ATLANTA — Air pollution is one human-made factor that is trapping sunlight and causing climate change, but the relationship also goes the other way: Climate change stands to increase levels of air pollution, experts say.

Although climate change is multifaceted, and won't bring warmer temperatures to all parts of the globe, the average global temperatures will rise.

Research shows that "a warming climate will lead to more severe air pollution," and that this holds true even if the only factor that changes is temperature, said Patrick Kinney, a professor of urban health and sustainability at the Boston University School of Public Health. Kinney's research group has looked into how temperature and air pollution are related. [5 Ways Climate Change Will Affect Your Health]

read more:

http://www.livescience.com/57913-climate-change-will-increase-air-pollut...

People like Happer are polluting the mind of people, on issues they know nothing about. 

William Happer is the emeritus Eugene Higgens Professor of Physics and Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University. Happer is a Director of the CO2 Coalition, a group formed in 2015 out of the former George C. Marshall Institute where Happer was also previously Chairman of the Board. [2], [3]

Happer is involved with a range of other climate change denial groups. He is on the Academic Advisory Council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). Will Happer is also member of a group titled Climate Exit (Clexit), founded in the summer of 2016. [4], [5]

According to Clexit's founding statement (PDF), “The world must abandon this suicidal Global Warming crusade. Man does not and cannot control the climate.” [6]

According to Will Happer's profile at the Cato Institute where he is adjunct scholar, his specialty at Princeton University was modern optics, optical and radiofrequency spectroscopy of atoms and molecules, radiation propagation in the atmosphere, and spin-polarized atoms and nuclei. From 1991-1993, Happer was the Director of Energy Research at the U.S. Department of Energy. [7]

William Happer has accepted funding from the fossil fuel industry in the past. In a Minnesota state hearing on the impacts of carbon dioxide, Peabody Energy paid him $8,000 which was routed through the CO2 Coalition. [8]

In 2015 undercover investigation by Greenpeace,  Happer told Greenpeace reporters that he would be willing to produce research promoting the benefits of carbon dioxide for $250 per hour, while the funding sources could be similarly concealed by routing them through the CO2 Coalition.  [8]

read more:

https://www.desmogblog.com/william-happer

“We’re doing our best to try and counter this myth that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant. It’s not a pollutant at all.” [69]

“We should be telling the scientific truth that more CO2 is actually a benefit to the earth. [… ]There are very good reasons to think that.” [69]

“Let me point out that if you have a well-designed coal plant, what comes out of the stack of the plant is almost the same thing that comes out of a person's breath.”  [69]

Quotes from Happer

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NO-ONE and I mean NO-ONE ever said that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant. We all know that we can die if we breathe too much of the stuff but THERE IS SO LITTLE OF THE STUFF in the atmosphere that it has no impact on us at this level — and plants love it. BUT, in regard to the atmosphere, EVEN SMALL VARIATIONS OF CO2 has been shown as the main component in increase and decrease of heat in the atmosphere. INCREASE CO2 and the amosphere warms up. Decrease CO2 and the atmosphere cools. The point here is that humans have added at least an EXTRA 100 PPM of CO2 to the natural 300 PPM maximum (of the last million years or so). This extra 100 PPM is driving increase of temperature as the present global warming. 

Even Arrhenius — the Swedish scientist who did the earliest calculations on this problem 120 years ago — thought that an increase of CO2 could be beneficial. At the time he did not account for a lot of other problems associated with increase of CO2: acidification of the sea, increase of droughts, floods and fires, stronger and more frequent devastating weather events, including downbursts, and the melting of glaciers, the displacement of the polar vortex, and the general warming which can destroy crops as much as help crops to grow.

A well designed small coal power plant exhausts about 3.5 million tons of CO2 PER ANNUM, a human exhaust by breathing is about 360 kilogram of CO2 per year.

Happer is talking shit. GRAN SHIT. TOTAL BULLSHIT!

