"The results of our study show that it is mainly the fear of globalization that drives some to go away from the political mainstream and turn to the populist parties,” the research states. It adds that values are playing hereby a “subordinate role.” According to the study, 78 percent of the German anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party (AfD) are viewing globalization critically or have a fear of it.

Established in 2013, the AfD already has seats in 10 out of 16 German state parliaments. In September, its deputy leader, Beatrix von Storch, even vowed that the AfD “will become the third-largest force in Germany” in the upcoming parliamentary elections next year. 

Fears of globalization are similarly high in neighboring Austria among supporters of the country’s right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ), with the number at 69 percent, according to the Bertelsmann report. On December 4, the country is choosing its Federal President, where the controversial FPÖ candidate Norbert Hofer has a high chance of snatching the post, Der Spiegel writes. 

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/368754-research-globalization-fears-populists/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stcsDbPHbiU

Regardless of where Australian wine makers are growing — from the Hunter Valley to the Tamar Valley — climate change is making its presence felt. It's creating big challenges for an industry already dealing with so much, including a more competitive market here and overseas.

The excitement the Tasmanian industry might feel is outweighed by a greater concern that winemaking on the mainland will be harder and harder on growers and makers.

Winemakers are adapting, and consumers need to be open to changing their wine drinking habits. There is no doubt that higher temperatures will mean higher alcohol content, compressed vintages and higher risks for our winemakers.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-04/how-climate-change-is-affecting-th...

Donald Trump, 420th on Forbes' list of The World's Billionaires and next week’s guest on Intelligent Investing With Steve Forbes, is no stranger to making a deal. Unlike many moguls, however, you won’t find him discussing business over a nice glass of scotch. Trump, known as much for his reality shows The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice as he is for his business acumen, is a teetotaler.

“I don't drink, and it's very easy for me not to drink,” Trump told Forbes when they chatted in the Forbes Townhouse. “I tell people, ‘What are you drinking for?’ And they don't even understand what I'm saying.”

read more:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisbarth/2011/03/11/donald-trump-and-nine-...

https://www.rt.com/news/369118-sochi-storm-waves-winter/

and in Australia:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-04/queensland-weather-bom-forecasts-more-storm-cells/8090976

Climate scientists have reported that sections of Antarctica’s ice shelf, previously relatively unaffected by rising global temperatures, have begun to melt.

The US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado recorded both the northern and southern poles receding, and people living in low-lying coastal cities such  as Annapolis, Maryland, and Miami, Florida, may have cause for concern as melting ice caps could signal rising sea levels, and drainage systems and sea walls may need be to constructed as a result. 

Read more: https://sputniknews.com/world/201612081048299069-scientists-say-polar-caps-melting/

After correctly predicting Donald Trump would win the presidential election, Michael Moore made a new prediction that he may not go on to serve his term while talking to Seth Meyers.

The Oscar-winning director made waves when he predicted that Trump would win back in July and now he says he takes no pleasure in being right.

"I never wanted to be more wrong," Moore told Seth Meyers on Wednesday's "Late Night." "I remember when I said this on the show, the audience moaned, like 'no,' all because it didn't seem possible. She was ahead in the polls, she was winning the debates, it was a great convention. And he's crazy."

http://www.zergnet.com/news/1335826/michael-moore-makes-a-new-trump-pred...

As well some delegates for Trump want to have the power to change their mind away from the state laws......

2016 was the hottest year on record, setting a new high for the third year in a row, with scientists firmly putting the blame on human activities that drive climate change. 

The final data for 2016 was released on Wednesday by the three key agencies – the UK Met Office and Nasa and Noaa in the US – and showed 16 of the 17 hottest years on record have been this century.

Direct temperature measurements stretch back to 1880, but scientific research indicates the world was last this warm about 115,000 years ago and that the planet has not experienced such high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for 4m years.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/18/2016-hottest-year-ev...

