Lenar Whitney calls Global Warming, “the Greatest Deception in the History of Mankind!”

July 2, 2014 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

by JOHN NOLTE 27 Jun 2014

Republican Congressional Candidate Lenar Whitney released a video

Friday calling global warming “the greatest deception in the history of mankind.”

While announcing her candidacy for the 6th Congressional District in Louisiana, Whitney called global warming a “hoax.” The video is a response to those she describes as “liberals in the lamestream media” who “became unglued and attacked me immediately.”

—

Calling Al Gore and other liberal politicians pushing global warming “delusional,” Whitney reminds viewers that “The earth has done nothing but get colder each year since the film’s release.”

Whitney then goes on to cite a litany of other scientific facts to rebut and mock global warming believers, including President Obama, whom she calls “foolish” for blaming his lousy economy on warming.

“Last summer,” Whitney reminds, “Antarctica reached the coldest temperature in recorded history. There’s record sheet ice and a 60% rise of ice in the Arctic Sea.”

Using compelling video and a relentless musical score matched only by Whitney’s relentless list of facts, the candidate, who is proud of being described as “one of the most conservative members of the Louisiana Legislature,” rebuts global warming alarmists point by scientific point before reminding voters of the thousands of hacked emails that proved the Climate Research Center of East Anglia “falsified data.”

The video closes with Whitney making a case for developing America’s energy resources and blasts global warming alarmists for using this hoax as a fear tactic to give the federal government control over every aspect of our lives.

Climate Lies Used by the Fear Mongers, Fall Apart Under Closer Scrutiny!

July 1, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Blinded by Beliefs: The Straight Poop on Emperor Penguins

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Guest Blogger

Guest essay by Jim Steele,

Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism

Two recent press releases concerning the Emperor Penguin’s fate illustrate contrasting forces that will either advance or suppress trustworthy conservation science. The first study reminds me of Mark Twain’s quip, “Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.” Embodying that truism is a paper by lead author Dr. Michelle LaRue who reports new advances in reading the Emperor Penguin’s fecal stains on Antarctic sea ice that are visible in satellite pictures. Two years ago the fecal stain method identified several large, hitherto unknown colonies and nearly doubled our estimate of the world’s Emperor Penguins.^1,2 That didn’t mean climate change had necessarily increased penguin numbers, but a larger more robust population meant Emperor Penguins were far more resilient to any form of change.

LaRue’s new study advances the science by analyzing the shifting patterns of penguin poop, and her results are prompting some scientists to “unlearn” a key belief that has supported speculation of the Emperors imminent extinction. Believing Emperors are loyal to their breeding locations (philopatry), whenever researchers counted declining penguins at their study site, they assumed the missing penguins had died. However other studies had shown populations could suddenly double, and such observations challenged the notion of philopatry.¹⁰ The only reasonable explanation for unusual rapid population growth was that other penguins had immigrated from elsewhere, and loyalty to a breeding location was a misleading belief. LaRue’s study confirmed those suspicions by identifying the appearance of freshly stained ice in several new locations. LaRue rightfully said, “If we want to accurately conserve the species, we really need to know the basics. We’ve just learned something unexpected, and we should rethink how we interpret colony fluctuations.”….”That means we need to revisit how we interpret population changes and the causes of those changes.”

Of course several alarmist websites have spun this evidence of an ancient behavior into a new behavior forced by climate change disruptions.

Although mistaking unanticipated emigration for a local extinction has been the hallmark of several bad global warming studies, some researchers refuse to unlearn mistaken beliefs. In 2009 scientists argued that a missing herd of caribou that once numbered 276,000, had been extirpated by climate change. But the herd was later found in an unexpected location in 2011 just as native peoples had suggested. Likewise the co-author of the penguin extinction papers ^3,8, Hal Caswell from the Woods Hole Oceanic Institute, mistakenly interpreted polar bear emigration as evidence of death due to climate change to advocate the bears’ imminent extinction as discussed here and here). He was similarly instrumental in modeling the extinction of the “March of the Penguins” Pt. Geologie colony. (Pt. Geologie Emperor Penguins are also known as the Terre Adelie colony or the Dumont d’Urvillecolony, named after the adjacent French research station known by the locals as DuDu.). Caswell and his co-authors are now doubling-down on their first prophesy of extinction for DuDu’s penguins to promote a more calamitous continent‑wide extinction scenario.

In a recent interview posted at ScienceDaily, the lead author Jenouvrier summarized their new extinction study saying, “If sea ice declines at the rates projected by the IPCC climate models, and continues to influence Emperor penguins as it did in the second half of the 20th century in Terre Adélie, at least two-thirds of the colonies are projected to have declined by greater than 50 percent from their current size by 2100.” “None of the colonies, even the southern-most locations in the Ross Sea, will provide a viable refuge by the end of 21st century.”

But Jenouvrier’s reference to sea ice’s influence on Emperor penguins during “second half of the 20th century in Terre Adélie” is a belief that should have been wisely abandoned. It was originally based on bizarre speculation in a 2001 paper Emperor Penguins And Climate Change,⁹ speculations that defied well-established biology and contradicted observations. The most obvious being Antarctic sea ice has not declined as al climate models predicted, but sea ice has now reached record extent. By attaching flipper bands and monitoring how many banded birds returned to DuDu researchers argued the penguins were less able to survive due to climate change. The paper’s authors, Barbraud et al, reported a 50% population drop from 1970 to 1981, and they blamed a prolongedabnormally warm period with reduced northward sea-ice extent. But any correlation with northward sea ice extent was absolutely meaningless.

Indeed the northward extent of sea ice had varied from 400 to 150 kilometers away from the colony, but the Emperor’s breeding success and survival depends solely on access to the open waters within the ice such as “polynya” and “leads.” That open water must be much, much closer. When open water was within 20 to 30 kilometers from the colony, penguins had easier access to food and experienced exceptionally high breeding success. When shifting winds caused open water to form 50 to 70 kilometers away, accessing food became more demanding, and their breeding success plummeted.⁷ Yet Barbraud et al absurdly argued that a reduction in sea ice extent, for unknown reasons, had lowered the penguin’s survival.⁹ It was catastrophic climate change speculation based on nothing more than a meaningless statistical coincidence.

Barbraud also argued that the warming of winter air temperatures from -17° to -11°C in 1981 contributed to the penguins demise, even though penguins would welcome any respite from deadly cold. When the penguins spend most of their lives swimming in +2°C water, there is no reason to believe the rise to -11°C had any deadly consequences. Again it was nothing more than a statistical coincidence. Yet the journal Nature gladly published their nebulous analyses and climate far, and then Jenouvrier, Caswell and several climate scientists were using that apocryphal study to predict more catastrophic extinctions.

