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Michigan Wind Turbine Company in Legal Trouble….for NOISE!!

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Court Backs Finding Of Wind Turbine Noise Problem

Lake Winds energy plant in Mason County now has to mitigate noise of its windmills

By JACK SPENCER | June 28, 2014

The Lake Winds Energy Plant in Mason County.

Michigan’s 51st Circuit Court has ruled that Mason County was justified in determining that wind turbines at the Lake Winds Industrial Wind Plant near Ludington are too noisy.

In his June 16 decision, Judge Richard Cooper denied Consumer Energy’s appeal to have the court overturn the county’s finding that the wind plant was exceeding the county’s established decibel level limits.

In a highly technical explanation, Judge Cooper said it was reasonable for the county to take into account the impact of maximum wind speeds that are not outside the norm. He also rejected the argument that excessive noise levels occurring only during certain periods of time should be allowed.

Lake Winds is a 56-turbine facility located south of Ludington. It was the utility company’s first wind plant project in Michigan. Residents who live near the $255 million plant began complaining of health problems shortly after the turbines began operating. They filed a lawsuit on April 1, 2013, arguing that noise, vibrations and flickering lights emanating from the wind plant were adversely affecting their health. Among the symptoms noted in the lawsuit were dizziness, sleeplessness and headaches.

In September 2013, the Mason County Planning Commission determined that the wind plant was not in compliance with safety guidelines. CMS Energy, which is the parent company of Consumers Energy, then appealed that decision to the Mason County Zoning Board of Appeals and lost. In January, CMS took the case to court and it has now lost again.

CMS spokesman Dennis Marvin said the utility has yet to decide whether it will appeal Judge Cooper’s decision to the Michigan Court of Appeals.

“Obviously, we were disappointed by the decision,” Marvin said. “We are still evaluating whether or not to appeal. In accordance with the court’s ruling we are cooperating with Mason County on our mitigation plan.”

Mason County has hired experts to continue tests at the wind plant. However, because wind speeds are generally low in the summer the testing isn’t likely to resume until September, at the earliest. Under the mitigation plan, affected wind turbines are now operating at reduced power levels to lower the sound level.

“CMS energy has no one to blame but themselves,” said Kevon Martis, director of the Interstate Informed Citizens Coalition, a non-profitorganization that is concerned about the construction of wind turbines in the region. “The citizens living inside Lake Winds wind plant paid for independent noise studies of the project before it was built. Independent analysis demonstrated that the turbines would not only exceed the noise ordinance as proposed by CMS and adopted by Mason County but that the turbine noise would create widespread complaints and result in legal action by those subjected to this industrial development in a rural environment.”

Lake Winds is part of the utility’s effort to meet Michigan’s renewable energy mandate, which requires that 10 percent of the state’s energy be produced by in-state renewable sources by 2015. Though the mandate was ostensibly aimed at reducing carbon emissions, the 2008 law did not require that emissions be monitored to measure the mandate’s actual impact.

