High School Students Sue Federal Government Over Global Warming… Awww, how cute, they’re like little Al Gores. Via The Atlantic: Alec Loorz turns 18 at the end of this month. While finishing high school and playing Ultimate Frisbee on weekends, he’s also suing the federal government in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. The Ventura, California, teen and four other juvenile plaintiffs want government officials to do more to prevent the risks of climate change — the dangerous storms, heat waves, rising sea levels, and food-supply disruptions that scientists warn will threaten their generation absent a major turnabout in global energy policy. Specifically, the students are demanding that the U.S. government start reducing national emissions of carbon dioxide by at least six percent per year beginning in 2013. [...] The plaintiffs contend that they have standing to sue under the “public trust doctrine,” a legal theory that in past years has helped protect waterways and wildlife. It’s the reason, for example, that some state government agencies issue licenses to catch fish or shoot deer, particularly when populations are declining. The doctrine has never before been applied to the atmosphere, and it’s a trickier prospect, not least because the sources of atmospheric pollution are so diffuse and wide-ranging, extending to other countries whose actions the United States may not be able to influence.
Someone tell these punk treehuggers that China emits more carbon than the US and together India, China and Europe emit more than twice the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions And of course every time we reduce our "dependence on oil" it becomes a little cheaper on the world market and the "dirtier" countries can afford more. If these green idiots knew anything about macroeconimics they'd realize that they're pissing up a rope.
Since Obama Took Office Federal Government Has Spent Nearly $70 Billion On “Climate Change Activities”… No wonder we’re broke. Via Daily Caller: The Congressional Research Service estimates that since 2008 the federal government has spent nearly $70 billion on “climate change activities.” Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe presented the new CRS report on the Senate Floor Thursday to make the point that the Obama administration has been focused on “green” defense projects to the detriment of the military. The report revealed that from fiscal years 2008 through 2012 the federal government spent $68.4 billion to combat climate change. The Department of Defense also spent $4 billion of its budget, the report adds, on climate change and energy efficiency activities in that same time period. Inhofe, the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued that the expenditures are foolish at a time when the military is facing “devastating cuts.”
Spain Eliminates Green Energy Subsidies – Green Energy Industry Promptly Exits Spain Memo to Barack Obama: After not yet having learned any lessons from your own large and still growing list of green energy failures and scandals, it you want to know what happens when top-down policymaking takes taxpayer dollars to subsidize green energy companies that can’t survive in the free market, just look to what’s happened in Spain. On the other hand, perhaps it’s true that you really do want electricity to “necessarily skyrocket.” After all, those were, indeed, your exact words. :roll:
UN Climate Change Panel To Address “Gender Inequality, Marginalized Populations And Traditional Knowledge”… I guess they’re broadening their horizons as the dire global warming predictions fall by the wayside. The IPCC: Going Where No Scientist Should Go — NFC The upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report will contain a chapter titled Human Security. According to an official outline, this will examine the following topics: •Social and economic activities, including employment •Education •Inequalities, gender, and marginalized populations •Culture, values, and society •Indigenous peoples •Local communities •Local and traditional knowledge •Migration and population displacement •Conflict •Community resilience •[see page 4 here] We’re told that the IPCC is a scientific organization and that its job is to “provide rigorous and balanced scientific information to decision makers.” But what can science possibly tell us about Culture, values and society? Or about Local communities? Why is the IPCC going anywhere near subjects such as these?
Electric Car Company Given $200 Million Loan By Obama Admin Says It May Drop Plans To Build Its Cars In America… Another brilliant investment. Via ABC News: The luxury carmaker Fisker Automotive continues to signal it could ditch plans to build its next generation hybrid electric vehicle in the United States, despite the nearly $200 million in Obama administration loan money it has already received. Fisker received federal funds in part to help purchase a shuttered General Motors plant in Delaware, where it predicted it would one day employ 2,000 auto workers to assemble the clean-burning gas-electric family car, known as the Atlantic. But company executives began hinting in February that it would reconsider that plan and look for a cheaper place to build the car after the Department of Energy froze the $529 million green-energy loan the company had received, and had been drawing on since 2010. Fisker used the first $169 million in taxpayer funds to bring to market the Karma, a flashy $100,000 hybrid sports sedan that it assembles in Finland. After a series of delays and stumbles, the company announced it had sold its first 1,000 Karmas, bringing in $100 million in revenues so far this year. The sleek, high-end model has been well received by critics, and the company reported this week it has started to sell in Europe, and could soon be on sale in the Middle East.
