Everything You Have Read About Melting Greenland Is Wrong
In this newsletter:
1) New Poll: Most Europeans And 2/3 Of Britons Reject IPCC ‘Climate Consensus’
Global Warming Policy Forum, 12 July 2017
2) Everything You Have Read About Melting Greenland Is Wrong
No Tricks Zone, 12 July 2017
3) Ocean Cools And Air Temps Follow
Science Matters, 7 July 2017
4) EPA Chief Wants Scientists To Debate Climate On TV
Reuters, 11 July 2017
5) Government Of Saskatchewan Responds To GWPF Report On CCS
Regina Leader-Post, 7 July 2017
6) Francis Menton: Looks Like Global Action On Climate Change Is Dead
Manhattan Contrarian, 10 July 2017
Global Warming Policy Forum, 12 July 2017
2) Everything You Have Read About Melting Greenland Is Wrong
No Tricks Zone, 12 July 2017
3) Ocean Cools And Air Temps Follow
Science Matters, 7 July 2017
4) EPA Chief Wants Scientists To Debate Climate On TV
Reuters, 11 July 2017
5) Government Of Saskatchewan Responds To GWPF Report On CCS
Regina Leader-Post, 7 July 2017
6) Francis Menton: Looks Like Global Action On Climate Change Is Dead
Manhattan Contrarian, 10 July 2017
Full details:
1) New Poll: Most Europeans And 2/3 Of Britons Reject IPCC ‘Climate Consensus’
Global Warming Policy Forum, 12 July 2017
A new opinion poll of 10,000 European citizens reveals majority of Europeans reject the claim that climate change is mainly or entirely caused by humans.
For the last few decades, questions about the causes and impacts of climate change have dominated the climate debate. The IPCC and many climate scientists have been claiming relentlessly that the global warming trend since the second half of the 20th century is mainly if not entirely man-made, i.e. as a result of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This dogma is habitually claimed to be the global climate consensus.
In contrast, climate sceptics have remained sceptical. Given the lack of proper understanding of the many known (and unknown) natural factors that contribute to climate change, most sceptics claim that it is impossible, at least for the time being, to quantify reliably the exact relationship between natural and human factors that drive climate change.
Following concerns that the so-called climate consensus was not reaching the public, a comprehensive opinion poll of 10,000 European citizens in 10 countries was conducted to establish levels of awareness, concern, and trust among different demographic groups and nationalities.
The result of the poll reveals that despite decades of climate alarmism and green indoctrination the European public remains doggedly sceptical and unprejudiced – a result that confirms and strengthens the work of the GWPF and other European climate sceptics:
“When asked about general perceptions of major global risks, 18% of all respondents said that climate change was the most serious problem facing the world. Concerning the causes of climate change, almost half of all respondents (46%) believed that climate change is either “mainly” or “entirely” caused by human activity and 42% thought that climate change is caused “partly by natural processes and partly by human activity.” Only 8% thought climate change was either “mainly” or “entirely” caused by natural processes (with a further 1% saying climate change did not exist and 2% saying “don’t know”).”
Figure 2. Responses to the question “Thinking about the causes of climate change, which, if any, of the following best describes your opinion?” Shown as the percentage of responses (10,106 in total, ca. 1,000 per country) for causes which were: entirely natural, mainly natural, natural and human, mainly human, or entirely human. For all individual countries and all countries combined.
Full paper
2) Everything You Have Read About Melting Greenland Is Wrong
No Tricks Zone, 12 July 2017
P. Gosselin
“In Greenland July this year has been the coldest ever. It has left climate catastrophists struggling to explain it. The ice cover has grown strongly over almost all of Greenland.”
We have all heard about the record breaking ice mass balance and cold temperature reading of -33°C recently being set in Greenland, the Arctic island that is the supposedly the canary in the climate coal mine.
It turns out that things are colder than we would be led to believe and that warming there is fiction.