“This should be a warning that there is a price to be paid for ignoring the clear acoustical science that predicted this social disaster long before the first shovel of dirt was ever turned,” Martis said.

~~~~~

Aussies to Scrap the Carbon Tax, next it’s the Renewable Energy Targets!

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PM’s Top Advisor – Maurice Newman – Hammers Palmer’s “Inconsistent” RET Plan

June 27, 2014 by  2 Comments

the_sting_3_newman_redford

As the dust settles on the Palmer/Gore circus of the bizarre, it’s now evident that the PUP’s leader has pulled one the greatest confidence tricks since Paul Newman and Robert Redford joined forces in “The Sting”. As the hard-green-left stared in awe at their grand warming alarmist, Palmer slipped through the net unnoticed.

It was a good 24 hours before the green-lefty press (Fairfax/ABC) and the Greens worked out that they’d been had. The play was a good ol’ fashioned “swithcheroo”. Clive put forward an ETS with the impression – sucked up by the Greens and their acolytes – that this was a die-in-a-ditch condition for supporting the Coalition’s plan to abolish the carbon tax. So far, so “green”.

But – as with most politics – the Devil’s in the detail. With the price for a tonne of CO2 under Clive’s ETS set at zero until all of Australia’s major trading partners also sign up to an international ETS, there will be NO price placed on CO2 at all: not now; not ever. Good one, Clive. To the horror of the Greens, it soon became clear that even that “policy” was a rubbery as Clive’s ample figure.

By lunchtime on Thursday, big Clive had dropped his demand to have his ETS replace the “carbon” tax, when repealed. The “carbon” tax will hit the legislative scrapheap within weeks – without a whimper; to be replaced by nothing: the “Sting”, complete.

There is, however, the small matter of the mandatory RET – which – as covered in detail in our last post – Palmer seems keen to support – at least for the moment.

The mandatory RET will see power prices double again between now and 2020, when the target hits the full annual 41,000 GWh target. The risk to the economy is something we’ve been banging on about for some time now. And it’s a matter not lost on the PM, Tony Abbott’s top business advisor, Maurice Newman – among others.

Here’s The Australian on the risk to real businesses in maintaining the mandatory RET.

Palmer’s RET policy ‘too costly for businesses’
The Australian
Annabel Hepworth
27 June 2014

THE head of the Prime Minister’s business advisory council has warned the Palmer United Party’s plan to retain key climate-change policies is at odds with getting electricity prices down and boosting industry competitiveness.

In the wake of Clive Palmer’s move to back the repeal of Labor’s carbon price, Maurice Newman said the carbon tax repeal should lower costs on businesses and households. “But it’s only part of the story,” he said, arguing that “we need to go a lot, lot further”.

He criticised the plan to oppose any changes to the renewable energy target before 2016 and to block the government’s plans to scrap Labor’s $10bn Clean Energy Finance Corporation and Climate Change Authority.

“Mr Palmer seems to want to hang on to them, which seems totally inconsistent with this idea of bringing down the price of energy,” Mr Newman said.

Australia needed to reduce its energy prices. “Australia is getting less and less competitive … We’ve got a very high wage structure and we’ve got very high energy costs.”

Other leading business figures lined up to back the warning on the RET, which is being reviewed by an expert panel headed by businessman Dick Warburton.

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Kate Carnell said it was “enormously expensive”.

EnergyAustralia chairman Graham Bradley said it was “a very good thing” the carbon tax was likely to go swiftly, but that the RET should be changed to a “real” 20 per cent.

Executives at EnergyAustralia, which owns the Yallourn brown coal power station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, estimated that ­delivering the required investment in renewables to meet the target would require a fivefold increase on past investment.

“We don’t believe this is achievable without driving up the cost of renewable energy,” group executive manager of strategy and corporate affairs Clare Savage said.

Mr Palmer’s single condition for his support for the carbon tax repeal is a legal requirement that power companies pass savings from scrapping the tax to households. This would go beyond government plans to give the competition watchdog extra monitoring arrangements in the carbon tax repeal.

Energy Supply Association chief executive Matthew Warren said: “It is not clear to us what other head of power the commonwealth could use, as regulating energy prices is a matter for state governments,” Mr Warren said.

Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox raised concerns most businesses had been unable to pass carbon costs to their customers.

The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission should “not expect reductions in prices for those goods and services that never rose in the first place”.

ACCC chairman Rod Sims said he was confident that when the carbon tax repeal passed the savings would be passed on.
The Australian

A while back, Maurice Newman identified the mandatory RET as the Elephant in the room – tagging it as being responsible for the demise of motor manufacturer, Ford and lots of other energy intensive businesses (see our posts here and here and here).

The mandatory RET must go. As retiring Queensland Senator, Ron Boswell put it: “We can have a carbon price and renewable energy targets or viable manufacturing. We can’t have both” (see our post here).

maurice-newman

 

The Left-wing Government of Ontario, is Destroying our Economy.

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Government stifles business in Ontario and Quebec, report says

BARRIE MCKENNA

OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Jun. 25 2014, 12:00 AM EDT

Canada is becoming a country of two solitudes when it comes to business investment.

Provinces are increasingly falling into one of two camps, according to a report being released Wednesday by the C.D. Howe Institute. In the West, business spending powers the economy. In much of the rest of the country, government spending is swallowing an ever greater share of economic activity, most notably in Ontario and Quebec.

The report puts a new spin on the “dead money” debate and why Canadian companies have been running up growing cash reserves since the recession.

The C.D. Howe report theorizes that governments in parts of the country may be crowding out and dissuading private investment.

Canada’s corporate cash holdings have continued to grow in recent months, according to Statistics Canada. Non-financial companies had cash holdings of $630-billion in the first quarter, up from $621-billion in the final three months of last year.

Part of the reason is that some provinces are creating a more business-friendly environment, while others are scaring away investment, argued the report’s author, Philip Cross, the former chief economic analyst at Statistics Canada and member of the C.D. Howe Institute’s Business Cycle Council.

“It’s not a case of dead money and companies not willing to invest,” he said in an interview. “You can see that in certain provinces, they are willing to invest like mad men.”

It’s more than just about the Alberta oil sands and other resources projects, Mr. Cross said. “The West has had resources for a long time. What unlocked them were good policies,” he said.

Mr. Cross said the blockage lies in Quebec, Ontario and much of Atlantic Canada, where high deficits and the prospect of higher taxes are crowding out access to capital and discouraging business investment, according to Mr. Cross.

And efforts to kickstart business investment with government money clearly are not working, he explained. “If I was a firm in Ontario, what I’m planning for next year is a hike in minimum wages, higher income taxes and the introduction of a new pension plan,” he said. “I’m dealing with all these things and I’m not planning on the future of my firm.”

Private-sector investment has grown rapidly in all four western provinces, particularly since the resource boom took off in 2003. In Alberta, business investment as a share of GDP reached 25.5 per cent in 2012, the highest of any province. Public-sector investment has stabilized at less than 3 per cent.

In much of the rest of the country, there has been a “marked shift” the other way. In Quebec and Ontario, for example, private-sector investment slumped to 7 per cent of GDP in 2012 from 10 per cent in the 1990s. Government spending in Quebec is now the highest in the country at 5.7 per cent of GDP. In Ontario, it’s roughly 4 per cent, up from 3 per cent in the mid-2000s.

