Trump´s realism on environmental policy is most welcome after Obama´s crusading

Donald Trump´s realism and pragmatism with regard to global warming and environmental policy is most welcome after Obama´s ideological crusading. Trump is actually very close to what Bjorn Lomborg and the Copenhagen Consensus has been propagating. 

John Tierney summarizes in an article in the City Journal:

Trump has vowed to ignore the Paris international climate agreement that committed the U.S. to reduce greenhouse emissions. That prospect appalls environmentalists but cheers those of us who consider the agreement an enormously expensive way to achieve very little. Trump’s position poses a financial threat to wind-power producers and other green-energy companies that rely on federal subsidies to survive.
During the campaign, DebateScience.org, a consortium of science groups, submitted a questionnaire to the candidates. Hillary Clinton responded to a question about climate change by calling it a “defining challenge of our time” and promising to make America the “clean energy superpower of the 21st century.” Steering clear of this litany of green promises, Trump said merely that there was still “much that needs to be investigated” about climate change. Instead of promising to install a half-billion new solar panels, as Clinton promised to do, Trump offered the kind of perspective found in the Copenhagen Consensus, a group of prominent economists who have concluded that other problems are far more pressing than climate change.
“Perhaps the best use of our limited financial resources,” Trump said, “should be in dealing with making sure that every person in the world has clean water. Perhaps we should focus on eliminating lingering diseases around the world like malaria.  Perhaps we should focus on efforts to increase food production to keep pace with an ever-growing world population.  Perhaps we should be focused on developing energy sources and power production that alleviates the need for dependence on fossil fuels.  We must decide on how best to proceed so that we can make lives better, safer and more prosperous.”

The Trump presidency is the best thing that could happen for solving real environmental problems

The Trump presidency is the best thing that has happened for the advancement of real environmental goals. By finally putting an end to the global warming hoax, the United States will lead the way in working for a better and cleaner environment. The billions of dollars that have been wasted in order to "combat climate change" will now be used for meaningful environmental projects:

Trump’s election also has upended the global near-consensus on climate policy, given his skepticism of global warming and embrace of the coal industry.
The United States has been the indispensable nation concerning global warming politics since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. Environmentalists had hoped the Paris Agreement of December 2015 was the final nail in the coffin of climate skeptics and locked in a permanent, binding agreement curtailing emissions – and future fossil fuel development – for the rest of the century.

Enter Donald Trump. He is the only candidate to become a head of government in the past several years who rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. Between calling that science “a hoax” and actively supporting the U.S. coal industry’s recovery, his ascent could result in the U S. withdrawal from the 1992 Climate Convention Treaty, which underpins the Paris Agreement.
It’s difficult to underestimate how large a political earthquake this would be for many of the world’s left-leaning political classes. The primary focus of European industrial and foreign policy in the last 20 years has been built around climate change treaties, while China has dramatically adjusted its energy production system to come into alignment with U.S. and other developed-economy climate goals. Now, the U.S. will likely entirely reverse its stance, possibly putting China’s planned economy under duress.

Read the entire article here

Barack Obama the hypocrite

Barack Obama, the hypocrite, in action:

President Barack Obama traveled to California on Friday to highlight the state’s drought emergency at two events near Fresno, calling for shared sacrifice to help manage the state’s worst water shortage in decades. He then spent the rest of the weekend enjoying the hospitality of some of the state’s top water hogs: desert golf courses.
Vacationing with DVDs of his favorite television shows and multiple golf outings with his buddies, the duffer in chief played at two of the most exclusive courses in the Palm Springs area. On Saturday, Obama played at the Sunnylands estate, built by the late billionaire Walter Annenberg, which features a nine-hole course that is played like 18 holes. The following day he golfed at billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s 19-hole Porcupine Creek. On Presidents’ Day, Obama hit the links at Sunnylands once again.
The 124 golf courses in the Coachella Valley consume roughly 17% of all water there, and one-quarter of the water pumped out of the region’s at-risk groundwater aquifer, according to the Coachella Valley Water District.

Another European "success story": Eight Italians bought an electric car in February

Europeans give thumbs down to these.

In spite of all the environmental hype and subsidies, European car buyers continue to give the thumbs down to electric cars and hybrids. These are the latest sales figures from February:

• 8 Italians (out of a population of 60 million) bought an electric car in February.
• 0 Not one electric car was sold in Greece 
• 505 electric cars were sold in Germany (population 82 million)
• 648 electric cars were bought in France (population 65,6 million)

The market share for electric cars and hybrids in western Europe is a whopping 0,25%!

