Wind Action Meeting in Harriston, Aug. 16th. Hope to see you all there!

Saturday, August 16th, 2014, Meeting for Wind Warriors at the Royal Canadian Legion in Harriston:

 If you haven’t let me know that you are coming already, please let me know before meeting day so we can accommodate everyone comfortably.

 

Royal Canadian Legion in Harriston, 53 Elora St.  Phone is 519-338-2843.  Legion is almost next to the Ford dealership on the main Street of Harriston. There is parking behind the Legion and usually the front door is open but you can always get in through the back doors.

 

People are generally able to stay to talk to those newer to the issue who want more info, after the meeting.  In fact we often seem to have an informal meeting afterwards at the local restaurant while we have lunch and would love to see you join in!

 Please send any other agenda item you want to see up for discussion.

Agenda to date:

 

The only rule we have and hold to is that we DO NOT rehash frustrations with wind company or govt.  We do not rehash common knowledge re wind company and govt as per what might be discussed at a public info session. Meetings are held to discuss next steps and concrete plans for action. 

 

–  Ontario Regional Wind Turbine Working Group becoming Ontario Wind Action: 

There is keen interest in changing this meeting group currently known as Ontario Regional Wind Turbine Working Group into Ontario Wind Action, with development of a website to go along with the change in name and specific contact names for media use.  Regional group has always been about concrete action and next steps in the battle against industrial wind turbines.  This development has the potential to help build strength, inclusiveness and focus to the fight.  Bring your ideas for this one.  (FYI, below please see minutes of very first Regional/Actiongroup meeting from Dec. of 2010.  So many people have been hard at work ever since!)

 

– Paul Kuster will speak to the initiative he is using to sell seeding trees to plant as an alternative to ‘planting’ giant turbines in communities. A handout on turbines goes with the seedlings.  It’s a wonderful opportunity for your group to both educate and fundraise! 

 

–  Municipal elections are coming up quickly.  It’s important to discuss some strategies now, before election time is upon us. 

 

–  SWEAR will update on Julian Falconer legal work and upcoming Divisional court dates

 

–  Sherri Lange will present the possibility of launching succession demands and working to qualify for special powers under the Charter of Rights.  Possibilities include giving urban centers a wake-up call on why there is the major divide between urban and rural Ontario.

 

– Jaki of West Grey’s  http://howgreenisthis.org.  will give a brief lesson on using social media, ie ‘twitter’, facebook, etc. to further spread the message of STOP the Wind Turbines.

 

Please send any other agenda items you want to see up for discussion asap.  We will  leave some time for discussion on ‘Orange Zone’, MPAC and any items we would prefer not out in print in an email.  Merci!

____________________________________________________________________ 

For your interest, below please see minutes of the very first Regional meeting held in Maxwell in December of 2010. These were the days of wind industry open houses every week, townhall info sessions almost every week, a barrage of letters to the editor, protests, struggling to find a legal stand; anything and everything….

 

While moving the meeting place to Damascus and then to Harriston, Regional meetings continued to occur approximately 4 times a year, every year since then and continue to date. 

 

Lefties Trying To Pretend That “Agenda 21” is a “Good Thing”! Maybe for them…..

Panic in “Sustainable City”

July 30th, 2014 by Tom DeWeese

The attacks came fast and furious, from March through June. A coordinated attack to vilify, ostracize and neutralize efforts by local citizen activists who are standing in opposition to Agenda 21 and its policy called Sustainable Development. The terms “conspiracy theory,” “extremists,” “fear mongers,” and “far right,” are all over these obvious attempts to smear any opposition to the agenda of the Sustainablist planners that now swarm over nearly every community in America.

It started with the American Planning Association (APA) delivering yet another report in a continuing effort to understand the fierce opposition to its “innocent,” “locally- driven” programs. Apparently it is a mystery to the APA why there would be  opposition to its plans to reorganize entire communities which sometimes result in turning people’s lives upside down.  The APA has done a series of studies over the past few years in an attempt to find a way to silence or counter our opposition to planning. The latest report, issued in March, 2014, entitled “The Actions of Discontent,” was perhaps the most honest of the reports the APA has issued, when it said the opposition to planning is “marked by deep philosophical differences between activists and planning proponents…”. That’s certainly better than saying we’re just nuts, unlike most of the usual attacks against us.

Case in point, the next attack came in April from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), yet again. This makes at least four SPLC reports I’m aware of, to specifically focus on me as the ring leader of the opposition. This report, entitled “Agenda 21, The UN, Sustainability and Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory,” says “it’s time to call out the conspiracy theorists.” It demands that “politicians who spread falsehoods about Agenda 21 and its effects need to be shamed by other politicians, by editorial boards and other commentators and by the citizenry at large.” Those are pretty strong words. Apparently they are getting desperate to stop us.

That report was followed by another from the Natural Resources Defense Council entitled “Agenda 21 Conspiracy Theorists Threaten Cities’ Sustainability Efforts.” Next came another rant from “Treehugger.com,” calling me the “Conspiracy King.” Then came articles in two national news magazines, each relying on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s attack. Newsweek started it with a cover article entitled “The Plots to Destroy America.” Then came Fortune magazine and its smear of activist Rosa Koire, head of Democrats Against Agenda 21. Rosa told me that it started out as an interview, then, just to “even the playing field,” reporter David Morris decided to bring in ICLEI and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Yep. Two against one. That’s a little fairer odds than we usually get.

What we are witnessing is the panic of a collapsing tyranny which they thought was well in hand.  And for a couple of decades it was all going the Sustainablist’s way, until some of us started to expose their hidden truths. Watch and learn America. This is how tyrants react to anyone who dares to challenge them.  As is always the case, their tactic is a scorched earth policy to lash out in every direction with vicious force in hopes that something will stick.

In its complete exasperation, the SPLC demands that the business community, the Chamber of Commerce, local governments and the news media “needs to stop reporting on Agenda 21 as if it were a bona fide controversy and plainly state the facts about the plan.” Further, the SPLC demands that communities “need to be encouraged to return to or start to develop such plans in tandem with responsible groups like the American Planning Association.” In other words, just as in the climate change debate, the SPLC demands that there be no debate, no discussion – just shut up and do it!

Meanwhile the tyranny of sustainable policy builds in town and after town, neighborhood after neighborhood.

In the Western states, the EPA is on a tear to control water, making it impossible to run the ranches. The Interior Department is forcing reintroductions of wolves and Grizzlies at the peril of livestock, family pets, children and natural herds of elk and deer.

In Orem, Utah, Betty Perry was arrested, handcuffed, and put in a holding tank because the grass in her front yard was dying. Violation, said the zoning enforcement officer. More recently, as the drought rages in California, a couple has been threatened with fines of $500 because their grass in their yard was dead. The reason it was dead is because they were obeying a California state government mandate that told them to preserve water or face a $500 fine. Tyrants always want it both ways.

Julie Bass, in Oak Park, Michigan, wanted to plant an organic garden in her yard. She even asked the mayor and city council if it was OK to plant and they both answered yes. But as she went to work on it, she too was arrested by the local zoning enforcement officer and faced 90 days in jail.

In Naperville, IL, two women were arrested for trying to prevent the local power company from installing smart meters that they clearly stated they did not want. The police came to the aid of the installers, cut a lock off their fences and trespassed on their property as the women tried to prevent it.