A separate report released Tuesday by Toronto-Dominion Bank presents a much rosier picture of the investment environment. Senior economist Randall Bartlett is predicting that business investment is poised to “rev up” in Canada over the next two years after a long slump.

He says six things will drive investment – the strengthening U.S. economy, a rebound in corporate profits, stronger corporate balance sheets, shrinking spare capacity, low interest rates and growing business optimism.

Business investment will lead GDP growth over the next couple of years, expanding at an annual rate of 4 to 5 per cent through the rest of 2014 and in 2015, the report said. “As investment increases, so does productivity, and ultimately wages and incomes in the long term,” Mr. Bartlett said.

Follow BARRIE McKENNA on Twitter: @barriemckenna

Can Noise Make You Sick?….You Bet It Can!

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June 26 2014
By JEROME BURNE

plane taking off afp

AFP

A similar study last year by the School of Public Health at Imperial College London found that being exposed to higher levels of aircraft noise around Heathrow raised the risk of admission to hospital for heart disease by 20 percent

London – We are surrounded by the sounds of the machinery that make our lives comfortable and convenient. The constant thrum of traffic, the thunder of jet engines overhead.

But when we have to listen to these noises for too long or at the wrong time, they can inflict silent and stealthy damage. Increasing evidence shows this damage isn’t just to our ears, but to our blood vessels and hearts.

Nor is this just a problem for people who live near busy roads or under flight paths. New research suggests noise pollution also causes harm in places such as hospitals.

Recently the world’s experts gathered in Japan to discuss the latest findings about noise and health. Perhaps most eye-catching was the study that linked noise pollution to your waist size.

In a four-year project published last year, researchers from Karolinska University in Sweden found that the louder the traffic noise to which people in different parts of Stockholm were exposed, the greater the increase in their waist size – there was nearly a centimetre increase for every ten-decibel rise in the noise levels. This is like the difference between a whispered conversation and the noise level in an average house or personal office.

Last month, scientists from Karolinska University found an even more dramatic effect from plane noise. After tracking more than 5 000 people for ten years, they reported that the waistlines of those most exposed to plane noise increased on average by 6cm.

A similar study last year by the School of Public Health at Imperial College London found that being exposed to higher levels of aircraft noise around Heathrow raised the risk of admission to hospital for heart disease by 20 percent.

The effects of noise pollution are even felt by babies in the womb.

In another of the studies presented at the conference, researchers from Utrecht University in the Netherlands examined data from more than 68 000 births and found that for every six-decibel increase in traffic noise there was a drop of 15g to 23g in birth weight.

Low birth weight is linked to a range of long-term health problems, including high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.

Of course, the most common response to noise exposure is annoyance. But while this may be limited to making you feel angry or exhausted, a major review of research published in the Lancet last October showed it can also disturb sleep and increase the risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

It also affects schoolchildren’s academic performance.

“We are gathering more and more evidence that noise in the environment can have a direct effect on health,” says Professor Adrian Davis, one of the authors of the Lancet review and director of population health science for Public Health England.

Sound affects you even in sleep

What is unsettling is that noise pollution can affect you without you even consciously hearing it.

At night, heavy traffic is a major cause of insomnia, with all the knock-on effects of missing out on the restorative phase of sleep, such as depression, weight gain, raised blood sugar levels as well as daytime sleepiness.

The result can be an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

But the noise doesn’t even have to keep you awake to have an impact. When the Imperial College researchers monitored sleepers’ blood pressure, they found it went up in response to a quite low sound, such as a passing car – even though this might register only 50 decibels, and even though the sleeper didn’t wake.

“It seems as if the subconscious never stops monitoring what is going on around you,” says Professor Paul Elliott, an epidemiologist (expert in the incidence of disease) at Imperial College.

Noise pollution makes you fat

So, what’s going on here? How can the sound of traffic make you put on weight or raise you risk of heart disease? “The connection comes from stress,” says Professor Elliott.

It dates back to our Stone Age ancestors, he says, explaining that back then, being alert to new sounds around you could mean the difference between life and death.

“In the wild, sounds are often a sign that something dangerous might be about to happen,” he says.

“When they catch our attention because they are new or annoying, our bodies produce stress hormones, such as adrenalin and cortisol, to make us ready to fight or flee.”

These hormones raise energy and make blood more ready to clot.

That’s good for a short-term emergency when you may be injured, but long term it’s one of the factors pushing up heart attack risk – which might explain the link between noise pollution and heart disease.

One of the chemicals from this cocktail, cortisol, is a hormone that makes it more likely you will pack on the pounds around the middle. This is the so-called visceral fat that also pushes up heart attack risk.

Noise can also increase blood pressure, another risk factor. When we’re stressed, the endothelium – the fine lining of the arteries – contracts, raising blood pressure.

The effect of noise stress isn’t limited to making us physically ill, it can also make it harder to concentrate, especially for children.

The background noise in the classroom shouldn’t be more than 35 decibels, but that can be doubled by cars passing by or planes overhead.

Research shows heavy traffic or being under a flight path is linked with learning more slowly. The children pay less attention or become more annoyed.

Hospital din can harm patients

Around 20 percent of people in the EU have to put up with traffic noise greater than 65 decibels in the day, while nearly a third have noise measurements greater than 55 decibels outside their houses at night – the level that can trigger problems, says the World Health Organisation.

A level of 45 decibels and below is considered ideal.

The problem isn’t limited to towns and cities. Aircraft fly over the countryside and agricultural machinery can be intrusive.

And as Anna Hansell, a doctor at Public Health England, explains: “If aircraft noise has an effect on the heart, then so might other sorts of noise that people find stressful – such as building works or constant loud music from neighbours.”

One of the big shocks of the Lancet report was the harm caused by noise in hospitals.

The review found that noise levels in hospitals have increased and are typically 15 to 20 decibels higher than the recommended 40 decibels – that’s the difference between the hum of a fridge and someone practising the piano.

Intensive care units, which look after some of the most vulnerable patients whose systems are already stressed, can be full of “irregular” sounds such as alarms sounding, phone ringtones and pagers going off, staff chatting and doors banging open and shut.

These are just the sort of sounds that can trigger the damaging stress “startle” response to noise.

The result is patients take longer to heal, need higher doses of painkillers and are likely to be readmitted to hospital, according to the Lancet review.

The review also found that staff, too, are affected by this constant noise, making them tired and suffer headaches. As Professor Davis points out: “Many of these noise sources can be dealt with simply with sound- absorbing ceilings and cutting the volume of ring tones – that would lower the rate of cardiovascular disease.”

Crying babies aren’t a risk

The decibel levels linked to health problems such as cardiovascular disease don’t seem too high – just 50 to 60 decibels for traffic noise.

That’s not very different from having a conversation (60 decibels), let alone a crying baby (100 decibels) or a rock concert (120 and up). So, why is traffic noise harmful and a screaming baby not? “There are several reasons why you can’t compare them directly,” says Dr Hansell.

“The rating for aircraft noise, for instance, is usually the average over 24 hours. So, you would have quiet moments and times when the level might reach 90 decibels. This sort of intermittent noise is much more annoying than a steady background noise.”

