Climate: LNG in B.C. vs Alberta tarsands

[Clint r]

Copied from Castanets news service. Deals more with oil but global warming is mentioned as the reason:

Cdn oil 'extraordinarily dirty'
Photo: The Canadian Press
The Canadian Press - Mar 6 4:41 pm
U.S. President Barack Obama has some less-than-laudatory words for Canada's oil industry in a new example of his increasingly critical take on the oilsands.
He was asked about the Keystone XL pipeline during a town-hall session Friday - and he launched into an explanation of why so many environmentalists oppose it.
"The way that you get oil out in Canada is an extraordinarily dirty way of extracting oil," Obama said during the event at a South Carolina college.
"Obviously," he added, "there are always risks in piping a lot of oil through Nebraska farmland and other parts of the country."
Obama has recently taken to dismissing the Keystone XL pipeline, playing down its benefit for the American economy. But his remarks Friday at Benedict College were notable in that they were aimed at the industry itself.
It came during a question-and-answer session where a student saluted him for vetoing a bill to build the pipeline: "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you," said the questioner. "You are what we hoped for."
Obama replied that his decision to veto the bill wasn't the last word on the matter. He said he hasn't made a final decision. But then he proceeded to launch into a statement on climate change.
He spoke about what he called a catastrophic threat, with possible wildfires, rising sea levels, crop losses, drought, hunger, war, and the spread of insect-born diseases like malaria into the U.S.
"This will affect you more than old people like me," he told the students.
"The disruptions - economic, social, security disruptions - that it can cause can make your life and the lives of your children much harder and much worse. And if you don't stop it at a certain point, you can't stop it at all. And it could be catastrophic.
"What I just described, it's not science fiction, it's not speculation, this is what the science tells us."
The Canadian government has consistently pointed out that the Obama administration's own environmental reviews suggest the Keystone XL pipeline would mean lower greenhouse gases than transporting oil by rail.
Alberta's envoy to the U.S. also challenged Obama's remarks about dirty Canadian oil.
"He's, I would say, reflecting some special-interest groups that have been telling him that," Rob Merrifield said in an interview.
"We encourage him to look at the facts of the matter on this - and to work with us, as Albertans and Canadians, to be world leaders in environmental protection."
He said Alberta doesn't get the credit it deserves for drastically lowering emissions per barrel; for its work to reduce emissions through flaring; for spending $300 for every Albertan on carbon capture; and for being the first North American jurisdiction to put a price on carbon and use it in a clean-technology fund.
Merrifield said there's still progress to make. Last year, the State Department concluded that Canadian oil emits 17 per cent more greenhouse gases than the average barrel of crude refined in the U.S. in 2005.
"We haven't arrived. We haven't said we've arrived," Merrifield said. "(But) we are certainly first in class in many areas and are working hard to continue to improve."
Canadian oil proponents say it now compares, even favourably in some cases, in emissions intensity to other heavy crudes refined in the Gulf of Mexico - especially Venezuelan oil.
And unlike Venezuela, Merrifield said, Canadian oil comes from a stable political source and an ally.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Satellite Temperatures Decline In February

By Paul Homewood

We were told a few months ago that it would only be a matter of time before the satellite datasets caught up with the surface ones, and confirmed that global temperatures had reached a record high.

Well, we’re still waiting!

Both UAH and RSS have recorded drops in temperature in February, and 12-month averages remain well below previous highs.


image

http://nsstc.uah.edu/climate/index.html

image

http://data.remss.com/msu/monthly_t...hannel_TLT_Anomalies_Land_and_Ocean_v03_3.txt

 

[GLG]

I,am sure he would like to know it.
Why don't you send him an email and tell him so.
I am sure you can send it via the site I took it from.

Your quick to rise in defense of Fred Singer OBD. Did you not read the court documents and the sworn affidavits? Still think he is worth your support? If you did read it then you would know that he is morally bankrupt. You show support so what does that make you?

 

[GLG]

Satellite Temperatures Decline In February

Paul Homewood
Retired accountant in service to climate denial and loving it.....

Yes the mental midget of climate change denial speaks again and the fan boy's gobble it up and spread the news far and wide.
Let's look at what the real graphs are telling us.....
Starting to see a trend OBD?

