AP: ‘Cow Fart Regulation Passed Into California Law’ To Fight ‘Global Warming’
SACRAMENTO (AP) — Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation that regulates emissions from dairy cows and landfills for the first time as California broadens its efforts to fight climate change beyond carbon-based greenhouse gases.
Brown’s move Monday targets a category of gases known as short-lived climate pollutants, which have an outsize effect on global warming despite their relatively short life in the atmosphere.
Environmentalists hope that tackling short-lived pollutants such as methane now would buy time to develop new and more affordable technology to reduce carbon emissions.
• ALSO READ: Gov. Brown Vetoes Ending ‘Tampon Tax,’ Sales Tax On Diapers
The legislation lays out steep reductions in a variety of pollutants, including methane. It’s tied to $90 million in funding for the dairy industry and garbage collectors.
Republicans say the regulations will hurt agricultural businesses, despite concessions made to dairy farmers.
© Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This …
US Atmospheric Scientist Sees No Link Between Hurricanes And Global Warming Over Past 30 Years
Atmospheric research scientist Dr. Philip Klotzbach at Twitter here tweeted a chart showing that accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) has not risen at all in 30 years, despite earlier massive hype and hollering by climate scientists and media, who insist “man-made” global warming is causing more frequent and intense cyclones.
In fact Klotzbach’s plot above shows that there has even been a modest decline.
So I tweeted a question to Dr. Klotzbach, and he was kind to answer as follows:
As the reader will note, Klotzbach does not see any link between cyclone activity and global warming over the past 30 years.
If we roughly plot CO2 levels vs ACE, no statistical analysis is needed to tell us that there is no correlation, except of course that rising atmospheric CO2 concentration might be causing a little bit less cyclone activity (which is the OPPOSITE of what is claimed by alarmists):
Plot of ACE since 1980 vs atmospheric CO2 concentration. ACE has dropped a bit. CO2 chart from NOAA.
Global temperatures have also risen since 1980 (many arguing it has more to do with ocean and solar cycles, and less so with CO2). Yet, here as well a temperature increase over the period has not led to a rising trend in cyclone activity.
The paper Dr. Klotzbach refers to can be seen here. He writes in the abstract:
Ten years ago, Webster et al. documented a large and significant increase in both the number as well as the percentage of category 4 and 5 hurricanes for all global basins from 1970 to 2004, and this manuscript examines whether those trends have continued when including 10 additional years of data. In contrast to that study, as shown here, the global frequency of category 4 and 5 hurricanes has shown a small, insignificant downward trend while the percentage of category 4 and 5 hurricanes has shown a small, insignificant upward trend between 1990 and 2014. Accumulated cyclone energy globally has experienced a large and significant downward trend during the same period. The primary reason for the increase in category 4 and 5 hurricanes noted in observational datasets from 1970 to 2004 by Webster et al. is concluded to be due to observational improvements at the various global tropical cyclone warning centers, primarily in the first two decades of that study.
Globally, the year 2015 saw
Washington Post Gives Full Page for Climate Activist Michael Mann to Bash ‘Deniers Club’
Michael Mann is not just a climate scientist, he’s a climate activist and one of the news media’s favorite alarmists.
So it is no surprise to see him lash out at anyone who disagrees with his views about the climate. But it crosses into rampant media bias when a national newspaper supplies him with the platform and the editorial cartoonist to lampoon his competition in the marketplace of ideas.
That is exactly what The Washington Post Outlook section did on Sept. 18, when it featured a full-page “Hotlist of climate-change deniers,” by Mann and Post cartoon artist Tom Toles. The smear campaign against eight individuals skeptical of climate alarmist was an excerpt adapted (and promoting!) Mann’s new book, The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy.
Mann was responsible for the infamous “hockey stick” graph of global warming and has repeatedly pushedmisleading statistics to promote climate alarmism, but accused his critics of spreading “deliberate misinformation.” In the wake of the Climategate emails, Mann was mocked with the phrase “hide the decline,” referring to what critics said he did to temperature data.
Mann’s Outlook piece accused all of the individuals of being part of a “campaign of deliberate misinformation” and described Rep. Joe Barton, Steve Milloy, Rupert Murdoch, Bjorn Lomborg, S. Fred Singer, Sarah Palin, the Koch brothers and Marc Morano as “some of the worst offenders.” Mann hurled attacks over “considerable largesse” from fossil fuel funding, “deniers-for-hire,” and “anti-climate science” generally without citing evidence or sources for his claims.
