These items caught my eye – 29 May 2013

The hypocrisy of green energy solutions; Another Electric car manufacturer runs out of gas; Plenty of ice around – time for a Pimms; Settled science? – Not yet it seems; Weep for the RS – someone’s trimmed their slush fund; Sea Surface Temperatures Are Cool – it’s a travesty; Why can’t the alarmists argue the facts? – because it’s easier to deal in ad hominen attacks. Hansen can go looking for sea-front property; Tim Yeo starts to seek the exit door; Another item on how the greens manipulate the young.
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Power station conversion from coal to woodchip is not sustainable

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Rog Tallbloke

From the Wall Street Journal

WINDSOR, N.C.—Loggers here are clear-cutting a wetland forest with decades-old trees.

The U.S. logging industry is seeing a rejuvenation, thanks in part of Europe’s efforts to seek out green fuel and move away from coal. Ianthe Dugan explains.

Behind the move: an environmental push.

The push isn’t in North Carolina but in Europe, where governments are trying to reduce fossil-fuel use and carbon-dioxide emissions. Under pressure, some of the Continent’s coal-burning power plants are switching to wood.

But Europe doesn’t have enough forests to chop for fuel, and in those it does have, many restrictions apply. So Europe’s power plants are devouring wood from the U.S., where forests are bigger and restrictions fewer.

Click here to read the full article
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Trailblazing Israeli electric car company to close

Posted on May 28, 2013 by JOSEF FEDERMAN, Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) — It was an audacious idea that came to symbolize Israel’s self-described status as “Start-Up Nation,” a company that believed it could replace most gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles and reduce the world’s reliance on oil — and all within a few years.

But it all came crashing down.

The company, Better Place, started out as a source of pride and a symbol of Israel’s status as a global high-tech power, but it suffered from a local brand of hubris and overreach. On Sunday, it announced plans to liquidate after burning through almost a billion dollars and failing to sell its silent fleet of French-made sedans to a skeptical public.

“This is a very sad day for all of us. We stand by the original vision as formulated by Shai Agassi of creating a green alternative that would lessen our dependence on highly polluting transportation technologies,” the company said. “Unfortunately, the path to realizing that vision was difficult, complex and littered with obstacles, not all of which we were able to overcome.”

Click here to read the full article
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Climate Update!! Global Sea Ice Over 1/2 Million Sq km Above The Mean!

Posted on May 28, 2013 by suyts space

You see, as the earth heats up, there’s a never ending cycle of positive feed back. In the case of global sea ice, as the ice melts from a warmer planet, the earth absorbs more solar energy to the sea, which, in turn, causes all the ice to melt further, which causes more heat up take, which causes more melting ice, which causes……. OMG!!!!!!

We’re all going to die!!!!!

As we can see, this has devastated the poles. Penguins just won’t know what sea ice is anymore. This is a well known global phenomena.

Click here to read the full article
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Australian scientists take 6 degrees of global warming off the table, say it is closer to 2 degrees

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Anthony Watts
From the University of Melbourne

Scientists narrow global warming range

Australian scientists have narrowed the predicted range of global warming through ground-breaking new research.

Scientists from the University of Melbourne and Victoria University have generated what they say are more reliable projections of global warming estimates at 2100.

The paper, led by Dr Roger Bodman from Victoria University with Professors David Karoly and Peter Rayner from the University of Melbourne and published in Nature Climate Change today, found that exceeding 6 degrees warming was now unlikely while exceeding 2 degrees is very likely for business-as-usual emissions.

Click here to read the full article
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Royal Society Gravy Train

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Paul Homewood

As part of the UK Government’s spending cuts, the grant the Royal Society received in 2011/12 was 2% lower than the year before. Nevertheless, government still provided funding of £48 million, amounting to 68% of the Society’s total income. Without state funding, the Royal Society simply would not be able to exist.

However, rather than cut its management costs in order to minimise the impact of the cuts on scientific research, the Society has actually increased them, with admin costs increasing from £4.5 million to £4.9 million, as their Annual Accounts for 2011/12 show.

Click here to read the full article
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Northern Extratropical Sea Surface Temperatures Are Cool, But Not Abnormally So

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Bob Tisdale

Many persons visit the Unisys Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly webpage to check on the surface temperatures of the oceans. Some people prefer the webpage due to the color scaling, which has light blues extending into positive anomalies. Unfortunately, the scaling makes sea surface temperature anomalies appear cooler than they are.

Example: The sea surface temperature anomalies on the map for today, Figure 1, appear very cool in the extratropical portions of the North Atlantic (20N-65N, 100W-20E) and North Pacific (20N-65N, 100E-100W). Some parts are cool, no doubt about it, especially along the east coast of Asia and in the Bering Sea.

