Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported for the entire 20th century by the United Nations (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows in fact that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

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30 April, 2009

THE SOLAR LINKAGE FOR DUMMIES

An email from Will Alexander [alexwjr@iafrica.com] in South Africa

I read all those reports on the solar linkage with climate with a mixture of amusement and amazement. I was particularly amazed by David Whitehouse's conclusion that for now all scientists can do, along with the rest of us, is to watch and wait. This is nonsense. I was amused because the linkage was first reported in the South African literature more than a hundred years ago. I also reported it in 1978, again in 1995, and on a number of occasions since then.

Let me take your readers through the issue in simple steps. The analyses consist of simple school level arithmetic and standard serial correlation analyses. The data were not manipulated in any way before, during or after the analyses.

STEP 1. The following data are from website information distributed by the World Data Centre for the Sunspot Index (2005). There were eight complete cycles during the past century. These commenced with the sunspot minimum that occurred in June1913, and ended with the sunspot minimum that occurred in March 1996. The lengths of the cycles were 10, 10, 11, 10, 10, 12, 10 and 10 years, with a mean of 10.4 years. These values are within a narrow range of between 10 (minimum) and 12 (maximum) years. A corresponding increase in solar activity during the past century is reflected in the increase in the numbers of sunspots per cycle, commencing with the cycle that started in 1913. Alternating cycles are identified by negative values. The sunspot numbers per cycle were +442, -410, +605, -757, +950, -705, +829 and -785. The maximum was more than twice that of the minimum that occurred only three cycles earlier.

The lengths of the corresponding double sunspot cycles were 20, 21, 22 and 20 years with a mean of 20.8 years, a minimum of 20 years and a maximum of 22 years. The average numbers of sunspots in the alternating cycles that made up the double cycles were +706 and -664, demonstrating a meaningful difference in sunspot activity in the alternating cycles.

STEP 2. There are very clear and unambiguous reversals in the South African hydrometeorological data. The periods commenced with sudden changes from sequences of drought years that were suddenly broken by floods that persisted in the following years. The years in which the reversals occurred in South Africa's major river are as follows with the corresponding sunspot minima in parentheses. They were 1932/33 (1933), 1941/42 (1944), 1953/54 (1954), 1965/66 (1964), 1972/73 (1975), 1986/87 (1986), 1995/96 (1996), and 2005/06 (2006?).

The annual flows during the three years preceding the reversals averaged 60% of the record average annual flows and the subsequent three years averaged 156% of the average annual flows. The average sunspot numbers in the three years before and after the sunspot minima were 17 and 100 respectively. It is very clear that the sudden changes in river flow are closely linked with corresponding changes in sunspot numbers, and are not random events. This relationship exists despite the long and complex energy path starting at the sun and ending with the potential energy of the water in the river, which is a function of its elevation above sea level.

STEP 3. Records were long enough to detect 21-year periodicity in the data at the 95% level of statistical significance using standard serial correlation analyses. Serial correlation analyses showed a statistically significant, 95 percent level, 21-year serial correlation in many records BUT NO 11-YEAR SERIAL CORRELATIONS. The analyses demonstrated very clearly that the relationship between solar activity and river flow was synchronously related to the double sunspot cycles and not the single sunspot cycles.

STEP 4. The hydrological analyses showed a clear and unambiguous, slow but steady increase in open water surface evaporation during the 70 years of available records. Received solar radiation and not air temperature controls the evaporation process. This was confirmed by evaporation suppression experiments.

STEP 5. There was a similar, steady increase in rainfall during the past century. This is directly contrary to claims by climate alarmists that climate change will result in most of South Africa becoming warmer and drier.

SUMMARY SO FAR

There is a clear and unambiguous synchronous relationship between sunspot activity and river flow in South Africa. The increases in evaporation and rainfall coincided with increases in sunspot activity during the past century. Why were these linkages not detected in the milder climates of the northern hemisphere?

STEP 6. There are two reasons for this. First, most of the solar energy received in the high latitudes is transported from the tropics via the atmospheric and oceanic systems. The subtle signals of variations in received solar energy are subdued in the process.

STEP 7. Another factor is that the average annual rainfall in South Africa is only 500 mm compared with the world average of more than 800 mm. As a consequence our rainfall and river flows are strongly seasonal. There is very little carryover from one year to the next. The annual values are discrete events and the signals are much clearer.

THE FUTURE

For the past four years I have warned that South Africa, and possibly the rest of the world, are about to enter a drought cycle. There is about a 20% probability that the drought sequences will be as severe as those of the early 1930s. This was called the Great Depression Drought here in South Africa as it coincided with the worldwide economic depression. In the USA it was called the Dustbowl Drought.

My personal concern has increased greatly in recent months. If a severe drought occurs and it coincides with the present economic recession that seems to be heading towards a depression, there will be chaos in this country and elsewhere. I do not know how the prolonged quietness of the Sun will influence my prediction. The reports in CCNet of 27 April were not very helpful. Waiting for events to unfold is not an option.




ARIMA representation for daily solar irradiance and surface air temperature time series

(The scientific paper below shows that the earth's temperature closely tracks changes in the sun)

By Olavi Karner

Abstract

Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models are used to compare long-range temporal variability of the total solar irradiance (TSI) at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) and surface air temperature series. The comparison shows that one and the same type of the model is applicable to represent the TSI and air temperature series. In terms of the model type surface air temperature imitates closely that for the TSI. This may mean that currently no other forcing to the climate system is capable to change the random walk type variability established by the varying activity of the rotating sun. The result should inspire more detailed examination of the dependence of various climate series on short-range fluctuations of TSI.

Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics (In press)




NORTH POLE SEA ICE TWICE AS THICK AS EXPECTED

The research aircraft "Polar 5" today concluded its Arctic expedition in Canada. During the flight, researchers measured the current ice thickness at the North Pole and in areas that have never before been surveyed. The result: The sea-ice in the surveyed areas is apparently thicker than scientists had suspected.

Normally, newly formed ice measures some two meters in thickness after two years. "Here, we measured ice thickness up to four meters," said a spokesperson for Bremerhaven's Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. At present, this result contradicts the warming of the sea water, according to the scientists.

Apart from measuring ice thickness, the composition of arctic air was also investigated. With the help of a laser, the researchers studied the level of pollution of the atmosphere by emissions from industrialized countries. In the next few weeks the results will be evaluated. Some 20 scientists from the U.S., Canada, Italy and Germany took part in the expedition.

SOURCE [In German. transl. BJP]




WE CAN'T SOLVE GLOBAL WARMING SAYS BRITAIN'S LEADING CLIMATE SCIENTIST

Can we solve climate change? No we can't, according to a leading climate change professor. Mike Hulme professor of Climate Change at East Anglia University reckons we are heading up a "dead end" by putting climate change science at the top of the political agenda. In fact he thinks we are pretty arrogant to think we can control the climate.

Mike, who has spent the last 25 years researching climate change, has just written a book Why we disagree about climate change where he questions why climate change has become "the mother of all issues." "Why is it that climate change has taken this premier position as the issue that humanity's future is at stake if we don't attend to climate change?"

Mike reckons "climate change" is unsolvable. People round the world are too different, with different needs, to come together. Since the "landmark" Kyoto agreement ten years ago emissions have accelerated. Instead we should treat climate change as an idea like democracy or justice motivating us to live better so that we can act locally and regionally to get cleaner air, or power or eradicate poverty.

"We shouldn't be framing climate change as the problem that we have to solve above all others. If we do that we have constructed an unsolvable dilemma because of the multiple reasons why we disagree about climate change. We will never converge on a set of solutions.

"Rather than putting climate change at the pinnacle and if we fail on climate change everything else fails. Humanity is doomed, we've only got seven more years, the clock is ticking... what I'm suggesting is that we turn this whole thing around and think of climate change as an imaginative idea like democracy or nationality or justice. It's an idea that can be used but you cannot solve an idea. You can use an idea you can manipulate it, you can exploit it but you can't solve it.

"Let's be very clear about this I'm not denying climate change. I'm not questioning the fundamental science here. Humans are altering the climate around the world in my mind there's no doubt about that. And climate has an effect on eco systems around the world. "What I am questioning is that we can solve it in the way that we have it currently framed. We have reached this paralysis mode"

Mike says the way we are tackling climate change could even lead to reactionary and authoritarian policies such as sending mirrors into space or spraying aerosols in the atmosphere. "My basic thesis is that we should turn climate change around. It's localising issues. "We don't have to get global agreements to attend to fuel poverty in Britain or air pollution in China's cities.

"If by 2050 we have managed to limit global warming to 2 degrees will that world actually be a better world? Will it have attended to these other issues, nationally and globally? I'm not sure it will. "Physical climate is being changed by human societies. Human societies are having to grapple with what that means and just trying to deal with this in terms of science is a dead end, I think." "A more powerful way into these issues to localise them. We can improve the local environment in our cities by changing our transport systems we can buy local food. "They don't all have to tick the climate change box to be morally or ethically desirable. There are more games in town than simply climate change.

"I am not saying we don't want radical change. I am saying we should take the spotlight away from climate change at the top of the pile. "It is rather hubristic to think we can actually control climate. Climate change is the new human condition we have to live with. Let's accept this is the new reality. "Don't construct the problem in a way which means we cannot have a solution which is the way I think we have got it constructed at the moment."

SOURCE




REVENGE OF THE ARISTOCRATS

Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne who is most famous for talking to plants, has signed a deal to make a movie and write a book about climate change. The project will be called "Harmony," because, in Charles's words, humankind must "rediscover that sense of harmony, that sense of being a part of, rather apart from, nature." His film will educate the unruly masses - with their fast cars, fridges, and other planet-destroying luxuries - that human beings "have a sacred duty of stewardship of the natural order of things."

The thought of being lectured about living more meekly by a taxpayer-subsidized prince who has never done a proper day's work in his life - and who is currently flying around Europe on a private jet with a master suite and plush bathroom that will spew a whopping 53 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere over the course of his five-day, $116,000 charter - is of course eye-swivellingly irritating. But this is something we're getting used to in Britain - because here, environmentalism looks very much like the Revenge of the Aristocrats. The British green lobby is stuffed with the sons and daughters of privilege, for whom environmentalism provides a perfect, scientifically tinged gloss for expressing in a new way their old foul prejudices against mass, modern society.

Many of the major players in British environmentalism are posh, rich, and hectoring. One of Charles's top advisers is Jonathon Porritt, a former director of Friends of the Earth and a patron of the creepy Malthusian outfit, the Optimum Population Trust (OPT). Porritt is a graduate of Eton, Britain's school of choice for the rich and well-connected, and is the son of Lord Porritt, the 11th Governor General of New Zealand. The increasingly influential OPT also counts Sir Crispin Tickell (who is as posh as his name suggests) and Lady Kulukundis, the wife of a Greek shipping magnate, among its patrons.

More HERE




SHOCK, HORROR: BRITAIN PLANS TO TEAR DOWN WINDMILLS AND PRODUCE USEFUL ENERGY INSTEAD!

One of the oldest and most efficient wind farm in Britain is to be dismantled and replaced by a nuclear power station under plans drawn up by the German-owned power group RWE.

The site at Kirksanton in Cumbria - home to the Haverigg turbines - has just been approved by the government for potential atomic newbuild in a move that has infuriated the wind power industry.

Colin Palmer, founder of the Windcluster company, which owns part of the Haverigg wind farm, said he was horrified that such a plan could be considered at a time when Britain risks missing its green energy targets and after reassurance from ministers that nuclear and renewables were not incompatible.

More HERE




BRITAIN'S GREEN JOBLESSNESS

So much for "Green jobs"

One of the biggest renewable energy manufacturers in Britain announced on Tuesday it is to cut more than half its UK jobs - blaming the government for failing to support the sector.

In a grave blow to the government's ambitions to create a "green" export industry, Vestas, the world's biggest maker of wind turbines, will axe about 600 of its 1,100 UK employees, probably closing its factory in the Isle of Wight and cutting jobs elsewhere in the UK.

Ditlev Engel, chief executive of Vestas, told the Financial Times: "We had been planning additional investment in the UK [because of government targets to increase renewables]. But the UK is probably one of the most difficult places in the world to get permission [for wind projects]. We can't afford to keep on this capacity."

The blow comes less than a week after Alistair Darling trumpeted the role of low-carbon industries in job creation, announcing new funding for renewables in his Budget.

More HERE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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29 April, 2009

British court rules that environmentalism is a religion

A former executive of a top property company has been told he can claim at a tribunal that he was sacked because of his "philosophical belief in climate change".

In the landmark ruling Tim Nicholson was told he could use employment law to argue that he was discriminated against because of his views on the environment. The head of the tribunal ruled that those views amounted to a philosophical belief under the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations, 2003. The case is the first of its kind and could open the way for hundreds of future claims to be made in the same fashion, the newspaper reported.

Mr Nicholson, 41, was made redundant while head of sustainability at Grainger plc, Britain's biggest residential property investment company, in July last year. He is now suing his former employers for unfair dismissal, arguing that his beliefs on the environment prompted clashes with other senior executives at the firm, and led to his sacking.

Mr Nicholson told the tribunal that he clashed with other executives over the way it adopted its policies on the environment and corporate social responsibility. He said he tried to get the company to act in a more environmentally responsible way, but was obstructed by senior company executives. Mr Nicholson said that his frustrations were exemplified by an occasion when the company's chief executive, Rupert Dickinson, "showed contempt for the need to cut carbon emissions by flying out a member of the IT staff to Ireland to deliver his BlackBerry that he had left behind in London."

At a pre-hearing review at an employment tribunal in London, tribunal head David Sneath ruled on a point of law that: "In my judgment, his belief goes beyond a mere opinion." The full employment tribunal is now set to take place from June 4. Grainger might consider an appeal against the ruling, the company's lawyer said.

SOURCE




Global warming alarmists out in cold

Comment from Australia by Andrew Bolt

IT'S snowing in April. Ice is spreading in Antarctica. The Great Barrier Reef is as healthy as ever. And that's just the news of the past week. Truly, it never rains but it pours - and all over our global warming alarmists.

Time's up for this absurd scaremongering. The fears are being contradicted by the facts, and more so by the week. Doubt it? Then here's a test.

Name just three clear signs the planet is warming as the alarmists claim it should. Just three. Chances are your "proofs" are in fact on my list of 10 Top Myths about global warming. And if your "proofs" indeed turn out to be false, don't get angry with me. Just ask yourself: Why do you still believe that man is heating the planet to hell? What evidence do you have? So let's see if facts matter more to you than faith, and observations more than predictions.

MYTH 1 THE WORLD IS WARMING

Wrong. It is true the world did warm between 1975 and 1998, but even Professor David Karoly, one of our leading alarmists, admitted this week "temperatures have dropped" since - "both in surface temperatures and in atmospheric temperatures measured from satellites". In fact, the fall in temperatures from just 2002 has already wiped out half the warming our planet experienced last century. (Check data from Britain's Hadley Centre, NASA's Aqua satellite and the US National Climatic Data Centre.)

Some experts, such as Karoly, claim this proves nothing and the world will soon start warming again. Others, such as Professor Ian Plimer of Adelaide University, point out that so many years of cooling already contradict the theory that man's rapidly increasing gases must drive up temperatures ever faster. But that's all theory. The question I've asked is: What signs can you actually see of the man-made warming that the alarmists predicted?

MYTH 2 THE POLAR CAPS ARE MELTING

Wrong. The British Antarctic Survey, working with NASA, last week confirmed ice around Antarctica has grown 100,000 sq km each decade for the past 30 years. Long-term monitoring by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports the same: southern hemisphere ice has been expanding for decades.

As for the Arctic, wrong again. The Arctic ice cap shrank badly two summers ago after years of steady decline, but has since largely recovered. Satellite data from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Centre this week shows the Arctic hasn't had this much April ice for at least seven years. Norway's Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre says the ice is now within the standard deviation range for 1979 to 2007.

MYTH 3 WE'VE NEVER HAD SUCH A BAD DROUGHT

Wrong. A study released this month by the University of NSW Climate Change Research Centre confirms not only that we've had worse droughts, but this Big Dry is not caused by "global warming", whether man-made or not. As the university's press release says: "The causes of southeastern Australia's longest, most severe and damaging droughts have been discovered, with the surprise finding that they originate far away in the Indian Ocean.

"A team of Australian scientists has detailed for the first time how a phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean Dipole - a variable and irregular cycle of warming and cooling of ocean water - dictates whether moisture-bearing winds are carried across the southern half of Australia."

MYTH 4 OUR CITIES HAVE NEVER BEEN HOTTER

Wrong. The alleged "record" temperature Melbourne set in January - 46.4 degrees - was in fact topped by the 47.2 degrees the city recorded in 1851. (See the Argus newspaper of February 8, 1851.) And here's another curious thing: Despite all this warming we're alleged to have caused, Victoria's highest temperature on record remains the 50.7 degrees that hit Mildura 103 years ago. South Australia's hottest day is still the 50.7 degrees Oodnadatta suffered 37 years ago. NSW's high is still the 50 degrees recorded 70 years ago.

What's more, not one of the world's seven continents has set a record high temperature since 1974. Europe's high remains the 50 degrees measured in Spain 128 years ago, before the invention of the first true car.

MYTH 5 THE SEAS ARE GETTING HOTTER

Wrong. If anything, the seas are getting colder. For five years, a network of 3175 automated bathythermographs has been deployed in the oceans by the Argo program, a collaboration between 50 agencies from 26 countries. Warming believer Josh Willis, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, reluctantly concluded: "There has been a very slight cooling ..."

MYTH 6 THE SEAS ARE RISING

Wrong. For almost three years, the seas have stopped rising, according to the Jason-1 satellite mission monitored by the University of Colorado.

That said, the seas have risen steadily and slowly for the past 10,000 years through natural warming, and will almost certainly resume soon. But there is little sign of any accelerated rises, even off Tuvalu or the Maldives, islands often said to be most threatened with drowning.

Professor Nils-Axel Moerner, one of the world's most famous experts on sea levels, has studied the Maldives in particular and concluded there has been no net rise there for 1250 years. Venice is still above water.

MYTH 7 CYCLONES ARE GETTING WORSE

Wrong. Ryan Maue of Florida State University recently measured the frequency, intensity and duration of all hurricanes and cyclones to compile an Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index. His findings? The energy index is at its lowest level for more than 30 years.

The World Meteorological Organisation, in its latest statement on cyclones, said it was impossible to say if they were affected by man's gases: "Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point."

MYTH 8 THE GREAT BARRIER REEF IS DYING

Wrong. Yes, in 1999, Professor Ove Hoegh-Gulberg, our leading reef alarmist and administrator of more than $30 million in warming grants, did claim the reef was threatened by warming, and much had turned white. But he then had to admit it had made a "surprising" recovery.

Yes, in 2006 he again warned high temperatures meant "between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland's Great Barrier Reef could die within a month". But he later admitted this bleaching had "minimal impact". Yes, in 2007 he again warned that temperature changes of the kind caused by global warming were bleaching the reef. But this month fellow Queensland University researchers admitted in a study that reef coral had once more made a "spectacular recovery", with "abundant corals re-established in a single year". The reef is blooming.

MYTH 9 OUR SNOW SEASONS ARE SHORTER

Wrong. Poor snow falls in 2003 set off a rash of headlines predicting warming doom. The CSIRO typically fed the hysteria by claiming global warming would strip resorts of up to a quarter of their snow by 2018. Yet the past two years have been bumper seasons for Victoria's snow resorts, and this year could be just as good, with snow already falling in NSW and Victoria this past week.

MYTH 10 TSUNAMIS AND OTHER DISASTERS ARE GETTING WORSE

Are you insane? Tsunamis are in fact caused by earthquakes. Yet there was World Vision boss Tim Costello last week, claiming that Asia was a "region, thanks to climate change, that has far more cyclones, tsunamis, droughts". Wrong, wrong and wrong, Tim. But what do facts matter now to a warming evangelist when the cause is so just?

And so any disaster is now blamed on man-made warming the way they once were on Satan. See for yourself on www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm the full list, including kidney stones, volcanic eruptions, lousy wine, insomnia, bad tempers, Vampire moths and bubonic plagues. Nothing is too far-fetched to be seized upon by carpetbaggers and wild preachers as signs of a warming we can't actually see.

Not for nothing are polar bears the perfect symbol of this faith - bears said to be threatened by warming, when their numbers have in fact increased.

Bottom line: fewer people now die from extreme weather events, whether cyclones, floods or blinding heatwaves.

Read that in a study by Indur Goklany, who represented the US at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: "There is no signal in the mortality data to indicate increases in the overall frequencies or severities of extreme weather events, despite large increases in the population at risk."

So stop this crazy panic. First step: check again your list of the signs you thought you saw of global warming. How many are true? What do you think, and why do you think it? Yes, the world may resume warming in one year or 100. But it hasn't been warming as the alarmists said it must if man were to blame, and certainly not as the media breathlessly keeps claiming.

Best we all just settle down, then, and wait for the proof -- the real proof. After all, panicking over invisible things is so undignified, don't you think?

SOURCE




VERY LOW SOLAR ACTIVITY CAUSES SOME TO SPECULATE ABOUT A NEW DALTON MINIMUM

In 2004, NASA scientists started looking forward to a new solar minimum. In 2005, it began. At this time most scientists expected the new solar cycle 24 to begin in late 2006 or early 2007 with a following ramp up in solar activity. But 2006 and 2007, according to NASA data, passed without any sign of a new solar cycle. During this time, the sun remained unusually quiet. Then, in early 2008, scientists finally found what they were waiting for -- a single sunspot with a reversed magnetic polarity. As a switch in magnetic polarity usually presages an increase in sunspot activity building up to a new solar maximum, scientists around the world proclaimed the new solar cycle had finally begun.

Now, nearly two months later, NASA observations show the sun is still unusually quiet. Day after day, the sun displays few, if any, sunspots. Even coronal holes are curiously absent. The long solar minimum now stretching into its third year coupled with curiously low solar activity even for a solar minimum is causing some scientists to speculate if the sun is entering a period of anemic activity like the most recent Dalton Minimum.

According to Wikipedia, the Dalton Minimum was a period of low solar activity stretching from 1790 to 1830. Like other long period solar minimums such as the Maunder Minimum and the Sporer Minimum, it resulted in crop failures, lower than average global temperatures, and little ice age conditions in the Northern Hemisphere.

If the sun is entering a new period of very low activity it would presage a 30 year or more drop in global temperatures. Some scientists are already beginning to speculate that just this sort of thing may be occurring now. According to Astronomer David Whitehouse, "It's something we must take seriously because what happened in the 17th century is bound to happen again some time. Recent work studying the periods when our Sun loses its sunspots, along with data on other Sun-like stars that may be behaving in the same way, suggests that our Sun may spend between 10 and 25 per cent of the time in this state. Perhaps the lateness of cycle 24 might even be the start of another Little Ice Age."

SOURCE




Episodes of relative global warming

(The paper below shows that variations in solar activity correlate with temperatures on earth -- funnily enough -- JR)

By C. de Jager and S. Duhau

Abstract

Solar activity is regulated by the solar dynamo. The dynamo is a non-linear interplay between the equatorial and polar magnetic field components. So far, in Sun-climate studies, only the equatorial component has been considered as a possible driver of tropospheric temperature variations. We show that, next to this, there is a significant contribution of the polar component. Based on direct observations of proxy data for the two main solar magnetic fields components since 1844, we derive an empirical relation between tropospheric temperature variation and those of the solar equatorial and polar activities. When applying that relation to the period 1610-1995, we find some quasi-regular episodes of residual temperature increases and decreases, with semi-amplitudes up to 0.3 °C. The present period of global warming is one of them.

Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Volume 71, Issue 2, February 2009, Pages 194-198




Warmism fading in Australia

By William Kininmonth, a former head of the National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation. Kininmonth agrees that there is a global warming effect but points out reasons why it has to be trivial. The temperature rise across the 20th century was certainly trivial -- about a half of one degree Celsius. It takes acute imaginitis and a lot of statistical jiggery pokery to extrapolate that to a huge rise in the 21st century

The science of global warming is claimed to be too complex for the public to comprehend and judge. We are continually being told to take and act on the advice of the consensus of IPCC experts; the dissenters are no more than paid mouthpieces of industry or worse. Nevertheless, the public and their representatives are showing innate common sense.

The Australian Senate is poised to reject the "cap and trade" legislation designed by the Rudd Government to implement the Orwellian carbon pollution reduction scheme; it is unlikely the US Senate will ratify similar legislation to limit carbon dioxide emissions any time soon, despite the rhetoric of Barack Obama; and the UN's post-Kyoto dreams of global industrial regulation are destined to fail in Copenhagen later this year.

Economist John Quiggin appears so concerned at the direction of events that he claims "mainstream science is on the verge of being overturned by the efforts of a group of dedicated amateurs" (The Australian Financial Review, April 23).

With public perceptions changing so dramatically and quickly it is little wonder Ian Plimer's latest book, Heaven and Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science, has been received with such enthusiasm and isinto its third print run in as manyweeks. The public is receptive to an expose of the many mythologies and false claims associated with anthropogenic global warming and are welcoming an authoritative description of planet Earth and its ever-changing climate in readable language.

In an interesting slant on logic, Robert Manne, writing in The Weekend Australian last Saturday, takes the position it is not what citizens should believe that is important but who they believe. Needless to say, he favours the UN's IPCC and its so-called consensus over those such as Plimer who question the anthropogenic global warming science.

What is often forgotten is that the UN established the IPCC in 1988 only because of the then raging scientific debate over the veracity of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. The debate has continued because the dire predictions violate fundamental scientific laws and the real science cannot be suppressed.

Recognition of the essential flaw in the dangerous global warming hypothesis predates the IPCC and has been there for the world to see in the title of a paper published in 1966 by CSIRO division of meteorological physics former chief Bill Priestley: "The limitation of temperature in hot climates by evaporation."

Seventy per cent of the Earth's surface is made up of ocean and much of the remaining surface is transpiring vegetation. Evaporation and the exchange of latent energy from the surface is a strong constraint to surface temperature rise. It is not rocket science that water from a canvas bag is cool even on the hottest days.

Furthermore, the surface temperatures of the warmest tropical oceans seldom exceed 30C and for millions of years the underlying cold sub-surface waters have provided a powerful thermal buffer to warming. The suggestion of anthropogenic global warming exceeding a tipping point and leading to runaway or irreversible global warming is a violation of conservation of energy principles.

Computer models are the essential tool for prediction of future climate. Since the IPCC fourth assessment, several independent analyses of the characteristics of the various models have been published in the scientific literature. These analyses reveal serious defects. As the Earth warmed during the 1980s and '90s, it was observed that the convective overturning of the tropics (the Hadley circulation) increased. In contrast, the overturning of the computer models is portrayed to decrease as increasing carbon dioxide generates global warming.

Separately it is found that the computer models underspecify (by a factor of three) the important rate of increase of evaporation with projected temperature rise, meaning that the models underspecify rainfall increase and exaggerate the risk of drought. The same evaporation problem causes an exaggeration of the temperature response to carbon dioxide, but the exaggeration is a model failure and not reality.

The greenhouse effect is real, as is the enhancement due to increasing carbon dioxide concentration. However, the likely extent of global temperature rise from a doubling of carbon dioxide is less than 1C. Such warming is well within the envelope of variation experienced during the past 10,000 years and insignificant in the context of glacial cycles during the past million years, when Earth has been predominantly very cold and covered by extensive ice sheets.

Fundamental science has always identified that it is quixotic to attempt regulation of climate through management of carbon dioxide emissions. The pity is that community leaders have been beguiled by the mystery of powerful computers and have failed to critically assess the predictions within the context of Earth's history. Plimer's authoritative book provides the excuse and impetus to re-examine the scientific fundamentals and redress that failure.

SOURCE




Greenies and the supply side of the housing bubble

Environmental activists have blamed every conceivable ill in society on global warming – from the spread of disease to increased risks of forest fires to environmental despoliation and the retreat of glaciers. If you read the "enviro" literature, you'll be hard-pressed to find any problem worldwide that might not be exacerbated by the Earth's changing temperature. I dismiss most such claims, or at least treat them skeptically, given that the goal of the alarmists is obvious: to scare humanity into ceding more of our freedom and our money to the politicians, government administrators and activist groups that promise to save us.

Yet there is one massive and ever-present problem that environmentalists have not yet tied to global warming: the global financial meltdown, which has threatened the world economy much the way supposedly melting polar ice is supposedly shrinking polar bear habitats. This is one crisis, however, that might actually be directly tied to global warming. I exaggerate a bit. Actually, theoretic man-made global warming didn't cause the housing bubble, but land-use policies implemented, in part, to fight global warming, do have a direct link to the housing bubble, the subsequent deflation of that bubble and all the wreckage that has followed.

This is the largely untold story of the ongoing economic crisis. It's not nearly as far-fetched as it sounds. We've all been reading about the main causes of the economic bust. It's elementary economics, really. Science-fiction writer Jerry Pournelle puts it in simple terms: "I've been telling you for years: you can't pump money into the housing market, and keep lowering the interest rates, without creating a bubble; and eventually the bubble will burst." Cheap money and loosened home-lending standards, pushed by politicians who wanted to make homeownership affordable even to people who clearly were not financially ready to buy and maintain a house, created an unnatural demand for housing. Demand went up, and prices soared. All Ponzi schemes come to an end, and now you've got wide choices among Southern California houses that cost not much more than a decent luxury car.

We know that. But let's look more closely at what happened. For example, answer this question: Why did prices go up when demand shot up? That's easy. Demand exceeded supply. Now for the follow-up question: Why didn't supply keep up with demand? It takes awhile to build houses, and government restrictions on land use made it far more difficult for that new supply to be built as demand soared.

In reality, the housing bubble did not get particularly inflated in many parts of the country. The bubble was almost exclusively a feature in big urbanized markets, and not just any big, urbanized markets. The bubble was inflated mainly in those metropolitan areas – i.e., San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, etc. – that embrace Smart Growth, the trendy and widely implemented idea that government should limit suburban growth (sprawl, as it is pejoratively called) and insist that new growth be crammed into urban growth boundaries.

"'Easy money,' by itself, does not explain what caused the unprecedented housing bubble in California," writes Wendell Cox, a former Los Angeles transportation planner and a well-known housing and transportation consultant who battles the Smart Growth folks for Heritage Foundation and other market-oriented think tanks. "If 'easy money' were the sole cause, then similar house price escalation relative to incomes would have occurred throughout the country. Take, for example, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston. These are the three fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the developed world … . Since 2000, these metropolitan areas have grown from three to 15 times as fast as Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and San Jose. … This is where the demand would have been expected to produce the bubble. But it did not. House prices remained at or near historic norms and average house prices rose one-tenth that of the California coastal metropolitan areas."

I heard Cox last week at the American Dream Coalition conference in Bellevue, Wash. (I spoke on local Smart Growth initiatives, and Cox offered a presentation via satellite from Paris). He noted that even economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman agrees that land rationing causes home-price increases. In fact, it's so obvious, I'm surprised a liberal Nobel Prize winner, as Krugman is, would recognize as much.

Don't get caught up in the politics of it, though. Think economically, in terms of any product you choose. Let's say money became available to virtually anyone to buy a new car, but that carmakers weren't able to build many new cars to fulfill the demand. Car prices would go up and up. The same thing would happen with anything. Remember the short-lived bubble for – it's hard to believe, but true – "scarce" Beanie Babies?

I looked at home-price data for some decent-size Midwestern cities over the period of bubble and bust that we experienced in California. The trend line was shocking – prices went up steadily but modestly year after year. In California markets, the prices spiked and then fell. In California, there wasn't enough supply – and it takes too many months to get approvals to fill the demand.

Certainly, some of the California markets that experienced the biggest bust, such as the Central Valley, the Inland Empire and the high desert, are not Smart Growth havens. But, as Randal O'Toole, a land-use expert for the Cato Institute, explained to me, these are markets that served as the blow-off valve for the highly restrictive Bay Area and Southern California urban markets. In other words, average folks couldn't afford homes in restrictive Orange County and Los Angeles, so they moved out to places such as Perris and Moreno Valley. Those are among the communities particularly hard hit by the bust.

California and other progressive states have been pushing tough land-use rules for years and for myriad reasons. But there's no doubt that global warming concerns have provided recent impetus for stringent restrictions. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law last year Senate Bill 375, a "Smart Growth" bill that withholds transportation funds from localities that do not embrace limits on suburban development. That was a follow-up to Assembly Bill 32, designed to battle global-warming-related emissions. In fairness, we shouldn't blame global warming hysteria entirely for these problems, but it deserves a good share of the blame.

Global warming might someday harm the polar bear. But the policies politicians have implemented to deal with this issue have had a good bit to do with the financial suffering Americans are facing today. Next time someone complains about the ill effects of global warming, add this one to the list.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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28 April, 2009

Warmism: A hopeless blend of hot air and hubris

THE ancient Greeks invented the idea of hubris, of human beings having overweening pride and self-esteem that needed to be punished for its excess. There are perhaps those who believe that what is commonly called climate change is a punishment for hubris, for human beings having gone beyond their place in the scheme of things.

However, an equally good case can be made that the call for human beings to make far-reaching changes to their way of life in response to climate change is itself a form of hubris. To begin, it is based on the belief that human endeavours, in the shape of industrial development, have had such an impact on the Earth that they threaten to disrupt its environment on an enormous scale. Not only have humans made such an impact on the planet, they are also capable, through an act of will, of reversing that impact and setting things right.

According to this scenario, human beings are the most important players in the history of the planet; they are the lords and masters who can destroy things as well as set them right. This belief in the capacity of humans to control the environment is very old. In some ancient civilisations the ruler was supposed to have the power to create a beneficial climate. If there were a prolonged drought, then the ruler sometimes was expected to make the ultimate sacrifice to propitiate the gods. During the depths of the Little Ice Age in Europe, some communities asked God for forgiveness of their sins so that a better climate might return.

Today, however, we look to the state to return us to the path of righteousness. Government can undo the wrongs that we have inflicted on the planet.

Think how much worse it would be for us if it could be demonstrated that the process of global warming were outside of human hands and unable to be manipulated by human efforts. The most we could do would be to adapt to the changes that are occurring. It would be a huge blow to humanity's ego.

Human beings do not want to feel helpless in the face of such changes. They want to feel in control. Believing in climate change creates the illusion that they are in control, that they can do something to make a difference. If they have already affected the planet in such a profound way, surely they can do itagain.

If human beings did not have climate change they might find themselves reduced to being mere spectators in a cosmos over which they had fairly limited control. They would feel that their stature had been diminished. Put simply, they need climate change.

Yet, reading Ian Plimer's excellent Heaven and Earth, what impresses one about his extraordinary account of the Earth's history and its climate is the many forces of nature that are beyond human control. These range from cosmic radiation to the movement of continents and the force of volcanoes. In so many ways we are just spectators, pilgrims who spend a short time on Earth.

That so many people need climate change in the face of the immense forces of nature can be put down to human hubris. They want the illusion of control, and the tool that they use to further that illusion is no longer religion but the state.

The same impulse that leads individuals to look to the state to control climate change also leads them to want to use the state to control economic matters. This is not to say that there is no role for the state in providing the framework in which economic activities take place. It is merely to point out that there are times when it is better for it not to interfere and to allow things to work themselves out.

There is a very important law in politics and economics known as the law of unintended consequences. When governments intervene in matters about which they have limited knowledge, and this is basically everything, they can take steps that make things worse rather than better.

The same law applies to the natural world. Plimer describes a universe so complex that it is simply not feasible that any computer model devised by a human being could capture its complexity.

State action based on such limited knowledge invariably will have unforeseen consequences that may well prove quite harmful.

Humility can be seen as the antidote to hubris. Human beings should be humble in the face of the immense forces of nature and recognise that their power to manipulate and change the world is very limited. They can do this only if they recognise that adherence to climate change is the ultimate expression of hubris. There are times when the best thing for the state to do is nothing.

SOURCE




Bogus Models Used To Justify Anti-CO2 Push

Few things are more appealing in politics than something for nothing. As Congress begins considering anti-global-warming legislation, environmentalists hold out precisely that tantalizing prospect: We can conquer global warming at virtually no cost. Here's a typical claim from the Environmental Defense Fund: "For about a dime a day (per person), we can solve climate change, invest in a clean energy future and save billions in imported oil."

This sounds too good to be true, because it is. About four-fifths of the world's and America's energy comes from fossil fuels — oil, coal, natural gas — which are also the largest source of man-made carbon dioxide, the alleged main greenhouse gas. The goal is to eliminate fossil fuels or suppress their CO2. The bill now being considered in the House would mandate a 42% decline in greenhouse emissions by 2030 from 2005 levels and an 83% drop by 2050.

Re-engineering the world energy system seems an almost impossible undertaking. Just consider America's energy needs in 2030, as estimated by the Energy Information Administration. Compared with 2007, the U.S. is projected to have almost 25% more people (375 million), an economy about 70% larger ($20 trillion) and 27% more light-duty vehicles (294 million). Energy demand will be strong.

But the EIA also assumes greater conservation and use of renewables. From 2007 to 2030, solar power grows 18 times, wind six times. New cars and light trucks get 50% better gas mileage. Light bulbs and washing machines become more efficient. Higher energy prices discourage use; by 2030, oil is $130 a barrel in today's dollars.

For all that, U.S. CO2 emissions in 2030 are projected at 6.2 billion metric tons, 4% higher than in 2007. As an example, solar and wind together would still supply only about 5% of electricity, because they expand from a tiny base.

To comply with the House bill, CO2 emissions would have to be about 3.5 billion tons. The claims of the EDF and other environmentalists that this reduction can occur cheaply rely on economic simulations by "general equilibrium" models.

An Environmental Protection Agency study put the cost as low as $98 per household a year, because high energy prices are partly offset by government rebates. With 2.5 people in the average household, that's roughly 11 cents a day per person. The trouble is that these models embody wildly unrealistic assumptions: there are no business cycles; the economy is always at "full employment"; strong growth is assumed, based on past growth rates; the economy automatically accommodates major changes — if fossil fuel prices rise (as they would under anti-global warming laws), consumers quickly use less and new supplies of "clean energy" magically materialize.

There's no problem and costs are low, because the models say so. But the real world, of course, is different. Half the nation's electricity comes from coal. The costs of "carbon capture and sequestration" — storing CO2 underground — are uncertain, and if the technology can't be commercialized, coal plants will continue to emit or might need to be replaced by nuclear plants. Will Americans support a doubling or tripling of nuclear power? Could technical and construction obstacles be overcome in a timely way? Paralysis might lead to power brownouts or blackouts, which would penalize economic growth.

Countless practical difficulties would arise in trying to wean the U.S. economy from today's fossil fuels. One estimate done by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that meeting most transportation needs in 2050 with locally produced biofuels would require "500 million acres of U.S. land . . . more than the total of current U.S. cropland." America would have to become a net food importer.

In truth, models have a dismal record of predicting major economic upheavals or their consequences. They didn't anticipate the present economic crisis. Earlier, they didn't predict the run-up in oil prices to almost $150 a barrel last year. In the 1970s, they didn't foresee runaway inflation. "General equilibrium" models can help evaluate different policy proposals by comparing them against a common baseline. But these models can't tell us how the economy will look in 10 or 20 years, because so much is assumed or ignored — growth rates; financial and geopolitical crises; major bottlenecks; crippling inflation or unemployment.

The selling of the green economy involves much economic make-believe. Environmentalists not only maximize the dangers of global warming — from rising sea levels to advancing tropical diseases. They also minimize the costs of dealing with it. Actually, no one involved in this debate really knows what the consequences or costs might be. All are inferred from models of uncertain reliability. Great schemes of economic and social engineering are proposed on shaky foundations of knowledge. Candor and common sense are in scarce supply.

SOURCE




Australia: DOOM AND BOOM ON A RESILIENT REEF

Our lab has just published a new paper in PLoS ONE, detailing the interactions of coral and algae on the Great Barrier Reef, and uncovered just how resilient some reefs can be following coral bleaching events. The southern end of the Great Barrier Reef was exposed to extended periods of high sea surface temperatures in the end of 2006, resulting in extensive coral bleaching across the Keppel Islands throughout January 2006. Following the bleaching event, a single species of fleshy macro-algae (Lobophora) overgrew the coral skeletons, causing high rates of mortality throughout the second half of 2006. But, by February 2007, corals were rapidly recovering due to an unusual seasonal dieback of the macro-algae, and astonishing regenerative capabilities of the dominant branching Acroporid corals - almost twice the rate of offshore corals on the northern Great Barrier Reef.

What is unusual about the Keppel Islands story is threefold: first, that corals recovered within months to years (reversal of macro-algae dominated reefs often takes decades), second, recovery of the corals occurred in the absence of herbivory (traditionally assumed to be the 'driving factor' in macro-algal phase shifts), and third, that corals recovered through asexual (regenerative) capacities rather than reseeding of reefs by larval recruitment. Understanding the processes that drive recovery following disturbances is critical for management of coral reefs, and the Keppel Islands example shows that managing local stressors (overfishing and water quality) helps reefs bounce back from global stressors such as coral bleaching events. PLoS One is an open-access journal, so the article is free to read - click on the link below, and feel free to rate and comments on the paper. Congratulations Guillermo et al!

Guillermo Diaz-Pulido et al. (2009) Doom and Boom on a Resilient Reef: Climate Change, Algal Overgrowth and Coral Recovery. PLoS ONE 4(4): e5239

SOURCE

NOTE: Hoagy (Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg), Australia's no.1 coral doomster, was among the joint authors of the paper. I wonder will this slow him down any?




Pesky! Plants Absorb More Carbon Dioxide Under Polluted Hazy Skies

Plants absorbed carbon dioxide more efficiently under the polluted skies of recent decades than they would have done in a cleaner atmosphere, according to new findings published this week in Nature.

The results of the study have important implications for efforts to combat future climate change which are likely to take place alongside attempts to lower air pollution levels.

The research team included scientists from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, the Met Office Hadley Centre, ETH Zurich and the University of Exeter.

Lead author Dr Lina Mercado, from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, said, "Surprisingly, the effects of atmospheric pollution seem to have enhanced global plant productivity by as much as a quarter from 1960 to 1999. This resulted in a net 10% increase in the amount of carbon stored by the land once other effects were taken into account."

An increase in microscopic particles released into the atmosphere (known as aerosols), by human activities and changes in cloud cover, caused a decline in the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface from the 1950s up to the 1980s (a phenomenon known as 'global dimming').

Although reductions in sunlight reduce photosynthesis, clouds and atmospheric particles scatter light so that the surface receives light from multiple directions (diffuse radiation) rather than coming straight from the sun. Plants are then able to convert more of the available sunlight into growth because fewer leaves are in the shade.

Scientists have known for a long time that aerosols cool climate by reflecting sunlight and making clouds brighter, but the new study is the first to use a global model to estimate the net effects on plant carbon uptake resulting from this type of atmospheric pollution.

Co-author Dr Stephen Sitch from the Met Office Hadley Centre (now at the University of Leeds) said, "Although many people believe that well-watered plants grow best on a bright sunny day, the reverse is true. Plants often thrive in hazy conditions such as those that exist during periods of increased atmospheric pollution."

The research team also considered the implications of these findings for efforts to avoid dangerous climate change. Under an environmentally friendly scenario in which sulphate aerosols decline rapidly in the 21st century, they found that by cleaning up the atmosphere even steeper cuts in global carbon dioxide emissions would be required to stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations below 450 parts per million by volume.

