Climate Alarmism & Information Warfare

via Defeat Climate Alarmismhttps://defyccc.com

Using the term “information warfare” literally while excluding cyber warfare from it, there are two important points to contemplate:

Climate Alarmism has been waging information warfare against the U.S. for many years.

The U.S. military has no information warfare capabilities.  Furthermore, employing or even possessing substantial defensive information warfare capacities might be going against the Constitution.

Russia has just acknowledged that its military has Information Warfare Troops. Remarkably, this military branch was revealed with the announcement of deploying 41 new intercontinental ballistic missiles. “Information warfare” has totally different meanings for the Russian and American militaries.  The Pentagon confines the use of this term strictly to cyber warfare: computer hacking, denial of service attacks, air broadcast interference, etc.  But the Russian Defense Ministry understands information warfare as covert propaganda and what KGB used to call “active operations.”  According to Military.com:

“Declaring the formation of the dedicated information warfare troops, [Russian Defense Minister] Shoigu noted that ‘propaganda needs to be clever, smart and efficient’.”

“Retired Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, the former head of the Defense Ministry’s international cooperation department, said that Russia should rely on information warfare troops to fight back against what he described as Western propaganda.”

This post is not related to the fake news campaign alleging that the elections have been hacked by Russians and that Putin has aided Trump.  On the contrary, Trump has won despite the massive aid that Hilary and the Democrats have received from foreign governments and U.N. agencies.

via Defeat Climate Alarmism https://defyccc.com

February 23, 2017 at 09:20PM

House Of Lords Committee Calls For Radical Reform Of UK Energy Policy

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)http://www.thegwpf.com

The House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs has now published its report entitled ‘The Price of Power: Reforming the Electricity Market’.

The Committee examined the impact of the policies of successive governments on the electricity market. In its report the Committee identifies two key failures in the current market: the narrow amount of spare capacity, particularly in winter, and the rising cost of electricity to consumers and businesses. The Committee concludes that constant intervention by successive Governments in the electricity sector has led to a complicated, uncompetitive market that is failing consumers and businesses. The Committee highlights:

• Domestic electricity bills in Britain have gone from being second cheapest in Europe in the mid-2000s to the seventh cheapest today. Decarbonisation policies accounted for around 10% of the average domestic bill in 2013.
• Industrial electricity prices in Britain are amongst the highest in Europe. The Government has taken steps to compensate some energy-intensive industries, but it still estimates 13% electricity costs after compensation relate to decarbonisation.
• The growth of renewable energy, supported by contracts that guarantee a given price for a fixed period, has left the UK facing a possible shortage of capacity as private investors have not been willing to build new conventional power plants.
• The UK’s capacity margin is narrow. The Government introduced the Capacity Market in an attempt to reintroduce competition into the electricity sector.
• However, it is still struggling to procure new power stations.

In order to address the failures in the energy market the Committee recommends the Government should:

1) Ensure that security of supply is always the first and most important consideration in energy policy. Affordability and decarbonisation must not be prioritised ahead of security.

2) Ensure that decarbonisation is achieved at the lowest cost to consumers. This may mean waiting for the development of new technologies which can reduce emissions. The Government should make sure that the pace of reductions is flexible and not a rigid path to be achieved at all costs.

3) Reduce and remove Government interventions in the market. The best way to do this would be to ensure that electricity generating capacity is secured through a single, technology-neutral, competitive auction for electricity supply. This auction would ensure that consumers are paying the lowest prices for low-carbon electricity.

4) Establish an Energy Commission to provide greater scrutiny of energy policy decisions. This independent advisory body would report to the Secretary of State and advise on the best way for all the objectives of energy policy to be delivered.

5) Create a world-class National Energy Research Centre which would search for new methods of producing cheap, clean energy and translate them into commercial applications.

6) In the light of the uncertainties remain about the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station deal, outline its ‘Plan B’ in the event the project is delayed or cannot produce the anticipated power.

