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Dear fellow Californians, Big Oil is trying to frack up our state and it's time to put a stop to it. They've used their money to create a disaster of a bill that would give them free rein to frack away. This legislative session, we've been watching as various bills were introduced to regulate the dangerous practice of fracking in California. We were hopeful that something would emerge to help California put an end to this practice in the state...and had some hope when environmental champion Senator Fran Pavley introduced her bill, SB4. But then Big Oil came in and threw their cash around -- pushing to remove the bill of its moratorium provision, adding loopholes to avoid disclosing chemicals and inserting a provision that could even block Governor Brown's authority to ban fracking should he determine it is unsafe. Just as Big Oil tried to kill California’s global warming bill in 2010 with Prop 23, they’re now trying to use their millions to frack freely around our state. We can’t let that happen. That's why we're now joining with our allies in the Californians Against Fracking coalition to tell Sacramento to stop SB4. Click here to join the fight and call your Assemblymember today. SB4 has gone from a potentially decent step in the effort to slow fracking in California to what it is now: a bill riddled with loopholes that will allow fracking to boom in our state. And our communities and climate simply can't afford it. A vote in the Assembly could come as soon as today or tomorrow, so now is the time to stand up and tell our representatives in Sacramento to oppose this bill. Our friends at CREDO have set up a great tool to help you call your Assembly member. Click here to use the tool to call your Assemblymember today! California has for a long time been a leader on climate and protecting our environment. We have beaten Big Oil before, and we can do it again.1 SB4 is a step back when we must be surging ahead. Thanks for your help, David Turnbull Oil Change International San Francisco, California 1 See Oil Change International’s analysis of how Big Oil spent millions to lose on Proposition 23:http://prop23. | |
Oil Change International campaigns to expose the true costs of fossil fuels and facilitate the coming transition towards clean energy. We are dedicated to identifying and overcoming barriers to that transition. We are a 501c3 organization and all donations are fully tax deductible. Check out our blog at PriceOfOil.org and find out how much oil and coal money your Representatives take atDirtyEnergyMoney.com. | |
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Climate sceptic book Taxing Air coming to an undiscerning book store near you
by Graham Readfearn,
For example, I recently had cause to wander through the tightly-bound and bulging aisles of my local Dymocks book store. They have some really quite “special” offerings both online and in-store.
Even though we essentially know that astrology is, for all intents and purposes, basically b******s, I can report that the paperback version of “Practical Astrology” is “in stock.”
Failing that, there’s also “Homeopathy for your Cat” within the pages of which you can find out how magic water can cure your ginger’s urinary tract issue.
Are you a book shopping parent who has “wished for a handbook on each child”? Well tough, because Dymocks has sold out of “Homeopathy and Your Child” so you’ll have to work out your kid’s “physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs” some other way (by the way, I’m not singling out Dymocks here – most of the big high street book sellers also hawk similar enlightenment-crushing garbage).
And there are the books on climate change.
Without any prior knowledge, it’s easy to see how the average punter might be easily fooled by the line-up of books cosying-up in Dymocks and elsewhere. As you can see by the image above, there’s some excellent stuff on offer from well credentialed authors and scientists.
There’s What We Know About Climate Change by MIT Professor of Atmospheric Science Kerry Emanuel. Just beneath, is The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the front lines from Professor Michael Mann, director of Earth System Science at Penn State University, also in the U.S.
And sharing the same shelf space, is Taxing Air written by Dr Bob Carter, an Australian geologist and advisor to about a dozen climate science denial organisations around the world, and John Spooner, a cartoonist for The Age newspaper in Melbourne, Australia.
Bob Carter’s fringe views on climate change (it’s all natural) make him a favourite of fossil fuel-funded propaganda unit the Heartland Institute and many, many other groups with similarly dismissive views on human-caused climate change and its risks.
Carter was recently let go by James Cook University in Queensland, where he had been an unpaid adjunct professor for over a decade, because he wasn’t pulling his weight.
Carter hinted – and his supporters screamed – that he had been booted out because he was a climate sceptic. I covered that case for DeSmogBlog and also summarised this and other recent goings on for the ABC Science Show.
But back to Taxing Air, which is yet another climate sceptic book with strong links to a conservative “think tank” – in this case, the Institute for Public Affairs, where Dr Carter is the Science Policy Advisor.
The IPA paid for copies to be sent out to Australian members of parliament and has also hosted a launch event for the book. Research has found that almost four out of five climate sceptic books published since the early 80s have links to conservative think tanks.
