By P Gosselin on 15. November 2013
To illustrate the absurdity that global warming science has become, global warming is claimed to cause climate change, which in turn now causes winters to be too cold! This is what some leading German state officials would like to have people believe.
1000-year old oak tree in Germany ailing because of “climate change”. Photo released into the public domain by Thomas Berendes.
Today FOCUS here reports that Lower Saxony Forestry Minister Christian Meyer (Green Party) released the 2013 Forestry Status Report, which concludes:
Lower Saxonys forests are suffering from too much nitrogen, sulfur dioxide, and climate change. This is the conclusion of the state Forestry Status Report introduced Friday.”
Here it turns out the three causes named above just happen to be by-products of the three things environmentalists love to hate: 1) agriculture, responsible for the nitrogen, 2) industry responsible for the sulfur dioxide and 3) humans responsible for the climate change. In summary, when you get down to it, all three are because of man. Precisely who activists want to frame. Meyer says:
Especially old beech and oak trees are ailing”.
Imagine that, old trees aren’t healthy!
Report confirms cooling
Climate change, i.e. global warming, being cited as one of the reasons would lead a normal person to believe that German forests are likely suffering from too much warmth due to the global warming. But the report says the climate-related ailments that forests are suffering are because of the “drier summers and more frosty winters.”
Forests are ailing because the winters have been too cold, the report claims. How is this due to global warming? This tells me global cooling is the problem, and not warming.
10 of the last 11 summers have been normal or too wet
And have summers really been drier? According to meteorologist Dominik Jung, 10 of the last 11 summers have been normal or wetter than normal in terms of precipitation. There’s only one conclusion we can reach about Meyer’s report: It is seriously flawed and more a political instrument that has little or no merit.
What’s another sign that the forest report is lots of activist hooey? The above pictured oak tree, for example, has been around 1000 years. Obviously it endured a broad range of conditions that occurred during the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and the current Modern Optimum. It’s seen and survived it all.
And because it is 1000 years old, nobody should be surprised that the tree is sick.
- See more at: NOTRICKSZONE
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German Scientists: Solar Cycle 24 Points To Dalton Or Maunder-Like Minimum, Boding Ill For A Climate Cooling
By P Gosselin on 11. November 2013
The Sun in October 2013 – Minimum lies ahead
By Frank Bosse and Fritz Vahrenholt
(Translated by P Gosselin)
In October 2013 there was a considerable rise in solar activity as the sunspot number (SSN) climbed to 85.6. That’s 77% of the mean value reached at this time into a solar cycle since 1750. The following diagram shows the current situation:
Enlarged SSN versus months since the start of the cycle
October 2013 deviates significantly from solar cycle number 5. However we continue to believe that SC 24 will be similar to SC 5. Just how large the uncertainties of the correct description of the 5th cycle is shown by a recently published paper by Rainer Arlt of the Leibniz Institute Potsdam and Ilya Usoskin of the Finnish University of Oulo, who after examining the solar cycles between 1750 und 1850 reached the conclusion that the sunspot count should be lowered by 20%. SC 24 shown by the red curve is, however, still very much below average of SC 1-23, let alone well below the large cycles of the solar maximums from 1940 – 1990.
Also in October 2013 mainly the southern hemisphere (SH) of our sun was active. In a comparison of the cycles with each other (here the SSN anomaly thus far up to the current cycle month) we see that the accumulated sunspot number is between SC5 and SC 14:
Enlarged Current cycle indicate we are entering a Dalton-like minimum
In a recent publication in Space Science Reviews (2013), renowned solar scientists Ken McCracken, Juerg Beer, Friedhelm Steinhilber and Jose Abreu studied the solar minimums over the last 9300 years. Based on measurements of beryllium and carbon isotopes as indicators for the intensity of cosmic rays, which are modulated by solar activity, the scientists arrived at the result that the minimum of 2007 to 2009 had similar characteristics as the minimums occurring during the time of the Dalton Minimums of 1780 to 1820. They discovered a 208-year periodicity (Suess-de Vries) of a grand solar minimum in the past. Therefore they anticipate in the near future the events of a Dalton Minimum, but not a Maunder Minimum.
