[h=1]Barack Obama interviews Sir David Attenborough[/h][h=2]US president interviews world renowned British naturalist about climate change[/h]
Barack Obama talking to Sir David Attenborough Photo: White House / BBC
President Barack Obama has met Sir David Attenborough in a rare encounter for a one-off television programme in which they discuss climate change and the challenges facing future generations.
The US president says he grew up watching Sir David’s programmes. “I’ve been a huge admirer of your work for a very long time ... you’ve been a great educator as well as a great naturalist,” he says.
Mr Obama is usually the one taking questions, but in the BBC programme that will be aired on Sunday night, he asks the beloved 89-year-old broadcaster: “What are the prospects for this blue marble that we live on?”
Sir David talks about the importance of harnessing renewable energy sources, but then puts the president on the spot, asking him why he has not put as much effort into tackling climate change as previous presidents did to putting a man on the moon.
Mr Obama, who has made tackling climate change one of the major issues of his presidency, answered: “We’re not moving as fast as we need to and part of what I know from watching your programmes, and all the great work you’ve done, is that these ecosystems are all interconnected.
“If just one country is doing the right thing but other countries are not, then we’re not going to solve the problem, we’re going to have to have a global solution to this.
“What we’re seeing are global trends that depends on the entire world working together, and sadly we haven’t made as much progress as we need to on climate change.”
The interview was filmed in May on Sir David’s birthday. He said afterwards he was left “astonished” that his environmental expertise had been called upon – by the President of the United States.
"We sat and talked for half an hour," he said. “He wanted to make it clear that he was not a philistine in this matter. He is on the side of the natural world and that's what he wanted to be clear. And that's against some very powerful voices that are in the US which are not in favour of the natural world.”
Sir David has been making television documentaries for 60 years. The BBC has called him "the godfather of natural history TV."
Mr Obama's administration is finalising rules to curb carbon emissions from power plants. He has pushed world leaders to agree to new targets at a summit later this year in Paris.
Mr Obama told Sir David that kids are "much more environmentally aware" than adults, citing his daughters Malia, 16, and Sasha, 13, as examples.
[SUB]Sir David Attenborough at home in Richmond (Eddie Mulholland)[/SUB]
"They do not dispute, for example, the science around climate change," Obama said in the clip.
Sir David agreed that adults lose the fascination with nature that is common among children.
"A 5-year-old, turning over a stone and seeing a slug, and says, 'What a treasure!' Kids understand the natural world," he said.
President Barack Obama has met Sir David Attenborough in a rare encounter for a one-off television programme in which they discuss climate change and the challenges facing future generations.
The US president says he grew up watching Sir David’s programmes. “I’ve been a huge admirer of your work for a very long time ... you’ve been a great educator as well as a great naturalist,” he says.
Mr Obama is usually the one taking questions, but in the BBC programme that will be aired on Sunday night, he asks the beloved 89-year-old broadcaster: “What are the prospects for this blue marble that we live on?”
Sir David talks about the importance of harnessing renewable energy sources, but then puts the president on the spot, asking him why he has not put as much effort into tackling climate change as previous presidents did to putting a man on the moon.
Mr Obama, who has made tackling climate change one of the major issues of his presidency, answered: “We’re not moving as fast as we need to and part of what I know from watching your programmes, and all the great work you’ve done, is that these ecosystems are all interconnected.
“If just one country is doing the right thing but other countries are not, then we’re not going to solve the problem, we’re going to have to have a global solution to this.
“What we’re seeing are global trends that depends on the entire world working together, and sadly we haven’t made as much progress as we need to on climate change.”
The interview was filmed in May on Sir David’s birthday. He said afterwards he was left “astonished” that his environmental expertise had been called upon – by the President of the United States.
"We sat and talked for half an hour," he said. “He wanted to make it clear that he was not a philistine in this matter. He is on the side of the natural world and that's what he wanted to be clear. And that's against some very powerful voices that are in the US which are not in favour of the natural world.”
Sir David has been making television documentaries for 60 years. The BBC has called him "the godfather of natural history TV."
Mr Obama's administration is finalising rules to curb carbon emissions from power plants. He has pushed world leaders to agree to new targets at a summit later this year in Paris.
Mr Obama told Sir David that kids are "much more environmentally aware" than adults, citing his daughters Malia, 16, and Sasha, 13, as examples.
"They do not dispute, for example, the science around climate change," Obama said in the clip.
Sir David agreed that adults lose the fascination with nature that is common among children.
"A 5-year-old, turning over a stone and seeing a slug, and says, 'What a treasure!' Kids understand the natural world," he said.
Arctic expedition to study global warming put on hold because of too much ice
Posted at 10:13 am on July 22, 2015 by Twitchy Staff
Heavy ice in Hudson Bay derails CCGS Amundsen's research plans
You don’t say…
According to a Coast Guard officer, the icy conditions are the “worst he’s seen in 20 years“:
They don’t see how funny this is?
And here’s a blog post from the expedition describing the treacherous conditions:
An excerpt:
When life gives you frozen lemons, make lemon snow cones!
***
Related:
The next catastrophic effect of global warming? ‘Pleasant temperatures’ and increased attendance at national parks
NASA scientists preach global warming at the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles
Photographic proof of effects of global warming deemed ‘Grade A Muppetry’
Posted at 10:13 am on July 22, 2015 by Twitchy Staff
Heavy ice in Hudson Bay derails CCGS Amundsen's research plans
CBC Canadian NewsVerified account
You don’t say…
According to a Coast Guard officer, the icy conditions are the “worst he’s seen in 20 years“:
A carefully planned, 115-day scientific expedition on board the floating research vessel, the CCGS Amundsen, has been derailed as the icebreaker was called to help resupply ships navigate heavy ice in Hudson Bay.
