The federal government approved the Northern Gateway project Tuesday, a confirmation that had already riled pipeline foes before the decision was announced.
Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors
h/t John B.
Oh, Shiny Pony!
Northern Gateway puts the coastal economy and the environment at risk. This is no place for a pipeline. Mr. Harper should reject it.
— Justin Trudeau, MP (@JustinTrudeau) June 17, 2014
The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire
Fundamental transformation, in action.
Victor Davis Hanson: Almost everything we are told about illegal immigration is both a lie and amoral.
Your Dietary Tip Of The Day
Don’t eat anything you can’t tie to a fence post.
“I’ve spent my life on the foreign-policy left.”
He can’t say he wasn’t warned.
In an exclusive interview with Climate Depot, Dr. Rossiter explained: “If people ever say that fears of censorship for ‘climate change’ views are overblown, have them take a look at this: Just two days after I published a piece in the Wall Street Journal calling for Africa to be allowed the ‘all of the above’ energy strategy we have in the U.S., the Institute for Policy Studies terminated my 23-year relationship with them…because my analysis and theirs ‘diverge.'”
“I have tried to get [IPS] to discuss and explain their rejection of my analysis,’ Rossiter told Climate Depot. “When I countered a claim of ‘rapidly accelerating’ temperature change with the [UN] IPCC’s own data’, showing the nearly 20-year temperature pause — the best response I ever got was ‘Caleb, I don’t have time for this.'”
Operation Empty Chair
The world is in the very best of hands;
Last weekend Barack Obama played his 175th and 176th rounds of golf as president. He played first at Sunnylands, the famously private course on the Rancho Mirage, California estate of the late billionaire Walter Annenberg. Obama next played at Porcupine Creek, the equally private course on the nearby estate of the very-much-alive tech billionaire Larry Ellison.
The White House said Obama received regular briefings on the worsening crisis in Iraq during his golf weekend. “The president directed [National Security Adviser Susan Rice] to continue to keep him apprised of the latest developments,” said spokesman Josh Earnest, “as his national security team continues to meet through the weekend to review potential options.”
The Sound Of Settled Science
Stephen Briggs from the European Space Agency’s Directorate of Earth Observation says that sea surface temperature data is the worst indicator of global climate that can be used, describing it as “lousy”.
“It is like looking at the last hair on the tail of a dog and trying to decide what breed it is,” he said on Friday at the Royal Society in London.
“The models don’t have the skill we thought they had. That’s the problem,” admits Peter Jan van Leeuwen, director of the National Centre of Earth Observation at the University of Reading.
Obviously if the surface temperature was still rising, as it was in the 90s, instead of inconveniently contradicting model predictions, then it would still be considered a valid climate metric.
Thankfully however, climate scientists have not yet run out of metrics which show an upward trend. The new measure of global warming is to be sea level rise – presumably because it is still moving in the right direction, and because it ties in nicely with the “deep ocean heating” narrative.
Related: Data is whatever they say it is.
We Don’t Need No Stinking French Fry Grease
In 2011 alone, more than 200 scientists wrote to the European Commission, condemning the EU biofuels mandate. Meanwhile, ethanol looked like another apparently permanent drain on a U.S. national treasury already $17 trillion in the red. This to “support” well-to-do corn farmers who have only a few votes, even as the many thousands of dairy, livestock, and poultry farmers were being harmed even more severely by ethanol than consumers.
Now, even Democrats on Capitol Hill are turning against ethanol. Staunch California Democrat Dianne Feinstein and a group of like-minded Senators recently introduced a bill to eliminate the corn ethanol mandate.
Environmental groups have even sought my help in getting rid of the mandate, indicating near-desperation to eliminate their own costly Green mistake.
Related: Review finds biofuels may be an energy sink instead of an energy source
Reader Tips
How low can “reporters” go? This low.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Honey, I Finished The Internet
Enbridge Decision Tuesday
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet must decide by midnight tomorrow whether to approve the C$6.5 billion ($6 billion) pipeline, which would carry diluted bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands across British Columbia. Canada’s petroleum industry is seeking measures to move landlocked crude to offshore markets with another proposed pipeline, TransCanada Corp’s, Keystone XL, in regulatory limbo in the U.S.
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall said signs point toward the federal government permitting Northern Gateway. “We’re hopeful approval’s coming,” Wall said in a June 12 phone interview. “I’m reading the tea leaves and picking up on signals like everyone else.”
Don’t blink.
It’s Probably Nothing
“Jim Grant will never work at the Fed.”*
Here’s a fact: China’s banking assets represent one-third of world GDP, whereas China’s economic output represents only 12% of world GDP. Never before has the world seen the likes of China’s credit bubble. It’s a clear and present danger for us all.
And here’s a sign of the times: Amazon, with a trailing P/E multiple of more than 1,000, is preparing to build a new corporate headquarters in Seattle that may absorb more than 100% of cumulative net income since the company’s founding in 1994.
Now, there are always things to worry about. Different today is the monetary policy backdrop. Which values are true? Which are inflated? In a time of zero percent interest rates, it’s not always easy to tell.
(h/t Melinda R.)
Nobel Peace Prize Update
Per a military source: "It is more than a little unnerving to see ISIS executing Iraqis with US weapons"
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZitoTrib) June 16, 2014
Jordan. They must be wondering when it is going to be their turn and who will help them. It really does look like they are next.
The Tolerant Left
Million Mask murders: Las Vegas Cop Killers Were #Occupy Protesters. (via)
Pollspotting
Left side of page: Do you support the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal?
“His campaign slogan should be ‘I told you so.'”
“A major, well-connected GOP funding source told me today that Mitt Romney is running for president.“
The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire
Someone in the Obama administration has let it be known that the US Embassy in Baghdad will henceforth be reinforced by less than 100 Marines. (h/t OMMAG)
Related.
Operation Empty Chair
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Foreign Policy Magazine – Jihadist Gains in Iraq Blindside American Spies
New York Times – Ten Years of ISIS Attacks in Iraq (an infographic).
Peace Prize Update: The White House believes it has a brief window to pursue diplomacy, this official said…
The Sound Of Settled Science
Humanity’s genetic split from an ape-like ancestor came about 13 million years ago, far earlier than the long-supposed era of a common ancestor of early humans and apes, suggests a first study of chimp gene mutations.
Along with shining a new genetic light on human origins, the findings published on Thursday in the journal Science point to the role that evolution plays in fostering mutations, some linked to inherited diseases, in our genes.
On the surface, this and other recent studies contradict the general consensus suggested by the fossil record: that the last common ancestor of the two species, a flat-footed ape, lived some seven million years ago.