not financially feasible

Solar Activity More Likely to Cause Global Warming, than CO2

/ 1957chev / 1 Comment

SOLAR ACTIVITY – NOT CO2 – COULD CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING, NEW PAPER SAYS

 
by 29 Jul 2014 550POST A COMMENT
 

The impact of carbon dioxide on climate change may have been overstated, with solar activity giving a better explanation of changes in the Earth’s temperature, according to Chinese scientists.

A new paper published in the Chinese Science Bulletin has found a “high correlation between solar activity and the Earth’s averaged surface temperature over centuries,” suggesting that climate change is intimately linked with solar cycles rather than human activity.

The paper, written in Chinese, says that there is also a “significant correlation” between solar activity over the past century and an increase in Earth’s surface temperatures over the same period. The correlation between solar activity and water temperature is even higher than the correlation between solar activity and land temperature.

The paper, by Dr Zhao Xinhua and Dr Feng Xueshang, adds that a peer-reviewer said the results “provide a possible explanation for the global warming”.

In a press release, posted on the Hockey Schtick blog, The researchers say:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claimed that the release of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases contributed to 90 percent or even higher of the observed increase in the global average temperature in the past 50 years.

However, the new paper casts doubt on the IPCC’s assertion:

Research shows that the current warming does not exceed the natural fluctuations of climate. The climate models of IPCC seem to underestimate the impact of natural factors on the climate change, while overstate that of human activities. Solar activity is an important ingredient of natural driving forces of climate. Therefore, it is valuable to investigate the influence of solar variability on the Earth’s climate change on long time scales.

Indeed, the study says that the “modern maximum” – a peak in solar activity that lasted much of the last century – corresponds very well with an increase in global temperatures.

There has been increasing evidence in recent years that global warming is linked with solar activity. In 2009, Professor Henrik Svensmark from the Danish National Space Centre,said that the last time the Earth experienced unusually high temperatures, in the later Medieval period, there had also been an increase in solar activity. When this activity dropped, it led to the “little ice age” of the seventeenth century.

In 2011, three further papers suggested the Earth could be heading for a new “little ice age” as solar activity drops once again. Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory in New Mexico said: “The fact that there are three separate lines of evidence all pointing in the same direction is very compelling.”

Honest, Unbiased Scientists Reject Global Warming Hysteria!

/ 1957chev / 9 Comments
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
.

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!!!

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

Posted on July 30, 2014 by

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

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Dismantling the RET is the Smartest Idea, It’s a Scam!

/ 1957chev / 2 Comments

Nick Cater: the Mandatory RET the Greatest Rort of All Time

July 30, 2014 by  

nick_cater

Hostages to a renewable ruse
The Australian
Nick Cater
29 July 2014

The Abbott bashers are unwittingly siding with crafty merchant bankers.

THE power couple.

If there is a sound more pitiable than the whine of a pious environmental activist, it is the wail of a ­financier about to do his dough.

The mournful chorus now wafting from Greg Hunt’s waiting room is the sound of the two in unison, pleading with the Environment Minister to save the life of their misshapen bastard child, the renewable energy target.

You have to hand it to Hunt, who either has nerves of steel or is stone deaf, for he has retained both his cool and his fortitude.

The RET review by Dick Warburton on the government’s behalf has brought the rent-seekers out in force, for billions of dollars of corporate welfare is resting on its outcome.

As it stands, the RET will produce a bounteous return for a small group of investors shrewd enough to get into the windmill game while the rest of us are slapped with four-figure power bills.

Wind farms may be ugly but they are certainly not cheap, nor is the electricity that trickles from them. No one in their right minds would buy one if they had to sell power for $30 to $40 a megawatt hour, the going rate for conventional producers.

But since the retailers are forced to buy a proportion of renewable power, the windmill mafia can charge two to three times that price, a practice that in any other market would be known as price gouging.

As if a $60 premium were not reward enough, the transaction is further sweetened with a renewable energy certificate that they can sell to energy producers who insist on generating power in a more disreputable manner.

The going rate of $40 a megawatt hour means the total income per megawatt for wind farms is three to five times that of conventional power, and unless the government changes the scheme that return is only going to get better.

In an act of rent-seeking genius, the renewable lobby managed to persuade the Rudd government to set the 2020 target as a quantity — 41 terawatt hours — rather than 20 per cent of overall power as originally proposed.

