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Europe’s New Anti-Green Majority Scores Huge Victory

Posted: 17 Apr 2013 04:20 PM PDT

The European Union’s climate change policy is on the brink of collapse today after MEPs torpedoed Europe’s flagship CO2 emissions trading scheme by voting against a measure to support the price of carbon permits. The price of carbon crashed up to 45 per cent to a record-low €2.63 a metric ton, after the European Parliament rejected a proposal to change the EU emissions-trading laws to delay the sale of 900m CO2 permits on the world’s biggest carbon markets. --Bruno Waterfields, The Daily Telegraph, 16 April 2013

Given the manifest reluctance of the world’s big emitters to accept any legally binding carbon targets and in face of our deepening economic crisis, Europe should undertake a comprehensive review of its economically damaging carbon targets and — in the absence of an international agreement — should consider the suspension of all unilateral climate policies that threaten Europe’s economic recovery. –Benny Peiser, National Post,  25 November 2011

"The decision means the end of a European approach to climate policy." --Felix Matthes, Spiegel Online, 17 April 2013

Interesting article, repeating and elaborating the general theme I've pursued on this blog since the beginning.  The game of lies and deception about global warming, now called "climate change" is not over.  The powers that be are determined to use "climate change" to increase their power and control over people and our economy.  Scientific "debate" or study is simply a cover, a distraction.  They use scare tactics with current extreme and local weather events as examples to stimulate the passage of legislation serving their purpose.....all in the name of necessity, or the "common good".  The same is done by using the horrible, random, insane murder and violence involving guns being  to justify increased gun control.  The common word and goal here is CONTROL.  That is what this is  ultimately all about.

A relevant quote for thought:

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human
freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of
slaves." 
William Pitt (1759-1806)


I post this for the record, mine, yours or whoever. 
Peter

See the original articel and graphics here:

http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-gold-silver-global-warming-and-other-superstitions.aspx?article=4253869694G10020&redirect=false&contributor=Bob+Hoye

 