The 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual rally of conservative officials and political activists, was set to be a big one — the first time a first-year sitting president would have attended since Ronald Reagan. While President Trump canceled late in 2016, enthusiasm for the president still filled its halls, and so did a number of his White House, Cabinet, and transition team members — including at least one previously unannounced member of the EPA transition team. 

Joining the CPAC lineup was the usual cast of climate science deniers who branded climate change as “fake news,” scientists and environmental advocates as “some of the worst people in the world,” and polluted rivers catching fire in the pre-EPA era as “the price of industrialization.” 

Early in the conference, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) sponsored a panel called “Fake Climate News Camouflaging an Anti-Capitalist Agenda — and What President Trump Plans To Do About it.”

Led by Craig Richardson, E&E has roots in a group which the Guardian described as having “a core mission of discrediting climate science and dismantling environmental regulations.”

Little surprise then that this panel was based on the idea that the media, NASA, and climate scientists are pushing climate change as part of an elaborate network of lies. 

Richardson seemed most excited to introduce panelist and Breitbart London writer James Delingpole — who has labeled climate change “the biggest scam in the history of the world” — saying, “We haven't had this much anticipation for a Brit since 1964 when the Beatles arrived.“ 

Joining him on the panel was Steve Milloy, a fellow at E&E and founder of the anti-climate change site JunkScience.com, and self-described “whistleblower” Tony Heller, who runs the blog Realclimatescience.com. 

The moderator was John Fund, national affairs columnist at the National Review and senior editor at The American Spectator. Fund, always good for a story about being attacked by the left, started by sharing an experience at the Aspen Ideas Festival when he was yelled at for calling out the organizers for using bottled water from Fiji.

Fund also used the opportunity to explain to Delingpole, the author of Watermelons: How the Environmentalists are Killing the Planet, where the fruity term for socialists-in-environmental-clothing came from. 

read more:

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/03/02/deniers-rally-conservatives-dismiss-climate-science-fake-news-breitbart-cpac

Millar and his colleagues concluded that the world needed a steady year-on-year decline to zero emissions in under 40 years, starting now. It still won’t be easy, they say, but getting warming under control is an achievable challenge.

Co-author Michael Grubb of University College London said the study had led him to revise his former view that staying below 1.5C was incompatible with democracy. He now thinks that with swift, decisive action the Paris goals are within reach.

Enter James Delingpole, a UK opinion writer who describes climate science as a false, self-serving attempt to destroy fossil fuels and wreck the economy. As is his wont, he launched yet another attack on the “climate alarmist establishment” in Breitbart Newsand London’s Sun newspaper.

“What [the Millar paper] effectively does is scotch probably the most damaging scientific myth of our age – the notion that man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) is causing the planet to warm at… dangerous and unprecedented speeds,” he said.

In the Melbourne Herald-Sun a day after Delingpole’s Breitbart piece, Andrew Boltchimed in with his own critique of what he called a “landmark paper”. (They may despise “warmist scientists”, but when it suits them both Delingpole and Bolt cite their work as gospel, which is a win of sorts.)

The Millar paper, Bolt said, “now concedes the world has indeed not warmed as predicted, thanks to a slowdown in the first 15 years of this century.” He then took the opportunity to bash old climate predictions by Tim Flannery and Bob Brown, as if that had any relevance.

In their haste to condemn, Bolt and Delingpole claimed modelling for the “landmark paper” showed past research outcomes had exaggerated current and future warming. Butthe modelling didn’t (and couldn’t) do that because it was set up just to illustrate a research point about carbon budgeting.

Millar wrote a written response to Delingpole’s attack, published by the Guardian, pointing out that the study’s warming projections for coming decades were identical to conclusions of the 2013 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The response indicates that Delingpole never contacted Millar or any of his colleagues involved with the research paper. He may never even have spoken to a scientist about it.

If he had explored further he might have learned what the authors were really saying, about how they reached their conclusions and how they continue to debate their work with others around the world. He might have been able to see more clearly how a lay person can get things wrong.

But that would have blurred his line of attack and spoiled his story, which is his bread and butter. What he has to say doesn’t bear any sort of objective scrutiny, but he continues to get airplay because he has a nifty turn of phrase and plenty of devoted followers.

