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.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

More condo owners told they can't charge their electric cars, heavy electricity pricetag problematic

.
1/30/12, "Disturbing Trend: Condo owners told they can't charge their EVs," green.autoblog.com

"Owning an electric car with a reasonable range could be a very practical solution for many drivers. After all, pulling into the garage at the end of the day and plugging in your car can be a huge time saver if it means you can forgo the gas pump, not to mention the potential environmental benefits.
  • That is, if you have access to a plug.
As we recently found out after driving a 2011 Nissan Leaf for a week, the availability of electrical outlets can be a major downer on EV ownership. Our test car spent a week in the Phoenix, AZ area, and was parked overnight in a covered parking garage. No problem, since there were indeed unused outlets in the structure, so we could plug it in. Except that we couldn't.

It seems the property management company that oversees the garage decided that electric cars were not allowed to draw power. The problem, as so often is the case, came down to monetary concerns. It seems that, without having a way to measure how much power was being consumed by the electric car, management decided it could not accurately charge the driver for any electricity consumed. This is despite the fact that the garage serves a building with tenants that pay the electricity bill.

We understood the monetary aspects involved, so we offered to pay the property management company a fee of their choosing (after jointly considering local rates) to use an outlet for a week, which was declined. The end result? We charged the Leaf at the nearest local Nissan dealer free of charge.

It turns out ours wasn't an isolated issue. According to a report from TheTruthAboutCars.com, at least one Chevrolet Volt owner in Ontario, Canada has been blocked from charging his car in his unit's parking garage unless he installs his own separate charging system. Interestingly enough, something similar also happened to Derek Kreindler, who wrote the story for TTAC.

We don't really see an easy solution to this problem, so we suggest speaking to your property management company, if applicable, before signing on the electrified dotted line... or at least know where your nearest fast charger is located. " via Instapundit



.

Poland had been having a mild winter, now freezing temperatures and snow have killed at least 36 across Eastern Europe

Hundreds more sought aid for frostbite and hypothermia.

1/31/12, "Winter cold snap kills 36 in Europe," Sydney Morning Herald

"Heavy snow and a severe cold snap have killed at least 36 people across eastern Europe, with many areas under emergency measures as schools closed down, roads became impassible and power supplies were cut off.

As temperatures dropped to around minus 20C, authorities opened hundreds of emergency shelters across the region and urged people to be careful and stay indoors. Police went searching for homeless people to make sure they didn't freeze to death.

Ukraine's Emergency Situations Ministry said 18 people died of hypothermia and nearly 500 people sought medical help for frostbites and hypothermia in just three days last week. Twelve of the dead were homeless people whose bodies were discovered on the streets.

Temperatures in parts of Ukraine plunged to minus 16C during the day and minus 23C during the night. Authorities opened 1500 shelters to provide food and heat and shut down schools and nurseries.

At least 10 people froze to death in Poland as the cold reached minus 26C on Monday....

Until now, Poland had been having a mild winter with little snow and temperatures just below freezing.

In central Serbia, three people died and two more were missing and 14 municipalities were operating under emergency decrees. Efforts to clear roads of snow were hampered by strong winds and dozens of towns faced power outages....

In Romania, local media reported four people had died due to the frigid weather. Hungry dogs and puppies near the Romanian capital of Bucharest got a helping hand after a dozen prison inmates shovelled snow on Monday to unblock paths to a stray dog shelter housing 300 dogs.

The strays had been frozen in after snowstorms and icy weather swept Romania. Bucharest is home to some 50,000 stray dogs."...



via Tom Nelson, photo AFP


Monday, January 30, 2012

"It is deeply disturbing that a group of climate activists (Hansen and Karl) have made adjustments which turned a cooling trend into a warming trend."

As James Hansen knows having won at least $900,000 in climate prize money, the "climate" gravy train is too big to fail.

1/29/12, "Corruption Of The US Temperature Record," Real Science, Steven Goddard

"Prior to the year 2000, the USHCN and GISS temperature database showed US temperatures as having peaked in the 1930s, with 1934 (by far) the hottest year – and 1998 the fifth hottest....

