Global Warming

Missing Science in the IPCC Report (+Dr. Krauss Caught Lying)

Published by Papa Giorgio

I will post a normal topic first, in this case it is a discussion on “Climate Change” (Global Warming), and it comes via The Heritage Foundation — a conservative/libertarian think tank. Great information prepping for the recent release of the latest climate report from the U.N. (Again, I cannot recommend enough a documentary entitled, “U.N.Me.” A great and actually funny look at the uselessness of that body.) Here is the discussion entitled, “Climate Change Reconsidered: Science the U.N. Will Exclude from Its Next Climate Report.”

IPCC REPORT

LYING

The second part is the ongoing debate between Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Lawrence Krauss. This ends the debate — effectively — any discussion of Craig’s use of the BGV Theorum. Two places to go to read the dialogue of this debate ending in full — which shows Dr. Krauss to be intentionally misrepresenting Dr. Vilenkin’s work. The first place to go is of course one of the principle players site, Dr. Craig:

The second place to go has a good summary and bullet point addition to the above, and where I found this nugget… which shows Dr. Kruass apparently wanted to hide what he knew was, a) a trouncing of himself in a public debate (yes, Dr. Craig is that good), b) willfully trying to hide his willful miss-characterization of Dr. Vilenkin’s work, or c), both.

  • (Via Wintery Knight) ~ “UPDATE: Dr. Craig reports that Dr. Krauss refused to let the organizers live-stream the three Australia debates, as well as refusing to let the Australian Broadcasting Corporation live-broadcast the three debates.”

Wow. As an ex-con, and someone who has raised boys that are actively wanting to be in law enforcement ~ (the oldest is part way done getting into the Sheriff’s … although he may be going active duty soon if they accept him into EOD, versus if he is going to stay in the airwing of the Corp as a reservist) ~ I know intimately what covering up a lie looks like. Dr. Krauss fits the criteria — fidgeting with which drink he is going to choose while Dr. Craig responds, to his mannerisms setting up the email, to his trying not to have the debate go public — he is truly “busted”!

Sea-Ice Update, No Media Coverage (Except Fox)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Via Breitbart:

You would think that the recent news about how Global Warming might not be real would be reason to celebrate in every corner of the media; Whoo-hoo we are not doomed! Oddly enough, though, except for some obligatory reporting about Arctic sea ice recovering to levels not seen in 35 years, and the news that the planet actually is not warming, the media almost seem to be covering this good news up.

Arctic ice and global temperatures were once big national news, at least when the trends moved the other way. Thus far, though, the media don’t seem too interested in the latest science on these very same topics–not even in this important study that shows humans are not to blame.

CBS Opted for Al Gore`s Memo While Ignoring Mother Nature`s (Comedy At Its Best! Thanks CBS)

Published by Papa Giorgio


WUWT states via Bloomberg:

Six tropical systems have formed in the Atlantic since the season began June 1 and none of them has grown to hurricane strength with winds of at least 74 miles (120 kilometers) per hour. Accumulated cyclone energy in the Atlantic, a measure of tropical power, is about 30 percent of where it normally would be, said Phil Klotzbach, lead author of Colorado State University’s seasonal hurricane forecasts.

“At this point, I doubt that a super-active hurricane season will happen,” Klotzbach said in an e-mail yesterday.

Via Breitbart:

Al Gore was recently taken to task for exaggerating claims involving the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. The latest weather news makes his misrepresentations look all the more ridiculous.

For the first time since 2002, this year there will be no hurricane activity before September 1.

Reports indicate this is only the 25th time in 161 years that has happened. 

The first hurricane of the season has formed on or after September 1 only 25 times in the past 161 years. Since the satellite era began in the mid-1960s, there have only been five years without a hurricane by August 31. The last time a hurricane failed to form before September 1 was in 2002 when Hurricane Gustav formed on September 11.

It would be foolish to make fun of anything involving such potentially dangerous storms and it’s also possible we could still see many late developing storms. However, given all the misleading information passed off on the topic by Gore, his allies and a fawning media, hopefully any lack of serious storm activity won’t be buried by the media for political reasons.

Electric Cars Worse, Or As Bad on the Environment!

