GREENIE WATCH -- by Dr. John Ray August 2012

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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31 October, 2012

Scientists reject Sandy/Climate Link -- Round Up of Hurricane Sandy Reactions

'The 'new normal' for climate activists is their ever shifting claims as they morph the entire AGW argument to focus on extreme weather. They are exploiting any weather event to promote their religion-like cause

NOAA's Martin Hoerling rejects 'Frankenstorm' climate link: 'This is not some spell conjured upon us by great external forces....unless you believe in the monster flicks of Universal Studios fame!' -- Meteorologist Hoerling of NOAA: 'The immediate cause is most likely little more than the coincidental alignment of a tropical storm with an extratropical storm. Both frequent W. Atlantic in Oct....nothing unusual with that'

Frankenscience: 'Sandy doesn't tell us anything about climate change' -- Prof. Pielke Jr.: 'We've done long-term trends with respect to hurricane damage in the United States, and it's very safe to say that regardless of how [Sandy] plays out, there's a century-long time series with no trend in it — and that's in damage, the number of landfalls, or the intensity of storms at landfall. So, if you are looking for signals of long-term climate change, focusing in on any one storm is the wrong way to go about it to begin with'

Sandy caused by global warming? 'The science of climate change & hurricanes does not support this conclusion' -- It's 'just not supported by science at this time' -- Houston Chronicle's Science guy Eric Berger: '...it is a big stretch to go from there to blaming Sandy on climate change. It's a stretch that is just not supported by science at this time'

Climatologist Dr. Patrick Michaels on Sandy: 'It's also consistent with a planet with colder temperatures as well as one with warmer ones' -- Michaels: 'More important, events like this are inevitable on a planet that has an ocean with the geography of the Atlantic (meaning a Gulf Stream-like feature), a large north-south continent on its western margin without a transverse mountain range to inhibit the merger of tropical warmth with polar cold, and four seasons in the temperate latitudes'

German Meteorological Expert Says: 'No Evidence Showing Link Between Storms And Global Warming' -- Meteorologist Dr. Karsten Brandt: 'Brandt said that by looking back at the global data available over the last decades, there's 'no indication or evidence showing there's been an increase in storm activity. The data don't show it.' He added: 'Luckily we don't need to worry much about increasing storms in the future'

Prof. Roger Pielke Jr.: 'Remarkably, the U.S. is currently experiencing the longest-ever recorded period with no strikes of a Category 3 or stronger hurricane'

Hurricane Expert Chris Landsea: Any connection between AGW & hurricanes is 'almost certainly undetectable' -- '...and that this view is not particularly controversial among tropical cyclone climatologists. He concluded that hurricanes should not be the 'poster' representing a human influence on climate...Chris responded that asserting such a connection can be easily shown to be incorrect and thus risks some of the trust that the public has in scientists to play things straight'

Prof. Judith Curry on Sandy: 'Kevin Trenberth frequently says that global warming is affecting all of weather' -- Curry: 'Trenberth s probably right, but apart from the relative magnitude of the effect, this begs the question as to whether the effect is good or bad; arguably in terms of Atlantic hurricanes, the warming is resulting in FEWER U.S. landfalls'

More HERE (See the original for links)

Shale rescues America while Europe sucks its thumb

The wonders of US shale gas continue to amaze. We receive fresh evidence by the day that swathes of American industry have acquired a massive and lasting advantage in energy costs over global rivals, demolishing assumptions about US economic decline.

Royal Dutch Shell is planning an ethane plant in the once-decaying steel valley of Beaver County, near Pittsburg. Dow Chemical is shutting operations in Belgium, Holland, Spain, the UK, and Japan, but pouring money into a propylene venture in Texas where natural gas prices are a fraction of world levels and likely to remain so for the life-cycle of Dow's investments.

Some fifty new projects have been unveiled in the US petrochemical industry. A $30bn investment blitz in underway in ethelyne and fetilizer plants alone.

A study by the American Chemistry Council said the shale gas bonanza has reversed the fortunes of the chemical, plastics, aluminium, iron and steel, rubber, coated metals, and glass industries. "This was virtually unthinkable five years ago," said the body’s president, Cal Dooley.

This is happening just as other clusters of manufacturing - machinery, electrical products, transport equipment, furniture, etc - are "re-shoring" back from from China to the US. A 16pc annual rise in Chinese wages over the last decade has changed the game. PricewaterhouseCoopers calls it the "Homecoming".

The revival of the chemical industry is a spin-off from the greater drama of America’s energy rebound, though a very big one. As many readers will have seen, the US energy department said last week that the country will produce 11.4m barrels a day (b/d) of oil, biofuels, and liquid hydrocarbons next year, almost as much as Saudi Arabia.

America looks poised to become the world’s biggest producer in 2014. It will approach the Holy Grail of "energy independence" before the end of the decade.

This is largely due to hydraulic fracturing - blasting rock with water jets - to extract shale gas and oil, though solar power and onshore wind are playing their part.

Europe is going in the opposite direction, drifting towards energy suicide. So is Japan as it shuts down its nuclear industry after the Fukushima disaster. China is more hard-headed, as it needs to be. The country is adding 20m cars a year. Chinese oil imports are rising by an extra 0.5m b/d annually.

As of last week, US natural gas prices were roughly one third of European levels. The German chemicals group BASF said it had become impossible to match the US on production costs.

Asia is facing an even greater handicap as Japan soaks up supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to offset the closure of its nuclear power stations. Prices on the Pacific rim are near $15 per million British thermal units (BTU), compared to $3 in the US.

The US cost of ethane - the raw material for polymers and much of what we use - has collapsed by 70pc since 2008. It is why Exxon and Westlake Chemical are building new ethane plants in America, while loss-making Mitsubishi is closing its unit in Japan, and Mitsui may follow soon. Credit Suisse said ethane production is barely viable in Japan, Korea or Taiwan.

The gas differential with Europe and Asia will narrow gradually over time but there is no genuine global market for gas. Prices are local, dictated by pipelines. In Europe’s case they are dictated by Vladimir Putin’s Gazprom. Germany imports 36pc of its gas from Russia. Dependency rises to 48pc for Poland, 60pc for Hungary, 98pc for Slovakia, and 100pc for the Baltics.

While LNG helps plug shortages, it requires shipping at minus 116 degrees and at great expense in molybdenum alloy hulls. It then needs an elaborate infrastructure at the docking port.

Shale has made the US self-sufficient in gas almost overnight. The new twist of course is shale oil. Output has jumped to 2m b/d from almost nothing eight years ago. The Bakken field in North Dakota is twice as big as the conventional Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska.

America produced 81pc of its total energy needs in the first six months of this year, the highest since 1991. Citigroup thinks US ouput of crude and eqivalents will top 15.6m b/d by 2020, adding up to 3.6m jobs through multiplier effects. North America as a whole will reach 27m b/d - with Canada’s oil sands and Mexico’s deepwater fields - making the region a "new Middle East".

The implications are momentous. America will no longer need a single drop of oil from the Islamic world. The strategic burden will fall on Europe, which is meekly disarming itself to meet Wolfgang Schauble's austerity targets. Russia and China will be pleased to help.

What is staggering is the near total failure of Europe’s leaders to face up to this new world order, or to prepare for their energy crunch ahead. They have spent the last decade wrangling over treaties that nobody wants, endlessly tinkering with institutional structures, and ultimately holding 22 summits to "save" EMU, largely oblivious to the bigger danger ahead.

Germany is to shut down its nuclear plants by 2022, reluctant to admit that this can be replaced only by coal - and even then with great difficulty. It is opting instead for the romantic quest of a politically-correct grid. The goal is to raise the share of renewables from 20pc to 35pc by 2020 at a cost of €200bn, and then to green supremacy by mid-decade for another €600bn.

Germany seems to think it can power Europe’s foremost industrial machine from off-shore wind in the Baltic, without the high-voltage wires running from North to South yet built or on track to be built. "It is a religion, not a policy," said one German official privately, warning that his country is already "very near blackouts". He fears an almighty national disaster.

"There is huge fear about the energy switch," said Volker Treier from the German Chambers of Industry. "We have no realistic plan to replace nuclear power. Electricity costs are already very high. Everybody is complaining about this."

The risk is that Germany will hit its aging crunch later this decade with no viable power system in place, having discovered that the contingent liabilities of EMU rescues are real liabilities - and bigger than German citizens were led to believe. You could scarcely devise a more certain way to ruin a nation. My sympathies to German friends watching this unfold with horror.

France has shale but has imposed a drilling moratorium It will shut down a nuclear plant for good measure to appease the Greens. Italy has banned nuclear power, yet has little else.

Britain has been sauntering slowly towards a debacle for nearly fifteen years. Eight coal plants are to close by 2015 as they burn up their EU carbon allowances. Much of the UK’s nuclear industry is on its last legs. No new plant has yet been commissioned.

What we have is a very big gamble on off-shore wind, a very long way from where most people live. It will supposedly supply 17pc of UK electricity by 2020, equal to all other off-shore wind projects in the world combined. Let us pray that it works.

As the years recede from the credit crash of 2008, it is becoming clearer that America suffered less damage than supposed. The Great Recession was certainly a shock. The debt-load is frightening, but the US can at least hope to outgrow that debt.

What is remarkable is that Euroland is not cutting its combined public and private sector debt any faster than the US - as a share of GDP - by asphyxiating its economy. It is doing so more slowly. That is the difference between growth and recession.

They look only at public debt in Euroland, fixated myopically on one variable, ignoring the lessons of balance sheet recessions. Such is policy architecture of Europe.

Four years on we can seen that the epicentre of destruction has in reality been right here in the Old World. We may look back and realize that the last decade - the Merkel decade, the EMU distraction decade, and in its way the Brown decade - was the turning point when Europe finally lost its global footing.

SOURCE

Ground Breaking Paper Refutes the Greenhouse Gas Theory

International team of researchers confirms peer-reviewed new paper refutes the greenhouse gas theory, the cornerstone of science that claims human emissions of carbon dioxide dangerously warms the Earth. Principia Scientific International (PSI) today issues a press release for Joseph E. Postma’s astonishing game-changing publication ‘A Discussion on the Absence of a Measurable Greenhouse Effect.’

PSI are adamant that what they have here compellingly debunks what a generation of government climatologists incorrectly assumed i.e. that the flow of radiation in Earth’s atmosphere is indicative of the flow of heat. They endorse Postma’s findings and confirm that the issue was never really about whether radiation moves freely about in the atmosphere (it does), the big question should have been whether once it has arrived at the surface: does it get more than one go at generating heat (i.e. “back radiation” heating)?

Along with other critical debunks beside this one, Postma and his colleagues say “no” because a) no such phenomenon as “back radiation heating” is cited in any thermodynamics textbooks and b) nor has any such effect been measured empirically. As the debate has raged in the blogosphere believers in the GHE were shown to be incapable of determining whether to support the “back radiation” heating or the “delayed cooling” (i.e. “blanket effect”) argument for the GHE. But as Postma’s paper proves, each of the ideas is a contradiction in terms and may separately be shown to not have any empirically proven basis. The Laws of Thermodynamics probably play a part in this.

Texan engineer, Joe Olson, speaking on behalf of his colleagues said this morning, “This paper has been assessed by a multi-disciplinary group of dedicated and trusted colleagues, we see there is so much original material here to establish a watershed.”   Climatologist Dr. Tim Ball is among those who assisted in developing the paper. Like the other 120 members of PSI (known in the blogosphere as the ‘Slayers’) Ball accepts that his and his colleagues’ credibility are at stake. Nonetheless, Ball and co. are adamant that if Postma’s findings are widely confirmed then future climate researchers may well be discussing the science in terms of “pre-Postma” and “post-Postma” analysis.

Hans Schreuder, who along with Alan Siddons, provided the core science upon which Postma’s paper was built, has laid down a bold challenge to the critics, “If they can demonstrate we are cranks then all power to them.”

Below is Postma’s summary as it appears on Page 54 of his paper:

(1)

The surface of albedo is not the ground surface, and so it never was correct to associate the radiative temperature of -180C with the ground surface in the first place when devising GHE equations, since the albedo is what determines the equilibrium temperature and the albedo is not found with the physical surface.

(2)

Even as the climate models show, an increase in cloud height causes an increase in temperature at the surface. This is not due to a backradiation GHE but due to the lapse rate of the atmosphere combined with the average surface of equilibrium being risen further off of the surface.

(3)

A real greenhouse doesn’t become heated by internal backradiation in any case, but from trapped warm air which is heated by contact with the internal surfaces heated by sunlight, and then physically prevented by a rigid barrier from convecting and cooling. The open atmosphere doesn’t do what a greenhouse doesn’t do in the first place, and the open atmosphere does not function as a rigid barrier either.

(4)

The heat flow ordinary differential equation of energy conservation is a fundamental equation of physics. It combines the fundamental mechanics of heat flow together with the most venerated law of science, conservation of energy. This equation predicts what should be observable if backradiation or heat-trapping is introduced to the equation, in accordance with the main idea of the atmospheric GHE, that a higher temperature than the insolation will be achieved. A higher-than-insolation temperature is not achieved in experimental data, and we make it clear how one could test the postulate with even more surety by using the “Bristol Board Experiment”.

(5)

An important factor for why the introduction of backradiation into the equation fails to match the real world is because radiation cannot actually increase its own Wien-peak frequency and its own spectral temperature signature; radiation cannot heat up its own source. The Laws of Thermodynamics are real and universal.

(6)

The rate of cooling at the surface is enhanced, rather than retarded, relative to the entire atmospheric column, by a factor of 10. Therefore, backradiation doesn’t seem to slow down the rate of cooling at the surface at all. Backradiation neither causes active heating, nor slowed cooling, at the surface. (Given Claes Johnson’s description of radiative heat transfer, radiation from a colder ambient radiative environment should slow down the rate of cooling, and we agree with that. What we didn’t agree with was that “slowed cooling” equated to “higher temperature” because that is obviously sophistic logic. And now in any case, it is apparent that sensible heat transfer from atmospheric contact at the surface dominates the radiative component process anyway, leading to ten times the rate of cooling at the surface relative to the rest of the column.)

(7)

Given the amount of latent heat energy actually stored (i.e. trapped) within the system, and that this energy comes from the Sun, and considering the Zero-Energy-Balance (ZEB) plot, it is quite apparent that this energy gets deposited in the equatorial regions and then shed in the polar regions. This trapped latent heat prevents the system from cooling much below 00C, which keeps the global average temperature higher than it would otherwise be and thus leads to an “interpreted appearance” of a GHE caused by “GHG trapping”, when the only trapping of energy is actually only in H2O latent heat.

(8)

Subsoil readings prove that a large amount of energy is held at a significant temperature (warmer than the surface) overnight, and because this soil is warmer than the surface, and the surface is warmer than the atmosphere, then the direction of heat flow is from the subsoil to the atmosphere. And as discussed, the atmosphere seems to enhance surface cooling rather than impede it.

(9)

The heat flow equation can be modeled to show that the Sun is capable of maintaining large amounts of water under the solar zenith at about 14 degrees C. This is very close to the surface average of +150C. The Sun can maintain a liquid ocean at +140C because it takes a long time for heated water to lose its thermal energy. This is also in combination with the surface of albedo being raised off the surface where the lapse rate will maintain a near-surface average of +150C in any case.

(10)

The issue has never been about whether radiation moves freely about in the atmosphere (it does), the question is whether once it has arrived at the surface, does it get more than one go at generating heat (i.e. “back radiation” heating)? We say “no” because a) no such phenomenon as “back radiation heating” is cited in any thermodynamics textbooks and b) nor has any such effect been measured empirically. GHE believers are left not knowing whether to support the “back radiation” heating or the “delayed cooling” (i.e. “blanket effect”) argument for the GHE; this is because each is a contradiction in terms and may separately be shown to not have any empirically proven basis. The Laws of Thermodynamics probably play a part in this.

(11)

As Alan Siddon’s has explained [41], it isn’t actually clear, and there seems to be a plain logical contradiction, when we consider the role of non-GHG’s under the atmospheric GHE paradigm. If non-GHG’s such as nitrogen and oxygen don’t radiate, then, aren’t they the ones trapping the thermal energy which they sensibly pick up from the sunlight-heated surface and from GHG’s? If on the other hand they do radiate, then aren’t they also GHG’s? If a GHG radiates, and the others gasses don’t, then doesn’t that mean that GHG’s cause cooling because they provide a means for the atmosphere to shed thermal energy? If the GHE is caused by trapping heat, then aren’t all non-GHG’s contributing to the effect since they can’t radiatively shed the thermal energy they pick up? Isn’t how we think of the GHE therefore completely backwards? In any case, everything with a temperature is holding heat; the only place trapping can be thought to be occurring is in latent heat.

SOURCE

Meghan McCain to GOP after Sandy: Do you still doubt climate change?

Megan and her fellow believers are out of their depth. How can a storm or anything else be a result of global warming when there has been no warming for 16 years?

Political analyst Meghan McCain, daughter of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), is challenging widespread GOP skepticism about climate change in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

“So are we still going to go with climate change not being real fellow republicans [sic]?” McCain wrote, via Twitter, around midnight as the storm was slamming ashore.

McCain’s father has advocated for curbing greenhouse gas emissions and co-sponsored cap-and-trade bills several years ago.

However, substantial numbers of Republicans now dispute widely held scientific views about global warming and the extent of humans’ contribution.

As Sandy menaced the East Coast, some climate activists and scientists used the storm to point out links between climate change and extreme weather.

Scientists urge caution about attributing specific weather events to climate change. But experts warn that warmer ocean waters, greater atmospheric moisture and other factors are fueling the intensity of storms, and that rising sea levels will make coastal impacts worse.

A number of science writers in recent days have pointed to research on Atlantic cyclones published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by the University of Copenhagen’s Aslak Grinsted.

He concludes that warm years are more active, the largest cyclones are most affected by warmer conditions and that there’s a “statistically significant trend in the frequency of large surge events” over the last 90 years.