“Obviously it has a large impact on us,” says Martin Fortier, executive director of ArcticNet, which coordinates research on the vessel. “It’s a frustrating situation.”
During the summer, the Amundsen operates as a floating research centre with experiments running 24 hours a day. This year it was scheduled to reach North Baffin Bay.
But the icebreaker has been rerouted to escort commercial ships en route to resupply communities in Northern Quebec on the eastern side of Hudson Bay.
Johnny Leclair, assistant commissioner for the Coast Guard, said Tuesday conditions in the area are the worst he’s seen in 20 years.
“Obviously it has a large impact on us,” says Martin Fortier, executive director of ArcticNet, which coordinates research on the vessel. “It’s a frustrating situation.”
During the summer, the Amundsen operates as a floating research centre with experiments running 24 hours a day. This year it was scheduled to reach North Baffin Bay.
But the icebreaker has been rerouted to escort commercial ships en route to resupply communities in Northern Quebec on the eastern side of Hudson Bay.
Johnny Leclair, assistant commissioner for the Coast Guard, said Tuesday conditions in the area are the worst he’s seen in 20 years.
They don’t see how funny this is?
And here’s a blog post from the expedition describing the treacherous conditions:
An excerpt:
Meanwhile, we’ve run into ice and out of darkness. During our night of action, the sun didn’t set, so only the face of my watch was there to tell me that it was 3 AM as we were tying down incubators. At five thirty in the morning, as the sun rose – or, rather, got a bit brighter in the sky – filling the world with a deep pink, and the waves turned glassy and viscous and bright, our fingers finally fell numb and our setup was finally done, just in time for a quick nap before breakfast. Tonight, likely, we’ll see the stuck ships.
Here’s an idea. Since the global warming scientists are in the area, maybe they can switch their experiments and study the excess ice and how it’s affecting the ecosystem?
When life gives you frozen lemons, make lemon snow cones!
***
Related:
The next catastrophic effect of global warming? ‘Pleasant temperatures’ and increased attendance at national parks
NASA scientists preach global warming at the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles
Photographic proof of effects of global warming deemed ‘Grade A Muppetry’
[h=1]LIBERAL KIDS TRY TO SCHOOL CRUZ ON CLIMATE CHANGE. THEY NEVER EXPECTED THIS TO HAPPEN[/h] http://teapartypolitics.com/liberal...te-change-they-never-expected-this-to-happen/
Great job by Cruz. Took the guy down and never once used the word, "you." A lot of posters here could learn from that exchange.
RR with all the videos you post you should learn how to embed. All you have to do is click the second icon from the left in the 'quick reply' section and then paste the youtube address in the space that opens. Then click OK and post, or add to your post either above or below the link.
RR with all the videos you post you should learn how to embed. All you have to do is click the second icon from the left in the 'quick reply' section and then paste the youtube address in the space that opens. Then click OK and post, or add to your post either above or below the link.
Libs going crazy in a second
Antarctic sea ice hit 35-year record high Saturday
Antarctic sea ice has grown to a record large extent for a second straight year, baffling scientists seeking to understand why this ice is expanding rather than shrinking in a warming world.
WWW.WASHINGTONPOST.COM|BY JASON SAMENOW
Antarctic sea ice hit 35-year record high Saturday
Antarctic sea ice has grown to a record large extent for a second straight year, baffling scientists seeking to understand why this ice is expanding rather than shrinking in a warming world.
WWW.WASHINGTONPOST.COM|BY JASON SAMENOW
[h=1]Ooops! New NASA study: Antarctica isn’t losing ice mass after all ![/h] Anthony Watts / 2 days ago October 31, 2015
From the “settled science” department and former chief alarmist Jay Zwally, who for years had said the Arctic was in big trouble (only to have his prediction falsified), comes this Emily Litella moment in climate science: “Never mind!”. Curiously, WUWT reported back in 2012 about an ICEsat study by Zwally that said: ICESAT Data Shows Mass Gains of the Antarctic Ice Sheet Exceed Losses. I surmise that with the publication of this second study, the original is now confirmed. I suppose John Cook will have to revise his “Denial 101” video on Antarctica now.
This map shows the rates of mass changes from ICESat 2003-2008 over Antarctica. Sums are for all of Antarctica: East Antarctica (EA, 2-17); interior West Antarctica (WA2, 1, 18, 19, and 23); coastal West Antarctica (WA1, 20-21); and the Antarctic Peninsula (24-27). A gigaton (Gt) corresponds to a billion metric tons, or 1.1 billion U.S. tons. CREDIT: Jay Zwally/ Journal of Glaciology
From the NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER via press release:
NASA study: Mass gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet greater than losses
A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.
The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.
According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.
But it might only take a few decades for Antarctica’s growth to reverse, according to Zwally.
Zwally said that while other scientists have assumed that the gains in elevation seen in East Antarctica are due to recent increases in snow accumulation, his team used meteorological data beginning in 1979 to show that the snowfall in East Antarctica actually decreased by 11 billion tons per year during both the ERS and ICESat periods. They also used information on snow accumulation for tens of thousands of years, derived by other scientists from ice cores, to conclude that East Antarctica has been thickening for a very long time.
Zwally’s team calculated that the mass gain from the thickening of East Antarctica remained steady from 1992 to 2008 at 200 billion tons per year, while the ice losses from the coastal regions of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula increased by 65 billion tons per year.
