US Military is World’s ‘Single Largest Producer’ of Greenhouse Gases – Report

© US Army / Ryan Hallock (via Reuters)

The Pentagon is the “single largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world,” according to a new study about climate change that accuses the Trump administration of being in “various modes of denial” about it.

The report, from Brown University’s ‘Costs of War’ project, focuses specifically on "post-9/11 wars" and their impact on emissions. It estimates the US military has been responsible for 1,212 million metric tons of greenhouse gases between 2001 and 2017. Emissions from “overseas contingency operations” in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Syria accounted for more than 400 million metric tons of CO2. In 2017 alone, the report says, “the Pentagon's emissions were greater than all emissions from Sweden or Denmark.”  

Of course, the Pentagon can fix that problem; they can just obliterate Sweden or Denmark, or both. They will be Muslim countries and consequently, enemies of the USA long before global warming becomes a catastrophe. (I am just kidding).

The effects of climate change will soon be “feeding political tensions and fueling mass migrations and refugee crises,” the report says, noting that the military has already added climate change to its list of national security concerns.

This is a theory that has little or no basis in fact, but is the politically correct position to have.

The researchers criticized the Pentagon for acknowledging the threat of climate change to national security, but failing to acknowledge "that its own fuel use is a major contributor.” They also accused "some elements" within the Trump administration of being "in various modes of climate denial.”

Of course, it would be no different if the Democrats were in the White House. Deep State will protect the military from any attempt to downsize or diminish its capability.

While the military received praise for making some effort to decrease its energy consumption, including by gradually replacing some non-tactical fleet vehicles with hybrid, plug-in or alternative fuel vehicles, reducing idling, and developing solar installations at some bases, the report says there is “room for more reductions.”

The study found seven major sources of greenhouse gas emissions relating to US military activities, including from installations and non-war operations, war-related emissions and emissions from the production of weapons. Emissions caused by the reconstruction of destroyed infrastructure in war zones and the deliberate burning of oil wells and refineries by all parties to war have also been factored in.

The authors also question whether the huge US presence in the Persian Gulf is necessary, since the US itself is less dependent on the region's oil than in the past and does not necessarily need to “protect the global flow” of oil.

One of the recommendations was that the Pentagon should report its fuel consumption to Congress annually, information which is currently “explicitly withheld.”

I just calculated that a 1.5 hour flight by an F-35 uses an amount of fuel equal to all the gasoline I have used in 55 years of driving. Ground one F-35 for an hour and a half and you negate one entire lifetime of pollution.

The researchers also recommended that each military installation should draw up plans to reduce energy consumption by 10 percent by 2022, and advised increased use of alternative fuels, hybrid vehicles and renewable energy. The Pentagon should also identify which military and national guard bases could be closed, whether due to climate change impacts or diminished threats.

The US military must urgently "reduce their role" in creating greenhouse gas emissions as a matter of national security, the report urged, concluding that if it takes bold actions to reduce fossil fuel use, there could be “enormous positive implications” for the climate.

How MSM and the Climate Change Lobby Distort the Debate

Carbon dioxide not ‘primary contributor’ to global warming, EPA chief says

© Peter Andrews / Reuters

Scott Pruitt, President Trump's new administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, does not think carbon dioxide is the primary contributor to global warming, a belief his own agency contradicts.

On Thursday, CNBC “Squawk Box” host Joe Kernen asked Pruitt if he believes that carbon dioxide has been proven to be the “primary control knob” for climate change.

“I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” Pruitt said.

"But we don't know that yet. ... We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis," he said.

Pruitt’s statements run contrary to the EPA website, which definitively states: “Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change.”

This is where MSM loses credibility. Here they compare apples to oranges and criticize Pruitt for not believing they are the same thing. The question he asked was - is CO2 the primary cause of global warming. Then the RT reporter (and a bunch of liberals on Twitter) go a little nuts and claim he is contradicting his own web site. But what does the web site actually say? 

“Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is

contributing to recent climate change.”

It does not say that it is the primary cause of climate change, but only that it is primary among greenhouse gasses. I agree with that statement and I suspect Pruitt would too.

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) also disagree with Pruitt.

“The planet's average surface temperature has risen about 2.0 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere,” NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies reported in January, based on NASA and NOAA data.

Just once, I would like top hear one of these guys say that they have eliminated sun-spot activity as the main driver in climate change and why.

The two agencies also said that global temperatures in 2016 were the warmest ever recorded.

It was also the strongest or 2nd strongest El Nino ever recorded, so that's what you would expect.

In response Thursday, Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), co-chair of the Senate Climate Action Task Force, called Pruitt’s views “extreme” and “irresponsible.”

"Anyone who denies over a century's worth of established science and basic facts is unqualified to be the administrator of the EPA. Now more than ever, the Senate needs to stand up to Scott Pruitt and his dangerous views," he said in a statement.

There is a century worth of science proving greenhouse gasses are responsible for climate change? Wow! How did I miss that? It's only been in the last few decades that science has even considered that greenhouse gasses may be contributing to climate change. In fact, it's been less than 50 years since most climate scientists decided that the planet was warming rather than cooling.

It doesn't help your cause to make such inflammatory and unscientific statements. It 'outs' you as being as 'scientifically illiterate' as the one you criticize.

Schatz says that that lawmakers will hold Pruitt accountable through the appropriations process, through oversight of the EPA, and by making sure that the agency follows the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

“He is still obligated to follow the law,” Schatz said.

Several other Democrats and climate scientists took to Twitter in protest of Pruitt’s comments.

In the interview, Pruitt said that the EPA should focus on reducing regulatory uncertainty, which he said has put a “paralysis on development.”

“Regulatory certainty is something we need to focus on at the EPA and that’s what we’re trying to re-instill in the agency presently,” Pruitt said. “This idea that if you're pro-environment you're anti-energy is just something we've got to change, so that attitude is something we're working on very much.”

Pruitt also called the Paris Agreement, an international accord to mitigate the impacts of climate change, “a bad deal” and said that he would soon be making an announcement on changes to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which set the average fuel economy for new cars and light trucks.

Lest you think I am partial here, (don't laugh), I find the above two paragraphs a little concerning. CAFE standards drive innovation and there is always room for improving air quality when it comes to vehicle emissions. (I don't automatically relate air quality to climate change but to healthy people and environments). Makes you wonder who Pruitt is working for, the people, or the oil industry?

16 Globally Renowned Scientists Say Man-Made Climate Change is BS

This article was published by The Astute Bloggers on Friday, July 18, 2014. Since I apparently missed it then, I include it here now. I know the list has grown considerably in the past two years. 

Here are the names and credits for the deniers:

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; 
J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; 
Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; 
Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; 
William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; 
Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; 
William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; 
Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; 
James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; 
Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; 
Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; 
Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; 
Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; 
Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; 
Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva;
AND: Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever.

HERE'S AN EXCERPT: (An excerpt of what, I don't know)

In September, (2013, I assume) Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?" 

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

I should note that July 2014 was before the beginning of this past year's record El Nino event.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years.

The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money."
RTWT!