Another country that gets a free pass when it comes to CO2 emissions: South Africa. From Twitter:
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Off the net for a bit -- getting ready for a bike ride -- warm but a bit wet:
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Global Warming? What Global Warming?
For the record: it is 12 degrees below zero
in the Grand Canyon today. It was fortunate that President Obama, through an executive order, ordered the Grand Canyon to be CO2-free by 2016:
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Harsh Winter In Canada Delaying Crude Oil Shipments From Alberta
Link here to oilprice.com:
Canadian oil producers can’t get a break. First it was the pipelines —
there are not enough of them to carry the crude from Alberta’s oil
sands to export markets. This pipeline capacity problem has been forcing
producers to pay higher rates for railway transportation, which has
naturally hurt their margins in no small way. Now, there is a shortage
of rail cars as well.
The situation is going from bad to worse for
Canadian producers who can’t seem to catch a break. Canadian railway
operators are fighting harsh winter weather and finding it hard to
supply enough cars to move both crude oil from Alberta and grain from
the Prairies.
The harsh weather is just the latest factor,
however.
Before that, there was the 45-percent surge in demand for rail
cars from the oil industry, Bloomberg reports,
citing Canadian National Railway. The surge happened in the third
quarter of last year, and Canadian National’s chief executive Ghislain
Houle says that it took the company “a little bit by surprise.” This
surprise has led to “pinch points” on the railway operator’s network,
further aggravating an already bad situation.
RBN Energy continues to report on this problem; earlier today it released part 4 of a continuing series on west Canada's crude oil takeaway crisis.
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The Sky Is Falling, The Sky Is Falling -- We're All Doomed
Even though common sense and reality seem to paint a different picture (see stories above), a faxed press release seems to have been worthy enough for printing by
The Washington Post.
From The Washington Post [personal comments in brackets]:
Barely two years ago, after weeks of intense bargaining in Paris, leaders from 195 countries announced a global agreement
that once had seemed impossible. [Signing a piece of paper with no intention of enforcing the guidelines is "hardly" impossible.]
For the first time, the nations of the
world would band together [like one big tribe] to reduce humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels
in an effort to hold off the most devastating effects of climate
change. [The most devastating: the loss of Tuvalu, which has since then grown much bigger.]
“History will remember this day,” the secretary general
of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, said amid a backdrop of diplomats
cheering and hugging. [#MeToo]
Two years later, the euphoria of Paris is colliding with the reality of the present.
Global emissions of carbon dioxide are rising again after several
years of remaining flat.
The United States, under President Trump, is
planning to withdraw from the Paris accord and is expected to see
emissions increase by 1.8 percent this year, after a three-year string of declines. Other countries, too, are showing signs they might fail to live up to the pledges they made in Paris.
In short, the world is off target.
The story fails to mention that
NOAA has been found to be fudging the current data.
But,
The Washington Post clearly tells us we are already doomed, if anyone is really paying attention to these graphs (and I don't think they are):
But this is key. This is the only paragraph in the story that calls out names:
Brazil has struggled to rein in deforestation, which fuels greenhouse
gas emissions. In Turkey, Indonesia and other countries with growing
economies, new coal plants are being planned to meet the demand for
electricity. In the United States, the federal government has scaled
back its support for clean energy and ramped up support for fossil
fuels.
- Does anyone see the 100-kg elephant in the room? India
- Does anyone see the 50-kg panda in the room? China
- Does anyone see the country returning to coal? Germany
- others? Mexico, South Korea, Japan (closing down nuclear reactors, returning to fossil fuel); and the list goes on and on and on
In fact, the US moving to natural gas, is actually doing more than the aforementioned.
By the way, the linked
Washington Post story appears to be a faxed press release supplied by the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research and edited for publication. I doubt any reporter was sent to the Tyndall Center to get the story.
