Washington’s War Against Your Air Conditioner
By TERENCE JEFFREY
Between now and when they face their final judgment, Barack Obama and John Kerry will never be forced to endure extreme heat — because they will always be able to afford air conditioning.
If they follow the standard pattern, they are sure to get richer when they leave public office because they served in public office.
In a corollary pattern, people grow wealthy in and around Washington, D.C., by taking — directly or indirectly — the tax money other Americans must send to Washington, D.C.
That is why the latest Census Bureau data for median household incomes by county shows that five of the nation’s eight richest counties are suburbs of Washington.
It gets hot in those suburbs in summer time, but the bureaucrats and politicians and contractors who live there have air conditioning in their homes — even if they work for the Environmental Protection Agency.
But if Obama and Kerry have their way, you may not have it in yours someday.
Twenty-eight years ago, the Senate ratified and President Reagan signed a treaty called the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. This treaty was designed to stop the use of chlorofluorocarbons, a coolant used in air conditioners and refrigerators that depleted the ozone layer.
The treaty worked. CFCs were replaced with hydrofluorocarbons, which do not deplete the ozone layer.
But then, as John Kerry explained in a speech in New York last month, the Obama administration targeted HFCs.
Kerry conceded that since ratification of the Montreal Protocol “nearly 100 of the most ozone-depleting substances have been completely phased out. As a result, the hole in the ozone layer is shrinking and on its way to full repair.”
“The bad news is that the substances banned by the Montreal Protocol have been replaced by substances that cause a different kind of danger,” Kerry said. “HFCs may be safer for the ozone, but they are exceptionally potent drivers of climate change itself, often thousands of times more potent than, for example, carbon dioxide.”
On Saturday, in Rwanda, the Obama administration and the other governments that are party to the Montreal Protocol agreed to an “amendment” to the protocol that, as a White House “fact sheet” puts it, is designed “to cut the production and consumption of HFCs by more than 80 percent over the next 30 years.”
So, the Obama administration and its global …
Toronto Star Editorial: ‘UN should not bar skeptics from climate conference’ – ‘A troubling precedent’ – ‘UN should change its mind’
The decision to bar The Rebel Media from attending a United Nations climate conference next month is seriously out of line.
But the decision to bar the outlet from attending a United Nations climate conference next month is seriously out of line. You don’t have to agree with anything The Rebel says to be concerned about UN officials discriminating against media organizations on the basis of their political leanings.
That’s what appears to be happening here. The Rebel applied to have a three-person team accredited to cover a major climate meeting called COP22 to be held in Marrakech, Morocco. It was rejected on the grounds that “advocacy media outlets do not qualify for accreditation,” and there’s a strong suspicion that The Rebel’s skeptical views on climate change have a lot to do with the decision.
On the face of it, this makes little sense. Most media organizations practice some form of advocacy journalism, and their views on the issues shouldn’t disqualify them from attending.
PEN Canada, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression and the Canadian Association of Journalists have all spoken out against this ill-judged UN decision. They’re right. Excluding The Rebel sets a troubling precedent and the UN should change its mind.…
Species may be listed as threatened based on climate change projections, court says
…NYT: Global Warming Will Cause ‘Surge’ In Forced Child Marriages
By Michael Bastasch
The New York Times published an article by the Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF) Tuesday claiming global warming could cause more child marriages and sexual abuse in third world cities.
Brishti Rafiq’s father brought her to live in Dhaka, Bangladesh when she was a little girl after floods washed away her river-front home. It wasn’t long before her father forced her into an arranged marriage.
Bristhi opposed the marriage, and it eventually fell through after it was discovered her husband-to-be already had a wife. But TRF reported it was just one case of a big problem in Dhaka, and one that could be made worse by global warming.
Experts “fear that growing migration to already overcrowded Dhaka, as climate change pressures exacerbate poverty, could result in a new surge in child marriages,” TRF reported in NYT.
“Early marriage not only deprives girls of education and opportunities but increases their risk of death or severe childbirth injuries if they have babies before their bodies are ready,” TRF reported.
“The flood of rural families moving to Dhaka’s slums is growing as people lose their homes, farms and jobs to riverbank erosion and climate change pressures, such as worsening floods and droughts and more intense storms,” TRF added.
TFR noted that child marriages have decreased in recent years, from 29 percent of girls married by age 15 to just 18 percent. That’s despite Bangladesh banning marriage before the age of 18.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/25/nyt-global-warming-will-cause-more-forced-child-marriages/#ixzz4O7Ug5Yin…
Dem VP Nominee Kaine Compares Fighting Global Warming to a Twelve-Step Program
While speaking at Florida International University, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine compared fighting global warming to participating in a twelve-step program and accused Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and vice presidential candidate Mike Pence of “turning their back on science.”