In Montgomery County, Ohio, Jennie Granato’s home was rendered basically  worthless as the regional government enforced the installation of a bike highway across her front yard, bringing the lane within seven feet of her front door. To date she has not been compensated a red cent for the land they took as the regional government plays games with the legal system to deny Jennie her day in court.

Across the nation, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is swarming over producers of unprocessed milk, confiscating products and shutting down plants, arresting producers and buyers alike, even though there have been no reports of sickness or deaths. Not even a complaint. And the assault on small farms continued in Michigan where entire herds of a certain breed of pigs were destroyed, accused of being feral, even though farmers had raised them for decades.

In Fauquier County, VA, the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) has colluded with local county government to harass organic farmer Martha Boneta for hosting a children’s birthday party in her little farm store. The store was forced to close as she was threatened with fines of $5000 per day.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced last summer a decree to make American neighborhoods more “diverse.” It’s called “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing,” calling for the federal government to gather and track data on “segregation” and “discrimination across America before deploying a wide range of social-engineering schemes to ensure more “diversity” in U.S. neighborhoods. It’s right out of the UN’s social justice plank.  Bottom line, if your neighborhood lacks the government mandated diversity breakdown, you won’t be able to sell your home to anyone but the racial quota they demand.

And on the international level, smug, arrogant, well-funded, white Sustainablists have determined that it’s a proper use of government power to ensure black residence of Africa continue to live in mud huts without electricity, clean water or an infrastructure to provide jobs. As Paul Driessen (author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death) reports, some 2.5 billion people still do not have electricity or get it only sporadically, and so must burn wood and dung for heating and cooking, which leads to wide-spread lung disease. No electricity means no refrigeration, safe water or decent hospitals. All of this is just fine with the perpetrators of Agenda 21 because such a life style, in their opinion, is sustainable! In reality it’s environmental racism.  And that is the real outcome of “social justice.”

All of these are examples of massive government overreach using the excuse of protecting the environment or controlling development or containing sprawl, or, in short, Sustainable Development. These, and many more outrageous government attacks on our once-free society, are the reasons why Americans are starting to show up at public meetings to demand that their elected officials protect them and their property from such out of control government sprawl. There is no justice, no reason, no compassion under sustainable policy dictates — just the rush to raw power for power’s sake.  Americans are feeling that reality first hand.

As a result, people are starting to listen to my warnings because they can clearly see the results. When they do feel that impact, and when they do ask questions, they are treated to stonewalling, lies and contempt by arrogant officials. So a growing number of Americans have stopped accepting their scare tactics and dire warnings of Environmental Armageddon. I’ve said for years that Agenda 21/Sustainable Development is built on a house of cards – on lies. And when such a foundation is finally challenged – it blows down rapidly. That is what is starting to happen across America. And that’s why the powerful Sustainablists are in such a panic over my efforts to expose these outrages.

Over the past three years pro-freedom activists have managed to convince more than 150 cities to end their memberships with ICLEI, one of the leading NGOs whose declared mission is to entrench sustainable policy into every community in the world.  A close associate of mine reported that the head of ICLEI USA told him they are scared because ICLEI can’t get new American cities to join them – because we made the very name “ICLEI” political poison. ICLEI is panicked.

More and more state legislatures are seriously considering anti-Agenda 21/pro-property rights legislation. Of course, Alabama has already passed such legislation, while  Oklahoma and Tennessee have passed similar attempts in at least one house of their legislatures. The Virginia legislature, after a two year battle waged by property rights activists, passed the Boneta bill to stop local harassment and over reach by local governments over small farmers. The legislation was a direct response by property owners to the enforcement of sustainable policy overreach. And it was a major defeat to the NGO’s pushing it. And it has them panicked!

Almost every day, now, I receive calls and emails from newly elected city councilmen and county commissioners from around the nation asking me what they can do to stop Agenda 21 policy in their community. I am starting to teach them new tactics to block new programs and ways to eliminate existing ones. We are especially focusing on strong language to define and defend private property rights. The fact is, Agenda 21 cannot be enforced without damaging property rights. Stand strong on that one issue and it can be stopped.

Regional governments and planning commissions are a major piece to the sustainable plans to change our government and impilment sustainable policies. With enough of these non-elected councils, sustainable policy can be enforced almost unopposed. The UN Commission on Global Governance defined the reason for the drive toward regionalism; “Regionalism must proceed globalism. We foresee a seamless system of governance from local communities, individual states, regional unions and up through to the United Nations itself.”

Forewarned is forearmed. So property rights activists are focusing on stopping the imposition of non-elected regional government councils that are now springing up across the nation. In just the state of Ohio, several local county and city governments have refused to join regional planning groups. Geauga County commissioners passed a resolution rejecting the Agenda 21 planning objectives put forth by the Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium (NEOSCC). A month later the community of Lordstown, Ohio passed a similar resolution. The commissioners in Ohio’s Pickaway County refused to join the Central Ohio Regional Planning Commission. And of course, the outrageous destruction of Jennie Granato’s property for the sake of a bike lane exposed the near untouchable control yielded by the Miami Regional Planning Commission in Montgomery County, Ohio. The local property rights activists now understand the power they face.

Another reason for the Sustainablists to panic was the just-completed Climate Change conference sponsored by the Heartland Institute. This was a gathering of the so-called “skeptics,” the scientists and engineers who actually practice sound science in the pursuit of truth. They all have one thing in common from their research. They can’t find proof of the dire predictions of man-made Global Warming. These men and women of science have suffered greatly for their insistence on truth, no matter the cost. As a result, for years they have been black balled from science journals, denied funding for projects, and ridiculed for their opposition to the Climate Change hysteria. But they have persevered and they are beginning to turn the debate and the conference was full of a positive feeling of accomplishment. And right behind that conference, Australia became the first developed nation to repeal its Cap and Trade program, dumping the center piece of global sustainable policy.  And the Sustainablists are panicked!

And finally, there is this bit of news to turn any “Green” to a gray depression. Carroll County Commissioner Richard Rothschild (the man who led his governing body to be the first in the nation to send ICLEI packing) won his primary reelection bid with 58% of the vote.  Commissioner Rothschild was targeted in the Republican primary by a Democrat-turned-Republican just for the occasion. The labor unions threw all of their massive resources of manpower and money into the effort to make him an example of what will happen to officials who dare oppose them. Richard defied them, speaking clearly and precisely on the dangers of sustainable development and all the policies that go with it. He didn’t try to hide his conservative views. In fact, he put the word “conservative” along with the word “leadership,” on his yard signs. He told the truth. And he won. The battle isn’t over. He still has to win the November election. But he has proven that standing up and openly fighting sustainable development is a winning issue. And the Sustainablists are panicked!!!

To all the individuals and local activist groups who feel overwhelmed and hopeless in your fights – take heart. The Sustainablists are armed with billions of your tax dollars. They are powerful in the back rooms of your government. They have an open mike to any news outlet and they have had nearly a thirty year head start. But it is THEY who are now in a panic as their well-laid plans are starting to crumble under the weight of their own lies and arrogance and rotten policy. Obviously, for those smug, once-powerful NGO forces who thought they could crush their opposition with ridicule, there’s panic in Sustainable City!

