George Soros gave Ivanka's husband's business a $250 million credit line in 2015 per WSJ. Soros is also an investor in Jared's business.

Saturday, August 31, 2013

No Atlantic hurricanes through August 2013, first time in 11 yrs., climate scare profiteers predicted 'above normal' season. “It just shows you having warm water isn’t everything,” Sr. meteorologist. 2007 UN IPCC report notes faulty wind measurement led to flawed ocean heat uptake models and sea level projections

"The Southern Ocean wind stress error has a particularly large detrimental impact on the Southern Ocean simulation by the models....It is likely that the relatively poor Southern Ocean simulation will influence the transient climate response to increasing greenhouse gases by affecting the oceanic heat uptake....These errors in oceanic heat uptake will also have a large impact on the reliability of the sea level rise projections. " 2007 UN IPCC Report, Chapter 8.3.2.2.2 Southern Ocean circulation
 
-------------------------------------- 

8/30/13, "No Atlantic Hurricane by August in First Time in 11 Years," Bloomberg, Barry K. Sullivan

"August is about to end without an Atlantic hurricane for the first time since 2002, calling into question predictions of a more active storm season than normal.

Six tropical systems have formed in the Atlantic since the season began June 1 and none of them has grown to hurricane strength with winds of at least 74 miles (120 kilometers) per hour. Accumulated cyclone energy in the Atlantic, a measure of tropical power, is about 30 percent of where it normally would be, said Phil Klotzbach, lead author of Colorado State University’s seasonal hurricane forecasts.

“At this point, I doubt that a super-active hurricane season will happen,” Klotzbach said in an e-mail yesterday.

The most active part of the Atlantic season runs from Aug. 20 to about the first week of October. The statistical peak occurs on Sept. 10, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Two storms formed in August and the hurricane center is tracking two areas of thunderstorms that have low to medium chances of becoming tropical systems within five days.

Atlantic storms are watched closely because they disrupt energy operations in and around the Gulf of Mexico and cause widespread destruction when they come ashore.

In the basin now, warm sea water and a decreasing amount of wind shear that can tear at the structure of budding storms mean conditions are ripe “for a burst of activity,” said Todd Crawford, chief meteorologist at Weather Services International in Andover, Massachusetts

A 'head scratcher'

The very inactive season so far has been a bit of a head-scratcher,” Crawford said in an e-mail interview.

Air temperatures from the Caribbean to Africa have been warmer than normal this year, reducing the instability in the atmosphere that drives storm development, he said. In addition, dry air is being pulled off Africa into the Atlantic, which also cuts storm activity, he said.

Seasonal predictions were for an above-normal season. The 30-year average is for 12 storms with winds of at least 39 miles per hour, the threshold at which they are named. Nineteen such systems formed in each of the last three years.

Colorado State, which pioneered seasonal forecasts, retreated slightly on its outlook in an early August update, calling for 18 named storms. Eight should be hurricanes and three of them major hurricanes, a reduction of one at each level, the researchers said.

NOAA outlook

The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration also kept its call for an above-average season in an Aug. 8 outlook for 13 to 19 named storms, six to nine hurricanes and three to five major systems.

“If you don’t get your first hurricane by or before August, it’s extremely difficult to get those high storm counts, especially for hurricanes and major hurricanes,” said Matt Rogers, president of Commodity Weather Group LLC in Bethesda, Maryland. “Amazing we’re on the 90th day of the hurricane season and no hurricanes yet.” 

While water temperatures in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico are high enough to spark hurricane formation, wind shear across the central part of the ocean has been high, Klotzbach said. Shear is when the winds at different altitudes blow at varying speeds or directions, which can tear at the structure of a budding tropical system.

Atlantic conditions

According to the U.S. Climate Prediction Center, there has been a lot of wind shear in the Atlantic between the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean and Cape Verde off the coast of Africa. This zone is often referred to as the main development region for Atlantic hurricanes, particularly in August and September.
.
“We haven’t had a hurricane and we don’t see anything that looks highly robust,” said Dan Kottlowski, an expert senior meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania. “It just goes to show you that having warm water isn’t everything.” 

For natural gas markets, hurricanes have shifted from being major output disruptions, in part because so much production has shifted to land, to being “load killers” that cut electricity demand as temperatures drop, said Teri Viswanath, director of commodities strategy at BNP Paribas SA in New York.

The Gulf of Mexico is home to about 6 percent of U.S. natural gas output, 23 percent of oil production and more than 45 percent of petroleum refining capacity, according to the U.S. Energy Department. In 2001, Gulf waters accounted for 24 percent of U.S. marketed gas production.

No bets

A quiet first half to the Atlantic storm season doesn’t mean the second will be the same, she said. “It’s not over until it’s over,” Viswanath said.

Hurricane Sandy, which slammed into New York and New Jersey last year, developed on Oct. 22 and went ashore on Oct. 29. It killed at least 159 people and damaged or destroyed more than 650,000 homes in the U.S., according to a federal task force report Aug. 19.

Crawford also said the 2013 season could rebound now that September has begun. He expects some of the barriers that have damped activity so far to fall.

The 2002 season, the last to pass without a hurricane by the end of August, included Hurricane Lili, a Category 4t storm that caused about $860 million in damage and killed at least 13 people in the Caribbean and Louisiana from Sept. 21 to Oct. 4, according to the hurricane center. The first hurricane to form that year was Gustav, on Sept. 11.