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Understandably, commentators have been seeking glimpses of light in Trump’s position. But there are none. He could not have made it clearer, through his public statements, the Republican platform and his appointments, that he intends to the greatest extent possible to shut down funding for both climate science and clean energy, rip up the Paris agreement, sustain fossil fuel subsidies and annul the laws that protect people and the rest of the world from the impacts of dirty energy.

His candidacy was represented as an insurgency, challenging established power. But his position on climate change reveals what should have been obvious from the beginning: he and his team represent the incumbents, fighting off insurgent technologies and political challenges to moribund business models. They will hold back the tide of change for as long as they can. And then the barrier will burst.

Twitter: @GeorgeMonbiot. A fully linked version of this column will be published at monbiot.com

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/19/donald-trumps-miss...

The UN’s new climate chief says she’s worried about President Donald Trump - but confident that action to curb climate change is unstoppable.

President Trump said he’d withdraw from the UN climate deal and stop funding the UN’s clean energy programme.

But former Mexican diplomat Patricia Espinosa told BBC News that the delay in any firm announcement suggests the issue is still unresolved.

She travels to US this weekend to try and meet the new US secretary of state. 

Ms Espinosa said it would be more damaging for the US to leave the on-going climate talks process altogether than to stop funding the clean energy programme.

read more

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39081783

Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, has dismissed a basic scientific understanding of climate change by denying that carbon dioxide emissions are a primary cause of global warming.

Pruitt said on Thursday that he did not believe that the release of CO2, a heat-trapping gas, was pushing global temperatures upwards. 

“I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” he told CNBC.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/09/epa-scott-pruitt-car...

Understanding the mechanism of climate change in a global warming world when it should be cooling is puzzling. But then politicians are not scientists and the so-called scientists who deny present climate change (aka global warming) are not climatologists either. We live in the age of deceit, where the truth becomes relative to those who believe the most of whatever together. Meanwhile the earth processes are going as they have gone for more than 4 billion years, experiencing change of status. It takes a lot of work to fully understand the mechanics of global warming. Few people are perpared to support the science while many will poo-poo it because it goes against out fossil-fuel based economy... for good "fake" reasons. GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL AND ANTHROPOGENIC.

What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?

On the subject of global warming, or climate change, we seem destined to find out.

On one side are the Republicans, who mostly seem unworried about climate change—or perhaps downright hostile to the very concept. On the other side are the Democrats, who do worry about climate change. A lot.

So which side will win? Which side will lose? If present trends continue, it’s possible that they both could lose. That is, the coming political collision could cripple economic growth, jeopardize national security—and still not address the climate issue.

So what to do? The solution will likely involve something altogether new. That is, it will take the technological equivalent of a deus ex machina. Our own history tells us that we’ve had plenty of those—and now we need another one.

♦♦♦

The battle lines are clearly drawn. Back in 2012, Donald Trump tweeted, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.” He has also referred to climate change as a “con” and derided regulatory agreements as “a bad deal.”

The Republican Party as a whole hasn’t been much kinder; the 2016 platformpledged that the GOP would “forbid the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide” and “oppose any carbon tax.” It further promised to cancel the Obama administration’s 2015 anti-greenhouse gas (GHG) initiative, the so-called Clean Power Plan.

During last fall’s campaign, Trump told an audience of energy executives in Pittsburgh, “The shale energy revolution will unleash massive wealth for America. And we will end the war on coal and the war on miners.” Trump carried Pennsylvania.

For their part, the Democrats have been just as entrenched. In 2015, Barack Obama agreed to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the so-called Paris Agreement, thus committing the U.S. to reduce its GHG emissions by 26–28 percent below the 2005 level by 2025 (although, since the Obama administration never sought a ratifying vote in the Senate, the legal status of the accord is unclear).

In the meantime, Hillary Clinton embraced the Paris agreement. She said of climate change in 2015,

Sea levels are rising, ice caps are melting, storms, wildfires and extreme weather are wreaking havoc. This is one of the most urgent threats of our time, and we have no choice but to rise and meet it.