	Global Warming and Other Superstitions
	by Bob Hoye - Institutional Advisors Published : February 20th, 2013
	Update: February 13, 2013 Each of the three great experiments in authoritarian government in the senior economy included some promotional inspiration. As Rome was corrupted from a republic to a police state the "Genius of the Emperor" provided compelling guidance. In the Sixteenth Century "Papal Infallibility" provided the front for a venal and corrupt bureaucracy. The current financial experiment started around 1900 and essential dogma has included the omniscience and omnipotence of central bankers.   The wonders of extremely intrusive government under the label of Communism was rejected by an always dissatisfied and, in 1989, suddenly critical public. The fall of the Berlin Wall was the symbol. Just as suddenly, full-on socialism could not be sold to the public by control freaks. "The Freeman" in the early 1990s had an article that named the names that turned to environmentalism as a possibly more successful way to impose control. The most successful and at the same time the most dangerous within this political movement has been "Anthropogenic Global Warming" (AGW). Then, the promoters discovered that the climate has been warming for some 12,000 years and the pitch was morphed to "Climate Change". The labels also included "Greenhouse Effect" and no matter what the weather event the "cause" has been the evils of free-market economies. Research behind the effort was quite limited - the assumption has been that there has been only one influence upon the climate and that is atmospheric carbon dioxide. This was an IPCC selection from all of the influences upon climate. The main ones are solar energy, which is variable, and the amount received at the Earth's surface, which also varies. Both variations are periodic - as are consequent warming phases and cooling phases.   On the nearer-term, Solar Cycle 23-24 has been the weakest since 1913. Solar physicists, Livingston and Penn, have been working on the possibility of diminishing solar output since the mid-1990s. A link to the 2008 review of their updated paper follows. Subject: Livingston and Penn paper: "Sunspots may vanish by 2015″. | Watts Up With That? In early January, the UK Met Office quietly released their study that temperatures have not increased since 1998   The chart below clearly shows the "Maunder Minimum" and the "Modern Maximum", which is the period of unusually high output that prevailed from the 1940s to the 1990s. Prof. Solanki at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich states that this is the sun's brightest period in a thousand years. Temperatures have been at the highest in a thousand years, but not as high as with the Medieval Maximum. The latest warming trend seems to have stalled out, naturally, almost 15 years ago. The following chart (1979 to date) plots temperature history (blue line) trending sideways. CO2 (green line) is still going up. If the Left's theories about CO2 were valid the rise in global temperature would be getting steeper. It isn't. As in "paper covers rock", solar energy trumps CO2. Note CO2's remarkably regular seasonal variation. This is explained as due to seasonal variation from plant life (land and sea) changing from emitting CO2, to absorbing CO2. Global commercial and industrial activity does not show the equivalent variation. Larger Image Beginning with the 1990s low, the next chart covers Cycles 23-24 when the high count was 170 sunspots with the peak in 2000. So far the high has been slightly less than 100 in 2011. This compares to the high of 254 in 1957. Solar activity has been diminishing since and recently solar physicists have provided the research that explained and anticipated the decline to the lowest minimum since 1913. The current cycle has been scheduled to reach its best this year (one review expects this leg up to peak at 84 in August) and then turn down. Livingston and Penn called for a significant decline in solar activity and the numbers are confirming it. Within a couple of years it could be concluded that the Modern Maximum is over. That the trend could continue to another minimum that would be as severe as the Maunder Minimum is uncertain. The main thing is that IPCC was run by a political caste that selected theories about climate disaster and when necessary data were cooked to "prove" otherwise unsupportable notions. The goal was to create hysteria that could only be remedied through massive increases in taxation and intrusion upon private life. The advance of science has always depended upon skepticism, sound data and logic. This authoritarian age has created some interesting departures. Throughout mankind's history we have thrived during climate warming and suffered during extensive cooling. The IPCC insists that for the first time in history warming is harmful. Oh well, it goes with the ideology - the Berlin Wall was the first wall ever built to keep the people in rather than the bad guys out. The last time the authoritarians made it dangerous to hold scientific theories that denied the politically correct ones was at the end of the last great experiment in intrusion. In the early 1600s Galileo was condemned for denying that the solar system rotated around the Earth. A couple of pieces we published in 2009 concluded that the mania about "AGW", or "Climate Change" was peaking. These are attached.   Other Superstitions Ambitious authoritarians promoted that only one thing was influencing climate change and that is the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. That it makes up only 0.038% of the gases surrounding our planet does not matter. Nor does the long history whereby the amount of CO2 lags temperature change by some 400 to 800 years. Of course, ambitious governments using one focus for control have not been limited to climate hysteria. Beginning in the early 1900s financial adventurers touted that a US central bank would end financial panics and disguised as the Federal Reserve System it was imposed. Original and subsequent promoters seem to have overlooked that the tout behind the formation of the Bank of England in 1694 was that it would "infallibly" lower interest rates. Naturally, to prevent financial disasters. There have been many since - usually two or three big ones per century. Sometimes severe enough for the establishment to distress itself about the inadequacies of the prevailing banking system. The other part of the pattern is that the same establishment during a financial mania boasts the current government financial agency will prevent things from going wrong. In the 1873 Bubble enthusiasms were assured because the US did not have a central bank and the Treasury System was proof against contraction. At the crest of the 1929 Bubble enthusiasms were supported by the tout that the old and dreadful Treasury System was gone and replaced by a "scientific" Federal Reserve System. The Fed was the first of over-rated concepts that were selected to serve authoritarian ambition.. The next was the grand idea that a central agency can and should "manage" a "national" economy. Keynesian theories were selected because they enabled a massive expansion of government, which extended its power through mainly one thing - the amount of money in circulation. Warm-mongers have been obsessed about atmospheric CO2 and policymakers have been obsessed about M1, M2, etc. Financial history has a long record of dynamic economic expansions turning into eras of magnificent asset inflations - including financial assets. After the huge expansion of credit a long post-bubble contraction has followed. The feature of which has been severe recessions and weak recoveries. Essentially on a global scale, when policymakers have discovered that there is no such thing as a "national" economy. The financial mania that climaxed in 2007 virtually replicated all of the great bubbles since the first one in 1720. Ours was number six and 1929 was number five. And the record is that the senior central bank has never been able to keep a bubble going and has never prevented the lengthy post-bubble contractions. Wrap The next few years are going to be very interesting. Solar activity and its influence upon the warming trend that began out of the exceptionally cold winters of the late 1600s is ending. The Maunder Minimum became the Modern Maximum and the latter is ending. This would be supported by the sunspot count resuming its downtrend in the fall. The establishment has been boasting that by manipulation of only one gas society can be saved from a self-inflicted climate disaster. In 2007 the establishment boasted that through manipulation of interest rates a financial calamity was impossible. They had a "Dream Team" of economists. Then the same establishment admitted that it was the worst recession since the last Great Depression. Then they boasted that without their "stimulus" the 2008 Panic would not have ended. Now they admit that this has been the weakest recovery since the 1930s. This is the basic pattern of a post-bubble contraction. The first business expansion out of the Crash is becoming mature and any weakening will be dangerous to an economy still over loaded with debt. It should be understood that great financial manias and their consequent contractions have been regular events, as has been an unusually active sun and its recent decline. Mother Nature will continue to prevail. Implacable market forces will insist that debt be contracted and solar physics has arranged for a significant decrease in solar output. Fads in "Science" "During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperatures have fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the past decade. Judging from the record of past interglacial ages, the present time of higher temperatures should be drawing to an end...leading into the next ice age." - National Academy of Science (NAS), 1974 - as quoted in Forbes, December 5, 2009 "The overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas), are responsible for most of the climate change currently being observed." - National Academy of Science, Website, February 2012