The sound of a screaming baby may be intermittent and stressful, but even the most distressed baby doesn’t keep going 24/7 for four or more years – the length of time of the studies that found health damage.

The key difference is that plane noise counts as “nuisance noise” – you don’t seek it out or enjoy it.

“Nuisance noise is harder to ignore and its effect is in addition to background noise,” says Dr Hansell.

And decibels aren’t the only feature that decides how a sound is going to affect us. Some types of noise are more stressful than others, possibly because they are less regular or are high or low-pitched – this varies with the individual.

There is a significant subjective element to the way people respond to sound, says Geoff Leventhall, an independent noise consultant, author and expert on the noise from wind turbines. “The actual level of sound as objectively measured in decibels makes up only about 30 percent of how it is perceived. People’s attitude can play a big part.

“Something that might be stressful viewed in one way, such as a thumping beat from a nearby club at 2am when you’ve got an early start, can be enjoyable if you are out for the weekend.”

Researchers such as Professor Elliott are well aware it’s hard to be sure it’s noise alone causing a problem.

“We found a connection between noise and heart disease in 3.6 million people living around Heathrow,” he says.

‘But that population includes a large number of people from South-East Asia who have a higher risk of heart disease anyway. That could have contributed to the result.’

However, with the growing body of evidence that noise is harmful, Professor Davis insists action is needed to tackle it.

“We need programmes to cut levels of stressful noise and enforce standards,” he says.

“The results could include improved learning in schools, better sleep for millions, a drop in heart disease, and hospitals that were far more pleasant.”

How to protect yourself

There are things we can all do to reduce the effects of noise, says Dr Hansell

Earplugs: “I use them in the cinema, at rock concerts and for sleeping, especially in noisy hotels,” says Dr Hansell.

Complain: “If we don’t all let people know when we’re being affected, nothing will change. So if a cinema film is too loud, ask the staff to turn it down. I’ve even written in about the announcements on the Northern line Tube being too loud.”

Relax: “If you can’t change it, try not to become annoyed or stressed by the noise, as that will increase your blood pressure!”

In decibels, how much noise are you exposed to?

10: Falling leaves

20: A whisper in a quiet library

30: Quiet conversation

40: The noise level in an average house or the hum of a fridge

50: Normal office noise or rainfall

60-70: Piano practice or the noise of a normal conversation at 3ft apart

70: Level at which most people play their radio

80: Noisy office or an alarm clock, loud singing, average sound of traffic

100: Bass drum, passing truck or a car horn

110: Screaming child

120: Rock concert

180: Plane taking off. – Daily Mail

ERT’s Are Set Up, To Protect The Rich Wind Corporations, NOT Taxpaying Citizens!

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County and community members fighting Jericho Wind farm

at Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal

By Megan Stacey, The London Free Press

Thursday, June 26, 2014

(QMI Agency)

 

Emotions are running high at the opening day of an Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal hearing to determine the fate of a wind turbine project by NextEra Energy in Lambton and Middlesex Counties.

Community members and the County of Lambton are facing off against the Ontario Environment Ministry and NextEra Energy over the Jericho Wind Energy Project, which would bring 92 turbines to the region.

An opening statement by resident Muriel Allingham, who is appealing the provincial ministry’s approval of the Jericho project alongside several other community members, attacked NextEra as greedy.

In order to overturn the province’s approval of the Jericho Wind Project, Allingham and the County of Lambton must prove it will cause severe harm to humans or the environment.

The first presenter of the day, Elizabeth Bellavance, a local community and social justice advocate, urged the tribunal to consider the injustice of the requirement.

In any project other than renewable energy where products like wind and vibration are released into the environment, showing “adverse effects” is enough to halt their use.

The community’s case against NextEra is virtually non-existent without the testimony of Sarah Hornblower, a local woman and mother who would have been a key witness in the hearing. The tribunal denied a summons for Hornblower late Wednesday afternoon.

Hornblower has several autistic children who she says will be severely impacted by the new wind turbines, several of which would fall on her family’s farm.

She has entered into agreements with NextEra Energy which community leaders say are because she has evidence of severe physical harm arising from turbines.

The resistance of rural communities to wind turbine projects is nothing new. Many argue the turbines destroy quality of life due to noise, vibration, stray voltage, turbine placement on parks and soccer fields, and their impact on those with sensory disorders like Hornblower’s children, among other concerns.

At a break in the hearing, Marcelle Brooks, another community member who is part of the team appealing the NextEra Energy project approval, said they expect this case to be the same as many others they’ve seen in the past few years.

“Our vision here today is how it has been for the last four years for us in this battle, and that is to expose the corruption, to expose the injustice,” Brooks said.

megan.stacey@sunmedia.ca

 

The Climate Change Scam….It has always been, “About the Money!!”

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‘Climate Reparations’ an idea that seems to be all about money

Posted on June 26, 2014

Climate Reparations—A New Demand

Guest opinion by Peter Wood

At the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December 2009, leaders from more than a hundred nations gathered to consider an agenda that included a massive transfer of money from developed countries to the Third World.  The developed states were tagged to provide $130 billion by 2020 to help developing nations deal with the consequences of global warming.  The proposed transfer was widely discussed as “reparations” for the damage caused by use of fossil fuels in the developed world.

 

The Copenhagen proposal went down in ignominious defeat.  A motley collection of Third World countries brought the idea up again in 2013 in the run-up to the UN’s climate conference in Warsaw, but by then whatever impetus the idea had had was gone.  President Obama instructed the U.S. delegate to oppose it.  The State Department explained:

“It’s our sense that the longer countries look at issues like compensation and liability, the more they will realize this isn’t a productive avenue for the [UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] to go down.”

The U.S. Government may have sidled away from this climate change compensation scheme but the underlying idea hasn’t gone away.  When the broader public and the world at large dismisses a “progressive” idea, that idea is almost certain to find an enthusiastic welcome on university campuses.  The notions of “climate reparations” and more broadly “climate justice” have settled in as things that campus philosophers philosophize about and campus activists activize over.

Possibly this is something that busy people should ignore. “Climate reparations” may turn out to be like the campaign to establish Esperanto as a world language. Esperanto, invented in the 1870s, was put forward as a tool for ending ethnic conflict and fostering world peace.  It enjoyed an American vogue in the 1960s, perhaps best remembered for a 1966 horror movie, Incubus, starring William Shatner, in which the entire dialogue was spoken in Esperanto.

Those who speak to Americans right now of climate reparations might as well be lecturing in Esperanto, since few of us want this economic incubus.  But it is never wise to entirely ignore the ideas gestating in the faculty towers.  Sometimes they get translated into actual political movements.

From Race to Environment

This thought came to mind when I came across an essay by a writer for the New America Foundation.  In “The Cost of Ignoring America’s Past,” Hana Passen begins by setting forth an astonishing parallel:

“If we do not face the lasting impact of slavery, which has been abolished by law and condemned in the court of morality, how will we be able to legislate issues like climate change, which some still deny?”