With this kind of sales, the German government's goal of having one million will of course never be reached. German car manufacturers are now crying for more subsidies:

“To support the development of alternative engines, we need positive conditions,” Zetsche, who is also the head of the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA), told business daily Handelsblatt. “At the same time it’s necessary to build the appropriate infrastructure.”Establishing new technology is unavoidably expensive, a cycle “we can only break if Europe supports the purchase of electric autos for a limited time,” he told the paper, adding that unified rules for the region would be ideal. 

WWF Russia is worried about huge snow cover killing animals

For once the WWF is worried about a real environmental problem. WWF Russia reports that an up to two meter thick snow cover is killing animals in the country's far eastern regions: 

Deep snow covered by ice crust has led to the deaths of many wild hoofed animals of various species in the far eastern woodlands in Russia, WWF Russia said.

"Dense snow which fell in January and was followed by a thaw in early February has created critical environmental conditions for the survival of wild hoofed animals. The snow is almost two meters thick in some places," the WWF's the Amur branch said.

According to Sergey Aramilev, WWF Russia Amur branch biodiversity conservation coordinator, both adult and young animals including boars, Manchurian wapitis and roe deers, have died because of unusually dense snow and poaching.

No doubt the alarmists at the WWF International Headquarters in Switzerland have  already reprimanded Mr. Aramilev for "forgetting" to mention that the thick snow is entirely due to human caused global warming. 

WWF and Coca Cola restore unique English rivers - but want to fill their surroundings with ugly wind turbines

WWF and Coke are cleaning the rivers, but want to fill the surrounding landscapes with ugly wind turbines.

The UK branch of the WWF, the world's probably richest envirofundamentalist organization, has published a propaganda video extolling the benefits of its cooperation with Coca Cola:

WWF and Coca-Cola: a year of protecting English rivers

Together we’ve already made some great progress in helping to restore English rivers. For example, we’re working to improve the health of the River Nar, in the Norfolk countryside. The Nar is one of only 200 chalk streams in the world, over two thirds of which are here in the UK.

There is, of course, nothing wrong in protecting these unique chalk streams, but what about the unique landscapes where these rivers originate and flow? Aren't they also worth being preserved? 

Apparently not, if one is to believe the WWF, which (together with Coke?) wishes to see unique areas of natural beauty filled with ghastly bird killing, ineffective and expensive wind turbines. 

Thank God, there are still organizations, which remain true to their original purpose, like the National Trust:

The National Trust has set out its battle plan for rural "warfare" with a list of 25 wind farm projects it is challenging.

Sir Simon Jenkins, the Chairman of the Trust, spoke yesterday of the “warfare” in the countryside sparked by a huge number of housing developments and wind farms planned in rural areas.

Today the Trust reveals they are opposing or "keeping a close eye" on 25 wind farms that threaten stately homes and unspoilt landscape around the countryside.

Britain is building more wind turbines this year than ever before with more than 1,200 turbines due to start spinning throughout the countryside and around the coast over the next 12 months.

Opposition against the WWF supported destruction of the rural natural heritage areas is fortunately growing also in Scotland:

The villagers of Straiton in South Ayrshire have launched a campaign against the projects, which they say have reduced residents to tears and would devastate an area of outstanding natural beauty.

The Conservative MEP Struan Stevenson said the village, in the heart of the Galloway Forest Park, had survived as an exemplar of Scotland’s unique rural heritage for over 250 years and was “packed with a dazzling array of flora and fauna”.

He added: “However, the area is now under imminent threat from wind farm developers. Separate plans from five different companies, if allowed to go ahead, would see the village encircled in a virtual ring of steel, which would devastate the local environment and put the villagers’ way of life in peril.”

(image by wikipedia)

The WWF has four times more money to spend than "Big Oil" American Petroleum Institute

The Greenpeace fleet includes the state of the art yacht Rainbow Warrior III. 

Envirofundamentalist organizations such as Greenpeace and the WWF often like to talk about the enormous sums Big Oil has at its disposal to counteract their activities. But a comparison done by American University professor Matthew Nisbet shows that the revenues generated by the American Petroleum Institute (API), the largest U.S trade association for the oil and natural gas industry, pale in comparison with such organizations as Greenpeace and the WWF. 

In 2011 the World Wildlife Federation Network generated US$800 million, four times more than the API ($203 million). Greenpeace also clearly beat the API with revenues almost the double:

Even more relevant are the figures reported for Greenpeace Worldwide, which according to the annual report represents the combined budget of Greenpeace International and its affiliated national and regional organizations. In this case, Greenpeace brought in global revenues of €241 million (US$336 million) and spent approximately €159 million on program activities (US$221 million) and €77 million on fundraising (US$107 million) across countries.- 

Greenpeace global revenue also compares well to that of major U.S. industry associations which we commonly think of as having inconceivably large budgets. Consider that in 2009, the American Petroleum Institute generated $203 million in revenue and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce $214 million in revenue from its industry members.

