Trump may stay in UN Paris climate accord — with caveats
Washington (AFP) – Signs are mounting that US President Donald Trump’s administration may stay in the landmark Paris climate change accord of 2015, under pressure from big business and public support for the agreement.
But experts say the final decision, expected next month, is anything but certain, and staying at the table could come with significant caveats, like a weakening of US commitments to curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
“Given the unpredictability of decision-making by this administration, I am very reluctant to predict,” said Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.
“But there does seem to be a growing convergence around a strategy of staying in the Paris Agreement but lowering the US target.”
The latest word on the administration’s stance came from Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who said Tuesday he would not advise Trump to abandon the deal but rather renegotiate it.
That statement aligned Perry, the former governor of Texas, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who formerly headed ExxonMobil and has spoken in favor of honoring the US commitment to the Paris deal, struck in 2015 and signed by more than 190 countries.
Trump’s daughter Ivanka, and son-in-law Jared Kushner — who both serve as his advisors — are also said to be in favor of the deal.
On Wednesday, 13 major international businesses ranging from energy to pharmaceuticals to retail urged Trump to adhere to the Paris accord.…
Warmists have just lost the Antarctic peninsula: Temperature shifted from a warming trend to a cooling trend
Via: http://antigreen.blogspot.com/2017/04/warmists-have-just-lost-antarctic.html
The peninsula was the only bit of the Antarctic that suited the Warmists. They gleefully reported glacial breakups there, quite ignoring that the Antarctic as a whole was certainly not warming and was in fact tending to cool. The study below however shows that the warmer period on the peninsula was an atypical blip that has now reversed
Recent regional climate cooling on the Antarctic Peninsula and associated impacts on the cryosphere
M. Oliva et al.
Abstract
The Antarctic Peninsula (AP) is often described as a region with one of the largest warming trends on Earth since the 1950s, based on the temperature trend of 0.54 °C/decade during 1951–2011 recorded at Faraday/Vernadsky station. Accordingly, most works describing the evolution of the natural systems in the AP region cite this extreme trend as the underlying cause of their observed changes. However, a recent analysis (Turner et al., 2016) has shown that the regionally stacked temperature record for the last three decades has shifted from a warming trend of 0.32 °C/decade during 1979–1997 to a cooling trend of − 0.47 °C/decade during 1999–2014. While that study focuses on the period 1979–2014, averaging the data over the entire AP region, we here update and re-assess the spatially-distributed temperature trends and inter-decadal variability from 1950 to 2015, using data from ten stations distributed across the AP region. We show that Faraday/Vernadsky warming trend is an extreme case, circa twice those of the long-term records from other parts of the northern AP. Our results also indicate that the cooling initiated in 1998/1999 has been most significant in the N and NE of the AP and the South Shetland Islands (> 0.5 °C between the two last decades), modest in the Orkney Islands, and absent in the SW of the AP. This recent cooling has already impacted the cryosphere in the northern AP, including slow-down of glacier recession, a shift to surface mass gains of the peripheral glacier and a thinning of the active layer of permafrost in northern AP islands.
Science of The Total Environment. Volume 580, 15 February 2017, Pages 210–223
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Related Links:
Antarctica: Via: Skeptics Deliver Consensus Busting ‘State of the Climate Report’ to UN Summit
NASA Study: ‘Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise’ – ‘Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses’ – Zwally’s team calculated that the mass gain from the thickening of East …
Academics Play the ‘Global Warming’ Card: ‘Gov’t money that supports Big Science has made scientists into politicians’
Philip Kitcher of Columbia and Evelyn Fox Keller of MIT are professors specializing in the philosophy and history of science. The philosophy and history of science is pretty boring, so people in that academic field try to write about controversial subjects so as to make their work less boring. The professors have written a book: The Seasons Alter, How to Save Our Planet in Six Acts.
The book is filled with scientific errors regarding climate science. Clearly the authors have a poor understanding of the main topic. They are apparently attracted to apocalyptic predictions of disaster that call for farsighted persons, such as themselves, to warn the world. Apparently that role is so enticing that the authors’ critical facilities have been put into hibernation.
Global warming has an establishment side and a dissenter side. The establishment receives vast amounts of government money because they claim that we face an imminent global warming disaster. Nobody would care about their field of science except for the predictions of disaster. Nor would they get much government money if they didn’t predict a looming disaster. Environmental groups are part of the establishment side. Looming disasters are stock in trade for environmental groups.
Science-Denier Bill Nye: Is It Time To ‘Penalize People For Having Extra Kids?’
But we are not all guilty of doing “a lot of emitting.”