More HERE

British Conservatives' Nightmare: Monster Power Bills Are A Guaranteed Vote-Loser

Consumers are having to bear the cost of big green subsidies. Rising bills are a guaranteed vote-loser, but the government is forging ahead with policies that make them unavoidable

Vincent De Rivaz, chief executive of EDF Energy, hunched over the microphone, nervously thumbing a sheaf of papers.

“We are on the brink of delivering an infrastructure project similar in scale to the London Olympics,” he told the panel of MPs. “But like all investors in capital-intensive infrastructure projects, we need to have a compelling business case . . . We must be honest. We must expect the unit price of electricity to increase.”

It was not the first time de Rivaz had made a pitch for higher household energy bills. His appearance last week before the Commons energy and climate change committee was the latest in a long-running campaign to secure Britain’s first new nuclear plant in more than two decades.

EDF plans to spend £14 billion on two reactors at Hinkley Point, Somerset. The quid pro quo demanded from the government is a guarantee that EDF will be able to charge well over double the current electricity price to ensure it makes money.

Negotiations about the final figure are in their closing stages and there could be an announcement by Christmas.

The nuclear guarantee is one of a raft of new charges being added to household bills. From carbon taxes to solar subsidies, the costs of Britain’s much-vaunted efforts to clean up the energy industry are feeding through to the customer.

It is a point the energy companies, including British Gas and Npower, were at pains to emphasise when they revealed another round of price increases this month. EDF announced a 10.8% rise last week, pushing the average annual dual-fuel bill to £1,334. Cue public outrage.

Seeking to quell the unrest, David Cameron made a rash pledge to force utilities to put households on their lowest-priced deals. John Hayes, the energy minister, quickly softened that stance.

The mixed messages are a sign of the wider conflict in Whitehall. Rising bills are a guaranteed vote-loser, but the government is forging ahead with policies that make them unavoidable.

Consider the case of British Gas. The average annual bill from Britain’s biggest utility rose by £183 between 2007 and 2011. Nearly one-third of that, £56, was a result of green taxes and related government-imposed charges. The rise in low-carbon fees represented a 60% jump — twice the rate of increase in the wholesale gas price, the biggest component of power bills.

That trend is gaining momentum. Andrew Horstead of Utilyx, the energy consultancy, said: “At the moment, about 55% of the bill is the commodity price, while the rest is green taxes and related costs. By 2020, you’ll see those percentages flip as the new charges feed through.”

The government’s controversial solar power subsidy is a good example. Greg Barker, the climate change minister, was forced into an embarrassing U-turn last year after the government was overwhelmed by interest in the feed-in tariff, which guarantees rates for electricity produced by solar panels.

Barker slashed the payout by more than 70% for large installations and by half for the smaller ones found on homes. Several solar panel producers and installers have sued the government over the cut. Even so, tens of thousands of people got in before the change took effect.

The upshot is that the government is locked in to paying hundreds of millions in solar subsidies for the next 25 years. That is the equivalent of an extra £2.19 on the £45 per megawatt hour (MWh) wholesale power price — a charge that did not exist a few years ago.

There are others. In April, the carbon price floor will kick in. This new emissions tax will require industrial plants, manufacturers and power producers to pay at least £15.70 for each ton of carbon dioxide they emit. The levy will rise every year, reaching £30 by 2020.

For householders, the carbon floor will translate into an estimated £2 per MWh of electricity. By 2020, that will rise to at least £14, according to Utilyx.

Next year will also see the main subsidy for pricey renewable technologies such as wind and biomass — renewable obligation certificates — rise slightly to £8.70 per MWh.

All of the above, of course, will be added to bills on top of any additional surge in the gas price, which has risen by a third in the past two years.

The government has done its best to play down the impact. Indeed, the Department of Energy and Climate Change has predicted the measures will actually lead to savings. It argues that widespread implementation of energy efficiency measures will reduce demand and therefore bills.

More HERE

Blackout Britain is back

Memories of WWII. Now it's the Green Nazis behind it

Huge swathes of Britain are being plunged into darkness as more and more streetlights are switched off by councils and roads authorities. Lights are being turned off on motorways and major roads, in town centres and residential streets, and on footpaths and cycle ways, as councils try to save money on energy bills and meet carbon emission targets. The switch-off begins as early as 9pm.

They are making the move despite concerns from safety campaigners and the police that it would lead to an increase in road accidents and crime.

The full extent of the blackout can be disclosed following an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph - which comes on the day that clocks moved back an hour, making it dark earlier in the evening - and found that:

*    3,080 miles of motorways and trunk roads in England are now completely unlit;

*    a further 47 miles of motorway now have no lights between midnight and 5am, including one of Britain’s busiest stretches of the M1, between Luton and Milton Keynes;

*    out of 134 councils which responded to a survey, 73% said they had switched off or dimmed some lights or were planning to;

*   all of England’s 27 county councils have turned off or dimmed street lamps in their areas.

The vast majority of councils have chosen to turn lights off at night, at times when they say there is less need for them, while others have installed lamps which can be dimmed.

Local authorities say the moves helps reduce energy bills, at a time when energy prices are continuing to rise. Several of the big energy companies have unveiled price hikes in recent weeks, including British Gas, npower and EDF Energy - which this week said it was increasing its standard variable prices for gas and electricity customers by 10%.

Some councils expect to save hundreds of thousands of pounds by turning off lights at night or converting them to dimmer switches.

However some councils admit they may not see savings for another four or five years because of the cost of installing new lights, dimmer switches and complex control systems.

And some councils - as well as the Highways Agency, responsible for motorways and major A roads - say that the lights are being turned off to meet “green” targets to cut carbon emissions, by reducing electricity use.

Critics say that spending money to meet the targets is a poor use of public funds in a time of recession.

The increasing black-out was criticised last night by safety and motoring organisations, who said the economic and environmental benefits were being over-stated and warned that less street lighting would lead to more accidents and more crime.

A spokesman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said: “The presence of lighting not only reduces the risk of traffic accidents but also their severity. Surveys have show that the public are in favour of street lighting as a way of improving road safety and that, if anything, it needs to be improved in some areas.

“There are economic and environmental reasons why some organisations may wish to reduce the amount of lighting. However there are safety reasons why lighting needs to be available.”

Paul McClenaghan, commercial director at Halfords, said: “Poor lighting or none at all can make it very difficult for motorists to see hazards or objects clearly at night. Added to this Government figures show that road accidents increase in the week after the clocks change, so it is clear that extra vigilance is needed at this time of the year, from motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.”

Paul Watters, head of roads policy at the AA, said: “We do know that most accidents happen in the dark, its also comforting for people, especially if they arrive back from somewhere in the night, when they have got a late train. There are also suggestions that it increases crime. So it may save money in terms of energy but then you have to look at the cost in terms of security, safety and accidents, it may actually be more. We have even heard that some milkmen are having more trips and falls, so it has had some implications you might not think about.

“Motorway drivers don’t like changing situations, from light to dark and dark to light, but I don’t think we would argue for no lighting at all. It is extremely comforting for drivers, especially in bad weather.”

The switch-off of motorway lights means that 70 per cent of the network is now unlit at night. Sections of the M1, M2, M27, M4, M48, M5, M54, M58, M6, M65 and M66 are now unlit from midnight.

One of the sections of the M1 is a 15-mile stretch from just north of Luton to the outskirts of Milton Keyns, one of the heaviest-used sections of any british road.

The Highways Agency said the full-switch off had saved it £400,000 last year, while reducing carbon emissions, and said it planned further blackouts.

Meanwhile 98 councils said they have switched off or dimmed lights, or planned to in the future.

In Shropshire, 12,500 - 70 per cent of the area’s lights - are now switched off between midnight and 5.30am, while Derbyshire County Council plans to turn off 40,000 lights at night. In Lincolnshire, some are turned off from as early as 9pm.

Leicestershire County Council expects to save £800,000 a year in energy bills by adapting one third of the country’s 68,000 street lights so that they can be dimmed or turned off at night.

Caerphilly in Wales no longer lights industrial estates overnight and Bradford dims 1,800 of its 58,000 street lights between 9.30pm and 5.30am.

However Worcestershire County Council postponed plans to switch off and dim lights after it found it would cost more money to implement the scheme than it would save. The authority currently pays £2 million a year to run 52,000 street lights but it found that to reduce that bill by £600,000 a year it would need to invest £3.4 million first. It is now running a trial to dim some lights before a final decision is made.

In many areas councils have received complaints from residents.

Caroline Cooney, an actress who complained to Hertfordshire County Council when the lights near her home in Bishop’s Stortford were switched off after midnight, said she faced a “black hole” when she returned home from working in the West End of London. “My street is completely canopied by large tress and I could not see my hand in front of my face,” she said.

Mrs Cooney, who appeared in Gregory’s Girl and who has also appeared in Casualty, said it was putting people in danger and the council was effectively imposing a “midnight curfew on residents who do not want to take the risk of walking home blind”.

“When I came out of the train station it was just like a black hole,” she said. “I simply cannot risk walking home in what is effectively pitch blackness.”

However the council told her it could not “provide tailored street lighting for each individual’s particular needs”

SOURCE

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30 October, 2012

Warmists embellish the truth

Yesterday, before heading back to the National Hurricane Center to help deal with Sandy, Chris Landsea gave a great talk here at CU on hurricanes and climate change (we'll have a video up soon). In Chris' talk he explained that he has no doubts that humans affect the climate system through the emission of greenhouse gases, and this influence may affect tropical cyclones. He then proceeded to review theory and data from recent peer-reviewed publications on the magnitude of such an influence. Chris argued that any such influence is expected to be small today, almost certainly undetectable, and that this view is not particularly controversial among tropical cyclone climatologists. He concluded that hurricanes should not be the "poster" representing a human influence on climate.

After his talk someone in the audience asked him what is wrong with making a connection between hurricanes and climate change if it gives the general public reason for concern about climate change. Chris responded that asserting such a connection can be easily shown to be incorrect and thus risks some of the trust that the public has in scientists to play things straight.

This exchange came to mind as I came across the latest exhibit in the climate science freak show, this time in the form of a lawsuit brought by Michael Mann, of Penn State, against the National Review Online and others for calling his work "intellectually bogus" and other mean things (the actual filing can be seen here). I will admit that for a moment I did smile at the idea of a professor suing a critic for lying (Hi Joe!), before my senses took back over and I rejected it as an absurd publicity stunt. But within this little tempest in a teapot is a nice example of how it is that some parts of climate science found itself off track and routinely in violation of what many people would consider basic scientific norms.

In Mann's lawsuit he characterizes himself as having been "awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." Mann's claim is what might be called an embellishment -- he has, to use the definition found at the top of this post, "made (a statement or story) more interesting or entertaining by adding extra details, esp. ones that are not true." An accurate interpretation is that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change did win the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, and the IPCC did follow that award by sending to the AR4 authors a certificate noting their contributions to the organization. So instead of being a "Nobel Peace Prize Winner" Mann was one of 2,000 or so scientists who made a contribution to an organization which won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Here we might ask, so what?

I mean really, who cares if a scientist embellishes his credentials a bit? We all know what he means by calling himself a "Nobel Peace Prize Winner," right? And really, what is an organization except for the people that make it up? Besides, climate change is important, why should we worry about such things? Doesn't this just distract from the cause of action on climate change and play right into the hands of the deniers? Really now, is this a big deal?

Well, maybe it was not a big deal last week, but with the filing of the lawsuit, the embellishment now has potential consequences in a real-world decision process. A journalist contacted the Nobel organization and asked them if it was appropriate for Mann as an IPCC scientist to claim to be "Nobel peace prize winner." Here is what the Nobel organization said in response:
Michael Mann has never been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mann's embellishment has placed him in a situation where his claims are being countered by the Nobel organization itself. Mann's claim, rather than boosting his credibility actually risks having the opposite effect, a situation that was entirely avoidable and one which Mann brought upon himself by making the embellishment in the first place. The embellishment is only an issue because Mann has invoked it as a source of authority is a legal dispute. It would seem common sense that having such an embellishment within a complaint predicated on alleged misrepresentations may not sit well with a judge or jury.

This situation provides a nice illustration of what is wrong with a some aspects of climate science today -- a few scientists motivated by a desire to influence political debates over climate change have embellished claims, such as related to disasters, which then risks credibility when the claims are exposed as embellishments. To make matters worse, these politically motivated scientists have fallen in with fellow travelers in the media, activist organizations and in the blogosphere who are willing not only to look past such embellishments, but to amplify them and attack those who push back. These dynamics are reinforcing and have led small but vocal parts of the climate scientific community to deviate significantly from widely-held norms of scientific practice.

More HERE

Science Or Propaganda from Britain's official meteorologists?

The UK Met Office display the above graph prominently on their website. It is the temperature plot, based on the long running CET (Central England Temperature series).

The message is clear. Temperatures suddenly started climbing rapidly around 1980, a classic hockey stick.

If you look closely, you will notice that the graph begins just before 1780. Yet the CET series actually began in 1659, so why did not the Met show the full graph?

I have used exactly the same data, which is available on the Met Office website here, to produce the graph below for the full period.

I have used the same temperature scale , with a six degree range. Even with this scale, there is very little sign of any hockey stick. Certainly there was a bunch of warm years around the turn of the century, but they were only slightly warmer than earlier periods, notably the 1730’s. And in recent years there has been a decline in temperature, which the running five year averages illustrate on the graph below. Indeed the average temperature over the last five years is no higher than several years during the 1730’s.

By the way, so far this year, the CET anomaly is running at 0.28, which would give an annual temperature of 9.76C. This would certainly not be unusually high by 20thC standards, and would bring the five year average down another notch. (You may just be able to make out the green line at the end of the Met graph, which represents this year).

Which brings us back to the question I posed at the start. Why did the Met not show the graph in full?

It seems to me that to produce a partial graph, which begins at an abnormally cold period, can only have been done in order to mislead.

SOURCE

Self-contradictory European energy policy

Governments are erasing the environmental "benefits" from expensive renewables by allowing coal use to increase

Andrew Brown, one of Shell’s most senior executives, also warned that shale gas would not have the same impact in the UK as it has in the US, where is has been heralded as a new era of cheap energy.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Brown, Shell’s upstream international director, said the UK and Europe were “missing a trick” in their policies.

“There are a lot of subsidies going towards renewables. Gas and coal are having to compete to be taken into power generation,” he said.

Because cheap gas is reducing coal demand in the US, there is “a lot of cheap coal in the marketplace”. As a result, Europe is burning more coal, while demand for gas – which emits much less CO2 than coal – is declining.

“You have this ridiculous situation where cash-strapped Europe is putting a lot of money into renewables to reduce CO2, meanwhile allowing ... the power generators to take much more coal and back out gas,” he said.

“All the benefits you’re getting from the renewable energy are being counteracted by far too much coal.”

Mr Brown said the EU’s Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), designed to reduce emissions by placing a price on carbon, “doesn’t work”. “CO2 is priced at such a low level it’s meaningless,” he said. “We want a higher CO2 price. Power generators would then make the right economic decision for Europe, for gas. Renewables and gas work very well together.”

Germany is one of the most high profile cases of a country that has invested heavily in renewables to curb carbon emissions – but is now burning increasing volumes of polluting coal.

The UK has also seen an increase in coal-fired generation as the economics have become more attractive than burning gas – although many of the most polluting coal plants will be forced to close over the next three years.

Many within Government are enthusiastic about gas and believe UK shale gas will ensure cheap supplies. The Chancellor has said he is mulling shale gas tax breaks “so Britain is not left behind as gas prices tumble on the other side of the Atlantic”.

But Mr Brown cautioned: “There is potential here but it won’t change the UK gas market as has happened in America.” Shale gas could however “play an important role in helping the UK with its energy security”, he said.

The Government is expected to allow controversial “fracking” for shale gas in the UK to resume within weeks.

A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said it agreed that “the EU Emissions Trading System needs to be strengthened” and so was pressing for Europe to adopt a 2020 emissions reductions target.

This was also why it had introduced the carbon price floor in the UK, which will push carbon costs above current ETS levels, he said.

SOURCE

Denmark Won’t Support wind company through Financial Hardship

The Danish government won’t provide direct support to Vestas Wind Systems A/S (VWS) should the world’s biggest maker of wind turbines need a bailout to stay afloat.

Aarhus, Denmark-based Vestas, which has been hurt by higher-than-budgeted costs to develop its V112 turbine and cuts in green energy subsidies, said in July it agreed with its banks to defer a so-called test of financial covenants, delaying loan payments after losses eroded its cash flow. The government is now saying it won’t step in to bridge any periods of financial distress at the company to prevent it going bankrupt.
Enlarge image Denmark Says Won’t Support Vestas If Turbine Maker Needs Bailout

Vestas in 2012 announced two rounds of job cuts that hit more than 3,700 employees, or a sixth of its workforce, to reduce fixed costs by more than 250 million euros ($323 million). The company is struggling to stay competitive as it faces declining demand in Europe and the U.S. Photographer: Ken James/Bloomberg

“We cannot and will not support a single company,” said Martin Lidegaard, Denmark’s Energy Minister, in an e-mailed reply to questions. “It is against the government’s general state aid policy.”

Vestas in 2012 announced two rounds of job cuts that hit more than 3,700 employees, or a sixth of its workforce, to reduce fixed costs by more than 250 million euros ($323 million). The company is struggling to stay competitive as it faces declining demand in Europe and the U.S.

The world’s largest wind turbine maker would consider selling about 500 million euros in shares to existing investors if talks on a strategic cooperation with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (7011) fail, said two people with knowledge of the matter last month.

Shares in Vestas sank as much as 2.5 percent to their lowest since Aug. 16, and were 2 percent down at 30.12 kroner as of 9:47 a.m. in Copenhagen. The stock has lost 51 percent this year, versus a 26 percent increase in the OMXC20 benchmark index of Danish companies.
No Discrimination

Denmark, which is also home to the wind power division of Europe’s biggest engineering company Siemens AG (SIE), has set itself a goal of becoming a hub for new developments in green energy technologies, Lidegaard said.