“On Sept. 9, if there is nothing to talk about, you can call me and we can write off the season,” said Michael Schlacter, founder of Weather 2000 in New York. “I think in the next 10 days there will be a lot of things to discuss.”"
via Drudge
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Comment: A type of ocean wind is mentioned above as a mitigating force against hurricanes. The UN IPCC 2007 report noted importance of accurate ocean wind measurements in climate assessments, cited errors in "wind stress" measurements rendered computer model simulations of ocean heat absorption likely erroneous along with sea level rise projections: 2007 UN IPCC report, Chapter 8.3.2.2.2:

"Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis"
"8.3.2.2.2 Southern Ocean circulation"

"The Southern Ocean wind stress error has a particularly large detrimental impact on the Southern Ocean simulation by the models. Partly due to the wind stress error identified above, the simulated location of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is also too far north in most models (Russell et al., 2006). Since the AAIW is formed on the north side of the ACC, the water mass properties of the AAIW are distorted (typically too warm and salty: Russell et al., 2006). The relatively poor AAIW simulation contributes to the multi-model mean error identified above where the thermocline is too diffuse, because the waters near the base of thermocline are too warm and salty. 

It is likely that the relatively poor Southern Ocean simulation will influence the transient climate response to increasing greenhouse gases by affecting the oceanic heat uptake. 

When forced by increases in radiative forcing, models with too little Southern Ocean mixing will probably underestimate the ocean heat uptake; models with too much mixing will likely exaggerate it. 

These errors in oceanic heat uptake will also have a large impact on the reliability of the sea level rise projections. See Chapter 10 for more discussion of this subject."


==============================

Another UN IPCC chapter again cites inability of computer models to accurately measure ocean heat:

"8.3.2.3 Summary of Oceanic Component Simulation"

"In the Southern Ocean, the equatorward bias of the westerly wind stress maximum found in most model simulations is a problem
that may affect the models’ response to increasing radiative forcing." 






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Tarp on the field in Detroit in the 8th v Cleveland Indians, rain shortens game to 7 innings

























8/30/13, Tarp on the field in Detroit in the 8th v Cleveland Indians, final in 7, 7-2 Tigers,getty














8/30/13, Tarp on the field in Detroit in the 7th vs Cleveland Indians, final in 7, 7-2 Tigers, ap








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Thursday, August 29, 2013

Nature Editorial, "Hidden Heat:" "Some argue that recent temperature trends show that the climate problem is less urgent. One can only hope that this is so." 8/28/13

8/28/13, "Hidden heat," Nature Editorial 

"Scientists are homing in on the reasons for the current hiatus in global warming, but all must recognize that the long-term risk of warming from carbon dioxide remains high.

This week, Nature publishes a study online suggesting that a recent cooling trend in the tropical Pacific Ocean can explain the current hiatus in global warming. Authored by a pair of scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, the paper does not say why the Pacific seems to have entered a prolonged ‘La Niña’ phase, in which cooler surface waters gather in the eastern equatorial Pacific. It is also silent on where the missing heat is going. But it does suggest that this phenomenon — affecting as little as 8% of Earth’s surface — could temporarily counteract the temperature increase expected from rising greenhouse-gas emissions (Y. Kosaka and S.-P. Xie Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature12534; 2013).

Previous modelling studies have linked the pause to La-Niña-like conditions that have prevailed since 1999, suggesting that heat that would otherwise go into the atmosphere is getting buried deeper in the ocean. And scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, have a study in the press indicating that decades in which global air temperature rises rapidly — including the 1980s and 1990s — are associated with warmer temperatures in the tropical Pacific, as exemplified by La Niña’s opposite effect, El Niño (G. A. Meehl et al. J. Climate http://doi.org/nkw; 2013). The Scripps researchers also confirmed that El-Niño-like conditions can boost global temperatures.

Scientists seem to be homing in on an important lever in the climate system. And none too soon. Although a prolonged hiatus in warming does not necessarily contradict prevailing theory, this one came as a surprise and has been used to discredit the climate-science community.* The story will probably not end there. Scientists know that the Sun has been in a prolonged solar minimum for several years, which means less incoming energy, and there may yet be a role for sunlight-blocking aerosols — human pollution and volcanic ash — and other factors in the hiatus. But at least a better explanation of the climate system is beginning to take shape.

All of this comes as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) prepares to release the first installment of its fifth assessment report. The hiatus in warming is at the centre of an ongoing debate about ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’, which is the amount of warming that would be expected over the long term owing to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Several papers have assessed the most recent data and conclude that the climate may not be as sensitive to greenhouse gases as was previously thought. The latest draft of the IPCC summary for policy-makers accounts for this — just. It suggests a likely climate sensitivity of 1.5–4.5 °C, compared with a range of 2–4.5 °C in the IPCC’s last assessment report.

Some argue that recent temperature trends show that the climate problem is less urgent. One can only hope that this is so, and scientists will continue to probe the matter. But policy-makers would be foolhardy to think that the danger has receded. Although scientists understand the basic physics, nobody can know how the numbers will turn out, as shown by the various temperature projections. Plenty of other lines of evidence, including palaeoclimate data and modern modelling experiments, support the higher end of these.

Ultimately, the decision over how to characterize climate sensitivity will fall to government officials who will approve — under the watchful eye of scientists — the latest IPCC documents in Stockholm next month. Whatever their decision, the underlying science has not changed."

-----------------------------------------
========================

*Comment: In the case of the United States, it's more about politicians than scientists though Nature does mention 'government officials' at the end of the article.  Decades of politicians have decided to allocate trillions of taxpayer dollars to CO2 danger since at least 1990 when climate ‘action’ was institutionalized in US government by George Bush the 1st via the U.S. Global Change Research Act of 1990.CO2 is mentioned near the end, Section 204, #4. The 1990 act bound 13 federal agencies to ‘climate' endeavors.   Also that year George Bush began emissions trading "to control environmental problems." (p. 2). Billions have been taken from US taxpayers for 'climate' via agency budget allocations, tax subsidies, diversion of US military to climate or green projects, countless federal regulations, vast sums shipped out in foreign aid for no-strings ‘climate’ endeavors.

