Climate: LNG in B.C. vs Alberta tarsands

[OldBlackDog]

Hottest year on global record was Canada's coolest in 18 years

Winter, spring and summer were all colder than normal in Ontario and Quebec, and fall was just average in 2014, Environment Canada says.
Winter, spring and summer were all colder than normal in Ontario and Quebec, and fall was just average in 2014, Environment Canada says. (Associated Press)
Last year broke another global heat record, becoming the hottest since 1880. But did it feel that way to you? Probably not, since it was Canada's coolest in 18 years.

NASA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced today that last year broke the global temperature record for the third time in a decade.

2014 was the hottest year in modern record
Dave Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada, acknowledges some of us might be surprised.

"I think most Canadians are going to say, 'Huh?' We weren't that warm."

NOAA reported many corners of the Earth experienced record heat last year, including most of Europe, the western U.S., part of interior South America and swaths of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans.

But in Canada, it was our coolest year since 1996, Phillips said.

Of course, that doesn't mean it was cooler than average.

"It was tad warmer than normal in Canada, believe it or not," Phillips said.

By a "tad," he means the average temperature across the country from December 2013 to November 2014 was 0.1 C warmer than the annual average since Canada started keeping nationwide records in 1947.

Of course, most of the past two decades have been unusually warm, which is how it is possible for the coolest year in 18 years to be warmer than "average."

On the other hand, parts of the country – especially Ontario and Quebec, where two-thirds of Canadians live – actually were cooler than average.

No warm season in Ontario, Quebec

"We didn't have one warm season – winter was colder than normal, spring was colder than normal, summer was colder than normal, and fall – well it was right on normal."

However, that was counterbalanced by hotter than normal temperatures in British Columbia, the Arctic and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Phillips said with seven per cent of the world's land mass, Canada is big enough to have a significant impact on the global average temperature. In 2014, it held the temperature back a bit.

"If Canada had been warmer than normal, then my gosh – this would have broken the record by that much more."

Around the globe, NOAA said 2014 averaged 14.58 C, 0.69 degrees above the 20th century average.

Earth also broke NOAA records set in 2010 and 2005. The last time the Earth set an annual NOAA cold record was in 1911.

 

[OldBlackDog]

SHOCK POLL: 57% Of Americans Say Global Warming Is Not A Threat

earnestIs this the new climate consensus? More than half of Americans say global warming is not a threat to their way of life, according to a CNN poll. Furthermore, nearly half of Americans say global warming is caused by natural forces or isn’t a proven fact.

CNN’s poll reveals that a “majority of those polled, at 57 percent, say global warming will not pose a serious threat to their way of life,” and that only 43 percent “expect global warming to threaten them.”

“Meanwhile, only 50 percent of Americans believe global warming is caused by man-made emissions, while 23 percent say it’s caused by natural changes and 26 percent say it isn’t a proven fact,” CNN notes.

CNN’s poll comes as Democratic lawmakers and environmentalists are trying to stop Congress from passing a bill that would approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline, bringing oil sands from Canada to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast. Opponents of the pipeline argue it will only make global warming worse.

“Unless we get our act together, the planet that we’re going to be leaving to our kids and grandchildren will be significantly less habitable than the planet we have right now,” Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders told MSNBC on Wednesday.

But it’s an argument that doesn’t seem to be resonating with the American people, as 57 percent of them don’t see global warming as a threat to their lives.

Democrats also have another problem: Fifty-seven percent of Americans also support building the Keystone XL pipeline while only 28 percent oppose it.

Some Democrats have recognized this and have changed their arguments from climate-focused ones to ones about the economics of the pipeline. Pipeline opponents have argued that low oil prices no longer make the project necessary, and that the oil sands will be exported and not benefit U.S. industry.

New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney said the pipeline would “help Canadian companies export their oil and it happens to be the filthiest energy form.”

“The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would transport Canadian tar sands oil – the dirtiest fuel on the planet – through America’s heartland to be refined and then shipped abroad,” said Danielle Droitsch, the Canadian director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Most energy experts disagree with the idea that oil sands will be shipped thousands of miles to the U.S. Gulf Coast — the area with the country’s largest concentrations of refining capacity — just to be sent overseas.

“It seems a stretch to believe that a crude oil marketing group would use the Keystone XL pipeline to take about 800,000 bpd of heavy crude to the world’s largest concentration of heavy coking capacity, and then bypass all that so it could put it on a ship and take it somewhere else for an additional $4 to $5,” Michael Wojciechowski, an energy ana

 

[GLG]

Peer-reviewed pocket-calculator climate model exposes serious errors in complex computer models and reveals that Man’s influence on the climate is negligible

What went wrong?

The model, developed over eight years, is so easy to use that a high-school math teacher or undergrad student can get credible results in minutes running it on a pocket scientific calculator.

The paper, Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model, by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, Willie Soon, David Legates and Matt Briggs, survived three rounds of tough peer review in which two of the reviewers had at first opposed the paper on the ground that it questioned the IPCC’s predictions.

Wait a sec... Didn't you just claim that CO2 didn't control temp?
Are you now saying it does control temp because that is what this paper is claiming.
Did you even read the paper and understand what it say's?
They argue that CO2 controls temp but due to high-school math it won't be that bad. (LOL)

And didn't you just claim that underwater rifts were the reason that the earth was warming?
But was that before or after you claimed that the earth was not warming.....

Can you do us a favor and explain what theory you hold to be true?
It's getting hard to track what the heck you think because it seems to change depending of the temperature.
.................

I think this paper seems to be pulling our leg...
Was it submitted April 1.... so we should we treat it that way.
I like this part.....

The model, developed over eight years, is so easy to use that a high-school math teacher or undergrad student can get credible results in minutes running it on a pocket scientific calculator.

4 guy's banging on their pocket calculators for 8 years to develop a simple climate model.
4 X 8 = 32 man years of work.... LOL Your team seems to be a bit slow huh.
I suspect a climate scientist could do the same thing before his coffee break in the morning.
Simple things for simple minds... your team likes it that way.

I'll make a prediction.... this paper won't last a month as it will be withdrawn due to how stupid it is.

How's that "paws" working out for you?
Has your team got an update for us?
You know 18 years and X months..... would like to see something.

 

[GLG]

“It seems a stretch to believe that a crude oil marketing group would use the Keystone XL pipeline to take about 800,000 bpd of heavy crude to the world’s largest concentration of heavy coking capacity, and then bypass all that so it could put it on a ship and take it somewhere else for an additional $4 to $5,” Michael Wojciechowski, an energy ana

800,000 bpd (barrels per day) X $4 = 3.2 million $ per day
Yup no money in that huh... LOL
Why have the oil companies gotten the laws changed so that the can now export crude oil?
They just have to call it condensate now and no over site on what it really is.
........
On another note I think we are in for some serious mocking with the senates first bill or should call it the oil companies first bill.
I guess you get what you pay for and move up the list of important matters when it come to bills in the US.