Below is the graph featured by penguin expert Dr. David Ainley on his PenguinScience website showing a purported connection between the penguins’ decline and rising temperatures. His website argues, “The Emperor Penguin colony where the movie “March of the Penguins” was filmed has been shrinking. The colony ( Pt Géologie) is located in northern Antarctica where temperatures have been steadily rising. In recent years, the ice has become too thin, and so it blows away before the chicks are grown. Therefore, fewer and fewer young penguins have been returning to live in this colony. Most Emperor Penguin colonies occur much farther south where temperatures are still very cold. This could change, however, if global warming trends continue.”

The blue arrow in Figure A. suggesting a “steadily rising” temperatures, is a figment of Ainely’s imagination. The actual temperatures for the DuDu research station are seen in Figure B. Ainley and I had been involved in several pleasant and thoughtful email discussions about the decline of DuDu’s Emperors, when I became aware of his Fig. A. I emailed him and asked how he justified such a false representation. He apologized and promised to remove it saying, “My intent with the graph was to refer to the temperature trend, a period when temperature was increasing. Sorry about that.” I have always had great respect for Ainley’s work and from our discussion felt a kindred spirit and dedication to being good environmental stewards. But 2 years have passed and his bogus graph remains as of this writing. Perhaps it will be removed if enough people object to its the gross misrepresentation.

Despite satellite estimates that more than doubled the population of known Emperor Penguins, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) changed their ranking of Emperors from a species of Least Concern to a Near-Threatened species based on modeling studies blaming the decline of DuDu’s penguins on climate change as presented in Jenouvrier and Caswell’s study. Likewise Ainley’s paper Antarctic Penguin Response To Habitat Change As Earth’s Troposphere Reaches 2°C Above Preindustrial Levels¹⁰had great influence. Ainley believed the DuDu colony had been unable to recover since 1980 because global warming had caused a thinning of the sea ice resulting in a premature loss of sea ice that was drowning chicks. Based on his faith in the models, he warned thinning se ice would get worse. However there was no evidence for such catastrophic events. So I first contacted Ainley to determine if his “drowning chicks” were based on observation or theoretical beliefs. Ainley confessed his claims were based on a sentence in Barbraud’s paper that stated, “Complete or extensive breeding failures in some years resulted from early break-out of the sea-ice holding up the colony, or from prolonged blizzards during the early chick-rearing period.” The early break-out of the sea-ice holding up the colony was merely a belief consistent with global warming hypotheses.

Mark Twain again provides insight to why bad science so easily goes viral having written, “In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from others.” And apparently scientists suffer the same second‑hand folly. Not wanting to succumb to a similar mistake, I emailed Barbraud and asked for the dates during which he had observed an “early break-out of sea-ice holding up the colony”. As it turns out, I was not the only one having difficulty finding that evidence. Dr Barbraud replied, “We are currently doing analyses to investigate the relationships between meteorological factors and breeding success in this species, including dates of sea ice break out, which are relatively difficult to find for the moment!” So why did he ever make the claim of “premature breakouts” in the first place?

There is a much more parsimonious explanation for the DuDu penguins’ decline. Between 1967 and 1980 researchers from DuDu attached flipper bands to breeding penguins, and that is exactly when the penguins began to desert the colony as seen in Figure A. By the time the much-ballyhooed “warm spike” occurred in the winter of 1981, the colony had already declined by 50%.

Several studies have shown that tight flipper bands can increase penguin mortality because flippers can atrophy or swimming efficiency is reduced. Those observations have prompted researchers to argue for another “unlearning” writing, “our understanding of the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems based on flipper-band data should be reconsidered.”¹⁵ However it is unlikely that atrophied flippers from tight bands can fully explain the 50% drop in the Emperor’s abundance. However, interrupting the Emperor’s pair-bonding and vital huddling behavior to attach flipper bands and count birds is a significant disruption that would encourage penguins to seek a more secluded breeding colony.

Placing a band on an Emperor Penguin is no easy task. Male Emperors must conserve energy in order to survive their 4 month winter fast, and tussles with researchers consumed their precious energy. Emperors must also huddle in order to conserve vital warmth (as seen below in the picture from Robertson 2014). But huddling was disrupted whenever researchers “drove” the penguins into files of 2 or 3 individuals in order to systematically read bands or more accurately count the population. “Droving” could also cause the males to drop their eggs that are so precariously balanced on their feet.

When DuDu’s flipper banding finally ended in 1980, coincidentally the Emperors’ “survival rate” immediately rebounded. Survival rates remained high for the next four years despite extreme shifts in weather and sea-ice extent. However, survival rates suddenly plummeted once again in 1985, despite an above-normal pack-ice extent.Coincidentally, that is when the French began building an airstrip at DuDu, and to that end they dynamited and joined three small islands.

I had argued with Ainley that the only parsimonious explanation for the decline in DuDu’s penguins was that researchers had created such disturbances to their breeding ground, that the Emperors chose to abandon the colony to join others far from such disruptions. Satellite studies such as LaRue’s now support that interpretation as 2 new colonies have been discovered and are the likely home for DuDu refugees.

Yet despite those obvious disruptions, and despite the growing and thickening sea ice, and despite the lack of any warming trend what so ever, the scientific literature is spammed and the public bombarded with more propaganda claiming climate change has put penguins in peril. A peril derived from how they imagined climate change had killed the DuDu penguins in the 1970s. Robert Bolton wrote, ““A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind” and catastrophic climate changes is tragically possessing too many minds. To repeat LaRue’s advice, if we want to accurately conserve the species, we really need to know the basics. And basically, changing concentrations of CO2 have done absolutely nothing to hurt the Emperor Penguins.

Literature Cited

1.Woehler, E.J. (1993) The distribution and abundance of Antarctic and Subantarctic penguins. Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, Cambridge.

2. Fretwell, P., et al.,, ( 2012) An Emperor Penguin Population Estimate: The First Global, Synoptic Survey of a Species from Space. PLoS ONE.

3. Jenouvrier, S., et al., (2009) Demographic models and IPCC climate projections predict the decline of an emperor penguin population. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0806638106

4. Brahic, C., (2009) Melting ice could push penguins to extinction. NewScientist,http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16487-melting-ice-could-push-penguins-to-extinction.html.