In. Nov, 2012 Obama took 'climate action' by giving $6 billion US taxpayer dollars to the Sultan of Brunei who owns 5000+ cars and to the Pres. of Indonesia, a country so corrupt even the World Bank says crime adds 20% to costs. These are just a few of many examples.  

In the year 2012 alone, $18.5 billion was taken out of the US economy via CO2 "regulation. (chart below)" Most laws in the US now are made via regulation, not congress. Meaning most US laws are enacted without our knowledge. We have no access to the people who make the laws, don't know who they are. The handy phrase, "it's Bush's fault," actually does apply in this case though it's Bush #1. He sought to bind US taxpayers to CO2 terror before most people had ever heard of 'climate scientists.' As of 2013, USA leads the world in CO2 reduction since 2006. China's CO2 has skyrocketed and is heading higher to the point nothing any other country does to mitigate its CO2 can have much effect on the global number. As Nature says, one hopes the situation isn't as dire as once thought.
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Change in global CO2 US v China, 2005 to 2011, energy related, US EIA (US Energy Dept.), WSJ, April 2013





4/18/13, "Rise in U.S. Gas Production Fuels Unexpected Plunge in Emissions," WSJ, Russell Gold

"U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions have fallen dramatically in recent years, in large part because the country is making more electricity with natural gas instead of coal."...


==========================
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6/10/13, 2012 US CO2 continues to drop. Chart from IEA report, China continues to rise. (Above chart is thru 2011) :



 






======================
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1/29/13, "China Uses Nearly as Much Coal as Rest of World Combined, EIA Says," Wall St. Journal, Cassandra Sweet


================================= 

6/4/12, "Climate change stunner: USA leads world in CO2 cuts since 2006," Vancouver Observer, Saxifrage



"Not only that, but as my top chart shows, US CO2 emissions are falling even faster than what President Obama pledged in the global Copenhagen Accord."...Here is the biggest shocker of all: the average American’s CO2 emissions are down to levels not seen since 1964 --over half a century ago....
Coal is the number two source of CO2 for Americans. Today the average American burns an amount similar to what they did in 1955, and even less than they did in the 1940s. …It is exactly America’s historical role of biggest and dirtiest that   makes their sharp decline in CO2 pollution so noteworthy and potentially game changing at the global level.”...

-----------------------------------------------------------

News of US CO2 plunge has been described as:



===================================

A few examples of climate cash sought in 2011: 

1/11/11, "Big Money in Climate Change: Who Gives, Who Gets," Al Fin


.


 ------------------------------------------

In 2012, $18.5 billion was taken out of the economy by regulation in the name of US CO2 terror:

.$18.5 billion worth of climate regulations were issued in 2012 alone. Without congress. "The vast majority of “laws” governing the United States are not passed by Congress but are issued as regulations."

----------------------------------------- "In 2011, the US Congress passed a total of 81 new “laws” while government agencies issued 3,807 new regulations."  









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Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Still waiting on drought in Denver, Giants v Rockies in the rain












8/26/13, Rain falls in Denver in the 9th inning as SF Giants Joaquin Arias hits RBI double, final 6-1 Rockies, getty, cbssports/mlb









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UN carbon trading program CDM in India has harmed the atmosphere, enriched private corporations, and is enabled by cronies. Then again, Enron championed UN carbon trading, said it would be 'good for Enron stock'

9/10/12, "Carbon credit fraud: How big firms faked green to mint gold," Daily News of India, by Gangadhar S Patil

"A global attempt to arrest climate change by providing firms with incentives to invest in green technology is being manipulated in India for profit. Instead of reducing carbon emissions, the Clean Development Mechanism, or CDM, has helped firms, mostly private corporations, raise huge sums virtually out of thin air. 

Worse, as this three-part series will show, the manipulation and subsequent failure of CDM in India may have led to thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gases (GHGs) being released into the atmosphere.

DNA
has found that several projects in the country that are earning huge sums through the sale of carbon credits are, in fact, ineligible for the CDM scheme. Promoters of these projects have manipulated and backdated documents
to meet requirements as prescribed by the CDM executive board....

A majority of Indians dependent on agriculture are likely to get affected most by climate change due to their reliance on natural factors like the monsoon. 

UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) requires member countries to limit or reduce GHG emissions. CDM is a UN-run international GHG offsetting scheme that allows developing countries to earn credits by implementing projects that prevent the creation of, or that remove, greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. These credits, called carbon credits, can be sold to governments, businesses or individuals to offset excess emissions they generate.

The first carbon credit was issued in October 2005. The market price of one carbon credit (each credit is equal to one tonne of carbon dioxide) today is about €6 (Rs400). In 2008, it was nearly €24 (Rs1,500).

The National Clean Development Mechanism Authority (NCDMA) that functions under the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) approves projects for CDM status at the national level. According to the ministry, until March 2012, the NCDMA approved 2,195 projects for CDM status. 

The CDM executive board, a supervisory arm of UNFCCC, registered only 827 of these projects. A conservative estimate of the total revenue generated by the sale of carbon credits from these projects is around Rs10,000 crore. 

Among others, big names such as Tata, ITC, Reliance, Jindal Steel, Bajaj, GFL, Adani have earned good returns under CDM.

THE FLAWED PROCEDURE

After the CDM project receives the consent of the respective government, it is validated by an accredited international organisation and then submitted to the CDM executive board that vets and registers it.


At all stages, authorities concerned have to validate and certify
that: A) the project uses efficient and clean technology that is resulting in reduction of carbon emission (sustainability), and B) that it will be unviable to implement the project without carbon credit revenue. This key requirement is also known as the additionality clause

When the project clears both tests, the carbon credits generated from the project are verified by accredited validation organisations after which they are available for sale. 

An examination of several CDM projects in India shows that many neither fulfill the additionality clause nor are they sustainable; they are ineligible for CDM status.

