Major Danish Daily Warns: “Globe May Be On Path To Little Ice Age…Much Colder Winters…Dramatic Consequences”!

Another major European media outlet is asking: Where’s the global warming?
 


Moreover, they are featuring prominent skeptic scientists who are warning of a potential little ice age and dismissing CO2 as a major climate driver. And all of this just before the release of the IPCC’s 5AR, no less!

The August 7 print edition of the Danish Jyllands-Posten, the famous daily that published the “Muhammad caricatures“, features a full 2-page article bearing the headline: ”The behavior of the sun may trigger a new little ice age” followed by the sub-headline: “Defying all predictions, the globe may be on the road towards a new little ice age with much colder winters.”

READ MORE:  http://notrickszone.com/2013/08/09/major-danish-daily-warns-globe-may-be-on-path-to-little-ice-age-much-colder-winters-dramatic-consequences/

Interior Secretary: I don't want any climate-change deniers in my department

Buried in a lengthy Washington Post article about President Obama’s environmental policy is an illuminating anecdote about just how debatable the administration views climate change — namely, not at all:

In an agency-wide address to employees Aug. 1, (Interior Secretary Sally) Jewell took the unusual step of suggesting that no one working for her should challenge the idea that human activity is driving recent warming. “I hope there are no climate-change deniers in the Department of Interior,” she said.

The address does not appear to be posted on the department’s website, so the Washington Examiner can only go by the Post’s presumably third-hand version. Still, it raises some interesting questions: What would happen to somebody at the department who raised some skepticism regarding Jewell’s take on climate change? Would they be in danger of losing their job?

READ MORE:  http://washingtonexaminer.com/interior-secretary-i-dont-want-any-climate-change-deniers-in-my-department/article/2534142

NOAA trims forecast for busy hurricane season

 "The forecasts don't include where storms might land, if any place. Despite the formation of more hurricanes recently, the last time a major hurricane made landfall in the United States was Wilma in 2005. That seven-and-a-half-year stretch is the longest on record. It's also the last time any size hurricane made a direct hit on Florida, which is also a record, said National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen."

By SETH BORENSTEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — This Atlantic hurricane season may not be quite as busy as federal forecasters once thought, but they still warn of an unusually active and potentially dangerous few months to come.

CLICK: WEATHER RADAR AND ALERTS

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration updated its hurricane season forecast Thursday, trimming back the number of hurricanes they expect this year to between six and nine. That's a couple less than they predicted back in May.

The forecast calls for three to five of those hurricanes to be major, with winds greater than 110 mph. The updated forecast also predicts 13 to 19 named storms this year. Both of those predictions are just one less forecast three months ago.

Read more: http://www.myfoxny.com/Story/23084472/noaa-trims-forecast-for-busy-hurricane-season#ixzz2dGmf7JsZ

HR 367, the Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2013

August 1, 2013

 

Congressman Scalise,

 

We write to express our support for your amendment to HR 367, the Regulations From the Executive in

Need of Scrutiny Act of 2013. The last thing the American people need is a new tax, especially a carbon

tax. 

 

A carbon tax would hurt American families by driving up the cost of energy as well as reducing economic

growth. According to a study of one popular carbon tax proposal, a carbon tax would reduce the income of

a family of four by $1,000 a year, cost the economy over 400,000 jobs by 2016, and increase the price of

gasoline by 30 cents a gallon by 2030.

 

1

Not only would a carbon tax harm the economy, it would have no substantive impact on global tempera

-ture. If we would reduce America’s carbon dioxide emissions to zero, global temperature would only be

0.052°C lower by 2050 and 0.137°C by 2100—not enough to have any substantive impact on climate.

2

A carbon tax would not reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to zero and would therefore have even less of a

climate impact. 

 

There are no arguments for a carbon tax that make sense. Some argue that implementing a carbon tax could

actually make the tax code more efficient. This claim is not supported by the economics literature. The

best literature on the topic explains that a revenue-neutral carbon tax swap would make the tax code more

inefficient and would hinder economic growth. Some estimates suggest that this ‘tax interaction ef

fect’ is so powerful that the theoretical size of a new carbon tax should be cut almost in half, once extra damage to

the economy is taken into account.  

