Daily Archives: September 13, 2011

From the ‘I wonder if anyone actually gives a fig’ files

Posted on September 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

Last ditch Goreathon: Scare, smear and slur

No one from the big scare campaign is even pretending that this is about the science anymore. It’s just tribal name-calling, voo-doo dolls and poo jokes from preschool. (Jo Nova)

Al Gore: ‘The message still has to be about the reality we’re facing’
Brad Plumer

The years since Al Gore released “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006 have not been kind to climate hawks. Cap-and-trade died in the Senate, skeptics have renewed their attacks on climate science, and the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, Rick Perry, denies that there’s even a problem. So what has the former vice-president decided to do about it? Double down his efforts and unveil yet another high-profile presentation on the threat posed by rising temperatures, in the hopes of converting climate skeptics. (WaPo)

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Posted in Activists, Climate change, Dioxycarbophobia, Green scams, Propaganda

European oceans suffer simulated harm

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Europe’s oceans changing at unprecedented rate: report

Europe’s seas are changing at an unprecedented rate as ice sheets melt, temperatures rise and marine life migrates due to climate change, a report by the Climate Change and European Marine Ecosystem Research (CLAMER) project warned.

Scientists examined a mass of EU-funded research on the impacts of climate change on Europe’s marine environment and identified the gaps and priorities for future work.

…

“Scenario simulations suggest that by the end of the 21st century, the temperature of the Baltic Sea may have increased by 2 to 4 degrees centigrade, the North Sea by 1.7 degrees, and the Bay of Biscay by 1.5 to 5 degrees,” the report said. (Reuters)

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Posted in PlayStation® climatology

Quick! Panic about something there is no evidence you are experiencing

Posted on September 13, 2011 | 1 Comment

Climate change to leave Pacific hungry

PACIFIC people will grow increasingly hungry and malnourished if the threat of climate change is not swiftly dealt with, a report warns.

The Asian Development Bank has issued an urgent call to rethink strategies dealing with rising temperatures, droughts, floods, higher tides and soil erosion linked to global warming.

The paper warns that agricultural productivity in the Pacific has stagnated over the last 45 years, increasing islanders’ dependence on imported food. (AAP)

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Posted in Climate change, Development, Propaganda

Despite Obama Administration Shale Oil & Gas Fever Is Sweeping The US

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Shale Oil & Gas Fever Is Sweeping The US

This bonanza of shale energy may be one of the few things keeping the US economy from going under — and it is accomplishing all that despite the fact that Obama’s DOI and EPA would like to shut the whole enterprise down. Someday a psychiatrist will write a monograph on the Suicidal Energy Anorexia of the US Obama Administration.
Al Fine Energy, 12 September 2011 (via GWPF)

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Posted in Energy, Fracking, Regulation

Heat from incandescents not necessarily ‘waste’

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FP Letters to the Editor: Compact bulbs feel the (lack of) heat

Re: “Chu’s choice,” Peter Foster, Aug. 24

As an engineer, I like to think about the grey areas in life. While incandescent light bulbs are only about 20% efficient at converting electricity into light, they are a good source of heat (being a co-generation plant), as can be determined by trying to change a “hot” bulb.

The energy that is being dissipated from a normal light bulb helps heat your house for most of the year (especially if you live north of the U.S. border).

By converting to compact fluorescent (CF) light bulbs, which are about 60% efficient at converting electricity into light you are losing the amount of heat that a normal light bulb generates and hence, in cold months, you have to turn up your furnace to replace the heat that is now lost from the incandescent light bulbs.

…

I read, enjoyed and totally support Mr. Foster’s views on banning incandescent light bulbs. But I would like to ask Mr. Foster, did the National Research Council consider in its calculation of the CO2 reduction and the cost savings to Canadians from CFLs, the following: Ninety per cent of the energy consumed by incandescents is released as heat. Given our climate and seasonal swings in hours of sunlight, most Canadian use of artificial light occurs during our home-heating season. In Canada, about 75% of electricity comes from renewables; most heat from fossil fuels or wood. Incandescents, therefore, don’t add much to CO2 emissions when turned on, but substantially reduce our need to generate CO2 to heat our homes here in the “Great White North”. (Financial Post)

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Posted in Energy, Regulation