One thing for sure the entertainment is going to be well worth following as Tea Party try's to out smart everyone.... LOL

 

[OldBlackDog]

2014, NOAA NASA produce weakest science on hottest fantasy in modern record

The Art of Lying by Omission

Back in the old days, when scientists had standards, they would never get excited over one hot year and certainly not over one meaningless hundredth of a degree.

The NOAA and NASA spinmeisters are parsing their press releases carefully, using vagueness to speak in half-truth-tongues. They utter no outright lie, yet misinform the crowd with lies by omission.

NOAA and NASA don’t say their models still don’t work, that the world was supposed to be a lot warmer and the “pause” continues. Nor do they admit that it has been warmer before many times in history. They don’t say the warming trend started long before we pumped out CO2. They don’t mention how tiny the “record” is, so tiny it could, and probably will, disappear with the next man-made adjustment. They don’t mention that the record depends entirely on which dataset you pick, and better instruments, satellites, show it wasn’t a record. NASA may launch satellites, but they prefer a thermometer in a carpark or beside a runway for measuring temperatures.

They don’t mention how much hotter it was than the last record. That’s because it looks very uncool — scientifically speaking — to get excited over two hundredths of a degree, when the error bars are 500% bigger. It’s called “noise”, in real scientific publications.

Get a grip on how much a few hundredths of a degree matters in this graph. “Get excited”.



If it was the hottest in 130 years, who cares? It was hotter 7,000 years ago, hotter 120,000 years ago, and hotter for most of the history of life on Earth. It doesn’t mean CO2 caused the last hot spell. It doesn’t mean warming is bad. It doesn’t mean it will continue to warm. And it doesn’t mean we understand what drives the climate.

But it does mean some people who want to seem-scientific want more of your money.

The Vaguest Scientists in the world

While NOAA and NASA declare that “… 2014 temperatures continue the planet’s long-term warming trend…”

If they had wanted to they could have said the opposite and it would be true too. It’s a fact that we’ve been in a long term cooling trend since human civilization developed. In this case the “long term” trend they refer to is 135 years long, but it has been running for 300 years. They don’t mention that either. It is equally true to say “2014 temperatures continue a warming trend that started circa 1700″. There were no coal fired power stations until 1882. Coal power is so dangerous that it causes heating 200 years before it starts producing “carbon”.

The El Nino Spin

NOAA and NASA are pointing out that ” 2014′s record warmth occurred during an El Niño-neutral year.” What they don’t say is that this is exactly what we would expect for an object that started off warm and continued to stay warm. The world has been in pretty much the same warm zone for 16 – 25 years (depending on how you measure it). In other words, El Nino-in, El-nino-out — we don’t need to add much more energy, in the big-scheme, to raise it by a hundredth of a degree.

But if I were a marketing and promotions agent, and not interested in science, I would make a big deal out of the non-el-nino which didn’t happen and doesn’t matter.

NASA wants your money

Here’s the line early in the press release which is the real point of the story:

“NASA is at the forefront of the scientific investigation of the dynamics of the Earth’s climate on a global scale,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The observed long-term warming trend and the ranking of 2014 as the warmest year on record reinforces the importance for NASA to study Earth as a complete system, and particularly to understand the role and impacts of human activity.”

Who cares about accuracy or serving the public. The only decimal places that matter to these NASA scientists are the ones on the numerous grant cheques.

Gavin Schmidt knows that it is naughty to make a fuss over one hot year:

“This is the latest in a series of warm years, in a series of warm decades. While the ranking of individual years can be affected by chaotic weather patterns, the long-term trends are attributable to drivers of climate change that right now are dominated by human emissions of greenhouse gases,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt.

Schmidt knows that the long term trends matter and that is what he should be talking about, yet he hunts the headlines with short term noise. He must surely also know that the NASA climate models have no idea what causes the real long term trends in the climate since they can’t explain what drove the medieval warm period, the little ice age, or the warming of the 1870s or 1920s and 1930s which was at a similar rate to the warming in the 1980s and 1990s.

Changes in the long term rate are what matters, and Unskeptical-scientists won’t be putting numbers on that in public. Just like they won’t be talking about verifying those roulette-wheel-climate models either.

Quoteable Quotes:

John R. Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who is known for his skepticism about the seriousness of global warming, pointed out in an interview that 2014 had surpassed the other record-warm years by only a few hundredths of a degree, well within the error margin of global temperature measurements.

“Since the end of the 20th century, the temperature hasn’t done much,” Dr. Christy said. “It’s on this kind of warmish plateau.” — CNBC

Even the BEST team balked at pumping the hottest ever meme:

The BEST reanalysis consortium have also reported their findings which are similar and their interpretation is in stark contrast to NASA’s:

“The global surface temperature average (land and sea) for 2014 was nominally the warmest since the global instrumental record began in 1850; however, within the margin of error, it is tied with 2005 and 2010 and so we can’t be certain it set a new record.” — GWPF

2014, NOAA NASA produce weakest science on hottest fantasy in modern record, 10.0 out of 10 based on 3 ratings
Tiny Url for this post: http://tinyurl.com/q7ulkp5

 

[GLG]

The Art of Lying by Omission

I guess this sums up your team argument now doesn't it there OBD.
You are out of step with your community and on a path to becoming irrelevant.
Some have argued you are already there.

[F_GvKJ0rM60]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_GvKJ0rM60

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/fort-mcmurray-braces-for-impact-of-oil-price-drop-1.2913496
Fort McMurray braces for impact of oil price drop

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/harper-government-reacts-nasas-hottest-year-record-statement
Harper government reacts to NASA's "hottest year on record" statement
Environment Minister's office defends the Harper government's record on fighting climate change, while slamming the Liberals' and NDP's "job killing carbon tax."
Mychaylo Prystupa Jan 16th, 2015

Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq and oil sands pollution
Canada's Minister of the Environment and Arctic Council (left); emissions from an oil sands facility near Fort McMurray, AB (right).

The Harper government boasted about its much criticized efforts at fighting climate change, when asked to respond to the news from NASA on Friday that 2014 was the hottest global temperature year on modern record.

The office for Canada's Minister of the Environment Leona Aglukkaq said that national emissions have actually dipped five per cent below 2005 levels, while the economy grew 11 per cent.

"We will continue to take action to reduce emissions without damaging the economy like the Liberals and the NDP would do with their job-killing carbon tax," wrote Minister Aglukkaq's spokesperson Shane Buckingham on Friday.

The Harper government, seeking to extend its 10-year reign in power in an election this year, said its "balanced sector-by-sector regulatory" approach to reducing emissions is working.