The first problem is that validators tend to rely on the project developer’s claims of sustainability and additionality without verifying them independently. For instance, a captive power project of Jai Balaji Sponge Ltd in Burdwan district of West Bengal was granted CDM status in 2006. However, it has been subject to several penal actions by the West Bengal Pollution Control Board for violating environment laws. The unit has also faced closure on previous occasions for the same reason.

The NCDMA approves CDM proposals without conducting field inspections to verify whether the project fulfils the eligibility criteria. “It is taken for granted that a project applying for CDM status is automatically clean and sustainable,” says a Mumbai-based carbon consultant, who did not want to be named. No wonder then that 44% of the projects rejected by the CDM executive board until 2008 belonged to India.

An American consulate cable released by WikiLeaks makes the same point. No Indian project can meet the “additionality in investment criteria” to be eligible for carbon credits, says the cable. It quotes RK Sethi, former member secretary of the NCDMA, saying that the national authority responsible for evaluation and approval of Indian projects that reduce GHG emissions to earn credits in the global carbon market, i.e. NCDMA, simply takes the “project developer at his word” for clearing the additionality clause.

The CDM board has also warned validators on several occasions for their biased opinion while certifying projects. In 2010, the executive board suspended TÜV SÜD, a German validation company. “TÜV SÜD has been giving positive validation opinion even though there were concerns about additionality,” said the minutes of the board’s meeting. In November 2008, a Norwegian CDM project validation company, DNV, was also suspended. This company verified several CDM projects in India. 

An example of DNV’s carelessness is Tata’s ultra-mega power projects (UMPPs) at Mundra. Even though Mathsy Kutty of DNV agreed that UMPPs in India would not qualify as CDM projects, it validated Tata’s UMPP that was later rejected by the CDM board because it didn’t fulfill the additionality clause.

However, the CDM board approved Anil Ambani’s UMPP at Sasan.

As per a WikiLeaks cable, Pratap Melampati, who works with the Reliance ADAG group, agreed that future power projects based on supercritical technology may fail to qualify under CDM as the technology becomes “commonly used” in India. This is because the government’s latest regulation says that use of supercritical technology is compulsory, not optional, for new power projects in India.

Yet, Reliance was successful in claiming that the project would not have used supercritical technology — a clean and efficient but expensive technology — without CDM support, thus fulfilling the additionality clause and bagging CDM status.

In its 2009-10 annual report, Anil Ambani’s Reliance Power goes so far as to state that CDM is a “new revenue stream for the company” and claimed it would earn a minimum of Rs3,100 crore by selling carbon credits from its ultra-mega coal power project at Sasan and Krishnapatnam. This raises a question over the need for carbon credits revenue to finance the project.

Many more dubious projects have escaped the CDM executive board’s scrutiny. This is partly because of conflicts of interest within the executive board, says Katy Yan of International Rivers, a non-profit, environmental organisation. A report by International Rivers says that one glaring indication that most projects do not qualify under the additionality clause is that three-quarters of projects were already up and running at the time they were approved by the CDM.

“CDM may have helped people think about air pollution but it has not resulted in any significant technology transfer or sustainable development. It has ended up as a capitalistic tool to take care of some of the immediate problems at minimal costs,” says Amar Mody, an independent consultant and carbon market specialist based in Mumbai who has represented various carbon funds and international brokerage firms in India for more than seven years.

Of the 60 CDM projects that I have evaluated, there appeared not to be one that actually reduced emissions, admitted Soumitra Ghosh of North Eastern Society for Preservation of Nature and Wildlife."
via Tom Nelson

=======================================

UN carbon trading program CDM has harmed the environment and made money for insiders. Then again, Enron was a big supporter of UN carbon trading, said it would be "good for Enron stock" (parag. 4):

8/9/12, "Green Fail: UN Carbon Trading Scheme Increases Pollution," Walter Russell Mead, Via Meadia

"Behold a green failure so colossal even Via Meadia is surprised: a UN carbon-credit trading program intended to reduce global concentrations of greenhouse gases has instead led a handful of factories in the developing world to massively increase them.

The NYT explains:

"Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere. The more dangerous the gas, the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions.

But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity."

They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but could earn more than 11,000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas. That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect. The credits could be sold on international markets, earning tens of millions of dollars a year.
The carbon credits represent such a lucrative business ($20–40 million per year per plant, by one estimate) that some of the plants participating the scheme, located mostly in China and India, made the bulk of their profits from carbon credits alone; other plants would hit their carbon-credit subsidy limits and then shut down for the rest of the year.

Like last week’s U.S. cooking-oil-for-fuel scam, this story is so unbelievable it almost makes one doubt the greens’ superior ability to regulate complex economic and political systems."

-----------------------------------------------

At Dec. 2010 Cancun 'climate summit,' Communist China threatened to spew extra poisonous gas into the atmosphere if anyone messed with the hundreds of millions in profits it's making via UN CDM deals. (This item near end of Schapiro article).  "Major U.S. financial houses, such as Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and JP Morgan Chase have significant holdings in the credits linked to the gas:"

12/13/10, "‘Perverse’ CO2 Payments Send Flood of Money to China," by Mark Schapiro, Yale Environment 360

"
To offset their own carbon emissions, European companies have been wildly overpaying China to incinerate a powerful greenhouse gas known as hfc 23. And in a bizarre twist, those payments have spurred the manufacture of a harmful refrigerant that is being smuggled into the U.S. and used illegally.


European legislators in Brussels have discovered that the strategy they devised to combat climate change is helping subsidize the economy of their, and America’s, major global competitor — China....

