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China’s SUVs to Drive Oil Demand Growth, Bernstein Says - BloombergThe proportion of SUVs in the Chinese passenger fleet should double to 20 percent in 2020 from its current size, and the total number of vehicles should also double to more than 220 million at the end of the decade, Bernstein said.
This electric car runs on tweets | GristThis 1967 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, converted to an electric car by at-risk students from five Kansas City high schools, will turn Twitter mentions and Facebook likes into wattage to complete a 1,000-mile trip to Washington, D.C.
manning052313“Academically, my interests follow my advocacy interests,” he said. “I focus on environmental policy, specifically related to the politics of climate change. BC has been incredibly supportive of my endeavors. In 2011 I was awarded an Advanced Study Grant to conduct research in Nova Scotia on the public perception of renewable energy development. The Presidential Scholars Program has given me the opportunity to travel and study in Nicaragua and the Galapagos Islands.
“And when I’ve jetted off to UN climate change negotiations, BC has supported my efforts. I will be writing my thesis next year on the UN climate talks,” he added.
This summer he will work on renewable energy development in Belfast, Northern Ireland, with the Department of Enterprise, Investment and Trade.
Governor Brown to Join More than 500 Scientists in Call to Action on Climate Change TomorrowSacramento, California - Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. will join more than 500 world-renowned researchers and scientists to release a groundbreaking call to action on climate change tomorrow at the fourth annual Water, Energy and Smart Technology Summit and Showcase at NASA Ames Research Center.
The call to action will be made in a 20-page consensus statement, produced at the Governor’s urging and signed by more than 500 concerned scientists, that translates key scientific findings from disparate fields into one unified message for policy makers, industry and the general public.
Twitter / chriscmooney: We're raising atmospheric CO2 ...We're raising atmospheric CO2 "a million times faster than nature varied in the past"-- on
German IPCC Scientist: “Although There Are No Data To Show It…Frequency Of Tornadoes Will Be Higher”!How Latif comes up with the idea that we should expect more tornadoes as warming and CO2 increases is a mystery to me.
Then again in the year 2000 (April 1st) Latif made the notorious prediction that snow and hard frosts would become rare in Germany in the wintertime. The exact opposite has happened. In fact, snow is the forecast for parts of Germany today, and it’s May 22!
Why can’t these people just be honest for once, and skip the constant BS. These people need to be fired.
Antarctic Sea Ice Extent Set A 2nd Daily Record in a row on May 21 | sunshine hoursAntarctic Sea Ice Extent set a 2nd daily record in a row on May 22 (day 141 of 2013).
That is the 10th daily record for the year.
NOAA : Thirty Deadliest Tornado Years All Occurred Below 350 PPM | Real ScienceHansen says that we have to get CO2 below 350 PPM to be safe.
The data says the exact opposite. According to NOAA, the thirty deadliest tornado years from 1875 to 2008 all occurred below 350 PPM CO2.
THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: Why warming reduces the occurrence and intensity of tornadoesIn a post today by Andy Revkin, Dr. Harold Brooks of the National Severe Storms Laboratory points out that "There are more F1+ tornadoes in warm winter months and fewer in warm summer months." and that "there are ~20% fewer tornadoes in the collection of warm months." Dr. Brooks also notes, "Probability of occurrence is mostly driven by wind shear and intensity is almost completely independent of the thermodynamics. The observations are clear on that. As a result, expected changes in occurrence and intensity would be driven by wind shear changes" and that 2/3 of the models indicate "a decrease in [wind] shear over the US."
Chu On Climate: 'If We Don't Change What We're doing, We're Going To Be Fundamentally In Really Deep Trouble' | ThinkProgressBack in 2009, Chu said “Wake up,” America, “we’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.”