Still, the government won’t favor local suppliers in tenders and will base any decisions solely on competitive considerations, the minister said.

“Price will be the determining criterion,” in Denmark’s plan to tender new offshore farms with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts,” Lidegaard said. “There will be no discrimination.”
Austerity Effect

Shares in Vestas rose earlier this month after Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt said tough economic conditions shouldn’t deter investment in renewable energy. Denmark plans to get half of its energy supply from wind by 2020, installing 3300 megawatts of new turbines with 1,500 MW offshore and 1,800 onshore.

Outside Denmark, austerity is weighing on subsidies for renewable energy in crisis-stricken Europe and the outlook for turbine makers is hampered by the expiration of tax breaks in the U.S. Increased supply of natural gas is also hurting demand for wind energy.

SOURCE

Windmills Overload East Europe’s Grid Risking Blackout

Central and Eastern European countries are moving to disconnect their power lines from Germany’s during the windiest days. That’s when they get flooded with energy, echoing struggles seen from China to Texas over accommodating the world’s 200,000 windmills.

Renewable energy around the world is causing problems because unlike oil it can’t be stored, so when generated it must be consumed or risk causing a grid collapse. At times, the glut can be so great that utilities pay consumers to take the power and get rid of it.

“Germany is aware of the problem, but there is not enough political will to solve the problem because it’s very costly,” Pavel Solc, Czech deputy minister of industry and trade, said in an interview. “So we’re forced to make one-sided defensive steps to prevent accidents and destruction.”

The power grids in the former communist countries are “stretched to their limits” and face potential blackouts when output surges from wind turbines in northern Germany or on the Baltic Sea, according to Czech grid operator CEPS. The Czechs plan to install security switches near borders by year-end to disconnect from Europe’s biggest economy to avoid critical overload.

Wind Farms

The bottleneck is one of many in the last eight years as $460 billion of wind farms were built worldwide on plains, hills and at sea before networks were fully expanded to deliver the power to consumers. Upgrading Germany’s system alone to address capacity and technical shortfalls will cost at least 32 billion euros ($42 billion), its four grid operators said in May.

Germany installed more than 8,885 megawatts of wind energy since 2007, mostly in the north. Now it’s studying how to build the power backbone to connect to the industrialized south, home to hundreds of factories such as those of chemicals manufacturer Wacker Chemie AG (WCH) and Siemens AG. (SIE) The electricity detours through the Czech Republic and Poland when German cables can’t handle the load as the countries’ grids are interconnected.

The problem may intensify with the approaching winter. With an insufficient north-south connection, Germany’s power network came close to a collapse last February when high winds in the Baltic sea flooded it with power and the Czech Republic and Poland threatened to disconnect their grids. The coming winter can be critical, German Economy Minister Philipp Roesler said last week.

Aging Plants

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to shut down aging atomic plants and exit nuclear power by 2022 following last year’s reactor meltdowns in Fukushima, Japan, exacerbated the power imbalance. Germany more than ever will have to rely on power generated in the more windy north.

“We do understand that the Czech and the Polish grid operators are concerned about market and system security,” Volker Kamm, a spokesman for grid operator 50Hertz Transmission GmbH, said in a phone interview from Berlin. “We are seeking a constructive solution.”

Lack of grid connections, such as in China, or oversupply as in Texas have made wind energy’s global rollout a lumpy process. Wind farms in West Texas earlier this year were paying utilities to use their electricity on particularly gusty days because they can still earn $22 a megawatt-hour in federal tax credits.

Excess Flows

Utilities like Prague-based CEZ AS (CEZ) and Warsaw-based PGE SA (PGE) are occasionally forced to disconnect some coal-fired plants in the western parts of the Czech Republic and Poland because of excess power flowing from Germany. CEZ’s Prunerov plant is often a casualty of the unplanned flows, CEPS said.

“Measures we’re using are costly and at times not sufficient,” said Jerzy Dudzik, an executive from Poland’s grid operator PSE. PGE had to adjust generation schedules at its Dolna Odra and Turow plants, he said.

Both Poland and the Czech Republic are planning to install so-called phase-shifter transformers in the trans-border area with Germany to regulate power flows and protect their transmission networks. While the Czechs are still negotiating with Germany on other short-term solutions and pushing for a creation of smaller power-trading areas with realistic capacity allocation, they’re already counting on installing four transformers by 2017, CEPS said.

‘Free Lunch’

“The Germans are using our infrastructure in an excessive manner,” CEPS board member Zbynek Boldis said in an interview in Prague. “At this point they’re getting a free lunch.”

Germany’s eastern neighbors have also said that the common German-Austrian power market puts them at a disadvantage since they must reduce cross-border transmission capacity because of trades between the two nations and have to take costly measures to protect their grids.

Southern Germany imports power from Austria’s pumped- storage hydroelectric power stations in the Alps during peak periods, again using the Czech grid while excluding the Czechs from the benefits of trading within a single-border area.

“Traders within the Austrian-German common zone don’t need to bid for capacity in auctions even though they’re using up the capacity of its neighbors, who do have to pay,” CEPS’s Boldis said. “That’s discrimination.”

The German-Austrian common market’s physical transmission capacity doesn’t correspond with the volume of transactions between the two countries, so they end up using the Czech, Polish, Slovak and Hungarian grids, Boldis said. The four countries want Germany and Austria to redraw the power-trading map, creating smaller areas that would better reflect electricity flows.

“Electricity follows a path of least resistance in the grid, according to the laws of physics,” Boldis said. “The result is that our transmission system is overloaded, we have security threats.”

SOURCE

Obama’s ominous EPA Plans for 2013

The November elections will determine the direction of US climate policy—and therefore also energy policy and the pace of economic growth: jobs, standards of living, budget deficits and inflation. Obama has already promised to make climate change the centerpiece of his concern—with all that implies: “Green” energy policy, linked to loss of jobs (Keystone pipeline disapproval), rising gas prices (ethanol mandates), and crony capitalism (Solyndra).”

By contrast, Romney is a climate skeptic—and Ryan has been quite outspoken: the perfect anti-Gore. The science supports Romney-Ryan—notwithstanding the UN-IPCC, and the bulk of the climate scientists living high on the hog on government grants.

All of this emerged from campaign rhetoric—but it needs to be spelled out more clearly. Note that Obama no longer promises to “heal the Earth and stop the rise of the oceans.” He has also been uncharacteristically quiet about his efforts to “make electricity prices skyrocket.” But there is more in store if he is re-elected and unleashes the full regulatory apparatus of the EPA.

Senate report

Earlier this month, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla. ), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, released a new EPW Minority Report entitled, “A Look Ahead to EPA Regulations for 2013: Numerous Obama EPA Rules Placed On Hold until after the Election Spell Doom for Jobs and Economic Growth.”

This report enumerates the slew of environmental regulations that the Obama-Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has delayed or punted on before the election while President Obama is trying to earn votes; but the Obama-EPA plans to move full speed ahead to implement this agenda if President Obama wins a second term. As this report reveals, these rules taken together will inevitably result in the elimination of millions of American jobs, drive up the price of gas at the pump even more, impose construction bans on local communities, and essentially shut down American oil, natural gas, and coal production.

President Obama has spent the past year punting on a slew of job-killing EPA regulations that will destroy millions of American jobs and cause energy prices to skyrocket even more,” Senator Inhofe said. “From greenhouse gas regulations to water guidance to the tightening of the ozone standard, the Obama-EPA has delayed the implementation of rule after rule because they don’t want all those pink slips and price spikes to hit until after the election. But President Obama’s former climate czar Carol Browner was very clear about what’s in store for next year: she told several green groups not to worry because President Obama has a big green ‘to-do’ list for 2013—so they’ll get what they want. As a result, hard working Americans will lose their jobs and be subjected to skyrocketing energy prices

This report also importantly puts the spotlight back on an Obama-EPA that has, as the Washington Post said, earned a ‘reputation for abuse.’ It serves as a stark reminder that President Obama has presided over a green team administration that works every day to ‘crucify’ oil and gas companies and make sure that ‘if you want to build a coal plant you got a big problem.’

Rules Delayed or “Punted” until 2013 by Obama-EPA:

Greenhouse Gas Regulations: These regulations—which President Obama himself warned would be worse than global warming cap-and-trade legislation—will be an enormous burden on the American people. These rules will cost more than $300 to $400 billion a year, and significantly raise the price of gas at the pump and energy in the home. It’s not just coal plants that will be affected: under the Clean Air Act (CAA), churches, schools, restaurants, hospitals and farms will eventually be regulated.

Thus far, EPA has issued regulations governing permit programs and monitoring requirements. Earlier this year, EPA proposed the first source-specific greenhouse gas regulations—emissions standards for new power plants. The proposal paints an ominous picture for rate payers: the requirements are so strict, they virtually eliminate coal as a fuel option for future electric power generation. In a thinly veiled political move, the agency has put off finalizing the proposal until after the election. Similarly, EPA has punted on standards for existing power plants as well as refineries—standards which will further drive up electricity and gasoline prices. Once these regulations are in place, EPA will proceed to issue regulations, industry by industry, until virtually every aspect of the American economy is constrained by strict regulatory requirements and high energy prices.

Take for example, farms: under federal permitting requirements, sources (i.e., a farm whose aggregate emissions exceed CAA permitting thresholds) would be required to comply with costly permitting mandates and pay an annual fee for each ton of greenhouse gas emitted on an annual basis. Known as the “cow tax”, there would be a cost-per-animal outcome. EPA itself estimates that in its best case scenario, there will be over 37,000 farms and ranches subject to greenhouse gas permits at an average cost of $23,000 per permit annually, affecting over 90% of the livestock production in the United States.

Ozone Rule: As the New York Times reported last year, President Obama punted on tightening the ozone standard until after the election, admitting that the “regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty” would harm jobs and the economy—but he still pointed to the fact that it will be reconsidered in 2013. EPA itself estimated that its ozone standard would cost $90 billion a year, while other studies have projected that the rule could cost upwards of a trillion dollars and destroy 7. 4 million jobs. By EPA’s own projections, it could put 650 additional counties into the category of “non-attainment,” which is the equivalent of posting a “closed for business” sign on communities. Affected counties will suffer from severe EPA-imposed restrictions on job creation and business expansion, including large numbers of plant closures. The Times concluded: “The full retreat on the smog standard was the first and most important environmental decision of the presidential campaign season that is now fully underway. An examination of that decision, based on interviews with lobbyists on both sides, former officials and policy makers at the upper reaches of the White House and the E. P. A. , illustrates the new calculus on political and policy shifts as the White House sharpens its focus on the president’s re-election.”

Hydraulic Fracturing: Today the Obama administration—through no less than fourteen federal agencies, including the EPA, the Department of Energy (DOE), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)—is currently working to find ways to regulate hydraulic fracturing at the federal level, so that they can limit and eventually stop the practice altogether.

In order to curtail hydraulic fracturing on public lands, BLM, under Secretary Salazar’s control, will be finalizing new regulations sometime after the election, which will have serious impacts on domestic energy production. According to one study, “The total aggregate cost for new permits and well workovers resulting from this rule would range from $1. 499 billion to $1. 615 billion annually. This is a conservative estimate of the delays and costs associated with the proposed rule which equates to about $253,800 per well, and $233,100 per re-fracture stimulation.”

The Obama Administration’s anti-hydraulic fracturing agenda doesn’t stop there. In the months following the election, we can expect the EPA alone to: issue guidance for the usage of diesel fuels during hydraulic fracturing, which will strip states of the primacy granted to them through the Safe Drinking Water Act; complete a study—highly criticized and unsupported by multiple state and federal agencies—desperately attempting to link hydraulic fracturing to water contamination in Pavillion, WY; answer countless petitions filed by radical environmental organizations potentially leading to the back-door regulation of hydraulic fracturing through the Toxic Substances Control Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and Clean Air Act; and potentially introduce Effluent Limitations Guidelines for both shale gas extraction and coal-bed methane.

Florida Numeric Nutrient Criteria: As the Associated Press reported, “When the Obama administration agreed to set the first-ever federal limits on runoff in Florida, environmental groups were pleased [. . . ] Nearly three years later—with a presidential election looming and Florida expected to play a critical role in the outcome—those groups are still waiting.” In 2009, EPA issued a Clean Water Act (CWA) determination that it would set federal numeric nutrient water quality standards for Florida. The proposed standards EPA unveiled in 2010 were criticized for being technologically and economically infeasible. Florida established its own nutrient criteria, and in 2011, petitioned EPA to withdraw the agency’s January 2009 determination that numeric nutrient criteria are necessary in Florida, repeal federal rulemaking completed in 2010, and refrain from proposing or promulgating any further numeric standards.

In June 2012 a Florida administrative law judge ruled that the state acted within its authority by establishing Florida-specific numeric nutrient standards for the state’s inland waters. Florida certified its standards on June 13, 2012 and submitted it to EPA for approval. EPA had 60 days from this date to approve the rule or 90 days to disapprove it. EPA has only sent back an “initial response” that gives no indication whether or not EPA will approve the Florida rule. EPA has thus far punted both on enforcing their own standards and on responding to Florida’s petition to establish their own standards.

EPA’s Water Guidance: EPA’s proposed new guidance document for waters covered by the CWA, proposed in April 2011, reinterprets recent Supreme Court decisions to allow EPA to expand federal control over virtually every body of water in the United States, no matter how small. EPA’s own analysis of the document estimated that up to 17% of current non-jurisdictional determinations would be considered jurisdictional using the new guidance. Further, the guidance applies to the entire CWA, which will result in additional regulatory responsibilities for states. This dramatic expansion has received tremendous push-back from the regulated community, states, and municipalities who do not want to have extensive new federal authorities and the costs associated with additional CWA compliance pushed through in guidance. As Inside EPA reported in the spring of 2012, the guidance looks to be delayed until after the election. This guidance, much like greenhouse gas regulations, failed to pass as legislation when Democrats enjoyed overwhelming majorities in the House and the Senate.

Storm-water Regulation: In 2009, EPA announced, as part of the Chesapeake Bay Settlement Agreement, that the agency would propose new nationwide storm-water rules by September 2010, with final action by November 2012. EPA’s advanced notice of proposed rulemaking proposed to expand the universe of federally regulated storm-water; establish a first-time standard for post-construction storm-water runoff; require first-time retrofit requirements on storm-water systems—which could include mandates on cities to change existing buildings, storm-water sewers, and streets; and mandate the use of “green infrastructure” techniques (like “green roofs,” rain gardens, permeable pavement) to replace conventional stormwater management practices. All this will put enormous cost burdens on states and municipalities and on anyone who owns property or wants to develop property. If the final rule does everything EPA has proposed, it could be the most expensive rule in EPA history. According to EPA’s website, the proposal has been punted until June 2013, and the final rule is due in December 2014.

Tier III Gas Regulations: EPA is preparing to propose a rulemaking called Tier III, which reduces the content of sulfur in gasoline from 30 ppm to 10 ppm. The cost of this rule could be up to $10 billion initially and $2. 4 billion annually, and it could add up to 9 cents per gallon in manufacturing costs; these costs would inevitably be passed on to consumers at the pump. As a recent Energywire article explained, many on the far left believe that political motives caused President Obama to delay this rule until after the election.

Boiler MACT Rule: EPA’s Boiler MACT (Maximum Achievable Control Technology) standards are so strict that not even the best-performing sources can meet them, so many companies will have no choice but to shut their doors and ship manufacturing jobs overseas. The rule has been projected to reduce US GDP by as much as 1. 2 billion dollars and will destroy nearly 800,000 jobs. Because of bipartisan Congressional opposition to the standards, the agency is now reconsidering certain aspects of the rule. In what can only be seen as another politically calculated move, the new rule is now being held by the White House, presumably until after the election. Not only is this creating uncertainty among the regulated community, it is also fueling speculation that very few changes have been made to the rule and that the White House would prefer that it not be made public until after the election.

Cement MACT Rule: EPA’s Cement MACT rule could cause 18 plants to shut down, throwing up to 80,000 people out of work. As more and more cement has to be imported from China, concrete costs for the construction of roads, bridges, and buildings that use cement could increase 22% to 36%. As with Boiler MACT, due to Congressional opposition, EPA is now reconsidering certain aspects of the rule, which will not be seen until after the election.

316(b) Cooling Towers Rule: EPA is planning to require the use of strict protections for fish in cooling reservoirs for power plants under the Clean Water Act. EPA’s own estimates put the draft rule costs between $384 million and $460 million per year and have benefits of just $17 million—a cost benefit gap of more than 22 to 1. As the Washington Guardian noted about the delay, “In its latest election-year delay of regulations, the Obama administration said Tuesday it will defer until next year acting on a Clean Water Act rule that could require expensive new construction at power plants to lower fish deaths. The postponement by the Environmental Protection Agency was not unexpected, with the agency having only recently completed a public comment period on its latest data. Still, the move to add another 11 months to the rulemaking marks the latest step by the administration to delay potentially controversial environmental rules until after the November election.”

Coal Ash: EPA’s proposed coal ash rule could cost $79 to $110 billion over 20 years, destroying 183,900 to 316,000 jobs; this will have disastrous impacts in states like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Missouri. As the Charleston Gazette reported, “Despite initial tough talk on the issue, [EPA administrator Lisa] Jackson issued a regulatory proposal that did not settle on a particular strategy.” Politico also noted, “EPA is sitting on proposed regulations to declare coal ash to be a hazardous substance. . . Administrator Lisa Jackson has said the agency will issue a final coal ash rule by the end of the year, but environmentalists and coal ash recyclers aren’t convinced.”

Farm Dust Regulations: EPA has been regulating farm dust for decades and may tighten the standards as part its review of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for coarse particulate matter (PM10). Tightening the PM10 NAAQS would have widespread implications for rural America, as it could be below the amount of dust created during normal farming operations, and therefore be impossible to meet. If the standard is tightened, the only option for farmers to comply will be to curb every-day farm activities, which could mean cutting down on numbers of livestock or the tilling of fields, or they may have to shrink or even end their businesses altogether.

Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) Rule: EPA’s Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) Rule would require farmers and ranchers to develop and implement costly oil and gasoline spill prevention plans, placing a tremendous burden on the agricultural community. The original deadline was set for November 2011, but the rule was delayed due to pressure from Congress. EPA set a new SPCC deadline of May 10, 2013.

Summary

This lengthy catalog of EPA horrors does not include schemes being hatched but not yet disclosed. Nor does it include initiatives by “junior EPAs”—such as the cap-and-trade planby CARB (Calif Air Resources Board).

Clearly, if Romney-Ryan are elected, they will have their hands full just reining in the EPA—an essential step in restoring economic growth. They will need all the help they can get from the next Congress.

SOURCE

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29 October, 2012

Push for climate consensus counter-productive

Atmospheric scientist Judith Curry and her colleagues have just had a paper accepted for publication which takes a look at claims of consensus about climate. The conclusions are below:

Conclusions

The climate community has worked for more than 20 years to establish a scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. The IPCC consensus building process arguably played a useful role in the early synthesis of the scientific knowledge and in building political will to act.

We have presented perspectives from multiple disciplines that support the inference that the scientific consensus seeking process used by the IPCC has had the unintended consequence of introducing biases into the both the science and related decision making processes.

The IPCC scientific consensus has become convoluted with consensus decision making through a ‘speaking consensus to power’ approach.

The growing implications of the messy wickedness of the climate change problem are becoming increasingly apparent, highlighting the inadequacies of the ‘consensus to power’ approach for decision making on the complex issues associated with climate change.

Further, research from the field of science and technology studies are finding that manufacturing a consensus in the context of the IPCC has acted to hyper-politicize the scientific and policy debates, to the detriment of both.

Arguments are increasingly being made to abandon the scientific consensus seeking approach in favor of open debate of the arguments themselves and discussion of a broad range of policy options that stimulate local and regional solutions to the multifaceted and interrelated issues of climate change, land use, resource management, cost effective clean energy solutions, and developing technologies to expand energy access efficiently.

More HERE

United Nation’s Climate Summary Elevates Political Activism Over Scientific Findings

It's a parody of science

In 2014, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will release its “fifth assessment” report on the influence human activity has on the environment. A “multi-stage review” of early draft versions is already underway, according to a U.N. news site. In the first stage, “scientific experts” review the draft, then “government experts get their shot. This all culminates with a “final round of government” comments in the “Summary for Policymakers.” This is important because the Summary will be released to the news media in September of next year before anyone actually sees the final full version of the fifth assessment.

Richard Lindzen, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has been sharply critical of this approach because it essentially means the U.N. is issuing a conclusion before producing the actual evidence for this conclusion. Lindzen specialized in the study of clouds and water vapor for the IPCC’s third assessment report released in 2001.

The Summary, which is typically about 20 pages long, is mostly the work of political operatives, not scientists, Lindzen has said. Moreover, the rules are such that changes and modifications can be made to the body of the report to bring in line with what government officials want in the Summary, Lindzen has explained.

“If you were doing this with a business report, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) would be down your throat,” he has said.

Harvard University physicist Lubos Motl is just as blunt.

“These people are openly declaring that they are going to commit scientific misconduct that will be paid for by the United Nations,” Motl has written on his blog. “If they find an error in the Summary, they won’t fix it, instead they will adjust the technical report so it looks consistent.”

Another key player here exposing the perfidy behind the U.N.’s IPCC is Donna Lafamboise, an investigative journalist based in Ontario, Canada. She has just written a book entitled: “The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert.” After probing into the IPCC over a two year period, she found that many of the lead authors were not well-credentialed scientists and that some were closely linked with environmental pressure groups.

During a recent forum hosted by the Friends of Science in Calgary, Canada, she presented photos on screen of lead authors, who were under 30, and lacking in scientific and academic credentials.

There is Richard Klein, for example, a Greenpeace activist, who was 23 when he finished his MA in geography. Two years later, he was tapped to be a lead author for the IPCC. There is also Sari Kovats, who in 1994, was selected to work on the first IPCC chapter. But she didn’t earn her Ph.D. until 16 years after she was selected a named as one of top environmental experts by the U.N.

As part of her investigation, Laframboise also performed an audit to see if the IPCC actually relies on peer-reviewed research as its top officials have claimed. She concluded that 21 out of 44 chapters in the 2007 report drew from less than 60 percent of material that was peer reviewed.

In her book, LaFramboise also makes note of conflicts that comprise the objectivity of the IPCC. For example, Jennifer Morgan, a lead spokesperson for the World Wildlife Fund, helped craft a portion of the IPCC reports back in 2010. In fact, two-thirds of the the fourth assessment includes at least one scientist connected with the WWF, according to the book.

Meanwhile, the run-up to the fifth assessment, actual scientific findings continue to debunk the idea the human activity is responsible for catastrophic man-made global warming. A new scientific study published in the journal “Climate of the Past” concludes that the Earth was much warmer 1,000 years ago, and that warming cycle for the late 20th Century was not unprecedented.

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Hurricane Sandy's Message to America

By Alan Caruba

When Mother Nature demonstrates her extraordinary power, I always hope that people will draw a lesson from it, but they never seem to. Hurricane Sandy is just the latest example of the futility and foolishness of thinking that humans can do anything about a hurricane or similar demonstration of who is really in charge. It is the planet. Not us.

This suspension of common sense is worsened when our President goes on television, as he did last Friday on MTV, to say “I believe the scientists, who say that we are putting too much carbon emissions into the atmosphere, and it is heating the planet and it is going to have a severe effect.” This is literally junk science, long since debunked by legions of scientists who know that carbon dioxide has nothing to do with the Earth’s temperature. The planet has been in a cooling cycle since 1998.
I keep hoping, too, that lacking the vital lifeblood of our nation--electricity—millions of people sitting around in the dark will ask themselves where it comes from, what generates it, how does it get to their home, and perhaps even why its cost keeps increasing even though the U.S. sits atop enough coal and natural gas to provide affordable power for two hundred years at current consumption rates.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in March of this year electricity from coal has fallen from 50% production to less than 40% by the end of 2011. Other sources include natural gas at 26%, nuclear at 22%, hydroelectric at 7% and “other” was said to be 6%. It should be noted that oil is a transportation fuel and not used to generate electricity. I believe that the amount that solar and wind produces is more likely closer to three percent. It is unreliable and uncompetitive and requires a traditional plant as backup when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun is obscured by clouds and, of course, at night.

Not surprisingly, the environmental organizations such as Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club are already beating the drums about “climate change”, asserting “unpredictable, extreme weather.” The planet is always in a state of climate change if for no other reason that it is subject to the seasons. Blaming extreme weather on “climate change” is just a code for keeping the “global warming” hoax alive. The only reason President Obama talks about climate change is his hope that a carbon tax can be imposed to raise more money for the government to waste.

Electricity is not magic. Some form of energy must be burned to generate it and then it must be transmitted by a huge, very old grid to consumers.

In January of this year, The North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned that the reliability of the grid was in jeopardy. Thanks to the Obama administration’s (i.e. EPA) relentless attack on coal, the NERC noted that beyond the 38 gigawatts of electricity capacity that has already been announced to retire, it estimated that another 35 to 59 gigawatts will come off-line by 2018 depending on the “scope and timing” of EPA regulations. If you think the downed lines that Hurricane Sandy will produce are a problem, consider a future in which the electricity they are supposed to distribute will be significantly reduced.

What most Americans don’t know is that coal is the fuel of choice to generate electricity in many other nations of the world. Just five years ago it produced fifty percent of our electricity, but today it is less than forty percent, the lowest share since data began to be collected in 1949. For example, China’s coal consumption grew 9.7% between 2010 and 2011. Last year China consumed 49% of the world’s coal supply. India’s coal consumption increased 9.2%

While the President blathers on MTV about CO2 emissions, my friend Dr. Jay Lehr, the Science Director of The Heartland Institute, dispatches that nonsense noting that “A simple volcanic eruption will cancel a decade of effort” to reduce emissions.

“Today,” says Dr. Lehr, “it is our government that is attempting to thwart our energy independence by blocking nearly every effort to develop our resources through completely unreasonable restrictions placed on us by the EPA and the Department of the Interior, and horrible policies of the Department of Energy which choose to throw unconscionable sums of money at renewable energy projects…”

Ultimately, while millions of Americans light candles in the dark or hope their flashlight batteries hold out, we have to ask WHY the Obama administration has waged a war on the provision of electricity.

This is a deliberate policy to weaken the nation’s capacity to function at every level and yet we are days away from an election where millions of Americans will vote to reelect Obama and send his Democratic Party minions to Congress.

It is in line with the Obama administration’s deliberate policy of reducing our military capacity on land, sea and air.

The only silver lining in the distress and disruption of Hurricane Sandy may be the awakening of voters to the critical need for more, not less, production of electricity, for improvements to the national grid, for more oil production for our transportation needs, and concurrent with this, the hundreds of thousands of jobs that such efforts would produce and billions it would generate to begin to reduce the national debt, now in excess of $16 trillion.
Long ago, the cartoon character, Pogo, famously said, “We have met the enemy and it is us.”

The enemy, I would suggest, is President Barack Hussein Obama, his many shadowy, unaccountable “czars” influencing energy policies, his Cabinet Secretaries of Energy and the Interior, and the rogue Environmental Protection Agency that is set to unleash regulations that will destroy the economy, aided and abetted by the nation’s environmental organizations.

That’s Hurricane Sandy’s message to America.

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Election Campaigns Prove Global Warming Crisis Skeptics Won The Climate Debate

Evidenced by public cooling towards global warming peril as a hot campaign issue, it is apparent that the Democrat party has been encountering a political climate change. The subject obviously hasn’t been viewed as a winning issue, nor has the anti-carbon “alternative energy” rationale supported by that contrived hysteria.

Nope, you’d hardly know from the presidential and V.P. debates that, as the 2012 Democrat party platform warns: “We know that climate change is one of the biggest threats of this generation…an economic, environmental, and national security catastrophe in the making.” In fact, it mentions global warming 18 times, stating that: “We affirm the science of climate change, commit to significantly reducing the pollution [carbon dioxide plant food] that causes climate change, and know we have to meet this challenge by driving smart policies [i.e., plug-in cars] that lead to greater growth in clean energy generation and result in a range of economic and social benefits [to favored fund-raisers and companies]. President Obama has been a leader on this issue.”

Could it be that the Democrats believe that, like defeating terrorism, their climate battle has already been won? After all, remember Barack Obama’s victory speech on the night he won the 2008 Democrat presidential primary when he said “[T]his was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal”? Well he does deserve some credit on quelling the ocean terror. Under his watch, they apparently haven’t risen at all. However, the rising debt does have the economy under water.

And just like the oceans, the climate and greenhouse pollution concerns that Dems emphasized in their platform never rose to gain much attention on their 2012 DNC podium in Charlotte either. Unlike 2008, when Al Gore blew onto the stage like a man-caused hurricane, he was nowhere in sight. Nor were the authors of their failed cap-and-trade bill, Henry Waxman or Ed Markey. The only mentions of these “threats” were voiced in a reference to “increasing climate volatility” in an obscure speech by Advanced Energy Economy co-founder Tom Steyer, a passing comment about “reducing greenhouse gases” in Bill Clinton’s address , and John Kerry’s statement that “an exceptional country does care about the rise of the oceans and the future of the country.”

Even Senator Kerry seems finally to have gotten the message that that “less is more” now applies to this tiresome topic. Frustrated over what he called “the flat-Earth caucus” of global warming skeptics, he recently said: “Even amid the ‘Tuesday Group’…a bi-partisan block of lawmakers, mostly Democrats, who are interested in energy issues… you can’t talk about climate now. People just turn off. It’s extraordinary. Only for national security and jobs will they open their minds.”

You gotta feel his pain. He and Independent Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman had worked hard to push a global climate crisis-premised 2010 carbon cap-and-trade bill, only to see its prospects for passage swept away in a Republican House cleaning. Kerry then charged that opponents to the legislation “made up their own science. They made up their own arguments. The Republicans created this idea of [carbon credit] trading because it avoided command and control by the Federal Government. Then they just decided to pick up and brand this a negative.”

He might very well be right about that negative branding, and not just only by Republicans. Egregious ClimateGate and related U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scandals have prompted many to rethink which side of the climate/energy issue “has made up their own science and arguments”.

An August 2011 Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American adults showed that 69% said it is at least “somewhat likely” that some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs, including 40% who said this is “very likely”. (The number who said it’s likely is up 10 points since December 2009.) And while Republicans and adults not affiliated with either major political party felt stronger than Democrats that some scientists have falsified data to support their global warming theories, 51% of the Democrats also agreed.

This skeptical trend is likely to continue. While no sane scientists doubt that climate changes, or that our planet has been warming, at least from the time the last Ice Age and much more recent “Little Ice Age” ended, there’s no evidence that alarm-premised economy-ravaging carbon regulation schemes are warranted. Despite elevated atmospheric CO2 levels, there actually hasn’t been any significant warming over more than one and one-half decades. Records show that global temperatures have been up and down since 1997, but are now at the same place they were at the beginning of that year.

So does this mean that they won’t rise again? No, as generally recognized, climate changes are measured in multi-decadal timescales. Yet this routine standard didn’t inhibit Al Gore his acolytes from declaring that a previous warm period following 40 years of flat temperatures that lasted from 1980 to 1996 signaled a man-made disaster.

Perhaps there is actually little mystery as to why climate concern hasn’t been featured by Dems as a debating point. It might just be because they recognize that lots of voters are weary of witnessing many billions of tax dollars squandered on phony climate alarm-premised green subsidy fiascoes and empty promises of energy security and employment benefits.

In January 2009, President Obama pledged: “We will put Americans to work in new jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced—jobs building solar panels and wind turbines.” Then, undeterred by dismal experiences here and abroad, he renewed a commitment to “double down” on this agenda in his 2012 State of the Union speech. So just how well is that approach working so far?

Well, about 20 of those government-backed energy companies have run into financial trouble, ranging from layoffs to bankruptcies. Seventy-one percent of those Energy Department green energy grants and loans have gone to projects involving major presidential campaign money bundlers including members of his National Finance Committee, or those who contributed to the Democratic Party… donors who raised $457,000, then received taxpayer-supplied project grants or loans totaling nearly $11.35 billion.

In fact, a report issued by the Government Accountability Office, the investigatory arm of Congress, raised concerns last year about favoritism in awarding some stimulus loan guarantees. The Energy Department’s own inspector general admitted to Congress that there might be reasons for such suspicion— that some contracts may have been steered to “friends and family.” Accordingly, the Energy Department’s inspector general is launching more than 100 criminal investigations into its own green energy program awards.

Maybe it has been a smart idea for the Democrats to go a bit light on the president’s record on climate and energy achievements after all, and concentrate their message on really critical matters…like switching from subsidies for green energy to subsidies for Sesame Street and contraceptives for female law students. And hey, why not let the planet heal itself just as it always has, even before Obama took charge?

In any case, one thing appears very clear. According to the presidential campaign priorities they emphasized, Democrats no longer seem to believe that global warming is an urgent subject warranting debate.

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A disaster that science brought upon itself

The jailing of scientists for failing to predict an earthquake is the sad conclusion to the scientific community’s depiction of itself as soothsayer

The jailing of six Italian scientists and a government official for failing to predict an earthquake has caused uproar in the scientific community. The men were convicted of manslaughter on the basis that they failed to give an adequate risk assessment of the 2009 earthquake in the central Italian city of L’Aquila, which killed 300 people. Outraged by the court’s verdict, the CEO of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science wrote to the president of Italy to tell him ‘there is no accepted scientific method for earthquake prediction that can be reliably used to inform citizens of an impending disaster’. The verdict is ‘perverse’ and ‘ludicrous’, says the science journal Nature.

That’s true - the verdict is perverse. It has a strong whiff of the Middle Ages about it, except instead of dunking witches for bringing about a harsh winter and destroying crops, we lock up scientists for failing to foresee a fatal earthquake. But at the same time, isn’t the verdict also the tragically logical conclusion to the scientific community’s feverish adoption in recent years of the role of soothsayer, predictor of the world’s end and proponent of solutions for how to prevent it? Over the past decade, leading scientists have repositioned themselves as modern-day diviners, particularly in the climate-change debate, where they insist that not only can they tell us what the world will look like in 50 years’ time, but also what minute changes all of us must make now if we want that future world to be different. And their predictions are treated as unchallengeable credos, as all those awkward, anti-green question-askers who have been branded ‘deniers’ will know.

In such a climate, is it really surprising that scientists who fail to predict a natural disaster, who do not fulfil the role of saviour of mankind that the science community has carved out for itself, can be demonised? If scientists play God, it’s also possible for them to be treated as the Devil.

Of course, outrage about the verdict is justified. These men should never have been arrested, never mind jailed. The trial effectively criminalised uncertainty, with the prosecution arguing that the men’s information about the earthquake was ‘generic and ineffective’ and ‘incomplete, imprecise and contradictory’. The crux of the case was that 29 of those who died in the quake had intended to leave L’Aquila, following a series of small tremors, but they were persuaded to stay by a statement given by the government official who has been jailed, Bernardo De Bernardinis. He said during the tremors period, ‘The scientific community tells me there is no danger because there is an ongoing discharge of energy’. This was incorrect - the scientists had actually told De Bernardinis that the tremors pointed to an increased risk of a quake but it was impossible to be precise about where or when such a quake might strike. This was clearly an instance of bad communication between officials and scientists, and between officials and the public, and it’s highly unfortunate that, in L’Aquila’s attempts to find someone or something to hold responsible for the devastating quake, it has all been dragged before a court and held up as something fatally sinister.

Fundamentally, the criminalisation of people for failing to predict an earthquake, and potentially lessen its impact, speaks to Western society’s discomfort with the idea of accidents or disasters, with the the idea that some things just happen and no one is responsible. Ours is an era in which we find it very hard to accept that some events have no logic behind them. And so we continually go on Medieval hunts for a malevolent force or person who might be blamed for various terrible things that occur.