The bottom line is that Delingpole, Bolt and their like aren’t interested in science. Their focus is the game of politics. They’re political animals through and through.

read more:

http://southwind.com.au/2017/10/03/james-delingpole-has-some-fun-with-th...

"getting warming under [1.5 degree Celsisus] control is an achievable challenge?"... tell them they're dreaming... Our real hope would be to stop the warming at 4 degrees Celsius above present temp... by stopping the emissions today...

Read from top...

As DeSmog reported in 2017, the foundation of the billionaire Mercer family has given millions to the museum, with latest figures putting their generosity at $3.8 million since 2013.

Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, heads the Mercer Family Foundation that has also been giving millions to climate science denial groups, including the notorious Heartland Institute.

But now the museum finds itself in the unenviable position of being defended, perhaps not surprisingly, by the Mercer-funded hyper-partisan outlet Breitbart and climate science denial characters from other Mercer-funded groups.

In a typically verbose screed on Breitbart, climate science denier James Delingpole called the scientists who had signed a letter protesting Mercer’s presence “basically frauds” and “imbeciles.”

Now climate science deniers have begun to circulate their own “open letter” calling for the AMNH to keep Mercer on the board and “not to cave in to this pressure.”

Read more:

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/02/06/climate-science-deniers-new-york-a...

The zeitgeist will soon bite their arse... 

See: 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33287

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/34805

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/29415

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/31205

and many more articles on this site including:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/19279

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A White House panel charged with determining whether climate change poses a national security threat will be headed by a climate science denier who has said he believes carbon dioxide is actually beneficial for the environment.

The proposed Presidential Committee on Climate Security would be headed by National Security Council senior director William Happer, the Washington Post reported. The panel, which would be established by executive order, will reportedly be charged with trying to refute intelligence agencies’ repeated findings that climate change poses a national security threat.

Happer is a physics professor and a former Energy Department staffer under George H.W. Bush but has no training as a climate scientist. He has sat on the boards of several groups that advocate climate change skepticism, and has insisted that carbon dioxide is beneficial and not a pollutant.

“We’re doing our best to try and counter this myth that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant,” he said at a 2016 energy and policy summit funded by the conservative Heritage Foundation. “It’s not a pollutant at all. . . . We should be telling the scientific truth, that more CO2 is actually a benefit to the earth.”

In a 2014 interview with CNBC, Happer said the “demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,” adding that “carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world, and so were the Jews.”

Read more:

https://www.salon.com/2019/02/22/science-denier-who-once-compared-co2-to...

Read from top. Apologies about the rude title of this comment, but nothing else can do better.

The notion of resorting to nuclear weapons to crack down on hurricanes has been suggested before, with a US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fact sheet about tropic cyclones emphasising the unlikelihood of it working, and the potential dangers involved.

Social media has reacted with vigour to a report from the news portal Axios on Monday that US President Donald Trump has on several occasions discussed with national security officials the possibility of using nuclear bombs to prevent devastating hurricanes from reaching the US.

Trump reportedly said at a White House briefing, as paraphrased by the publication's source:

"Why don't we nuke them? They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can't we do that?".

Twitter reactions were more than forthcoming, with some users taking the idea quite seriously, and responding with either disbelief or grave concern:...

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201908261076638968-trump-reportedly-floating-idea-of-nuking-hurricanes-generates-social-media-storm/

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How the mainstream media reported an August 8 accident at a top-secret missile test facility in northern Russia should serve as a cautionary tale regarding the dangers of rushed judgments via institutional bias.

In the days following the initial report of the accident, the media exploded with speculation over both the nature of the device being tested at the Nenoksa State Central Marine Test Site and the Russian government’s muted response. Typical of the hysteria was the analysis of Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program for the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and editor of the blog “Arms Control Wonk.”

Lewis and his collaborators penned a breathless article for Foreign Policy that asked, “What Really Happened?” According to Lewis, the answer was clear: “The reference to radiation was striking—tests of missile engines don’t involve radiation. Well, with one exception: Last year, Russia announced it had tested a cruise missile powered by a nuclear reactor. It calls this missile the 9M730 Burevestnik. NATO calls it the SSC-X-9 Skyfall.” 

