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Robert Redford: Another Looming Cliff of Grave ConsequenceWith extreme weather taking its toll on communities all over America, we can't afford another major dirty energy project such as the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
Robert Redford - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaHe has described himself as having been a "bad" student, finding inspiration outside the classroom, and being interested in art and sports...After being asked to leave the University of Colorado, he traveled in Europe, living in France, Spain, and Italy.[8] He later studied painting at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and took classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City
AlGorjeera -- It's Official: Al Gore is by far the most lavishly funded fossil fuel player in the global warming debate today'Gore's massive personal cash influx from oil-backed Al Jazeera makes him by far the most lavishly funded fossil fuel player in the global warming debate today. Will the media now accurately label Gore an industry funded activist every time they report on him?'
New York Green Weenies Almost Out of Gas | Power LineAs a friend remarked to me today, “For years how to revive the economy of rural New York has been a top-of-the-agenda item for politicians. Now that something comes along that could do it, they say, ‘Well, maybe not. . .’
RIP Seymour Laxon, who allegedly started the "No ice means no polar bears" memeI last saw Seymour and Fiona several years ago at a party at Duncan and Ivana’s flat in Islington. In conversation I mentioned that I was surprised to see a spate of stories in the press headlining with global warming and the plight of Polar bears. Seymour laughed. It turned out that he was interviewed by a journalist following the publication of a paper concerning the seasonal extent of arctic ice. The paper, which was the culmination of a meticulous analysis of data from three satellites spanning 25 years, pointed to the potential disappearance of arctic ice in the summer months. A stark conclusion. The journalist, not fully appreciating the importance of this finding, quizzically remarked ‘so, no more arctic ice’, and in true laconic style Seymour replied ‘No ice means no polar bears!’. And since that day every time I see the media headline with global warming and the plight of polar bears I say to myself ‘Seymour started that’.
Arctic To Be Ice Free Before 2013 | Real Science
Scientists link global warming to England’s rainiest year on record“It is not just Britain but many other parts of northern Europe and north America that are getting wetter and there is a climate change component to it,” Kevin Trenberth told EurActiv over a phone line from the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
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“The overall pattern has been that middle to high latitudes [have] an increase in precipitation that goes with a warming climate, and the fact that the air can hold more moisture so the hydrological cycle speeds up,” he said.
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“If you draw a line around the globe starting with the UK, this whole region is expected to become wetter,” [Gabriele Hegerl] said, “the wet regions become wetter and the dry regions drier.”
The best solution for climate change is a carbon tax | The Great DebateGlobal warming is happening, whether or not lawmakers on Capitol Hill want to acknowledge it. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the consequences of ignoring it are dire.
Given the already lackluster recovery, the future economic devastation from global warming looms many times larger than any “fiscal cliff.” A 2006 report from British economist Nicholas Stern estimated that if global temperatures increase 2-3 degrees Celsius in the next 50 years we risk losing up to 20 percent of global GDP – a loss similar to that of the Great Depression.
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According to the world authority on the subject, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a carbon tax on GHGs of $50 per metric ton of CO2 equivalents would be a good first step. With annual emissions of 6.8 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalents, the United States would collect $340 billion each year.
With revenue like that, a carbon tax could be used to help balance the budget.
Solar Neutrons and the 1970s cooling period | Watts Up With That?"...Early in the 1970s a series of adverse climatic anomalies occurred:
The world’s snow and ice cover had increased by at least 10 to 15 percent.
In the eastern Canadian area of the Arctic Greenland (sic), below normal temperatures were recorded for 19 consecutive months. Nothing like this had happened in the last 100 years.
The Moscow region suffered its worst drought in three to five hundred years.
Drought occurred in Central America, the sub-Sahara, South Asia, China and Australia.
Massive floods took place in the Midwestern United States.
Within a single year, adversity had visited almost every nation on the globe.”
There was a 1970s cooling period – the CIA left a record of it, and by some measures, the 1970s was the coldest decade of the 20th Century.
Cold snap — temperature in Boise gets down to 3 degrees Friday morning The National Weather Service got a temperature reading of 3 degrees at the Boise Airport overnight, making Friday the coldest day in Idaho’s capital city since 2010.