Co-author Professor Peter Cox of the University of Exeter summed up the consequences of the study, "As we continue to clean up the air in the lower atmosphere, which we must do for the sake of human health, the challenge of avoiding dangerous climate change through reductions in CO2 emissions will be even harder. Different climate changing pollutants have very different direct effects on plants, and these need to be taken into account if we are to make good decisions about how to deal with climate change."

Journal reference:

1. Lina M. Mercado, Nicolas Bellouin, Stephen Sitch, Olivier Boucher, Chris Huntingford, Martin Wild & Peter M. Cox. Impact of changes in diffuse radiation on the global land carbon sink. Nature, 2009; 458 (7241): 1014 DOI: 10.1038/nature07949

SOURCE




A big climbdown from Britain's Greenest newspaper

The missing sunspots: Is this the big chill? Scientists are baffled by what they’re seeing on the Sun’s surface – nothing at all. And this lack of activity could have a major impact on global warming. David Whitehouse investigates:

The disappearance of sunspots happens every few years, but this time it's gone on far longer than anyone expected - and there is no sign of the Sun waking. Could the Sun play a greater role in recent climate change than has been believed? Climatologists had dismissed the idea and some solar scientists have been reticent about it because of its connections with those who those who deny climate change. But now the speculation has grown louder because of what is happening to our Sun. No living scientist has seen it behave this way. There are no sunspots.

“This is the lowest we’ve ever seen. We thought we’d be out of it by now, but we’re not,” says Marc Hairston of the University of Texas. And it’s not just the sunspots that are causing concern. There is also the so-called solar wind – streams of particles the Sun pours out – that is at its weakest since records began. In addition, the Sun’s magnetic axis is tilted to an unusual degree. “This is the quietest Sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” says NASA solar scientist David Hathaway. But this is not just a scientific curiosity. It could affect everyone on Earth and force what for many is the unthinkable: a reappraisal of the science behind recent global warming.

Our Sun is the primary force of the Earth’s climate system, driving atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. It lies behind every aspect of the Earth’s climate and is, of course, a key component of the greenhouse effect. But there is another factor to be considered. When the Sun has gone quiet like this before, it coincided with the earth cooling slightly and there is speculation that a similar thing could happen now. If so, it could alter all our predictions of climate change, and show that our understanding of climate change might not be anywhere near as good as we thought.

Sunspots are dark, cooler patches on the Sun’s surface that come and go in a roughly 11-year cycle, first noticed in 1843. They have gone away before. They were absent in the 17th century – a period called the “Maunder Minimum” after the scientist who spotted it. Crucially, it has been observed that the periods when the Sun’s activity is high and low are related to warm and cool climatic periods. The weak Sun in the 17th century coincided with the so-called Little Ice Age. The Sun took a dip between 1790 and 1830 and the earth also cooled a little. It was weak during the cold Iron Age, and active during the warm Bronze Age. Recent research suggests that in the past 12,000 years there have been 27 grand minima and 19 grand maxima.

Throughout the 20th century the Sun was unusually active, peaking in the 1950s and the late 1980s. Dean Pensell of NASA, says that, “since the Space Age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high. Five of the ten most intense solar cycles on record have occurred in the last 50 years.” The Sun became increasingly active at the same time that the Earth warmed. But according to the scientific consensus, the Sun has had only a minor recent effect on climate change.

Many scientists believe that the Sun was the major player on the Earth’s climate until the past few decades, when the greenhouse effect from increasing levels of carbon dioxide overwhelmed it. Computer models suggest that of the 0.5C increase in global average temperatures over the past 30 years, only 10-20 per cent of the temperature variations observed were down to the Sun, although some said it was 50 per cent.

But around the turn of the century things started to change. Within a few years of the Sun’s activity starting to decline, the rise in the Earth’s temperature began to slow and has now been constant since the turn of the century. This was at the same time that the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide carried on rising. So, is the Sun’s quietness responsible for the tail-off in global warming and if not, what is?

There are some clues as to what’s going on. Although at solar maxima there are more sunspots on the Sun’s surface, their dimming effect is more than offset by the appearance of bright patches on the Sun’s disc called faculae – Italian for “little torches”. Overall, during an 11-year solar cycle the Sun’s output changes by only 0.1 per cent, an amount considered by many to be too small a variation to change much on earth. But there is another way of looking it. While this 0.1 per cent variation is small as a percentage, in terms of absolute energy levels it is enormous, amounting to a highly significant 1.3 Watts of energy per square metre at the Earth. This means that during the solar cycle’s rising phase from solar minima to maxima, the Sun’s increasing brightness has the same climate-forcing effect as that from increasing atmospheric greenhouse gasses. There is recent research suggesting that solar variability can have a very strong regional climatic influence on Earth – in fact stronger than any man-made greenhouse effect across vast swathes of the Earth. And that could rewrite the rules.

No one knows what will happen or how it will effect our understanding of climate change on Earth. If the Earth cools under a quiet Sun, then it may be an indication that the increase in the Sun’s activity since the Little Ice Age has been the dominant factor in global temperature rises. That would also mean that we have overestimated the sensitivity of the Earth’s atmosphere to an increase of carbon dioxide from the pre-industrial three parts per 10,000 by volume to today’s four parts per 10,000. Or the sun could compete with global warming, holding it back for a while. For now, all scientists can do, along with the rest of us, is to watch and wait.

SOURCE




MSNBC climate fakery

MSNBC is running a four-part series entitled Future Earth. On their website they say you can “find out why Earth’s climate machine — the North Pole — is melting alarmingly fast. Learn about our planet’s future, and how you can stop its decline.”

First, the North Pole is not “Earth’s Climate Machine”. There is far more heat and area in the Tropics than at the North Pole.

Second, YOU can’t stop its decline (assuming it’s declining)! Nature is big - you personally are insignificant compared to nature. Don’t you wish you had the power to control icecaps! If you don’t mind some profanity, check out George Carlin’s take on “Saving the Planet”.

Third, MSNBC does not know “our planet’s future”. The scenario they portray in this piece is about as remote a possibility in the near future (and more than likely the very far future) as the Lions going 16-0 next season.

The Antarctic icecap (which is much bigger than the Arctic icecap) has been growing. In Sept. 1979 (first year of satellite data) the Antarctic icecap was 18.4 million sq. km. In Sept. 2008, the Antarctic icecap was at 19.2 million sq. km. That’s a 30-year trend. By comparison, Michigan is 151,586 sq. km, so that’s an increase in icecover of over five times the area of Michigan.

MSNBC could instead be doing a story on the trend of cooling in Antarctica and possible falling sea levels due to ice accumulation in Antarctica. Keep in mind that if the Polar icecap (without Greenland) melted…it would hardly cause sea level to rise, because the icecap is currently displacing water in the Arctic Ocean. The Antarctic icecap is over a land continent, not floating over an ocean. Significant ice accumulation over the land of Antarctica would cause sea level to fall. The Arctic icecap did decrease significantly (yes, very significantly) from 1979 to 2007.

To do a fair piece on Arctic ice…MSNBC or anyone would have to note this. However, to also be fair…they should also tell what’s been going on in the Arctic since 2007. Please, CHECK OUT THIS GRAPH from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Note that the current icecap has grown significantly and is now much closer to the 1979-2000 average than it is to the low level of 2007.

There are meteorological reasons for this increase (PDO - Pacific Decadal Oscillation going negative, etc.) that have nothing to do with CO2. Some scientists predicted there would be no icecap this summer. It’ll actually be bigger than last summer. Al Gore predicted last year that “the icecap will be gone in five years!”.

I would be willing to not only bet Al Gore but also give him 100 to one odds that there will still be a polar ice cap in 2013. One last point, MSNBC is owned by General Electric. GE is already making money off the issue with their Carbon Credit Master Card (link from “Treehugger”, no less). Here’s CNN’s story on the new credit card.

Interesting note: In the fourth quarter of 2008 as GE/NBC stock fell 30 percent, GE spent $4.26 million on lobbying — that’s $46,304 each day, including weekends, Thanksgiving and Christmas. In 2008, the company spent a grand total of $18.66 million on lobbying.” Reviewing their lobbying filings, GE’s specific lobbying issues included the “Climate Stewardship Act,” “Electric Utility Cap and Trade Act,” “Global Warming Reduction Act,” “Federal Government Greenhouse Gas Registry Act,” “Low Carbon Economy Act,” and “Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.”

Do you think this “big business” is just concerned about the environment? Well, check out this column from the Politico, which says: “Several of the companies would gain a commercial advantage after a cap and trade was established. General Electric has an “ecoimagination” line of green appliances and equipment. Robert Stavins, a professor of business and government at Harvard University, said a cap and trade program would be fantastic for GE and other companies that sell products that consume power. He said that if energy costs go up as a result of the regulation — something he believes is likely — a wide array of products from appliances to power plants would become prematurely obsolete and need to be replaced with greener models.” That would mean big money for GE (parent company of NBC and MSNBC).

Take a moment and read my previous post on polar ice…check out the graphs and charts…they speak for themselves.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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27 April, 2009

RESPONSE TO PETER SALONIUS

An email from Mark Lawson [markslawson@optusnet.com.au] of the Australian Financial Review about the Salonius effusion

I wish to respond to the post by Peter Salonius that takes the green alarmism to new extremes. For he suggests that the only way to save the planet is to go back to hunter-gathering lifestyles, and have no children. Anti-population groups (the best collective term I can think of for them) are common in Australia and I recently annoyed them by pointing to the obvious from official statistics - there is just no hint of any limit, anywhere.

There are many facets to the argument but let us briefly discuss one aspect - agricultural productivity. Salonius is fond of quoting Jared Diamond. In one book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), Prof Diamond makes the valuable point that the Australian state of Western Australia is akin to a gigantic flower pot. The soil has few nutrients of its own so what farmers put in the way of fertiliser is what they get out in crops. If the fertiliser stops coming then no crops. Salonius says that phosphate will eventually stop coming, pointing to research suggesting a "phosphate peak" [This was a great scare in the 1970s but was rather defused by the discovery (now apparently forgotten) of vast phosphate deposits in the Western Sahara -- JR]

I groaned when I saw this. Arguing over forecasts of peak oil is bad enough, with all the immense complications of no standardisation in the way reserves are reported, and the interplay between price, demand, supply, oil exploration and technology. Then there are different types of oil (oil sands and shales) and substitutes (LNG or even coal if the price is right). But at least we understand a great deal about the most traded commodity as it is the subject of intense research. Trying to work out what phosphate production might be in, say, 50 years when far less is known about reserves and substitutes would be a waste of time. A dozen highly-paid analysts could examine the issue intensively for five years and come up with a forecast that could still be completely wrong.

When it comes to making forecasts Prof Diamond and his fellow travellers are likely to be no better than the rest of us. Although the chapter quoted above makes some valuable points, there are also howlers. Prof Diamond somehow manages to give the impression that Australia can barely feed itself, without actually saying so. In fact its agricultural surpluses are so large farmers have to make special efforts to find markets. He also manages to confuse the West Australian State Constitution (which is arranged to favour the agricultural sector) with the Federal Constitution (which isn't).

While on the question of productivity publications from the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics (ABARE) show that total factor productivity was increasing, in Australia at least, until perhaps 10 years ago. No one seems to know what this pause is due to, but the delay in bio-engineered crops may be an explanation. The increase in productivity is, in turn, only just keeping Australian farmers ahead of generally declining terms of trade (increase in prices for farm inputs, and general decline in real prices for agricultural commodities). It doesn't look like we will run out of food any time soon.




"SCIENCE" BY PRESS RELEASE

A new study on global streamflows has just been announced via press release by NCAR. Here is how the press release opens:

"Rivers in some of the world's most populous regions are losing water, according to a new comprehensive study of global stream flow. The study, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), suggests that in many cases the reduced flows are associated with climate change. The process could potentially threaten future supplies of food and water."

Here is what the paper actually says:

"We emphasize, however, that the actual streamflow and discharge examined here likely include changes induced by human activities, such as withdrawal of stream water and building dams, and thus they are not readily suitable for quantifying the effects of global warming on streamflow."

Lets see how many news stories follow the press release rather than the paper.

SOURCE.

Note: The Guardian does not disappoint. It always chooses the alarmist path.




IS THE SUN A GLOBAL WARMING DENIER?

Philip Stott

The Sun isn't playing ball with the 'global warmers'. Indeed, I expect one of our more rabid Labour ministers to come out any day now fatuously accusing the fading star of 'global warming' denial on a par with denying the effects of smoking or the link between HIV and AIDS. But one has to laugh. The sun is currently so inactive that even our 'global warming'-obsessed media has been forced, through heavily rose-tinted sunglasses, to admit the phenomenon, rushing to add, of course, that this doesn't mean that 'global warming' has halted, or that we must stop mending our evil ways.

'Global Warming' In Trouble

Yet, the truth is that 'global warming' [not, let's be clear, climate change] is possibly in trouble. The whole point is that climate is the most complex of systems, and that it is impossible - madness even - to try to predict future climates with respect to one variable, and a variable working at the margins to boot.

So what precisely is all the fuss about that very big other variable, the Sun? Put simply, a thing called 'Solar Cycle 24' is long overdue; it just can't seem to get going. Solar-cycle intensity is measured by the maximum number of sunspots. Sunspots are dark blotches on the Sun that mark areas of heightened magnetic activity. The more sunspots, the more likely it is that major solar storms will occur. The next 11-year cycle of solar storms (i.e. 'Solar Cycle 24') was predicted to begin in Autumn, 2006, but it appears to have been seriously delayed.

This is what Paul Stanko of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is reported as saying about this on the wonderful Watts Up With That web site: "My running mean of the International Sunspot Number [ISN} for 2009 just dipped below 1.00. For anything comparable you now need to go back before 1913 (which scored a 1.43) which could mean we're now competing directly with the Dalton Minimum.

Just in case you'd like another tidbit, here is something that puts our 20 to 30 day spotless runs in perspective... the mother of all spotless runs (in the heart of the Maunder Minimum, of course!) was from October 15, 1661 to August 2, 1671. It totaled 3,579 consecutive spotless days, all of which had obs[ervations]."

So Why Do Sunspots Concern Us Here On Planet Earth?

But why does a spotless sun matter to you and me? The reason is simple: there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climates. During an active solar period, violent eruptions occur more often on the Sun. Solar flares and vast explosions, called coronal mass ejections, shoot energetic photons and highly-charged matter towards Earth, affecting the planet's ionosphere and geomagnetic field, potentially disrupting power grids, critical communications, satellites, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), and even threatening astronauts with harmful radiation. These storms also illuminate night skies with brilliant sheets of red and green, called auroras or aurorae - the Northern Lights (aurora borealis) and the Southern Lights (aurora australis).

However, sunspot numbers also affect the temperature of the Earth. A famous student of solar cycles was Edward Walter Maunder (1851-1928). Maunder was an English astronomer who identified an historical climate period, dating from 1645 to 1715, which is now named after him as the 'Maunder Minimum' [see the graph right: reproduced under the GNU Free Documentation Licence Version 1.2. Original by the excellent 'Global Warming Art' website].

This was a period in the Little Ice Age when sunspots became very rare, as noted by observers of the era. During one 30-year period within the Maunder Minimum, astronomers recorded only about 50 sunspots. Although a simplistic correlation is rightly contested, the Maunder Minimum thus appears to coincide with the middle - and the severest part - of the Little Ice Age.

Moreover, a second time a cycle was delayed like our current Solar Cycle 24 occurred during the so-called Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790. Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

Thus, what currently is happening to the average temperature of the Earth's surface? Since at least 2001, it has been falling, and dramatically so during the last two years.

Nobody Knows

Will this lead to a new mini Little Ice Age? I don't know, and nor does anybody else, anymore, I might add, than the global warmers know 'the truth' about climate. What it does remind us, however, is that climate remains entirely beyond human control and management, and that there will be no predictable outcomes to managing CO2 emissions at the margins.

The question we should be asking every Minister who comes out blathering that we must 'fix' climate is: "What climate precisely are you going to conjure up for us?"

Political Madness: 'Global warming' is a quite extraordinary political madness. In the immortal words of Bruno Latour: "Nous n'avons jamais été modernes".

SOURCE




False prophet rewarded at the NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center)

Last year we had the forecast from NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze of an “ice free north pole”. As we know, that didn’t even come close to being true. Summer 2008 had more arctic ice than summer 2007, and summer 2007 was not “ice free” by any measure.

In spite of the spectacular failure of Dr. Serreze’s widely quoted prediction, there were no retractions, no apologies for misleading the public, no admissions of error, and inaccurate stories like the one above are still in place. So what could possibly be worse news from NSIDC?

The very man who made that ridiculous statement of “an ice free north pole in 2008? is set to become the “incoming director” of NSIDC. Apparently alarmism pays, especially if you get press.

SOURCE




US AMBASSADOR BLASTS EUROPEAN CLIMATE FAKERY

Departing ambassadors give valedictory addresses, most of which are stunningly dull. Not so the US special envoy to the EU, the exotically named C Boyden Gray, who had a stark warning for Europe and a dig at Britain as he shut the door behind him.

C Boyden was scathing about the European plan for a 20% drop in greenhouse gases between 1990 and 2020, which would allow 50% of the "savings" to be achieved via "offsets" in developing countries.

With one eye clearly on UK plans to build Kingsnorth and up to seven other coal power stations, he pointed out that European countries could hardly claim to be world leaders on climate change if they were going to increase coal consumption and get everyone else to make the cuts. How much more ethical was the US, planning to cut emissions just as deeply but to make all except 15% of the cuts at home!

The ears of the British diplomats in the audience burned, seeing as they were the chief cheerleaders of the EU's offset arrangements.

SOURCE




Cancelled: 'Snow and freezing winds' puts Edmonton's Earth Day on ice

Mother Nature upstaged Mother Earth in Edmonton this weekend. Earth Day celebrations in the Albertan capital that were planned for Sunday have been postponed because of the cold weather.

Organizer Janice Boudreau said exhibitors and entertainers had been pulling out all week as forecasts announced snow and freezing winds. "They did it last year, but they didn't want to do it again," she said. "This is supposed to be an enjoyable experience for everyone." The organizing team will meet Monday to pick a new date, hopefully one during May or June.

Boudreau made the decision to put the event on hold on Saturday. "Our philosophy is any day is Earth Day," she said. "This was not an easy decision to make."

April 22 was International Earth Day.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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26 April, 2009

SEA ICE CLAIMS ON THIN ICE

Last weeks' top Antarctic AGW story was: Antarctic ice melting faster than expected

due to CO2, of course. This week the #1 story is: Antarctic ice spreading

but the increase in size is due to "stratospheric ozone depletion" which is of course also caused by man-made gases.

So Antarctic ice is disappearing faster than expected due to man, and it is also expanding in size due to man. Meanwhile, the early autumn temperature in Vostok, Antarctica is a toasty -95F, a nice warm up from the -104F temperatures earlier this week.

Oh, and one minor problem with the ozone hole theory "The ozone hole occurs during the Antarctic spring, from September to early December" - but the positive ice anomaly occurred during the autumn and winter (March through July) as represented by the red line below. And while the ozone hole was present, ice was normal. So the ice excess probably has nothing to do with the ozone hole.



SOURCE




EARTH DAY PREDICTIONS OF 1970. THE REASON YOU SHOULDN'T BELIEVE EARTH DAY PREDICTIONS OF 2009

For the next 24 hours, the media will assault us with tales of imminent disaster that always accompany the annual Earth Day Doom & Gloom Extravaganza. Ignore them. They'll be wrong. We're confident in saying that because they've always been wrong. And always will be. Need proof? Here are some of the hilarious, spectacularly wrong predictions made on the occasion of Earth Day 1970.

"We have about five more years at the outside to do something." -Kenneth Watt, ecologist

"Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." -George Wald, Harvard Biologist

"We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation." -Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

"Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction." -New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

"Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." -Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

More HERE




POLISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES QUESTIONS GLOBAL WARMING "CONSENSUS"

Translation:

The climate change of our planet, which can be observed more frequently in recent years, has become alarming for the public opinion. Various methods to remedy the situation are elaborated on the international level by decision makers, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (operating since 1988) and different ecologic organisations.

Having a part in this significant debate, the Geologic Science Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences wishes to turn to 10 fundamental aspects of the problem closely related to the functioning of geosystem - the complex interdependence of processes occurring in the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. The knowledge of these factors should be the foundation for any rational and careful decisions, which could interfere in the geosystem.

1. The climate of the Earth depends on the interaction between the surface and the atmosphere, both of which are heated by solar radiation characterized by a cyclical, variable intensity. The climate is influenced by the Earth's yearly revolution around the Sun, thermics, changes in ocean waters flow, air mass movement, mountain massif position, their uplift and erosion in time perspective as well as changes in the continents' position as a result of their permanent wandering.

2. Geologic research proves irrefutably that the permanent change is the fundamental characteristic of the Earth's climate as throughout its entire history, and the changes occur in cycles of varied length - from several thousand to just a few years. Longer climate cycles are provoked by the extraterrestrial factors of astronomic character as well as by the changes of the Earth's orbital parameters, in brief - by regional and local factors. Not all reasons for climate change or their phenomena are fully known yet.

3. Although in the history of the Earth, a considerably warmer climate than today had dominated, there had been repeated occurrences when the Earth experienced massive global cooling which always resulted in vast ice sheets that sometimes even reached the subtropics. Therefore, reliable forecasts of changes in the Earth's climate (not to mentioned efforts to prevent, shape, or act against them) must take into account the results of its research of the Earth's geological history - a time when humanity (and the industry) were not on our planet.

4. Since twelve thousand years ago, the Earth is in the another phase of cyclical warming and is near the maximum of its intensively. Just in the last 2.5 million years, periods of warming have on several occasions intertwined with ice ages, which have already been well identified.

5. The current warming is accompanied by an increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere: water vapour is dominant among them, and in smaller quantities there are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and ozone. This has always happened because it is an occurrence that accompanies cyclical warming and cooling. The periodic increase in the number of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, sometimes a value even several times larger than at present, has accompanied previous warming even before man inhabited the Earth.

6. Over the past 400 thousand years - even without human intervention - the level of CO2 in the air, based on the Antarctic ice cores, has already been similar 4 times, and even higher than the current value. At the end of the last ice age, within a time of a few hundred years, the average annual temperature changed over the globe several times, in total, it has gone up by almost 10 °C in the northern hemisphere, therefore the changes mentioned above were incomparably more dramatic than the changes reported today.

7. After a warm period in the past millennium, by the end of the thirteenth century, a cold period had begun and it lasted up to the mid-nineteenth century, and then a warm period in which we are living had begun. The phenomenon observed today, in particular the temporary rise of global temperature, are the result of the natural rhythm of climate change. Warmer and warmer oceans have a smaller ability to absorb carbon dioxide, and reducing the area of the long term permafrost leads to more rapid decomposition of organic compounds in the soil, and thus to increased emissions of greenhouse gases. For billions of years, Earth's volcanic activity along the lines of lithosphere plate boundaries, hidden mainly beneath the surface of the oceans, has been constantly providing the atmosphere with CO2 with various levels of intensively.

In the geo-system gas is removed from the atmosphere to the biosphere and from the lithosphere through the process of photosynthesis that is bound in the living organisms - including the shell carbonate marine organisms and after their death it is stored in the huge limestone on the bottom of the seas and the oceans, while on land it is bound in various organic sediments.

8. A detailed monitoring of climate parameters has been carried out for slightly over 200 years; it only regards parts of continents, which constitute only 28% of the world. Some of the older measuring stations established - as a result of progressive urbanization, in the peripheries of the cities, are now within them. This factor, among other things, is the reason for the rise of the measured values of temperature. The research of the vast areas of the oceans has only been launched 40 years ago. Measurements taken for this kind of short periods of time can not be considered as a firm basis for creating fully reliable models of thermal changes on the surface of the Earth, and their accuracy is difficult to verify. That is why far-reaching restraint needs to be kept regarding blaming, or even giving the biggest credit to man for the increased level of emissions of greenhouse gases, for such a theory has not been proven.

9. There is no doubt that a certain part of the rise of the level of greenhouse gases, specifically CO2, is associated with human activity therefore, steps should be taken to reduce the amount on the basis of the principles of sustainable development, a cease of extensive deforestation, particularly in tropical regions. It is equally important to take up and pursuit appropriate adapting actions that will mitigate the effects of the current warming trend.

10. Experiments in natural science show that one-sided observations, those that take no account of the multiplicity of factors determining certain processes in the geo-system, lead to unwarranted simplifications and wrong conclusions when trying to explain natural phenomena. Thus, politicians who rely on incomplete data may take wrong decisions. It makes room for politically correct lobbying, especially on the side of business marketing of exceptionally expensive, so called eco-friendly, energy technologies or those offering CO2 storage (sequestration) in exploited deposits. It has little to do with what is objective in nature. Taking radical and expensive economic measures aiming at implementing the emission only of few greenhouse gases, with no multi-sided research into climate change, may turn out counterproductive.

The PAN Committee of Geological Sciences believes it necessary to start an interdisciplinary research based on comprehensive monitoring and modelling of the impact of other factors -not just the level of CO2 - on the climate. Only this kind of approach will bring us closer to identifying the causes of climate change

Geological Science Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences

NOTE: The original document (in Polish) is available here




EMISSIONS TRADING DRIVES GERMAN INDUSTRY ABROAD

Emissions trading will burden German energy companies considerably while its competition in France will be able to attract industrial consumers with lower energy prices as a result of rules adopted by the EU. The relocation of German industries could be the result. This is the result of calculations by the consulting firm Energy Environment Forecast Analysis (EEFA).

At the end of last year, the EU member states agreed on the rules for emissions trading from 2013 to 2020. One of the benchmarks agreed: from 2013 onwards, the operators of CO2-emitting power plants will be forced to buy all their emission allowances through auctions. Exceptions from this rule only apply to nine eastern European member states.

From the start, German electricity producers had warned about the consequences of this decision and calculated billion-dollar benefits for competing countries. The consultant firm EEFA has now quantified these benefits. "By 2020, French energy suppliers will rake in additional profits of 9.5 billion euros as a direct result of the auctioning of carbon allowances," said EEFA's Elmar Hillebrand. Among EU countries, there are clear winners and losers of the new emissions trading rules. "Countries with a high proportion of nuclear power or hydroelectric power, such as France and Sweden, are among the winners. Germany, because of the structure of its power generation, is among the losers, also because of the exit from nuclear energy, "says Hillebrand.

Hillebrand expects serious consequences for industrial production in Germany. So far, the issue at the centre at the debate has been whether German industry, due to the ETS's effects on the price of electricity, would have to relocate outside the EU. What has been ignored, however, is the effect of the emissions trading scheme on competition within Europe. "This aspect should not be underestimated. It might be of interest for energy-intensive businesses to relocate their production from Germany to France," Hillebrand warned. This could mean that "the wealth creation chain in Germany would be disrupted." [transl. BJP]

More HERE (in German)




$8 gas and the green agenda

by Jeff Jacoby

TESTIFYING BEFORE the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week, Energy Secretary Steven Chu was asked about something he said in September. "Somehow," the Nobel laureate had told The Wall Street Journal, "we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." At the time, gasoline in Europe was going for around $8 a gallon. Did the secretary, Florida Representative Cliff Stearns inquired, still want to see US gas prices rise that high?

"In today's economic climate," Chu quickly replied, "it would be completely unwise to want to increase the price of gasoline. And so we are looking forward to reducing the price of transportation in the American family . . . by encouraging fuel-efficient cars (and) developing alternative forms of fuel." The congressman couldn't resist giving the knife a twist. "Your statement, 'Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe' -- doesn't that sound a little bit silly in retrospect?" Stearns asked.

Chu: "Yes."

Stearns didn't ask why Chu had stopped being "silly," but it doesn't take a Ph.D. in political science to know that a craving for higher gas prices is one of those things you quit talking about after you join a presidential administration -- assuming you want the president to be reelected.

Yet Chu is hardly the first person to have called for making gasoline more expensive. As far back as his first US Senate campaign in 1984, for example, John Kerry advocated a 50-cent-per-gallon increase in gas taxes. Many environmental activists, climate alarmists, and mass-transit fetishists want to see fuel costs rise -- even as high as, yes, $8 a gallon. The steeper the price at the pump, they reason, the fewer miles Americans will drive, the less petroleum they will consume, and the greener their lifestyles will become.

"I hope gas prices go as high as they have to go to get the rest of these morons off the road in these big Hummers," CNN's Jack Cafferty has said, while Freakonomics author Steven Levitt wrote in 2007 -- in an essay headlined "Hurray for High Gas Prices!" -- that "rather than bemoaning the high price of gas, we should be celebrating it." Last year, The New York Times's Thomas Friedman sang the praises of $4-a-gallon gasoline, and wished "Washington would declare that it would never let the price fall below that level." Even Barack Obama, asked on the campaign trail whether sky-high gas prices might actually be a good thing, objected only to the speed with which they had climbed. "I think I would have preferred a gradual adjustment," he told CNBC.

Those are fringe opinions, of course. Most Americans don't regard automobiles as a blight and don't blame human activity for global warming, so it goes without saying that most of them don't want fuel prices to rise. For those who do believe that cars are a curse and climate change is caused by people, however, it makes perfect sense to call for more expensive gasoline.

Raise the price of something high enough and you invariably lower the demand for it. That's why last year's sharp spike in gas prices resulted in fewer cars on the highways and a plunge in miles driven. If your goal is fewer SUVs, less solo driving, and lower carbon-dioxide emissions, inflicting European-level gasoline prices on American motorists is a pretty good strategy. Conversely, it is hypocritical -- or at least illogical -- "to say you care deeply about global warming and advocate for the price of gas to go down," as AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson told Newsweek last year. "Those are mutually exclusive concepts."

And yet advocating for the price of gas to go down is essentially what environmentalists are doing when they clamor for higher-mileage cars. All other things being equal, raising fuel efficiency lowers the cost of driving. As Secretary Chu correctly told the House committee last week, "encouraging fuel-efficient cars" is one means of "reducing the price of transportation." But cheaper driving means more driving, and more driving means more energy use, more cars on the road, more demand for highways, more drilling for oil -- all things environmentalists abhor.

If greens and global-warmists really want the US automotive fleet to use less energy, they should be clamoring for cars that get lower mileage. Crazy, you say? Surely no crazier than $8-a-gallon gas.

SOURCE




Pressure to censor global warming skepticism

In a series of articles on climate change the villain is gradually being identified as, you should have guessed it, freedom of thought! One Jon Gertner of The New York Times Magazine wrote the other day that

"What makes CRED's work [the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions] especially relevant ... is that various human attitudes and responses--How can there be global warming when we had a frigid January? What's in it for me if I change the way I live?--can make the climate problem worse by leaving it unacknowledged or unaddressed. Apathetic and hostile responses to climate change, in other words, produce a feedback loop and reinforce the process of global warming"

The idea that thought and speech are major obstacles to doing what is right isn't new at all. As recently as the 1980s the one liberty that liberal statists could be counted on defending, at least in the United States of America, is the one spelled out in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Alas, this was challenged some time ago by Professor Catharine A. MacKinnon of the University of Michigan school of law, in her short but prominently published book, Only Words (Harvard University Press, 1983). In it the good professor argued that words do not deserve the legal protection afforded them by the Constitution since insults and put downs, including jokes, can injure people good and hard. And such injuries should not be protected. The victims would have to pay too high a price for the fact that the law treats such injuries as "only words."

We have heard a good deal lately about how President Barack Obama is a pragmatist, how he eschews ideology. The most sensible rendition of this sound bite is that he refuses to be bound by principles and when it comes to something as vital as containing climate change, why not toss the First Amendment and censor those who show skepticism?

Professor MacKinnon wasn't recommending tossing the principle underlying the First Amendment, only suggesting that we should not be ideological about our embrace of it. Maybe the same should be expected from President Obama when it comes to a central elements of his political agenda, namely, to contain pollution.

This pragmatism isn't across the board for Mr. Obama, of course. As with all loyal pragmatists he, too, is willing to stick to a select few principles and refuse to give them up even in times of emergency. Consider, for example, that according the Obama & Co. there is never any excuse for using torture!

I will not speculate on why in that instance pragmatism is inadequate--various suggestions present themselves and some of them aren't pretty at all. Suffice it to note that Mr. Obama seems to be perfectly willing to toss jettison the principles of the free market--the right to private property, the right to enter into binding contracts, the right to due process.

And here we have evidence that like minded folks, too, appear not to be very worried about banning certain kinds of inconvenient conduct such as speaking out against the doctrine--the ideology?--of climate change. We should be prepared, I believe, for some movement in this direction. Apathy toward climate change isn't tolerable, nor is skepticism. Leaving the climate problem unacknowledged or unaddressed would also count as something we ought not to tolerate--so if I speak out against recycling, for example, maybe I ought to be muzzled since not doing so will "produce a feedback loop and reinforce the process of global warming."

Just as Professor MacKinnon's abandoning of the First Amendment seemed to her fully justified, given how that Amendment made it possible to insult and intimidate women, so it should come as no big surprise to anyone that laws will be passed that prohibit global warming skepticism. Such dangerous conduct on the part of citizens must be arrested, or so some of the climate change fanatics could well believe now, quite seriously.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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25 April, 2009

World cooling has set-in warns astrophyicist - BBC & 'Global Warming apologists' challenged to end 'cover-up'

"Official data shows the world passed its peak temperatures 10 years ago, but sadly the BBC and 'Global Warming apologists' are now attempting to cover up the facts" said Piers Corbyn, 'climate realist', astrophysicist & long range weather & climate forecaster, 24 April, in response to the BBC's 'Quiet Sun baffling astronomers' report.

"In timely backing of the UK Government's £1billion Carbon budget and similar moves in the USA, the BBC and Prof Lockwood of Southampton University distort the facts in an attempt to cover-up the proven centrality of the sun in controlling world temperatures", said Piers.

"They make the ignorant and loaded claim that '...Current slight dimming of the sun was not going to reverse the rise in global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels'. This is treble confusion because (1) the world is already cooling even though CO2 is rising; (2) there is no evidence that the burning of fossil fuels ever did or ever will drive world temperatures and (3) reputable and informed solar scientists know that there is a lot more to the sun's influence on the world than its dimness or brightness."

"It appears the BBC and Prof Lockwood hope to coax the public into believing coal burning drives climate by telling us that another discredited theory - that of solar dimming - doesn't work. This approach is disingenuous. It is astounding that such arguments as bizarre as 'It's not a dog so it must be a cat' emanate from a member of the UK Natural Environment Research Council.

"It is well known that world temperatures primarily follow the sun's magnetic cycle of 22 years, so obviously half the time temperatures will move oppositely to the 11 year cycle of tiny solar dimming and brightening. Prof Lockwood has been reminded of this fact on a number of occasions yet he is still recycling this old chestnut. With scientific leadership of this calibre what hope has the UK of clawing its way out of recession on the back of sound investment in science and technology?"

"The latest advances in Sun-Earth relations show not only the primacy of magnetic-particle links between the sun and the earth but that these are modulated by lunar effects to give the observed 60 year cycle in both world and USA temperatures. This means that the world will continue general cooling at least to 2030 (see ++). Neither the 60 year cycle, nor the 22 year cycle nor any fluctuations in world tempertaures over the last 100 years, thousand years or million years can be explained by changes in CO2. Furthermore advances in understanding of Sun-Earth magnetic and particle activity are being applied to succesfully predict dangerous weather and climate change events months and years ahead; whereas all predictions of the CO2-centred theory have failed and will continue to fail and anti-CO2 taxes and measures will never stop a single extreme weather event. The UN's Climate Change committee (the IPCC) have still failed to respond to requests from an international group of scientists to provide data evidence for the CO2 theory (see+*).

"Tragically the BBC is driven by a political agenda to propagate failed science rather than report on front-line advances in this field of key scientific and political import. The BBC and NERC boycotted the International Climate Change Conference New York 8-10 March which is a great pity because they missed sound refutations of the theory of man-made global warming and many world-class reports on scientific advance"

"One wonders if Prof Lockwood's place on the Natural Environment Research Council and the well-known opposition of its Chief Executive to 'Climate Sceptics' are not dimming his scientific faculties" queried Piers (See NERC-Register of interests)

The above is a press release from www.weatheraction.com. Enquiries: piers@weatheraction.com




The warmth of our present geological era is associated with Methane from Wetlands

Wot?? No CO2?

At the end of the cold climate interval called the Younger Dryas, approximately 11,600 years ago, global temperatures began their final ascent to the warmth of the Holocene, and the concentration of methane in the atmosphere increased rapidly and substantially. There has been much speculation about the cause of that increase, with most recent evidence pointing to wetlands as the source. The most direct proof of that explanation requires the measurement of the radiocarbon content of that methane. Petrenko et al. (p. 506; see the Perspective by Nisbet and Chappellaz) analyzed 1000 kilogramsized samples of Greenland ice, which have sufficient methane to allow measurement of its 14C content. They show that wetland sources indeed must have been responsible for the majority of the rise in atmospheric methane levels at the end of the Younger Dryas.

SOURCE

14CH4 Measurements in Greenland Ice: Investigating Last Glacial Termination CH4 Sources

By Vasilii V. Petrenko et al.

The cause of a large increase of atmospheric methane concentration during the Younger Dryas–Preboreal abrupt climatic transition (~11,600 years ago) has been the subject of much debate. The carbon-14 (14C) content of methane (14CH4) should distinguish between wetland and clathrate contributions to this increase. We present measurements of 14CH4 in glacial ice, targeting this transition, performed by using ice samples obtained from an ablation site in west Greenland. Measured 14CH4 values were higher than predicted under any scenario. Sample 14CH4 appears to be elevated by direct cosmogenic 14C production in ice. 14C of CO was measured to better understand this process and correct the sample 14CH4. Corrected results suggest that wetland sources were likely responsible for the majority of the Younger Dryas–Preboreal CH4 rise.

Science 24 April 2009: Vol. 324. no. 5926, pp. 506 - 508

Global Warming Overreach

Congressman Henry Waxman played to the crowds this week with high-profile hearings designed to boost his climate legislation. To listen to the Energy and Commerce committee chair, a House global warming bill is all but in the recyclable bag.

To listen to Congressman Jim Matheson is something else. During opening statements, the Utah Democrat detailed 14 big problems he had with the bill, and told me later that if he hadn't been limited to five minutes, "I might have had more." Mr. Matheson is one of about 10 moderate committee Democrats who are less than thrilled with the Waxman climate extravaganza, and who may yet stymie one of Barack Obama's signature issues. If so, the president can thank Democratic liberals, who are engaging in one of their first big cases of overreach.

Not that you couldn't see this coming even last year, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi engineered her coup against former Energy chairman John Dingell. House greens had been boiling over the Michigan veteran's cautious approach to climate-legislation. Mr. Dingell's mistake was understanding that when it comes to energy legislation, the divides aren't among parties, but among regions. Design a bill that socks it to all those manufacturing, oil-producing, coal-producing, coal-using states, and say goodbye to the very Democrats necessary to pass that bill.

Such sense didn't deter Mrs. Pelosi, who first tried an end-run around Mr. Dingell in 2007 by putting Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey in charge of a new global-warming committee. When that didn't get her a bill, she helped her fellow Californian, Mr. Waxman, unseat Mr. Dingell. Environmentalists threw a party, and the Waxman-Markey duo got busy on legislation to please their coastal crowds.

Cap and trade was already going to be a brawl, but the two upped the ante by including tougher targets and restrictions. If that weren't enough, they rolled in every other item on the green wish list: a renewable electricity standard; a low-carbon fuel standard; a broader renewable fuels policy; new efficiency standards. Any one of these is a monumental fight on its own. Put together they risk an intra-party committee mutiny.

There's Mr. Matheson, chair of the Blue Dog energy task force, who has made a political career championing energy diversity and his state's fossil fuels, and who understands Utah is mostly reliant on coal for its electricity needs. He says he sees several ways this bill could result in a huge "income transfer" from his state to those less fossil-fuel dependent. Indiana Democrat Baron Hill has a similar problem; not only does his district rely on coal, it is home to coal miners. Rick Boucher, who represents the coal-fields of South Virginia, knows the feeling.

Or consider Texas's Gene Green and Charles Gonzalez, or Louisiana's Charlie Melancon, oil-patch Dems all, whose home-district refineries would be taxed from every which way by the bill. Mr. Dingell remains protective of his district's struggling auto workers, which would be further incapacitated by the bill. Pennsylvania's Mike Doyle won't easily throw his home-state steel industry over a cliff.

Add in the fact that a number of these Democrats hail from districts that could just as easily be in Republicans' hands. They aren't eager to explain to their blue-collar constituents the costs of indulging Mrs. Pelosi's San Francisco environmentalists. Remember 1993, when President Bill Clinton proposed an energy tax on BTUs? The House swallowed hard and passed the legislation, only to have Senate Democrats kill it; a year later, Newt Gingrich was in charge. With Senate Democrats already backing away from the Obama cap-and-trade plans, at least a few House Dems are reluctant to walk the plank.

Rumors were in fact flying earlier this week that Mr. Markey might have to postpone next week's subcommittee markup. For now, he and Mr. Waxman are busy trying to buy or arm-twist votes. They have some potent tools, in particular the enticement of giving some carbon-emission permits away for free, or allocating them to specific industries. Yet having set expectations so high, the duo risk losing liberal members if they give away too much.

The Obama team is aware it has trouble, which explains last week's well-timed Environmental Protection Agency "finding" that carbon is a danger. The administration is now using this as a stick to beat Congress to act, arguing that if it doesn't the EPA will. (Reality: Any EPA actions will be tied up in court for years.) It also helps explain EPA's Monday analysis claiming the legislation won't cost all that much. (Reality: The agency could only make this claim by assuming an endless recession.)

The real risk to the president is that his bill goes down at the hands of his own party -- with nary a Republican to blame. Whether Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Waxman considered this as they crafted their gem is unclear. But the overreach has made it a possibility now.

SOURCE




Geologist Chides Revkin of New York Times For 'Strange, Silly' Climate Article

Revkin 'is starting to really feel the weight of the evidence showing that dangerous AGW is a myth'

Australian Paleoclimate researcher Dr. Robert M. “Bob” Carter dismissed New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin's April 23, 2009 article “Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate” as “strange, silly even.” Revkin wrote about the now defunct Global Climate Coalition and documents that suggest the group had scientists on board in the 1990's who claimed “the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.”

Paleoclimate scientist Dr. Bob Carter of Australia's James Cook University and former chairman of the earth science panel of the Australian Research Council told Climate Depot his thoughts on Revkin's article on Friday April 24, 2009. Dr. Carter also testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works on December 6, 2006.

Dr. Carter's Comments on Revkin's NYT Article: Andrew Revkin's latest article in the New York Times makes for strange reading; silly, even. For though the technical experts may have been advising (for some strange, doubtless self-interested reason) this: “even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted”, I'll eat my hat if anyone could show that was actually the case at any time since 1990.

My guess is that Revkin -- like all other promulgators of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) hysteria throughout the media and scientific communities -- is starting to really feel the weight of the evidence that shows all too clearly that dangerous AGW is a myth, and is simply thrashing around in any and every direction to try to find a way of continuing to obfuscate the issue until December.

The bottom line is that - with President Obama elected and Copenhagen COP (Conference of Parties) coming up as long-planned - the carbonistas can sense that they are oh-so-nearly over the line.