5. BBC New, (2009) Emperor penguins face extinction.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7851276.stm

6. Fraser, A., et al. (2012) East Antarctic Landfast Sea Ice Distribution and Variability, 2000‑08. Journal of Climate, vol. 25, p. 1137-1156.

7. Massom, R., et al. (2009) Fast ice distribution in Adelie land, east Antarctica: interannual variability and implications for Emperor penguins Aptenodytes forsteri. Marine Ecology Progress Series, vol. 374, p. 243-257.

8. Jenouvrier, S., M. Holland, J. Stroeve, M. Serreze, C. Barbraud, H. Wimerskirch and H. Caswell (2014), Climate change and continent-wide declines of the emperor penguin. Nature Climate Change, , doi: NCLIM-13101143-T

9. Barbraud, C., and Weimerskirch, H. (2001) Emperor penguins and climate change. Nature, vol. 411, p.183‑186.

10. Kato, A. (2004) Population changes of Adelie and emperor penguins along the Prince Olav Coast and on the Riiser-Larsen Peninsula. Polar Biosci., vol. 17, 117-122.

11. Ainley, D., et al., (2010) Antarctic penguin response to habitat change as Earth’s troposphere reaches 2°C above preindustrial levels. Ecological Monographs, vol. 80, p. 49–66

12. Dugger, K., et al., (2006) Effects of Flipper Bands on Foraging Behavior and Survival of Adélie Penguins (Pygoscelisadeliae). The Auk, vol. 123, p. 858-869

13. Robertson , G. et al (2014) Long-term trends in the population size and breeding success of emperor penguins at the Taylor Glacier colony, Antarctica. Polar Biol (2014) 37:251–259

14. Saraux, C., et al., (2011) Reliability of flipper-banded penguins as indicators of climate change. Nature, 469, 203‑206.

Adapted from the chapter “The Emperor Penguin Has No Clothes” in Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism

Industrial Wind Turbines….Far Too Close to Human habitation!

July 1, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Wind Setbacks: Safety First (unless you’re a wind developer)

Lisa Linowes – July 1, 2014

Safety

After years of debate there is still disagreement and uncertainty regarding appropriate safety setback distances. This uncertainty has benefited the wind industry. Thousands of turbines are erected that are dangerously close to where people live.

Last month, Ohio infuriated wind proponents by passing Senate bill 310, a bill that delays the state’s renewable electricity standard for two years and eliminates the requirement that half of the renewables mandate be met with in-state resources.

Within days of SB310 passing, Ohio Governor John Kasich approved a change to the safety setback distances for wind turbines. Under the new law, setbacks will now be measured at the property line of the nearest adjacent property as opposed to the wall of a nearby home. In practice, this will require minimum distances of at least 1,300 feet from property lines to each turbine base.

Wind developers and Ohio’s media cried foul over due process claiming the legislature gave no warning of the setback rule change or opportunity for testimony. They insisted the provision was ‘anti-wind’ driven by coal and oil interests intent on destroying the economics of large-scale wind andcalled on the governor to veto the change.

Industry Setback Recommendations

For decades, the wind industry has advanced the notion that these massive spinning structures can safely be erected a few hundred feet from where people live and gather.

The industry’s preferred setback has been 1.1x to 1.5x the height of the tower (including the blade) which was derived from the fall-zone of the tower. We saw variations on this over the years beginning in California, that measured as much as 3-4x the total tower height. In general, there was no consideration in the setback distances for noise nor did the 1.1 to 1.5x setback adequately address ice/blade throw.

In 2006, the California Energy Commission examined setback standards in the state. The conclusion of the study called for a setback distance just shy of 1000 feet to protect against turbine failure [1]. This distance was less conservative than what Vestas had recommended (although Vestas has since eliminated this standard from its documentation and claims it is not involved in siting decisions.)

Simple math describing motion shows that ice or debris from a 100-foot long blade can be thrown nearly 1700 feet from the base of the turbine [2]. Turbine manufacture, Vestas, has reported debris from its V90 turbine being thrown 1,600 feet.

Assessing Risk from Turbine Failure

In assessing risk to the public, the wind industry typically assumes a probabilistic perspective where they examine the probability of failure and the chances of an individual being present at the time of the event. If the probabilistic assessment assumes that people are infrequently present when a blade might be thrown, for example, then it’s not surprising that the industry reports a low risk of harm even at close range.

According to William Palmer, a utility reliability engineer responsible for analyzing the impact on public safety at a nuclear facility in Ontario Canada, deterministic risk assessments provide a more accurate understanding of risk and necessary mitigation measures. Deterministic risk assessments require analysts to assume that a person is permanently standing at the limit of risk (edge of the safety zone), and are considered to be there during the accident. If people are nearby all the time, their risk of being hurt is high.

Safety cannot take a back seat to statistical probabilities but that’s exactly what communities have accepted from the wind industry for years.

What About Ice Throw?

Project developers often represent that ice throw is unlikely to occur because ice generally melts gradually and slips off the blade and down to the ground below. Iberdrola Renewables made this claim in 2010 prior to receiving approval to construct its Groton Wind facility in New Hampshire. However, according to Iberdrola’s Emergency Plan written for Groton Wind employees and released this year, “shedding ice may be thrown a significant distance as a result of the rotor spinning or wind blowing the ice fragments.”

GE Wind states that rotating turbine blades may propel ice fragments up to several hundred meters if conditions are right depending on turbine dimensions, rotational speed and many other potential factors.

As more turbines are sited in cold climates, the wind industry has considered safety distances based on the level of allowable risk [3]. The figure on the right maps distances from the turbines based on the estimated annual icing events at the project site and degree of risk. In colder climates, icing can occur during non-winter months.

Very little public information is available that documents the frequency of ice throw and the distances flung from the turbines. Surveys have been conducted of large project operators in an effort to track the size and distance of ice fragments being thrown but the results are inconclusive as there is no way to assess how well the area around the turbines was searched, especially at great distances from the towers. One operator of a wind installation admitted large turbines will throw a four hundred pound chunk of ice one thousand feet.

Conclusion

In the last 5-6 years, communities have adopted setbacks at or greater than the distance codified under Ohio law. More modern ordinances include two setback protections. The first protects property owners from ice/debris flying off the turbines. This ranges from 1300 feet to 1 mile or more away. The second setback distance is implied based on noise limits that cannot be exceeded either at the property line or the wall of an occupied building. If the noise standards are correctly applied, turbines may be erected 1.25-1.5 (or more) miles from the property line/building.

According to Mr. Palmer, the goal of public safety risk assessment is to ensure that we do not impose risks on unsuspecting members of the public. We agree!

