Europe Slams Trump In Public On Climate, Lobbies Him In Private For Natural Gas Exports

European leaders criticizing President Donald Trump’s Thursday decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord have also been lobbying the administration to fast-track the approval of liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals.

ProPublica’s Andrew Revkin reported Friday that, while European leaders were “generally basking in the glow of the Paris Agreement,” they’ve been quietly lobbying Trump since February to fast-track approvals of multi-billion-dollar investments in U.S. LNG export terminals.

Maros Sefcovic, who heads the European Union’s commission on energy policy, told ProPublica in April that “LNG exports were a central focus of meetings earlier in the year in Washington with Trump administration officials” to get Europe off Russian-supplied gas.

That same month Secretary of Energy Rick Perry told an energy conference that Europeans “[w]e’re out in the public and they’re giving all these speeches about the Paris accord and all the things we’re going to do, and we get into private meetings, it’s like, ‘How do we get that LNG?’”

“Don’t get up on the front end and make all these speeches about how good you’re doing, when the fact of the matter is you’re not,” Perry said.

European politicians attacked Trump for leaving the deal, and claimed they will double down on it after the U.S. has left.

“We in Germany, in Europe and the world will band together to take more decisive action than ever to confront and successfully surmount major challenges to humanity such as climate change,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel, vowed Friday.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that his country won’t even consider the Trump administration’s offer to renegotiate the terms of the Paris climate deal.

“As the article points out, some (but not all) European countries have been pressing for alternatives to Russian pipeline gas for some time,” Richard D. Kauzlarich, former U.S. ambassador to the energy rich nation of Azerbaijan and Bosnia and a professor of energy geopolitics at George Mason University, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “In particular, the Baltic states have been anxious to reduce their dependence on Russian gas and believe that US LNG can help in this regard.”

U.S. LNG exports will have political implications in Europe where about half the continent’s natural gas supply comes from state-owned Russian companies. Foreign policy experts see U.S. gas exports as a way to undermine Russia’s energy dominance in the region.

“Europe lacks a common energy policy, especially about Russian gas imports, so it is difficult for the EU to leverage either the US or Russia,” Kauzalarich said. “On the other hand, the Trump administration wants to expand US energy infrastructure especially gas pipelines and LNG port facilities so the capacity for US LNG exports to global markets – including Europe – will grow.”

About half of Europe’s imported natural gas comes from Russia. This dependence prevented many of America’s European allies from responding more forcefully to Russian actions in Syria and Ukraine.

The rise of the U.S. as a major exporter of natural gas is an enormous change in the way the E.U. could get its electricity and heat. Though Russian state-owned media denies it, most experts agree that merely selling U.S. natural gas to other countries will seriously undermine Russia’s lucrative energy hegemony. It will allow for European and Asian countries to have a much broader choice of natural gas suppliers.

“In response to Qatar LNG exports to Europe and the potential US LNG exports, Gazprom [Russia’s state controlled gas company] has become concerned about maintaining market share,” Kauzalarich said. “In some cases, it has been willing to renegotiate contracts downward to compete.”

Russia has used its gas as a political tool to keep Eastern European countries on a tight leash. Russia interrupted natural gas supplies at least three times since 2006 to put political pressure on Eastern European countries, like Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states. The U.S. sent its first shipment of LNG to Europe in January 2016.

For these countries, increasing American natural gas exports allowed them to reduce their dependence on Russian gas and switch suppliers. Increased competition for natural gas in the world market has already reduced Russia’s bargaining power and export revenue. North American LNG exports could compete against Russian gas, forcing the country to rethink how it treats customers.

The Department of Energy (DOE) gave a Texas-based energy company permission in April to export liquefied natural gas to countries with which the U.S. does not have free trade agreements.

U.S. consumers would deal with minimal costs to export LNG and would reap huge economic benefits, according to a study published in December 2015 by the DOE. The study found that exporting American LNG would provide huge environmental benefits as well, stating that exporting LNG will help “address a variety of environmental concerns in the power‐generation sector.”

Exporting natural gas is likely to be a growth industry, as global demand for natural gas is expected to be 50 percent higher by 2035 than it is now, according to the International Energy Agency. Demand for imports of LNG increased 27 percent in the United Kingdom last year alone.

Ref.: http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/03/europe-slams-trump-in-public-on-climate-lobbies-him-in-private-for-natural-gas-exports/

.. another funny thing from 2015

Top Scientist Resigns Admitting Global Warming Is A Big Scam

Global warming scientist resigns after admitting global warming is a big scam

Top US scientist Hal Lewis resigned from his post at the University of California after admitting that global warming was a big scam, in a shocking resignation letter.