Struggling to explain
The Swiss online Baseler Zeitung (BAZ) here reports: “In Greenland July this year has been the coldest ever. That has left climate catastrophists struggling to explain it.”
Citing the Danish Meteorological Institute, the BAZ comments that the -33°C reading earlier this month was “the coldest July temperature ever recorded in the northern hemisphere”, smashing the previous record of 30.7°C.
Expanding ice mass, media ignore
The BAZ adds that also the “ice cover has grown strongly over almost all of Greenland“.
The Switzerland-based daily also writes that “most journalists and media leaders are active or passive members of the green-socialist Climate Church and the new religion of the post-Christian western world” who acknowledge only things that fit their world narrative, and that likely explains why there’s been no word about the record cold in Greenland. Why? The BAZ comments:
“It casts the central prophesy of a continuous and ultimately lethal global warming, for which we are ourselves to blame, into question.”
Greenland has been cooling
Recently NTZ reported here that Greenland in fact has been cooling over the past decade, as three recent studies alarmingly show.
Greenland’s temperatures headed in the wrong direction, defying climate model projections. Underlying chart source: Kobashi et al., 2017.
According to a new study published in May of this year by a team led by Takuro Kobashi of the University of Bern, mean annual temperatures at the summit of Greenland have been showing “a slightly decreasing trend in accordance with northern North Atlantic-wide cooling“. See chart above.
Full post
3) Ocean Cools And Air Temps Follow
Science Matters, 7 July 2017
Ron Clutz
June Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) are now available, and we can see ocean temps dropping further after a short pause and resuming the downward trajectory from the previous 12 months.
HadSST is generally regarded as the best of the global SST data sets, and so the temperature story here comes from that source, the latest version being HadSST3.
The chart below shows the last two years of SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST3 including June 2017.
In May despite a slight rise in the Tropics, declines in both hemispheres and globally caused SST cooling to resume after an upward bump in April. Now in June a large spike upward in NH was overcome by an even larger drop in SH, now three months into a cooling phase. The Tropics also cooled off so the Global anomaly continued to decline. Presently NH and SH are both changing strongly but in opposite directions.
Note that higher temps in 2015 and 2016 were first of all due to a sharp rise in Tropical SST, beginning in March 2015, peaking in January 2016, and steadily declining back to its beginning level. Secondly, the Northern Hemisphere added two bumps on the shoulders of Tropical warming, with peaks in August of each year. Also, note that the global release of heat was not dramatic, due to the Southern Hemisphere offsetting the Northern one. Note that June 2017 matches closely to June 2015, with almost the same anomalies for NH, SH and Global. The Tropics are lower now and trending down compared to an upward trend in 2015.
June satellite measures of air over the land and oceans also shows a sharp drop. The graph below provides UAH vs.6 TLT (lower troposphere temps) confirming the general impression from SSTs.
In contrast with SST measurements, air temps in the TLT upticked in May with all areas participating in the rise of almost 0.2C. Then in June SH dropped 0.4C, NH down 0.2C while the Tropics declined slightly. The end result has all areas back to March values except for the Tropics. June 2017 compares closely with July 2015 but with no signs of an impending El Nino.
We have seen lots of claims about the temperature records for 2016 and 2015 proving dangerous man made warming. At least one senator stated that in a confirmation hearing. Yet HadSST3 data for the last two years show how obvious is the ocean’s governing of global average temperatures.
The best context for understanding these two years comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:
The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature these years.
Full post
4) EPA Chief Wants Scientists To Debate Climate On TV
Reuters, 11 July 2017
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is in the early stages of launching a debate about climate change that could air on television – challenging scientists to prove the widespread view that global warming is a serious threat, the head of the agency said.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks during an interview for Reuters at his office in Washington, U.S., July 10, 2017. REUTERS/
The move comes as the administration of President Donald Trump seeks to roll back a slew of Obama-era regulations limiting carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, and begins a withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement – a global pact to stem planetary warming through emissions cuts.