Twitter / billmckibben: 32 million people displaced ...32 million people displaced by climate change last year, almost all in the poor countries
Science: Thawing tundra soils could produce lower CO2 emissions than previously thought -- study -- Wednesday, May 22, 2013 -- www.eenews.netWarming may push carbon more deeply into the soil
Now you see it, now you don’t: Sen Whitehouse disappears his Oklahoma tornado speech | Climate Depot'The senator apparently found his speech this week subsequently embarrassing and took it down from his own website; if you click the previous link that featured the speech it now says 'page not found.' I guess Whitehouse thinks that because he’s a senator, don’tyouknow, he can do the Orwell memory hole trick'
No Rest For Weather Weary: Expect More Extremes After Oklahoma Tornado - ForbesJoe Bastardi has warned for years that we would enter a period of climactic hardship as a result of the cold PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) and warm AMO (Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation). Similar to the 1950s, the United States should experience heightened risk for landfalling hurricanes and higher likelihood of summer heat/drought.
Twitter / aDissentient: BH commenter: According to ...BH commenter: According to the methodology used in Cook et al. (2013), Prince Andrew was elected to the RS with a consensus of 100%.
New York Magazine: The Climate-Change Wars Begin This Summer | JunkScience.com“The legal challenge [for EPA regulation of power plant emissions] won’t take place for two years, but the two sides are preparing for war already. The field of battle will be the Federal Appeals Court in Washington, D.C.”
To Spark Buyers for Electric Cars, Drop the Price to Nearly $0 - WSJ.comThis car deal sounds too good to be true: Drive a car, almost free.
To entice drivers to try electric-powered cars, auto makers are lowering the price of entry to the zero-emission lifestyle.
Freak snow in Bickleton cancels school » Kitsap SunBICKLETON, Wash. (AP) — A freak snow has given students a snow day in May in the Klickitat County town of Bickleton.
School Superintendent Ric Palmer says 10-to-12 inches fell in places overnight and heavy snow brought some tree branches down on lines, knocking out power and phones.
Snow, no! Traffic trouble on mountain passes | Local & Regional News | Eugene News, Weather, Sports, Breaking News | KVAL CBS 13About 5 inches of snow fell overnight on Willamette Pass on Highway 58 and Santiam Pass on US 20.
Hillwalkers in Scotland warned to expect blizzards as weather turns wintry over higher ground - Daily RecordWINDS of up to 80mph and snow are expected on mountains on Thursday as the recent sunny spell gives way to a colder snap.
Deutsche Bank's CO2 offset portfolio for sale: sources - News - Point CarbonLONDON, May 22 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Deutsche Bank is hunting for a buyer for its U.N. carbon offset portfolio, once worth hundreds of millions of dollars, two sources said on Wednesday, as the German bank seeks to sell one of the last pieces of its shuttered global carbon trading business.
Frigid mid-May temperatures leave Denali Park businesses struggling to open | Alaska DispatchBut this winter won’t let go: Fresh snowfall over the weekend, followed by temperatures in the teens and mid-20s through the weekend culminated with a record low of 14 degrees Saturday morning. The chill disrupted local businesses trying to get their seasons started.
...
On Monday afternoon, Denali Air Flightseeing Tours was still struggling to clear its airstrip, 10 days after the company planes usually take to the skies.
“We’re probably three weeks behind where we should be,” owner R.D. Rosso said. The airstrip needs to be free of snow and completely dry before planes can take off, but Friday’s snowfall reversed the progress workers had made clearing the strip before the weekend.
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Denali National Park is used to cold temperatures, spokesperson Kris Fister said, but this year it’s been different because of all the snow still on the ground.
The buses are up and running, she said, but “visitors going out to Toklat will see a far snowier landscape” than usual. But the last 60-plus miles to Wonder Lake are still closed.
Still, visitors are “taking it in stride,” Fister said. “The grumpiest people are Alaskans.”
Transcript | This American Life
Julia Kumari Drapkin Before I get to Nolan, a word about just how weird the weather was here last year. I moved to the state in April, and at first, the stuff I was hearing about was kind of subtle. One woman started noticing squirrel roadkill near her house, for example.