Hillary Clinton Visits Norway To View “Sobering” Effects Of Global Warming … Encounters Record Cold Temperatures… What she actually encountered: Record cold and a country getting covered with snow in June. (Breitbart) — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took a first hand look Saturday at the way a warming climate is changing the Arctic, opening a once frozen region to competition for vast oil reserves. Experts here estimate the value of the Arctic’s untapped oil alone — not including natural gas and minerals — at $900 trillion, making it a huge prize for the five countries that surround the Arctic if they can reach it. And with climate warming opening up some 46,000 square kilometres (18,000 square miles) a year that had once been bound in ice, the region is expected to burst open, not just with oil exploration but with East-West trade along a more accessible northern route. Returning from a tour of the Arctic coastline aboard a Norwegian research trawler with scientists and government officials, Clinton told reporters that she learned “many of the predictions about warming in the Arctic are being surpassed by the actual data.” “That was not necessarily surprising but sobering,” she said.
Solar Company Hires Former Top Biden Staffer, Receives $1.6 Billion Loan From Obama Admin… Nothing to see here folks, move along. Via Heritage: Internal emails show that BrightSource Energy, which received the largest federal loan for a solar energy project under President Obama’s stimulus package, leveraged its considerable political connections with top Democratic policymakers to secure its $1.6 billion in taxpayer backing. BrightSource energy faced a “do-or-die moment,” according to a report in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, as the Energy Department weighed a federal loan for its massive Ivanpah solar farm in the California Mojave Desert. To spur the administration to approve the loan, BrightSource beefed up its lobbying presence, most notably by hiring Bernie Toon, former chief of staff for then-Senator Joe Biden, to lobby on its behalf. Toon was paid $40,000 for his efforts, according to disclosure forms.
Yes Al Gore, polar bears can swim. Here's a polar bear swimming around with a huge rock; which it uses to break the window at the zoo... <object><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mU40A1nVBtI?version=3&feature=player_detailpage"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/mU40A1nVBtI?version=3&feature=player_detailpage" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="360"></object>
U.N. Funneling Millions of Dollars Worth of Carbon Credits To Iran, North Korea, Sudan… Typical U.N. fiasco. Via Washington Free Beacon: The U.N. is funneling millions of dollars worth of tradable carbon credits to corrupt nations worldwide, including Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Uzbekistan in an attempt to encourage clean energy projects in the developing world. The U.N. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is defined in Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol. Western European countries fund energy projects in the developing world in order to obtain Certified Emission Reduction credits (CERs), tradable credits that enable Europeans to count foreign emission reductions towards their own domestic emission reduction targets. “The CDM started from a page and a half in the Kyoto Protocol,” said David Abbass, a spokesperson for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. “In the beginning they thought there would be maybe 600 projects, but now there are over 4,000 projects.” Iran, Uzbekistan, Sudan, and North Korea are among the more than 70 countries currently hosting CDM projects. Iran, with 16 separate CDM projects, brings in around 4.8 million CERs, worth about $26 million, every year, despite numerous U.N. sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Uzbekistan, dominated for the last two decades by the autocratic Islam Karimov, hosts 20 different CDM projects, with a combined annual value of over 7.5 million CERs, or roughly $40 million. Sudan, whose president Omar Hassan al-Bashir came to power via military coup over 20 years ago and is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Darfur, is on the receiving end of two different CDM projects, with a combined annual value of over 180,000 CERs, or almost $1 million. North Korea is hosting seven hydroelectric dams, which may generate over $1 million in CERs annually.