Since the target was set, the energy generation forecast for 2020 has fallen substantially, meaning the locked-in renewable target is now more like 28 per cent.

That will send conventional producers scrambling for certificates, pushing up their price beyond $100. It’s a mouth-watering prospect for the merchant bankers and venture capitalists who were smart enough to jump on board, and brilliant news for Mercedes dealerships on the lower north shore, but of little or any benefit to the planet.

The cost of this speculative ­financial picnic will be about $17 billion by 2030 or thereabouts, ­according to Deloitte, which produced a report on the messy business last week.

Since the extra cost will be added to electricity bills, the RET is a carbon tax by another name, a regressive impost that will fall most heavily on those with limited incomes, such as pensioners.

The lowest income households already spend 7 per cent of their disposable incomes on energy, according to the Australian Council of Social Service. Energy takes just 2.6 per cent of the budget of those on high incomes.

Thus under the cover of responding to climate change — “the greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time” — billions of dollars are taken from the poor and given to the rich investors in the unsightly industrial turbines that are blighting the lives of rural communities and stripping value from the properties of people who just wish to be left to live in peace.

If the anti-Abbott budget bashers who are squealing about a minor adjustment to pension indexation were serious, they would demand the end of the RET’s iniquitous transfer of wealth.

Yet ironically they find themselves on the side of crafty merchant bankers in the romantic expectation that this complex ­financial ruse is doing something to assist the planet.

To speak up in opposition to this social injustice is to find oneself condemned as a climate change denier, right-wing ideologue, apologist for the coal industry or, worse still, to be ignored altogether, as the ABC’s Four Corners managed to do in its renewable energy special last month.

The corporation flew reporter Stephen Long to California to tell us how wonderful the renewable energy bonanza is going to be and how foolish Tony Abbott’s government is to even question the proposition that too many windmills are barely enough.

“This government has an ideological agenda,” insisted John Grimes, chief executive of the Australian Solar Council.

“They want to carve out the impact of renewable energy on the network and they want to stop renewals in their tracks.”

Jeremy Rifkin, author of a book called The Third Industrial Revolution, told Long: “Australia’s the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy. There’s so much sun; there’s so much wind off the coast, and so it makes absolutely no sense when you have an abundance of renewable energy, why would you rely on a depleting supply of fossil fuels with all of the attendant ­consequences to society and the planet?”

Fatuous arguments of this kind are rarely challenged on the ABC, nor are the purveyors of renewable energy subjected to the degree of scepticism that others with corporate vested interests can expect. Instead they find themselves in the company of a cheer squad.

“The new developments with renewable energy and storage seem to have passed the Prime Minister by,” Long editorialised halfway through his dispiriting ­report.

Finally, however, as Long was about to run out of time and throw back to Kerry O’Brien, he let slip the awkward truth he had managed so far to avoid.

“Yes, it costs money to create the infrastructure for renewable energy,” he says. “A lot of money.”

Indeed it does, and if the arbitrary, inefficient and regressive mechanism of the RET is all that is left to overcome that hurdle, we may as well give up.

It is through this complicated method that the consumers are forced to pay a subsidy to wind farms without the need for a ­carbon tax.
The Australian

A fantastic piece of analysis from Nick Cater.

But we take issue with Deloitte’s cost estimate for the mandatory RET of “$17 billion by 2030″, which is way off the mark.

Putting aside the hidden costs of providing fossil fuel back up to cover the occasions when wind power output plummets every day – and for days on end (see our post here); putting aside the need for a duplicated network to carry wind power from the back blocks to urban markets (seeour post here); putting aside the cost of running highly inefficient Open Cycle Gas Turbines to cover wind power “outages” (see our post here), for the purpose of this argument let’s just focus on the cost of Renewable Energy Certificates and their bedmate – the mandated shortfall charge.

Under the mandatory RET – retailers are fined $65 per MWh for every MW they fall below the mandated annual target: what’s called the “shortfall charge” – follow the links here and here.

The alternative is to buy RECs and surrender them as proof that the retailer has purchased a MWh of renewable energy.

Wind power generators are issued 1 REC for every MWh of power dispatched to the grid – and this deal continues until 2031: the operator of a turbine erected in 2005 will receive RECs (1 per MWh dispatched) each and every year for 26 years.

