The New York Times is reporting that the Obama administration is working behind the scenes to “forge a sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions,” without seeking approval from Congress whatsoever:
In preparation for this agreement, to be signed at a United Nations summit meeting in 2015 in Paris, the negotiators are meeting with diplomats from other countries to broker a deal to commit some of the world’s largest economies to enact laws to reduce their carbon pollution. But under the Constitution, a president may enter into a legally binding treaty only if it is approved by a two-thirds majority of the Senate.
To sidestep that requirement, President Obama’s climate negotiators are devising what they call a “politically binding” deal that would “name and shame” countries into cutting their emissions. The deal is likely to face strong objections from Republicans on Capitol Hill and from poor countries around the world, but negotiators say it may be the only realistic path. [emphasis added]
Notice the statement didn’t say climate change “rules” to be enacted, but “laws” to reduce carbon pollution.
Weather Channel Founder Man-Made Global Warming… by TATS-2-MIN-NEWS
So because Obama and his administration haven’t been able to get everyone on board with the man made climate change “science,” despite continuously espousing that there is a consensus and the debate is over (even though there clearly isn’t a consensus and the debate obviously isn’t over or he wouldn’t have to go around Congress to do this), Obama is going straight to the UN and brokering a deal to get climate change laws passed anyway.
The other nations involved realize what is going on here, too. The NYT continues:
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“There’s a strong understanding of the difficulties of the U.S. situation, and a willingness to work with the U.S. to get out of this impasse,” said Laurence Tubiana, the French ambassador for climate change to the United Nations. “There is an implicit understanding that this not require ratification by the Senate.” [emphasis added]
The deal would be an attempt to finally pass a legally binding global climate change treaty like the one that failed in 1997, aka the Kyoto Protocol, a mechanism based on the 1992 UN Agenda 21 Earth Summit.
Carbon taxes and energy austerity, with even higher energy premiums, are sure to follow. Al Gore must be absolutely thrilled, considering he stands to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire” should such a thing go through.
This isn’t the first time Obama, the self-proclaimed “constitutional law professor,” has bypassed Congress to get his way on the climate change policies he wants to enact.
Last June, Obama used an executive order to enact regulations that would force coal-fired power plants to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent, triggering lawsuits in multiple states.
The president has planned this so-called “war on coal” ever since his first campaign (via The New American):
During his 2008 campaign, he told the San Francisco Chronicle, “If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them.”
Later during that same interview, Obama admitted that “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” under his plan for cap and trade. [emphasis added]
Remember, this is also the same president that told a group of young African leaders at a town hall meeting in April 2013 that if everybody has nice houses, cars and air conditioning, the planet will “boil over.”
Delegates at next month’s United Nations General Assembly in New York will continue working on the new deal to be drafted in December.
Meanwhile, we are still teaching children in school that America is a constitutional republic — with a straight face.
Melissa Melton is a writer, researcher, and analyst for The Daily Sheeple and a co-creator of Truthstream Media with Aaron Dykes, a site that offers teleprompter-free, unscripted analysis of The Matrix we find ourselves living in. Melissa also co-founded Nutritional Anarchy with Daisy Luther of The Organic Prepper, a site focused on resistance through food self-sufficiency. Wake the flock up!
GLOBAL WARMING A TOTAL LIE ? WOW REALLY
http://news.yahoo.com/stronger-pacific-winds-explain-global-warming-hiatus-study-180125166.html LONDON (Reuters) – Stronger winds which have cooled the surface of the Pacific Ocean could explain what is likely to be a temporary slowdown in the pace of global warming this century, researchers said. Last year, scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the pace of temperature rise at the Earth’s
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Arctic Sea Ice Melting Season Getting Longer ! WOW REALLY?