Germans are contributing most to Greenpeace funding, but the Dutch are the leading per capita donors. 
Source: Greenpeace

At the global level, Greenpeace employs nearly 2,200 staff, with 1,039 based in Europe and 314 in the U.S and Canada. As displayed in this graph from its annual report, Germany is the leading source of the organization’s worldwide fundraising followed by the U.S., Netherlands, and Switzerland.

As big in scope as Greenpeace Worldwide might be, it still is smaller than at least one other multi-national environmental organizations. Consider that in 2011, the World Wildlife Federation Network, which includes the U.S. based World Wildlife Federation and affiliates in 80 other countries, generated €575 million in revenue (US$800 million) and employed 5,000 staff worldwide.[3]

For once Greenpeace is fighting for a good cause

It does not happen often that I find myself agreeing with something Greenpeace is doing. But in this case, I think they should be supported: 

Greenpeace has launched a new crowd-funded campaign to protest the federal court’s decision to support Coca-Cola in its fight against a Northern Territory recycling plant.

Three days ago the Australian federal court sanctioned the dismantling of a Northern Territory 10c deposit recycling scheme after Coke argued the initiative, introduced in January last year, was costly and ineffective.

The scheme was similar to one which has been running in South Australia since 1977.

The soft drink company argued the extra 10 cents added to its products was unfair to consumers, despite the fee being refundable. --

Greenpeace said that in two weeks over 50,000 people had already signed up to the campaign calling on politicians to implement a national ‘Cash for containers’ scheme.

Depicted in the ad is a flesh-footed shearwater from Lord Howe Island, which starved on a full stomach - full of plastic waste it had mistaken for food.

According to Greenpeace, two-thirds of seabirds are affected by plastic trash which pollutes our waterways, rivers and end up in the ocean.

Other species known to be impacted by plastic pollution in our oceans include turtles, whales, seals and fish and Greenpeace asserts that one of the biggest culprits is creating this plastic pollution is the beverage industry.

However, I cannot understand, why there is a need to launch a campaign in order to stop Coca-Cola from opposing the recycling plant. 

Only a few weeks ago Greenpeace International boss Kumi Naidoo boasted about his close relationship with Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent:

"A few weeks ago, the McDonald's chief executive pulled out of the Natural Refrigerants Alliance. So to get them back in, I had two options: start another campaign against McDonald's – which eats up resource time – or use another route. So I had 15 minutes with Muhtar Kent, chief executive, Coca Cola, and I said he needed to pick up the phone and call the chief executive of McDonald's, who he is friends with, and he agreed to it. Also, I am able to call Kent and say "Listen, I understand that you are a part of this association at the state level that has been lobbying against climate, and you guys have to make up your mind which side of the fence are you on because it is inconsistent. You are doing some really positive things on climate action in your practice, but actually you're part of a business coalition that is pushing in the other direction."

Why doesn't Kumi just pick up the phone, and tell Kent to stop Coca-Cola's fight against the recycling plant? Or is their relationship restricted only to the AGW hoax?

Václav Klaus: "the best promoter of “social and environmental quality” is economic growth"

Opposing the global warming hoax does not mean that one does not care for the environment. On the contrary, as Czech President Václav Klaus pointed out in his remarks at the EU-CELAC Summit in Santiago de Chile, on 26 January:

- The term sustainable development is not an economic concept, but a political doctrine with far-reaching economic implications, and

- the best promoter of “social and environmental quality” is economic growth. The history has proved that the optimal economic response to social and environmental problems is abandoning any policies that hinder economic growth.

To say that does not imply any underestimation of social and environmental problems. This statement of mine is about sequencing – the economic growth makes the achievement of non-economic goals and ambitions possible. Being wealthier and having greater human capital means being able to employ cleaner, environment protecting technologies.

We have to take care of our forests, rivers, seas, of the air in the cities, but we should stop fighting the non-existent danger, the ideological doctrine of excessive, the planet and people endangering, man-made global warming. I find it promising that this catastrophic view about the future has already crossed its zenith. In our efforts to guarantee a prosperous future for both continents, Europe and Latin America, we should refute such politically motivated environmental agendas.

Britain's Prince Charles and environmental hypocrisy

Britain's Prince Charles says that he is worried about leaving "a dysfunctional word" to his grandchild:

“I don't want to be confronted by my future grandchild and (have) them say: 'Why didn't you do something?',” he said in a pre-recorded interview for the high-rating  ITV program This Morning.