The trouble is, her staff at Environment Canada forecast the country's global warming emissions to rise significantly with the growth in Canada's oil and gas sector. The department reported in December that it predicts Canada will have no chance of meeting its Copenhagen target for reducing emissions by 17 per cent by 2020.

SFU climate economist Mark Jaccard also said most of Canada's downward force in emissions was due to Ontario's move to close coal-fired power plants -- not the Harper government's efforts, he suggested Wednesday.

Conservatives have also moved to significantly speed the approval of major oil and gas pipelines. New rule changes for National Energy Board hearings limit the length of time a hearing can go. They also deny those who want to speak up about climate change and "downstream impacts."

The Liberals also say that if Justin Trudeau were to become Prime Minister (and the leader has been polling highest in national popularity recently), the party would set national targets for cutting emissions, and let provinces decided if that's done with a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system.

"So if B.C wants a carbon tax, and Quebec wants cap and trade, that's fine," said John McKay, a Toronto area Member of Parliament on Friday.

“It’s the Liberal party’s policy to price carbon. We think the provinces need to be encouraged, not discouraged," he added.

The Liberal M.P. also said the Conservative's anti-carbon-tax message was "politically juvenile" and economically counter productive to Canada's long-term prosperity.

New Democrats have previously campaigned for a national cap-and-trade system to make emissions more expensive for big polluters. Leader Thomas Mulcair also said last month:

"We will eliminate the billion-dollar subsidies to the fossil-fuel industry and reinvest this money in environmentally sustainable initiatives."

"We will enforce emissions limits and enact Jack Layton’s Climate Change Accountability Act — to do Canada’s part to keep global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius," wrote Mulcair in a widely published op/ed.

But the Green Party is pitching that it is the only party that can be trusted on the climate file.

Newly minted candidate Green candidate Lynne Quarmby -- the SFU scientist who took prominence during the Burnaby Mountain pipeline saga -- said the party sees itself winning "at least six seats" and the balance of power in the next government.

"So our condition for working with any of the other parties are two: proportional representation, and secondly, real action on climate change," said Quarmby.

She said Greens seek to implement a "fee and dividends" plan to slash global warming emissions. With this system, companies would have pay to pollute, and the money collected would go to things like clean tech and alternative energy, she said.

She added, that NASA's "hottest year" announcement will give climate change far more focus in the 2015 election.

NASA and NOAA said Friday that the 10 warmest years on temperature record, with the exception of 1998, have now occurred since 2000.

 

[agentaqua]

http://oceana.org/en/news-media/pub...cebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=climate
Offshore Energy by the Numbers: An Economic Analysis of Offshore Drilling and Wind Energy in the Atlantic

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/ne...ndigenous-rights-and-canadas-federal-election

Naomi Klein on fracking, Indigenous rights and Canada's federal election
Jenny Uechi Jan 1st, 2015

Naomi Klein photo by Ed Kashi
Photo by Ed Kashi
Naomi Klein's book This Changes Everything, synthesizes much that environmentalists have been warning about the social, environmental, political consequences of climate change.

Her thesis that the fight against climate change is intricately linked to the fight against exploitative neoliberal capitalism has sparked intense conversations worldwide.

Klein shared her thoughts with The Vancouver Observer recently on the climate crisis and how Canadians can take back control from federal politicians who are failing to protect the environment.

2015 federal election: withdraw support from climate laggards

"Right now, the major opposition parties aren’t offering a real alternative to fossil fuels," Klein said.

"That is something that can shift. It’s going to come from the fact that more and more people understand what's happening. In BC, people have been at forefront of experimenting with other ways of living -- how to have a sustainable economy, food security, renewable energy. We know it's possible, and not just a theory.

"So pressure really needs to be applied to the opposition parties. We need to demand that [politicians] offer a genuine alternative, or we withdraw our support. I really hope that this next election doesn’t become ‘anything but Harper' and settling just for the same -- but slightly less egregious -- behaviour (from other political parties). It’s scandalous."

Fossil fuels and the resource economy

“I feel like one of the reasons why this book is resonating in Canada the way it is is that people realize they have governments that badly mismanaged their futures by relying so heavily on extractive industries. That reliance, for a long time, there was a feeling that this is a dirty deal we’ve made, which is why we’re doing so well. But people are realizing that this deal has made them really vulnerable.

“I was in Alberta when the price of oil dropped. This has made them extremely vulnerable in the same way that Christy Clark’s reliance on LNG has made BC very economically vulnerable. That very seductive promise of easy money has a flip side -- these are volatile industries. Not only are we breaking international commitments, but we are also damaging our economy in many ways.

"We’ve already seen this in Ontario. The extractive boom has been hugely damaging to our manufacturing economy...I think the takeaway is we need to be building regenerative economies, not extractive, and that means getting away from extractive resources that are so volatile.”

B.C. and the 'love of place' that fuels environmentalism

“With the collapse of LNG, there’s another opening now to question the whole model. The thing with Pacific Northwest of Canada is that you have so many people who live there because they value being able to live in a way that’s close to nature.

"They have a vocabulary to talk about the things which can’t be valued on a purely economic basis. This is less true in other parts of the country, but it’s very true here. That’s why there’s a movement here against tankers. This is a movement grounded in love of place, not hatred of fossil fuels.”

On Premier Christy Clark's goal to build a $100 billion 'prosperity fund' through LNG, Klein said the B.C. government was digging itself into a hole by trying to attract investors at all costs.

“Christy Clark’s euphoric promises about striking it rich with LNG are falling apart. The offers being made (by the B.C. government) to sweeten the pot and attract foreign investors are destructive....what we need to do is keep more of the profits and extract less. We need higher royalty rates so we don’t have to extract more and more. We need a government with the courage to impose higher royalty rates so [the Province] is able to extract less and keep more profits and can help fund the transition off fossil fuel. And there has been a lot of misinformation about natural gas and climate risks. More research has been coming out about natural gas and especially about LNG. It’s a climate bomb.”

Sacrifice zones to build a resource economy

In one of the most striking parts of Klein's book, she talks about the environmental “sacrifice zones” that have been devastated for the sake of short-term economic gain. Part of the problem, Klein said, is that the public doesn't get outraged about ecosystems being ravaged when they are out of sight and mind.

“There are still parts of our country that are barely covered at all (by the media). They’re so remote that there’s a sacrifice zone mentality. In terms of the anti-fracking movement, it took off when it started impacting cottage country for New Yorkers and people living in Pennsylvania.

"But one of things with fracking in Canada is that it’s happening very remote areas, and it’s getting almost no media coverage like it had in Quebec. Major cities there were in the bulls-eye (for fracking), and so people got mobilized. That’s been the vulnerability of that sector from the start -- resource sectors are still banking on remoteness.”

Klein said the problem with this way of thinking was that it was closely related to colonial history, of exploiting other people's land and resources for profit.