The attack used the terms “deny,” “denial,” “denier,” and “denialist” 10 times, to denigrate the critics he singled out. Mann failed to include any scientists whom he considers “deniers” in the list, even though there are scientists who disagree with Mann’s claims about climate change.
The list complete with mocking cartoon images for each person supplied by Toles was offensive on multiple levels, but especially because of the use of the term “deniers.” The Associated Press stylebook announced in 2015 that journalists should “avoid” the term because of “pejorative” connotation to Holocaust denialism.
The section on political scientist and economist Bjorn Lomborg took Lomborg’s words out of context.…
Media Posts McCarthy-esque Hit List of ‘Climate Change Deniers’
In a move reminiscent of a wild-eyed, 1950s Commie hunt, EcoWatch has published a list of the most dangerous heretics from climate change orthodoxy, including Donald Trump, Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX), and Marc Morano.
For the crime of questioning the science behind current global warming theories, especially regarding human causality and radical proposals of CO2 reduction, EcoWatch writer Michael Mann has branded these freethinking skeptics as “deniers”—in an intentional reference to those who repudiate the Jewish Holocaust.
Gone are the days when intelligent inquiry was lauded as a prized element of serious science. Mann accuses the skeptics of “clouding the climate change debate” with their pesky, unanswered questions and stalling action through “a campaign of deliberate misinformation.”
The EcoWatch piece reprises an earlier article in the Washington Post hawking copies of Mann’s new book, The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy by holding up climate change deniers to public scorn.
The full ten-member “basket of deplorables” includes Donald Trump, “the most prominent current climate change denier of them all,” along with physicist S. Fred Singer, Steve Milloy, Marc Morano, Congressman Joe Barton, Sarah Palin, Rupert Murdoch, David and Charles Koch, and Bjorn Lomborg.
375 Scientists Worried About Global Warming Basically Endorse Hillary For President
Hundreds of members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) signed an open letter criticizing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for calling global warming a “hoax,” and also called on “political leaders” to support an international agreement to fight warming.
The open letter, signed by 375 NAS members, is basically an endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Two of the letter’s signatories, climate scientists Kerry Emanuel and Ben Santer, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that “efforts to reduce the risk to future generations are now being imperiled by a small yet vocal group that denies the validity of the evidence and of scientific expertise in general.”
“Of special and immediate concern is the stated intent of the current Republican Party platform and presidential nominee Donald Trump to promote the extraction and use of the most carbon-intensive fossil fuels, to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement and to rescind President Obama’s executive actions designed to reduce climate risk,” they wrote.
Emanuel and Santer, writing on behalf of the 375 NAS members, are referring to a United Nations treaty agreed to at talks in Paris, France in December 2015 to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Trump has promised to “renegotiate” the Paris deal, and may even scrap it altogether as part of his plan to get “better deals” for Americans. Clinton, on the other hand, supports the Paris treaty and has promised to build upon President Barack Obama’s global warming legacy.
In that context, NAS scientists are essentially backing Clinton presidential bid.
“We are deeply concerned about the serious long-term damage to our world that would result if the climate and energy policy goals of Trump and the Republican Party were to become our national policies, reversing decades of progress on energy, climate, clean air and clean water,” Emanuel and Santer wrote.
Physicist: Proof that alternatives burn more fossil fuels
By Physicist Denis G. Rancourt, PhD
I provide a proof that alternative energy production technologies (wind, solar, ocean energy, biofuels, etc.) necessarily burn more fossil fuel, per quantum of energy generated, than the energy production technologies that directly burn fossil fuel.
(Note: Hydro-electricity is “renewable” but it is not an “alternative” energy.)
If this were not the case, or if there was a realistic potential for this not to be the case, then alternatives could be more economical on a true-coast basis and would be experiencing a consequential surge in development and implementation, without disproportionate (per energy quantum) public investment.
Whereas, the global reality looks like this:
The increases in the insignificant alternatives are tied to disproportionate government investment, incentives, and subsidies, which transfer artificially high costs to citizens and users. As soon as government commitments are reduced or terminated the sector crashes [1].
Here is the said proof.
The true (no public subsidy) cost of any “alternative” is a fair proportional measure of the fossil-fuel expenditure needed to create and maintain the said “alternative”.
