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Showing posts from November, 2013

Surprise: First Climate Change Refugee Appeal Officially Rejected

Townhall   covered  a Pacific Islander's attempt to become the first climate change refugee and avoid deportation from New Zealand. It's official: the High Court described the appeal as "novel," but ultimately inadequate. If you missed the original story, here is the background: France 24 reports that the man, Ioane Teitiota, is currently appealing the New Zealand High Court's decision to refuse him refugee status on the basis of climate change predictions. Teitiota, 37, has had three children in New Zealand and argues that returning to Kiribati would endanger his family: “There’s no future for us when we go back to Kiribati,” he told the appeal tribunal, adding that a return would pose a risk to his children’s health. ... “Fresh water is a basic human right ... the Kiribati government is unable, and perhaps unwilling, to guarantee these things because it’s completely beyond their control,” [his lawyer] told Radio New Zealand. Thankfully, this case is

Need for pro-consumer and pro-energy groups to pay attention to the off-the-radar regulators like FERC

If we’re going to take control of our energy future; if we’re going to avoid high gas prices every year, we need an all-of-the-above strategy that develops every source of American energy.” - President Obama, March 1, 2012 Wellinghoff’s Moment of Truth Every once in a while, our politicians in Washington speak their minds and leak the truth about their intentions. In a recent talk by FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff, the truth about his anti-energy agenda leaked like a sieve. During his keynote address at the National Summit on Integrating Energy Efficiency and Smart Grid in October, Chairman Wellinghoff rejected the Obama administration’s “ all of the above ” energy strategy in favor of his pet initiative, energy efficiency. Wellinghoff said : “I’ve been doing energy efficiency for a long, long time; an advocate of energy efficiency. Although I have to say, ‘No, we’re advocates of all the above,” all of the above is one of the most overused terms in energy that

You can here it now! Climate Clown , Climate Change do it, Climate Change do it, " no it all atmospheric-river event.now"(What the Jet steam?) Yawn! California, Dry year may be in store

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State forecasters are predicting a third dry year for California, the Department of Water Resources announced Wednesday. The forecast for water year 2014 is of particular interest since water years 2012 and 2013 were both dry, and 2014 brings the possibility of a third dry year. The experimental forecast, prepared for DWR by Dr. Klaus Wolter of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, makes the following predictions based on statistical models that consider global influences on California climate: • Mostly dry conditions for most of California, with dry conditions being especially likely in Southern California. • Near-normal to drier than normal for the Colorado River Basin, an important source of water supply for Southern California, although not as dry as in water year 2013. • A small chance of a spring shift to El Niño conditions that could bring wetter weather for Southern California late in the season. “Atmosp

Al Gore goes vegan, with little fanfare?

Maybe it was something about what they served in the White House mess in the 1990s. Or perhaps it's what happens to baby boomer  Democrats more than a decade after leaving office. For whatever the reason former vice president Al Gore has gone vegan, just like the president with whom he once served . Gore's recent decision to forgo animal products surfaced as an offhand reference in a Forbes magazine piece  about Hampton Creek Foods, an upscale vegan product line carried in Whole Foods. Ryan Mac's article, which posted Saturday, chronicled how wealthy investors including Bill Gates, Tom Steyer and Vinod Khosla have poured money into the company, which hopes to take down the U.S. egg industry with offerings such as a plant-base mayonnaise. "Newly turned vegan Al Gore is also circling," Mac writes. An individual familiar with Gore's decision, who asked not to be identified because it involved a personal matter, confirmed that Gore opted a c

What is U.N Agenda 21?

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If you were to hear that in the very near future the United States will have no privately owned property, no air conditioning, no dams, no paved roads, no way to correct rivers for flood control, no golf courses, no pastureland used for grazing, would you believe it? These are all mandates of a United Nations program called Agenda 21 which was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. All delegates watched as four men, holding poles attached to an “Ark of Hope” which contained this Agenda 21 document! Within its pages are a substantial attack on the American Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. The primary target for the changes proposed in 1992 is the United States of America. Here is a list of some of their “Unsustainable” Targets: Page Number Unsustainable =We will take this away! 337 Ski runs 350 Grazing of livestock 351 Disturbance of soil surface-plowing of soil, building fences 728 Commercial Agriculture-Modern farm production, chemical fer