Zwally, H. Jay[SUP]1, 2[/SUP]; Li, Jun[SUP]3[/SUP]; Robbins, John W.[SUP]4[/SUP]; Saba, Jack L.[SUP]5[/SUP]; Yi, Donghui[SUP]3[/SUP]; Brenner, Anita C.[SUP]6[/SUP]
Source: Journal of Glaciology doi: 10.3189/2015JoG15J071
[h=3]Abstract:[/h]
From the “settled science” department and former chief alarmist Jay Zwally, who for years had said the Arctic was in big trouble (only to have his prediction falsified), comes this Emily Litella moment in climate science: “Never mind!”. Curiously, WUWT reported back in 2012 about an ICEsat study by Zwally that said: ICESAT Data Shows Mass Gains of the Antarctic Ice Sheet Exceed Losses. I surmise that with the publication of this second study, the original is now confirmed. I suppose John Cook will have to revise his “Denial 101” video on Antarctica now.
This map shows the rates of mass changes from ICESat 2003-2008 over Antarctica. Sums are for all of Antarctica: East Antarctica (EA, 2-17); interior West Antarctica (WA2, 1, 18, 19, and 23); coastal West Antarctica (WA1, 20-21); and the Antarctic Peninsula (24-27). A gigaton (Gt) corresponds to a billion metric tons, or 1.1 billion U.S. tons. CREDIT: Jay Zwally/ Journal of GlaciologyFrom the NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER via press release:
NASA study: Mass gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet greater than losses
A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.
The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.
According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.
“We’re essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica,” said Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study, which was published on Oct. 30 in the Journal of Glaciology. “Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica – there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas.” Zwally added that his team “measured small height changes over large areas, as well as the large changes observed over smaller areas.”
Scientists calculate how much the ice sheet is growing or shrinking from the changes in surface height that are measured by the satellite altimeters. In locations where the amount of new snowfall accumulating on an ice sheet is not equal to the ice flow downward and outward to the ocean, the surface height changes and the ice-sheet mass grows or shrinks.
But it might only take a few decades for Antarctica’s growth to reverse, according to Zwally.
“If the losses of the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica continue to increase at the same rate they’ve been increasing for the last two decades, the losses will catch up with the long-term gain in East Antarctica in 20 or 30 years — I don’t think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses.”
The study analyzed changes in the surface height of the Antarctic ice sheet measured by radar altimeters on two European Space Agency European Remote Sensing (ERS) satellites, spanning from 1992 to 2001, and by the laser altimeter on NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) from 2003 to 2008.
Zwally said that while other scientists have assumed that the gains in elevation seen in East Antarctica are due to recent increases in snow accumulation, his team used meteorological data beginning in 1979 to show that the snowfall in East Antarctica actually decreased by 11 billion tons per year during both the ERS and ICESat periods. They also used information on snow accumulation for tens of thousands of years, derived by other scientists from ice cores, to conclude that East Antarctica has been thickening for a very long time.
“At the end of the last Ice Age, the air became warmer and carried more moisture across the continent, doubling the amount of snow dropped on the ice sheet,” Zwally said.
The extra snowfall that began 10,000 years ago has been slowly accumulating on the ice sheet and compacting into solid ice over millennia, thickening the ice in East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica by an average of 0.7 inches (1.7 centimeters) per year. This small thickening, sustained over thousands of years and spread over the vast expanse of these sectors of Antarctica, corresponds to a very large gain of ice – enough to outweigh the losses from fast-flowing glaciers in other parts of the continent and reduce global sea level rise.
Zwally’s team calculated that the mass gain from the thickening of East Antarctica remained steady from 1992 to 2008 at 200 billion tons per year, while the ice losses from the coastal regions of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula increased by 65 billion tons per year.
“The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away,” Zwally said. “But this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for.”
“The new study highlights the difficulties of measuring the small changes in ice height happening in East Antarctica,” said Ben Smith, a glaciologist with the University of Washington in Seattle who was not involved in Zwally’s study.
“Doing altimetry accurately for very large areas is extraordinarily difficult, and there are measurements of snow accumulation that need to be done independently to understand what’s happening in these places,” Smith said.
To help accurately measure changes in Antarctica, NASA is developing the successor to the ICESat mission, ICESat-2, which is scheduled to launch in 2018. “ICESat-2 will measure changes in the ice sheet within the thickness of a No. 2 pencil,” said Tom Neumann, a glaciologist at Goddard and deputy project scientist for ICESat-2. “It will contribute to solving the problem of Antarctica’s mass balance by providing a long-term record of elevation changes.”“Doing altimetry accurately for very large areas is extraordinarily difficult, and there are measurements of snow accumulation that need to be done independently to understand what’s happening in these places,” Smith said.
###
In a piece at Nature News, Zwally has said:
“Parts of Antarctica are losing mass faster than before,” says Jay Zwally, a glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of a paper to appear in theJournal of Glaciology[SUP]1[/SUP]. “But large parts have been gaining mass, and they’ve been doing that for a very long time.”
The findings do not mean that Antarctica is not in trouble, Zwally notes.
“I know some of the climate deniers will jump on this, and say this means we don’t have to worry as much as some people have been making out,” he says. “It should not take away from the concern about climate warming.” As global temperatures rise, Antarctica is expected to contribute more to sea-level rise, though when exactly that effect will kick in, and to what extent, remains unclear.
Gee, thanks.
