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Presidential Memorandum -- Climate Change and National Security | whitehouse.gov https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/21/presidential-memorandum-climate-change-and-national-security The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release September 21, 2016 Presidential Memorandum -- Climate Change and National Security September 21, 2016 MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES SUBJECT: Climate Change and National Security By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby direct the following: Section 1. Purpose. This memorandum establishes a framework and directs Federal departments and agencies (agencies) to perform certain functions to ensure that climate change-related...

As the Paris climate agreement edged closer to entering into force – which many advocates hope will occur before the possibility of a Trump presidency – Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday thanked what he called “warriors for the planet” as the second-to-last hurdle on the path to that achievement was cleared. Addressing the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Kerry said he was “absolutely confident” that the most ambitious climate deal yet negotiated will enter into force before the next U.N. climate megaconference, which starts in Marrakech, Morocco on November 7 – one day before the U.S. election....

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon could have used his valedictory speech to the General Assembly for some self-reflection on what he could have done better during his two terms. Ban Ki-moon delivered his final address as United Nations Secretary General to world leaders gathered for the UN’s annual high level General Assembly debate. He highlighted as successes during his two terms in office the UN member states’ adoption of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals agenda and the successful negotiation of the Paris Agreement on climate change. The Secretary General then catalogued the many unresolved conflicts and “grave security threats” from Syria...

“Current temperature 95 degrees,” the weather man said, and hastened to add, “but it feels like a hundred and five.” Immediately I stood up. The time had come to test a longstanding hypothesis. I packed a winter coat, hat, and gloves; a notepad; and a No. 2 Ticonderoga pencil. With these things in hand, and my three-in-one thermometer-compass-magnifier keychain survival tool, I headed for the door. Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/07/feels-like-weather-and-the-latex-glove-index/#ixzz4JpHhlEus

Chinese news source is reporting that President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping will announce as early as this week that both nations have "ratified" the climate change treaty inked in Paris last year. The most asked question during the Obama years: "How can he do that without congressional approval?"

Tell the world it is all an act.It’s a do or die moment for The Cause. Brexit has hit them hard, and the Trump factor threatens to wreck everything. The Paris agreement has stalled pathetically at 1.1% of all human emissions (they need 55% to come into force). What they need right now is a gamechanger, and if they can’t get it then, true to form, they will manufacture the illusion of it.Next week expect a grand performance from US and China — or rather from two men who look solemn and can sign important looking carbon chastity vows on...

We know, we know. It's August and it's hot and humid and it seems like it will never be cold again. But:~SNIP~And you better start preparing because according to the Long Range Weather Forecast released by The Old Farmer's Almanac, this one is going to be a real doozy. Every region of the U.S. will be hit with a different type of terrible. The Northeast and Midwest can expect "colder than normal" temperatures and precipitation is supposed to be "above normal." If you're in the Pacific Northwest, you can expect a lot of rain and chilly weather. And in the...

Secretary of State John Kerry said in Vienna on Friday that air conditioners and refrigerators are as big of a threat to life as the threat of terrorism posed by groups like the Islamic State. The Washington Examiner reported that Kerry was in Vienna to amend the 1987 Montreal Protocol that would phase out hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, from basic household and commercial appliances like air conditioners, refrigerators, and inhalers. “As we were working together on the challenge of [ISIS] and terrorism,” Kerry said. “It’s hard for some people to grasp it, but what we–you–are doing here right now is of...

PROTECTION ISLAND — Jim Hayward slips on a hard hat and pops open an umbrella before stepping into a storm of angry gulls. Hayward, a seabird biologist based on Protection Island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, is making his evening rounds through the largest gull nesting colony in the Puget Sound region. He's been monitoring this site since 1987, so he's used to the shrieking, the divebombing, the frequent splatterings of gull poop, and the pecking at his head, hands and feet. What he's not accustomed to is the cannibalism.

We haven't had a good series on the Chickenhawks of the Radical Left in a while. You might remember some of the previous ones - paternity leave, minimum wage,and of course, my first chickenhawk post from three years ago, also about green chickenhawks! But now let's return to the chickenhawks of the Church of Climate Change. Where a few years ago I asked why they don't invest more of their own money in green technology, let's look at it from a simpler angle of how they live their everyday lives. A few months ago a few of this strange cults'...

