Source:  National Journal

Source:  Global Warming Org

by Marlo Lewis

A study by NASA’s James Hansen and two colleagues, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), finds that during the past 30 years, extreme hot weather has become more frequent and affects a larger area of the world than was the case during the preceding 30 years. Specifically, the study, “Perception of climate change,” reports that:

• Cool summers occurred one-third of the time during 1951-1980 but occurred only 10% of the time during 1981-2010.
• Very hot weather affected 0.2% of the land area during 1951-1980 but affected 10% of the land area during 1981-2010.

Hansen is the world’s best known scientist in the climate alarm camp and a leading advocate of aggressive measures to curb fossil-energy use. He and his co-authors are up front about the policy agenda motivating their study. The “notorious variability of local weather and climate from day to day and year to year” is the “great barrier” to “public recognition” of man-made climate change and, thus, to public support for policies requiring “rapid reduction of fossil fuel emissions.” When heat waves or drought strike, the authors want the public to perceive global warming. On Saturday, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Hansen summarizing the study’s results.

Heat waves will become more frequent and severe as the world warms; some areas will become drier, others wetter. Those hypotheses are not controversial. (more…)

Source:  CEI

http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/69300/69309/69309_mining_coal.htm

By Marlo Lewis

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote soon on legislation (S.J.Res.37) sponsored by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) to overturn one of the most costly regulations ever adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Known as the Utility MACT Rule, the regulation establishes first-ever maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standards for hazardous air pollutant (HAP) emissions from power plants.

Mercury is the principal HAP targeted by the Rule. Unlike most air pollutants, mercury poses health risks not via inhalation but after being deposited in water bodies. Microbes can transform some of the mercury into an organic compound, methylmercury, which can accumulate in aquatic food chains. For humans, the “primary route of exposure” is eating fish. (more…)

Source:  http://www.globalwarming.org/2012/02/17/desmog-blogs-bogus-expose-of-the-heartland-institute/#more-13089

Earlier this week, the climate hysterics at DeSmog Blog and ThinkProgress tried (but failed) to manufacture a scandal by posting board-meeting and fund-raising documents stolen under false pretenses from the Heartland Institute, the Illinois-based free-market think tank. You can read Heartland’s response to the document heist here.

In the climate debate, Heartland is perhaps best known as organizer and host of six international climate conferences and as publisher of Climate Change Reconsidered: The Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

The Heartland conferences transformed the disparate ranks of climate-alarm skeptics into a confident, energized, networked movement. The NIPCC report and related publications not only debunk Al Gore’s “planetary emergency” but also provide the only comprehensive, fully-documented alternative to the alleged “scientific consensus” represented by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (more…)

by Marlo Lewis

A study funded by the National Science Foundation finds that global warming (which we all know is turning our planet upside down) will not change the wind patterns targeted for “investment” by wind energy developers and their political patrons.

Verily, Gaia is great. She not only whips up violent storms to punish our sins of emission, she also insulates the wind from our corrupting influence so that green job creators can begin the process of planetary healing.

Or maybe there’s a simpler explanation. Congress funds the NSF and the NSF funds studies that “justify” both climate alarm and Soviet-style production quota like wind energy mandates.

I blog on this topic today at GlobalWarming.Org. As always, your comments are welcome. (more…)

Source: Global Warming Org

Earlier this week, the House Energy & Commerce Committee held its third hearing on the Energy Tax Prevention Act, a bill to stop EPA from determining national policy on climate change through the Clean Air Act, a statute enacted in 1970, years before global warming was even a gleam in Al Gore’s eye. The hearing, requested by ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), was entitled Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulations.

Although Democrats are now the minority party in the House, they got more witnesses (4) than did the majority (3). I don’t know how Rep. Waxman pulled that off. Did he ever let Republicans have more witnesses when he was in the chair? No. Would he return the favor if Dems regain control of the House? Doubtful.

The most effective minority witness, IMO, was Dr. Richard Sommerville, whose testimony updates the continual — and predictable — refrain that ‘climate change is even worse than we previously predicted.’ Much of Somerville’s testimony is drawn from a report he co-authored called the Copenhagen Diagnosis. (more…)

Cap-and-trade is dead because the public finally caught on that it is a stealth energy tax, a big reason being that it makes coal – the most economic electricity fuel in many markets – uncompetitive. (more…)

Source:  Pajamamedia

This tactic points in only one direction: allowing an EPA power grab.

by Marlo Lewis

Last week, in a brief filed on behalf of six large electric power producers, the Obama administration urged the Supreme Court to vacate an appeals court decision (State of Connecticut et al. v. American Electric Power et al.) that would allow states and other parties to sue coal-burning electric utilities for their alleged contribution to global warming-related “injuries.”

The brief clearly lays out the absurdities of attempting to regulate greenhouse gases via public nuisance litigation. Yet the brief stops short of reaching the obvious conclusion implied by its argument, namely that climate policy is a “non-justiciable political question.” Instead, it advises the Supreme Court to direct the court of appeals to reassess its decision on “prudential” grounds.

I smell a rat. The administration, I suspect, does not want the Court to rule that the political question doctrine precludes tort litigation against CO2-emitters, because it wants the only solid, durable shield for industry to be the EPA’s “displacement” of common-law injury claims via the agency’s endangerment rule and ensuing regulatory cascade under the Clean Air Act (CAA). (more…)

Source:  Pajamas Media

By Marlo Lewis