Ah, the irony of reading an in-flight magazine, worrying about the CO2 emissions – of a sandwich. pic.twitter.com/HWrPxPZGld
— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) April 25, 2018
Climate Barbie: Origins
The Sound Of Swamp, Draining
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt will soon end his agency’s use of “secret science” to craft regulations.
“We need to make sure their data and methodology are published as part of the record,” Pruitt said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Otherwise, it’s not transparent. It’s not objectively measured, and that’s important.”
Pruitt will reverse long-standing EPA policy allowing regulators to rely on non-public scientific data in crafting rules. Such studies have been used to justify tens of billions of dollars worth of regulations.
Climate Barbie
Strikes again.
Dead Rose Country
Got my first natural gas bill for 2018 today.
Cost of gas: $77.
Cost of carbon tax, er, “levy”: $52.
The total bill was $235.
So that’s like:
The carbon tax, er, “levy” amounted to a 67.5% tax on natural gas.
Or it’s like paying a 23% GST rate.
Thanks Rachel!
— D.B.Cooper (@GuardOfForever) February 17, 2018
The Alarming Roots Of Environmentalism
Y2Kyoto: Bigger, Badder
The experience of the Soviets, the only rivals to the Nazis for engineering gigantism, is instructive. In its haste to improve agriculture, USSR implemented irrigation projects that destroyed the Aral Sea. “The Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature, also known as Stalin’s plan for the transformation of nature, was proposed by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union in the second half of the 1940s, for land development, agricultural practices and water projects to improve agriculture in the nation.” The Plan needless to say, did not work.
Yet the mind-boggling goals of the German superproject and even Stalin’s Great Plan pale in comparison to the biggest engineering undertaking of our age: the Paris Climate Agreement. With a 195 signatories the goal of the agreement is nothing less than the modification of the weather system of the entire planet, a much bigger deal than simply damming up the Straits of Gibraltar. It sails serenely on. Most political leaders have signed on to the accord on the same basis that Philippine health authorities agreed to Dengvaxia: rational ignorance. Presidents and prime ministers, incapable of independently judging the technological soundness of the Paris Agreement, must rely instead scientific consensus that it’s good.
How many by oil tankers?
Four of six Right Whales died of blunt-force trauma.
We need to shut down the dangerous and environmentally damaging St. Lawrence Seaway. This is killing Mother Earth.
The Green Police
Canada’s Competition Bureau, an arm’s length agency funded by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to the tune of almost $50 million annually, investigated three organizations accused of denying mainstream climate science for over a year, following a complaint from an environmental group.
The bureau discontinued its 14-month probe in June, citing “available evidence, the assessment of the facts in this case, and to ensure the effective allocation of limited resources”, according to Josephine A.L. Palumbo, Deputy Commissioner of Competition, Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate.
But it will re-open its investigation should it receive relevant new information from the public.
“Ve Haff Ways Of Making You Green”
While the notion of mandatory energy audits is just at the lobbying stage nationally, for Ontario residents it is soon to become a harsh reality. As laid out in the province’s current climate change plan, beginning in 2019: “energy audits [will] be required before a new or existing single-family home can be listed for sale, and the energy rating will be included in the real estate listing.”
Volvo
I guess it’ll be harder to fake emission reports if the engines are all electric. I’m sure the hybrid models will grade out just fine, though. >wink<
Captain Obvious
Yes, Margaret, yes. Greenpeace is a menace to the world.
As are all the radical marxist agitators.
Soylent Smoke
Nothing has a smaller carbon footprint than an urn filled with ashes: The Telegraph noted that cladding “is used as an insulation to make buildings more sustainable to meet green energy requirements.” Some 30,000 buildings in the U.K. have been retrofitted with cladding to cheaply comply with green energy mandates.
Environmentalism kills.
CPAWS
Reader James notes via email – CPAWS is taking our Government to court.
The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) has filed a lawsuit against federal environment minister Catherine McKenna, asserting that the Government of Canada is not following its own rules about protecting caribou.