Dr. James Hansen from NASA wrote at the time :

Empirical evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought. The drought of 1999 covered a smaller area than the 1988 drought, when the Mississippi almost dried up. And 1988 was a temporary inconvenience as compared with repeated droughts during the 1930s “Dust Bowl” that caused an exodus from the prairies, as chronicled in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/

Around the year 2000, USHCN and GISS decided to “adjust the temperature record, in a way which caused the 1930s to get much cooler, and recent temperatures to get much warmer.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.D.gif

The animated image below (LINK) shows how the data was adjusted. The year 1934 was cooled several tenths of a degree, while the year 1998 was warmed by half a degree. How is that two years prior to the adjustment, over 365,000 US temperature readings were measured improperly by half a degree?

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2009.pdf

The map below (LINK) uses the same images, but with regions of no temperature change removed. Note how the area of warming temperatures was nearly doubled, while the area of

  • cooling temperatures was reduced by about 90%.

Where is the data that was used before the Y2K corruption? Why is it not made available by the scientist who wrote the text below in 1999?

Empirical evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought.

It is deeply disturbing that a group of climate activists (Hansen and Karl) have made adjustments

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

11/25/2009, "Global warming industry becomes too big to fail," Timothy Carney, Washington Examiner



via Tom Nelson

Sunday, January 29, 2012

'Planet hasn't warmed in 15 years,' say UK climate scientists, though CO2 has continued to rise

"It is becoming evident that factors other than CO2 play an important role in rising or falling warmth."...

1/29/12, "Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)," UK Daily Mail, David Rose

"Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years"

"
The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.

We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.

Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.

According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C.

However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.

Yet, in its paper, the Met Office claimed that the consequences now would be negligible – because the impact of the sun on climate is far less than man-made carbon dioxide. Although the sun’s output is likely to decrease until 2100, ‘This would only cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08C.’ Peter Stott, one of the authors, said: ‘Our findings suggest a reduction of solar activity to levels not seen in hundreds of years would be insufficient to offset the dominant influence of greenhouse gases.’

These findings are fiercely disputed by other solar experts.

World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’

He pointed out that, in claiming the effect of the solar minimum would be small, the Met Office was relying on the same computer models that are being undermined by the current pause in global-warming.

CO2 levels have continued to rise without interruption and, in 2007, the Met Office claimed that global warming was about to ‘come roaring back’. It said that between 2004 and 2014 there would be an overall increase of 0.3C. In 2009, it predicted that at least three of the years 2009 to 2014 would break the previous temperature record set in 1998.

So far there is no sign of any of this happening. But yesterday a Met Office spokesman insisted its models were still valid.

‘The ten-year projection remains groundbreaking science. The period for the original projection is not over yet,’ he said.

Dr Nicola Scafetta, of Duke University in North Carolina, is the author of several papers that argue the Met Office climate models show there should have been ‘steady warming from 2000 until now’.

‘If temperatures continue to stay flat or start to cool again, the divergence between the models and recorded data will eventually become so great that the whole scientific community will question the current theories,’ he said.

He believes that as the Met Office model attaches much greater significance to CO2 than to the sun, it was bound to conclude that there would not be cooling. ‘The real issue is whether the model itself is accurate,’ Dr Scafetta said. Meanwhile, one of America’s most eminent climate experts, Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said she found the Met Office’s confident prediction of a ‘negligible’ impact difficult to understand.

‘The responsible thing to do would be to accept the fact that the models may have severe shortcomings when it comes to the influence of the sun,’ said Professor Curry. As for the warming pause, she said that many scientists ‘are not surprised’.

She argued it is becoming evident that factors other than CO2 play an important role in rising or falling warmth, such as the 60-year water temperature cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

‘They have insufficiently been appreciated in terms of global climate,’ said Prof Curry. When both oceans were cold in the past, such as from 1940 to 1970, the climate cooled. The Pacific cycle ‘flipped’ back from warm to cold mode in 2008 and the Atlantic is also thought likely to flip in the next few years .

Pal Brekke, senior adviser at the Norwegian Space Centre, said some scientists found the importance of water cycles difficult to accept, because doing so means admitting that the oceans – not CO2 – caused much of the global warming between 1970 and 1997.