Lewis’s assessment was joined by President Trump’s, who tweeted, “The United States is learning much from the failed missile explosion in Russia…. The Russian ‘Skyfall’ explosion has people worried about the air around the facility, and far beyond. Not good!” Trump’s tweet appeared to conform with the assessments of the intelligence community, which, according to The New York Times, also attributed the accident to a failed test of the Skyfall missile.

Former Obama administration national security analyst Samantha Vinograd tweeted: “Possibly the worst nuclear accident in the region since Chernobyl + possibly a new kind of Russian missile = this is a big deal.”

The Washington Post editorial board joined Vinograd in invoking the imagery of Chernobyl: “If this slow dribble of facts sounds familiar, it is — the same parade of misdirection happened during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.”

They’re all wrong. Here’s the real story of what actually happened at Nenoksa.

Liquid-fuel ballistic missiles are tricky things. Most Russian liquid-fueled missiles make use of hypergolic fuels, consisting of a fuel (in most cases asymmetrical dimethylhydrazine, or heptyl) and an oxidizer (nitrogen tetroxide), which, when combined, spontaneously combust. For this to happen efficiently, the fuel and oxidizer need to be maintained at “room temperature,” generally accepted as around 70 degrees Fahrenheit. For missiles stored in launch silos, or in launch canisters aboard submarines, temperature control is regulated by systems powered by the host—either a generator, if in a silo, or the submarine’s own power supply, if in a canister. 

Likewise, the various valves, switches, and other components critical to the successful operation of a liquid-fuel ballistic missile, including onboard electronics and guidance and control systems, must be maintained in an equilibrium, or steady state, until launch. The electrical power required to accomplish this is not considerable, but it must be constant. Loss of power will disrupt the equilibrium of the missile system, detrimentally impacting its transient response at time of launch and leading to failure. 

Russia has long been pursuing so-called “autonomous” weapons that can be decoupled from conventional means of delivery—a missile silo or a submarine—and instead installed in canisters that protect them from the environment. They would then be deployed on the floor of the ocean, lying in wait until remotely activated. One of the major obstacles confronting the Russians is the need for system equilibrium, including the onboard communications equipment, prior to activation. The power supply for any system must be constant, reliable, and capable of operating for extended periods of time without the prospect of fuel replenishment.

The solution for this power supply problem is found in so-called “nuclear batteries,” or radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG). An RTG generates electricity using thermocouples that convert the heat released by the decay of radioactive material. RTGs have long been used in support of operations in space. The Russians have long used them to provide power to remote unmanned facilities in the arctic and in mountainous terrain. Cesium-137, a byproduct of the fission of U-235, is considered an ideal radioisotope for military application RTGs.

On August 8, a joint team from the Ministry of Defense and the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics, subordinated to the State Atomic Energy Corporation (ROSATOM), conducted a test of a liquid-fueled rocket engine, in which electric power from Cesium-137 “nuclear batteries” maintained its equilibrium state. The test was conducted at the Nenoksa State Central Marine Test Site (GTsMP), a secret Russian naval facility known as Military Unit 09703. It took place in the waters of the White Sea, off the coast of the Nenoksa facility, onboard a pair of pontoon platforms.

The test had been in the making for approximately a year. What exactly was being tested and why remain a secret, but the evaluation went on for approximately an hour. It did not involve the actual firing of the engine, but rather the non-destructive testing of the RTG power supply to the engine. 

The test may have been a final system check—the Russian deputy defense minister, Pavel Popov, monitored events from the Nenoksa military base. Meanwhile, the deputy head of research and testing at the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics, Vyasheslav Yanovsky, considered to be one of Russia’s most senior nuclear scientists, monitored events onboard the off-shore platform. Joining Yanovsky were seven other specialists from the institute, including Vyacheslav Lipshev, the head of the research and development team. They accompanied representatives from the Ministry of Defense, along with specialists from the design bureau responsible for the liquid-fuel engine.