The study:
Mass gains of the Antarctic ice sheet exceed lossesZwally, H. Jay[SUP]1, 2[/SUP]; Li, Jun[SUP]3[/SUP]; Robbins, John W.[SUP]4[/SUP]; Saba, Jack L.[SUP]5[/SUP]; Yi, Donghui[SUP]3[/SUP]; Brenner, Anita C.[SUP]6[/SUP]
Source: Journal of Glaciology doi: 10.3189/2015JoG15J071
[h=3]Abstract:[/h]
Mass changes of the Antarctic ice sheet impact sea-level rise as climate changes, but recent rates have been uncertain. Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) data (2003–08) show mass gains from snow accumulation exceeded discharge losses by 82 ± 25 Gt a[SUP]–1[/SUP], reducing global sea-level rise by 0.23 mm a[SUP]–1[/SUP]. European Remote-sensing Satellite (ERS) data (1992–2001) give a similar gain of 112 ± 61 Gt a[SUP]–1[/SUP]. Gains of 136 Gt a[SUP]–1[/SUP] in East Antarctica (EA) and 72 Gt a[SUP]–1[/SUP] in four drainage systems (WA2) in West Antarctic (WA) exceed losses of 97 Gt a[SUP]–1[/SUP] from three coastal drainage systems (WA1) and 29 Gt a[SUP]–1[/SUP] from the Antarctic Peninsula (AP). EA dynamic thickening of 147 Gt a[SUP]–1[/SUP] is a continuing response to increased accumulation (>50%) since the early Holocene. Recent accumulation loss of 11 Gt a[SUP]–1[/SUP] in EA indicates thickening is not from contemporaneous snowfall increases. Similarly, the WA2 gain is mainly (60 Gt a[SUP]–1[/SUP]) dynamic thickening. In WA1 and the AP, increased losses of 66 ± 16 Gt a[SUP]–1[/SUP] from increased dynamic thinning from accelerating glaciers are 50% offset by greater WA snowfall. The decadal increase in dynamic thinning in WA1 and the AP is approximately one-third of the long-term dynamic thickening in EA and WA2, which should buffer additional dynamic thinning for decades.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/...dy-antarctica-isnt-losing-ice-mass-after-all/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/...dy-antarctica-isnt-losing-ice-mass-after-all/
GOP: Obama circumventing Senate in Paris climate deal talks
By Timothy Cama - 10/20/15 05:28 PM EDT
Republican senators accused President Obama Tuesday of deliberately circumventing Congress in his attempt to reach a broad U.N. deal on climate change.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), chairman of a Foreign Relations Committee subpanel, said at a Tuesday hearing that any deal negotiators reach at the talks in Paris in December needs to go through Senate ratification.
“Just like the Kyoto Protocol and the United Nations framework convention on climate change, any agreement that commits our nation to targets or timetables must go through the process established by the founders in our Constitution. It must be submitted to the United States Senate for its advice and consent,” Barrasso told Todd Stern, the State Department’s top negotiator for the deal.“The president has made clear that he doesn’t see it that way, as was the case with the Iranian nuclear deal,” he said.
Barrasso was the only Republican at the hearing, which was dominated by Democrats who thanked Stern for his work.
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who wanted to have a joint hearing on the talks with the Environment and Public Works Committee, which he chairs, said in a statement that the deal should go through the Senate.
“While we can certainly disagree on the underlying policies, I believe we, as the Senate, should support basic oversight responsibilities, especially when they are consistent with past practice."
“President Obama and his administrative officials are going out of their way to circumvent the role of the U.S. Senate in this negotiating process and I am disappointed that the minority would enable such behavior,” he said.
Republicans have long accused Obama of working with international leaders to craft a deal that would not require Senate approval, as treaties generally do under the Constitution.
Stern said whether the deal would go through the Senate hinges largely on whether countries’ individual contributions are legally binding — a factor that has not yet been finalized in the negotiations.
“We don’t know yet what the elements of the agreement are going to be and so it’s hard to speculate at this time,” he said. “We’re pushing hard for an agreement that does not include binding targets.”
Inhofe had planned to have a joint hearing with the committees that would have included Stern and representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality.
Those agencies declined to send representatives because they do not have primary authority over the talks, Inhofe’s office said, a decision that disappointed him.
Meanwhile, the panel’s Democrats were very happy with Stern’s efforts.
“The Paris agreement takes us in the right direction, signing up countries, developed and developing, to halt the climate crisis,” said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), the panel’s top Democrat. “The United States must lead and set an example for other countries. This is the right thing to do to protect our economy in the long term.”
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) accused Republicans of denying science in their opposition to the deal.
“They say they’re not scientists and I would agree with them,” she said. “They ought to be listening to the 97 percent of scientists who tell us human action and activities is causing too much carbon pollution.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That dumb Boxer bitch sounds exactly like Pavian! :hitting:
By Timothy Cama - 10/20/15 05:28 PM EDT
Republican senators accused President Obama Tuesday of deliberately circumventing Congress in his attempt to reach a broad U.N. deal on climate change.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), chairman of a Foreign Relations Committee subpanel, said at a Tuesday hearing that any deal negotiators reach at the talks in Paris in December needs to go through Senate ratification.
“Just like the Kyoto Protocol and the United Nations framework convention on climate change, any agreement that commits our nation to targets or timetables must go through the process established by the founders in our Constitution. It must be submitted to the United States Senate for its advice and consent,” Barrasso told Todd Stern, the State Department’s top negotiator for the deal.“The president has made clear that he doesn’t see it that way, as was the case with the Iranian nuclear deal,” he said.
Barrasso was the only Republican at the hearing, which was dominated by Democrats who thanked Stern for his work.
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who wanted to have a joint hearing on the talks with the Environment and Public Works Committee, which he chairs, said in a statement that the deal should go through the Senate.
“While we can certainly disagree on the underlying policies, I believe we, as the Senate, should support basic oversight responsibilities, especially when they are consistent with past practice."
“President Obama and his administrative officials are going out of their way to circumvent the role of the U.S. Senate in this negotiating process and I am disappointed that the minority would enable such behavior,” he said.
Republicans have long accused Obama of working with international leaders to craft a deal that would not require Senate approval, as treaties generally do under the Constitution.
Stern said whether the deal would go through the Senate hinges largely on whether countries’ individual contributions are legally binding — a factor that has not yet been finalized in the negotiations.
“We don’t know yet what the elements of the agreement are going to be and so it’s hard to speculate at this time,” he said. “We’re pushing hard for an agreement that does not include binding targets.”