The same goes for the impact of the sun – which was highly active for much of the 20th Century.

‘Nature is about to carry out a very interesting experiment,’ he said. ‘Ten or 15 years from now, we will be able to determine much better whether the warming of the late 20th Century really was caused by man-made CO2, or by natural variability.’

Meanwhile, since the end of last year, world temperatures have fallen by more than half a degree, as the cold ‘La Nina’ effect has re-emerged in the South Pacific.

‘We’re now well into the second decade of the pause,’ said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. ‘If we don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015, it will start to become clear whether the models are bunk. And, if they are, the implications for some scientists could be very serious.’" via Climate Depot


chart from UK Daily Mail



.







Warm winter due to La Nina & Arctic Oscillation, cold air can't get to most of US say climate scientists-LA Times

1/27/12, "U.S. seems to have largely escaped winter," LA Times, E. Brown, "A combination of factors has trapped winter's cold air over Canada and Alaska, making for unseasonably warm weather in the Lower 48."

La Nina's influence on the jet stream has kept cold air in Canada and Alaska from reaching the lower 48. This has been reinforced by Arctic Oscillation...La Nina can persist for years.

"Throughout the continental United States, it's been a very warm winter....

The answer: A combination of factors has trapped the winter's cold air in the northern latitudes over Canada and Alaska.

"If you look at U.S. temperatures, you'd say, 'Wow, it was a warm winter,'" said Dan Cayan, a climate researcher at the U.S. Geological Service and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. And you'd be right.

"But," he added, "in the coastal West, it's been cool."...

"Scientists said the cyclical cooling in the Pacific Ocean known as La Niña was a likely cause for dry conditions in California and across the nation.

There's an 82% probability of less-than-normal rainfall in a La Niña year, said Bill Patzert, a climate researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.

Most of California has received less than half of its normal precipitation this winter, Cayan said.

According to the National Weather Service, downtown Los Angeles has had 5.06 inches of rain this water year, which began July 1. The average for that time period is 6.74 inches.

La Niña-related dryness might have helped California stay cool at night, Kittell said, because less rain means less water vapor in the air. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas that traps heat near the ground.

"When it's very dry, you kind of lose that extra layer and the ground cools like crazy," he said.

Cayan chalked up the cool temperatures on the West Coast to its position on the eastern edge of a La Niña-related high-pressure center over the Pacific Ocean that has created a dry, cool air flow in the region.

La Niña has also helped keep the jet stream on a west-to-east path over Canada, preventing cold Arctic air from dipping into the Lower 48 states, he said.

A phenomenon known as the Arctic Oscillation has reinforced that effect, Patzert said.

The oscillation is a pattern of pressure that wraps itself around the North Pole. When the pressure is low, as it has been for most of this winter, the oscillation captures the cool air that normally breaks out of the Arctic and moves into Canada.

The Arctic Oscillation shifted in January, leading some meteorologists to predict that cold air would soon dip farther south,
  • allowing the winter to finally begin in earnest.
But since La Niña can persist for years, Cayan said he suspected it was unlikely California would catch up on rain and snowfall this year.

"We're so far behind right now," he said."



via Climate Depot

Friday, January 27, 2012

529 jobs lost due to Obama EPA regulations, coal plants close, poor economy also cited. Not mentioned, electric cars are powered by coal.

Slow economy had cut back energy usage and....natural gas has become so much cheaper "in recent weeks." Now who happens to be a big investor in natural gas? Right. Electricity used to charge "electric" cars comes from 'dirty' coal.

1/26/12, "FirstEnergy closing 6 coal-fired power plants," Boston.com

"FirstEnergy Corp. said Thursday that new environmental regulations led to a decision to shut down six older, coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland, affecting more than 500 employees.

The plants, which are in Cleveland, Ashtabula, Oregon and Eastlake in Ohio, Adrian, Pa. and Williamsport, Md., will be retired by Sept. 1. They have generated about 10 percent of the electricity produced by FirstEnergy over the last three years, the company said.

In a statement James Lash, head of the company's generation unit, indicated that a review of the company's coal-fired plants determined it would not be cost-effective to get the older ones into compliance with environmental regulations the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced in December.

