Month: April 2017

Uncategorized 11 Apr 2017

Ethanol industry, small-engine manufacturers clash over damage from fuel

via Climate Change Dispatch
http://ift.tt/2jXMFWN

Manufacturers of lawn mowers, snowblowers, chainsaws, and other small-engine equipment continue fueling a debate over the supposed dangers of ethanol, but the ethanol industry argues that they are merely looking for a scapegoat to mask operator error. Gasoline blended with ethanol has become commonplace for American drivers, especially since Congress enacted the 2007 Renewable Fuel […]

via Climate Change Dispatch http://ift.tt/2jXMFWN

April 10, 2017 at 11:42PM

Uncategorized 11 Apr 2017

EPA Asked To Invalidate A Pillar Of Obama’s Climate Agenda

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

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has received two petitions asking for official review of a regulatory document that served as critical leverage for the Obama administration to issue global warming regulations.

Two groups — Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC) — claim EPA’s 2009 “endangerment finding” should be updated with new evidence invalidating the agency’s previous claim greenhouse gasses threatened public health.

CEI filed its petition in late February, but did not publicize it. Sam Kazman, CEI’s general counsel, told The Daily Caller News Foundation that Trump will have a difficult time rolling back EPA’s global warming regulations without invalidating the “endangerment finding.”

“I think they’re going to have a lot of trouble on the other things they want to get done without addressing the endangerment finding,” Kazman said.

CHECC sent its petition to EPA Jan. 20, during Trump’s inauguration. CHECC is only now publicizing this, along with CEI, to urge the Trump administration to re-examine the endangerment finding now that the president issued an executive order to rolling back Obama-era global warming policies.

CHECC’s petition relies on a 2016 study that “failed to find that the steadily rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations have had a statistically significant impact on any of the 13 critically important temperature time series data analyzed.”

“In sum, all three of the lines of evidence relied upon by EPA to attribute warming to human GHG emissions are invalid,” reads CHCC’s petition. “The Endangerment Finding itself is therefore invalid and should be reconsidered.”

One of EPA’s lines of evidence was predicated on the existence of a “tropical hotspot” where global warming would be most apparent. Climate models predicted there’d be enhanced warming in the tropical troposphere.

CHECC’s 2016 study — by economist James Wallace, climatologist John Christy and meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo — found the tropical hotspot “simply does not exist in the real world.”

The co-authors found that once El Ninos and other natural factors were taken into account, “there is no ‘record setting’ warming to be concerned about.”

“These analysis results would appear to leave very, very little doubt but that EPA’s claim of a Tropical Hot Spot (THS), caused by rising atmospheric CO2 levels, simply does not exist in the real world,” according to CHECC’s 2016 study.

EPA issued its endangerment finding for six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, in 2009, citing three lines of evidence to claim such emissions from vehicles “endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.”

That finding allowed the Obama administration to move forward with an aggressive agenda to clamp down on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants and other industrial facilities.

Full post

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

April 10, 2017 at 11:13PM

Uncategorized 11 Apr 2017

Climate Activists Lose Battle Over Green Investment Bank

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

A fiercely debated process of selling Britain’s first nationally-owned bank for green investments took another step forward Friday with a court decision supporting the British government.

Image result for Green Investment Bank Greenpeace

Launched in 2012 under then-Prime Minister David Cameron – whose Conservative Party was in a coalition government with the smaller Liberal Democrats – the Green Investment Bank claims to be the first of its kind in the world.

Owned by the state, it is a for-profit institution whose stated mission is to accelerate the transition of the United Kingdom to a greener economy.

So far, the bank says in its literature it has backed 99 green infrastructure projects, which have committed £3.4 billion ($4.2 billion) to investments in off-shore farms, plants transforming waste into energy, and towns building more efficient street light systems.

In early 2016, the government began the process of privatizing the bank, which it said would see investors bring in new capital and allow the firm to continue and to grow.

To protect its original mission, the bank would create a “special share” in the company, held by a separate company and run by independent trustees. Once the privatization process is complete, the government said its green goals would only be able to be altered with the agreement of this special shareholder.

However, this has not been enough for a number of politicians and environmental groups, who have spoken out in parliament and in the press about their fears that the bank could be stripped of its assets once privatized, or have its green mission diluted.

Last fall it was widely reported, but not officially confirmed by the government for commercial reasons, that the preferred bidder for the company was Macquarie, a global investment bank based in Australia.

Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party, told parliament in January that she thought Macquarie had a ”very, very worrying” track record as an investment firm.

”The [Green Investment Bank] has been widely recognized as a true success story, kick-starting truly innovative low-carbon projects across the UK,” she said. “Yet the preferred bidder, Macquarie, not only has a dismal and terrible environmental record but an appalling track record of asset-stripping.”

Greenpeace has also charged that the ”special share” would have limited legal powers to enforce the green purposes of the bank and no power to veto investments before they were made.

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

April 10, 2017 at 10:43PM

Uncategorized 11 Apr 2017

Warm Winter: U.S. Climate Prediction Center Makes A Wrong La Nina Prediction

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

So much for a cold winter. Despite predictions of a colder, snowier season in the northern U.S. from the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center, the winter of 2016 to 2017 proved anything but.

“It was half right,” National Weather Service Meteorologist Eric Ahasic said of the long-range forecast.“It was colder and snowier than normal in eastern Montana and the Dakotas. Especially in North Dakota, it was a really harsh winter … [but] it was much above normal here in Minnesota.”

The original forecast was based on an anticipated La Niña weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean, which tends to result in cold air from Alaska and Canada being routed through the Midwest. Ahasic said that never really materialized.

“Last winter, 2015-2016, was the strongest El Niño [the opposite of La Niña] we’ve had on record, which only going back to the 1950s,” Ahasic said. “What happened is the La Niña just never really developed. We just hovered in the neutral phase.”

What instead characterized this winter, Ahasic said, was a number of wide swings, from record highs to bone-chilling lows, due to an unusually amplified jet stream that swung back and forth over the region..

“You’d be either way to the north of the jet stream, which meant you’re on the cold side of it, or that jet stream is way off to the north, so you’re on the warm side and way above normal temperatures,” he said.

But the overall trend was still definitely a warm one, particularly in February, which saw a few days top 60 degrees.

“It seemed like we’d have a week of cold weather and then three weeks of above-normal temperatures, so when we average it out, it comes to warmer than average,” Ahasic said.

The precipitation prediction also proved incorrect. Weather service data shows that Owatonna received 38 inches of snow from November to March. That’s more than the previous winter, but well short of 2012 to 2015, some of which saw close to 70 inches of total snowfall.