Kaine began his remarks on climate change by saying climate change “affects your ability to sell your house, affects your ability to own a business, affects your neighborhoods”:
In Florida and Virginia, we’re worried about climate change. In south Florida, you see the affects of sea level rise. And we see the same thing in Virginia Beach and Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia. The sea levels rising affects your ability to sell your house, affects your ability to own a business, affects your neighborhoods, affects the main road into the largest naval base in the world, in Norfolk, Virginia. Just normal tidal action and when storms come, it’s even worse. And you see that here in south Miami.
In his remarks, Kaine compared defeating climate change to a twelve-step program. According to Kaine, unless you admit climate change is a problem, you are not going to break the cycle and defeat it:
Look, I don’t know how much you know about twelve-step programs. Twelve-step programs are when you’re trying to lick a problem. Step one: admit that you have a problem. If you can’t get to step one, you’re not going to get to step twelve. You aren’t even going to get to step two. You gotta admit you have a problem. And we’ve got a problem with climate change.
Kaine then applauded Obama’s climate change effort and asserted a Clinton administration would move in the same direction:
…The good news is this. President Obama worked in a leadership way to get 197 nations in Paris to all agree, these are the steps we’re going to take in our own country to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to try to slow down the pace of climate change. President Obama should get a lot of credit for that. It’s hard to get Congress to do a Mother’s Day resolution. To get 197 nations to do that?
And Hillary and I are going to carry that forward and invest in clean no and low carbon energy so that we can move down the path and help save our planet and create jobs at the same time. But Donald Trump and Mike Pence…
EPA Chief: ‘People Have to Start Living a Life That’s Commensurate with Reductions in Greenhouse Gases’
(CNSNews.com) -“People have to start living a life that’s commensurate with reductions in greenhouse gases,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said while discussing the recent global deal to limit the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) used in air-conditioning and refrigeration.
During a social media discussion with Mashable last week, McCarthy said that fighting climate change will “not have to be just what government does, but it has to be what people do.”
“People have to start living a life that’s commensurate with reductions in greenhouse gases to the extent they can,” McCarthy said. “But also, as you said- demand government to be responsive to this.”
“But I would waste no time with climate deniers, if they haven’t figured it out by now, what in God’s name can anyone say to them to make them figure it out,” McCarthy continued. “The science is overwhelming. I don’t check out Flat Earth Society, and I’m not talking to climate deniers – that’s it.”
In the past, the president of the Flat Earth Society has spoken out in support of the theory of climate change.
According to recent survey by the Pew Research Center, nearly three-quarters of Americans don’t trust that there is a large “scientific consensus” amongst climate scientists on human behavior being the cause of climate change.
Earlier this month the US signed on to a global deal that caps and reduces the use of HFCs. The White House claims the deal will “could avoid up to 0.5 degrees C of warming by the end of the century” by cutting production and consumption of HFCs “by more than 80 percent over the next 30 years.”
NASA’s Lead Climate Scientists: Sky literally is falling because of ‘Climate Change’
…GOP Senator On Climate Change: ‘Mankind Has Actually Flourished In Warmer Temperatures’
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Monday said he doesn’t think people should worry about finding solutions to climate change ― because historically, “civilization thrives” in warmer temperatures.
“Climate has already changed, always will. I’m just not an alarmist. We will adapt,” Johnson told Wisconsin radio station WHBY. “How many people are moving up toward the Antarctica, or the Arctic? Most people move down to Texas or Florida, where it’s a little bit warmer.”
…
Johnson made a similarly dubious argument in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Friday, when asked about his claim that sunspots cause climate change.
“I’ve never denied climate change. It has always changed, always will,” he said. “The sun has the primary effect on weather and climate on planet Earth, so I’m just not a climate change alarmist.”
“Mankind has actually flourished in warmer temperatures,” he continued. “I just think the question always is what is the cost versus the benefit of anything we do to try and clean up our environment … I’m highly concerned about the climate alarmists that are going to spend a lot of money and have no impact whatsoever on the climate but have a great deal of harm on our economy.”
Johnson also claimed that “the jury’s out” on climate change, even though virtually the entire scientific community is in agreement about the cause, the nature and the seriousness of the problem. In fact, many groups of scientists have said their models actually underestimate the magnitude and impact of climate change.
“The jury’s out,” Johnson said. “The models have not been predictive. They were predicting much higher temperatures, and that hasn’t panned out yet.”
When pressed, he admitted that he is a climate change skeptic, but added that “it’s not the right question.”…