Dr Carter, it should be noted, has only written one scientific paper on atmospheric climate change, which claimed – wrongly as it turned out – to have found that recent global warming was down to natural cycles of water temperatures in the Pacific.
One group of leading climate scientists who analysed carter’s paper concluded that the conclusions he and his co-authors drew were “not supported by their analysis or any physical theory presented in their paper.”
But is Taxing Air any good? Well, I have a copy which I’m still trudging through (I may not get to the end). But one academic who has finished it is Australian Ian Enting, and he is none too impressed. Mathematical physicist Enting (author of the Australian Mathematical Scences Institute book Twisted: The distorted mathematics of greenhouse denial) worked at Australia’s leading science agency, the CSIRO, for 24 years in atmospheric research and modelling of the global carbon cycle.
Enting has analysed the book, describing it as a “polemic” characterised by “half-truths and slanted misrepresentation” and “appalling hypocrisy.”
At one point, Enting’s document notes how one chart in Taxing Air is taken from a leaked draft of the not-yet-published United Nations IPCC Assessment Report 5 (due out in two weeks).
The chart has been altered, Enting’s document notes, removing a shaded area that shows the uncertainty range which, had it been left in,
shows how climate models agree with the observations within the range of uncertainty. Enting finds dozens of other examples like this.
But my real reason for going into the Brisbane Dymocks store was to hunt out a copy of Killing the Earth To Save It, written by UK-based climate science denialist and wind-farm hater James Delingpole.
In the UK, it was published under the name Watermelons. There was something remarkable about the book which I had read and was keen to confirm.
The book was published by Connor Court, which has published several other climate sceptic books. The editorial board of Connor Court also includes the IPA executive director John Roskam.
The IPA also paid for Delingpole to tour Australia to promote his book in September 2012 – a favour which he returned by running a public appeal for people to donate cash to the Melbourne-based group, which doesn’t reveal its funders but has run a long campaign of climate misinformation.
But none of these are the “remarkable thing” I referred to earlier.
The remarkable thing was an entry in Chapter 8 – “Welcome To The New World Order.” Delingpole continues to spruik on his Daily Telegraph blog, most recently earlier this week. Here’s what Delingpole says on page 174 of my newly purchased copy:
Probably the best analysis of the Club of Rome’s tangible effects on global environmental policy comes courtesy of a website called “The Green Agenda”:
Indeed.While researching [...] and during my academic studies, I have come across many references to the Club of Rome (CoR), and reports produced by them. Initially I assumed that they were just another high-level environmental think-tank and dismissed the conspiracy theories found on many website claiming that the CoR is a group of global elitists attempting to impose some kind of one world government. I am not a conspiratorial person by nature and was faced with a dilemma when I first read their reports. But it’s all there – in black and white.
So what exactly is “The Green Agenda” which Delingpole tells his readers is offering this leading analysis? Here’s the source of the quote, on the website “The Green Agenda.” And who runs “The Green Agenda”? It is a sister site of The Watchman’s Post - which describes itself as a “Christian/ Messianic End Time Messenger!” based in New Zealand.
That’s right. Delingpole’s “analysis” of a jumped-up conspiracy theory about plans for a one world government come direct from a group of Christian fundamentalists who preach about second comings and “end times.” The watchman’s website details the coming of an “anti-Christ,” “times of distress and tribulation” and “Triads of evil.”
Here’s a taster:
True Christians will be seen at best as ‘insane’ and at worst as worthy of elimination. However, note; the period being introduced at that time and rightly called the ‘Time of Tribulation’ will quickly degenerate into a terrible time of trouble for almost everyone in the whole world, not just believers in Jesus. [We will explain more, later!] We can add with conviction, that we believe the ‘Time of God’s judgmental anger’ is a separate period of time as indicated by the pouring out of the ‘Bowls of Wrath’ when all true Believers will be sovereignly protected! [We will explain later.]Perhaps it might be worth checking a few more of Delingpole’s sources in “Killing the earth to Save It” which is described by News Corp. columnist Andrew Bolt on the back cover as “wonderful” with “devastating facts and lacerating anecdotes.”
Not just devastating and lacerating, but potentially world ending – apparently – just not in the way Bolt and Delingpole might have expected.
Oh, did I say that Killing the World To Save It and Taxing Air are available in “all good bookshops”?
http://www.readfearn.com/2013/09/the-undiscerning-climate-bookshelf/
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Climate change will 'exacerbate existing problems': Defence
ABC Australia, Environment, September 11, 2013
As first responders and humanitarian assistance providers, the armed forces will be busy in a climate changed future. Credit: Australian Defence Image Library
Extreme weather and rising sea levels caused by climate change will significantly increase the need for an effective defence force. It's why the military are taking notice of the scientists.