Whether it’s quakes in Italy, flooding in England or tsunamis in Asia, there’s a blame game after every natural disaster. Religious believers blame sinful mankind, claiming he brought God’s violent or watery judgement upon us; environmentalists blame polluting mankind, arguing that our temerity to be industrious has upset ‘Gaia’s balance’; others blame government officials, accusing them of failing to safeguard every aspect of society from the whims of nature. In each case, the impulse to blame is a backward, pre-modern one, fuelled by a belief that some sentient, probably wicked force either caused a natural disaster or exacerbated its effects. It is not unlike when, between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, eccentric old women were branded witches and held responsible for, as one author describes it, ‘[bringing about] years of extreme hardship, in particular the type of misery related to extreme climatic events’ (1). Today, too, we seek out individuals or institutions we can blame for extreme events.

Indeed, it is worth comparing Italian officials’ response to the L’Aquila quake with the response of Enlightened thinkers to the Great Lisbon Earthquake of November 1755. That quake, which killed up to 100,000 people, became a key reference point for Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Kant. They wrote about and argued over it for years. Kant in particular challenged the idea, then a given, that quakes such as this were acts of divine providence, punishment from on high for mankind’s errors. That simply didn’t make sense in relation to Lisbon, a devout Catholic city, in which virtually every church was toppled but the notorious red-light district was left standing. Kant posited that earthquakes ‘are not supernatural events’ but rather are natural disasters, over which we have no control (2). This was a radical, and radically reasoned, reading of natural events, which challenged the idea that mankind was at the mercy of some external, watching force. Where the Lisbon quake generated heated Enlightened debate, the L’Aquila quake gave rise to a rush to apportion blame - signalling what a crisis of Enlightened thought there is today in comparison with 250 years ago.

But even as we condemn the Italian court for jailing these scientists, and Western society for failing to accept that sometimes disasters just happen, we should also ask whether the scientific community itself bears some responsibility for how these men have been treated. Because today, scientists are at the forefront of depicting natural events as being easily blameable on the behaviour of human beings. Through its fulsome and ceaseless promotion of the climate-change agenda, the global scientific community (as it has fashioned itself) continually makes a simplistic causal link between what men do now and what will befall the planet in the future - just as a link was made between the behaviour of those Italian scientists and the quake deaths that followed.

Also, the scientific community is forever depicting itself as soothsayer, as an almost all-knowing force, whose predictions of future calamity must not be challenged. When radical green activists march behind banners declaring ‘We are armed with peer-reviewed science’, and critics of the environmentalist agenda are slammed for being ‘anti-science’, you can clearly see that science has become a kind of unquestionable gospel of the future, a respectable version of what Nostradamus used to do. It isn’t only that court in L’Aquila that demonises uncertainty, lambasting those seven men for saying things that were ‘incomplete, imprecise, contradictory’; through the phrase ‘the debate is over’, the scientific community does the same thing in relation to climate change, frequently slamming those who seek to inject some healthy uncertainty about the future into proceedings.

Today it is those who pose as pro-science who are most likely to treat natural events as being caused by individuals’ behaviour, and who are most likely to argue that catastrophes can be predicted and potentially offset through a secular form of eco-penance. They even claim that earthquakes are caused by climate change, as evidenced in recent headlines such as ‘Climate change will shake the earth’. They would probably have blamed the Lisbon quake on consumerism, just as religious folk blamed it on sin. In such an increasingly unhinged, pre-Enlightened climate, is it so shocking that scientists who fail at being seers can be ruthlessly punished?

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Perverse environmentalist oil sands ethics

The duplicity and hypocrisy of environmental pressure groups seem to be matched only by their consummate skill at manipulating public opinion, amassing political power, securing taxpayer-funded government grants, and persuading people to send them money and invest in “ethical” stock funds.

In the annals of “green” campaigns, those against biotechnology, DDT and Alar are especially prominent. To those we should now add the well-orchestrated campaigns against Canadian oil sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Oil has been seeping out of Northern Alberta soils and river banks for millennia. Native Americans used the bitumen to waterproof canoes, early explorers smelled and wrote about it, and “entrepreneurs” used it in “mineral waters” and “medicinal elixirs.”

Today, increasingly high-tech operations are extracting the precious hydrocarbons to fuel modern living standards in Canada and the United States. Enormous excavator/loading shovels and trucks used in open pits during the early years are giving way to drilling rigs, steam injection, electric heaters, pipes and other technologies to penetrate, liquefy and extract the petroleum.

The new techniques impact far less land surface, use and recycle brackish water, and emit fewer air pollutants and (plant-fertilizing) carbon dioxide every year. Water use for Alberta oil extraction is a tiny fraction of what’s needed to grow corn and convert it into ethanol that gets a third less mileage per gallon than gasoline. Affected lands are returned to forest and native grasslands at a surprising pace. And the operations are removing oil that would otherwise end up in local air and water.

Instead of requiring perpetual subsidies, á la the “renewable” technologies that President Obama intends to redouble if he is reelected, the oil sands generate vast sums in royalties and taxes: an anticipated $690 billion into federal and provincial coffers all across Canada over the life of the project. That’s on top of tens of thousands of jobs of every description, including nearly 2,000 Native Canadians (Aboriginals), whose communities have enjoyed soaring living standards since the operations were launched. In fact, the oil sands project will ultimately generate 11,219,000 person-years of high-paying employment from Alberta to British Columbia, Ontario and the Maritime Provinces, say government sources.

This North American oil is displacing millions of barrels of annual US oil imports from some of the least savory countries on Earth, while adding billions of barrels a year to planetary petroleum production, and thereby keeping world oil prices lower than they would otherwise be.

These are huge benefits. The oil sands project is hardly perfect. It causes environmental impacts, just as all human enterprises do, especially those that provide energy. Indeed, even fantasy fuel projects – wind, solar and biofuel boondoggles that provide comparatively minuscule amounts of energy, but require billions in taxpayer subsidies – have enormous ecological impacts.Here’s the most important point:

Canada’s oil sands (and the Keystone Pipeline that will bring their petroleum to the United States) must be evaluated on environmental and ethical grounds that compare them to real world alternatives to them – not to some utopian energy resource that exists only in the minds of idealists, ideologues and special interest environmental pressure groups.

These critics viciously attack Alberta and the oil sands industry – accusing them of “blood oil,” environmental devastation and unethical practices. In reality, oil sands petroleum is among the most ethical and ecological on Earth, especially when compared to real-world alternatives like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Sudan, Russia, Ecuador and Venezuela, whose human rights violations, terrorism sponsorship and reckless environmental records are legendary. And yet oil sands critics give them a free pass, while heaping opprobrium on Canada.

Whole Foods says oil sands fuel “does not fit our values.” Perhaps the grocer and its “ethical” colleagues prefer values espoused in alternative oil-supplying nations on rights of women, children, gays and foreign housekeepers; stoning, lashing and lopping off hands and heads; treatment of civilians during wars in Chechnya and Darfur; massacres and environmental degradation in the Nigerian delta region; rigged elections and Swiss bank accounts for oil proceeds; or treatment of aboriginals, minorities and Christians.

Perhaps Whole Foods, Sierra Club, NRDC, Obama’s EPA and allied critics prefer to look toward China, which provides 95% of the rare earth metals that are essential for wind turbines and solar panels. Those operations have brought unprecedented air and water pollution, cropland and wildlife habitat wastelands, widespread radiation contamination, and cancer and lung disease in workers and local residents.

28% of Canadian oil industry jobs held by women is “not enough,” intones Kairos, a left-leaning coalition of churches. Compared to what? Women’s jobs in Saudi Arabia or Iran? The 3.5 million more American women who have ended up on poverty rolls since President Obama took office?

Some 1,600 ducks died after landing in an oil sands waste pit several years ago. A repeat of this isolated incident is increasingly unlikely as open pit mining and oil-water separation pits are replaced by in situ drilling and steam. Nevertheless, using analytical methods that only IPCC climate alarmists would appreciate, the “respected” Pembina Institute conjured up the fantastical “calculation” that “more than 160 million birds would die from oil sands development” over the coming decades.

The claim is not merely wild fear-mongering. It ignores the growing impact of wind turbines on raptors, and attempts by industrial wind developers to get US Fish & Wildlife Service “programmatic take” permits: 007 Licenses to Kill thousands of eagles, hawks, whooping cranes and other protected birds every year without fear of prosecution.

Greenpeace routinely pillories oil sands companies as “climate criminals,” while the US Environmental Protection Agency uses their oil sands CO2 emissions to justify denying Keystone Pipeline permits. (Greenpeace lost its Canadian tax-exempt status, but still manages to con contributors out of vast sums, to retain its status as a $340-million-per-year pressure group. EPA conducts illegal experiments on humans, to justify regulations that are killing thousands of coal mining and utility jobs.)

These positions reflect adherence to the shaky hypothesis of catastrophic manmade global warming and unsupportable claims that the oil sands contribute disproportionately to a looming climate Armageddon. However, Alberta environment office show that “greenhouse gas” emissions from oil sands plummeted 38% between 1990 and 2009, and are now 5% of Canada’s total GHG emissions – and equal to or lower than CO2/GHG emissions from petroleum operations in Nigeria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

So-called “ethical funds” likewise excoriate oil sands developers like Total, Syncrude and Imperial Oil, while promising investors that their money will purchase shares in “responsible” companies that don’t produce fossil fuels, do nuclear power or contribute to climate change. Co-operative Bank’s is one of those modern day snake oil “entrepreneurs.” Its über-ethical Sustainable Leaders Trust (don’t you love that name?) makes that pitch – and then invests client cash in Third World coal mines … and oil sands!

The rogues’ gallery of oil sands critics and their shady dealings is so vast that someone could write a book about them. In fact, Ezra Levant did exactly that. His Ethical Oil is an eye-opening companion to my own Eco-Imperialism, which chronicles the often lethal misdeeds of other self-righteous pressure groups.

Their misrepresentations, double standards, questionable practices and perverse ethics would get them brought up on fraud charges, if they were oil companies or non-“ethical” investment “trusts.”

It’s time to apply the same legal, ethical and credibility standards to these “socially responsible” outfits that they insist on applying to the corporations they denounce. Keep that in mind the next time you see EPA, Greenpeace, Co-operative Bank or anyone else taking pot shots at oil sands or Keystone.

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

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28 October, 2012

Pesky new study of malaria; scare debunked

Anybody who knows anything about the natural sciences knows how improbable are straight-line projections from known data. Future changes will usually either approach an asymptote or even be parabolic. But Greenie "scientists" love their straight-line projections. It's so much easier to create a panic that way.

And a favorite linear projection is that as world temperatures get warmer so will malaria become more frequent. They derive that theory from the fact that malaria is best known as a tropical disease. That its prevalence there might be due to poor public health measures in many tropical countries they do not consider. I was born and bred in the middle of the tropics but malaria is unknown there because Australia is a modern Western country with modern Western public health measures. There are a lot of blue eyes there too, if that helps you to get the picture.

Some researchers have however had a closer look at the actual facts about malaria prevalence and fitted a distressingly non-linear function to them. They find that malaria actually FALLS as the temperature gets hot

The downside is that the most favorable temperature for malaria transmission is 25 degrees Celsius -- about the average July temperature of NYC! Clearly, public health measures matter a lot more than temperature. Wotta laugh the whole scare is! Note that French malaria expert Paul Reiter has been pointing out the facts for years -- JR.

Optimal temperature for malaria transmission is dramatically lower than previously predicted

Erin A. Mordecai et al.

Abstract

The ecology of mosquito vectors and malaria parasites affect the incidence, seasonal transmission and geographical range of malaria. Most malaria models to date assume constant or linear responses of mosquito and parasite life-history traits to temperature, predicting optimal transmission at 31 °C. These models are at odds with field observations of transmission dating back nearly a century. We build a model with more realistic ecological assumptions about the thermal physiology of insects. Our model, which includes empirically derived nonlinear thermal responses, predicts optimal malaria transmission at 25 °C (6 °C lower than previous models). Moreover, the model predicts that transmission decreases dramatically at temperatures > 28 °C, altering predictions about how climate change will affect malaria. A large data set on malaria transmission risk in Africa validates both the 25 °C optimum and the decline above 28 °C. Using these more accurate nonlinear thermal-response models will aid in understanding the effects of current and future temperature regimes on disease transmission.

Ecology Letters

Global cooling hits Britain!

Don't like the logic of the heading above? It's more logical than saying that drought in parts of America proves global warming -- though that's not saying much

Northern counties yesterday saw the first snow of winter and tonight temperatures in southern England are expected to fall to a chilly -3C. Hundreds of gritters were on standby to treat roads around the country last night as forecasters warned some areas were as cold as Moscow.

As temperatures plummet towards freezing, the first snow fell in Northumberland today. Milder temperatures will move in tomorrow, but widespread persistent rain and high winds means it will still be a day best spent in front of the fire.

There was snow on the ground in Scotland and Northumberland yesterday, leaving a dusting on fields and pavements as temperatures dipped below zero.

A Met Office spokesman said the snow was falling much earlier than last year, when snowflakes were not reported until December.

Charlie Powell, a spokesman for the Met Office said: 'Some parts of the country are as cold as Moscow today. Those in Northumberland are experiencing temperatures between 3 and 4C.

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Mike’s Nobel Trick

By Mark Steyn

Last Monday, hockey-stick progenitor Michael Mann filed suit in DC Superior Court against me, NR, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Rand Simberg. I noticed on the press release (published on his Facebook page) that Dr Mann claimed to have been “awarded the Nobel Peace Prize“, and that on the complaint itself we are accused of the hitherto unknown crime of “defamation of a Nobel prize recipient“.

So my colleague Charles C W Cooke decided to call up the Nobel chaps in Oslo and ask them if Dr Mann was, in fact, a Nobel laureate:

*    Cooke: I was wondering, has Dr. Michael Mann ever won the Nobel Peace Prize?

*    Nobel Committee: No, no. He has never won the Nobel prize.

Thomas Richard also contacted the Norwegians and asked, “Was Prof Michael Mann ‘awarded’ a Nobel Prize of any sort at any time? Is he a Nobel Laureate as implied elsewhere in his legal brief?” He received the following email from Geir Lundestad, Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute:

*    Michael Mann has never been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In public, Dr Mann is a-huffin’ an’ a-puffin’ that this is just more smears from Koch-funded climate deniers. But, behind the scenes, a lot of quiet airbrushing of the record seems to be going on. Two days ago, his Penn State bio said he had been “co-awarded” the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, now merely that he “contributed… to the award” (whatever that means).

Over at Wikipedia, they’re arguing over ever more unwieldy rewrites. Editing a false legal complaint is trickier but by now someone may have snuck into the DC court clerk’s office with a gallon of White-Out and amended “defamation of a Nobel prize recipient” to “defamation of a man who received one of two thousand photocopies of a commemorative thank-you certificate run off at the IPCC branch of Kinko’s”.

So let’s see: A week ago, Michael Mann accused us of damaging his reputation – and seems to have made it a self-fulfilling prophecy. A week ago, he was a “Nobel prize recipient”. Now he’s not. Great work, Mike!

SOURCE

Obama War On Coal Key To Mitt Romney's Ohio Hopes

Mitt Romney's battle for Ohio may come down to President Obama's "War on Coal." Romney has gained on Obama in the crucial state. Before the Oct. 3 presidential debate, the RealClearPolitics average had Obama up 5.5 points in Ohio. It's now down to 2.1 points, with the most recent survey showing a tie.

The GOP hopeful could win without Ohio and its 18 electoral votes. Assuming he wins Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, which seems likely, he could reach 271 by taking New Hampshire, Colorado and Wisconsin.

But Romney would be bucking history. No Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. With it, he only needs New Hampshire, where he has led some recent polls, to reach the minimum 270 electoral votes.

Romney's biggest liability is his opposition to the administration's auto bailout, a big issue to the car industry's heavy northeast portion of the Buckeye State. The Obama campaign has been hitting Romney with ads on that issue nonstop.

Romney's ace in the hole might be the 18 counties in Ohio that still produce coal. Obama's Environmental Protection Agency regulations targeting coal are not popular in those areas.

Thousands of signs in southeast Ohio read, "Stop The War On Coal. Fire Obama," according to Mark Weaver, a GOP strategist and part of Romney's legal team in the state.

The 18 coal counties gave Obama a margin of about 41,000 votes in 2008. If Romney could produce a five-point swing, he would win the region by roughly 10,000 votes.

The other advantage Romney may have is a lack of enthusiasm among 18- to 29-year-olds. In Ohio they voted 61%-36% in favor of Obama in 2008, a margin of 238,000 votes.

But polls show that the enthusiasm has faded. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that only 48% of those 18-29 had given quite a lot of thought to the 2012 election this year vs. 65% in 2008. Seventy-two percent said in 2008 that they were definitely voting vs. 63% this year, a drop of nine points. In 2004, Kerry won the Ohio youth vote over Bush by a smaller 56%-44%.

A drop of nine points in youth voter turnout with 2004 margins would reduce Obama's edge among Ohio millennials to about 104,000 votes.

"One piece of evidence for the decline in youth enthusiasm is that in the last several trips Obama has made to Ohio, most have been to a college town, trying to drum up support," said Weaver. "There just isn't the same fervor among millennials as there was four years ago."

Another challenge Obama faces is in Cuyahoga County, which contains Cleveland. Cuyahoga gave Obama his biggest vote margin in Ohio last time.

But voter registration is down 182,000 since 2008, a drop of more than 16%. That could cost Obama more than 40,000 votes if he wins Cuyahoga by the same percentage.

Nevertheless, there are still more than 74,000 people who work in the auto and related industries in Ohio. Romney's support for a bankruptcy reorganization instead of a bailout could hurt him with that demographic.

"The auto bailout creates an interesting dynamic because it puts in play some blue collar people who haven't supported Obama but may do so this time," said Matt Mayer, president of Opportunity Ohio, a conservative think tank.