Even though they have one of the highest fertility rates in the world, the good people of Niger, according to Rieder, are totally awesome because they “are doing almost no emitting.” Yes, these amazing people emit only “0.1 metric tons of carbon annually,” while we American pigs emit “160 times” that amount.
Oddly enough, though, what Nye and Rieder fail to tell us is that Niger is a hellhole of humanity that ranked as the country with the world’s worst standard of living in 2009, a standard that has only gotten worse since. The “absolute poverty rate” in Niger was 61% and climbing in 2012.
But when his guest mentioned Niger, Nye said approvingly, “They burn some charcoal [only] now and then.”
Well, when all you own is a wooden bowl, an old blanket, and herd of bed bugs…
Anyway, things then got super-creepy….
Billy Nye: So, should we have policies that penalize people for having extra kids in the developed world?
Travis Rieder: I do think that we should at least consider it.
Bill Nye: Well, “at least consider it” is like “Do it.”
Travis Rieder: One of the things that we could do that’s kind of least policy-ish is we could encourage our culture and our norms to change, right?
Couple points…
1) HITLER!
2) Niger has an infant mortality rate of 71.2 deaths per 1000 live births — one of the highest in the world. America’s infant mortality rate, which the left-wing Washington Post called an “embarrassment,” is only 6.1 per 1000.
Life expectancy in Niger is 61 years (the same age as Tom Hanks!). Life expectancy in America is 79 years. America’s poor live like kings compared …
Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo: Are Global Warming claims & the so called Consensus, a Sinister Betrayal of Science?
By Joseph D’Aleo
Excerpt:
Sir Karl Popper, an Austrian-British philosopher and professor is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century. Popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method, in favor of empirical falsification: A theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified, meaning that it can and should be scrutinized by decisive experiments.
See in this chapter by James R. Fleming, Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Colby College, how the scientific method worked in climate change theories all through history.
That held until politicians with a globalist viewpoint were searching for a cause that would drive their globalization goals. The Club of Rome was an organization formed in 1968 consisting of current and former heads of state, UN bureaucrats, high-level politicians and government officials, diplomats, scientists, economists and business leaders from around the globe. It raised considerable public attention in 1972 with its report The Limits to Growth. The club states that its mission is “to act as a global catalyst for change through the identification and analysis of the crucial problems facing humanity and the communication of such problems to the most important public and private decision makers as well as to the general public.” In 1991, the club published The First Global Revolution in which they decided:
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming…would fit the bill…It does not matter if this common enemy is “a real one or…one invented for the purpose.”
That is when massive investment began into building a case for their cause by funding the UN, global universities, scientists and in government agencies through published work and reports ensuring an alignment around the theory that we are responsible for all bad things that happen and paint them as unprecedented. That investment has exceeded $1 trillion dollars. Meanwhile instead of engaging and supporting critical thinking and testing of hypothesis, there was concerted effort to paint anyone not supporting their theory as deniers with not so subtle attempts to liken them to holocaust deniers and those who denied the dangers of cigarettes.
Scientists practicing the scientific method were demonized, stripped where possible of their role in universities and in government agencies. Many have remained silent to keep their position. …
Update: 7 Shots Fired: ‘The FBI needs to get involved’ – Possible Ecoterror Attack at Skeptical Climatologists
April 26th, 2017 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Ecoterrorism. Eco-terrorism is defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as “the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against people or property by an environmentally oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature.” -Wikipedia
It appears that at least some people are beginning to take the shots fired into the side of our building a little more seriously.
By way of clarification, the March for Science here on Saturday did not pass right by our building, but started farther down our street. (As I’ve said before, the shots would not have been fired during the march. The expensive “boutique” FN Five-seven [5.7 mm] gun used has a loud report — everyone would have noticed.)
Also, there seems to be some disagreement whether all shots hit John Christy’s floor (4th floor of the NSSTC). UAH Chief of Staff Ray Garner has been quoted in this AL.com story that a few shots hit the third floor. I did not see those when surveying the outside; each floor has about 5 ft of window at the top, and 3 ft of siding below the window. Some of the bullets hit the siding below the window. Below the 4th floor would then be 5 feet of window on the third floor, and no third floor windows were hit that I could tell.
But it doesn’t really matter. The bullets all hit near John Christy’s office.
