[…]So here the scenario of “catastrophic” global warming causing the melting of the Arctic permafrost, thawing the peat-lands and releasing yet more “dangerous” gases to poison the environment falls flat on its face. The true scenario is more likely that Nature has, for billions of years, evolved its own “self-cleaning” mechanism.
Ocean acidification scare, dead:
[…]’Surprisingly, in Palau where the pH is lowest, we see a coral community that hosts more species, and has greater coral cover than in the sites where pH is normal,’ says Anne Cohen, a co-author on the study and Barkley’s advisor at WHOI. ‘That’s not to say the coral community is thriving because of it, rather it is thriving despite the low pH, and we need to understand how.’
Sea ice and polar bears, thriving:
[…] I have summarized this evidence in a fully referenced, peer-reviewed essay that explores how the acceptance of this fallacy (“sea ice is a stable habitat”) has so skewed the conservation biology of polar bears that to outsiders it may look like a scientific integrity issue. (polarbearscience.com)
The Surprising Economic Benefits of Frac Sand Mining
Hydraulic fracturing for oil and natural gas production has dramatically increased the demand for industrial silica sand, known as “frac sand,” available in great abundance in the Upper Midwest. As new sand mines and processing facilities are proposed, the policymakers and citizens of counties with frac sand resources are being asked to evaluate the potential economic benefits and costs of industrial sand mining.
In this Policy Study, the second in a series addressing frac sand mining topics, Heartland Institute Research Fellow Isaac Orr and geologist Mark Krumenacher address the key issues with which local policymakers and their constituents must contend:
- the benefits of silica sand mining, including high-paying opportunities for employment, increasing regional economic activity, generating tax revenues for state and local governments, and improving economic diversity in rural communities that rely heavily on agriculture for household income.
… and the costs, including asserted negative effects on tourism and agriculture, and whether mining might result in “boom or bust” economic cycles and may thus not be a sound foundation for long-term economic prosperity.
The authors focus their analysis on Wisconsin, the largest producer of industrial silica sand in the nation, accounting for approximately two-thirds of U.S. frac sand production. They note the state “has strong agricultural and tourism sectors and therefore provides valuable insight into claims industrial sand mining could negatively affect these industries.” They conclude:
Industrial sand mining has been a significant driver of economic growth across the Upper Midwest. If done in an environmentally responsible manner, it can be an important source of employment and earnings for decades to come.
Yes, the scares are dead. The EPA Fracking Miracle.
Now it’s started cooling:
This is a great column by Don Aitkin, (via Catallaxy) a fine independent commentator. He has looked closely at the latest claim that there has been no pause in warming and he demonstrates just how barefaced the government funded are prepared to be. (And never forget the smoking guns that turned up in the emails from the East Anglia climate research unit).
Alas, the Karl paper doesn’t even mention anyone else in the temperature-measuring field. I pressed on into Supplementary Materials attachment and found this gem: Previous versions of our SST analysis included satellite data, but it was dis-included in a later release because the satellite SSTs were not found to add appreciable value to a monthly analysis on a 2° grid, and they actually introduced a small but abrupt cool bias at the global scale starting in 1985 . Other observing systems, including satellites, and model simulations could provide important insights that would enable the quantification of interpolation uncertainties in data-sparse regions, but haven’t been used in this study.
Read them all.
