China won’t classify CO2 as a ‘pollutant’ in new environment law
Heavy levels of smog blanket Harbin, China. Fredrik Rubensson-Wikimedia CCA-SA-2
China’s highest legislative body rolled out a new #Environment tax targeting companies that emit a variety of air pollutants, yet they declined to list carbon dioxide. The new law comes after 20 cities were left under a blanket of smoke and fog (smog) last week. The new law taxes any company that pollutes the air and water or contributes to noise pollution.
The National People’s Congress (NPC) committee, which passed the law, will tax man-made emissions like sulfite and sulfur dioxide. Taxes start at $0.20 per unit and $0.17 per unit respectively. For noise pollution, the new law can tax a manufacturer from $50 to $1,612. CO2, however, gets a free pass.
Smog chokes China cities for fourth day of ‘airpocalypse’, grounding flights and closing roads http://ab.co/2i9VqNi
Despite China’s ratifying and signing the Paris Climate Agreement, which calls for a reduction in CO2 emissions to slow #Climate Change, the NPC has chosen to exclude CO2 from its list of known pollutants. For CO2 to be considered harmful, it would need to be at levels 125 times higher than today’s levels. China relies heavily on coal to produce electricity for much of its population.
China Ramps Up Coal Power Capacity As UN Climate Talks Kick Off http://trib.al/LDZOzYf
In the U.S., CO2 was classified a pollutant by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under its former head Lisa Jackson. Once classified as an environmental hazard, the current EPA head Gina McCarthy could roll out regulations under the Clean Power Plan. All that could change with the nomination of Scott Pruitt to head the EPA.
Is CO2 a pollutant?
Though many scientists dispute CO2 is a pollutant, others consider it a major contributor to any increase in world temperatures; it is a colorless, odorless gas and is chemically non-reactive. At 400 parts
2016 Highlights: Tsunami Of Skeptic Papers & Desperate Attempts To Silence Climate Dissenters
2016 is coming to a close, and I’d like to wish all readers here a very Merry Christmas and all the best for the coming new year.
What follows are some of the main highlights at NTZ in 2016. Overall visitor traffic increased a good 30% since the start of the year. Much of this is due to the hard work of Kenneth Richard who joined as a guest author some months ago.
Kenneth writes every Monday and Thursday. His reviews of the latest scientific literature have gotten great attention. Thanks Kenneth!
2016 Highlights
January: stable Antarctic, GISS’s shady role
Back in January I reported how Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt wrote about how NASA GISS director Gavin Schmidt had “squandered much credibility” and played “a shady role with the temperature data.” The two German experts went on to say that Schmidt’s “dubious data alterations with the GISS datasets will likely become interesting material for science historians.”
Also we reported how Lüning wrote of 5 very recent papers showing that Antarctic ice is much more stable than originally believed.
February: 250 papers disputing climate alarmism
In February Kenneth Richard made his debut at NTZ, providing a list of over 250 peer-reviewed scientific papers from 2015 casting doubt on climate science! The entire list is here.
Also it was underscored what a folly Germany offshore wind energy truly is. A study we reported on shows that the maintenance costs are 100 times more than the cost of the turbine itself. Little wonder Germans are now forced to pay among the highest electricity rates in the world. Technical problems have plagued the German offshore wind industry, read more here.
March: Glacier retreat, sea level rise slow down
In March we presented new papers showing that glacier retreat and sea level rise are slowing down rapidly. Also read here and here. Claims of rapid sea level rise lost credibility as recent studies indicate only 0.8 – 1.6 mm/year sea level rise.
Moreover, Kenneth Richard published a story here on 500 peer-reviewed papers disputing alarmist claims surrounding climate from the year 2014 and 2015. Looks like the IPCC has got a lot of updating to do.
April: Embryonic, untrustworthy models
We’ve known a long time that climate models are woefully inadequate for making reliable long-term projections, and this
Enviros wage war on Christmas lights
They worry that both the manufacturing processes of the lights and the electricity needed to power them will generate lots of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. They worry that the lights are manufactured in China and thus the amount of CO2 emissions generated during their construction is effectively unknowable.