——————————————————————————–

[1] Noise and ice were not considered.

[2] Distance is dependent on the length of the blade, its angle at the time of the incident, the speed of rotation and the vertical distance from the ground.

[3] The distances in the graph are based on turbines with a 50-meter rotor diameter. Newer turbines have rotor diameters well over 100-meters.

Global Warming Alarmists, have Some Bitter Pills to Swallow!

July 1, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Forget Global Cooling Predictions…It’s Already Happening!

Global Temperature Falling More Than A Decade!

By P Gosselin on 30. Juni 2014

Climate scientists on both sides of the debate agree on one thing: the earth’s surface and atmosphere have (unexpectedly) stopped warming; there’s been no temperature increase in over 17 years and counting.

While global warming scientists insist the pause is only temporary and that warming will resume in earnest sometime in the future (once the missing heat comes out of hiding), other scientists are very skeptical. Today a growing number of distinguished scientists all over the globe believe the earth will be cooling due to the forces of natural cycles that have recently come into play.

Yet as many scientists are making forecasts of cooling, there’s one fact that seems to have escaped them: the datasets of the world’s leading climate data institutes clearly show that planetary cooling is already taking place and has been happening for over a decade.

Chart source: www.woodfortrees.org.

Danish solar scientist Henrik Svensmark recently declared: “Global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning.” The cold reality, however, is that the cooling actually started 12 years ago!

There are more signs other than temperature readings that show global cooling is in full swing. Antarctica has just set a new record positive sea ice anomaly. Global sea ice has been mostly above average for a year and half, flying in the face of stunned scientists who warned just 5 years ago that the Arctic could soon be ice-free in the summertime. Moreover Asia, Europe and North America have been hard hit by a string of unexpectedly harsh winters.

So how cold is it going to get and for how long?

Although a large number of scientists agree on cooling, they differ widely on how much and for how long.

Geologist and climate researcher Sebastian Lüning of Germany in a just released video forecasts a global cooling of 0.2° by 2030, before it starts to warm up again. However, many scientists see this as too mild of a forecast. Russian solar physicist Habibullo Abdussamatov, for example, predicts another Little Ice Age by 2055. Also Russia’s Pulkovo Observatory claims we “could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years.”

Long list of experts

At his Climate Depot website, Marc Morano has a list of a number of renowned scientists who believe the data are clear on what’s ahead.

Prominent geologist Dr. Don Easterbrook warns that “global cooling is almost a slam dunk” for up to 30 years or more. The Australian Astronomical Society warns of global cooling as the sun’s activity “significantly diminishes”.

The reason for the cooling? Scientists agree that it’s natural solar and oceanic cycles overpowering the overhyped effects of greenhouse trace-gas CO2.

– See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2014/06/30/forget-global-cooling-predictions-its-already-happening-global-temperature-falling-more-than-a-decade/#sthash.iiRucSUK.dpuf

Clive Palmer Triggers the Warmist’s Scream!

July 1, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Anguished cries in the global warming debate.

TWO sentences neatly and completely capture the total irrationality and sheer, raging religious fervour of the global warming true, true believers.

They both came as deep primeval screams in delayed reaction to Clive Palmer’s climate change twostep with Mr Climate Hysteria himself, the man who used to be the next president of the US, until he found religion and fortune could be combined in very convenient climate untruths, Al Gore.

The initial reaction of true believers was one of almost euphoric rapture. Al and Clive had seemingly united to defeat the Climate Anti-Christ Abbott; Julia Gillard’s carbon tax and Gaia would be saved.

Nowhere was this reaction more extensive or ecstatic than at Climate Central Downunder, The Age. The paper revelled in the Anti-Christ’s coming discomfort.

Then as the truth sunk in that Gore had merely given cover to Palmer’s continued support for axing the tax, the scream erupted in The Age’s editorial on Friday. It included a delicious, utterly, if utterly unintentionally, revealing sentence.

The editorial noted that under the Palmer plan, while the scaffolding of an emissions trading scheme (ETS), would remain in place, the scheme would have no effect.

That’s actually not so, as we won’t even get that “scaffolding”. But returning to The Age, its lament was that such a scheme would have no effect because there’d be no price on carbon until Australia’s major trading partners implemented their own schemes.

Then the sentence: “That might occur next year, next decade, or never.”

A rational sentient human being would have then said; exactly, and thank you Clive. For there is absolutely no point in Australia going down the aggressive ETS path, cutting our emissions of carbon dioxide, unless precisely our major trading partners were doing the same.

To argue otherwise is to argue for Australia to unilaterally hurt both its industries and its citizens, to send industries and jobs to ‘our major trading partners,’ for absolutely no point. Our pain would have not the slightest effect on the global or even the local climate.

That lamenting sentence is so revealing; that to The Age rationality has absolutely nothing to do with the issue. It is all about religious fervour.

Quite irrespective of what the world does, quite irrespective of whether our CO2 cuts would achieve anything at all, we have to cut; we have to flagellate like a 12th century penitent, to exculpate our sins, to pay penance to Gaia.

The sentence is deeply revealing on another level. For The Age is also admitting that in its collective hearts of hearts, it really knows that the operative word in that sentence is ”never”.

Despite all the increasingly desperate propaganda nonsense pumped out that everyone else is taking big steps to cut emissions, and we are so laggard — including of course by The Age itself — the truth is the exact opposite.

Let a few more years run out, and apart from even more evidence that the planet, as opposed presumably to Gaia, ain’t warming as predicted, the emptiness of that claim will become almost undeniable.

And in its deepest, most inchoate scream, The Age is telling us that it just can’t bear that prospect.

The second primeval scream of pain and inchoate anger at Palmer assuaging the Climate Anti-Christ came from David Llewellyn-Smith on his MacroBusiness Blog.

Now LSD as we’ll call him, projects as at least a moderately intelligent human being. Yet he could come out with such a sentence, and more particularly one word, reveals an irrationality and stupidity so fundamental that it can only be explained by a religious belief. And a belief so fervent that a blinding curtain of rage isolates his brain.

LSD expressed sarcastic surprise that a hugely wealthy mining magnate would rubber stamp the end of a carbon price costing him millions of dollars per year for “tipping filth into the atmosphere”. Filth? FILTH?

Does LSD walk around all day in total self-hatred for doing exactly the same thing, pumping out his own filth with every exhaling breath?

Does he awake in complete despair every morning, at the prospect of another totally unavoidable day of exhaling filth? How many times a day does he flagellate himself, penitent-style if figuratively, or perhaps even literally?