 

[GLG]

[h=2]Panic in Denierville: Google May Start Ranking for FACTS![/h]
Facts are stubborn things. Truth is a slippery slope.
Popular Science:

Just because Google tells you something, though, doesn’t mean it’s true. A team of Google researchers has devised a “Knowledge-based Trust” algorithm that attempts to rank websites based on their factual accuracy, rather than their popularity. In order to do that, however, it needs to be able to figure out what’s factual and what isn’t.
Google’s Knowledge Vault tries to find information that falls into a pattern of what Google calls “triples,” which are made up of three factors: a subject that’s a real-world entity, a predicate that describe some attribute of that entity, and an object that is the value of the attribute. For example, that President Obama (subject) is the president (predicate) of the United States (object).
The Knowledge Vault contains billions of those triples from across the web. And the Knowledge-based Trust algorithm uses a complicated multi-layer approach to weigh whether or not particular facts are true.
If the system works as well as hoped, Google might be able to rank sites based on just how factual they are, which is good for everything from fact-checking politicians to writing that research paper.
​

Was Obama born in Kenya? How do I know, I’m not a geographer!
or as the climate deniers say
Is man-made climate change true? How do I know, I'm not a scientist.

“I worry about this issue greatly… My site gets a significant portion of its daily traffic from Google,” Anthony Watts, who runs Watts Up With That, a popular blog that is skeptical of global warming claims, told FoxNews.con.
“It is a very slippery and dangerous slope because there’s no arguing with a machine,” he added.

You go Tony... don't let facts get in your way of you telling the fan boy's what to think....
[ljKFND87Cak]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljKFND87Cak

 

[OldBlackDog]

Once again, read what I said not what you think I said.

Your quick to rise in defense of Fred Singer OBD. Did you not read the court documents and the sworn affidavits? Still think he is worth your support? If you did read it then you would know that he is morally bankrupt. You show support so what does that make you?

 

[OldBlackDog]

Great reply from you as usual. Good use of the English language as always.
Again send it the the author of the article whom you seem to know going by your description here.
I am sure he will like to see it.

Then go on to tell us/him how you disagree with what he said.

Both UAH and RSS have recorded drops in temperature in February, and 12-month averages remain well below previous highs.

Yes the mental midget of climate change denial speaks again and the fan boy's gobble it up and spread the news far and wide.
Let's look at what the real graphs are telling us.....
Starting to see a trend OBD?

 

[GLG]

OBD you are a merchant of doubt, plain, simple and oh so transparent.
Your time is over....
If you have something to say why don't you say it?
All it seems to be is copy / paste from climate change denial websites that think for you.
Have you even written 5 lines of your own words in one post on this entire thread?
What are you afraid of that I will tease you on your English?
Have I done that or is it you that has pulled that card?

 

[OldBlackDog]

Yes this would be your trend.


Yes the mental midget of climate change denial speaks again and the fan boy's gobble it up and spread the news far and wide.
Let's look at what the real graphs are telling us.....
Starting to see a trend OBD?

 

[GLG]

Interesting stuff coming out of Alberta.
See, some have a foot in today and the other in the future.
Unlike some that can only see the past.

[4NNxlUKYXEI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NNxlUKYXEI

 

[OldBlackDog]

Setting the Record Straight

In a recent article on these pages, Mr Robert ET Ward BSc misrepresents the economic literature on the impacts of climate change and impugns my character. I am grateful to the editors of the Huffington Post for allowing me to set the record straight.

Mr Ward claims that there are "significant errors in [a] study suggesting global warming is good for the world". That study is a survey published by me in 2009. There were errors in that survey, now corrected, but the headline conclusions did not change. The latest survey contains four studies - by the late Ralph d'Arge, Robert Mendelsohn of Yale University, David Maddison of Birmingham University and myself - that conclude that climate change would improve human welfare. None of these studies have been found to be in error.

Climate change has many impacts, some small, some large, some positive, some negative. The main positive effects are that warmer winters would reduce spending on heating houses, and reduce cold-related deaths. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be a boon to crops, particularly in semi-arid areas. For moderate climate change, these positive impacts appear to outweigh the negative ones. For more profound warming, the negative impacts dominate. Mr Ward claims that I "refused to give an undertaking to correct his journal papers". In fact, I only refused to regularly brief Mr Ward, who had uncovered a single typo. Indeed, all known errors have been corrected, and a number of errata have been published.

