posted February 16, 2014 12:02 PM            

The fund, announced in Fresno, California, is part of Obama's pledge to speed federal assistance to the most populous U.S. state.

California is attempting to cope with its worst drought in recorded history, which is threatening its critical agriculture industry, energy production and other industries.

The fund is part of a broader approach to deal with climate change that Obama outlined in his Climate Action Plan in June 2013.

While certain elements of that plan can be carried out through executive action, the fund requires Congressional approval, which makes its future uncertain.

"Given the saliency of the issues in communities across the political spectrum, it seems likely to create some momentum for action in Congress, although obviously that is very hard to say in the current environment," said Billy Pizer, associate professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.

Republicans and some Democrats in coal reliant states have bitterly opposed previous attempts to pass legislation that would put a mandatory limit on carbon emissions. Some have tried to pass legislation that would stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon emissions.

The proposal will be formally introduced when Obama unveils his fiscal 2015 budget in March.

It will help communities deal with extreme weather events, such as floods, drought, heat waves, and wildfires, according to the White House. Such disasters include Superstorm Sandy in 2012; the April 2011 tornado outbreak in Southern, Midwestern, and Northeastern United States; and California wildfires in October 2007.

Funds would be used to research how to better prepare for climate change-related effects like rising sea levels and extreme temperatures and encourage local initiatives. Other investments would include "breakthrough technologies and resilient infrastructure" such as building sea walls and more resilient electricity delivery systems to protect vulnerable cities and towns.

The concept of the fund is based on a recommendation made in December 2012 by the think tank Center for American Progress

CAP founder John Podesta is a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. Podesta returned to the White House in December as a senior adviser to Obama.

"Every dollar spent on resilience will save federal taxpayers $4 in lower disaster recovery costs," Daniel Weiss, CAP's director of climate strategy, said on Friday, citing a study by the organization. "Now it's up to Congress to make this essential preparedness fund into a reality."

CAP's proposal, called the community resilience fund, would direct the president to appoint a bipartisan panel to design the fund and recommend ways to pay for it.

Nancy Sutley, the director of the White House's Council for Environmental Quality, said on Friday that Obama will use the California drought to highlight the importance of the climate resilience issue.

"This continues to demonstrate the continuing need to focus on resiliency, on reducing risks and vulnerabilities in light of the changing climate," said Sutley, whose last day at the CEQ was Friday. Sutley plans to return to her home state of California this month.

posted February 16, 2014 12:06 PM            

Oh, really? Where is the warming then?

posted February 23, 2014 11:44 AM            

But, this Man Made Global Warming crusade was never about warming in the first place. It's always been about greed, power, control and domination over the energy use of all nations by rabid Socialist Progressives. But, their campaign to coerce nations and peoples is coming apart at the seams.

Imagine the biggest airheads on earth being in charge of the planet's energy use. NO SALE.

Stephens: Climate Prophets and Profiteers
The most cynical part of John Kerry's climate-change speech.
Bret Stephens
Feb. 17, 2014 7:14 p.m. ET

The weirdest thing about John Kerry's weekend speech on climate-change—other than the fact that this is the same guy who in 1997 voted to forbid the U.S. from signing the Kyoto Protocol—is that it begins by quoting something Maurice Strong said at the U.N.'s 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro: "Every bit of evidence I've seen persuades me that we are on a course leading to tragedy."

Maurice who?

Mr. Strong, a former oil executive from Canada (he was Pierre Trudeau's pick to run state-owned Petro-Canada in the mid-1970s), was for many years the U.N.'s ultimate mandarin. He organized many of its environmental mega-confabs, including the 1972 Stockholm Conference and the 1992 Rio summit, before rising to become Kofi Annan's right-hand man. At various times Mr. Strong has served as director at the World Economic Forum, chairman of the Earth Council and the World Resources Institute, vice chairman of the Chicago Climate Exchange and chairman of the China Carbon Corporation, to name just a few of his many prominent affiliations.

In 2005 it emerged that Mr. Strong, who was the chairman of the U.N. panel that created the Office of the Iraq Program, had accepted a check for close to $1 million from a South Korean businessman named Tongsun Park, who in the 1970s had been involved in an effort to bribe U.S. politicians. Mr. Strong claimed that the check, from a Jordanian bank, was meant as an investment in a family company that later went bankrupt. Mr. Park (who also sublet office space from Mr. Strong) later went to prison for trying to bribe U.N. officials overseeing the Oil-for-Food program that was propping up Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Mr. Strong was accused of no wrongdoing and has denied involvement in Oil-for-Food. He left the U.N. that year and moved to Beijing.

Draw your own conclusions. Ask yourself: Is this a guy who deserves a shout-out from the U.S. Secretary of State?

When John Kerry speaks, people wonder: Is he seriously clever or totally oblivious? Profound or void? Detective Columbo or Chance the gardener?