El Paso receives up to eight inches of snow | kvue.com AustinEL PASO -- Much of West Texas was blanketed with up to eight inches of snow. Commuters woke up Friday in El Paso to dangerous ice on the roads.
There were several crashes Thursday night which shut down Interstate 10.
America: Doomed by Scarcity, Doomed by Plenty, Doomed, Doomed! | Via MeadiaAmerica, once doomed because it had no more oil, is now even more doomed because it has too much
Twitter / RogerPielkeJr: Q for @MunichRe @MunichRe_US ...Q for Was there really only 2 US thunderstorm disasters 1975-1990!? .. -typo fixed
Twitter / RogerPielkeJr: Record surplus $584B! "Insurance ...
Grid Problems Curb India's Electric-Vehicle Appetite - NYTimes.comThen, in May, an acute power shortage took hold in Ampere’s home state, Tamil Nadu. The supply of rationed electricity in most of the state dropped from 13 or 14 hours a day to 8. Almost immediately, said the company’s co-founder, Pachyappa Bala, the company’s monthly sales dropped from 600 bikes to 60.
Ampere’s plight highlights an unexpected consequence of the worsening power shortages in India. The fledgling market for electric vehicles, which might help clean up the polluted air, is losing traction because customers aren’t confident they can fill up the battery.
Resignation of EPA's Jackson is "serious warning" that climate in danger from Obama White HouseJill Stein, the recent Green Party presidential candidate, said today that the resignation of Lisa Jackson as head of the Environmental Protection Agency underscores the resistance of the Obama administration to dealing with climate change and the environment.
Gore Went to Bat for Al Jazeera, and Himself, in Current TV Deal - NYTimes.com“We were not allowed to the table,” [Glenn Beck] said. “He didn’t sell to the highest bidder. He looked for, Who do I ideologically align with?” Mr. Beck’s producer Stu Burguiere added, “The guy who was vice president of the United States and was 537 votes away from being president during 9/11 is ideologically aligned, by his own definition, with the network that Osama bin Laden went to every time he wanted to get a message out.”
Climate Change and Obesity? | [If you don't ride a bicycle, you'll cause hurricanes and get fat]You see, NCDs and Climate Change do in fact share the same causes and largely require the same solutions. Carbon-intensive and labour-conserving lifestyles; highly-processed food requiring large energy inputs; larger portions of meat and higher calorie diets; increasing air pollution…
Twitter / BigJoeBastardi: This has got to be the coldest ...This has got to be the coldest start to Jan in history in parts of Nevada. Amazing how far below normal it is.
The Dr. David Viner moment we’ve all been waiting for…a new snow record | Watts Up With That?It seems despite the sage advice from that East Anglia CRU scientist, a new record for snowfall has been set for the month of December.
An Antidote for Climate Contrarianism - NYTimes.com
I would guess a few Green readers had the experience, over the holidays, of arguing yet again about global warming with a parent or brother-in-law who thinks it’s all a big hoax. Maybe there’s some undiscovered substance in roast turkey that makes people want to pick fights around the dinner table.
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The book is dead accurate, not only presenting scientifically what we know, but also leveling with readers about what we don’t.
I bought the Kindle version of Emanuel's book, spent a few minutes skimming it, and highlighted the quotes below:
During the early part of the Eocene era, around 50 million years ago, the earth was free of ice, and giant trees grew on islands near the North Pole, where the annual mean temperature was about 60°F, far warmer than today’s mean of about 30°F.
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Even if the changes we are bringing about are larger than the globe has experienced in the last few thousand years, they are smaller than the big natural swings between ice ages and interglacial periods, which the earth and indeed human beings survived.
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My own work has shown that hurricanes are responding to warming sea surface temperatures faster than we originally expected, especially in the North Atlantic, where the total power output by tropical cyclones has nearly doubled since the 1970s. The 2005 hurricane season was the most active in the 150 years on record, corresponding to record warmth of the tropical Atlantic.
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the twin perils of flood and drought both increase substantially in a warming world.