CHECK ON THE PHOTO TO SEE THE VIDEO: The summer melt season for Arctic sea ice has lengthened by a month or more since 1979, a new study finds. TAT’S 2 MIN NEWS 21714 Climate Scientists Slam Obama Science Czar’s ‘Pseudo-Science Rambling’ on Global Warming by TAT’S 2 MIN NEWS The primary culprit is a
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3.0 Abusing Doctor Suess: Pulling the Cat out of the Hat
So far, the evidence presents the rather tantalizing implication that volcanogenic CO2 emission is a significant if not dominant contributor to atmospheric CO2 levels. The next logical step for those trying to prove that the CO2 rise is anthropogenic is to find a signature to fingerprint anthropogenic CO2 as separate from all other sources of CO2. The research of one Harmon Craig, first submitted for publication on ISO:1953-Apr-20, found that 13C & 14C are enriched in carbonates. Harmon Craig discusses the carbon dating errors that can be introduced by natural isotopic fractionation, along with other processes (Craig, 1954). While Rankama (1954), suggests that 13C depletion is characteristic of biogenic sources, Craig (1954) goes so far as to suggest the use of 13C as a tracer for 14C. This becomes the subject of research by Hans E. Suess into the contamination of 14C dates by variations in normal atmospheric 14C, which quantified the effect of processes discussed by Craig (1954). Part of Suess’ explanation of his own results was seized upon as a way to fingerprint fossil fuel CO2 because fossil fuels, being too old to contain measurable amounts of this cosmogenic isotope, will deplete atmospheric concentrations of 14C when burned. In Cleveland & Morris (2006, p. 427) Hans Suess and the Suess Effect, used to account for contamination of radiocarbon dates by various phenomena, are given the following entries:
Suess, Hans 1909-1993, U.S Chemist who developed an improved method of carbon-14 dating and used it to document that the burning of fossil fuels had a profound influence on the earth’s stocks and flows of carbon. (Fossil fuels are so ancient that they contain no C-14.)
Suess Effect Climate Change. a relative change in the ratio of C-14/C or C- 13/C for a carbon pool reservoir; this indicates the addition of fossil fuel CO2 to the atmosphere.
However, this is only half of the explanation offered by Suess. In Suess (1955, p. 415) we read:
The decrease can be attributed to the introduction of a certain amount of C14-free CO2 into the atmosphere by artificial coal and oil combustion and to the rate of isotopic exchange between atmospheric CO2 and the bicarbonate dissolved in the oceans.
As you can see, Suess himself puts the Suess Effect down to more than just fossil fuel consumption. Yet, the exclusion of other processes, such as isotopic exchange and volcanic input, are hardly surprising given the assumption that fossil fuels are the only cause of 14C depletion. This assumption has quite some history in the literature. According to Tans et al (1979):
THE dilution of the atmospheric 14CO2 concentration by large amounts of fossil-fuel derived CO2 which do not contain any 14C is commonly called the Suess effect. Its magnitude can be calculated with the same geochemical models as the global carbon cycle that also predict the future rise of atmospheric CO2 to be caused by the combustion of fossil fuels.
Keeling (1979) concurs with a bizarre emphasis on “formulating models rather than surveying and interpreting data”. This reflects the rather general attitude, amongst anthropogenic global warming proponents, that the Suess Effect fingerprints the rising atmospheric carbon dioxide as the exclusive product of fossil fuel combustion. Does such a narrow interpretation concur with the original author’s idea? Suess (1955), who first proposes the idea that fossil fuels may contaminate the carbon isotope reservoir with adverse effects on carbon dating methods, estimates that fossil fuel CO2 accounted for less than 1% of carbon isotope reservoir contamination.
The smaller effects noted in the other three trees indicate relatively large local variations of CO2 in the atmosphere derived from industrial coal combustion, and that the worldwide contamination of the earth’s atmosphere with artificial CO2 probably amounts to less than 1 percent.
While, superficially, this may be interpreted as either 1% of contamination or 1% of total atmospheric carbon, the apparently “smaller effects” of “large local variations” in atmospheric CO2 due to industry shows that something other than industrial CO2 accounts for the bulk of the effect. Suess’ next statement further clarifies this point:
5.0 Plimer Strikes Again: 139,000 Intraplate Volcanoes Leaking CO2 into the Ocean
Until reading Hillier & Watts (2007), I would have estimated that the oceans, occupying twice the surface area of land, would have twice the number of volcanoes. In fact the number of submarine volcanoes is very much higher than twice the number of subaerial volcanoes. Given the update of Werner & Brantley (2003), which raises the estimate of subaerial volcanogenic CO2 from 27±3 MtCpa to 78±6 MtCpa, this would seem to imply roughly 200 MtCpa from submarine volcanogenic CO2 and brings the total estimate of volcanic CO2 in line with the bare minimum determined by Morner & Etiope (2002). Plimer (2001; 2009) & Wishart (2009) maintain that the amount of CO2 from volcanoes is enormous, and without estimating an amount suggests that it dwarfs anthropogenic contributions. If we take the updated estimate, correct the conservative bias, and extend to submarine environments we still wind up with a figure around 1.5 GtCpa for total passive volcanic emissions (excluding imponderables such as mid oceanic ridge emissions) and that is still only 20% of the 7.8 GtCpa attributed to anthropogenic CO2 emissions by the IPCC. As it turns out, there is a lot more to the distribution of volcanoes across different tectonic settings, and Plimer (2009) omits the rather small detail of a 2007 paper presenting primary evidence that underpins his claim in spectacular fashion.