“So clearly now that we will have a grandchild, it makes it even more obvious to try and make sure we leave them something that isn't a total poisoned chalice.”

Prince Charles said with the Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, and Duchess Kate expecting a baby this northern hemisphere summer, he hoped not to leave them a “dysfunctional world”.

“I've gone on for years about the importance of thinking about the long-term in relation to the environmental damage, climate change and everything else,” he said.

Read the entire article here

Read what Willis Eschenbach recently wrote, and you will understand what a hypocrite the prince is:

So when James Hansen (NNoN: and prince Charles) gets all mealy-mouthed about his poor grandkids’ world in fifty years, boo-boo, it just makes me shake my head in amazement. His policies have already led to an increase in something I never heard of when I was a kid, “fuel poverty”. This is where the anti-human pseudo-green energy policies advocated by Hansen and others have driven the price of fuel so high that people who weren’t poor before, now cannot heat their homes in winter … it’s shockingly common in Britain, for example.

In other words, when James Hansen is coming on all weepy-eyed about what might possibly happen to his poor grandchildren fifty years from now, he is so focused on the future that he overlooks the ugly present-day results of his policies, among them the grandparents shivering in houses that they can no longer afford to heat …

And the hypocrisy of Prince Charles is not only related to fuel poverty and poor people. The prince also fakes an interest in birds:

HRH The Prince of Wales today officially opened the latest Live Build project, a Bird Hide at Llangorse Lake in Wales, completed by our Building Craft Apprentices earlier this year.

The bird hide aimed to replace an older version, also situated at Llangorse Lake, as growing reeds were increasingly limiting views of the local wildlife.The new structure was designed in close partnership with the local community, who played a crucial part in helping the students understand what the new building needed to incorporate in its design.

In reality the Prince, who in 2011 received the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Medal, is cashing in on bird and bat killing wind turbines:

The Royal Family have secured a lucrative deal that will earn them tens of millions of pounds from the massive expansion of offshore windfarms.

They will net up to £37.5 million extra income every year from the drive for green energy because the seabed within Britain’s ter­ritorial waters is owned by the Crown Estate.

Last year energy firms were given green light for 45 windmills on Crown Estate land, which will rake in  in £1million a year in subsidies.

Although Prince Charles has previously said that he opposed onshore wind farms, he has now changed his tune:

“I recently flew over the German countryside where ancient buildings and castles now merge into a new landscape dotted with solar panels and wind turbines. I certainly support the commitment to working with nature’s freely-given forms and clean energy.”

(But the prince of course does not want wind turbines to "merge into" the landscape close to his own "ancient buildings and castles"). 

This is what Prince Charles does not want to people to know:

Wind farms are devastating populations of rare birds and bats across the world, driving some to the point of extinction. Most environmentalists just don’t want to know. Because they’re so desperate to believe in renewable energy, they’re in a state of denial. But the evidence suggests that, this century at least, renewables pose a far greater threat to wildlife than climate change.

Germany's Der Spiegel interviews "the intellectual father of the environmental movement"

A Der Spiegel journalist has interviewed "the intellectual father of the environmental movement", former MIT professor Dennis Meadows, who co-authored the Club of Rome's "The Limits to Growth" report forty years ago. 

It comes as no surprise that the "environmental guru" completely agrees with the fawning Der Spiegel reporter, who in this uncritical interview pretends that the "the message of the book remains valid today" and "several forecasts you made in the book have come true, the exponential growth of the world's population, for example, and widespread environmental destruction."

The interviewer Markus Becker's last question gives Meadows an opportunity to repaint the future awaiting humanity in dark colors: 

PIEGEL ONLINE: Let's assume that you are right and that the collapse will arrive in this century. What will it look like?

Meadows: It will look different in different places. Some countries are already collapsing, and some people won't even notice. There are almost a billion people who are starving to death these days, and people here basically aren't noticing. And there is the issue of speed: The difference between a decline and a collapse is speed. The rich can buy their way out of a lot of things. The end of fossil energy, for example, will be gradual. But climate change will come to the industrial countries no matter what. And the geological record clearly shows that the global temperature doesn't increase in a linear way. It jumps. If that happens, a collapse will occur. But it would be nothing new, of course. Societies rise and fall. They have been doing so for 300,000 years.

Dennis Meadows probably will go on believing that he was right for the rest of his life, but one wonders why an established magazine like Der Spiegel has chosen to be a megaphone for these claims that have so clearly been refuted by what actually has happened during the forty years since the Club of Rome's fantasies were published. 