In my view they will do absolutely anything to ensure that the dam holds until December, and then in Copenhagen aim to achieve “another Kyoto”, i.e. organize a lowest-common-denominator agreement that is so inoffensive that countries will sign it with relief (anything to get this bloody issue of off our backs for a while). And this will be making exactly the same mistake again, for a signed piece of paper, however ineffectual the actions, if any, that are required to stem from it, will serve to keep the matter on the political agenda – just as Kyoto has.

God protect us from those who want to save the world.

On a more positive note, there has been a MAJOR change in the way that the Australian media are reporting the AGW issue, led nobly by newspaper The Australian. The change has been stimulated by a Canberra Senate select committee that is discussing the tabled ETS legislation, and also by the release of Geologist Ian Plimer's new book. “Heaven and Earth. Global Warming: The Missing Science”

More HERE




Democrats afraid of what a British aristocrat might say

UK's Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President Al Gore at high profile global warming hearing on Friday April 24, 2009 at 10am in Washington. Monckton told Climate Depot that the Democrats rescinded his scheduled joint appearance at the House Energy and Commerce hearing on Friday. Monckton said he was informed that he would not be allowed to testify alongside Gore when his plane landed from England Thursday afternoon.

“The House Democrats don't want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face,” Monckton told Climate Depot in an exclusive interview. “They are cowards.”

According to Monckton, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), Ranking Member on the Energy & Commerce Committee, had invited him to go head to head with Gore and testify at the hearing on Capitol Hill Friday. But Monckton now says that when his airplane from London landed in the U.S. on Thursday, he was informed that the former Vice-President had “chickened out” and there would be no joint appearance. Gore is scheduled to testify on Friday to the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment's fourth day of hearings on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The hearing will be held in 2123 Rayburn House Office Building.

According to Monckton, House Democrats told the Republican committee staff earlier this week that they would be putting forward an unnamed 'celebrity' as their star witness Friday at a multi-panel climate hearing examining the House global warming bill. The 'celebrity' witness turned out to be Gore. Monckton said the GOP replied they would respond to the Democrats 'celebrity' with an unnamed 'celebrity' of their own. But Monckton claims that when the Democrats were told who the GOP witness would be, they refused to allow him to testify alongside Gore.

“The Democrats have a lot to learn about the right of free speech under the US Constitution. Congress Henry Waxman's (D-CA) refusal to expose Al Gore's sci-fi comedy-horror testimony to proper, independent scrutiny by the House minority reeks of naked fear,” Monckton said from the airport Thursday evening.

“Waxman knows there has been no 'global warming' for at least a decade. Waxman knows there has been seven and a half years' global cooling. Waxman knows that, in the words of the UK High Court judge who condemned Gore's mawkish movie as materially, seriously, serially inaccurate, 'the Armageddon scenario that he depicts is not based on any scientific view,'” Monckton explained. Monckton has previously testified before the House Committee in March. [So they know he would wipe the floor with Gore]

SOURCE




Comment on the people-hating Kanck the crank -- who says that we need to cut population drastically

AS the father of three small boys, I am well aware I am guilty of certain crimes. Like telling corny dad jokes. Or bragging about my sons' achievements to anyone who'll listen. But in the grand scheme of things, these are mere social misdemeanours. Because it turns out that in process of raising a small brood of children, I have committed heinous crimes against humanity.

At least, that's what it felt like after I read comments by Sandra Kanck, a former South Australian Democrats politician and newly appointed leader of an advocacy group calling itself Sustainable Population Australia.

Ms Kanck said this week that Australia, whose current population is bumping up against the 22 million mark, should cut its head count to something nearer to just seven million. Kanck's suggested means of achieving this target is a China-style one child policy.

The SPA isn't what you'd call a people-friendly mob. One item at the SPA website suggests that Nadya Suleman, the American woman who recently gave birth to octuplets, should be jailed as a murderer who is killing all of us.

Never mind the Suleman case, which is admittedly at the extreme end of the scale. In the strange, Orwellian world of the population controllers, to give life is to reap death. My only hope is that if having eight children in one go is murder, perhaps some future Population Court will allow me to plea bargain my way to a charge of mere Earthslaughter.

Though there is a danger that my repeat offences - whoops, I mean "children" - arrived over a number of years might be seen as evidence of a long-running conspiracy against the planet.

Of course, the idea that even if we could depopulate Australia, anything good would come of it is laughable. As demographer Bernard Salt explains: "Australia is the only nation on the planet to lay claim to the resources of an entire continent. "In a world with a population of six billion, rising to nine billion in the foreseeable future, the cold, hard reality is that we'll have to accommodate more people, not less."

What's more, as Salt points out, Kanck's plan won't even work. "Even if you eliminated all immigration, which currently runs to about 200,000 people per year, a one-child policy would only begin to see overall population reductions by around the mid 2020s."

To achieve her complete 15 million reduction target in any speedier timeframe, Kanck presumably has a Plan B in mind.

And this does not even begin to take into account economic damage that would occur from about 2030, when an ageing population would have to be supported by a vanishingly small number of taxpayers, or what might happen to an all-but-empty continent seen as ripe for the picking by densely-populated, resource-hungry neighbours looking for more space.

As Salt puts it, Kanck's ideas are "retrograde and bizarre". For as even the deepest cuts in Australia's tiny (1.5 per cent) share of the globe's carbon emissions will do nothing to change the globe's climate, eliminating 15 million Australians would have zero impact on the global environment.

Just as the relationship between man and climate is a lot more complicated - and a lot less direct - than conventional green wisdom would have it, so to is the link between people and the planet.

The fact is, it is not people causing environmental degradation. Researchers at Rockefeller University in the US recently confirmed what dozens of studies have shown - and what anyone who has travelled in the developing world will understand.

Namely, that the primary driver of environmental damage is not people but poverty. Increasing incomes lead in the long run to cleaner air, cleaner water, and cleaner energy. Scientist Jesse Ausubel put it this way: "The long-term trend is towards natural gas and nuclear power, or conceivably solar power. If the energy system is left to its own devices, most of the carbon will be out of it by 2060 or 2070."

Yet the environmental movement is seemingly inextricably bound up in the sort of misanthropy of which Kanck is only an extreme example.

Years of dreary campaigns that turn every human achievement from powered flight to the incandescent light globe into nothing more than a carbon footprint that must be cut and eliminated show a real lack of imagination. And they suggest a subconscious desire to return to some green Garden of Eden that never was - and when life was a whole lot harder and a whole lot shorter for the lack of technology.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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24 April, 2009

DONKS HEADED FOR A TRADE-WAR WITH CHINA

Is the Democrat love affair with Communist governments over? Probably not. But it looks like green trumps red these days. Besides, China is probably not Communist enough now. A trade war with China would be incredibly stupid, however. China is far too big to bully. How would an atmospheric nuclear test in the waters off San Francisco go, for instance? If America can break its agreements, so can China. Obama could only come out of it with much mud on his face and the danger posed by the Greenies would be made plain for all to see. At the moment China is the only party talking reason about these matters. That's how low the standards in American political debate have sunk

A top adviser to the Chinese government on Tuesday warned that a proposed US border tax on carbon sensitive materials "smells of protectionism" and could spark retaliation from developing countries.

During a speech at New York University about how the US and China can forge a closer partnership, Tung Chee-hwa, vice-chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the Chinese government's official advisory, said that a proposed "border adjustment" programme could be challenged through the World Trade Organisation and that he was "distressed" by the new bill introduced to Congress.

The programme in question was introduced earlier this month by two powerful Democrats in the House of Representatives. The bill includes aggressive climate targets to be met through a green house gas emissions cap and trade programme, where companies would be eligible for rebates to compensate for cost they incur. More controversially, the US government would be able to levy import taxes on foreign manufacturers to cover carbon contained in US-bound products.

"This is particularly unfair to China," Mr Tung, who was chief executive of Hong Kong from 1997 until 2005, said.

In March, Steven Chu, US energy secretary, told Congress that a carbon border tax would help "level the playing field" with countries with looser carbon standards.

The legislation, introduced by Henry Waxman, California Democrat and chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and Edward Markey, Democrat from Massachusetts and Chairman of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee, aims to cut green house gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 and by more than 80 per cent by 2050, from 2005 levels. The draft proposal would require electricity suppliers to get 25 per cent of their power from renewable sources, such as wind and solar, by 2025. It would establish a national renewable energy standard and an energy efficiency standard aimed at cutting power demand by 15 per cent by 2020 and natural gas demand by 10 per cent.

On Tuesday Mr Tung said that China was taking its own aggressive measures to combat climate change but that he was concerned about the US taking a more protectionist stance. "The lesson from 1929 was that we went to protectionism and the whole world collapsed," he said. "China and America are on the same boat."

SOURCE




'QUIET SUN' BAFFLING ASTRONOMERS

An email from Prof. Oliver Manuel [omatumr@yahoo.com]. Prof. Manuel is a skeptic in the field of astrophysics. He points out that the accepted theory of how the sun works appears to be wrong and that a better understanding of how the sun influences our climate is possible if we look at the facts about the sun instead of at that famed Warmist "consensus" which basically ignores the sun

Regarding the BBC report, 'QUIET SUN' BAFFLING ASTRONOMERS:

Yes, indeed, the Sun is quiet. Sunspots have disappeared! Earth is cooling.

Astronomers - especially those associated with NASA - are baffled because they chose to ignore cycles of solar activity and all other observations and space-age measurements over the past five decades that were unexplained by the Standard Solar Model (SSM) of a Hydrogen-filled Sun.

Angular momentum changes in the Sun cause deep-seated magnetic fields from the dense, energetic solar core to penetrate the visible solar surface (the photosphere) and produce cycles of sunspots and solar eruptions.

Earth's climate is closely linked to this cycle of angular momentum changes and to the number of sunspots at the solar surface.

You can see the Landscheidt solar cycles here:

Astronomers are baffled by the quiet Sun precisely because they continued to claim that our Sun is nothing but a homogeneous ball of Hydrogen, despite precise, space-age experimental data that directly falsify this claim. Some of the data are summarized in the papers below:

1. "Composition of the solar interior: Information from isotope ratios", Proceedings of the 2002 SOHO/GONG Conference on Helioseismology, European Space Agency SP-517 (editor: Huguette Lacoste, 2003) pages 345-348 :

2. "The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass", Physics of Atomic Nuclei 69 (2006) pages 1847-1856; Yadernaya Fizika 69 (Russian), number 11 (Nov 2006).

Astronomers need to address the experimental data, whether or not they agree with the interpretations given above.




Climate change science isn't settled

By Jan Veizer. Veizer is a distinguished university professor of geology (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and has researched the use of chemical and isotopic techniques in determining Earth's climatic history.

MANY people think the science of climate change is settled. It isn't. And the issue is not whether there has been an overall warming during the past century. There has, although it was not uniform and none was observed during the past decade. The geologic record provides us with abundant evidence for such perpetual natural climate variability, from icecaps reaching almost to the equator to none at all, even at the poles.

The climate debate is, in reality, about a 1.6 watts per square metre or 0.5 per cent discrepancy in the poorly known planetary energy balance. Let me explain.

Without our atmosphere, the Earth would be a frozen ice ball. Natural greenhouse warming, due to atmospheric blanket, raises the temperature by about 33C. At least two-thirds of this warming is attributed to the greenhouse effect of water vapour.

Water vapour, not carbon dioxide, is by far the most important greenhouse gas. Yet the models treat the global water cycle as just being there, relegating it to a passive agent in the climate system. Energy that is required to drive the water cycle and generate more water vapour must therefore come from somewhere else: the sun, man-made greenhouse gases, other factors or any combination of the above.

Note, however, that because of the overwhelming importance of water vapour for the greenhouse effect, existing climate models are unlikely to yield a definitive answer about the role of carbon dioxide v the sun, for example, and the answer must be sought in past records.

The past climate record does indeed resemble the trend in solar output. However, because three decades of satellite data show only limited variability, the solar output would have to be somehow amplified to explain the entire magnitude of the centennial warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change argues that because no amplifier is known, and because the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide did increase from 280 parts per million to 370ppm, man-made greenhouse gases must be responsible for most of the energy imbalance.

But this is an assumption, an attribution by default, not an actual empirical or experimental proof that carbon dioxide is the driver. Yet such attribution is then taken as a fact in the subsequent complex model calibrations of climate sensitivity to CO2.

If, however, an amplifier to solar output does exist, and empirical observations detailed below argue for its existence, the need to attribute the energy input to man-made greenhouse gases would diminish accordingly. So how realistic is the basic model assumption that the tiny - biologically controlled - carbon cycle drives the climate via the passively responding huge water cycle?

Nature tells us that it is the other way around. Surely, the blossoming of plants in the spring is the outcome, not the cause, of the warming sun and abundant rain.

Our atmosphere contains 730 billion tons of carbon as CO2. Each year about 120billion tonnes of carbon are cycled via plants on land and 90billion tonnes via oceans. Human emissions account for about seven billion to 10billion tonnes, or less than 5 per cent, of the annual CO2 flux.

From the point of view of interaction of the water and carbon cycles it is important to realise that for every unit of CO2 sequestered by a plant from the atmosphere almost 1000 units of water must be lifted from the roots to the leaf canopy and eventually evaporated back into the air.

The required huge energy source is the sun. Solar energy drives the water cycle, generating a warmer and wetter climate while invigorating the biological carbon cycle. The sun also warms the oceans that emit their CO2.

Atmospheric CO2 is thus the product and not the cause of the climate, as demonstrated by past records where temperature changes precede changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations and fluxes: ice cores, the 1991 Mt Pinatubo volcanic eruption in the Philippines or seasonal oscillations are instructive examples.

But what might be the complementary source of energy that could account for the disputed 1.6W/m2?

Clouds are a mirror that reflects solar radiation back into space. The amount of solar energy reflected by the Earth is about 77W/m2 and the difference between cloudless and cloudy skies is about 28W/m2. Therefore a change of just a few per cent in cloudiness easily can account for the disputed energy discrepancy.

Clouds are an integral part of the sun-driven water cycle; however, formation of water droplets requires seeding and this is where solar amplification likely comes into play. Empirical and experimental results suggest that cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere may generate such initial seeds, particularly over the oceans. While the actual mechanisms are still debated, the correlations between cloudiness and cosmic ray flux already have been published.

The amplifying connection to the sun comes via its electromagnetic envelope, called the heliosphere, and a similar envelope around the Earth, the magnetosphere. These act as shields that screen the lethal cosmic rays from reaching our planet. A less active sun is not only colder but its heliospheric envelope shrinks, allowing more cosmic rays to reach our atmosphere and seed more clouds, and vice versa. Indeed, satellite data for the past decade shows a 25per cent shrinking of the heliosphere that is coincident with the halt, or even decline, in planetary temperature since 1998: a trend at odds with the ever rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

We also have direct evidence for the above scenario. Cosmic rays, when hitting the atmosphere, generate a cascade of cosmogenic nuclides that then rain down to the Earth's surface and can be measured in ice, trees, rocks and minerals. Such records over the past 10,000 years correlate well with the highly variable climate, while the contemporary concentrations of CO2, measured in ice cores, are flat around the low pre-industrial levels of 280ppm with no resemblance to climate trends.

These centennial to millennial correlations, coupled with direct observations of coincidence of cloudiness with cosmic rays and temperature in central Europe since 1978, argue that the sun and its amplifying mechanism must play a leading role in climate control even if the cosmic ray signal proves no more than an indirect measure of solar variability.

The science of climate change continues to evolve and regardless of the outcome of the climate debate, observational data suggests that we may be served well by basing our climate agenda, scientifically and economically, on a broader perspective than that in the IPCC outlined scenarios. Our pollution abatement and energy diversification goals could then be formulated, and likely implemented, with less pain.

SOURCE




The Killers & Kooks of Earth Day

A Rush Limbaugh transcript

Now, we've just honored some great people on Earth Day, but here is a story from some newspaper called The Bulletin. It is an American paper, I guess it's Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Bulletin. "Today is Earth Day, a holiday created to honor the planet and to raise the consciousness of man's effect on the environment. Philadelphia has a very strong tie to this day. One of its native sons, Ira Einhorn, was a co-founder of the environmentalist jubilee. But Mr. Einhorn has another line on his resume. In addition to being a environmental guru, he is the Unicorn Killer. While a student at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Einhorn dated a Bryn Mawr College graduate by the name of Holly Maddux. When the affair ended in 1977, Mr. Einhorn went into a jealous rage and murdered her." This is a founder of Earth Day.

By the way, the Unabomber was an environmentalist as well. So was the Son of Sam. So is the most recently added name to the FBI's top ten most wanted list an environmentalist. But Mr. Einhorn "concealed his crime for 18 months by stuffing Ms. Maddux's body in a trunk that he kept in his apartment. The foul odor of the decomposing corpse coming from Mr. Einhorn's Powelton Village apartment caused neighbors to complain. In 1979, police found the trunk stored in a closet in Mr. Einhorn's apartment. Ira Einhorn, member of the counterculture pantheon, one of the founders of the environmentalist movement, icon of the liberal intelligentsia, was charged with murder. But it was not just a simple murder, it was a gruesome case of domestic violence. At the bail hearing, Mr. Einhorn was praised by a contingent of luminaries -- all testifying to his character. There were Ivy League professors, an Episcopalian minister and corporate executives who worked with Mr. Einhorn raising funds. They all stated under oath that he was a man of the greatest integrity."

Arlen Specter was Mr. Einhorn's attorney. "He managed to get the bail set at the unheard of amount of $40,000 for the suspected murderer. Only 10 percent was needed to free him. Barbara Bronfman, heiress to the Seagram liquor fortune, paid it. Proclaiming his innocence, Mr. Einhorn told all that he was framed. He said it was the CIA or the FBI who committed the murder and they were trying to frame him for it because of his political activities. Some will note that another notorious Philadelphia murderer, Mumia Abu-Jamal, used this defense a few years later. Like Mumia, Mr. Einhorn had no shortage of leftist followers. Mr. Einhorn skipped bail and left Philadelphia in 1981." Founder, environmentalist movement and Earth Day. Just like the Unabomber, murderers, just like the most recent addition to the FBI's top ten most wanted list, a leftist environmentalist. And yet Janet Napolitano, head of the Department of Homeland Security, sends out this memo warning of returning veterans who might commit acts of terror in the United States.

I got some e-mails from people who want the rest of the Ira Einhorn story. Here's the rest of the Ira Einhorn story: "More than a decade passed when the DA's office tried Mr. Einhorn in absentia after being unable to locate him. He was convicted in 1993. Several years after the absentia conviction, in 1997, Mr. Einhorn was located. He was living in France with a new girlfriend -- a Swedish woman. The District Attorney's office in Philadelphia immediately asked to have him extradited. However, the humane French refused to extradite Mr. Einhorn. French officals cited the use of capital punishment in Pennsylvania and the conviction in absentia as reasons for their refusal. Mr. Einhorn was able to convince the French courts not to extradite him until he received the promise of a new trial. A Pennsylvania legislator, Dan O'Brien, introduced a bill in the Pennsylvania General Assembly that allowed granting Mr. Einhorn a new trial, if he asked for it, and if the French extradited him. The bill did not vacate the original verdict. When France began extradition, Mr. Einhorn's representatives requested the European Court of Human Rights to review the case. The request was denied. He was extradited to Pennsylvania in July 2001. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison October 17, 2002."

We're talking here, if you just joined us, about the founder of Earth Day. But as the writer, Michael Tremoglie, at the Philadelphia Bulletin says, "There is a little mentioned irony about the Einhorn saga. Ira Einhorn was arrested for murder March 28, 1979, the day the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident occurred. Ira Einhorn, environmentalist, was charged with murder during the same period as one of the greatest environmental accidents in United States history. But the real irony is that more people died in the apartment of Ira Einhorn, co-founder of Earth Day than at Three Mile Island. The environmentalist killed more people than the so-called environmental disaster. Happy Earth Day."

And not to leave this out, Investor's Business Daily, with a great editorial today called, "Save Capitalism," they say, "Wednesday's airwaves, print media, cable news shows and Webosphere will be filled with nonsense about the scourge of capitalism, corporations and humanity. All of it will ignore the real truth. ... Every year Steven Hayward, a scholar at the Pacific Research Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, compiles his Index of Leading Environmental Indicators. And every year, his findings contradict the alarmists' warnings that the world is on the edge of environmental cataclysm. From evidence 'that tropical rain forests may now be expanding faster than they are being cut down' to the improving health of US ocean fisheries to better outdoor air quality in American cities with the worst air pollution, Hayward shows there's more to be optimistic about than there is to be troubled about. The Environmental Protection Agency has also published its own Report on the environment. Last year's report, the most recent, indicates outdoor air quality has improved, there's been a net gain in wetland acreage, public-source drinking-water problems are uncommon and forest land is expanding after declining for a century.

"Of the estimated 1 billion people who will observe Earth Day worldwide this year, few will know about the progress that has been made. Fewer still will know how it was made. The media, uninterested in looking at the real story, will simply credit the environmental movement for the improvements," when in fact it has been capitalism. Greener is richer.

SOURCE




EU EMISSIONS TRADING SCHEME IS AN EXPENSIVE FAILURE

The EU's emissions trading scheme has so far failed to deliver any reductions in CO2 emissions while at the same time strangling energy-efficiency investment in the electricity sector, according to a former European Commission official.

Jørgen Henningsen, a senior adviser at the European Policy Centre, a Brussels think-tank, was addressing a conference organised by the combined heat and power generation sector (CHP) on Tuesday (21 April).

Speaking at the event, Henningsen, who has previously worked as a director at the Commission's environment department and once held a position at DG Energy and Transport, argued that there was "no reason for optimism" in the next few years regarding energy savings from technologies like CHP.

He singled out the EU executive as the biggest obstacle in the way of developing the technology.

The Commission has acknowledged that installing cogeneration capacity in power stations could help the EU to cut down its CO2 emissions significantly. This is because CHP plants operate at a far higher efficiency level than conventional power stations, as they produce both electricity and useful heat at the same time.

However, Henningsen argued that the Commission had based its climate policy overwhelmingly on the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme, which is not delivering on its original purpose of cutting emissions cost-effectively.

"The Commission has clearly been over-optimistic about the contribution of emissions trading to CO2 reductions. So far, the system has hardly delivered anything and the low CO2 prices at present support the fear that not only the present trading period, but also the 2013-20 period, will be a failure," Henningsen said.

More HERE




NEW REPORT SETS OUT THE "OVERLOOKED" EVIDENCE AGAINST CLIMATE ALARMISM

A 110-page report by an international team of climate experts published today by the independent Fraser Institute examines critically-important scientific evidence that has been overlooked or omitted in government reports that blame climate change on carbon dioxide emissions.

The report, Critical Topics in Global Warming, supplements the Fraser Institute's Independent Summary for Policymakers, a 2007 analysis of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report.

The new peer-reviewed report's seven chapters investigate published scientific literature on issues such as the effects of ocean oscillations and solar variations on climate, historical climate variability, statistical challenges in climate analysis, uncertainties in climate modeling, and quality problems in temperature measurement systems. The report leaves no doubt that the science is far from "settled" on climate change.

The new report reviews published evidence demonstrating such critically important points as:

- Natural oscillations of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans-not increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere-explain 20th century weather changes in the United States, Greenland, and the Arctic, as well as the reduction of Arctic sea ice.

- Arctic air temperatures over the last century correlate better with average incoming solar radiation than levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

- Evidence from around the world reveals climatic conditions in the Medieval era were warmer than the recent era. As the report states: "Late 20th century temperatures are not unprecedented, falling well within the range of natural millennial-scale variability, particularly in comparison to the interval 1,000 years ago when there was 25 per cent less carbon dioxide in the air than there is today."

- The popularized notion that carbon dioxide "traps heat" in the atmosphere, thereby raising temperatures as in a greenhouse, is inaccurate. As the report states: "The atmosphere does not actually work like a greenhouse ...Unlike the greenhouse case, whether or not temperature changes, and how it changes, depends on the details. And the details cannot be determined from first principles."

- Extensive problems in the global weather station network, including urbanization near the thermometers and a sharp loss of monitoring sites in the early 1990s, indicate the likelihood of an upward bias in many published global surface warming trends.

- Climate trend analysis has been skewed by a failure to properly account for long-term persistence. New statistical modeling work has challenged the view that recent trends are outside natural variability.

- Computer-based climate modeling has contributed to our understanding of the climate, but it is insufficient as the basis of global warming theory. Too much emphasis on modeling discourages scientists from pursuing alternative, complementary scientific strategies that are essential for moving ahead.

The complete study can be downloaded at www.fraserinstitute.org

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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22 April, 2009

Sea level fraud

The Washington Times' front-page story "Rising sea levels in Pacific create wave of migrants" (Page 1, Sunday) outrageously peddles a talking point circulated by activists such as former Vice President Al Gore. The article's claim that human-induced climate change and sea-level rise spawned a migration of refugees from South Pacific island nations was found unsupportable by the only court to examine its merits (Dimmock v. Secretary of State (UK) for Education and Skills, UK High Court, Oct. 10, 2007).

This claim is a rehash of assertions made in Mr. Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." In its Dimmock ruling, the High Court stated: "In scene 20, Mr. Gore states 'that's why the citizens of these Pacific nations have all had to evacuate to New Zealand.' There is no evidence of any such evacuation having yet happened." Even the defendant UK government admitted, "It is not clear that there is any evidence of evacuations in the Pacific due to human-induced climate change." Refugees seeking generous New Zealand and Canadian welfare regimes do exist, but they are not driven by sea-level rise.

This ruling came in late 2007. The rate of sea-level rise - which began after a period known as the Little Ice Age - proceeded steadily from about 1850 until then, without accelerating. Since then, satellite data have affirmed that the rate peaked in 2005 and that levels even have dipped slightly. Sea levels around the Maldives have dropped appreciably in recent decades. Nowhere did The Times acknowledge doubt, let alone these facts.

In short, this reportage perpetuated unsupportable claims made, as the UK High Court put it, "in the context of alarmism and exaggeration in support of [Mr. Gore's] political thesis." A retraction is warranted.

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Save the Humans!

Get ready for a dazzling display of environmental alarmism this week as Washington takes up the evils of modern living.

When it comes to the Earth's demise, no one is innocent. Take, for instance, the recent story about a group of scientists who are wagging their scrawny fingers at our rotund brothers and sisters for contributing to the planet's demise by relentlessly stuffing their pudgy faces. (Eat green; be green!)

You see, eating more means humans must produce more food -- and more carbon dioxide. It means we must raise more soon-to-be juicy steaks that have a tendency to emit greenhouse gases that reek. You might find the thought of regulating food intake and livestock flatulence a bit bizarre, but hey, if it means saving the Earth, why not?

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency bravely moved forward by finding that things such as smokestacks and breathing, or things related to greenhouse gases, endanger public health and welfare. And because the EPA can regulate CO2, it can have a say in nearly everything we do, with little regard for silly distractions, such as economic trade-offs.

We're not talking about your cars or soon-to-be-extinct trucks; we're talking about your scooters and toasters, your dryers and pets (do you really need two dogs? Come to think of it, do you really need two children?), your coffeehouses and Subaru dealerships and organic-produce collectives.

It's not going to be easy. Climate change is the cause of -- and caused by -- everything. Reputable news pieces regularly allege, without any evidence, that climate change is the culprit in hundreds of dreadful events. From the decline of outdoor youth hockey to the scourge of teenage drinking to the massacre in Darfur, you guessed it; global warming is often the boogeyman.

Who knew that a shift of 0.04 degrees Celsius in a decade could be so terrible? [Or a shift of .6 of a degree over the entire 20th century?]

What's worse than the EPA grabbing power over CO2? Well, leading Luddite and congressman Henry Waxman is worse. His proposal sets carbon reduction goals of 20 percent by 2020, 42 percent by 2030 and 83 percent by 2050 and, with cap and trade, effectively nationalizes energy.

This incremental destruction of prosperity is probably going to have to be modified as soon as citizens get a taste of reality. But how could any reasonable or responsible legislator suggest an 83 percent cut in emissions without any practical or wide-scale alternative to replace it or any plan to pay for it all?

When people are on a crusade, I guess, logic rarely plays a part. And when Waxman and friends hold climate change hearings this week, it will feature more than 50 witnesses, the majority, no doubt, prepared to spin some exceedingly (non) chilling tale to the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Energy and Environment Subcommittee.

I suspect that few of them will mention the recent report from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation on cap and trade policy that illustrates all American households would face an annual cost of nearly $144.8 billion per year -- "disproportionately borne by low-income households, those under age 25 and over 75 years … and single parents with dependent children."

Even fewer will mention the new Rasmussen poll that shows that only 1 in 3 voters now believes global warming is caused by human activity -- the lowest number ever. Forty-four percent of likely voters attribute climate change to long-term planetary trends, while 7 percent blame some other reason.

This shift in public opinion may be a blip, or it may be a trend. But if we're ever to enact energy policy that is both environmentally responsible and economically reasonable, we're going to need a rational discussion. We haven't come close yet.

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THE DEBATE IS REALLY SIZZLING IN AUSTRALIA

It's a big story in Australia at the moment. Four current articles below

Another nasty one for the Greenies

SEA ice around Antarctica has been increasing since the 1970s. Yet more explaining away to do but the best the Warmist can do is hark back to the failed "ozone hole" theory. And whatever explanation you put on it, there is clearly no danger of a sea level rise emanating from the Antarctic. And since the Antarctic contains 91% of the earth's ice, we can kiss the disastrous sea-level rise scares goodbye

SEA ice around Antarctica has been increasing at a rate of 100,000sq km a decade since the 1970s, according to a landmark study to be published today. The study by the British Antarctic Survey, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, says rather than melting as a result of global warming, Antarctica continues to expand.

The fact that Antarctic ice is still growing does not in itself prove that global warming is not happening. But the BAS says increased ice formation can be explained by another environmental concern, the hole in the ozone layer, which is affecting local weather conditions.

But the absence of an ice melt overall does put a further question mark over extreme claims that the world faces precipitous rises in sea levels because of the melting polar ice caps.

Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett has been under fire for suggesting sea levels could rise by 6m as a result of the melting of the Antarctic ice. Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth's ice and extensive melting of its ice sheet would be required to raise sea levels substantially.

The Weekend Australian reported on Saturday that the results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicated there was no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica. Drilling in the fast ice, a type of sea ice, off Australia's Davis Station last year showed the ice was 1.9m thick, its densest in 10 years.

The BAS, which discovered the ozone hole in the mid-1980s, has drawn on data from international agencies, including Australia's three Antarctic bases. BAS project leader John Turner told The Australian yesterday that cooling had been recorded at the Australian bases and elsewhere in east Antarctica. He said satellite images indicated the ozone layer had strengthened surface winds around Antarctica, deepening storms in the South Pacific area of the Southern Ocean. This had resulted in a greater flow of cold air over the Ross Sea, leading to more ice production. [But the ozone hole should be gone by now after CFCs were banned 20 years ago, shouldn't it? Surely we are not admitting the now obvious fact that banning CFCs had no effect! Look at the bottom right-hand graph by NASA here and you will see clearly that there has been no trend in the size of the ozone hole since 1989. What a laugh!] While sea ice had been lost to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula, sea ice cover over the Ross Sea had increased.

Dr Turner said the research results indicated why the extensive melting of ice in the Arctic was not occurring in Antarctica [Rubbish! Arctic warming is a purely local effect, probably due to the fact that the ice there sits on top of a chain of volcanoes (the Gakkel ridge). Warming episodes in the Arctic have been very uneven and much greater than anywhere else, indicating that their cause is NOT global] "While there is increasing evidence that the loss of sea ice in the Arctic has occurred due to human activity, in the Antarctic, human influence through the ozone hole has had the reverse effect and resulted in more ice," he said. As the ozone hole repaired itself as a result of measures in place to reduce chlorofluorocarbons in the stratosphere [When's that going to happen? There has been no trend in that direction so far], the cooling in Antactica was expected to be reversed. [One day, over the rainbow ...] "We expect ozone levels to recover by the end of the century, and by then there is likely to be around one-third less Antarctic sea ice," Dr Turner said. [A prophet!]

He said that while the expansion of sea ice, the relatively thin ice in Antarctic coastal waters, had been established, debate continued about whether the main mass of the Antarctic ice sheet was growing or shrinking.

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Warmists answer facts with abuse and an appeal to authority again

And they call conservatives "authoritarian"! That good old projection again



THERE'S nothing like healthy academic combat. In the corridors of Adelaide University, two respected professors on opposite sides of the climate change debate are pushing their theories on the subject, sparked by a new book that has sceptics rubbing their hands with glee.

Outspoken academic geologist Ian Plimer [above] yesterday launched Heaven and Earth: Global Warming the Missing Science, concluding that scientific modelling had placed too much emphasis on the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and global warming should not be blamed on increased human activity.

Speaking after the launch yesterday, Professor Plimer accused high-profile climate change advocates such as former US vice-president Al Gore of "scaring people witless" with theories about the world ending. He also said 2007 Australian of the Year Tim Flannery pushed a "political line" and had considered only a "small body of evidence" when studying global warming.

Many scientists, he said, had not considered the history of the earth when discussing climate change, or factors including the earth's rotation, changing tides and solar winds. "When you look at the selective evidence, then there's a chance that you might be frightened about the end of the world," Professor Plimer said. "When you look at the comprehensive evidence, it just says the planet changes all the time."

Defending climatologists and thousands of other scientists, Barry Brook, who heads Adelaide University's Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability, poured cold water on Professor Plimer's book and said his colleague had only used "selective evidence" when quoting more than 200 scientists and from peer-reviewed papers. [More than 200? There are more than 2,000 scientific references in Plimer's book]

Professor Plimer's "stated view of climate science is that a vast number of extremely well respected scientists and a whole range of specialist disciplines have fallen prey to delusional self-interest and become nothing more than unthinking ideologues", he said. "Plausible to conspiracy theorists, perhaps, but hardly a sane world view, and insulting to all those genuinely committed to real science." Professor Brook, whose office is literally metres from Professor Plimer's base, said his colleague's research was "confusing" because he failed to argue one specific point, and that it was a case study "in how not to be objective". [Mere abuse!]

With the international debate on climate change raging, Professor Plimer yesterday said people were embracing his book because they were frustrated with the one-sided debate on global warming. The presses have started printing the third run of 5000 copies, after the first 10,000 sold in two days. "The average punter out there feels helpless and disenfranchised," he said.

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CARMAKERS FEAR CAP AND TRADE WILL DRIVE JOBS OUT OF AUSTRALIA

FORD Australia has warned that the Government's emissions trading scheme could add millions of dollars a year to its costs and threaten jobs, six months after Canberra pledged $6.2 billion to rescue the local auto industry. The carmaker's entry into the politically charged debate over the timing and shape of the Government's response to climate change comes amid intense lobbying for a review of next year's start date for the scheme. BlueScope, OneSteel, Rio Tinto, Alcoa, Chevron, Woodside Energy and Visy have long pushed for changes or delays to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, citing its impact on jobs at a time of economic crisis.

But Ford Australia's submission to a Senate inquiry into the ETS marks its strongest call yet for caution on the scheme. "It is difficult to precisely quantify the impact, but it would well be in the annual order of many millions of dollars via increased energy costs," it said. "There will be extremely limited opportunity for domestic manufacturers to offset these increased costs with higher prices, particularly as the proposed introduction of the scheme in 2010 will coincide with a drop in the passenger car import tariff from 10 per cent to 5 per cent." Strong competition from imports and dwindling local demand cost 1400 local jobs at Ford's Australian operations over the 15 months to October last year.

The Government's ETS, initiated during an economic boom, is encountering growing resistance from business as their margins shrink. BlueScope Steel and OneSteel, which are reeling from falling sales and prices, said in their submission the damage wrought by the Government's emissions trading model would be second only to the impact of the global recession. The iron and steelmakers have already cut at least 1000 full-time equivalent staff from their combined 20,000-strong workforce. "In the context of the deep economic downturn - globally and in Australia - the cumulative costs of the carbon pollution reduction scheme are intolerable and are very likely to cause a fall in profitability, investment and jobs," their joint submission to the Senate inquiry said.

The 415 submissions to the parliamentary inquiry published so far highlight the difficulties Labor will face in pushing its emissions trading laws through the upper house, where it lacks a majority. The Coalition has slammed the scheme as "reckless" while balance-of-power senators consider it environmentally and economically damaging.

Business, too, is speaking with more than one voice on the issue. Companies such as BP Australia and Shell used the inquiry process to call on the Government to stick with its market-based approach to cutting greenhouse gases and its early implementation plan. "We believe the carbon pollution reduction scheme green paper largely got it right with respect to many of the emissions trading design issue," BP Australia's submission tells the inquiry.

Conservationists also oppose the proposal, but for different reasons. The Australian Conservation Foundation told the Senate inquiry the Government's targets for greenhouse gas cuts were too low and its permits for polluters were too generous.

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AUSTRALIAN FARMERS' FEDERATION DEMANDS MORE DEBATE ON CLIMATE SCIENCE

The National Farmers' Federation has thrown its backing behind controversial climate change dissenter, Professor Ian Plimer, whose new book aims to debunk the theories and dire predictions of some within the scientific fraternity. In Heaven and Earth: Climate change - the real science, Prof Plimer, from the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide, notes that climatic change is "the norm", sea levels rise and fall all the time, and that climate cycles are driven by massive forces completely unrelated to carbon emissions.

"Climate changes in the past have been far greater and far more rapid than anything measured in the present," he writes. "Not one previous climate change has ever been driven by carbon dioxide. "To talk of carbon pollution shows an appalling ignorance of basic school science. "Carbon dioxide is plant food, without it humans could not exist."

Prof Plimer will be a keynote speaker at the NFF's upcoming National Congress in Brisbane in June. While not explicitly supporting the position Prof Plimer takes, NFF president David Crombie said it was time the climate change debate heard more from those with dissenting opinions. "We've heard ad nauseam from those scientists convinced that climate change will ruin us all and, seemingly, hell-bent on making grim doomsday predictions," Mr Crombie said. "But we've heard precious little from those experts for whom the jury is still out, or, in the case of Professor Plimer, say their research shows extreme climate change predictions are over-stated.

"Now, before I'm carted to a stake for public torching, I'm not saying Professor Plimer is right, nor that his colleagues with differing views are wrong. "Just that it's about time we had a balanced, informed discussion and debate... free from vilification of those who dare to question conventional wisdom."

In his book, Prof Plimer claims that every scientific argument ever used to show that humans change climate is wrong and cites over 2300 scientific references in support of his claims.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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22 April, 2009

An amusing wail from a Greenie

If only that nasty technology hadn't saved us from starvation! Email below from the misanthropic Peter Salonius [psaloniu@nrcan.gc.ca], Research Scientist, Natural Resources Canada

The human footprint reduction that has been called for by Rees, Wackernagel and others has to do with many other excess demands on the global ecosystem besides our carbon containing gas emissions. I have posited in an essay on THEOILDRUM that the overshoot of carrying capacity began as soon as humans began cultivation agriculture because of its associated soil damage. Rees has agreed that the overshoot of carrying capacity ocurred long before the 20th century, but he suggests that he did not want to frighten people with the enormity of our excesses.

The recently published book 'Sustainability or Collapse: An Integrated History and Future of People on Earth', edited by Robert Costanza and several others, deals with the history of past empires and civilizations as they collapsed because of mounting population pressure on such resources as water supplies and soil productive capacity.

"Neither Malthus nor the "new Malthusians" could have foreseen what the substitution of temporary supplies of non renewable geological energy (fossil and nuclear) for sunlight energy, starting in the mid 1800s, would do to non sustainably raise agricultural productivity by:

1. freeing up land formerly used to feed draft animals (horses, oxen etc.) for the production of food for humans,

2. facilitating the mining, long distance transport and manufacture (ammonia by the Haber-Bosch process from natural gas) of fertilizers to replace those soil nutrients lost by cultivation agriculture,

3. allowing the temporarily increased agricultural productivity that resulted from the development of new crop varieties produced by the Green Revolution - that are dependent on irrigation from depleting fossil water supplies, heavy use of fertilizers, and pesticides - all of which are dependent on fossil fuel resources that are now becoming rapidly depleted."

I have maintained, in a 'somewhat well referenced article' posted on THE OILDRUM, October 20, 2008, that economic and population growth, facilitated by the shift from hunter gathering to farming, have been responsible for the environmental destruction that has been escalating for the last 10,000 years. I think you will agree that IF my thesis, which is the culmination of my ~ 42 year investigation into the relationship between humans and their supporting ecosystems, is correct -- then the 'population bomb'/that continues to make natural resource management problematic/exploded a long, long time ago, see 'Agriculture: Unsustainable Resource Depletion Began 10,000 Years Ago'

My 'guesstimate' for sustainable human numbers in the 100s of millions, if true, suggests that the present global population has so far overshot the carrying capacity of its supporting ecosystems that most analyses of the relationship of excessive human numbers to SPECIFIC ASPECTS of environmental damage are simply indulgent academic exercises.

There are more people on the planet (and have been for millennia) than it can sustainably support. Many of us have concluded that even TWO CHILD FAMILIES -- that would only slowly stabilize the human population -- are not an adequate response to this problem; we require the adoption of NO or ONE CHILD PER FAMILY behaviour to orchestrate the Rapid Population DECLINE that is necessary now.




HOW TO LOSE A DEBATE

Today's ClimateWire has a story about the debate over the costs of cap and trade:

"From the halls of Congress to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, experts and politicians are hoisting conflicting numbers describing the cost of a cap on greenhouse gases, with amounts from $3,100 to $324 to zero being touted as the annual hit on households. As Congress returns this week, it will find a cloud of numerical discrepancies hovering over climate change legislation."

This is a great example of the consequences of how issues are framed in political debate. If the framing is "costs" of cap and trade legislation, the Republicans will win the political debate, regardless of whose numbers turn out to be right. Of course, the reality is that cap and trade can be designed in any way you'd like with high or low (or zero) costs. But remember that the theoretical basis of cap and trade is that energy prices will increase, so low or zero cost increases will have low or zero effect on emisisons.

The political point is that if the debate hinges on costs, Republicans have the upper hand because if Democrats respond with claims of low or zero costs, and if this turns out to be untrue, then such claims will become a political liability. But if the claims of low costs turn out to be true, they will gut the policy from the standpoint of emissions reductions, and thus become a political liability.

Bottom line: Democrats cannot win the cap and trade debate if the issue is framed as costs to American households.

SOURCE




Earth Day, Then and Now

by John Andrews

“The trouble with the eco-crusader is that his false guilt and his false fears feed endlessly upon each other.” With Earth Day coming up on Wednesday, I remembered this line from an old presidential speech. Can you guess who said it? “From the emotional remorse that we have sinned terribly against nature,” it continues, “there is but a short step to the emotional dread that nature will visit terrible retribution upon us. The eco-crusader becomes, as a result, deaf to reason and science, blind to perspective and priorities, incapable of effective action.”

That’s telling’em, Mr. President. Or it would have been, if Richard Nixon hadn’t let staffers talk him out of giving the Eco-Crusader speech in September 1971.

Fired up by attacks on the “disaster lobby” by Look magazine publisher Thomas Shepard, and uneasy about his own role in establishing the Environmental Protection Agency after the first Earth Day in 1970, Nixon directed me and other speechwriters to produce a warning against ecological extremism that he could deliver as a major address. Our draft died on his desk amid concerns about political backlash. I kept the file as a historical curiosity – the presidential bombshell that wasn’t. Today, four decades into the age of true-believing green religion, Nixon’s undelivered speech reads prophetically.