For this is all we are talking about, whether it is Palmer’s business emissions or their shared personal emissions. CO2. Carbon dioxide. Plant food. The basis of life on Earth. And nothing else.

No, despite the best efforts of a battalion of modern day Goebbelian wannabes, from Gillard down, none of this — carbon tax or ETS — is about real pollution.

That’s the dirty bits of grit that used to come out of both power stations and home hearths and killed thousands, and will continue to kill thousands if people like The Age, LSD & Co succeed in denying Africa modern, clean, coal-fired power stations that would stop them relying on burning wood and dung.

Lamentably, the way pollution has been able to be attached to CO2 — presumably in time we’ll start renaming heavy rain as ‘water pollution’ — seems to have succeeded with people like LSD.

So when he thinks — more accurately, emotes — about emissions, cognitive dissonance, the disease of the modern intelligentsia, kicks in and he sees in his minds-eye, those dirty bits of grit, the ‘filth’ of modern civilisation.

So there you have it; the religion of global warming in two sentences.

No matter what anyone does, we must cut in self-flagellation for our sins against Gaia.

The self-hatred flowing from the original sin of personal exhalation of CO2 “filth” makes for even more aggressive warriors against business emissions of that same “filth”.

Originally published as Palmer triggers warmest scream COMMENTS

Farmers in Sweden, Too Smart to Fall for Climate Alarmist B.S.!

July 1, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Swedish farmers have doubts about climatologists

June 27, 2014 – 06:10

Farmers rely more on their own experiences with changing weather than on climatologists who have no agricultural experience, according to Swedish research.

By: Georg Mathisen

Climatologists are not often found in the Swedish countryside. So farmers have their doubts about climate predictions. (Photo: Microstock)

Researchers the world over almost unanimously agree that our climate is changing because of the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide humankind pumps into our fragile atmosphere. But many farmers – at least Swedish ones – have experienced mild winters and shifting weather before and are hesitant about trusting the scientists.

Surprised

The researcher who discovered the degree of scepticism among farmers was surprised by her findings. Therese Asplund, who recently presented her PhD thesis at Linköping University, was initially looking into how agricultural magazines covered climate change.

Asplund found after studying ten years of issues of the two agricultural sector periodicalsATL and Land Lantbruk that they present climate change as scientifically confirmed, a real problem.

But her research took an unexpected direction when she started interviewing farmers in focus groups about climate issues.

Asplund had prepared a long list of questions about how the farmers live with the threat of climate change and what they plan to do to cope with the subsequent climate challenges. The conversations took a different course:

“They explained that they didn’t quite believe in climate changes,” she says. “Or at least that these are not triggered by human activities.”

Used to changes

The climate of course has previously gone through natural spells, and the farmers tend to think in terms of their experiences in recent decades.

“Many have a lot of experience, for instance they recall the mild winters of the 1960s,” explains Asplund.

The farmers also distrust climatologists partly on the grounds of what they perceive of as too much concurrence.

“They think information about climate change is too uniform. Credibility would increase if more contrary perspectives were presented,” she says.

Office science

And above all: They think climatologists lack the experience they have living in keeping with the soil, weather and growth seasons.

The climate of course has previously gone through natural spells, and the farmers tend to think in terms of their experiences in recent decades. (Photo: Mary Evans Picture)

“Climate researchers also are given less credence by farmers because they think the scientists draw their conclusions from theoretical analyses rather than practical experience,” says Asplund.

She finds it hard to say how climatologists can make use of the farmers’ experiences:

“For the research of a scientifically trained climatologist, the opinions of farmers might not be all that essential. But that does not necessarily make their views irrelevant. For a sociological approach to climate research the farmers’ opinions are highly relevant, on a par with those of other social groups,” asserts Asplund.

Information is not enough

She is concerned about understanding disparate ways of thinking and responding with regard to climate issues.

“With insufficient knowledge, we risk believing that information will readily alter human perceptions and behaviour. The example of climate communication in Swedish agriculture shows what challenges a climatological point of departure for communication can encounter,” says Asplund.

After talking with focus groups all over Sweden, she thinks that information alone cannot change attitudes and behaviour – no matter how well rooted it is in empirical science.

Does this mean it is harder than thought to get Swedish farmers to engage in climate-friendly agriculture? The researcher says both “yes” and “no”.

It will be hard as long as the implementation of improvements is voluntary. But in the discussions the farmers signal that they can adapt – if not to physical climate changes, at least to climate policy decisions. Thus it should be no harder to get them to adjust to climate measures as to other political mandates.

But there is one proviso: “This is a resistance to decrees which they think undermine competitive Swedish agricultural production,” says Therese Asplund.

————

Bad Investments in “Novelty Energy Sources” are a Burden for Ratepayers!

July 1, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Power price hikes bite in Queensland

By AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS

PUBLISHED: 01:08 GMT, 1 July 2014

Queenslanders face a dramatic hike in power bills with the start of the new financial year, and households with solar panels are also likely to take a hit to the hip pocket.

The average power bill is expected to rise by $191, or 13.6 per cent, pushed up by green policies and the increasing cost of poles, wires, and electricity generation.

However, prices will only go up by about 5.1 per cent if the federal government’s carbon tax is repealed.

Queensland’s Energy Minister Mark McArdle has blamed much of the hike on the former Labor government’s over-investment in the power distribution network.

“Every power bill that is issued, 54 per cent of that bill relates to the cost of poles and wires – the gold-plated legacy of Labor that we’re now having to unravel,” Mr McArdle told ABC radio.

Pensioners and seniors will be able to apply for an electricity rebate of $320 after the government upped concessions to $165 million for this financial year.

“The Queensland government promised to lower the cost of living wherever we could and we’re making sure that pensioners and other vulnerable Queenslanders get some relief on household costs,” Mr McArdle said.

Consumers are forking out 50 per cent more for electricity than they did three years ago, and shadow treasurer Curtis Pitt says price hikes under the Newman government total $560.

“Campbell Newman arrogantly promised to lower Queenslanders’ electricity bills, yet ever since he’s become premier they’ve just gone up and up and up,” he said.

This financial year, about 50,000 homeowners who have solar panels will no longer be guaranteed a feed-in tariff of eight cents.

Government-owned distributors will no longer be responsible for paying the tariff and households will have to negotiate directly with electricity retailers for the price they are paid for the solar power they generate.

The 44 cent tariff, paid to some 284,000 people who were first to sign up to the scheme, will remain unchanged.

Australian Solar Council chief executive John Grimes says consumers need to shop around, or join forces to negotiate as a block with electricity retailers.