Warsaw Follies II, Goodbye science, hello agenda 21 redistribution of wealth r

Message from Craig Rucker From CFACT, an organization opposed to the latest Climate Treaty nonsense. Rucker attended the Warsaw meet of the UN climate gang. Craig Rucker’s message: The UN struck a deal last night in Warsaw. Just when it seemed the UN climate summit would disintegrate amidst acrimony and recriminations, Obama agreed to announce U.S. emissions reductions in time to ink a global warming treaty in Paris in 2015. The UN delegates couldn’t resist bringing the U.S. on board. Among the more damaging outcomes, the U.S. and the developing world agreed to a “loss and damage” mechanism. Industrialized nations pretty much accepted liability for natural disasters which strike poor countries. Goodbye science, hello redistribution. Aka un agenda 21 redistribution of wealth E conomic Prosperity is defined in the preamble of Agenda21, “The developmental and environmental objectives of Agenda 21 will require substantial flow of new and additional financia

Maybe, just maybe, that whole ethanol/gasoline absurdity will fade away

The key reason ethanol is added to gasoline is very simple. Most of it is derived (in the US) from corn. Iowa, the first State in the Presidential election primary calendar grows lots of corn. (To be sure, the so-called “oxygenation” additives to fuel have some, emphasize some, utility in reducing local air pollution in congested urban areas. But there are huge, make that HUGE, downsides to ethanol. Including massive increases in the price of food). Now it’s starting to look like it’s losing some of its clout. Per the Associated Press: “That rule of politics collapsed resoundingly in the 2012 campaign when five of the six top Republican candidates said it was time for such intervention in the private market to end. “Now, Iowa’s senior political leaders are pondering how to shore up political support for the corn-based fuel at a time when its economic and environmental benefits are under attack .” But the case has become a tough sell for Republicans as the party

Prominent Yale warmist admits global warming impact is ‘invisible’

From the NYTimes ombudsman’s column today, whinging about the paper’s lack of climate coverage: The Times, which has published many groundbreaking series on the environment, has not had such a series since Mr. Gillis’s “Temperature Rising” ended in January. Such series not only provide especially deep reporting, but their presence also shows the subject is a high priority. “The Times is the thought leader and the agenda-setter, both globally and in the United States,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of Yale University’s Project on Climate Change Communication. “What it does matters tremendously, especially on this topic whose impact is invisible.” EARLY this year, The Times came under heavy criticism from many readers who care deeply about news coverage about the environment — especially climate change In January, The Times dismantled its “pod” of reporters and editors devoted to that subject. And in March, it discontinued its Green blog, a daily destination for

That whole hypothermia treatment for cardiac arrests? Not so fast…

  Despite the best claims of tv shows, the actual survival rates of people in cardiac arrest is in the one percent rate. Or worse. There’s been lots of continuing research to try to improve the figures. One new treatment that’s been getting a lot of hype, hope, and publicity is induced hypothermia, namely taking the patients and quickly cooling them down, in the hope that this will reduce brain damage and give the patient a better chance at recovery. The New England Journal of Medicine just reported on a study that casts, err, cold water on this: Conclusions In unconscious survivors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest of presumed cardiac cause, hypothermia at a targeted temperature of 33°? C[91.4 F] did not confer a benefit as compared with a targeted temperature of 36 C [96.8 F]. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1310519 About these ads

20 Rules for Junk Science Detectives

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This is an outstanding set of rules for science detection and evaluating scientific assertions. Put up in Nature Mag. Thank you Joe Bast, for forwarding, tipped off by Bob Ferguson http://www.nature.com/news/policy-twenty-tips-for-interpreting-scientific-claims-1.14183 I keep telling you about Cargo Cult Science, and it is all around us, charlatans with credentials and an agenda. The extraordinary physics genius and Nobel Prize winner, Richard Feynman, splains it in his 1974 Commencement Speech at Cal Tech. Here is a nice intro to the great Feynman if you don’t know of him. http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/06/08/richard-feynman-caltech-cargo-cult-science/ Here is the text of the speech that unfortunately was not recorded or filmed. Feynman was a charismatic speaker. http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html ONE MORE THING. Any reader who is of our skeptical group would note that the Nature article show a little bit of panderin

Liberal Science, A Climate of Fear, Cash and Correctitude, Modern environmentalism, coupled with fears first of global cooling and then of global warming,

Earth’s geological, archaeological and written histories are replete with climate changes: big and small, short and long, benign, beneficial, catastrophic and everything in between. The  Medieval Warm Period  (950-1300 AD or CE) was a boon for agriculture, civilization and Viking settlers in Greenland. The  Little Ice Age  that followed (1300-1850) was calamitous, as were the Dust Bowl and the extended droughts that vanquished the Anasazi and Mayan cultures;  cyclical droughts and floods  in Africa, Asia and Australia; and periods of vicious hurricanes and tornadoes. Repeated Pleistocene Epoch ice ages covered much of North America, Europe and Asia under mile-thick ice sheets that denuded continents, stunted plant growth, and dropped ocean levels 400 feet for thousands of years. Modern environmentalism, coupled with fears first of global cooling and then of global warming, persuaded politicians to launch the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Its original goal was to ass