“There are lots of questions that have not been asked and answered (about climate change),” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told Reuters in an interview late on Monday.
“Who better to do that than a group of scientists… getting together and having a robust discussion for all the world to see,” he added without explaining how the scientists would be chosen.
Asked if he thought the debate should be televised, Pruitt said: “I think so. I think so. I mean, I don’t know yet, but you want this to be open to the world. You want this to be on full display. I think the American people would be very interested in consuming that. I think they deserve it.”
Pruitt, one of the most controversial figures in the Trump administration, has repeatedly expressed doubts about climate change – one of the main points of contention in his narrow confirmation by the Senate.
While acknowledging the planet is warming, Pruitt says he questions the gravity of the problem and the need for regulations that require companies to take costly measures to reduce their carbon footprint.
“It is a question about how much we contribute to it. How do we measure that with precision? And by the way, are we on an unsustainable path? And is it causing an existential threat?” he said in the interview.
Since taking up his role at EPA, he has emerged as one of the more prolific Trump cabinet appointees, taking steps to undo more than two dozen regulations, and influencing Trump’s decision to pull the United States from the Paris climate change deal, agreed by nearly 200 countries in 2015.
Pruitt rejected global criticism of the United States for pulling out of the climate deal, which Trump has said would have cost America trillions of dollars without benefit.
“We have nothing to be apologetic about,” Pruitt said. “It was absolutely a decision of courage and fortitude and truly represented an America First strategy with respect to how we are leading on this issue.”
Pruitt said the United States had already cut its carbon output to the lowest levels in nearly 25 years without mandates, thanks mainly to increased use of natural gas – which burns cleaner than coal.
“Red Team, Blue Team” Tactics
Pruitt said his desire for the agency to host an ongoing climate change debate was inspired by two articles published in April – one in the Wall Street Journal by theoretical physicist Steve Koonin, who served as undersecretary of energy under Obama – and one by conservative columnist Brett Stephens in the New York Times.
Koonin’s article made the case that climate science should use the “red team-blue team” methodology used by the national security community to test assumptions. Stephens’ article criticized claims of complete certainty in climate science, saying that it “traduces the spirit of science.”
Pruitt said scientists should not scoff at the idea of participating in these debates.
“If you’re going to win and if you’re so certain about it, come and do your deal. They shouldn’t be scared of the debate and discussion,” he said.
Pruitt said debate is not necessarily aimed at undermining the 2009 “endangerment finding,” the scientific determination that carbon dioxide harms human health that formed the basis for the Democratic Obama administration’s regulation of greenhouse gases. He said there may be a legal basis to challenge the finding but would prefer Congress weigh in on the matter.
Full post
see also: Transcript of Reuters interview with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt
5) Government Of Saskatchewan Responds To GWPF Report On CCS
Regina Leader-Post, 7 July 2017
D.C. Fraser
A new report from a U.K.-based think tank is taking aim at the use of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), including how it is being used in Saskatchewan.
Gordon Hughes, a former advisor to the World Bank and economics professor at the University of Edinburgh, wrote in a Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) report that Saskatchewan’s use of CCS technology is “an object lesson in the uncertainties and difficulties of managing the installation of a new technology.”
GWPF is, according to its website, an organization “deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated” regarding global warming, which it considers a “contested science.”
SaskPower spent $1.5 billion retrofitting an existing coal power plant — Boundary Dam 3, near Estevan — with CCS technology.
Its aim was to reduce carbon emissions generated by the coal-fired plant, but Hughes says in his report it has “not performed up to expectations.”
He notes breakdowns and maintenance have led to the unit operating only 40 per cent of the time. Hughes suggests replacing the coal-fired plant with an efficient gas plant would have cut CO2 emissions at five to 10 per cent of the cost.
“This is really the key lesson from the Boundary Dam project. It was simply an application of the wrong technology in the wrong circumstances,” he writes.
In a statement, the premier’s office said they will be taking a closer look at the report and says some of the facts contained within it are outdated.
