wall Street and Washington, has built a very efficient machine for the upward distribution of wealth and income.
Twitter / LFFriedman: First time I have seen an airport ...
First time I have seen an airport NOT decked out in COP posters during one of these things. #welcometopoland #COP19
Heating things up: Global Warming and Blakemore - Campus - The Miami Student
In “the jump” as Blakemore called it, to connect the uthe film to Global Warming, he suggested that Global Warming is becoming another atrocity civilization has allowed, but “no one meant for it to happen.”
The Global Warming God Strikes Again | FrontPage Magazine
It is of course the very definition of religious faith to assume that a bearded woman in the sky is sending storms to threaten global climate negotiators
Twitter / UN_ClimateTalks: .@CFigueres at #BINGO day: ...
.@CFigueres at #BINGO day: Conclusion from #IPCC report is clear: zero emissions by 2nd half of century needed to stay und 2 degrees Celsius

Yvo de Boer still wants 85-90% emission reduction by mid-century; "everything will be wonderful in the long-term"

Yvo de Boer: Europe looking for the climate future in the past | EurActiv
“We need serious efforts to stick to that target of 85-90% emission reduction by the middle of the century
...The problem with climate is that everybody knows that in the long-term there will be huge benefits, huge savings, the lives of your children will be better, the economy will be more efficient, the air will be cleaner, everything will be wonderful in the long-term. But the long term is after elections,” he said.

Links

NRSC Poll Confirms: No One Knows What Carbon Pollution Is | Somewhat Reasonable
It’s actually amazing that only 51 percent of the respondents said they favored regulating “carbon pollution” from power plants — because quite frankly, the intentionally misleading language makes it sound scary. Any time the word “pollution” is thrown around people will be for regulating it, even if they aren’t sure what they are regulating.
Alan Jones - Tony Abbott | 2GB
Alan talks to the Australian Prime Minister on a range of topics including - climate change, boat people, CHOGM and wind farms
Are climate change talks getting dirty? » Spectator Blogs
Warsaw – As reports flood in of devastation in the Philippines, pressure is growing on ministers attending United Nations talks in Poland to prove that on-going climate change talks are not a waste of money.
...Well, 10,106 people have gathered in a football stadium in Warsaw to produce more hot air discussing a global deal to cut emissions.
...At least the chaotic meeting in Copenhagen in 2009 was supported by Vestas – a wind turbine company.
...The huge stadium (wreathed in red, green and silver lights at night) is powered by coal, which accounts for more than 80 per cent of Poland’s electricity generation.

The cost is estimated to be more than 30m euros.
...Youth groups prowl the corridors carrying banners, perform colourful stunts outside meeting rooms and finally burst into tears in pure frustration.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Uh oh: Obama supporter Warren Buffett reveals Berkshire's $3 Billion Stake In Exxon Mobil

Buffett Reveals Berkshire's $3 Billion Stake In Exxon Mobil - Forbes
In a form 13-F filed Thursday afternoon, Buffett revealed Berkshire Hathaway owns 40,089,371 shares of the oil company, for an approximate value of more than $3.7 billion.
2012: Buffett: I Support Obama 100% | Fox Business Video

Warren Buffett - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In addition to other political contributions over the years, Buffett has formally endorsed and made campaign contributions to Barack Obama's presidential campaign. On July 2, 2008, Buffett attended a $28,500 per plate fundraiser for Obama's campaign in Chicago hosted by Obama's National Finance Chair, Penny Pritzker and her husband, as well as Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett.[100] Buffett backed Obama for president, and intimated that John McCain's views on social justice were so far from his own that McCain would need a "lobotomy" for Buffett to change his endorsement

UN climate chief Figueres wishes that warmists had "a voice that is equally as orchestrated with arguments that are at least equally as compelling" as skeptics

Progressive businesses need to break the strangle-hold of the fossil fuel lobby | Guardian Sustainable Business | Guardian Professional
The report quotes Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UNFCC, who has warned that the fossil fuel lobby is much louder, better funded, and operates much more in unison than those who will benefit from a move towards a low carbon economy. She warned that "if we don't have a voice that is equally as orchestrated with arguments that are at least equally as compelling, then governments are going to be taking very timid decisions and they're not going to be tipping the scale."

Links

EPA assailed on power plant regulations | TheHill
“You don’t live in the real world,” Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) told Janet McCabe, the EPA’s top air pollution regulator, who testified before an Energy and Commerce Committee panel.

“You are saying the technology is available. We are saying it is not,” said Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.).
More Dissent Erupts In Germany! Free Democrat Parliamentarian Slams IPCC Science, Proposed Climate Policy
Slowly, but surely, leading politicians are mustering the courage to express their doubts on climate science and to speak up.