The average house with Christmas lights uses a fair amount of electricity– equal to about 22.8 days of 
the average household’s electricity consumption. Green groups claim that an “extravagant light display” can generate 881 pounds of CO2 throughout the holiday season. This is roughly equal to the CO2 emissions of a single car driving 958 miles, according to the Environmental Protection Agency
Media hyped ‘Heatwaves’ in Arctic have been occurring since 1930s
Heatwaves in the Arctic have been occurring for as long as people have been visiting there.
Actress Sunburned In Heat Wave At North Pole
The Phoenix – Google News Archive Search
Ice at the pole is currently two meters thick, the same as it was in 1940.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icethickness/thk.uk.php
In 1940, the ice at the pole was also two meters thick.
The fake news press has been pulling this same Arctic scam for as long as anyone can remember. Arctic conditions are the same as they were 60 years ago, and they have been predicting an ice-free Arctic for as long as anyone can remember.
The Changing Face of the Arctic; The Changing Face of the Arctic – The New York Times
Actress Sunburned In Heat Wave At North Pole
The Phoenix – Google News Archive Search
Ice at the pole is currently two meters thick, the same as it was in 1940.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icethickness/thk.uk.php
In 1940, the ice at the pole was also two meters thick.
The fake news press has been pulling this same Arctic scam for as long as anyone can remember. Arctic conditions are the same as they were 60 years ago, and they have been predicting an ice-free Arctic for as long as anyone can remember.
The Changing Face of the Arctic; The Changing Face of the Arctic – The New York Times…
Media Arctic warmth fizzle: Despite predictions, Temps never got higher than minus 10C – ‘If You’re Going To Arctic, Don’t Bother Packing That Bikini’
Temperatures at the North Pole could reach freezing point, claimed the BBC on Saturday.
In reality temperatures never got higher than about minus 10C. While this was still less cold than usual, it was due to an incursion of milder air from the Atlantic across a very narrow front.
Most of the Arctic was around average at between minus 30C and 40C.
http://old.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/fsavnnh.html
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/weather/arcticweather.uk.php
Tone Heller does his usual thorough job debunking the scare stories, and explaining that it is simply a weather event which has regularly happened before.
Worth a read here.…
Warmist Ben Santer to Trump: “Don’t listen to the ‘ignorant voices’ on climate change”
…Trump Puts Global Warming ‘Action’ on Ice
by MICHAEL BARONE December 27, 2016 12:00 AM @MICHAELBARONE Unlock Free Digital Access
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443345/donald-trump-climate-change-entitlement-reform-action-torpedoed
He’s on particularly strong ground on climate change. Global-warming alarmists proclaim that their dire scenarios are certain to occur, and they would be clearly right if the only thing affecting temperatures were carbon dioxide emissions. But many other things (e.g., the sun) affect climate as well, and the interactions among them and their differing effects are not fully understood, as the failure of climate scientists’ models to explain past observations shows. Liberal elites tell us that “the science is settled” and that people must have faith in their predictions. But science is never settled. Scientists produce theories and test them against observations. When Albert Einstein announced his relativity theory in 1905, he didn’t ask people to have faith. He claimed that his theory would do a better job than Isaac Newton’s of predicting observations in a solar eclipse in 1919. It is religion, not science, that demands that people have faith in things that otherwise seem unlikely, brands those who do not as “heretics” and “deniers,” requires participation in repeated rituals (recycling, anyone?), and permits sinners to purchase indulgences (carbon offsets for Al Gore’s private jet). The sensible thing to do about possible climate change is to learn more, to fund research (and not just by believers in the alarmist faith), to think seriously about how to mitigate possible bad effects — and to take advantage of possible good ones. (I grew up in Michigan, where I would have been happy to experience a little warming.) In the meantime, we are not going to be bound by the Paris climate agreement and we are not going to phase out fossil fuels. We may even stop harassing “heretics” and “deniers,” at least for the next four years. We are not going to be bound by the Paris climate agreement and we are not going to phase out fossil fuels. Conservative elites’ concern about entitlements is based on solider numbers than liberal elites’ concern about climate. We know just about how many Americans will turn 67 in 2082 (they were born last year), and we can make reasonably good estimates of how many immigrants will. We also have a pretty good idea of how much Social Security beneficiaries will be entitled to then — though we have a somewhat less firm idea of how many …