From MSNBC.
During his big emotional climate speech this week, President Ovbama said:
“I don’t want my grand-kids to not be able to swim in Hawaii or not be able to climb a mountain and see a glacier because we didn’t do something about it,That’d be shameful of us.”
But for some who study climate change the only shame is this: Obama’s plan does not go nearly far enough. It’s meek and dangerously self-congratulatory, sapping the movement of urgency while doing almost nothing to maintain the future habitability of the earth.
“The actions are practically worthless,” said James Hansen, a climate researcher who headed NASA’s Goddard’s Institute for Space Studies for over 30 years and first warned congress of global warming in 1988. “They do nothing to attack the fundamental problem.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he wrote, when asked if the plan would make continued climate activism unnecessary. Obama’s plan, and for that matter the proposed plan Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, he continued, “is like the fellow who walks to work instead of driving, and thinks he is saving the world.”
Hansen suggested a gradually rising fee for fossil fuel extraction, collected at the port of entry or, in domestic cases, the place where the material actually comes out of the ground. “As long as fossil fuels are allowed to (appear to be) the cheapest energy, someone will burn them,” he wrote in an email to msnbc. “It is not so much a matter of how far you go. It is a matter of whether you are going in the right direction.”
The right direction is away from a global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. If that grim milestone is reached the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that irreversible damage to society would be the likely result.
In Copenhagen in 2009, world leaders agreed to work together to keep global temperatures below that mark. In Paris this coming November and December, climate ministers will gather again in hopes of negotiating a new agreement, one that puts the world on a path for less than 2 degrees of warming.
…
The White House is reviewing the criticisms and told msnbc that it would respond shortly.
More: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/obamas-climate-policy-practically-worthless-says-expert
You gotta love the single mindedness on display at MSNBC in the poll that accompanies the story:
There’s no option for a simple “No, I don’t support it”. Typical.
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With his karma, Hansen will be reborn an artisan coal miner hauling his gunnysack or two a day. Or mebbe as the coal miner’s daughter.
==================
Abengoa – practically worthless:
4 Aug: Zerohedge: Tyler Durden: Meet Solyndra 2.0: This US-Taxpayer-Subsidized Spanish “Renewables” Firm Is Collapsing
News that bonds and stocks of Abengoa SA – the Spanish renewable-energy company – plunged after a plan to shore up capital failed to reassure investors that it can stop burning cash is likely to have passed many by. But coming just one day after President Obama unleashed his Clean Power Plan, the fact that the company – that is now facing significant liquidity concerns – received over $230 million in US taxpayer subsidies in 2014 – despite two ongoing federal investigations – may raise an eyebrow or two as images of Solyndra’s government-sponsored farce come to mind… as Diane Feinstein, Ken Salazar, and Bill Richardson – with the help of subsidies and Ex-Im bank loans alledgely exerted their influence to keep this zombie alive…READ ALL PLUS COMMENTS
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-04/meet-solyndra-20-us-taxpayer-subsidized-spanish-renewables-firm-collapsing
5 Aug: DakotaFinancialNews: Abengoa SA Downgraded by Zacks (ABGB)
Abengoa SA (NASDAQ:ABGB) was downgraded by Zacks from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report issued on Wednesday, Analyst Ratings.Net reports.
According to Zacks, “Abengoa SA is an engineering and clean technology company…The Company’s technology generates electricity from the sun, produces biofuels, desalinates seawater and recycles industrial waste…It also produces a variety of biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel). Abengoa SA is headquartered in Seville, Spain. “…
Abengoa SA has a one year low of $5.77 and a one year high of $30.75…
http://www.dakotafinancialnews.com/abengoa-sa-downgraded-by-zacks-abgb/320785/
Heh, now they downgrade.
=========
This is the same company.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aElP..Gdw9jo
From 2009…
Spain’s Iberdrola Gets U.S. Grants for Wind Projects (Update3)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aElP..Gdw9jo
Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) — Iberdrola SA, a Spanish company, will get most of the more than $500 million in economic recovery funds the Obama administration said today it is distributing to U.S. renewable-energy projects.
Bilbao, Spain-based Iberdrola will get $236 million for wind farms in Texas, Oregon and Minnesota and an additional $59 million for a Pennsylvania wind project, U.S. officials said.
Twelve projects in total will get funds, with 59 percent of the money going to Iberdrola’s Penascal project in Texas, the Hay Canyon and Pebble Springs wind farms in Oregon, Locust Ridge II in Pennsylvania and the Morraine II wind farm in Minnesota.