Since the RET began in April 2001, over 195 million RECs have been created – worth more than $8 billion – the cost of which has all been added to our power bills.

The cost of the REC is ultimately borne by retail customers and, therefore, constitutes a Federal Tax on all Australian electricity consumers (see our post here).

Now to the numbers.

If no RECs were purchased, retailers would simply be hit with the $65 per MWh shortfall charge on the entire figure set by the mandatory RET legislation (see the link here).

That cost alone would add $2.665 billion to power bills annually from 2020 to 2031.

Alternatively, if sufficient RECs to satisfy the target were purchased at $100, say, the cost rises to $4.1 billion a year from 2020 to 2030.

Year RET in MWh (millions) Shortfall Charge
(or RECs) @ $65		 RECs @ $100
2014 16.1 $1,046,500,000 $1,610,000,000
2015 18 $1,117,000,000 $1,800,000,000
2016 22.6 $1,469,000,000 $2,260,000,000
2017 27.2 $1,768,000,000 $2,720,000,000
2018 31.8 $2,067,000,000 $3,180,000,000
2019 36.4 $2,366,000,000 $3,640,000,000
2020 41 $2,665,000,000 $4,100,000,000
2021 41 $2,665,000,000 $4,100,000,000
2022 41 $2,665,000,000 $4,100,000,000
2023 41 $2,665,000,000 $4,100,000,000
2024 41 $2,665,000,000 $4,100,000,000
2025 41 $2,665,000,000 $4,100,000,000
2026 41 $2,665,000,000 $4,100,000,000
2027 41 $2,665,000,000 $4,100,000,000
2028 41 $2,665,000,000 $4,100,000,000
2029 41 $2,665,000,000 $4,100,000,000
2030 41 $2,665,000,000 $4,100,000,000
  Total $36,483,500,000 $56,210,000,000

RECs are currently trading around $30, but, as the target starts to bite from 2017 the price is expected to exceed $90 and may well exceed the $100 figure mentioned by Nick Cater.

The shortfall charge (as a fine) is a cost that the retailer can’t claim as a legitimate tax deduction, whereas the REC is – this places an added value on the REC to the extent that its face value can reduce the retailer’s taxable income. At a minimum then, RECs can be expected to trade at a figure at least equal to the shortfall charge. But with the tax benefit attached, RECs would be worth at least $94 – based on a shortfall charge of $65.

At the bottom end, this means the value of RECs surrendered (and/or the shortfall charge applied) will add over $36 billion to power bills over the next 17 years. At the top end, the figure (assuming RECs hit $100 by 2017) will exceed $50 billion. These figures represent the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the Commonwealth: a transfer that comes at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable in society; struggling manufacturing businesses, real jobs and families. To call the mandatory RET obscene is pure understatement. No single policy has ever threatened to cost so much for nothing in return.

The mandatory RET must go now.

abbottcover

High Energy Costs Hurt Seniors and other Vulnerable Citizens!

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New Obama EPA Rules Will Devastate Seniors

Jim Martin | Jul 28, 2014

 

When President Obama proposed healthcare reform that added 30 million to the insurance rolls while promising lower costs, most people who passed fourth grade math raised an eyebrow, if not a ruckus. The simple realities of supply and demand, coupled with the burden of government mandates, could only push healthcare costs skyward. With Obamacare now in effect, those early concerns have come to be realized through skyrocketing premiums, as confirmed by a recent Morgan Stanley survey of 148 national insurance brokers.

Premiums are up as much as 100 percent in some cases, and this is after Obama promised “savings.” One can only imagine what would happen to the cost of a commodity the President promises to make Americans pay more for. Unfortunately, we don’t have to imagine, as this is exactly what Obama promised his energy plan would achieve.

In January of 2008, candidate Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that “under my plan… electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket.” No sanguine language here about savings, just a flat out mission to make Americans pay through the nose for energy. It’s no coincidence that under Obama gasoline prices have doubled, and have remained above $3 per gallon throughout his two terms.

Now to make good on his promise to make electricity cost more, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have issued brutal new rules on emissions for electricity generating power plants, just what the doctor ordered for skyrocketing electricity prices. This is a story largely ignored by the mainstream press who never miss an Obama chip shot on to the green or a grip and grin in some remote diner. But Americans are catching on fast.

On HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy declined to disagree with the host’s contention that Obama was waging a “war on coal.” Indeed, it was candidate Obama who in the same Chronicle interview stated, “If somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant, they can. It’s just that [my plan] will bankrupt them.” The President makes no bones that his aim is to make producing electricity cost-prohibitive, but in the end it will be you, me, and everybody with an outlet and a light switch paying the bill.

The EPA’s war on coal is no less than a war on seniors and our nation’s most vulnerable. Seniors on fixed and diminishing incomes pay a disproportionate share of their monthly budget on utilities, and Obama’s EPA will serve only to make them poorer and more vulnerable. A recent Harris poll found 88 percent of seniors are at least somewhat concerned that the new EPA rules will force them to pay more. Sharing this view is a U.S. Chamber of Commerce analysis showing the new EPA rules will cost Americans $17 billion a year more to pay their electricity bills, and hit the economy with $50 billion a year in new costs.

As recently as six years ago coal accounted for about 50 percent of America’s electricity, and now stands at 40 percent. Obama wants it below 30 percent, a chokehold on energy production which is nothing short of pulling the emergency brake on the economy and letting America’s most vulnerable go flying through the windshield.

Seniors of limited means are least able to absorb the increasing costs of energy and electricity, as we’ve seen from far too many stories of elderly dying in their homes or requiring hospitalization during severe weather conditions. Clearly the President and the EPA are willing to gamble with the lives of seniors for the sake of their extreme ideology.

A study of the Administration’s new power plant emissions rules revealed job losses of 442,000 by 2022, and a loss of 40 percent of electrical capacity generated by coal in the next 15 years. What’s even more alarming is that the environmentalists at the EPA can’t even point to a tangible, achievable benefit to these new proposed standards. The truth is these additional regulations are of benefit to no one, and do nothing to address the fact that developing nations like China and India will double their power-plant emissions in short order with Americans essentially subsidizing their increased production.

The EPA counters that the short-term cost increase is easily absorbable and by 2030 we will all be paying less for energy, thanks to Obama and his environmental mandates. This is little comfort to the tens of millions of seniors now paying the price for Obama’s healthcare “savings.”

Ridiculous Environmental Policies All Part of United Nation’s Agenda 21.

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Sniffing Out Bad Environmental Policies Is Much Like Culling Rotten Produce

By  

When buying produce, we’ve found ways to discern which pieces are worthy to place in our basket. Each piece of fruit or stalk of vegetable must be of good quality to justify spending our hard-earned income on it. So we look, we sniff and we gently squeeze them in order to cull the unripe or rotten pieces and glean the good ones.

Perhaps we should use a similar approach when evaluating the competing environmental proposals proffered by various organizations. We should carefully sniff out the rotten assumptions and gently squeeze the reasoning of their justifications in order to glean which proposals might be worthy of our real sacrifice in national treasure and personal freedoms.

For example, consider the World Bank’s proposals for reducing man-made influences over global climate change. Like most other organizations, they stress the urgency for all nations to take immediate, coordinated actions to reduce carbon emissions. However, they stress that the needed sacrifices should not be shared equally among the nations.

Upon closer inspection, the World Bank’s policy recommendations reveal intellectually unripe assumptions that employ ethically rotten reasoning to justify them. For example, in the World Development Report 2010, the President of the World Bank stresses that,

Developed countries have produced most of the emissions of the past and have higher per-capita emissions. These countries should lead the way by significantly reducing their carbon footprints and stimulating research into green alternatives.

First, consider the intellectually unripe assumption that per-capita carbon emissions are an appropriate basis for determining relative global warming culpability across the nations, and to identify which nations should bear the brunt of costly remediation efforts.

Let’s remember that carbon emissions result from economic activity. All else equal, greater economic activity in a nation’s economy creates greater carbon emissions per capita, but also greater prosperity (output per capita) for its citizens enjoy.

Humanitarians should want the citizens of all nations to become prosperous, but to achieve their prosperity with the smallest environmental footprint possible. Therefore, would not an intellectually ripe indicator of culpability be carbon emissions per-dollar of economic output?

Using this perspective, we could identify the various institutional characteristics among the nations that tend to create a “greener” prosperity, which would then better inform the efforts of environmental policy makers. For example, I point out in an earlier blog post that countries pursuing prosperity through free markets rather than through centralized planning consistently produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, per dollar of GDP.