Passen, it turns out, hadn’t conjured the moral equivalence of slavery and climate change out of thin air.  She was paraphrasing Atlantic editor Ta-Nehisi Coates, who sets it out even more starkly:

“What [slavery] reparations requires is a country and a citizenry that can look at itself in the mirror naked and see itself clearly,” Coates said during a recent conversation with New America President Anne-Marie Slaughter. “And that’s the same argument for climate change. What is required for reparations, that kind of citizenry, that kind of patriotism, is not just required on that front.”

Coates’ article in the Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations,” was a huge hit for the rather stodgy journal.  According to its editor James Bennett, Coates’ article “brought more visitors to the Atlantic [website] in a single day than any single piece we’ve ever published.”  It also sold out on newsstands.  But in his article Coates stuck entirely to the theme of racial reparations and did not raise the green flag of climate reparations he brought up his New America interview.

Reparations for slavery is an idea that has been churning among African-Americans for a very long time, and one that grows less and less plausible as a practical political matter with every year that passes since the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and the passages of the 13th and 14th Amendments (1865, 1868).  But slavery reparations, or reparations for racial injustice more broadly conceived, are a durable fantasy, and it isn’t wholly surprising that a fresh enunciation of the case for them has excited attention.

But that’s a topic for another day.  The relevance of racial reparations to “climate justice” is that it serves as a conceptual and moral model.  Somebody has done something bad to someone.  Somebody has to pay.

Cotton Mather’s View

Mr. Coates is an editor, not an academic.  But the academic world is astir with ideas about how to apportion responsibility for climate change.  In this realm, any debate whether global warming is occurring and to what degree it can be attributed to human actions is entirely foreclosed.  It is simply assumed or asserted that catastrophic man-made climate change is upon us, and the discussion moves directly to identifying the culprits and apportioning the costs.  In this vein, the discussion bears a certain resemblance to debate in 17th century New England on how to handle the danger posed by witches.  It is as provocative today to express doubt in anthropogenic global warming (AGW) as it would have been to argue with Cotton Mather about relying on spectral evidence.  As Mather said, “Never use but one grain of patience with any man that shall go to impose upon me a Denial of Devils, or of Witches.” In what follows, I will abide by Mather’s counsel.

What do academics argue about when it comes to climate reparations?  Simon Carey, a professor of political theory at the University of Birmingham, lays out some useful distinctions in “Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility, and Global Climate Change.”  There is wide agreement on the “polluter pays principle” (PPP), Carey says.  But there is disagreement whether the true polluter is the individual who pollutes or the nation that benefits from his actions.  “Many of those who adopt the PPP approach to climate change appear to treat countries as the relevant units.”  Carey, who might be described as a climate liberal, rejects this collectivist approach, which he said is founded on the “beneficiary pays principle” (BPP). Current generations have benefited from the pollution caused by their ancestors, so the current generation should be held collectively responsible.  The Copenhagen proposal—which came four years after Carey’s article—embodies BPP logic.

Carey himself, however, believes that BPP violates PPP.  The original polluter often doesn’t pay at all, because he is dead, and the payments ignore all the improvements to the standard of living that flow from past industrialization. Carey isn’t against making people pay; he just wants individuals to pay for the harm they themselves do.  Presumably he would endorse making BP (the oil company) pay for the damage caused by the 2010blowout of its well in the Gulf of Mexico.

This summary is probably enough to suggest that the debate over climate reparations is a serious matter drawing serious attention from scholars.  I won’t take the space here for a deep dive into climate reparations scholarship, but a little snorkeling around the reef is enlightening.

Backward-Looking Laws

In 2008, Daniel Farber published “Basic Compensation for Victims of Climate Change” inEnvironmental Law and Policy Annual Review.  Farber attempted to identify the injuries that deserve compensation and the “responsible parties.”  He also gave voice to the racial reparations analogy:

“The problem is somewhat analogous to the diffuse issues raised by those seeking reparations for slavery and past racial discrimination.”

Farber is a professor of law at UC Berkeley where he holds a named chair and co-directs the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment.  He is a consequential and well-published figure.  His works include, not incidentally, a law review article, “Backward-Looking Laws and Equal Protection:  The Case of Black Reparations” (2006).  His books include Disaster Law; Disaster Law and Policy; and Eco-pragmatism:  Making Sensible Environmental Decisions in an Uncertain World.  His article on black reparations is essentially a meditation on Justice Stevens’ approach to reparations, who he says, “clearly prefers forward-looking rationales for affirmative action over remedial ones” and “might vote against reparations on that basis.”

Farber’s article on compensation for victims of climate change elicited a number of responses, most interestingly from Kenneth Feinberg, the man who served as Special Master to the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund and who also ran the $20 billion BP oil spill victims’ fund.  Feinberg disagreed with Farber’s approach that distributes financial responsibility among culprits by a “market share” contribution formula.  Feinberg thinks it “more reasonable—and more politically feasible—to expect governments themselves to fund any compensation regimen.”  Feinberg also thinks it is premature to start cutting the checks.  “There is a great deal to be said for waiting until climate change litigation develops and matures…”

Why Wait?

There are many in the sustainability movement, however, who aren’t inclined to wait at all.  They act quickly, as we saw recently when an adjunct professor at American University ventured a criticism on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal of the climate reparations movement.  Professor Caleb Rossiter noted that:

“More than 230 organizations, including Africa Action and Oxfam, want industrialized countries to pay ‘reparations’ to African governments for droughts, rising sea levels and other alleged results of what Ugandan strongman Yoweri Museveni calls ‘climate aggression.’”

Rossiter argued that the campaign extended to efforts “to deny to Africans the reliable electricity—and thus the economic development and extended years of life—that fossil fuels can bring.”  The reward to Rossiter for his airing this complaint was a prompt firingfrom his position as a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.  (Cotton Mather would approve.)

As part of the National Association of Scholars’ study of the sustainability movement, I have begun to track the “reparations” thread within the universities.  It has several aliases, including “environmental justice,” “climate compensation,” “climate change liability,” “climate debt,” and “climate reparations.”  The last in the list is the term preferred by Maxine Burkett, a law professor at the University of Hawaii, who argues that reparations put the “moral issues” appropriately at the center of the debate and offer the possibility of “galvanizing greater enthusiasm and commitment to repair from individuals, communities and nation-states.”  She thinks reparations would “foster civic trust between nations and manifest social solidarity.”

Judging from the Copenhagen and Warsaw conferences, that dream of international amity is far-fetched.  We might have a better chance by sitting ourselves down to learn Esperanto.

But lest this seem too airy a dismissal of a movement that combines heartfelt sympathy for a world imagined to be warming to disaster with cold determination to plunder the West by litigation and treaty, let me add that I take the reparations movement as a force to be reckoned with.  Hundreds of professors are honing it at law schools, environmental institutes, and schools of public policy.  Who pays?  As we say in Esperanto, Finfine, vi kaj mi. [Eventually, you and me.]

===============================================================

Originally published in Minding the Campus. Peter Wood is president of the National Association of Scholars.