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we should also be wary of our own collective ignorance of how the climate system works.
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we do not understand the sudden climate jumps revealed by the ice core record and are worried that similar jumps might be part of our future.
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it takes thousands of years for CO2 levels to return to normal once emissions cease.
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countries such as Russia and Canada might profit from a warmer climate.
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Climate research has been a victim of a disturbing phenomenon: the use of advanced marketing techniques to discredit scientific findings that may lead to consumer and regulatory behavior unfavorable to certain business interests.
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Most people, when it comes to their personal health, would never ignore the advice of 97 doctors in favor of three. But through the wondrous alchemy of marketing, it is possible to get some people to do just that in the realm of climate science
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As long as we continue to elect scientific illiterates such as James Inhofe, who believes global warming to be a hoax, we will be discouraged from engaging in intelligent debate at the policy level.
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The hockey-stick shape of the temperature curve over the past few thousand years has become something of an icon of anthropogenic climate change and has been strongly criticized from many quarters. But repeated reanalyses of the underlying proxy data have verified the basic shape of the temperature curve and show the last century of warming to be anomalously pronounced.
Iceland bets on oil to boost fragile economy | ReutersOSLO, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Iceland is opening its waters for exploration to energy firms, and involving the help of oil-rich Norway in the process, as it looks to make use of its energy resources and boost its fragile economy.
Sept 2012: Iceland's president weighs in on impact of rapidly disappearing Arctic ice | PRI.ORGGrimsson said he believes before the end of this decade, China will become "the leading clean energy country in the world."
"Unless Europe and the United States get their act together in the field of clean energy, the question before the end of this decade will be: when will Europe and when will the U.S. catch up with China," he added.
..."What happens to the ice in the arctic, in the Himalayas, and in Antarctica will have a profound effect on every nation, on every continent," Grimsson said. "And the melting of the ice in the last four years has been much more dramatic than anybody predicted ten years ago. And therefore, we need all to be gravely concerned about the effect and the impact of this for everybody on planet earth."
Al-Jazeera seen as using Al Gore to bolster network's legitimacy in United States | The Daily Caller[Middle East scholar Barry Rubin] said Al-Jazeera is a “radical media outlet run by people who are anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and anti-Western.”
“[I]t is an instrument of extremist revolutionary movements,” he added. “On a number of occasions it has lent itself to promote and be used by violent terrorist groups.”
Rubin said by lending his imprimatur to Al-Jazeera – and potentially personally reaping a sum of $100 million, according to reports — Gore is acting “disgracefully.”
“In former, sane, times, doing something like this would have finished Gore’s credibility forever,” Rubin said. “Needless to say, sanity has long since jumped out the window.”
Gore Takes $100 Million Of Big Oil From Anti-Semitic Al Jazeera - Investors.comMark it up as a three-fer in greedy hypocrisy for Gore. He gives anti-Semitic Islamists more influence in America, takes $100 million in cash from Big Oil (after making a lucrative living by claiming that it's destroying the planet), and gives those same greenhouse gasbags a foothold in the U.S. media.
Some Chevy dealers ceasing Volt sales due to costly toolsA recent report says that a few discontented dealers have stopped carrying the innovative sedan because General Motors is requiring a more significant investment in the near future, and the specialized costs (in excess of $5,000) aren't offset by the model's slow sales at those establishments.
The New Nostradamus of the North: New study: There will be less - not more - tropical cyclones in the futureIn spite of Sandy, the "new normal" is LESS, not more tropical storms:
A new study by Masato Sugi, Japan Agency for Marine Earth Science and Jun Yoshimura, Meteorological Research Institute of Japan, published in the Geophysical Letters (Vol 39, Issue 19), shows that the frequency of tropical storms has decreased since 1872 - and that this decrease will continue also in the future
Yes, in My Backyard: Why Richmond Should Value Its Oil Refinery — MasterResourceOil refineries transform oil, an essentially useless natural substance made largely of dead plants, into fuel and synthetic materials–into the fuel that drives a firetruck to your home, intro the hose that allows the firefighter to save your home, into the flame-retardant jacket that allows him to live to fight many more fires.