University of Alabama in Huntsville climate scientist Dr. John Christy looks at a bullet hole in the window of the office next to his at the university. Seven shots were fired at the building over the weekend of April 22-23, and Christy believes his floor was targeted. (Lee Roop/[email protected])
In fact, these details miss the big picture of this event. Even if: (1) the bullets had hit the other end of the building, (2) on the first floor, (3) it didn’t happen on Earth Day weekend, and (4) there was no March for Science that weekend, I would still consider 7 shots fired into our building a probable act of ecoterrorism.
I am not surprised this happened at all.
For the last 25 years our science has been viewed as standing in the way of efforts to institute a carbon tax or otherwise reduce carbon
Climate Activists Are Taking Over Your Local Weather Forecast – Propaganda now being fed into weather forecasting
Walter Williams: ‘Environmentalists Are Dead Wrong’
By Walter E. Williams
Each year, Earth Day is accompanied by predictions of doom. Let’s take a look at past predictions to determine just how much confidence we can have in today’s environmentalists’ predictions.
In 1970, when Earth Day was conceived, the late George Wald, a Nobel laureate biology professor at Harvard University, predicted, “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” Also in 1970, Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist and best-selling author of “The Population Bomb,” declared that the world’s population would soon outstrip food supplies. In an article for The Progressive, he predicted, “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” He gave this warning in 1969 to Britain’s Institute of Biology: “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” On the first Earth Day, Ehrlich warned, “In 10 years, all important animal life in the sea will be extinct.” Despite such predictions, Ehrlich has won no fewer than 16 awards, including the 1990 Crafoord Prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ highest award.
In International Wildlife (July 1975), Nigel Calder warned, “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.” In Science News (1975), C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization is reported as saying, “The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.”In 2000, climate researcher David Viner told The Independent, a British newspaper, that within “a few years,” snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event” in Britain. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.” In the following years, the U.K. saw some of its largest snowfalls and lowest temperatures since records started being kept in 1914.
In 1970, ecologist Kenneth Watt told a Swarthmore College audience: “The world has been chilling sharply for about 20 years. If present trends continue, the world will be about 4 degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990 but 11 degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
Also in
Bullets Shatter Windows Next To A Prominent Global Warming Skeptic’s Office
Shots were fired at the fourth floor of a science and technology center at the University of Alabama-Huntsville sometime over the weekend, hitting windows adjacent to climatologist John Christy’s office.
No one was hurt, and university police have characterized the event as a “random shooting,” UAH spokesman Ray Garner told WHNT News. Police found “seven spent Belgian 5.7 millimeter bullet casings along Sparkman Drive” near the National Space Science and Technology Center, WHNT reported.
“My office was not hit, but the one next door and then further north had bullet impacts on the windows,” Christy told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Appears to be a drive-by from the trajectories from the street parallel to the building,” Christy added.
Three bullets hit windows, while four hit the side of the National Space Science and Technology Center. An incident report was filed after building staff discovered shards of glass Monday morning.…
Shots Fired at Climate Skeptic’s Office During March for Science
by JAMES DELINGPOLE24 Apr 2017889
A leading skeptical scientist has reported that seven shots were fired at his workplace during the weekend’s Earth Day and March for Science events — likely as a threat and warning.
Dr Roy Spencer, meteorologist and noted climate skeptic at the University of Huntsville, Alabama, reports at his website that the shots were aimed at the office of his colleague and fellow sceptic, Dr John Christy:
A total of seven shots were fired into our National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) building here at UAH over the weekend.
All bullets hit the 4th floor, which is where John Christy’s office is (my office is in another part of the building).
Given that this was Earth Day weekend, with a March for Science passing right past our building on Saturday afternoon, I think this is more than coincidence. When some people cannot argue facts, they resort to violence to get their way. It doesn’t matter that we don’t “deny global warming”; the fact we disagree with its seriousness and the level of human involvement in warming is enough to send some radicals into a tizzy.
Our street is fairly quiet, so I doubt the shots were fired during Saturday’s march here. It was probably late night Saturday or Sunday for the shooter to have a chance of being unnoticed.
Maybe the “March For Science” should have been called the “March To Silence”.
Campus and city police say they believe the shots were fired from a passing car, based upon the angle of entry into one of the offices. Shell casings were recovered outside. The closest distance a passing car would have been is 70 yards away.
Both Spencer and Christy have long incurred the wrath of climate alarmists for the work they do debunking the junk science behind the global warming scare. What they have shown is that the “global warming” recorded by accurate satellite measurements is considerably less dramatic than that shown on the heavily adjusted earth surface temperature datasets preferred by climate alarmists.
Christy has made himself especially unpopular by testifying in Congress last month that the climate establishment is corrupt and untrustworthy and that a Red Team needs to be created to correct false “Consensus Science.”…