The forces of freedom should gain energy from the NGO’s panic and increase our efforts to stamp out these self appointed tyrants once and for all. We certainly have a long way to go to restore our precious Republic. But it’s D-Day on Omaha Beach and, though we continue to face fierce fighting, we have established a beachhead and are moving inland.  And the Sustainablists are panicked.

As you face them in battle after battle, just remember these immortal words from Rocky Balboa; “It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit…how much you can take and keep moving. That’s how winning is done!”   

– See more at: http://americanpolicy.org/2014/07/30/panic-in-sustainable-city/#sthash.58o1TTKq.dpuf

Too Many People Trying to Cover Up the Truth about our Climate!

PROFESSOR QUITS FIVETHIRTYEIGHT BLOG AFTER ANTI-GLOBAL WARMING ARTICLE BACKLASH

 
 

Environmental studies professor Roger Pielke, Jr. has quit Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog over a controversy that arose after he wrote a post denying that global warming is responsible for the increasing costs of recovery from natural disasters.

Pielke, a professor in the Environmental Studies Program and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), reported to Discover Magazinethat over the last month he began to find that his work was being rejected by FiveThirtyEight. So, he told editor Mike Wilson that he quit.

The controversy grew after Pielke posted a March 19 story he entitled, “Disasters Cost More Than Ever–But Not Because of Climate Change.”

As soon as he posted the piece, the laymen critics in Silver’s audience began to attack him for daring to deviate from the idea that global warming causes all of the earth’s ills.

In his interview at Discovery, Pielke lamented the editorial cowardice of Nate Silver, who sat back and allowed Pielke’s critics to go so far as to organize an effort to have him fired at the blog, not to mention ultimately showing reluctance to support him by posting new pieces.

“I do wish that 538 had shown a bit more editorial backbone, but hey, it is his operation. If a widely published academic cannot publish on a subject which he has dozens of peer-reviewed papers and 1000s of citations to his work, what can he write on?” Pielke said.

The professor also said that he has a suspicion that Silver “knows very well where the evidence lies on this topic” but refused to fully support him over the whole thing for whatever reason.

Pielke also criticized the whole atmosphere at the blog, saying, “For me, if the price of playing in the DC-NYC data journalism world is self-censorship for fear of being unpopular, then it is clearly not a good fit for any academic policy scholar.”

Pielke was pilloried as a global warming denier–something he most decidedly is not–by such luminaries as Paul Krugman, Slate, and others after the original post went viral. Pielke said that he was shocked at how some of these people and outlets lied about him.

As he told Discovery, “It is remarkable to see people like Paul Krugman and John Holdren brazenly make completely false claims in public about my work and my views. That they make such false claims with apparently no consequences says something about the nature of debate surrounding climate.”

Pielke also noted that too often in the global warming debate people on the left side of the argument resort to name calling almost immediately: “There is a common strategy of delegitimization used in the climate debates. It seems that labeling someone a ‘denier’ offers a convenient excuse to avoid taking on arguments on their merits and to call for certain voices to be banished.”

But despite the attacks on him, Pielke says that the whole controversy probably hasn’t hurt his standing in the academic community too much.

“Ultimately, what I learned from the 538 episode is how small and insular the community of self-professed ‘climate hawks’ actually is,” Pielke insisted. “Sure they made a lot of noise online and got Jon Stewart’s attention. But that was because of Nate Silver’s fame, not mine. Back in the real world, outside the climate blogosphere and the NY-DC data journalism circle virtually no one knew or much cared about the 538 brouhaha, even within academia. I found that encouraging.”

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston 

Windweasels Cause a Multitude of Horrific Problems….

Wind Power Sends German Power Market Into Chaos

Gaza_Blackout_Main_pic_1

With the introduction of unreliable and intermittent wind power comes the risk of widespread blackouts, social and economic chaos. However, to avoid the consequences, grid managers in Germany are paying conventional generators huge premiums to compensate for wind power “outages” – and the costs of doing so are starting to bite – not that the generators mind. Keeping chaos at bay has created opportunities to milk the system for what it’s worth – with some very handsome upside for savvy marketeers.

Here’s Bloomberg on the market debacle created by German wind power.

German Utilities Bail Out Electric Grid at Wind’s Mercy
Julia Mengewein
Bloomberg Businessweek
25 July 2014

Germany’s push toward renewable energy is causing so many drops and surges from wind and solar power that the government is paying more utilities than ever to help stabilize the country’s electricity grid.

Twenty power companies including Germany’s biggest utilities, EON SE and RWE AG, now get fees for pledging to add or cut electricity within seconds to keep the power system stable, double the number in September, according to data from the nation’s four grid operators. Utilities that sign up to the 800 million-euro ($1.1 billion) balancing market can be paid as much as 400 times wholesale electricity prices, the data show.

Germany’s drive to almost double power output from renewables by 2035 has seen one operator reporting five times as many potential disruptions as four years ago, raising the risk of blackouts in Europe’s biggest electricity market while pushing wholesale prices to a nine-year low. More utilities are joining the balancing market as weak prices have cut operating margins to 5 percent on average from 15 percent in 2004, with RWE reporting its first annual loss since 1949.

“At the beginning, this market counted for only a small portion of our earnings,” said Hartmuth Fenn, the head of intraday, market access and dispatch at Vattenfall AB, Sweden’s biggest utility. “Today, we earn 10 percent of our plant profits in the balancing market” in Germany, he said by phone from Hamburg July 22.

Price Plunge

In Germany’s daily and weekly balancing market auctions, winning bidders have been paid as much as 13,922 euros to set aside one megawatt depending on the time of day, grid data show. Participants stand ready to provide power or cut output in notice periods of 15 minutes, 5 minutes or 30 seconds, earning fees whether their services are needed or not.

German wholesale next-year electricity prices have plunged 60 percent since 2008 as green power, which has priority access to the grid, cut into the running hours of gas, coal and nuclear plants. The year-ahead contract traded at 35.71 euros a megawatt-hour as of 3:54 p.m. on the European Energy Exchange AG in Leipzig, Germany.

Lawmakers last month backed a revision of a the country’s clean-energy law to curb green subsidies and slow gains in consumer power prices that are the second-costliest in the European Union. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s energy switch from nuclear power aims to boost the share of renewables to at least 80 percent by 2050 from about 29 percent now.

Power Premium

Jochen Schwill and Hendrik Saemisch, both 33, set up Next Kraftwerke GmbH in 2009 to sell power from emergency generators in hospitals to the power grid. Today, the former University of Cologne researchers employ about 80 people and have 1,000 megawatts from biomass plants to gas units at their disposal, or the equivalent capacity of a German nuclear plant.

“That was really the core of our founding idea,” Schwill said by phone from Cologne July 21. “That the boost in renewable energy will make supply more intermittent and balancing power more lucrative in the long run.”

Thomas Pilgram, who has sold balancing power since 2012 as chief executive officer of Clean Energy Sourcing in Leipzig, Germany, expects the wave of new entrants to push down balancing market payments.

“New participants are flooding into the market now, which means that prices are coming under pressure,” Pilgram said. “Whoever comes first, gets a slice of the cake, the others don’t because prices have slumped.”

Increased Competition

German grid regulator Bundesnetzagentur welcomes the increase in balancing market participants.