Follow The Money To Solar And Wind Energy......NO MORE PLEASE

As was totally predictable, the Billions of taxpayer dollars spent on subsidies to the solar and wind energy industries has been a bust, a failure, a waste.  With America in such debt, isn't it time to pull the plug on these losers?  Will anyone be held accountable for such a criminal waste?  And voters elected the same Administration responsible for this outrage to four more years?  Amazing stupidity.
Peter

Is Colorado's "new energy economy" still viable in light of recent setbacks in the industry? No By William Yeatman The Denver Post Posted: DenverPost.com It's been a rough stretch for Colorado's "new energy economy." Over the last few months, the Centennial State's green energy industry, which the new energy economy was supposed to kick start, has been beset by a series of setbacks. Loveland-based Abound Solar went bankrupt; Vestas Wind Systems laid off almost 200 workers at its Windsor blade plant; and General Electric pulled the plug on a planned solar manufacturing plant in Aurora.   The troubles of renewable energy companies are not unique to Colorado; they extend nationwide. U.S. taxpayers ponied up $60 billion for green energy "investments" as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the stimulus bill. The results are only coming in only now, and they are not good. The list of "stimulosers" — of which Solyndra is only the most famous example — is long and growing. It includes Beacon Power, Evergreen Solar, Amonix, A123 Systems, Nevada Geothermal Power, and many others.   These green industries are in trouble for a simple reason. They are running out of subsidies. The 2009 stimulus has been spent and the wind production tax credit is set to expire in December. Without a steady influx of taxpayer help, renewable energy sources like wind and solar power cannot compete, due to their high capital costs and intermittent supply.   How dependent on government are these industries? The American Wind Energy Association estimates that almost half of the entire wind power workforce — almost 37,000 people — would lose their jobs if Congress were to allow a single tax subsidy to expire. Such sudden and severe contractions are symptomatic of industries whose business plan is predicated on political favoritism. When the political winds change and the subsidies on which these companies depend are cut, the bottom falls out from under them.   On the demand side, green energy entails higher rates for consumers. In 2011, for example, a New Energy Economy policy known as the Solar*Rewards program accounted for almost 4 percent of sales, despite generating a scant half a percent of Xcel Energy's system-wide power. That's a bad deal for Coloradans. Unfortunately, the burden on Xcel ratepayers will only increase with the expiration of federal subsidies, which have effectively discounted Colorado's policies.   Somewhat paradoxically, the new energy economy's biggest expense likely will pertain to fossil fuels. The 2010 Clean Air Clean Jobs Act mandated that Xcel Energy generate from natural gas almost 1,000 megawatts of base load supply that it now gets from coal. At current prices, natural gas is historically cheap, but it is still more than twice as expensive as coal, according to Xcel Energy's regulatory filings.   And let's not forget that the price of natural gas reached historical highs only four summers ago. In fact, the high cost and volatility of the natural gas market relative to coal was the primary reason that the Colorado utilities have relied on the latter to meet the preponderance of the state's energy needs. A spike in the price of gas after the current supply contracts expire would cost Xcel Energy ratepayers dearly.   The worst aspect of the new energy economy program is its regressive nature. Utility bills represent a larger portion of poor households' budgets, so the new energy economy's costs are shouldered disproportionately by those who can least afford them.   Before the new energy economy program came along, Colorado utilities' decisions on how to provide power to consumers were guided by considerations on how to do so most efficiently at the least cost. Now, many of those decisions are based on political considerations, such as the need to prop up renewable energy, imposed by politicians. As a result, Colorado ratepayers can expect to pay for unsustainable subsidies, endure lower power supply reliability, and suffer unexpected consequences — all in the name of green ideology.   William Yeatman is assistant director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank in Washington, D.C.