Lockwood sees elevated chance of a Maunder-like minimum
Another established solar scientist, Prof. Michael Lockwood of the University of Reading, has pointed out that solar activity since the end of the last century has diminished more strongly than it ever has in all the earlier times of the last 9000 years. Lockwood found 24 solar minimum in the last 9000 years, and nowhere did solar activity drop so strongly as it has in the current period. He now sees the probability of another Maunder Minimums at 25- 30%. Just a few years ago he said the probability of a Maunder Minimum re-occurring was 8%. Consequently Lockwood: “We found a significant relationship between the occurrence of cold winters in Europe and solar activity.“ The probable mechanism is the change in the solar UV radiation, which has an influence of the temperature gradient, ozone formation, and the winds in the stratosphere. This in turn disrupts the Jetstream in the northern hemisphere, leads to blocking weather patterns, and to easterly winds that lead to cold spells.
Already in our September report 2013 concerning the publication by Ermolli et al we pointed to a much more strongly variable UV radiation within a solar cycle then what is observed in the overall total radiation (factor 2-6). Weaker solar cycles have a considerably weaker UV radiation and lead to cold periods in the northern hemisphere. Unfortunately the measurements can no longer be continued because the SORCE satellite, which measures the radiation of the sun above the atmosphere, has stopped functioning because of battery damage, and so the cold winters that lie ahead will have to be endured without satellite UV measurements.
And we introduce a third publication. In it Friedrich Steinhilber and Jurg Beer are venturing a look at the next 500 years using two different methods. Here, phi is a measure of solar activity. M marks the Maunder Minimum, D the Dalton Minimum and G the weaker Gleisberg Minimum of 1900:
Enlarged
Other reading: wsj.com/news/8.
- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2013/11/11/german-scientists-solar-cycle-24-points-to-dalton-or-maunder-like-minimum-boding-ill-for-a-climate-cooling/#sthash.72vXTSFA.dpuf
- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2013/11/11/german-scientists-solar-cycle-24-points-to-dalton-or-maunder-like-minimum-boding-ill-for-a-climate-cooling/#sthash.72vXTSFA.dpuf
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Not Welcome: UN climate summit in Poland greeted by 50,000 angry Poles rallying against UN
more than 50,000 enthusiastic Poles gathered in downtown Warsaw on Monday to celebrate National Independence Day, with millions more watching on live television, CFACT president David Rothbard was invited to the stage to deliver an impassioned address celebrating freedom and warning against the dangerous and oppressive climate agenda of the UN.
CFACT warns 50,000+ against UN climate agenda
Before what was one of the largest audiences to ever hear a speech denouncing UN global warming policies, Rothbard said he was honored to stand with the Poles in a “new battle for freedom against those who would use environmental and climate alarmism to steal away our liberties and give international bureaucrats control over our energy sources, our daily lives, our prosperity, and our national sovereignty.”
The address was carried live on national television and covered by a large number of international media outlets. It took place just as the UN was kicking off its COP19 climate conference a few kilometers away.
Rothbard noted that at last year’s COP meeting, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said that what the UN was undertaking is “a complete economic transformation of the world.”
“This is not good news for those who love freedom, and it is not good news for Poland,” Rothbard asserted.
“Standing next to a CFACT banner that read “No to UN Climate Hype” in Polish and surrounded by throngs who wore CFACT stickers bearing the same message in Poland’s distinctive red and white, the crowd gave hearty consent to Rothbard’s message.
He also quoted from the Book of Proverbs that “the wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion,” noting that “the environmentalists and the bureaucrats don’t want to debate these issues because they know they are deceiving the world.”
“There hasn’t been any global warming in more than 15 years,” he noted, “and this is simply an excuse for more government oppression.”
“We stand for freedom. We stand for opportunity. We stand for our families. And we stand for a strong and prosperous future. Together let us be bold as a lion,” he concluded.
The rally took place one day after CFACT keynoted a climate policy conference in Warsaw co-sponsored by Solidarity, the Institute for Globalization, and other Polish and European NGOs. There, members of the European Parliament, along with representatives from the U.S., Italy, Sweden, Hungary, and Poland formally signed the “Warsaw Declaration” calling on the UN to discontinue work on a new treaty until a genuine “scientific consensus is reached on the phenomenon of so-called global warming.”
The UN made a big mistake choosing Poland to host its global warming treaty summit. The Poles see right through warming propaganda. Enduring generations of socialism has left them with a deep distaste for propaganda and bureaucratic control. Polish prosperity was blocked first by war and then by ideology. Poland deserves freedom and prosperity and knows it can’t move forward without energy. The brave Poles are not about to cede their sovereignty to UN control.