WHEN AUSTRALIAN professors Colin Butler, Tony McMichael and Will Steffen stood up to talk climate change at a series of briefings in Canberra earlier this year there was something very different about the audience.
This wasn't a forum organised by an environment group where the seats are taken up by the usual cohort of the climate concerned.
Instead, this audience was full of hardheaded military types and members of the defence community - people worried more about conflict and geopolitics than wind turbines and carbon footprints. This invitation to speak on climate change had come from Australia's Department of Defence.
"They wanted to get a handle on the idea of tipping elements in the climate system that could cause rapid change that would be very difficult for human societies to deal with," says Professor Steffen, an Australian Climate Commissioner and executive director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University.
Butler, Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the University of Canberra, displayed maps of places where climate change might act as a "threat multiplier" - food and water shortages in eastern parts of Asia and forced migration across Africa.
"The maintenance of peace and preventing war depends on more than just military personnel and hardware," says Professor Butler. "It also depends on what I call the 'determinants of peace' - that is, having enough basic resources of food, shelter and energy."
It's a far cry from 2009, when a Defence White Paper concluded that climate change would not be a serious consideration for the Defence Forces until at least 2030.
Australia's current National Security Strategy lists climate change as a broad global challenge "with national security implications" alongside the more obvious threats of corruption and the resurgence of violent political groups.
Last month in the journal Science, researchers reported the results of an analysis of "45 different conflict data sets" and found "strong causal evidence linking climatic events to human conflict."
When rainfall and temperatures started to shift, the study found a systematic increase in "the risk of many types of conflict."
One of the study's authors, the University of California's Marshall Burke, told the ABC that if societies in the future responded to these changes in the same way as previous ones, then, for example, "We could see a 50 per cent or greater increase in civil conflict in sub-Saharan Africa as a result of climate change by about 2050."
Does this mean war?
Air Vice-Marshal Neil Hart is head of the Joint Capability Coordination Division at the Department of Defence. His responsibilities include examining the potential impacts of global changes on the preparedness of the Australian Defence Force.He says that changes in the global climate system have the potential to "exacerbate existing problems" through flooding of low-lying regions, more frequent and severe natural disasters, and shifting rainfall. This could lead to loss of food production in some areas and "climate-driven large-scale human migration."
"Taken together, these factors point to the potential for an increased demand for humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and stabilisation operations over coming decades," he says.
The Australian Government's latest Defence White Paper, published in May, found that global energy, food and water resources were under pressure from population growth, rising affluence and climate change.
"As a frequent first responder to national and international emergencies, Defence needs to be prepared for some of the consequences of global climate system changes, such as potentially increased demands for the Australian Defence Force to undertake humanitarian and disaster relief responses both domestically and across the region."
As a threat multiplier, it has the potential to generate and exacerbate destabilising conditions that could reshape the regional security environment.
The commander of the US Navy in the Pacific, Admiral Samuel Locklear, agrees climate change is a real threat to peace. Earlier this year he said climate change was the greatest long-term security threat for his region.
Rising sea levels could displace communities, he said, and the impacts from climate change could "cripple the security environment."
Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti is the UK's special representative on climate change. Appointed by the Foreign Office, he says climate change will likely "accelerate global instability" and that it challenges "our ability to deliver our core mission of providing national security."
He says climate change impacts are already causing health issues in the Asia Pacific region, in particular from sea levels rising and damaging land used for growing food.
"So there are concerns that food supplies, agricultural land and even habitable land is now under threat. That represents a number of immediate threats to nutrition, health and safety that in the longer term is likely to disrupt communities."
In September, Australia will take its turn as president of the United Nations Security Council, where there have been long-running calls for more formal recognition of the climate threat.
One of Australia's leading security think tanks, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), produced a detailed report on climate change and Australia's defence force in March.
The report suggested that climate change had "generated little interest in either the Australian Defence Force (ADF) or the Australian Defence Department" compared with the UK and the United States.
"Climate change is transforming the conventional roles of security forces," the report said. "As a threat multiplier, it has the potential to generate and exacerbate destabilising conditions that could reshape the regional security environment."
But the report also pointed out the ADF had been called on to help communities after the 2009 Victorian bushfires, the Queensland floods and Cyclone Yasi in 2011. These events, the report said, had resulted in some of the largest defence deployments ever in Australia.
As the issue of refugees continues to dominate the political landscape, Professor McMichael says the current flows of people "really are just a taste of what's to come as living conditions deteriorate in many parts of the world."
