Tag: Environment

Trump Must Stop U.S. Hardwood Forests Being Burned for UK ‘Biofuel’

AP/Elise Amendola

Greenies are up in arms over another environmental scandal of their own making. A TV documentary, shown on Britain’s left-wing Channel 4, has been shocked to discover that old hardwood forests in the U.S. are being chopped down, exported to the UK and burned for what is laughably being billed as “green” energy.

According to the Ecologist:

Huge areas of hardwood forest in the state of Virginia are being chainsawed to create ‘biomass’ energy in Britain as the government attempts to reach targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in efforts to tackle climate change, an investigation by Channel 4 Dispatches has found.

A key part of government efforts to hit its green energy targets is to switch from generating electricity from burning coal to burning wood – or so-called biomass. It’s a policy that is costing taxpayers more than £700 million per year through a levy on their electricity bills.

Well fancy that. Enviroloons caught once again killing the planet in order to save it.

Oscar Wilde would have called this “the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in the glass”.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Environmentalism Is the Dirty Secret Behind Global Pollution Deaths

Rodger Bosch / AFP / Getty

Most of the world’s deadliest pollution is concentrated in the Third World, largely among poor households which have little or no access to electricity produced by fossil-fuel power.
Serious pollution in the West, however, is negligible.

This is the clear message of the latest State of Global Air report produced by the Health Effects Institute and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

But it is not, needless to say, how it is being reported in the liberal media.

The Guardian, for example, headlines its story:  “More than 95% of world’s population breathe dangerous air, major study finds”.

This sounds bad, until you realize that the “dangerous” air being talked about here is only “dangerous” because it contains concentrations of particulate matter known as PM2.5.

Ah yes: our old friend PM2.5. We dealt with this pseudo-scientific fake news scare story this time last year, at the time of the previous State of Global Air report.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Global Cooling Approaches; Warmists: ‘Look! A Gulf Stream Squirrel!’

ARNO BURGI/AFP/Getty

Unexpectedly early, a new solar minimum has arrived.
The signs are that it could be one of the weakest in centuries, potentially ushering in the most serious bout of global cooling since the 17th century’s Maunder Minimum.

You might think the climate alarmists would be happy about this: after all, what better antidote to the horrors of “global warming” than a bracing dose of global cooling?

Instead, they are trying to divert attention by reviving one of their favorite old scare stories: the one about how ‘climate change’ is causing the Gulf Stream to alter its course, just like in The Day After Tomorrow.

This latest version of the scare story originated in the alarmist journal Nature and was then amplified by the Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact, ground zero for the most extreme form of pseudo-scientific climate alarmism.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Killing Yourself for Gaia Is an Act of Insanity

DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP/Getty

Environmentalism has a long history of attracting cranks, loons and zealots.

There was the Unabomber, whose Manifesto was all but indistinguishable from Al Gore’s Earth in Balance.

There was James Lee, the eco-terrorist who in 2010 was shot by police at the Discovery Channel after taking hostages, leaving behind rambling messages protesting about “overpopulation” and the need to “the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies.”

Now there is David S Buckel, a lawyer who burnt himself to death in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, apparently in the belief that this would set some kind of moral example to all those people out there bent on destroying the planet.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Climate Alarmists Maul Inconvenient Polar Bear Expert

Polar bears
Reuters/Geoff York/WWF

Susan Crockford is a polar bear expert with a message that climate alarmists don’t want to hear: polar bear populations are thriving and are certainly in no danger from thinning summer sea ice supposedly caused by ‘man-made global warming.’

That’s why the alarmist establishment is currently trying destroy her.

First came a hatchet job in Bioscience, described by climate scientist Judith Curry as “absolutely the stupidest paper I have ever seen published.”

Crockford’s rebuttal is epic and can be read in full here.

Now, the New York Times has weighed in with a piece entitled ‘Climate Change Denialists Say Polar Bears Are Fine. Scientists Are Pushing Back’.

The headline has been poorly subbed. “Scientists” should be in danger quotation marks.

Its introductory paragraph will give you a taste of its quality:

Read the rest at Breitbart.

48,000 Britons Died of Cold This Winter; UK Government Praises Climate Policy Which Helped Kill Them

Cold
OLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty

Britain has just suffered its worst winter death toll in 42 years.
According to the Daily Star:

It is estimated that 20,275 Brits more than average died between December and March.

An additional 2,000 deaths more than average were expected due to cold conditions between March 23 and 31, this winter’s average death rates show.

Campaigners have called the deaths a “national tragedy” as cold weather victims fatalities could be prevented – especially in the elderly.