Links

Global Warming Activism And Christianity: Beware Of Modern Inquisitors Toting Bibles - Forbes
In short, Thistlethwaite may be a past president of a seminary that advocates leftist liberation theology, but this doesn’t give her any semblance of leadership or representation of conservative or mainstream Christian thought. Moreover, her condemnation and insulting rhetoric directed at skeptics of her asserted global warming crisis have no religious, scientific or moral weight.
More delegates on hunger strike at UN climate talks | ABS-CBN News
A database obtained by ABS-CBN News shows at least 60 people from one umbrella organization alone, the Climate Action Network, signing up to go on a hunger strike.
...
[Sano] also said he no longer craves food, but avoids the smell of it and does not go inside the Warsaw national stadium's food court as much as possible.

Links

2013 Global Temperature – Flatlining
On Wednesday the Bank of England governor Mark Carney said that the UK’s economy was improving and that the time had come to view the glass as half-full and not half-empty. It would be nice if sometimes reporting of climate change stories occasionally looked at things from a different perspective as well.
Revkin: Can We Outgrow Growth (as the Metric That Matters)? - NYTimes.com
[Disclosure note: I'm getting a modest fee to cover my costs and time, but my views, as always, are my own.]
Amstrup compares climate change to a Titanic for polar bears | polarbearscience
The earliest breakup date in recent years (since 1991), by the new method devised by polar bear biologist Seth Cherry, was June 17, 1999. Breakup has not been that early since.
THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: Settled science: German scientists discover bacteria that make ice, clouds & rain; may significantly affect climate
Scientists have discovered that a humble species of bacteria may play a major role in producing planetary climates by "seeding" clouds with ice-producing proteins.

Warmist John Vidal on COP meetings: "It is done in a complete miasma of secrecy and corridor stuff...It's a shambles frankly...something out of the 18th century almost"

Climate talks: will COP19 help poor countries? – podcast transcript
JV The problem, actually, is you don't know what the fine words are because most of the meetings in these COPs – these huge, huge conferences – are secret. You never hear. You don't have access to them, there's no reportage. It is almost impossible to find out exactly what is going on. If anyone ever tells you at a COP that is or that is happening they're wrong. Nobody knows, it is done in a complete miasma of secrecy and corridor stuff, and bits get let out here and there and wherever. It's a shambles frankly. The UN, the way it organises these things is something out of the 18th century almost. The diplomats are not accountable, the delegations keep themselves to themselves, nobody talks to each other, journalists basically are spoon-fed stuff by their governments. And so there is very, very little real understanding of the scale of what's happening or the importance of what is happening. So I think a big part of the problem, actually, is the meetings themselves.

Jack Ohman of the Sacramento Bee: Children will surf in downtown Manhattan; on global warming, Al Gore has "certainly won the debate"

Editorial notebook: Al Gore keeps telling us inconvenient truths - Jack Ohman - The Sacramento Bee
Most of the people in his Sacramento audience probably won’t be around to be able to surf in downtown Manhattan, but their children will, and that’s reason enough to act.
...
He may have lost Florida in 2000 (that’s debatable), but he has certainly won the debate on a subject we all need to continue to hear, and act upon.

Links

Report: Lecture by Prof Salby 7th Nov 2013 | ScottishSceptic
What Salby proposes is in principle very simple: that ice-cores do not correspond to actual levels of CO2 at the time the snow was formed.
Swat Delegation at U.N. Climate Change Conference: Day of Departure | Daily Gazette
Human lives are being sacrificed while negotiations stall.
Australia’s Politics of Global Warming - NYTimes.com
The jellyfish, though, are a painful new development.
Grand Strand, Pee Dee record lows shattered - WMBFNews.com, Myrtle Beach/Florence SC, Weather
The low in Myrtle Beach hit 27 degrees, shattering the record low for November 14. The previous record was set in 2003, at 33 degrees.

Links

Canada reveals climate stance with praise for Australian carbon tax repeal - 14 Nov 2013 - News from BusinessGreen
Canada has dropped any remaining pretences of supporting global action on climate change by urging other countries to follow Australia's example in gutting its climate plan.
If It Weighs The Same As A Duck ….. | Real Science
The most important thing is to have your mind made up about the results – before you choose the best combination of data sources to use, in order to achieve them.
Uncertainty in SST measurements and data sets | Climate Etc.
I don’t think Cowtan and Wray’s analysis adds anything to our understanding of the global surface temperature field and the ‘pause.’