Colorado Resident
Three roadkill squirrels. And I can't say that I've ever remember seeing a squirrel on our--
...
Meanwhile, bears were killing off livestock like crazy because they didn't have enough to eat in the woods. Because there weren't enough acorns. Because the oak leaves froze. Because they came out too early.
[Bob Inglis] Now there's a real problem with saying carbon tax. If you say it to a conservative audience, which is our target audience, conservatives break out in hives when you mention the word carbon, and they go into anaphylactic shock when you mention the word tax. And so you need EpiPens available to revive them, get them back breathing.
...
[Ira Glass] And last fall, McKibben hit the road to sound the alarm that climate change in fact does have an enemy, and to organize an army against that enemy. His goal-- to turn the oil and gas and coal companies into pariahs, like cigarette companies, as a way to destroy their political clout.
...If nothing else, if McKibben's successful, the discussion will pop out of that rut, and soon, we will all be arguing with each other about whether or not the oil companies are going to destroy the world.
...if enough people are yelling about all this, other things might become possible. A carbon tax, or any of the other proposals that would deal with climate change on more of an urgent, wartime footing.
New Energy chief: Need to address climate change ‘not debatable’ - The Hill's E2-WireNew Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz doesn’t want to spend his tenure battling over climate science.
“Let me make it very clear that there is no ambiguity in terms of the scientific basis calling for a prudent response [like what, specifically?] on climate change,” Moniz told Energy Department employees shortly after his swearing-in.
“I am not interested in debating what is not debatable,” Moniz said in his remarks at the Tuesday ceremony. “There is plenty to debate as we try and move forward on our climate agenda.”
Global Warming’s Six Indias | Yale Project on Climate Change CommunicationA new national study in India finds six distinct groups within the Indian public that respond to the issue of climate change in very different ways.
Can solar keep the UK’s lights on? | Carbon CounterStoring a trickle of solar energy in the middle of the day for use at night does not appear to be get us very far in preventing blackouts.
Climate change caused the Oklahoma tornado? Crikey, these people are getting desperate! – Telegraph Blogs[Delingpole] Do the Senator Boxers and Whitehouses of this world have no shame? That'll be a rhetorical question, by the way, and it doesn't just apply to Democrat senators. It applies pretty much across the board to all those desperate climate alarmists (politicians, scientists, green campaigners, rent-seeking corporatists trying to squeeze the last bit of liquid from the withered dugs of the renewable energy milch cow…) who, in the absence of any credible evidence to support their ludicrous claims, now rely largely on emotional grandstanding (like the "future generations" standby) and cheap ad homs.
Terrible Tornadoes in a Changing Climate - NYTimes.com...a half century of observations in the United States show no change in tornado frequency and a declining frequency of strong tornadoes.
Does any of this mean global warming is not a serious problem? No.
It just means assertions that all weird bad weather is, in essence, our fault are not grounded in science and, as a result, end up empowering those [Revkin links to Marc Morano's Climate Depot here] whose prime interest appears to to be sustaining the fossil fuel era as long as possible. I was glad to see the green blog Grist acknowledge as much.
Bill Maher: New Rules Republicans are Benghazi crazy - YouTube
3:35 and while the press has been occupied with scandal the biggest scandal and the most important story of the century so far happened last week
scientists reported that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has passed the long feared milestone of four hundred parts-per-million and unless you're a chimney sweep that's bad news because humans have never lived through it
you think susan rice gave bogus talking points about Benghazi what about the bullshit talking points the entire republican party has been spewing on climate change since the nineties
i wanna see the--i want to see the emails to find out who came up with the talking points that
global warming is just a theory and that it needs more study and climate change is a hoax. The Obama administration isn't dirty, the air is.
[Via
Real Science]
SkepticalScience Now Argues Against Foster & Rahmsorf (2011) | Bob Tisdale – Climate ObservationsWill SkepticalScience be correcting all of their past posts that reference those papers, and the numerous other papers with similar results, in an effort to reflect their change in opinion? If they don’t, their readers will be even more confused.