The new standards are designed to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic pollution from coal- and oil-fired power plants. An Associated Press survey found that the changes were likely to result in the mothballing of dozens of units in the Midwest and in the coal belt -- Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia.

The Obama administration was under court order to issue a new rule, after a court threw out an attempt by the Bush administration to exempt power plants from controls for toxic air pollution.

Two factors have made it easier for utilities to shut old coal plants in recent years. Power demand has been weakening in recent years because of the slow economy and energy efficiency programs. And natural gas prices, which have fallen to decade-low levels in recent weeks, have allowed utilities to switch from coal to natural gas without impacting customer bills. Meanwhile, demand from China and elsewhere

  • has driven up the price of coal.

FirstEnergy said its decision would directly affect 529 employees. Some of them could end up transferring to other FirstEnergy facilities and work sites, while others could take advantage of a retirement benefit being offered to employees 55 years and older, the company said.

FirstEnergy has a total of 17 coal power plants, including those that will close by September.

The plants targeted to shut down have been producing less power over the last few years, mainly during times of peak demand, the company said.

Eastlake, a community of about 18,500 people and located alongside Lake Erie northeast of Cleveland, will lose $590,000 a year in taxes, or about 4.5 percent of its regular budget, Mayor Ted Andrzejewski said.

With about 100 good-paying jobs, the plant was among the top employers in the community, according to the mayor.

Most communities weren't caught off guard by the decision to shutter the plants....

A message requesting comment from the Utility Workers Union of America in Cleveland was not immediately returned on Thursday....

FirstEnergy's electric system has 6 million customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia. Coal and nuclear power plants generate about 80 percent of the company's output. The company employs about 17,000 people."...



via Tom Nelson

16 scientists sign Wall St. Journal article, say it's completely false that 'most scientists agree' about catastrophic climate change

"Follow the money." Some scientists won't speak up for fear of being demoted 'or worse.' We've had "no warming for well over 10 years."

1/27/12, "No Need to Panic About Global Warming," Wall St. Journal opinion signed by 16 scientists

"There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy."
  • "Editor's Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:

"A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the
warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decadeindeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant
. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update,

  • "Follow the money."

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

If elected officials feel compelled to "do something" about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.

Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but
  • Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris;
  • J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting;
  • Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University;
  • Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society;
  • Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences;
  • William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton;
  • Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.;
  • William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology;
  • Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT;
  • James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University;
  • Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences;
  • Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne;
  • Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator;
  • Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem;
  • Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service;
  • Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva."




via Climate Depot

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Occupy member to run for congress from Pennsylvania, is a former democrat legislative aide

1/24/12, "The first Occupy candidate: Nate Kleinman," Politico, Dylan Byers

"Nathan Kleinman, a 29-year-old member of the Occupy Philadelphia movement, intends to run for congress in Pennsylvania's 13th district

"The petition gathering period starts today and lasts for three weeks, so I plan to file by then," Kleinman told me over the phone today. "I'll be running in the Democratic primary."

Kleinman, who refers to himself as a human rights activist and organizer, served as an aide to Joe Sestak's unsuccessful 2010 Senate campaign before becoming a legislative

  • assistant to Pennsylvania State Representative Josh Shapiro.

More recently, he has been a member of the Occupy Philadelphia movement, participating in a number of associated working groups, including "Free University," "Outreach Working Group," "Process Working Group," "Camp Liberty," and "The Committee of Correspondence," through which he became involved with InterOccupy.org, which he describes

  • as "a central hub for communications" in the national Occupy movement.

Now, he plans to campaign for the House of Representatives, which would make him the first member of the Occupy movement to seek a seat in Congress.

"After a GREAT meeting tonight in Jenkintown, I'm excited to say: I'm running for Congress!!" Kleinman wrote on his Facebook page last night. He later joined Facebook's "Occupy US Congress" group.

Kleinman told me that he intends to run on his own, autonomous platform, but will "stay involved in the Occupy movement" during the campaign....