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Links

What George Clooney Can Teach Us About Climate Change - Forbes
Clooney is not acting as some free-thinking radical but a simple cipher for what he has picked up in our media and educational system.
Twitter / MichaelEMann: .@Hudsonweather Paul: If ...
.@Hudsonweather Paul: If #climatechange critics R right, next few yrs should C lowest glob ave temps of entire (~160 yr) historical record.
Canadian Praise For Tony Abbott A Game Changer For Climate Negotiations | The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)
Canada’s public praise yesterday for Australia’s decision to scrap the carbon tax underscores a dramatic shift that could sweep through international climate negotiations.

Links

Report: Climate Change Leaving America’s Big Game Nowhere to Run - National Wildlife Federation
Wildfire, floods and extreme weather events like heat waves, droughts and heavy rainfall, are becoming more frequent and more severe.
Deconstructing the hype on Super Typhoon Haiyan – Yolanda | Watts Up With That?
The sensationalist and over-hyped reporting of much of the media immediately after the tragedy was, in my view, utterly disgraceful. Perhaps in future, they might care to check the facts first.
Brrrrr! Record-breaking cold hits western Mass. | WWLP.com
The official reading at Westover Air Reserve Base was 19 degrees this morning, which breaks the record low of 20 degrees set back in 1950.

Links

Top climate scientists call for fracking ban in letter to Gov. Jerry Brown - San Jose Mercury News
"If what we're trying to do is stop using the sky as a waste dump for our carbon pollution, and if we're trying to transform our energy system, the way to do that is not by expanding our fossil fuel infrastructure," said Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University.
The Super Storm Meme | The Resilient Earth
Careful indeed. The next time the natural disaster du jour is pronounced “Super” or “the worst ever” step back and take a deep breath. Odds are it is nothing of the sort. And when your friend or coworker blames the latest drought, heatwave, flood, blizzard or cold snap on global warming realize that they are just mindlessly repeating a meme, implanted into their minds like a disease by other witless carriers of global warming syndrome. Sadly, the only cure is to wait for the madness to fade in the fullness of time.
Tesla Is Planning To Make An Electric Pickup Truck | ThinkProgress
“If you’re trying to replace the most gasoline miles driven, you have to look at what people are buying,” Musk told CNN Money on Tuesday. “That’s the best selling car in America. If people are voting that’s their car, then that’s the car we have to deliver.”
Column - Greens feed on fears … and on Typhoon Haiyan’s dead | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog
once again almost everything they say about this disaster is false or misleading.

Links

October in the USA Since 1998 | sunshine hours
According to the NOAA, October 2013 was the 37th coldest since 1895.
US Forest Fires Down 77% Since 1938 | Real Science
There were 42,538 wild fires in the US this year – the lowest total since 1984.
Warsaw talks to thrash out UN climate roadmap : Nature News & Comment
“Warsaw will bring some clarification on the structure of the new agreement,” Villagrasa says. “That’s not sexy for the media, but it’s important.”
SOI alumni attend COP19 in Poland | Students on Ice Blog
Ultimately as a seventeen year old I could not physically attend COP19. But the Policy paper that I have helped write will help influence the same politics which have changed our world, time and time again.

Links

The Coming Revelation Of The 'Global Warming' Fraud Resembles The Obamacare Lie - Forbes
The second shoe is preparing to drop to shatter the world view of so-called Progressives. Coming, global revelations will demonstrate the fraud behind the theory of man-caused, catastrophic, global warming, just like the real world has shattered the falsehoods behind Obamacare.

That is because the underlying reason for both frauds was the same: to expand government power.
Global Warming Blamed for Earlier Bird Migrations
...She says this may also explain why changes in migration pattern are not occurring among those bird species who migrate over long distances. These birds arrive so late to the breeding grounds that they do not have the opportunity to nest earlier in response to warmer temperatures.
Unreliable research: Trouble at the lab | The Economist
Scientists like to think of science as self-correcting. To an alarming degree, it is not

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Links

Facing the Facts: Climate Change Is Bad For Business | DeSmogBlog
51% of the businesses contacted for the study said that climate change, specifically heavy rains and droughts, has already had a very large impact on operations, always in a negative way.
Veteran ice expert talks climate change at OUVeteran ice expert talks climate change at OU
[Lonnie Thompson] In a very real sense, we sink or swim together on this planet
We have to be the carbon tax | SocialistWorker.org
We're at a point where every single fossil fuel development should be fought--every pipeline, every bit of infrastructure.
Two opposing views on climate change » Around the world » In the U.S. » Workers World
The only conclusion that can be had from this is that the environmental movement must become consciously and militantly anti-capitalist.