German Geologist Thinks Policymakers Need To Take Geology 101 Before Entering Climate Discussion
…GOP Lawmaker Tricks Obama’s Climate Adviser With Arctic Melting Article From 1922
California Republican Rep. Tom McClintock opened a congressional hearing by reading a Washington Post article detailing the “unheard of” impacts global warming had on the Arctic ecosystem.
“The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and some place the seals are finding the water too hot,” McClintock read in a Wednesday hearing, adding that reports “all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard of temperatures in the Arctic zone.”
McClintock went on, then asked President Barack Obama’s top climate adviser Christy Goldfuss if “this the crisis you’re referring to?” — referring to a new guidance her Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) staff issued on accounting for global warming impacts of federal agency actions.
“It is a crisis we’re trying to address,” Goldfuss said, totally unsuspecting of what was about to happen. “I’m not familiar with that specific report…” Goldfuss added.
“Perhaps the reason is because it was November 2, 1922 that The Washington Post carried this article,” McClintock said.
It turns out McClintock was reading a Washington Post article from November 1922, not November 2015 as many listening, including Goldfuss, likely assumed.
In 1922, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported “so little ice as has ever been noted” in the Arctic. A Norwegian captain told NOAA the Arctic “of that region is not recognizable as the same region of 1868 to 1917.”
“Many old landmarks are so changed as to be unrecognizable,” NOAA reported. “At many points where glaciers formerly extended far into the sea they have entirely disappeared.”
…
Here’s what he said:
…McClintock: “I think we can agree that global warming has been going on for a long time. It’s been going on and off since the last ice age.”
“In fact, I attended the president’s address at Yosemite this last year. I was struck by his noting that the glaciers in Yosemite
As Americans Tire of Eco-Panic, Hillary Quietly Drops ‘Climate Change’ Rhetoric
A Yale University study released in July revealed that only 17 percent of American voters describe themselves as “alarmed” about climate change, or would rank it as a top tier election issue. Republican candidate Donald Trump has successfully positioned himself as a climate-change skeptic, and Hillary seems to have registered how little the issue resonates with voters.
Climate Home, a UK-based environmental advocacy group associated with the left-wingGuardian newspaper, searched for the words “climate change” in all speech transcripts published on the Clinton campaign website between January 2016 and early September and found that she had all but abandoned reference to climate change since July.
A broader search for the word “environment” confirmed the trend to back away from climate issues, with Clinton mentioning the word in just four of her 78 official speeches in 2016.
FAILED TIPPING POINTS: HISTORY KEEPS PROVING PROPHETS OF ECO-APOCALYPSE WRONG
The ability to make accurate predictions is a hallmark of good science. Predictions by environmental doom-mongers have proven to be wrong time and time again. No wonder most people no longer believe them.
If we do not reverse global warming by the year 2000, “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels”, warned Noel Brown, a director of the United Nations Environment Programme, in 1989.
It is common cause that sea levels have been rising ever since the start of the Holocene at the end of the last Ice Age, about 11,700 years ago. Throughout the 20th century, tide gauge data has shown this rise to be fairly steady at about 1.5mm/year, and largely unaffected by changes in temperature or atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Since 1993, satellite altimetry has determined a fairly constant sea level rise of just over 3mm/year. However, it is far from clear whether this represents an acceleration or an artefact of how sea level is measured with respect to surrounding land.
A 2016 paper by Australian scientists Albert Parker and Cliff Ollier suggests that the altimetry record suffers from errors larger than its trends, and “returns a noisy signal so that a +3.2 mm/year trend is only achieved by arbitrary ‘corrections’”.
“We conclude that if the sea levels are only oscillating about constant trends everywhere as suggested by the tide gauges, then the effects of climate change are negligible,” they write, “and the local patterns may be used for local coastal planning without any need of purely speculative global trends based on emission scenarios. Ocean and coastal management should acknowledge all these facts. As the relative rates of rises are stable worldwide, coastal protection should be introduced only where the rate of rise of sea levels as determined from historical data show a tangible short term threat. As the first signs the sea levels will rise catastrophically within a few years are nowhere to be seen, people should start really thinking about the warnings not to demolish everything for a case nobody knows will indeed happen.”
Clearly, history proved Noel Brown wrong.
In 2002, George Monbiot urged the rich to give up meat, fish and dairy, writing: “Within as little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world’s animals or …
China Funds And Builds Europe’s New Coal Power Plants
From GWPF:
The Balkan region’s first privately-funded power plant came online on Tuesday, increasing the region’s dependency on coal-fired power stations even as environmental concerns are driving them to the brink of the extinction elsewhere in Europe. It was built by China’s Dongfang Electric Corp and financed with the help of a 350 million euro ($391.13 million) loan from the China Development Bank.
Coal-fired power plant Stanari
Planned coal power plants in south-eastern Europe; source Bankwatch
The 300-megawatt plant, in the northern Bosnian town of Stanari, is a foreign investment in a chronically impoverished country that remains heavily dependent on foreign aid more than 20 years after it emerged from war.
Even though the Western Balkans has a power deficit, European investors are reluctant to finance more polluting coal which forms the backbone of supply in the region, attracting Chinese financiers and contractors.
Work on the investment, by Serbian-run but British-based Energy Financing Team (EFT), started in 2013. It was built by China’s Dongfang Electric Corp and financed with the help of a 350 million euro ($391.13 million) loan from the China Development Bank.
EFT, which focuses on power markets in central and southeast Europe, won a 30-year concession in 2008 to build the Stanari plant and expand an adjacent coal mine that will feed it at a total cost of 560 million euros ($625.63 million).
Lignite – the most polluting type of coal – is widely available in the Balkans, making it appealing to governments seeking ways of ensuring security of supply and keeping energy prices low while also placating influential mining lobbies.
The new plant, which will generate 2,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, creating 1,000 jobs, will strengthen Bosnia’s position as a leading energy exporter to the region.
It generates more than 40 percent of its electricity from hydroelectric power, making it, along with Bulgaria and Romania, one of the few Balkan countries with a domestic power surplus.
Environmentalists fear that the region’s cash-strapped governments will be tempted to cut corners in this and other projects, exposing them to costly upgrade costs once they join the European Union.
Some 2,800 megawatts of extra coal-fired capacity is planned across the region in coming years at a total cost of 4.5 billion euros, most of it financed by China.
Meanwhile:
SARAJEVO (Bosnia and Herzegovina), September 20 (SeeNews) – Bosnian state-controlled coal miner Banovici [SAJ:RMUBR] plans to sign …