More than a billion dollars, the nonprofit groups concluded, have thus far been spent on the credits. Two members of the European Parliament have demanded an inquiry by the European Commission into the “gross misuse of European consumers’ money” in the UN-administered offset system."...
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===================================

2002 Washington Post article describes Enron's support for the Kyoto agreement and carbon trading, which it said would be "good for Enron stock:" (parag. 4)

1/13/2002, "THE ENRON COLLAPSE / Gaining Favor in Washington / Democrats' Enron ammunition may backfire / Energy firm courted Clinton team before backing Bush, insiders say," Washington Post, Dan Morgan

"In a White House meeting in August 1997, for example, Lay urged President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore to back a "market-based" approach to the problem of global warming -- a strategy that a later Enron memo makes clear would be "good for Enron stock." 

The next February, Lay met with Energy Secretary Federico Pena to urge White House action on electricity legislation favored by Enron. Pena "suggested that President Clinton might be motivated (to act) by some key contacts from important constituents," according to another Enron memo. 

Taking the cue, Lay, one of 25 business executives on Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development, wrote to the president the same day.... 

In 1994, the Export-Import Bank in Washington approved a $302 million loan to promote Enron's investment in a power plant in Dabhol, India. According to a 1997 article in Time magazine, Clinton took a personal interest in the project, deputizing his chief of staff, Thomas "Mack" McLarty III, to monitor it. McLarty later became a paid adviser to Enron. 

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 1996, stocked with Clinton appointees, helped Enron with a series of orders that weakened the monopoly of nuclear and coal-burning utilities....

The Clinton administration's interest in an international agreement to combat global warming also dovetailed with Enron's business plans. Enron officials envisioned the company at the center of a new trading system, in which industries worldwide could buy and sell credits to emit carbon dioxide as part of a strategy to reduce greenhouse gases....

On Aug. 4, 1997, Lay and seven other energy executives met with Clinton, Gore, Rubin and other top officials at the White House to discuss the U.S. position at the conference on global warming in Kyoto, Japan. Lay, in a memo to Enron employees, said there was broad consensus in favor of an emissions- trading system. 

Enron officials later expressed elation at the results of the Kyoto conference."... 









Sunday, August 25, 2013

Antarctic Sea Ice reaches another record high, 8/18/13, NSIDC

8/22/13, "Spreading out," antarcticsun.usap.org

Record Antarctic Ice, 8/18/13, red line at top


"Antarctic sea ice nears record extent once again."


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2013 Arctic Ice is increasing too. 8/24/13 chart, "Daily Image," at top of NSIDC site. Turquoise line.








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8/24/13, "62% Increase In Arctic Ice Since Last Year," Steven Goddard

"Green shows ice present in 2013 which was not present on this date in 2012. Red shows the opposite."












Arctic Sea-Ice Monitor 
========================================

More on 2013 Arctic Ice Increase:

8/23/13, "NASA Stumped: Summer Arctic Ice Extent Among Highest This Decade, Antarctica “Headed Toward Record Extent”," P. Gosselin, No Tricks Zone

"NASA has released its latest sea ice report. These are tough times for climate alarmists. The truth is: There’s a lot more sea ice out there this year than they ever imagined."...via Climate Depot







.

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Washington Post's Greg Sargent suggests 'price' should be paid for 'climate science denialism.' The price should be especially high for science deniers like Mr. Sargent and his pals at hate group League of Conservation Voters

The science of sunspots was ridiculed by Washington Post's Greg Sargent and his rich friends at science denial hate group LCVRecognized scientists have held differing views on what if any effects solar activity has on Earth's climate. From 7 article excerpts and quotes below, it's clear individual scientists have changed their minds on the issue one way or the other. US taxpayer money has been spent studying the issue. In 2010 a UK scientist led a peer reviewed study finding certain solar activity did cause colder European winters. Other scientists simply say they don't know how or if solar changes effect Earth's climate. They don't ridicule another scientist's view. Sunspots are quite large, each about the size of planet Earth.
 
7/12/13, "Sun's bizarre behavior: Weakest solar cycle in 100 years," LA Times, Deborah Netburn

.
"Those of us who have been paying attention to the sun this year have been a little ... disappointed. 2013 was supposed to be the year of solar maximum -- the peak of an 11-year cycle when the number of sunspots that mar the sun's surface is at its highest.

These sunspots, which are actually cool areas on the sun's surface caused by intense magnetic activity, are the sites of spectacular solar flares and CMEs, or coronal mass ejections, which can send billions of tons of solar material hurtling into space.

But this year, the serious solar fireworks show never materialized.
Sure, we've seen a handful of major solar flares, and a few extra fast CMEs, but scientists say our current solar maximum, known as solar maximum 24, is the weakest one in 100 years.


And some scientists believe that the 25th solar maximum could be even weaker.

To help us understand what's going on here, the American Astronomical Society asked three leading solar scientists to provide an update on the 24th solar maximum at a news conference Thursday.


It turns out there is some controversy in the scientific  community about exactly why this year's solar maximum has been so unspectacular.

One theory is that this year's weak solar maximum is part of a 100-year solar cycle. Graphs going back to the 1700s show that the number of sunspots during solar maximums in the early part of the last three centuries since humanity has been studying the solar cycle is much lower than the number of sunspots during solar maximums in the latter half of those centuries.


When asked what caused the 100-year cycles, the scientists admitted they did not know.


Other scientists are not convinced that this year's weak solar maximum is part of a 100-year cycle, and have not ruled out the possibility that the sun might be on the verge of a Maunder Minimum, a period of time when it exhibits almost no sunspots.


The last Maunder Minimum was observed in 1645. However, the last time there was a Maunder Minimum, it was preceded by a relatively strong solar maximum.

Nobody knows exactly what is going on, because we've only been studying the sun for such a tiny sliver of its life, and so much of its behavior is a mystery." via iceagenow.info
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The Irish Times reports US scientists wouldn't go on record predicting what the unusual solar activity might mean, while a UK scientist suggested Earth's climate could be affected:

. .
7/12/13, "Sun’s bizarre activity may trigger another ice age," IrishTimes.com, Dick Ahlstrom

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"The sun is acting bizarrely and scientists have no idea why. Solar activity is in gradual decline, a change from the norm which in the past triggered a 300-year-long mini ice age.