“The whole concept of the frontier is connected to the history of fossil fuels,” she said. “That we needed to identify — that it is possible to power our economies without sacrifice zones. If we don’t identify that as a problem, it’s easy to say nuclear is the solution despite the fact that it has huge risks at every stage and has a huge sacrifice zone mentality.

“If we don’t talk about more than just carbon, we are going to have natural gas presented as clear alternative to coal, nuclear presented as the clean alternative to natural gas, and replicating the pattern of sacrifice zones."

“I think what gives me most hope is the fact that this crisis is being increasingly understood not just as an economic criss but really as a spiritual crisis. The idea of humans having a divine right to dominate the earth and being outside the community of living things and living systems is at the heart of the crisis.”

Our relationship with nature must change

“As Indigenous people take a leading role in resisting the extractive industries — which is happening obviously most powerfully in BC - there’s also an important cross-pollination of ideas that is not just about opposing a pipeline but is also about a shift in how we see ourselves and our relationship to nature,” Klein said.

“The allure of fossil fuels is the promise that you can transcend the natural world. That’s always been the intoxicating promise. You know, the quotes I have in the book about when the commercial steam engine is that you can build factories and no longer be at the mercy of winds. No longer be at the mercy of moving water to power your water wheels. This was always an illusion.

In her book, Klein writes about the Earl of Liverpool, who penned in a meeting to memorialize James Watt in 182: “Be the winds friendly or be they contrary, the power of the steam engine overcomes all difficulties...Let the wind blow from whatever quarter it may.. you have the power and the means, by the Steam Engine, of applying that force in the proper time and in the proper manner."

But Klein argues that this transcendence of the natural environment was always an illusion.

“We were never free from nature. We’ve always been a part of it and in dialogue. It’s just that what fossil fuels created was a delayed response so that the impact of our actions are now coming to us centuries after that first carbon was burned, right?," she said.

"It does necessitate a new understanding — or an older understanding — of our role in the world. One that says, no, we were never free from nature, nor should we be. We are of nature, we are of community and we need relationships that are founded on that premise.

"So I think that leadership coming from First Nations should be about something much more profound than that understanding that First Nations have legal power. It’s also that - there’s a shift in the world view that has been possible because of these cross pollination of ideas.

"I think the power of the First Nations sovereignty movement here is really at the forefront of a global moment. What gives me most hope is the way in which the discussion over Indigenous land rights has evolved over the last decade, since the Delgamuukw case, when Indigenous land right were reported as a 'threat', like 'they’ are taking our fish, or 'they' are taking our logs."

"But now, there’s a much deeper understudying that the Indigenous rights that allow them to traditionally hunt and fish are the same rights that allow them to say 'no' to tar sands pipelines. It’s been incredibly exciting to watch that understanding emerge...it’s not to say there isn’t any deep racism against First Nations, but there’s been a shift."

"Among US activists there’s definitely a sense that Canada is further along in understanding the power of Indigenous land rights to catalyze transition to another economic world view. Canadian activists are respected for this in the world -- as opposed to the Canadian government."

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/the-...l-the-northern-gateway-pipeline-to-voters-283

The Canadian Government Wants You to Believe They Have Oil Spills Under Control
January 13, 2015
by Justin Ling

Oil tanker spill south of New Orleans. Photo via Flickr user DVIDSHUB

Do you have any good ideas on how to prepare First Nations, western Canadians, and the nation at large, to deal with the millions of litres of oil seeping onto their coastlines?

If yes, then the federal government would love to hear from you. Because it needs to convince British Columbians—and especially First Nations—there's no real risk from the Northern Gateway oil pipeline project.

In a Request for Proposals posted to a government tendering site, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans announced that it was seeking a private company to produce an information guide that, according to the request, "would be used as a communications tool for informing Aboriginal and coastal communities and the general public" about how Canada plans to deal with the possibility of oil spills off the coast of Canada.

While it's a competitive bidding process, the government expects the whole thing to come in under $90,000.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which is responsible for this part of the plan, told VICE the information guide is being designed to "improve understanding of Canada's ability to prevent, prepare for, and respond to ship-source oil spills."

Since shipping traffic in all of Canada's three bordering oceans promises to pick up drastically in the next few years, it's probably good timing. Just five years ago, the Commissioner of the Environment warned "the federal government is not ready nor prepared for a major [oil] spill."

Now, the government contends, it is ready. And it wants the world to know.

Ottawa has been piecing together a strategy for the past few years, lamentably dubbed the "Ship-source Oil Spills Preparedness and Response Regime" (or, if you'd rather, SOSPRR), which is looking to create a framework for how tanker traffic travels along Canada's coasts, and how the government will respond if one of them leaks oil. Part of the recommendations for the government's strategy includes an information document to inform coastal residents.

The communications plan the government is looking to embark on is centered on three objectives: let the public know about the risk of oil spills, tell those affected what the government is doing to prevent a spill and what they'll do if one occurs, and inform the public about measures it's taking to reduce tanker-created pollution.

While that may sound pretty altruistic, some of the fine print of what the government is looking for might give environmentalists pause.

For one, whoever gets contracted to produce the guide will do so with the understanding that they'll need to "outline the low level of risk of a ship-source spill in Canadian waters," and that the government's strategy for preventing and dealing with them is "comprehensive."

Perhaps it's unavoidable that a government education program would verge on self-promotion.

"The root of what's coming out here is positive," said NDP Environment Critic Megan Leslie. "It makes sense to educate people what is in place."

Especially, Leslie says, when the government's oil spill and tanker safety plan is such an about-face from what was previously in place—nothing.

"There's nowhere to go but up," she said, but added that it's hard to read the tender notice without "a healthy dose of skepticism."

Who the education plan is targeting is particularly interesting.

The request reads that "the contractor needs to take into consideration that although the Guide would first be distributed to Aboriginal and other coastal communities in northern British Columbia, it will be national in scope and disseminated across Canada."

It's interesting that the government plans on targeting northern British Columbia since the report notes that most tanker traffic is in the southern half of the province. It would seem to suggest that Ottawa is looking to launch an education plan with the Northern Gateway pipeline in mind.

Leslie says that raises her eyebrows.

The Harper government, of course, approved the Northern Gateway project amid controversy in June, though it did impose hundreds of conditions on the project. Northern Gateway will see supertankers enter the Douglas Channel in northern BC—moving tar sands crude to Pacific markets.

The government is no doubt aware of the recent Nanos poll showing more than a third of BC residents fear the Northern Gateway project could lead to an oil spill. That's a fear fuelling opposition to the plan, with only 29 percent of British Columbians wanting approval—the rest of BC's population is split between wanting a decision delayed and having it killed outright.