Pointless, unsustainable ‘green industries’ begin inevitable train wreck

Posted on September 13, 2011 | 1 Comment

Congressional Investigator: More Solar Bankruptcies to Come
Lachlan Markay

A top congressional investigator said on Tuesday that he believes more companies that benefitted from the stimulus bill’s renewable energy loan guarantee program will go bankrupt before all allotted funds are spent. (The Foundry)

Merkel’s Solyndra – Germany’s Green Industries Start Their Collapse
Continue reading →

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Posted in Biofuel, Corporate welfare, Ethanol, Green scams, Solar, Wind

Henry Payne: Ford’s Green Pose

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Ford’s Green Pose
September 13, 2011 1:00 P.M.
By Henry Payne

Under its environmentalist chairman, Bill Ford, Ford Motor Company has preened green, touting its “Ecoboost” engines and hiring Hollywood greenie Ed “Ford Gets it” Begley Jr. as its 2011 Detroit Auto Show spokesman to tout its commitment to a zero-emission electric world.

So this month, Ford began spreading its gospel to the world with construction on a new $1 billion electric manufacturing plant in India, right? Wrong. The new facility will produce 270,000 internal combustion engines a year as Ford targets a goal of 50 percent global growth by the middle of this decade to 8 million vehicles a year.

That’s a lotta ICE engines. So much for Ford’s other goal of decreasing global emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

Clearly, Ford separates the green church from the state of its bottom line. (Planet Gore)

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Posted in Dioxycarbophobia, Energy, Propaganda, Transport

Seriously dumb ‘green’ plan

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Biomass schemes will boost destructive timber imports, claims wood industry
Wood companies and green campaigners say subsidies to power companies threaten both jobs and rainforests
Terry Macalister

Big wood companies are trying to halt Drax, RWE and others pressing ahead with a raft of lower-carbon energy schemes which would see large power stations switch from burning coal to timber.

The wood industry fears thousands of jobs in its factories will be threatened by the “green” power plans and wants government to remove the subsidies facilitating them.

Wildlife and environmental groups are also alarmed that the new biomass schemes could trigger a huge escalation in wood imports and threaten rainforests.

The Wood Panel Industries Association said: “We have already seen a 50% increase in wood prices over the last three years because of these kinds of energy developments and we do not think they should be receiving subsidies for schemes which we believe are not carbon-friendly and which will require a huge amount of imported wood to support a tenfold increase in planned capacity.” (Guardian)

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Posted in Biomass, Corporate welfare, Energy

CO2 Science Volume 14 Number 37: 14 September 2011

Posted on September 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

Editorial
Non-CO2-Induced Acidification of Near-Shore Ocean Waters: What are the local causes?… what are the local fixes? … and what are the local consequences?

Journal Reviews
Global Tropical Cyclone Activity: How has it varied over the past four decades?

Tropical Storms of the North Atlantic Ocean: Do we know how their numbers will vary as mankind’s greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise?

Drought in China Since 1950: How has it varied? … and what does it suggest about the future?

Historical Increases in the Water Use Efficiency of Ponderosa Pines: What phenomenon has been responsible for them?

The World’s Seagrass Species: On the Road to Potential Extinction?: What’s their status? … and what’s driving their disappearing act?

Ocean Acidification Database
The latest addition of peer-reviewed data archived to our database of marine organism responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment is Northern Shrimp [Pandalus borealis]. To access the entire database, click here.

Plant Growth Database
Our latest results of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature are: Dallas Grass (Manea et al., 2011) and Weeping Lovegrass (Manea et al., 2011).

Medieval Warm Period Project
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 1004 individual scientists from 574 research institutions in 43 different countries … and counting! This issue’s Medieval Warm Period Record comes from Cueva del Cobra, Cantabrian Range, Northern Spain. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project’s database, click here.

World Temperatures Database
Back by popular demand and upgraded to allow patrons more choices to plot and view the data, we reintroduce the World Temperatures section of our website. Here, users may plot temperatures for the entire globe or regions of the globe. A newly added feature allows patrons the ability to plot up to six independent datasets on the same graph. Try it today. World Temperatures Database.

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Posted in Climate, Research

Can we stop this stupid “green jobs” welfare now?