From the Telegraph

The following is a letter to the American Physical Society released to the public by Professor Emeritus of physics Hal Lewis of the University of California at Santa Barbara

Sent: Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal Lewis
From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).

Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence – it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it…

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club.

Ref.: http://yournewswire.com/top-scientist-resigns-admitting-global-warming-is-a-big-scam/

.. and back in 2011

War of words over global warming as Nobel laureate resigns in protest

A Nobel laureate has quit one of the world’s leading organisations for scientists in protest at its assertion that the evidence of damaging global warming is “incontrovertible”.

Ivar Giaever, 1929: Global warming

Ivar Giaever, 1929 Photo: ALAMY

In a fresh challenge to claims that there is scientific “consensus” on climate change, Prof Ivar Giaever has resigned from the American Physical Society, where his peers had elected him a fellow to honour his work.

The society, which has 48,000 members, has adopted a policy statement which states: “The evidence is incontrovertible: global warming is occurring.”

But Prof Giaever, who shared the 1973 Nobel award for physics, told The Sunday Telegraph. “Incontrovertible is not a scientific word. Nothing is incontrovertible in science.”

The US-based Norwegian physicist, who is the chief technology officer at Applied Biophysics Inc and a retired academic at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world, added: “Global warming has become the new religion.”

Prof Giaever was one of Barack Obama’s leading scientific supporters during the 2008 president election campaign, joining 70 Nobel science laureates endorsing his candidacy.

But he has since criticised Mr Obama over his stance on global warming and was one of more 100 scientists who wrote an open letter to him, declaring: “We maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated.”

He has now parted company with the APS after what he called lengthy consideration. In an email to its executive office Kate Kirby, he said he “cannot live” with its official statement on global warming.

He questioned whether the average temperature of “the whole earth for a whole year” can be accurately measured, but contended that even if the results are accurate, they indicate the climate has actually been “amazingly stable” for 150 years.

And he concluded that in any case, both “human health and happiness have definitely improved” over the so-called “warming period” of the last century and a half.

In its policy statement, the APS declares: “Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes. 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.”

Prof Giaever is one of the most prominent scientific dissenters challenging the controversial man-made global warming claims of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former US vice-president Al Gore.

He has testified to the US Senate about his doubts, calling himself a “sceptic” on global warming and citing both his birthplace and other scientific scares he has seen come and go during his career.

“I am Norwegian, should I really worry about a little bit of warming?” he said. “I am unfortunately becoming an old man. We have heard many similar warnings about the acid rain 30 years ago and the ozone hole 10 years ago or deforestation but the humanity is still around.

“Global warming has become a new religion. We frequently hear about the number of scientists who support it. But the number is not important: only whether they are correct is important. We don’t really know what the actual effect on the global temperature is. There are better ways to spend the money.”

Prof Giaever, 82, is not alone in rejecting the APS’s insistence that there is consensus on the existence and severity of man-made global warming.

Several prominent members have expressed frustration that it has refused to reconsider its position – drawn up in 2007 – in the light of the “Climategate” controversy about the findings of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

“Measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th – 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today,” dissenters wrote in an open letter to it its governing board.

Last year, another sceptic, Hal Lewis, a University of California professor quit the group, describing global warming as a “scam” and a “pseudoscientific fraud”.

In a statement issued after Prof Lewis’ departure, the APS said that “on the matter of global climate change, APS notes that virtually all reputable scientists agree… carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere due to human activity”.

Tawanda Johnson, an APS spokeswoman, told The Sunday Telegraph that the society was “disappointed” by Prof Giaever’s decision. It believed the criticisms were based on “misunderstandings” but would not “engage in a back-and-forth on Ivar’s observations”.

The APS says it that its climate change statement does not assert that “anthropogenic” (man-made) climate change is incontrovertible – but that the evidence of global warming is.

The society continues: “The graph of global temperature vs. time for the last 30 years shows just that. The statement also contains the following language: ‘Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate.’ That statement is based on basic principles of molecular physics and thermodynamics.

“Finally, the statement acknowledges uncertainties in the science: ‘Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate.'”

Ref.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/8786565/War-of-words-over-global-warming-as-Nobel-laureate-resigns-in-protest.html

Nobel Laureate in Physics; “Global Warming is Pseudoscience”

Publisert 17. des. 2015

Professor Ivar Giaever, the 1973 Nobel Prizewinner for Physics trashes the global warming/climate change/extreme weather pseudoscientific clap-trap and tells Obama he is “Dead Wrong”.
This was the 2012 meeting of Nobel Laureates.


 

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