Second, consider the ethically rotten policy implications that this intellectually unripe measure would likely create: In order for a nation with heavy carbon emissions per capita to reduce its culpability in global warming crimes against humanity, it must make relatively greater sacrifices. It must decrease its economic activity using current technologies and divert significant portions of its national treasure towards developing “green” technologies. Nations with lower per-capita emissions would not be called upon to sacrifice as much.

This means a country like China, which has an economy similar in size to the U.S. but generates 43% more total carbon emissions, would be expected to sacrifice less than the U.S. Why? With its 2 billion citizens (6 times the 325 million U.S. citizens), Chinese carbon emissions per capita are still far lower than the U.S.

This ethically rotten perspective ignores the fact that China has produced far more carbon emissions per dollar GDP than the U.S. As a result, Chinese citizens bear a much lower level of prosperity (output per person) than U.S. citizens, despite having imposed a far larger total environmental footprint than the U.S.

Using per-capita carbon emissions as an indicator of climate change culpability?  Hmm… I think I smell something rotten in Denmark.

– See more at: http://environmentblog.ncpa.org/sniffing-out-bad-environmental-policies-is-much-like-culling-rotten-produce/#sthash.iZ5AGrRf.dpuf

The “Inconvenient Truth”, for Climate Alarmists! Been chilly lately….

/ 1957chev / 3 Comments

Quotable Warming Hiatus Quotes

Posted: 28 Jul 2014 

 
Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 5th July, 2005
“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant….”
 
Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 7th May, 2009
‘Bottom line: the ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.’
__________________
Dr. Judith L. Lean – Geophysical Research Letters – 15 Aug 2009
“…This lack of overall warming is analogous to the period from 2002 to 2008 when decreasing solar irradiance also countered much of the anthropogenic warming…”
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Dr. Kevin Trenberth – CRU emails – 12 Oct. 2009
“Well, I have my own article on where the heck is global warming…..The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
__________________
Dr. Mojib Latif – Spiegel – 19th November 2009
“At present, however, the warming is taking a break,”…….”There can be no argument about that,”
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Dr. Jochem Marotzke – Spiegel – 19th November 2009
“It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community,”….”We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”
__________________
Dr. Phil Jones – BBC – 13th February 2010
“I’m a scientist trying to measure temperature. If I registered that the climate has been cooling I’d say so. But it hasn’t untilrecently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend.”
__________________
Dr. Phil Jones – BBC – 13th February 2010
[Q] B – “Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming”
[A] “Yes, but only just”.
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Prof. Shaowu Wang et al – Advances in Climate Change Research –2010
“…The decade of 1999-2008 is still the warmest of the last 30 years, though the global temperature increment is near zero;…”
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Dr. B. G. Hunt – Climate Dynamics – February 2011
“Controversy continues to prevail concerning the reality of anthropogenically-induced climatic warming. One of the principal issues is the cause of the hiatus in the current global warming trend.”
__________________
Dr. Robert K. Kaufmann – PNAS – 2nd June 2011
“…..it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008…..”
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Dr. Gerald A. Meehl – Nature Climate Change – 18th September2011
“There have been decades, such as 2000–2009, when the observed globally averaged surface-temperature time series shows little increase or even a slightly negative trend1 (a hiatus period)….”
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Met Office Blog – Dave Britton (10:48:21) – 14 October 2012
“We agree with Mr Rose that there has been only a very small amount of warming in the 21st Century. As stated in our response, this is 0.05 degrees Celsius since 1997 equivalent to 0.03 degrees Celsius per decade.”
__________________
Dr. James Hansen – NASA GISS – 15 January 2013
“The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slowdown in the growth rate of the net climate forcing.”
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Dr Doug Smith – Met Office – 18 January 2013
“The exact causes of the temperature standstill are not yet understood,” says climate researcher Doug Smith from the Met Office.
[Translated by Philipp Mueller from Spiegel Online]
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Dr. Virginie Guemas – Nature Climate Change – 7 April 2013
“…Despite a sustained production of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, the Earth’s mean near-surface temperature paused its rise during the 2000–2010 period…”
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Dr. Judith Curry – House of Representatives Subcommittee on Environment – 25 April 2013
” If the climate shifts hypothesis is correct, then the current flat trend in global surface temperatures may continue for another decade or two,…”
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Dr. Hans von Storch – Spiegel – 20 June 2013
“…the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) — a value very close to zero….If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models….”
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Professor Masahiro Watanabe – Geophysical Research Letters – 28 June 2013
“The weakening of k commonly found in GCMs seems to be an inevitable response of the climate system to global warming, suggesting the recovery from hiatus in coming decades.”
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Met Office – July 2013
“The recent pause in global warming, part 3: What are the implications for projections of future warming?
………..
Executive summary
The recent pause in global surface temperature rise does not materially alter the risks of substantial warming of the Earth by the end of this century.”
 