“As an independent customer, with an average-size system on your roof, you really have little leverage when talking to a utility,” Mr Grimes told ABC radio.

This Article, written in May….hit the Nail, right on the head….Scary!

July 1, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Warning: Reading about How the Ontario Liberals

Keep on Winning Might Make You Sick

by Tim on May 22, 2014 in Commentary

Enough is enough.

You would think the sheer waste of taxpayer dollars through scandals and mismanagement would be enough to hang the Liberals.

Especially since, at the same time your money swirls down the toilet, the Liberals continue to run deficits (seven in a row) and pile up debt that your grandchildren’s children will still be paying off.

Yet in spite of their mistakes and outright lies (the hit parade includes: the billion-dollar gas plant cancellation and the failure to provide proper oversight of Ornge air ambulance expenses and out-of-control spending at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and elsewhere) they’ve managed to hold onto power for 11 years. How is that?

I’ll give you three reasons. (Hold on, it’s a long explanation.)

1. They buy votes with big spending promises.

George Bernard Shaw got it right. “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”

When even the tax-the-rich NDP recognize that Ontarians are taxed to the hilt and refuse to put up with any “new taxes, tolls or fees that hit middle-class families,” you know Ontario must be in financial trouble.

Net debt is projected to climb to $269.2 billion for 2013–14 and hit $324.5 billion by 2017–18 (nearly 40% of Ontario’s economy). In fact, Ontario’s debt has more than doubled since the Ontario Liberals came to power in 2003–04 when the provincial debt stood at $138.8 billion (or 27.5% of the economy).

Interest payments are the third largest expense in the budget. And right now interest rates are low. When rates go back up, each point will add another $3 billion to our annual interest payment, points out economist Jack Mintz.

But in spite of repeated warnings about the need for spending cuts, from former Liberal finance minister Dwight Duncan (who conveniently woke up to the Ontario’s debt problem in his last few months in office) and public servants in Ontario’s finance ministry, what did the Liberals propose in the budget that forced an election?

Big spending promises, of course. Billions for schools and hospitals, roads and bridges, billions more for corporate grants, and millions for a smorgasbord of social services.

With this budget, the Liberals are in fact driving toward a deficit $2.4 billion higher(or 24% more) than they previously projected—in spite of hiking taxes by almost $1 billion. The deficits planned for 2015–16 and 2016–17 also increased by $1.7 billion and $1.8 billion.

In other words, the Liberals forecast spending to jump by $3.4 billion this year, $900 million more than projected in the 2013 budget, with program spending expected to climb by nearly $3 billion to $119.4 billion.

With Ontario already in a fiscal mess, the NDP (yes, the NDP, a party not known for financial responsibility), criticized the budget as “a mad dash to escape the scandals by promising the moon and the stars.”

2. They pander to unions, whose members make up a big chunk of the electorate.

The real beneficiary of the tax-and-spend Liberals has been the unions.

For starters, over half of Ontario’s program spending goes to pay public-sector workers their salaries and pension benefits.

What’s more, when the Liberals came into power in 2003, only 14,926 public-sector employees were making $100,000 or more. Today, 97,796 Ontario public-sector workers are on the so-called Sunshine List, an increase of 655% in just 10 years.

But, really, who can be surprised when about 70 percent of public-sector employees are unionized (compare this to the roughly 15 percent unionization rate in the private sector)?

The fact is the Liberals have pandered to unions, especially teacher’s unions, handing out massive, unaffordable pay hikes.

From 2003 to 2011, the McGuinty Liberals increased education spending by 45%, hiring 14,000 more teachers (up 10%) and increasing salaries by 24%—all while student enrollment actually dropped by 6%.

And teachers repaid the favour, “volunteering and voting for McGuinty’s Liberals in huge numbers during the past three elections.”

But following a narrow election win in 2011 (voters were angry over broken promises and higher taxes), McGuinty shifted direction, proposing to freeze teacher wages for two years and curb benefits to reduce the government’s alarming $14.4 billion deficit.

The teachers reacted with predictable outrage.

So despite all their talk about austerity, the Liberals just couldn’t say “no” to their vote-rich cash cow.

While the McGuinty government was calling for wage freezes publicly, it secretly negotiated a three percent wage increase with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents 35,000 voters, er, government workers.

And forget about Kathleen Wynne taking a firm stance on public-sector wages and benefits.

In a clear bid to win back union support, one of her first moves as premier was to negotiate an LCBO contract that gave 7,000 unionized workers a $1,600 signing bonus over two years—about $9 million— and wage increases of two% in 2015–16.

Her education minister also renegotiated new contracts with the province’s two biggest teachers unions, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation and the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, offering better maternity benefits, fewer unpaid days off, and an improved “sick-day bank.”

And the quid pro quo?

Millions of dollars spent on attack ads directed exclusively against Tory leaders in Ontario’s 2003, 2007, and 2011 elections—by a powerful coalition of special interest unions that includes the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association, the Canadian Auto Workers, and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation and calling itself the Working Families Coalition.

The so-called Working Families coalition first “came together in 2003 to discredit then Tory premier Ernie Eves and get Dalton McGuinty elected.” Their ad campaigns had such a big impact on the election results, they followed up with more of the same in the 2007 and 2011 elections. For this campaign, they’re just getting started, but expect a barrage of attack ads aimed squarely at Tim Hudak.

The coalition’s negative ads effectively doubles the advertising budget of the Liberals at the expense of the Tories through loose election laws around third-party advertising. Unlike political parties, third parties “can spend as much as they want, take contributions as large as they want and keep their financial backers hidden until long after the campaign is over.”

In Ontario’s 2011 general election, Working Families spent $1.6 million to help the Liberals.

Other big spenders included the Elementary Teachers’ Federation—$2.6 million—and the English Catholic Teachers’ Association, which spent $1.9 million to help defeat the PC party. For comparison’s sake, out of 21 registered political parties, only two spent more than $2 million on advertising. The Elementary Teachers’ Federation, the biggest third-party advertiser, spent more on advertising than nineteen political parties combined.

Spending records for the 2007 election (the first year third parties had to register with Elections Ontario) show a similar story. A shocking “90 per cent of the $2.3 million raised by third-party advertisers for the 2007 campaign went to organized labour or groups opposed to specific Tory policy positions.”

Plainly, Ontario’s election laws are giving Liberals with their deep-pocketed union allies an unfair advantage.

3. They reward party insiders with lucrative contracts.

In Ontario, it’s not what you know, but who you know.