Under the Species at Risk Act, once critical habitat for a species has been identified, the minister has 180 days to take action.
“Boreal woodland caribou’s critical habitat was identified and publicly posted in October of 2012. Much of the habitat is on non-federal lands. Though we know that much of the boreal caribou critical habitat remains unprotected more than four years later, there have been no reports describing what is being done to address any protection gaps,” CPAWS Quebec executive director Alain Branchaud said in a statement.
Much of that habitat is in oil and gas development regions across Canada.
Of course it is. James adds – “And a peek at the CRA site tells us why: CPAWS non-receipted revenue from out-of-country sources ($893,596) and revenue received from other charities ($1,045,007) vastly exceeds the relatively miserly federal donation: $166,092. Get out our cheque-book Justin – make it all go away.”
In A Surprising Outbreak Of Judicial Sanity
Ruling against National Post writers in defamation suit by prominent climate scientist overturned… (h/t Jamie)
Meltdown At The EPA
It looks like the EPA will be the agency hardest hit by the Trump sledgehammer. For eight years, President Obama used the agency as his de facto enforcer of environmental policies he couldn’t pass in Congress even when it was controlled by his own party. If Obama was the climate-change bully, then the EPA was his toady, issuing one regulation after another aimed at imaginary polluters who were allegedly causing global warming. Jobs were lost, companies were bankrupted, and an untold amount of economic growth was stymied out of fear of reprisals from this rogue agency. The courts halted many of the EPAs most overreaching and unlawful policies initiated by Obama — such as the Clean Water Rule and Clean Power Rule, two regulations aimed at farmers and coal producers. Unsurprisingly, people in these sectors voted heavily for Trump.
Trump officials and Congress are ready to make major changes in the EPA. A leaked memo written by Trump’s EPA transition team details how the new administration wants to tackle shoddy science at the agency. The memo asserts that the EPA should not be funding scientific research, and it must make any data publicly available for independent scientists to review. It also said that the agency must eliminate conflicts of interest and bias from the science advisory process.
The administration also put a freeze on most contracts and grants, pending further review by incoming staff. A good chunk of the EPA’s $8.3 billion budget is spent on grants to universities and units of government; its 2017 budget for state- and tribal-assistant grants was nearly $3.3 billion. The agency also has nearly $6.4 billion in outstanding contractual obligations to dozens of companies across the country, dating back to 2001. These will get much-needed scrutiny over the next several months, and Milloy insists it’s a necessary step.
More: The Howling
Wynneing!
It cannot have escaped the attention of many that Ontario is most unsettled these days. That its industries are anxious, its debt colossal, its citizens not in a pleasant mood. Ontario is in a lot of pain. But let me assure readers outside Ontario that it has not all been for nothing. There are rewards. They are subtle, intangible, but they are real. Let me explain….
h/t nold
Make It So
Elizabeth May says she's willing to go to jail in the fight against the Kinder Morgan pipeline. #cdnpoli #hw pic.twitter.com/o2oQMvElmN
— JULIE VAN DUSEN (@JULIEVANDUSEN) November 29, 2016
Let Them Eat Lead
The study, conducted by a team of researchers from the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food at the University of Oxford and the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC, is the first global analysis to estimate the impacts that levying emissions prices on food could have on greenhouse gas emissions and human health.
The findings show that about one billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions could be avoided in the year 2020 if emissions pricing of foods were to be implemented, more than the total current emissions from global aviation.
Vancouver? What have you done?
Via, DanBC:
Vancouver votes to ban natural gas by 2050.
Oh, of course:
Mayor Gregor Robertson led the charge on the Renewable City Strategy which passed this summer. He is a vocal critic of oil and gas development and was a director Tides Canada from 2002 until 2004.
A wing-nut. More at the CTF.
Robertson wants a 70 per cent cut in natural gas use in new buildings by 2020, and 90 per cent gone within ten years. All natural gas use in Vancouver will be banned by 2050 at the latest.
#NotACult Noooonono.