Lord Hollick has recorded a video setting out the key recommendations in the report. It is online here.

The full text of the report can be viewed here:

PDF version – http://ift.tt/2lg5KFr

HTML version – http://ift.tt/2lx76OF

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

February 23, 2017 at 06:58PM

WSJ: Kushner, Ivanka Trump Pushed to Remove Words Critical of Paris Climate Deal From Executive Order

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)http://www.thegwpf.com

At the request of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his wife, Ivanka Trump, language critical of a global climate deal was struck from an executive order that Mr. Trump is planning to sign soon, according to multiple people familiar with the move.

Mr. Trump is expected to sign within days at least two executive orders that will begin the process of trying to dismantle former President Barack Obama’s climate and environmental regulations.

Mr. Kushner, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, and Ms. Trump, the president’s eldest daughter, intervened to strike language about the climate deal from an earlier draft of the executive order, according to these people.

The executive order, which targets Mr. Obama’s broad climate agenda, now includes no mention of the climate deal, which nearly 200 nations struck in Paris in 2015, in large part due to a strong push by the Mr. Obama’s administration.

One White House official said both Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump have been considered a moderating influence on the White House’s position on climate change and environmental issues. The move is the latest sign of influence Mr. Trump’s daughter and Mr. Kushner have in a White House that has seen internal divisions on a variety of issues, including foreign policy.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump promised to cancel the climate deal and said it hurt U.S. companies. He has said once since the election that he would be open to remaining a part of the accord, though his top advisers have since maintained that Mr. Trump doesn’t take seriously the issue of climate change.

Ms. Trump, in particular, has said that she wants to focus on addressing climate change during her father’s administration, a goal that led to a meeting in December between Mr. Trump and former Vice President Al Gore, an influential climate activist. After the meeting, Mr. Gore described the meeting with Mr. Trump as a “sincere search for areas of common ground.”

The U.S. commitment to the Paris deal falls under the State Department’s jurisdiction. White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Thursday declined to comment on whether Mr. Trump plans to follow through on his campaign promise to withdraw from the deal, saying instead that is a conversation Mr. Trump is having with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

“I think I will leave that to Secretary Tillerson,” Mr. Spicer said.

Full story

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

February 23, 2017 at 06:58PM

Hundreds Of Scientists Urge Trump To Withdraw From U.N. Climate Agency

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)http://www.thegwpf.com

More than 300 scientists have urged President Trump to withdraw from the U.N.’s climate change agency, warning that its push to curtail carbon dioxide threatens to exacerbate poverty without improving the environment.

In a Thursday letter to the president, MIT professor emeritus Richard Lindzen called on the United States and other nations to “change course on an outdated international agreement that targets minor greenhouse gases,” starting with carbon dioxide.

“Since 2009, the US and other governments have undertaken actions with respect to global climate that are not scientifically justified and that already have, and will continue to cause serious social and economic harm — with no environmental benefits,” said Mr. Lindzen, a prominent atmospheric physicist.

Signers of the attached petition include the U.S. and international atmospheric scientists, meteorologists, physicists, professors and others taking issue with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC], which was formed in 1992 to combat “dangerous” climate change.

The 2016 Paris climate accord, which sets nonbinding emissions goals for nations, was drawn up under the auspices of the UNFCCC.

“Observations since the UNFCCC was written 25 years ago show that warming from increased atmospheric CO2 will be benign — much less than initial model predictions,” says the petition.

Mr. Trump said during the campaign he would “cancel” U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement, which was ratified in September by former President Barack Obama over the objections of Senate Republicans, who argued that the accord requires Senate ratification under the U.S. Constitution.

Myron Ebell, a Competitive Enterprise Institute scholar who led the Trump transition team on the Environmental Protection Agency, told reporters last month in London that the president would pull out of the Paris Agreement.

Full post

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

February 23, 2017 at 06:58PM