“That’s in our interest as we want to encourage competition in this market,” Armasari Soetarto, a spokeswoman for the Bonn-based authority, said by phone July 18. “More supply means lower prices and that means lower costs for German end users.”

The average price for capacity available within five minutes has dropped to 1,109 euros a megawatt in the week starting July 14, from 1,690 euros in the second week of January, Next Kraftwerke data show. Payments for cutting output within 15 minutes dropped to 361 euros from 1,615 euros in January.

The number of participants has increased as the country’s four grid operators refined how capacity is allocated. In 2007, the grids started one common auction and shortened the bidding periods. Since 2011, power plant operators commit their 5-minute capacity on a weekly basis instead of a month before.
Bloomberg Business week

The same conditions that allow rorting and gaming of the power market in Germany exist in Australia: huge fluctuations in wind power output – with almost daily collapses – allows sharp operators to cash in, with grid managers entirely at their mercy. During wind power “outages” the dispatch price has rocketed from around $40 per MWh to the regulated cap of $12,500 per MWh – see our post: the Great Watt and Pole Swindle.

Wind power has provided Australian generators with the perfect “cover” for pricing tactics of the kind that helped Enron make a killing in the Californian power market during the late 1990s (see our post here.).

The end of the mandatory RET can’t come soon enough.

electricity-price-rise

Will the Republicans Hold Obama Accountable for Presidential Overreach?

 

House Republicans authorize lawsuit against Obama for presidential overreach.

 

President Barack Obama speaks about the economy, Wednesday, July 30, 2014, at the Uptown Theater in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

House Republicans voted Wednesday evening to authorize an unprecedented lawsuit against President Obama, escalating a separation of powers battle between Congress and the White Housethat is heavily tinged with election-year politics.

Mr. Obama mocked Republicans, telling them to “stop just hatin’ all the time,” but GOP lawmakers said they felt boxed in, being unable to get their legislation through the Democrat-controlled Senate and having to watch as the president tweaks, waives or ignores laws Congress has written but which he dislikes.


SEE ALSO: HURT: Impeaching Obama is a losing strategy for the GOP


“This isn’t about Republicans and Democrats; it’s about defending the Constitution that we swore an oath to uphold and acting decisively when it might be compromised,” said House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, as he pleaded for Democrats to look beyond their party allegiance and defend Congress against an ever more powerful chief executive. “Are you willing to let any president choose what laws to execute and what laws to change?”

The 225-201 vote, which broke down almost entirely along party lines, was a resounding rejection of Mr. Boehner’s call, as Democrats said Republicans were more interested in repealing Obamacare and stopping the president’s agenda.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, the chamber’s top Democrat, said she could see no reason for the Republican effort unless it’s a precursor for impeachment.

“Why would you sue somebody unless you want to prove something? And why would you go down that path unless you wanted to do something about it?” Mrs. Pelosi said. “Middle-class families don’t have time for the Republican partisan grudge match with the president.”

Mr. Boehner a day earlier said there were no plans to pursue impeachment and that Democrats are the only ones talking about impeachment because it’s a successful fundraising tactic for them.

Mrs. Pelosi, though, said Mr. Boehner must officially rule impeachment “off the table” — a phrase she used when she squelched efforts by her fellow Democrats to impeach President George W. Bush.


SEE ALSO: Obama to Republicans: ‘Stop just hatin’ all the time’


The details of the lawsuit itself were almost an afterthought, but under the resolution passed Wednesday, House attorneys can be directed to file suit challenging Mr. Obama’s decision to issue waivers of his own health care law’s “employer mandate,” which was supposed to require large companies to provide insurance for their employees or else face fines.

Mr. Obama waived the fines for 2014, then expanded his waiver to include 2015 and 2016.

Mr. Boehner said House Republicans support waiving those fines, which is why it’s all the more strange that Mr. Obama acted alone, without coming to Congress to change the law. He said that situation is why Republicans chose to sue over Obamacare rather than a host of other perceived overreaches including those involving environmental and immigration policies.

The lawsuit’s chances for success are questionable.

Legal analysts said the biggest hurdle will be overcoming the federal courts’ rules requiring a plaintiff to show harm before the judges will hear the case. Institutional harm to Congress‘ constitutional powers generally has been rejected as a sufficient reason.

But some analysts said it’s an open question for the Supreme Court — and they argue Mr. Obama’s overreach has been so dramatic that judges might be tempted to get involved in order to rebalance the two other branches of government.

Speaking in Kansas City, Missouri, hours before the vote, Mr. Obama taunted Republicans, asking them to forgo the lawsuit and instead back his agenda of raising the minimum wage, boosting spending on infrastructure and other steps he said would help the middle class.

“Come on and help out a little bit. Stop being mad all the time. Stop just hatin’ all the time,” the president told a raucous crowd. “Come on. Let’s get some work done together.”

Minutes after Wednesday’s vote, the White House sent out an email to supporters vowing to take more executive action — this time issuing a policy laying out stiffer worker safety rules for federal contractors.

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer also said in the email that Mr. Obama will “deal with our broken immigration system in the months ahead.”

Mr. Obama, who had some legislative successes in his first two years in office, backed by huge majorities in both the House and Senate, has grown increasingly frustrated since 2011, when Republicans took control of the House and began trying to roll back his policies.

With Democrats still controlling the Senate, that’s often led to gridlock on Capitol Hill — and Mr. Obama has enthusiastically claimed the right to take action on his own when Congress won’t.

Judges have taken a dim view of some of those actions. Last month a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that he overstepped when he made recess appointments to four key positions at a time when the Senate was meeting every three days in pro forma sessions specifically to deny him his recess powers.

Mr. Obama had argued that the Senate wasn’t really in session, but all nine justices rejected that, saying it’s up to Congress to decide those matters.

All Democrats who voted Wednesday opposed the lawsuit, as did five Republicans: Reps. Paul C. Broun of Georgia, Scott Garrett of New Jersey, Walter B. Jones of North Carolina, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Steve Stockman of Texas.

“This lawsuit is merely an act of political theater that is highly unlikely to result in any real consequences for an executive branch that continues to display a blatant disregard for the rule of law,” Mr. Jones said in a statement.

He said rather than sue, the House should either impeach Mr. Obama or use its power of the purse to cancel Mr. Obama’s actions.

Both sides are expected to use Wednesday’s vote as they gin up their base ahead of November’s elections.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/30/house-votes-sue-president-obama-over-claims-presid/#ixzz390sFVp1Q
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Some Sanity Returning?… Wind Turbine Setbacks May Halt Plans!