Three leading solar scientists presented the very latest data about the weakening solar activity at a teleconference yesterday in Boulder, Colorado, organised by the American Astronomical Society. It featured experts from Nasa, the High Altitude Observatory and the National Solar Observatory who described how solar activity, as measured by the formation of sunspots and by massive explosions on the sun’s surface, has been falling steadily since the mid-1940s.

The sun goes through a regular 11-year cycle with a maximum, when sunspot activity is at its peak, followed by a minimum when sunspot numbers are reduced and are smaller and less energetic. We are supposed to be at a peak of activity, at solar maximum.

The current situation, however, is outside the norm and the number of sunspots seems in steady decline. The sun was undergoing “bizarre behaviour” said Dr Craig DeForest of the society.

“The sun’s current maximum activity period is very late and very weak, leading to speculation that the sunspot cycle itself could be shutting down or entering a dormant phase,” he said before the teleconference. 

Irish solar science specialist Dr Ian Elliott, formerly of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, quoted from figures released by Nasa on July 1st. It had asked an expert group to predict sunspot activity using models, with an upper limit and a lower limit.

The predictions suggested the monthly average sunspot total should range between 90 and 140, but in fact the present monthly average is only 67, Dr Elliott said. A typical average at maximum during much of the early 20th century was about 200. 

“It is the smallest solar maximum we have seen in 100 years,” said Dr David Hathaway of Nasa. We are currently in solar cycle number 24 which is about half as active as cycle 23, but cycle 25 is likely to be smaller again due to changes in the magnetic flux on the sun’s surface,” he said.

Dr Giuliana de Toma of the High Altitude Observatory acknowledged the clear signs that solar activity was in decline but this did not mean the earth was heading for another “Maunder Minimum”. This was a time between 1645 and 1725 when solar activity was extremely low or nonexistent, a situation which caused a mini ice age. 

The fall-off in sunspot activity still has the potential to affect our weather for the worse, Dr Elliott said. Research by Prof Mike Lockwood [see below] at the University of Reading (UK) showed how low solar activity could alter the position of the jet stream over the north Atlantic, causing severe cold during winter months. This was likely the cause of the very cold and snowy winters during 2009 and 2010, Dr Elliott said.

“It all points to perhaps another little ice age,” he said. “It seems likely we are going to enter a period of very low solar activity and could mean we are in for very cold winters.”

And while the researchers in the US said the data showed a decline in activity, they had no way to predict what that might mean for the future."  

========================


4/14/2010, "Are cold winters in Europe associated with low solar activity?" Environmental Research Letters, Lockwood et al.

"We stress that this is a regional and seasonal effect relating to European winters and not a global effect. Average solar activity has declined rapidly since 1985 and cosmogenic isotopes suggest an 8% chance of a return to Maunder minimum conditions within the next 50 years (Lockwood 2010 Proc. R. Soc. A 466 303–29): the results presented here indicate that, despite hemispheric warming, the UK and Europe could experience more cold winters than during recent decades....

Acknowledgments

"The CET data are provided by the UK Meteorological Office and the HadCRUT3v data set are compiled by the UK Meteorological Office and the Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia, UK. The northern hemisphere temperature reconstructions were obtained via the World Data Centre (WDC) for Paleoclimatology, Boulder, USA and the interplanetary and geomagnetic data via the WDC for Solar Terrestrial Physics, Chilton, UK. The cosmic ray data were generated by the Bartol Research Institute, University of Delaware, USA, and the PMOD TSI data composite by the World Radiation Centre, Davos, Switzerland. We thank the many scientists who contributed to these data sets and others for valuable discussions."...

===================================

On sunspots in 2011 by AP:

6/14/11, "Sunspots May Disappear, Sun Going Into Unusual Quiet Mode: Scientists," AP, Seth Borenstein

"The sun is heading into an unusual and extended hibernation, scientists predict. Around 2020, sunspots may disappear for years, maybe decades.

But scientists say it is nothing to worry about....And it might mean a little less increase in global warming.

It's happened before, but not for a couple centuries.

"The solar cycle is maybe going into hiatus, sort of like a summertime TV show," said National Solar Observatory associate director Frank Hill, the lead author of a scientific presentation at a solar physics conference in New Mexico.

Scientists don't know why the sun is going quiet. But all the signs are there.

Hill and colleagues based their prediction on three changes in the sun spotted by scientific teams: 

Weakening sunspots, fewer streams spewing from the poles of the sun's corona and a disappearing solar jet stream....

Experts say the sun has already been unusually quiet for about four years with few sunspots higher magnetic areas that appear as dark spots.

The enormous magnetic field of the sun dictates the solar cycle, which includes sunspots, solar wind and ejection of fast-moving particles that sometimes hit Earth....

Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory, another study co-author, said sunspot magnetic fields have been steadily decreasing in strength since 1998. If they continue on the current pace, their magnetic fields will be too weak to become spots as of 2022 or so, he said.

Jet streams on the sun's surface and below are also early indicators of solar storm activity, and they haven't formed yet for the 2020 cycle. That indicates that there will be little or delayed activity in that cycle, said Hill, who tracks jet streams....

There are questions about what this means for Earth's climate. Three times in the past the regular 11-year solar cycle has gone on an extended vacation – at the same time as cool periods on Earth. 
 
Skeptics of man-made global warming from the burning of fossil fuels have often pointed to solar radiation as a possible cause of a warming Earth, but they are in the minority among scientists....

(Frank) Hill (the study's lead author) and colleagues wouldn't discuss the effects of a quiet sun on temperature or global warming.