A spokesperson with the Pennsylvania state election office confirmed that filing petitions for 2012 went out today, and said that an applicant must obtain 1,000 signatures to qualify."


via Hot Air

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Obama aims to submit US to UN control outside congressional authorization via federal and state emissions-reduction programs-Reuters

Global/climate warming consists of 3 issues per former Obama-Biden climate adviser Nigel Purvis: "constraining industry," transferring money out of the US, and "strengthening the UN." (see subhead 'Repub. brainchild') 'Climate' is not mentioned because it's not about climate.

1/23/12, "U.S. CO2 emissions to stay below 2005 levels as coal use shrinks," Reuters

"U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions will be 7 percent lower
than their 2005 level of nearly 6 billion metric tons in 2020 as coal's share of electricity production continues a steady descent over the next two decades, according to new government data.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) released an early version of its annual energy outlook on Monday, which predicted a slowdown in growth of energy use over the next two decades amid economic recovery and improved energy efficiency.

The report highlights the fact that carbon-intensive coal generation will see a major decline in the power sector in the coming decades, which will ensure energy-related CO2 emissions will not exceed 2005 levels at any point before 2035.

The report also showed that emissions per capita would fall an average of 1 percent per year from 2005 to 2035 as the new federal standards, state renewable energy mandates and higher energy prices would temper the growth of demand for transportation fuels.

"Over the next 25 years, the projected coal share of overall electricity generation falls to 39 percent, well below the 49-percent share seen as recently as 2007, because of slow growth in electricity demand, continued competition from natural gas and renewable plants,

The retirement of old, inefficient coal-fired power plants will outpace new construction, and the report added that gas-fired plants - which are cheaper to build - will generate 13 percent more power in 2012 than they did last year.

Meanwhile, the share of electricity generation from renewable fuels is expected to grow from 10 percent in 2010 to 16 percent by 2035, according to the EIA.

The Obama Administration has set a target under the U.N. for the U.S. to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

Congress has not been able to pass comprehensive energy and climate change legislation that would help ensure the target is met, but the administration hopes a combination of federal regulations and state emission-reduction programs

  • can achieve the cuts.

The report said that the U.S. will remain an importer of oil while it becomes for the first time a net exporter of natural gas within the next 25 years.

The agency cautioned that the results of the outlook may change when it publishes the final annual energy outlook in April this year."

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici)



via Tom Nelson

Monday, January 23, 2012

NBC's Brian Williams orders Tampa debate audience to 'stay quiet,' giving media and GOP establishment control of the narrative

The Tampa debate crowd meekly submits to NBC's Brian Williams' order to 'stay quiet.' The narrative is taken away from the people and given to the establishment. The GOP desperately wants primaries to be over so they can get back to selling this country out. As Rush Limbaugh said Monday, "Newt is a vessel" for long silenced and scorned ordinary Americans. The silencing of the audience at this event proves why the crowd was cheering the other night. We have been gagged and treated like trash for decades.

1/23/12, "Gingrich Lost His Crowd-Pleasing Groove in Tampa," National Journal, Tim Alberta

"NBC's Brian Williams asked the audience to stay quiet." (parag. 3)

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

The audience was told to shut up so the media and establishment can create the narrative that Newt was 'a dud.' This is not to say Gingrich can or will win just based on cheering audiences.




via Drudge

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Al Gore takes cruise to Antarctica with ClimateGate figure Trenberth, billionaire Branson, and US millionaire climate activist James Hanson

Sea ice in Antarctica has been increasing for 30 years.

1/20/12, "Scientists, celebrities to cruise with Gore to Antarctica," E&E News, Lauren Morello

"Former Vice President Al Gore is taking his fight against climate change to Antarctica next week as part of a cruise organized by his Climate Reality Project.

Gore and more than 100 fellow travelers will depart from Argentina late next week. Scientists, including climatologists James Hansen of NASA and Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, will give talks during the journey.

Other attendees include Bangladesh's minister of environment and forests, Hasan Mahmud, and British billionaire Richard Branson, who blogged about the trip last month.

"Today is the 100th anniversary of Roald Amundsen and his team's successful trip to the South Pole. Next month I'm going to Antarctica with [my family] to celebrate that trip and also Capt Robert Scott (who was a relative of ours) incredible voyage there," Branson wrote on Dec. 14. "Sadly as you know he perished on the way home. We're going on a boat organised by Al Gore to learn as much as we can from scientists and experts about where we are

  • in the worrying cycle of Global Warming."