Published by Papa Giorgio

Via HotAir:

…An environmental activist who once pushed for EVs and now works as a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley now calls electric vehicles “unclean at any speed” in a recent article for the engineering journal IEEE Spectrum (via Weasel Zippers and UPI):

The idea of electrifying automobiles to get around their environmental shortcomings isn’t new. Twenty years ago, I myself built a hybrid electric car that could be plugged in or run on natural gas. It wasn’t very fast, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t safe. But I was convinced that cars like mine would help reduce both pollution and fossil-fuel dependence.

I was wrong.

I’ve come to this conclusion after many years of studying environmental issues more deeply and taking note of some important questions we need to ask ourselves as concerned citizens. Mine is an unpopular stance, to be sure. The suggestive power of electric cars is a persuasive force—so persuasive that answering the seemingly simple question “Are electric cars indeed green?” quickly gets complicated.

Ozzie Zehner, who worked on the experimental EV-1 at GM before it got shelved, says some of the complications are due to the economics of science and scientific research.  Most of the funding comes from interested parties, which tends to produce research that supports their positions…

…read more…

Climate Scientist Dr. Murry Salby Explains Why Man-Made CO2 Does Not Drive Climate Change (Serious Saturday)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Climate scientist Dr. Murry Salby, Professor and Climate Chair at Macquarie University, Australia explains in a recent, highly-recommended lecture presented at Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg, Germany, why man-made CO2 is not the driver of atmospheric CO2 or climate change.

Dr. Salby demonstrates:

  • CO2 lags temperature on both short [~1-2 year] and long [~1000 year] time scales
  • The IPCC claim that “All of the increases [in CO2 concentrations since pre-industrial times] are caused by human activity” is impossible
  • “Man-made emissions of CO2 are clearly not the source of atmospheric CO2 levels”
  • Satellite observations show the highest levels of CO2 are present over non-industrialized regions, e.g. the Amazon, not over industrialized regions
  • 96% of CO2 emissions are from natural sources, only 4% is man-made
  • Net global emissions from all sources correlate almost perfectly with short-term temperature changes [R2=.93] rather than man-made emissions
  • Methane levels are also controlled by temperature, not man-made emissions
  • Climate model predictions track only a single independent variable – CO2 – and disregard all the other, much more important independent variables including clouds and water vapor.
  • The 1% of the global energy budget controlled by CO2 cannot wag the other 99%
  • Climate models have been falsified by observations over the past 15+ years
  • Climate models have no predictive value
  • Feynman’s quote “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with the data, it’s wrong” applies to the theory of man-made global warming.

See and Read More HERE

Ominous Points of View (Photo Fraud in the Washington Post)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This via WUWT:

Junkscience.com reports this is what the print copy looks like today for this article by Eugene Robinson. Note what looks like black unfiltered pollutants spewing skyward [is steam]

This is what it looks like during the day, in color, with the sun light coming from another direction (to the right).

Again, this is steam!

Which reminds me of a great article I wish to recommend — it is only 25-cents for Pete’s Sake (here) — in which it’s author Charles Cooke recounts seeing the infamous seven chimneys seen in many documentaries by activist environmentalists:

After half an hour’s drive, the incessant stretch of virgin land comes to an end and, over the shallow hills, we see white smoke billowing into the sky. A few more miles and an industrial plant comes into view. Against the green-and-white landscape, it is a shock. I recognize it immediately as belonging to heavy-oil giant Syncrude, and as the favorite subject of the myriad anti-oil-sands photographs that are currently circulating around the Web. It is without doubt an ugly thing to see amid so much beauty, and the Tolkienesque distaste for the “scouring” of the countryside that informs the “green” zeitgeist is born of a noble instinct. Yet not all is what it seems. To a layman, the seven sets of white clouds look baleful, but, I learn, six of these chimneys are emitting just harmless steam. Our host, Cheryl Robb, jokes that she prefers conducting summer tours because then “the steam is invisible.” She gives us the details of an ongoing $1.6 billion project that will reduce the emissions from the one offending chimney by 60 percent. (National Review, “The Quite Gold Rush,” by Charles C. W. Cooke)

It’s all about perspectives… one is a misuse of lighting and facts, the other is more honest.