"If our predictions are true, we'll have a wonderful experiment that will determine whether the sun has any effect on global warming," Hill said."

--------------------------------------------- 

In 2012 Grantham said solar activity's connection to Earth's climate was being considered as a possible reason for 15+ years of flat global temperatures:

Feb. 6, 2012, "Anthropogenic global warming 'stopped' in 1997…and in 1996, 1995, 1982, 1981, 1980, 1979, 1978 and 1972," Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Bob Ward, Dr. James Rydge 

"Climate scientists are interested in what the noisy global average temperature data of the last 15 years shows us. They do not conclude that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have suddenly stopped causing the Earth to warm.... But they do suspect that other factors may be 'masking' the anthropogenic global warming trend, such as a cooling effect caused by an increase in the amount in the atmosphere of aerosols from the burning fossil fuels which reflect sunlight,  

or changes in solar activity. "...


========================

In 2007, an elite science society, AGU, received a US taxpayer grant via NSF to study whether sunspots effected rainfall. NASA climate science celebrity Gavin Schmidt laughed off any chance of connection between solar activity and Earth's climate, saying,
If they (solar cycle effects) were there, they’d have been found already. To Schmidt, it's "settled science," 100% of solar science has already been discovered. 

8/17/2007, "Do sunspots foretell heavy rains-and disease?" NBCNews.com, Bryn Nelson, MSNBC.

"The take-home message, researchers concluded in the latest issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research, is that careful scrutiny of past climatic conditions may generate better long-term predictions of destructive weather events in the future. That knowledge, in turn, may provide a crucial head start to those working to limit fallout such as erosion, flooding and mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and Rift Valley Fever.

J. Curt Stager, the report’s lead author and a paleoclimatologist at Paul Smith’s College in Paul Smiths, N.Y., said reaction to his research has been decidedly mixed, due in part to the checkered past of sunspot predictions. 

“I’m afraid it suffers from the same failings as most of the purported surface climate-solar cycle connections,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. In an e-mail, Schmidt said that even uncorrelated “noise” in records with decadal variability, such as rainfall measurements, can sometimes yield apparent patterns if someone looks hard enough. But it doesn’t make those correlations significant. 


“People have been looking for solar cycle effects in climate for 200 years, Schmidt said. If they were there, they’d have been found already.

David Verardo, director of the National Science Foundation’s Paleoclimate Program, nevertheless praised the new results in a statement as “an important step in applying paleoclimate analyses to predicting future environmental conditions and their impacts on society.” The foundation provided major funding for the study....
The next crest, or solar maximum, is expected to arrive between 2011 and 2012....

Solar physicists cannot yet explain the 11-year rhythm of sunspots. Even so, observers have noted their cyclical waxing and waning since the first half of the 19th Century. Far more recently, satellite data have documented slight increases in the sun’s energy every time the sunspot numbers peak.

In Stager’s study, he and his colleagues compiled evidence suggesting that those solar peaks also correlate with significant up-ticks in the levels of East Africa’s Lake Victoria and other regional lakes. The widespread effect, the researchers suggested, was mediated primarily through unusually heavy rainfall that began roughly one year before each solar maximum.

“The weak part,” Stager conceded, “is we don’t know exactly why it works.”... 


Only time, and perhaps more research, will tell if the sunspot-rainfall prognostication fares better in the coming years."

==========================

"THE SUN AND SUNSPOTS: Can an increase or decrease in sunspot activity affect the Earth's climate?," crh.NOAA.gov

parag. 3, "Sunspots are quite large as an average size is about the same size as the Earth....

"Sunspots, Solar Flares, Coronal Mass Ejections and their influence on Earth:
 
parag. 5, "But the jury is still out on how much sunspots can (or do) affect the Earth's climate....

(last parag.): So the question remains, do solar minimums help to create periods of cooler than normal weather, and do solar maximums help to cause drought over sections of Earth?  This question is not easily answered due to the immensely complex interaction between our atmosphere, land and oceans.  In addition, there is evidence that some of the major ice ages Earth has experienced were caused by Earth being deviated from its "average" 23.5 degrees tilt on its axis.  The Earth has tilted anywhere from near 22 degrees to 24.5 degrees on its axis.  The number of sunspots alone does not alter the overall solar emissions much at all.  However, the increased/decreased magnetic activity which accompanies sunspot maxima/minima directly influences the amount of ultraviolet  radiation which moves through the upper atmosphere."  

=============================

If a "price" should be paid for "climate science denialism," as Mr. Sargent suggests, an especially high price should be paid by science deniers like himself who have used their bully pulpit to encourage transfer of hundreds of billions of US taxpayer dollars for excess CO2 that only exists in China.

Mr. Sargent says that in 2010 it was being "scornful" of climate science for anyone to suggest sunspots had an effect on global warming. Among other things, in 2010 a UK scientist published a peer reviewed study finding lower sunspot activity did cause cooler temperatures in Europe. In 2012, Grantham Institute said they were considering solar activity to explain 15+ years of flat global temperatures. No one says Mr. Sargent or LCV has to agree, but if anyone's "heaping scorn" on climate science it's Sargent and LCV. As of 2013, some scientists say they just don't know enough to predict what effect if any sunspots will have on Earth's climate. In other words, it's not "settled science," except to profiteers who attack, harass, ridicule, for the purpose of silencing anyone who impedes their goal of diverting more billions of US taxpayer dollars for the non-existent problem of excess US CO2. China controls global CO2.

8/21/13, "Paying no price whatsoever for climate science denialism," Washington Post, Plum Line,

You really should be paying close attention to the ongoing battle between the League of Conservation Voters and Tea Party Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. In addition to being highly entertaining, there’s a great deal at stake here — whether it’s possible to hold public officials accountable for climate science denialism.