Interestingly, nearly half of the province says the Harper government's support for the project would make them less likely to support the Conservatives. When it comes to credibility, more British Columbians trust Enbridge, the company building the pipeline, than trust the Harper government (49 percent versus 46 percent), while First Nations and environmental groups are viewed as significantly more credible.

Other parts of the request suggest that a prospective contractor should consider identifying "potential risks and opportunities (e.g. environmental, social and economic risks; employment and economic opportunities.)"

Ottawa posted the notification last Thursday and will decide on the winning bidder in February. After that, the contractor will have seven months to do the research, draft a guide, tour communities on the country's east and west coasts to workshop the document, then present it to government bureaucrats before editing and finalizing the guide. It's about as breakneck as things get in the public service.

Coastal residents, especially First Nations, will be able to see the plan sometime early next summer, when the company will be required to present its nearly-finished document in half-day sessions run by the government to, as the tender puts it, "seek input from usability testing groups participants." In other words: they'll be running focus groups.

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...id-with-its-oil-and-we-didnt/article11959362/

What Norway did with its oil and we didn’t
ESTHER HSIEH
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, May. 16 2013, 6:04 AM EDT
Last updated Thursday, May. 16 2013, 3:01 PM EDT

When oil was discovered in the Norwegian continental shelf in 1969, Norway was very aware of the finite nature of petroleum, and didn’t waste any time legislating policies to manage the new-found resource in a way that would give Norwegians long-term wealth, benefit their entire society and make them competitive beyond just a commodities exporter.


INFOGRAPHIC
Canada's aging infrastructure
Gardens by the Bay is a multimillion-dollar project designed, among other things, to show off Singapore’s prowess in green technology and innovation.
CANADA COMPETES
Singapore's futuristic gardens
“Norway got the basics right quite early on,” says John Calvert, a political science professor at Simon Fraser University. “They understood what this was about and they put in place public policy that they have benefited so much from.”

This is in contrast to Canada’s free-market approach, he contends, where our government is discouraged from long-term public planning, in favour of allowing the market to determine the pace and scope of development.

“I would argue quite strongly that the Norwegians have done a much better job of managing their [petroleum] resource,” Prof. Calvert says.

While No. 15 on the World Economic Forum’s global competitiveness rankings, Norway is ranked third out of all countries on its macroeconomic environment (up from fourth last year), “driven by windfall oil revenues combined with prudent fiscal management,” according to the Forum.

Before oil was discovered, the Act of 21 June 1963 was already in place for managing the Norwegian continental shelf. This legislation has since been updated several times, most recently in 1996, now considered Norway’s Petroleum Act, which includes protection for fisheries, communities and the environment.

In 1972, the government founded the precursor of Statoil ASA, an integrated petroleum company. (In 2012, Statoil dividends from government shares was $2.4-billion). In the same year, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate was also established, a government administrative body that has the objective of “creating the greatest possible values for society from the oil and gas activities by means of prudent resource management.”

In 1990, the precursor of the Government Pension Fund – Global (GPFG), a sovereign wealth fund, was established for surplus oil revenues. Today the GPFG is worth more than $700-billion.

While there’s no question that Norway has done well from its oil and gas, unlike many resource-based nations, Norway has invested its petro dollars in such a way as to create and sustain other industries where it is also globally competitive.

The second largest export of Norway is supplies for the petroleum industry, points out Ole Anders Lindseth, the director general of the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy in Norway.

“So the oil and gas activities have rendered more than just revenue for the benefit of the future generations, but has also rendered employment, workplaces and highly skilled industries,” Mr. Lindseth says.

Maximizing the resource is also very important.

Because the government is highly invested, (oil profits are taxed at 78 per cent, and in 2011 tax revenues were $36-billion), it is as interested as oil companies, which want to maximize their profits, in extracting the maximum amount of hydrocarbons from the reservoirs. This has inspired technological advances such as parallel drilling, Mr. Lindseth says.

“The extraction rate in Norway is around 50 per cent, which is extremely high in the world average,” he adds.

Norway has also managed to largely avoid so-called Dutch disease (a decline in other exports due to a strong currency) for two reasons, Mr. Lindseth says. The GPFG wealth fund is largely invested outside Norway by legislation, and the annual maximum withdrawal is 4 per cent. Through these two measures, Norway has avoided hyper-inflation, and has been able to sustain its traditional industries.

In Norway, there’s no industry more traditional than fishing.

“As far back as the 12th century they were already exporting stock fish to places in Europe,” explains Rashid Sumaila, director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre.

Prof. Sumaila spent seven years studying economics in Norway and uses game theory to study fish stocks and ecosystems. Fish don’t heed international borders and his research shows how co-operative behaviour is economically beneficial.

“Ninety per cent of the fish stocks that Norway depends on are shared with other countries. It’s a country that has more co-operation and collaboration with other countries than any other country I know,” Prof. Sumaila says.

“That’s [partly] why they still have their cod and we’ve lost ours,” he adds, pointing out that not only are quotas and illegal fishing heavily monitored, policy in Norway is based on scientific evidence and consideration for the sustainability of the ecosystem as a whole.

Prof. Sumaila cites the recent changes to Canada’s Fisheries Act, as a counter-example: “To protect the habitat, you have to show a direct link between the habitat, the fish and the economy,” he says, adding, “That’s the kind of weakening that the Norwegians don’t do.”

Svein Jentoft is a professor in the faculty of Bioscience, Fisheries and Economics at the University of Tromso. He adds that Norway’s co-operative management style, particularly domestically, has been key to the continued success of the fisheries.

“The management system [for fish stock] is an outcome of the positive, constructive and trustful relationship between the industry on the one hand and the government on the other hand,” Prof. Jentoft says. “They have been able to agree on issues that you and many other countries haven’t been able to, largely because the government has listened to the fishermen.”

However, Prof. Jentoft isn’t on board with all of his government’s policies. He’s concerned about how the quota and licensing system is concentrating wealth and the impact that this will have on fishing communities.

He predicts that Norway’s wild stocks will remain healthy in the foreseeable future and that the aquaculture industry (fish farms), where Norwegians are world leaders, will continue to grow.

In 2009, Norway’s total fish and seafood export was $7.1-billion, $3.8-billion was in aquaculture. By 2011, Norwegian aquaculture exports grew to $4.9-billion. In Canada, total fish and seafood exports in 2011 were $3.6-billion, with approximately one-third from aquaculture.

Norway’s forests are another important natural resource, and its pulp-and-paper industry has many parallels to Canada’s. Both nations are heavy exporters of newsprint. With much less demand since the wide adoption of the Internet and competition from modern mills from emerging markets, both nations have suffered through down-sizing and mill closures over the past decade. Both have been looking for ways to adapt.

The Borregaard pulp and paper mill in Sarpsborg has become one of the world’s most advanced biorefineries. From wood, it creates four main products: specialty cellulose, lignosuphonates, vanillin and ethanol, along with 200 GWh a year of bioenergy.