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Professor Rowan Sutton – Independent – 22 July 2013
“Some people call it a slow-down, some call it a hiatus, some people call it a pause. The global average surface temperature has not increased substantially over the last 10 to 15 years,”
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Dr. Kevin Trenberth – NPR – 23 August 2013
“They probably can’t go on much for much longer than maybe 20 years, and what happens at the end of these hiatus periods, is suddenly there’s a big jump [in temperature] up to a whole new level and you never go back to that previous level again,”
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Dr. Yu Kosaka et. al. – Nature – 28 August 2013
“Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling
Despite the continued increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the annual-mean global temperature has not risen in the twenty-first century…”
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Professor Anastasios Tsonis – Daily Telegraph – 8 September 2013
“We are already in a cooling trend, which I think will continue for the next 15 years at least. There is no doubt the warming of the 1980s and 1990s has stopped.”
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Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth – Nature News Feature – 15 January 2014
“The 1997 to ’98 El Niño event was a trigger for the changes in the Pacific, and I think that’s very probably the beginning of the hiatus,” says Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist…
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Dr. Gabriel Vecchi – Nature News Feature – 15 January 2014
“A few years ago you saw the hiatus, but it could be dismissed because it was well within the noise,” says Gabriel Vecchi, a climate scientist…“Now it’s something to explain.”…..
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Professor Matthew England – ABC Science – 10 February 2014
“Even though there is this hiatus in this surface average temperature, we’re still getting record heat waves, we’re still getting harsh bush fires…..it shows we shouldn’t take any comfort from this plateau in global average temperatures.”

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H/t Steve GWR

Heartfelt Poetry, from a Victim of the Wind Scam! Life on a Windfarm…

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Life on a Wind Farm: 3 Poems by M. Krochmalnik Grabois

Under the Turbines

Infants and toddlers cannot speak

and even pre-teens

may not have the vocabulary to describe

the unprecedented symptoms they suffer

 

Teenagers can tell you more—

they are developing a lexicon for suffering

They are beginning to see that life is unfair

and full of strife

 

and even if they sometimes feel invulnerable

they watch their parents and know deep inside that

invulnerability is a lie

 

They watch the landscape change around them

see the five-hundred foot turbines erected

 

The sound of the gears up there are not like the sound

of their childhoods swings

which creak in the wind at night

a comforting sound

 

Now they hear the tangible sound of the wealthy

stealing from them

before they have even begun to acquire anything

 

 

More Symptoms from Living in a “Wind Farm”

Sleep disturbance in children and infants is common

Your child may feel bullied

even if no classmate is bullying him

 

He has just begun to get over the idea that there is a monster

under his bed

 

and now he awakens feeling that there is an intruder in the house

an intruder with more powerful weapons than Father’s guns

and a feeling that Father is powerless

against the greater forces in the world

 

Of course, it’s true

Father and his neighbors tried to stop the turbines

He pointed out that the Comprehensive Plan

forbade them

 

Father is powerless

 

Grit

I watch my sleeping daughter grit her teeth

When she was three she had bad earaches

and took so many antibiotics

the doctor forbade us to give her milk

because milk is full of antibiotics

and we can’t afford Organic

 

Now she has ear aches again

This time the doctor says there is no treatment

other than moving out of the “wind farm”

 

It’s the pressure he says

and because of her history she is particularly

vulnerable

 

We all involuntarily explore our vulnerabilities now

 

Anxiety, nervousness—

I’ve learned there’s a difference between the two

but when I startle awake with an elevated heart rate

I’m not sure which is which

 

Nausea

I’ve always eaten like a horse and never felt nauseous in my life

Now I feel nauseous all the time

I can’t figure out how the wind turbines cause nausea

though I’ve been told it’s an inner ear thing

I guess it’s something my daughter and I

have in common

 

My neighbor, the professor

now stands in front of the chalkboard

gripping the edges of the podium

staring at his notes

 

He’s got vertigo

and can’t perambulate around his classroom

speaking extemporaneously

like he used to

 

I never much liked that guy

kind of an egghead

who moved here from some city

for the peace and quiet

That’s a laugh, ain’t it, Professor?