Note: Just in case you’re wondering if the recent volcanic eruption in the Aleutians caused the cooling in those portions of the North Pacific, we can look at the Unisys animation here and determine the cooling started before the May 13th eruption. Then again, we can’t say the volcanic aerosols haven’t contributed to the cooling since then.

But if we look at the weekly sea surface temperature anomaly data for the extratropical portions of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, we’ll see that the temperatures they are cool, but not abnormally so. See Figures 2 and 3.

Click here to read the full article
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Who’s a conspiracy theorist then Paul Syvret?

Posted on May 29th, 2013 by JoNova

Paul Syvret seems to be hoping no one will notice that he doesn’t even try to respond to arguments about wind turbines. His technique to avoid debate is to decree that some other people were wrong once on a different topic. They used a rapid fire technique called a Gish Gallop, so therefore, thusly and henceforth anyone with a rapid-fire technique can be dismissed with a handy wave of The Gish. It’s just another label in Syvret’s all-purpose excuse-list for not having a grown up conversation.

Those who have no evidence, just make things up and toss insults. Syvret of The Courier Mail defends the wind industry from its critics — not with data about windfarms, but with allegations of imaginary astroturfing and denialism. He uses all his biggest scientific words: it’s “a barrage of BS”, “pseudo-science”, and a crusade run by a rat-bag in an incestuous network. He wants to make sure his readers know the critics are shills and conspiracy nutters because, well… he says so.

Click here to read the full article
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Hansen falsified: His extreme sea level rise projections are drowning in hubris

Posted on May 29th, 2013 by Guest Blogger

After yesterday’s tongue-in-cheek mention of Obama’s healing the planet (and sea level rise with it) here’s the real lowdown on the current knowledge. It seems that all the science that Hansen uses to base his 5-6 meter sea level rise has now been overturned by more recent scientific findings. Basically, there is no longer any valid scientific backing for Hansen’s extreme sea level rise projections. – Anthony

Guest essay by Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger

Retired NASA scientist and peripatetic global warming crusader James Hansen has a—let’s put it delicately—unique view of sea-level rise resulting from mankind’s use of fossil fuels. Specifically, he believes global average sea level will rise some 15 to 20 feet by 2095. The central estimate from the most recent report from U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is about 15 inches.

Hansen’s an outlier, and proud of it, thinking himself more courageous than other scientists who, he says, are “reticent” to tell the public how bad things really are.

Click here to read the full article
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Tim Yeo: About Turn – Straight Face

Posted on May 29th, 2013 by Rog Tallbloke

Heh, Tim ‘Trougher’ Yeo seems to be backpedalling furiously. “Did I say Global Warming is nearly all human caused? What I meant, of course, is that it could mostly be ‘natural phases’”. H/T @Sourmanarti. From the Telegraph:

The chairman of the Commons Energy and Climate Change committee Tim Yeo MP said he accepts the earth’s temperature is increasing but said “natural phases” may be to blame.

Such a suggestion sits at odds with the scientific consensus. One recent [bogus] survey of 12,000 academic papers on climate change found 97 per cent [of 32% of the biased sample] agree human activities are causing the planet to warm.

Mr Yeo, an environment minister under John Major, is one of the Conservative Party’s strongest advocates of radical action to cut carbon emissions. His comments are significant as he was one of the first senior figures to urge the party to take the issue of environmental change seriously.

Click here to read the full article
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Earth Guardians: Tip Of The Indoctrination Iceberg

Posted onMay 29th, 2013 by Paul Driessen

Schools should teach children to read, ponder, investigate and become functional adults.

“We’re from the Earth Guardians group, and we’re working on fracking and how it’s going to affect our future and our health. So we wrote this song for all the gas companies that are putting their profits ahead of our future.”

With that prelude, 12-year-old Xiuhtezcatl Martinez and his 9-year-old brother Itzcuauhtli launched into an anti-fracking rap song for Evergreen Middle School students whose teacher had invited them to travel 40 miles from their home in “the People’s Republic of Boulder,” Colorado. The song was well rehearsed, spirited, clever – and no doubt assisted by their mother, the founder and executive director of Earth Guardians, and maybe even by Boulder’s former mayor, an EG advisor.

The boys have been inculcated in Aztec and Hard Green ideology from birth. As EG members, they’re dedicated to “educating” other children about “sustainability,” “dangerous climate change” and “earth-friendly” renewable energy. In an era when too many babies are having babies, it’s not surprising that children are indoctrinating children. Not surprising, but not beneficial either.

Moreover, the teacher had failed to follow school policy, get permission to bring in outside propagandists, or present other perspectives. Unhappy parents raised a stink with Principal Kris Schuh, and the school district promised to distribute “pro-oil and gas literature” to secure some balance.

Click here to read the full article
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