Will The Debate On Global Warming/Climate Change Ever Be Over?

So many people have a vested interest in maintaining the big public scare about global warming and/or climate change, the debate will go on forever.  Many people's careers, in fact entire university science departments depend upon government funding for continual, "ad infinitum" research on climate.  With that understood, in order to justify this spending to the tax-paying public, these "researchers" absolutely must keep up with the scare tactics.  They must just love heat waves, floods, tornados, hurricanes, blizzards, and all the other usual weather phenomena.  The more destructive and headline-making these things are, the better.  It is all rather shameless, and in my opinion, much of it is despicable.
Peter


Announcement

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee this week held its first hearing on climate science since 2009. Politico incorrectly claimed that no star witnesses testified. In fact, University of Alabama-Huntsville Professor John Christy, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, provided outstanding testimony. Professor Christy’s written testimony is available here, and video of his opening statement is available here.

Among the alarmist witnesses, Stanford Professor Chris Field’s testimony was convincingly refuted in this response by University of Colorado Professor Roger Pielke, Jr.

Landsat Joins Google Earth

This is fabulous and very much worth following.
Peter


Google’s Landsat Video of EarthJuly 25, 2012 | Earth Engine
Google has prepared a video that describes the Landsat program and includes some spectacular views of earth. Now, Google Earth Engine allows scientists, researchers and the public to easily view and analyze this treasure trove of planetary data.

Biofuels Lead To Food Crisis

This is unfortunately so predictable.  It has been said here by me, and others all along, that using food crops to make fuel is insanity.  What is worse is it being done in the name of "stopping global warming" (now they call it climate change) by using less of those evil fossil fuels (oil, gas, and coal).  And these people call this being "green".....and call themselves "Progressives".  They're not progressive in any way.  To put it politely, they are regressive.  They would have us living in the stone age, or using horses and buggies, if that.

It is becoming painfully clear that solar power and wind power and geothermal energy can not meet the demand either.  Thank goodness we've discovered what can be done with hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and horizontal drilling to increase the production of oil and gas, the only fuels that can meet the world's demand.  See here for more information on oil and gas: http://geopetesview.blogspot.com/
Peter

