UK Guardian: ‘The last five years have not been great at Greenpeace’ – ‘Are they losing their nerve?’
Dawn was breaking when the campaigners used slingshots to fire ropes on to the rig. But as they began to scale the Prirazlomnaya, aiming to unfurl a banner denouncing Russia’s attempts to drill for oil in the Arctic, their hopes of another successful Greenpeace “action” swiftly faded. They had been anticipating high-pressure hoses that sprayed freezing seawater at intruders. They weren’t prepared for balaclava-wearing soldiers shooting at their inflatable boats.
One soldier grabbed the rope used by one of the climbers, slamming her body repeatedly against the rig. They captured two other activists. Then the Russians demanded to board the Greenpeace ship. But the Arctic Sunrise’s captain, Peter Willcox, fearing his boat would be seized, resisted.
“I said, ‘Well, go ahead – open fire. But don’t hit that silver tank back near the stern because that’s gasoline and that’s going to blow us all up.’ They must’ve been thinking, ‘Who the fuck is this idiot?’ And then I was sitting in jail thinking, ‘Who was that idiot?’ But the adrenaline gets flowing.”
Willcox’s account of his 2013 jailing, alongside 27 other Greenpeace activists and two journalists, might resemble a terrifying gangster film – except that the gangsters were in government. His memoir also documents four decades of peaceful direct action against everything from whaling off Peru to incinerator ships in the North Sea, and shows how many protests eventually trigger policy change. But it’s harder to detect positive outcomes from the jailing of the “Arctic 30”. Although Greenpeace went on to successfully oppose Shell’s drilling in the Arctic, other companies have continued, and millions of barrels of oil continue to flow from the far north. As a new political era dawns, bringing the prospect of unprecedented US-Russia collaboration over the Arctic’s exploitation, Willcox is clear that the fight against climate change is only just beginning.
“I’m not sure I’ve held on to my optimism,” says the 63-year-old American, when we meet in London between his continuing missions skippering Greenpeace ships on “actions” around the world. “I’m not stopping work. I’m not giving up. I don’t want to give Planet Earth to [Trump’s nominee for US secretary of state] Rex Tillerson. But my optimism is not very high right now. Not when you’ve seen what I’ve seen.”
Canada’s carbon-tax rebellion! ‘How is it justified for you to ask me to pay a carbon tax?’
After the audience broke out into 10 seconds of applause and shouts of support for the woman, Trudeau bobbed and weaved, riding the technicality that electricity is a local matter and that, in fact, it was the government of Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne that was responsible for Ontario’s soaring hydro bills, the product of the province’s billion-dollar carbon-fighting boondoggles.
The moment came when the Peterborough audience erupted in cheers and applause for a 54-year-old woman, Kathy Katula, who pleaded for the prime minister’s support in her battle against soaring Ontario electricity bills and the burden of living in what she described as energy poverty. “I’m asking you, Mr. Trudeau, how do you justify to a mother of four children, three grandchildren, with physical disabilities, and working up to 15 hours a day, how is it justified for you to ask me to pay a carbon tax when I only have $65 left in my paycheque every two weeks to feed my family.”
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NPR: Ice Shelf Is Cracking In Antarctica- But ‘it’s probably just simply a natural event…not directly attributable to any warming’
But this is not just another sad climate change story. It’s more complicated.
“A lot of things are going on deep inside the ice,” says Adrian Luckman, a glaciologist at Swansea University in the U.K. He’s also leading a project to track changes in the ice shelf.
Luckman says climate change is certainly influencing this region. Larsen C used to have two neighbors to the north, Larsen A and Larsen B. As the air and water warmed, those ice shelves started melting and then splintered into shards in 1995 and 2002.
But the crack in Larsen C seems to have happened on its own, for different reasons.
“This is probably not directly attributable to any warming in the region, although of course the warming won’t have helped,” says Luckman. “It’s probably just simply a natural event that’s just been waiting around to happen.”