This is true because a large fraction of the said true cost is to buy the mechanical (machine) work to entirely manufacture and maintain the alternative technology.
The said mechanical work is needed for every aspect of the production, from mining and transporting ore (or raw material), to making materials from the ore, to making components from the materials, to assembly of the components, to computer design (having built the computers), to feeding and clothing and housing and transporting all the workers involved… (i.e. labour costs), to installing the technology, and to maintain the technology. Operational life-time and disaster installation-replacement must also be counted, as part of “maintenance”.
Maintenance costs are significant. Here are a few provocative pictures that illustrate the point:
The required said mechanical work is energized by the available energy sources. Since 87% or so of energy used, which powers all machine activity, is fossil fuel (not to mention hydro and nuclear), therefore the said mechanical work is mostly energized by burning fossil fuel.
Since the true cost of alternative energy produced is higher than the true cost of fossil fuel energy produced, since true cost is a measure of available energy consumed in producing the energy, and since available energy is mostly (87%) from fossil fuels, it follows that alternative technologies burn more fossil fuel …
ELECTRIC CAR SALES DROP SHARPLY AFTER UK GOVERNMENT CUTS SUBSIDIES
According to Department for Transport statistics, between April and June 4,200 plug-in cars were sold – the lowest for two years.
The government announced last year that it would extend grants for electric cars for a further two years but halved the payments to £2,500. Around 17,500 cars were registered in the first three months of the year as motorists took advantage of the grants before they were cut.
The Department for Transport was criticised for its “lack of strategy” in encouraging green car sales in an environmental audit select committee report published earlier this month (September).…
Top EPA Official Admitted His Yahoo Email Was A ‘Channel’ For ‘Offline Chats’ With Environmentalists
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) former head of policy described his private email account as a “channel” for “offline chats” with left-wing environmental lobbyists, according to newly released emails.
Former EPA Policy director Michael Goo wrote to an environmental lobbyist in 2011 “if you want to have an offline chat just let me know you are using this channel,” referring to his Yahoo email account.
Goo’s admission is detailed in an updated report by the free-market Energy and Environment Legal Institute (EELI). EELI updated its February 2016 report on EPA collusion with environmentalists after the agency recently handed over a batch of new emails from Goo’s account.
CEOs can now be tried under international law at The Hague for ‘environmental crimes’
CEOs whose businesses commit environmental crimes can now be tried in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
The ICC is looking to clamp down on land grabbing, a practise that has seen multinationals take over large areas of foreign land to exploit its natural resources without benefiting the local inhabitants.
The move could reshape how business is done in developing countries says Global Witness, an NGO that has been urging the ICC to investigate the issue.
“Chasing communities off their land and trashing the environment has become an accepted way of doing business in many resource-rich yet cash-poor countries,” said Gillian Caldwell, Executive Director at Global Witness.
CEOs whose businesses are found to be complicit in razing tropical rainforests, poisoning water supplies or seizing land will face prosecution.
“The ICC announcement sends a powerful message that the terrible impacts of land grabbing and environmental destruction have been acknowledged at the highest level of criminal justice,” Ms Caldwell added.…
NEWSWEEK: ‘CLIMATE CHANGE STUDY FINDS LAST FOSSIL FUEL CAR MUST BE SOLD BY 2035 TO MEET TEMPERATURE GOALS’
Transportation is responsible for 14 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emission and a new study has found that in order to reach global warming goals—set by world leaders last year—the last fossil fuel car would have to be sold by 2035. The report, which has been backed up by three European research groups, spotlights the importance of transitioning to clean electric cars. Last December, world leaders met in Paris to discuss the climate and rising temperature. Collectively, members attending the summit set a goal: to limit rising temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above temperatures during the pre-industrial era.
“We calculate that the last gasoline/diesel car will have to be sold by roughly 2035,” the CAT report said, adding that it assumes fuel-based vehicles will be on the road until 2050. The findings of this report are significant, as most car makers do not intent to phase out gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. Toyota, for example, intends to reduce emissions by 90 percent (from 2010 levels) by 2050.
“It’s striking that it’s so early—it means a huge change in the whole automobile industry,” NewClimate Institute’s Niklas Höhne told Reuters.
Already, many experts are concerned that reaching the more ambitious goal—limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius—is near impossible. Reaching this goal would require swift action and sophisticated technology that can efficiently capture carbon.…