Inhofe had planned to have a joint hearing with the committees that would have included Stern and representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality.
Those agencies declined to send representatives because they do not have primary authority over the talks, Inhofe’s office said, a decision that disappointed him.
Meanwhile, the panel’s Democrats were very happy with Stern’s efforts.
“The Paris agreement takes us in the right direction, signing up countries, developed and developing, to halt the climate crisis,” said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), the panel’s top Democrat. “The United States must lead and set an example for other countries. This is the right thing to do to protect our economy in the long term.”
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) accused Republicans of denying science in their opposition to the deal.
“They say they’re not scientists and I would agree with them,” she said. “They ought to be listening to the 97 percent of scientists who tell us human action and activities is causing too much carbon pollution.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That dumb Boxer bitch sounds exactly like Pavian! :hitting:
Global Warming Activists Don’t Like When Someone Follows The Money
Environmentalists like to claim skeptics are making money off hampering global warming regulations, but those same activists are making a lot of money promoting global warming alarmism.
A recent video from The Guardian claims that there is little money or power to be gained from environmental activism. The money behind activism pales in comparison to those of their fossil fuel-financed opposition, according to the video. The video even claims that “most of the money in solar and wind power comes from savings to the consumer.”
In the case of Al Gore, prominently featured in the video, the former vice president has levied his global warming activism from a net worth of $700,000 in 2000 into an estimated net worth of $172.5 million by 2015. He’s not alone in his financial endeavor.
“Funding of science, in this particular case, climate change science, is dominated by the federal government. We assert that this will cause recipients of [government] grants to publish findings that are in-line with government policy preferences (i.e., don’t bite the hand that feeds you),” Chip Knappenberger, the assistant director of the Center for the Study of Science at the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an email.
“After a while, the scientific literature becomes dominated by these types of research findings which then produces a biased knowledge base,” Knappenberger said. “This knowledge base is then ‘assessed’ by intergovernmental and federal science committees (i.e., IPCC, USGCRP) to produce authoritative reports that supposedly represent the scientific ‘consensus,’ which is then tapped by the federal government in determining policy and setting regulations, such as the CPP [Clean Power Plan].”
Studies that receive financial support from the public sector don’t have to disclose it as a conflict of interest, even when that support is in the millions of dollars. Recent studies that the Environmental Protection Agency is using to support the scientific case for its Clean Power Plan saw the EPA itself give $31.2 million, $9.5 million, and $3.65 million in public funds to lead authors according to EPA public disclosures.
The author who received $3.65 million, Charles Driscoll, even admitted to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the result of his study was predetermined, saying “in doing this study we wanted to bring attention to the additional benefits from carbon controls.”
Universities typically received about 50 percent of the money that their researchers get in public funds if their research finds positive results, making them deeply dependent upon federal funding and likely to encourage studies which will come to conclusions that the government wants.
Even counting only private money, environmental groups massively outspend their opposition. Opposition to global warming activism only raises $46 million annually across 91 conservative think tanks according to analysis by Forbes. That’s almost 6 times less than Greenpeace’s 2011 budget of $260 million, and Greenpeace is only one of many environmental groups. The undeniable truth is that global warming activists raise and spend far more money than their opponents.
Attempts by governments to encourage solar and wind power have created incentives for corruption that even environmentalists acknowledge. The push to encourage “green” systems has already led to serious corruption, such as the Solyndra scandal, which “crowds out” investment dollars that could be better spent on more workable solutions.
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Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/03/g...when-someone-follows-the-money/#ixzz3qXLhUqdI
A recent video from The Guardian claims that there is little money or power to be gained from environmental activism. The money behind activism pales in comparison to those of their fossil fuel-financed opposition, according to the video. The video even claims that “most of the money in solar and wind power comes from savings to the consumer.”
In the case of Al Gore, prominently featured in the video, the former vice president has levied his global warming activism from a net worth of $700,000 in 2000 into an estimated net worth of $172.5 million by 2015. He’s not alone in his financial endeavor.
“Funding of science, in this particular case, climate change science, is dominated by the federal government. We assert that this will cause recipients of [government] grants to publish findings that are in-line with government policy preferences (i.e., don’t bite the hand that feeds you),” Chip Knappenberger, the assistant director of the Center for the Study of Science at the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an email.
“After a while, the scientific literature becomes dominated by these types of research findings which then produces a biased knowledge base,” Knappenberger said. “This knowledge base is then ‘assessed’ by intergovernmental and federal science committees (i.e., IPCC, USGCRP) to produce authoritative reports that supposedly represent the scientific ‘consensus,’ which is then tapped by the federal government in determining policy and setting regulations, such as the CPP [Clean Power Plan].”
Studies that receive financial support from the public sector don’t have to disclose it as a conflict of interest, even when that support is in the millions of dollars. Recent studies that the Environmental Protection Agency is using to support the scientific case for its Clean Power Plan saw the EPA itself give $31.2 million, $9.5 million, and $3.65 million in public funds to lead authors according to EPA public disclosures.
The author who received $3.65 million, Charles Driscoll, even admitted to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the result of his study was predetermined, saying “in doing this study we wanted to bring attention to the additional benefits from carbon controls.”
Universities typically received about 50 percent of the money that their researchers get in public funds if their research finds positive results, making them deeply dependent upon federal funding and likely to encourage studies which will come to conclusions that the government wants.
Attempts by governments to encourage solar and wind power have created incentives for corruption that even environmentalists acknowledge. The push to encourage “green” systems has already led to serious corruption, such as the Solyndra scandal, which “crowds out” investment dollars that could be better spent on more workable solutions.