German People Plead With Their Government, to Stop the Wind Scam!

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Letter to the Members of the 18th German Bundestag

On 26 and 27.6.2014 the German Bundestag wants to adopt the reform of the EEG. Despite harsh criticism by the EU Commission.

To ensure that no Member of Parliament can say afterwards that he knew nothing about health hazards and negation of species protection, wind delusion has all the members of the 18th German Bundestag wrote the following letter and sent by email.

If you want our people Represented write a few lines, come and find here the contact details for all Members: http://www.flegel-g.de/2014-Mailadressen-alle-Bt-18-Wahlperiode.html (you may have replace the semicolon with a comma to insert the list of deputies in an address line of your email program.)

 

Dear Members,

The reform of the EEG is at the Bundestag for a decision.Many lobbyists will contact you for months, so you use your voice to help these economic and ideological benefits. It tries to influence you and many wishes and demands are brought to you.

    We have no claims on you. 

    Rather, we would like to ask for your concerns to include the welfare of your electorate before making your decision.

Many of you have already before the federal election in 2013 of various lobby organizations such as the BWE (German Wind Energy Association) funded ” renewable energy revolution now “or thecitizen energy revolution sponsored by Juwi , BUND , BWE can, inter alia, collect, and these in the event of your choice to Bundestag pledged your support. Here it is not surprising that the official government commissioned report of the Advisory Council promptly disappeared because of the adverse outcome in the sinking and the complaint of the Regulatory Control Council for EEGremained unheard.
We, citizens of this country, taxpayers and voters, many of us living in the countryside, looking for your support. Not to us to enrich with your help or to convince you of an ideology, but because we want to remind you on Friday comply with the vote on the EEG reform your obligation to act for the benefit of the people.

With the themes of economy and national wealth, energy efficiency, unreliability of so-called renewable energy and skyrocketing electricity prices, we do not want to bother you, many others, such as the federal initiative power of reason , have already done to enlightenment. For this report, even the German media.

On the subject of social justice and democracy, which has to do with freedom of speech for dissenters and tolerance, with the village of peace, the preservation of specially unearned property and related old-age security and creditworthiness to read little and you may think it’s all good in the country?

From energy poverty, which was a marginal phenomenon in German society before and today has already reached hundreds of thousands of households the power switched off, you have heard certain. Also assume that the cost of the energy revolution by the EEG are not calculable by the perks for many lobby groups to absurdity of paying for not produced and not abzunehmenden power because of overload or not existing networks.
already today calls on the EU that in the foreign electricity produced from so-called renewable on domestic support measures must be subsidized if it is consumed domestically.
Surely you have already thought about how, for example, prices will explode only when, as with “Northern Link is planned, “in a big way power would be transported from the Norwegian pump storage plants in Germany, who is also the Norwegian producer profits through EEG would give to EU demands.

From the damage to nature and biodiversity, to the “gold rush” has done for wind power plants, biogas and photovoltaic fields, transported through the EEG, you must have heard this before.barotrauma caused by differences in air pressure can the lungs of bats and birds burst, the avifauna is driven by the effect of displacement from their habitats. Birds, especially Griffins as red kites are, by 300 km / h fast slain rotating blades . The avifauna is no food and no more breeding sites aftermonocultures have destroyed their habitat . Grassland birds are scared away either by wind power plants, such as the lapwing or the skylark or robbed by new animal by newcomers such as the fox and the wild boar of their nest. Avifauna lands in search of water on huge photovoltaic fields and burns . , the continental and intercontinental bird migration are robbed of their flight paths through huge barriers of wind power plants up to their altitude. nature and animal protection laws are a means of a license to kill with the granting of planning permission and successive reduction of the habitat of biodiversity through new spacing rules as a gift for EEG lobbyists undermined. square kilometers way forests are vanishing, and huge bogs are drained and abused as locations for wind power plants, and thus destroyed the main CO2 storage. , the right to rest in nature and an intact landscape is one of the human rights. These are sacrificed for years the energy turnaround.

The injustice against nature and against the civil rights will eventually trumped by the threat to the health of residents.
From botulism , the slow poisoning of humans and animals through the application of Gärschlämmmen from biogas plants you have already read?
Each funded by EEG biogas plant increases the spread of this dangerous disease!
make also of the rare earths for use in wind turbine gearboxes and photovoltaic their promotion of thousands of workers and their families sick, to destroy the environment in the producing countries?continuous noise than for Illness is you will be aware, he is often discussed, unless it comes from highways, factories, airports and was defined as “bad” noise. Continuous noise of wind power plants, pumps and cooling units, with additional noise peaks by impulsiveness, audio components and information is from local residents in accordance with policy specification to endure as a “good” noise, Ebeso as the non-audible, but by the vibrations from tactile infrasound and visual pollution Shadow Strike and Flashing continuously in a formerly quiet and relaxing surroundings in a natural environment. These diseases affect not only the psyche of the residents, but provide some of them serious disease symptoms.

The following diseases caused by noise are sure many of you do not realize it, because the issue of low-frequency and infrasound, which although researched for decades , it will infrasound weaponsare and the New York police demonstrators by infrasound wards, but is not made ​​by the local media publicized . If it does is once wrote or sent via infrasound, the lobbyists and ideologues sitzten in editing or in the editing room. This is abgewiegelt immediately and through studies vonPartner universities ( here and here ) of the various lobby groups that still against better knowledge of the hazardous nature of infrasound report which, although situated below the hearing threshold of 20 Hz, but body organs and material to vibrate and brings to vibrate the inner ear tissue, cardiac muscle, vein walls , among others damaged, forcing stressors for continuous activity and stimulates the immune system and leads to dangerous interference with the development of white blood cells and the appearance of immature cells in the blood .

For example demonstrates the latter study from 2010 clearly shows that the immune system by infra-sound even at low sound pressures is damaged. Thus, investigations of Dr. Pierpont, Dr. Harry, Professor Salt or Dr. Laurie were confirmed, which could prove beyond doubt in their studies, among other things, that emitted by wind turbine infrasound damages human health

That the selection of different sound disorders not only meeting people but also breeding animals shows the most recent example of Denmark, where in 1600 mink after commissioning of neighboring wind power plants dead, malformed and arrived early to the world, adult mink each other with bites have seriously injured to Death.
studies and investigations on the vibration-acoustic disease (VAD) of the team led by Professor Mariana Alves-Pereira and Dr. Nuno Castelo Branco from the University of Lisbon, conducting research since 1980 on the subject of infrasound, first at cabin crew and pilots, since the late 90 then to wind power plants, there injured people have led to the introduction of an occupational pension for infrasound. The investigations of Vibro Acoustic Disease (VAD) deal with the lobby-independent-working team of the University Lusófona with tissue changes in humans and animals (horses, goats).
The first research there were in fact already in 1912 and 1917 in Austria .

Especially after Your MEPs colleague Ms. Hoehn of the Greens recently claimed in a letter of reply to a wind power opponents citizens’ initiative that the opinion of Prof. Salt a personal opinion and his research was flawed, it seems to be necessary to make reference to the long period of research and their diversity.