Hillier & Watts (2007) surveyed 201,055 submarine volcanoes estimating that a total of 3,477,403 submarine volcanoes exist worldwide. According to the observations of Batiza (1982), we may infer that at least 4% of seamounts are active volcanoes. We can expect a higher percentage in the case of the count taken by Hillier & Watts (2007) because it includes smaller, younger seamounts; a higher proportion of which will be active. Nevertheless, in the spirit of caution and based on our minimum inference of 4% seamount activity from Batiza’s observations, I estimate 139,096 active submarine volcanoes worldwide. If we are to assume, in the absence of other emission figures for mid oceanic plate volcanoes, that Kilauea is a typical mid oceanic plate volcano with a typical mid oceanic emission of 870 KtCpa (Kerrick, 2001), then we might estimate a total submarine volcanogenic CO2 output of 121 GtCpa. Even if we assume, as Kerrick (2001) and Gerlach (1991) did, that we’ve only noticed the most significant outgassing and curb our estimate accordingly, we still have 24.2 GtCpa of submarine volcanic origin.
If guesses of this order are anywhere near the ballpark, then we can take it that either what has been absorbing all this extra CO2 is not absorbing as much or there has been some variation to volcanic output over the past 500 years or so. Both are normal assumptions given the variable state of the natural environment, and considering that vegetation consumed something on the order of 38GtCpa more in 1850 than today (see my Deforestation article for the quick and dirty calculation), it is hardly surprising that we were missing a large natural CO2 source in the carbon budget. The other possibility is that both Werner et al (2000: approx. 38 KtCpa) and Werner & Brantley (2003: approx. 4000 KtCpa) are correct, which could imply that volcanogenic CO2 emissions are increasing. This certainly would explain steadily rising CO2 observed at stations in regions most affected by volcanic emissions, it could partly explain the recent increase in ocean acidification discussed by Archer (2009, pp. 114-124), and further it would explain the more intense Spring melting centred on the Pacific Coast of Antarctica and along the Gakkel Ridge under the Arctic ice cap.
6.0 Conclusion: Three Million Volcanoes “Can’t be Wrong”
The second most erupted gas on the planet next to steam has a significant magmatic source in which it is preferentially fractionated towards the surface. On the scale of atmospheric composition, the isotopic composition of volcanogenic CO2 is effectively indistinguishable from fossil fuel CO2 due to the complete lack of statistically significant carbon isotope determinations for each of the contributing volcanic and tectonic provinces. Moreover, molar oxidation estimates cannot be used to constrain volcanogenic CO2 output because such estimates neglect the fact that carbon is not the only abundant element on the planet that preferentially combines with oxygen. It is only through emission monitoring taken in statistically significant empirical samples for each volcanic province that we may calculate a scientific estimate of total worldwide volcanic CO2 emission and perhaps, with statistically significant carbon isotope data for each volcanic province, we may one day be able to distinguish volcanic and industrial CO2 contributions in the atmosphere.
Eruptions and volcanic geochemistry are highly variable and so too are volcanic emissions. The lack of any sizeable volcanic eruptions (on the scale of Krakatoa, Tambora, Laki, Huaynaputina, Kuwae, Eldja, etc.) in the 20th Century confirms the volcanic quiescence of this time. Perhaps the reduction of frequency and amount of SO2 ejected into the stratosphere may explain the slight upward trend of atmospheric temperature last century. Perhaps the simplest explanation for the last century’s volcanic quiescence is a greater and more consistent release of volcanic gases in passive emissions whose sub-surface accumulation would have otherwise resulted in the buildup of pressure in magma chambers, and consequently much more violent eruptions.