 

Now I feel more brotherly toward him

We stood up in public hearings

and our arguments, our pleas

were equally ignored by the corrupt commissioners

 

him with his PhD

me with my high school diploma

 

I think I was right not to go on to college

though my mother told me

I was smart enough

 

(Photo Credit: Steve Sutherland)

Toronto School Boards Really Bad at Math!!! (and science!)

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The green mirage: Toronto school board gets free roof repairs for solar panels — or do they?

Toronto School Board flunks outToronto School Board flunks out

Canada’s largest school board, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), is getting an F on management practices.  Ontario’s Ministry of Education and Ministry of Energy must also receive a failing grade.

It starts with Toronto’s public schools having leaky roofs.  The TDSB, with much fanfareMay 2011, found the Holy Grail when they struck a deal with AMP Solar Limited Partnership for solar panels on school roofs.  TDSB thought the deal with AMP would result in free roof repairs on 450 schools, and, after AMP recovered the cost of the repairs, TDSB would also receive 14.5% of the solar power revenue generated from the Feed-In Tariff or FIT contracts they hoped to obtain from the OPA (Ontario Power Authority).  On paper it sounded wonderful; TDSB’s Director of Education Chris Spence said,  “This is a win-win for everyone involved.”

What he meant was, it would be a losing proposition for Ontario’s ratepayers.

What has happened since that announcement shows someone didn’t do their math homework or anticipate what might go wrong.

One year later: there were delays as the rules under the FIT program changed, creating lower prices for roof-top solar, and then McGuinty prorogued the Legislature.  TheToronto Sun quoted Chris Bolton, TDBS’s chair, confessing the Board didn’t have an alternate plan.  The story went on to say the Ontario government “encouraged” the TDSB to turn to FIT as a resolution to its roof repair backlog.   It is not clear if that suggestion came from the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Energy.  If it was, it was as a neat budget gambit to fool the taxpayers while sticking it to the ratepayers.   Three weeks prior to the Sun article the Ministry of Education froze new construction approvals, “citing concerns the TDSB was going over budget on building projects and in danger of not wiping out an existing $50 million capital deficit.”

A few “snags”

Fast forward July 25, 2014: the reporter who wrote the Toronto Sun story wrote one for the National Post  headlined  “Solar panel upgrades for public schools hit snags”.  The article infers “the costs” to repair the roofs are “higher than first pegged” and goes on to explain, “That’s because of greater-than-expected costs to the board’s private partner-School Top Solar LP-for roofing, installing the panels and fees to Toronto Hydro for hooking up to its power grid.”  It is unclear who School Top Solar LP is—the original TDSB partner was AMP Solar Limited Partnership, but perhaps they flipped the project to take a nice profit (as has happened with so many companies) that have obtained FIT contracts).

The result of this wonder story is that the most TDSB will get out of this free deal will be to replace one-sixth (720,000 sq. ft.) of the 4.3 million square feet of roofs.    They can also kiss goodbye to the 14.5% energy revenue Chris Spence thought they would get.

Let’s see where the mistakes were made. First, the math on the 66 MW that will be installed: based on the original roof-top solar prices ($700 per megawatt hour), the 66 MW could have generated in excess of $40 million annually and $806 million over the 20-year life of the contract. The developer (AMP) claimed the 66 MW would produce enough electricity to power 6,000 average homes, which means 57,600 megawatt hours (MWh) of power yearly.

Now the roof repair costs: roof replacement repairs to the 4.3 million square feet would run to $8 or $9 per sq. ft., meaning total costs would be in the $40 million range.  Capital cost of solar per MW is $5 million (approximately) as estimated by the U.S. EIA, so 66 MW would have cost $330 million making total costs (including roof repairs) about $370 million and recovery of the cost outlays (including maintenance) should have taken nine to ten years.