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EPA blasted for requiring oil refiners to add type of fuel that's merely hypothetical By Jim Angle Published June 21, 2012 FoxNews.com Federal regulations can be maddening, but none more so than a current one that demands oil refiners use millions of gallons of a substance, cellulosic ethanol, that does not exist. "As ludicrous as that sounds, it's fact," says Charles Drevna, who represents refiners. "If it weren't so frustrating and infuriating, it would be comical." And Tom Pyle of the Institute of Energy Research says, "the cellulosic biofuel program is the embodiment of government gone wild." Refiners are at their wit's end because the government set out requirements to blend cellulosic ethanol back in 2005, assuming that someone would make it. Seven years later, no one has. "None, not one drop of cellulosic ethanol has been produced commercially. It's a phantom fuel," says Pyle. "It doesn't exist in the market place." And Charles Drevna adds, "forcing us to use a product that doesn't exist, they might as well tell us to use unicorns." And yet, they still have to pay what amounts to fines: "Why would they ask them to blend any at all if it doesn't exist?" Pyle said. "Because they know that they can squeeze some extra dollars out of them." The EPA does have discretion to lower the annual requirement. And one supporter explains, that's what the agency is saying. "We are going to reduce your blending obligation by 98 percent because we feel that that’s the right thing to do," says Brooke Coleman, the executive director of the Advanced Ethanol Council of the Renewable Fuels Association. "We are going to maintain your blending obligation on the gallons that we think are going to emerge." The EPA, which would not speak on camera, is still hoping production of cellulosic ethanol will emerge. A study by the Congressional Research Service, however, says the government "projects that cellulosic bio fuels are not expected to be commercially available on a large scale until at least 2015." Drevna of the refiners association says they had no other choice left since EPA insisted they still had to blend some of the nonexistent cellulosic ethanol. "We've had to go to the courts and litigate this thing is because they just turned a blind eye to us," Drevna said. So the refiners are now suing the EPA, in part because the mandate gets larger and larger-- 500 million gallons this year, 3 billion in 2015 and 16 billion in 2022. And still, not a gallon of cellulosic ethanol in sight.
UN Climate Change Document Outlining Agenda Calls For Economic “Contraction” In Major Countries… Brilliant! Let’s tank the world economy to stop a non-existent threat. Via Washington Examiner: United Nations officials refuse to allow observers to read the draft agenda for the Rio+20 conference on climate change, after an earlier draft called for the economic “contraction” in major countries. “It seems the UN has taken the final pre-conference draft and classified it!” Lord Monckton, a climate skeptic with the Center for a Constructive Tomorrow reported in an email. “We were promised transparency. This is unacceptable.” A proposal within an earlier draft agenda for the conference called for the “contraction and convergence for over- and under-consumers of natural resources,” CFACT noted. Given President Obama’s oft-repeated statistic that the United States produces 2 percent of the world’s oil but uses 20 percent, this proposal would affect the American economy significantly. “We aspire to nothing less than a global movement for generational change,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said earlier this year.
Another Global Warming Propaganda Claim Goes Poof: Antarctic Ice Shelves Not Melting After All… Al Gore’s bank account hardest hit. Via The Register: Twenty-year-old models which have suggested serious ice loss in the eastern Antarctic have been compared with reality for the first time – and found to be wrong, so much so that it now appears that no ice is being lost at all. “Previous ocean models . . . have predicted temperatures and melt rates that are too high, suggesting a significant mass loss in this region that is actually not taking place,” says Tore Hattermann of the Norwegian Polar Institute, member of a team which has obtained two years’ worth of direct measurements below the massive Fimbul Ice Shelf in eastern Antarctica — the first ever to be taken. According to a statement from the American Geophysical Union, announcing the new research: It turns out that past studies, which were based on computer models without any direct data for comparison or guidance, overestimate the water temperatures and extent of melting beneath the Fimbul Ice Shelf. This has led to the misconception, Hattermann said, that the ice shelf is losing mass at a faster rate than it is gaining mass, leading to an overall loss of mass. The team’s results show that water temperatures are far lower than computer models predicted. . . Hatterman and his colleagues, using 12 tons of hot-water drilling equipment, bored three holes more than 200m deep through the Fimbul Shelf, which spans an area roughly twice the size of New Jersey. The location of each hole was cunningly chosen so that the various pathways by which water moves beneath the ice shelf could be observed, and instruments were lowered down.