When the actual testing finished, something went very wrong. According to a sailor from the nearby Severdvinsk naval base, the hypergolic fuels contained in the liquid engine (their presence suggests that temperature control was one of the functions being tested) somehow combined. This created an explosion that destroyed the liquid engine, sending an unknown amount of fuel and oxidizer into the water. At least one, and perhaps more, of the Cesium-137 RTGs burst open, contaminating equipment and personnel alike. 

Four men—two Ministry of Defense personnel and two ROSATOM scientists—were killed immediately. Those who remained on the damaged platform were taken to the Nenoksa base and decontaminated, before being transported to a local military clinic that specializes in nuclear-related emergencies. Here, doctors in full protective gear oversaw their treatment and additional decontamination. All of them survived.

Three of the ROSATOM scientists were thrown by the explosion into the waters of the White Sea and were rescued only after a lengthy search. These men were transported to the Arkhangelsk hospital. Neither the paramedics who attended to the injured scientists, nor the hospital staff who received them, were informed that the victims had been exposed to Cesium-137, leading to the cross-contamination of the hospital staff and its premises. 

The next day, all the personnel injured during the test were transported to Moscow for treatment at a facility that specializes in radiation exposure; two of the victims pulled from the water died en route. Medical personnel involved in treating the victims were likewise dispatched to Moscow for evaluation; one doctor was found to be contaminated with Cesium-137.

The classified nature of the test resulted in the Russian government taking precautions to control information concerning the accident. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) seized all the medical records associated with the treatment of accident victims and had the doctors and medical personnel sign non-disclosure agreements. 

The Russian Meteorological Service (Roshydromet) operates what’s known as the Automatic Radiation Monitoring System (ASKRO) in the city of Severdvinsk. ASKRO detected two “surges” in radiation, one involving Gamma particles, the other Beta particles. This is a pattern consistent with the characteristics of Cesium-137, which releases Gamma rays as it decays, creating Barium-137m, which is a Beta generator. The initial detection was reported on the Roshydromet website, though it was subsequently taken offline. 

Specialized hazardous material teams scoured the region around Nenoksa, Archangesk, and Severdvinsk, taking air and environmental samples. All these tested normal, confirming that the contamination created by the destruction of the Cesium-137 batteries was limited to the area surrounding the accident. Due to the large amount of missile fuel that was spilled, special restrictions concerning fishing and swimming were imposed in the region’s waters — at least until the fuel was neutralized by the waters of the White Sea. The damage had been contained, and the threat was over.

The reality of what happened at Nenoksa is tragic. Seven men lost their lives and scores of others were injured. But there was no explosion of a “nuclear cruise missile,” and it wasn’t the second coming of Chernobyl. America’s intelligence community and the so-called experts got it wrong — again. The root cause of their error is their institutional bias against Russia, which leads them to view that country in the worst possible light, regardless of the facts.

At a time when the level of mutual mistrust between our two nuclear-armed nations is at an all-time high, this kind of irresponsible rush to judgement must be avoided at all costs. 

Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West’s Road to War.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-medias-russian-radiation-story-implodes-upon-scrutiny/

Gus was aware of these two stories:

The top one is a ridiculous idea that had been floating for a while.

On the second one, I was awaiting for someone to really give a fix on the technology of the RTG, studied by Gus... The USA also use similar nuclear technology in long distance voyaging satellites, far away from the sun. In theory, the RTG heats a couple of metals that have different potential when hot, thus in turn provide electrons (electricity) used for various purposes in satellites, including transmission and "heating". It's simple enough. The nuclear material in the RTG provides the heat by decaying. The choice of decaying "nuclear" material is critical as to provide enough heat for a long enough period of time, (several years, sometimes decades), against being too "cool" by being slow in nuclear decay, thus providing little power... The whole lot is "shielded". In the Russian experiment, though we don't really know what happened, either the RTG got too hot and blew up, or it provided too much heat to the rocket fuel in the missile... Either way, a sad case.

Read from top.