Trade unions are firing back against the progressive “Green New Deal” agenda and, in doing so, are revealing a split between left-leaning labor and climate advocates in the House and Senate.

The “Green New Deal” is “not achievable or realistic,” read a letter from AFL-CIO energy committee heads Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, and Lonnie Stephenson, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

The letter was sent last week to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., the two leaders of the “Green New Deal” agenda. The letter has been trickling out on social media this week.

The Green New Deal was released by the two Democrats as a broad call to action on climate change, and has since become the policy platform for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. It calls for radical action to reduce the threat of climate change by switching out the nation’s entire energy grid to renewables in just 10 years. It offers few particulars and has raised many feasibility questions by both Democrats and Republicans.

The unions want to be part of the climate change discussion but concede that their members need assurances that the infrastructure development required to meet the nation’s climate and energy goals will be part of the discussion.

The investments needed to meet the clean energy and climate goals, including increased natural gas use, must be paired with “strong labor and procurement standards to grow family-sustaining, middle-class union jobs,” the letter added.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, tweeted out the letter on Monday and said he agrees with the union bosses.

Full story

The post Unions Split With Democrats Over ‘Green New Deal’ appeared first on The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

https://ift.tt/2NYM6Na

March 12, 2019 at 03:21PM

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

― George Orwell, 1984

The Ministry of Truth has responded to President Trump’s tweet.

Patrick Moore was not a co-founder of Greenpeace.

Greenpeace USA on Twitter: “Patrick Moore was not a co-founder of Greenpeace”

Rewriting the past is more difficult in the Internet age.

The Founders of Greenpeace

Patrick Moore, ecology student at the University of British Columbia

The Founders | Greenpeace International

There are hundreds or thousands of newspaper articles confirming Dr. Moore’s involvement with Greenpeace. Here are a couple of them.

06 Dec 1998, 51 – The Morning Star at Newspapers.com

24 Jul 1983, 1 – Arizona Daily Sun at Newspapers.com

But never mind the overwhelming evidence Greenpeace is lying – Twitter has their back, amplifying the big lie.

Global warming has nothing to do with science. The perpetrators are becoming very open about their motivation. I received this E-mail this morning from The American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Achieving these limits will require “rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,”

So what do we do now, they ask? What we do is expose and root out the totalitarians, frauds, liars and criminals who are attempting to overthrow our civilization.

via The Deplorable Climate Science Blog

https://ift.tt/2TGISDw

March 12, 2019 at 03:09PM

Abundant ice in Svalbard, East Greenland and the Labrador Sea is excellent news for the spring feeding season ahead because this is when bears truly need the presence of ice for hunting and mating. As far as I can tell, sea ice has not reached Bear Island, Norway at this time of year since 2010 but this year ice moved down to the island on 3 March and has been there ever since. This may mean we’ll be getting reports of polar bear sightings from the meteorological station there, so stay tuned.

Sea ice extent as of 11 March 2019, from NSIDC Masie:

Much of the ice that was blown out of the Bering Sea early in the month has returned and ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the East Coast of Canada is the highest its been in years, threatening to impede ferry traffic between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, as it did in 2015 and again in 2017. The fishing season off Newfoundland might also be delayed by the heavy ice, as it was in 2017.

Bering Sea

From late February to early March, sea ice retreated from the Bering Sea in such a hurry you could almost see it leave. At the same time, ice increased in the Barents Sea. It was almost as if winds were blowing it across the Arctic from west to east. We know that Bering Sea ice extent is always strongly influenced by wind: in fall, ice forms in the Chukchi Sea and gets blown south into the Bering Sea. However, the winds have changed now and much of that ice is back.

Barents Sea

There is still virtually no pack ice on the west coast of Svalbard (below) but that’s been true since about 2007. However, ice off the east coast and to the south is now extensive:

Bear Island, shown in the map below, is the small grey dot in the chart above. Ice reached Bear Island on 3 March and now surrounds it, something that has not happened since 2010:

Svalbard area ice has been up and down all winter but is now well above average:

East Coast of Canada

More than average amounts of ice (in blue, below) are present this year on the east coast, although only the ice off Newfoundland is relevant to polar bears, which rarely venture south of the Strait of Belle Isle (although one did in 2017).

Below is the weekly chart for 4 March showing the extent of ice off the East Coast:

Lots of ice off Newfoundland and Labrador in the last two years has resulted in high numbers of sightings of bears ashore, something that did not happen back in the 1980s and 1990s when ice was abundant. That’s because the population size of Davis Strait polar bears had not yet risen to the heights of recent years (which is almost certainly higher than in 2007, when the last survey was done). Even as recently as 2007, when thick ice delayed Newfoundland fishing for months, yet as far as I know there was not a single report of a polar bear ashore. That suggests population numbers must be at a certain threshold before large numbers of bears come ashore in winter and spring.

via polarbearscience

https://ift.tt/2HdDi5L

March 12, 2019 at 02:48PM

Two hundred years from now anthropologists will marvel at a bizarre cult at the start of the third millennium that were so terrified of climate change that they vowed not to have children until the weather got perfect, or climate change “ended” or the Yeti appeared at their press conference.

This is the logical end point of where the self-hate civilization gets us.

 BirthStrikers: meet the women who refuse to have children until climate change ends

Elle Hunt, The Guardian

In just two weeks, 140 people, mostly women in the UK, have declared their “decision not to bear children due to the severity of the ecological crisis”, says Pepino. “But we have also had people get in touch to say: ‘Thank you for speaking out about something that I didn’t feel I could even talk to my family about,’” she adds. Many of these BirthStrikers are involved with Extinction Rebellion, which on Saturday threw buckets of red paint outside Downing Street to symbolise “the death of our children” from climate change.

So people involved with a group called “Extinction Rebellion” are rebelling against extinction by, wait for it, not having kids?

The irony ‘s so hot it’s almost nuclear.

Be aware, she […]

via JoNova

https://ift.tt/2CdjzPi

March 12, 2019 at 02:23PM