For a less uncritical update of Meadows's "magnum opus", Reason.com's science correspondent Robert Bailey's article makes great reading:

Forty years ago, The Limits to Growth, a report to the Club of Rome, was released with great fanfare at a conference at the Smithsonian Institution. The study was based on a computer model developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and designed “to investigate five major trends of global concern—accelerating industrial development, rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion of nonrenewable resources, and a deteriorating environment.” The goal was to use the model to explore the increasingly dire "predicament of mankind." The researchers modestly acknowledged that their model was “like every other model, imperfect, oversimplified, and unfinished.” 

Yet even with this caveat, the MIT researchers concluded, “If present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years.” With considerable understatement, they added, “The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.” In other words: a massive population crash in a starving, polluted, depleted world. 

Industrial development: World GDP stood in real 2010 dollars at about $19 trillion in 1972 and has tripled to $57 trillion today. Average per capita incomes rose in real dollars from $5,000 to $8,100 today. Just to explore how incomes might evolve between 1972 and 2000, the researchers simply extrapolated the current growth, investment, and population growth rates to calculate GDP per capita for 10 large countries. They stressed these were not "predictions" but added that if one disagreed then one was obligated to specify which factors changed, when and why. A comparison of their extrapolations with actual GDP per capita (in 2010 dollars) finds U.S. GDP per capita $56,000 versus actual $44,000; Japan's per capita GDP was projected to be $120,000 versus actual $46,000; the now defunct USSR would be $33,000 versus Russia's $2,200; and China's per capita income was supposed to grow to $500, but was instead $1,200. 

Population: The Limits researchers noted, “Unless there is a sharp rise in mortality, which mankind will strive mightily to avoid, we can look forward to a world population of around 7 billion persons in 30 more years.” In addition, they suggested that in 60 years there would be “four people in the world for everyone living today.” In fact, average global life expectancy rose from 60 to nearly 70 years. On the other hand, the global fertility rate (the average number of children a woman has during her lifetime) fell from about 6 per woman in 1970 to 2.8 today and continues to fall.

World population stood at 3.8 billion in 1972, which means that a four-fold increase in 60 years would have yielded a total world population of 15 billion by 2030. Even the latest U.N. high fertility population projection foresees about 9 billion by 2030. The U.N.’s low fertility variant yields a maximum world population of about 8 billion around 2050, falling back to 6 billion by the end of the 21st century. It turns out that the invisible hand of population control correlates very nicely with economic freedom.

Food supplies: According to the data from the Food and Agriculture Organization, global food production has more than tripled since 1961, while world population has increased from 3 billion to 7 billion. This means that per capita food has increased by more than a third. Thelatest figures [PDF] from the United Nations show that as world population increased by a bit over 10 percent between 2000 and 2009, global food production rose by 21 percent.

Read the entire article here

A fish called Obama

The mostly Republican anglers of Tennessee are now free to catch Obama, the new fish:

Last week, five new fish species were given some left-leaning names after being recognized as distinct species for the first time. The five fish species were previously considered populations of the wider-ranging Speckled Darter (Etheostoma stigmaeum), but male breeding colors and morphology have revealed their 'true colors.' The fish were "discovered" and named by Steve Layman from Geosyntec Consultants in Georgia and Rick Mayden from the Department of Biology at Saint Louis University.
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Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Teddy Roosevelt, and Jimmy Carter are also honored by the names of these new freshwater darter species.

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Steve Layman: “We chose President Obama for his environmental leadership, particularly in the areas of clean energy and environmental protection, and because he is one of our first leaders to approach conservation and environmental protection from a more global vision."

Here you can compare the new political fish species. The Etheostoma Obama is the reddest of them. 

Bill Gates' latest brainwashing project: A world in which "human beings are reduced to a minor, rather undistinguished role"

"Big history" - A world in which human beings are reduced to  minor, rather  undistinguished role.

History is made by occurrences such as the big bang and climate change in which human beings are reduced to a minor, rather undistinguished role. That is the essence of the "big history" syllabus peddled by Bill Gates and an increasingly loud environmental movement. 

University of Kent sociology professor Frank Furedi is rightly worried about the danger of children being brainwashed by the "big history" envirofundamentalists:  

The syllabus is very much of the moment. It resonates with the present misanthropic zeitgeist that is obsessed with the natural environment and regards the human-created one with deep suspicion. Its ambition is to convert schools throughout the world to its approach to the past. 

No doubt the authors of this syllabus are motivated by the impulse of reforming the way children think about their past. However, whatever the aim of this syllabus, its effect will be to revolutionise the way schoolchildren think about the past through distancing them from their cultural legacy. 

The author of this syllabus, David Christian, contends that what it offers is a story that transcends the nation-state and covers humanity as whole. He says in his course “you encounter humans not as Americans or Germans or Russians or Nigerians but as members of a single, genetically homogeneous, species, Homo sapiens”. However, his reduction of humanity to a biological species speaks to an imagination that has become estranged from civilisation, culture and community. 