The money is part of President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan. The entire plan contains about $3 billion that will be given in lieu of tax credits to support about 5,000 biomass, solar, wind and other types of renewable energy production facilities.
“This renewable energy program will spur the manufacture and development of clean energy in urban and rural America,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a written statement.
Obama has set a goal of doubling renewable energy production in three years. He also has said that development of cleaner energy sources would create jobs.
“We are delighted and we are right now putting the stimulus money to use,” said Jan Johnson, a U.S. spokeswoman for Iberdrola.
She said the company plans to spend $6 billion over four years on renewable energy projects in places such as Arizona, Texas, Illinois, North Dakota and Oregon.
84 Turbines
The Penascal wind farm, near Sarita, Texas, the biggest project covered by the grants, is to receive $114 million. It began operating in April, using 84 turbines supplied by Japan’sMitsubishi Corp., and produces 202 megawatts, or enough to power 70,000 South Texas homes, according to an April statement by the company.
The grants will help develop 840 megawatts of capacity, or about 3 percent of total U.S. wind power, said Matt Rogers, an adviser at the Energy Department. Except for $2.7 million of the grants that went to solar projects, all the $502.6 million in grants support wind technologies.
============
Update: (same company as above)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-04/meet-solyndra-20-us-taxpayer-subsidized-spanish-renewables-firm-collapsing
That someone who so clearly needs real psychological help can get press like this speaks more poorly of the media than of James Hansen. At this point, I actually feel sorry for him as he’s pretty clearly suffering from delusions. Only a press so completely devoid of rational thought could have the indecency to let an unwell man continue to make a fool of himself.
Jim Hansen should go take a swim on the Major Degan…oops, not flooded? Didn’t he warn that it would be? He is a fool, and so are those who listen to him.
I support Hansen’s idea on a tax on Fossil Fuels (but from ships only). Put a huge import tax on tankers bringing in oil from offshore. Imagine how fast that would improve the North American economy. The Middle East oil would still flow, but it would go to Japan, China and India, etc. I don’t know. Just a thought.
TPP looks dead. The US isn’t the biggest customer anyway.
From my perspective, the Obama climate plan, James Hansen’s assessment of it, and MSNBC polls are totally worthless.
Obama’s grand kids aren’t going to curse him for the temperature, they’re going to curse him for the debt.
AMEN!!! (true story)
Jim Hansen as an honest man:
“The actions are practically worthless,” said James Hansen, a climate researcher who headed NASA’s Goddard’s Institute for Space Studies for over 30 years and first warned congress of global warming in 1988. “They do nothing to attack the fundamental problems (of the dwindling grant money and as a result, in the future, there will no longer be a source of funds for the tenured fortune tellers such as myself. If a large fee is placed on the extraction or consumption of fuels then there will be an unlimited fund for the study of climate and all of the problems associated with it.)”
He can take the position of head of high climate priests, who will consult their climate models and decide if the world is in balance or if further sacrifices are needed. I presume he will eventually wear an elaborate, feathered headdress in public.
OLD DEATH TRAIN HANSEN
ALWAYS GOOD FOR A LAUGH
More holy than thou
He warns you of Venus
The only thing now
That hardens his penis
He rants at the crowds
A coot with the hypers
His mind in the clouds
A load in his diapers
He quotes from the Greens —
We work for the many
(Diversity means
The colors of money)
He quotes from the Reds —
Consensus is dictum
(Good Socialist heads
Are all up one rectum)
A Fascist he cries
This Goebbels of weather
The truth is in lies
The bigger the better
So just like a skunk
His sight is a alarming
His science is junk
There’s no global warming
Eugene WR Gallun
Got to laugh at Hansen. Just an old fart desperate to be the center of attention. To achieve that he is employing his usual method — telling bigger lies than everybody else.
Eugene WR Gallun
Loved that one, Mr. Gallun! U DA MAN!
Tomis
To quote that great philosopher, Bugs Bunny: Wotta maroon.
(Applies to both Hansen and Bambi)
Hansen appears to think he is capable of organizing an economy and specifying options for 300 million people. It takes quite a lot of arrogance to assume such a thing, and even more to think that by doing so you are saving the world. It is a Messianic complex of some sort. I suppose a person could argue that it is a sign of mental illness. Ordinarily we simply ignore such people, or if they seem a danger to themselves and others we have them committed to an institution…unless, their delusions are aligned with the current religious orthodoxy. Radical environmentalism is the current religious orthodoxy. There is no way to get him off the streets.