Call we want only some, but allow us the following request:
Pay attention to the relevant source information among the various studies. You’ll be amazed at how much research already operated for infrasound for 100 years and how many more studies have been published worldwide!
Mc Cauley, Kelly , Carl Philip, Nina Pierpont , Dres Enbom , Harry, Nissenbaum, Hubbart & Shepherd, Thorne , Laurie , mouse field, hamlets, Scholz and many more

There is even a study by Vestas in Australia who came only once to the public in 2004 during a wind energy conference. There, the wind turbine manufacturer Vestas warned of the effects of infrasound on the neighbors of its wind turbines. On their official website , however, they summon harmlessness of infrasound.
In Canada and Australia are currently established long-term measurements for infrasound place inDenmark is one such under the auspices of two ministries and carried out by the company to combat cancer in preparation.
, the Here in Germany there are now at least recently released feasibility study by Prof. Krahé of the University of Wuppertal . Mr. Krahé talks and publishes about infrasound way as his colleagues Salt , Kelly, Alves-Pereira, Nissenbaum , Hubbart & Shepherd, Ambrose & edge , Iser , Nobbs Doolan & Moreau , inter alia, the Inter-Noise. The texts are freely available to all interested parties.

(This link is important wg. Many of the various information, also affected!http://windwahn.de/index.php/krankheit-56/vibro-acoustic-disease/krank-durch-schall

You might wonder why nothing about reading in the general press and why it makes virtually no sound sick and attending doctor to speak in the FRG.
In a society that has delivered the various lobbies for years and that no questions this provides that lobbyists sit in Germany in droves in the Bundestag and the ministries make policy for their interest group and write the bills that are hardly tested adopted as law.
Harmful effects of tobacco and asbestos were at the instigation of the respective lobbies also many decades long downplayed with the help of lobby-dependent doctors, denied and covered up until you could no longer overlook the serious sequelae and wanted to finally to draw conclusions!

Quoting Prof. Dr. Alec Salt to the Ministry of Health in Victoria , AU, we would like you to please put your heart to ensure that it diemal not as long and our country is not ruled by lobbyists but by you as representatives of the people responsible for the welfare of your fellow citizens, which of course decide independently and freely without being guided by economic interests of others and of ideologies.
” It is irresponsible to maintain the highest degree of a Ministry of Health that low-frequency sound can have no physiological effect when publicly available experimental results prove the contrary. Ministry of Health of the public fails to protect against the potential risks of low frequency sound by its lack of objective and balanced assessment. “

By the way: There are quite politicians who have the courage to have their own opinion and this also known to do: For example, Senator Madigan, he buttoned up in the Australian Parliament during a 20-minute speech, just the, well paid by the beneficiaries of the use of wind energy and always most cited on the subject of nocebo effect Prof. Simon Chapman before and calling his “scientific” lobby study together with his cynicism in dealing with concerned and affected citizens by infrasound.
Whether there will be in Germany one day politicians who do the same by dieLobbystudien ofpsychologist Dr. John Pohl , Martin- Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg clear for all to hear as make the public what they are, courtesy report for the wind power industry, appears still very questionable.
A recent example of how the study leader Hübner and Pohl a study of annoyance due to wind turbines of the Faculty of Psychology tangible physical symptoms caused by infrasound negate simply click here . The fact that the interviewed residents of the expert absurdum which leads immediately ad by referring to the once positive attitude of local residents before the construction of the facilities and is plagued by disease symptoms but in the aftermath, speaks volumes, but is hardly noticed.

How many residents in the radius of 10 km and depending on sound sensitivity sometimes even more ill results, in addition to the many studies that 30-40 % of residents speak world from the personal accounts on many websites. . Therein you will find evidence of unsaleable property after the construction of wind farms, people who leave their homes due to unbearable symptoms but who give up their company and financially lose in addition to the home and all
Please visit the websites and make yourself a picture: windturbinesyndrome.com, illwind.org, waubra-foundation.org.au, stilhed.eu, windwahn.de (illness, WTS, wind delusion Story Chapter 3, Affidavit, WTS initial symptoms in the search function), etc. Many of the information pages have a translator function.

That it for several years in Germany, more and more doctors out there that inform and symptoms of the disease by sound, occurred after the commissioning of wind power plants, pumps or other technichen plants and thus take seriously affected residents, is a poisitive development. The fact that many of these doctors being tempted to provide education, to write articles and give lectures is another step towards a more offensive approach to the compulsive hushed topic infrasound:
Article by Dr. Vogt , Dr. Nelting , Dr. Kuck (Ärzteforum Emission Control) – Videos Dr. Mayer andDr. Repp

These lectures and articles allow any interested party, all parties concerned and the sick, to become familiar with the subject infrasound in relative brevity, and to understand its symptoms. 
It would be a great asset to our company if you would take the time , the Enlightenment and view videos from PPPs and to read the article. 
Possibly would also awakened in your interest to deal more effectively with this is, by the increase in technical, infrasound-emitting plants, since two decades propagating environmental disease – for the benefit of the population.

Please provide us fellow citizens, residents of infrasound-emitting plants by the wind power plant on pumps to chillers, among others devices the necessary protection against low frequency and infrasound!

Thank you for taking note of our concerns on behalf of all affected or threatened by infrasound and other specified environmental conditions members of the EPAW (European Platform Against Windfarms) in Germany, as well as our “wind delusion” readers and wish you and us make wise choices among concerns above instructions.

Sincerely,

Jutta Reichardt and Marco Bernardi
spokeswoman for EPAW in D and editors and Webmastering by www.windwahn.de

 

Aussie, Clive Palmer, Supports Demolition of Carbon Tax Scam….while Al Gore, Looks On!

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The truth inconveniently dawns on the Clive show THE AUSTRALIAN

  • JUNE 27, 2014

CLIVE Palmer must have been tempted to throw out some chicken pellets as he left. The former media adviser to Joh Bjelke-Petersen had just sold the chooks of the Canberra press gallery a chopping block and rotisserie, and they gobbled it up.

Journalists and commentators who had long campaigned against Tony Abbott and in favour of a carbon price had just been advised of a package that would kill the carbon tax, defer an emissions trading scheme into the never-never and put an end to carbon abatement through “direct action” — and they applauded. “Palmer in carbon tax blow to PM,” bellowed the front page of The Age, suggesting the Prime Minister’s plans to abolish the tax were in “chaos”, while The Sydney Morning Herald, which favours a price on carbon, editorialised that Mr Palmer’s intervention was a “positive” move for the environment.

That the Queensland coalmine developer and nickel-refining billionaire was audacious enough to think he could snow the media just by having Al Gore share his podium was bizarre enough. That so many in the media fell for it is droll and depressing in equal measure. As for Mr Gore, given his claims about the origins of the internet, he might have found 10 minutes to Google his new political ally before administering self-harm to his diminishing reputation as a climate evangelist. Did Mr Gore even know he was sharing the stage with a man who had often denied global warming was a problem and was planning to make billions of dollars from coal exports? Did the man who shared a Nobel prize for climate activism not even take the time to ascertain that what he was endorsing was the abolition of any and all substantial carbon emissions reduction schemes in this country?