Monday, July 28th, 2014
By Kathy Thompson
Wind farm could be knocked flat by new regs
 
  Stricter setback regulations approved in June could foil proposed plans for a wind turbine project that stretches into northern Mercer County.
Gov. John Kasich signed House Bill 483 in June, which includes a revision requiring wind turbines to be erected 1,300 feet from the nearest property line. The law previously required turbines to be placed 1,300 feet from a structure and about 550 feet from a neighboring property line.
The proposed Long Prairie wind farm project involves about 300 landowners – 17 in Mercer County – who earlier leased property to BP America for the construction of 67 300-megawatt turbines. BP in May sold its 16 operating wind farms in nine states and its portfolio of planned projects to Apex Clean Energy Inc.
Apex president Mark Goodwin called HB 483 an “Ohio job killer.” As it stands, the legislation would eliminate about $114 million in local spending, $15 million in lease payments to local landowners, $45 million in local tax revenue and $22.5 million in new payroll income for the area during the next 20 to 25 years, he said.
Goodwin sent a letter to Kasich soon after the legislation was signed, stating his company has “more wind energy development projects in the state than any other company” and claimed the bill would eliminate more than $3 billion in wind project investments.
Goodwin claims Apex may be forced to take its investment elsewhere. He is hoping the bill will be amended and his company can move ahead with the project.
“We have invested about $10 million in these projects, and we have tens of thousands of acres of private land leased with local landowners,” Goodwin stated. “The setbacks will make it impossible for us to build these projects at all.”
Rob Nichols, a spokesman for Kasich’s office, said the setbacks were created to protect property value and human health.
“Every industry has rules and provisions,” he said. “This office sees this industry as no different than any other.”
Despite the setback issue, the company remains optimistic.
“We’re very excited at this new prospect,” said Scott Koziar, director of project development for Apex. “Clean energy is wanted in the nation. We know the transition has been a bit slow, but the project is one of several that we’ve acquired and we want to be open and transparent.”
Koziar said the company is still in the process of contacting landowners and government officials about the buyout, but hope in the coming weeks to meet with commissioners in both counties and have formal conversations with landowners in the spring.
“We’re at the very beginning of this,” Koziar said. “Before we do a deep dive with owners and commissioners, we need to see what our next steps are, make sure we have all our environmental studies completed, look at the taxes schools would get, and what road and maintenance commitments we will be making.”
Koziar said if the project kicks off this year or next, it could be completed by 2017 or 2018.
One of the landowners leasing property to Apex said he isn’t happy about the new setback regulations.
“Good Lord,” said Jerry Rolsten of Mendon, who has a contract to lease 186 acres of land to Apex. “That’s a lot. I may not even be eligible if that’s true. If I am, it’s going to be real close. This could get interesting.”
Rolsten said he “believes in progress” and that is why he decided to lease his land for the development of a wind farm.
Koziar said the proposed local wind farm would create 200 to 300 construction jobs and 15 to 18 long-term jobs. The wind turbines would generate electricity for 40,000 homes, he added.
“That’s actual energy consumed within the area,” Koziar said.  
Opponents claim the “flickers” or shadows cast by the blades, as well as the turbines’ loud noise are annoying. They also note their presence decreases property values.
Van Wert resident Milo Shaffner, 67, said he hopes the proposed venture is abandoned. He lives about a mile from the operational Blue Creek wind project and farms within 600 feet of turbines.
“They are very unsightly to begin with,” he said. “The sound they make is so disturbing, it sounds like a jet plane going overhead. My wife and I can’t sit on our front porch and drink coffee in the mornings anymore.”
Shaffner said his quality of life has “gone down the drain” since the turbines arrived.
“We used to have a great landscape to look at,” he said. “Our roads are ruined, my neighbors have health issues. Those turbines are industry and this is supposed to be farm country. They don’t belong here.”

Bjorn Lomborg Testifies at Senate Hearing, Regarding Climate Change!

Lomborg’s Senate testimony

by Judith Curry

Because   there   is   no   good, cheap   green   energy,   the   almost   universal  political  choices   have   been   expensive   policies   that   do   very   little. There   is   much   greater   scope   for   climate   policies to   make   the   total   climate   cost   greater   through  the   21st   century. – Bjorn Lomborg

Yesterday the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety convened a Hearing on Examining the Threats Posed by Climate Change.  The Hearing website is [here].

There is no majority or minority statements or opening remarks on the web page.  Six individuals presented testimony, five of whom I am unfamiliar with.  I’ve read all the testimonies.  They’re all interesting, but I think Lomborg’s testimony is important.  I had the priviledge of testifying with Lomborg previously this year at this Hearing.

Lomborg’s testimony can be found [here].  From the Summary:

Global warming is real, but a problem, not the end of the world. Claims of “catastrophic” costs are ill founded. Inaction has costs, but so does action. It is likely that climate action will lead   to higher total costs in this century.   Climate action through increased energy costs will likely harm the poor the   most, both in rich and poor countries.

  • The cumulative cost of inaction towards the end of the century is about 1.8% of GDP
  • While this is not trivial, it by no means supports the often apocalyptic conversation on climate change.
  • The cost of inaction by the end of the century is equivalent to losing one year’s growth, or a moderate, one year recession.
  • The cost of inaction by the end of the century is equivalent to an annual loss of GDP growth on the order of 0.02%.
  • However, policy action as opposed to inaction, also has costs, and will still incur a significant part of the climate damage. Thus, with extremely unrealistically optimistic assumptions, it is possible that the total cost of climate action will be reduced slightly to 1.5% of GDP by the end of the century.
  • It is more likely that the cost of climate action will end up costing upwards of twice as much as climate inaction in this century – a reasonable estimate could be 2.8% of GDP towards the end of the century.
  • Climate action will harm mostly the poor. Examples from Germany and the UK are given.
  • To   tackle   global   warming,   it   is   much   more   important   to   dramatically  increase   funding   for   R&D   of   green   energy   to   make   future   green   energy  much   cheaper.   This   will   make   everyone   switch   when   green   is   cheap  enough,   instead   of   focusing   on   inefficient   subsidies   and   second best  policies   that   easily   end   up   costing   much   more.  

The part of Lomborg’s testimony that I found particularly compelling was the text related to energy poverty.  Excerpts:

The   first   realization   needs   to   be   that   the   current,   old fashioned   approach   to     tackling   global   warming   has   failed.   The   current   approach,   which   has   been   attempted   for   almost   20   years   since   the   1992   Earth   Summit   in   Rio,   is   to   agree   on     large   carbon   cuts   in   the   immediate   future.   Only   one   real   agreement,   the   Kyoto   Protocol,   has   resulted   from   20   years   of   attempts,   with   the   2009   Copenhagen   meeting   turning   into   a   spectacular   failure.  

The   Kyoto     approach     is     not     working   for   three   reasons.   First, cutting   CO2   is   costly.     Second, the   approach   won’t     solve     the     problem.   Even   if   everyone   had   implemented   Kyoto, temperatures   would   have   dropped   by   the   end   of   the   century   by   a   miniscule  0.004C     or     0.007F.     Third, green     energy     is     not     ready   to   take   over   from   fossil   fuels.

Current   global   warming   policies make   energy   much   more   costly.   This   negative   impact   is   often   much   larger, harms   the   world’s   poor   much   more,   and   is   much   more   immediate.  

Solar   and   wind   power   was   subsidized   by   $60   billion   in   2012,   despite   their     paltry   climate   benefit   of   $1.4   billion.   Essentially,   $58.6   billion   were   wasted.   Depending   on   political   viewpoint,   that   money   could   have   been   used   to   get   better   health   care,   more   teachers,   better   roads,   or   lower   taxes.   Moreover, forcing   everyone   to   buy   more   expensive,   less   reliable   energy   pushes   higher   costs   throughout   the   economy,   leaving   less   for   welfare.