SOURCE

Important Energy Questions Remain After Presidential Debates

The sparring over energy issues in the Presidential debates, particularly the first one at the University of Denver, underscored divergent viewpoints between the two candidates. The differences are particularly important here in Colorado, where we are home to ten of America’s 100 largest natural gas fields, and three of the 100 largest oil fields.

President Obama correctly noted that oil and natural gas production are higher than they’ve been in years, but Governor Romney countered that “all of the increase in natural gas and oil has happened on private land, not on government land.” He took the president to task for cutting the number of permits and licenses in half. In Colorado more than a third of the land is controlled by the federal government, so we found it alarming that the president did not answer to the fact that oil and gas production on federal lands dropped to record low levels.

When the president proposed new taxes on gas and oil that would ultimately be borne by consumers and cost job losses, Romney correctly took him to task for wasting tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on expensive and unreliable energy sources, whose failed corporate leaders were Obama campaign donors.

The debate spelled out clear differences, yet voters still deserve answers to questions that were not asked during the debates.

The Interior Department is expected to issue new regulations on hydraulic fracturing, a process that extracts oil and gas from shale rock deposits. Colorado’s shale oil deposits contain as much as 1 trillion barrels of recoverable oil – nearly as much as the entire world’s proven oil reserves. The federal rule will cost the industry an estimated $1.5 billion dollars while vesting authority to the federal government that had been reserved to the states for more than 60 years without a single instance of groundwater contamination.

Will Obama approve the new rules? Almost certainly since they are being drafted by his Administration. Romney has indicated he prefers leaving regulation to the various states as it has historically been administered.

Federal energy regulations have a direct impact on the lives of the 570 employees who work at Colorado’s two refineries, and earn more than $150,000 a year, on average. Significantly more workers are employed in the large gulf coast refinery regions and elsewhere, but a plethora of new government regulations are threatening their jobs as well as driving energy costs even higher.

For example, under new EPA rules, refiners must buy costly "waiver credits" if they don’t blend gasoline and diesel with a mandated amount of cellulosic biofuel. Yet no cellulosic ethanol even exists outside of a research laboratory.

It is expected that the EPA will move forward with its so-called Tier 3 rule, which would require even steeper cuts to sulfur levels in gasoline. The rule is coming despite the fact that refineries spent nearly $10 billion to reduce sulfur levels by 90 percent just since 2004, and despite the fact that steeper cuts could result in a 9 to 25 cents per gallon increase in the cost of manufacturing gasoline and lead to as many as seven additional refinery closures. Tier 3 is an excellent example of why both candidates should have been asked whether or not the costs of regulations should be taken into consideration along with the potential benefit.

The Obama Administration has been criticized for "the most anti-oil-and-gas record in U.S. history." On the other hand, Mitt Romney has made North American Energy Independence by 2020 the number one objective of his 5-point economic plan. Under Obama, permitting, leasing and production on federal lands declined. Romney would streamline regulation restrictions and open more federal reserves both on and off shore to energy development.

Obama has exerted continually more federal control over energy resources. Romney’s plan would return authority to the states for federal lands within their borders as well as reaffirm that states have primacy when it comes to the regulation of production on private land.

Colorado’s future economic health and that of our nation is linked to our ability to safely develop our abundant energy resources. Ultimately, much of that ability depends on White House policies that balance costs with the benefits produced by corresponding regulations. Among the many stark contrasts between Obama and Romney, energy policy is one of the most obvious and significant to every American.

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Australia: Black politician lashes Greenie protesters

THE first indigenous woman elected to an Australian parliament has come out swinging against Browse gas hub opponents, saying the Broome community is not divided over the proposal and it's only a small but vocal group causing all the fuss.

Outgoing Kimberley MLA Carol Martin has told the West Australian parliament that she supported a bill underpinning the Woodside-led Browse project because many indigenous people in the Kimberley region believed it would benefit them, not just state revenues.

Premier Colin Barnett has long argued that a land agreement signed with native title claimant groups, which included a substantial benefits package, was "the most significant act of self-determination by an Aboriginal group in Australian history".

Ms Martin agreed, saying Aboriginal people needed to take control of their own destiny.

The Kimberley's indigenous communities were still mired in abject poverty, she said, and they did not want to keep living with a welfare model that was not only humiliating and demoralising, but made some young people feel as if they did not have a future, leaving them contemplating suicide.

After being colonised by "the British", "do-gooders", "missionaries" and "industry", indigenous people were now being colonised by "the bloody greenies" who opposed the hub, who should "go and check the headstones".

"They have loud voices, they have the media on their side and they have bands," she said, referring to a recent, free John Butler concert in Broome that anti-hub activists said had been watched online by "tens of thousands in over 65 countries".

The organisers of the event did not ask the shire for a permit and interfered with an annual surf competition at Cable Beach, Ms Martin said. "How disrespectful is that?" she asked. "These people stuffed it up."

Those who attended the concert were not necessarily opponents of the gas hub, she said.

Ms Martin said she thought it was wrong that some activists had threatened Browse staff and police had been criticised for sending officers to Broome to protect them.

"The public has a right to know what is happening; these people are being assaulted on their way to work and at work. "It is disgraceful. I do not support people who break the law, get arrested, and then stand as if they are some sort of martyr."

Ms Martin said the "200 people on the news" were not the 17,000 people who lived in the area.

Mr Barnett on Thursday said Ms Martin's speech was one of the most moving and passionate he'd heard in parliament.

It "might not suit the politically correct media that we have" and "an essentially urban, middle-class Australia".

"She talked about the famous, the rich and famous who would come to the Kimberly in a self-righteous way as if only they cared about the environment or only they cared about the whales or only they cared about the dinosaur footprints," he told parliament.

"And implicit in that is an attitude that we see too often ... that somehow this state is a redneck environment, that we don't care about heritage, that we don't care about the environment, and somehow we're not capable enough to look after marine life in the Kimberley."

SOURCE

Big fadeout for Greens in ACT

ACT is Australia's DC equivalent

The ACT Greens slipped into deeper electoral trouble last night with updated vote counting showing for the second night running that their leader Meredith Hunter is heading for defeat.

And history is against Ms Hunter in her Ginninderra electorate, where no independent or minor party MLA has ever lasted more than one term.

Last night's updated interim preference figures show the Greens heading for a near wipeout, losing three of the four seats they won in their historic 2008 showing.

Last night's update has Labor challenger Yvette Berry in front of Ms Hunter for the fifth seat in the northern electorate in a result that would see the new assembly made up of eight Labor MLAs, eight Liberals and the Greens still hanging on to balance-of-power with one member in the chamber.

In Molonglo, senior Labor frontbencher Simon Corbell was ahead, for the second night running, of fellow ALP challenger Meegan Fitzharris but the Liberals' education spokesman Steve Doszpot has fallen behind his party colleague, newcomer Elizabeth Lee.

Greens MLA Shane Rattenbury remains ahead of his colleague Caroline Le Couteur for the seventh Molonglo seat, and in Brindabella the Liberals' Andrew Wall still leads Green Amanda Bresnan for the fifth seat in the southern electorate.

Labor also nudged back into a narrow lead over the Canberra Liberals in the popular vote yesterday by just 55 votes across the territory, with 85,532 votes to the Liberals' 85,477.

Both Labor leader Katy Gallagher and her Liberals opponent Zed Seselja have claimed success in the popular vote as they have sought since Saturday's election to bolster their chances of forming government.

Vote counting will resume this morning and is not expected to be finished before tomorrow night, and it could even be Sunday before Ms Hunter and the other candidates in tight races know their fates.

But Ms Hunter's task in holding her seat is made more complex by the electoral history of the Ginninderra electorate.

Since its creation before the 1995 election, no independent or minor party MLA has managed to hold a seat in the Belconnen-based electorate for more than one term.

The first election, in 1995, established a pattern with the ALP and the Liberals each winning two seats and the final seat going to the Greens' Lucy Horodny.

Ms Horodny did not contest the 1998 election and independent Dave Rugendyke was elected in Ginninderra on a social conservative ticket.

In 2001 Mr Rugendyke was replaced by Australian Democrat Roslyn Dundas, who in turn was beaten in 2004 when Labor managed to get three MLAs elected in Ginninderra.

But in 2008, the ALP failed to retain their third spot and the final seat went to Ms Hunter, who now looks in grave danger of becoming another one-term MLA.

But Ms Dundas, now director of the ACT Council of Social Service, says she believes it is simply changing times that lie behind the inability of smaller players to last in Ginninderra.

"My election in 2001 was at a time when there was a real feel for a need to change and a focus on supporting women to get elected and a focus on big social issues that hadn't been treated in step with what the community was feeling," Ms Dundas said.

"But then in 2004, Jon Stanhope as chief minister did what party leaders do in seats, gathering more than 30 per cent of the votes, which made it hard for prefer-ences to flow to small parties.

"Then in 2008, we saw a reaction to [Labor] majority government which was then a swing back to the non-old parties … That's the great thing about democracy, new ideas will come forward and people will respond to those new ideas."

Ms Dundas says she believes the Greens now find themselves in such deep trouble because they failed to promote themselves as a party that had been in the Legislative Assembly for 17 years.

"There's been a Green in the ACT Parliament since 1995 … but the campaign they ran this year was much more short-term than that," she said.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.   My Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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26 October, 2012

Mega pesky! New study finds growth of Antarctic sea ice accelerated 53% since 2006

Evidence that there is nothing GLOBAL about the ice changes. One might give it a pass if the changes at the two poles were at slightly different rates but large-scale OPPOSITE changes are a different matter. And the cooling is definitely NOT what the Warmists predicted. They predicted drastic warming in the Antarctic. Another failed prophecy. There is NO evidence that the Arctic changes are part of something global and every indication that they are purely local in origin

The steady and dramatic decline in the sea ice cover of the Arctic Ocean over the last three decades has become a focus of media and public attention. At the opposite end of Earth, however, something more complex is happening.

A new NASA study shows that from 1978 to 2010 the total extent of sea ice surrounding Antarctica in the Southern Ocean grew by roughly 6,600 square miles every year, an area larger than the state of Connecticut. And previous research by the same authors indicates that this rate of increase has recently accelerated, up from an average rate of almost 4,300 square miles per year from 1978 to 2006. [an increase of 53%/year between 1978-2010 vs. 1978-2006 rate]

"There's been an overall increase in the sea ice cover in the Antarctic, which is the opposite of what is happening in the Arctic," said lead author Claire Parkinson, a climate scientist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "However, this growth rate is not nearly as large as the decrease in the Arctic."

Earth's poles have very different geographies. The Arctic Ocean is surrounded by North America, Greenland and Eurasia. These large landmasses trap most of the sea ice, which builds up and retreats with each yearly freeze-and-melt cycle. But a large fraction of the older, thicker Arctic sea ice has disappeared over the last three decades. The shrinking summer ice cover has exposed dark ocean water that absorbs sunlight and warms up, leading to more ice loss.

On the opposite side of the planet, Antarctica is a continent circled by open waters that let sea ice expand during the winter but also offer less shelter during the melt season. Most of the Southern Ocean's frozen cover grows and retreats every year, leading to little perennial sea ice in Antarctica.

Using passive-microwave data from NASA's Nimbus 7 satellite and several Department of Defense meteorological satellites, Parkinson and colleague Don Cavalieri showed that sea ice changes were not uniform around Antarctica. Most of the growth from 1978 to 2010 occurred in the Ross Sea, which gained a little under 5,300 square miles of sea ice per year, with more modest increases in the Weddell Sea and Indian Ocean. At the same time, the region of the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas lost an average of about 3,200 square miles of ice every year.

Parkinson and Cavalieri said that the mixed pattern of ice growth and ice loss around the Southern Ocean could be due to changes in atmospheric circulation. Recent research points at the depleted ozone layer over Antarctica as a possible culprit. Ozone absorbs solar energy, so a lower concentration of this molecule can lead to a cooling of the stratosphere (the layer between six and 30 miles above Earth's surface) over Antarctica. At the same time, the temperate latitudes have been warming, and the differential in temperatures has strengthened the circumpolar winds flowing over the Ross Ice Shelf.

"Winds off the Ross Ice Shelf are getting stronger and stronger, and that causes the sea ice to be pushed off the coast, which generates areas of open water, polynyas," said Josefino Comiso, a senior scientist at NASA Goddard. "The larger the coastal polynya, the more ice it produces, because in polynyas the water is in direct contact with the very cold winter atmosphere and rapidly freezes." As the wind keeps blowing, the ice expands further to the north.

This year's winter Antarctic sea ice maximum extent, reached two weeks after the Arctic Ocean's ice cap experienced an all-time summertime low, was a record high for the satellite era of 7.49 million square miles, about 193,000 square miles more than its average maximum extent for the last three decades.

The Antarctic minimum extents, which are reached in the midst of the Antarctic summer, in February, have also slightly increased to 1.33 million square miles in 2012, or around 251,000 square miles more than the average minimum extent since 1979.

The numbers for the southernmost ocean, however, pale in comparison with the rates at which the Arctic has been losing sea ice -- the extent of the ice cover of the Arctic Ocean in September 2012 was 1.32 million square miles below the average September extent from 1979 to 2000. The lost ice area is euivalent to roughly two Alaskas.

Parkinson said that the fact that some areas of the Southern Ocean are cooling and producing more sea ice does not disprove a warming climate.

"Climate does not change uniformly: The Earth is very large and the expectation definitely would be that there would be different changes in different regions of the world," Parkinson said. "That's true even if overall the system is warming." Another recent NASA study showed that Antarctic sea ice slightly thinned from 2003 to 2008, but increases in the extent of the ice balanced the loss in thickness and led to an overall volume gain.
The new research, which used laser altimetry data from the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), was the first to estimate sea ice thickness for the entire Southern Ocean from space.

Records of Antarctic sea ice thickness are much patchier than those of the Arctic, due to the logistical challenges of taking regular measurements in the fierce and frigid waters around Antarctica. The field data collection is mostly limited to research icebreakers that generally only travel there during spring and summer -- so the sole means to get large-scale thickness measurements is from space.

"We have a good handle of the extent of the Antarctic sea ice, but the thickness has been the missing piece to monitor the sea ice mass balance," said Thorsten Markus, one of the authors of the study and Project Scientist for ICESat-2, a satellite mission designed to replace the now defunct ICESat. ICESat-2 is scheduled to launch in 2016. "The extent can be greater, but if the sea ice gets thinner, the volume could stay the same."

SOURCE

Lies, Damn Lies And Green Statistics

Almost all predictions about the expansion and cost of German wind turbines and solar panels have turned out to be wrong – at least by a factor of two, sometimes by a factor of five

When Germany’s power grid operator announced the exact amount of next year’s green energy levy on Monday, it came as a shock to the country. The cost burden for consumers and industry have reached a “barely tolerable level that threatens the de-industrialization of Germany”, outraged business organisations said.

Since then politicians, business representatives and green energy supporters have been arguing about who is to blame for the “electricity price hammer”. After all, did not Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) promise that green energy subsidies would not be more than 3.6 cents per kilowatt hour? How could Merkel be so wrong?

Now, however, the cost burden is rising by 50 percent – to 5.3 cents per kilowatt hour. German citizens have to support renewable energy by more than EUR 20 billion – instead of 14 billion Euros. How could Merkel be so wrong?

Finding an answer to this question is crucial for the progress and success of the green energy transition. Only then the Federal Government would ever get a grip on its most important mega-project.

A review of the green energy transition’s planning data is revealing. It turns out that almost all predictions about the expected additional expansion of wind turbines and solar panels were dramatically wrong, at least by a factor of two, sometimes by a factor of five.

However, if there was one thing which was even less accurate than the prediction of the tempo of expansion it was the estimates of the associated costs of this expansion.

Renewable energy has been completely miscalculated

Already three years ago, the Renewable Energy Agency examined more than 50 studies on the development of renewable energy sources to see if their predictions had come true. The results were devastating: All of Germany’s top research institutes, from the Prognos Institute, the Fraunhofer Institute and the Institute for Aerospace (DLR) to the Wuppertal Institute, had completely underestimated the expected contribution of renewable energy.

A Prognos study in 1998, for example, estimated that solar panels would provide 0.44 TWh electricity in 2020. In reality, photovoltaic supplied ten times as much in 2008.

In 2005, in a study for the Federal Economics Ministry, Prognos Institute forecasted the level of green energy generation for the year 2030. In reality, the level was reached in 2007, just two years after the publication of the study.

“Renewable energy must not be systematically miscalculated,” the former head of the Agency for Renewable Energies, Jörg Mayer, commented the findings of the report: “Major energy policy decisions depend on predictions.”

Green electricity levy was promised to cost just one Euro

The leader of the Green Party, Jürgen Trittin, proclaimed in 2004 that Germany’s green electricity law (EEG) would cost each household “only about one Euro per month – as much as a scoop of ice cream.” As Federal Minister of the Environment, Trittin then pursued the expansion of the most expensive green energy technologies such as solar photovoltaic and offshore wind power without any hesitation.

Given the poor quality of forecasting delivered by Germany’s research institutions, it was an almost forgivable mistake. In reality, the monthly EEG costs per household have increased almost twenty-fold compared to the amount proclaimed by Trittin.

Trittin’s successor, Sigmar Gabriel (Social Democrats, SPD), should have become suspicious, however. His ministry always relied on so-called reference scenarios produced by the German Institute for Aerospace (DLR) and an engineering firm: year after year they predicted a decrease in the number of the expensive solar panels in Germany – and were thus far removed from reality.

Sending out the wrong message

For 2007, the “reference scenario” expected an additional construction of 600 MW of solar panels in Germany. In reality, it was 1,270 MW – twice as much. And in 2010 7,400 MW of solar panels were installed; six times as much as estimated in the reference scenario used by the environment minister.

The message that politicians of all parties got from the studies by the ministry of the environment was as clear as it was wrong: the cost of solar subsidies are negligible, photovoltaics would remain a niche technology. Today, however, the hangover is hurting: Already, the subsidies for solar power alone add up to 110 billion Euros. They will have to be paid by consumers in the next 20 years.