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Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/03/g...when-someone-follows-the-money/#ixzz3qXLhUqdI
[h=1]People Who Say Climate Change Is Worse Than Terrorism Are Dangerous Liars[/h] 846
4
264
ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP/Getty Images
by James Delingpole17 Nov 2015242
Yes of course terrorism can and may destroy our civilization.
And the reason it can and may do so has actually very little to do with what the terrorists may do it us. Rather it has to do with what they are helping enable us to do to ourselves.
By “we” I don’t mean all of us – and almost certainly not you. I mean people like Paul Krugman. And presidential contender
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
. And Soros-funded attack dog Joe Romm. And CIA Director John Brennan. And Hillary Clinton. And French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius who, just a month ago, in remarks one would like to hope he now very much regrets, declared that “climate change is a threat to peace” and a significant cause of terrorism. What all the above have claimed about climate change is, of course, completely untrue. No there is absolutely no credible evidence to suggest that climate change is responsible for the Syrian refugee crisis, let alone for ISIS terrorism. In fact there is absolute no credible evidence that “climate change” – in the “man-made global warming” sense – has caused major harm to anyone, anywhere in the world, ever.
There is however no shortage of credible, verifiable evidence to show that terrorism is causing major harm to lots of people all the time. Not the as-yet-nameless “children of the future” forever being invoked by climate alarmists. But actual living, breathing people with names and families and jobs and dreams.
Just ask Ludo Boumbas: he knows. Oh, no, wait, you can’t: he died on Friday sprayed by an AK outside a cafe in Paris where he was celebrating a friend’s birthday. Boumbas was black (originally from the Congo) but I don’t think he would have had much sympathy with the whiny narcissistic bigots of #blacklivesmatter. We know this because on the spur of the moment he gallantly decided that the life of his white friend Chloe Clement was worth more, throwing himself in front of her and taking the bullets that would otherwise have killed her.
Maybe instead you could try speaking to one of the survivors of the Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan theatre where 80 of the crowd were murdered in cold blood. But you might have some difficulty because they’re in a state of shock. What they saw, no one in a peacetime Western democracy should ever be forced to see: a pregnant woman hanging from a window-ledge, so terrified by the horror within that she preferred to risk a 45 foot drop into the streets; people in wheelchairs being deliberately executed; men pleading (unsuccessfully) for the lives of their wives and girlfriends; screaming wounded being eviscerated with knives because, as one killer put it, “We’re here to make you go through what the innocent are suffering in Syria”; jihadists calmly, casually reloading their AKs for the next round of executions as their captive victims lay on the floor in an inch of gore not daring to move for fear of attracting attention; wounded and dying couples whispering their final attestations of love and devotion to one another…
We need to dwell on this stuff because, unlike “climate change”, it’s real.
We need unflinchingly to linger on every last ugly detail the better to fuel our rage against the people who make it possible.
And I’m not just thinking of the terrorists here. If we focus purely on them we’re never going to solve the problem. We’ll just end up with more empty, feel-good gestures like the current French air-strikes against Raqqa which will no doubt – eventually, after much thoatclearing – mutate slowly into a similarly pointless but vastly more expensive Coalition which will end up achieving in ISIS held territory what our previous interventions achieved in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya: ie really not much, except possibly to make things worse.
Not that I’m against military intervention per se – and I dare say, when we go in, it will make us all feel better for a time. I just happen to agree on this one with Mark Steyn:
All those idiot politicians and commentators trying to make out that “climate change” is a bigger threat than “terrorism” they’re the perfect example of this malaise.
By speaking such palpable nonsense – and apparently expecting people to take them at their word – they are betraying many of the values on which the democracies of Western Civilization have been built and without which our democracies can all too easily be destroyed.
Here are a few of them:
Empiricism: the way in which, through observation and experiment, we learn to discern what is true from what is false. (eg not fiddling with temperature data records just because it suits your ideology; not saying people are dying of “climate change” when clearly, obviously, they aren’t)
Accountability: the duty politicians have to spend their money of those who elected them wisely, honestly and responsibly, rather than splurging it on imaginary problems.
Property rights: the responsibility of the state to create an environment in which its citizens’ property rights and lives are kept secure; and also that they are prioritized over those of non-citizens.
Equality before the law: no special excuses for minorities, however aggressive they may be in their demands for special privileges (eg courts where they get to make up their own local rules)
Free speech: by all means argue stuff like “the climate is changing, it’s all our fault and it’s the biggest threat of our age” – but do have the grace to argue it from evidence rather than authority; and also, not to try to destroy your opposition with threats of vexatious RICO suits, ad homs, withdrawal of tenure, etc.
Values like these aren’t negotiable. They help form the bedrock of Western Civilization and are part of the reason we have advanced so quickly and enjoyed so much more peace and prosperity than those cultures – such as the Islamic world’s – which have rejected them. Yet what’s perfectly clear from the response to events in Paris by so many of our politicians and commentators is that they have lost all sense of what it is about our culture that makes it so precious and so worth defending.
What those terrorists did in Paris was sickening.
But hardly less sickening is the mentality whereby the likes of a Nobel-prize-winning public intellectual and a US presidential candidate can actually stand up and declare – with those 130 murdered bodies barely cold in the morgue – that “climate change” (which has hurt no one in the world) is a bigger threat than terrorism (which is hurting almost everyone in the world.)
It’s an ugly lie because it’s so disrespectful towards – and, worse, dismissive of – all those innocents who died for no better reason than that they wanted to enjoy a Friday night in Paris.
It’s a lazy lie because it serves the status quo (an endless round of never-ending global climate talks in which everyone gets to feel that they are doing something about an important problem) and ducks the challenge of the far greater threat now facing us all.
It’s a dangerous lie because by pusillanimously rejecting those values – empiricism, accountability, property rights, equality before the law, free speech, the truth – on which Western Civilization has been built, it gives succour and encouragement to those who would destroy it.