The   burdens   from   these   climate   policies   fall   overwhelmingly   on   the   world’s   poor.   This   is   because   rich   people   can   easily   afford   to   pay   more   for   their   energy,   whereas   the   poor   will   be   struggling.   It   is   surprising   to   hear   that   well meaning   and   economically   comfortable   greens   often   suggest   that   gasoline   prices   should   be   doubled   or   electricity   exclusively   sourced    from   high cost   green   sources.  

Take   Pakistan   and   South   Africa.   With   too   little   generating   power   both   nations   experience   recurrent   blackouts   that   cost   jobs   and   wreck   the   economy.   Muhammad   Ashraf, who   worked   30   years   at   a   textile   plant   in   central   Pakistan,   was   laid   off   last   year   because   of   these   energy   shortages.   Being   too   old   to   get   another   job,   he   has   returned   to   his   village   to   eke   out   a   living   growing   wheat   on   a   tiny   plot   of   land.   Instead   of   $120   a   month,   he   now    makes   just   $25. Yet, the   funding   of   new   coal   fired   power   plants   in   both   Pakistan   and   South   Africa   has   been   widely   opposed   by   well meaning   Westerners   and   climate concerned   Western   governments.   They   instead   urge   these   countries   to   get   more   energy   from   renewables.  

But   this   is   cruelly   hypocritical.   The   rich   world   generates   just   0.76%   of   its   energy   from   solar   and   wind,   far   from   meeting  even   minimal   demand.   In   fact, Germany   will   build   ten   new    coal fired   power   plants   over   the   next   two   years   to   keep   its   own   lights   on.   

A   recent   analysis   from   the   Center   for   Global   Development   shows   that   $10   billion   invested   in   renewables   will   help   lift   20   million   people   in   Africa   out   of   poverty.   But   the   same   $10   billion   spent   on   gas  electrification   will   lift   90   million   people   out   of   poverty.    $10   billion   can   help   just   20   million   people.   Using   renewables,   we   deliberately   end   up   choosing   to   leave   more   than   70   million   people   –   more   than   3  out   of   4   –   in   darkness   and   poverty.  

The other thing that struck me in particular was the following text:

The   only   way   to    move   towards   a   long term   reduction   in   emissions   is   if   green   energy   becomes    much   cheaper.   If   green   energy   was   cheaper   than   fossil   fuels,   everyone   would   switch. This   requires   breakthroughs   in   the   current   green   technologies,   which   means   focusing   much   more   on   innovating   smarter,   cheaper,   more   effective   green   energy.  

The   metaphor   here   is   the   computer   in   the   1950s.   We   did   not   obtain   better   computers   by   mass producing   them   to   get   cheaper   vacuum   tubes.   We   did   not   provide   heavy   subsidies   so   that   every   Westerner   could   have   one   in   their   home   in   1960.   Nor   did   we   tax   alternatives   like   typewriters.   The   breakthroughs   were   achieved   by   a   dramatic   ramping   up   of   R&D,   leading   to   multiple   innovations,   which   enabled   companies   like   IBM   and   Apple   to   eventually   produce   computers   that   consumers   wanted   to   buy.  

This   is   what   the   US   has   done   with   fracking.   The   US   has   spent   about   $10bn   in   subsidies   over   the   past   three   decades   to   get   fracking   innovation,    which   has   opened   up   large   new   resources   of   previously   inaccessible   shale   gas.   Despite some   legitimate   concerns   about   safety, it   is   hard   to   overstate   the   overwhelming   benefits.   Fracking   has   caused   gas   prices   to   drop   dramatically   and   changed   the   US   electricity   generation   from   50%   coal   and   20%   gas   to   about   40%   coal   and   30%   gas.  

This   means   that   the   US   has   reduced   its   annual   CO₂ emissions   by   about   300Mt   CO₂   in   2012.   This   is   about   twice   the   total reduction   over   the   past   twenty   years   of   the   Kyoto   Protocol   from   the   rest   of   the   world,   including   the   European   Union.   At   the   same   time,   the   EU   climate   policy   will   cost   about   $280   billion   per   year,   whereas   the   US   fracking   is   estimated   to   increase US   GDP   by   $283   billion   per   year.    

 JC reflections

Read the entire testimony, well worth reading and pondering.

I take such economic projections with a grain of salt (where are the uncertainty estimates?),  but Lomborg’s point that the cure is likely worse than the disease is compelling.

Of particular concern is the impact of these energy policies on the poor. Lomborg makes this argument extremely effectively, and I can’t believe that more people don’t get this.  Last April I gave a climate change presentation to a group of Georgia Tech alumni.  Someone in the audience asked:  “What did you do for Earth day?”  I said Nothing.  I think turning out the lights sends the wrong message.  I want to see the lights go on in Africa.

We clearly need clean green energy, if not now then in the future.  Lomborg argues that our current strategies may be be slowing down the development of these technologies.

I have to say, after reading Lomborg’s testimony, current climate/energy policies have never made less sense.

7-cool-it

 

 

Honest, Unbiased Scientists Reject Global Warming Hysteria!

December 4, 2013

Dr. Don Easterbrook Exposes Global Warming Hoax 

Global Cooling is Here

Evidence for Predicting Global Cooling for the Next Three Decades

Department of Geology, Western Washington University
Article originally published, 11/2/2008
Re-Published 10/29/2013
Addendum Video:  3/26/2013 Presentation to WA Senate committee added 12/4/2013 by HSaive
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Global Research Editor’s note

The following article represents an alternative view and analysis of global climate change, which challenges the dominant Global Warming Consensus.

Global Research does not necessarily endorse the proposition of “Global Cooling”, nor does it accept at face value the Consensus on Global Warming. Our purpose is to encourage a more balanced debate on the topic of global climate change.

INTRODUCTION

Dr Don Easterbrook mugDespite no global warming in 10 years and recording setting cold in 2007-2008, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) and computer modelers who believe that CO2 is the cause of global warming still predict the Earth is in store for catastrophic warming in this century. IPCC computer models have predicted global warming of 1° F per decade and 5-6° C (10-11° F) by 2100 (Fig. 1), which would cause global catastrophe with ramifications for human life, natural habitat, energy and water resources, and food production. All of this is predicated on the assumption that global warming is caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 and that CO2 will continue to rise rapidly.

3/26/2013 Presentation to Washington State Senate Committee on Climate Change – In addition to evidence contrary to IPCC, Dr. Easterbrook alleges media bias and manipulation of data by East Anglia, NASA, NOAA and NSF. (TVW Original Broadcast)

Easterbrrok Video at TVW
Archive Backup Video

Easterbrook-1-glcool1

Easterbrook-2-glcool1

Figure 1. A. IPCC prediction of global warming early in the 21st century. B. IPCC prediction of global warming to 2100. (Sources: IPCC website)

However, records of past climate changes suggest an altogether different scenario for the 21st century. Rather than drastic global warming at a rate of 0.5 ° C (1° F) per decade, historic records of past natural cycles suggest global cooling for the first several decades of the 21st century to about 2030, followed by global warming from about 2030 to about 2060, and renewed global cooling from 2060 to 2090 (Easterbrook, D.J., 2005, 2006a, b, 2007, 2008a, b); Easterbrook and Kovanen, 2000, 2001). Climatic fluctuations over the past several hundred years suggest ~30 year climatic cycles of global warming and cooling, on a general rising trend from the Little Ice Age.