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‘Reaction To Trump’s Team Proves Climate Alarmists Are The Real Deniers’
By Julie Kelly
Today is the Day Against Denial, where climate change activists around the country are protesting President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet picks. Activists will supposedly converge on U.S. Senate offices and demand that their senators “reject Donald Trump’s reckless climate-denying cabinet nominees” particularly secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt, and Energy secretary pick Rick Perry (if you’re not sure what a denier is, I just wrote about it here for The Hill).
Day Against Denial is being organized by 350.org, an environmental group founded by climate change lunatic Bill McKibben. He thinks we should actually declare war on climate change and fight it the same way we fought the Nazis in World War II: “It’s not that global warming is like a war. It is a war. And we are losing.” McKibben says Trump’s presidency demands fierce resistance and foresees “an onslaught of daily emergencies during the Trump years.”
Cue the Global Meltdown
Climate change alarmists are not just upset about Trump’s victory, they have completely lost their sh–. After the election, there were reports of EPA employees breaking down in tears and Energy Department staffers needing counseling.
Last month at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, climate celebrity Michael Mann urged about 26,000 scientists to “step forward and make our voices heard, not just for the sake of scientific research but for the sake of the entire planet.” The Union of Concerned Scientists penned a letter to Trump, signed by thousands of scientists, demanding more resources for scientific agencies, without which “the consequences are real….we will be less prepared to limit the impacts of increasing extreme weather and rising seas.” Those are just a few of about two zillion examples.
But the topper came last Friday from meteorologist and climate researcher Eric Holthaus, who unleashed a pathetic 15-tweet rant that sadly represents the current mindset of the climate change cult. Holthaus admitted to seeing a counselor due to his post-election “climate despair” and said he knew many people who felt the same way.
It’s hard to choose which tweet is the most petulant, but this one sticks out: “We don’t deserve this planet. There are (many) days
Bye, Bye Holdren, Hello Happer!? Trump May Pick Prominent Climate Skeptic As His Science Czar
President-elect Donald Trump met with a Princeton University physicist and skeptic of man-made global warming who observers believe could be the next White House science czar.
Trump met with Dr. Will Happer in New York City Friday. Happer didn’t take any questions entering or leaving Trump Tower last week, so it’s hard to say what the meetings were about. Trump has yet to fill key energy and science roles in his administration.
Happer served as the director of the Office of Energy Research at the Energy Department under former President George H.W. Bush. Trump could ask Happer to head the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy or even sit on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Trump has already taken heat from environmentalists for appointing “climate deniers” to his cabinet, but skeptics of man-made global warming were delighted to hear of the meeting.
Study: ‘Strong evidence that first half of 20th century had more extreme weather than the second half’
Abstract:
It is widely promulgated and believed that human-caused global warming comes with increases in both the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. A survey of official weather sites and the scientific literature provides strong evidence that the first half of the 20th century had more extreme weather than the second half, when anthropogenic global warming is claimed to have been mainly responsible for observed climate change. The disconnect between real-world historical data on the 100 years’ time scale and the current predictions provides a real conundrum when any engineer tries to make a professional assessment of the real future value of any infrastructure project which aims to mitigate or adapt to climate change. What is the appropriate basis on which to make judgements when theory and data are in such disagreement?
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Core Conundrum Revisited
Items of physical infrastructure, for example, for housing, transportation, and energy supplies, must last 50-100 years, and are therefore generally designed to last over that period. Engineers involved in such projects have to assess the value-for-money for clients. Нey will be assisted by economic and environmental assessments, both of which will have uncertainties associated with predictions of the future. Extreme events play an important role in deciding the safety margins and the point where extra protection is not worth it. Нe lack
of clarity about future extreme weather, aіer 20 years of intensive analysis of future climates is deeply worrying. Нere is nothing that
emerges from references [1,2] that would require a significant refinement of the margins that have applied over the last half-century,
the engineering of the physical infrastructure. Over-adaptation that is not needed leaves clients free to sue advisors if the problems have been oversold and the costs of protection prove to have been excessive, even on a 20-year basis.
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