That is why human beings have a limited and undistinguished status in this syllabus. As Christian argues, humans are “only part of the picture” in his vision of history. 

It is necessary to note that Christian’s project is not about universal history. A truly universal history would have as its focus the significant human accomplishments that bind together people of different cultures. Rather than focusing on the biological and chemical make-up of a species, a universal history would look at the way different civilisations evolved, interacted and developed, and dealt with the shared challenges confronting mankind. 

The authors of this project claim to offer a shared global discipline. But what is shared are not historical but natural inheritances. This is a synthesis of what was once called natural history with environmentalist ideology. 

Not surprisingly, its emphasis is on environmental factors, particularly the influence of geology and climate. From this perspective history is made by occurrences such as the big bang and climate change, and human beings are reduced to a minor, rather undistinguished role in the making of their world. 

The lengthy timescale of big history - 13.7 billion years from the big bang - speaks to an imagination that relegates human accomplishment to a minor footnote. That is why in this syllabus, the human species does not make an appearance until well into the course. The assignment of a marginal role to humans in the making of their world is at the centre of environmentalist ideology. The timescale around which this story is constructed is an integral part of this ideology because the further you go back in time, - the more insignificant is the role of human beings relative to that of nature. 
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Indoctrinating children with such a passive version of human destiny is unlikely to encourage the opening up of young minds. 

It makes perfect sense in teaching geography to move back in time when volcanoes and asteroids changed and ruled the world. Physics pupils need to know about theories to do with the big bang, and those studying biology require a knowledge of the evolution of the human species. What they also need is what big history devalues, which is an understanding of human history. 

There is no doubt that history can and should be taught in a variety of ways. But whatever the strategy pursued, young people need to know about the experience of their community and nation. Australian children must be able understand the influences from the past that shape their life today. They also have to be exposed to the cultural legacy of their ancestors and the best that humanity offers. It is that which will give them the foundation for going forward in the future. 

Read the entire article here

(picture by http://www.antiqueprints.com/)

New study: Electric cars are toxic

A toxic mix

A new Norwegian study confirms that electric cars - the darlings of all "progressive" greenies - are not very green at all:

Questioning thoughts arise from a bracing study from Norway. The electric car might be a trade-in of an old set of pollution problems for a new set. Thanks but no thanks to a misguided cadre selling on the green revolution. Electric cars will eventually be one more pollutant source to campaign over. The study, "Comparative Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Conventional and Electric Vehicles," appears in the Journal of Industrial Ecology. Researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology declared in the study that "EVs exhibit the potential for significant increases in human toxicity, freshwater eco-toxicity, freshwater eutrophication, and metal depletion impacts, largely emanating from the vehicle supply chain."
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Earlier this year, reports of a study of vehicle types in China concluded that electric cars have an overall impact on pollution that could be more harmful to health than conventional vehicles. The researchers in that study examined pollution in 34 Chinese cities and they found that the electricity generated by power stations to drive electric vehicles led to more fine particle emissions than petrol-powered transport. They analyzed five vehicle types—gasoline and diesel cars, diesel buses, e-bikes and e-cars.

Read the entire article here

Talk about double standards!: Greenpeace Norway "proud" of the country´s oil industry

Norwegians, those socialist Arabs of the Arctic, who enjoy a life in luxury  thanks to lucrative fossil fuel exports, also enjoy lecturing others on the lack of environmental awareness. Greenpeace Norway is no exception; these greenies are proud of their oil and gas industry while at the same time strongly condemning other countries - like Canada - which try to benefit from their own natural resources: 

I'd come to those offices because I was interested in the views of the world's largest environmental group on the industrial darling of the Norwegian nation. Was Greenpeace -- an organization often characterized as extremist by the Canadian government -- going to provide me the first voices I had heard stridently opposing the Norwegian oil industry? Not really. Like everything else in this country, the dialogue was decidedly more thoughtful, and typical of the much lower rhetorical temperature in Norway.

I was met by Martin Norman and Truls Gulowsen, two veteran campaigners from the Greenpeace Oslo office. 

When I asked if they were proud of the Norwegian oil industry, there was a somewhat awkward pause. Gulowsen offered these measured thoughts:

"In Norway the oil industry is the biggest problem for responsible action on climate change and probably will be re sponsible for a lot of problems in the future.

 But as a Norwegian, I am quite proud that we as a nation have been able to control the world's most powerful industry to the degree that we have. So when we discuss the oil industry with my international colleagues sometimes it makes me a little proud that many of my colleagues would be happy if they could get their oil industry up to Norwegian standards in terms of regulation and precautionary measures and openness."