From eHealth Ontario and Cancer Care Ontario to the Local Health Integration Networks, the Liberals have a history of rewarding party loyalists with “cushy, untendered contracts” and well-paid appointments.

In 2004, Mike Crawley, the then-president of the Ontario Liberals, was awarded awind power contract that guarantees his company AIM PowerGen $66,000 a day for 20 years. That’s a total of $475 million dollars.

In 2010, nearly two-thirds of the $68 million of taxpayers’ money spent on the 14 LHINs went to cover the salaries and remuneration of government-appointed board members.

Pat Dillon, the business manager of the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council and the head of the infamous Working Families Coalition, has received a number of appointments—to Premier Wynne’s Transit Panel, the Ontario College of Trades, the WSIB Board, Infrastructure Ontario, and more.

The Globe and Mail recently reported that Ontario Liberal friends and allies were awarded millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded contracts because of loopholes in the rules surrounding government expenditures. The report goes on to say that, “while there is no indication that any of the transactions were illegitimate, the lack of transparency makes it difficult to determine what services were provided at taxpayers’ expense.”

The sad truth? It pays to be a friend of the Liberals. Ontario taxpayer, not so much.

The Ontario Liberals are long past their best-before date

After 11 years, it’s time to hold the Liberals to account.

Imagine if some pimply-faced thug robbed a gas station and got caught, he’d get what? A thousand dollars tops and some jail time.

But the Liberals who have “stolen” billions of taxpayer money through incompetence and cronyism remain unpunished.

It’s time to throw the Liberals out. They’ve inflicted enough damage on the province. It’s time they answered for their crimes against taxpayers.

What Sleep can do for us….and Lack of Sleep can do to us!

June 30, 2014June 30, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

One of the Most Common Complaints, from Residents

near Wind Turbines, is lack of sleep!

The Miracle and Mystery of Sleep: 12 Remarkable Psychological Studies

Post image for The Miracle and Mystery of Sleep: 12 Remarkable Psychological Studies

“Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

What beautiful rewards sleep delivers– if you can get enough of it.

Sleep has profound effects on our memories, desires, self-control, learning, relationships and more.

Here are twelve studies which demonstrate some of the psychological benefits of sleep and a few of the dangers of not getting enough.

1. Placebo sleep

Sleep is slippery beast, not least in how it’s susceptible to our perceptions of its quality.

If we think we’ve had a wonderful sleep last night, we feel and perform better, even if our sleep was actually the same as usual.

This is what Draganich and Erdal (2014) found in a study which had participants hooked up to sensors which they were told were measuring the quality of their sleep.

Actually the sensors weren’t measuring anything. Instead the researchers randomly told some people they’d had better sleep than others.

When they were given a cognitive test the next day, those who’d been told they slept the best also did the best in the test.

Their self-reported sleep quality had little effect on the test results.

The researchers dubbed this ‘placebo sleep’.

2. Emotional sleep

During sleep our memories are reorganised and made stronger–in particular the emotional centres of the brain are highly active.

Psychologists have found that the mind is cataloguing our memories and deciding what to keep and what to throw away.

Sleep expert Elizabeth A. Kensinger explains:

“Sleep is making memories stronger. It also seems to be doing something which I think is so much more interesting, and that is reorganizing and restructuring memories.”

A review of studies on sleep found that we tend to hold on to the most emotional parts of our memories (Kensinger & Payne, 2010).

3. Blame bad sleep on the full moon

If your sleep wasn’t up to scratch last night, perhaps it was partly down to the phase of the moon.

People often complain of worse sleep around the full moon, but until recently scientists have been sceptical.

A study by Cajochen et al., 2013, though…

“…studied 33 volunteers in two age groups in the lab while they slept. Their brain patterns were monitored while sleeping, along with eye movements and hormone secretions.”

This is what they found:

“The data show that around the full moon, brain activity related to deep sleep dropped by 30 percent. People also took five minutes longer to fall asleep, and they slept for twenty minutes less time overall.

The researchers think it may be because we have a kind of ‘moon clock’ inside us that tracks its cycles and affects our hormone levels. This is in addition to the better known circadian rhythms which affect many bodily processes during the day.

→ Read on: Bad Night’s Sleep? Blame the Full Moon

4. Junk food cravings

One of the dangers of not getting enough sleep is craving junk food.

Recent research from UC Berkeley scanned the brains of 24 participants after both a good and a bad night’s sleep (Greer et al., 2013).

After disturbed sleep, there was increased activity in the depths of the brain, areas which are generally associated with rewards and automatic behaviour.

It seems a lack of sleep robs people of their self-control and so their good intentions are quickly forgotten.

Hence those junk food cravings get out of control.

→ Read on: Why the Sleep-Deprived Crave Junk Food and Buy Higher Calorie Foods

5. Learn in your sleep

It’s not possible to learn something new when you sleep, like a foreign language, but you can reinforce something you already know.

Gobel et al. (2012) found that students learned to play a series of musical notes better after listening to them during a 90-minute nap.

One of the authors, Paul Reber explained:

“The critical difference is that our research shows that memory is strengthened for something you’ve already learned. Rather than learning something new in your sleep, we’re talking about enhancing an existing memory by re-activating information recently acquired.”

→ Read on: Offline Learning: How The Mind Learns During Sleep

6. Benefits of a six-minute nap

Even tiny amounts of sleep can be beneficial.

A study by Lahl (2008) found that even a short six-minute nap was enough to measurably improve performance on a test of word recall.

Tell that to the boss the next time your caught ‘resting your eyes’ at work!

7. Night owls have lower integrity white matter

Different neural structures have been discovered between people who are night owls and early risers.

Research on 59 participants, those who were confirmed night owls (preferring late to bed and late to rise) had lower integrity of the white matter in various areas of the brain (Rosenberg et al., 2014).

Lower integrity in these areas has been linked to depression and cognitive instability.

Unfortunately work, school and other institutions mostly require early rising, which, for night owls, causes problems.

As night owls find it difficult to get to sleep early, they tend to carry large amounts of sleep debt.

In other words, they’re exhausted all the time and their brains clearly show the consequences.

→ Read on: Like to Stay Up Late? Different Neural Structures Found in the Brains of Night Owls

8. Children’s sleep

Children are processing way more information than adults because everything is so new to them.

That is why irregular bedtimes at a young age can reduce their cognitive performance.

One study had children learning a task which had a hidden pattern. After a night’s sleep they were much more likely to guess the secret pattern without being told (Wilhelm et al., 2013).

Children also outperformed adults, suggesting that sleep was more important to them for this task.