There is one issue outstanding. One editor of a learned journal argued that a comment plus rejoinder would be more informative than a corrigendum. Mr Ward was invited to submit his comment in March 2014, but has yet to do so.

Mr Ward claims that "mistakes had been corrected" in the Fifth Assessment Report of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, we replaced the vague "may be beneficial" with the precise "17 out of 20 are negative", in line with the IPCC style which frowns on ambiguous wording and emphasizes the more likely outcomes. Still, the IPCC reports both beneficial and harmful impacts -as did the final draft.

Mr Ward highlights "shortcomings in the trend that had fitted to the data". In fact, the original and corrected data are not materially different. There is no statistically significant difference between the trends fitted to the original data and to the corrected data.

Since 2009, however, more estimates of the economic impact of climate change have been published. These new results do affect the fitted trend, but not in the way suggested by Mr Ward. The new trend shows positive impacts for warming up to about two degrees global warming, just like the old trend did. The new trend, however, shows markedly less negative impacts for more profound warming than did the old trend. In other words, in the last five years, we have become less pessimistic about the impacts of climate change.

Mr Ward is employed by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) to promote the findings of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Environment at the LSE and the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at the LSE and the University of Leeds. Apparently, although lavishly funded, these centres produce too little research of note to keep Mr Ward busy, as he seems to spend most of his time smearing me and others.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Atmosphere 'has finally woken up' as El Niño gets underway in the Pacific

06 Mar 2015, 14:55
Roz Pidcock

The long-awaited El Niño has arrived. After keeping a close eye on evolving conditions in the Pacific, scientists yesterday announced the official onset of El Niño, a phenomenon affecting weather worldwide. But the nascent event is likely to have little global impact, scientists say.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Centre upgraded its assessment from 'El Niño Watch' to 'El Niño Advisory', meaning an event is now occurring.

Scientists have classified the current event as a "borderline, weak El Niño" with a 50 to 60 per cent chance of persisting through Spring. Its weak strength and late timing mean "widespread or significant global impacts" are unlikely, yesterday's report says.

An unsure start

Every five years or so, a change in the winds causes a shift to warmer than normal sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean - known as El Niño. Together with its cooler counterpart, La Niña, this is known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and is responsible for most of the fluctuations in global weather we see from one year to the next.

The official threshold for when the ocean passes into an El Niño state is when sea surface temperatures, averaged over three months, exceed 0.5 degrees Celsius in the central and eastern Pacific. The latest data for February show average sea surface temperatures 0.6 degrees above average, as the map below shows. (Click here for an animated version.)

Screenshot 2015-03-06 11.37.20

Average sea surface temperature in the tropical Pacific for the week of 25th Feb. Anomalies are relative to 1981-2010 weekly average. Source: NOAA Climate Prediction Centre

Normally, warmer water at the sea surface triggers a sequence of interactions between the atmosphere and ocean that amplifies the initial warming, and an El Niño builds.

Sea surface temperatures have been hovering at or around the critical point for several months, prompting predictions that El Niño was on its way as far back as last April.

But until this week, the atmosphere had "largely failed to respond" as expected, with leading experts dubbing El Niño's failure to emerge as "puzzling" and "an enigma".

Atmosphere reacts

Now, the atmosphere seems to have sprung into action, Prof Mat Collins, El Niño expert at the University of Exeter and joint Met Office Chair in climate change, tells Carbon Brief.

"It seems like the atmosphere has finally woken-up to the fact that the sea surface temperatures have been warm in the equatorial Pacific."

The fledging El Niño classifies only as a weak event, with most models predicting a slow increase over the coming months. A blog by NOAA El Niño scientist Dr Emily Becker accompanying yesterday's announcement, explains why this event is weaker than past ones:

"The current warm sea surface temperature anomalies are greatest in the Central Pacific. ENSO events centered in this area tend to be weaker".

El -nino -basic 5logo Source: Rosamund Pearce, Carbon Brief.

A weak event

While El Niño's initial elusiveness proved puzzling, the fact that it seems to be spinning up at this time of year is also unexpected, Collins explains:

"[T]his is usually a time in which we would expect to see an El Niño event decaying, so it would be a pretty weird event that amplified significantly now."