Posted on September 13, 2011 | 1 Comment

‘Green Jobs’ Welfare Queens Defend Their Indefensibleness
CHRIS HORNER

The Global Warming Policy Foundation update today focuses on the same point a friend of mine in the industry who also writes on energy issues called to relate a few days ago, post-Solyndra: the whole ‘green jobs’ thing, this renewables industry, “has a fuse on it”. And not in a good way. (American Spectator)

Promises of green jobs withering on vine
Subsidies fail to help sector take root
Ben Wolfgang

The green-jobs revolution may be going up in smoke.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Green jobs, Green scams

GOP argues bill would block ‘radical’ EPA student programs

Posted on September 13, 2011 | 1 Comment

GOP argues bill would block ‘radical’ EPA student programs
Ben Geman

A conservative House Republican wants to block Environmental Protection Agency student internship and fellowship programs that he alleges are catering only to students that share the Obama administration’s “radical” priorities.

Freshman Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) floated legislation Friday – the “EPA Student Nondiscrimination Act” – that would prevent funding for the Environmental Justice eco-Ambassador Program and greenhouse gas programs.

The eco-Ambassador program recruits minority graduate students for 10-week, $6,000 internships at EPA sites to work with community-based groups on environmental justice.

Pompeo’s office, in announcing the bill, said the EPA program’s application guidelines show that it seeks to “recruit and hire, at taxpayer expense, only those college students who are ideologically in line with the Obama Administration’s radical environmental policies.” (E2 Wire)

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Posted in Activists, Enviros, EPA, Green scams

Colin McInnes: The long road to green serfdom

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The long road to green serfdom
Germany’s decision to ditch nuclear power should be a wake-up call to all those who favour development.
Colin McInnes

German chancellor Angela Merkel is no slouch. The holder of a PhD in quantum chemistry, she understands better than most the technical intricacies of nuclear energy. It is therefore all the more surprising that such a savvy, technocrat politician has been manoeuvred into legislating a national prohibition on nuclear energy.

Let’s be clear about the magnitude of Merkel’s decision. To deliberately abandon the single largest source of cost-effective, reliable and clean energy in Europe’s largest economy is nothing short of jaw-dropping. As recently as 2008, Merkel declared that the then proposed gradual phase-out of nuclear energy was ‘absolutely wrong’. So just how did she get boxed into a corner and make such an economically and environmentally regressive decision?

The answer is not, of course, a Damascene conversion to renewable energy, but modern political dynamics that can allow minority parties to have a disproportionate influence on key national policies. Merkel well knows that nuclear energy is the lowest-cost means of generating reliable, clean energy, but she also understands that her party needs green votes to stay in power. Her capitulation on nuclear energy is a dangerous step along the road to green serfdom. (spiked)

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Posted in Activists, Development, Energy, Enviros, Nuclear

Actually we need to “unenvironmentalize” everywhere and always

Posted on September 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

Rio+20 must ‘unenvironmentalise’ green issues, says G77 negotiator
Focus should shift to economics to make notion of sustainability more widely accepted, says senior organiser for Brazil
Jonathan Watts

Next year’s Rio+20 United Nations summit must “un-environmentalise” the world’s approach to sustainability so that it can reach out beyond the converted, according to a senior organiser in the host nation. (Guardian)

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Posted in Activists, Agenda 21, Development, Enviros, Green scams, Misanthropy, Propaganda

Frank Fleming: Okay, so let’s try real science

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Okay, so let’s try real science
By FRANK FLEMING

People have alleged that Rick Perry and others like him are anti-science. That’s horrible. Science is extremely important. It’s given us microwaves, dinosaurs and the “Mr. Wizard Show.” And medicines. Except for the homeopathic ones.

It’s critical that we all accept science’s conclusions. For instance, if we don’t agree on the age of the Earth, how will we know what to do when the Earth tries to buy liquor? And without knowledge of evolution, when a species goes extinct, how do we know who to notify as its next of kin?

But despite the obvious importance of science, one group of people does everything in pure defiance of scientific methods: politicians. (NY Post)

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Posted in Humor

Wishing Greenpeace an unhappy birthday

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Wishing Greenpeace an unhappy birthday
For 40 years, big green NGOs have helped to denigrate democracy and stand in the way of progress.
Ben Pile

The growth of environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) over the past 50 years has been extraordinary. Starting from humble beginnings and means, organisations like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, which are both celebrating their fortieth anniversaries this year, and the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), which opened its first office 50 years ago, now command budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars. But while the organic champagne may be flowing in the green camp, what does the rest of the world have to celebrate about the rise and rise of the Big Green NGO? (spiked)

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Posted in Development, Enviros, Misanthropy