In the article, Eugine Robinson laments a Co2 milestone than WUWT makes a point that even Al Gore called for a solemn day of prayer over:

Al Gore calls for a day of prayer and reflection, and bothering your neighbor:

So please, take this day and the milestone it represents to reflect on the fragility of our civilization and and the planetary ecosystem on which it depends. Rededicate yourself to the task of saving our future. Talk to your neighbors, call your legislator, let your voice be heard. We must take immediate action to solve this crisis. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next year. Now.

Shirts are available:

However, the PPM were revised, much to the chagrin of the religious believers (beliebers?) like Al Gore:

It seems we didn’t reach 400PPM last week after all. The data has been revised. Ooops.

‘Carbon dioxide measurements in the Earth’s atmosphere did not break the symbolic milestone of 400 parts per million at a Hawaiian observatory last week, according to a revised reading from the nation’s climate observers.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revised its May 9 reading at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, saying it remained fractions of a point below the level of 400 ppm, at 399.89′

Source: LA Times

Oh well, there’s always next week…or maybe not, since spring in the Northern Hemisphere tends to reduce CO2 as plants suck up all that CO2 that some claim is not plant food.

Tornado Alley, A Big Bust for AGW Alarmists

Published by Papa Giorgio

UPDATE via POWERLINE:

As everyone knows, climate orthodoxy holds that climate change from carbon emissions is going to make extreme weather more extreme. So I won’t hold my breath waiting to hear the climatistas commenting on this story from the Bezos Bulletin Washington Post today:

2018 will be the first year with no violent tornadoes in the United States

In the whirlwind that is 2018, there has been a notable lack of high-end twisters.

We’re now days away from this becoming the first year in the modern record with no violent tornadoes touching down in the United States… It was a quiet year for tornadoes overall, with below normal numbers most months. Unless you’re a storm chaser, this is not bad news. The low tornado count is undoubtedly a big part of the reason the 10 tornado deaths in 2018 are also vying to be a record low.

The story also offers this chart of tornado trends over the last several decades:

OLDER POST

To be clear, this is a 60-year low… and we have increased carbon output in the past 15-years almost as much as the previous 60-years.

Via WUWT (the below and above):

….Figure 1 [top] shows all tornadoes above EF1. (See here, why EF1’s are excluded.) The 10-Year Trend is significantly below the level consistently seen up to 1991, although the high totals in 2011 have inevitably caused a small upwards blip.

We see a similar pattern with the stronger EF3+ tornadoes.

I do not claim to know what will happen to tornado numbers in coming years. And anyone who does is lying.

NOAA sums up the situation neatly in their FAQ.

Does “global warming” cause tornadoes? No. Thunderstorms do. The harder question may be, “Will climate change influence tornado occurrence?” The best answer is: We don’t know….

…read more…

Professor David Deming Defends Professor Don Easterbrook from the Anti-Science Global Warming Ideology

Published by Papa Giorgio

  • [WUWT note: this article was originally submitted as a “letter to the editor” to the Bellingham Herald, a newspaper that published an attack on Dr. Don Easterbrook. The Herald refused to publish my rebuttal. The executive editor, July Shirley (julie.shirley@bellinghamherald.com) explained “We only print letters from residents of Whatcom County. We are not publishing your letter.”]

Via Watts Up With That? (Seen first at Powerline) Note that there are numerous links in the original post:

I write in rebuttal to the March 31 letter by WWU geology faculty criticizing Dr. Don Easterbrook. I have a Ph.D in geophysics and have published research papers on climate change in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. In 2006 I testified before the US Senate on global warming. Additionally, I am the author of a three-volume history of science.

I have never met Don Easterbrook. I write not so much to defend him as to expose the ignorance exhibited in the letter authored by WWU geology faculty. Their attack on Dr. Easterbrook is the most egregious example of pedantic buffoonery since the Pigeon League conspired against Galileo in the seventeenth century. Skepticism is essential to science. But the goal of the geology faculty at WWU seems to be to suppress critical inquiry and insist on dogmatic adherence to ideology.

The WWU faculty never defined the term “global warming” but described it as “very real,” as if it were possible for something to be more real than real. They claimed that the evidence in support of this “very real” global warming was “overwhelming.” Yet they could not find space in their letter to cite a single specific fact that supports their thesis.

