Skeptics Win! AG pulls #ExxonKnew subpoena

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Climate change prosecutors suffer defeat as attorney general pulls Exxon subpoena

Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude E. Walker agreed Wednesday to withdraw his climate-related subpoena of ExxonMobil, a stunning reversal that delivered a blow to the Democratic-led effort to prosecute climate change dissent.

Claude E. Walker, Attorney General, Virgin Islands Claude E. Walker, Attorney General, Virgin Islands

In the Joint Stipulation of Dismissal, Mr. Walker said he would pull his March 15 subpoena of the world’s largest energy company, which had challenged the subpoena as unconstitutional.

“After conferring on this matter, the parties mutually agreed that Attorney General Walker will withdraw the subpoena and ExxonMobil will stipulate to the dismissal without prejudice of this action,” said the four-page document filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The decision indicates a dramatic scaling back of Mr. Walker’s climate change investigation, coming just five weeks after he withdrew his subpoena of the free market Competitive…

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Remember that claim “global warming is causing cherry trees to bloom earlier” ? – Never mind, light pollution is likely the cause

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Oh this is funny. I pointed out the other day on Twitter that “Global Warming is the universal boogeyman of the left”. Almost anything that seems slightly out of the ordinary in the natural world now seems to have global warming or climate change immediately slapped on it as the cause. I blame the education system and the lack of teaching critical thinking. One of the most famous knee jerk reactions aided and abetted by a graph that should have had a caveat from the “correlation is not causation” department comes from the Washington Post environmental reporter Jason Samenow:

cherry-blossom-time-series

His article: D.C.’s cherry blossoms have shifted 5 days earlier: what about global warming and the future? immediately puts warming as the blame, excluding any other possibility, because, see there’s this graph he made, and the evidence is right there:

My analysis of temperatures and blooms dates reveals Washington’s average…

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Discovery: Wind-blown Antarctic sea ice helps drive ocean circulation

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Study first to quantify influence of Antarctic sea ice

Ocean waters circulate globally, rising in some regions and sinking in others.CREDIT L.D. Talley et al,, Oceanography, 2013 Ocean waters circulate globally, rising in some regions and sinking in others.CREDIT L.D. Talley et al,, Oceanography, 2013

Antarctic sea ice is constantly on the move as powerful winds blow it away from the coast and out toward the open ocean. A new study shows how that ice migration may be more important for the global ocean circulation than anyone realized.

A team of scientists used a computer model to synthesize millions of ocean and ice observations collected over six years near Antarctica, and estimated, for the first time, the influence of sea ice, glacier ice, precipitation and heating on ocean overturning circulation. Overturning circulation brings deep water and nutrients up to the surface, carries surface water down, and distributes heat and helps store carbon dioxide as it flows through the world’s oceans, making it an important force in the global…

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Guardian: Old People Voting Against Climate or Brexit is “Intergenerational Theft”

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Anker Grossvater erzählt eine Geschichte 1884 Anker Grossvater erzählt eine Geschichte 1884. By Albert Anker – Albert Anker, Sandor Kuthy und andere, Orell Füssli Verlag, Zürich 1980, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5488292

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Oil industry consultant Dana Nuccitelli, writing for the Guardian, has launched yet another green attack on democracy, by suggesting that older people who voted for Brexit, or who vote against green policies, are committing “intergenerational theft”.

The inter-generational theft of Brexit and climate change

Youth will bear the brunt of the poor decisions being made by today’s older generations

In last week’s Brexit vote results, there was a tremendous divide between age groups. 73% of voters under the age of 25 voted to remain in the EU, while about 58% over the age of 45 voted to leave.

This generational gap is among the many parallels between Brexit and climate change. A 2014 poll found that 74% of Americans under…

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Brexit: Greenpeace, FOE fears a “Bonfire” of Green Regulations

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EU_flag-fractured

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Evidence is mounting that Brexit, and possible “contagion” of the British exit from the EU, the empowerment of nationalist movements throughout Europe demanding their own exit referenda, is the worst nightmare come true for green groups which had been counting on the bureaucratic authoritarianism of the European Union to bind democratically elected politicians to strong green policies.