Oh yes, Greenpeace´s man in Norway fakes some vague criticism of the the Norwegian fossil fuel industry, but in general he is proud of it! No wonder then that Gulowsen every year gets an invitation to speak at the Norwegian Police Academy, where he probably concentrates on berating foreign governments for endangering the future of the world, by allowing the exploration of fossil fuels: 

Especially when it comes to operations in Alberta, it seems the oil industry is not under control. It's not regulated and monitored and enforced the way one would believe as a Norwegian. The more it leaks out to the rest of the world about how Canada lets the oil companies behave in the tar sands is gradually changing the world's picture about the environmental status and responsibly of Canada, and that isn't beneficial to any Canadians. "

Talk about double standards! 

Read the entire article here

Good news: A sharp downturn in global wind turbine orders

There will - fortunately - be fewer of these ugly convoys in the coming years

Global orders for wind turbines are down by 30% during the first half of this year. The largest wind turbines companies are fighting for survival, as governments have begun to cut the generous subsidies on which the manufacturers are totally dependent: 

MAKE Consulting has examined global order intake for 1H/2012, and we 

note that wind turbine order intake (MW) in 1H/2012 fell by 30%  YoY, 

principally due to weakness in core markets  in  Asia Pacific and Europe, in 

particular China, India, UK and Germany (offshore). Regulatory uncertainty, 

subsidy cuts and grid connectivity issues all contributed to the weakness and 

offset good growth in new emerging markets.  

The  Americas held up well driven by the U.S. where developers endeavor to squeeze in projects before 

the PTC expires at the end of 2012 and high order activity in several  Latin 

American markets.

Weak orders in 1H/2012 support MAKE’s view that 2013 will be a weaker 

year for installations (-5% vs 2011).  However, we expect that order flow 

could improve in 2013 and beyond.

MAKE´s expectation of an improving order flow next year should be taken with a pinch of salt. The consulting company is not a neutral actor, but exists mainly in order to assist the wind turbine industry. That is obvious when one reads how they choose to describe themselves:

MAKE Consulting is a professional team of independent advisors with proven experience in the international wind energy industry. This has given us detailed insight and market intelligence which we make every effort to translate into an end product that provides our clients with a competitive advantage.

We are as passionate about renewable energy as you are, and have developed the analytical skills and tools to match.

The sharp downturn in wind turbine orders is evident also in the order books of two of the industry´s main actors, Siemens and Vestas: 

German engineering conglomerate Siemens reported on Thursday a 66 percent drop from a year earlier in new third-quarter orders for its renewable energy business, which includes its wind and solar units.

Danish wind turbine maker Vestas has announced first-half orders for turbines with total capacity 1,973 megawatts, down from 2,895 MW in the first half of 2011.

Read the entire article here

PS

The bad news for the turbine makers is good news for the growing number of people all over the world who oppose these inefficient, bird killing and landscape destroying monsters, which for totally irrational reasons became the darlings of the "progressive" enviromentalists. 

(image by wikipedia)

Our forebears lived in peaceful harmony with nature - or did they?

The so-called “developed” countries must reduce their levels of over-consumption to reestablish harmony among human beings and with nature, allowing for the sustainable development of all developing countries. 
“Harmony with Nature”
 Resolution approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations




Before the introduction of the ecologically degrading, evil capitalist system of production, humans lived in peaceful harmony with nature. Except that before our forebears reached this state of harmony, they had to fix the Neanderthal problem:


The recent news coming from scientists seems to confirm suspicions about "social Darwinism." Modern man or homo sapiens outperformed, out-maneuvered and outright slaughtered the less advanced Neanderthals. A study of volcanic ash suggests that it was this factor, and not the ice age, that led to the extinction of this forerunner of humanity. 
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"Neanderthal extinction in Europe was not associated with the CI eruption," researchers from an international team led by Professor John Lowe from Royal Holloway, University of London say.

"Our evidence indicates that, on a continental scale, modern humans were a greater competitive threat to indigenous populations than the largest known volcanic eruption in Europe, even if combined with the deleterious effects of climate cooling.


(image by wikipedia)

EU to get "toughest in the world" emission targets for cars

The European Commission Wednesday proposed further cuts to carbon dioxide, CO2, emissions from new cars and vans by 2020, making EU targets the toughest in the world:

Connie Hedegaard, EU Commissioner for Climate Action, called the new targets "a win-win for the climate, consumers, innovation and jobs." "With our proposals we are not only protecting the climate and saving consumers money. We are also boosting innovation and competitiveness in the European automotive industry," said Hedegaard. "And we will create substantial numbers of jobs as a result."