...
It appears that SkepticalScience is just a confused as the climate science community about the recent slowdown in the rate of warming.
Amazon River produces monster levels of “pollution”. The dilemma. Should we stop the river? « JoNovaBad news for fans of The Amazon River. A new study shows that while the Amazon rain forest is the Lungs of The Planet, pulling down gigatonnes of CO2, the river undoes all the good the trees do, and pours all the CO2 back into the sky. Damn that river eh? Lucky it only discharges one fifth of the worlds freshwater.
Stop global warming, get paid $12-13 per hour [by Greenpeace] | Watts Up With That?…plus benefits if you work more than 350 hours…
Barbara Boxer Forecasts Summer Snow, Heat And Tornadoes | Real ScienceShe forgot to predict that it will be dark at night, cold in the winter, and there will be rain and wind sometimes.
Twitter / keithkloor: Self-described left-wing greenie ...Self-described left-wing greenie is "embarrassed to hug the same tree as the ppl I generally agree with"
Aviation officials see global emissions deal possible by 2020 - Reuters News - Point CarbonGENEVA, May 21 (Reuters) - Senior officials from business and commercial aviation voiced cautious optimism that a long-sought worldwide framework to reduce aviation's carbon emissions could be in place by 2020.
Twitter / RogerAPielkeSr: Spending millions of dollar ...Spending millions of dollar on no skill climate projections is poor policy compared with grants to communities for school tornado shelters.
Twitter / RichardTol: Cook survey included 10 of ...Cook survey included 10 of my 122 eligible papers. 5/10 were rated incorrectly. 4/5 were rated as endorse rather than neutral.
Twitter / BigJoeBastardi: Snow could fly Catskills, ...Snow could fly Catskills, Adirondacks and into high ground northern new england this weekend
The Real Climate-Change Lesson from the Oklahoma Tornado - The Daily BeastThe first thing to notice is that when we want to know if tornadoes are related to climate change, we turn to scientists. Take, for example, Harold Brooks, a scientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Severe Storms Laboratory. He sees no evidence that climate change is making tornadoes more common or more severe. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (PDF) has the same view, stating in 2012 that it did not see evidence that climate change increased the risk of tornadoes. You hear the same thing from Marshall Shepherd, President of the American Meteorological Society, who tweeted that there is “No link to tornadoes.”
The Reference Frame: Ask questions to James HansenIf you want to waste 73 minutes, feel more than free to watch a talk that Hansen gave yesterday in front of some people who think he is a "hero". Among other things, Hansen explains that he was skipping classes in the college because he didn't want to show how ignorant he was – which made him even more ignorant. But then he found the environmental movement and ignorance was transformed to a virtue.
Friedbert Pflüger: Climate change is no longer the EU’s only priority | EurActivThe EU’s climate policy has not vanished but the approach today is probably more balanced towards other aims like energy supply security and competitiveness, Friedbert Pflüger said in an interview with EurActiv Slovakia.
Why the EU could terminate global warming hysteria | JunkScience.comOne chart says it all.
UN Chief Says That The World Is Going To Run Out Of Water | Real ScienceMust be all the excess moisture caused by global warming which has made the planet dry up.
Law Professor Labels German Federal Environment Agency Authoritarian Pamphlet Against Skeptics “State Propaganda”In the pamphlet, he German government UBA specifically singles out, identifies, targets and attacks US and German skeptics, thus sparking outrage.
Some of the Americans targeted include scientists Fred Singer, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, Frederick Seitz, Pat Michaels, John Christy, Ross McKitrick and conservative think-tank Heartland Institute. The German targets include European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), Fritz Vahrenholt, and Sebastian Lüning, as well as journalists and publicists Dirk Maxeiner and Michael Miersch, and film-maker / publicist Günter Ederer, and national newspaper Die Welt.