“It is wonderful to be back in Oregon,” Obama said. “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go….” B. Obama
I hear that there are lots of glaciers in States 54 and 55. I would suggest that he take his grandkids there.
Well, let’s see… We have the 48 contiguous states, the state of hawaii, the state of Alaska, the state of confusion, the state of alarm, the state of anxiety, the state of unconsciousness, the state of depression, the state of mental health, the state of suspended animation and the state of the union address… I think there’s 58 actually.
Do I need a sarc tag?
Oh! forgot the most important one. THE STATE OF THE ECONOMY.
Dawtgtomis — nice one! — Eugene WR Gallun
I was going to add this yesterday, but I thought it would be too much…
State of: embellishment, exaggeration, grandiosity, misperception, anger, misunderstanding, intoxication, bewilderment, puzzlement, recklessness, embarrassment, awkwardness, arrogance, foolishness, folly, absurdity, idiocy, ineffectiveness, vainness, uselessness, inanity, vanity, narcissism, self-importance, conceit, arrogance egotism, pomposity, conceit, haughtiness, smugness, snobbery, superiority, self-satisfaction, condescension, snootiness, pretentiousness, contempt, scorn, snootiness, overestimation, aggrandizement, puffery, braggadocio, self-adoration, disrespectfulness, incredulity, self-exaltation, cynicism, scornfulness ….
There’s 49, now Mr. obama needs to tell us which other 8 states he has been in. [Dawg covered these]
Here’s hoping that the 58th state will be the state of honesty/clarity….
Dr James Hanson is practically worthless says Obama’s climate policy. There the lede is fixed.
James Edward Hansen (born March 29, 1941) is an American adjunct professor (meaning no official office nor phone nor e-mail nor insurance policy nor retirement policy not time off policy nor sick days policy nor salary!) in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences (this department was inaugurated due to the fact that Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory is the REAL geoscience institute at Columbia University, i.e. an impostor!).
Hansen is best known for his research in the field of climatology (his research was about the atmosphere of Venus! which failed miserably), his testimony (an act of desperation) on climate change (he never studied that) to congressional committees (money and a ruse to keep the money from NASA flowing into his bi-weekly Federal back account) in 1988 (open the windows and turn off the air conditioners!) that helped raise broad awareness (muddied the waters) of global warming, and his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change (Governmental action to extinct homo sapiens sapiens using tax payer money).
In recent years, Hansen has become a climate activist (hooligan) for action to mitigate the effects of climate change (advocates the extinction of all life within the national boarders of the United States of America especially within NASA Headquarters DC, his arch nemesis for good reason), which on a few occasions has led to his arrest (found naked in a porn movie theater in the “Tender Loin” region of the city of San Francisco while enjoying the money from the American Geophysical Union (membership dues) gave to him by Ms McEntee ($$$), kissy kissy, – a Sanctuary City!).
Ha ha
“I don’t want my grand-kids to not be able to swim in Hawaii or not be able to climb a mountain and see a glacier because we didn’t do something about it,That’d be shameful of us.”
==================
I’ve heard Hawaii is nice.
I imagine 99% of Americans have never been there.
About the same percentage that have seen a glacier.
Some of us work for a living, the trips to Hawaii and Alaska aren’t aboard Air Force 1.
You are a product of the Chicago machine, nothing more.
Any time you want to start acting like a President ?
It’s almost too late.
Been to Hawaii once. While in the military. Been to a glacier once. While in the military. The glacier was in Alaska and was the emptiest, deadest, weirdest place I have ever been to. Never want to go to another one. I wish Obama’s future grandkids all the best with their Hawaii trips and glacier-viewing.
James McMurtry put it this way in his lyrics:
“They can join the air force, or join the corps if they can’t make it here any more.”
If James Hanesn currently lives in Whitehorse Yukon, Winisk, Ontario or even Caribou, Maine, then he believes what he is saying. If he still lives in NYC, probably not. If he now lives south of the Mason-Dixon line, he’s announcing himself to be a fraud artist. So, where does he live? Has global warming scared Christiana Figueres so much that she has moved from Costa Rica to Iceland?
Al Gore moved from Tennessee to Santa Barbara. Why not Prince Rupert, BC?
Global warming doesn’t seem to have any influence upon these people’s decisions about where they choose to live. They are demonstrating, “global warming isn’t affecting me.”