So does Shepard’s diagnosis that the environmental doomsayers “are basically opposed to the free enterprise system and will do anything to bolster their case for additional government controls.” So does the denunciation by Prof. Peter Drucker, another source we consulted at the time, of the green fallacy “that one can somehow deprive human action of risk.” The battle lines have changed little in 38 years.

I wish now that President Nixon, a gambler in foreign policy, had risked this piece of domestic truth-telling. One politically incorrect speech from the White House couldn’t have halted the tides of earth-worshipping guilt and fear that still engulf us. But it would have been a start. With braver leadership, sooner, America’s voices for environmental common sense might have been less outnumbered today.

Two of those lonely voices were in my state of Colorado last week. Terry Anderson, head of the Montana-based Property & Environment Research Center, and Christopher Horner, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, brought a coolly factual message to deflate some of the new-energy hype and carbon-phobia that Gov. Bill Ritter trades on and President Obama wants to emulate.

Anderson literally wrote the book on free-market environmentalism – a 1991 volume by that title. He told the Independence Institute about PERC’s research on such inconvenient truths as the wildly oversold benefits of green jobs and the grim toll that cap-and-trade legislation to mitigate CO2 will take on our standard of living.

Horner’s current book is “Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed.” He told the Centennial Institute, where I work, that a recessionary economy and ten straight years of global cooling make this the worst time for a burdensome new carbon tax that “would not detectably impact climate anyway.”

If the eco-crusaders were serious about cleaner energy, says Horner, they would support nuclear power. They aren’t, so they don’t. And again, we find the battle lines unchanged; the nuclear debate also pervades my 1971 White House file. No, their aim is control, as Thomas Shepard warned. “For a new enemy to unite us, the threat of global warming fits the bill,” gloated the anti-growth Club of Rome in 1991.

Cheerleading mainstream journalists have decided the likes of Horner and Anderson “are not news,” as one bluntly told me – so Coloradans heard little about their visit to Denver. Gov. Ritter letting eco-crusading foundations pay his climate czar’s salary has stirred no media curiosity either. We're supposed to belief a staffer beholden to ideologues at the Hewlett and Energy foundations gives the Guv objective advice? What sheep we are.

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USE ENERGY, GET RICH AND SAVE THE PLANET

When the first Earth Day took place in 1970, American environmentalists had good reason to feel guilty. The nation's affluence and advanced technology seemed so obviously bad for the planet that they were featured in a famous equation developed by the ecologist Paul Ehrlich and the physicist John P. Holdren, who is now President Obama's science adviser. Their equation was I=PAT, which means that environmental impact is equal to population multiplied by affluence multiplied by technology. Protecting the planet seemed to require fewer people, less wealth and simpler technology - the same sort of social transformation and energy revolution that will be advocated at many Earth Day rallies on Wednesday.

But among researchers who analyze environmental data, a lot has changed since the 1970s. With the benefit of their hindsight and improved equations, I'll make a couple of predictions:

1. There will be no green revolution in energy or anything else. No leader or law or treaty will radically change the energy sources for people and industries in the United States or other countries. No recession or depression will make a lasting change in consumers' passions to use energy, make money and buy new technology - and that, believe it or not, is good news, because...

2. The richer everyone gets, the greener the planet will be in the long run.

I realize this second prediction seems hard to believe when you consider the carbon being dumped into the atmosphere today by Americans, and the projections for increasing emissions from India and China as they get richer.

Those projections make it easy to assume that affluence and technology inflict more harm on the environment. But while pollution can increase when a country starts industrializing, as people get wealthier they can afford cleaner water and air. They start using sources of energy that are less carbon-intensive - and not just because they're worried about global warming. The process of "decarbonization" started long before Al Gore was born.

The old wealth-is-bad IPAT theory may have made intuitive sense, but it didn't jibe with the data that has been analyzed since that first Earth Day. By the 1990s, researchers realized that graphs of environmental impact didn't produce a simple upward-sloping line as countries got richer. The line more often rose, flattened out and then reversed so that it sloped downward, forming the shape of a dome or an inverted U - what's called a Kuznets curve. (See nytimes.com/tierneylab for an example.)

In dozens of studies, researchers identified Kuznets curves for a variety of environmental problems. There are exceptions to the trend, especially in countries with inept governments and poor systems of property rights, but in general, richer is eventually greener. As incomes go up, people often focus first on cleaning up their drinking water, and then later on air pollutants like sulfur dioxide.

As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more efficient and cleaner sources - from wood to coal and oil, and then to natural gas and nuclear power, progressively emitting less carbon per unit of energy. This global decarbonization trend has been proceeding at a remarkably steady rate since 1850, according to Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University and Paul Waggoner of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.

"Once you have lots of high-rises filled with computers operating all the time, the energy delivered has to be very clean and compact," said Mr. Ausubel, the director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller. "The long-term trend is toward natural gas and nuclear power, or conceivably solar power. If the energy system is left to its own devices, most of the carbon will be out of it by 2060 or 2070."

But what about all the carbon dioxide being spewed out today by Americans commuting to McMansions? Well, it's true that American suburbanites do emit more greenhouse gases than most other people in the world (although New Yorkers aren't much different from other affluent urbanites).

But the United States and other Western countries seem to be near the top of a Kuznets curve for carbon emissions and ready to start the happy downward slope. The amount of carbon emitted by the average American has remained fairly flat for the past couple of decades, and per capita carbon emissions have started declining in some countries, like France. Some researchers estimate that the turning point might come when a country's per capita income reaches $30,000, but it can vary widely, depending on what fuels are available. Meanwhile, more carbon is being taken out of the atmosphere by the expanding forests in America and other affluent countries.

Deforestation follows a Kuznets curve, too. In poor countries, forests are cleared to provide fuel and farmland, but as people gain wealth and better agricultural technology, the farm fields start reverting to forestland.

Of course, even if rich countries' greenhouse impact declines, there will still be an increase in carbon emissions from China, India and other countries ascending the Kuznets curve. While that prospect has environmentalists lobbying for global restrictions on greenhouse gases, some economists fear that a global treaty could ultimately hurt the atmosphere by slowing economic growth, thereby lengthening the time it takes for poor countries to reach the turning point on the curve.

But then, is there much reason to think that countries at different stages of the Kuznets curve could even agree to enforce tough restrictions? The Kyoto treaty didn't transform Europe's industries or consumers. While some American environmentalists hope that the combination of the economic crisis and a new president can start an era of energy austerity and green power, Mr. Ausubel says they're hoping against history.

Over the past century, he says, nothing has drastically altered the long-term trends in the way Americans produce or use energy - not the Great Depression, not the world wars, not the energy crisis of the 1970s or the grand programs to produce alternative energy. "Energy systems evolve with a particular logic, gradually, and they don't suddenly morph into something different," Mr. Ausubel says. That doesn't make for a rousing speech on Earth Day. But in the long run, a Kuznets curve is more reliable than a revolution.

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Talking Climate Change with Anthony Watts

Anyone who regularly tunes into WattsUpWithThat.com, the popular climate-science blog operated by Anthony Watts, will never make fun of TV weathermen again. Watts - who was a TV meteorologist for 25 years - provides a steady diet of smart, always interesting and sometimes deeply complex scientific information and opinion about global climate change. Watts is also the founder of surfacestations.org, a project that for nearly two years has been quality-checking each of the 1,200-plus weather stations of the U. S. Historical Climate Network (USHCN) to see if they are set up and maintained properly. So far, Watts and his volunteers have checked about 820 of the weather stations, which have been in place for about 100 years and are the source for the country's official average annual temperature. Watts has found that temperature data from nearly 70 percent of the stations is of questionable accuracy because the stations do not adhere to the USHCN's own quality-control guidelines. I talked to Watts April 16 by phone from his office in Chico, Calif.

Q: Why do you do your blog WattsUpWithThat?

A: Well, it's just an extension of what my life has been up until the last few years. I was a broadcaster on television - a meteorologist - for 25 years. I look at the blog as really no different. I did a daily broadcast each day in television. A blog is really just a daily broadcast in a different form.

Q: Who is your target audience?

A: I never really thought about a target audience. I took the same philosophy from broadcasting. I made it to reach as broad an audience as possible and the demographics that I get from it tell me I am doing that job successfully. I've got everything from people with high school educations to people that are Ph.Ds who are reading and commentating and sometimes even submitting articles.

Q: Sometimes it gets pretty deep - lots of scientific charts and data.

A: It does. But that is to be expected because of the broad audience we have. My job is to try to make everything understandable, even for people who are not in tune with some of the more technical details of climate.

Q: Have you become more politicized since you began blogging? Or are you primarily still a man of science?

A: Well, my main interest always has been the science. I am still of the belief that you should let the data tell you what the real story is. As far as the blog goes, the only thing I can say that I've become a little more critical of in terms of politics is that we have some people now who should be sticking to science, such as Jim Hansen (head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, going out and advocating things such as civil disobedience (at coal-fired power plants). That concerns me.

Q: What is your basic position on the question of global warming? Are you a believer? A skeptic? Somewhere in between?

A: I would call myself what some people describe as a "lukewarmer" in that the CO2 effect that people have done thousands of studies on is in fact real. However, it is not a crisis. The reason it is not a crisis is because most people do not understand the logarithmic nature of the CO2 response in our atmosphere.

Q: And that means?

A: It's like salting soup. If you have a bowl of soup in front of you and you put a little salt in it to salt it to taste, you say, "Well, maybe it needs just a tad more." So you add some more salt and you think, "Maybe not quite enough." Then you add some more, and all the sudden it's too salty. Now if you were to add additional salt to the soup, you could not determine that it was any more salty than it already was. And if you continue to add salt, you can't tell the difference.

CO2 is much like that in the way that our atmosphere responds to long-wave outgoing radiation, or trapping of heat. At some point when you get to a certain level, like a doubling of CO2, and then you add a second doubling of CO2, the response halves. It's logarithmic. Then it halves again and then halves again after that. So much of the effect that we would expect to see from CO2 -- because of this logarithmic response -- has already happened. In essence, our soup is already fairly well salted and additional salting is not to make a whole lot of difference.

Q: What is the most harmful "fact" - quote unquote - about global warming that everyone believes but which is probably not true or at least uncertain?

A: There is a belief out there that we will get into a runaway condition where at some point a tipping point would occur and that at that point there is no turning back and then the world would destroy itself. That is being pushed in the media a lot and it is flat wrong.

As we go back into history, into past millennia, we can see that our atmosphere has in fact had much more CO2 - up to 6,000 parts per million, compared to the 380 parts per million that we have now - and it has responded and it has settled. Earth didn't destroy itself. It didn't burn up and boil off the oceans. So the comparison that we see with runaway global warming and the turning of Earth into Venus, things of that nature, are probably the most dangerous and wrong ideas that are being pushed.

Q: Are your troubled or annoyed by the way global warming is being discussed or covered by the mainstream media?

A: I am. And mainly because it's getting a free pass for almost every problem that's brought up. There's a Web site in the UK called Number Watch (numberwatch.com) that maintains a list of literally thousands of things in the media that are blamed on global warming. It's almost like "The Devil made me do it." The idea here is that, yeah, we have an issue and the issue is that there is some warming of the atmosphere.. That warming however is not catastrophic. It has occurred in the past and the Earth has survived. So the blaming of global warming as a catchall for every problem that we see in our environment is a disservice to science and to the people.

Q: My grandchildren ask me if the polar ice in the Northern Hemisphere is going to disappear?

A: I would say that the polar ice has disappeared in the past. Certainly there seems to be evidence of past climate situations where we may have had virtually no or none during the summertime. In the immediate future, however, I don't think we are going to see that. In fact, we're going through a rebound right now. If you look at the current Arctic ice extent from the Japanese agency which tracks the Arctic ice, you'll find that it is very near normal at this point and it is rebounding well from the last couple years. Antarctic ice is above normal. And the global total amount of sea ice is above normal. So it's not disappearing any time soon.

Q: What's the story with the Sun? It's been described as being asleep or in a state of "slumber" because it has had virtually no sun spots for a long time. What's going on?

A: Well, the Sun is driven by dynamic magnetic cycles. There are 11-year and 22-year cycles that have been identified and there are longer cycles that have been theorized. In every kind of a cycling endeavor there are always lulls and there are giant peaks. We've seen both in the past. We've seen lulls in the Maunder Minimum (1645 to 1715) and the Dalton Minimum (1790 to 1830), when virtually no sun spots appeared. Coincidentally, during those periods the weather and climate on Earth got colder.

The period that we are currently in now is what appears to be the beginning of an extended solar cycle that may now be as long as 12 1/2 years, compared to the normal 11. The current state of the Sun appears to be a similar kind of situation being set up to what it was right before the Dalton Minimum. So the possibility exists that we may find ourselves in a period of cooler weather in the next 20 to 30 years.

The missing link, however, between solar activity and Earth's climate is "What is the amplification factor?" The total solar irradiance, or TSI, has shown to be very small and when you look at the amount of watts per meter that is delivered to the Earth's surface, the amount of change in total solar irradiance doesn't appear to be enough to cause such differences in the climate of the Earth.

However, what people are looking for now is an amplification factor - sort of a climatic transistor, if you will. A transistor takes very small signals and amplifies them so they are audible - which is why radios work. The theory has been bandied about that the same kind of process occurs in Earth's climate. A very small change in signal related to solar activity - and we don't know which signal yet; it could be total solar irradiance, it could be ultraviolent; it could be magnetic; it could be cosmic rays; there are number of things that are being looked at -- gets amplified in Earth's natural processes and changes. That's what needs to be identified before a complete causal relationship is established between changes on the Sun's solar cycle and changes in Earth's climate.

Q: When we know the immense size of the Sun and power of the Sun and relative tininess of Earth, doesn't the Sun just scream out as being the chief culprit of climate change on Earth?

A: On the surface -- on a simple analysis -- one would think that. But again, the missing link is, what is the true causal relationship between changes in the Sun's solar cycle and Earth climate. Where's the amplification factor? Because just the change in the amount of sunlight that occurs doesn't appear to be enough to account for the observed changes in the past. So we are looking for that link.

However, I would say that the Sun really is the Big Kahuna of all the climate on earth. We would not have any climate. We would not have any weather. We would not have any ocean currents. We would not have life. We would have nothing if it were not for the Sun. So the Sun is this central point from which everything on Earth springs. We should not ignore that fact.

Q: Is a period of global cooling coming? And if so, what would you point to as evidence of that?

A: Well, there is a post on my blog today (April 16) about the computer models (of future global average temperatures) starting to diverge from the climate reality. This is something that is really kind of unexpected. The models continue to go up in (global temperature) but the climate reality and the current (global temperature) measurement starts to go down. They are diverging and have been diverging since 2006. There are a number of things that have aligned that make me think that perhaps we are in for a cooling period. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, for example, has shifted from its warm regime to its cold regime last year. NASA JPL certified this. The last time it switched -- in 1978 -- it switched from a cool regime to a warm regime. We've been riding that warm period all the way since then.

Q: Is there a quick way to explain what the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is?

A: It has a larger influence that either El Nina or El Nino. It is a broad swath of water that extends from the Equator up into Alaska that changes the character of the surface temperatures of the Pacific over that broad swath of water. It was discovered by looking into changes in fishery stock by the University of Washington. The fishing stocks were changing and they had no explanation for it. They starting looking for it and they discovered it was linked to the food supply. And the food supply - krill and phytoplankton and all that sort of stuff - was linked to the changes in the temperature of the water. So they discovered this pattern. So it's a broad, wholesale change in the structure of the surface temperature of the Pacific.

Q: That has obvious influences over the whole climate for years afterwards.

A: Particularly the United States, because the weather flows from west to east. And particularly California. California had a fairly cool climate prior to 1978. And during the warmer period from 1978 to last year, agriculture boomed in California. Grapes began to be grown in places they haven't been grown before. The wine industry expanded. Agricultural expanded. And it expanded under a warmer climatic regime. Now that warmer climatic regime is in danger of shrinking again. So we may find growing seasons and growing places reduced back to areas that they were historically at in 1978.

Q: What is the most important, irrefutable truth about the climate of Earth that you wish every schoolchild and every elected official in Washington understood?

A: That the climate has always changed. It has never been static. In the past it has seen extremes hotter and colder than what we experience today. So change is normal.

Q: Since you are a meteorologist, I'll put you on the spot. Ten years from now what will we be talking about, global warming or global cooling?

A: I believe it will be global cooling, based on the fact that there are several things aligning - like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the solar patterns and so forth -- to make it appear that we might be in for a period of global cooling. However, I am also prepared to say that I may be completely wrong.

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Greenie secrecy endangering lives

Must protect birds. People don't matter. If people know where there are dangerous flocks of birds that endanger airliners, they might want somebody to shoot those birds and that would never do. That the birds mostly concerned (Canada Geese) are present in pest proportions doesn't matter!

A survivor of the jetliner that ditched in the Hudson River after hitting birds and most other public commenters opposed a government proposal to make secret its data on when and where such bird strikes occur.

Public comments about the Federal Aviation Administration's secrecy proposal ran 5-to-1 against it as the comment period closed Monday. One major group, which some had expected to support the rule, declined to take a position.

The primary trade group for U.S. airports, the Airports Council International-North America, told the FAA that its member airports were split on the issue so it "cannot take a position either supporting or opposing" the secrecy. But it urged the agency "to provide explanatory information to assist the public and media to use the data responsibly" if it decides against imposing secrecy.

Donald C. Jones, of Jacksonville, Fla., who was fished from the Hudson Jan. 15 along with the other 154 people aboard US Airways flight 1549, told the FAA he was "surprised and alarmed" to read its proposal. "This issue needs to be addressed openly, not swept under the rug," Jones said. Six private pilots and an air traffic controller also were among 35 people who objected in writing to the FAA's plan.

The Airline Pilots Association, which represents more than 52,000 professional airline pilots, the city of Portland, Ore., which operates three airports, and helicopter-maker Sikorsky Aircraft were among seven commenters who favored the secrecy.

After the Jan. 15 ditching, The Associated Press requested access to the FAA's bird strike database, which contains more than 100,000 reports of strikes that have been voluntarily submitted since 1990.

While still processing the AP Freedom of Information Act request, the FAA on March 19 quietly published its proposal in the Federal Register and provided 30 days for public comment.

The agency expressed concern that, if the data were released, some airlines and airports would reduce voluntary reporting of bird strikes for fear that the public and news media would misconstrue raw data and "cast unfounded aspersions on the submitter." "Drawing comparisons between airports is difficult because of the unevenness of reporting" from airport to airport and the difference in local bird populations they have to deal with, the FAA said.

But Jones, director of an association of endocrinologists, was among several commenters who suggested the remedy for uneven reporting was to make the reports mandatory, not secret. "Why isn't reporting of strikes by commercial airlines, private aviation and airports mandatory?" Jones asked the FAA. "How can the FAA ignore the recommendations of the National Transportation Safety Board that reporting strikes be mandatory?" The safety board made that recommendation to the FAA 10 years ago, noting that the database grossly understates the number of strikes.

The FAA says strikes increased from 1,759 in 1990 to 7,666 in 2007.

Opposing the FAA plan, Paul Eschenfelder, president of the aviation consultant Avion Corp. in Spring, Texas, wrote that in 2004 and 2007 a government-industry working group, which was rewriting the FAA's engine design standards for withstanding bird strikes, "agreed that the FAA wildlife database was unusable due to its incompleteness" and paid Boeing Co. "to develop a cogent database that all agreed was superior."

The pilots union, the city of Portland, Sikorsky and even the airports council expressed fear the public might misinterpret the data. "This data is complex and nuanced, and could be easily misunderstood or misinterpreted if disclosed in raw form to the public," wrote Nick Atwell, aviation wildlife manager for the Port of Portland.

Members of the public, however, bridled at that idea. Robert M. McCauley, a Denison, Texas, attorney with a private pilot's certificate, objected to the FAA's "obvious concept that you have been `anointed' to protect the public from itself." McCauley said he was "just as anxious to know the location of high volume bird strike areas as I am of geographical areas that exhibit regular hazardous weather tendencies, each of which may well impact my decisions in planning flights and ultimately, my life."

Roger Maloof, of New Hampshire, who described himself as a mechanical engineer from MIT, wrote that "if we the people know of inadequately protected airports, then we can petition for corrections. Keeping the data secret only protects dangerous airports and endangers the general public. ... This is like hiding which roads are more dangerous in winter to protect the interests of the businesses on those roads."

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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21 April, 2009

WHY ARE INCREASING NUMBERS OF AMERICANS CLIMATE-SCEPTICAL?

Climate change skepticism has soared under Obama's presidency, with only one third of American likely voters now blaming humans for climate change, according to a Rasmussen poll released today. In contrast, 48% believe that long term planetary trends are responsible, 7% blame other non-man-made factors, and 11% aren't sure.

The plummeting support for Al Gore's thesis - the lowest ever - is a complete reversal from one year ago, when 47% blamed humans and only 34% saw long-term planetary trends as the culprits. The rise in climate change scepticism, and decline in pinning the blame on humans, tracks Obama's assumption of power. In December, one month after his defeat of John McCain in the presidential race, the number of Americans who blamed people dropped to 43%. By February, the figure had dropped to 38% and it now rests at 34%

Why has Al Gore's position lost so much credibility with the American public? While the Rasmussen poll does not explore this question, two Obama factors could be at play. First, public hostility toward George Bush and the Republicans likely expressed itself in part as hostility toward global warming scepticism, with which Bush and the Republicans were identified. As soon as the Republicans lost power, many in the public lost their fervour in opposing climate change scepticism.

Second, the recession, combined with proposals from the new Obama administration to start taxing carbon in one form or another, gave the public new reason to question whether carbon dioxide really is the demon that climate change doomsayers claim. Upon investigation, the public would have found little to support the doomsayer case.

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THE GREAT GREEN CON: BRITISH LABOUR'S CLIMATE POLICY MOSTLY HOT AIR

After last week's eco-car initiative, Wednesday's Budget will have a green spin. But the Government's low-carbon strategy could be making matters worse, says environment editor Geoffrey Lean

Britain's economic stimulus measures, promoted by Gordon Brown as part of a "global green new deal", will accelerate global warming instead of curbing it, an investigation by The Independent on Sunday has established.

The investigation also shows that most of the Prime Minister's vaunted green initiatives have not materialised and, in some cases, are likely to set back his professed strategy for "the creation of a low-carbon economy". It has found that, over the past four years, ministers have launched a staggering 91 consultations relating to the issue, while actually doing little.

The revelations come as the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, prepares to unveil what ministers insist will be a groundbreaking green Budget. Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband, told the IoS that it would represent "a massive greening of the Government".

Last year's Budget, however, was similarly trailed in advance as "the greenest ever", but actually led to a slight fall in the revenue coming from green taxes. And though Gordon Brown promised in 1997 to put "the environment at the core of the Government's objectives for the tax system", income from such taxes fell by 22 per cent during his 10 years as Chancellor.

As the IoS exclusively reported last month, green measures form only 6 per cent of the Government's stimulus package, compared to 13 per cent in Germany, 21 per cent in France, 38 per cent in China and 81 per cent in South Korea. And now a new study shows that the British package will increase rather than reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.

Carried out for WWF and E3G – a respected environmental group – it found that the harmful effects of new spending on roads, which will increase traffic, far outweighed the contribution of extra expenditure on energy saving and rail infrastructure. And it points out that Britain has "yet to include any investments at all dedicated to renewable energy".

Examination of Mr Brown's hyped green initiatives since becoming Prime minister reveals a similarly sorry picture, as the panel (right) shows. He has repeatedly promised that Britain will increase the proportion of its energy coming from renewable sources to 15 per cent by 2020. But a new study to be published on Tuesday by Cambridge Econometrics is expected to show that, if current policies continue, it will grow from 1 per cent to only 1.5 per cent by then.

The Government has consistently failed to provide incentives that are routine in other countries. Four years ago, it promised to provide £50m to help develop wave and tidal power, an area where Britain has a potential world lead. But the resulting Marine Renewables Deployment Fund has yet to give a penny to support this. Installation of rooftop windmills has been held up through bureaucratic delays over planning issues at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Gordon Brown wrote to one manufacturer last August saying the issue had been resolved, but the hold-up continues.

Homeowners have also been discouraged from installing other renewable energy systems, such as solar electric panels. Just as they were beginning to take off, ministers slashed the level of grants available. They will end such funding for commercial buildings and charities altogether in June.

The Government has promised to introduce "feed-in tariffs", which would pay people for excess energy they produce. But these are not due to come in for a year for electricity and for two years for heat – causing a funding gap that threatens to drive some installers out of business. There is a similar failure to honour an undertaking by Mr Brown last September properly to insulate six million houses over the next three years. In practice, this would involve providing cavity wall insulation to a million homes. The official Cavity Insulation Guarantee Agency told the IoS last week that filling cavity walls was running at just 500,000 homes a year.

Mr Brown promised to augment a scheme called the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target, under which the big energy companies have to help households save fuel and electricity. But the Government is now threatening to gut the scheme by allowing the companies to get away with simply offering people advice.

He also undertook to tackle fuel poverty. But ministers accept they will fail to meet a legal obligation to end it among vulnerable groups next year, and have cut funds, even as the number of households affected has risen from 4.3 to 5.4 million last year. Last week's heavily publicised promotion of electric cars follows the same pattern, since the cars for which grants will be available will not be on the market for at least two years.

Meanwhile a study by a consulting firm, JDS Associates, has counted 91 separate consultations concerning sustainable energy launched by the governments in Westminster, Edinburgh and Cardiff between May 2005 and January 2009.

Last night Greg Barker, the Conservatives' energy spokesman, said the investigation showed ministers and civil servants were locked in "mid-20th-century attitudes to producing energy". Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat environment spokesman, said the Prime Minister was content to "paint a green picture" without taking practical action.

SOURCE




REALITY CHECK: UK GOVERNMENT TO PUSH NEW COAL-FIRED POWER STATIONS

GORDON BROWN is to risk a clash with the green movement by throwing the government’s weight behind the construction of a new generation of coal-fired power stations. Ministers intend to give power companies permission to construct at least two new coal-fired stations, with more to follow. The move will anger climate change scientists and campaigners because coal produces more CO2 for each unit of energy generated than any other fuel.

Brown and Ed Miliband, his energy secretary, will argue that Britain urgently needs more coal-fired generating plants to prevent future power shortages as old plants are shut down. They will soften the blow by pledging that any new plants will be designed so they can be fitted at a later date with equipment to capture CO2 — a technology that is still unproven. The plan may also be mentioned in Alistair Darling’s budget this week.

The government is understood to want initially to approve 2.5 gigawatts (Gw) of generating capacity. This is equivalent to two fairly large power stations. The proposed plant at Kingsnorth in Kent, seen as the most likely to be approved first, would generate 1.6Gw. The plant has already been the focus of large-scale protests by green activists.

This week Miliband is expected to prepare the ground for the inevitable controversy by announcing a consultation into the technical requirements to be imposed on any new power station, including the licensing system for pumping captured CO2 into underground rock strata. He is also expected to say he wants to expand plans to test “carbon capture and storage” (CCS) technologies by building up to three such plants rather than the single one planned at the moment. He told a recent parliamentary committee that he wanted to put Britain at the forefront of CCS technologies.

The government hopes such pledges will placate its opponents sufficiently so that the new power stations will be approved. “We see new coal generation as having a potentially important role to play in securing Britain’s electricity supply, but we also recognise the need to deal with CO2 emissions,” said a spokesman for the energy and climate change department, run by Miliband.

He is likely to face fierce opposition from other political parties and from groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. They see the proposals as a way of getting coal-fired power stations built on a promise that will not be fulfilled — that their emissions will one day be abated.

In theory, so-called carbon capture could be capable of capturing up to 90% of the CO2 emissions from power plants. It would then be pumped underground for permanent storage. However, no industrial-scale CCS plant has yet been built anywhere in the world and the technology remains unproven.

Britain burns about 63m tons of coal a year, with 84% used to generate power. Coal-fired plants generate about a quarter of the 560m tons of CO2 that Britain produces each year.

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Europe is cheating

The European Union is playing "tricks on the atmosphere" when it claims it will reduce its emissions by 20% by 2020, argues Stefan Singer, director for global energy policy at the WWF. Speaking to EurActiv in an interview, he explained how he had calculated that the EU’s own domestic emissions will in fact only amount to "4 to 5%". "What we did was compare the level of ambition that the European Union is pretending to take, compared to what it means in reality. 20% emissions reduction by the EU by the year 2020 on 1990 levels means no more than 4-5% emissions reductions domestically" as from 2009 onwards, he said.

To back his claim, Singer explained that the EU will already achieve an 8% cut, mainly due to de-industrialisation in ex-Soviet states that has taken place since 1990, the base year of the Kyoto Protocol. "So 12% is left," Singer points out. But he says this will not be achieved by emission cuts within Europe’s borders, as the EU plans to allow a large chunk of it -- 60% -- to be achieved via emission offsets in developing countries, using the UN’s clean development mechanism (CDM). "This in principle is not a problem if there were a strong domestic target as well, and if the clean development mechanism would have been shown to be truly additional. But that is not the case."

In fact, he says EU offset projects in developing countries did not truly deliver "because those emissions reductions would have probably occurred anyway" due to policies implemented in countries such as China. As a consequence, Singer says the EU’s 20% target "represents just a 4-5% domestic target" between now and 2020. "It’s a trick on the atmosphere," he claims. "If we want to stay below 2°C global warming, the European Union is pretending to do the 20% cut. And then on top of that they ask developing countries to reduce their emissions 15% to 30%. That’s cheating. That does not help to achieve the 2°C."

US and China 'among the world leaders'

In comparison, Singer says US President Barack Obama has committed to much more aggressive cuts. “The Obama administration is proposing a stabilisation of emissions in the US at 1990 levels by the year 2020. That is a 19% emissions cut in the US from now on, roughly.”

Singer is also keen to counter the argument, often heard in Europe, that emerging economies such as China are not doing enough on climate change. "China has committed to reducing its energy intensity, energy use per GDP, by 20% in just six years between 2005 and 2010, and another 20-30% until 2020. And this is quite substantive if you look at the GDP growth in China. China has a very ambitious renewable energy target, 15-20% renewables by 2020, similar to that of the EU. China has 14 to 16 new pilot projects on coal gasification in the pipeline. We just have one in Europe." "China is definitely one of the world leaders."

According to Singer, one of the biggest uncertainties at the UN climate talks will be the position of Russia. "Experience tells us that Russia always comes in at the eleventh hour with some kind of ridiculous demand. And not just on climate, on all issues, because Russia has the understanding of the UN as a self-service shop." In order to "deal with Russia," he says the global community should start thinking about making trade offs. The trouble, he said is that "no-one knows what is to be traded off against what with Russia, because Russia is very often a black box."

Developing countries doing their bit

On the other hand, he is quick to defend the record of developing countries, whose efforts are "often forgotten", he said. "Brazil has committed before the turn of the year to reducing its emissions in the Amazon by 70%. Indonesia has committed to reducing its emissions by almost 100% in Borneo, which is the largest spot of deforestation. Of course it is not related to industry, but it’s still a big chunk of emissions. So this has changed!" "Developing countries are doing something. They’re committing. We can all say they’re not doing enough, and we need compliance, but they’re doing something."

And in the face of those efforts, Singer says developing countries are getting little in return from the Europeans. "Europe has fundamentally missed out on giving at least a minimum of cash to developing countries. By arrogantly, really arrogantly, saying 'sorry it’s a negotiation, we want to see what the others are doing'." "This is a recipe for disaster. And Europe is going to be slaughtered by the group of developing countries for that."

SOURCE




Reliance on consensus

By consensus I mean extreme majority but not necessarily universal view within some group - as this seems to be its meaning as it is commonly used today.

Someone competent in a field does not have much use for consensus. A mathematician can examine a proof and discover for himself whether it is valid or invalid, without relying on the opinion of other mathematicians. A scientist who doubts a result can reproduce the experiment for himself, without relying on the opinion of other scientists. This is not to say that scientists do not benefit from communication with other scientists, that they do not benefit from a sanity check provided by other scientists. But consensus can be built up in many different ways, many of them more likely to reinforce error than to discover truth, only some of them an improvement on independent thinking. So consensus - be it general, scientific, field-specific, or what have you, is not by itself very good evidence of truth. As was pointed out in the book by that title, to get the "Wisdom of Crowds" phenomenon it's important that people give their independent opinions, thus avoiding an information cascade - a condition that is not all that often fulfilled.

If you rely on consensus you are making yourself into part of the above-mentioned information cascade. We might hope, therefore, that people who rely on the consensus in a field are themselves all outside that field. That is not certain to be the case, which poses a problem for those who would like to rely on consensus.

If you wish to rely on the consensus of the group of people competent to individually judge claims in a given topic for themselves, you also have the problem of defining that group. If you are not yourself competent to judge, how do you know who is competent to judge? If you rely on someone else's definition of that group, how do you know that they are competent to judge? Ultimately you cannot avoid making a decision for yourself - you cannot avoid choosing who to rely on, and therefore you cannot, in the end, avoid relying on your own competence to make the decision. (I happen to think that many people are not competent, and that consequently they rely on false authority - they are the blind led by the blind. So this ultimate reliance on one's own competence is a real problem and not just of academic interest.)

There are some ways for the competent to identify others to delegate judgment to. For example, if you spot check someone's work, and all that you've checked is flawless, then it is reasonable to rely on the rest of his work without checking on it, treating him as an authority. This, however, presupposes your own competence - your own authority. It does not work for the incompetent.

You don't have to have the same kind of competence as the person whose competence you are testing. I don't know many words of Chinese (Mandarin or other dialect) but I can identify authorities on Chinese. There are ways to "bootstrap" competence. But these employ a certain kind of competence. For instance, you need to have the competence to distinguish the cases where a specific kind of bootstrapping succeeds from the cases where it fails. (So the thoroughly incompetent are thoroughly screwed. The competent may, of course, guide them, but so may anyone else.) I happen to think that many people accept authorities without the benefit of proper "bootstrapping" - possibly as a result of tragically mistaken "bootstrapping" based on false signs of competence.

Once you have identified a group of authorities, then relying on consensus, rather than relying on (say) the judgment of selected individuals from this group, may serve the limited function of checking your own tendency to cherry-pick authorities whose judgments coincide with what you want to be true. And it might, additionally, confer a Wisdom of Crowds benefit. But if there is dissent within your identified group of authorities, that is a significant fact. And of course, relying on consensus (as opposed to relying on one specific authority) is only meaningful (will only even potentially give you a different conclusion than relying on a single authority) if there is dissent. So the very occasions on which reliance on consensus might even possibly confer some benefit, are precisely those occasions where the significant fact of the existence of dissent may give you pause.

Thus, the useful function of reliance on consensus is restricted (it checks your own tendency to cherry-pick), and its value is dubious (since what it amounts to is ignoring the existence of dissent among your chosen authorities). Furthermore it completely fails to distinguish convergence by independent experience and thought from convergence by groupthink, which you should be keenly interested in distinguishing.

There is some evidence that the average ______ is incompetent. The linked evidence (the rate of correct answers was worse than random guessing) is for economics but why should this not be generally true? I suspect it is (based in part on my own experiences here and there). So as a rule of thumb, between eighty and 100 percent of accredited members of a field are incompetent and should not be trusted.

Good luck relying on the consensus within a field (as defined by accreditation) if that's the case!

Underlying the popular habit of relying on consensus may lie the consensus theory of truth. Certain philosophical notions are these days deeply embedded in popular thought, and the consensus theory of truth may be one of them.

SOURCE




Bound to Burn

By Peter W. Huber

Like medieval priests, today's carbon brokers will sell you an indulgence that forgives your carbon sins. It will run you about $500 for 5 tons of forgiveness--about how much the typical American needs every year. Or about $2,000 a year for a typical four-person household. Your broker will spend the money on such things as reducing methane emissions from hog farms in Brazil.

But if you really want to make a difference, you must send a check large enough to forgive the carbon emitted by four poor Brazilian households, too--because they're not going to do it themselves. To cover all five households, then, send $4,000. And you probably forgot to send in a check last year, and you might forget again in the future, so you'd best make it an even $40,000, to take care of a decade right now. If you decline to write your own check while insisting that to save the world we must ditch the carbon, you are just burdening your already sooty soul with another ton of self-righteous hypocrisy. And you can't possibly afford what it will cost to forgive that.

If making carbon this personal seems rude, then think globally instead. During the presidential race, Barack Obama was heard to remark that he would bankrupt the coal industry. No one can doubt Washington's power to bankrupt almost anything--in the United States. But China is adding 100 gigawatts of coal-fired electrical capacity a year. That's another whole United States' worth of coal consumption added every three years, with no stopping point in sight. Much of the rest of the developing world is on a similar path.

Cut to the chase. We rich people can't stop the world's 5 billion poor people from burning the couple of trillion tons of cheap carbon that they have within easy reach. We can't even make any durable dent in global emissions--because emissions from the developing world are growing too fast, because the other 80 percent of humanity desperately needs cheap energy, and because we and they are now part of the same global economy. What we can do, if we're foolish enough, is let carbon worries send our jobs and industries to their shores, making them grow even faster, and their carbon emissions faster still.

We don't control the global supply of carbon.

Ten countries ruled by nasty people control 80 percent of the planet's oil reserves--about 1 trillion barrels, currently worth about $40 trillion. If $40 trillion worth of gold were located where most of the oil is, one could only scoff at any suggestion that we might somehow persuade the nasty people to leave the wealth buried. They can lift most of their oil at a cost well under $10 a barrel. They will drill. They will pump. And they will find buyers. Oil is all they've got.

Poor countries all around the planet are sitting on a second, even bigger source of carbon--almost a trillion tons of cheap, easily accessible coal. They also control most of the planet's third great carbon reservoir--the rain forests and soil. They will keep squeezing the carbon out of cheap coal, and cheap forest, and cheap soil, because that's all they've got. Unless they can find something even cheaper. But they won't--not any time in the foreseeable future.

We no longer control the demand for carbon, either. The 5 billion poor--the other 80 percent--are already the main problem, not us. Collectively, they emit 20 percent more greenhouse gas than we do. We burn a lot more carbon individually, but they have a lot more children. Their fecundity has eclipsed our gluttony, and the gap is now widening fast. China, not the United States, is now the planet's largest emitter. Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and others are in hot pursuit. And these countries have all made it clear that they aren't interested in spending what money they have on low-carb diets. It is idle to argue, as some have done, that global warming can be solved--decades hence--at a cost of 1 to 2 percent of the global economy. Eighty percent of the global population hasn't signed on to pay more than 0 percent.

Accepting this last, self-evident fact, the Kyoto Protocol divides the world into two groups. The roughly 1.2 billion citizens of industrialized countries are expected to reduce their emissions. The other 5 billion--including both China and India, each of which is about as populous as the entire Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development--aren't. These numbers alone guarantee that humanity isn't going to reduce global emissions at any point in the foreseeable future--unless it does it the old-fashioned way, by getting poorer. But the current recession won't last forever, and the long-term trend is clear. Their populations and per-capita emissions are rising far faster than ours could fall under any remotely plausible carbon-reduction scheme.

Might we simply buy their cooperation? Various plans have circulated for having the rich pay the poor to stop burning down rain forests and to lower greenhouse-gas emissions from primitive agricultural practices. But taking control of what belongs to someone else ultimately means buying it. Over the long term, we would in effect have to buy up a large fraction of all the world's forests, soil, coal, and oil--and then post guards to make sure that poor people didn't sneak in and grab all the carbon anyway. Buying off people just doesn't fly when they outnumber you four to one.

Might we instead manage to give the world something cheaper than carbon? The moon-shot law of economics says yes, of course we can. If we just put our minds to it, it will happen. Atom bomb, moon landing, ultracheap energy--all it takes is a triumph of political will.

Really? For the very poorest, this would mean beating the price of the free rain forest that they burn down to clear land to plant a subsistence crop. For the slightly less poor, it would mean beating the price of coal used to generate electricity at under 3 cents per kilowatt-hour.

And with one important exception, which we will return to shortly, no carbon-free fuel or technology comes remotely close to being able to do that. Fossil fuels are extremely cheap because geological forces happen to have created large deposits of these dense forms of energy in accessible places. Find a mountain of coal, and you can just shovel gargantuan amounts of energy into the boxcars.

Shoveling wind and sun is much, much harder. Windmills are now 50-story skyscrapers. Yet one windmill generates a piddling 2 to 3 megawatts. A jumbo jet needs 100 megawatts to get off the ground; Google is building 100-megawatt server farms. Meeting New York City's total energy demand would require 13,000 of those skyscrapers spinning at top speed, which would require scattering about 50,000 of them across the state, to make sure that you always hit enough windy spots. To answer the howls of green protest that inevitably greet realistic engineering estimates like these, note that real-world systems must be able to meet peak, not average, demand; that reserve margins are essential; and that converting electric power into liquid or gaseous fuels to power the existing transportation and heating systems would entail substantial losses. What was Mayor Bloomberg thinking when he suggested that he might just tuck windmills into Manhattan? Such thoughts betray a deep ignorance ab! out how difficult it is to get a lot of energy out of sources as thin and dilute as wind and sun.

It's often suggested that technology improvements and mass production will sharply lower the cost of wind and solar. But engineers have pursued these technologies for decades, and while costs of some components have fallen, there is no serious prospect of costs plummeting and performance soaring as they have in our laptops and cell phones. When you replace conventional with renewable energy, everything gets bigger, not smaller--and bigger costs more, not less. Even if solar cells themselves were free, solar power would remain very expensive because of the huge structures and support systems required to extract large amounts of electricity from a source so weak that it takes hours to deliver a tan.

This is why the (few) greens ready to accept engineering and economic reality have suddenly emerged as avid proponents of nuclear power. In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident--which didn't harm anyone, and wouldn't even have damaged the reactor core if the operators had simply kept their hands off the switches and let the automatic safety systems do their job--ostensibly green antinuclear activists unwittingly boosted U.S. coal consumption by about 400 million tons per year. The United States would be in compliance with the Kyoto Protocol today if we could simply undo their handiwork and conjure back into existence the nuclear plants that were in the pipeline in nuclear power's heyday. Nuclear power is fantastically compact, and--as America's nuclear navy, several commercial U.S. operators, France, Japan, and a handful of other countries have convincingly established--it's both safe and cheap wherever engineers are allowed to get on with it.

But getting on with it briskly is essential, because costs hinge on the huge, up-front capital investment in the power plant. Years of delay between the capital investment and when it starts earning a return are ruinous. Most of the developed world has made nuclear power unaffordable by surrounding it with a regulatory process so sluggish and unpredictable that no one will pour a couple of billion dollars into a new plant, for the good reason that no one knows when (or even if) the investment will be allowed to start making money.

And countries that don't trust nuclear power on their own soil must hesitate to share the technology with countries where you never know who will be in charge next year, or what he might decide to do with his nuclear toys. So much for the possibility that cheap nuclear power might replace carbon-spewing sources of energy in the developing world. Moreover, even India and China, which have mastered nuclear technologies, are deploying far more new coal capacity.

Remember, finally, that most of the cost of carbon-based energy resides not in the fuels but in the gigantic infrastructure of furnaces, turbines, and engines. Those costs are sunk, which means that carbon-free alternatives--with their own huge, attendant, front-end capital costs--must be cheap enough to beat carbon fuels that already have their infrastructure in place. That won't happen in our lifetimes.