The Antarctic voyage is part of a larger campaign to focus attention on the threat climate change poses to the world's ice sheets and glaciers -- a subject Gore highlighted in his 2007 documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," and at a 2009 conference he convened with Norway's foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Støre.

"This winter we will be talking about Antarctica as part of our 'Living on Thin Ice' campaign which will focus on how people around the globe are being impacted by the melting of the world's ice," Climate Reality Project spokesman Eric Young said. "As part of that effort, we are journeying to Antarctica with our chairman, Vice President Gore, and leading scientists and thinkers to see firsthand how the climate crisis is unfolding."

Antarctica is not the only stop for Gore's campaign, Young said, which has convened events in Ecuador, the Sierra Nevada and Brooklyn and is planning trips to Nepal and the Alps."

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

1/22/12, "Three Stooges Travel To Antarctica – Don’t Know What Season It Is," Real Science

"Gore, Hansen, and Trenberth are travelling to Antarctica (where sea ice has been steadily increasing for 30 years) to showcase melting ice. The leader of Gore’s project thinks it is winter in Antarctica....A possible hint for them about the season would be the fact that Antarctica is completely surrounded by hundreds of miles of ice during the wintertime, and that it is also very dark and cold. Given that nobody lives in Antarctica, that sea ice is increasing there, and that temperatures are declining – one might question

  • how anyone there is being impacted by melting ice."



via Climate Depot, Tom Nelson, Real Science

Saturday, January 21, 2012

New movie with Liam Neeson 'pits stranded oil pipeline installers against a pack of vicious wolves'

1/20/12, Politico, Morning Energy

"Quick Hits"

"The Los Angeles Times takes a look at energy and environmental issues in Liam Neeson’s new film “The Grey,” which pits
  • stranded oil pipeline installers

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

I've got to persuade my brother to move out of California. These people are sick. ed.



.

Fortunes from rich US tax exempt groups remove Canadian decision making from Canadians in the name of saving them from CO2 poisoning

"The concern for Canadians, apart from the environment, is the integrity of our democratic decision making."

1/21/12, "How US Charities Fund Greens," Lawrence Solomon, National Post

"Americans should be able to influence Canada's environmental debates. They should not be able to do so under the radar.

But they do, and not just in the case of the proposed Northern Gateway oil pipeline from the oil sands of Alberta to the West Coast - today's hot environmental topic. Unbeknownst to most Canadians, over the past two decades Canada's fabulously influential environmental movement increasingly has had U.S. paymasters. As elsewhere, he who pays the piper calls the tunes.

It wasn't always so, and foreign money wasn't always a problem. Canada's environmental groups in the 1970s and 1980s were a diverse lot advocating all-over-the map solutions to the many environmental problems they tackled. The Canadian groups would write up funding proposals for their ideas, shop them around to potential funders on both sides of the border, sometimes finding takers among them, sometimes not. It was largely a hit and-miss operation, and especially hard to obtain funding from the U.S. foundations, which tended to favour U.S. environmental groups. In this marketplace of ideas few funding proposals found much favour, and most environmental groups on both sides of the border struggled to survive.

Then the funders - typically the well-heeled U.S. foundations, most of them offshoots of corporate fortunes - got down to business....

The funders compared notes with each other over cocktails and at confabs, commissioned high-priced consultants to conduct expert studies into how best to manage grants to the environmental sector, had the consultants present their findings to the funders' executives at colloquia called for that purpose,

  • and decided to take charge....

With that decision, the environmental funders took the steering wheel away from the environmentalists. No longer would environmentalists set the agenda, with the funders acting as enablers. Now the funders became the agenda setters and the environmental groups became, in effect, their contractees. For U.S. issues, the funders work through U.S. environmental groups, to capitalize on their credibility with the public. For issues that involve foreign countries, the funders will also enlist local environmental groups in the foreign countries, to put a home-grown face on their campaigns.

This organizational model has been fabulously successful. The first concerted effort to change Canada's domestic policies in the 1990s and 2000s involved Canada's forestry industry. The Boreal forest and much of Canada's land mass is now subject to a legion of MadeintheU.S. certifications and other restrictions.