The secretary devoted much of his speech to venting spleen at those in the "Flat Earth Society" who dispute the 97% of climate scientists who believe in man-made global warming. "We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists and science and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific fact," he said. Once upon a time people understood that skepticism was essential to good science. Now Mr. Kerry is trying to invoke a specious democracy among scientists to shut down democratic debate for everyone else.

This is of a piece with the amusing notion that the only thing standing in the way of climate salvation is a shadowy, greedy and powerful conspiracy involving the Koch Brothers, MIT's Dick Lindzen, Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe and this newspaper's editorial page. Oh, the power!

And yet there goes Mr. Kerry extolling Mr. Strong, who really does stand at the obscure intersection of public policy, private profits and the climate science that joins the two. "I have to disclose my own association with this process in my earlier role in the United Nations negotiations which established the basis for the development of these new [market] opportunities," Mr. Strong said in a 2007 speech, noting his roles in the Chicago Climate Exchange and the China Carbon Corporation.

If George W. Bush had left office and immediately joined the boards of defense contractors building MRAPs for Iraq, hard questions would be raised. When Maurice Strong, Al Gore and other climate profiteers seek to enrich themselves from policies they put into place while in office, it scarcely raises an eyebrow.

It should. The carbon-trading schemes enacted with such fanfare just a few years ago have effectively ceased to operate amid collapsing prices. The sustainable-energy craze produced the expensive bankruptcies of solar-panel maker Solyndra, Fisker Automotive and battery maker A123 Systems, to name a few. Germany, which has taken its climate-change fetish further than any other major economy, is now coming to grips with a comprehensive fiasco of higher energy prices and higher carbon emissions. Who would have thought that when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow, people might still want to switch on the lights?

It is now the dogma of the left that any hint of doubt when it comes to predictions of climate doom is evidence of greed, stupidity, moral turpitude or psychological derangement. "Climate denial" is intended to be the equivalent of Holocaust denial. And yet the only people who've predicted anything right so far are those who foresaw that the Kyoto Protocol would fail, that renewable energies didn't really work, and that climate bureaucrats accountable to nobody but their own sense of virtue and taste for profit were a danger to everyone.

posted February 24, 2014 08:49 AM            

This is the moron who screeches, howls and shrieks about the rich paying their fair share, then docks his new yacht out of state to avoid paying the taxes which would be due if he registered his yacht in Massachusetts.

This is the greedy b@stard who divorced his first wife, who was only worth about $300 Million to marry Teresa Hines who was worth upwards of $1.5 Billion.

posted February 24, 2014 11:49 AM            

They continue to make predictions and forecasts which, based on faulty theory, twisted ideology and screwed up models, wind up being so far off the mark of reality, they're laughable.

Here's another. Notice how this prediction has most of the US burning up with above average temperatures versus how it really turned out with frigid temperatures way below average.

Oh but not to worry, these predictions were from a "trusted source" The Climate Prediction Center.

Top chart is their predictions for November, December and January 2013-2014 and the bottom chart is the reality of actual temperatures across the country. It's a bad joke. Bad that these clowns are sucking up taxpayer money to fund their nonsense.

posted February 25, 2014 05:45 PM            

John Traitor Kerry is the Constitutional definition of a traitor...one who commits treason against the United States...which consists of making war against them/us or giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Giving aid and comfort to the enemy is exactly what John Traitor Kerry did when he agitated for the North Vietnamese list of conditions to end the Vietnam war. Further, this treasonous A-hole met with the North Vietnam delegation..the enemy, in Paris which was a violation of the UCMJ at a time when Traitor Kerry was a reserve naval officer.

This is the reason it took a special discharge panel convened 7 years AFTER Traitor Kerry should have been discharged to grant him an honorable discharge. Thanks Jimmy Carter.

John Traitor Kerry should have been charged, tried, convicted and either executed or given a long sentence in Leavenworth. But, this American traitor was buds with another traitor, Edward M. Kennedy who was a US Senator and protected this POS traitor.

There's no question whatsoever about what A-Hole Kerry did and there's no question whatsoever that what he did constitutes treason under the US Constitution.

posted February 25, 2014 08:07 PM            

Traitor Kerry had protection against prosecution from powerful members of the US Senate...Kennedy and Sarbanes.

posted February 26, 2014 12:19 AM            

I must have been absent the day you said anything that was actually true acoustic.

posted February 26, 2014 08:36 AM            

Committing an act, such as treason, rape, murder, etc, etc, etc is the deciding factor which determines whether one is a "traitor", a "rapist" or a "murderer".

A trial and conviction for an offense is societies way of assigning just punishment for committing the act.

There are tens of thousands of people freely circulating in society who have committed crimes. Just because they haven't been tried and convicted doesn't mean they didn't do the crime of treason, rape or murder.

John Traitor Kerry committed Treason against the United States. The fact A-Hole Kerry didn't get his just punishment has nothing to do with whether he did the act.

A woman is raped but her rapist was wearing a mask so she can't identify him and he's never caught, tried and convicted of rape. Using your ignorant, illogical, irrational reasoning, he's not a rapist at all.