According to the Office of National Statistics, one in 10 cold weather deaths are among under-65s, one in 10 among 65-75s and eight in 10 among over-75s.

The Department of Health also said cold conditions worsen winter killers including flu, chest diseases, heart attacks, strokes and dementia.

It means this winter is set to total at least 48,000 deaths due to cold weather – which works out at an average of one death every three and a half minutes.

But what’s more shocking still is that the UK government – claiming to be Conservative, last time I looked – is actually boasting about the disastrous policy which helped kill them.

Here is what Energy Minister Claire Perry had to say on the tenth anniversary of the 2008 Climate Change Act – the most ruinous and pointless piece of legislation in recent British parliamentary history – which is largely responsible for making energy so expensive that the poor and vulnerable cannot afford to heat their homes.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Trump Rides Once More to the Defense of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt

Trump/Pruitt
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty

President Trump has once again come out in defense of his embattled Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt.

This is both canny and righteous.

It’s righteous because Scott Pruitt has proved himself to be perhaps the bravest and best of Trump’s administrators.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Scott Pruitt Is a Hero, Unlike Some of His EPA Predecessors

Scott Pruitt
AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Trump has finally risen to the defense of his embattled EPA chief Scott Pruitt. Quite right too, for Pruitt is by some margin the best Administrator the Environmental Protection Agency has had since it was founded by Richard Nixon in 1970.

This is not just because Pruitt is so good. It’s also because his predecessors were so bad. Not merely incompetent, but in several cases actively corrupt, dishonest, and criminal.

As Steve Milloy notes here, all three past Democrat EPA administrators flagrantly violated public records laws, including the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA):

After issuing a host of “midnight regulations” on her way out the door and despite a court order directing that all records be preserved, Clinton EPA chief Carol Browner ordered that her hard drive be erased on her last full day in office, January 19, 2001.

Obama’s first EPA chief Lisa Jackson was able to foil FOIA requesters until an intrepid one discovered that Jackson was using a false name or alias (i.e., “Richard Windsor”) to send and receive e-mail. Since no one but Jackson’s close associates knew about “Richard Windsor,” FOIA requests coming in for e-mails to/from “Lisa Jackson” produced pretty much nothing

Obama’s second EPA chief, Gina McCarthy, opted for Browner’s means of ducking public records requirements. She simply deleted 5,000 text messages rather than turn them over for public scrutiny. Oh, and did I mention that McCarthy used private email to conduct agency business?

and:

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Maldives Builds Giant New Airport Runway Despite Global Warming

Yachts
EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty

The Maldives – that Indian Ocean island group allegedly most threatened by global warming –  is building a new runway at its international airport.
According to the Maldives Independent:

The 3,400-meter-long, 60-meter-wide runway will open the airport to the Airbus A380 jetliner, the world’s largest passenger airline.

And:

The US$400 million runway project was awarded to China’s Beijing Urban Construction Group as part of ambitious plans to upgrade the country’s main international airport. The Chinese construction giant will also build a fuel farm with a storage capacity of 45 million litres and a cargo complex with the capacity to handle 120,000 tonnes.

Reclamation work to expand the airport island by some 62 hectares was subcontracted to the Dubai-based Gulf Cobla.

The Maldivian government secured a US$373 million concessionary loan from the Chinese EXIM Bank in December 2015 for the runway project. Loan agreements worth US$200 million have also been signed with the Saudi Fund for Development, the Kuwait Fund and the OPEC Fund to finance the airport expansion.

A contract was signed with the Saudi Binladin Group in May 2015 to build a new passenger terminal for an undisclosed amount.

So: Chinese, Saudi and Kuwaiti money and Chinese engineers to build a new runway on coral atolls which – according to environmentalists – are one of the places at the world most at risk from ‘climate change’.

This suggests one of two possible conclusions.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

The New York Times Is 100 Percent Wrong About Scott Pruitt

Scott Pruitt
AP/Carolyn Kaster

President Trump is winning at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

There can be no better proof of this than the latest anguished editorial in the New York Times, lamenting the changes made by EPA administrator Scott Pruitt.

The EPA, it claims, is the “epicenter of denial.” Its new regime is “terrified” of thwarting “Trump’s promise to ease regulations on fossil fuel companies and increase their profits”. Its every new action flies in the face of all the regulatory efforts made by such experts as Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, ex-EPA administrator Gina McCarthy and some guy from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

What’s not to like?

Steve Milloy, a writer more familiar with the EPA’s past dirty tricks than almost anyone, has compiled a glorious, line-by-line demolition of the Times‘s editorial.

Here is a taster (Milloy’s comments in bold):

Read the rest at Breitbart.