4
264
by James Delingpole17 Nov 2015242
Sorry, conservatives: when President Obama describes climate change as the greatest threat we face, he’s exactly right. Terrorism can’t and won’t destroy our civilization, but global warming could and might.
Paul Krugman, Nobel prizewinning economist, public intellectual; New York Times columnist
The thing I love about Paul Krugman is that he’s such a mighty touchstone of wrong. If he told you that day followed night you’d have to go out in the morning to check with a torch; if he told you that The Sopranos was the greatest TV series ever you’d suddenly realize having revisited all 86 episodes that, no, actually even Hannah Montana had sharper acting and deeper insights; so when he tells you that “terrorism can’t and won’t destroy our civilization”, well you know, without even having to think about it, that for once in his political career Jeb Bush has called it dead right, and that yet again, as ever, Krugman couldn’t be further from the right end of the stick.Paul Krugman, Nobel prizewinning economist, public intellectual; New York Times columnist
Yes of course terrorism can and may destroy our civilization.
And the reason it can and may do so has actually very little to do with what the terrorists may do it us. Rather it has to do with what they are helping enable us to do to ourselves.
By “we” I don’t mean all of us – and almost certainly not you. I mean people like Paul Krugman. And presidential contender
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
16%
. And Soros-funded attack dog Joe Romm. And CIA Director John Brennan. And Hillary Clinton. And French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius who, just a month ago, in remarks one would like to hope he now very much regrets, declared that “climate change is a threat to peace” and a significant cause of terrorism. What all the above have claimed about climate change is, of course, completely untrue. No there is absolutely no credible evidence to suggest that climate change is responsible for the Syrian refugee crisis, let alone for ISIS terrorism. In fact there is absolute no credible evidence that “climate change” – in the “man-made global warming” sense – has caused major harm to anyone, anywhere in the world, ever.
There is however no shortage of credible, verifiable evidence to show that terrorism is causing major harm to lots of people all the time. Not the as-yet-nameless “children of the future” forever being invoked by climate alarmists. But actual living, breathing people with names and families and jobs and dreams.
Just ask Ludo Boumbas: he knows. Oh, no, wait, you can’t: he died on Friday sprayed by an AK outside a cafe in Paris where he was celebrating a friend’s birthday. Boumbas was black (originally from the Congo) but I don’t think he would have had much sympathy with the whiny narcissistic bigots of #blacklivesmatter. We know this because on the spur of the moment he gallantly decided that the life of his white friend Chloe Clement was worth more, throwing himself in front of her and taking the bullets that would otherwise have killed her.
Maybe instead you could try speaking to one of the survivors of the Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan theatre where 80 of the crowd were murdered in cold blood. But you might have some difficulty because they’re in a state of shock. What they saw, no one in a peacetime Western democracy should ever be forced to see: a pregnant woman hanging from a window-ledge, so terrified by the horror within that she preferred to risk a 45 foot drop into the streets; people in wheelchairs being deliberately executed; men pleading (unsuccessfully) for the lives of their wives and girlfriends; screaming wounded being eviscerated with knives because, as one killer put it, “We’re here to make you go through what the innocent are suffering in Syria”; jihadists calmly, casually reloading their AKs for the next round of executions as their captive victims lay on the floor in an inch of gore not daring to move for fear of attracting attention; wounded and dying couples whispering their final attestations of love and devotion to one another…
We need to dwell on this stuff because, unlike “climate change”, it’s real.
We need unflinchingly to linger on every last ugly detail the better to fuel our rage against the people who make it possible.
And I’m not just thinking of the terrorists here. If we focus purely on them we’re never going to solve the problem. We’ll just end up with more empty, feel-good gestures like the current French air-strikes against Raqqa which will no doubt – eventually, after much thoatclearing – mutate slowly into a similarly pointless but vastly more expensive Coalition which will end up achieving in ISIS held territory what our previous interventions achieved in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya: ie really not much, except possibly to make things worse.
Not that I’m against military intervention per se – and I dare say, when we go in, it will make us all feel better for a time. I just happen to agree on this one with Mark Steyn:
“…[W]ar is merely the sharpest tool of national strategy, and so, if you have no national strategy, there’s no point going to war. It’s a complete waste of time bombing some guy in the Iraqi desert when Angela Merkel is forcing a German village with 120 people to take 750 “refugees”. The overseas and home fronts have to be in sync.”
What he’s talking about here is “civilizational confidence”. Or rather, about the current lack thereof through much Western culture.
All those idiot politicians and commentators trying to make out that “climate change” is a bigger threat than “terrorism” they’re the perfect example of this malaise.
By speaking such palpable nonsense – and apparently expecting people to take them at their word – they are betraying many of the values on which the democracies of Western Civilization have been built and without which our democracies can all too easily be destroyed.
Here are a few of them:
Empiricism: the way in which, through observation and experiment, we learn to discern what is true from what is false. (eg not fiddling with temperature data records just because it suits your ideology; not saying people are dying of “climate change” when clearly, obviously, they aren’t)
Accountability: the duty politicians have to spend their money of those who elected them wisely, honestly and responsibly, rather than splurging it on imaginary problems.
Property rights: the responsibility of the state to create an environment in which its citizens’ property rights and lives are kept secure; and also that they are prioritized over those of non-citizens.
Equality before the law: no special excuses for minorities, however aggressive they may be in their demands for special privileges (eg courts where they get to make up their own local rules)
Free speech: by all means argue stuff like “the climate is changing, it’s all our fault and it’s the biggest threat of our age” – but do have the grace to argue it from evidence rather than authority; and also, not to try to destroy your opposition with threats of vexatious RICO suits, ad homs, withdrawal of tenure, etc.