And the 2016 Democratic platform was just as emphatic: “Climate change is an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time.”

Today, of course, the Republicans have most of the formal political power in the country. Most obviously, the GOP possesses the White House, and it also controls both chambers of Congress—although its margin in the Senate is narrow. In addition, Republicans control 33 governorships and 66 of 99 state legislative chambers. In fact, not since the 1920s have Republicans had so many seats.

Yet even so, the Democrats still have plenty of punch. They have most of the media, pop culture, high culture, the foundations, and other chatterers. In addition, they have solid support among big-city mayors, activist lawyers, and protesters.

Moreover, the Democrats have overwhelming support in the Deep State—that is, the complex of bureaucrats and technocrats who form the permanent federal government. According to John DiIulio of the Brookings Institution, the federal edifice, including contractors and grantees, numbers at least 10 million people. And while not all federal employees are activist liberals or Democrats, it sure seems that everyone connected with the Environmental Protection Agency is one, if not both. For example, amidst the battle over the Senate confirmation of Scott Pruitt, the Trump administration’s choice to run the environment agency, we saw this brazen February 16 headline in the New York Times: “In a show of defiance, EPA workers fight to stop Pruitt’s confirmation.” (Pruitt was confirmed by a vote of 52–46.)

Meanwhile, signs of Deep State power keep sprouting up. On February 24,Washington Post readers saw this headline: “The US Geological Survey hails an early spring—and ties it to climate change.” The USGS, we might note, is a unit within the Department of Interior; that is, it’s a part of President Trump’s executive branch. And yet the report from the National Phenology Network, a USGS grantee, is, to put it mildly, off Trump’s message. The report was a mere pinprick that drew little if any blood. But the Deep State will keep trying.

And oh yes, 97 percent of climate scientists say that climate change is happening, and that means something—although, as with just about every factual assertion in the climate-change arena, there are some who dispute this figure.

Okay, so what about the American people themselves? What do they think, all 320 million of them? The polls consistently indicate that Americans care most about jobs and economic growth, and yet the polls also reveal that they are concerned about climate change.

read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-deus-ex-machina-for-th...

Carbon dioxide capture is a dreamer's dream... The process is very expensive, inefficient and could need more energy than burning the fossil fuel in the first place. Second, vaults of CO2 could leek like sieves. The only chance of dealing with CO2 is to break it down, like plants do. But the process takes time and CO2 is a super-strong double bonded molecule. Heat and ultraviolet lasers can deal with it, but here again, the energy of the process makes burning the fuel not worth the trouble.  Storing under pressure underground in liquid form is fraught with the possibility of catastrophic leaks. It's time to place fossil fuels to bed and reset our economies.

It takes a lot of energy to make dry ice (solid CO2).

Donald Trump's aides have abruptly postponed a meeting to determine whether the US should remain in the Paris climate agreement, with an unlikely coalition of fossil fuel firms, environmental groups and some Republicans calling on the president to stick with the deal.

Trump's top advisers were set to meet on Tuesday to provide the president with a recommendation ahead of a G7 meeting in May. However, a White House official said the meeting had been postponed due to conflicting schedules. It is unclear when it will now take place.

Trump has already signed executive orders to start the demolition of the clean power plan, throw open federal land to coal mining, and halt new vehicle emissions standards but has so far not acted on his campaign pledge to "cancel" the Paris compromise.

read more:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/04/trump-aides-postpone-meet...

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The nomination of Kathleen Hartnett White, a climate change sceptic, to serve as Donald Trump’s top environmental adviser is to be withdrawn, the White House has confirmed.

White was announced in October last year as Trump’s choice to chair the Council on Environmental Quality. 

But White’s nomination languished and was among a batch of nominations the Senate sent back to the White House when it adjourned at the end of 2017. Trump would have had to resubmit White’s nomination.

She made headlines in November last year when she had difficulty answering basic questions about climate change.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/04/kathleen-hartnett-white-...

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