 

Another argument some advance to support a carbon tax is that it would substantially reduce global warming. But again, the reality is that U.S. Government acting unilaterally cannot significantly slow global carbon dioxide emissions. Furthermore, William Nordhaus’ work suggests that if only half of the world’s governments implement the ‘optimal carbon tax,’ then the economic cost of achieving a desired environmental objective will increase by 250 percent.

 3

 

Lastly and most importantly, the American people do not support a carbon tax. According to a recent survey, two thirds (64 percent) of respondents believe that energy costs are already too high compared to other goods and services.Among those surveyed, half are less likely to vote for a Member of Congress if he/she supports a carbon tax. Any effort to focus on issues other than the economy will be seen as a distraction or diversion, according to survey respondents.Given repeated declarations from the President that he intends to move forward with his global warming agenda unilaterally in the absence of Congressional action, your amendment explicitly requiring any tax or fee on carbon to be approved by Congress is a crucial safeguard for taxpayers.

 

Sincerely,

 

60 Plus Association

Freedom Action

American Commitment

FreedomWorks

American Energy Alliance

Heritage Action for America

Americans for Limited Government

High Impact Leadership Coalition

Americans for Prosperity

Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles

Americans for Tax Reform

National Black Chamber of Commerce

American Tradition Institute

Positive Growth Alliance

Citizens Against Government Waste

Taxpayers Protection Alliance

Competitive Enterprise Institute

Tea Party Nation

Congress of Racial Equality

1 David W. Kreutzer & Kevin Dayaratna,

Boxer–Sanders Carbon Tax: Economic Impact,

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/04/boxer-sanders-

carbon-tax-economic-impact,

Apr. 11, 2013.

2 Patrick J. Michaels & Paul C. Knappenberger, Current Wisdom: We Calculate, You Decide: A Handy-Dandy Carbon Tax Temperature-Savings Calculator, http://

www.cato.org/blog/current-wisdom-we-calculate-you-decide-handy-dandy-carbon-tax-temperature-savings-calculator, July 23, 2013. This is using the 3°C

climate sensitivity advocated by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

3 Robert P. Murphy,

Rolling the Dice: Nordhaus’ Dubious Case for a Carbon Tax

, June 2008, http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/up

-

loads/2008/06/2008-06_rolling_the_dice_murphy.pdf.

4 IER Survey Finds Broad-Based Opposition to Carbon Tax, July 16, 2013, http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2013/07/16/ier-survey-finds-broad-based-

opposition-to-carbon-tax/.

2

Five or More Failed Experiments in Measuring Global Sea Level Change

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gmW9GEUYvA&feature=youtu.be&hd=1

Dr. Soon, an astrophysicist, authored The Maunder Minimum and The Variable Sun-Earth Connection. Presented at the Doctors for Disaster  by Supreme Savings Plugin" id="yiv0182579601_GPLITA_0"Preparedness 31st Annual Meeting, July 13, 2013, Houston, Texas.

FOSSIL FUELS DOMINATE GLOBAL ENERGY SUPPLIES

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MEDIA CONTACT: BENJAMIN COLE

202.621.2957

FOSSIL FUELS DOMINATE GLOBAL ENERGY SUPPLIES
IER Analysts Break Down Recent Report on International Energy Trends

Last week, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released the much-anticipated 2013 International Energy Outlook, which projected increased use of oil, natural gas, and coal as the world's dominant energy source. IER analysts spent the weekend digging into the results of EIA's report to examine the global trends in energy production and consumption. Highlights of the report include:

• Oil, natural gas, and coal will comprise almost 80 percent of the global energy supply in 2040.
• While coal demand in the United States declines due to cheap natural gas and biased regulatory activities, coal's worldwide share holds steady at 27 percent in 2040.
• Energy demand will grow by 56 percent between 2010 and 2040, with most of the growth coming from developing countries such as China and India.
• Electricity generation from nuclear power will more than double by 2040 as many developing countries look to this zero-emission fuel source to meet growing energy demands.
• Carbon dioxide emissions are projected to increase by 46 percent over the same period, with nearly 70 percent of the increase coming from developing Asian countries
• Hydropower will drive rapid growth in electricity from renewables over the next three decades, accounting for 52 percent of new renewable generation.
• Wind will comprise 28 percent of renewable generation added over the projection period, though the intermittency of wind energy will continue to hinder its competitiveness worldwide.
• Non-OPEC oil supply growth will drive production increases to 28.3 million barrels per day as countries like the United States, Brazil and Canada ramp up production in unconventional fields, thus forcing OPEC to increase production to maintain its share.