“(The report) says BD3 is only up 40% of the time (which was the first year of operation), but BD3 is up and running 85% of the time the second year, which is right on target,” said the statement.
According to SaskPower, BD3 has been operating 68.5 per cent of the time since it became operational in October 2014 to June 2017, when an outage lasting the month and into July was planned.
The province also pointed out Hughes’ summary suggests CCS technology only made sense for utility companies in charge of all aspects of providing power. That includes providing the power, bringing it to communities, billing customers and fixing outages.
“That’s exactly what SaskPower is,” said the statement.
The province says Hughes’ suggestion the coal-fired plant should be replaced with an efficient gas plant is “using a lot of hindsight” because nobody predicted gas prices to be as low as they are.
Cathy Sproule, who is the NDP’s critic of SaskPower, says CCS technology is “really too expensive.”
Full story
6) Francis Menton: Looks Like Global Action On Climate Change Is Dead
Manhattan Contrarian, 10 July 2017
Without the U.S. in the game, all the biggest players are going to be increasing emissions, not decreasing them. In reality, the whole “global action on climate change” thing is completely dead.
As a basic starting point, I suggest that on any story of political importance in the New York Times, the truth is probably exactly the opposite of what they report. Consider that lead story on the front page of yesterday’s Sunday print edition: “World Leaders Move Forward on Climate Change, Without U.S.”
Scary! The U.S. is getting completely isolated from the world community!
In a final communiqué at the conclusion of the Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany, the nations took “note” of Mr. Trump’s decision to abandon the pact and “immediately cease” efforts to enact former President Barack Obama’s pledge of curbing greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. But the other 19 members of the group broke explicitly with Mr. Trump in their embrace of the international deal, signing off on a detailed policy blueprint outlining how their countries could meet their goals in the pact.
You can definitely count on Pravda not to look into what these other 19 countries have promised to do and let you know if there is any substance to it. So the hard work falls once again to the Manhattan Contrarian. If you just Google the letters “INDC” (“Intended Nationally Determined Contribution”) along with the name of a country, you can find out exactly what that country has promised to do as part of the Paris Agreement. So let’s take a look at what a few of the big countries are up to.
China. We already know that answer from my post just last week. China, through its companies, is planning to build over the course of the next decade or so well more than double the number of coal power plants that the U.S. has today. Its INDC calls for its proceeding to increase carbon emissions as much as it wants through 2030, and only then (when everyone in China presumably has electricity and a couple of cars) to level things off. By that time its emissions will probably be at least triple those of the U.S.
India. India’s INDC openly admits that it intends to increase its electricity supply by more than triple between now and 2030, with no commitment whatsoever as to how much of that will come from fossil fuels. Oh, they say that they plan to lower the “emissions intensity” of their energy generation, and greatly expand (useless) wind and solar capacity, as well as nuclear. Whoopee!
Indonesia. These things get more comical the more of them you read. The first thing you learn in reading Indonesia’s INDC is that the large majority of its emissions come from burning down the rain forest (“most emissions (63%) are the result of land use change and peat and forest fires”) and very little from using fossil fuels for energy (“fossil fuels contribute[e] approximately 19% of total emissions”). So they’ll promise to burn down less of the rain forest, and nothing whatsoever as to reducing use of fossil fuels for energy. Their (completely illusory) “reduction target” of 29% by 2030 is not against a fixed amount of past usage (like the United States’ benchmark of 2005 emissions), but rather is against what they call a “business as usual” scenario of projected future emissions that are a multiple of today’s.
Russia. What, you didn’t know that Russia was a member of the G20? What is the chance that Russia would make an honest promise about emissions reductions? Their INDC calls for reducing emissions by 25-30% below 1990 by 2030. Impressive! Wait a minute! The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Then they closed down all that inefficient Soviet industry. According to a graph at Climate Action Tracker here, by 2000 their emissions were down by almost 40% from the 1990 level, and they have only crept up a little from there since. In other words, Russia’s supposed “commitments” again represent increases from today’s level of emissions. Yet another total scam.