Irrespective that some authors may neglect to allow for significant volcanogenic CO2 input to the atmosphere, volcanoes represent an enormous CO2 source that is mostly submarine. Furthermore, volcanic activity beneath both ice caps and localized to the regions of most intense melting has demonstrated an obvious cause of stronger Spring melts at the Poles. It is evident from the observations of Sohn et al. (2008) & Reves-Sohn et al. (2008) that the Northwest Passage was opened up by powerful volcanic activity under the Arctic Ice along the Gakkel Ridge, while West Antarctic melting (as opposed to thickening of ice throughout the rest of Antarctica) can be explained by recent volcanic activity beneath the ice (Corr & Vaughan, 2008). Moreover, there are simply too many volcanoes to deny that the atmospheric concentration of the most erupted gas next to water is predominantly controlled by the balance or lack thereof between volcanic activity and photosynthesis. Furthermore, there is simply no established volcanic CO2 fingerprint by which we may distinguish atmospheric proportions of anthropogenic and volcanogenic contributions. This leaves us with no empirical method by which we may attribute the 20th century rise in CO2 to human energy consumption.
http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/
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House Votes to Ban Pentagon from Claiming Climate Change as National Security Threat
John Holdren, czar of the White House Office of Science and Technology, recently asserted that “climate change is not a distant threat — It already is affecting every region of the country and key sectors of the economy.”
However, the House of Representatives approved an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which prohibits the Pentagon from using its funding to combat climate change.
The amendment, championed by House Representative David McKinley, reads: “None of the funds authorized to be appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to implement the U.S. Global Change Research Program National Climate Assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report, the United Nation’s Agenda 21 sustainable development plan, or the May 2013 Technical Update of the Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis Under Executive Order.”
McKinley said : “Climate change alarmists contend that man-made CO2 is the cause of climate change. Most people may not realize that 96 percent of all the CO2 emissions occur naturally.”
This measure also bars the Department of Defense (DoD) from using reports concerning global warming when defining viable threats to national defense.
The Center for Naval Analysis Military Advisory Board (CNAMA) stated in a recent report: “In Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, we are already seeing how the impacts of extreme weather, such as prolonged drought and flooding — and resulting food shortages, desertification, population dislocation and mass migration, and sea level rise — are posing security challenges to these regions’ governments. We see these trends growing and accelerating.”
Earlier this month, the CNAMA released a report co-authored by several retired generals concerning the “national security” threat climate change is to the environment.
Authors of the study assert “the biggest change in the seven years between the two studies was the increase in scientific certainty about global warming, and of the link between global warming and security disruptions.”
Climate change, according to this document, becomes a “threat multiplier” which could “enhance or contribute to already existing causes of global disruption.”
The report states: “Climate change can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world, and it presents significant national security challenges for the United States. [Problems will be felt] even in stable regions.”
Authors of the report claim that the US military “should plan to help manage catastrophes and conflicts both domestically and internationally, raising concerns regarding a wave of refugees fleeing rising sea levels. These effects are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad, such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability and social tensions — conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.”
The CNAMA states the climate change has and will continue to cause drought in the Middle East and Africa “leading to conflicts over food and water and escalating longstanding regional and ethnic tensions into violent clashes.”
Another concern of the authors is the “rising sea levels [that] are “putting people and food supplies in vulnerable coastal regions like eastern India, Bangladesh and the Mekong Delta in Vietnam at risk and could lead to a new wave of refugees.”
John Kerry, Secretary of State remarked: “Tribes are killing each other over water today. Think of what happens if you have massive dislocation, or the drying up of the waters of the Nile, of the major rivers in China and India. The intelligence community takes it seriously, and it’s translated into action.”
Kerry believes that this report will influence US foreign policy in the future.
In accord, John Conger, deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment with the Pentagon explained: “The department certainly agrees that climate change is having an impact on national security, whether by increasing global instability, by opening the Arctic or by increasing sea level and storm surge near our coastal installations. We are actively integrating climate considerations across the full spectrum of our activities to ensure a ready and resilient force.”
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change (IPCC) retorts that if a successful action is not taken to stop climate change, it will become a national and international security threat.
Pachauri said: “If the impact of climate change is going to make regions of violence poorer, then they really provide a level of fertility for inciting disaffection, resentment against the prosperous world. That’s an indirect effect that can create the conditions for terrorism.”
Recommendations to the US were: “We’re likely to have problems with respect to water supplies in the US. We have to tell the people of the US. That this is something intimately connected with their present and their future. The cost of inaction is going to be far higher than action. And the cost of action is really not all that high. The US has made all kinds of sacrifices in the past and has always come out on top.”