According to EIA, economic expansion in developing countries will drive additional energy demand over the next three decades. While nuclear and renewable energy are projected to be the fasting growing sources of supply worldwide, fossil fuels are still expected to supply almost 80 percent of that demand in 2040. It is clear from EIA’s assessment of the world energy picture that nations will use increasing amounts of energy of all kinds, but especially those from reliable and affordable fossil energy sources, for decades to come.

To read IER's breakdown of the International Energy Outlook, click here.
###
For media inquiries, please contact Benjamin Cole
bcole@iedrdc.org
202.621.2957

Drowning in Sea Level Nonsense: ‘ The notion of the seas rising, swamping coastal cities, and creating havoc is the stuff of science fiction, not science’

Drowning in Sea Level Nonsense

http://iceagenow.info/2013/07/drowning-sea-level-nonsense/

Sea-level rise the thickness of a nickel

By Alan Caruba

New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D) and forty members of Congress believe the sea levels are rising, that a panel should be created to determine what should be done, and, of course, to throw billions of dollars at a problem that does not exist. Politicians were eager to scare the public with the discredited global warming hoax and now they have found a new one.

In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg has proposed a $20 billion flood barrier system to protect the city from future hurricanes and rising sea levels. Well, hurricanes like tropical storm Sandy are real, but rare. Rising sea levels, however, represent no threat at all.

William Happer who researched ocean physics for the U.S. Air Force and is currently a physics professor at Princeton University notes that “The sea level has been rising since 1800, at the end of the ‘little ice age’”, a cooling cycle last from around 1300 to 1850. Far from heating up, the Earth entered a new cooling cycle around 1996 or so.

READ MORE:  http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/07/31/drowning-in-sea-level-nonsense-the-notion-of-the-seas-rising-swamping-coastal-cities-and-creating-havoc-is-the-stuff-of-science-fiction-not-science/

1,122 Record Cold Temps in the U.S. in one week

July in the USA ends on a frigid note as record cold outpaces warmth nearly 10 to 1

 NOAA forecast shows lows into the 30′s and 40′s for much of the norther and western USA will likely continue. Where’s that global warming when we need it?

 

 READ MORE:  http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/71-of-the-us-below-normal-temperature-in-2013/

Birdwatch News Archive

Wind farm bird deaths more than thought

Posted on: 21 Jul 2013

---

New research from the United States indicates that bird deaths from wind farm collisions may have been underestimated by up to 30 per cent.

After the sad death of the White-throated Needletail on Harris, Outer Hebrides, on 26 June when it hit the shaft of a wind turbine on the island, some birders were vocal in their disapproval of the prominent energy generators, proclaiming them to be killers of bird in large numbers. While some of these claims were somewhat exaggerated, it turns out that they may indeed be more dangerous than thought previously.

READ MORE:  http://www.birdwatch.co.uk/channel/newsitem.asp?c=11&cate=__14606

Delaware's Future Weather

As people understandably become ever more skeptical about manmade global warming catastrophe claims … and congressional action on job-killing carbon dioxide control or cap-and-trade legislation remains extremely unlikely … President Obama and EPA have gone on the attack, promising punitive greenhouse gas regulations that will terminate countless jobs and put the government in charge of everything we make, ship, eat and do.

 To aid and promote this massive power grab, the climate alarm industry is pulling out all the stops –using our taxpayer dollars to advance this agenda. In just one example out of hundreds, Dr. Katherine Hayhoe has issued a “report,” claiming that runaway global warming is going turn Delaware into another Georgia. One of her most breathtaking and scary forecasts claims that Delaware is going to get pounded by more than two full months of endless days above 95°F and a hundred-fold increase in days with temperatures at or above 100°F by 2100. Fortunately, as climatologist David Legates and I point out in our article this week, this is utter nonsense. Thank you for posting our informative article, quoting from it, and forwarding it to your friends and colleagues. Best regards, Paul