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than serious ignorance and conscientious stupidity”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“….Pseudo-science and socialism,
Obama and his tricks;
Combining fear and ignorance,
It’s such a potent mix.
A big enough lie told often enough,
How many are being deceived?
And his incredulous rants on climate,
By how many are being believed?…”
http://rhymeafterrhyme.net/obama-and-ignorance-an-infectious-disease/
Well-Lol! I’ve had my good belly laugh for the day,
Then you’d better stop EPA foolin’ around!
James and Barak have that in common. No surprise, there.
I wonder how Mr. Hansen lives his life. Has he gone green in any significant way? Eschew airline travel, mass transit where available and has he devoted the majority of whatever salary he acquires and from what source?
If not so much then I’ll politely ignore his inflammatory and baseless claims especially while the agency he used to work for feels it necessary to falsify temperature data to prove something that is untrue.
And that the models he bases his supposed beliefs on are inaccurate and unusable.
You already know the answer to that question , Hansen like other green prophets such as St Gore firmly believe in their right to lecture others on what they should not do, while doing the very same things themselves.
James Hansen has already predicted that “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted” then CO2 concentrations need to be limited to 350ppm.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf
Since we are well above that level and civilisation is still here perhaps civilisation should just ignore him.
The windbag of Washington
For once I agree with Hansen.
Obama’s CO2 Deception
The best antidote to Hansenitis is to realise that there are independent sources of climate data that owe nothing to the US and its clique of scientists with narrowly focussed science objectives and the disturbing suggestion of political influence.
One possible source , from a nation with remarkable scientific skills and an advanced manufacturing technology that, in some areas , appears to exceeds that of the US , is of course China.
The National Space Science Centre (Chinese Academy of sciences) has an ambitious programme of space and remote sensing work , using its capable and independent satellite capability :
http://english.nssc.cas.cn/au/ac/
“The National Space Science Center (NSSC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is China’s gateway to space science. It is the key institute responsible for planning, developing, launching and operating China’s space science satellite missions. It also spearheads space science research in the fields of space physics, space environment, microwave remote sensing, space engineering technology, etc.”
Some of the research has been written up , much of it is to do with space weather , but some with climate , relevant to discussions here:
An example , and I cannot judge its value is given below (part of the abstract minus Figs which did not copy)
“High Correlations between Solar Activity and the Earth’s Averaged Surface Temperature Proved by NSSC Scientists
Global warming, namely the unequivocal and continuing rise in Earth’s climate, is one of the hottest and most debatable issue at the present time. As a scientific intergovernmental and international body under the auspices of the United Nations (UN), the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) once claimed that the release of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases contributed to as much as 90% or even higher of the observed increase in the global average temperature in the past 50 years. However, worldwide scientists are still skeptical and debate on the possible explanation of the global warming never ends. Research shows that the IPCC’s model tends to underestimate the impact of natural factors on the climate change, while overestimate that of the human activities.
As a matter of fact, solar activity is an important ingredient of natural driving forces of climate. A recent study done by space physicists at the State Key Laboratory of Space Weather, the National Space Science Center (NSSC) have demonstrated the high correlations between solar activity and the Earth’s averaged surface temperature during centuries. The result will to a large extend provide a new clue to reveal the cause of global warming in recent years.
Supported by NSSC’s “Five Key Cultivation Directions” Fund, Dr. ZHAO Xinhua and Dr. FENG Xueshang combined the measured data with those reconstructed to disclose the periodicities of solar activity during centuries and their correlations with the Earth’s temperature based on the wavelet analysis technique and cross correlation method. Their results demonstrate that solar activity and the Earth’s temperature have significant resonance cycles, and the Earth’s temperature has periodic variations similar to those of the solar activity (Figure 1).
The study also implies that the “modern maximum” of solar activity agrees well with the global warming of the Earth during the past century. A significant correlation between them can be found (Figure 2). Especially, the correlation between the solar activity and the ocean temperature is higher than the correlation between the solar activity and the land temperature. These results, as pointed out by a peer reviewer, “provide a possible explanation for the global warming”.
Their work, entitled Periodicities of solar activity and the surface temperature variation of the Earth and their correlations was published on CHINESE SCIENCE BULLETIN (In Chinese) 2014 No.14. It was reported by the global source for science news, EurekAlert!, both in Chinese and in English entitledHas solar activity influence on the Earth’s global warming? on June 3 and June 4, 2014, respectively.”