Category: Uncategorized

Uncategorized 22 Jun 2017

Richard Branson “Baffled” By President Trump’s Paris Decision

via Watts Up With That?
http://ift.tt/1Viafi3

Richard Branson and Al Gore

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Richard Branson is so shocked by President Trump’s decision to withdraw from Paris, he’s putting his own money into renewables R&D. My question – isn’t this how Capitalism is supposed to work?

Richard Branson: Business leaders are ‘baffled’ by Trump on climate change

ritish billionaire Richard Branson said business leaders were left dumbfounded by President Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement. But if there’s a silver lining, it’s that companies are now even more driven to invest in clean energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

“Whether it’s GE, or whether it’s the big oil companies… I haven’t come across one business person who doesn’t want to get out there and do everything they can to try to compensate for the [Trump] administration’s very strange stance,” Branson said on a Wednesday call with reporters.

“A lot of people in the world are baffled by the American administration’s comments,” the Virgin Group CEO said.

…

Rick Perry floats adversarial ‘red teams’ to resolve climate debate

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

Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Wednesday proposed using a process floated by a former Obama administration official to resolve the debate over global warming by allowing government scientists to hash out the facts through an open “adversarial” process.

“It’s a great opportunity for this country to have a conversation about the climate and get the politics out of it, and bring the scientists together,” Perry said while answering questions at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the fiscal 2018 budget.

“As a matter of fact, the under secretary of energy for President Obama, Steven Koonin, has said, who is a theoretical physicist and was over at the department and knows this issue rather well, and he says it’s probably time for us to have a conversation with all the politics out of room.”

Perry referenced the “Red Team/Blue Team” process that Koonin had endorsed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in April as a way forward on climate change, given the differences of opinion on the issue.

Koonin is “offering up the idea of having a red team come in and having this conversation,” Perry said. “And I would dearly love to be in the room while they’re having that, not to be one of the experts, but to really listen and have that opportunity to have that conversation.”

Koonin, who is now the director of New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress, outlined a process used in national security circles to test assumptions called the Red Team/Blue Team process.

“The national-security community pioneered the ‘Red Team’ methodology to test assumptions and analyses, identify risks, and reduce — or at least understand —uncertainties,” he wrote ahead of the March for Science in Washington. “The process is now considered a best practice in high-consequence situations such as intelligence assessments, spacecraft design, and major industrial operations. It is very different and more rigorous than traditional peer review, which is usually confidential and always adjudicated, rather than public and moderated.”

The process usually has a red team that challenges assumptions, and tries to find weaknesses, while the blue team offers evidence to detract from the red team’s challenges.

“Moving from oracular consensus statements to an open adversarial process would shine a much-needed light on the scientific debates,” Koonin wrote.

“My perspective is that it is not settled science,” Perry said. “I don’t mind being [a] skeptic about things,” and “President Obama’s own undersecretary at DOE … says this science is not settled.”

Koonin wrote that the “public is largely unaware of the intense debates within climate science,” adding that at a recent national laboratory meeting he attended, “I observed more than 100 active government and university researchers challenge one another as they strove to separate human impacts from the climate’s natural variability. At issue were not nuances but fundamental aspects of our understanding, such as the apparent—and unexpected—slowing of global sea-level rise over the past two decades.”

Perry offered up the red team process in responding to questions by Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., on “what it would take” to convince him that manmade carbon dioxide emissions are causing the Earth’s climate to warm.

“Senator I hope that we can agree that maybe it’s time for us to have a red team approach to this, set them in a room let’s listen to what they come up with,” Perry said.

Read more at Washington Examiner

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

June 22, 2017 at 10:26AM

Uncategorized 22 Jun 2017

Brexit Costs: EU Commissioner Proposes EU-Wide Climate Tax

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

Due to Brexit and other new commitments, the EU will soon be short of € 25 billion. As a new source of revenue, EU Budget Commissioner Günther Oettinger is proposing to introduce a EU-wide CO2 tax. Germany could benefit from it.

As a result Brexit and because of many new tasks the EU budget will be missing € 25 billion. EU Budget Commissioner Günther Oettinger, therefore, wants to introduce new tax revenues for the EU in form of a climate tax. In addition, he wants to take Brexit as an opportunity to remove not only Britain’s discount but similar contribution discounts for other EU member states.

“When the British leave, the discount negotiated by Maggie Thatcher falls away; I want to use this opportunity to cancel all discounts, including those for Denmark and Germany,” Oettinger told SPIEGEL. “After the departure of the British, we are likely to be short of at least € 10 billion a year,” he said. “I can imagine that half of this sum can be saved, and the remaining members will divide the other half among themselves,” the EU Commissioner said. Germany, for example, receives a discount on the additional costs incurred as a result of the British discount.

But it’s not just Brexit that is causing a hole in the EU budget. EU members states are facing many new tasks such as in defense, development aid or the safeguarding of external borders. The additional financial requirement of these new commitments is estimated to be 15 billion euros. This is why Oettinger intends to present a discussion paper on the future financing of the EU next Wednesday which will include proposed cuts in existing funding programmes. Apparently, cuts in the agricultural budget, which is still amounting to almost 40% of all EU spending, are being considered.

Oettinger also wants to open up new sources of income for the EU. To this end, EU member states are to transfer part of their tax revenues to Brussels. “One consideration is to use the topic of climate protection and to transfer the taxation of EU CO2 credits to the EU,” Oettinger said. “These CO2 credits are based on European legislation, but they have so far gone to member states.”

The advantages for the EU members are obvious, Oettinger said. “To date, Germany’s contributions to the EU come from the federal budget, but environmental taxes are paid by a steel producer from Luxembourg or by a chemical company from Rhineland-Palatinate, which would reduce the contribution from national budgets.”