Germany. Germany is part of the supposed EU commitment to reduce emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. Oh, but now that Germany has gotten its electricity production from renewables up to about 30%, it seems that it has hit a wall, and its carbon emissions have actually gone up for both of the last two years (2015 and 2016), according to Clean Energy Wire. Exactly how do they plan to meet their goal? Excellent question.
In other words, this whole thing is a total farce. The G20 “climate” thing — let alone New York Times reporting on same — is nothing more than an international effort to bully the United States into crippling its economy while everyone else goes right ahead and uses fossil fuels exactly as they please. Whatever else you might say about President Trump, he seems to be unusually immune to this kind of bullying.
Full post
Global Warming Policy Forum, 12 July 2017
A new opinion poll of 10,000 European citizens reveals majority of Europeans reject the claim that climate change is mainly or entirely caused by humans.
For the last few decades, questions about the causes and impacts of climate change have dominated the climate debate. The IPCC and many climate scientists have been claiming relentlessly that the global warming trend since the second half of the 20th century is mainly if not entirely man-made, i.e. as a result of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This dogma is habitually claimed to be the global climate consensus.
In contrast, climate sceptics have remained sceptical. Given the lack of proper understanding of the many known (and unknown) natural factors that contribute to climate change, most sceptics claim that it is impossible, at least for the time being, to quantify reliably the exact relationship between natural and human factors that drive climate change.
Following concerns that the so-called climate consensus was not reaching the public, a comprehensive opinion poll of 10,000 European citizens in 10 countries was conducted to establish levels of awareness, concern, and trust among different demographic groups and nationalities.
The result of the poll reveals that despite decades of climate alarmism and green indoctrination the European public remains doggedly sceptical and unprejudiced – a result that confirms and strengthens the work of the GWPF and other European climate sceptics:
“When asked about general perceptions of major global risks, 18% of all respondents said that climate change was the most serious problem facing the world. Concerning the causes of climate change, almost half of all respondents (46%) believed that climate change is either “mainly” or “entirely” caused by human activity and 42% thought that climate change is caused “partly by natural processes and partly by human activity.” Only 8% thought climate change was either “mainly” or “entirely” caused by natural processes (with a further 1% saying climate change did not exist and 2% saying “don’t know”).”
Figure 2. Responses to the question “Thinking about the causes of climate change, which, if any, of the following best describes your opinion?” Shown as the percentage of responses (10,106 in total, ca. 1,000 per country) for causes which were: entirely natural, mainly natural, natural and human, mainly human, or entirely human. For all individual countries and all countries combined.
Full paper
2) Everything You Have Read About Melting Greenland Is Wrong
No Tricks Zone, 12 July 2017
P. Gosselin
“In Greenland July this year has been the coldest ever. It has left climate catastrophists struggling to explain it. The ice cover has grown strongly over almost all of Greenland.”
We have all heard about the record breaking ice mass balance and cold temperature reading of -33°C recently being set in Greenland, the Arctic island that is the supposedly the canary in the climate coal mine.
It turns out that things are colder than we would be led to believe and that warming there is fiction.
Struggling to explain
The Swiss online Baseler Zeitung (BAZ) here reports: “In Greenland July this year has been the coldest ever. That has left climate catastrophists struggling to explain it.”
Citing the Danish Meteorological Institute, the BAZ comments that the -33°C reading earlier this month was “the coldest July temperature ever recorded in the northern hemisphere”, smashing the previous record of 30.7°C.
Expanding ice mass, media ignore
The BAZ adds that also the “ice cover has grown strongly over almost all of Greenland“.
The Switzerland-based daily also writes that “most journalists and media leaders are active or passive members of the green-socialist Climate Church and the new religion of the post-Christian western world” who acknowledge only things that fit their world narrative, and that likely explains why there’s been no word about the record cold in Greenland. Why? The BAZ comments:
“It casts the central prophesy of a continuous and ultimately lethal global warming, for which we are ourselves to blame, into question.”