Polish feelings about the UN climate treaty echo what Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher told the Soviet Union. “Let Poland be Poland!”
CFACT, which has been an officially recognized NGO at UN conferences for nearly two decades, will be in Warsaw throughout the two weeks of COP 19. Its delegation will be headlined by Apollo VII astronaut Col. Walter Cunningham who is highly critical of UN climate science.
See also here a story on how The Media remains silent as Obama makes another big power grab.
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Published November 01, 2013
Satellite image from October 2012 of superstorm Sandy on the eastern seaboard. Many say the monster storm was a result of climate change while skeptics say that weather patterns give no real indication of changes in the climate. NOAA
Through the stroke of a pen, President Obama on Friday used his executive powers to elevate and take control of climate change policies in an attempt to streamline sustainability initiatives and potentially skirt legislative oversight and push a federal agenda on states.
The executive order establishes a task force of state and local officials to advise the administration on how to respond to severe storms, wildfires, droughts and other potential impacts of climate change. The task force includes governors of seven states all Democrats and the Republican governor of Guam, a U.S. territory. Fourteen mayors and two other local leaders also will serve on the task force.
All but three of those appointed are Democrats. The task force will look at federal money spent on roads, bridges, flood control and other projects. It ultimately will recommend how structures can be made more resilient to the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels and warming temperatures.
“We’re going to need to get prepared. And that’s why this plan will also protect critical sectors of our economy and prepare the United States for the impacts of climate change that we cannot avoid,” Obama said last June, when he first launched a Climate Action Plan.
“States and cities across the country are already taking it upon themselves to get ready...And we’ll partner with communities seeking help to prepare for droughts and floods, reduce the risk of wildfires, protect the dunes and wetlands that pull double duty as green space and as natural storm barriers.”
The White House added in Friday’s statement that even as the United States acts to curb carbon pollution, officials also need to improve how states and communities respond to extreme weather events like last year’s Superstorm Sandy. Building codes must be updated to address climate impacts and infrastructure needs to be made more resilient.
Critics of the order charge, among other things, that it groups together everything from forest fires to heavy rains as evidence of climate change - despite scientific testimony from both sides of the debate.
“The devil is in the details,” a former senior government official said to FoxNews.com earlier this month, referring to a recently released study that proposed the streamlining between federal and state agencies. “Who gets to decide what sustainability is? Or what its outcome means?”
The chair of the study, Thomas Graedel, a professor of chemical engineering, geology and geophysics, and currently head of the Center for Industrial Ecology at Yale University, said at the time of its release that the study “provides encouragement for parts of the government to get together on projects of concern. There is no formula for how it all works out.”
Officials for the EPA released a statement on Friday afternoon praising the order, saying it will be vital in their attempts to help local-level communities “adapt to a changing climate.”
“To meet our mission of protecting public health and the environment, EPA must help communities adapt to a changing climate,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in the statement. “These Implementation Plans offer a roadmap for agency work to meet that responsibility, while carrying out President Obama’s goal of preparing the country for climate-related challenges.”
But critics say the order has the potential to do much more, including:
* Hold back money to communities unless they meet new standards on various items and agendas set by the federal government. For example, using new policies that will encourage communities to rebuild to pre-disaster standards instead of stronger ones.
* A possible mandate to bring sweeping new changes to land use and resource policies.
* More control and refocus of climate change data and use of it to push a new agenda into every priority of the federal government.
* Create the need for a new internal organization for coordination efforts during a government sequestration and possible future shutdowns.
The task force includes Govs. Jerry Brown of California, Jay Inslee of Washington and Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, as well as Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn. The panel also includes several big-city mayors, including Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Houston Mayor Annise Parker. All three are Democrats.
The task force builds on efforts Obama announced for his Climate Action Plan last June, which include the first-ever limits on climate pollution from new and existing power plants.
The plan is intended to reduce domestic carbon dioxide emissions by 17 percent between 2005 and 2020. The plan also would boost renewable energy production on federal lands, increase efficiency standards and prepare communities to deal with higher temperatures. The 12 hottest years on record all have occurred in the past 15 years.
Climate change skeptics, as well as scientists, argue there is no proven link between extreme events and global warming. Indeed, Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research who has called for climate mitigation, argued recently that—heat waves aside—there is little evidence for an increase in extreme events themselves. John Christy testified to the Senate however that when you consider state all-time heat records, 38 of them occurred before 1960 and 23 in the 1930s and there have been more cold records than warm record since the 1940s. Also for long term 90 year stations, last year’s heat wave was merely a blip compared to the 1930s.