Delaware’s “future weather” We’re getting burned by phony science and authoritarian power grabs Paul Driessen and David R. Legates During this hot, wet summer, a “national climate expert” recently told Delawareans that they can expect even hotter summers – with a climate like Savannah, Georgia’s – by the end of the century. The culprit, naturally: runaway global warming. Savannah residents are long accustomed to their climate and, thanks to air conditioning and other modern technologies, are better able to deal with the heat and humidity. Nevertheless, the impact on Delaware will be disastrous, Dr. Katherine Hayhoe claims. Nonsense. Her forthcoming report promises to be no different than other proclamations that persistently predict dire consequences from climate change – and then present taxpayers with a hefty bill. In this scenario, the State’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) paid $46,000 for her report, presumably to suggest that “independent scholars” support the state’s positions. The preliminary release of her report reads like the script from a bad disaster movie – think The Day After Tomorrow and An Inconvenient Truth. Like them, it also plays fast and loose with the facts. It fails to mention the extreme cold that many places around the globe experienced recently. Europe and Russia in particular suffered through bitter cold the past two winters.

The report likewise ignores the fact that average global temperatures have not risen at all over the last sixteen years; in fact, Earth has actually cooled slightly during the past decade. For its really scary worst-case scenario, Dr. Hayhoe says Delaware’s temperatures will rise astronomically in coming decades: with more than two full months of endless days above 95°F and a hundred-fold increase in days with temperatures at or above 100°F by 2100. “Trends to more extreme highs and fewer extreme lows already are apparent,” Dr. Hayhoe asserts. Except they are not. Data from 970 weather stations across the United States reveal that more record daily maximum air temperatures were set in the 1930s than in any recent decade, and no increase in frequency of higher temperatures has been observed since 1955. The Delaware State Climatologist examined New Castle County Airport records in Wilmington and found no long-term trend in either the total number of days or the number of consecutive days with maximum air temperature above 90°F. The same can be said for days where temperatures remain below freezing. Globally, daytime high temperatures do not show significant warming – and most of the warming that has been observed is confined to nighttime low temperatures. Nighttime lows are driven by turbulence (or lack thereof) near the surface, not by the accumulation of energy related to CO 2 warming of the deep atmosphere. By contrast, maximum daily temperature is a measure of the energy content of the deep atmosphere, and is thus a much better measure of the warming due to greenhouse gases. The lack of a signal in maximum temperature suggests that the rate of warming due to CO 2 is relatively small – and certainly much smaller than climate models suggest. As for precipitation, Dr. Hayhoe claims that both floods and droughts will increase, with “more rain arriving as heavy downpours, and more dry periods in between.” This assertion was dispelled in a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on extreme events, released last summer. The IPCC report concluded that “in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense or shorter; for example in central North America.” Similarly, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration has produced plots that show which parts of the United States are classified as moderate to extreme for dryness and wetness. While both conditions show considerable variability, neither exhibits a significant trend. NOAA also concludes that snowfall records show no long-term trend, and recent record snowfalls are the result of natural variability. Why should Delaware’s or the nation’s future be any different than the past fifty years of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations? Dr. Hayhoe’s bases her extreme scenarios on climate models – the same models that have predicted major temperature trends that have not materialized; greatly exaggerated short-term trends in rainfall, droughts and violent storms; and failed to predict the lack of warming since 1998. So why should we believe them now? The real reason behind this report is to provide the State with the justification to enact draconian measures to control Delawareans’ energy use and provide major subsidies for “alternative” and “renewable” energy projects. Delaware Secretary of the Environment and Energy Collin O’Mara says, “We need to make sure we have good science driving our decision-making in the years to come.” Apparently, $46,000 has bought the State precisely the “science” he wanted to hear. O’Mara came to Delaware in 2009, as part of Governor Markell’s administration. Billed as “the youngest state cabinet official in the nation,” O’Mara is a self-proclaimed climate-change and energy “entrepreneur.” During his tenure in Delaware, he has spearheaded the administration’s efforts on “climate change mitigation,” renewable energy subsidies and “sustainable development.” During the last 4-1/2 years, the Markell Administration has “invested” in Fisker Automotive, leaving the State’s citizens on the hook to pay for an automobile assembly plant that has created zero new jobs and produced zero cars. Bloom Energy, which hails from the same town as O’Mara (San Jose, CA), has also been the happy beneficiary of enormous State subsidies and exceptions from environmental regulations. Delaware now labels natural gas as a renewable resource, for example – but only if it is burned in a Bloom fuel cell. This enables the State to funnel taxpayer and ratepayer money from renewable energy credits to Bloom. To top it off, if the State ever decides to renege on the deal, the legislation requires that the State immediately pay Bloom twenty years worth of profits. O’Mara has also been busy with rule-making by executive fiat. Without any public discussion or debate, and without any vote by the State legislature, O’Mara signed into law new “green” energy standards that make the First State’s emission rules even more stringent than Federal regulations, via a clever process known as prospective incorporation. Through this, all provisions from the California Code of Regulations are automatically “updated,” to ensure that Delaware’s Code is consistent with California’s. That means any changes to the California Code implemented by the most environmentally dogmatic, job-killing and bankrupt state in the Union are immediately and completely binding via Delaware regulations. With no presentation to the people, no discussion or vote by the General Assembly, and not even any case-by-case intervention by Delaware’s executive branch, California regulations are automatically the law in Delaware. With the stroke of the pen, Delaware has surrendered its sovereignty to California. Armed with this new “scientific” report, what draconian measures might Mr. O’Mara and the Markell Administration have in store for the citizens of Delaware? Time alone will tell. However, given their track record thus far, Delawareans are going to get burned – and not by global warming. Even worse, the same sneaky shenanigans are being played out in other states, in Washington, and all over the world, through the UN, EU and environmentalist pressure groups – in the name of saving the planet from computer model and horror movie disasters. These are bigger power grabs than anything King George III tried. We the People need to take notice, and take action. ___________ Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power, black death (Merril Press, 2012). David Legates is a Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware and has studied climate change for thirty years. The following graph could be included with the article, to illustrate its key points about global temperatures and computer models.

