Month: April 2017

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Cornwall Alliance Fights Climate Ugliness

Cornwall Alliance Fights Climate Ugliness

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“Radical environmentalists will fight the order in every way they can, in Congress, in the courts, in the media, and apparently in the streets. As a citizen, you need to stay informed of the stakes and tactics in this battle, and we at the Cornwall Alliance need your support to keep up the good fight.”

In a recent post, E. Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation provided this update in the moral trenches of the climate-change public policy debate.

“Environmentalists Vow to Fight Trump in the Streets Over Climate Policy”

If you pay attention to news sources outside the typical conservative camp, you’ll have noticed two things in the last couple days: First the titles are all ridiculous in their alarmism (we are all going to die, etc. etc. etc.). Second, that impending doom is solely due to President Donald J. Trump’s recent executive order attempting to roll back  some of Barack Obama’s Climate Legacy.  To say that environmentalists are spitting mad is an understatement so vast I hesitate to make it, but the mental picture is good, so let’s go with it. 

The Huffington Post, in their article titled “Environmentalists Vow To Fight Donald Trump’s ‘Dangerous,’ ‘Embarrassing’ Climate Rollback,” reported the head of the Sierra Club saying,

“Trump can’t reverse our clean energy and climate progress with the stroke of a pen, and we’ll fight Trump in the courts, in the streets, and at the state and local level across America to protect the health of every community.”

While it’s laughable that radical environmentalists have decided to channel Winston Churchill to make their point (see his brilliant Dunkirk speech to see what I mean), it’s also scary, because they are threatening to fight not just legal battles but in the streets.  Radical environmentalists believe with a fervor of religious proportions—the environment is their god—and they will not stop just because they were dealt a minor set-back. This fight is just heating up, folks.  

And people in poverty around the world are still in desperate need of relief. That’s why we absolutely have to do two things:

  1. Trash the endangerment finding.
  2. Completely, 100%, get out of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

We stand ready to fight for these life-giving policy changes. Will you stand with us? Individuals, families, people struggling, both here and abroad, need access to abundant, affordable, reliable energy. They need relief from onerous regulations, they need relief from bureaucrats who believe they know what’s best for people thousands of miles away.  

Trump’s executive order should remove important barriers particularly to the coal industry, which employs, directly or indirectly, over 100,000 Americans but has been hard hit by the Obama Administration’s needless regulations. But don’t be fooled. Radical environmentalists will fight the order in every way they can, in Congress, in the courts, in the media, and apparently in the streets. As a citizen, you need to stay informed of the stakes and tactics in this battle, and we at the Cornwall Alliance need your support to keep up the good fight.

You are invited to view our new documentary film, Collateral Damage: Forgotten Casualties of the Left’s War on Coal , which shows up-close the devastation those regulations brought to representative communities in West Virginia.

The post Cornwall Alliance Fights Climate Ugliness appeared first on Master Resource.

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April 6, 2017 at 06:01PM

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Atmosphere around low-mass Super-Earth detected 

Atmosphere around low-mass Super-Earth detected 

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Size comparison of GJ 1132 b (aka Gliese 1132 b) with Earth [credit: Wikipedia]

Early indications from models suggest that ‘an atmosphere rich in water and methane would explain the observations very well.’

Astronomers have detected an atmosphere around the super-Earth GJ 1132b, reports the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.

This marks the first detection of an atmosphere around a low-mass Super-Earth, in terms of radius and mass the most Earth-like planet around which an atmosphere has yet been detected.

Thus, this is a significant step on the path towards the detection of life on an exoplanet. The team, which includes researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, used the 2.2 m ESO/MPG telescope in Chile to take images of the planet’s host star GJ 1132, and measuring the slight decrease in brightness as the planet and its atmosphere absorbed some of the starlight while passing directly in front of their host star.

While it’s not the detection of life on another planet, it’s an important step in the right direction: the detection of an atmosphere around the super-Earth GJ 1132b marks the first time an atmosphere has been detected around a planet with a mass and radius close to that of Earth (1.6 Earth masses, and 1.4 Earth radii).

Astronomers’ current strategy for finding life on another planet is to detect the chemical composition of that planet’s atmosphere, on the look-out for certain chemical imbalances that require the presence of living organisms as an explanation. In the case of our own Earth, the presence of large amounts of oxygen is such a trace.

We’re still a long way from that detection though. Until the work described in this article, the (few!) observations of light from exoplanet atmospheres all involved planets much more massive than Earth: gas giants – relatives of our own Solar System’s Jupiter – and a large super-Earth with more than eight times the Earth’s mass.