The ASPI report highlighted how there were 250 million people living in the river deltas of Asia. In particular, the report said the Mekong and Ganges-Brahmaputra deltas were regarded as being at extreme risk from sea level rise.
"Many defence forces around the world are obviously seeing the strategic implications of a rapidly destabilising climate and what that might mean," adds Professor Steffen. "It's simply in their interest to be prepared."
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2013/09/11/3845626.htm
Rising sea levels could displace communities, he said, and the impacts from climate change could "cripple the security environment."
Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti is the UK's special representative on climate change. Appointed by the Foreign Office, he says climate change will likely "accelerate global instability" and that it challenges "our ability to deliver our core mission of providing national security."
Security council
Professor Tony McMichael, an expert on the impacts of climate change on human health at Australian National University, believes the defence department "can see quite clearly that the world around us is changing pretty rapidly and that has considerable implications for the defence forces on several fronts - both beyond our borders and within."He says climate change impacts are already causing health issues in the Asia Pacific region, in particular from sea levels rising and damaging land used for growing food.
"So there are concerns that food supplies, agricultural land and even habitable land is now under threat. That represents a number of immediate threats to nutrition, health and safety that in the longer term is likely to disrupt communities."
In September, Australia will take its turn as president of the United Nations Security Council, where there have been long-running calls for more formal recognition of the climate threat.
One of Australia's leading security think tanks, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), produced a detailed report on climate change and Australia's defence force in March.
The report suggested that climate change had "generated little interest in either the Australian Defence Force (ADF) or the Australian Defence Department" compared with the UK and the United States.
"Climate change is transforming the conventional roles of security forces," the report said. "As a threat multiplier, it has the potential to generate and exacerbate destabilising conditions that could reshape the regional security environment."
But the report also pointed out the ADF had been called on to help communities after the 2009 Victorian bushfires, the Queensland floods and Cyclone Yasi in 2011. These events, the report said, had resulted in some of the largest defence deployments ever in Australia.
As the issue of refugees continues to dominate the political landscape, Professor McMichael says the current flows of people "really are just a taste of what's to come as living conditions deteriorate in many parts of the world."
The ASPI report highlighted how there were 250 million people living in the river deltas of Asia. In particular, the report said the Mekong and Ganges-Brahmaputra deltas were regarded as being at extreme risk from sea level rise.
"Many defence forces around the world are obviously seeing the strategic implications of a rapidly destabilising climate and what that might mean," adds Professor Steffen. "It's simply in their interest to be prepared."
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2013/09/11/3845626.htm
Monday, September 9, 2013
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| Your call urgently needed: We have four days to stop a bill that could frack California | |
| SB 4, an already weak fracking bill, was amended Friday to exempt fracking from California's most important environmental law: the California Environmental Quality Act. The amendments could even block Governor Brown's authority to ban fracking should he determine it is unsafe. We only have four days to kill this bill—call your Assembly member today and tell him to vote 'NO' on SB 4. Click below for a sample script and the number to call:
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| Dear Karin, We want to update you on what’s happening with a bill that could open the floodgates to fracking in California without review under our state's most important environmental law. This email may be longer and more detailed than usual, but our fight to stop fracking in California is facing a watershed vote in the Legislature. We feel it’s imperative to share our thinking on what’s happening with you immediately. Call Assembly Member Reggie Jones-Sawyer: Vote 'no' on Senator Pavley's dangerous fracking bill and support a ban on fracking. Click here to call.On Friday, dangerous, last-minute amendments were attached to Senator Fran Pavley's fracking bill, SB 4. With these added amendments, the last fracking bill left standing in the California Legislature just got a whole lot worse. Shockingly, the amendments give state regulators authority to exempt fracking from California's strongest and most important environmental law: the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The new amendments could even block Governor Brown's authority to ban fracking in California should he determine fracking is unsafe and want to take executive action to protect our citizens and our water. Senator Pavley has long been one of our greatest environmental champions in the California Legislature. But SB 4 falls far short of the standard of uncompromising advocacy that she's set. Groups like CREDO, MoveOn.org Civic Action, Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, the Center for Biological Diversity and dozens of others oppose this bill. We cannot support a bill that would allow fracking to move forward in California, endangering public health and the climate, and providing political cover to the fracking industry to claim that fracking is safely regulated. In this case, an incredibly weak bill is worse than no