The multiple light colored lines track projections of mean global temperature for the lower Troposphere by 44 climate models. The dark black line is the 44-computer-model average, which is what the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses as its best estimate of predicted “catastrophic manmade global warming.” The two brightly colored lines represent the actual satellite temperature records measured by the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH – blue) and Remote Sensing System (RSS – red). These two lines demonstrate that actual planetary temperatures are far below what IPCC models predict. http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/04/global-warming-slowdown-the-view-from-space/

The Divestment Delusion

For a moment during his climate speech on June 25, President Obama joined the fossil-fuel-divestment movement when he said, “Invest. Divest. . . . Make yourself heard.” The leading group of divestment activists, 350.org, said, “Obama’s shout-out to the fossil fuel divestment movement is a huge endorsement.” But what did Obama endorse, exactly?

The goal of the fossil-fuel-divestment movement is for “institutional leaders to immediately freeze any new investment in fossil fuel companies, and divest from direct ownership and any commingled funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds within 5 years.”

 Divestment activists claim their movement rests on the same moral foundation as the movement to divest from South Africa during apartheid. The website gofossilfree.org, a spin-off of 350.org, tells the success story of the latter movement:

READ MORE:  http://www.nationalreview.com/article/354660/divestment-delusion-travis-fisher

Senator Barbara Boxer’s Own Experts Contradict Obama On Global Warming

Expert witnesses called by Sen. Barbara Boxer to testify during Senate Environment and Public Works hearings yesterday contradicted a key assertion made by President Barack Obama on climate change.

Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser less than a month before directing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to impose costly new restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions, Obama said, “we also know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago.”

“I don’t have much patience for people who deny climate change,” Obama added.

However, climate scientists including United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lead author Hans von Storch report temperatures have remained essentially flat for the past 10 years, and indeed for the past 15 years.  Storch told Der Spiegel that 98 percent of IPCC climate models cannot replicate the prolonged pause in global warming, and IPCC may need to revise its computer models to correct their apparent warming bias.

READ MORE:  http://m4gw.com/senator-barbara-boxers-own-experts-contradict-obama-on-global-warming/

Ethanol industry has EPA as ally in battle against Big Oil

Drama is high these days for ethanol makers, whose fate is on the line in Washington -- fitting for an industry dependent on government.