Has Global Warming Stalled? | Royal Meteorological Society[Trenberth] "Warming" really means heating, and so it can be manifested in many ways. Rising surface temperatures are just one manifestation. Melting Arctic sea ice is another. So is melting of glaciers and other land ice that contribute to rising sea levels. Increasing the water cycle and invigorating storms is yet another...Another prominent source of natural variability in the Earth’s energy imbalance is changes in the sun itself, seen most clearly as the sunspot cycle. From 2005 to 2010 the sun went into a quiet phase and the warming energy imbalance is estimated to have dropped by about 10 to 15%.
...Human induced global warming really kicked in during the 1970s, and warming has been pretty steady since then...Focusing on the wiggles and ignoring the bigger picture of unabated warming is foolhardy, but one promoted by climate change deniers. Global sea level keeps marching up at a rate of over 30 cm per century since 1992 (when global measurements via altimetry on satellites were made possible), and that is perhaps a better indicator that global warming continues unabated.
Kevin Trenberth’s REAL travesty | Climate Sanity[Trenberth 2009] The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.
The Collapsing ‘Consensus’ | Watts Up With That?[Monckton] Yet the most remarkable conclusion to be drawn from Cook’s strange paper is that the “consensus” – far from growing – is actually collapsing.
GWPF Invites Royal Society Fellows For Climate Change Discussion | The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)London, 22 May: In response to a suggestion by Sir Paul Nurse, the President of the Royal Society, the Global Warming Policy Foundation has invited five climate scientists and Fellows of the Royal Society to discuss the current state of climate science and its wider implications.
Contrary to your leader’s assertions, the Earth has been cooling for 2000 yearsA new study of tree-ring data has concluded that not only has our climate often been noticeably hotter than today, temperatures have actually been on a falling trend for the past 2,000 years.
- Bishop Hill blog - Oxford professors and the poor[Matt Ridley to Myles Allen] This is manifestly dishonest. To find out what I think, try reading my article rather than making up fantastic and absurd stories and then saying "if that is what Ridley thinks…". Where did I mention anything remotely like a "second coming"? Where did I imply that I "don't care about unborn generations", when I made the exact opposite point? Why did you choose to distort my argument that the citizens of 2060 will be able to cope with mild climate change into a quite different point -- "cope with whatever we bequeath them"? And why did you choose to ignore the point I clearly made that climate policy is doing more economic and ecological harm to the poor today than climate change itself, and will do so for several more decades?
Donoughue fights on - Bishop Hill blogLord Donoughue continues his lonely struggle to get peers of the realm to give the time of day to people struggling under the burden of UK energy policy. His speech in Lords last week is well worth a read.
Last week, a global warming campaigner from this House denounced those who question green orthodoxy as, revealingly, the “forces of darkness”. I say revealingly because the language is religious or religiose. Much of this debate is conducted in those terms. The greens claim the high moral ground, pursuing the virtue of—ambitiously, I must say—saving the planet. “The end of the world is nigh”, they say. Those of us who question them are evil sinners.
Economist's View: 'The Climate Skeptics Have Already Won'Humanity has decided to yawn and let the real and present dangers of climate change mount. ... Judged by the world’s inaction, climate skeptics have won..., however rational it may be to seek to lower the risk of catastrophic outcomes, this is not what is happening now or seems likely to happen in the foreseeable future. ...
Climate Change John Kerry's Climate Alarmism WSJ Opinion - YouTube[5-minute video]
Surprise! Another California Green Policy Flop | The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)California’s “Hydrogen Highway” is a road to nowhere. About a decade ago, then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called for the state to invest more than $50 million in the program, which was to lead to the creation of 100 hydrogen fuel stations capable of serving 2,000 fuel-cell vehicles. Today, the state has a whopping total of nine hydrogen stations serving about 200 fuel cell cars.
...