Models' ability to predict how an El Niño will evolve is notably reduced during April, May and June, when temperatures in the Pacific can change very quickly. This is what's scientists call the "spring predictability barrier".

Given these uncertainties, the NOAA scientists predict a 50 to 60 per cent chance of El Niño persisting through the Northern Hemisphere summer. The odds of it sticking around to September and beyond drop to 50 per cent.

Low impact

While the effects of El Niño may be felt in some locations during Spring, we're unlikely to experience a worldwide impact, yesterday's NOAA report says:

"Due to the expected weak strength, widespread or significant global impacts are not anticipated."


View on YouTube Dr Jeff Masters from Weather Underground and Dr Kevin Trenberth explaining how ENSO affects global temperature trends by reorganising heat between the atmosphere and ocean. Credit: Peter Sinclair, Climatecrocks.com

The influence of El Niño outside the tropics are also typically weak at this time of year. Becker explains:

"After twelve months of El Niño Watches, we are issuing an El Niño Advisory. However, what it really represents is an incremental crossing of the borderline … From an impacts perspective, this is not particularly momentous".

On the question of whether El Niño will bring much-needed rain to drought-ridden parts of California, Becker doesn't hold much hope. She says:

"Especially since the rainy season in the West is winding down by March, it is unlikely that these current El Niño conditions will lead to substantial, drought-breaking rains."

Given El Niño's somewhat unpredictable and elusive behaviour so far, its next moves will be of great interest to scientists worldwide. We await the next update in a month's time, on 9th April.

 

[OldBlackDog]

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/143063/morgan-d-bazilian/power-to-the-poor
Part of the story.
Imagine life without electricity. With no lights, electric stove, or water pump, you must travel miles to fetch water and firewood, running a particular risk of attack if you are a girl or a woman. At home, you cook over a smoky stove or an open fire, raising your odds of getting lung and heart disease. If you are pregnant, you may die in the dark, giving birth at a clinic that lacks air conditioning and modern medical equipment. Without vaccines, which require refrigeration, your children remain vulnerable to deadly diseases. At night, they study by the light of a kerosene lamp, which causes burns when the fuel spills. Earning a living isn’t easy, either. No electricity means no sewing machines or rice mills, no pumps for irrigating crops, and no way to keep drinks cold or keep a store open at night. The lack of power keeps away bigger companies that might have hired you.

Such is the plight of nearly half of the world’s population. Some two billion people lack electricity outright or have poor-quality service, and nearly three billion rely on dirty fuels, such as firewood and animal dung, for cooking and heating. Nearly 90 percent of those suffering from energy poverty, as the problem is known, can be found in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In Liberia, to take one of the most extreme cases, just two percent of the population has regular access to electricity. And in Tanzania, nearly 50 percent of firms say that poor electricity service is a major constraint for doing business. They face an average of nearly nine power outages every month, leading to lost sales and poor productivity. In this area, the disparity between the developing world and the developed world could hardly be greater: the average American uses about 50 times as much power as the average Bangladeshi and about 100 times as much as the average Nigerian.


The problem has proved stubbornly persistent. Data from the World Bank show that although 1.7 billion people acquired access to electricity from 1990 to 2010, the gains barely outpaced population growth. They also accrued disproportionately to cities: today, about 85 percent of those without electricity live in rural areas far from any infrastructure. In sub-Saharan Africa especially, the scale of the challenge is daunting. Enabling people there to consume as much electricity as those in a middle-income region would require an increase in power generation of more than ten percent 
a year over two decades—an annual growth rate far greater than the historical two to three percent. Small wonder, then, that the International Energy Agency has forecast that in 20 to 30 years, the number of energy poor may remain close to where it stands today.


 

[GLG]

Setting the Record Straight

In a recent article on these pages, Mr Robert ET Ward BSc misrepresents the economic literature on the impacts of climate change and impugns my character. I am grateful to the editors of the Huffington Post for allowing me to set the record straight.