Others find small links between climate change and some specific natural disasters, saying storms like Sandy were worsened by rising sea levels. Not true the main culprit was angle of attack and high tide and full moon which added 6 feet to the storm surge. But for other events, notably droughts and downfalls, there’s no evidence of a global warming effect.
A Sept. 2012 editorial in the prestigious journal Nature urged caution in drawing any such connection: “Better models are needed before exceptional events can be reliably linked to global warming.”
Fox News’ George Russell and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
By Dr. Larry Bell, Forbes Reprinted with permission of author
What potential consequences will result now that the Supreme Court announced in October that it will review the June 2012 D.C. Circuit of Appeals decision in Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA which upheld four of the agency’s main greenhouse gas rulings. In the new case, Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, the Court will limit its review to one question: “Whether EPA permissibly determined that greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles triggered requirements under the Clean Air Act for stationary sources that emit greenhouse gases.”
So what does this really mean? What impact will such a ruling have depending upon whichever way it goes? I have asked my good friend Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., to discuss the implications regarding whether petitioners win or lose.
Marlo, first of all, what potential significance does this Supreme Court decision to review the case have? Does it indicate evidence of a shift within the Court with regard to statutory boundaries of the EPA’s regulatory authority?
Larry, only time will tell. The Court’s grant of “certiorari” to reassess the lower court’s ruling could simply mean that some of the Justices want to end litigation attempting to roll back or limit the regulatory consequences of the Supreme Court’s earlier finding in Massachusetts v. EPA that the agency could determine that CO2 was a pollutant subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. Accordingly, the EPA then claimed regulatory authority premised upon claimed climate impacts asserted in its Endangerment Rule.
My hunch, though, is that the Court agreed to review the case because some Judges do have serious concerns about the legality of EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources.
Bear in mind that this reassessment explicitly won’t address EPA’s May 2010 “Tailpipe Rule” which established first-ever greenhouse gas emission standards for motor vehicles, much less the December 2009 Endangerment Rule which represents the fountainhead of all greenhouse gas regulations. Still, a determination that nullifies EPA’s authority to regulate stationary sources can represent a major political and policy setback for EPA.
Overturning the Timing Rule would limit the EPA’s greenhouse regulations mostly to mobile sources, at least for the next few years. EPA would have to mothball its big plans to impose greenhouse permitting requirements on modified power plants as well as new steel mills, cement production facilities, paper and pulp factories and other large industrial installations. That would validate criticism that the agency is bent on expanding its power regardless of the law.
I’m not sure how much overturning the rule would help the economy, but it certainly would not hurt! It would avert regulatory burdens that hinder job creation and make U.S. firms less competitive. It would avoid at least some higher energy and production costs that regulated entities would pass on to consumers.
If the Court decision goes against the plaintiffs, does this mean “game over” insofar as future challenges to EPA’s greenhouse gas regulatory binge?
No, I don’t believe that is necessarily true. While many global warming crisis skeptics and limited government advocates continue to be terribly disappointed that the Court has declined to review either the Endangerment Rule or subsequent Tailpipe Rule, the case could still rekindle public and policymaker support for legislative action to rein in the agency and contain fallout from Mass v. EPA.
Even if the Court upholds the Timing Rule, petitioners and their allies can extract some political capital from the case. A decision favorable to the EPA would confirm the urgency of ending “regulation without representation.” As you know, many constitutionalists and free-marketers view the EPA’s takeover of climate policy as a breach of the separation of powers. If the President submitted EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations to Congress as a legislative package, it would be dead on arrival. Congress should have to approve major regulatory actions before they can become binding on the public.
Marlo, will overturning the Timing Rule have other legal consequences?
Maybe. If the Court overturns the Rule, several other EPA rules compelling States to include greenhouse gases in their permitting programs would become unenforceable or vulnerable to legal challenges. The decision might then create momentum for other litigation to roll back the EPA’s takeover of State environmental programs.
If the Court upholds the Timing Rule it will have lots of explaining to do. The Timing Rule is what triggers the “absurd results” and “administrative impossibility” that the EPA attempts to “tailor” away by playing lawmaker and amending the Clean Air Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction and Title V operating permits programs. If the Court upholds the Rule, it will have to explain how the Clean Air Act can be the statutory scheme Congress intended to regulate greenhouse gases, its conclusion in Mass. v. EPA and yet lead to extreme measures and absurd results when used for that purpose. Logically, the Court has to choose between Mass. v. EPA and the Timing Rule, unless it wants to take ownership of the bizarre notion that the Clean Air Act was wired from the start to self-destruct four decades later.
