Christmas Is Here, Everyone! EPA Officials Are ‘Leaving in Droves’

protest
Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Environmental Protection Agency officials are “leaving in droves”, reports the New York Times.

More than 700 people have left the Environmental Protection Agency since President Trump took office, a wave of departures that puts the administration nearly a quarter of the way toward its goal of shrinking the agency to levels last seen during the Reagan administration.

What marvellous news to ease us all into the festive Christmas spirit, eh readers?

Why, it’s like the final scene in A Christmas Carol where Scrooge repents of all his miserliness, his nephew Fred gets a big fat turkey, Bob Cratchit gets a pay rise and Tiny Tim declares “God bless us, every one!”

Not, of course, that this is quite the way the New York Times sees it. It wants us to believe that this is an attack on both science and the environment.

Within the agency, science in particular is taking a hard hit. More than 27 percent of those who left this year were scientists, including 34 biologists and microbiologists; 19 chemists; 81 environmental engineers and environmental scientists; and more than a dozen toxicologists, life scientists and geologists. Employees say the exodus has left the agency depleted of decades of knowledge about protecting the nation’s air and water. Many also said they saw the departures as part of a more worrisome trend of muting government scientists, cutting research budgets and making it more difficult for academic scientists to serve on advisory boards.

Actually, though, what it really is is #winning.

Read the rest on Breitbart.

China Vindicates Trump, Mocks Paris Accord, with Record CO2 Emissions

China
The Associated Press

China’s CO2 emissions are shooting to the moon.

Several studies released by the Global Carbon Project say worldwide carbon emissions are projected to jump about 2 percent this year after staying flat for three years, according to preliminary estimates.

The culprit, the data show, is China, which has kept its emissions in check in recent years but now shows a massive rise in pollution. Under the Paris pact, China agreed to cap its emissions by 2030, meaning it is still free to increase pollution.

China’s uptick this year, after a 1 percent drop in 2015 and flat emissions last year, is largely a result of the country’s increased use of fossil fuels.

This is very bad news if you believe in the man-made global warming fairy.

But it’s great news if you’re Donald Trump. It means that his decision to pull out of the UN Paris Accord is vindicated – and for all the reasons he gave.

Here is the key section from the President’s Rose Garden speech in June this year when he announced the U.S. withdrawal.

For example, under the agreement, China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years — 13.  They can do whatever they want for 13 years.  Not us.  India makes its participation contingent on receiving billions and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from developed countries.  There are many other examples.  But the bottom line is that the Paris Accord is very unfair, at the highest level, to the United States.

Further, while the current agreement effectively blocks the development of clean coal in America — which it does, and the mines are starting to open up.  We’re having a big opening in two weeks.  Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, so many places.  A big opening of a brand-new mine.  It’s unheard of.  For many, many years, that hasn’t happened.  They asked me if I’d go.  I’m going to try.

China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants.  So we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement.  India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020.  Think of it:  India can double their coal production.  We’re supposed to get rid of ours.  Even Europe is allowed to continue construction of coal plants.

Exactly. The Paris Accord was a bad deal for the U.S.  It would have needlessly handled a huge competitive advantage to economies like India and China, while doing next to nothing – actually, let’s be honest, nothing – to combat climate change.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

The István Markó Interview: Possibly the Best Thing You Will Ever Read on Global Warming. Pt 1: The Science

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AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Maybe the biggest of all the lies put out by the global warming scaremongers is that the science is on their side. No it isn’t. And if you’re in any doubt at all you should read this interview with the brilliant scientist István Markó. It tells you all you need to know about the science of global warming.

Dr. Markó, who sadly died earlier this year aged only 61, was a professor and researcher in organic chemistry at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium’s largest French-speaking university. More importantly for the purposes of this interview, he was one of the world’s most outspoken and well-informed climate skeptics, who contributed to several articles on the subject for Breitbart News.

Before he died, he gave an extensive interview to the French journalist Grégoire Canlorbe. Here are highlights of the English translation. As you’ll see, he doesn’t pull his punches.

CO2 is not – and has never been a poison

Each of our exhalations, each of our breaths, emits an astronomical quantity of CO2proportionate to that in the atmosphere (some >40,000 ppm); and it is very clear that the air we expire does not kill anyone standing in front of us. What must be understood, besides, is that CO2 is the elementary food of plants. Without CO2 there would be no plants, and without plants there would be no oxygen and therefore no humans.

Plants love CO2. That’s why the planet is greening

Plants need CO2, water, and daylight. These are the mechanisms of photosynthesis, to generate the sugars that will provide them with staple food and building blocks. That fundamental fact of botany is one of the primary reasons why anyone who is sincerely committed to the preservation of the “natural world” should abstain from demonizing CO2. Over the last 30 years, there has been a gradual increase in the CO2 level. But what is also observed is that despite deforestation, the planet’s vegetation has grown by about 20 percent. This expansion of vegetation on the planet, nature lovers largely owe it to the increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

An Impertinent Pup from Snopes Tried to Fact-Check Me on Global Warming. Here’s My Reply…

Snopes
As I predicted, my piece “400 Scientific Papers in 2017  say ‘Global Warming’ is a Myth”, is causing greenie heads to explode like watermelons struck by hollow-point bullets.