Another argument commonly advanced is that getting over carbon will, nevertheless, be comparatively cheap, because it will get us over oil, too--which will impoverish our enemies and save us a bundle at the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. But uranium aside, the most economical substitute for oil is, in fact, electricity generated with coal. Cheap coal-fired electricity has been, is, and will continue to be a substitute for oil, or a substitute for natural gas, which can in turn substitute for oil. By sharply boosting the cost of coal electricity, the war on carbon will make us more dependent on oil, not less.

The first place where coal displaces oil is in the electric power plant itself. When oil prices spiked in the early 1980s, U.S. utilities quickly switched to other fuels, with coal leading the pack; the coal-fired plants now being built in China, India, and other developing countries are displacing diesel generators. More power plants burning coal to produce cheap electricity can also mean less natural gas used to generate electricity. And less used for industrial, commercial, and residential heating, welding, and chemical processing, as these users switch to electrically powered alternatives. The gas that's freed up this way can then substitute for diesel fuel in heavy trucks, delivery vehicles, and buses. And coal-fired electricity will eventually begin displacing gasoline, too, as soon as plug-in hybrid cars start recharging their batteries directly from the grid.

To top it all, using electricity generated in large part by coal to power our passenger cars would lower carbon emissions--even in Indiana, which generates 75 percent of its electricity with coal. Big power plants are so much more efficient than the gasoline engines in our cars that a plug-in hybrid car running on electricity supplied by Indiana's current grid still ends up more carbon-frugal than comparable cars burning gasoline in a conventional engine under the hood. Old-guard energy types have been saying this for decades. In a major report released last March, the World Wildlife Fund finally concluded that they were right all along.

But true carbon zealots won't settle for modest reductions in carbon emissions when fat targets beckon. They see coal-fired electricity as the dragon to slay first. Huge, stationary sources can't run or hide, and the cost of doing without them doesn't get rung up in plain view at the gas pump. California, Pennsylvania, and other greener-than-thou states have made flatlining electricity consumption the linchpin of their war on carbon. That is the one certain way to halt the displacement of foreign oil by cheap, domestic electricity.

The oil-coal economics come down to this. Per unit of energy delivered, coal costs about one-fifth as much as oil--but contains one-third more carbon. High carbon taxes (or tradable permits, or any other economic equivalent) sharply narrow the price gap between oil and the one fuel that can displace it worldwide, here and now. The oil nasties will celebrate the green war on carbon as enthusiastically as the coal industry celebrated the green war on uranium 30 years ago.

The other 5 billion are too poor to deny these economic realities. For them, the price to beat is 3-cent coal-fired electricity. China and India won't trade 3-cent coal for 15-cent wind or 30-cent solar. As for us, if we embrace those economically frivolous alternatives on our own, we will certainly end up doing more harm than good.

By pouring money into anything-but-carbon fuels, we will lower demand for carbon, making it even cheaper for the rest of the world to buy and burn. The rest will use cheaper energy to accelerate their own economic growth. Jobs will go where energy is cheap, just as they go where labor is cheap. Manufacturing and heavy industry require a great deal of energy, and in a global economy, no competitor can survive while paying substantially more for an essential input. The carbon police acknowledge the problem and talk vaguely of using tariffs and such to address it. But carbon is far too deeply embedded in the global economy, and materials, goods, and services move and intermingle far too freely, for the customs agents to track.

Consider your next Google search. As noted in a recent article in Harper's, "Google . . . and its rivals now head abroad for cheaper, often dirtier power." Google itself (the "don't be evil" company) is looking to set up one of its electrically voracious server farms at a site in Lithuania, "disingenuously described as being near a hydroelectric dam." But Lithuania's grid is 0.5 percent hydroelectric and 78 percent nuclear. Perhaps the company's next huge farm will be "near" the Three Gorges Dam in China, built to generate over three times as much power as our own Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State. China will be happy to play along, while it quietly plugs another coal plant into its grid a few pylons down the line. All the while, of course, Google will maintain its low-energy headquarters in California, a state that often boasts of the wise regulatory policies--centered, one is told, on efficiency and conservation--that have made it such a frugal energy user. Bu! t in fact, sky-high prices have played the key role, curbing internal demand and propelling the flight from California of power plants, heavy industries, chip fabs, server farms, and much else (see "

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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20 April, 2009

Another nasty one for poor silly old Tom Yulsman

Tom Yulsman of CEJournal is one of the many purveyors of the recent "Antarctic crackup" story but he portrays himself as a reasonable commentator on climate change, open to all points of view. Therefore, on 18th., I challenged him to put up on his blog the latest report showing that the Antarctic is not melting overall at all. He put up an aggrieved reply on my blog post but has still NOT mentioned the latest report on his blog. He has exposed himself as a fraud.

I am too bored with the "Antarctic ice breaking up" story to post any more on it but if Tom wants to suffer a real crisis of faith, he should read this post. It shows -- complete with screen grabs -- that the Greenies trot out the same old false "crackup" story year after year.

How about it, Tom? Have you accepted that you are a crook yet? Or are you going to read the story?




We're winning!

Rasmussen poll: Only 34% Now Blame Humans for Global Warming. Looks like a lot of people have noted that the world is getting colder even if the Warmists haven't

Just one-out-of-three voters (34%) now believe global warming is caused by human activity, the lowest finding yet in Rasmussen Reports national surveying. However, a plurality (48%) of the Political Class believes humans are to blame. Forty-eight percent (48%) of all likely voters attribute climate change to long-term planetary trends, while seven percent (7%) blame some other reason. Eleven percent (11%) aren’t sure. These numbers reflect a reversal from a year ago when 47% blamed human activity while 34% said long-term planetary trends.

Most Democrats (51%) still say humans are to blame for global warming, the position taken by former Vice President Al Gore and other climate change activists. But 66% of Republicans and 47% of adults not affiliated with either party disagree.

Sixty-two percent (62%) of all Americans believe global warming is at least a somewhat serious problem, with 33% who say it’s Very Serious. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it’s a not a serious problem. The overall numbers have remained largely the same for several months, but the number who say Very Serious has gone down.

A growing number of Americans (58%) say the United States needs to build more nuclear plants. This is up five points from last month and the highest finding so far this year. Twenty-five percent (25%) oppose the building of nuclear plants.

While the economy remains the top issue for most Americans, 40% believe there is a conflict between economic growth and environmental protection. Thirty-one percent 31% see no such conflict, while 29% are not sure.

SOURCE




Humans declared toxic

Andrew Bolt

Humans breathe out carbon dioxide with every breath. It's a byproduct of keeping our bodies alive

The green faith reveals itself in full contempt. Humans are by their living, breathing nature now officially pollutants of this world:

THE US Environmental Protection Agency has shifted course and deemed carbon dioxide a health risk, in a turnabout important to global warming-related regulation.

But what will trees use for food when carbon dioxide is eliminated. Madness is on the hoof.

SOURCE




Science thrown right out the window: "Sea Levels Could Rise 10 Feet in 50 Years"

Even the IPCC forecasts nothing like this. The Fox news writer makes a couple of nice points at the end of the report, though. Really sad but not too unexpected when a reporter has more sense than academic journal editors. "Nature" is a crusading Warmist publication these days

Global sea levels could rise 10 feet in 50 years if the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps rapidly melt, a new study suggests. Analysis of coral beds formed in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula found that during the last warm period between ice ages more than 100,000 years ago, an entire layer of corals suddenly died, only to be replaced decades later by a new, smaller layer.

That indicates that sea levels had risen between 2 and 3 meters (6.6 to 10 feet) fairly rapidly — over 50 to 100 years. And the only thing that could cause that would be a substantial melting of the continental ice sheets.

"Scientists have tended to assume that sea level reached a maximum during the last interglacial very slowly, over several millennia," study leader Paul Blanchon of the National University of Mexico told Agence France-Presse. "What we are saying is 'No, they didn't.'"

The previous interglacial period, the Eemian, lasted from 130,000 to 115,000 years ago. It was warmer than the current interglacial, the Holocene, with hardwood forests well north of the Arctic Circle and, presumably, smaller ice caps.

Blanchon's sudden coral die-off occurred about 121,000 years ago, which means the Eemian may have continued to get warmer as it went on. "The potential for sustained rapid ice loss and catastrophic sea-level rise in the near future is confirmed by our discovery of sea-level instability," he and his co-authors write in Friday's issue of the journal Nature.

Blanchon's work illustrates that sea levels can rise very quickly, but doesn't ascribe a cause for the rising temperatures back then. People skeptical of the theory of man-made global warming could use the paper as evidence the Earth warms up suddenly on its own, without any explanation.

Of course, that would also mean that the planet can rapidly cool down and slide into another ice age — as will likely happen within the next 5,000 years without man-made global warming.

SOURCE

Comment on the above received from Don Easterbrook [dbunny14@yahoo.com]:

We seem to be slipping back into the Dark Ages of science--this has got to be one of the dumbest papers I've ever seen. Why Nature would even publish such nonsense is amazing. Consider for example:

1. There is no way to date 120,000 year old corals with an accuracy of 20-50 years. The best you could do would be with a +/- of tens of thousands of years.

2. The average temp in Antarctica is about -55 degrees F below zero. In order to melt any ice at all you would have to raise the temperature 55 + 32 = 87 degrees just to get to the melting point of ice. To do this in 10-50 years is absurd! You would need to raise the temp many degrees above the freezing point at a rate of about 10 degrees per year every year!

3. The volume of ice in Antarctica is estimated to be about 30 million m3 To melt all of this ice in 10 years you would have to melt 3 million m3 per year in a land whose average temp is -55 degrees!

4. At the last glaciation maximum at (~20,000 yrs B.P.), glaciers covered huge areas in mid-latitude North America, northern Europe, and Russian. At the end of glacial maximum, temperatures rose abruptly and the continental glaciers melted at a maximum rate. That produced a sea level rise of about 10 mm per year or 1.0 m per century. Today, these glaciers are all gone and only two ice caps, Antarctica and Greenland, remain, so glacial melting cannot be anywhere near as drastic today as during the end of the maximum deglaciation. Therefore, the value of 10 mm per year (1.0 m in a century) may be used as an absolute maximum possible value for future sea level rise.




Beware green jobs, the new sub-prime

Dominic Lawson

When everybody seems to have the same big idea, you just know it can only mean trouble. Remember sub-prime mort-gages? Now universally excoriated as the spawn of the devil, the proximate cause of the credit crunch and all that followed, a few years back “sub-prime” was everyone’s darling. Financiers loved it because it generated sumptuously high-yielding debt instruments; governments, because it promised to make even the poor into proud property owners.

Now business lobbyists and governments on both sides of the Atlantic have got a new big idea. They call it “green jobs”. Leading the pack is, as you might expect, Barack Obama. The president recently defended a vast package of subsidies for renewable energy on the grounds that it would “create millions of additional jobs and entire new industries”.

In Britain, the business secretary, Lord Mandelson, promises billions in state aid for the same purpose. To add verisimilitude, last week he gave a royal wave from the inside of a prototype electric Mini. Mandelson’s chauffeur was a representative of the lower house: the transport secretary, Geoff Hoon.

The occasion for this photo opportunity was the government’s proposal to offer a £5,000 subsidy to anyone buying an electric car of a type not yet available: exact details to be given in Alistair Darling’s forthcoming budget. The idea is to create a “world-beating” British-based electric-car-manufacturing industry, while also attempting to meet Gordon Brown’s promise to have the nation converted to electric or hybrid cars by 2020.

That remarkable prime ministerial pledge predated the recession; its motive was to demonstrate that Britain was “leading the world in the battle against climate change”. We aren’t, as a matter of fact; but under new Labour we have certainly led the world at claiming to do so. Mandelson expressed this almost satirically last week when he declared that “Britain has taken a world lead in setting ambitious targets for carbon reduction”.

As ever, new Labour confuses announcements and newspaper headlines with real action. Whenever it becomes obvious even to ministers that Britain will not meet its current carbon reduction target, they replace it with a yet tougher target, only with an extended deadline.

It does not yet seem to have occurred to new Labour that this is making it look ridiculous, especially to the environmentalists whose support it is presumably trying to solicit. Or perhaps it has, but it would rather that than lose our “world leadership” in target-setting.

There is something almost comical in the government’s belief that the electric car, dependent as it is on the national grid, is a sort of magic recipe for reducing carbon emissions. Some months ago President Sarkozy of France had an identical idea and commissioned a report on the prospects for turning Renault and Citroën into producers of mass-market electric vehicles. The report concluded that “the traditional combustion engine still offers the most realistic prospect of developing cleaner vehicles simply by improving the performance and efficiency of traditional engines and limiting the top speed to 105mph. The overall cost of an electric car remains unfeasible at about double that of a conventional vehicle. Battery technology is still unsatisfactory, severely limiting performance”.

Note that this crushing verdict came in a country where electricity is for the most part generated by nuclear power, which produces . In this country, more than three-quarters of the grid’s power comes from theno CO2 fossil fuels of gas and coal.

Presumably it is the latter that accounts for the fact that when the London borough of Camden commissioned a study to see whether it should introduce electric vehicles for some of its services, it found that “EVs relying on the average UK mix of energy to charge them were responsible for significantly more particles of soot that lodge deeply in the lungs . . . than the average petrol-powered car”.

If all our electricity were to be generated by wind power, without any fossil-fuel back-up, this criticism would not apply. Then the cars could take days, rather than hours, to recharge (depending on the weather) and would be so expensive to run that driving would become the exclusive preserve of the rich.

A further absurdity is that electric cars are suitable only for short rides within urban areas – precisely where we are being encouraged to abandon cars and use public transport. Ken Livingstone exempted electric cars from his congestion charge as if, in addition to their suppositious environmental benefits, they also had the magical property of being incapable of contributing to congestion. As the Ecologist magazine has reported: “The focus on electric vehicles and the political love they get is totally misguided . . . to have that as the spearhead of government transport carbon-reduction policy is insane.”

The magazine is controlled by Zac Goldsmith, the prospective Conservative candidate for Richmond Park and team Cameron’s environmental guru. Last week his colleague George Osborne took a different tack, observing that the absence of plans for a national network of charging points meant that “the Labour plan is like giving people a grant to buy an internal combustion engine, without bothering to set up any petrol stations”. Osborne had his own suggested grant to create “green jobs”: “We will give every household a new entitlement to £6,500 of energy-saving technologies.”

I’m not sure how the Tories came up with the figure of £6,500. It is pointedly bigger than Labour’s proposed £5,000 electric car subsidy; but all these figures are preposterous. If you multiply £6,500 by the number of households in the land, you get to £160 billion, bigger on its own than the national debt that Osborne has repeatedly told us is unaffordable.

Electoral bribes apart, there is a more serious misconception behind the idea that ploughing subsidies into the “green economy” is a sure-fire way of boosting domestic employment. At best it will move people from one economic activity to another. Labour’s plans would subsidise car production workers to move from making conventional models to electric vehicles, which hardly anyone wants to buy. Osborne’s proposals would subsidise the double-glazing and home insulation industry and suck in many workers gainfully employed (without subsidy) elsewhere.

The key to a successful, wealth-generating economy is productivity. Saving energy is what businesses have done already, because it lowers their production costs. The problem with any form of subsidy is that it makes the consumer (through hidden taxes) pay to keep inherently uneconomic businesses “profitable”. Meanwhile, diversified energy companies such as Shell, with plenty of speculatively acquired wind-farm acreage, are salivating at the plans by Obama to introduce cap-and-trade carbon emissions targets for American industry.

Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu, had some soothing words for US manufacturing companies that complained that the new policy will make them even less competitive with Chinese exporters, since the people’s republic has indicated that it has no intention of inflicting a similar increase in energy costs on its own producers. He suggested that America might have to introduce some sort of “car-bon-intensive” tariff on Chinese goods. One of China’s envoys, Li Gao, immediately retorted that such a carbon tariff would be a “disaster”, since it could lead to global trade war.

Actually, Mr Li is right: and this is how an achingly fashionable and well-intentioned plan to create “millions of new green jobs” could instead end up making the global economy even sicker than it is already.

SOURCE




Australia: Green dream ruined by reality

AFTER spending five years raising three small children in what many consider the idyllic South Coast town of Berry, naturopath Amanda Haberecht and designer Stuart Cook couldn't wait to move back to the city.

"Over a bottle of wine one night, we realised that we actually liked art galleries and restaurants and doing nothing on the weekends," she said.

"Life in the country was working all week and then working all weekend to fix fences or build stuff or mow acres."

The Balmain couple say the years in the countryside were great for the children, "who can now deal with spiders and snakes and all those things city kids freak out about", but became a problem as they grew older.

"We spent so much time driving our kids around that we thought it really limited their independence," Ms Haberecht says. "In the city, kids have more opportunities and can get around on their own."

The couple also found it difficult to find enough employment while they lived in Berry and spent much of their time commuting back to Sydney for work.

"It took a real toll on the marriage because one of us was always single-parenting and the other was on the road," Ms Haberecht said.

"And you know what? I really hate gardening. I liked the idea of growing organic vegies, but I hated doing it."

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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19 April, 2009

EPA's Greenhouse Gas Finding Endangers U.S. Economy

The Environmental Protection Agency today formally declared that carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases are pollutants that threaten the public health and welfare.

Heritage Foundation environmental expert Ben Lieberman reacted to the announcement as follows:

"This clears the way for the most expensive and expansive environmental regulation in history. The EPA approach to regulating COs will dramatically affect the lives and day-to-day practices of all Americans... all for a change in the Earth's temperature too small to ever notice.

"The finding opens the door to federal regulation of almost anything that emits carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. That includes virtually everything that moves, from cars, trucks and ships to lawn mowers and tractors. The agency could also go after things that stand still—regulating millions of emissions-producing hospitals, restaurants and other commercial buildings, and perhaps even eying backyard barbeques.

"Even advocates of the finding recognize that a harsh regulatory regime would yield only negligible benefits—reducing greenhouse gases worldwide by less than TK percent. Yet the proposed regulations carry tremendous costs.

"The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis has found that, in just 20 years, the proposed carbon dioxide rules alone would lower gross domestic product by $7 trillion, with single-year GDP losses exceeding $600 billion. Job losses would exceed 800,000 annually for several years. The already-struggling manufacturing sector would be hit especially hard.

"Today's announcement, though expected, is a tremendous disappointment for those seeking policies that will improve the environment without devastating our economy."

SOURCE




Filmmaker vs. Hysterics

The economic consequences of Al Gore

By JOHN FUND

Irish documentary filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney have stirred up trouble before by debunking smug liberal hypocrisy. Their latest film, "Not Evil, Just Wrong" takes on the hysteria over global warming and warns that rushing to judgment in combating climate change would threaten the world's poor.

The film reminds us that environmentalists have been wrong in the past, as when they convinced the world to ban the pesticide DDT, costing the lives of countless malaria victims. The ban was finally reversed by the World Health Organization only after decades of debate. The two Irish filmmakers argue that if Al Gore's advice to radically reduce carbon emissions is followed, it would condemn to poverty two billion people in the world who have yet to turn on their first light switch.

Mr. McAleer and Ms. McElhinney have put needles into the pincushions of self-satisfied environmentalists before. In 2007, they produced a documentary called "Mine Your Own Business," which told the story of a poor village in Romania where environmentalists fought plans for a new gold mine. The village, where unemployment tops 70%, desperately needed the $1 billion in new investment and 600 jobs the project would bring. But environmentalists have blocked it, claiming it would pollute a pristine environment. Mr. McAleer, then a journalist with the Financial Times, considers himself an environmentalist. But when he covered the story for his paper, he says, "I found that almost everything the environmentalists were saying about the project was misleading, exaggerated or quite simply false."

The two filmmakers are skilled at using provocative publicity tactics. On April 22, they will hold a public showing of their film at the Rachel Carson Elementary School in the suburbs of Seattle. "Since it was Rachel Carson who touched off the campaign to ban DDT, we thought showing 'Not Evil, Just Wrong' there would be appropriate," says Mr. McAleer.

Local environmentalists will probably not appreciate the gesture and will be appalled that the school agreed to rent out its auditorium to the renegade skeptics. But somebody might point out that it's not evil, just appropriate, to hold a debate about the real-world consequences of acting on global warming fears.

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Alternative Fuel Folly

Every so often Washington throws out a controversy that brilliantly illustrates everything wrong with Washington. Consider the brewing outrage over "black liquor." This is the tale of how a supposedly innocuous federal subsidy to encourage "alternative energy" has, in a few short years, ballooned into a huge taxpayer liability and a potential trade dispute, even as it has distorted markets and led to greater fossil-fuel use. Think of it as a harbinger of the unintended consequences that will accompany the Obama energy revolution.

Back in 2005, Congress passed a highway bill. In its wisdom, it created a subsidy that gave some entities a 50-cents-a-gallon tax credit for blending "alternative" fuels with traditional fossil fuels. The law restricted which businesses could apply and limited the credit to use of fuel in motor vehicles.

Not long after, some members of Congress got to wondering if they couldn't tweak this credit in a way that would benefit specific home-state industries. In 2007, Congress expanded the types of alternative fuels that counted for the credit, while also allowing "non-mobile" entities to apply. This meant that Alaskan fish-processing facilities, for instance, which run their boilers off fish oil, might now also claim the credit.

What Congress apparently didn't consider was every other industry that might qualify. Turns out the paper industry has long used something called the "kraft" process to make paper. One byproduct is a sludge called "black liquor," which the industry has used for decades to fuel its plants. Black liquor is cost-effective, makes plants nearly self-sufficient, and, most importantly (at least for this story), definitely falls under Congress's definition of an "alternative fuel."

All of which has allowed the paper industry to start collecting giant federal payments for doing nothing more than what it has done for decades. And in fairness, why not? If Congress is going to lard up the tax code with thousands of complex provisions designed to "encourage" behavior, it shouldn't be surprised when those already practicing said behavior line up for their reward, too.

In March, International Paper announced it had received $71 million from the feds for a one-month period last fall. The company is on track to claim as much as $1 billion in 2009. Verso took in nearly $30 million from the operation of just one mill in one quarter of last year. Other giants are gearing up to realize their own windfalls. Wall Street has gone wild, pushing paper-company stocks up dramatically in recent weeks.

Happy as industry is to have this new federal lifeline in the middle of a recession, it is the only one smiling. Foreign competitors are screaming that the subsidy is unfairly propping up the U.S. industry in tough times. They claim the U.S. industry is ramping up production simply to realize more tax money. Canadian forestry firms are already demanding their government file a trade complaint.

In order to qualify for the credit, alternative fuel must be mixed with a taxable one. (The government might want to encourage alternative fuels, but not to the extent that it loses its gas-tax revenue.) This means that to qualify, the paper industry must mix some diesel with its black liquor. This has sent environmentalists around the bend. They have accused the industry of burning fossil fuels that it didn't used to burn, simply to get the tax dollars. (The industry has not been clear on whether it is, in fact, using more diesel.)

And then there's Congress, which is suddenly looking at billions more in red ink than expected. In 2007 it estimated a 15-month extension of the credit would cost taxpayers $333 million. It has since revised those numbers to take into account black liquor and is now figuring a one-year cost of more than $3 billion. Wall Street analysts are talking $6 billion. Senate Finance Committee bosses Max Baucus and Charles Grassley are reportedly aware of the issue, none too happy, and they are working to bar the paper industry from receiving the credit.

But this, in turn, has tossed up uncomfortable questions. The paper industry argues that if the government is going to be in the business of rewarding good behavior, it ought to do it equally. Is green policy only to be aimed at dirty or economically unviable actors? Is black liquor any less useful than ethanol or biodiesel, and if so why? If not, shouldn't Washington encourage its use? Isn't every green subsidy in fact the basis for a trade dispute? These are questions Congress has no interest in confronting, since it would expose the muddle that is its entire green-energy program.

All of this is highly amusing, if not surprising. Every government attempt to manage energy markets has resulted in similar disarray. Look at the havoc that came from the energy price controls, regulations and subsidies of the 1970s. Or look, more recently, at the ethanol fiasco, and the accompanying soaring food costs. Energy powers the economy. Mess with energy markets, and mess with everything else. When will Washington learn?

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The Ethanol Bubble Pops in Iowa

More evidence the fuel makes little economic sense

In September, ethanol giant VeraSun Energy opened a refinery on the outskirts of this eastern Iowa community. Among the largest biofuels facilities in the country, the Dyersville plant could process 39 million bushels of corn and produce 110 million gallons of ethanol annually. VeraSun boasted the plant could run 24 hours a day, seven days a week to meet the demand for home-grown energy.

But the only thing happening 24-7 at the Dyersville plant these days is nothing at all. Its doors are shut and corn deliveries are turned away. Touring the facility recently, I saw dozens of rail cars sitting idle. They've been there through the long, bleak winter. Two months after Dyersville opened, VeraSun filed for bankruptcy, closing many of its 14 plants and laying off hundreds of employees. VeraSun lost $476 million in the third quarter last year.

A town of 4,000, Dyersville is best known as the location of the 1989 film "Field of Dreams." In the film, a voice urges Kevin Costner to create a baseball diamond in a cornfield and the ghosts of baseball past emerge from the ether to play ball. Audiences suspended disbelief as they were charmed by a story that blurred the lines between fantasy and reality.

That's pretty much the story of ethanol. Consumers were asked to suspend disbelief as policy makers blurred the lines between economic reality and a business model built on fantasies of a better environment and energy independence through ethanol. Notwithstanding federal subsidies and mandates that force-feed the biofuel to the driving public, ethanol is proving to be a bust.

In the fourth quarter of 2008, Aventine Renewable Energy, a large ethanol producer, lost $37 million despite selling a company record 278 million gallons of the biofuel. Last week it filed for bankruptcy. California's Pacific Ethanol lost $146 million last year and has defaulted on $250 million in loans. It recently told regulators that it will likely run out of cash by April 30.

How could this be? The federal government gives ethanol producers a generous 51-cent-a-gallon tax credit and mandates that a massive amount of their fuel be blended into the nation's gasoline supplies. And those mandates increase every year. This year the mandate is 11 billion gallons and is on its way to 36 billion gallons in 2022.

To meet this political demand, VeraSun, Pacific Ethanol, Aventine Renewable Energy and others rushed to build ethanol mills. The industry produced just four billion gallons of ethanol in 2005, so it had to add a lot of capacity in a short period of time.

Three years ago, ethanol producers made $2.30 per gallon. But with the global economic slowdown, along with a glut of ethanol on the market, by the end of 2008 ethanol producers were making a mere 25 cents per gallon. That drop forced Dyersville and other facilities to be shuttered. The industry cut more than 20% of its capacity in a few months last year.

What's more, as ethanol producers sucked in a vast amount of corn, prices of milk, eggs and other foods soared. The price of corn shot up, as did the price of products from animals -- chickens and cows -- that eat feed corn.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry reacted by standing with the cattlemen in his state to ask the Environmental Protection Agency last year to suspend part of the ethanol mandates (which it has the power to do under the 2007 energy bill). The EPA turned him down flat. The Consumer Price Index later revealed that retail food prices in 2008 were up 10% over 2006. In Mexico, rising prices led to riots over the cost of tortillas in 2007. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization and other international organizations issued reports last year criticizing biofuels for a spike in food prices.

Ethanol is also bad for the environment. Science magazine published an article last year by Timothy Searchinger of Princeton University, among others, that concluded that biofuels cause deforestation, which speeds climate change. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration noted in July 2007 that the ethanol boom rapidly increased the amount of fertilizer polluting the Mississippi River. And this week, University of Minnesota researchers Yi-Wen Chiu, Sangwon Suh and Brian Walseth released a study showing that in California -- a state with a water shortage -- it can take more than 1,000 gallons of water to make one gallon of ethanol. They warned that "energy security is being secured at the expense of water security."

For all the pain ethanol has caused, it displaced a mere 3% of our oil usage last year. Even if we plowed under all other crops and dedicated the country's 300 million acres of cropland to ethanol, James Jordan and James Powell of the Polytechnic University of New York estimate we would displace just 15% of our oil demand with biofuels.

But President Barack Obama, an ethanol fan, is leaving current policy in place and has set $6 billion aside in his stimulus package for federal loan guarantees for companies developing innovative energy technologies, including biofuels. It's part of his push to create "green jobs." Archer Daniels Midland and oil refiner Valero are already scavenging the husks of shuttered ethanol plants, looking for facilities on the cheap. One such facility may be the plant in Dyersville, which is for sale. Before we're through, we'll likely see another ethanol bubble.

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San Francisco Hearing on Offshore Energy Resources a Kangaroo Court

The kangaroo is back, and with good reason! After an appearance last month in the halls of Congress, a live "kangaroo" appeared today at a federal hearing in San Francisco to protest the "kangaroo court" atmosphere at an important meeting to discuss the future of national energy policy.

Obama Administration Interior Secretary Ken Salazar presided over a public hearing today that only effectively represented one aspect of the debate over offshore energy development. The kangaroo is meant to point out that oil and gas exploration is being largely ignored in favor of promoting wind power along the Pacific coast.

The kangaroo was seen protesting the hearing outside the Robertson Auditorium on the Mission Bay campus of the University of California, San Francisco (1675 Owens Street) between 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM Pacific Time.

"Oil and gas exploration could create trillions in revenue and tens of thousands of jobs, but this hearing is likely to overlook this economic stimulus package in favor of dubious green technology," said National Center executive director David W. Almasi. "Right now is the window of opportunity. The government is considering the next five-year plan for energy policy. To ignore drilling today is irresponsible, which is why it is considered a kangaroo court and why participants will find a live, bouncing marsupial there today."

Today's hearing is the third of four being conducted by Salazar and the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service. The hearings follow a report issued by the Obama Administration that says Southern Oregon and Northern California are prime areas for wind-energy development. This is despite the acknowledgement that current technology and the ocean terrain in the region are incompatible and that the region also lacks the transmission infrastructure necessary to accommodate any offshore production of wind energy.

To the contrary, the Point Arena Basin off Mendocino County, California is thought to have a more than 1.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The California coastline is already the home to many offshore drilling operations.

A kangaroo visit was already made to a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources in Washington, D.C. on March 31. A similar "kangaroo court" on drought conditions in California was being protested at that time. Before last-minute testimony by area congressmen was added, this hearing was expected to be simply a platform for government officials and environmental radicals to promote further regulation of resources in the name of combating global warming.

"As was seen in yesterday's tea parties against out-of-control government spending and taxation, it's clear that people want their leaders to be more accountable," said The National Center's Almasi. "The same applies to the creation of public policy. When crafting something as important as our nation's energy future, a one-sided hearing just won't do. If they continue in this manner, they can expect to be seeing a lot of this kangaroo."

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Planet doomsayers need a cold shower

Comment from Miranda Devine in Australia

The global warming scare campaign is reaching fever pitch. We have had one eminent Australian scientist claim this week to the senate inquiry on climate policy that global warming has already killed people in Australia. We have had another four CSIRO scientists at the inquiry arguing for Australian emissions reduction targets up to six times greater than planned, 90 per cent by 2050, and warning of catastrophic consequences otherwise.

We have also had the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, agree on ABC's Lateline program this month that sea levels would rise as much as six metres due to human-caused global warming this century. Yet even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body dedicated to discovering evidence of human-caused climate change, forecasts less than half a metre rise in the century to 2090.

It seems that when it comes to convincing the Government to take drastic, jobs-killing, economy-crushing and ultimately futile unilateral action on climate change, the ends justify the means. "How we get there matters much less than the fact that [emissions] are very low by 2050," CSIRO's Dr Michael Raupach, told the inquiry.

While debating with a National Party senator the wisdom of imposing reductions of carbon dioxide emissions, the University of Melbourne's Professor David Karoly declared: "Loss of jobs is important but loss of life is really important". True enough, but where is the evidence that climate change has killed a single Australian? More to the point, since Australia accounts for just 1.4 per cent of global emissions, even if we shut down all industry and move into caves, how would any theoretical effect on climate be more than negligible?

There is no doubting the passion and intelligence of these scientists and many of their colleagues in the climate change movement in advocating the cause of eliminating so-called "carbon pollution" to save the planet. But the tactics are not very scientific. As a University of Adelaide geologist, Dr Ian Plimer, writes in his new book, Heaven And Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science, scientists are usually "anarchic, bow to no authority and construct conclusions based on evidence … Science is not dogmatic and the science of any phenomenon is never settled."

His dense book, crammed with 2311 footnotes, is a comprehensive scientific refutation of the beliefs underpinning the idea of human-caused climate change. "It is meant to be an overwhelming demolition job," said Plimer on the phone from Adelaide where he is preparing a field trip this weekend to Broken Hill to study rocks. He wrote the book, "for those out there with an open mind wanting to know more about how the planet works. The mind is like a parachute. It only works when it is open".

From the geologist's perspective he says our climate has always changed in cycles, affected by such variables as the orbit of the planet and our distance from the sun, which itself produces variable amounts of radiation. One of the lessons of 500 million years of history, he says, is that there is no relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature.

Plimer's book comes at a crucial time in the debate about whether and by how much human-produced carbon dioxide causes climate change, and, if it does, what are the effects, and can they be stopped. It is a warning to government, as it refines its emissions trading scheme, in the lead-up to the Copenhagen Climate Convention next year, not to back itself into the corner of relying on dubious computer models in an attempt to stop climate change by reducing so-called "carbon pollution".

Plimer says the business world would never "make trillion-dollar decisions without a comprehensive and expensive due diligence". "To have government policy based on propaganda is very dangerous."

Yet our Government has already promised to reduce emissions by 5 to 15 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020, and 60 per cent by 2050, and is trying to construct a carbon trading scheme by July. A Senate report into this Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, tabled on Thursday, demonstrated the difficulty of consensus, containing, as it did, three dissenting reports.

Meanwhile, the coal industry has warned that at least two NSW coalmines will have to close under climate legislation already planned. Those power outages in Sydney lately will be just a small taste of things to come. The consequences are everywhere, with cost of living surges ultimately borne by individuals.

And for what? Plimer says that if government had read the fine print of "the crucial Chapter 5" of the IPCC's 2007 report "Humans Responsible for Climate Change" they would have realised that it is "based on the opinions of just five independent scientists". "Governments are planning to structurally change their nations' economies where most people will suffer from increased taxes and costs … based on the opinion of the fabulous five whose computer models have not been able to accurately predict the cooling that has occurred since 1998," Plimer says.

Plimer, 62, has spent much of his life working in Broken Hill, in the real world of rocks and soil, far enough from the social pressure of academia to think for himself. Such independent scientific dissenters have been demonised, their evidence marginalised, as climate change has become a quasi-religious belief. But you cannot stop one side from debating what is the biggest policy decision of our era. Plimer's book, accessible as it is to the layperson, will help redress the power imbalance between those who claim to own the knowledge and the rest of us.

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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18 April, 2009

Pesky! Antarctic ice growing, not shrinking

Greenies shriek about the bits of ice that break off but ignore the overall picture. I noted just such an instance of Greenie bias on 6th., when I referred to a Green/Left blog post as "an amusing exercise in unbalanced reporting". The author of the post, Tom Yulsman of CEJournal, was outraged and said he was just doing his best to set out what was happening. See the comments he left on my blog post. I hereby challenge him to report the findings below. That should show what he really is

All the Warmist agonizing about the Antarctic is just an attempt to con the gullible anyhow. The average temperature of the Antarctic is around minus 40 degrees C from memory so the few degrees of warming that even Greenie extremists predict are not going to bring that temperature anywhere near the melting point (zero degrees) where ice turns to water. But the Warmists have GOT to get that ice to melt in order to have the sea level rise that they crave -- so basic physics is totally ignored and the scientific ignorance of the general public is relied upon instead

ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap. The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent's western coast.

Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth's ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month. However, the picture is very different in east Antarctica, which includes the territory claimed by Australia. East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report prepared for last week's meeting of Antarctic Treaty nations in Washington noted the South Pole had shown "significant cooling in recent decades".

Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison said sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica. "Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally," Dr Allison said.

The melting of sea ice -- fast ice and pack ice -- does not cause sea levels to rise because the ice is in the water. Sea levels may rise with losses from freshwater ice sheets on the polar caps. In Antarctica, these losses are in the form of icebergs calved from ice shelves formed by glacial movements on the mainland.

Last week, federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett said experts predicted sea level rises of up to 6m from Antarctic melting by 2100, but the worst case scenario foreshadowed by the SCAR report was a 1.25m rise. Mr Garrett insisted global warming was causing ice losses throughout Antarctica. "I don't think there's any doubt it is contributing to what we've seen both on the Wilkins shelf and more generally in Antarctica," he said.

Dr Allison said there was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. "The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west," he said. And he cautioned that calvings of the magnitude seen recently in west Antarctica might not be unusual. "Ice shelves in general have episodic carvings and there can be large icebergs breaking off -- I'm talking 100km or 200km long -- every 10 or 20 or 50 years."

Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m.

A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded.

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THE CENTRAL SUBJECT OF CLIMATOLOGY

An email from Dr. Gerhard Loebert [Gerhard.Loebert@t-online.de], Munich, Physicist and Recipient of The Needle of Honor of German Aeronautics, who focuses on the rarely-noted point that the earth does NOT rotate at an even speed

In my opinion the researchers in climatology should put aside their present work for a moment and focus their attention on the central and decisive subject of climatology. This is the extremely close correlation between the changes in the mean surface temperature and the small changes in the rotational velocity of the Earth in the past 150 years (see Fig. 2.2 here), which has been ignored by mainstream climatologists. Almost everything in climatology follows from this one central phenomenon.

Note that temperature lags rotation by about 6 years.

Since temperature is lagging rotation it cannot be influencing the latter. On the other hand, it cannot be envisaged how rotation should influence temperature. Hence, a third agent must be driving the two. The solution is given here. There it is shown that small-amplitude vacuum density waves generated by the motion of the supermassive objects located in the center of the Galaxy are constantly acting on the Sun and the Earth and are thereby producing a series of correlated physical reactions within these celestial bodies.

Remember: Almost everything in climatology follows from this one central phenomenon.




New prediction: global cooling to start in 2023!

Another theory that focuses on gravitation variations -- possibly compatible with Loebert's observations noted above

Various theories are being propounded about the global warming phenomenon due to rise in green house gas emissions, coal, pollution, animal waste. But now a new research done by David Dilley of Global Weather Oscillation does not blame the earth or the any of these causes for the rising temperature. It is is earth’s natural satellite – the moon.

Due to the significance of these finds, Meteorologist and climate researcher David Dilley has offered his book, "Global Warming-Global Cooling, Natural Cause Found” for download free of cost at ww.globalweathercycles.com

His book is written in non technical language so everyone from middle school to college professors can understand these important findings concerning the earth's natural cycles. Mr. Dilley, says the gravitational cycles act like a magnet by pulling the atmosphere's high pressure systems northward or southward by as much as 4 degrees of latitude (approximately 380 kilometers - 240 miles) from their normal seasonal positions. As the current gravitational cycle declines, global temperatures began cooling in 2008-09 and there will be dramatic cooling by 2023.

Research illustrated within the book links the Moon's recurring gravitational cycles as the primary driving force causing 2200 global warming events during the past half million years, including the earth's current warming cycle which is now ending. It also links these natural cycles to the 50 percent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels seen during the past 8 thousand years, not just the past 150 years.

Mr. Dilley says the gravitational cycles act like a magnet by pulling the atmosphere's high pressure systems northward or southward by as much as 4 degrees of latitude from their normal seasonal positions, and thus causing dramatic changes within the oceans and the earth's atmosphere. With the current gravitational cycle now declining, global temperatures began cooling in 2008-09, and by around the year 2023 there will be dramatic cooling with temperatures becoming similar to those experienced in the 1800's.

David Dilley utilizes nearly a half million years of data linking very specific long term gravitational cycles of the moon as the primary cause for the present global warming, rises in carbon dioxide levels, and for 2200 global warming cycles during the past half million years. The book illustrates seven different types of recurring gravitational cycles ranging from the very warm 460,000 year cycle down to a 230 year recurring global warming cycle. All of these gravitational cycles coincide nearly 100 percent with 2200 global warming events during the past half million years. This includes the earth's current warming cycle which began around the year 1900, and the first stage of global cooling beginning in 2008-09.

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Loony logic: Warming will HARM trees?

A warmer, steamier climate would make forests more LUSH! Have any of these anus-talkers ever been to the tropics?

FORESTS that today soak up a quarter of carbon pollution spewed into the atmosphere could soon become a net source of CO2 if Earth's surface warms by another two degrees Celsius, cautions a report to be presented today at the UN. Plants both absorb and exhale carbon dioxide, but healthy forests - especially those in the tropics - take up far more of the greenhouse gas than they give off. When they are damaged, get sick or die, that stored carbon is released.

“We normally think of forests as putting the brakes on global warming,” said Risto Seppala, a professor at the Finnish Forest Research Institute and head of the expert panel that produced the report. “But in fact over the next few decades, damage induced by climate change could cause forests to release huge quantities of carbon and create a situation in which they do more to accelerate warming than slow it down.”

Authored by 35 of the world's top forestry scientists, the study provides the first global assessment of the ability of forests to adapt to climate change. Manmade warming to date - about 0.7 C since the mid-19th century - has already slowed regeneration of tropical forests, and made them more vulnerable to fire, disease and insect infestations. Increasingly violent and frequent storms have added to the destruction.

If temperatures climb even further, the consequences could be devastating, according to the report by the Vienna-based International Union of Forest Research Organisations (IUFRO). “The current carbon-regulating functions of forests are at risk of being lost entirely unless carbon emissions are reduced drastically,” said Alexander Buck, IUFRO's deputy director and coordinator of the report. “With a global warming of 2.5 C compared to pre-industrial times, the forest ecosystems would begin to turn into a net source of carbon, adding significantly to emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation,” he told AFP by phone.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted in 2007 that average global temperatures would go up before 2100 by 1.1 C to 6.4 C, depending on efforts to curb the gases that drive global warming. Any increase of more than 2.0 C, the panel said, would unleash a maelstrom of human misery, including drought, famine, disease and forced migration. Since the IPCC report, however, a growing number of climate scientists have said that this threshold is likely to be crossed no matter what actions are taken.

The forest assessment did contain what appears to be some good news: cold-clime boreal forests stretching across vast expanses of Russia, northern Europe, Canada and Alaska are set to expand rapidly as climate change kicks in. But while this may be a boon for the timber industry, it is not likely to help curb global warming, it said. “One might assume with the increasing growth in boreal forests that more carbon would be taken up by forest ecosystems and removed from the atmosphere,” said Buck. “But these positive effects will be clearly outweighed by the negative impacts on forest ecosystems.”

The report urged international negotiators trying to hammer out a new global climate change treaty before the end of the year to take into account the potential impact of warming on forests. Up to now, discussions on forests at the UN climate talks have focused almost exclusively on the impact of deforestation.

The destruction of vegetation straddling the equator - some 130,000 square kilometers disappear every year - accounts for nearly 20 per cent of total carbon emissions. “But it is also important to keep in mind that those forests that remain will be affected by climate change to a degree that might exceed their capacity to adapt,” Buck cautioned.

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Lovelock's Last Gasp: Gaia Theorist Says We're Doomed

By Alan Caruba

It is the height of vanity to think the Earth will come to an end shortly after one’s mortal life ends. Some people think that, without them, the Earth cannot survive and we call these idiots environmentalists and, sometimes, megalomaniacs.

A perfect example of this is James Lovelock, the man credited with coming up with the Gaia Theory that says the Earth is a living creature and, of course, that humans are some kind of horrid cockroach infestation that is destroying it.

Now in his 90s, Lovelock has written “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warming.” This book is an extension of all the other astonishingly bad “science” that has brought fame and fortune to Lovelock as he and other alleged scientists began warning that “global heating may all but eliminate people from the Earth.”