Greenland has been cooling
Recently NTZ reported here that Greenland in fact has been cooling over the past decade, as three recent studies alarmingly show.
Greenland’s temperatures headed in the wrong direction, defying climate model projections. Underlying chart source: Kobashi et al., 2017.
According to a new study published in May of this year by a team led by Takuro Kobashi of the University of Bern, mean annual temperatures at the summit of Greenland have been showing “a slightly decreasing trend in accordance with northern North Atlantic-wide cooling“. See chart above.
Full post
3) Ocean Cools And Air Temps Follow
Science Matters, 7 July 2017
Ron Clutz
June Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) are now available, and we can see ocean temps dropping further after a short pause and resuming the downward trajectory from the previous 12 months.
HadSST is generally regarded as the best of the global SST data sets, and so the temperature story here comes from that source, the latest version being HadSST3.
The chart below shows the last two years of SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST3 including June 2017.
In May despite a slight rise in the Tropics, declines in both hemispheres and globally caused SST cooling to resume after an upward bump in April. Now in June a large spike upward in NH was overcome by an even larger drop in SH, now three months into a cooling phase. The Tropics also cooled off so the Global anomaly continued to decline. Presently NH and SH are both changing strongly but in opposite directions.
Note that higher temps in 2015 and 2016 were first of all due to a sharp rise in Tropical SST, beginning in March 2015, peaking in January 2016, and steadily declining back to its beginning level. Secondly, the Northern Hemisphere added two bumps on the shoulders of Tropical warming, with peaks in August of each year. Also, note that the global release of heat was not dramatic, due to the Southern Hemisphere offsetting the Northern one. Note that June 2017 matches closely to June 2015, with almost the same anomalies for NH, SH and Global. The Tropics are lower now and trending down compared to an upward trend in 2015.
June satellite measures of air over the land and oceans also shows a sharp drop. The graph below provides UAH vs.6 TLT (lower troposphere temps) confirming the general impression from SSTs.
In contrast with SST measurements, air temps in the TLT upticked in May with all areas participating in the rise of almost 0.2C. Then in June SH dropped 0.4C, NH down 0.2C while the Tropics declined slightly. The end result has all areas back to March values except for the Tropics. June 2017 compares closely with July 2015 but with no signs of an impending El Nino.
We have seen lots of claims about the temperature records for 2016 and 2015 proving dangerous man made warming. At least one senator stated that in a confirmation hearing. Yet HadSST3 data for the last two years show how obvious is the ocean’s governing of global average temperatures.
The best context for understanding these two years comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:
The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature these years.
Full post
4) EPA Chief Wants Scientists To Debate Climate On TV
Reuters, 11 July 2017
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is in the early stages of launching a debate about climate change that could air on television – challenging scientists to prove the widespread view that global warming is a serious threat, the head of the agency said.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks during an interview for Reuters at his office in Washington, U.S., July 10, 2017. REUTERS/
The move comes as the administration of President Donald Trump seeks to roll back a slew of Obama-era regulations limiting carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, and begins a withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement – a global pact to stem planetary warming through emissions cuts.
“There are lots of questions that have not been asked and answered (about climate change),” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told Reuters in an interview late on Monday.
“Who better to do that than a group of scientists… getting together and having a robust discussion for all the world to see,” he added without explaining how the scientists would be chosen.
Asked if he thought the debate should be televised, Pruitt said: “I think so. I think so. I mean, I don’t know yet, but you want this to be open to the world. You want this to be on full display. I think the American people would be very interested in consuming that. I think they deserve it.”
Pruitt, one of the most controversial figures in the Trump administration, has repeatedly expressed doubts about climate change – one of the main points of contention in his narrow confirmation by the Senate.
While acknowledging the planet is warming, Pruitt says he questions the gravity of the problem and the need for regulations that require companies to take costly measures to reduce their carbon footprint.