bill at all. Call Assembly Member Reggie Jones-Sawyer: Vote 'no' on Senator Pavley's dangerous fracking bill and support a ban on fracking. Click here to call.CREDO knew that the bill would be further weakened during the legislative process and that earlier support for the bill from environmental groups could be used by legislators as an excuse for voting for the bill even after it was further compromised and those groups withdrew support. What happened on Friday was even worse than we could have predicted. The amendments added on Friday make it even more urgent that environmentalists unite and kill this bill. Even before it was amended on Friday, SB 4 was a dangerously weak bill. It allows the fracking industry to keep secret the volumes and concentrations of the dangerous chemicals it injects underground by designating them "trade secrets." That means Californians won't know whether the industry is trucking teaspoons or tons of toxic chemicals through our communities. And SB 4 won't stop fracking from expanding rapidly in California while polluting our air, contaminating our water, and accelerating climate change. Call Assembly Member Reggie Jones-Sawyer: Vote 'no' on Senator Pavley's dangerous fracking bill and support a ban on fracking. Click here to call.But Friday's amendments are by far the worst part of the bill. The California Environmental Quality Act, also known as CEQA, is California's environmental safety-net. It requires the government to notify the public about any environmentally destructive project, thoroughly analyze and mitigate its environmental risks, and provide the public with an opportunity to voice concerns about the project. The new amendments to SB 4 could be used by state regulators to make an end-run around CEQA’s bedrock environmental review and mitigation requirements and could also prevent our state’s air and water boards, local land use jurisdictions and other agencies from carrying out their own CEQA reviews of fracking. Under existing law, the governor and state regulators can deny approvals for wells that involve fracking or place a partial or complete moratorium on fracking. The new language states that state regulators "shall allow" fracking to take place until regulations are finalized in 2015 provided that certain conditions are met. This could be interpreted to require every fracked well to be approved between now and 2015, with environmental review conducted only after the fact and could be used to prevent the governor or state regulators from issuing a moratorium on fracking prior to 2015. The California Legislature is legendary for last-minute shenanigans, so we can't know what will happen to SB 4 in the next few days. It could change dramatically—probably for the worse. What we do know is that Friday's amendments make SB 4 a must-kill piece of legislation, and we only have four days before the end of the legislative session to stop it. Call Assembly Member Reggie Jones-Sawyer: Vote 'no' on Senator Pavley's dangerous fracking bill and support a ban on fracking. Click here to call.It's time to pull the plug on the Legislature's dangerous push to pass fracking legislation before things get any worse. Our friends in Sacramento are telling us that it's possible to stop SB 4 in the Assembly, where it's currently awaiting a floor vote. The bottom line is that SB 4 would actually pave the way for more fracking in California and roll back existing legal protections, leaving us worse off. Call Assembly Member Reggie Jones-Sawyer: Vote 'no' on Senator Pavley's dangerous fracking bill and support a ban on fracking. Click here to call.The legislative session ends this week and the Legislature has a lot of important issues left to resolve. What happens next for SB 4 is impossible to predict, but here are the most likely scenarios:
To make sure that doesn't happen, we need to make it clear that we are watching and that we will hold our elected officials accountable if they pass a bill that kneecaps our efforts to ban fracking in California. Thanks for fighting fracking. Zack Malitz, Campaign Manager CREDO Action from Working Assets Click below for a sample script and the number to call:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3BkrAI1KqY
The Hill:
Billionaire climate change activist Tom Steyer is launching a four-part, $1 million ad buy that attacks the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline.
The former hedge fund chief’s first ad, slated to run during today’s political talk shows, alleges Keystone wouldn’t help the U.S. because the oil would be “refined and loaded on ships to be sold overseas to countries like China.”
“Foreign countries will get more access to more oil to make more products to sell back to us, undercutting our economy and our workers,” the ad states.
The Obama administration is weighing whether to grant a cross-border permit for TransCanada Corp.’s pipeline, which would bring oil from Canadian oil sands projects to Gulf Coast refiners.
Keystone pipeline supporters have pushed back against activists’ allegations [not really allegations, more like the facts] that Keystone would largely be an export pipeline, either for crude it carries or refined products made with it.
http://climatecrocks.com/2013/09/09/new-ad-clobbers-keystone-economics/
Sunday, September 8, 2013
September Arctic sea ice extent data since 1980 from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (blue diamonds). "Recovery" years, meaning years when the sea ice extent is greater than the previous year, are highlighted in red to mock the repeated cynical claims of climate change "skeptics" that global warming has somehow stopped. Many factors affect the annual summer decrease in Arctic sea ice extent, and it is illogical at best to claim any "trend" by cherry-picking only brief periods of data. The obvious true long-term trend in Arctic sea ice extent (red second-order polynomial curve fit) is that it is declining at an accelerating rate.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=64
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