  • But no issue holds a candle to the

"Our investigation produced a chilling conclusion: If we don't act boldly in the next decade to prevent carbon lock-in, we could lose the fight against global warming," explains Design to Win, a major report commissioned by six funders, including the $7-billion William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (the Hewlett of the Hewlett-Packard Corp.), the $6-billion David and Lucile Packard Foundation (the Packard of the Hewlett-Packard corporation), the $1.6-billion Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (heiress to the American Tobacco Co. fortune),

It decided what policy changes were needed to get the most bang for their buck, and that funding from U.S. philanthropic organizations would need to quadruple, to $800-million annually, to accomplish their goals. It also decided to create funding bodies in foreign countries to "oversee highly leveraged, strategic interventions," all this in aid of

  • influencing voters and changing policy at all levels of government.

The upshot of these and other interventions by Big Philanthropy is the greatest environmental advocacy effort in history, of which the controversies involving Northern Gateway pipeline, the Keystone XL Pipleline, and the Tar Sands form a small part. The concern for Canadians, apart from the environment, is the integrity of our democratic decision making. When Americans tell us what is good for us, we rightly take the source of the advice into consideration.

  • We should do no less when the advice comes from Canadians in the pay of Americans."

"- Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and the author of The Deniers."



via Tom Nelson

Friday, January 20, 2012

Kilimanjaro not receding except at highest peak which has been doing so since 1880 due to dry Holocene conditions

Climate Depot Kilimanjaro Report, Page 38, pdf.

1/18/12, "Are the snows of Kilimanjaro returning? Guide says yes," McClatchy, Miami Herald, Alan Boswell, Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

"One of Mount Kilimanjaro's most dramatic features is its breathtaking glaciers, which slither across its dormant volcanic plateau and down its crater slope in frigid shades of bluish-green.

And one of the saddest claims of some scientists and environmental activists is that those glaciers are disappearing, perhaps before the end of the decade, another victim of rising global temperatures.

Athumani Juma doesn't believe it. A guide who's been hiking the mountain for the past seven years, he laughed when he was asked about the likelihood that Kilimanjaro's snowcap would disappear soon. The glaciers, he claimed, no longer are shrinking, but growing.

"Before, we were seeing glaciers melting," he explained during a recent descent from the summit. "But from 2010 to now, we have been seeing new glaciers."

So is one of the most popularly cited examples of the adverse effects of man-made climate change, Kilimanjaro's great melt, a myth?

Yes and no, said Georg Kaser, a professor at Innsbruck University in Austria who's a leading expert on low-latitude glaciers, including Kilimanjaro's.

The glaciers atop Kilimanjaro's highest peak, Kibo, are indeed melting, but not because of climate change, he said. They've

"According to our understanding, the Kibo glaciers shrink and will disappear not because of changing climate conditions but because of conditions that are unfavorable in principle: It is simply too dry for these glaciers to exist under normal Holocene conditions," he emailed. The Holocene is how geologists refer to

  • the period from the last Ice Age until now.

"The much less clear question is on how the glaciers came to exist, and there are indications that a series of exceptional wet years allowed them to build up during the first half of the 19th century," Kaser wrote....

A separate study published in the journal Global and Planetary Change in November 2010 suggested that deforestation in Kilimanjaro's lower rain forests could be accelerating the glaciers' retreat because

  • it leads to drier air around the mountain's peak.

What about Juma's claim that Kilimanjaro's glaciers have swelled instead of shrunk the past few years? Tanzania National Parks said it couldn't help clarify that; the park service doesn't monitor glacier movements on the mountain.

According to Kaser, there's no evidence to support Juma's observation. Such a reversal would require an increase in precipitation over the past two to three years, which didn't occur, he said."



via Climate Depot, via Tom Nelson


Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/18/2595738/are-the-snows-of-kilimanjaro-returning.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/18/2595738/are-the-snows-of-kilimanjaro-returning.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/18/2595738/are-the-snows-of-kilimanjaro-returning.html#storylink=cpy

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

US Dept. of Energy 'Chicago Office' gave over $1.5 million taxpayer dollars to ClimateGate figure Phil Jones. Chicago is birthplace of US CO2 trading.