SMH columnist Mike Carlton took to Twitter saying the announcement would “screw the Tories” but succeeded only in demonstrating his venom and lack of political acuity. “Cute of Palmer to front with Al Gore, though, it will drive the climate change deniers at News Corpse to an apoplectic frenzy, just watch,” was his take. If that weren’t embarrassing enough, no lesser figure than the managing director of the ABC shared an identical sentiment. “Sensing hyperventilation in The Australian’s editorial room,” tweeted Mark Scott. We should welcome Mr Scott’s honesty in publicly aligning himself with the embittered left fringe of politics but we should also despair that the ABC’s editor-in-chief should misunderstand policy and politics so comprehensively.

The policy implications of Mr Palmer’s stand are neither disappointing nor surprising. As expected — indeed, as promised — he will support the abolition of the carbon tax. Further, he has vowed to oppose Mr Abbott’s direct action plan. The Australian has always been sceptical of this policy because it will not lead to the lowest cost abatement. However, Mr Palmer’s stand means that the nation could be left with no scheme at all to enable the delivery of its emissions reduction target of 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020. The trump card, strangely lauded by much of the media, is his proposition to legislate an ETS that would be set at $0 until our major trading partners adopted similar schemes. This is a fundamentally sensible position at one level but includes some obvious paradoxes. Australia, effectively, already has an ETS because the carbon tax is due to switch to a market price next year. So what Mr Palmer really suggests is that a fixed price should be kept in place indefinitely but cut to the rate of zero. It would be a carbon price signal without a price signal. This is bizarre, of course, and really no more than spin. Few people could or would argue against an ETS to be imposed if and when our major trading partners adopted one. In fact that has been the consistent policy thread of most sensible advocates in this country since the Shergold report first informed the Howard government on these matters in 2007. And this newspaper has always supported that policy direction: an Australian ETS acting in concert with our trading partners. This is the only way to ensure we do not place ourselves at an economic disadvantage or simply export emissions, and jobs, offshore. The elephant in the room, which we suspect Mr Palmer sees but his media throng doesn’t, is that this won’t be happening any time soon. If ever. To demonstrate what a setback this is for carbon price supporters we simply need to consider the most optimistic scenario. Let us pretend for a moment that global agreement for a trading scheme occurred a decade from now. If that were the case we could see now that the ABC and Fairfax press have been cheering a policy that switches the nation from a $25.40 a tonne carbon price escalating every year for 10 years and raising a minimum of $70 billion, to one set at $0 raising nothing across a decade. Some progress.

And to shatter their climate dreams further, Mr Palmer, with Labor and the Greens, promises to axe the Coalition’s $2.5bn direct action plan that would have been spent entirely on domestic schemes to reduce carbon emissions. This is a great win for carbon pricing in the same way that the Titanic’s maiden voyage was a great win for trans-Atlantic travel.

Mr Palmer is demanding the renewable energy target remains in place. This initiative has long held bipartisan support but is under government review. Dismantling or reducing it would be difficult economically and politically, but keeping it will continue to put upward pressure on electricity prices. The heaviest burden will fall on the poor; not businessmen like Mr Palmer. By also insisting the Clean Energy Finance Corporation remains, Mr Gore’s newest friend ensures only some ongoing government subsidies and investments for industry; although without a carbon tax to fund it, the CEFC soon may wither and die.

So let’s consider the winners and losers from this week’s theatrics. Mr Palmer certainly wins because he has ensured that none of his companies will pay carbon tax and he has again been lauded by the ABC and other media, blowing more CO2 into his political balloon. Mr Abbott wins because he gets rid of the carbon tax and pockets the unexpected bonus of a $2.5bn budget benefit because he can’t get his direct action plan through the Senate. The Labor Party and the Greens lose because they will have conspired to eradicate any emissions reduction scheme — unless either of them backflips and supports direct action. The Greens eventually should wear the odium of having pulled off the extraordinarily counterintuitive feat of killing off climate action under Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Mr Abbott. The hypocrisy eventually may catch up with them. Or not.

The Palmer United Party may stay united or may fracture in the Senate; we would not presume to guess where this coagulation of characters and interests might end. But in the best traditions of the Queensland white shoe brigade, Mr Palmer has spun the media and the southern politicians to his personal advantage. Wednesday night on the ABC’s 7.30 Sarah Ferguson said the PUP leader was “putting himself at the vanguard” of climate policy. A couple of hours later on Lateline Tony Jones asked Mr Palmer what had caused his “road to Damascus conversion” on climate. At least Jones also asked Mr Palmer if he was “feeding the chooks”. Still, praise from a Nobel laureate, the ABC and the Fairfax press is not bad for a bloke who killed off climate action.

Eventually, reality began to set in. Even the Ten Network’s Paul Bongiorno, who tends to make Radio National hosts sound mainstream, could see through the smoke and mirrors. “The Australian seems to call it as it is,” he summarised, referring to our front page headline of “Palmer kills carbon action”. Independent senator Nick Xenophon declared the Palmer-Gore doctrine was “more ham than plan” and Mr Palmer emerged from talks with the Prime Minister confirming the carbon tax would, indeed, be axed. Almost 24 hours on from the excitement of seeing Mr Gore take the stage with a man who has an equally large carbon footprint, the overexcited media pundits started to grasp what was happening. It dawned on the Greens that they had been sold a pup (pun intended) and they began hoping Mr Palmer was befuddled. And over at Fairfax, Tony Wright had worked out that an ETS dependent on action from our trading partners might be some time off. “Say, just after world peace is achieved,” he mused. “Or when Clive becomes Jenny Craig’s poster boy.” Or, perhaps, when Mr Gore next endorses a death blow to climate action.

Global Warming!! Just a fear tactic used to push the socialist Agenda 21.

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GLOBAL WARMING STUDY RIDICULED AFTER TEMPERATURES DROP

by  26 Jun 2014, 8:53 AM PDT 20POST A COMMENT

A UK Met Office study that predicted temperatures would rise by up to half a degree centigrade over the past 10 years faces ridicule after it was revealed that temperatures actually dropped over that period.

The peer-reviewed study by Doug M. Smith et al, entitled “Improved Surface Temperature Prediction for the Coming Decade from a Global Climate Model” – and whichfeatured in the journal Science – also incorrectly predicted that several years over the past decade would see record heat.

The paper says:

“…predict further warming during the coming decade, with the year 2014 predicted to be 0.30° ± 0.21°C [5 to 95% confidence interval (CI)] warmer than the observed value for 2004. Furthermore, at least half of the years after 2009 are predicted to be warmer than 1998, the warmest year currently on record.”

However, now we are able to analyse the data on how temperatures really changed, we can see that there was actually a cooling of 0.014 degrees over the past 10 years, which is below even the lowest estimate.

Also, not a single year was warmer than 1998, despite the paper predicting that at least three years would be.

The above chart (credit: Kalte Sonne) shows the Met Office’s observed data (thin grey line) with the Smith et al predictions (red and blue lines) and the real trend (thick black line) overlaid. We can clearly see that not only does to real trend fall well outside the range of Smith et al’s predictions, it actually drops slightly.

Writing for the German climate blog Die Kalte Sonne, scientist Frank Bosse says that the Smith et al study failed to take into account known ocean cycles and other natural factors.

Smith has since written another paper, taking more factors into account, but Bosse writes that the range of uncertainty in it makes it “more or less useless”.

In a translation by NoTricksZone, Bosse concludes:

“As long as man is unable to determine with the needed precision the role natural variability plays in our observed climate, calculating the impact of greenhouse gases will remain prophecy. Do you feel guilty that you are still using incandescent light bulbs? Don’t fret over it!”