In your view, will the case re-open any issues in Mass. v. EPA even though the Court’s review narrowly focuses on the Timing Rule?
Maybe. It’s hard to imagine how the Court can review a rule that leads to “absurd results” and “administrative impossibility” without examining its opinion in Mass v. EPA opinion that an Endangerment Finding under Section 202 of the Clean Air Act won’t lead to “extreme” or “counterintuitive” measures, but only to a cost-constrained modification of the motor vehicle emission standards.
It’s not at all surprising that the Court drew that conclusion after petitioners assured them that mobile source provisions of the Clean Air Act (Title II) are separate from stationary source provisions (Title I). What the petitioners didn’t tell the Court is that, although separate, Title I and Title II are linked especially as EPA reads the statute.
Marlo, please explain how they are “linked”.
Here’s where some more of that background history comes into the picture. Under EPA’s long-standing interpretation of the statute, reaffirmed in the Timing Rule, once any “air pollutant” is regulated under any part of the Act, “major” stationary sources are automatically “subject to regulation” under the Title I PSD preconstruction permit program and Title V operating permit program. Thus, when EPA’s Tailpipe Rule took effect on January 2, 2011, “major” greenhouse emitters became subject to PSD and Title V regulation. This leads straight to the extreme and counter-intuitive measures the Court assumed would not occur. Here’s why.
A source is defined as “major” under PSD if it has a potential to emit 250 tons per year of an air pollutant, and also “major” under Title V if it has a potential to emit 100 tons per year. Whereas only large industrial facilities emit 100-250 tons per year of smog-producing chemicals or particulate matter, literally millions of small non-industrial facilities office buildings, hospitals, schools, restaurants, heated agricultural facilities, etc. emit enough CO2 to qualify as “major” sources.
EPA estimates that applying permit programs as written to greenhouse gases would increase the number of PSD applications from 280 to 81,000 (a 300 fold increase), and Title V permit applications from 14,700 to 6.1 million per year (a 400-fold increase). In order to process these applications, permitting agencies would have to spend an extra $21 billion annually to hire an additional 230,000 full-time employees. Otherwise, ever-growing bottlenecks would paralyze environmental enforcement and freeze economic development.
Apparently that seemed to be a bit of an expansionary stretch even for EPA. And then what did they do?
To avert administrative disaster and a political firestorm, the EPA adopted its June 2010 Tailoring Rule which exempts all but the largest greenhouse emitters from PSD and Title V permitting. It does so by revising the “major” source applicability thresholds from 100-250 tons per year to 75,000-100,000 tons per year. In other words, to avoid a debacle of its own making, the agency effectively re-wrote the statute.
So, contrary to the Court’s expectation, the Endangerment Rule teed up several “extreme measures”: 1) an orders-of-magnitude increase in the number of firms subject to Clean Air Act permitting programs; 2) the application of complex and costly permitting requirements to small non-industrial facilities, contrary to congressional intent; 3) an overloaded permitting system that blocks construction activity throughout he land; 4) a multi-billion dollar expansion of environmental agencies that State governments can ill-afford, or alternatively, 5) EPA amendment ("tailoring") of unambiguous statutory language, a blatant exercise of legislative power.
So what’s the legal solution to this dilemma if the Court is not going to disavow its opinion that Congress authorized the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases?
Petitioners in Utility Air Regulation Group v. EPA argue that the PSD and Title V programs apply only to pollutants that affect public health and welfare by virtue of their local concentration, toxicity, or air quality impact. Since the harm allegedly posed by greenhouse gas emissions has nothing to do with local concentration or exposure, the permitting programs do not apply to them.
Whether petitioners win or lose, the review should occasion debate not only about the specific legal issues in the case, but also about the larger constitutional issue of whether an administrative agency should be dictating national policy on a legislatively-unsettled issue like climate change. The Court would not even be hearing this case if we had an accountable regulatory system in which the people’s representatives, not non-elected bureaucrats or activist judges appointed for life, make policy decisions.
Thanks Marlo. This ultimately puts the ball in the court of informed voters who will determine who those representatives are, and will expose them to some true human-caused heat.