The Biofuels Disaster: ‘Green’ Politicians Cause Another Food Crisis

Written by Dr. Benny Peiser, GWPF | July 20 2012

A United Nations expert has condemned the growing use of crops to produce biofuels as a replacement for petrol as a crime against humanity. The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said he feared biofuels would bring more hunger. The growth in the production of biofuels has helped to push the price of some crops to record levels. It was, he said, a crime against humanity to divert arable land to the production of crops which are then burned for fuel. --Grant Ferrett, BBC News, 27 October 2007
The world is running short of corn. That is the message being delivered by the market, where on Thursday prices pushed above $8 a bushel for the first time. With no obvious abundance of international suppliers to make up for the drought-ravaged US corn crop and stocks close to record lows, traders and analysts believe demand must be pegged back.The biggest potential for a reduction in corn demand comes from the ethanol industry, which is using roughly 5bn bushels of corn, or nearly 40 per cent of the US corn crop, each year to make fuel for cars and animal feed. -- Financial Times, 19 July 2012

read the remainder of the article here:

Doomsday Environmental Fearmongers Will Not Go Away

These "scientists" and the United Nations make a living from instilling fear in people, coercing them to pay higher taxes giving them more control.  The late, lamented Michael Crichton was "spot on" with his book "State of Fear".  Nature will pretty much take its course, no matter what us "insignificant" humans do.  Giving money to these self-serving "scientists" and the United Nations is a total waste.

Do a search for Michael Crichton on this blog for much more information on his expose' of environmental fear tactics.

Peter

Environmental collapse now a serious threat: scientists

 

• People walk together in a city …
• Climate change, population growth …
• The Khumbu Glacier at Everest-Khumbu

Climate change, population growth and environmental destruction could cause a collapse of the ecosystem just a few generations from now, scientists warned on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The paper by 22 top researchers said a "tipping point" by which the biosphere goes into swift and irreversible change, with potentially cataclysmic impacts for humans, could occur as early as this century.

The warning contrasts with a mainstream view among scientists that environmental collapse would be gradual and take centuries.

The study appears ahead of the June 20-22 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, the 20-year followup to the Earth Summit that set down priorities for protecting the environment.

The Nature paper, written by biologists, ecologists, geologists and palaeontologists from three continents, compared the biological impact of past episodes of global change with what is happening today.

The factors in today's equation include a world population that is set to rise from seven billion to around 9.3 billion by mid-century and global warming that will outstrip the UN target of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

The team determined that once 50-90 percent of small-scale ecosystems become altered, the entire eco-web tips over into a new state, characterised especially by species extinctions.

Once the shift happens, it cannot be reversed.

To support today's population, about 43 percent of Earth's ice-free land surface is being used for farming or habitation, according to the study.

On current trends, the 50 percent mark will be reached by 2025, a point the scientists said is worryingly close to the tipping point.

If that happened, collapse would entail a shocking disruption for the world's food supply, with bread-basket regions curtailed in their ability to grow corn, wheat, rice, fodder and other essential crops.

"It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point," said lead author Anthony Barnosky, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California in Berkeley.

"The data suggests that there will be a reduction in biodiversity and severe impacts on much of what we depend on to sustain our quality of life, including, for example, fisheries, agriculture, forest products and clean water. This could happen within just a few generations."

The authors stressed it was unclear when this feared tipover would happen, given blanks in knowledge about the phenomenon.

And they said there were plenty of solutions -- such as ending unsustainable patterns of growth and resource waste -- that mean it is not inevitable.

"In a nutshell, humans have not done anything really important to stave off the worst because the social structures for doing something just aren't there," said Arne Mooers, a professor of biodiversity at Simon Fraser University in Canada's British Columbia.

"My colleagues who study climate-induced changes through the Earth's history are more than pretty worried," he said in a press release. "In fact, some are terrified."  (Yes, they're terrified they're going to lose their funding and government pensions.)

Past shifts examined in the study included the end of the last Ice Age, between 14,000 and 11,000 years ago, and five species mass extinctions which occurred around 443 million, 359 million, 251 million, 200 million and 65 million years ago.

Earth today is vulnerable to fast change because of the growing connectedness between ecosystems, voracious use of resources and an unprecedented surge in greenhouse gases, the authors concluded.

In a report on Wednesday issued ahead of the "Rio+20" summit, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) warned that burgeoning populations and unsustainable patterns of growth were driving Earth towards "unprecedented" eco-damage.