Like Al Gore and James Hansen, two other prominent “global warming” charlatans, Lovelock continues to say that the Earth is warming while, for the past ten years, the meteorological satellites and other measurement instruments have reported a distinct cooling trend. At the same time, the Sun which is the primary instrument of the Earth’s climate cycles, has gone “quiet.” It is currently into one of its well known cycles of low to no sunspot activity.

At the heart of all environmentalist propaganda is the view that humans are causing “global warming” and destroying the Earth by doing things like raising crops and animal stocks to eat, using the abundant oil, natural gas, and coal sources as energy for transportation and the maintenance of our lives and industries, and generally fouling everything we touch from our rivers, oceans, land areas, and other species.

“Simply cutting back fossil-fuel burning, energy use, and the destruction of natural forests will not be a sufficient answer to global heating,” says Lovelock, oblivious to the reality of a cooling planet; one that is on the cusp of a predictable ice age since we are now about 11,500 years into an interglacial period since the last one.

Why anyone credits Lovelock with having any special knowledge or insight is beyond my understanding. He made his early reputation for his discoveries in the transfer of infectious disease and advances in the measurement of trace gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. The man is not a climatologist or meteorologist.

Lovelock and others keep telling people that carbon dioxide will be the death of all of us, claiming erroneously that it is critical to the amount of heat that exists in the Earth’s atmosphere, but CO2 is barely 0.038 percent of the atmosphere, a very minor player that shows up in increased amounts 800 or more years after any major climate change.

Moreover, there have been periods in the Earth’s past when there was a lot more CO2 and, not surprisingly, forests, jungles, and all manner of vegetation were even more abundant than now. Dinosaurs grew to huge sizes thanks to the rich diet available or by dining off of the herbivores. And then they went extinct. No one suggests they died from an excess of CO2 in the environment.

The essential problem with Lovelock’s theories about carbon dioxide and global warming is that they lack any scientific merit. The other problem is that environmentalists and politicians worldwide have latched onto them as a means to exert total control over the lives of everyone on Earth.

If Lovelock were just an obscure scientist raving about the end of the world in some English pub, we could happily ignore him, but he is one of the founders of the movement that has been taken up by the United Nations and implemented in various ways by nations that have wasted billions on so-called “clean energy” such as wind and solar energy, biofuels like ethanol, and the set-aside of vast areas of America to ensure that millions of tons of coal can be mined, nor billions of barrels of oil and cubic feet of natural gas tapped for our use.

Always, at the heart of Lovelock’s and environmentalist programs is the view that humans are to blame for the Earth’s extraordinary, chaotic, and uncontrollable climate systems.

Lovelock despairs that “No voluntary human act can reduce our numbers fast enough even to slow climate change. Merely by existing, people and their dependent animals are responsible for more than ten times the greenhouse gas emissions of all the airline travel in the world.”

Lovelock thinks it was “brave” for ten thousand people to make the long journey to Bali, the site of the last United Nations climate control conference, but says that “As we hold our meetings and talk of stewardship, Gaia still moves step by step toward the hot state…” No, Jim, Gaia—Earth—is cooling, not heating. That invalidates all the rest of the gibberish in his latest book and the lies President Obama and others keep telling about global warming.

When it comes to the Earth, Lovelock says that it has “not evolved solely for our benefit, and any changes we make to it are at our own risk. That way of thinking makes clear that we have no special human rights; we are merely one of the partner species in the great enterprise of Gaia. We are creatures of Darwinian evolution, a transient species with a limited lifespan, as were all our numerous distant ancestors.”

Unlike other “transient species”, however, the human one has organized itself into complex societies that permit it to use energy sources to build vast cities, developed transportation that move millions around the globe every day, have communications systems that allow people to address all manner of needs and problems, created agricultural systems that feed six billion people every day, discovered how to eliminate or cure diseases that threaten our lives, and also found time to create music, drama, and literature that enhances our lives.

All this has occurred in the very brief period of about ten thousand years from the days the first humans stood upright, banded together in families, tribes, and nations, and about five thousand years ago began to devote most of our time to looting, pillaging and killing one another with greater efficiency.

Lovelock is now closing in on his own mortality and the odds are that he will join the many other prophets of doom who despise their own species while worshipping an Earth that constantly reminds us all with earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, droughts, ice ages, and other natural calamities that we are not in charge of anything.

SOURCE




Big climate backdown coming in Australia? Might be best to dump ETS, says Green guru

Professor Ross Garnaut says it's lineball whether the scheme in its current form is worth doing. He urged senators to make substantial changes during a committee hearing today. Prof Garnaut, an economist, was hired by the federal and state governments to advise them on what to do about climate change.

"If there were no changes at all it would be a lineball call whether it was better to push ahead or say ... we'll have another crack at it and do a better one when time is right,'' Prof Garnaut said. He set out the three major changes he wants to the scheme, which is the main way to tackle climate change and is due to start next year.

Prof Garnaut wants a deeper cut to greenhouse gas emissions. The scheme will cut emissions by five to 15 per cent by 2020; Prof Garnaut wants the upper limit increased to 25 per cent, conditional on other countries taking similar steps.

He wants the Government to commit more money for new, green technologies. And he's worried the ETS gives too many free permits to industry. He wants an escape clause which would make it easier to stop the free permits.

Prof Garnaut said he was agonising over whether it was better to bring in an imperfect scheme or hold off and try for a better one later. The global recession meant "it is not a good time for good policy''.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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17 April, 2009

CLAUDE ALLEGRE TOUTED AS NEW ENVIRONMENT MINISTER OF FRANCE

The rumours spreading here in France now seem to be confirmed. Claude Allègre, a former socialist minister of research and an avid climate sceptic is on his way back, this time possibly back into government under the conservative Francois Fillon. Allegre has published several climate-critical texts. In a recently held television show he even called my boss and official IPCC French envoy, Jean Jouzel, a "tricheur" ("deceiver").

His contacts with Sarkozy appear to have intensified in recent times. Today, a fax was sent to all institutes of the IPSL (a group of laboratories located in Paris which work on climate issues) that Allègre is being considered as a successor of French environment minister Jean Luis Borloo. Allègre nomination, many think, is probably linked to a general shift in French climate policy. Some of my colleagues here at IPSL fear this may also have an influence on the part of the budget which deals with the funding of climate research. As usual, there have already been calls for strikes and demonstrations. [transl. BJP]

SOURCE

NOTE from Benny Peiser: Despite the conspicuous date of the above story, the blog rumours are no April fool's joke. In recent days, the French media have been reporting that President Nicholas Sarkozy is considering a cabinet reshuffle after the European Elections in June and that Claude Allègre is considered a possible ministerial candidate who may replace environment minister Jean Luis Borloo. See here. Allègre is France's most eminent climate sceptic. The very fact that he is a serious contender for the post of environment minister in itself is a clear signal that climate policies and politics in Europe are changing rapidly.




Amazing: Giscard a skeptic too. Will France be the first to break ranks? They are independent-minded enough to do so

An email from Christian Gerondeau [cgerondeau@automobileclub.org]

Please find below the translation of the preface to my book "CO2: un mythe planétaire". The Preface was written by the former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, a highly esteemed European personality. As you can see, you can now count President Giscard d'Estaing among the "climate sceptics".

PREFACE

The great advantage of a scientific mind is that it reasons in an objective and inventive manner. This is true of the renowned engineer Christian Gerondeau, who has given much thought to one of the dominant concerns of our times, climate change.

Mr Gerondeau begins with an original line of thought, leading to a series of fundamental questions. He believes that we are on the wrong track as it is not realistic to try to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In his view, the only way of doing so would be to stop extracting fossil energy resources or at least to set a ceiling on them. However, we are doing exactly the opposite by encouraging oil exploration, developing natural gas transport networks and by opening new coal mines. Once these fossil energies have been extracted, they will naturally be consumed and will produce carbon dioxide emissions. If we do not extract them, other countries will, thus producing the same volume of carbon dioxide emissions. The only solution would be to limit the extraction of oil, natural gas and coal, but there is no global consensus to propose this.

Christian Gerondeau puts forward another original idea, indicating that there will probably be little harm done to the planet as he shows, like other scientists, that no definite relationship has been established between the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and possible changes in the climate. The latter are due to far more complex evolutions which doubtless find their origin well beyond the atmosphere.

Mr Gerondeau also deduces that the considerable sums of money that different countries throughout the world believe to be devoting to "saving the planet" will be completely wasted, like those serving to cover France with wind turbines, which disfigure our landscapes and for which we have no need in terms of energy supplies. The result is poor use of public funds for an ineffective production of electricity.

This book has the virtue of helping us question generally accepted ideas and perhaps discover more realistic solutions for the future.

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing

NEW PAPERS AT SPPI

An email from Bob Ferguson [bferguson@sppinstitute.org], President, Science and Public Policy Institute [www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org]

The most recent issue of SPPI ScareWatch has been posted. Excerpt follows:

The scare: For years, scientists, politicians, journalists, academics, and schoolteachers have been fabricating lurid and imaginative disaster stories about the supposed environmental impact of anthropogenic "global warming". There have been apocalyptic predictions about soaring temperatures, Arctic ice-melt, sea-level rise, hurricanes, extreme-weather events of all kinds, species extinction, etc., etc. These scare stories have little basis in scientific reality: they are pure inventions, usually designed to attract funding or increase circulation.

The truth: For years, the Science and Public Policy Institute has been drawing public attention to the flimsiness of the alarmist case, both in its popular Scarewatch series and, more recently, in its authoritative and influential Monthly CO2 Reports, which have revealed that the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is half the UN's central estimate...

Full paper can be read here.

Also, the following new papers have been recently posted:

A Farmer's View of Carbon Credits -- by Farmer Steve

Global Warming - A Classic Case of Alarmism -- by David Evans

Your "Carbon Legacy" -- by Sherwood, Keith and Craig Isdo




Catastrophic droughts in Africa are the norm, claim scientists

Catastrophic droughts in Africa such as the those which devastated the Continent in the late 20th century are the norm and not due to human activity, claim scientists. Researchers believe the drought that struck parts of Northern Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions more, may have been the result of a natural climate cycle.

In the past, many scientists thought the drought in the Sahel zone – a band that runs just below the Sahara – was caused by humans overusing natural resources in the region. But a new study in the journal Science shows that they are a natural part of weather pattern of the area for the last 3,000 years. If anything the droughts were less severe than those seen historically, with previous periods without rain lasting more than a century.

The earlier dry spells dwarfed the well-documented drought that plagued West Africa in the late-20th century, and as the planet warms, the study's authors believe the region's rainfall patterns will have an even greater impact.

During the 1970s and 1980s the drought pushed the Sahara desert south, destroying farmland. It had a major impact on many countries including Nigeria, Niger and Mali. Clearly, much of West Africa is already on the edge of sustainability and the situation could become much more dire in the future with increased global warming," said Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona.

The findings emerged from sediments that lie at the bottom of Lake Bosumtwi in Ghana, deposits of soil and organic matter that contain annual bands of light (winter) and dark (summer) layers that stretch back more than three millennia. The study shows regular periods of dryness, particularly droughts in the 30-40 year range. Some have even lasted centuries.

The team, which reported its findings in Science, believe the arid periods correspond with fluctuations in sea surface temperatures, a pattern called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO).

Previous researchers produced a computer model that included ocean surface temperature, the amount of moisture in the soil, and loss of vegetation. With all those conditions, the computer model behaved just like the Sahel drought – producing a long period of dry, cool weather. "What's disconcerting about this record is that it suggests the most recent drought was relatively minor in the context of the West African drought history," said co-author Timothy Shanahan, of the University of Texas,

"If we were to switch into one of these century-scale patterns of drought, it would be a lot more severe, and it would be very difficult for people to adjust to the change."

SOURCE




JOHN MADDOX: THE SKEPTICAL PROPHET

More background on the courageous Sir John

A good prophet is hard to find, and we've lost one of the best with the death of John Maddox, the former editor of Nature. My colleague William Grimes describes his career well, telling how he transformed Nature and was not shy when it came to fighting for the scientific principles he held dear.

I spoke with Dr. Maddox about prophecy in 1994, on the 25th anniversary of the landing on the Moon, when I reviewed some of the prophecies made a quarter century earlier. The moon landing tended to inspire either technological rhapsodies (forecasts of colonies on the moon by 2000) or ecological nightmares about the destruction of "Spaceship Earth," but Dr. Maddox didn't succumb to either extreme.

He debunked the catastrophists, most notably in his 1972 book, "The Doomsday Syndrome," in which he argued that Spaceship Earth had more carrying capacity and ecological resilience than environmentalists realized. His book was denounced at the time by John P. Holdren, who is today the White House science advisor. In a 1972 article in the Times of London, Dr. Holdren and his frequent collaborator, the ecologist Paul Ehrlich, dismissed Dr. Maddox as "uninformed" and clearly unable to understand "simple concepts" of population theory. They wrote:

"The most serious of Maddox's many demographic errors is his invocation of a "demographic transition" as the cure for population growth in Asia, Africa and Latin America. He expects that birth rates there will drop as they did in developed countries following the industrial revolution. Since most underdeveloped countries are unlikely to have an industrial revolution, this seems somewhat optimistic at best. But even if those nations should follow that course, starting immediately, their population growth would continue for well over a century-perhaps producing by the year 2100 a world population of twenty thousand million."

Well, contrary to Drs. Holdren and Ehrlich, the industrial revolution and the demographic transition did indeed arrive in developing countries.

And their projection for 2100 - that even a best-case scenario would produce a world with 20 billion people - looks way off to today's demographers, whose projections tend to be only about half as large. Perhaps Dr. Maddox really did understand some of those "simple concepts" of population.

Dr. Maddox was also skeptical of the dramatic predictions for space travel, and during the Apollo program he criticized the moon missions as an extravagance that would lead nowhere. In 1994, that prediction was also looking as accurate as some of his environmental forecasts, and I asked him to look ahead another quarter century. Here's how I summarized the predictions of Dr. Maddox for 2019:

On this planet, he expects a continuation of the technological changes that have been gradually increasing the food supply, income and life expectancy of the average human. And away from this planet, he doesn't expect much of anything for the average human.

"This business of carting people around the solar system is going to remain enormously difficult," he said, "and for the foreseeable future there's no worthwhile purpose for it." He can imagine humans someday scanning for dangerous earthbound asteroids from an observatory on the moon, or perhaps a satellite of Jupiter, but not until much better spaceships are available - which he does not expect soon.

"I hope this won't make me sound too crusty," he said, "but my guess is that this sort of space travel is 250 years down the road."

I hope he's wrong about space travel - not 250 years! - but it would be nice if he were right about humans coping well on this planet. I'll leave you with a remark of his on global warming, made after attending a conference of climate skeptics in London in 2005. (Hat tip: CCNet.) David Adam, the science correspondent for the Guardian, reported from the meeting:

"Bob May, the president of the Royal Society, said the sceptics were a "denial lobby" similar to those who refused to accept that smoking caused cancer.

But John Maddox, a former editor of the journal Nature, who attended yesterday's meeting, said the sceptics might have a point.

He did not dispute that carbon dioxide emissions could drive global warming, but said: "The IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] is monolithic and complacent, and it is conceivable that they are exaggerating the speed of change."

Any predictions on whether he's right about the future of the environment or space travel? Or any thoughts on his many accomplishments?

SOURCE




Australia: Climate plan to close coal mines

A CONFIDENTIAL industry briefing to Federal MPs warned at least two NSW coal mines would close under planned climate change laws. Mining giant Xstrata Australia's chairman Peter Coates said the Emissions Trading Scheme would make some mines unprofitable and cut new investment. His warnings, regarded as extremely sensitive in the industry, added to concerns the Government's ETS, to start in July 2010, would cost thousands of jobs.

They were revealed ahead of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's bid to downplay the fears by launching a "think tank" on cleaning up the coal industry. Mr Rudd will today open the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute in Canberra, to examine ways to reduce and divert emissions.

In briefings in recent weeks in his role as Minerals Council of Australia climate change committee chairman, Mr Coates gave two case studies - an Illawarra mine and one in the Hunter. He said that the Illawarra mine produced 1.5 million tonnes a year of gassy coking coal, costing an extra $27 million a year to buy a permit for its carbon emissions under the ETS. The Hunter mine's 1.8 million tonnes a year of gassy thermal coal would add $39 million to its costs. Mr Coates' study found both mines and others will close, leading to 5000 to 10,000 job losses in the coal industry nationally.

He did not identify the mines and Xstrata does not have an Illawarra operation. An Xstrata spokesman yesterday told The Daily Telegraph the company would not name mines that might be threatened because it would alarm workers, saying only that "marginal, gassy mines" would be most at risk.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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16 April, 2009

JOHN MADDOX AND THE MEN WHO CRY DOOMSDAY

Sir John has just passed away. The report below is from Science News, 102:24, December 1972, written by Kendrick Frazier. It recalls the time when "Nature" magazine was rigorously devoted to science. It is sad to note that the hysteria and pseudoscience that Maddox attacked has got worse rather than better :

In the United States, in 1972, one ventures a criticism of the environmental movement with the trepidation of those who in past years might have questioned the concept of motherhood or the virtues of apple pie. He is sure to be misunderstood or maligned.

Environmentalism (notice how the movement has even added another "-ism" to our vocabulary) has become the issue that every right-minded citizen seemingly can support. In this social context then, one can hardly imagine a book addressing a more fashionable subject while taking a less fashionable point of view than John Maddox's The Doomsday Syndrome (McGraw-Hill, $6.95).

Maddox's arguments, however, deserve the thoughtful attention of all who profess concern about the environment and the future of planet earth. Maddox is the editor of the respected British journal NATURE, and what he has put together is an attack not on the environmental movement itself but on some of the more extreme elements of the movement or, as he puts it, an attack on pessimism. In fact the word "attack" is perhaps ill advised, for one of his main goals is to substitute calm, scientific analysis for some of the more strident emotional rhetoric surrounding environmental issues. In this sense, his work espouses moderation. I do not agree with everything Maddox says, but as one who is annoyed by exaggeration and overstatement, especially on important subjects having scientific content, I found myself frequently cheering him on as I read.

In the past decade, he notes, the peoples of North America and, to a lesser extent, Western Europe have been "assailed by prophecies of calamity." Population growth, pollution, overconsumption of resources, genetic engineering, economic growth all, say the doomsayers, spell danger to the human race. They even talk "of the possibility that the temper of modern science may undermine the structure of modern society."

Says Maddox: "Although these prophecies are founded in science, they are at best pseudoscience. Their most common error is to suppose that the worst will always happen. And to the extent that they are based on assumptions as to how people will behave, they ignore the ways in which social institutions and humane aspirations can conspire to solve the most daunting problems."

Maddox notes that his is not a tract in favor of population growth or of pollution. "One of the distressing features of the present debate about the environment is the way in which it is supposed to be an argument between farsighted people with the interests of humanity at heart and others who care not a tuppence for the future.... This false dichotomy conceals a host of important issues." And, he continues, "The doomsday cause would be more telling if it were more securely grounded in facts, better informed by a sense of history and an awareness of economics and less cataclysmic in temper. .. Too often, reality is oversimplified or even ignored, so that there is a danger that much of this gloomy foreboding about the immediate future will accomplish the opposite of what its authors intend. Instead of alerting people to important problems, it may seriously undermine the capacity of the human race to look out for its survival. The doomsday syndrome may be in itself as much a hazard as any of the conundrums which society has created for itself."

The message is not that everything is all right with the world, but that to remedy what is wrong we need cool heads, accurate, undistorted information, and rational unemotional analysis. I think Maddox somewhat underestimates the positive aspects of the environmental movement in the United States. (Are not the recent clean air and clean water acts the result of "social institutions" conspiring "to solve the most daunting problems"?) The environmental movement has made major achievements. But the intangible costs of some of the excessive rhetoric are yet to be summed up. (High among those costs would be the at-least-partially misguided recent negativism toward science and technology and a lessened faith in society's ability to engage in any enlightened progress.)

Perhaps, now that it has long since gained everyone's attention, the environmental cause can now move into a more mature phase in which scare tactics and "either-or" doomsaying can be supplanted by hard analytical thinking and well-informed realistic action on the whole range of difficult choices to be made.




LAUGHING MY WRINKLED WHITE BUTT OFF

Incredible: America imports engineers and computer programmers, but trains people in "counseling" and "early childhood development" - where they can work at Wal Mart and answer phones, and now America is training people for "green jobs"

I just love this. College students are flocking to "green" fields of study. They're listening to the siren call of Barack Obama and the environmental crowd and they're using their parent's money and four or five years of their lives to prepare themselves for "green" jobs. I can see this one coming. In about eight years these fools will be out there handing shopping carts to Wal-Mart shoppers and wondering where the hell their "green job" is. This is going to be wonderful stuff. They'll show up at some job interview somewhere and they'll be asked "What was your major at State U?" "Green studies!" they'll answer .. .and the interview will be over. You just have to love this. Resumes with "green studies" entries on them being tossed in the trash cans. Oh man, this is gonna be great!

SOURCE




Kyoto's successor may die on the vine

Comment from a Greenie

Any chance the US may have had in taking a leadership role in forming a new international climate protocol diminished today with news from President Barack Obama's energy czar that the White House is taking a wait-and-see approach to regulating CO2 emissions.

For the US to lead on the issue of climate change – and get developing countries to follow – it has to act, and act quickly. The next major international climate summit, the Copenhagen Climate Convention, is in December. And if the US wants any role in shaping the successor of the Kyoto protocol, a global agreement that ends in 2012, its delegates must arrive in Denmark with firm plans on how it will regulate CO2 emissions at home.

The US can pass regulations in one of two ways: through Congressional legislation or in terms dictated by the White House via the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Air Act. The former would likely result in regulations that are more palatable to a larger segment of the US population, since members of Congress from each state would have a say in shaping the legislation. But it's widely believed that Congress won't move on its own, unless it believes the Obama Administration is about to dictate the terms of regulations itself.

I was, therefore, sad to hear today that the White House is tipping its hand on its plans just as Congress takes its first serious look at a cap-and-trade system, in which emitters will be charged for the carbon dioxide they put into the air. "It is the strong preference of this administration that we secure [Congressional] legislation," said Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change, at a clean energy summit on Monday at MIT. Browner added she was "very confident that Congress will act," and is "very, very encouraged by the schedule of commitment" she has seen from legislators in the House and Senate.

Congressional legislation, and all the give and take it entails, is likely the best approach to creating a lasting carbon-reduction scheme in the US. But even if the Obama Administration "strongly prefers" such a route, I wish it would rattle its regulatory sabre enough to ensure that the US gets to the table in Copenhagen.

SOURCE




Obama's Climate Suicide Threat

Comment from a moderate Green/Leftist

This morning brought more bad news for supporters of cap and trade climate legislation. It came in the form of an appearance by House Energy and Commerce Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Santa Monica) on PBS' Tavis Smiley. When asked how cap and trade would create technology innovation, Waxman said:

When we raise the price of energy, which will happen if we reduce the amount of carbon emissions, and industries have to figure out how to live in a carbon-constrained environment, they are going to have to figure it out because it is in their profitable interest to figure it out.

Waxman's call for raising energy prices comes after a month of setbacks for cap and trade proponents. In March, the White House floated the idea of passing cap and trade and health care bills as part of the budget in order to avoid reaching the 60 votes needed to avoid filibuster. Moderate Senate Democrats led by Evan Bayh (D-IN), whose state is over 92 percent dependent on coal electricity, joined Republicans in opposing passing cap and trade as a budget resolution.

Then, on March 31, the day after Waxman and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) introduced their climate legislation, the Senate passed a resolution 89-8 saying that the Senate will not pass climate legislation that raises energy prices -- a direct contradiction of what Waxman says his bill will do. The following day, the Senate passed a resolution 98-0 that effectively defined cap and trade as a tax. Unless the Senate can manage to do a cap and trade that does something different than what its sponsor say it will do, historians will likely look back on these resolutions as the moment that cap and trade was buried in the Senate.

If there is a strategy coming from the White House, it's not obvious what it is. Waxman-Markey left enough details unanswered in their legislation that the sponsors could still potentially create a huge, pork-filled bill to buy off moderate Dems and Republicans. But there is no obvious strategy to deal with the problem created in the Senate, where the chamber has said it will not allow cap and trade to raise energy prices. Given the recent turn of events, climate czar Carol Browner's statement at MIT yesterday that she believes cap and trade will pass Congress by December is either extremely bold or delusional.

Stung by the Senate moderates who publicly sided with Republicans against passing cap and trade budget resolution, the White House seems either paralyzed about what to do or focused on its many higher priorities: Afghanistan, Pakistan, the banking crisis, and the auto crisis. Last Friday Times' John Broder noted that the Obama administration would use the possibility of EPA regulating carbon dioxide as a club to move Republicans and moderate Dems to pass legislation.

But Roger Pielke makes the point that such a strategy is certain to backfire on Democrats.

Republicans must be drooling over the possibility that EPA will take extensive regulatory action on climate change. Why? Because the resulting political fallout associated with any actual or perceived downsides (e.g., like higher energy prices) will fall entirely on Democrats and the Obama Administration. Far from being an incentive for Congress to act on its own, the looming possibility that EPA will take regulatory action is a strong incentive for Republicans to stalemate Congressional action and a nightmare scenario for Democrats.

In other words, the White House "threat" to Republicans and moderate Democrats to regulate carbon is the equivalent of threatening your enemy with suicide. ("Don't make me raise energy prices! You'll really be in trouble with your voters when I raise their energy prices!")

The White House and Congressional Democrats are now in a lose-lose situation. They can either pass cap and trade legislation which does not rise energy prices -- which would thus not, according to Waxman, result in any innovation -- or it could continue to try to raise energy prices, handing Republican consultants a powerful political advertisement for restoring bi-partisan balance to Congress as a check on a too liberal White House.

Signs of disarray and division among greens and Democrats are everywhere. Friends of the Earth released a scathing critique of cap and trade just before Waxman introduced climate legislation, warning of "carbon derivatives" markets that could be as dangerous to the economy as credit default swaps. The New York Times' green columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a column last week saying that environmental groups were lousy spokespersons for climate legislation, and then in a Newsweek interview blamed Al Gore for why increasing numbers of Americans are telling Gallup that they think global warming is being exaggerated. And a substantial portion of grassroots environmentalists including author Bill McKibben and Middlebury's Jon Isham, endorsed Rep. Van Hollen's legislation instead of Waxman-Markey.

Gore has been notably silent during the cap and trade debate, with his "We Campaign" reduced to asking members to send letters to the editor which explain that cap and trade won't raise energy prices as much as Republicans say it will. This is part of the larger blame-the-media strategy pioneered by Joe Romm of Climate Progress, who attributes the increase in voters telling Gallup that they believe that news of global warming is being exaggerated to the media, and not to Gore, Friedman, himself, and other greens who routinely use apocalyptic language when describing climate impacts.

Environmental groups are quiet, too. They are not running advertisements, releasing reports, or sending much in the way of email to their members. Into the vacuum has rushed Rep. Waxman and Thomas Friedman, who keep insisting to large television and other audiences that the key to developing clean energy is raising fossil fuel prices -- a claim that has been contradicted by large evaluations of the evidence by the International Energy Agency, McKinsey, Stern and others, who all point to the need for direct government investment in technology.

Another legislative loss on cap and trade would be very hard on green groups. It would come under a Democratic president and Democratic Congress, and would thus force greens to ask themselves a hard question about cap and trade: if it can't pass under those legislative conditions, when can it pass? Even more devastating for greens will be if Republicans can use cap and trade to take back one or both houses of Congress in 2010. If that occurs, greens will be viewed increasingly skeptically on the Hill. And it could undermine the ideological consensus on the Hill among Democrats that cap and trade is the only or the best way to deal with climate change. Moderates who refuse to raise electricity and gasoline prices on their constituents will find common cause with liberal members who favor greater government spending on energy technology, infrastructure and education.

SOURCE




We mustn’t warm to this myth

Comment from England

EVERY totalitarian regime needs its defining myth. With the Nazis, it was the “Aryan” fantasy of racial purity. With the USSR, it was the dictatorship of the proletariat. With secularised, semi-pagan Western societies in historic decline, it is global warming.

Sometimes comparisons among these are alarming. For example, Ed Miliband, the climate change minister, has said that opposing wind farms is “socially unacceptable”. How long before global warming denial becomes an offence, like holocaust denial? The Government seizes approvingly on outrageous remarks by such as Dr James Hansen, who wrote in a national newspaper: “The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.”

What I find bewildering is that the Greens, who claim to care for the environment, are so strongly in favour of wind farms, which are a kind of pollution of the countryside. What’s more, they don’t work very efficiently. So why ruin the countryside for the sake of obsessed environmentalists’ gesture politics? Millions of British people enjoy our glorious countryside as a natural environment which provides an antidote to the stress of urban life. It is nothing short of wickedness to foul this delight with useless wind farms.

To their credit, some governments are coming to see the uselessness of the wind turbines. Germany and Spain are losing their enthusiasm for wind power because, as reported by The Scientific Alliance, “...of the need to run back-up conventional power stations”.

It is meteorologists and other scientists who point out that settled spells of either very hot or very cold weather – the weather that creates the greatest demand for electrical power – occur when there is no wind. So, when electricity demand is at its peak, wind turbines are static and produce nothing.

Global warming is not indisputable. Thousands of highly qualified and experienced scientists question it. But the problem is that global warming is not being treated as a theory, a possibility, but as a truth of nature on a par with the law of gravity. It is the unassailable myth of the new totalitarians.

I wouldn’t want you to think this is just Mullen shooting from the hip. I have been avidly reading scientific papers and reports and, while there are those who believe global warming is taking place, there are thousands of reputable scientists who deny it.

This is entirely as it should be. Rigorous examination of hypotheses is the very basis of science. And this is what is being asked for by, among other intelligent sources, The Scientific Alliance. I quote: “The whole juggernaut of global warming is based on a framework which accepts the International Panel on Climate Change’s view of the enhanced greenhouse effect as indisputable truth. Hence the refusal to concede that any degree of scepticism or a different interpretation of evidence is legitimate.

So it is even more important for critical points to be raised and debate encouraged. Scientific understanding will benefit from this: and the better the understanding, the better any necessary response can be formulated.” This is the reasonable approach and a long way from Ed Miliband’s dark words about what is “socially acceptable” and the disgraceful invocation of “death trains”.

SOURCE




Beware the climate of conformity

Comment from Australia

What I am about to write questions much of what I have written in this space, in numerous columns, over the past five years. Perhaps what I have written can withstand this questioning. Perhaps not. The greater question is, am I - and you - capable of questioning our own orthodoxies and intellectual habits? Let's see.

The subject of this column is not small. It is a book entitled Heaven And Earth, which will be published tomorrow. It has been written by one of Australia's foremost Earth scientists, Professor Ian Plimer. He is a confronting sort of individual, polite but gruff, courteous but combative. He can write extremely well, and Heaven And Earth is a brilliantly argued book by someone not intimidated by hostile majorities or intellectual fashions.

The book's 500 pages and 230,000 words and 2311 footnotes are the product of 40 years' research and a depth and breadth of scholarship. As Plimer writes: "An understanding of climate requires an amalgamation of astronomy, solar physics, geology, geochronology, geochemistry, sedimentology, tectonics, palaeontology, palaeoecology, glaciology, climatology, meteorology, oceanography, ecology, archaeology and history."

The most important point to remember about Plimer is that he is Australia's most eminent geologist. As such, he thinks about time very differently from most of us. He takes the long, long view. He looks at climate over geological, archaeological, historical and modern time. He writes: "Past climate changes, sea-level changes and catastrophes are written in stone."

Much of what we have read about climate change, he argues, is rubbish, especially the computer modelling on which much current scientific opinion is based, which he describes as "primitive". Errors and distortions in computer modelling will be exposed in time. (As if on cue, the United Nations' peak scientific body on climate change was obliged to make an embarrassing admission last week that some of its computers models were wrong.)

Plimer does not dispute the dramatic flux of climate change - and this column is not about Australia's water debate - but he fundamentally disputes most of the assumptions and projections being made about the current causes, mostly led by atmospheric scientists, who have a different perspective on time. "It is little wonder that catastrophist views of the future of the planet fall on fertile pastures. The history of time shows us that depopulation, social disruption, extinctions, disease and catastrophic droughts take place in cold times . and life blossoms and economies boom in warm times. Planet Earth is dynamic. It always changes and evolves. It is currently in an ice age."

If we look at the last 6 million years, the Earth was warmer than it is now for 3 million years. The ice caps of the Arctic, Antarctica and Greenland are geologically unusual. Polar ice has only been present for less than 20 per cent of geological time. What follows is an intense compression of the book's 500 pages and all their provocative arguments and conclusions:

Is dangerous warming occurring? No. Is the temperature range observed in the 20th century outside the range of normal variability? No.

The Earth's climate is driven by the receipt and redistribution of solar energy. Despite this crucial relationship, the sun tends to be brushed aside as the most important driver of climate. Calculations on supercomputers are primitive compared with the complex dynamism of the Earth's climate and ignore the crucial relationship between climate and solar energy.

"To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable - human-induced CO2 - is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science."

Over time, the history of CO2 content in the atmosphere has been far higher than at present for most of time. Atmospheric CO2 follows temperature rise. It does not create a temperature rise. CO2 is not a pollutant. Global warming and a high CO2 content bring prosperity and longer life.

The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology. "But evidence no longer matters. And any contrary work published in peer-reviewed journals is just ignored. We are told that the science on human-induced global warming is settled. Yet the claim by some scientists that the threat of human-induced global warming is 90 per cent certain (or even 99 per cent) is a figure of speech. It has no mathematical or evidential basis."

Observations in nature differ markedly from the results generated by nearly two dozen computer-generated climate models. These climate models exaggerate the effects of human CO2 emissions into the atmosphere because few of the natural variables are considered. Natural systems are far more complex than computer models.

The setting up by the UN of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988 gave an opportunity to make global warming the main theme of environmental groups. "The IPCC process is related to environmental activism, politics and opportunism. It is unrelated to science. Current zeal around human-induced climate change is comparable to the certainty professed by Creationists or religious fundamentalists."

Ian Plimer is not some isolated gadfly. He is a prize-winning scientist and professor. The back cover of Heaven And Earth carries a glowing endorsement from the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, who now holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. Numerous rigorous scientists have joined Plimer in dissenting from the prevailing orthodoxy. Heaven And Earth is an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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15 April, 2009

Skeptic gets it right but you would not know it from Wikipedia

An email from Nigel Calder [nc@windstream.demon.co.uk] to Benny Peiser. Since global warming DID stop almost exactly at the year 2000, as Calder predicted, he should have been acclaimed. Unlike the Warmists, his prophecy came true

It's one thing to be held to account for daring predictions made nearly 30 years ago, another to have them perversely rated. Last year a blogger on the Vanity Fair website, Jim Windolf, reported that he had found in a junk shop "a worn-out copy of The Book of Predictions, a compendium of '4,000 exclusive predictions' edited by the family team of David Wallechinsky, Amy Wallace, and Irving Wallace". Among the gems from 1980 for his readers to chortle about, Windolf picked out the following:

"British science journalist Nigel Calder wrote that, by 2000, 'the much-advertised heating of the earth by the man-made carbon-dioxide 'greenhouse' fails to occur; instead, there is renewed concern about cooling and an impending ice age."

A thought policeman who uses Wikipedia to promote the man-made global warming hypothesis has now added that quote to my biography, with the comment: "After his prediction was proven wrong, Calder participated in the polemic documentary film The Great Global Warming Swindle. He also co-authored The Chilling Stars."

Proven wrong, forsooth! As 20-year forecasts go, mine was rather good, wouldn't you say? "Global warming" did indeed come to a halt in the 1990s, as I first pointed out on German TV in 2002. Only a few of us talked about a cooling at that time, and I must admit that back in 1980 I failed to foresee the extraordinary intervention into climate physics, by governments and gullible media. It made most people unobservant about the changing trend. But "renewed concern about cooling" is now commonplace, which moderates any forecasting error in that respect. An example this month here

As for the impending ice age, it ranks with your next NEO impact - without human intervention it's bound to happen. We don't know when, but if anyone needs reminding that the next glaciation could in principle begin any time soon, concern is still freely aired in Russia, which has been relatively immune to IPCC brainwashing: e.g. here

Just because I'm a sceptic, Wikipedia elects to focus on the 10% of my writing that happens to deal with the climate. In my accounts of general relativity, astrophysics, particle physics and solid-Earth geophysics (for example) I show my readers what real physics looks like. It's all very different from the computer games of the climate modellers.

But we know about the Wiki Witch of the West, don't we, Benny? "Peisers [sic] crap shouldn't be in here," said William Connelley, as Lawrence Solomon reported last year. See here.

Except about the incipient cooling, I'm an incorrigible optimist. Perhaps the popularity and generally benign intentions of Wikipedia will work in our favour, if hopeful readers and hard-working editors alike rebel against its corruption by the prejudice of one administrator. In The Wizard of Oz, if I remember rightly, Dorothy's solution was a bucket of water.




MONCKTON TESTIMONY BEFORE US HOUSE COMMITTEE

An email from Bob Ferguson [bferguson@sppinstitute.org], President of the Science and Public Policy Institute [www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org]

On March 25th, Christopher Monckton gave testimony before the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce. That testimony gave rise to a letter to both Democrat Ed Markey and Republican Joe Barton, members of the committee. The letter has been formatted and posted at SPPI here.

As context, the Committee held a hearing on the desirability of, and opportunities for, adapting to anthropogenic "global warming". Congressman Joe Barton introduced Monckton to the Committee as "the world's most knowledgeable climate skeptic." His opening statement concentrated on three scientific graphs and an economic graph. The scientific graphs (each featured in SPPI's Monthly CO2 Report, here) showed that global temperature had been falling for seven years; that CO2 concentration had been rising at about half the UN's central estimate, requiring its warming projections to be halved and rendering them harmless; and that 20 years of satellite observations of changes in outgoing long-wave radiation had demonstrated conclusively that the UN had exaggerated the effect of CO2 on temperature by a factor of 7-10. The economic graph showed the cost of adapting to "global warming" (if and when it resumed) as being many times cheaper than the cost of attempting to mitigate it.

These graphs aroused considerable interest. Provoked by Congressman Markey's alarm at hearing real science, Mr. Tom Karl, the Director of the US National Climatic Data Center, a Democrat witness, disputed the temperature graph on the insubstantial ground that Monckton had compiled it by inappropriately combining two satellite and two surface temperature datasets; disputed the CO2 graph on the ground that carbon emissions were rising far faster than the UN had predicted; and disputed the satellite data on outgoing long-wave radiation on the ground that all satellites are prone to orbital degradation.

Monckton replied that each of the four temperature datasets individually demonstrated that global temperatures had been falling for fully seven years; that it is not CO2 emissions but CO2 concentrations remaining in the atmosphere that matter, and the concentrations, while rising, were doing so far more slowly than even the lowest of the UN's projections; and that the analysis of the satellite data that he had displayed had been confirmed - precisely because the results were so surprising to those who believed the UN's exaggerated estimates of climate sensitivity - by at least four further scientific papers.

Congressman Barton said it was essential that the Committee should know who was telling the truth, and he invited Mr. Karl and Lord Monckton to write to the committee, giving further and better particulars in support of what they each had said.




No, we don't need five planets

Bjorn Lomborg

ACCORDING to conventional wisdom, we are voraciously using the world's resources and living way beyond Earth's means. This narrative of decline and pessimism underlies much of today's environmental discourse and is often formulated in a simple fashion: by 2030, we will need two planets to sustain us, owing to higher living standards and population growth. If everyone managed to live at American living standards today, we would need almost five planets. But this received wisdom is fundamentally wrong.

Environmental campaigners use the so-called ecological footprint - how much area each one of us requires from the planet - to make their point. We obviously use crop land, grazing land, forests and fishing grounds to produce our food, fibre and timber, and we need space for our houses, roads and cities. Moreover, we require areas to absorb the waste emitted by our energy use. Translating all these demands into a common unit of physical area gives us an opportunity to compare it with Earth's productive area, and thus to get a sense of how sustainable we are.

For more than a decade, the WWF and several other conservation organisations have performed complicated calculations to determine individual footprints on the planet. Their numbers show that each American uses 9.4ha of the globe, each European 4.7ha, and those in low-income countries just 1ha. Adding it all up, we collectively use 17.5 billion hectares.

Unfortunately, there are only 13.4billion hectares available. So the WWF points out that we are already living beyond Earth's means, using about 30 per cent too much. And it will get worse. It tells us that the recent financial crisis "pales in comparison to the looming ecological credit crunch", which could presage "a large-scale ecosystem collapse".

This message is being seared into the public consciousness. The British newspaper The Observer used the headline "Wanted: New Earth by 2050"; according to the BBC, Earth is "on course for eco-crunch"; and The Washington Post, horrified by the four extra planets needed, urges us to use more canvas shopping bags and energy-saving light bulbs.

The message has been received loud and clear. We are using up too much of the planet's area.

But wait a minute. How can we do that? How can we actually use more area than there is on Earth?

Obviously, any measure that tries to aggregate many different aspects of human behaviour will have to simplify the inputs; the ecological footprint is no different. For example, when we talk about American lifestyles needing five planets, we assume that technology is frozen, whereas it is likely that worldwide land-use productivity will increase dramatically. Likewise, organic farming leaves a larger footprint than its conventional cousin.

Yet, despite such shortcomings, it is clear that areas we use for roads cannot be used for growing food and that areas we use to build our houses take away from forests. This part of the ecological footprint is a convenient measure of our literal footprint on Earth. Here, we live far inside the available area, using about 60per cent of the world's available space, and this proportion is likely to drop, because the rate at which the world's population is increasing is now slowing, while technological progress continues. So no ecological collapse here.

There is just one factor that keeps increasing: our carbon emissions. It is not at all obvious to anybody how to convert CO2 to area. The WWF and some researchers choose to get around this by defining the area of emissions as the area of forest needed to soak up the extra CO2. This now makes up more than 50 per cent of the ecological footprint and will grow to three quarters before mid-century.

In essence, we are being told that we ought to cut emissions to zero, and to plant trees to achieve that, meaning that we would have to plant forests today on 30 per cent more than all of the available land, and plant forests on almost two planets by 2030. This is unreasonable.

Is it really necessary for us to cut all emissions? Just cutting about half of all emissions would reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the medium term. More important, planting forests is one of the least area-efficient, technology-intensive ways to cut carbon. Solar cells and wind turbines require less than 1per cent of the area of forests to reduce CO2, they become increasingly efficient, and they can often be placed on non-productive land (such as wind turbines at sea and solar panels in deserts). Measured this way, the scary eco-crunch disappears.

Due to technology, the individual demand on the planet has already dropped by 35per cent over the past half decade, and the collective requirement will reach its upper limit before 2020 without any overdraft.

Translating CO2 into an illogical and inefficient measure of forest cover seems intended mainly to ensure that an alarming message results.

In the scientific literature, a leading modeller acknowledges that most modellers regard this method as "hard to defend". Two other research teams have pointed out that the ecological footprint "itself is nothing more than an important attention-grabbing device" and that "it is less a scientific measure than one designed to raise public awareness and influence politics".

When we really examine the ecological footprint calculations, we discover that the only thing the world is running out of is space to plant a colossal amount of imaginary forest that we wouldn't have planted anyway, to avoid CO2 emissions that we can prevent through much smarter and cheaper means.