There is significant evidence that would tend to falsify global warming. The mean global air temperature has not risen for the last fifteen years. At the end of March the global extent of sea ice was above the long-term average and higher than it was in March of 1980. Last December, snow cover in the northern hemisphere was at the highest level since record keeping began in 1966. The UK just experienced the coldest March of the last fifty years. There has been no increase in droughts or wildfires. Worldwide hurricane and cyclone activity is near a forty-year low.

One might think that the foregoing facts would raise doubts in scientists interested in pursuing objective truth. But global warming is not so much a scientific theory subject to empirical falsification as it is a political ideology that must be fiercely defended in defiance of every fact to the contrary. In the past few years we have been told that not only hot weather but cold weather is caused by global warming. The blizzards that struck the east coast of the US in 2010 were attributed to global warming. Every weather event–hot, cold, wet or dry–is said to be caused by global warming. The theory that explains everything explains nothing.

Among the gems in the endless litany of nonsense we are subjected to are claims that global warming causes earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. Last year we were warned that global warming would turn us all into hobbits, the mythical creatures from J. R. R. Tolkien’s novels. I am not aware of any member of the WWU geology faculty criticizing these ridiculous claims. Their vehemence seems to be reserved for honest skeptics like Dr. Easterbrook who advance science by asking hard questions.

At the heart of the WWU geology faculty criticisms was the claim that peer review creates objective and reliable knowledge. Nonsense. Peer review produces opinions. Scientists, like other people, have political beliefs, ideological orientations, and personal views that strain their scientific objectivity. One of the most disgusting things to emerge from the 2009 Climategate emails was the revelation of an attempt to subvert the peer-review process by suppressing the publication of work that was scientifically sound but contrary to the reviewer’s personal views.

The infamous phrase “hide the decline” refers to an instance where a global warming alarmist omitted data that contradicted his personal belief that the world was warming. This sort of bias is not limited but pervasive. Neither is science a foolproof method for producing absolute truth. Scientific knowledge is always tentative and subject to revision. The entire history of science is littered with discarded theories once thought to be incontrovertible truths.

The WWU geology faculty letter asserted that technological advances arise from application of the scientific method. They claimed that airplanes were invented by scientists. But the Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics–not scientists. The modern age of personal computing began in a suburban California garage in 1976. The most significant technological advance in human history was the Industrial Revolution in Britain that occurred from 1760 through 1830. When Adam Smith toured factories and inquired as to who had invented the new machinery, the answer was always the same: the common workman. Antibiotics were not discovered through the rigorous application of scientific methodology but serendipitously when Fleming noticed in 1928 that mold suppressed bacterial growth.

Dr. Easterbrook’s contributions have furthered the advance of scientific knowledge and the progress of the human race. It matters not if a multitude of professors oppose him. As Galileo explained, it is “certain that the number of those who reason well in difficult matters is much smaller than the number of those who reason badly….reasoning is like running and not like carrying, and one Arab steed will outrun a hundred jackasses.”

David Deming

Professor of Arts & Sciences

University of Oklahoma

More People Are Catching On That the AGW Crowd are Charlatans

Published by Papa Giorgio

From the Daily Mail:

The Mail on Sunday today presents irrefutable evidence that official predictions of global climate warming have been catastrophically flawed.

The graph on this page blows apart the ‘scientific basis’ for Britain reshaping its entire economy and spending billions in taxes and subsidies in order to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. These moves have already added £100 a year to household energy bills.

[….]

But when the latest official global temperature figures from the Met Office are placed over the predictions, they show how wrong the estimates have been, to the point of falling out of the ‘95 per cent’ band completely.

The graph shows in incontrovertible detail how the speed of global warming has been massively overestimated. Yet those forecasts have had a ruinous impact on the bills we pay, from heating to car fuel to huge sums paid by councils to reduce carbon emissions.

…read more…

(Real Clear Politics) Steven Hayward points to signs that even advocates of the global warming hysteria are starting to backtrack.