“You have a diversified portfolio of products,” explains Karin Oyaas, research manager at the Paper and Fibre Research Institute in Trondheim. “The Borregaard mill uses all parts of the wood and they have a variety of products, so if one of the products is priced low for a few years, then maybe some of the other products are priced high.”

She feels this is a key change in direction for the industry in Norway. She doesn’t want to see the industry putting all of its eggs in one basket, as it did with newsprint.

Dr. Oyaas also thinks that rebranding the industry is key to its survival and success in Norway. The forestry industry doesn’t get the same kind of attention as the oil industry, nor does it have the high-tech image. But it is just as high-tech, and it has the bonus of being a renewable resource.

“You can make anything from the forest. You can make the same products that you can make from oil,” explains Dr. Oyaas.

 

[agentaqua]

http://grist.org/climate-energy/heres-what-climate-activists-should-do-in-2015/
Here’s what climate activists should do in 2015

 

[GLG]

A Win for the Climate Scientist Who Skeptics Compared to Jerry Sandusky


As the judge green-lights his libel suit, the defendants' lawyers jump ship.

—By Mariah Blake
| Fri Jan. 24, 2014 6:00 AM EST
In 2012—after writers for National Review and a prominent conservative think tank accused him of fraud and compared him to serial child molester Jerry Sandusky—climate scientist Michael Mann took the bold step of filing a defamation suit. The defendants moved to have the case thrown out, citing a Washington, DC, law that shields journalists from frivolous litigation. But on Wednesday, DC Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg rejected the motion, opening the way for a trial.
Although public figures like Mann have to clear a high bar to prove defamation, Weisberg argued that the scientist's complaint may pass the test. And he brushed aside the defendants' claims that the fraud allegations were "pure opinion," which is protected by the First Amendment:

Accusing a scientist of conducting his research fraudulently, manipulating his data to achieve a predetermined or political outcome, or purposefully distorting the scientific truth are factual allegations. They go to the heart of scientific integrity. They can be proven true or false. If false, they are defamatory. If made with actual malice, they are actionable.
​

Weisberg's order is just the latest in a string of setbacks that have left the climate change skeptics' case in disarray. Earlier this month, Steptoe & Johnson, the law firm representing National Review and its writer, Mark Steyn, withdrew as Steyn's counsel. According to two sources with inside knowledge, it also plans to drop National Review as a client.

The lawyers' withdrawal came shortly after Steyn—a prominent conservative pundit who regularly fills in as host of Rush Limbaugh's radio show—publicly attacked the former judge in the case, Natalia Combs Greene, accusing her of "stupidity" and "staggering" incompetence. Mann's attorney, John B. Williams, suspects this is no coincidence. "Any lawyer would be taken aback if their client said such things about the judge," he says. "That may well be why Steptoe withdrew."
Steyn's manager, Melissa Howes, acknowledged that his commentary "did not go over well."* But Steyn maintains it was his decision to part ways with his attorneys.
The lawsuit centers on Mann's famous "hockey stick" graph. In 1999, Mann and two colleagues charted 1,000 years worth of climate data, and found a steep uptick in global temperatures beginning in the 20th century. The graph, named for its iconic shape, became a potent, easy-to-grasp symbol of global warming. And it was featured prominently in the landmark 2001 report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which concluded that "the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years."

The chart also made Mann a target for climate change skeptics. This was especially true beginning in 2009, when more than 1,000 emails were stolen from Britain's University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU), one of the world’s leading climate research institutions. In one message, CRU’s director, Phil Jones, famously described using Mann's "Nature trick" to "hide the decline." He was referring to atechnique that Mann had used to control for variations in tree-ring data in a paper for the journal Nature. But Skeptics—among them the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a free-market think tank that has received funding from the Koch bothers and Exxon Mobil—seized on this revelation as evidence that scientists were conspiring to cover up a decline in global temperatures.
Soon, climate researchers found themselves under siege. Mann's inbox was flooded with death threats and messages calling him a "fraud," a "******* terrorist," and a "one-world-government socialist.” As Mother Jones reported in 2011, "Images of Mann and other scientists were posted on neo-**** sites. The CRU's Jones temporarily stepped down from his post; he later said he contemplated suicide."
Pennsylvania State University, where Mann works, and at least six other institutions conducted separate investigations into the allegations of scientific misconduct. An independent probe commissioned by the University of East Anglia faulted the researchers for their bunker mentality, and found their responses "to reasonable requests for information were unhelpful and defensive." But none of the investigations turned up evidence of malfeasance or data manipulation. After completing its inquiry, the US Environmental Protection Agency posted a fact sheeton its website stating:

The CRU emails do not show either that the science is flawed or that the scientific process has been compromised. EPA carefully reviewed the CRU emails and found no indication of improper data manipulation or misrepresentation of results…Some people have "cherry-picked" a limited selection of CRU email statements to draw broad, unsubstantiated conclusions about the validity of all climate science.
​

Still, the emails remained a rallying cry for skeptics, some of whom turned their ire on Penn State, which allegedly declined to interview Mann's critics during its probe. In 2012, it came to light that Penn State officials had ignored or concealed evidence that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was molesting children, including in the university's locker room. That July, CEI scholar Rand Simberg wrote a post for the organization's blog likening the situation to "another cover up," the "Michael Mann affair." Simberg also called Mann "the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data."
Several days later, CEI deleted the passage, which it admitted was "inappropriate." But Steyn, a regular National Review contributor, quoted it on the magazine's blog. He added:

Not sure I'd have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr. Simberg does, but he has a point. Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change "hockey-stick" graph.
​

cont.....

 

[GLG]

cont.....

Mann's attorney fired off letters to CEI and the National Review, calling the fraud allegations "defamatory" and demanding apologies and full retractions. National Review Editor Richard Lowry responded with another post, which dismissed the defamation claims as "transparent nonsense." "In common polemical usage, 'fraudulent' doesn’t mean honest-to-goodness criminal fraud," he wrote. "It means intellectually bogus." At that point, Mann filed his defamation suit against CEI, Simberg, National Review, and Steyn. In July 2013, Judge Combs Greene of the DC Superior Court rejected the defendants' motion to dismiss. The defendants appealed the decision. But that December, the appeals court, which was concerned that Mann had filed an amended complaint shortly before Combs Greene's ruling, sent it back to the Superior Court for further review. Judge Weissman took on the case, following Combs Greene's retirement.
Finally, on Christmas Eve, Steyn published his blog post, railing against Combs Greene and her ruling, which contained typographical errors and mixed up the defendants:

Among her many staggering incompetences, DC Superior Court judge Natalia Combs-Greene…denied NR's motion to dismiss the fraudulent complaint while simultaneously permitting Mann’s lawyers to file an amended complaint.
The appellate judges have now tossed out anything relating to Mann's original fraudulent complaint, including Judge Combs-Greene's unbelievably careless ruling in which the obtuse jurist managed to confuse the defendants, and her subsequent ruling in which she chose to double-down on her own stupidity. Anything with Combs-Greene's name on it has now been flushed down the toilet of history.
​

When asked about these comments, Steyn made no apologies. "I spent the first months attempting to conceal my contempt for Judge Combs Greene's court," he said in an email to Mother Jones. "But really, it's not worth the effort." Wednesday's ruling affirms the thrust of Combs Greene's order, however. It also concludes that "a reasonable jury" may "find the statement that Dr. Mann 'molested and tortured data' was false, and published with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for whether it was false or not."
Steyn, meanwhile, appears to be paying a price for his brazenness. He still has no legal representation. ("My check from the Koch brothers seems to have been lost in the mail or intercepted by the NSA," he wrote. "So for the moment I am representing myself.") And since his Christmas Eve diatribe, the conservative pundit—who had been writing near-daily posts for National Review Online—hasn't written a single item. Neither he nor the magazine's publisher, Jack Fowler, would say why. But Steyn hinted at the reasons in a post on his website: "As readers may have deduced from my absence at National Review Online and my termination of our joint representation, there have been a few differences between me and the rest of the team."
As for Mann, he welcomes the recent ruling. "I'm pleased that the judge has reaffirmed the merit of our case and has allowed it to now move on to the discovery phase," he told Mother Jones. Beyond that, he declined to comment, but he has written about his reasons for coming out aggressively in his own defense. "As the staid scientific journal Nature put it, climate researchers are in a street fight with those who seek to discredit the accepted scientific evidence, and we must fight back against the disinformation that denies this real and present danger to the planet," he explained on the liberal blog ThinkProgress. "The worst thing we can do is bury our heads in the sand and pretend that climate change doesn’t exist."

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/01/michael-mann-climategate-court-victory


Oh dear it seams that well that oiled machine of OBD and his climate science deniers are in a little hot water..... LOL
Perhaps 2015 will be very entertaining watching the climate deniers squirm.

 

[OldBlackDog]

From your group.

I guess this sums up your team argument now doesn't it there OBD.
You are out of step with your community and on a path to becoming irrelevant.
So have argued you are already there.

 

[GLG]

From your group.

I guess this sums up your team argument now doesn't it there OBD.
You are out of step with your community and on a path to becoming irrelevant.
Some have argued you are already there.

Good one... had a LOL moment.
Here is one for you

 

[OldBlackDog]

Dr. Spencer
2014 as the Mildest Year: Why You are Being Misled on Global Temperatures
January 18th, 2015
OR: Why I Should Have Been an Engineer Rather than a Climate Scientist

I’ve been inundated with requests this past week to comment on the NOAA and NASA reports that 2014 was the “hottest” year on record. Since I was busy with a Japan space agency meeting in Tokyo, it has been difficult for me to formulate a quick response.

Of course, I’ve addressed the “hottest year” claim before it ever came out, both here on October 21, and here on Dec. 4.

In the three decades I’ve been in the climate research business, it’s been clear that politics have been driving the global warming movement. I knew this from the politically-savvy scientists who helped organize the U.N.’s process for determining what to do about human-caused climate change. (The IPCC wasn’t formed to determine whether it exists or whether is was even a threat, that was a given.)

I will admit the science has always supported the view that slowly increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere from burning of fossil fuels should cause some warming, but the view that this would is any way be a bad thing for humans or for Nature has been a politically (and even religiously) driven urban legend.

I am embarrassed by the scientific community’s behavior on the subject. I went into science with the misguided belief that science provides answers. Too often, it doesn’t. Some physical problems are simply too difficult. Two scientists can examine the same data and come to exactly opposite conclusions about causation.

We still don’t understand what causes natural climate change to occur, so we simply assume it doesn’t exist. This despite abundant evidence that it was just as warm 1,000 and 2,000 years ago as it is today. Forty years ago, “climate change” necessarily implied natural causation; now it only implies human causation.

What changed? Not the science…our estimates of climate sensitivity are about the same as they were 40 years ago.

What changed is the politics. And not just among the politicians. At AMS or AGU scientific conferences, political correctness and advocacy are now just as pervasive as as they have become in journalism school. Many (mostly older) scientists no longer participate and many have even resigned in protest.

Science as a methodology for getting closer to the truth has been all but abandoned. It is now just one more tool to achieve political ends.

Reports that 2014 was the “hottest” year on record feed the insatiable appetite the public has for definitive, alarming headlines. It doesn’t matter that even in the thermometer record, 2014 wasn’t the warmest within the margin of error. Who wants to bother with “margin of error”? Journalists went into journalism so they wouldn’t have to deal with such technical mumbo-jumbo. I said this six weeks ago, as did others, but no one cares unless a mainstream news source stumbles upon it and is objective enough to report it.

In what universe does a temperature change that is too small for anyone to feel over a 50 year period become globally significant? Where we don’t know if the global average temperature is 58 or 59 or 60 deg. F, but we are sure that if it increases by 1 or 2 deg. F, that would be a catastrophe?

Where our only truly global temperature measurements, the satellites, are ignored because they don’t show a record warm year in 2014?

In what universe do the climate models built to guide energy policy are not even adjusted to reflect reality, when they over-forecast past warming by a factor of 2 or 3?

And where people have to lie about severe weather getting worse (it hasn’t)? Or where we have totally forgotten that more CO2 is actually good for life on Earth, leading to increased agricultural productivity, and global greening?:

Estimated changes in vegetative cover due to CO2 fertilization between 1982 and 2010 (Donohue et al., 2013 GRL).
Estimated changes in vegetative cover due to CO2 fertilization between 1982 and 2010 (Donohue et al., 2013 GRL).
It’s the universe where political power and the desire to redistribute wealth have taken control of the public discourse. It’s a global society where people believe we can replace fossil fuels with unicorn farts and antigravity-based energy.

Feelings now trump facts.

At least engineers have to prove their ideas work. The widgets and cell phones and cars and jets and bridges they build either work or they don’t.

In climate science, whichever side is favored by politicians and journalism graduates is the side that wins.

And what about those 97% of scientists who agree? Well, what they all agree on is that if their government climate funding goes away, their careers will end.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Merchants Of Smear

cartoon
Manmade climate disaster proponents know the Saul Alinksy community agitator playbook by heart. In a fight, almost anything goes. Never admit error; just change your terminology and attack again. Expand your base, by giving potential allies financial and political reasons to join your cause. Pick “enemy” targets, freeze them, personalize them, polarize them and vilify them.