If it looks too good to be true, maybe…

The reduction in the FIT rates threw the “free” roof idea into jeopardy. It now looks like the TDSB will have to go cap in hand to the Minister of Education, Liz Sandals, if they want those leaking roofs fixed, without making the Board’s $50-million capital deficit disappear.

What’s funny is that now, as reality hits, a few of the education board trustees interviewed for the National Post said they actually want to blame the school principals(some of them had requested adjustments to the placement of the equipment used to hook up the panels to Toronto Hydro’s electricity grid).

Perhaps Ms. Sandals will solve the TDSB dilemma by getting the teachers unions to back down on their demands for raises and pension benefits until the roof leaks have been plugged!

This is another example of the many logic failures brought to Ontario by the Liberal government and its push for renewable energy on a large-scale!

Parker Gallant,

July 28, 2014

Windweasels Won’t Take NO for an Answer! Appealing Court Decision!

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Utility Appeals Wind Turbine Noise Court Ruling

Ruling could impact wind plants across Michigan

By JACK SPENCER | July 29, 2014

The Lake Winds Energy Plant in Mason County.

Consumers Energy is appealing the 51st Circuit Court ruling that upheld Mason County’s determination that the Lake Winds Energy Plant near Ludington is in violation of the county’s 45-decibel noise ordinance.

Arguing that the County’s decision was an “erroneous ruling,” the utility filed a 38-page appeal with the Michigan Court of Appeals on July 18. In addition, Consumers Energy is saying that if the ruling by 51st Circuit Court Judge Richard Cooper were allowed to stand, it could have an impact on many other wind turbine plants across the state.

“This has implications beyond just Mason County,” Dennis Marvin, spokesman for Consumers Energy told Capitol Confidential. “We believe the study the county based its decision on was flawed. We took this decision (to appeal) very seriously, but ultimately our legal staff determined this was in the best interest of our customers and the landowners at the wind park.”

Rick James, of East Lansing-based E-Coustic Solutions, is an acoustician specializing in the production, control, transmission, reception and effects of sound. According to James, Consumers Energy is not exaggerating when it talks about the potential impact of the Lake Winds case.

“Consumers’ appeal has less to do with the supposed 1 decibel error, the topic of the appeal, and more to do with the wind industry’s broader concerns,” James said. “A decision by the Appeals Court in favor of Mason County would make it easier for other counties and townships with wind energy utility noise regulations to prove non-compliance.”

“Consumers would have been better advised if they had not accepted the conclusions of their acoustical consultant that the proposed project could be fit into the host community without causing problems,” James continued. “Both Consumers and its consultant should have known from past work on other projects that locating large, utility-scale wind turbines close to residential homes was likely to result in the type of litigation now in progress.”

Located south of Ludington, Lake Winds was the utility company’s first wind plant project in Michigan. Residents who live near the $255 million, 56-turbine facility started 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.

Less than six months later, 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 again, where it lost once more.

As the case began at the Circuit Court level, in January, the utility asked Judge Cooper to delay the requirement that it make efforts to mitigate the alleged noise problem until the court made its final ruling. Cooper denied that request. Now, as part of its appeal, Consumers Energy is asking the same thing of the Appeals Court.

“Lake Winds is an embarrassment for CMS and for good reason,” said Kevon Martis, director of the Interstate Informed Citizens Coalition, a nonprofit organization that is concerned about the construction of wind turbines in the region. “They denied well-established science that indicated in advance that this project would not comply with the noise language CMS essentially dictated to Mason County. The truth is that even if CMS complied with the wind turbine noise limits they demanded from Mason County, evidence from inside Lake Winds, as well as inside almost every major wind plant across the state, is clear: 45-decibel wind turbine noise limits are not adequate to protect homeowners whose township has been turned into a 47-story tall power plant.”

“Ohio just recently modified their turbine setback standards to 1,320 feet and for that distance to be established from property lines,” Martis continued. “Our home rule townships would be wise to adopt similar or stronger language to protect their residents from such abuse.”

Marvin denied that CMS dictated the details of Mason County’s noise ordinance.

“We provided input and so did others,” Marvin said.

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. The mandate was supposedly aimed at reducing carbon emissions, however; the 2008 law did not require the monitoring of emissions to measure the mandate’s actual impact. 

~~~~~