Chicago Climate Exchange founded in 2003: "(Richard) Sandor
Obama was on the (Joyce) foundation that gave us the grant [for a pilot program to trade carbon credits] Sandor said. We know him well.”... (scroll down to sub-head 'Know him well')
---------------------------

5/7/2008, ClimateGate 2.0 email #3338


"5/7/2008, subject: RE: Request for Cost date for DOE Grant to: "Jones Philip Prof \(ENV\)"

"Dear Phil, I have reconciled the account to date and propose to send the following figures - all in US$

Received to date 1,589,632.00...

4/30/2008, Subject: Fwd: Request for Cost date for DOE Grant
"In accordance with the President's Management Agenda, there has been and continues
to be a Government-wide movement to ensure that the American people receive better
results for their money.
Thus, all government entities are striving to improve
the quality, accuracy, and timeliness of financial information regarding the results
of operations and overall performance. As we seek to accomplish this goal, we are
requesting cost data from our Grant recipients that have received significant
financial

  • assistance monies from the

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

Obama was on the board of the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation which gave grants to start a pilot program in the US for trading CO2 credits launched in 2003 as the Chicago Climate Exchange:

6/16/09, "(Richard) Sandor got Obama's nod for Chicago-style climate law," Bloomberg, by Jim Efstathiou, Jr

"(Richard) Sandor launched the Chicago Climate Exchange, or CCX, in 2003 after getting two research grants from the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation. The money went to the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois,

  • for Sandor’s pilot program to trade carbon credits.

Obama was on the foundation that gave us the grant, Sandor said.

  • “We know him well.”...
In 1989, he (Sandor) wrote a paper promoting the use of financial markets to turn air pollution into a commodity to reduce sulfur- dioxide emissions from power plants. His early concepts helped shape the landmark 1990 Clean Air Act, which mandated acid-rain reductions and built a market where companies trade rights to pollute."...

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

On the Chicago Climate Exchange's 'External Advisory Board' is none other than the UN IPCC Climate chief. Nearly 50% of the UN IPCC budget is paid once again by the US taxpayer.

"Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, Director-General of The Energy Research Institute (TERI)

(Note the UN IPCC Chief is Director of an oil company.) ed.

Also Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is on the External Advisory Board. from the CCC website dated 12/18/2009.

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

As of 12/18/09, the website lists Goldman Sachs and Al Gore each owning 10% of the Chicago Climate Exchange.

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

1/3/12, "U.S. Taxpayers Cover Nearly Half the Cost of U.N.’s Global Warming Panel," CNS News, E. Harrington

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

(Ed. note: The $1.5 million was just the amount received up until mid-2008. Early monies were important in building the giant noose with which an unsuspecting American public was about to be strangled, criminalized, and told to pay billions in perpetuity).




via Tom Nelson

Phil Jones ClimateGate2 email, Jan. 2005, Recent Arctic warm period not as long as earlier 20th century...'If you smooth it last 15 yrs. are warmest'

Jan.17, 2005, ClimateGate2 Email #3287 from Phil Jones to Simon Tett,
Subject: "Better read this sitting down
"


"The recent warm period in the Arctic is, however, not yet as long
as that in the early-to-mid 20th century.... Patterns of recent warming
in the Arctic are more consistent with changes in the NAM than those earlier
in the 20th century. It is in an concluding section and I think we will need
to add a figure into the main part of the text. So Arctic warmth and its 'impression
in a time series plot' depends how much you smooth it. If you decadally
smooth then the last 15 years are warmest."



via Tom Nelson

Monday, January 16, 2012

NY Governor's ex-wife Kerry Kennedy could make $40 million in Ecuador rainforest legal deal

1/15/12, "NY Governor's ex-wife Kerry Kennedy 'making $40 MILLION by advocating for rainforests'," UK Daily Mail

"Activist Kerry Kennedy apparently has more than just a humanitarian interest in the outcome of the trial over the environmental damages caused to
  • Ecuadorian rain forests.

It was revealed today that Ms Kennedy, who is the ex-wife of Governor Andrew Cuomo and former president John F. Kennedy's niece, has a financial stake in the contentious legal battle."...




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