If Tol is so impugned why not take him to court. Climate deniers are always saying their going to take someone to court.... LOL

So what is Tol going on about this time? here is the article that offend him.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/bob-ward/global-warming_b_6631350.html

Significant Errors in Study Suggesting Global Warming is Good for the World


The new issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives includes a remarkable admission about a controversial academic paper that wrongly suggested moderate amounts of global warming would have an overall positive economic impact on the world.
The paper by Richard Tol, who is now a professor of economics at the University of Sussex, has been widely promoted by climate change 'sceptics' who have attempted to argue that global warming is not a problem.
But editors at the journal have now finally acknowledged that the original paper contained a number of significant errors that render invalid its conclusion about beneficial global warming.
In 2009, the journal published 'The Economic Effects of Climate Change' by Professor Tol, which used estimates of the impacts of climate change from a number of previous studies to show how they would change as global average surface temperature increases.
Among its conclusions were that global warming of upto two centigrade degrees or so could have a net positive economic impact.
Professor Tol added to and updated his analysis in subsequent papers for other journals, but reached the same general conclusion.
Unfortunately, his papers contained a number of errors because he had inadvertently misrepresented the results of some of the studies of economic impacts.
In particular, Professor Tol's 2009 paper suggested that a study in 1996 by Erica Plambeck and Chris Hope of the University of Cambridge had estimated a net positive impact equivalent to 0.9 per cent of GDP due to global warming of 2.5 centigrade degrees, when in fact the authors had found a negative effect.
I first became aware of the errors in Professor Tol's work when his 2009 paper was cited by Viscount Ridley in an article for The Spectator magazine in October 2013, which proclaimed on its front page 'Why climate change is good for the world'.
Professor Tol and Viscount Ridley are both members of the all-male "Academic Advisory Council" of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which was launched by Lord Lawson in November 2009 to campaign against Government climate change policies.
I contacted Professor Tol in October 2013 to alert him to the errors in his work. While he acknowledged some of the mistakes, he refused to give an undertaking to correct his journal papers.
In January 2014, I discovered that a section based on one of Professor Tol's faulty papers had been inserted into the final draft of a chapter of a report on 'Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability' by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
It reproduced some of the errors that occurred in Professor Tol's paper, including the inaccurate claim that "Climate change may be beneficial for moderate climate change".
Professor Tol was one of the Coordinating Lead Authors on the chapter, so I contacted him and other members of the IPCC to alert them to the defects.
When the final version of the report's chapter was published in October 2014, the mistakes had been corrected and it omitted the erroneous suggestion that moderate warming would create net economic benefits for the world.
In May 2014, the Journal of Economic Perspectives published a 'Correction and Update' by Professor Tol, acknowledging some, but not all, of the flaws in his 2009 paper. The journal shortly afterwards published another version of the 'Correction and Update', noting that the previous version had still been incorrect, but it also contained mistakes. I contacted the journal to point out that further corrections were required, but I was only offered the option of leaving an online comment.
The new 'Editorial Note' in the journal was written after "the editors discussed the situation with Richard Tol and with outside reviewers at some length". It admits that the 'Update and Correction' produced by Professor Tol "also contained errors that were soon pointed out by various researchers". It also highlighted shortcomings in the trend that Professor Tol had fitted to the data.
This is just the latest shocking development in a sorry saga that has lasted for more than a year, during which Professor Tol has repeatedly criticised me for pointing out the errors in his work.
He even persuaded The Mail on Sunday newspaper to publish in April 2014 an article attacking me.
But two of Professor Tol's papers have still not been fully corrected, and The Spectator has not withdrawn the flawed article by Viscount Ridley.
It is to be hoped that this final verdict from the journal draws to a close an episode that has become an embarrassment not just to climate change 'sceptics', but also to the academic economics profession.
Bob Ward is policy and communications director at the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science.


No one takes Tol seriously anymore in fact he is the least creditable economic professor on the planet and with good reason. He seems to have problems with math and that's not a good sign for team coming up short.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Is There an Elephant in the Living Room? Or Did Manmade Climate Change Cause Syria’s Civil War and the Rise of ISIS?

elephantGuest essay by E. Calvin Beisner

Did manmade global warming cause the Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS?

A new paper, “Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought,” PNAS, March 2, 2015, summarized its findings by saying, “the 2007−2010 drought contributed to the conflict in Syria. It was the worst drought in the instrumental record, causing widespread crop failure and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers.”