Values like these aren’t negotiable. They help form the bedrock of Western Civilization and are part of the reason we have advanced so quickly and enjoyed so much more peace and prosperity than those cultures – such as the Islamic world’s – which have rejected them. Yet what’s perfectly clear from the response to events in Paris by so many of our politicians and commentators is that they have lost all sense of what it is about our culture that makes it so precious and so worth defending.
What those terrorists did in Paris was sickening.
But hardly less sickening is the mentality whereby the likes of a Nobel-prize-winning public intellectual and a US presidential candidate can actually stand up and declare – with those 130 murdered bodies barely cold in the morgue – that “climate change” (which has hurt no one in the world) is a bigger threat than terrorism (which is hurting almost everyone in the world.)
It’s an ugly lie because it’s so disrespectful towards – and, worse, dismissive of – all those innocents who died for no better reason than that they wanted to enjoy a Friday night in Paris.
It’s a lazy lie because it serves the status quo (an endless round of never-ending global climate talks in which everyone gets to feel that they are doing something about an important problem) and ducks the challenge of the far greater threat now facing us all.
It’s a dangerous lie because by pusillanimously rejecting those values – empiricism, accountability, property rights, equality before the law, free speech, the truth – on which Western Civilization has been built, it gives succour and encouragement to those who would destroy it.
[ Astute, intelligent people knew this all along. And then there are the puppets and lemmings... ]
[h=1]German Professor: NASA Has Fiddled Climate Data On ‘Unbelievable’ Scale[/h] 4965
23
CARL DE SOUZA/AFP/Getty Images
by James Delingpole24 Nov 2015570
[h=2]A German professor has confirmed what skeptics from Britain to the US have long suspected: that NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies has largely invented “global warming” by tampering with the raw temperature data records.[/h] Professor Dr. Friedrich Karl Ewert is a retired geologist and data computation expert. He has painstakingly examined and tabulated all NASA GISS’s temperature data series, taken from 1153 stations and going back to 1881. His conclusion: that if you look at the raw data, as opposed to NASA’s revisions, you’ll find that since 1940 the planet has been cooling, not warming.
According to Günter Ederer, the German journalist who has reported on Ewert’s findings:
The most commonly used ones were:
• Reducing the annual mean in the early phase.
• Reducing the high values in the first warming phase.
• Increasing individual values during the second warming phase.
• Suppression of the second cooling phase starting in 1995.
• Shortening the early decades of the datasets.
• With the long-term datasets, even the first century was shortened.
Ewert’s findings echo that of US meteorologists Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts who examined 6,000 NASA weather stations and found a host of irregularities both with the way they were sited and how the raw data had been adjusted to reflect such influences as the Urban Heat Island effect.
Britain’s Paul Homewood is also on NASA GISS’s case. Here he shows the shocking extent of the adjustments they have made to a temperature record in Brazil which has been altered so that a cooling trend becomes a warming trend.
Unadjusted temperature record: shows cooling trend.
Adjusted temperature record: shows warming trend.
For still more evidence of NASA’s adjustments, check out Alterations to Climate Data at Tony Heller’s Real Climate Science.
Truly, these people have no shame.
[h=1]German Professor: NASA Has Fiddled Climate Data On ‘Unbelievable’ Scale[/h] 4965
23
by James Delingpole24 Nov 2015570
[h=2]A German professor has confirmed what skeptics from Britain to the US have long suspected: that NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies has largely invented “global warming” by tampering with the raw temperature data records.[/h] Professor Dr. Friedrich Karl Ewert is a retired geologist and data computation expert. He has painstakingly examined and tabulated all NASA GISS’s temperature data series, taken from 1153 stations and going back to 1881. His conclusion: that if you look at the raw data, as opposed to NASA’s revisions, you’ll find that since 1940 the planet has been cooling, not warming.
According to Günter Ederer, the German journalist who has reported on Ewert’s findings:
From the publicly available data, Ewert made an unbelievable discovery: Between the years 2010 and 2012 the data measured since 1881 were altered so that they showed a significant warming, especially after 1950. […] A comparison of the data from 2010 with the data of 2012 shows that NASA-GISS had altered its own datasets so that especially after WWII a clear warming appears – although it never existed.
Apart from Australia, the planet has in fact been on a cooling trend:
Using the NASA data from 2010 the surface temperature globally from 1940 until today has fallen by 1.110°C, and since 2000 it has fallen 0.4223°C […]. The cooling has hit every continent except for Australia, which warmed by 0.6339°C since 2000. The figures for Europe: From 1940 to 2010, using the data from 2010, there was a cooling of 0.5465°C and a cooling of 0.3739°C since 2000.
But the activist scientists at NASA GISS – initially led by James Hansen (pictured above), later by Gavin Schmidt – wanted the records they are in charge of maintaining to show warming not cooling, so they began systematically adjusting the data for various spurious reasons using ten different methods.
The most commonly used ones were:
• Reducing the annual mean in the early phase.
• Reducing the high values in the first warming phase.
• Increasing individual values during the second warming phase.
• Suppression of the second cooling phase starting in 1995.
• Shortening the early decades of the datasets.
• With the long-term datasets, even the first century was shortened.
Ewert’s findings echo that of US meteorologists Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts who examined 6,000 NASA weather stations and found a host of irregularities both with the way they were sited and how the raw data had been adjusted to reflect such influences as the Urban Heat Island effect.
Britain’s Paul Homewood is also on NASA GISS’s case. Here he shows the shocking extent of the adjustments they have made to a temperature record in Brazil which has been altered so that a cooling trend becomes a warming trend.
Unadjusted temperature record: shows cooling trend.
Adjusted temperature record: shows warming trend.
For still more evidence of NASA’s adjustments, check out Alterations to Climate Data at Tony Heller’s Real Climate Science.
Truly, these people have no shame.