Unfortunately, our educational system does not teach the value of oil refineries.
Twitter / RichardTol: ‘Global warming is to blame’ ...‘Global warming is to blame’ for the lightning strike that killed Ian McKeever says veteran climber Pat Falvey
baggythecrust @RichardTol People used to blame the gods.
@RichardTol @baggythecrust They still do. The gods have changed names, that's all. Odin and Shiva are now called Climate Change.
A Match Made In Heaven? | Power LineIt is interesting that conservative Americans like Glenn Beck are anathema to the likes of Al Gore, whereas the rulers of Qatar, the world’s richest country, fit right in. Where, exactly, do Gore and Hyatt see ideological compatibility with al Jazeera? Do they think al Jazeera America will promote gay marriage? Or women’s rights? Or is it the fact that al Jazeera is owned by a monarchy that assures it will be “aligned with [Gore and Hyatt's] point of view?” Perhaps so.
Carbon compensation scheme may benefit companies already enjoying windfalls, say MPs - TelegraphA £250m Government scheme to help heavy industries manage the costs of green policies could “nonsensically” benefit companies that are already enjoying a “windfall” from one of the same policies, MPs have warned.
Twitter / RogerPielkeJr: Too much capital or not enough ...Too much capital or not enough disasters: Reinsurance supply and demand gap grows – Aon Benfield report
For your own good, someone else needs to decide whether you should buy a bottle of water!
Presumably selling similar bottles is just fine if some combination of artificial flavoring, sugar, and/or carbon dioxide is added. Cigarettes and hard liquor are also probably still available.Ban plastic water bottle sales? One U.S. town just did - The Globe and MailConcord, Mass., has banned the sale of single-serving plastic water bottles, the Boston Herald reports. The bylaw, posted on the Town of Concord’s website, states: “It shall be unlawful to sell non-sparkling, unflavored drinking water in single-serving polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles of 1 litre (34 ounces) or less in the Town of Concord on or after Jan. 1, 2013.”
Violators face up to a $50 (U.S.) fine, with Concord’s Health Division responsible for enforcing the ban.
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“It’s kind of dumb,” Concord resident Camille Galejs told local news organization WHDH. But how smart is it to pay through the nose for a commodity that’s practically free?
Twitter / CHedegaardEU [EU commissioner for Climate Action displays lots of cool, refreshing, illegal-to-sell-in-Concord bottled water on her Twitter page]
New paper finds another mechanism by which the Sun controls climateA paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters finds that short-term changes in solar activity over the 11 year solar cycle have a significant influence on the North Atlantic Oscillation [NAO] and Arctic Oscillation [AO]. According to the authors, "Variability in solar irradiance has been connected to changes in surface climate in the North Atlantic through both observational and climate modelling studies." Using new satellite data demonstrating that solar UV varies by a factor that is 4 to 6 times larger than typical previous estimates, the authors find a mechanism to explain the solar effect on these climate oscillations via increased production of ozone in the atmosphere. The authors conclude that these large changes in solar UV can have amplified effects on regional climate and may be useful for predicting seasonal and long term climate change in Europe.
New Year snow in South Canterbury, mid-summer New ZealandI am sure it is not unknown – Cold snap brings snow to Sth Canterbury.
Bitter People Who Cling To Fear Of Guns And Global Warming Religion | Real ScienceObama had it backwards (as always.) The bitter people are the ones who worship the false religion of global warming, and fear guns. The rest of us are having a great time.
Turn Off Your Electricity And Gas And Stop Driving Your Car, Stupid | Real ScienceAmerica is in a deep freeze and fossil fuels are keeping millions of people alive. McKitten is all excited at the idea of cutting off everybody else from this essential commodity.
Bill should travel on wind powered aircraft and tweet on a wood-burning Internet.
Kyoto Has Saved The World! « sunshine hoursLets connect the dots. Warming stopped in 1997. Kyoto was adopted in 1997. CO2 is up 58%. Signing the Kyoto has stopped global warming. More CO2 is irrelevant. The very act of creating a treaty stopped the warming.
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