The United States could remain in the Paris climate accord under the right conditions, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Sunday.

President Donald Trump was willing to work with partners in the Paris agreement if the United States could construct a set of terms that are fair and balanced for Americans, Tillerson said on the CBS “Face The Nation” program.

“The president said he is open to finding those conditions where we can remain engaged with others on what we all agree is still a challenging issue,” Tillerson said.

Trump administration officials said the United States would not pull out of the agreement and had offered to re-engage in the deal, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. U.S. officials attended a meeting on Saturday of ministers from more than 30 of the nations that signed the climate-change agreement.

Trump announced in June that he would withdraw the United States from the 2015 global climate pact, arguing it would undermine the U.S. economy and national sovereignty. The decision drew anger and condemnation from world leaders.

Tillerson said Gary Cohn, Trump’s top economic adviser, was overseeing the issue.

“So I think the plan is for director Cohn to consider other ways in which we can work with partners in the Paris Climate Accord. We want to be productive. We want to be helpful,” said.

Similar sentiments were expressed on Sunday by national security adviser H.R. McMaster, who said on ABC’s “This Week” program that Trump was open to “any discussions that will help us improve the environment.”

“He left the door open to re-entering at some later time if there can be a better deal for the United States,” said McMaster. “If there’s an agreement that benefits the American people, certainly.”

Full story

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

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September 17, 2017 at 11:17AM

 New DOI and DOA policy to cut overgrown, diseased, dead and burned trees is long overdue Paul Driessen President Trump promised to bring fresh ideas and policies to Washington. Now Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue are doing exactly that in a critically important area: forest management and conflagration prevention. Their actions…

via Watts Up With That?

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September 17, 2017 at 10:12AM

Fear of natural catastrophes among German citizens has dwindled over the past 10 years. Back in 2007, just on the heels of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth – the peak of the global warming scare – natural catastrophes took second place among the ranking of top fears for Germans.

Today ten years later in 2017 natural catastrophes are not even in the top three according to German ARD public television, which cited a study by R+V Insurances:

Chart source: R + V Versicherungen, via ARD German television screenshot.

Ranking in the top three are 1) terrorism, 2) political extremism and 3) tensions concerning the influx of foreigners.

South German SWR public broadcasting here cites the R + V study and writes that this year 56% of those surveyed said they feared “natural catastrophes”, putting that factor in fourth place in the ranking. A variety of other social and economic issues followed closely behind.

The ranking of fears is strongly linked to what issue happens to be dominating the news cycle at the time surveys are conducted. Coverage of climate and natural disasters comes and goes in cycles, and at times disappears for weeks or months from the German media radar.

Recently the Atlantic hurricane season was the top stories in the news, and so a survey done last week would have reflected a greater fear fo natural disasters. But once the hurricane season dies out later this fall and the La Nina-induced fall of global temperatures starts to happen, the media of course will go to other bad news to feature.

Made-up news: Ice-free Arctic!

This year there has not been any record ice melt, and global temperatures have in fact begun to ease off. There really isn’t much left out there to report. And when facts aren’t there, some even make them up. For example just before its prime time 8 p.m. news, meteorologist Karsten Schwanke of flagship ARD German television announced on 15 September 2017 that the northeast and northwest passages of the Arctic were ice-free, which is a flat out lie:

No ice-free Arctic passages this year, according to the National Snow and Ice data Center (NSIDC). See details here.

Fear a function of media coverage, not observation

German fear of climate and natural disasters is not really related to real world observations made by citizens, but largely depends on media coverage. When media cover it, or make it up, they get afraid. When they don’t cover it, the fear disappears.

Obviously there’s risk involved in the media featuring climate and natural disasters constantly, namely people would simply tune it out. So the German media instead focusses only the major natural disasters, always trying not to overdo it but to keep it at a level that keeps the fear alive.

Keeping fear at high levels is a very tough and challenging job, especially when reports of growing doom don’t match real life observations, or when the reports are organized propaganda.

via NoTricksZone

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September 17, 2017 at 09:48AM

Last year brought Greenland it’s fifth highest surface mass gain on record, and this year is already well ahead of last year.

Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Mass Budget: DMI

Meanwhile, the criminals known as climate scientists and climate journalists continue to generate completely fake news about Greenland, in hopes of pilfering money confiscated from taxpayers based on false premises.

via The Deplorable Climate Science Blog

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September 17, 2017 at 09:18AM