Breaking News on Temperature Studies Not Being Reliable, Windmills and Prairie Chicken; Corn-Ethanol Subsidies; Global Taxation; Power Plants Closing; Gulf of Mexico Oil Wells to Japan?;

Canada Free Press writes: Global warmers is in full retreat as Aussie experts admit growing doubts about their own methods as a new study shows one third of temperatures are not reliable. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) admits it was wrong about urban heating effects as a professional statistical analysis by Andrew Barnham exposes a BOM claim that “since 1960 the mean temperature in Australia has increased by about 0.7 °C”; the BOM assertion has no empirical scientific basis.
Like Stewart, Barnham paid particular attention to BOM’s methodology in addressing what is known as the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI), a proven phenomenon whereby thermometers measuring temperatures in towns and cities become unduly influenced by extra ‘background’ heating from buildings, road surfaces, machinery, etc. It’s in the UHI adjustments that the greatest discrepancies appear to lie.
A chastened BOM is now starting to questions its own UHI adjustments. A recent BOM media release referring to a paper presented at the Australia - New Zealand Climate Forum in Hobart (October 14, 2010) admits it formulated its calculations incorrectly.
BOM concedes that daytime temperatures in Aussie cities are warming more rapidly than those of the surrounding countryside and that this is due to the cities themselves. In effect, the admission undermines all prior claims that such warming is principally due to man-made emissions trumpeted in the similarly discredited “greenhouse gas theory.”
Skeptical researchers have long argued that little or no weighting has properly been ascribed to the UHI phenomenon; this apparent U-turn may signal the demise of the now discredited official adjusted Australian temperature record. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/29775
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pajamas Media writes: Kansas is ranked second in the nation behind Montana for wind energy potential, a fact which should have environmentalists jumping for joy. Instead, they’re trying to block the construction of transmission lines to wind farms in south central Kansas and north central Oklahoma.
Why? Well it all has to do with the lesser prairie chicken. According to a story by the Hutchinson News in February of this year, ranchers and wildlife officials in the area are teaming up with groups like the Sierra Club to block the construction of the lines, which would apparently run through prime breeding territory for the bird. Studies by Kansas State University show the birds will not nest within 400 yards of a power line, and the counties through which the lines would run are where the largest concentrations of the birds remain. Indeed, Kansas is the last state in the nation with a hunting season for lesser prairie Chicken.
The problem developers ITC Great Plains (a Kansas subsidiary of a Michigan company) and Prairie Wind Transmission (a joint venture between Westar Energy and Electric Transmission America) are facing: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is saying if more habitat is lost — and 60 percent of it has been lost in western Kansas alone — they’ll have to list the bird as “threatened.” In that case, the developers may find themselves with wind farms to nowhere. [It needs to be reiterated here that windmills are known to lead to bird kills, human illnesses, and stress caused by the noise.  There is no perfect solution, and all alternatives to oil and gas have their major problems.]  http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/environmentalists-blocking-wind-farms-and-solar-and-geothermal/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
National Review Online writes: The Environmental Protection Agency announced on October 13 that it had approved an increase in the amount of ethanol that can be blended into gasoline from 10 percent to as much as 15 percent. This latest decision [by the EPA, without the consent of Congress] allows the ethanol scammers to continue gorging themselves at the public trough. In July, the Congressional Budget Office reported that corn-ethanol subsidies cost U.S. taxpayers more than $7 billion per year. Those subsidies are larger than those given to any other form of renewable energy.Maddening as that is, the real outrage of the corn-ethanol scam involves air quality. In 2007, the EPA admitted that increased use of ethanol in gasoline would increase emissions of key air pollutants, including volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides, by as much as 7 percent. On Wednesday, the agency again acknowledged that more ethanol consumption will mean higher emissions of key pollutants.
O’Donnell’s: “More ethanol means worse air quality, period.” He adds that corn ethanol “doesn’t do anything to reduce greenhouse gases.”  Thus, despite more than three decades of subsidies that have cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, the ethanol industry cannot point to any decline in oil imports during the time period when the industry experienced its most rapid growth.