“It is a question about how much we contribute to it. How do we measure that with precision? And by the way, are we on an unsustainable path? And is it causing an existential threat?” he said in the interview.
Since taking up his role at EPA, he has emerged as one of the more prolific Trump cabinet appointees, taking steps to undo more than two dozen regulations, and influencing Trump’s decision to pull the United States from the Paris climate change deal, agreed by nearly 200 countries in 2015.
Pruitt rejected global criticism of the United States for pulling out of the climate deal, which Trump has said would have cost America trillions of dollars without benefit.
“We have nothing to be apologetic about,” Pruitt said. “It was absolutely a decision of courage and fortitude and truly represented an America First strategy with respect to how we are leading on this issue.”
Pruitt said the United States had already cut its carbon output to the lowest levels in nearly 25 years without mandates, thanks mainly to increased use of natural gas – which burns cleaner than coal.
“Red Team, Blue Team” Tactics
Pruitt said his desire for the agency to host an ongoing climate change debate was inspired by two articles published in April – one in the Wall Street Journal by theoretical physicist Steve Koonin, who served as undersecretary of energy under Obama – and one by conservative columnist Brett Stephens in the New York Times.
Koonin’s article made the case that climate science should use the “red team-blue team” methodology used by the national security community to test assumptions. Stephens’ article criticized claims of complete certainty in climate science, saying that it “traduces the spirit of science.”
Pruitt said scientists should not scoff at the idea of participating in these debates.
“If you’re going to win and if you’re so certain about it, come and do your deal. They shouldn’t be scared of the debate and discussion,” he said.
Pruitt said debate is not necessarily aimed at undermining the 2009 “endangerment finding,” the scientific determination that carbon dioxide harms human health that formed the basis for the Democratic Obama administration’s regulation of greenhouse gases. He said there may be a legal basis to challenge the finding but would prefer Congress weigh in on the matter.
Full post
see also: Transcript of Reuters interview with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt
5) Government Of Saskatchewan Responds To GWPF Report On CCS
Regina Leader-Post, 7 July 2017
D.C. Fraser
A new report from a U.K.-based think tank is taking aim at the use of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), including how it is being used in Saskatchewan.
Gordon Hughes, a former advisor to the World Bank and economics professor at the University of Edinburgh, wrote in a Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) report that Saskatchewan’s use of CCS technology is “an object lesson in the uncertainties and difficulties of managing the installation of a new technology.”
GWPF is, according to its website, an organization “deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated” regarding global warming, which it considers a “contested science.”
SaskPower spent $1.5 billion retrofitting an existing coal power plant — Boundary Dam 3, near Estevan — with CCS technology.
Its aim was to reduce carbon emissions generated by the coal-fired plant, but Hughes says in his report it has “not performed up to expectations.”
He notes breakdowns and maintenance have led to the unit operating only 40 per cent of the time. Hughes suggests replacing the coal-fired plant with an efficient gas plant would have cut CO2 emissions at five to 10 per cent of the cost.
“This is really the key lesson from the Boundary Dam project. It was simply an application of the wrong technology in the wrong circumstances,” he writes.
In a statement, the premier’s office said they will be taking a closer look at the report and says some of the facts contained within it are outdated.
“(The report) says BD3 is only up 40% of the time (which was the first year of operation), but BD3 is up and running 85% of the time the second year, which is right on target,” said the statement.
According to SaskPower, BD3 has been operating 68.5 per cent of the time since it became operational in October 2014 to June 2017, when an outage lasting the month and into July was planned.
The province also pointed out Hughes’ summary suggests CCS technology only made sense for utility companies in charge of all aspects of providing power. That includes providing the power, bringing it to communities, billing customers and fixing outages.
“That’s exactly what SaskPower is,” said the statement.
The province says Hughes’ suggestion the coal-fired plant should be replaced with an efficient gas plant is “using a lot of hindsight” because nobody predicted gas prices to be as low as they are.