That our profligate consumption requires five planets is a catchy story, but it is wrong. The planet we have is more than enough.

SOURCE




Green Bubbles Bursting

The delusions of renewables and the realities of nuclear power

ALEX ALEXIEV

With the selling of President Obama’s economic agenda now in full gear, this is a good time to take stock of his energy plans against the background of energy trends worldwide. Alas, even a brief glimpse reveals that Obama’s focus on renewable energy and the introduction of a cap-and-trade regime runs counter to both economic rationality and current energy trends to the point of guaranteeing its inevitable failure, which will result in serious economic harm to the United States.

The president is imposing his green agenda on America, even as the renewable-energy bubbles of the Left are bursting, and the world is witnessing the astounding comeback of the kind of energy Obama scrupulously avoids mentioning: nuclear power. To understand this surprising reality, the best place to start is to look at the record of the three countries Obama specifically mentioned in his address to Congress as leading the United States in the renewable-energy revolution: China, Japan, and Germany.

China, he said, “has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient.” True enough, but that effort has nothing to do with renewable energy, and it’s not even clear that it’s working. To the Chinese, energy efficiency means more efficient coal-burning equipment, co-generation, coal liquefaction, and other improvements of their primarily coal-based energy industry. Despite marginal improvements in this area, China is now the largest carbon-dioxide emitter in the world and can, at best, slow down but not stop carbon-emissions growth for the foreseeable future. As far as renewable energy proper is concerned, its share of total energy production not only is minuscule, but has actually declined over the past two years, according to Beijing’s State Electricity Council. There is, however, one clean-energy sector in which China is making a lot of progress and has even more ambitious plans for the future: nuclear power.

What about Japan? It does produce a lot of solar panels for export and subsidizes rooftop solar installation, but its renewable-energy production target for 2010 is only 3 percent. Instead, Tokyo plans to boost the share of nuclear power to 41 percent from the current 30 percent in less than a decade.

This leaves Germany as a model for our green future. At first glance, it is a renewable-energy success story and, to no one’s surprise, it has become the poster child of the green fantasy universe. In just a few years, the country has become the world’s powerhouse of green energy, currently generating nearly 15 percent of its electricity from wind power and solar energy, which already exceeds the EU target of a 12.5 percent renewable share for 2010. A heartwarming story, it seems — until one starts asking questions as to how a country that has neither much sun, nor much wind, got there; how much it cost; and where it is going from here.

The reality, of course, is that it doesn’t matter how much sun or wind there is as long as the government provides huge subsidies at the expense of the taxpayer and of the economy’s future prospects. In Germany, through a scheme innocuously called “feed-in tariff,” this has meant guaranteeing solar producers, for instance, a price seven times higher than the wholesale rate for 20 years. No wonder every entrepreneur-for-the-dole promptly lined up to feed at the public trough and created an artificial industry overnight. Yet, with Germany’s electricity bill going up by 38 percent in just one year (2007 over 2006), this is hardly a sustainable proposition.

If that’s not enough, several years of operational experience have proven what experts have known or feared for a long time: that renewable energy is not only very expensive but also highly inefficient and unreliable. Solar panels, for example, seldom convert more than 25 percent of sun energy into electricity, while wind power’s “load factor” — i.e., electricity produced per installed capacity — seldom exceeds 20 percent in Germany. The intermittent nature of both of these sources makes them completely unsuitable for baseload-grid consideration, meaning that they have to be backed up by conventional energy — which, of course, defeats the purpose of green energy as an alternative.

Nor does the German and overall European experience with cap-and-trade provide any reason to be optimistic about the prospects of Obama’s plan to raise $646 billion through a similar scheme. Four years after its introduction, the EU carbon-trading scheme has failed to create a functioning emissions-permit market, to generate revenues, or to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions as promised, even as it led to large electricity-rate increases and windfall profits for some of the worst polluters on the Continent.

The bottom line is that for the foreseeable future renewable energy will remain a pie-in-the-sky green fantasy, not feasible economically without huge public subsidies.

Engaging in such economically irrational policies may have been understandable on the part of politically correct Western elites seeking to appease their hysterical environmental lobbies, especially when the stakes were small, energy prices were skyrocketing, and economic prosperity seemed assured. But those days are now gone and probably won’t be back for quite some time. Instead, under the perfect storm of collapsing energy prices, the worst economic crisis in decades, a severe credit crunch, and mass unemployment, the green-energy bubble has burst. Around the world, Germany included, green subsidies are being slashed, renewable-energy projects are being canceled or postponed, private capital and credit institutions have abandoned the sector, and many of the once high-flying green companies are on the brink of bankruptcy. Green energy, long touted as our salvation from environmental doom, now appears doomed itself.

This should be a cause for celebration, for out of the ruins of this irrational fantasy, a new, powerful trend toward clean, inexpensive, and reliable power is gathering steam, and it may finally bring some economic rationality to energy policy worldwide. It has taken the form of a remarkable economic comeback–cum–political rehabilitation of the much-maligned nuclear-power industry. Though Americans will hear neither their president nor his devoted claque in the “mainstream” media discuss this, it is already a powerful reality that may yet make the 21st century the century of nuclear power.

What is most remarkable about the nuclear-power revival is that it is a worldwide phenomenon that includes Western countries that until recently were staunch fellow travelers in the anti-nuclear bandwagon. Italy and Sweden, both of which had moratoriums on building nuclear reactors dating back to the 1980s, have now reversed course, and Germany will almost certainly follow shortly. Italy now plans to get 25 percent of its future electricity needs from eight new nuclear plants and has already contracted with a French company for the construction of the first four. Great Britain envisages not only refurbishing eight aging reactors, but also building ten new ones.

France, which never succumbed to the anti-nuclear frenzy and already derives 80 percent of its electricity from 58 reactors, has become a world leader in nuclear technology — eclipsing the U.S. — and is aggressively moving forward with third-generation reactors at home and abroad. Farther east, Ukraine, despite its Chernobyl legacy, plans eleven new reactors by 2030, while Russia, an exporter of nuclear technology, wants to double its electricity output from nuclear power by 2020. Not to be left behind, Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Romania are either planning or already building new nuclear plants. In short, Europe, until recently a citadel of anti-nuclear fervor, is being transformed into a gigantic nuclear-power construction site.

Elsewhere, the nuclear-power steamroller is making even more impressive inroads. India and China, likely economic superpowers of the future alongside the U.S., have both opted for nuclear energy in a decisive way. India, which today produces a meager 4,100 megawatts, or 3 percent of its electricity, from nuclear power, aims to boost that 15-fold, to 63,000 MWs, with 40 new reactors by 2032. It is already constructing five new plants and has just signed a contract with the French company Areva for up to six more third-generation reactors. China, which currently has a nuclear-generating capacity of 9,000 MWs, plans to increase that to 40,000 MWs by 2020 and 63,000 MWs ten years later. Finally, Japan, which alongside France is a world leader in nuclear-electricity technology, is fully committed to nuclear power and intends to double its share of electricity production from the current 30 percent by mid-century.

So where does this leave the U.S., and President Obama’s energy agenda? It leaves us in the unenviable position of being the only major economic power led by a president dogmatically wedded to yesterday’s make-believe universe of green energy that has already been debunked by reality in the rest of the world. Much as in Europe, renewable energy in America is in a dire predicament. By the end of 2008, American solar- and wind-power stocks had lost some four-fifths of their value — twice the loss rates of the general market — inflicting catastrophic losses on investors who had bought into the green hype. Investment and credit have both dried up and, despite the brave rhetoric of President Obama, there isn’t enough government money to make much difference in the absence of private capital. In just one example of the parlous state of renewable affairs, California, where sunlight is nearly as abundant as lack of environmental common sense, produces but 0.2 percent of its electricity from solar power after three decades of heavy subsidies.

Worse may be in store. If Obama’s dubious energy agenda is rammed through Congress, as seems likely, not only are Americans going to be saddled with a crushing tax burden, courtesy of the bogus cap-and-trade scheme, but the country’s economic competitiveness could suffer lasting if not irreparable damage. Such are the wages of our renewable delusions.

SOURCE




Why "cap and trade" will be an unmitigated disaster

On top of this disastrous fiscal policy [of huge government deficits], the Democrats seem determined to push through a so-called "cap and trade" plan to tax carbon emissions...

What most people don't realize about this plan is it's actually the largest tax increase in American history. Says Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin, "It's the most significant revenue-gathering proposal of all time." Current estimates show a cap and trade regime will add $500 billion to $1 trillion to the government's annual revenues - an amount equal to roughly 50%-100% of all the income taxes collected each year!

Taxing electricity at these rates, plus mandating that 25% of all electricity come from "alternative sources," (which doesn't include nuclear power), plus regulating all home appliances, plus making it against the law to trade in incandescent light bulbs... It's insanity. These new taxes and regulations will destroy our economy. I'd bet less than 10 senators understand the incredibly important role electricity plays in our economy: There's a perfect correlation between electricity production and economic growth. Watching the government bankrupt itself with unprecedented new debts, while at the same time shooting our economy in the face with a huge new tax on electricity, should scare the crap out of every American.

And these fears ought to apply equally to Democrats or Republicans. If you were trying to devise a political plan to destroy the country, this is the route you'd take: make it harder than ever before to produce anything, devalue the currency, and raise taxes by 50%.

SOURCE




What is "normal" climate?

"In the midst of all the public discussion about climate change, people lose sight of the simple, fundamental question: What is "normal" climate? Here in Saskatchewan we aren't even sure what "normal" weather is". -- Comment by Brian Pratt, P.Geo., a sedimentologist and palaeontologist at the Department of Geological Sciences, University of Saskatchewan

There is no such thing as one single global climate, and measuring the heat flux of the entire Earth is no simple matter. Every geoscientist knows that climate is never static: it has always been changing and always will be. Here in Saskatchewan, the last of the Pleistocene ice sheets only melted back 10,000 years ago. A hundred million years before then, dinosaurs strolled through lush jungles under a canopy of cypress trees.

We live in extraordinary times. In less than two centuries, first coal then petroleum fuelled unimaginable technical and scientific advances that have taken us to the point where information transmittal is instantaneous around the globe. Yet, even though everyone takes advantage of this technology, the level of scientific literacy among the general population is so abject that it makes the power of suggestion just about as strong as it was in the Dark Ages. Add a dash of guilt and fear of the apocalypse, and how can the citizenry resist the call to "save the planet"?

But when you stop and think about it, the apocalyptic predictions don't quite make sense scientifically. Alongside the enormity of the sun and what we know of the scale and power of natural processes, to imagine humans being able to make any difference to global climate would seem like the most preposterous conceit.

Fact and Fiction

Even though I consider myself a dedicated environmentalist, I cannot accept the claims of anthropogenic -humancaused- global warming. My research involves deducing climate back in what we call "Deep Time" - geological eras of millions and billions of years ago - so I think I have enough background to understand the evidence. I know that the factors controlling climate work as an extremely complex, integrated system that cannot be resolved by debate and exchange of opinion. Therefore the suspicions of any scientist should be aroused by glib assertions like "the science is settled" or "there is a consensus," because this is not how scientists and engineers operate.

Al Gore's movie and books are so appallingly riddled with mistakes and outlandish exaggerations that they would be laughable if they weren't taken so seriously by so many. Legislators have even passed laws declaring CO2 to be a pollutant, seemingly unaware of photosynthesis, respiration and biodegradation. Should I feel guilty that my beer gave off CO2 during fermentation and when I opened it? I need something to cry into when I hear of the measures planned to reduce "carbon emissions", because of the threat these pose to our already economically fragile society.

Here are the facts, as I understand them: solar heat varies cyclically at different frequencies, from the decades to the hundreds of thousands of years. Atmospheric CO2 concentration and temperature are linked, but rather than the former driving the latter, it is the other way around and there is a nearly thousand-year lag in the response.

The oceans are the great sink for CO2. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is not uniform around the globe and regional variations are tied to sea-surface temperature because CO2 dissolves in colder sea water while it degasses from warmer sea water. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, yes, but it absorbs only a very small portion of the infrared spectrum and its capacity to do so declines exponentially with concentration. It's a fact of physics that the CO2 molecule radiates almost none of the heat it can absorb. Moreover, it is such a trace gas that this effect is negligible, and even less so at the low pressures and cold temperatures high in the atmosphere.

All of this explains why, when CO2 concentration is thought to have been much higher in Deep Time such as during the Paleozoic, the surface of the globe did not overheat and the polar regions were still cold. Water vapour is what insulates the Earth and CO2 concentration has nothing to do with cloud generation. Why, then, have anthropogenic global warming promoters seized upon CO2 as the culprit?

Beyond the Science

Climate change has now become so highly politicized that one wonders whom or what to trust. It turns out that the legitimate science in the successive UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports was laundered to such a degree by a very small and select group of experts and bureaucrats charged with preparing the "summaries for policymakers" that they are often contradictory-indeed, some of the scientific contributors have since distanced themselves from these reports. There has grown a whole industry of taxpayer-funded climate modellers whose equations can't reproduce last week's weather let alone past climate change at all, but whose crystal balls universally forecast impending disaster (and of course the urgent need for more research money).

Why haven't physicists pointed out the basic mistakes in the science? Why haven't more geoscientists stood up to correct the misconceptions about natural, long-term climate change? Some have, but precious few. Barring a few notable exceptions, journalists have suspended their neutrality and taken up the cudgel to help enforce obedience to the anthropogenic global warming mantra. All manner of things from hurricanes to frog population decline to the sagging of gingerbread houses are blamed on it.

Moreover, the zealotry of many adherents is frighteningly reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition, fascism and other movements designed to take control and silence dissent. Vicious personal attacks on those who raise valid scientific questions infect the blogosphere, including likening them to Holocaust deniers. Even NASA's James Hansen, a very vocal promoter of anthropogenic global warming, has been allowed to get away with all sorts of very unscientific and virulent statements, such as demanding that oil company executives be tried for "crimes against humanity and nature".

Science is Never "Settled"

Globally averaged temperature data - imprecise, it must be admitted- show that temperature has not risen in the past 10 years: we are not in the midst of global warming at all. The famous "hockey-stick" graph wielded by Al Gore and the IPCC reports that claimed to show a dramatic rise in global temperature in the latter 20th century turns out to be a methodological and statistical chimera. Some have even suggested that it was a deliberate fraud. Temperature fluctuations and regional variations in the last few decades do not track rising atmospheric CO2 concentration.

So, if anthropogenic CO2 is not driving climate change, why do most Western governments -with the notable exception of Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic- continue to fall over themselves in support of the belief of anthropogenic global warming, and try to best each other in promising to cap CO2 production, designing carbon taxes and cap-and-trade legislation, and throwing huge sums of money at alternative energy schemes, CO2 sequestration projects and climatological research?

Sure, certain individuals stand to make a lot of money out of these measures, but some of them arguably will amount to economic suicide. Well, what politicians do "passeth all understanding" for most of us in the trenches, but it does illustrate the power of the green lobby and, in my opinion, a dearth of real leadership. The recent meeting of President Barack Obama and PrimeMinister Stephen Harper pledged a soothingly green approach to continental relations. Some of this will be beneficial: enhanced oil recovery by CO2 injection, more use of solar and geothermal heating, and improved energy efficiency. Other measures will cost a fortune and will make no difference whatsoever to climate or the weather.

As James Hutton said in 1795, the Earth has "no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end" and this holds true for climate change. Does reducing our dependence on fossil fuels justify promulgating scientific lies? I don't think so. But it is inescapable that coal, oil and natural gas are finite natural resources and when they are burned up they are gone. Period. Profligacy with these precious commodities is what needs to change.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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14 April, 2009

"N*gger-hating" Greenie?

David Attenborough argues the planet cannot handle more people and wants births reduced. Since almost all the countries with positive population growth are in Africa, the target of this guy's ill-will would seem obvious. European birthrates are already half what is required for replacement of deaths

SIR David Attenborough has become a patron of an organisation that campaigns to limit the number of people in the world, arguing that the growth in global population is frightening. The television presenter and naturalist said the increase in population was having devastating effects on ecology, pollution and food production. "There are three times as many people in the world as when I started making television programs only a mere 56 years ago," Sir David, who has two children, said after becoming a patron of the Optimum Population Trust think-tank. [It's not a think-tank. It's just the successor to the old "people are pollution" ZPG movement. Calling it a hate-tank would be more accurate]

"It is frightening in the sense that we can't go on as we have been. We are seeing the consequences in terms of ecology, atmospheric pollution and in terms of the space and food production. "I've never seen a problem that wouldn't be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more. Population is reaching its optimum and the world cannot hold an infinite number of people." The OPT counts among its patrons the environmentalist Jonathon Porritt and the academic Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta. However, Sir David's appointment has already been criticised.

Austin Williams, author of The Enemies of Progress, said: "Experts can still be stupid when they speak on subjects of which they know little. Sir David may know a sight more than I do about remote species but that does not give him the intelligence to speak on global politics. "I have a problem with the line that people are a problem. More people are a good thing. People are the source of creativity, intelligence, analysis and problem-solving. "If we see people as just simple things that consume and excrete carbon, then the OPT may have a point, but people are more than this and they will be the ones to find the solutions."

Sir David said the OPT was drawing attention to the issue of population and being a patron seemed a worthwhile thing to do. Roger Martin, the chairman of the trust, said the appointment would put pressure on organisations to face up to what he said was the taboo issue of population. "The environmental movement will not confront the fact that there is not a single problem that they deal with which would not be easier with fewer people."

The trust campaigns for global access to family planning and for couples to be encouraged to stop having more than two children. In Britain it wants to stabilise the population by bringing immigration into balance with emigration and making greater efforts to reduce teenage pregnancies.

Mr Martin said the UK population must be reduced to a sustainable level because Britain was already the most overcrowded country in Europe. He said the world could not increase production to meet the needs of a growing population. "We can't feed ourselves with some of the most intensive agriculture in the world - we're only 70 per cent self-sufficient." Mr Martin said that Britain could not rely on the world food market because, when food runs short, exporters do not export it. "It's completely cuckoo to imagine that these globalised economies are going to keep us fed when we can't do it ourselves," he said.

SOURCE




No SUVs Around During the Roman Global Warming ‘Crisis’

Self-hating humans need to relax and enjoy the warm weather while it lasts.

Ah, spring, when the earth slowly wakes from its winter slumber, a warming welcomed by nearly every living thing. Hard to believe some silly people are deathly afraid of warming weather — worried sick because the earth has warmed a degree or two over the last 150 years.

Make no mistake — the earth has warmed. Unfortunately for the climate-change catastrophists, warming periods have occurred throughout recorded history, long before the Industrial Revolution and SUVs began spitting man-made carbon into the atmosphere. And as might be expected, these warm periods have invariably proven a blessing for humanity. Consider:

Around the 3rd century B.C., the planet emerged from a long cold spell. The warm period which followed lasted about 700 years, and since it coincided with the rise of Pax Romana, it is known as the Roman Warming.

In the 5th century A.D., the earth’s climate became cooler. Cold and drought pushed the tribes of northern Europe south against the Roman frontier. Rome was sacked, and the Dark Ages commenced. And it was a dark age, both metaphorically and literally — the sun’s light dimmed and gave little warmth; harvest seasons grew shorter and yielded less. Life expectancy and literacy plummeted. The plague appeared and decimated whole populations.

Then, inexplicably, about 900 A.D. things began to warm. This warming trend would last almost 400 years, a well documented era known as the Medieval Warm Period. Once again, as temperatures rose harvests and populations grew. Vineyards made their way into Northern Europe, including Britain. Art and science flourished in what we now know as the Renaissance.

Then around 1300 A.D. things cooled drastically. This cold spell would last almost 500 years, a severe climate event known as the Little Ice Age. Millions died in famine as glaciers advanced all over the world. The plague returned. In Greenland, the Norse colony that had been established during the Medieval Warming froze and starved. Arctic pack ice descended south, pushing Inuit peoples to the shores of Scotland. People ice skated on the Thames; they walked from Staten Island to Manhattan over a frozen New York Harbor. The year 1816 was remembered as the year without a summer, with some portions of the Northern Hemisphere seeing snowfall in June.

But around 1850 the planet began to warm up yet again. Glaciers retreated. Temperatures rose. This is the warming period which we are still enjoying today. And once again, the warmth brought bounty: The last 150 years have seen an explosion in life expectancy, population, and scientific progress like never before.

Of course, even before the appearance of humans, the earth alternated throughout its history between extremes of heat and cold: 700 million years ago the planet was covered entirely in ice; 55 million years ago, a swampy greenhouse.

Why? What drives these ancient cycles? There are a lot of theories. The waxing and waning of solar output; cosmic rays and their role in cloud formation; the earth moving through plumes of galactic dust as it travels up and down through the arm of the Milky Way; plate tectonics redirecting the ocean currents; vulcanism. Perhaps it is a combination of all of these things. Perhaps it is something as yet undiscovered. One thing for sure that it’s not: SUVs.

Why, then, do otherwise sensible people believe that we are both causing the current warming and that the warmth is a bad thing? To me it seems some grotesque combination of narcissism and self-loathing, a mentality that says at once “I am so important that my behavior is causing this” and “I am so inherently tainted that it must be bad.” For these self-hating humans who want us to cut our carbs (carbons, not carbohydrates), I say relax and enjoy the warmth while it lasts. Because it won’t. No matter what we do, the ice and the cold and the dark will come again. That should be our worry.

SOURCE




More than 100 campaigners arrested over British 'power station plot'

More than 100 people are in custody after police smashed a major plot to sabotage one of Britain's biggest power-stations. Officers swooped on environmental protesters as they prepared a mass raid that could have disrupted supplies to tens of thousands of homes. The demonstrators are thought to have gathered at night in readiness to move on Ratcliffe-on-Soar power-station, Nottinghamshire.

They were rounded up shortly after midnight on Sunday at the Bakersfield Community Centre in Sneinton, Notts, by scores of officers. Detectives later revealed they recovered specialist equipment that suggested the group represented a "serious threat" to the station's safety.

Supt Mike Manley, of the Nottinghamshire force, said 114 men and women from across the UK were detained during the dramatic swoop. They were being questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass and criminal damage at Ratcliffe-on-Soar. Supt Manley said: "In view of specialist equipment recovered by police, those arrested posed a serious threat to the safe running of the site. "This was a significant operation, with large-scale arrests. There were no injuries during the arrests, and the police investigation is ongoing."

Witnesses told how officers in more than 20 police vans descended on the plotters' apparent rendezvous point in the early hours. Tess Rearden, who lives near the scene, said: "We were woken up by the sound of doors slamming and saw all these police vans and riot vans.... One resident told how the protesters did not fight with officers during the swoop but signalled their defiance as they were being led away. She said: "The police jumped out of their vans and ran behind the community centre. The people they brought out were singing: 'We'll be back again.'"

It is thought detectives had prior knowledge of the plot but chose to wait till the demonstrators were together in one place before moving in. Local city councillor David Mellen added: "I understand there was some kind of gathering of people here in connection with the power-station. "If the police had information that there was a danger to the power supply in the East Midlands then obviously they had to take action."

The Derbyshire and Leicestershire forces helped in the operation and later provided additional custody facilities for some of those arrested. Ratcliffe-on-Soar has been the target of a number of protests in the past, including one two years ago in which protesters tried to shut down the plant. Environmentalists who stormed the site on that occasion later failed in a landmark legal bid to prove they were acting in the interests of humanity.

Climate-change campaigners admitted they attempted to force the site's closure by chaining themselves to conveyor belts and filtration systems. But they argued that, because they were saving the planet from global warming, their actions were legal under the so-called "defence of necessity". Had they won their case they would have paved the way for campaigners around the country to stage similar protests without fear of prosecution.

At the time Eastside Climate Action, the group involved, said the break-in reflected "the threat climate change poses to the human population". A spokesman said: "We argue that the threat to human life is so serious that it is a proportionate and reasonable response to take direct action."

Giving evidence at the court hearing, station manager Raymond Smith told how production at the site was threatened during the incident. He said: "People chained themselves to the conveyor system and the filtration system. They were non-violent, but none had permission to be on the site. "If the protest had continued to the extent that the power station ran out of coal we would have had to shut it down. But we called the police."

Eastside denied any involvement in yesterday's events - thought to be linked to plans for a new coal-fired power-station in Kingsthorpe, Kent. E.on, the power giant behind Kingsthorpe, owns Ratcliffe-on-Soar - allegedly Britain's second-largest producer of carbon-dioxide emissions. An E.on spokesman said: "While we understand everyone has a right to protest peacefully and lawfully, this was clearly neither of those things. "We will be assisting police in their investigations into what could have been a very dangerous attempt to disrupt an operational power-plant."

SOURCE




Climate bill could trigger lawsuit landslide

Allows action from those 'expected to suffer'

Self-proclaimed victims of global warming or those who "expect to suffer" from it - from beachfront property owners to asthmatics - for the first time would be able to sue the federal government or private businesses over greenhouse gas emissions under a little-noticed provision slipped into the House climate bill.

Environmentalists say the measure was narrowly crafted to give citizens the unusual standing to sue the U.S. government as a way to force action on curbing emissions. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sees a new cottage industry for lawyers. "You could be spawning lawsuits at almost any place [climate-change modeling] computers place at harm's risk," said Bill Kovacs, energy lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The bill was written by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman, California Democrat, and Rep. Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Democrat. Both lawmakers declined repeated requests for comment. The Waxman-Markey blueprint, including the lawsuit provision, has just been released, and the Senate is drafting its own energy bill. But Mr. Waxman has set an accelerated schedule for passing the bill through his committee by Memorial Day and President Obama lists an energy overhaul bill as one of his top priorities.

David Doniger, senior counsel with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the measure is similar to a landmark environmental ruling from the Supreme Court allowing states to sue the federal government for damages from climate change - largely on the basis of lost shorelines from rising sea levels - but did not set grounds for people to file lawsuits. "The [Chamber of Commerce] is trying to say the global-warming legislation is scarier than global warming itself," Mr. Doniger said. "It's part of a menu of scare tactics they are compiling."

Under the House bill, if a judge rules against the government, new rules would have to be drafted to alleviate the problems associated with climate change. If a judge rules against a company, the company would have to purchase additional "carbon emission allowances" through a cap-and-trade program that is to be created by Congress.

The measure sets grounds for anyone "who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part," to government inaction to file a "citizen suit." The term "harm" is broadly defined as "any effect of air pollution (including climate change), currently occurring or at risk of occurring."

It would allow citizens to seek up to $75,000 in damages from the government each year, but would cap the total amount paid out each year at $1.5 million, committee staff said. It is unclear whether the provision would actually cap damages at $75,000 per person, because the U.S. law referenced does not establish payouts by the government. The $1.5 million cap reflects a compromise reached with House Republicans in a 2007 version of the measure introduced by Mr. Waxman, committee staff said. Mr. Waxman and Mr. Markey wrote the measure into a broader climate plan introduced last week, although it was left out of a bill summary that committee staff provided at the time.

Republican committee staff said the measure has the potential to muddle the judicial system. "Perhaps a more accurate title of the bill would be 'The Lawyer Full-Employment and As-Seen-on-TV Global Warming Act of 2009,' " said Larry Neal, deputy Republican staff director for the House committee.

Democratic staffers said the measure provides guidance to the courts on how to apply existing Clean Air Act provisions. Private citizens can sue the government based on harm caused by pollutants currently regulated under the Clean Air Act - including nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide - but they lack standing to sue for damages resulting from climate change.

Regulating carbon dioxide has been a hard slog for environmentalists, and some energy analysts say that the Waxman-Markey bill and parallel efforts by the Obama administration constitute a multifaceted attempt to achieve the goal by regulation if legislative attempts fail.

The "citizen suit" would allow people to force government action on climate change, seemingly a redundancy in a bill that would achieve that goal if passed. But environmentalists have been cautious in their tack, arguing that many environmental protections on the books were not vigorously enforced under the Bush administration.

Environmental lawyers played down the significance of the provision. The measure would not guarantee payouts from the government or successful lawsuits, Mr. Doniger said, but would set the bar for people seeking to force the government to act on climate change. He likened the measure to tort laws regarding cigarette smoke or cancer-causing chemicals, in which the harmful effects are not seen for decades. "If this pollution isn't curbed, it isn't just today or tomorrow you have problems, it's also 20 to 30 years from now," Mr. Doniger said.

Expansion of the Clean Air Act to allow "citizen suits" on climate change has been a goal among environmental groups and moderate to liberal Democrats for many years - although the measure has never succeeded. But amending the Clean Air Act is "potentially a big gamble" because it opens other sections of the act to modification during the bill-drafting process, said a Democratic energy lobbyist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of ties to committee members.

SOURCE




India Rejects Calls For Emission Cuts

Officials Say Growth Will Be Compromised

Days after the Obama administration unveiled a push to combat climate change, Indian officials said it was unlikely to prompt them to agree to binding emission cuts, a position among emerging economies that many say derails effective action. "If the question is whether India will take on binding emission reduction commitments, the answer is no. It is morally wrong for us to agree to reduce when 40 percent of Indians do not have access to electricity," said a member of the Indian delegation to the recently concluded U.N. conference in Bonn, Germany, which is a prelude to a Copenhagen summit in December on climate change. "Of course, everybody wants to go solar, but costs are very, very high."

India's position goes to the heart of the vexing international debate over how quickly nations should try to phase out carbon-spewing fuels such as coal and switch to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. In India, the debate has been cast as a choice between pursuing urgently needed economic growth to reduce poverty and addressing climate change.

More than 60 percent of India's power is generated from coal. As India rapidly climbs the list of global polluters, analysts say coal will continue to fuel the economic demands of the country's 1.1 billion people for two decades. But India has repeatedly said that it will not compromise on growth by committing to emission reduction goals set by developed nations, which it deems bigger culprits when it comes to pollution.

President Obama's promise of a leading U.S. role in combating climate change is a clear departure from the stance of his predecessor, George W. Bush. A climate bill recently introduced by Democrats in the House calls for a 20 percent cut in carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 2020, along with a substantial increase in renewable-energy use. "I am reasonably optimistic. But it is not entirely upon President Obama. He has to carry the Congress and the Senate with him," said Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He added that India is "very unlikely" to change its official position.

In a policy document released in January, India calls for industrialized countries to commit to significant emission reduction targets while aiding sustainable development in developing nations with funds and technology. "But it was informally made very clear to us by the developed countries that there will be no money available for developing countries because of the global economic slump," said the Indian delegate to the Bonn meeting. About 2.5 percent of India's gross domestic product is spent on measures to address climate change, including introduction of cleaner technologies, energy-efficient consumer products and renewable energy.

Indian officials say it is unfair to group their country with the major emitters because, per capita, India's emissions are a tenth of those in the United States. Last week, India's special envoy on climate change, Shyam Saran, told reporters in Bonn that he opposed any attempt by the European Union and the United States to impose "carbon tariffs" on exports of Indian goods produced in energy-intensive industries such as steel, aluminum, cement and fertilizer.

Another issue raised was the controversial carbon capture and storage technology, or CCS. The expensive, unproven and environmentally contentious technique is intended to help combat climate change by injecting carbon dioxide emissions into deep underground reservoirs. The United States recently committed money to the technology in its economic stimulus package, and more funding may be proposed in the climate bill expected to be debated later this year. In January, India joined a handful of nations gingerly experimenting with CCS.

Scientists at India's National Geophysical Research Institute released preliminary findings from ongoing government-funded research that seeks to inject carbon dioxide into the basalt rock formation called the Deccan Traps, which is about 60 million years old. S. Nirmal Charan, a senior scientist at the institute, said researchers wanted to determine whether carbon dioxide can be trapped for tens of thousands of years within the basalt. He said more simulated laboratory tests are underway, but initial results show the process to be "environmentally benign."

Critics say it is a gimmick that allows carbon-spewing industries to carry on with business as usual. "The idea of CCS allows our addiction to coal to remain. It ensures that we keep burning coal," said Chandra Bhushan, associate director of the Center for Science and Environment. "Who will monitor whether there are carbon dioxide leaks from underground storage?"

Norway and Canada have begun implementing various carbon-storage initiatives. Last week, Germany approved a draft law to develop the technology, and China has identified two sites for storage. India has not formally committed to conducting CCS field experiments. But an official in the Power Ministry said it has the "potential to be an extremely important technology." "But we are unsure about how it will work," the official said. "Let the world first demonstrate. We will learn from them."

SOURCE




Australian energy industry warns of blackouts

CONSUMERS face possible blackouts and power stations could go broke unless the Rudd Government offers an extra $6billion worth of free permits under its planned emissions trading scheme, the energy sector has warned.

If the extra assistance is not forthcoming, the sector, responsible for about 70 per cent of Australia's carbon emissions, will ask the Government for a Rudd Bank-style financing facility to help raise the capital.

A survey by the Energy Supply Association of Australia has found the sector will need to find $100 billion over the next five years for refinancing, essential upgrades and new investments in low-emission generation to comply with the emissions trading scheme and new renewable energy targets.

The industry says it is facing a "perfect storm" of a credit squeeze caused by the financial crisis and the Rudd Government's bank guarantee, inadequate compensation under the carbon pollution reduction scheme, and a decision by the Australian Energy Regulator that could reduce the profitability of energy network providers.

The Government has offered the electricity industry $3.9billion in free pollution permits to compensate for the "most probable and most extreme" writedowns in power station asset values because of the carbon pollution reduction scheme - an acknowledgement that the scheme will cause upheaval in the sector as it shuts down some high-polluting power plants early and invests in new low-polluting generation.

The ESAA said this amount must be increased to at least $10billion, to be delivered over the first five years of the scheme.

"If the Government does not increase the level of compensation, we will have no choice but to go to them asking for another finance facility for our sector," association chief executive Clare Savage said.

"What is at stake here is the future of the energy market. If nothing is done, power stations are likely to be bankrupted, and if they closed, then there would be problems with electricity supply, or more likely governments would have to step in to take them over, and that would unravel the last 10 years' hard work to set up a national electricity market."

An ESAA survey found the energy sector would need to find $50billion for refinancing over the next five years, $6.3 billion for planned spending on existing assets, $12 billion for new lower-emission generation and $31billion for investments in the electricity networks.

The sector needs to fight for access to that capital in a market where banks and state governments have received federal government guarantees and where the carbon pollution reduction scheme means asset values are being written down.

The $40 billion energy distribution industry is facing a large reduction in its returns if the Australian Energy Regulator confirms a recent draft decision at the same time as it is being asked to fund billions of dollars in new network investments as the industry shifts to new types of generation.

According to the Energy Networks Association, the draft decision would reduce returns to the industry by more than 10 per cent.

"When you combine the effects of these decisions with the debt guarantees being offered to other sectors, it is tantamount to tying one hand behind the industry's back while it fights for capital in the midst of a global financial crisis," Ms Savage said.

"To help ensure these assets remain in service to support the transition to lower-emission technologies and give new investors in the energy supply sector confidence that when the Government institutes major policy change that has the potential to strand long-lived infrastructure assets, the value of these assets must be adequately recognised."

The Government says the revenue it will raise from auctioning permits under the carbon pollution reduction scheme is already fully allocated in compensation to industry and households, meaning any increase in compensation to one sector would require taking something away from another.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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13 April, 2009

Debate continues on Earth climate change and global warming

Carbon footprint. Go green. These are a few phrases that recently have become part of our vernacular. We hear them every day. The president says them. School teachers use them. Tele-vision shows play them. Each of these phrases has a connection to one problem many believe every person on the plant shares: Global warming.

However, there is a large community of scientists who do not agree with this theory on global warming. While everyone knows what global warming is, many do not know there is a rebuttal out there.

According to globalwarming.com, “The premise of global warming is that industrial growth coupled with non-structured methods we as humans use to sustain ourselves has created a situation where our planet is getting hotter by the minute. We have seemingly negatively affected our environment by a cycle of harmful processes that now seem to be feeding upon themselves to exponentially increase damage to our ecosystem.”

Edward F. Blick was once a professor at the University of Oklahoma in the School of Petroleum and Geological Engineering, the School of Meteorology, the College of Medicine and the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering. Blick holds an M.S. degree in aeronautical engineering and a Ph.D. in engineering science. He has served as an Air Force weatherman, has worked for Lockheed Missile and Space Co. and McDonnell Aircraft Corp., and has consulted for several corporations and government agencies such as NASA and the Air Force.

In a phone interview Blick explained global warming as follows: “What they say is that as man has started using fossil fuels in the middle 1800s ... these fossil fuels have carbon in them. When the fuel is used up ... and comes out as exhaust, it comes out as H2O, which is water, and CO2, which is carbon dioxide.”

Global warming, also called anthropogenic global warming, which means global warming caused by man, is said to be a result of the exhaust made by the burning of fossil fuels. “The thing is, the CO2 goes up into our atmosphere and increases the CO2, which is there naturally, producing the greenhouse effect,” said Blick.

Globalwarming.com describes the greenhouse effect as occurring when “solar radiation either bounces off of or is radiated forth from the Earth and instead of passing through our atmosphere and outward into space, is absorbed by all kinds of extra amounts and extraneous gases and particles ... from there the process repeats itself until we have a global version of a car with the windows rolled up parked in the noonday sun.”

On Feb. 25 William Happer, Cyrus Bogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University spoke before the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “Without greenhouse warming, the Earth would be much too cold to sustain its current abundance of life,” said Happer. “However, at least 90 percent of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player.”

Happer went on to say there is little argument within the scientific community that “a direct effect of doubling the CO2 concentration will be a small increase of the Earth’s temperature — on the order of one degree.”

Scientists may agree twice the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would only raise the Earth’s temperature one degree, but what if man more than doubles the amount of CO2? “Burning all our remaining fossil fuels cannot double the CO2, but only increase it by 20 percent,” said Blick.

“But what about the frightening consequences of increasing levels of CO2 that we keep hearing about?” said Happer. “In a word, they are wildly exaggerated.”

Even though the Earth’s temperature was rising slowly beginning about 200 years ago until recently, many experts say, “So what?” “Climate is changing, always has and most likely always will until that thermonuclear engine in the sky, the sun, goes out,” said Gary England, chief meteorologist for KWTV news Channel 9. “That’s what climate does. It changes.”

Happer and Blick both said the recent warming period began around 1800. “(It began) at the end of the little ice age, long before there was an appreciable increase of CO2,” said Happer. “There have been similar and even larger warmings several times in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age. These earlier warmings clearly had nothing to do with the combustion of fossil fuels.”

Happer, Blick and England all said over the past 10 years there has been a consistent global cooling, not warming.

Blick said it is mostly politicians who are warning the world of impending global warming. “How many scientists are involved? Probably very few,” said Blick. Blick said several natural forces appear to be lining up to bring a period of very cold weather to the planet. One of those natural forces is sunspots. “We’re in what is called sunspot cycle 23,” said Blick.

During a part of the sunspot cycle when there are few sunspots, the weather gets colder. “The sun has had few sunspots the past year or so,” said England. “The sun is quiet. The last time this went on for years we ended up with the little ice age for many years.” “The evidence is that right now, the sunspot measurements are so low, they haven’t been this low in about 100 years,” said Blick.

Blick said if a cold period is coming, people should be aware and preparing for it. “Cold kills,” said Blick. “And yet our politicians are telling us it’s going to get hot. They’re preparing for the wrong battle.”

Even though these and other experts say it’s getting colder, people are still hearing the polar ice caps are melting. “More recently ... people found a big problem with the data from a satellite that is used to estimate Arctic ice coverage,” said England. “It was a 500,000 square kilometer error ... in reality, we find now that ice coverage is not collapsing.”

England said the same researchers also discovered a large number of rural weather stations around the world were shut down. If only urban temperatures are reported, it might seem the average temperature went up even if it didn’t because urban areas always are warmer than rural areas.

These experts do not believe we currently are in a warming period, but they also do not believe that we can create enough CO2 to do any damage. In fact, they say an increase in CO2 could be a good thing. “Increased CO2 actually increases crop production,” said England. “When CO2 drops to less than 150 (parts per million) plants will commence failing. If the plants die, then the livestock die and then guess who is next?”

“CO2 is not a pollutant and it is not a poison,” said Happer. “Plants and our own primate ancestors evolved when the levels of atmospheric CO2 were about 1,000 ppm, a level that we will probably not reach by burning fossil fuels, and far above our current level of about 380 ppm.”

Happer said human exhaled breath contains a CO2 level of 40,000 ppm, a much higher level than is in the atmosphere. Happer also said it has been said CO2 is a cause of increased heat. “(Former Vice President) Al Gore likes to display graphs of temperature and CO2 concentrations over the past million years or so, showing that when CO2 rises, the temperature also rises,” said Happer. “If you look carefully at these records, you find that first the temperature goes up, and then the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere goes up. There is a delay between a temperature increase and a CO2 increase of about 800 years.”

An example of a rise in temperature causing a rise in CO2 is the ocean. When the temperature rises, more ocean water evaporates, causing more of the water vapor and, as Happer said, 90 percent of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds, not CO2.

Blick said Gore travels around giving presentations and has even written books about global warming, even though he has no academic training in science. “Al Gore will not debate anybody. He says the debate is over,” said Blick. “I would love to debate Al Gore ... I’d be glad to go to court in defense of no global warming. I’d win easily.”

Most likely Blick won’t get his opportunity to debate Gore, or to go to court in opposition to anthropogenic global warming. The debate is likely to continue.

“With respect to the discussion on global warming, I say there are no simple answers to such an extremely complex issue,” said England. “No matter how many models they wave in the air and no matter how dire their predictions about our impending doom, they don’t know.”

Happer said there are more important things to focus on than a global crisis that may not even exist. “I regret that the climate change issue has become confused with serious problems like secure energy supplies, protecting our environment and figuring out where future generations will get energy supplies after we have burned all the fossil fuel we can find,” said Happer. “We should not confuse these laudable goals with hysterics about carbon footprints.”

England said controlling climate is not something the human race can accomplish with ease. “The following numbers are approximate,” said England. “The Earth spins at the equator at 1,038 mph; the Earth moves around the sun at 67,000 mph; our solar system travels around our galaxy at 558,000 mph and our galaxy is moving through the universe at 666,000 mph. So, right now you may be moving at 1,292,000 mph, and Washington, D.C., says they’re going to control our climate. I don’t think so.”

SOURCE




When the Inmates are in Charge

By Alan Caruba

If you ever wondered what it would be like if seriously deranged people were close to the seat of power in America, you can stop wondering. In January, the Competitive Enterprise Institute issued a three-page memorandum. William Yeatman, the author of the memorandum, had serious concerns about the nomination of Dr. John P. Holdren to be the White House Science Adviser. This position heads the Office of Science and Technology Policy which, in official lingo, “serves as a source of scientific and technological analysis and judgment for the President with respect to major policies, plans and programs of the Federal Government.”

“John Holdren’s 40-year record of outlandish scientific assertions, consistently wrong predictions, and dangerous public policy choices make him unfit to serve as White House Science Adviser,” warned Yeatman.

Just how crazy is Holdren? On April 8, according to the Associated Press, Holdren said that “global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth’s air.” Holdren suggested that one option includes “shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays.”

The last time anything of this nature was discussed, it was called “a nuclear winter” in which the debris from a nuclear war would fill the atmosphere and keep the Sun’s warming and nourishing rays from getting through.

According to Holdren, “It’s got to be looked at. We don’t have the luxury of taking any approach off the table.” Holdren believes that the Earth is in the grip of global warming, but the difference between belief and science is that the latter demands proof. Take, for example, the data our weather satellites have been sending back since 1998 all of which points to a cooling Earth.