Brexit: Environmentalists fear ‘bonfire’ of regulations designed to fight climate change and protect wildlife

Remain campaigners have argued that EU legislation has helped towards tackling water and air pollution, protect endangered species and imposed tough safeguards on the use of genetically modified crops and potentially dangerous chemicals.

Regulations set in place to help fight climate change and protect Britain’s wildlife may be destroyed following the Brexit result, top environmentalists have warned.

Reacting to the vote to leave the European Union, charity groups and climate change campaigners said the…

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The Tangled Web of Global Warming Activism

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Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) wrote,

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”

There were several actions required to create the tangled web of deception relating to the claim that human-produced CO2 caused global warming. It involved creating smaller deceptions to control the narrative that instead of creating well-woven cloth became the tangled web. The weavers needed control of the political, scientific, economic inputs, as well as the final message to the politicians to turn total attention on CO2.

Their problem was the overarching need for scientific justification, because science, if practiced properly, inherently precludes control. Properly, you go where the science takes you, by disproving the hypothesis. However, before the planners could get to the science, they had to establish the political framework.

The framework was built around the need to prove the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis (AGW), which…

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Why we had to abandon our home

Mothers Against Wind Turbines Inc.

keanes

“This is an Interview that we did for Irish radio at our abandoned house in Roscommon .I am posting this in response to some questions about how we dealt with the wind farm noise issues ,did we get compensation from the developer ,did the developer buy our house any why we had to abandon our home, and why we did not sue the Developer . There are seven families in County Cork who are in litigation against a developer after they and their children abandoned their homes over six years ago .We were offered the same legal team on a pro bono basis and declined the offer for two reasons ,one was the fact that we are both over sixty years old and were not prepared to spend six years or more fighting an entity with deep pockets and time on their hands,sure they only have to stretch things…

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Thank you, America!

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By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley 

head for the brexit

For my final broadcast to the nation on the eve of Britain’s Independence Day, the BBC asked me to imagine myself as one of the courtiers to whom Her Majesty had recently asked the question, “In one minute, give three reasons for your opinion on whether my United Kingdom should remain in or leave the European Union.”

My three reasons for departure, in strict order of precedence, were Democracy, Democracy, and Democracy. For the so-called “European Parliament” is no Parliament. It is a mere duma. It lacks even the power to bring forward a bill, and the 28 faceless, unelected, omnipotent Kommissars – the official German name for the shadowy Commissioners who exercise the supreme lawmaking power that was once vested in our elected Parliament – have the power, under the Treaty of Maastricht, to meet behind closed doors to override in secret any decision…

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Another unaccounted for climate variable: Airplanes make existing clouds brighter

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From STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY and the department of negative feedbacks comes this surprising finding that says not only do contrails add reflectivity for incoming solar radiation, they also increase reflectivity for other nearby clouds.

Jet contrails as seen by satellite. Credit NASA Langley Research Center Jet contrails as seen by satellite. Credit NASA Langley Research Center

Clouds may have a net warming or cooling effect on climate, depending on their thickness and altitude. Artificially formed clouds called contrails form due to aircraft effluent. In a cloudless sky, contrails are thought to have minimal effect on climate. But what happens when the sky is already cloudy? In a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, scientists at ACES and colleagues from the UK show that contrails that are formed within existing high clouds increase the reflectivity of these clouds, i.e. their ability to reflect light. The researchers hope that their discovery offers important insights into the influence of aviation on climate.

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New AGU study negates the climate ‘methane emergency’ in Alaska

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One of the most “out there” climate activist groups is the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, a collection of luminary scientists who are convinced we are on a one-way trip to perdition in a picnic basket because Arctic methane is going to cause runaway feedbacks:

AMEG-statement-methane-feedback

THURSDAY DEC. 4 2014 – Press Conference Room 2, COP-20, Lima

PRESS CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT
Arctic Methane Emergency Group

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

TIME: Thursday, December 4, 2014, 12:00-12:30 PM

SUBJECT: Arctic meltdown: a catastrophic threat to our survival
AMEG calls for rapid refreezing of the Arctic to halt runaway melting

Just who would direct Gaia to do this “rapid refreezing”? Inquiring minds want to know. Since they have not updated their web page since December, 2014, perhaps there is no emergency after all….Gavin seems to think not. Or, maybe they just decided to run away from the conspiracy theory rantings of AMEG member Dr…

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