Evidence that the Obama administration is more worried about the farm lobby than urban air quality came within minutes of the EPA’s announcement. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack issued a statement praising the move, saying that the increased use of ethanol “is an important step toward making America more energy independent.” http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/250677/more-ethanol-means-dirtier-air-robert-bryce?page=2
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michigan Capitol Confidential writes: When the Republican majority is seated in the House of Representatives this January, many have high expectations that they will cut government spending as many of the candidates promised on the campaign trail. But the tricky question now is: Where to cut?
Some energy and environmental experts say they should begin with energy subsidies; specifically for ethanol.
Ethanol is a biofuel made mostly from corn in North America and can be used as an additive to gasoline. In many states, there is a mandated 10% blend with gasoline; the idea being to lower the amount of oil needed.
But many experts say this doesn't work.
"Contrary to popular belief, ethanol fuel does little or nothing to increase our energy security or stabilize fuel prices," wrote Kenneth Green, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Instead, it will increase greenhouse gas emissions, local air pollutant emissions, fresh water scarcity, water pollution (both riparian and oceanic), land and ecosystem consumption, and food prices." http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/13991
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spectator writes: Within 72 hours of the Tea Party's "shellacking" of Obama and Pelosi, Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, called for global taxation of the American public -- an idea endorsed by a high-level official of the Obama administration.
The demand comes from the Secretary-General's High-level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing, which was organized following last year's UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Among the panelists recommending global taxes are George Soros, the financier of socialist change, and Larry Summers, President Obama9;s economic advisor.
The Advisory Group's report is filled with options for governments to get the required $100 billion. "Governments may prefer to increase budget contributions," its authors helpfully suggest, until such time as new domestic or international taxes can be imposed and collected. It goes on to recommend a "carbon export optimization tax," and levies on international aviation and shipping including taxes on jet fuel and passenger tickets for international flights.
Other possibilities include royalties from fossil fuel extraction, and taxes on the use of electricity. Finally, there is the need, according to the UN, for a "global financial transaction tax," that would require "international coordination" and "international implementation." This is UN-speak for a global tax collecting agency.
A denunciation of international taxes on American citizens has yet to appear on the President's teleprompter, but it needs to. A congressional condemnation is warranted as well. The fact that Summers, a presidential advisor and former Treasury Secretary, has signed off on the idea that the United Nations is entitled to seize, rather than request, American wealth is monumental. http://spectator.org/archives/2010/11/12/global-warming-global-taxes
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Week writes: The U.S. will have to slow the implementation of some key environmental regulations on electric power plants or suffer a significant loss in the amount of reserve energy available to the U.S. power grid, said an industry report released this week.
The EPA, which regulates the power plants, recently adopted new regulations that could force some old plants to be retired.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Week writes: Scrambling to raise funds to pay for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, BP has agreed to sell four oil fields int he Gulf of Mexico to Japan's Marubeni Oil and Gas, said Graeme Wearden in the London Guardian.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The feds, who manufactured much of the oil spill hysteria (in connivance with press and tube), now concede that Chicken Little was misinformed. The Food and Drug Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (who knew that the oceans and the atmosphere require federal administration?) say that seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is safe to eat.
Now [they] tell us. There was more good news from the federal hysteria-mongers. 
Now she tells us. There was more good news from the federal hysteria-mongers of yore. The Environmental Protection Agency, which is not in the business of spreading good news, now says the level of cancer-causing chemicals released during the controlled burns of the BP oil spill was so minuscule that the agency is no longer concerned about the risk to residents and visitors to the Gulf. The chemical emissions from the oil fires on the surface of the sea was about in line with the risks from forest fires and residential fireplaces (like those in the White House).
Only yesterday we were all doomed. The mainstream media happily joined the din of weeping and wailing, the voices predicting nature's wrath to come. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/nov/15/pruden-on-second-thought-were-not-all-doomed/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------