The oil industry has launched an assault on the ethanol mandate that drives demand for the plant-based fuel. The Senate recently confirmed an industry friend to head the Environmental Protection Agency. And the EPA is finalizing a controversial rule to allow higher blends of ethanol in gasoline.

Ethanol is a fuel made from fermenting and distilling plant matter -- mostly corn in the U.S. From the industry's earliest days, government has subsidized the fuel. The most important benefit for the industry today is the Renewable Fuel Standard.

The 2005 Republican-passed energy bill created the RFS, known as the "ethanol mandate," and the 2007 Democrat-passed energy bill expanded it. Under the law, oil refiners must purchase a set quantity of ethanol every year.

READ MORE:  http://washingtonexaminer.com/ethanol-industry-has-epa-as-ally-in-battle-against-big-oil/article/2533290?custom_click=rss

Your Vote Determines your Electric Rates

           People who live in more Democratic-leaning states often pay higher electricity rates, and this is not by accident.

 

            The most liberal leaning states, with policies designed to curtail conventional power plants, have electric rates over twice as high as the most conservative leaning states. For example, a voter in Connecticut using the same amount of electric power as a voter in Utah would pay $800 a year in higher electric bills. It also means high power cost states will be passed over in a manufacturing revival bringing good middle class jobs back to U.S. shores.

 

            States on the Pacific and the Northeast coastal tend to have policies that raise electric rates.  The phased in nature of many of these policies ensures the difference in electric rates by state will continue to grow by as much as 20% in the years to come. Although most states, Republican and Democrat leaning have renewable energy standards, liberal leaning states have more aggressive requirements for expensive renewable power sources like wind and solar, which have been receiving government subsidies for years yet still cannot compete in the free market economy with other forms of energy like coal and natural gas.

 

            Liberal-leaning states and counties are often slow to cite, and allow for, new conventional power plants. Many of these states have an unfriendly regulatory environment for conventional power plants. Some of these localities have economy-slowing carbon taxes, ranging from $5 per ton of CO2 produced in Montgomery County, Maryland, to carbon taxes on residents, businesses, and industrial customers in Boulder, Colorado. Last November residents in Boulder County voted to keep their carbon taxes where they are, which range from $21 to residents to nearly $10,000 for industrial customers.

           

            The eleven highest cost states cluster between about $35 and $50 per million BTU’s (energy needed to heat one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit) and average 61% higher at $40/Million BTU. In addition to the policies described above, these liberal state governments believed they could punish power plant operators by de-regulating prices for the electric generation portion of electric bills. Previously power plant prices were regulated by government run Public Service Commissions to protect the massive infrastructure investments required to disburse electric power to everyone while protecting against monopoly pricing. Price de-regulation was a trendy issue in the late 1990’s that supposedly would force utilities to compete and lower prices but really just gave the power plants, with essentially captive customers, the opportunity to raise prices.

 

            Bottom line: Citizens should oppose energy policies which drive up the cost particularly for the middle and working class, such as carbon taxes, subsidies to "green" companies, and instead should push state and Federal legislators to allow more natural gas development and more conventional power plants. If renewable energy is meant to be, the free-enterprise system will let the best ideas succeed and get rid of the government cronyism.

 

David T. Stevenson, Director

Center for Energy Competitiveness

Caesar Rodney Institute

Industries spar over the future of renewable fuel subsidies

 How Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has dealt with financial crises in the state – and how he will handle the Detroit bankruptcy – could hold lessons for the rest of the US.

 

Industries as wide-ranging as oil refiners, biofuel manufacturers, chain restaurants and chicken farmers sparred over the future of the federal ethanol mandate Tuesday.

The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) mandates that 13.8 billion gallons of ethanol be blended into gasoline this year, and 14.4 billion gallons in 2014.

Refiners, however, are reaching the limit of what they can safely blend into the fuel supply, which is putting pressure on the petroleum industry.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/23/industries-spar-over-the-future-of-renewable-fuel-subsidies/#ixzz2blE3cgOM

Scientist tells senators: Global warming not causing extreme weather

In a Senate hearing Thursday, environmental scientist Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado said it’s “incorrect” to claim that global warming is spurring more extreme weather disasters.

“It is misleading and just plain incorrect to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally,” Pielke said in his testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “It is further incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases.”