With the present observation, we’ve taken the first tentative steps into analyzing the atmosphere of smaller, lower-mass planets that are much more Earth-like in size and mass. The planet in question, GJ 1132b, orbits the red dwarf star GJ 1132 in the Southern constellation Vela, at a distance of 39 light-years from us.

Recently, the system has come under scrutiny by a team led by John Southworth (Keele University, UK). The project was conceived, and the observations coordinated, by Luigi Mancini, formerly of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) and now working at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Additional MPIA team members were Paul Mollière, and Thomas Henning.

The team used the GROND imager at the 2.2 m ESO/MPG telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile to observe the planet simultaneously in seven different wavelength bands. GJ 1132b is a transiting planet: From the perspective of an observer on Earth, it passes directly in front of its star every 1.6 days, blocking some of the star’s light.

The size of stars like GJ 1132 is well known from stellar models. From the fraction of starlight blocked by the planet, astronomers can deduce the planet’s size – in this case around 1.4 times the size of the Earth.

Crucially, the new observations showed the planet to be larger one of the infrared wavelengths than at the others. This suggests the presence of an atmosphere that is opaque to this specific infrared light (making the planet appear larger), but transparent at all the others.

Different possible versions of the atmosphere were then simulated by team members at the University of Cambridge and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. According to those models, an atmosphere rich in water and methane would explain the observations very well.

The discovery comes with the usual exoplanet caveats: while somewhat larger than Earth, and with 1.6 times Earth’s mass (as determined by earlier measurements), observations to date do not provide sufficient data to decide how similar or dissimilar GJ 1132b is to Earth. Possibilities include a “water world” with an atmosphere of hot steam.

The presence of the atmosphere is a reason for cautious optimism. M dwarfs are the most common types of star, and show high levels of activity; for some set-ups, this activity (in the shape of flares and particle streams) can be expected to blow away nearby planets’ atmospheres. GJ 1132b provides a hopeful counterexample of an atmosphere that has endured for billion of years (that is, long enough for us to detect it). Given the great number of M dwarf stars, such atmospheres could mean that the preconditions for life are quite common in the universe.

In any case, the new observations make GJ 1132b a high-priority target for further study by instruments such as the Hubble Space Telescope, ESO’s Very Large Telescope, and the James Webb Space Telescope slated for launch in 2018.

Full report: Atmosphere around low-mass Super-Earth detected | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy

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April 6, 2017 at 09:24AM

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The March Against Science

The March Against Science

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Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

Well, I wrote about this crazy March For Science idea two months ago, but the story just gets better. Far and away the most insightful comment I’ve read on this goofy idea of marching was from a climate scientist I respect, Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., who said:

The smartest people on the planet want to oppose Trump & the best they can come up with is a march in support of themselves?

Hard to argue with that … but since then there have been two developments.

One was the announcement that the March For Science will be led by none other than Bill Nye the Science Guy. We’ve discussed his wondrous views about science before.

Bill Nye and Partner from DWTS

Of course, this appointment of Bill Nye led to many people pointing and laughing. With all of the distinguished scientists in the country, the idea of picking Bill Nye as the honorary poster boy for the march is hilarious.

But wait, it gets better. In the sadly common Blue-On-Blue violence of identity politics, there’s been a new protest. This protest is not because Bill Nye lacks credibility. Nor is the protest because Bill Nye lacks credentials or cranial horsepower. And the protest is not because Bill Nye lacks support in the scientific community.

Nope.

This protest is because Bill Nye lacks melanin.

Seriously. You can’t possibly make this up. If I were Bill Nye, I’d go straight to the ACLU and get them to file an anti-discrimination lawsuit. What the organizers have done is a criminal offense under the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act. It’s clearly against the law to discriminate against the melanin-deficient, that’s just cruel.

It gets better. The protest is not just because Bill Nye lacks melanin. He’s also guilty of being short of another even more important requirement.

Bill Nye lacks that scientific necessity, the vital Y chromosome.

So in the wonderful American non-tradition of everyone getting a Participation Trophy, the March Organizing Committee has added two more “Honorary Co-Poster Children” or some title like that as Co-Leaderpersons of the March. Of course, neither of these new Co-Coordinationizers lacks those vital scientific elements of melanin and Y chromosomes.

Now, please be clear what I’m saying. I’m not dissing the two new Co-Non-Gender-Titled-People in any sense. I’m sure that both of the women named as Honorary Co-Chairpersonages, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the Iraqi-English pediatrician who exposed the Flint lead contamination, and Dr. Lydia Villa-Komaroff, a Hispanic biologist and businesswoman, are good scientists and well-intentioned people.