The EU climate queen Connie Hedegaard is once again talking nonsense. How on earth could these suggested measures "boost the competitiveness" of an European industry that is already now losing money!


The message from European Automobile Manufacturers' Association´s Secretary General Ivan Hodac was polite, but clear: 


"Indeed, contrary to some claims, the proposed targets for the European fleet are far more stringent than those in the United States, China or Japan."
This will increase manufacturing costs in Europe, creating a competitive disadvantage for the region and further slowing the renewal of the fleet, he said.


"Considering that most manufacturers are losing money in Europe at the moment, the industry needs as competitive a framework as possible. Targets - while ambitious - must be feasible.


Read the entire article here


PS


Another example of the only thing in which the European Union really excels: Shooting itself in the foot

Greenpeace activists arrested by Dutch police

Congratulations to the Dutch Police for a job well done:

Four Greenpeace activists who have been preventing an Australian-bound super-trawler from leaving a port in the Netherlands were arrested on Tuesday.

"THIS morning we arrested four people: two men and two women who were preventing the ship's departure," Evy Elschot told AFP from Ijmuiden, 30km northeast of Amsterdam.

The Lithuanian-flagged FV Margiris, which is to be re-flagged as Australian and deployed to catch baitfish off Tasmania, was stopped by the Greenpeace team on June 27 as it tried to leave the Dutch port.

The 143-metre, 9,500-tonne Margiris is one of the world's largest fishing trawlers, and has been accused by Greenpeace in the past of over-fishing off West Africa.

Activists hung on cables between the quay and the ship and put a chain around the trawler's propeller.

"We first asked the activists to leave the boat, which did not happen," said Elschot, adding the activists were then arrested "but remained calm."

Read the entire article here

The illegal Greenpeace activities should be condemned. There is absolutely no justifiable reason to sabotage the Australian bound fishing vessel:

 Australian Fisheries Management Authority has dismissed over-fishing concerns, saying the Margiris would have little if any impact on the broader eco-system with strict catch limits in place.

According to AFMA the trawler will be allowed to catch just 10 percent of available fish - a highly precautionary figure it says is well below international standards.

Wind turbines are killing machines threatening endangered species

Wind turbines are veritable killing machines. And the really sad thing is that they kill birds and bats that are already struggling:

The Spanish Ornithological Society in Madrid estimates that Spain's 18,000 wind turbines may be killing 6 million to 18 million birds and bats annually. “A blade will cut a griffon vulture in half,” says Bechard. “I've seen them just decapitated."

“The troubling issue with wind development is that we're seeing a growing number of birds of conservation concern being killed by wind turbines,” says Albert Manville, a biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Arlington, Virginia.

But the rapid expansion of wind power can harm wildlife in multiple ways. Beyond direct collisions with turbines, wind farms threaten species by displacing habitat. And bats can develop fatal internal haemorrhaging as a result of air-pressure changes when they fly through the wake of a spinning blade.
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But the concern is that turbines threaten species that are already struggling, such as bats, which in North America have been hit hard by white-nose fungus. Another vulnerable group is raptors, which are slow to reproduce and favour the wind corridors that energy companies covet. “There are species of birds that are getting killed by wind turbines that do not get killed by autos, windows or buildings,” says Shawn Smallwood, an ecologist who has worked extensively in Altamont Pass, California, notorious for its expansive wind farms and raptor deaths. Smallwood has found that Altamont blades slay an average of 65 golden eagles a year². “We could lose eagles in this country if we keep on doing this,” he says.


Other species at risk include the critically endangered California condors (Gymnogyps californicus) — which number only 226 in the wild — and the few hundred remaining whooping cranes (Grus americanus), concentrated in the central United States. Biologists can't say whether the increase in wind farms will cause the collapse of these or other bird species, which already face many threats. But waiting for an answer is not an option, says Smallwood. “By the time we do understand the population-level impacts, we might be in a place we don't want to be.”


Read the entire article here


This senseless killing of endangered birds and bats should of course be condemned by all, particularly those who say they are working for the protection of wild animals. But don´t expect that e.g. Greenpeace "activists" will be chaining themselves to wind turbines any time soon. No, Greenpeace is instead actively spreading false information about the danger to birds by wind turbines:

Myth: Wind turbines threaten bird populations.

Fact: Studies show that for every 10,000 bird fatalities, less than one is caused by wind turbines. For comparison, cats cause about 10 percent of bird deaths and nearly half are caused by collisions with buildings or windows.

In fact, a recent study published Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows that 40 percent of all species could face extinction because of global warming.

Monitoring of existing wind farms suggests that with proper location and construction, there is no adverse impact on bird populations.