Category Archives: carbon
Global Community versus Global Warming
The civilized world rebuked ISIS by agreeing to turn down the global thermostat.
Al Gore was giddy. He proclaimed, “the global community is speaking with one voice”.
Last time the “global community” tried to speak with one voice was the Kyota Protocol. Poor countries said screw it, we want to get rich too. So this time around the rich countries agreed to buy off the poor ones for $100 billion a year. Or, as The Wall Street Journal editorial board put it, “governments of the West are going to dun their taxpayers to transfer money to clean and green governments run by the likes of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe”.
But not to worry. John Kerry says the deal is non-binding. It’s not a treaty because a treaty would never get past the US Senate. In other words it’s empty symbolism. Not that that’s a bad thing, according to Robert Tracinski:
As a global warming skeptic, who thinks it’s absurd that the entire world is supposed to get together to prevent relentlessly rising temperatures (that aren’t happening) and who considers the idea of an international political target for global temperatures at the end of the century to be a monument to the hubris of central planning, I’m not bothered that the Paris Agreement is empty symbolism.
Isis Oil Crisis
President Obama is so green it’s tough to get him to take his own side in a fight.
Former CIA Director Michael Morell told Charlie Rose the reason President Obama refused to bomb ISIS oil facilities was to save the environment.
Really.
Obama was also reluctant to bomb ISIS oil trucks because he didn’t want to harm the drivers. When the trucks finally were bombed, we gave 45 minutes advance warning by dropping leaflets telling the drivers to run away.
Dick Morris thinks this is “loony”. ISIS pays its jihadis with the $2 million a day it makes in oil sales. Here’s what Morris had to say about the environmental cost of putting a stop to that:
This kind of environmental fantasizing was in vogue during the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein’s destruction of all of Kuwait’s oil fields was thought to be likely to cause huge damage. Paul Crutzen, a noted atmospheric scientist, predicted that a “nuclear winter” might ensue with a cloud of smoke covering half the Northern Hemisphere for at least 100 days. Carl Sagan argued that the effects of the destruction of Kuwaiti oil fields could be comparable to the explosion of the volcano Tambora in 1815, which produced “a year without summer.”
It never happened.
Pipeline to Paris
When President Obama killed the Keystone Pipeline last Friday he threw blue collar unions under the bus in favor of elitist greens. That’s according to Terry O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers International Union of North America.
Obama agrees:
“Approving this project would have undercut our global leadership on climate.”
He hopes to lead the UN climate conference in Paris at the end of the month.
Keystone Killed
After seven years of dithering, President Obama killed the Keystone pipeline on Friday. He said the project wouldn’t make a meaningful long term contribution to the economy.
Matt Lewis in The Week explains the real reason the president took so long. Labor unions were for the pipeline and environmentalists were against it. Labor isn’t happy:
We are dismayed and disgusted that the president has once again thrown the members of [The Laborers’ International Union of North America], and other hard-working, blue-collar workers under the bus of his vaunted ‘legacy,’ while doing little or nothing to make a real difference in global climate change. His actions are shameful. [LIUNA, via The Hill]
New Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took the slap in the face more gracefully.
Warren Buffett took the news gracefully too. Oil not shipped by pipeline will have to he shipped by train. He owns the trains.
Emissions from Volkswagen
Reuters reports that Volkswagen will “repair” up to 11 million cars rigged to give misleading emissions info to inspectors. The “fix” will cost $6.5 billion.
Emissions
The evil geniuses at VW figured out a way for its diesel emissions systems to recognize when they were being tested. During a test the system stifles emissions according to government standards. The rest of the time the system turns itself down or off, allowing for great mileage and more power but higher emissions.
Who but the greenest among us is going to want to bring his car in for that repair?