Cathy Sproule, who is the NDP’s critic of SaskPower, says CCS technology is “really too expensive.”
Full story
6) Francis Menton: Looks Like Global Action On Climate Change Is Dead
Manhattan Contrarian, 10 July 2017
Without the U.S. in the game, all the biggest players are going to be increasing emissions, not decreasing them. In reality, the whole “global action on climate change” thing is completely dead.
As a basic starting point, I suggest that on any story of political importance in the New York Times, the truth is probably exactly the opposite of what they report. Consider that lead story on the front page of yesterday’s Sunday print edition: “World Leaders Move Forward on Climate Change, Without U.S.”
Scary! The U.S. is getting completely isolated from the world community!
In a final communiqué at the conclusion of the Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany, the nations took “note” of Mr. Trump’s decision to abandon the pact and “immediately cease” efforts to enact former President Barack Obama’s pledge of curbing greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. But the other 19 members of the group broke explicitly with Mr. Trump in their embrace of the international deal, signing off on a detailed policy blueprint outlining how their countries could meet their goals in the pact.
You can definitely count on Pravda not to look into what these other 19 countries have promised to do and let you know if there is any substance to it. So the hard work falls once again to the Manhattan Contrarian. If you just Google the letters “INDC” (“Intended Nationally Determined Contribution”) along with the name of a country, you can find out exactly what that country has promised to do as part of the Paris Agreement. So let’s take a look at what a few of the big countries are up to.
China. We already know that answer from my post just last week. China, through its companies, is planning to build over the course of the next decade or so well more than double the number of coal power plants that the U.S. has today. Its INDC calls for its proceeding to increase carbon emissions as much as it wants through 2030, and only then (when everyone in China presumably has electricity and a couple of cars) to level things off. By that time its emissions will probably be at least triple those of the U.S.
India. India’s INDC openly admits that it intends to increase its electricity supply by more than triple between now and 2030, with no commitment whatsoever as to how much of that will come from fossil fuels. Oh, they say that they plan to lower the “emissions intensity” of their energy generation, and greatly expand (useless) wind and solar capacity, as well as nuclear. Whoopee!
Indonesia. These things get more comical the more of them you read. The first thing you learn in reading Indonesia’s INDC is that the large majority of its emissions come from burning down the rain forest (“most emissions (63%) are the result of land use change and peat and forest fires”) and very little from using fossil fuels for energy (“fossil fuels contribute[e] approximately 19% of total emissions”). So they’ll promise to burn down less of the rain forest, and nothing whatsoever as to reducing use of fossil fuels for energy. Their (completely illusory) “reduction target” of 29% by 2030 is not against a fixed amount of past usage (like the United States’ benchmark of 2005 emissions), but rather is against what they call a “business as usual” scenario of projected future emissions that are a multiple of today’s.
Russia. What, you didn’t know that Russia was a member of the G20? What is the chance that Russia would make an honest promise about emissions reductions? Their INDC calls for reducing emissions by 25-30% below 1990 by 2030. Impressive! Wait a minute! The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Then they closed down all that inefficient Soviet industry. According to a graph at Climate Action Tracker here, by 2000 their emissions were down by almost 40% from the 1990 level, and they have only crept up a little from there since. In other words, Russia’s supposed “commitments” again represent increases from today’s level of emissions. Yet another total scam.
Germany. Germany is part of the supposed EU commitment to reduce emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. Oh, but now that Germany has gotten its electricity production from renewables up to about 30%, it seems that it has hit a wall, and its carbon emissions have actually gone up for both of the last two years (2015 and 2016), according to Clean Energy Wire. Exactly how do they plan to meet their goal? Excellent question.
In other words, this whole thing is a total farce. The G20 “climate” thing — let alone New York Times reporting on same — is nothing more than an international effort to bully the United States into crippling its economy while everyone else goes right ahead and uses fossil fuels exactly as they please. Whatever else you might say about President Trump, he seems to be unusually immune to this kind of bullying.
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