In 2009, the Association of Renewable Energy (BEE) published a reassuring prognosis: “The delivery volume of electricity generated by renewable energy will decrease after 2013.” The statement was accompanied by statistics that suggested subsidies of 5.6 billion Euros in 2013. Another great error: In fact, with 20.36 billion Euros the figure was almost four times higher in 2012.

The environment minister’s secret

When it comes to the green energy costs per household, the stakeholders of the eco-industry also promised the consumers the earth: households would only be charged 1.4 cents per kilowatt hour in 2013 – a figure, which would decrease steadily thereafter and would amount to 6 cents in 2020. The reality shows a different picture: in 2013, consumers will be charged four times of what they had been promised by the green lobby.

After the most recent EEG price shock, Federal Environment Minister Peter Altmaier (Christian Democrat, CDU) announced a reform of the green electricity levy. The fixed feed-in tariffs may be abolished, the minister said in a ten-point paper: in return, the green electricity target for 2020 may be raised from 35 percent to 40 percent.

Given that all green energy forecasts have been off the mark by hundreds of percentage points after just three years it is unclear where the minister gets his confidence to believe that he will succeed.

SOURCE

Energy sources abundant

We've been told the world is running out of sources of energy, and we've been preached to about renewables and made to spend vast sums on them.

The oil, we are told, is running out, and they talk of 'peak oil.' There are vast reserves of coal, but it pollutes more than we want, so the talk turns to renewables. Biofuel from food grains lacks all sense or reason. The farmers loved it, of course, and so probably did the politicians who collected their votes. Poorer people who had to compete with Chelsea tractors for cheap food were less pleased.

Wind farms have blighted our areas of natural beauty, are very expensive, and may not even contribute to environmental quality when their whole life pollution, including construction, is factored in. Moreover there has to be back-up power for when winds prove unreliable.

Renewables are jacking up the fuel bills that customers complain of, despite their tiny contribution to total energy supply. The big change to the equation has been the natural gas revolution, with hydraulic fracturing technology giving us access to reserves we knew about but could not previously tap. We now have many decades, maybe hundreds of years, of reserve supplies. And those reserves are not in politically sensitive or unstable areas.

Gas does emit carbon, but half that of the coal-fired power stations it can replace. It is what will fuel our power stations. It can even substitute for oil in transport if we move to electric vehicles using gas-generated electricity. It is a fossil fuel, of course, but not in short supply.

Coming close on its heels is photo-voltaic power, with the price of the cells subject to a kind of Moore's Law that sees the prices tumbling steadily over the years. Technology has thus already shown us the solution to the energy shortage. Environmentalists oppose this solution, of course, because it does not necessitate the behavioural changes that they seek.

Note that a US coal-fired plant converts only about 33% of the potential energy to power. An incandescent light-bulb is only about 3% efficient. This makes coal to incandescent light only 1% efficient. By contrast an LED powered by gas-generated electricity is 20% efficient – twenty times as much. Technology like this is solving the problem.

SOURCE

Some food realities

We are told there won't be enough food for our increasing numbers, and that millions in poorer countries will starve. In fact this will almost certainly not happen, and the world's future food supply is a source of optimism.

It was Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) who popularized this view in "An Essay on the Principle of Population." He stated that agricultural output increases in a linear (arithmetic) way, but that population does so in an exponential (geometric) way. This means that large numbers must starve.

The Malthus view has not been borne out by events. Our ability to use technology to increase food production has enabled food output to keep pace with population, even with the explosive growth of the 20th Century. The use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides has boosted production per acre in ways he could not imagine.

The Green Revolution between the late 1940s and the 1970s, led by Norman Borlaug, saw the development of high-yield crop varieties, plus changes in agricultural infrastructure, and is reckoned to have saved more than a billion people from starvation.

A second Green Revolution is coming about based on genetic modification. Desirable traits can be crossed between species, enabling plants to be bred that can overcome many of the limits of traditional agriculture. Plants have already been developed to resist herbicides so that weeds can be killed without affecting food crops. Even more exciting is the research under way to develop crop strains that will resist pests themselves without needing chemical assistance.

Researchers are developing crops that will thrive on marginal land, that can resist drought and temperature extremes, and that are saline tolerant. This will open up to agriculture huge areas of land not presently suitable for crops. Varieties are being produced that can fix atmospheric nitrogen and fertilize themselves in the way that legumes do. Others are under way that incorporate vitamins to supplement unbalanced diets and reduce the health risks caused.

Yet more research is being done to create varieties that yield more food and less waste, enabling greater output per acre. We will not need to cut down rainforests. Our future food production should easily outpace the population increase, overturning the Malthusian pessimism.

Environmentalists whose agenda is behaviour change have raised scare campaigns over GM foods, yet GM crops have been in widespread use now for many years without adverse effects. Far from posing a hazard to our future well-being, they stand to make a huge and positive contribution to it.

SOURCE

Shale phobia looking costly for Europe

Cheaper natural gas prices in the U.S. could spell trouble for European chemical companies, as their rivals across the Atlantic benefit from lower costs.

The U.S. shale-gas revolution has made natural gas roughly three times cheaper there than in Europe, and the U.S. chemical industry is reaping the benefits through cheaper energy and feedstock, leaving the European sector under the threat of increased competition.

"Production costs with shale gas are lower than anything we can achieve in the short term in Europe," said Harald Schwager, a member of the board of executive directors at German chemical giant BASF SE BAS.XE +0.83% . The rise in U.S. competition will first be palpable on highly energy-intensive products, but in the long term there is a risk that the whole supply chain will be hit, Mr. Schwager added.

The challenge comes as Europe is making key, strategic choices about its energy future, and dependence on natural gas, which is mainly imported, is likely to increase. Some countries—including Germany, its largest economy—have decided to phase out nuclear power and governments are being pressed to cut back in public funds for renewables to shore up budget deficits.

But Europe is divided on the development of its own shale gas potential: the likes of France and Bulgaria are opposed to it while Poland and others are keen to exploit it, mainly to reduce their dependence on Russian natural-gas imports.

Chemical plants have traditionally been built close to the markets for their products, as feedstock could be fetched from different parts of the world and investment in the region was considered safer than in other countries. But the energy price differential could alter that dynamic, especially as it hits an industry that is already facing sluggish demand in Europe due to the economic crisis.

"The threat is that the [U.S.] chemical industry attracts more investment and that goes to the expense of the EU industry," said Wim Hoste, an analyst specializing in chemical companies at KBC Securities in Brussels.

Companies are unlikely to decommission plants in Europe just to move them elsewhere given the high cost involved. But as production sites grow older and new demand emerges elsewhere, companies could consider producing in the U.S. and exporting to Europe.

SOURCE

British energy policy in a muddle

Next month, the coalition government in Britain intends to publish its new energy bill. The coalition partners, however, are increasingly at odds over the direction of the United Kingdom's energy policy. In view of growing antagonism, it remains unclear whether the bill can be salvaged or whether the increasing friction will lead to its delay.

Last week, British Prime Minister David Cameron bewildered MPs when he announced that energy suppliers would be forced by law to put customers on their cheapest energy tariffs. Ed Davey, the Energy Secretary, contradicted the PM declaring that the government's new energy legislation would actually introduce something quite different to bring down energy costs - increased market competition. No wonder that the government's approach to energy legislation appears increasingly confused and frenzied.

Energy policy is one of the main economic battle grounds between the government's coalition partners. On energy policy, the Treasury has been increasingly at odds with the Department of Energy and Climate Change. This conflict has been growing between the Treasury and DECC ever since Chancellor George Osborne promised an end to Britain's unilateral decarbonisation targets.

The Chancellor has sent a clear signal that the government's ambition to restore the UK economy to health is overriding its desire to be the greenest government. He is adamant that the UK should no longer place too much emphasis on renewable energy and should adopt a new dash for gas. Cameron's recent reshuffle has certainly helped to pave the way for a new gas policy while Owen Paterson, the new Environment Secretary, has been widely reported to favour the rapid exploitation of shale gas. Yet, Davey is trying hard to safeguard the future of renewable energy subsidies.

In July, Osborne wrote to Ed Davey warning him that renewable energy was too expensive and that Britain should advance gas-fired electricity generation instead. Osborne stressed that the government "need to set out an approach which puts costs to consumers at the heart - we should be limiting support for low-carbon generation to a level the country can afford".

The DECC, on the other hand, has based the case for expanding green – and more expensive – energy in large part on their assumption that gas prices will inescapably rise in the future. This argument is no longer credible in the light of the growing international abundance of shale gas, not to mention the likely shale gas potential in Britain itself.

It will be interesting to see whether the coalition government will be able to overcome these conflicting and contradictory policy approaches in coming weeks. Davey claims the ultimate intention of the energy bill, expected to be published in November, was to "move from price setting by ministers to price discover by market". However, the draft energy bill - released earlier this year - was just as confused and inconsistent as Cameron's latest intervention. Unless these incongruities are disentangled and resolved, the energy bill will not provide investors with the certainty they require to make substantial investments.

This lack of clarity would inevitably lead to constant government amendments and continual intervention, further bewildering the energy sector. It is doubtful that an energy bill fudge would actually be workable, let alone economically viable. There is a growing risk that it will prove to be highly unpopular as the costs of these measures are likely to further inflate energy bills artificially. In this case, the crisis of energy policy making could quickly turn into a veritable government fiasco.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.   My Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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25 October, 2012

UN climate change body worse than a delinquent teen

Talk about a case of mistaken identity. Most people, if they know anything at all about the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), believe that it is made up of “the world’s leading scientists” at the peak of their careers.

Indeed, Donna Laframboise, an Ontario-based investigative journalist who wrote for the Toronto Star and was a member of the National Post’s editorial board, said she too had once assumed that the IPCC’s reports into climate change were written by the personification of “a meticulous, upstanding professional in business attire.”

Instead, after spending more than two years investigating just who is behind the IPCC, she came to the conclusion that the world’s “Climate Bible” is “produced by a slapdash, slovenly teenager who has trouble distinguishing right from wrong.”

That’s how she came up with the title for her book, The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert.

During a luncheon hosted by the Friends of Science and co-sponsored by the Frontier Centre on Wednesday at the Metropolitan Centre, Laframbois told the crowd of 300 that when she began the journey of writing her book, she set out intending to “examine arguments for and against dangerous, human-caused climate change.

“What I learned along the way turned me into a climate skeptic or — as I like to call myself these days — a climate rebel.”

And this rebel has a cause — to expose the real IPCC — to pull back the curtain, if you will, on this Wizard of Oz and expose — well, a phoney.

When she started looking into the IPCC, she was told repeatedly by august scientific publications, newspapers and the chairman of the IPCC himself, Rajendra Pachauri, that the IPCC is made up of the world’s top scientists and best experts and that any information that is not peer reviewed is discarded from the report.

Most people just accept these statements as fact.

So what did Laframbois find? Yes, “a number of talented and experienced scientists have indeed helped to write IPCC reports over the years. The problem is that many other IPCC authors don’t come close to being leading scientists at the top of their profession,” said Laframbois to the crowd made up of many geologists, geophysicists and astrophysicists.

On the screen, Laframbois flashed the photos of three “20-somethings,” who were lead authors and even co-ordinating lead authors of entire chapters of the IPCC Climate Bible that directs the governments of 185 countries into actions like raising gasoline prices, imposing carbon taxes and the like.

Richard Klein, for instance, was 23 in 1992 when he completed his master’s degree in geography and worked as a Greenpeace campaigner. Two years later, he was a lead author for the IPCC. Since 1994, he has been a lead author for six IPCC reports, and beginning in 1997, he was promoted to co-ordinating lead author — the IPCC’s most senior author role — at the age of 28. “That’s six years prior to him completing his PhD. Neither his youth nor his thin academic credentials prevented the IPCC from regarding him as one of the world’s top experts,” she said.

Laurens Bouwer was a lead author for the IPCC in 1999-2000, BEFORE earning his master’s degree in 2001.

The most egregious example is Sari Kovats. In 1994, Kovats was one of 21 people “in the entire world selected to work on the first IPCC chapter” looking into the affects of climate change on human health.

But she wasn’t anywhere near being one of the world’s top scientists or experts in her field. Indeed, she didn’t publish her first academic paper until three years after she acted as an “expert” and she didn’t earn her PhD until 2010 — a whopping 16 years after being tagged as one of the top 21 experts in the world.

And it gets worse. The IPCC is filled with environmental activists, not objective scientists measuring data and coming to conclusions.

Among a list of people she cites, Laframbois notes that Jennifer Morgan spent several years as the World Wildlife Fund’s chief spokesperson on climate change and then in 2010 the IPCC appointed her “to work on a report it describes as objective, rigorous and balanced.”

Indeed, two-thirds of the chapters of the IPCC’s Assessment Report 4 included at least one WWF affiliated scientist. Two-thirds! Laframbois calls that a “full-scale invasion.”

“This is the equivalent of a judge in a murder trial — a judge who’s supposed to be neutral and impartial — partying with the prosecution team in the evening while the trial’s going on during the day,” said Laframbois.

It’s important to note here that while a columnist with the Toronto Star, it was Laframbois who questioned the science that convicted Guy Paul Morin of murder. Years later, she was proved right when DNA evidence exonerated the innocent man in 1995 of killing a child.

Pachauri has often claimed that the IPCC relies only on peer-reviewed research and material and says all non-peer reviewed work should be thrown “into the dust bin.” Laframbois conducted an audit to see if that’s indeed the case. It is not. Laframbois found that 21 out of 44 chapters in the 2007 IPCC report used less than 60 per cent peer reviewed material. Pachauri should follow up and throw the entire report into the dustbin. So should the world.

By the end of her talk, Laframbois was shown to be understated by calling the IPCC a delinquent teenager. More like a dangerous mob boss with a knack for fraud and hijacking. Time to lock him up.

SOURCE

Obama Washington Wink-Winking like crazy at EPA

President Obama is among the slickest practitioners ever of the Washington Wink-Wink -- what professional politicians in both parties do when they say one thing while planning to do something else entirely.

There was, for example, Obama's 2008 campaign promise to "cut the federal deficit in half." And that "net federal spending cut" he would achieve by the end of his first term? Anybody think he didn't know then that his first term would explode the deficit and spending to historic highs?

Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, sees more of the same from Obama on the Environmental Protection Agency front, which the Oklahoma Republican described in a detailed report he issued yesterday.

Here's the first wink: "Obama has spent the past year punting on a slew of job-killing EPA regulations that will destroy millions of American jobs and cause energy prices to skyrocket even more," Inhofe said. "From greenhouse gas regulations to water guidance to the tightening of the ozone standard, the Obama-EPA has delayed the implementation of rule after rule because they don't want all those pink slips and price spikes to hit until after the election."

For the second wink, Inhofe quotes Obama's former White House environmental czar Carol Browner, who recently reassured impatient environmentalists with these words: "I can tell you, having spent two years in the White House with the president, that this is not a fad. The president believes deeply in these issues ... there is no doubt in my mind this will be a big part of his to-do list and he will remain committed in the next four years."

In other words, Browner was saying, just wait, because Obama fears he might not get re-elected if he went ahead with his EPA plans before the election.

Here are just a few of many examples cited by Inhofe of costly new Obama-inspired regulations that EPA will impose on the economy after Nov. 6:

* Greenhouse gas regulations, including the infamous "cow tax." The EPA will finalize proposed regulations that will virtually eliminate coal use in electricity generation, thus driving consumer electric bills sky-high. This cluster of new regulations will also impose an annual fee on farmers for every ton of greenhouse gases emitted by their animals. The EPA estimates that 37,000 farms and ranches will have to pay on average a $23,000 annual "cow tax."

* New regulations will so severely reduce permissible ozone emissions that the EPA estimates the cost to the economy will be $90 billion per year. Other studies put the cost as high as $1 trillion. Split the difference between the estimates, and the result still means the loss of millions of jobs.

* New Tier III regulations will cut permissible sulfur emissions by two-thirds. That will add as much as 9 cents to the cost of a gallon of gas, according to Inhofe.

* The EPA's new coal ash regulation will cost as much as $110 billion over two decades and destroy more than 300,000 jobs, mostly in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri.

This week, the Columbia Journalism Review and Pro Publica released a report stating that Obama has proved more secretive in some respects than his immediate predecessor in the Oval Office, George W. Bush. One of those quoted by CJR/PP is Society of Environmental Journalists President Ken Ward Jr., a staff reporter for the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette, who tweeted this yesterday: "The Obama EPA is the most difficult to get information and answers out of that I've covered in 20 years."

That's the kind of transparency we get from politicians who do the Washington Wink-Wink.

SOURCE

Recycled water raises safety concerns

This winter, an Arizona ski resort, Snowbowl, will be the first to use treated sewage water, and sewage water alone, to make manmade snow. Recycling’s usually a good thing, but opponents of the plan worry about chemicals left in the snow, and an August report by a civil and environmental engineer says that the recycled water, already used for irrigation in Flagstaff green spaces, may contain antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

As Virginia Tech’s Amy Pruden describes in an unpublished report, covered by The New York Times Green blog, her group tested reclaimed water from various green spaces irrigated by Flagstaff’s recycled water and found five of the eight antibiotic resistance genes that they were testing for. These genes allow disease-causing bacteria, such as Staphylococcus aureus, to flourish despite antibiotic treatments. It’s unclear whether the bacteria in the wastewater that contain these genes are disease-causing, but growing them in a dish to find out is the next step, Pruden told the Times. Finding antibiotic-resistant bugs in the water would shift concern to alarm, she said.

Pruden is not the first researcher to be concerned about the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in effluent from wastewater treatment plants. A University of Michigan lab previously found that wastewater treatment plants were a source of antibiotic-resistant bugs. The plants foster bacterial growth to break down organic matter, then treat the effluent with ultraviolet light or chlorine to kill bacteria before discharging the wastewater, but the treatment doesn’t kill all microorganisms.