State government figures spearheading an effort to obtain documents from scientists and researchers who dissent from the Obama administration’s position on climate change are being asked, once again, to come clean about their relationships with environmental organizations. But this time around, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey have only two weeks to comply with a demand for information from a House committee that the two Democrats have resisted previously. That’s because the demand comes in the form of subpoenas issued Wednesday to Schneiderman, Healey, and eight environmental advocacy groups. The House Committee on Science,...

Pressured by radical environmentalists and multi-billionaires like Tom Steyer who stand to profit, the Democratic Party has issued a new platform statement on climate and energy: Moving beyond the “all of the above” energy approach in the 2012 platform, the 2016 platform draft re-frames the urgency of climate change as a central challenge of our time, already impacting American communities and calling for generating 50 percent clean electricity within the next ten years. The Committee unanimously adopted a joint proposal from Sanders and Clinton representatives to commit to making America run entirely on clean energy by mid-century, and supporting the...

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A conservative legal group is accusing state Democratic officials of conspiring to flout public records laws in order to keep secret details of a campaign to bring racketeering charges against climate policy dissenters. Democratic attorneys general led by New York’s Eric Schneiderman are seeking to block efforts to obtain documents about their efforts by invoking an overbroad claim to secrecy in ongoing legal proceedings, according to the Energy and Environment (E&E) Legal Institute. “These activist AGs are trying to write themselves out from freedom of information laws their legislatures have written them into,” E&E senior legal fellow Chris Horner said...

If Ms Figueres were selected, she would be a striking departure from the eight men who have run the UN so far. She is widely credited with helping to re-energise global climate action after the disastrous failure of a 2009 Copenhagen meeting aimed at sealing the accord finally struck in Paris. She previously spent many years representing Costa Rica in climate negotiations but has little of the broader foreign policy experience held by most UN secretaries-general. Ms Figueres conceded on Thursday she faced a “learning curve” on peace and security issues but her recent experience in shepherding through the Paris...

Political platforms are not meant to be taken as anything other than aspirational documents. They make a brief appearance at party conventions and then sit on a shelf and collect dust for four years until the next presidential election comes along. One of the few things platforms do accomplish is they put on display the party’s collective id, laying bare the base instincts of its members. Essentially, for party supporters, the political platform acts as the road map on the way to immanentizing the eschaton: “Barring opposition, following this document will get us to heaven on Earth.” On June 25,...

The article, written by Anthony Burke and Stefanie Fishel, professors who study international relations and gender studies respectively, concludes massively empowering the U.N. is the best way to slow global warming. “A ‘crimes against biodiversity’ law would act like a [crime against humanity] for the environment,” Burke and Fishel’s article states. “Unlike international laws that punish genocide, our suggested law would not require proof of intent to commit the crime, but merely a strong link between the activity and the destruction of biodiversity or industrial and systemic harm to animals.”

Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse recently told people gathered in New York City that global warming “denial” hurts U.S. soldiers in the field and that the “main problem” with the military is its reluctance to join the climate crusade. “The problem has been that the uniformed military has been reluctant to put its voice into – or its image into this fight,” Whitehouse said, according to a YouTube video posted Thursday. [dcquiz] “But, it’s hard to put a panel of people in uniform in front of the Environmental and Public Works Committee and say, you know, I’m a general,...

The Bramble Cay melomys has become more famous in extinction than it ever was in life. A mouse-like rodent, the melomys amazingly survived on a 3.6 hectare grass-covered cay (a low-lying island in a coral reef) in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef like a ratty Robinson Crusoe for thousands of years. There, it thrived off just a few plant species until human-caused climate change—in the form of rising sea levels and increasing inundations of sea water on the low-lying island—wiped it off the planet. But, while the extinction has been reported widely, articles have missed an important point: the scientists who...

Astonishing images from NASA reveal no visible sunspots are currently visible on its surface. This has caused the star to go into "cue call" mode having entered its quietest period for more than a century, Vencore Weather claims. Decreased activity is not unusual as solar activity changes the volatile star's surface in 11-year cycles, astronomers say. But researchers are warning this current cycle could have a devastating impact on Earth's atmosphere, possibly ushering in a second ice age, similar to the one which began in 1645. Paul Dorian of Vencore Weather says the blank Sun is a sign that the...