Twice during the interview, Holdren compared global warming to being “in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in a fog.” The truth, however, is that Holdren is a genuine cuckoo who probably checks under the bed every night to make sure the bogyman isn’t there.

Yeatman described him more charitably as a “chronic alarmist”, citing just a few of his paranoid fantasies. In 1971, Holdren predicted that “some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the century.” We are now safely into a new century and the only catastrophe is the Obama administration.

The really neat thing about making catastrophic predictions is that they always take place way into a future. In 1986, Holdren was predicting that global warming would cause the deaths of one billion people by 2020. This is eight years beyond 2012 when devotees of the ancient Mayan calendar predict the end of the world will occur. Neither are likely to occur.

In 1998 Holdren warned that we just can’t go on using energy fuels like oil, natural gas, and coal that represent nearly one hundred percent of everything we and everyone else uses now and will into the future. These days we hear President Obama blathering away about “clean energy”, but there is reality and there is the increasingly weird world of the White House.

In a recent article, Robert Bryce, one of the nation’s leading authorities on energy, pointed out that “Oil now provides nearly 40 percent of America’s total primary energy use. It also provides nearly all of the energy needed for the transportation sector. Coal and natural gas together provide about 50 percent of America’s primary needs.”

That leaves “clean energy”, solar and wind power, “but together,” Bryce notes, “these sources currently provide about 0.16 percent of Americans total needs.” It should also be pointed out that solar, wind, and ethanol production would not exist were it not for huge government subsidies and mandates for their use.

Both President Obama and Holdren think “clean energy” should receive billions of dollars while the White House does everything in its power to destroy the nation’s oil and coal industries.

The Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, recently said that windmills off the East Coast “could generate one million megawatts of power, roughly the equivalent of 3,000 medium coal-fired power plants, or nearly five times the number of coal plants now in the United States.”

The reality, however, is that there aren’t 3,000 coal fired plants operating. There isn’t even half that number. The Institute for Energy Research estimates that, to achieve Salazar’s insane goal, there would have to be 309,587 giant 3.15 megawatt wind turbines spread over 1,800 miles of coastline or about 172 turbines per mile of coastline. And, of course, the wind would have to blow 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Are these people crazy? You bet! Are the inmates in charge of the asylum? Yes, indeed.

They aren’t the only ones. The American Meteorological Society and several other otherwise respected science groups have completely lost their wits. The AMS wants to explore “geoengineering’s potential to understand its limits and to avoid rash deployment.”

Geoengineering? Remember that Star Trek movie that featured the “Genesis” machine that could convert a dead planet into one with grass and trees, rivers and oceans? When the AMS starts talking about geoengineering, it is strictly into cloud cuckoo land.

Absolutely nothing humans can or should do to mess with the unimaginably huge forces that determine the Earth’s atmosphere should even be contemplated. It is insane! It’s beyond science fiction. It is global genocide. Holdren has been urging “population control measures” since the 1960s.

In 1969, Holdren wrote that it was necessary “to convince society and its leaders that there is no alternative but the cessation of our irresponsible, all-demanding, and all-consuming population growth.” This is another way of saying that there are too many people sharing the planet with Holdren and he has been thinking about that “problem” for a very long time.

So have others in the Obama White House and, in terms of energy use, their “solution” is to make energy so expensive that people will stop driving, starting using mass transit, or just telecommute without going anywhere ever again. Forget about air conditioning and other aspects of modern life.

They intend to achieve this by scaring everyone with global warming talk and by claiming carbon dioxide is a “pollutant”. Then they intend to have the Environmental Protection Agency regulate it. Then they will tax it in the form of cap-and-trade “carbon credits” that must be purchased by all forms of industry and business in America. The costs will be passed along to consumers.

Billions would flow to a government that already is spending trillions in a mad scheme to fix the financial crisis.

What ever happened to just doing nothing? Sometimes when there is no problem, doing nothing is the most brilliant answer. There is no global warming. And, left alone, the financial crisis would correct itself in time. Everything the government is currently doing was tried in the 1930s and it just prolonged the Depression and made it worse!

In the meantime, loonies like Dr. John Holdren will be whispering into Obama’s ear about “shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays.”

SOURCE




What's the Carbon Footprint of a Pizza?

For President Obama, quite a lot higher than the average American.

When you're the president of the United States, only the best pizza will do - even if that means flying a chef 860 miles. Chris Sommers, 33, jetted into Washington from St Louis, Missouri, on Thursday with a suitcase of dough, cheese and pans to to prepare food for the Obamas and their staff.

He had apparently been handpicked after the President had tasted his pizzas on the campaign trail last autumn.

'It's surreal, it's a huge honour,' said Mr Sommers, who owns Pi restaurant in St Louis. 'It will be a casual lunch and hopefully we'll have a chance to say hello to the president.'

Mr Somers was accompanied by this business parnter Ryan Mangilardo who will help prepare the dinner for 140 this evening. It will feature his signature dishes - ten deep dish and ten thin crust creations.

He is also planning a pizza especially for the president - the Hyde Park topped with chicken and hot sauce.

Exit question: Who paid for the trip and how is this different than CEOs flying to D.C. on their private jets for hearings?

SOURCE




Obama trying to stop investment in conventional sources of power

Hello blackouts up ahead!

Businesses must not sink money into high-carbon infrastructure unless they are willing to lose their investments within a few years, the US lead negotiator on climate change has warned.

In the Obama administration’s starkest rebuke yet to industry over global warming, Todd Stern, special envoy for climate change at the state department, said “high-carbon goods and services will become untenable” as the world negotiates a new agreement to cut carbon emissions.

Investors should take note, he warned, that high emissions must be curbed, which would hurt businesses that failed to embark now on a low-carbon path. “How good will the business judgment of companies that make high-carbon choices now look in five, 10, 20 years, when it becomes clear that heavily polluting infrastructure has become deadly and must be phased out before the end of its useful life?”

Companies investing in such goods and services – such as coal-fired power plants and gas-guzzling cars – could start to incur heavy economic penalties for their greenhouse gas output. These could include buying carbon permits under a US cap-and-trade system, for which the administration of President Barack Obama is currently attempting to gather support in Congress.

If this stalls, other systems for pricing companies’ carbon output could be brought into play, including regulations on efficiency for cars, buildings and electrical equipment; agreements by which the big emitters in certain sectors are bound to tighten emissions limits; or tax rises.

Cap-and-trade is the White House’s favoured route, and Mr Stern noted that an international market in carbon would “doubtless” have to be part of a new global climate settlement. But he said it was too early to say which other instruments and incentives could be used. “There will need to be a lot of creative thinking, a lot of interaction with the private sector,” he said.

Mr Stern is attending talks in Bonn on a climate change treaty to replace the Kyoto protocol when its current provisions expire in 2012. The talks are the first at which the US has participated as an enthusiastic supporter of a successor.

Mr Stern, in an interview with the Financial Times, said a new treaty – which he insisted could be negotiated this year, at a United Nations climate change meeting in Copenhagen in December – must include developing countries. Under the 1997 Kyoto protocol, emerging economies such as China and India were spared the obligation to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. But their output has grown rapidly since, with China overtaking the US as the world’s biggest emitter.

Mr Stern said the main developing countries would need to take steps to curb the growth of emissions, though this could fall short of absolute cuts. “Exactly what form those [commitments] take is unclear, but there will need to be substantial action on the part of leading developing countries if we are going to have any chance of getting in the vicinity of what the science says we need to do,” he said.

One of the possible breaking points for any agreement is over financing. Poor countries want the rich world to commit to providing aid for them to cut their emissions. But so far rich countries have failed to come up with any figures, or a mechanism for achieving the large finance flows necessary.

Mr Stern said: “We are in the middle of trying to work through how a financing package might be constructed ... There might be some that comes from public monies, appropriated monies, but I do not think that will be the core of it. We will doubtless need to use carbon markets in one fashion or another.”

Loan guarantees to private sector companies might be another alternative, he said.

SOURCE




FIDEL CASTRO IS A WARMIST!

Can't say I'm surprised

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro says that climate change is more serious than the international economic crisis that is the main subject of Thursday's G-20 summit in London. "The financial crisis is not the only problem. There's another worse one, because it has to do not with the means of production and distribution but with our very existence. I'm referring to climate change. Both are here and will be discussed simultaneously," Castro said in the latest of his commentaries on current events.

In his column, he analyzed the prospects for the G-20 summit and the imminent negotiations about climate change in Bonn, with quotes from international news agencies and the media in other countries, after in an earlier article he lamented the fact that the Cuban media - all under state control - were neglecting the London conference....

Regarding climate change, Castro recalled that at the Bonn meeting, which will begin on Sunday, Washington will announce a new position and U.S. President Barack Obama has called a forum on energy and the climate for the end of the month.

"Strong contradictions exist regarding the contribution that the economies should make," Castro said, referring to arguments between the rich world and emerging powers such as China and India, whose leaders say the brunt of the cost of reducing greenhouse emissions should be borne by Europe and the United States. He added that while the Antarctic ice cap is melting at a faster rate, the skeptics are crying that "the scientists are exaggerating" and continue to dream "such feeble hopes."

More HERE




Australia: Kids' competition 'is climate change propaganda'

LIBERAL Senator Cory Bernardi has accused Climate Change Minister Penny Wong of pushing "extreme propaganda" on the nation's schoolchildren. Senator Bernardi, who does not disguise his view that man-made climate change is a myth, has attacked a new climate change awareness competition for schoolchildren launched by Senator Wong yesterday.

The competition "Think Climate, Think Change," asks students in years 3 to 9 to use short stories, poems and art work to answer the question "what does climate change mean to me?" First prize is a trip for two to Canberra (the winner and a parent), a Nintendo Wii console, sports kit and Wii Fit pack, and books for the winner's school.

Senator Bernardi slammed the competition. "Encouraging children to look after the environment is laudable aim but this seems to have more in common with the ministry of propaganda than the balanced education of our children," he told AdelaideNow.

"One can only guess that the only children eligible to win this competition will be those who conform to the Rudd Government and Minister Wong's extreme political propaganda about climate change.

"I doubt the competition materials will include any discussion of how the Rudd Government ETS (emissions trading scheme) will export Australian industry overseas and result in hundreds of thousands of job losses for Australian workers."

Ms Wong said the competition came about because children are naturally concerned about the environment and their future. "Schoolchildren from all over Australia have written to me asking about climate change and sharing their ideas," she said. "Young Australians are very well informed when it comes to the issue of climate change - they understand that we need to take action now."

The national competition will open on Tuesday April 24 and close two months later on June 24. Senator Wong said the winner would be invited to pass on their ideas to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and other senior ministers when they are flown to Canberra.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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12 April, 2009

Nuclear Engineering Prof. Takes on Global Warming Alarmism

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution stunned those of us here at the Heartland Institute April 5 when it published a letter from Heartland friend James Rust, a retired Georgia Tech nuclear engineering professor with more than 50 years experience teaching and research in areas related to energy policy.

In running Jim’s letter, the AJC opened its door just a crack to allow a dissenting voice to its steady drumbeat of global-warming alarmism. Jim’s letter was so remarkable, for its brevity as well as its ability to slip by the AJC censors, that we reprint it here in full:

Dear Editor:

Sunday, March 29 AJC’s Other Opinions page (A19) allowed three quarters of the page to writings of climate alarmist journalists Thomas Friedman ("Mother Nature needs a rescue package") and Chris Mooney ("Follow the lead of sciences: Don’t play loose with facts"). Both writers maintain there is overwhelming scientific consensus carbon dioxide from human activity is producing catastrophic global warming (AGW). Thus we need to rapidly reduce use of fossil fuels by adopting alternative energy sources such as wind and solar.

There is no consensus on AGW. The computer models used to predict global warming can not duplicate actual conditions in the atmosphere. While carbon dioxide has been increasing at the rate of about one part per million annually the past century, global temperatures have risen, fallen, risen, and now falling the past ten years. Before rushing into wind and solar energy as replacements for fossil fuels, it might be prudent to look at the experience Great Britain is having with wind energy. Ultimately we probably will need to replace fossil fuels with practical alternatives. But don’t use AGW as an excuse to add further ruin to our economy by rushing into energy technologies that are impractical and uneconomical.

SOURCE




The Real Climate Deniers

For at least a decade, intimately connected with energy use, have been claims on climate change. Richard Lindzen, arguably the world's most renowned climate scientist, describes our understanding of the science of climate as "primitive." Yet many in the media persist in treating alarmist "climate experts" as "all-knowing." But then the same media have a long history of taking up "end is nigh" scaremongering. It's good for ratings. We have had a litany of warnings that "billions could die" when AIDS, Avian flu, SARS, Ebola, mad cow disease, the millennium bug -- the list is endless -- hit the headlines. When they didn't of course, media alarmists shrugged, claimed they "simply report the facts" and moved on to warn about the next looming disaster.

Since man set foot on the earth, however, nothing has quite gripped the angst-ridden imagination like the weather gods visiting their fury at human behavior and life, so much connected with the use of fossil fuel energy. Media editors know this. Where once we banished such "end is nigh" eccentrics to the limits of society, today, they are fêted for spinning prediction as science and conducting publicly funded research to "save the planet." Their messages are aided by apocalyptic video game scenarios passing for media news reports.

Nowhere has this been thrown into more graphic relief than in two international climate conferences held in March this year. The "expert" conclusions of each could not have been more starkly divergent. But it is in the aims, nature and public pronouncements of each conference that we discern where the real science of climate understanding lays, and thus who are the real "climate deniers." All of which has profound implications for the future of energy, energy policy and energy investment.

The Alarmist Conference

The climate alarmist conference met in Copenhagen March 10-12 and was attended by over 2,000 activists, mostly non-scientists. It was billed as an "emergency summit" ahead of next December's UN global climate summit to be held in the same city. Such is the panic among climate/political activists that world governments will use the economic crisis as an excuse to avoid committing to binding national carbon targets come December, it was felt vital to up the political ante. If you thought that would mean scientists pointing to the latest accruing scientific evidence of impending disaster, however, you would be wrong. Far from presenting any new (or old) actual evidence, the conference majored on politicians doling out the media's headlines based on the latest apocalyptic computer-modeled predictions.

The conference duly warned of even higher sea levels and even higher global temperatures all presaging even greater catastrophes. Apparently warnings of temperature rises of 2 to 3 degrees C. clearly were not shocking us enough. Now they could be as high as 4 or 5 degrees C. The London Times reported the conference as claiming the "ice sheets are melting" and that increased global warming would lead to other "impacts," including more hurricanes, floods, and starvation.And just to show how previous prevarication by world leaders has already cost us, we learned that "two years ago it was widely thought that holding temperature increases to a maximum of 2C was achievable if governments made the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050. It is now recognised that an 80 percent cut is needed."

To sum up, the alarmist conference in Copenhagen was not about science, it was about politics and prophecy. For the actual science, including the latest scientific evidence and trends, observers in Copenhagen would have had to travel to New York.

The Non-Alarmist Conference

Seven hundred climate "skeptics," many of them scientists, including Richard Lindzen of MIT, attended the Second International Conference on Climate Change, "Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis?" The conference sponsored by the Heartland Institute, was held in New York on March 8-10. This was a wholly different kind of affair. It focused on the empirical science of climate, the latest scientific data and climate trends. As such, in dealing with the gritty reality of climate science, it duly got almost zero mass media coverage. Most journalists, it seems, do not like dealing with real science and allaying public scares is just bad for business.

In complete contrast to Copenhagen, the New York conference was addressed by a who's who of distinguished climate scientists. As well as hearing from Professor Lindzen, the conference was addressed by Professor Syun-Ichi Akasofu, former director of the International Arctic Research Center, Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute, and Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, to name but a few. These eminent scientists are the very ones the media likes to smear as "crackpots" and "climate deniers." What the conference received was the fruit of real research and study that showed sea levels, far from experiencing dramatic rise, are seeing the same level of rise they have been seeing for over 200 years. Professor S. Fred Singer, highlighting the claim of one alarmist who warned a rise of even 18 cm over a century would be "catastrophic," pointed out that the gentleman concerned is "apparently unaware that 18cm a century is the ongoing rate of rise -- which implies no additional rise in sea levels. In other words, the human influence is zero."

Alarmist claims over the "melting of the Western Antarctic ice sheet" also got short shrift as it was revealed the long-term melting of the Western ice sheet has been known about for decades. Far more significant was the data that confirmed how the Antarctic is not melting at all except for one tiny corner, the Antarctic Peninsula. The lack of scientific evidence that global ice was in meltdown was tied in with the fact that key computer-modeled temperature predictions -- upon which the whole alarmist edifice stands -- assume a linear rise in temperatures as carbon emissions rise. But such computer predictions were shown to have proven consistently and hopelessly inept. Far from following the linear rise anticipated by the alarmists, the actual satellite-measured global temperature data reveals that global temperatures have flattened out in recent years and, more recently, dropped. On the plain scientific data, if the present trend continues, the world will in fact be 1.1 degree C. cooler by 2100. In short, the world's ice is not in meltdown.

Similarly, claims that hurricane activity was rising was refuted by the scientific data showing hurricane activity, currently, is at a 30-year low. Much more could be said, but reading the New York presentations (linked below) one can only be impressed by the standard of empirical scientific study and debate and, in Copenhagen, the distinct lack of it. The juxtaposition of these two conferences is thus iconic of the entire climate debate -- or rather the mass media's collusive and shameful closing down of it. Unfortunately, many political leaders have simply bought the media-dominating alarmist line.

Vaclav Klaus, keynote speaker at the New York conference and current president of the European Union, lamented that, "the minds of world leaders are firmly shut to anything but the fantasies of the scaremongers." Yet it's those same leaders who are about to consider diverting vast economic and energy resources at the current G20 and at December's "Kyoto II." Frightening, when you consider they will do so based on an agenda propagated by a highly anti-intellectual, exclusively prophetic, anti-science 'faith' movement -- the real climate deniers.

SOURCE




NASA: Clean-air regs, not CO2, are melting the ice cap

Acid-rain countermeasures could drown London

New research from NASA suggests that the Arctic warming trend seen in recent decades has indeed resulted from human activities: but not, as is widely assumed at present, those leading to carbon dioxide emissions. Rather, Arctic warming has been caused in large part by laws introduced to improve air quality and fight acid rain.

Dr Drew Shindell of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies has led a new study which indicates that much of the general upward trend in temperatures since the 1970s - particularly in the Arctic - may have resulted from changes in levels of solid "aerosol" particles in the atmosphere, rather than elevated CO2. Arctic temperatures are of particular concern to those worried about the effects of global warming, as a melting of the ice cap could lead to disastrous rises in sea level - of a sort which might burst the Thames Barrier and flood London, for instance.



Shindell's research indicates that, ironically, much of the rise in polar temperature seen over the last few decades may have resulted from US and European restrictions on sulphur emissions. According to NASA:

Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50 percent. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates.

Meanwhile, levels of black-carbon aerosols (soot, in other words) have been rising, largely driven by greater industrialisation in Asia. Soot, rather than reflecting heat as sulphates do, traps solar energy in the atmosphere and warms things up.

The Arctic is especially subject to aerosol effects, says Shindell, because the planet's main industrialised areas are all in the northern hemisphere and because there's not much precipitation to wash the air clean.

"Right now, in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and in the Arctic, the impact of aerosols is just as strong as that of the greenhouse gases," says Shindell.

SOURCE




Science by opinion poll

Global warming is likely to overshoot a 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) rise seen by the European Union and many developing nations as a trigger for "dangerous" change, a Reuters poll of scientists showed on Tuesday.

Nine of 11 experts, who were among authors of the final summary by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 (IPCC), also said the evidence that mankind was to blame for climate change had grown stronger in the past two years.

Giving personal views of recent research, most projected on average a faster melt of summer ice in the Arctic and a quicker rise in sea levels than estimated in the 2007 report, the most authoritative overview to date drawing on work by 2,500 experts. "A lot of the impacts we're seeing are running ahead of our expectations," said William Hare of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Ten of 11 experts said it was at best "unlikely" -- or less than a one-third chance -- that the world would manage to limit warming to a 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) rise above pre-industrial levels. "Scientifically it can be done. But it's unlikely given the level of political will," said Salemeel Huq at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London.

And David Karoly, of the University of Melbourne, said the world was "very unlikely" to reach the goal. "The concentration of long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is already enough to cause warming of more than 2C above pre-industrial levels, and we are continuing to emit more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere," he said.

SOURCE




Britain: Fined £75, the man who pinned up a sign and 'harmed a living tree'



After losing two of his prized paintings, Anton Cataldo decided to make a direct appeal to the public. The 28-year-old artist, who specialises in pet portraits, made posters of his missing paintings and pinned them to half a dozen trees in his local park. He included his phone number and email address as well as the offer of a £100 reward for their safe return.

But the only message he received was from a council official who took exception to Mr Cataldo's use of the local fauna - and fined him £75 for harming the 'living' trees. The email said the council had been made aware of the artist's decision to search for his lost property and said: 'Some of these posters had been stapled to trees. You appear to have little understanding that trees are living things. 'Wounding the bark of a tree in any way can lead to attack by airborne fungal spores which, in the worst-case scenario, could lead to the loss of the tree.'

The email, from a Brighton and Hove City Council enforcement officer, went on to inform Mr Cataldo that while several of his posters had already been taken down by the council, he should make every effort to remove the rest himself. It read: 'Whilst we accept that the subject matter of these posters has sentimental value to you, we simply can not allow every person who loses property to resort to the kind of actions as taken by yourself. 'The city council will, on occasions, permit residents or charities to attach posters to its property in cases, for example, where pets go missing or to raise funds, but, as I have said, not for the purpose of trying to locate lost property.' The email ended: 'We genuinely hope that the paintings are found and returned to yourself.'

Mr Cataldo, a Brighton resident whose artistic endeavours supplement his income as a part-time carer, painted the portraits of his parents' labradors, Oscar and Sam, last October and said they had added sentimental value after 17-year-old Sam later died. He then gave the 8in by 12in wood-framed pictures to his parents - Mario, a 56-year-old IT consultant, and Dwenda, 58 - to put up in their home in Uckfield, East Sussex. He later borrowed them to take to a job interview as part of his portfolio. It was on his return that they went missing.

He said: 'I put them on my car roof while I unlocked the door outside my studio in Brighton but then drove off with them still on the roof. 'I feel really stupid. The paintings obviously slid off on the way to my parents house about 20 miles away but there is no way of knowing where. I did everything I could think of to find them. I put adverts on websites, left flyers in pubs and put up posters. I really had no idea I might be doing anything wrong.

'I found the council email quite patronising. I'm not an expert but I doubt very much that a staple could cause so much damage to a tree that it would actually die.' He continued: 'I'm quite a considerate person and I would never knowingly do anything to harm a tree. I didn't realise there was a law about putting posters up, as you often see them around.

Mr Cataldo complained to the council about the fine, which has since been cancelled. A council spokesman said: 'This was probably a case of an officer who was a little bit over-zealous.'

SOURCE




Failure to get connected means "renewable" British electricity projects may never be turned on

Energy companies are having to shelve projects that would help Britain to meet its 2020 renewables target because they cannot connect them to the national grid. With waits of several years, and in one case almost a decade, before connections can be built, several wind farm projects might have to be put in abeyance.

Delays for land-based turbines caused by grid connection dates are a longstanding grievance of the on-shore wind industry and now threaten to affect the off-shore sector. To avoid a repeat of the delays on land the national grid has called for the off-shore sector to be split into regions to allow for a strategic approach. Under the present system a tender to connect off-shore wind farms is put out for each project, which executives at National Grid plc believe puts costs up and discourages potential investors.

Dividing the off-shore developments into regions would allow for strategic planning that could consider which part of the seas to concentrate on rather than skip back and forth between individual projects hundreds of miles apart. “There is a lack of joined-up thinking, particularly in the current economic climate,” Stewart Larque, of National Grid, said. “Having transmission regions would allow better economies of scale, which is good in the current climate for raising financing. It is generally a much better way to ensure we are best placed to meet the country’s renewables targets.”

Attempts are also under way to introduce a strategic approach on land after pressure from renewable energy companies frustrated at costly delays. Talks between National Grid, renewables companies, the Government and the regulator have identified several wind farm projects that could have their grid connection dates brought forward. Among them is a scheme by Renewable Energy Systems to build 21 wind turbines at Drummuire, Caithness, which has been given a grid connection date of 2016 despite having been given planning permission in 2005.

Richard Ford, grid connections manager for RES, is awaiting a final decision but said it appeared that some progress was being made. Nevertheless, another project that the company is planning in Scotland has been given a connection date of 2018 and it is thought likely that it will slip back to at least 2020. Mr Ford said: “If we really believe there is no prospect of better, whether or not we get planning approaval, we have to question whether it is appropriate to put it through planning.”

National Grid is responsible for organising grid connections and for deciding when they can be put in. Delays inherent in the planning system have been among the biggest problems, with the connections being subject to the same rules as the projects, often attracting intense local opposition.

SOURCE

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11 April, 2009

"Climate Change Leads To Major Decrease In Carbon Dioxide Storage"

Decode of the politically correct presentation below follows the article

The North Atlantic Ocean is one of the Earth’s tools to offset natural carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, the ‘carbon sink’ in the North Atlantic is the primary gate for carbon dioxide (CO2) entering the global ocean and stores it for about 1500 years. The oceans have removed nearly 30 per cent of anthropogenic (man-made) emissions over the last 250 years. However, several recent studies show a dramatic decline in the North Atlantic Ocean's carbon sink.

Concerned by this decline, a group of international scientists, including Helmuth Thomas, professor of oceanography at Dalhousie University, spent the last two years investigating the world’s largest carbon sink. They weren’t sure what was causing the decrease, whether it was man-made or natural reasons. “There were massive changes in the coastal carbon cycle, and it was similar throughout the ocean,” says Dr. Thomas, who wrote about the study in Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

Recent observational studies found that the North Atlantic carbon uptake has decreased by 50 per cent over the last ten years. While many are quick to blame anthropogenic climate change, Dr. Thomas and his colleagues found different results.

They believe the decrease is a natural phenomenon as a result of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which causes weather patterns to change. “The next phase should once again increase in carbon uptake,” says Dr. Thomas. These natural phenomenons have the potential to mask the effects of anthropogenic climate change.

These findings are crucial in understanding how this natural system is reacting to climate change and dealing with increased man-made carbon emissions. Dr. Thomas says more research must be done; including enhanced observational efforts and developing models for analysis to fully understand the long-term effects, such as how the oceanic sink will deal with increased carbon emissions from humans. However, he hopes the study, reported on in the March edition of Nature, will help all climate change scientists with their research.

“This research is the foundation for research in ocean acidification which has implications on marine life and corals,” explains Dr. Thomas. He also cautions against misinterpreting the findings. “There are natural systems that deal with and react to natural climate change. We have to understand these to assess how anthropogenic climate change is affecting them.”

SOURCE

A short analysis of the above article received by email from Richard S. Courtney [richardscourtney@aol.com]

Firstly, the title could be misleading to those who do not read the text. The title says, 'Climate Change Leads to Major Decrease in CO2 Storage'. But the article reports that the climate changes and the decreased CO2 storage are natural, thus not anthropogenic. Specifically, it says:

“There were massive changes in the coastal carbon cycle, and it was similar throughout the ocean,” says Dr. Thomas, who wrote about the study in Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

Recent observational studies found that the North Atlantic carbon uptake has decreased by 50 per cent over the last ten years. While many are quick to blame anthropogenic climate change, Dr. Thomas and his colleagues found different results.

They believe the decrease is a natural phenomenon as a result of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which causes weather patterns to change."

The article makes PC 'nods' towards man-made emissions and their effects when it says: "These findings are crucial in understanding how this natural system is reacting to climate change and dealing with increased man-made carbon emissions." And "He also cautions against misinterpreting the findings. “There are natural systems that deal with and react to natural climate change. We have to understand these to assess how anthropogenic climate change is affecting them.”

But these 'nods' are not relevant to the findings. The findings are that a significant part - and possibly all - of the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration over the last ten years is a result of changed ocean chemistry induced by variation of the NAO.

These findings are consistent with my view - repeatedly stated - that the recent rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is a result of natural variation to the chemical composition of the ocean surface layer. In my view the carbon cycle is constantly seeking equilibrium, and I strongly assert that the IPCC uses a model of the carbon cycle that is wrong because it assumes the carbon cycle acts like a simple plumbing system that has fixed 'sources', 'sinks' and flows. The findings of Thomas et al. support my view and are yet more strong evidence that the IPCC model is wrong.




Medieval Warm Period rediscovered

I have already commented on this study but the presentation below is much more detailed -- JR

A recent article in the journal Science has provided a new, detailed climate record for the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), also know as the Medieval Warm Period. It was the most recent pre-industrial warm period, noted in Europe and elsewhere around the globe. The researchers present a 947-year-long multi-decadal North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) reconstruction and find a persistent positive NAO during the MCA. The interesting thing is that the MCA had basically been removed from the climate record by Michael Mann's infamous “hockey stick” history graph that was adopted by the IPCC a decade ago.

More interesting, Trouet et al., based their work in part on a tree-ring–based drought reconstruction for Morocco (1049–2002) and a millennial-length speleothem-based precipitation proxy for Scotland (900–1993), a methodology similar to Mann's work. Unlike Mann, these researchers found significant climate warming during the MCA. According to the report: “The Morocco and Scotland reconstructions contain substantial multi-decadal variability that is characterized by antiphase oscillatory behavior over the last millennium.” Their reconstruction can be seen in the figure from the article seen below.



The figure shows a proxy-derived long-term NAO reconstruction. (Top) Reconstructed winter precipitation for Scotland and February-to-June Palmer Drought Severity Index for Morocco. Records were normalized over the common period (1049–1995) and smoothed with the use of a 30-year cubic spline. The bottom graph shows a winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) reconstruction (black curve). The gray area is the estimated uncertainty. The researchers' conclusions?

The persistent positive phase reconstructed for the MCA appears to be associated with prevailing La Niña–like conditions possibly initiated by enhanced solar irradiance and/or reduced volcanic activity and amplified and prolonged by enhanced AMOC. The relaxation from this particular ocean-atmosphere state into the LIA appears to be globally contemporaneous and suggests a notable and persistent reorganization of large-scale oceanic and atmospheric circulation patterns.

Here AMOC stands for the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (i.e. the ocean conveyer belt) and LIA for Little Ice Age, the period of global cooling that followed the Medeival Warm Period and lasted until the mid 1800s. What they are saying is that both the MCA and the LIA were real and had identifiable root causes. This result stands in stark contrast with the hocky stick result where the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age almost disappeared, replaced by a largely benign, slight cooling trend that lasted until ~1900.



This is just the latest in a series of reports that quietly contradict some of the more outlandish untruths spread by the anthropogenic global warming extremists of the IPCC. Another recent Science article, by Brierly et al., addresses the Pliocene warm interval, a period of warm climate conditions that preceded the current Pleistocene Ice Age. Occurring some 4 million years ago, the Pliocene warm interval has been difficult to explain.

The early Pliocene epoch from 5.3 to about 3 million years ago was much warmer than today. The early Pliocene climate was very much like preindustrial conditions during the Holocene (our current interglacial warm period). Similarities include the amount of solar radiation Earth received, the concentration of atmospheric CO₂, and a nearly identical geographic environment. But there were also significant differences. For example, there was no permanent ice sheet in the Northern Hemisphere, and global sea level was 80 feet (25 m) higher. Why is our climate today so different? Quoting from the article:

Our reconstruction shows that the meridional temperature gradient between the equator and subtropics was greatly reduced, implying a vast poleward expansion of the ocean tropical warm pool. Corroborating evidence indicates that the Pacific temperature contrast between the equator and 32°N has evolved from ~2°C 4 million years ago to ~8°C today. The meridional warm pool expansion evidently had enormous impacts on the Pliocene climate, including a slowdown of the atmospheric Hadley circulation and El Niño–like conditions in the equatorial region. Ultimately, sustaining a climate state with weak tropical sea surface temperature gradients may require additional mechanisms of ocean heat uptake (such as enhanced ocean vertical mixing).

This says that the difference in ocean temperatures between the equator and higher latitudes is much more pronounced today. The tropics were not warmer but the temperate zones were. Because of this, the researchers found a significant decrease in the heat transport by the atmosphere, along with an implied increase in ocean heat transport. This result contradicts studies using ocean general circulation models (GCM) with low vertical diffusion. Such models, heavily used by climate scientists to try and predict the future course of global warming, suggest that a permanent El Niño should be associated with reduced heat transport by the ocean. When simulating Earth's climate with current GCM, the ocean typically gains a large amount of heat over the tropical Pacific cold tongue.



The region of the tropical Pacific that scientists call the “equatorial cold tongue,” is a band of cool water that extends along the equator from the coast of South America to the central Pacific Ocean. Departures from average of sea surface temperatures in this region are critically important in determining major shifts in the pattern of tropical rainfall, which influence the jet streams and patterns of temperature and precipitation around the world. Attempts to simulate the Pliocene climate with coupled atmosphere-ocean GCM have not succeeded in replicating the collapse of the sea surface temperature (SST) gradient along the equator, possibly because of this issue.

In summary the researchers conclude: “[I]t may be necessary to incorporate additional mechanisms for increased ocean heat uptake when simulating the early Pliocene climate and, potentially, the response of the tropics to contemporary global warming. The enormous impacts of changes in the warm pool (such as shifts in global precipitation patterns and cloud cover), as well as tentative evidence that the tropical belt has been expanding poleward over the past few decades, make our findings especially relevant to current discussions about global warming.”

The bottom line? Once again the climate models used by the IPCC and other climate catastrophists are shown to be inaccurate, incomplete and not up to the job of predicting future climatic conditions. What does the IPCC have to say about all of this? Here is a quote from Paleoclimate, chapter 6 of the 2007 IPCC report:

Palaeoclimate science has made significant advances since the 1970s, when a primary focus was on the origin of the ice ages, the possibility of an imminent future ice age, and the first explorations of the so-called Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period. Even in the first IPCC assessment (IPCC, 1990), many climatic variations prior to the instrumental record were not that well known or understood. Fifteen years later, understanding is much improved, more quantitative and better integrated with respect to observations and modelling.

Meaning all of the earlier IPCC predictions were wrong because they really didn't know what they were doing. Of course that didn't prevent them from predicting a coming climate catastrophe with great confidence. The thing that they don't tell us is that their current “improved” predictions, which are also based on computer models, simply can not be considered accurate either. If the Holocene truly marks the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age and a return to the conditions that prevailed during the Pliocene, parking your SUV and buying carbon credits won't do a thing to stop it.

On the bright side, ocean temperatures were much warmer then and distributed differently than today, so climate change still has a way to go before real global warming kicks in. The eventual rise in sea level will play havoc with oceanfront property around the world, but that will happen if the ice age is over regardless of what we mortals do. If the Pleistocene hasn't come to an end the ice will eventually return and all the current “runaway global warming” will only be a fondly remembered historical age—much like the Medieval Warm Period.

As always, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical.

SOURCE




Cow farts may REDUCE "greenhouse" gases

By Gerrit J. van der Lingen, geologist/paleoclimatologist, Climate Change Consultant, Geoscience Research and Investigations, New Zealand

I hope that other readers can make sense of Hocking's letter, because, frankly, I can't. My original article argued that cattle and sheep do not contribute to an increase in greenhouse gases but, to the contrary, are carbon sinks. Hocking seems to agree with most of what I am saying. So what is he arguing about?

New Zealand so far is the only country that wants to include agriculture in an emissions trading scheme. This contrasts with the United States, where farmers can claim carbon credits from growing grass (which was one of the elements of the carbon loop in figure 1 in my original article-see above).

From reading Hocking's two letters, he seems to believe in catastrophic man-made global warming. It is difficult to counter beliefs with factual arguments. However, there are a few points in Hocking's letter that warrant some comments.

Hocking uses some of the usual hoary old chestnuts trotted out by global warming alarmists against so-called climate sceptics. One is to cast aspersions on the credibility and qualifications of anyone who dares to doubt the apocalyptic climate dogma. Hocking queries whether I am a climate scientist. He even asks me to list my publication record. Apart from finding this rather insulting, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the subject of my original article. But I don't want to be a spoilsport.

I am willing to provide a list of my publications. I am even willing to provide a list of the many formal paleoclimate papers I have presented at national and international conferences. I am also willing to provide a list of climate-related papers published by members of my small paleoclimate research group (GRAINZ - Geoscience Research and Investigations New Zealand), which I have led for 11 years. To top it up, I also can provide a video I edited of a four-week expedition to the Tasman Sea and Southern Ocean on the German research ship SONNE in 1998, in which I and Dr Kerry Swanson, another GRAINZ scientist, were invited to take part. Two ocean sediment cores for paleoclimate research were collected for my research group in the Tasman Sea.

` I will do all that on one condition. As Hocking brought this up, he should first provide his own list of climate publications, plus similar lists for former US Vice-President Al Gore and for the Chairman of the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr Rajendra Pachauri (a railway engineer).

The other chestnut is the claim that (catastrophic) man-made climate change is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community. Nothing could be further from the truth. Recently, 31,478 American scientists, 9,029 PhDs among them, signed a petition to the US Congress. It stated, among others, that "there is no convincing evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate" (www.petitionproject.org).

Marc Morano of the US Congress has put together a list of more than 700 well-qualified scientists from all over the world who disagree with the IPCC hypothesis. They are all listed by name and qualifications. Earlier this month (March) the second International Conference on Climate Change was held in New York. Seven hundred scientists, economists and politicians attended, among them Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, present President of the EU, and author of the excellent book "Blue Planet in Green Shackles".

It was a conference of people critical of the alarmist man-made global warming hype. Several top climate scientists explained the lack of scientific evidence for catastrophic man-made global warming and explained that natural causes have always changed the climate and always will. Not surprisingly, the media totally ignored this conference.

Hocking asks on what I base my statement that the earth may continue to cool. That is based on two observations (not computer models). Point one: during the present transition from Solar Cycle 23 to 24 the sun has been unusually quiet. Most days there are few or no sunspots. We know from history that during the coldest periods of the Little Ice Age there were few or no sunspots. Based on analyses of past sunspot cycles some astrophysicists are predicting that we may be entering a cooling period that could last up to 30 years (see peer-reviewed paper by Clilverd et al, 2006: Predicting Solar Cycle 24 and beyond. Space Weather, vol. 4).

Point two: The oceanic Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has alternating warm and cool periods, lasting on average 20 to 30 years. After a 25-year warm period it has now entered a cooling period.

Finally, if I understand Hocking's letters correctly, he is in favour of carbon-taxing sheep and cattle farmers. Nice one.

SOURCE




Anti-Global-Warming Activist Marc Morano Gets Cold Shoulder in NYT

In the usual Leftist way, the NYT tries to discredit anti-global-warming activist Marc Morano, not by addressing any of his arguments but by abuse -- by linking him to some of their favorite villains: Exxon, the Swift Boat Veterans, and Richard Mellon Scaife

On Friday, reporter Leslie Kaufman profiled anti-climate-change activist Marc Morano in "Dissenter on Warming Expands His Campaign -- A Thorn in Climate Changers' Side." In contrast to Times profiles of liberal activists who want enormous political and lifestyle changes to combat global warming, Kaufman had nothing flattering to say about Morano. Mocking his personal appearance; Kaufman wrote that Morano "fills out his suit like a bulldog in a restraining jacket." She also hinted Morano is less than truthful about some of his confrontations, something the Times would never challenge a liberal on.

Marc Morano does not think global warming is anything to worry about, and he brags about his confrontations with those who do.

For example, Mr. Morano said he once spotted former Vice President Al Gore on an airplane returning from a climate conference in Bali. Mr. Gore was posing for photos with well-wishers, and Mr. Morano said he had asked if he, too, could have his picture taken with Mr. Gore.

He refused, Mr. Morano said.

“You attack me all the time,” Mr. Gore said, according to Mr. Morano.

“Yes, we do,” Mr. Morano said he had replied.

Mr. Gore’s office said Mr. Gore had no memory of the encounter. Mr. Morano does not care. He tells the story anyway.

Kaufman explained that Morano, once a spokesman for Sen. James Inhofe known for his e-mails to journalists debunking climate change, has started his own Web site, ClimateDepot.com.

In his work with Mr. Inhofe, Mr. Morano, whose thick build fills out his suit like a bulldog in a restraining jacket, did not hesitate to go after journalists he saw as biased. He promoted any study or statement that could be construed as cutting against the prevailing view that heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide contribute to global warming. Peter Dykstra, a former executive producer for CNN’s science, environment and technology unit, recently called him the “drum major of the denial parade.”

Mr. Morano may be best known for compiling a report listing hundreds of scientists whose work he says undermines the consensus on global warming.

But environmental advocates and bloggers say that many of those listed as scientists have no scientific credentials and that their work persuaded no one not already ideologically committed.

Kaufman uncovered Morano connections to two of the Times' favorite scary monsters: conservative cause financier Richard Mellon Scaife and energy titan Exxon.

Mr. Morano’s new Web site is being financed by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a nonprofit in Washington that advocates for free-market solutions to environmental issues....Public tax filings for 2003-7 -- the last five years for which documents are available -- show that the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the ExxonMobil Foundation and from foundations associated with the billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, a longtime financer of conservative causes best known for its efforts to have President Bill Clinton impeached.

Kaufman then tried to discredit Morano by linking him to another Times villain, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who questioned John Kerry's record in Vietnam during the 2004 presidential campaign.

He then jumped to Cyber News Service, where he was the first to publish accusations from Vietnam Swift-boat veterans that Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, then the Democratic presidential nominee, had glorified his war record. Many of the accusations later proved unfounded.

Actually, despite what Times reporters like Kate Zernike desperately want people to believe, none of the accusations made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were ever "proved unfounded." In fact, the Times and other media organizations never bothered to investigate the charges, simply assuming the Swifties were liars and Kerry was telling the truth, despite convincing evidence to the contrary -- for instance, Kerry wasn't in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968, as he had long claimed.

Kaufman attempted some shrug-worthy debunking of a couple of the names on the list. For instance, she argued that a weather director in Kentucky is listed as a meteorologist on the report, even though he has no degree in meteorology. As Noel Sheppard writes at NewsBusters even negative articles like this one are unacceptable for some purveyors of climate panic.

SOURCE




Hot Air on Wind Energy

Don't expect wind power to replace coal as the nation's main source of electric power, whatever Obama's interior secretary said.

Interior Secretary Salazar said that the amount of "developable" wind power off the East Coast could produce more energy than all the coal-fired electric plants in the U.S., and that wind's potential to replace most of our coal power "is a very real possibility." We find his claims to be wildly optimistic, to say the least.

It's true that government studies show there's enough offshore wind to generate far more than coal plans currently do – in theory. But converting that wind to enough electricity to replace what's now produced by coal won't happen anytime in the foreseeable future. The Interior Department itself made clear its offshore wind estimate was a gross figure of potential resources only, saying in a report that there are several obstacles to achieving that.

We calculate that converting wind to enough electricity to replace all U.S. coal-fired plants would require building 3,540 offshore wind farms as big as the world's largest, which is off the coast of Denmark. So far the U.S. has built exactly zero offshore wind farms.

Another government study last year concluded that to supply just 20 percent of U.S. electricity with wind turbines would require land-based equipment taking up an area "slightly less than the area of Rhode Island," plus scores of offshore wind farms.

A Salazar spokesman says the secretary did not mean to say that replacing coal power with offshore wind power was a realistic goal, but was only trying to draw attention to its potential.

More HERE




A Dang