The “crisis” was global cooling, until Earth stopped cooling around 1976. It was global warming, until our planet stopped warming around 1995. The alarmist mantra then became “climate change” or “climate disruption” or “extreme weather.” Always manmade. Since Earth’s climate often fluctuates, and there are always weather extremes, such claims can never be disproven, certainly not to the alarmists’ satisfaction.

Alarmists say modern civilization’s “greenhouse gas” emissions are causing profound climate change – by replacing the powerful, interconnected solar and other natural forces that have driven climate and weather patterns and events since Earth and human history began. They insist that these alleged human-induced changes are already happening and are already disastrous. Pope Francis says we are already witnessing a “great cataclysm” for our planet, people and environment.

However, there is no cataclysm – now or imminent – even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have gone well past the alleged 350 parts-per-million “tipping point,” and now hover near 400 ppm (0.04%). There has been no warming since 1995, and recent winters have been among the coldest in centuries in the United Kingdom and continental Europe, despite steadily rising levels of plant-fertilizing CO2.

As of January 12, 2015, it has been 3,365 days (9.2 years!) since a Category 3-5 hurricane hit the US mainland. This is by far the longest such stretch since record-keeping began in 1900, if not since the American Civil War. Sea levels are barely rising, at a mere seven inches per century. Antarctic sea ice is expanding to new records; Arctic ice has also rebounded. Polar bears are thriving. In fact:

Every measure of actual evidence contradicts alarmist claims and computer model predictions. No matter how fast or sophisticated those models are, feeding them false or unproven assumptions about CO2 and manipulated or “homogenized” temperature data still yields garbage output, scenarios and predictions.

That’s why alarmists also intoned the “peak oil” and “resource depletion” mantra – until fracking produced gushers of new supplies. So now they talk about “sustainable development,” which really means “whatever we advocate is sustainable; whatever we despise and oppose is unsustainable.”

USEPA Administrator Gina McCarthy also ignores climate realities. Her agency is battling coal-fired power plants (and will go after methane and gas-fired generators next), to “stop climate change” and “trigger a range of investments” in innovation and a “clean power future.” What she really means is: Smart businesses will support our agenda. If they do, we’ll give them billions in taxpayer and consumer money. If they oppose us, we will crush them. And when we say innovation, we don’t mean fracking.

As to responding to these inconvenient climate realities, or debating them with the thousands of scientists who reject the “dangerous manmade climate change” tautology, she responds: “The time for arguing about climate change has passed. The vast majority of scientists agree that our climate is changing.”

This absurd, dismissive assertion underscores citizen investigative journalist Russell Cook’s findings, in his perceptive and fascinating Merchants of Smear report. The climate catastrophe narrative survives only because there has been virtually no debate over its scientific claims, he explains. The public rarely sees the extensive evidence debunking and destroying climate cataclysm assertions, because alarmists insist that “the science is settled,” refuse to acknowledge or debate anyone who says otherwise, and claim skeptical scientists get paid by oil companies, tainting anything they say.

The fossil-fuel-payoff claim is classic Alinsky: Target and vilify your “enemies.”

“No one has ever offered an iota of evidence” that oil interests paid skeptical researchers to change their science to fit industry views, “despite legions of people repeating the claim,” Cook notes. “Never has so much – the very survival of the global warming issue – depended on so little – a paper-thin accusation from people having hugely troubling credibility issues of their own.” The tactic is intended to marginalize manmade global warming skeptics. But the larger problem is mainstream media malfeasance: reporters never question “climate crisis” dogmas … or allegations that “climate denier” scientists are willing to fabricate studies questioning “settled science” for a few grand in illicit industry money.

Pay no attention to the real-world climate or those guys behind the curtain, we are told. Just worry about climate monsters conjured up by their computer models. “Climate change deniers” are Big Oil lackeys – and you should turn a blind eye to the billions of dollars in government, industry and foundation money paid annually to researchers and modelers who subscribe to manmade climate disruption claims.

In fact, the US government alone spent over $106 billion in taxpayer funds on alarmist climate research between 2003 and 2010. In return, the researchers refuse to let other scientists, IPCC reviewers or FOIA investigators see their raw data, computer codes or CO2-driven algorithms. The modelers and scientists claim the information is private property, even though taxpayers paid for the work and the results are used to justify energy, job and economy-killing policies and regulations. Uncle Sam spends billions more every year on renewable energy programs that raise energy prices, cost jobs and reduce living standards.

None of these recipients wants to derail this money train, by entertaining doubts about the “climate crisis.” Al Gore won’t debate anyone or even address audience questions he hasn’t preapproved.

As to claims of a “97% consensus,” one source is responses from 75 of 77 “climate scientists” who were selected from a 2010 survey that went to 10,257 scientists. Apparently, the analysts didn’t like the “consensus” of the other 10,180 scientists. Another study, by a University of Queensland professor, claimed that 97% of published scientific papers agree that humans caused at least half of the 1.3o F (0.7o C) global warming since 1950; in reality, only 41 of the 11,944 papers cited explicitly said this.

“Skeptical” scientists do not say climate doesn’t change or humans don’t affect Earth’s climate to some (small) degree. However, more than 1,000 climate scientists, 31,000 American scientists and 48% of US meteorologists say there is no evidence that we are causing dangerous warming or climate change.

Two recent United States Senate staff reports shed further light on other shady dealings that underlie the “dangerous manmade climate change” house of cards. Chains of Environmental Command reveals how Big Green activists and foundations collude with federal agencies to develop renewable energy and anti-hydrocarbon policies. EPA’s Playbook Unveiled shines a bright light on the fraud, deceit and secret science behind the agency’s sue-and-settle lawsuits, pollution standards and CO2 regulations.

The phony “solutions” to the imaginary “climate crisis” hurt our children and grandchildren, by driving up energy prices, threatening electricity reliability, thwarting job creation, adversely impacting people’s health and welfare, and subsidizing wind turbines that slaughter birds and bats. They perpetuate poverty, misery, disease and premature death in poor African and Asian countries, by blocking construction of fossil fuel power plants that would bring electricity to 1.3 billion people who still do not have it.

The caterwauling over climate change has nothing to do with real-world warming, cooling, storms or droughts. It has everything to do with an ideologically driven hatred of hydrocarbons, capitalism and economic development, and a callous disdain for middle class workers and impoverished Third World families that “progressive” activists, politicians and bureaucrats always claim to care so much about.

House and Senate committees should use studies cited above as a guide for requiring a robust pollution, health and climate debate. They should compel EPA, climate modelers and scientists to testify under oath, present their evidence and respond to tough questions. Congress should then block any regulations that do not conform to the scientific method and basic standards of honesty, transparency and solid proof.

 

[GLG]

OBD you have passed on to the the list of irrelevant with you hoax theory.
It's all just "noise" from your side with your friends.
The denialists are denying it's the warmest year. Which makes sense if you're in denial
Seek help.....

[CHHJLQVUX0k]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHHJLQVUX0k