“The new issue of The Economist has a long feature on the declining confidence in the high estimates of climate sensitivity. That this appears in The Economist is significant, because this august British news organ has been fully on board with climate alarmism for years now. A Washington-based Economist correspondent admitted to me privately several years ago that the senior editors in London had mandated consistent and regular alarmist climate coverage in its pages.

“The problem for the climateers is increasingly dire. As The Economist shows in its first chart (Figure 1 here), the recent temperature record is now falling distinctly to the very low end of its predicted range and may soon fall out of it, which means the models are wrong, or, at the very least, that there’s something going on that supposedly ‘settled’ science hasn’t been able to settle.”

See a better version of that graph [at the top], which makes it clear that the actual predictions in the graph date only to about 2006—and they are already being proven wrong.

You know, you can really manipulate a graph to spin the data, for example, by manipulating the scale to “zoom in” and make something look bigger or “zoom out” to make it look smaller. We’re used to seeing the zoomed-in version of global temperature measurements, so it’s nice to see this zoomed-out version (to the right)

Rather than narrowing in to measure minor variations from the long-term average, which makes annual variations of a few tenths of a degree look enormous, this one zooms out to show us the data in terms of absolute temperature measurements, in which the annual variations over the past 15 years look as insignificant as they really are.

So basically, all that the global warming advocates really have, as the evidentiary basis for their theory, is that global temperatures were a little higher than usual in the late 1990s. That’s it. Which proves nothing. The climate varies, just as weather varies, and as far as we can tell, this is all well within the normal range. (…read more…)

James Hansen, who is retiring from NASA making it clear he is doing so because he wants to devote more time to [crazy] activism: James E. Hansen, the climate scientist who issued the clearest warning of the 20th century about the dangers of global warming, will retire from NASA this week, giving himself more freedom to pursue political and legal efforts to limit greenhouse gases (Climate Depot). Dr. Lubos Motl, a physicist and a Harvard Professor of stringy theory, comments on this move by Hanses:

“In most respects, James Hansen is just another rank-and-file environmentalist pinko commie watermelon who climbs chimneys, gets arrested during rallies, sleeps in front of power stations, and eats rootlets, acorns, and earthworms… Hansen was pretty much the only person in the world who combined these Luddite, insane, totally unscientific, irrational attitudes to the human civilization with an influential position in an organization that is one of the symbols of the contemporary scientific and technological establishment.”

These comments about Hansen are similar to the co-founder of Green Peace, Patrick Moore, comments:

“I now find that many environmental groups have drifted into self-serving cliques with narrow vision and rigid ideology…. many environmentalists are showing signs of elitism, left-wingism, and downright eco-fascism. The once politically centrist, science-based vision of environmentalism has been largely replaced with extremist rhetoric. Science and logic have been abandoned and the movement is often used to promote other causes such as class struggle and anti-corporatism. The public is left trying to figure out what is reasonable and what is not.”

But people continue to be duped by these liberal activists, and continue to believe and kick a dead horse. I think Romans 1:22 speaks to this? “Claiming to be wise, they became fools.”

NEW Hockey Stick
…the 20th century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes.

One chap brought up Greenland to me, and after showing that there have been warmer periods in the past, is posted this:

You are fighting history R.T., as well as updated satellite info:

☁ The melt extent algorithm used by Greenland Ice Sheet Today has been overestimating the melt extent, and as a result, daily images posted on this site in February and March may have indicated melt where none occurred…. The adjusted algorithm shows greatly reduced melt extent for early 2013. This much lower extent is more consistent with available weather and climate records. ~ via National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) (http://tinyurl.com/chhmk7o)

So a correction by the same people where you get your info from is excluded in your view of the world, but included in mine. In other words, one person is missing info (you), the other has more (me). One person’s conclusion is wrong based on this partial information (you), the other persons conclusion is more rational/less scary due to this more complete information (me). (See also: http://tinyurl.com/br8eerz)

ALL THIS, however, refuses to sink into the minds of those convinced by this false info via BAD predictive computer models. Again, failed computer models versus evidence. You be the judge. I will let Real Clear Politics take us out:

….So here’s the state of play of climate science a third of a century into the global warming hysteria. They don’t have a reliable baseline of global temperature measurements that would allow them to say what is normal and natural and what isn’t. Their projections about future warming are demonstrably failing to predict the actual data. And now they have been caught, yet again, fudging the numbers and manipulating the graphs to show a rapid 20th-century warming that they want to be true but which they can’t back up with actual evidence.