Here is an email I got shortly afterwards from a guy at the completely unbiased and apolitical (lol) fact-checking organization Snopes.

Hello James,

I’m a science writer for the fact checking website Snopes.com reporting on your ‘400 studies say climate change is a myth’ exposé. I had a couple of questions about your process:

  • Did you read all (or a fraction) of the 400 studies listed in that post personally or talk to any of the scientists involved?
  • How long did it take to research this piece?
  • Were you able to get an early look at the No Tricks Zone post from 23 October before it was published?

Best,

Alex

This Alex is an impertinent pup, isn’t he?

Since I make it my business not to respond to snarky little tics asking irrelevant questions designed to smear and belittle rather than enlighten, I thought I’d instead deal with the issues he raises here at Breitbart.

I do this for two reasons.

First because publicly humiliating one’s enemies is always fun.

Second, because these climate alarmists use the same old tricks again and again to prop up their junk science scam. It’s always a good idea to expose these tricks, to show the guy behind the curtain pulling all the levers, because once you know what these people’s game is, their dark magic loses its power.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Study: Global Warming Has Saved Us from a New Ice Age

The new research, published in the journal Nature, examined the eight global ice ages over the past 800,000 years and used complex climate models to determine the critical factors that kickstarted the big freezes.

The result was surprisingly simple. A particular combination of lower sunlight at a latitude of 65 deg N, where snow surviving through the summer leads to ice sheets, and low carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was the signal for a new ice age to dawn. The level of sunlight is very predictable as it varies with cyclical changes in the shape of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun and in the tilt of the Earth’s axis, called Milankovitch cycles.

But the level of CO2 has been drastically altered by human activity, rising from 280ppm at the start of the industrial revolution to 400ppm today. The researchers showed that even if carbon emissions are limited to the amount consistent with a 2C rise in temperatures – the internationally agreed goal – there will be enough CO2 in the atmosphere to avoid future ice ages that could have started 50,000 or 90,000 years from now.

Since a new ice age would kill life on earth far more effectively than a few degrees C of global warming, this ought to be good news. Unfortunately the study needs to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt because it’s based on “complex climate models” and emanates from Germany’s fanatically warmist Potsdam Institute, which is ideologically committed to “proving” that CO2 is a significant driver of “climate change” even when most real-world evidence suggests it’s not.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

China Shows How Much It Cares about Climate Change: With a Single, Upraised Finger

According to shock data  released, without fanfare, by China’s statistical agency, its coal use has been about 17 per cent higher per year than earlier official figures admitted. This may have pumped an extra billion tons per year of CO2 into the atmosphere – more than the total greenhouse gas output of the entire German economy.

In 2012, China burned through an extra 600 million tons of coal: about 70 per cent of the amount used annually by the US.

The new figures make a nonsense of China’s publicly-expressed commitment to wage war on climate change.

Only two days ago, Chinese president Xi Jinping emerged from a summit with French president Francois Hollande, calling for “an ambitious and legally binding deal” at the forthcoming COP21 climate talks being staged by the UN in Paris later this month.

This moved Greenpeace China’s Li Shuo to declare it “encouraging to see the ball rolling and diplomacy nudging us a small step forward”. He added:

“Moreover, with the recent decline in coal consumption and robust renewable energy development, China is positioning itself at the front of climate leadership. This is drastically different from six years ago in Copenhagen.”

We now know that this was wishful thinking.

Not that we couldn’t have guessed this anyway. China’s policy on CO2 emissions is – and always has been – a case of “tell the gullible Gwailo whatever they want to hear – then carry on building coal-fired power stations regardless.”

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Al Gore: CO2 Makes You Stupid

The piece to which Gore is referring concerns a study by the Harvard School of Physical Health, which says that carbon dioxide (CO2) has a negative effect on cognitive abilities and decision-making.

According to the study, which tested participants in a controlled office environment under a range of conditions, an increase in CO2 intensity of 400 ppm (parts per million) can impair people’s cognitive scores by an average 21 per cent. Its biggest impacts were on Crisis Response, Information Usage and Strategy.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Enron Environmentalism: The Carbon Credits Scam Pumps Millions of Tonnes More Greenhouse Gases into the Atmosphere

As well as pumping much as 600 million tonnes more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the carbon credits scheme has been abused by countries like Russia and the Ukraine which have used them as a money making scam.

Vladyslav Zhezherin, one of the co-authors of the study by the Stockholm Environment Institute says:

“This was like printing money.”

Another co-author Anja Kollmuss has told BBC News.

“We were surprised ourselves by the extent [of the fraud], we didn’t expect such a large number.”

“What went on was that these countries could approve these projects by themselves there was no international oversight, in particular Russia and the Ukraine didn’t have any incentive to guarantee the quality of these credits.”

To which the two obvious questions are:

Have any of these people actually been to Russia or the Ukraine?

and:

This stuff that these greenies have been smoking sounds totally amazing. How do we go about getting some?

The corruption they describe is by no means a recent thing. It dates back to Enron whose entire business model was based on dodgy carbon credits, which it used not to save the planet but to close down its rivals in the coal industry.

Read the rest at Breitbart.