It went on to say, “Century-long observed trends in precipitation, temperature, and sea-level pressure, supported by climate model results [emphasis added], strongly suggest that anthropogenic forcing has increased the probability of severe and persistent droughts in this region, and made the occurrence of a 3-year drought as severe as that of 2007−2010 2 to 3 times more likely than by natural variability alone.”

It concluded its summary, “human influences on the climate system are implicated in the current Syrian conflict.”

Not surprisingly, global warming alarmists jumped on the news.

AP’s Seth Borenstein called it “one of the most detailed and strongest connections between violence and human-caused climate change.”

Eric Holthaus, writing in Slate, led his report by saying, “One of the most terrifying implications [of climate change] is the increasingly real threat of wars sparked in part by global warming. New evidence says that Syria may be one of the first such conflicts.”

He cited Retired Navy Rear Adm. David Titley, a meteorologist who’s now a professor at Penn State University, as saying, “you can draw a very credible climate connection to this disaster we call ISIS right now.”

But the case isn’t quite so clear. Holthaus also cited Titley as saying that after decades of poor water policy “there was no resilience left in the system” and “It’s not to say you could predict ISIS out of that, but you just set everything up for something really bad to happen.”

A “climate connection” isn’t the same thing as a “manmade global warming connection,” and “climate model results” aren’t exactly convincing support for anything.

Consider first the measures of temperature and rainfall for the region. Are those two factors sufficient to explain the drought—or even much of it? Eyeballing graphs in the PNAS paper suggests not.

clip_image002

In the Fertile Crescent, of which Syria is part, the Palmer Drought Severity Index (which uses a scale from +3 to -3) worsened from about positive 0.2 to about negative 0.8 since 1930. That’s significant but not likely sufficient to explain the severe 2007–2010 drought.

More important, what caused the drought?

The Fertile Crescent experienced about a 7% decline in winter rainfall since 1930, most occurring before 1980, leaving only about 3% during the period of allegedly manmade warming. Not much there to explain.

If you accept the figures from the Climatic Research Unit, home of Climategate, annual surface temperature in the Fertile Crescent rose by about 0.5 C˚ since 1930, again about half before 1980, leaving about 0.25 C˚ since then, but that’s not sufficient to explain the drought.

So, with so little change in precipitation and temperature, why the major increase in drought, and, more important, what caused the conflict over water?

Part of the answer is embedded in Holthaus’s own words: “After decades of poor water policy.” Got that? Poor water policy.

But there’s a second, more important culprit, and neither Holthaus nor Admiral Titley mentions it, though it’s obvious in the bottom portion of Kelley et. al’s graph.

Syria’s population multiplied 11 times since 1930, from about 2 million to about 23 million. At the same time, its industrial and agricultural water use multiplied even more. Eleven times as many people coupled with burgeoning industry and agriculture mean you’re going to use a lot more water—and hence face water shortages, especially with “poor water policy.”

But assume for a moment that higher temperature and lower rainfall, not population growth, actually drove the drought. That doesn’t explain what caused either one, and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in its 2012 report on extreme weather that it was impossible to demonstrate a connection between global warming, manmade or natural, and increasing frequency or severity of extreme weather events, including droughts.

Even assuming that global warming contributed somewhat to the rise in annual surface temperature and the fall in winter rainfall, that doesn’t mean human activity drove the global warming. The computer models on which the IPCC depends simulate warming from rising atmospheric CO2 at double (and more) the observed rate, and none simulated the complete absence of observed warming over the last 18+ years, so they’re wrong and provide no rational basis for any belief about the magnitude to human contribution to global warming.

At most, human activity has contributed only a fraction of the global warming observed over the last 30, 50, 100, or 150 years, which means it can have contributed only a fraction of the half-degree increase in annual average surface temperature in the Fertile Crescent and only a fraction of the slight decline in rainfall, and hence only a fraction of a fraction of the increased drought and a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the conflict over water.

Rising population coupled with “poor water policy” is a far greater cause of conflict for access to water in Syria.

And as causes of Syria’s civil war, those pale into insignificance compared with religio-political conflicts. Elephant in the living room, anyone?

E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., is Founder and National Spokesman of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.