A theory with this many holes in it would be have been thrown out long ago, if not for the fact that it conveniently serves the political function of indicting fossil fuels as a planet-destroying evil and allowing radical environmentalists to put a modern, scientific face on their primitivist crusade to shut down industrial civilization.

But can’t we all just stop calling this “science” now?

John Kerry vs. `The Warming[?] World`

Published by Papa Giorgio

Mouse Over Graph

Via a guest post by Paul Driessen at What’s Up With That, entitled “Our real manmade climate crisis“

In his first address as Secretary of State, John Kerry said we must safeguard “the most sacred trust” we owe to our children and grandchildren: “an environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate.”

Even the IPCC and British Meteorological Office now recognize that average global temperatures haven’t budged in almost 17 years. Little evidence suggests that sea level rise, storms, droughts, polar ice and temperatures or other weather and climate events and trends display any statistically significant difference from what Earth and mankind have experienced over the last 100-plus years…

[….]

1) Influence peddling.

Over the past three years, the Tides Foundation and Tides Center alone poured $335 million into environmentalist climate campaigns, and $1 billion into green lobbies at large, notes Undue Influence author Ron Arnold. Major US donors gave $199 million to Canadian environmental groups just for anti-oil sands and Keystone pipeline battles during the last twelve years, analysts Vivian Krause and Brian Seasholes estimate; the Tides Foundation poured $10 million into these battles during 2009-2012.

All told, US foundations alone have “invested” over $797 million in environmentalist climate campaigns since 2000! And over $19.3 billion in “environmental” efforts since 1995, Arnold calculates! Add to that the tens of billions that environmental activist groups, universities and other organizations have received from individual donors, corporations and government agencies to promote “manmade climate disaster” theories – and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

Moreover, that’s just US cash. It doesn’t include EU, UN and other climate cataclysm contributions. Nor does it include US or global spending on wind, solar, biofuel and other “renewable” energy schemes. That this money has caused widespread pernicious and corrupting effects should surprise no one.

2) Politicized science, markets and ethics.

The corrupting cash has feathered careers, supported entire departments, companies and industries, and sullied our political, economic and ethical systems. It has taken countless billions out of productive sectors of our economy, and given it to politically connected, politically correct institutions that promote climate alarmism and renewable energy (and which use some of this crony capitalist taxpayer and consumer cash to help reelect their political sponsors).

Toe the line – pocket the cash, bask in the limelight. Question the dogma – get vilified, harassed and even dismissed from university or state climatologist positions for threatening the grants pipeline.

The system has replaced honest, robust, evidence-based, peer-reviewed science with pseudo-science based on activism, computer models, doctored data, “pal reviews,” press releases and other chicanery that resulted in Climategate, IPCC exposés, and growing outrage. Practitioners of these dark sciences almost never debate climate disaster deniers or skeptics; climate millionaire Al Gore won’t even take questions that he has not preapproved; and colleges have become centers for “socially responsible investing” campaigns based on climate chaos, “sustainable development” and anti-hydrocarbon ideologies…

[….]

3) Climate eco-imperialism impoverishes and kills.

Climate alarmism and pseudo science have justified all manner of regulations, carbon trading, carbon taxes, renewable energy programs and other initiatives that increase the cost of everything we make, grow, ship, eat, heat, cool, wear and do – and thus impair job creation, economic growth, living standards, health, welfare and ecological values.

Excessive EPA rules have closed numerous coal-fired power plants, and the agency plans to regulate most of the US hydrocarbon-based economy by restricting carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles, generating plants, cement kilns, factories, malls, hospitals and other “significant” sources. Were it not for the hydraulic fracturing revolution that has made natural gas and gas-fired generation abundant and cheap, US electricity prices would be skyrocketing – just as they have in Britain and Germany.

EU papers carry almost daily articles about fuel poverty, potential blackouts, outsourcing, job losses, economic malaise and despair, and deforestation for fire wood in those and other European countries, due to their focus on climate alarmism and “green” energy. California electricity prices are already highest in USA, thanks to its EU-style programs. The alarms are misplaced, the programs do nothing to reduce Chinese, Indian or global emissions, and renewable energy is hardly eco-friendly or sustainable.