Flashback: Obama Touts $400 Million Taxpayer Loan To Solar Company That Declared Bankruptcy Yesterday… <iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/R86VqQOtTLY?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0"></iframe> During his weekly address in July 2010, Obama boasts of Abound Solar which is now bankrupt (July 3, 2010).
The Washington Post: Global Warming Behind Colorado Wildfires Actually, a lightning strike started the High Park fire (same with the Boulder fire, I believe), and Waldo Canyon is manmade, perhaps arson. Look below the fold for a historical perspective on Colorado wildfires. (The Washington Post) — No one predicted fires like the current ones, but years ago climate scientists warned state and federal officials that they could start seeing early springs, more hot and dry weather, and frequent and perhaps severe droughts, Doesken said. The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder was among the first to sound an alarm. Climate scientists there saw temperatures warming nationwide. Rain cycles changed from mild and prolonged to hard and short. During the longer dry spells, land was susceptible to burns, said Bob Henson, meteorologist and science writer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. Colorado is in the middle of “a terrible dry period,” Henson said. The snowpack statewide was less than 3 percent of the normal level on June 1.about the time the fires started. With a warming climate, authorities are going to need to be more active in managing forests to limit wildfire damage, scientists say. . . . “I think you’re going to have to get in there . . . and remove trees,” said Allison, department director for extension animal sciences and natural resources at New Mexico State University. “There are millions of acres that look a lot like what’s being burned right now.” Clearing trees is important because fires like to climb. A low-intensity burn that starts in grass will work its way up small trees. Fires burn with higher intensity in the canopy, where they are harder to manage, Allison said.
Global-warming ice sculpture protest canceled in embarrassment for green group the Daily Caller In the sweltering, triple-digit Washington, D.C. heat, the climate change group 350.org planned to mock global warming skeptics on Capitol Hill Saturday morning by melting an ice sculpture shaped into the word “Hoax?” Early Saturday, however, group founder and “Fight Global Warming Now” author Bill McKibben sent a cancellation notice to participants, claiming he was calling off the stunt out of sensitivity to those suffering in the heat wave — especially people in West Virginia. “I think I screwed up,” McKibben began, explaining that while melting a statue was a good way to draw attention to global warming, it could also have offended those suffering in tough times. “The idea was simple enough: if this epic heatwave gripping the nation has one small silver lining, it’s that its reminding people that global warming is very very real,” he wrote. “And the response was strong — we raised the $5000 it would have taken to pull off the event, and far more than that for relief efforts.” “But we also heard from old friends, especially in nearby West Virginia, who asked us not to do it. The sight of ice melting while they sweltered would be too hard to take; their region, they pointed out, is as hard hit as any in the country by the heat wave, and it would make people feel like their plight wasn’t being taken seriously.” Others are not so sure McKibben’s explanation holds water. Former meteorologist and climate change skeptic Anthony Watts pointed out that the stunt would have backfired, given the slow rate at which the ice was likely to melt.
Planet Has Been Cooling for 2,000 Years Moonbattery The warm summer is just what hoaxers needed to revive the flagging global warming swindle. But science is still not on their side: A study suggests the Britain of 2,000 years ago experienced a lengthy period of hotter summers than today. German researchers used data from tree rings — a key indicator of past climate — to claim the world has been on a ‘long-term cooling trend’ for two millennia until the global warming of the twentieth century. This cooling was punctuated by a couple of warm spells. These are the Medieval Warm Period, which is well known, but also a period during the toga-wearing Roman times when temperatures were apparently 1 deg C warmer than now. They say the very warm period during the years 21 to 50AD has been underestimated by climate scientists. Lead author Professor Dr Jan Esper of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz said: ‘We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low. ‘This figure we calculated may not seem particularly significant, however it is not negligible when compared to global warming, which up to now has been less than 1 deg C.’