I’m just pointing out that this is another in the many pieces of evidence that this is a March For Political Correctness, not a March For Science in any sense. Opportunity wasted. Prepare for impassioned speeches from all the extremely scientific co-

Prepare for impassioned speeches from a bunch of extremely scientific spokesdudes and spokesmodels on how Trump hates water and air, and how spending $ Trillions with a T to cool the earth by 0.1°C in fifty years is a scientifically brilliant plan supported by 97% of all true moral noble and upstanding humanoids everywhere. Amen.

Oh, and if you disagree, think of the grandchildren, because compassion, and besides you’re just a hater and a scientific troglodyte, because 97%.

I put the over/under of someone passing out white lab coats along the march route at 100%.

March for science? … I don’t think so.

A rainy day here, more rain on the way. The forest is happy. The cat is not happy.

Me, I’m overjoyed, and I can only wish the same for you.

w.

PS—When you comment on someone’s ideas, I request that you please QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE REFERRING TO. That way, we can all understand what you are discussing. I can defend my words. I can’t defend your words about my words.

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April 6, 2017 at 09:10AM

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Why “Environmental” Groups Have Gone Mad

Why “Environmental” Groups Have Gone Mad

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I am sure that I have long since been ex-communicated by most “environmental” groups, but I still regard myself as an environmentalist in that I believe that the natural world should be preserved when it can be shown that such action will also be economically beneficial. My goal is to improve both human welfare and the environment; the current environmental groups claim that they are reducing the impact of humans on the environment. But they are actually making humans and the environment worse off in most of their high profile activities. I do not see how anyone can call himself or herself an “environmentalist” and advocate any of the following goals of many “environmental” organizations:

    o Reducing Earth’s level of atmospheric CO2. As discussed previously, if there is any real danger from the level of CO2 in the atmosphere it is that it is dangerously low. Making CO2 emissions lower increases the risk of CO2 plant starvation during the next ice age, and with it, the food supply for most of the world’s human, animal, plant populations. Those who advocate lowering the atmospheric CO2 levels are really advocating mass starvation of most plants and animals, including humans. I find this absolutely reprehensible, particularly when every climate-related argument for reducing CO2 emissions has been found to be scientifically invalid, including the claim that human activities are increasing atmospheric global warming by increasing atmospheric CO2 levels.

    o Chopping up or frying millions of birds and bats who encounter wind or solar farms. Birds and bats are probably the biggest consumers of insects injurious to humans and other animals. Decimating them by the use of ultra costly wind and solar projects is both unwise and anti-environmental. We need as many birds and bats as we can get, and we need as low a population of injurious insects (which many birds and bats eat) as possible.

    o Preventing the use of DDT, the only economical pesticide with a proven record of preventing malaria but not harming humans or birds, in less developed countries. Outlawing the use of DDT condemned tens of millions to death and hundreds of millions to one of the most debilitating diseases still rampant in the less developed world.

    o Opposing the use of fracking to lower the cost of extracting oil and natural gas. Fracking and associated technology is quite safe and one of the best technologies to increase production of oil and natural gas at a lower cost. It is forcing OPEC to keep prices of these vital fuels lower than they otherwise would be. It does have the disadvantage that fracking for natural gas reduces emissions of CO2 compared to coal, but this is well worth it for providing the advantages of improving human lives by using plentiful, inexpensive gas and oil. There are alleged to be some minor risks, but there are ways to reduce even these rather than banning the use of fracking. Fracking increases human welfare, which is strongly associated with an improved environment.

    o Increasing the cost of using energy to assist humans in their daily tasks by favoring unreliable, intermittent, and more expensive sources. Increasing the cost of using energy by raising its cost will decrease its use and thus human welfare and economic productivity, which are strongly associated with an improved environment as humans turn to such issues as their basic needs are satisfied.

    o Pushing down the reliability of electric power systems. The poster child for this is the State of South Australia, which has now suffered from five state electricity blackouts in the last six months as a result of closing down dependable fossil fuel generating stations in favor of unreliable “renewable” sources.

    o Pushing a very intolerant version of climate alarmism which according to one study has had a cost of roughly $1.5 trillion per year and is based on invalid science. These resources could have been used to really improve human welfare and the environment.

It is long past time for “environmental” groups to do something constructive that will make life on Earth better rather than worse. What they have done in recent years have resulted in all costs and no benefits. They have been taken over by left wing radicals, who are now trying to control the use of energy, which is drastically decreasing human welfare. This hurts humans including lowering their standard of living, which means they will do less to preserve the environment because their basic needs will be less adequately met.

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April 6, 2017 at 08:51AM