PREDICTIONS BASED ON PAST CLIMATE PATTERNS

Global climate changes have been far more intense (12 to 20 times as intense in some cases) than the global warming of the past century, and they took place in as little as 20–100 years. Global warming of the past century (0.8° C) is virtually insignificant when compared to the magnitude of at least 10 global climate changes in the past 15,000 years. None of these sudden global climate changes could possibly have been caused by human CO2 input to the atmosphere because they all took place long before anthropogenic CO2 emissions began. The cause of the ten earlier ‘natural’ climate changes was most likely the same as the cause of global warming from 1977 to 1998.

Easterbrook-3-glcool1

Figure 2. Climate changes in the past 17,000 years from the GISP2 Greenland ice core. Red = warming, blue = cooling. (Modified from Cuffy and Clow, 1997)

Climatic fluctuations over the past several hundred years suggest ~30 year climatic cycles of global warming and cooling (Figure 3) on a generally rising trend from the Little Ice Age about 500 years ago.

Easterbrook-4-glcool1

Figure 3. Alternating warm and cool cycles since 1470 AD. Blue = cool, red = warm. Based on oxygen isotope ratios from the GISP2 Greenland ice core.

Relationships between glacial fluctuations, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and global climate change.

After several decades of studying alpine glacier fluctuations in the North Cascade Range, my research showed a distinct pattern of glacial advances and retreats (the Glacial Decadal Oscillation, GDO) that correlated well with climate records. In 1992, Mantua published the Pacific Decadal Oscillation curve showing warming and cooling of the Pacific Ocean that correlated remarkably well with glacial fluctuations. Both the GDA and the PDO matched global temperature records and were obviously related (Fig. 4). All but the latest 30 years of changes occurred prior to significant CO2 emissions so they were clearly unrelated to atmospheric CO2.

Easterbrook-5-glcool1

Figure 4. Correspondence of the GDO, PDO, and global temperature variations.

The significance of the correlation between the GDO, PDO, and global temperature is that once this connection has been made, climatic changes during the past century can be understood, and the pattern of glacial and climatic fluctuations over the past millennia can be reconstructed. These patterns can then be used to project climatic changes in the future. Using the pattern established for the past several hundred years, in 1998 I projected the temperature curve for the past century into the next century and came up with curve ‘A’ in Figure 5 as an approximation of what might be in store for the world if the pattern of past climate changes continued. Ironically, that prediction was made in the warmest year of the past three decades and at the acme of the 1977-1998 warm period. At that time, the projected curved indicated global cooling beginning about 2005 ± 3-5 years until about 2030, then renewed warming from about 2030 to about 2060 (unrelated to CO2—just continuation of the natural cycle), then another cool period from about 2060 to about 2090. This was admittedly an approximation, but it was radically different from the 1° F per decade warming called for by the IPCC. Because the prediction was so different from the IPCC prediction, time would obviously show which projection was ultimately correct.

Now a decade later, the global climate has not warmed 1° F as forecast by the IPCC but has cooled slightly until 2007-08 when global temperatures turned sharply downward. In 2008, NASA satellite imagery (Figure 6) confirmed that the Pacific Ocean had switched from the warm mode it had been in since 1977 to its cool mode, similar to that of the 1945-1977 global cooling period. The shift strongly suggests that the next several decades will be cooler, not warmer as predicted by the IPCC. 

Easterbrook-6-glcool1

Figure 5.Global temperature projection for the coming century, based on warming/cooling cycles of the past several centuries. ‘A’ projection based on assuming next cool phase will be similar to the 1945-1977 cool phase. ‘B’ projection based on assuming next cool phase will be similar to the 1880-1915 cool phase. The predicted warm cycle from 2030 to 2060 is based on projection of the 1977 to 1998 warm phase and the cooling phase from 2060 to 2090 is based on projection of the 1945 to 1977 cool cycle.

Implications of PDO, NAO, GDO, and sun spot cycles for global climate in coming decades

The IPCC prediction of global temperatures, 1° F warmer by 2011 and 2° F by 2038 (Fig. 1), stand little chance of being correct. NASA’s imagery showing that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has shifted to its cool phase is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007). The PDO typically lasts 25-30 years and assures North America of cool, wetter climates during its cool phases and warmer, drier climates during its warm phases. The establishment of the cool PDO, together with similar cooling of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), virtually assures several decades of global cooling and the end of the past 30-year warm phase. It also means that the IPCC predictions of catastrophic global warming this century were highly inaccurate.

The switch of PDO cool mode to warm mode in 1977 initiated several decades of global warming. The PDO has now switched from its warm mode (where it had been since 1977) into its cool mode. As shown on the graph above, each time this had happened in the past century, global temperature has followed. The upper map shows cool ocean temperatures in blue (note the North American west coast). The lower diagram shows how the PDO has switched back and forth from warm to cool modes in the past century, each time causing global temperature to follow. Comparisons of historic global climate warming and cooling over the past century with PDO and NAO oscillations, glacial fluctuations, and sun spot activity show strong correlations and provide a solid data base for future climate change projections.

The Pacific Ocean has a warm temperature mode and a cool temperature mode, and in the past century, has switched back forth between these two modes every 25-30 years (known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or PDO). In 1977 the Pacific abruptly shifted from its cool mode (where it had been since about 1945) into its warm mode, and this initiated global warming from 1977 to 1998. The correlation between the PDO and global climate is well established. The announcement by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) had shifted to its cool phase is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007). The PDO typically lasts 25-30 years and assures North America of cool, wetter climates during its cool phases and warmer, drier climates during its warm phases. The establishment of the cool PDO, together with similar cooling of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), virtually assures several decades of global cooling and the end of the past 30-year warm phase.

Eaterbrrok-7-globalcool7

Figure 6. Switch of PDO cool mode to warm mode in 1977 initiated several decades of global warming. The PDO has now switched from its warm mode (where it had been since 1977) into its cool mode. As shown on the graph above, each time this has happened in the past century, global temperature has followed. The upper map shows cool ocean temperatures in blue (note the North American west coast). The lower diagram shows how the PDO has switched back and forth from warm to cool modes in the past century, each time causing global temperature to follow. Projection of the past pattern (right end of graph) assures 30 yrs of global cooling

Comparisons of historic global climate warming and cooling over the past century with PDO and NAO oscillations, glacial fluctuations, and sun spot activity show strong correlations and provide a solid data base for future climate change projections. As shown by the historic pattern of GDOs and PDOs over the past century and by corresponding global warming and cooling, the pattern is part of ongoing warm/cool cycles that last 25-30 years. The global cooling phase from 1880 to 1910, characterized by advance of glaciers worldwide, was followed by a shift to the warm-phase PDO for 30 years, global warming and rapid glacier recession. The cool-phase PDO returned in ~1945 accompanied by global cooling and glacial advance for 30 years. Shift to the warm-phase PDO in 1977 initiated global warming and recession of glaciers that persisted until 1998. Recent establishment of the PDO cool phase appeared right on target and assuming that its effect will be similar to past history, global climates can be expected to cool over the next 25-30 years. The global warming of this century is exactly in phase with the normal climatic pattern of cyclic warming and cooling and we have now switched from a warm phase to a cool phase right at the predicted time (Fig. 5)

The ramifications of the global cooling cycle for the next 30 years are far reaching―e.g., failure of crops in critical agricultural areas (it’s already happening this year), increasing energy demands, transportation difficulties, and habitat change. All this during which global population will increase from six billion to about nine billion. The real danger in spending trillions of dollars trying to reduce atmospheric CO2 is that little will be left to deal with the very real problems engendered by global cooling.