9. Adolescents need more sleep

Adolescents typically require an hour or two more sleep than adults.

If so, why do we make them get up so early for school?

One study has delayed the waking up time of adolescents at a boarding school by just 25 minutes (Boergers et al., 2013).

They found that afterwards the number of students getting more than 8 hours sleep a night jumped from 18% to 44%.

On top of this, the students experienced less daytime sleepiness, were less depressed, and found themselves using less caffeine.

→ Read on: Later School Start Times Improve Sleep and Daytime Functioning in Adolescents

10. Consolidate motor skills

When we are learning a motor skill, like playing the piano, our brains continue to process the information after we’ve finished.

In research by Allen (2012), musicians who practised a new song had improved in speed and accuracy compared with before a night’s sleep.

Like memory, a good night’s sleep can also improve motor performance.

11. Relationship damage

People are usually at their worst after a bad night’s sleep, but what does that do to their intimate relationships?

A new study finds that even one bad night’s sleep can be surprisingly damaging to a relationship (Gordon & Chen, 2013).

They found that even for those who were good sleepers, just a single night’s poor sleep was associated with increased relationship conflict the next day.

→ Read on: How Just One Night’s Poor Sleep Can Hurt a Relationship

12. Hidden caves open up during sleep

If sleep has such amazing restorative powers then what is going on physiologically?

New research has discovered “hidden caves” inside the brain, which open up during sleep, allowing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to flush out potential neurotoxins, like β-amyloid, which has been associated with Alzheimer’s disease (Xie et al., 2013).

The flushing out of toxins by the CSF may be central to sleep’s wondrous powers.

→ Read on: Hidden Caves in the Brain Open Up During Sleep to Wash Away Toxins

Last word

Last word to the playwright Wilson Mizner who said:

“The amount of sleep required by the average person is five minutes more.”

Quite right.

Greenpeace has Become a Corrupt Organization, that Promotes Alarmism!

June 30, 2014June 30, 2014 / 1957chev / 6 Comments

Greenpeace In Decline Like The AGW Scam

They Support

by Tory Aardvark

Dr Patrick Moore “They have a whole fleet of ships, pretending the $32 million Rainbow Warrior III is powered by the wind when it has two large diesel engines for propulsion. I like to joke that when we first sailed against US hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska we did not have a nuclear weapon on board.”

Things have not been going well for environmental NGO Greenpeace in the last few months, there was the insanely stupid attempt to interfere with Gazprom operations in the Arctic, which led to the Arctic 30 enjoying the hospitality of the Russian penal system for a few months. Greenpeace also lost a ship, the Arctic Sunrise which is still impounded in the Russian port of Murmansk, and likely to be there until it rusts away and sinks, or ends life as a towed target for the Russian Navy.

In the words of Greenpeace Co-Founder Patrick Moore “I’d like to think that Greenpeace left me, rather than the other way round. I became a sensible environmentalist. Greenpeace became increasingly senseless.”

Greenpeace apart from being increasingly senseless have also been caught losing millions in donations by failed currency trading, been labelled as a threat to national economic security, and one of their top executives has been caught out hypocritically commuting by air from Luxembourg to Amsterdam.

All this makes for very bad publicity for Greenpeace:

“Greenpeace has been careful to cultivate an image as intrepid defenders of the environment,” editorializes Der Spiegel, a major German newspaper. “Calling themselves the rainbow warriors, activists hang from factory chimneys, throw themselves in front of whaling ships or risk jail time in Russia by calling attention to the plight of the Arctic.”

“Now, another activity has been added: playing the financial markets,” Der Spiegel adds. “For an organization almost entirely financed by donations, the revelation is a PR disaster, endangering from one day to the next the greatest asset Greenpeace possesses: its credibility.”

Even that organ of left wing biased climate change propaganda the UK Guardian has turned against Greenpeace:

The Guardian, a left-wing newspaper, has been especially critical of Greenpeace lately. The paper even obtained internal documents detailing the disarray within Greenpeace International.

A November 2013 document obtained by the Guardian shows that Greenpeace’s executive team was for years fully aware of major problems within the group’s finance department.

“[The] international finance function at GPI [Greenpeace International] has faced internal team and management problems for several years and the situation did not improve during 2013 despite efforts and support,” says the Greenpeace document.

India’s Intelligence Bureau has come to the conclusion that Greenpeace is a threat to the countries national economic security:

The Indian Express reports that the Intelligence Bureau submitted a report to the prime minister’s office saying Greenpeace was “negatively impacting economic development” through political activism and its anti-fossil fuels agenda. The reports says that Greenpeace activities have reduced the country’s GDP by 2 to 3 percent a year.

The report mentioned other activist groups, but singled out Greenpeace for trying to “change the dynamics of India’s energy mix” and orchestrating “massive efforts to take down India’s coal fired power plants and coal mining activity.”

“It is assessed to be posing a potential threat to national economic security… growing exponentially in terms of reach, impact, volunteers and media influence,” the report warns of Greenpeace, adding the group is finding “ways to create obstacles in India’s energy plans” and to “pressure India to use only renewable energy.”

It is not just in India, but other countries as well there seems to be a shift towards curtailing the activities of Green NGO’s, in Tasmania the politicians want to remove charitable status from Green NGOs and give the status to real charities:

The government is being pressed to alter the charitable status of environmental groups after a Liberal MP successfully argued to his party that the groups are not “real charities” like the Red Cross or the Salvation Army.

A motion introduced by MP Andrew Nikolic to the Liberal federal council called for environmental groups to be stripped of charitable rights, such as the ability to receive tax-deductible donations.

Nikolic, the federal member for the Tasmanian electorate of Bass, said the groups should not be subsidised for political activism, some of it which he claimed was illegal. The conference motion passed the motion unanimously.

The news of Greenpeace’s massive loss of donations currency trading was soon followed by the revelations that Greenpeace’s international program director Pascal Husting was regularly taking the plane from his home in Luxembourg to the office in Amsterdam:

The UK Telegraph noted that Greenpeace actively campaigns against “the growth in aviation,” which the group says “is ruining our chances of stopping dangerous climate change.”

“Each round-trip commute Mr Husting makes would generate 142kg of carbon dioxide emissions,” reports the Telegraph. “That implies that over the past two years his commuting may have been responsible for 7.4 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions — the equivalent of consuming 17 barrels of oil.”

None of these antics have done much to bolster Greenpeace’s declining credibility with its life blood, the millions of people who make the small donations that keep Greenpeace functioning, instead they have been shown to be nothing more than one of those duplicitous corporations the environmentalists so love to despise.

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