 

[GLG]

Published on Sep 29, 2014
Interview with Dr. Andrew Dessler on "what we know" about climate change, putting the unpredicted hiatus in global surface temperatures into context, and further discussion on climate sensitivity and risk. Video includes a summary of all the positions on climate sensitivity expressed by the scientists participating in Climate Change National Forum thus far.

[OD4BDpdJ1Vs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD4BDpdJ1Vs&t=19

 

[OldBlackDog]

Tariffs on Chinese solar panels may hurt Canadian renewables industry

New import tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels threaten to dent enthusiasm for solar power and slow the shift to renewable energy in Canada, some industry players warn.

A decision last week to impose duties on Chinese imports was hailed as a victory for Canadian solar panel manufacturers, but it is raising concerns that prices will spike, pushing up the costs of installation and depressing demand.

Last Thursday, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) issued a preliminary ruling that cheap subsidized solar modules are being dumped into Canada from China. The agency set stiff provisional import duties to protect Canadian panel manufacturers. A final decision on any tariffs, to be made by the Canadian International Trade Tribunal, is expected in about four months.

“The tariffs are the biggest step backwards Canada has made in the past 10 years towards replacing fossil fuels with renewables,” said Dave Egles, president of HES Home Energy Solutions Inc., a Victoria, B.C.-based distributor of solar systems and other electrical products. He said the tariffs will cause a price increase of at least 10 per cent to his customers – firms that install solar panels. That will cause fewer people to install projects, which would have helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions, he said.

While the tariffs are designed to protect Canadian solar panel manufacturers – four of whom initiated the federal review by complaining about cut-rate Chinese panels – the damage to employment will outweigh any gains, Mr. Egles said. As many as 5,000 solar installers and ancillary workers could be out of work in the coming year, he said.

Ron Kortekaas, the owner of solar installation firm Eco Alternative Energy in Sharbot Lake, Ont., said the new tariffs will undoubtedly increase his costs, because he buys imported Chinese panels. Those higher costs will be passed on to customers, so “it will probably put a dent in our sales,” he said.

The Ontario-based panel manufacturing companies that initially complained – Eclipsall Energy Corp., Heliene Inc., Silfab Ontario Inc. and Solgate Inc. – say unfair competition from dumped Chinese panels means they are losing sales and market share, putting them under pressure to cut prices at a time when margins are already thin.

Heliene president Martin Pochtaruk said the preliminary CBSA ruling “is a positive step in the right direction to level the playing field in terms of competition.” He also noted that several other countries – including the United States – have found that Chinese solar panels were dumped into their markets, and have put in place punitive tariffs.

Chris Stern, a former executive at North America-wide solar installer Pure Energies who is now a consultant to the industry, said similar U.S. tariffs have pushed up prices for consumers in that country. The Canadian duties will prevent “more jobs from being created as fewer people will be inclined to install solar,” Mr. Stern said, noting that the installation business generates far more employment than panel manufacturing.

One key company in the sector – Guelph, Ont.-based Canadian Solar Inc. – is in an unusual position on both sides of the issue; it manufactures panels in Canada, as well as in China. Panels imported from Canadian Solar’s Chinese plants will be hit with a 174-per-cent duty under the provisional ruling. Its Canadian-made panels, which make up more than 90 per cent of its sales in this country, will not be hit.

Canadian Solar chief executive officer Shawn Qu said in an e-mail that the CBSA decision is “unfortunate,” and that his company supports free trade. He said his firm’s panel plants in Guelph and London, Ont., “have proven that we can be competitive with our ‘Made in Canada’ products.”

Mr. Qu said he thinks the imposition of the tariffs could slow development of solar projects in Canada.

Thomas Koerner, general manager for the Americas at Canadian Solar, said the company has a global supply chain and “we don’t believe any trade limitation is helpful in providing affordable renewable energy.”

One problem, Mr. Koerner said, is that dumping is not defined as selling below the actual cost of the imported product, but as selling below the local manufacturer’s cost structure. A company can be accused of dumping just because “you are able to produce [panels] somewhere else significantly cheaper, and the local manufacturers cannot,” he said.

 

[OldBlackDog]

US Govt Scientists Confirm: Natural Climate Change of Past Produced Warmer Temps Than Modern Era

Thank you, Obama!....US DOE researchers connect-the-dots...confirm for the public, once and for all, that natural climate change was bigger!, badder!, warmer! and cooler! than the meek modern era climate...science has spoken!!...the science is settled!!...the debate is over!!...it's a consensus!!...indeed, modern warming is very natural-like, just not as robust versus the past.....