CONCLUSIONS

Global warming (i.e, the warming since 1977) is over. The minute increase of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere (0.008%) was not the cause of the warming—it was a continuation of natural cycles that occurred over the past 500 years.

The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling, perhaps much deeper than the global cooling from about 1945 to 1977. Just how much cooler the global climate will be during this cool cycle is uncertain. Recent solar changes suggest that it could be fairly severe, perhaps more like the 1880 to 1915 cool cycle than the more moderate 1945-1977 cool cycle. A more drastic cooling, similar to that during the Dalton and Maunder minimums, could plunge the Earth into another Little Ice Age, but only time will tell if that is likely.

Don J. Easterbrook is Professor Emeritus of Geology at Western Washington University. Bellingham, WA. He has published extensively on issues pertaining to global climate change. For further details see his list of publications

Climate Scam Exposed as a HUGE Money-Grab!!!

BREAKING: Senate report exposes the climate-environmental movement as being a cash machine controlling the EPA

How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA

A new report was released today by the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, and it is damning. All this time that climate skeptics are accused of being in the employ of “big oil” is nothing more than a projection of their own greed.

Some excerpts:

Over 7.9 BILLION in funding between these groups. 

EPW_report_greenfunding

Bill McKibben caught in a lie, he might be “scruffy” be he isn’t nearly broke as he once claimed:

McKibben_money

The “epicenter” of funding disclosed:

Green_epicenter

The NRDC “mafia”

NRDC_mafia

Josh wasn’t far off the mark:

rc_mafia

Read the entire report here, then demand action from your legislators.

http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=8af3d005-1337-4bc3-bcd6-be947c523439

The Lefties Have Gone Too Far. We Need a Return to Sanity!

Hate Speech: U.K. Political Leader Arrested for Quoting Winston Churchill

Written by 

 
Hate Speech: U.K. Political Leader Arrested for Quoting Winston Churchill

 

A 2009 poll found that more than a third of British teenagers couldn’t identify some of Winston Churchill’s most famous words. Now it turns out that this deficit just might save them from jail.

In a shocking application of hate-speech law, Paul Weston (shown), co-founder and leader of the Liberty GB party and candidate for member of the European Parliament, was arrested on Saturday and now faces a possible two years in prison. His crime?

He quoted one of the 20th century’s most famous Englishmen, that WWII hero Churchill.

 

As Liberty GB reported at its website:

Mr Weston, a candidate in the 22 May European Elections in the South East, was arrested on 26 April in front of Winchester Guildhall for quoting in public a passage critical of Islam written by Winston Churchill, using a megaphone.

He spent several hours in a cell at Winchester Police Station, after which the original charge of breaching a Section 27 Dispersal Notice was dropped and Mr Weston was “re-arrested” for a Racially Aggravated Crime, under Section 4 of the Public Order Act, which carries a potential prison sentence of 2 years.

He was then fingerprinted and obliged to submit to DNA sampling, following which he was bailed with a return date to Winchester Police on May 24th.

Had the woman who complained to the police made an official statement, Mr Weston would not have been released last night, but fortunately for him she did not.

The case is now being presented to the Crown Prosecution Service. If the CPS decides to prosecute, then Mr Weston will be arrested, awaiting trial, when he presents himself to the police on May 24th.

The “offending” words were taken from Churchill’s book The River War, penned in 1899 while he served as a British army officer in Sudan. It is a passage oft-quoted on the Internet:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property — either as a child, a wife, or a concubine — must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.

Yet publicly voicing such sentiments in Britain is now often viewed as “racial or religious harassment.” What this means is that were Churchill alive today he could, conceivably, be arrested by the U.K. government simply for espousing his beliefs.

Some may assume Churchill’s fame would save him, but it was no shield for Paul Weston. Nor has it helped talk-show host Michael Savage, the most well-known American victim of British hate-speech law. In 2009, Dr. Savage was placed on a list of people banned from entering the U.K. along with hardened criminals and terrorists. The British government extended this ban in 2011, saying the commentator had not “provided any acceptable evidence to show his repudiation of those unacceptable behaviours.” Note that these “behaviours” amounted to simply voicing opinion.

As for opinion, Liberty GB finds itself an outlier in U.K. politics, describing its ideology as overriding “the conventional dichotomy (and terminology) of Left and Right,” as it rejects “the notion of Britain as a global no-man’s land upon which any of the world’s teeming millions may lay claim” and espouses “Christian ethics and Western civilization” but also is progressive “in areas such as women’s equality and animal welfare.”

But it’s questioning how wide-scale Muslim immigration affects English welfare that can really get you in trouble in today’s U.K. As to this, columnist Mark Steyn recently wrote, recalling how, a decade earlier, he began a piece “with a reader’s recollection of the first weeks of the Salman Rushdie fatwa” (hat tip: American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson):

A couple of years back, I mentioned the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and received a flurry of lively e-mails. It was Valentine’s Day 1989, you’ll recall, when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his extraterritorial summary judgment on a British subject, and shortly thereafter large numbers of British Muslims were marching through English cities openly calling for Rushdie to be killed.

A reader in Bradford recalled asking a West Yorkshire officer on the street that day why the various “Muslim community leaders” weren’t being arrested for incitement to murder. The officer said they’d been told to “play it cool”. The calls for blood got more raucous. My correspondent asked his question again. The policeman told him to “F— off, or I’ll arrest you.”

In his recent piece, Steyn added:

And so it has gone, ever more openly, across the ensuing quarter-century. Point out problematic aspects of Islam, and the British state’s response is “F— off, or I’ll arrest you.” Her Majesty’s Constabulary do not yet police their charges quite as strictly as the Saudi mutaween, but they’re getting there: The day after Drummer Lee Rigby was hacked to death in broad daylight on the streets of London, a march in support of the “Help for Heroes” military charity led to a five-hour standoff between marchers and police, ending with the arrest of Lee Cousins for “mocking the Islamic prayer ritual” by getting down on his hands and knees outside the pub. He was fined 600 pounds.

When was the last time someone was fined 600 quid for mocking any bit of Christian ritual?

And British citizens are noticing this double standard, though not many dare voice opposition too publicly. As a poster going by the name “John” wrote under the Liberty GB article about Weston’s arrest:

How many times did the racist who butchered Lee Rigby violate these [hate-speech] laws without fear of arrest? He was even involved in a scuffle with the police. People who pretend these “efforts” [at enforcement] are neutral are racist liars. These are in fact classic laws of racist colonialism, where the natives are forbidden to criticize the occupying power.

Even the supposed anonymity of the Internet may not offer protection for long, however. Swedes who criticized immigration on the Web were recently tracked down via their IP addresses and persecuted, while the Swedish government has just enacted a new law making it easier to prosecute “net haters.” And now two Democrat legislators in the United States have proposed the “Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014,” which would empower the federal government to scour the Internet for “hate speech.”