The usual green assumptions, projections, and policy-errors are on full display here. The companies involved in this program were poorly managed, too reliant on government subsidies, and thrown completely for a loop by the US shale boom and the rise of cheap green technology imports from China.
EU Commission Plans Fundamental Course Change In Energy Policy – More Focus On Economics, Less On ClimateMajor German dailies today are reporting that Europe is beginning to give up on the big green dream it once so deeply cherished and envisioned a great society powered by clean sunshine and wind. After trying for years to force renewable energies onto consumers, the bill came and eyes popped.
Suddenly we are also seeing studies showing that warming won’t be so bad after all, and that CO2 climate sensitivity is much lower than first thought. The policy-making pressure coming from the threat of climate change is disappearing rapidly.
Dont pin US tornado on climate change: UN panel head | Astro AwaniGENEVA: Pinning the deadly tornado in the US state of Oklahoma on climate change is wrongheaded, even though the world is set to see a rise in high-profile weather disasters due to global warming, the leader [Pachauri] of a UN body said Tuesday.
Chilly days can kill by raising blood pressure | Health | News | Daily ExpressCOLD weather really is a killer because it triggers dangerous spikes in blood pressure, according to experts.
Tesla and the Myth of the Zero-Emissions Vehicle | National Review OnlineIndeed, when you factor in the toxicity of materials used in battery production, it’s hard to make the case that EVs are a very green alternative.
THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: New paper finds sea level rise has greatly decelerated over past 10,000 yearsA paper published today in the Journal of Quaternary Science reconstructs sea level rise in New Jersey, USA over the past 10,000 years and "concludes that relative sea levels rose at an average rate of 4 mm per year from 10,000-6,000 years ago, 2 mm per year from 6,000 to 2,000 years ago, and 1.3 mm per year from 2,000 years ago to AD 1900." Thus, the paper finds a large deceleration in sea level rise over the past 10,000 years, to a rate in 1900 essentially the same as during the past seven years.
The Secret Donors Behind the Center for American Progress and Other Think Tanks...the fact that CAP has received financial support from First Solar while touting its virtues to Washington policy-makers points to a conflict of interest that, critics argue, ought to be disclosed to the public. CAP’s promotion of the company’s interests has supplemented First Solar’s aggressive Washington lobbying efforts, on which it spent more than $800,000 during 2011 and 2012.
“The only thing more damaging than disclosing your donors and having questions raised about the independence of your work is not disclosing them and have the information come to light and undermine your work,” says Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. “The best practice, whether required by the IRS or not, is to disclose contributions.”
EDF Climate [Hoax] Corps Turns Over a New LeafToday, Environmental Defense Fund launched a new class of EDF Climate Corps fellows to catalyze energy savings in organizations around the country. This year’s class is bigger than ever – with 116 students placed in 106 different organizations.
Twitter / BjornLomborg: Boxer blames Oklahoma tornadoes ...Boxer blames Oklahoma tornadoes on global warming. No justification, just tasteless political exploitation.
Time for civil disobedience | Greenpeace InternationalNon-violent direct action can help re-establish a balance where our rights have been overtaken by the self interest of powerful economic elites, willing to sacrifice our children’s future for their short term gain and profit.
Twitter / bruneski [Sierra Club chief Michael Brune]President #Obama can make a strong commitment to fight #climate change. Or pursue an "all of the "above" fuels policy. He can't do both.
It Only Took Five Minutes for Democrats to Politicize the Oklahoma Tornado - The Rush Limbaugh ShowRUSH: It took five minutes. Five minutes. It only took five minutes before the Democrat Party politicized the tornado in Oklahoma. They politicize everything, folks. They rub their hands together in glee when there is a natural disaster that they think they can spin in such a way as to advance their political agenda. If any of you doubt that global warming is a political issue and not a science issue, then you must open your mind and consider why in the world, ask yourself, why in the world, five minutes after the news hits of this horrible destruction, a Democrat senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, runs out and starts talking about global warming and blaming the tornado on global warming.