“Hurricanes have not increased in the U.S. in frequency, intensity or normalized damage since at least 1900,” Pielke added. “The same holds for tropical cyclones globally since at least 1970.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/18/scientist-tells-senators-global-warming-not-causing-extreme-weather/#ixzz2bTv6WZkq

A Fracking Revolution: U.S. Now Leads World In CO2 Emission Reductions

Fortunately, the U.S. did not sign the idiotic United Nation's Kyoto Protocol that Democrats attempted to force on the U.S. And, thank goodness for common sense, most Americans did not swallow the incredibly lame global warming fear-mongering that is a staple of left-wing, liberal politics - instead, the U.S. relied on innovation and competition, which led to the natural gas/shale fracking revolution and massive CO2 emission reductions, in spite of Al Gore and his green, anti-America jihadis.

Thanks to fracking, U.S. carbon emissions are now lower than they were in 1995.
While global warming has all but disappeared (being replaced with a slight cooling trend) the U.S. free market has been busy reducing America's CO2 emissions tonnage. As the adjacent chart attests to, the U.S. leads the world's major powers over the last 5 years.

While Obama, the billionaire-crony Al Gores of the world, the anti-growth Democrats and the green-religion fanatics continue to literally lie about the threat of global warming and push for continuing anti-business and anti-job CO2 regulations, they have completely mislead Americans about the phenomenal success of pro-market forces arresting CO2 emissions.


READ MORE:  http://www.c3headlines.com/2013/07/a-fracking-revolution-us-now-leads-world-in-co2-emission-reductions-.html

Upstate's path to recovery

It seems that New Yorkers would rather listen to Natalie Merchant sing of happiness and sign feel-good petitions created by Yoko Ono than deliver real jobs to the more than 700,000 people out of work in their state.

That's what the anti-hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, stance boils down to — celebrity and emotion winning out over economic and scientific facts.

New York regulators are debating their stance on fracking, a drilling process in which chemically treated water is plunged underground to help shatter rock and free natural gas. New York holds the largest untapped reserves in the Marcellus Shale rock formation that runs through Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, and with that, a key to economic prosperity.


READ MORE:  http://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Upstate-s-path-to-recovery-4678307.php

Is global warming making this summer hotter?

After an uncomfortable heat wave enveloped much of the Midwest and Northeast from about July 14 to July 20, there has been a renewed focus on the conversation around global warming and man-made climate change. While some make the argument that the hot summer and recent global temperatures are proof that our planet is changing, others are not so convinced.

AccuWeather.com Senior Expert Meteorologist Bernie Rayno does not dispute that humans may be impacting temperatures. Rayno said that building up in cities has increased temperatures in those areas, a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect. He disagrees, however, that human activity is causing drastic changes to the climate on a global scale or that heat waves can be blamed on it.

"This is the time of year for heat waves," Rayno said. "Mid-July to mid-August. I'd be more concerned if we weren't seeing heat waves right now."

READ MORE:http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/climate-change-heat-wave/15632612

Greens don't like fracking because they don't like prosperity

You'd think Greens would be delighted by the shale gas bounty under our feet. Here is a plentiful energy supply which does not emit soot (as coal does), nor jam estuaries (as tidal turbines do), nor starve Africans (as biofuels do), nor slaughter rare birds (as wind farms do). It does not require public subsidies (as both nuclear and renewables do). On the contrary, it will generate a healthy stream of tax revenue for the Exchequer. It will diminish our reliance on nasty regimes, from Tehran to Moscow – precisely the sorts of regimes that Greens march against. Oh, and it will reduce our carbon emissions, by displacing coal in electricity generators.

What, then, is the problem? Some campaigners talk of water pollution; others, a touch histrionically, of earthquakes. If either was a remotely serious prospect, we'd know by now. There has been a great deal of fracking in the United States, but not a single instance of groundwater being contaminated. As for earthquakes, well, yes, technically any tremor qualifies as an earthquake, but the kind caused by fracking is, according to the most comprehensive report to date, “about the same as the impact caused by dropping a bottle of milk”. The process has been pronounced safe by the Royal Academy of Engineering and by the Royal Society.

READ MORE:  http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100223838/greens-dont-like-fracking-because-they-dont-like-prosperity/