Wind energy requires perpetual subsidies and “backup” fossil fuel power plants that actually produce 80% of the electricity attributed to wind, and blankets wildlife habitats with turbines and transmission lines that kill millions of birds and bats every year. In fact, industrial wind facilities remain viable only because they are exempted from many environmental review, wildlife and bird protection laws that are enforced with heavy penalties for all other industries. Solar smothers habitats with glossy panels, and biofuels divert crops and cropland to replace fuels that we have in abundance but refuse to develop.

Now climate activists and EPA want to regulate fracking for gas that was once their preferred option.

[….]

Symbols Lost

BP goes ‘beyond petroleum’

Then in 2000 BP, now a group of companies that included Amoco, ARCO and Castrol, unveiled a new global brand with a new mark, a sunburst of green, yellow and white symbolizing dynamic energy in all its forms. It was called the Helios after the sun god of ancient Greece. In a press release announcing the change, the group said it had decided to retain the BP name because of its recognition around the world and because it stood for the new company’s aspirations: ‘better people, better products, big picture, beyond petroleum.’

In related news, BP is quitting its 40-years of investment in solar power:

It seems to be a trend now, last October it was Siemens who gave up on solar, now it is British Petroleum, who has been in the solar business nearly 40 years, and has made the last closure announcements, finalizing what they announced in 2011.

In the news today:

(Reuters) – British oil major BP shut down the remnants of its solar unit on Wednesday, drawing a line under the business on which most of its Beyond Petroleum tagline of the early 2000s was premised.

[….]

The company confirmed on Wednesday that it plans to exit its large-scale projects at Long Haven in the U.S. and Moree in Australia.

BP announced plans in July to abandon its household and industrial rooftop solar activities to concentrate on the larger projects but said on December15 that even those were no longer viable.

What Is the Cause of the Violent Arab Spring? Global Warming of Course

Published by Papa Giorgio

In the above audio of Prager he is talking about this article, “The Scary Hidden Stressor,” by Thomas Friedman. The following article is also mentioned in the above audio:

Dennis Prager’s Column:

Last week, Bjørn Lomborg, the widely published Danish professor and director of one of the world’s leading environmental think tanks, the Copenhagen Consensus Center, published an article about the Philippines’ decision, after twelve years, to allow genetically modified (GM) rice — “golden rice” — to be grown and consumed in that country.

The reason for the delay was environmentalist opposition to GM rice; and the reason for the change in Philippine policy was that 4.4 million Filipino children suffer from Vitamin-A deficiency, and golden rice contains Vitamin A.

Vitamin-A deficiency, Lomborg writes, “according to the World Health Organization, causes 250,000 to 500,000 children to go blind each year. Of these, half die within a year.” During the twelve-year delay, Lomborg continues, “about 8 million children worldwide died from Vitamin-A deficiency.”

Using golden rice is by far the most effective and cheapest way to get Vitamin A into Third World children.

So who would oppose something that could save millions of children’s lives and millions of other children from blindness?

The answer is people who are more devoted to nature than to human life.

And who might such people be?

They are called environmentalists.

These are the people who coerced nations worldwide into banning DDT. It is generally estimated that this ban has led to the deaths of about 50 million human beings, overwhelmingly African children, from malaria. DDT kills the mosquito that spreads malaria to human beings.

U.S. News writer Carrie Lukas reported in 2010, “Fortunately, in September 2006, the World Health Organization announced a change in policy: It now recommends DDT for indoor use to fight malaria. The organization’s Dr. Anarfi Asamoa-Baah explained, ‘The scientific and programmatic evidence clearly supports this reassessment. Indoor residual spraying (IRS) is useful to quickly reduce the number of infections caused by malaria-carrying mosquitoes. IRS has proven to be just as cost effective as other malaria prevention measures and DDT presents no health risk when used properly.’”

Though Lukas blames environmentalists for tens of millions of deaths, she nevertheless describes environmentalists as “undoubtedly well-intentioned.”

As we end the above Leftist lunacy, we should remember well CS Lewis’ words about well-intentioned persons:

 “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”