Just to catch you up, LCV recently announced plans to launch a $2 million campaign attacking Republicans in Congress for climate change denialism, including a TV ad attacking Johnson....

Back in 2010, Johnson heaped scorn on climate science and blamed “sunspots” for global warming, though a spokesperson later backed away from the remark."...  

=======================

6/4/12, "Climate change stunner: USA leads world in CO2 cuts since 2006," Vancouver Observer, Saxifrage



"Not only that, but as my top chart shows, US CO2 emissions are falling even faster than what President Obama pledged in the global Copenhagen Accord."...Here is the biggest shocker of all: the average American’s CO2 emissions are down to levels not seen since 1964 --over half a century ago. …Coal is the number two source of CO2 for Americans. Today the average American burns an amount similar to what they did in 1955, and even less than they did in the 1940s. …It is exactly America’s historical role of biggest and dirtiest that   makes their sharp decline in CO2 pollution so noteworthy and potentially game changing at the global level.”...

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News of US CO2 plunge has been described as:

==============================

Change in global CO2 US v China, 2005 to 2011, energy related, US EIA (US Energy Dept.), WSJ, April 2013





4/18/13, "Rise in U.S. Gas Production Fuels Unexpected Plunge in Emissions," WSJ, Russell Gold

"U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions have fallen dramatically in recent years, in large part because the country is making more electricity with natural gas instead of coal."...

=================================

6/10/13, 2012 US CO2 continues to drop. Chart from IEA report, China continues to rise. (Above chart is thru 2011) :



 






======================
.
1/29/13, "China Uses Nearly as Much Coal as Rest of World Combined, EIA Says," Wall St. Journal, Cassandra Sweet

"China's use of coal has grown quickly over the last decade and now rivals the amount of coal consumed by the rest of the world combined, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said Tuesday."...

===============================

  • May 2012, Washington Post on China CO2:

"China was the biggest contributor (in 2011), with carbon dioxide output growing 9.3 percent." (3rd parag.)
5/25/12, "U.S. cut its carbon emissions in 2011 — but China erased the gains," Washington Post, Brad Plumer

==============================

Developing countries CO2 emissions from fossil fuel far exceed those of industrialized nations:

"Although emissions from developing countries now dominate, the industrial countries set the world on its global warming path."...(scroll down to 3rd graph, this text 2 parags. below)
 
7/23/13, "Fossil fuel use pushes carbon dioxide emissions into dangerous territory,"
Earth Policy Institute, Emily E. Adams














====================== 
 
China emitted 4 billion tons more CO2 in 2011 than the US:
 
2/2/12, "Carbon pollution up to 2 million pounds per second," AP, Seth Borenstein

"The overwhelming majority of the increase was from China, the world’s biggest carbon dioxide polluter. Of the planet’s top 10 polluters, the United States and Germany were the only countries that reduced their carbon dioxide emissions....

The latest pollution numbers, calculated by the Global Carbon Project, a joint venture of the Energy Department and the Norwegian Research Council, show that worldwide carbon dioxide levels are 54 percent higher than the 1990 baseline."...

=====================================

.
15+ year "pause" in global warming:
.
1/18/13, Climate change: scientists puzzle over halt in global warming, Der Spiegel, by Axel Bojanowski (translation from German)

"The British Met Office forecast even more recently that the temperature interval could continue at a high level until the end of 2017 - despite the rapidly increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. Then global warming would pause 20 years."..."The exact reasons of the temperature standstill since 1998, are not yet understood, says climate researcher Doug Smith of the Met Office."...










 


 

UK Met Office chart via Der Spiegel





=================

6/11/13, "What to make of a warming plateau," NY Times, Justin Gillis 
 .
======================================
 .
11/29/12, 134 scientists write to UN Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-Moon, asking him to desist from blaming climate disasters on global warming that hasn't happened:
.
"Global warming that has not occurred cannot have caused the extreme weather of the past few years."...“The NOAA “State of the Climate in 2008report asserted that 15 years or more without any statistically-significant warming would indicate a discrepancy between observation and prediction. Sixteen years without warming have therefore now proven that the models are wrong by their creators’ own criterion.”…(2nd parag. fr. end of letter). 
"Policy actions that aim to reduce CO2 emissions are unlikely to influence future climate. Policies need to focus on preparation for, and adaptation to, all dangerous climatic events, however caused."...Special to Financial Post, 12/10/12 

 
===================================

.
BBC discussion suggests a pause in confiscation of taxpayer dollars in the face of dual problems, that temperatures have remained flat since 1998 while CO2 has increased. Money was diverted based on predictions that didn't happen which "peer reviewed literature regards as established yet unexplained:"

7/22/13, "Andrew Neil on Ed Davey climate change interview critics," BBC, Andrew Neil

Multi-billion dollar "spending decisions, paid for by consumers and taxpayers
...might not have been taken (at least to the same degree or with the same haste) if global warming was not quite the imminent threat it has been depicted....The recent standstill in global temperatures is a puzzle. Experts do not know why it is occurring or how long it will last....There is no consensus. Extensive peer-reviewed literature regards it as established yet unexplained. It is widely accepted that the main climate models which inform government policy did not predict it."...(subhead, "Reputable evidence")


============================
.
In 2012, $18.5 billion was taken out of the economy by regulation in the name of CO2 terror. Sargent and LCV don't need congress.  

.$18.5 billion worth of climate regulations were issued in 2012 alone. Without congress. "The vast majority of “laws” governing the United States are not passed by Congress but are issued as regulations."

-----------------------------------------

"In 2011, the US Congress passed a total of 81 new “laws” while government agencies issued 3,807 new regulations."  


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A few examples of climate cash sought in 2011:
.
1/11/11, "Big Money in Climate Change: Who Gives, Who Gets," Al Fin


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I'm the daughter of a World War II Air Force pilot and outdoorsman who settled in New Jersey.