Historical global temperature proxy vs modern temp 030515
(click on chart to enlarge)
This chart was recently produced by government scientists, as noted here and here.

This single chart compilation by govt researchers confirms what multiple studies have shown over and over again...natural climate change rules, regardless of CO2 greenhouse emissions.

Several obvious points from this research pictorial.

A. Past natural climate change has produced extreme volatility and variation.

B. Reconstructed temperature proxies reveal multiple climatic periods of acceleration and levels of cooling/warming that far exceed what the modern era has experienced.

C. Modern global warming is not extreme nor unique, even compared to the relatively recent period of the Minoan/Bronze age civilizations.

D. Current temperatures would not have to drop by that much for Earth to enter an ice age glaciation period.

E. Earth has been in an overall cooling mode for the last 10 million years.

These 5 scientific factual points are indisputable, undeniable, irrefutable and unequivocal. [Editor opinion: Any scientist, politician, bureaucrat or journalist/pundit who states otherwise is a definitive climate change denier - or, maybe 'anti-science' liar would be a more apt label for those denying what climate science has proven to be fact.]

Two more points to be considered.

First, the DOE scientists who produced this chart attached instrument thermometer readings to reconstructed proxy estimates. This is truly an apple-to-orange comparison without any scientific validity. It's a science 'no-no' in lay terms. In addition, modern era proxy reconstructions reveal a temperature decline since 1960 that these DOE scientists conveniently fail to mention identify.

Second, it has been well established by multiple analysts that modern climate records have been heavily manipulated by govt "scientists" to fabricate faux-warming over vast regions of the globe. It is now estimated that large swaths have had their climate records "adjusted" upward by at least 0.4C over the last 20 years. To appreciate the huge extent of the temperature fabrication, visit these search links: here, here, here, here and charts here.

When these two considerable factors are taken into account, the actual modern warming that has occurred is likely better represented by the mauve arrow added to the chart on the right side.

Alas, in the scheme of actual climate empirical evidence, modern warming is not so much as it turns out. It's those stubborn facts, again.

 

[GLG]

Is There an Elephant in the Living Room?

E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D, in Scottish History is Founder and National Spokesman of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.

Interesting source there OBD does this man now speak for you and is this your theory of climate change?

http://www.desmogblog.com/calvin-beisner

“God has said that all of the various cycles on which life depends are going to be sustained by his providential care from now until God ends heaven and Earth themselves in the last judgment. Now that too, I think, is contrary to fears that man-made climate change could bring an end to the various different climate cycles on which we depend and on which other forms of life depend for our thriving.”

or this one

[t]he aggressive, extreme secularism that would reject all reference in biology studies to intelligent design of irreducibly complex structures is more patently unscientific and more obviously religious than what most people have encountered in discussing evolution and creation. Perhaps a few more will waken now to the fact that the public schools are the enemy, not the friend, and not even a neutral party to Christians, and therefore (a) remove their kids from them and (b) stop working with them.” (emphasis added)

How about this statement?

In 1990, Beisner wrote a piece criticizing the need for further federal spending on AIDSresearch, treatment and education. In the article Beisner asks, “…is it rational to allocate $3.5 billion dollars to fight a disease that is almost 100 percent self-inflicted by people intent on immoral and irrational behavior?” (emphasis added) [10]
Beisner goes on to claim that the “simple fact is that militant homosexuals have a potent lobby on Capitol Hill and at the White House. They know how to get politicians' attention. Only that can explain the irrational policies that have prevailed toward AIDS…” (emphasis added).

Is this someone you think we should listen to when making value judgments on Climate change?
I'll give you one thing OBD your sure know were to find wackos.

 

[OldBlackDog]

A “climate connection” isn’t the same thing as a “manmade global warming connection,” and “climate model results” aren’t exactly convincing support for anything.

Interesting source there OBD does this man now speak for you and is this your theory of climate change?

http://www.desmogblog.com/calvin-beisner



or this one



How about this statement?


Is this someone you think we should listen to when making value judgments on Climate change?
I'll give you one thing OBD your sure know were to find wackos.