Nothing has changed in response to the findings yet, but Pruden has been appointed to an advisory panel in Flagstaff that will decide how to respond to the possibility of having antibiotic resistant bacteria in water already used for irrigation. Snowbowl plans to start spraying manmade snow around Thanksgiving

SOURCE

Get orf our land! (or how my village blew away a 140ft turbine)

By James Delingpole

Two months ago my family and I finally moved out of the Big City and into paradise – a pretty rented cottage on a 2,500-acre estate in Northamptonshire with lakes, Capability Brown parkland, a 12th Century church, a ruined Elizabethan haunted house, an 18th Century walled garden and an ancient bluebell wood teeming with badgers, bats, deer and rare birds.

But what we didn’t know was that there was a snake in the garden: a planning application for an ugly 140ft wind turbine on the hill overlooking our new idyll.

The first I heard of it was when a woman called Sue accosted me at the Fawsley village fayre. ‘We’re so glad you’re here,’ she said. ‘Now you can help lead our fight against the wind turbine!’

Flattering though this was, I had to explain that I’m a troublemaker not an organiser. Sure, I could help out with an angry article, but if she wanted a leader she’d have to look elsewhere. Run a campaign? I can scarcely run a bath.

But from that moment on our paradise felt lost. Every time I went for a walk I couldn’t help glancing up at that hill, wondering how it would look when the wind turbine came. I thought of the sunrises it would blight, the low-frequency noise, the birds and bats it would slice and dice, and the hundreds of thousands of pounds going into the landowner’s pocket while the neighbours had their landscape ruined.

A fortnight ago, our worst fears came true. Sue emailed me to say the turbine had been recommended for approval by the planning officer. With only a week before the meeting when a decision would be made, we had left it too late. Only 12 people had written to object and planning approval was surely now a formality. ‘If only we’d put up more resistance earlier,’ said Sue.

At this point something in me snapped. There are things worth fighting for, and for me this was one of them. Come what may, the dragon must be slain.

What you don’t realise until you’ve fought one of these wind applications is just how grotesquely rigged the system is in favour of the developer.

Apply to your council’s planning department for a slightly bigger than normal conservatory and they’ll likely turn you down flat. On the other hand, propose to erect a noisy, gleaming white industrial wind turbine twice the height of the tallest oak tree.....

Incredibly, it’s the developer (not the council) who gets to commission all the expert environmental, architectural, acoustic and ecological surveys assessing the proposed turbine’s impact. Is it any surprise that these surveys generally tend to find in favour of the person who has paid for them – of course there won’t be any noise, the bats will do fine, and the turbine will meld   perfectly into the landscape.

Worse still, under current planning law, the presumption is in favour of renewable energy schemes. In other words, unless you can prove that the adverse effects of a turbine will ‘significantly and demonstrably’ outweigh its supposed carbon-reduction benefits, then the application is likely to be approved regardless of how strongly the local community objects.

This cruel injustice is spreading heartbreak, misery and fear across our land. The length of Britain – from the Stopit Meddon campaign in North Devon to once-wild and unspoilt Orrin in Ross-shire, Scotland – small groups are engaged in desperate battles to spare their cherished patch of the countryside from ruin.

All they want is peace. Instead, they’re having their nerves shredded, their spare time eaten up, and their savings exhausted in a frantic guerrilla war against ruthless, powerful developers with bottomless pockets and an insatiable appetite for the vast subsidies wind farms attract.

How to win against so mighty a foe? Simple. You have to call on the same reserves of courage, ingenuity, determination and raw cunning that in the past helped us see off the Spanish Armada, Napoleon’s navy and Hitler’s Luftwaffe. I’m not exaggerating. Truly, the Blitz spirit is alive and well in your nearest anti-wind-farm campaign group.

A few urgent phone calls later and our entire community was mobilised. From the lord of the manor to the lowliest tenant, from the village’s two resident hot-shot barristers to the former bass guitarist from Echo And The Bunnymen, from the children at the village school to the woodsman on the estate, everyone was determined to do their bit.

By the weekend before the hearing our position had changed from totally hopeless to not-entirely futile. Our crack team had spotted any number of serious flaws in the planning application. Nearly every conservation body going had raised objections, including English Heritage.

Quite why the planning officer had decided to override these objections – and in a protected landscape area too – was a mystery.

A mystery, it turned out, that the council’s planning committee found as baffling as we did. At a packed meeting – preceded by a demonstration by the village’s placard-wielding children – we were first astonished, then almost tearful with gratitude, as one by one the members of the planning committee at Daventry District Council stood up to say how appalled they were that such a blight was even being considered in an area so beautiful and unspoilt. They rejected the idea by nine votes to one.

I’d love to end the story at the glorious pub celebration where jubilant villagers – many of whom had never met until we were united through struggle – toasted the wisdom of those councillors and the power of local democracy. But sadly I can’t.

Since then I’ve heard the landowner is going to appeal against the decision and try to force through a wind turbine that no one (except him) wants and which will disfigure our neighbourhood.

Our community’s plight is by no means an unusual one. Something has gone badly awry with both our energy policy and our planning laws. Is anyone at Westminster listening?

SOURCE

Shooting down the locovores

Is locally grown produce as green as its proponents think it is? Or are they just loco?

Today we're going to be politically incorrect again and point our skeptical eye at another sacred cow: Locally grown produce. Particularly in the United States, but in many other countries as well, one of the newest and fastest growing market segments is locally grown produce. The claims are that locally grown produce is less wasteful of fuel because it doesn't need to be delivered over long distances; it's fresher for the same reason; and it supports a small local organic farmer instead of an immoral megacorporation that sources food from cheap overseas producers.

I discussed one of these claims, about local delivery burning less fuel, in a May 2009 entry on SkepticBlog.org. It must have been pretty inflammatory, because it generated a huge number of comments. Most of them followed this pattern: The commenter begrudgingly agreed with the mathematics of the delivery question, but then claimed that I missed the point completely because the real reason to like locally grown produce has nothing to do with a low carbon footprint of minimal delivery miles. I'm not sure I buy that — virtually everyone I've ever asked says that's what locally grown is all about — but hey, I'm fair, we'll give them all a voice here.

First, let's give a brief overview of the mathematics of local delivery. Think of the traveling salesman problem. This is where you speckle a map with all sorts of random locations. The traveling salesman's problem is to find the shortest possible driving route, called a tour, that visits each of the locations. It's among the most computationally difficult problems in mathematics. But there's a cool piece of free software by Michael LaLena that finds one efficient solution using a genetic algorithm. Try to stump it with a pattern of hundreds of dots that you think will be hard to connect, and the software blows your mind with a surprisingly simple tour that visits all the locations.

Many years ago I did some consulting for a company that was then called Henry's Marketplace, a produce retailer built on the founding principles of locally grown food. Henry's had evolved from a single family fruit stand into a chain of stores throughout southern California and Arizona that sold produce from small, local farmers. Part of what I helped them with was the management of product at distribution centers. This sparked a question: I had assumed that their "locally grown produce" model meant that they used no distribution centers. What followed was a fascinating lesson where I learned part of the economics of locally grown produce.

In their early days, they did indeed follow a true farmers' market model. Farmers would either deliver their product directly to the store, or they would send a truck out to each farmer. As they added store locations, they continued practicing direct delivery between farmer and store. Adding a store in a new town meant finding a new local farmer for each type of produce in that town. Usually this was impossible: Customers don't live in farming areas. Farms are usually located between towns. So Henry's ended up sending a number of trucks from different stores to the same farm.

Soon, Henry's found that the model of minimal driving distance between each farm and each store resulted in a rat's nest of redundant driving routes crisscrossing everywhere. What was intended to be efficient, local, and friendly, turned out to be not just inefficient, but grossly inefficient. Henry's was burning huge amounts of diesel that they didn't need to burn. So, they began combining routes. This meant fewer, larger trucks, and less diesel burned. They experimented with a distribution center to serve some of their closely clustered stores. The distribution center added a certain amount of time and labor to the process, but it still accomplished same-day morning delivery from farm to store, and cut down on mileage tremendously. Henry's added larger distribution centers, and realized even better efficiency. Today their model of distributing locally grown produce, on the same day it comes from the farm, is hardly distinguishable from the model of any large retailer.

Compare the traveling salesman's simplified tour to a tangle of crisscrossing bicycle spokes, and the inefficiency of direct delivery between farm and store becomes acutely clear. If we want to minimize the carbon footprint of the entire food cycle, eliminating direct delivery is the easiest place to make the biggest gains. So, right off the bat, the main reason most people prefer locally grown produce is shot down, and shot down in big flames. But let's turn to the SkepticBlog commenters and see what people had to say.

As did a number of readers, Ian pointed out that you have to consider the total price. Not just the cost of distribution, but also the cost of the retailer's wholesale purchase. Total them all up, and in some cases it might be cheaper to buy from ridiculously far away:

"...Wal-Mart [buys] fruit from South Africa, coffee from Kenya, etc. Flying this produce around the world is clearly using more fuel than even an inefficient model for distributing food locally. The efficiency comes not from reducing fuel usage, but from paying significantly less for the produce."

This was underscored by another poster, "Old White Guy":

"As someone who spent a good chunk of his life controlling distribution for several large companies, I can say the only thing that matters is getting the product to the point of sale as inexpensively as possible. If that [means] the cheapest wine in the store comes from another continent, so be it."

This suggests that it some cases, huge container-sized purchases might still be cheaper for the large retailer, even though their delivery produces a lot of wasteful emissions, and their production might be with some god-awful third-world high-pollution child-labor dogs-and-cats-living-together environmental disaster. That might be true in some cases, but those would be the exception, not the rule.

Most of the time, produce is cheaper from those countries because the native growing conditions are much better for that particular crop. Tomatoes flourish in Spain but require heated greenhouses in the United Kingdom, and so the overall energy efficiency of growing them in Spain and transporting them overseas to the UK is actually better.

A number of people who disagreed with my article repeatedly referenced Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma. Pollan devotes one of the book's four sections to the practices of holistic cattle farmer Joel Salatin. One of Salatin's rules is that, in the interest of a minimum carbon footprint, he won't ship his beef at all; customers have to drive to him to pick it up. While I applaud Salatin for having the right idea and the right motivations, I don't believe he thought through this particular point very critically.

Salatin should instead design practices that more directly address his desire: He should allow only shipments that use a minimum amount of fuel per pound of beef delivered. Instead, he adopts a rule that might put hundreds of cars and vans on the road, each delivering only a few pounds of beef. Salatin's solution is emotionally satisfying and makes for a fine sound bite, but its underlying science is flawed and counterproductive to his stated goals.

The elephant in the room on Joel Salatin's farm is that his near-total self-sufficiency methods require an outrageous 550 acres to support only 100 head of cattle and a herd of pigs, plus some turkeys and chickens.

More HERE

LA Times confirms: Environmental regulations killing Californians at the pump

Last week, we editorialized:

There has not been a major new oil refinery built in the United States since the Marathon Garyville Refinery was built in Louisiana in 1977. True, our existing refinery capacity is higher today than it was 30 years ago, but all that refining is being done at 137 refineries today, versus 254 refineries 30 years ago.

Fewer refineries means more miles of pipe must be built and maintained, and it also means bigger problems whenever a key refinery goes down. That is exactly what happened this fall in California, when the Richmond Exxon refinery caught fire and the Kettleman-Los Medanos pipeline was contaminated. With two key delivery system points at reduced capacity, and without other refineries and pipelines to back them up, gas prices shot up almost a full dollar from $3.73 in the first week of July to $4.65 today.

In other words, Californians are now suffering at the pump because they have let their energy infrastructure become too fragile. Instead of developing the resources closest to them (including the more than 300 million barrels of oil sitting off of California’s coast in the Pacific Ocean), California has chosen to become dependent on other states for its oil supply. And instead of building a diverse group of smaller refineries and shorter pipelines, California relies on a big dog that can suddenly take ill.

Today, The Los Angeles Times reports:

The Golden State’s gasoline market is essentially closed. The state’s strict clean-air rules mandate a specially formulated blend used nowhere else in the country. Producers in places such as Louisiana or Texas could make it, but there are no pipelines to get it to the West Coast quickly and cheaply....

Shielded from outside competition, these refiners benefit from keeping supplies tight. Even as gasoline consumption has declined in California in recent years because of high unemployment and increased vehicle fuel efficiency, refiners have been able to keep prices about 35 cents a gallon higher than the rest of the country. At the same time, the number of refineries operating in California has declined to just 14 today from 27 in the early 1980s....

In other states, such as Texas, independent, non-branded stations make up as much as 50% of the market, creating more competition. But California’s independent stations are the first to suffer when there’s a hiccup in the state’s fragile supply chain...

As the number of refineries shrinks, the chances that an outage could create disruptive shortages and painful price hikes increases.

“The fragility of the refining system makes California really vulnerable to spikes,” said Carl Larry, president of consulting firm Oil Outlooks & Opinions. “What happened this month looks like the result of a hurricane. But there are no hurricanes in California.”

Back to our editorial:

Americans will face a choice this November. They can go down the path California has chosen, a path of less oil development, fewer refineries and higher gas prices. Or they can let the market build a robust energy infrastructure that will create thousands of construction jobs now and keep energy prices low for decades. Depending on the choice they make, $7 gas could really be just four more years away.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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24 October, 2012

Obama's record is bright green

The day after the November 2010 elections made clear President Obama’s greenhouse-gas legislation was doomed, he vowed to keep trying to curb emissions linked to global warming. There’s more than one way of “skinning the cat,” he told reporters.

Since then, Obama has used his executive powers — including his authority under the 1970 Clean Air Act — to press the most sweeping attack on air pollution in U.S. history. He has imposed the first carbon-dioxide limits on new power plants, tightened fuel-efficiency rules as part of the auto bailout and steered billions of federal dollars to clean-energy projects. He also has proposed slashing mercury emissions from utilities by 91 percent by 2016.

Obama’s end run around Republican opposition has delighted environmentalists, but it has drawn the ire of business groups and conservatives who argue he is crippling the coal industry, driving up energy costs and hurting the overall economy.

“Environmental regulation should be about protecting public health, and not about creating green jobs and mitigating hypothetical risk,” said Diane Katz, research fellow in regulatory policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “Being unemployed and poor from overregulation, or zealous regulation, is a greater risk than global warming.”

When Obama was elected in 2008, environmentalists were confident their most-cherished goals — ending coal-fired power plants, limiting greenhouse-gas emissions and invoking new protections for public lands — were finally within reach.

Following up on a campaign promise, the president backed legislation that would slash America’s carbon output by 80 percent by 2050. Under the proposed cap-and-trade legislation, companies would buy and sell emissions credits allowing them to pollute more.

The bill was passed by the House, which at the time was controlled by Democrats, but in June 2009 it was blocked in the Senate by Republicans and moderate Democrats. When Republicans won control of the House in the 2010 elections, the bill was dead.

Acting on a strategy

The administration turned to the Clean Air Act, which Obama allies said the president became familiar with while serving on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Using the law’s extensive authority, the administration issued six major environmental rules, including ones that placed limits on toxic air pollutants, greenhouse gases, soot and smog-forming pollutants.

The strategy was bolstered by some outside factors. Its effort to limit carbon emissions was benefited by the natural-gas boom; many utilities are switching from coal to natural gas, which is more economical and emits much less carbon. The automobile bailout gave Obama the leverage to impose tougher fuel-efficiency standards, and the Environmental Protection Agency faced several lawsuits pending from the Bush administration that needed to be resolved.

Obama’s standards for new vehicles, said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, rank as “the biggest move to get us off our oil dependence by any president ever.” The rules, which took effect this year, will require the U.S. auto fleet to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

Heather Zichal, deputy assistant to the president for energy and climate change, said the administration’s array of environmental rules go to the “sweet spot of energy security, economic opportunity and reducing pollution,” and fit into a favorite Obama theme during the 2008 campaign.

But the business community argues that the regulations are heavy-handed and are hurting the nation’s economic security.

“The utility sector, which we consider a part of the manufacturing sector, has been hit extremely hard,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president of energy and resources at the National Association of Manufacturers.

Utilities, he said, are shuttering older plants and holding off expanding existing ones out of fear that the EPA will deny them permits.

Dumping compromise?

Last month, urged on by several business and energy groups, the GOP-controlled House passed the Stop the War on Coal Act, which would reverse several Obama regulations and proposals. It would bar the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, jettison the stricter fuel standards and give states primary authority over the storage and disposal of coal-combustion waste. But that bill has little chance in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Because the administration, faced by partisan polarization, has moved ahead on its own, opportunities for compromise have been lost, some say. Eisenberg notes that during former president Bill Clinton’s second term, the two parties negotiated passage of such significant environmental laws as the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act.

“The big difference is you had a Congress and an administration a little bit willing to work together on the issues,” he said.

Obama has disappointed environmentalists in some cases.

In September 2011, he decided to pull back an EPA proposal to limit ozone emissions linked to smog, on the grounds that it would hurt the economy and the government would revisit the issue in 2013 anyway. The business community praised the move, while environmentalists said it was irresponsible.

The administration also has been criticized by some environmentalists for not moving to create new wilderness areas, in which development and energy extraction would be barred. Only Congress can designate wilderness but the president can bestow similar protections by creating national monuments through the 1906 Antiquities Act.

“It’s not something they’re making a priority,” said Heidi McIntosh, associate director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. She said administration officials have been unwilling to overrule the objections of state and local officials on several key land-use issues.

Barring a last-minute development, the current Congress will be the first since 1966 to fail to designate a single wilderness area. Obama has recently declared a few national monuments based on their historic or cultural significance, including Colorado’s Chimney Rock, and has forged private-public partnerships to preserve working landscapes in states such as Florida and Kansas.

Obama has spent only a brief amount of time visiting national parks, and the National Park Service budget has declined 6 percent in the past two years.

More goals if reelected

Obama friends and foes agree on one thing: The president will probably pursue an even more aggressive environmental agenda if reelected.

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) said in a statement he would expect Obama to push for more national monument designations in a second term. “From nearly day one,” he said, “the Obama Administration has attempted to impose policies that would block public access to public lands and cause significant economic harm and job loss.”

When it comes to putting more public land off limits to development, he added, “Such decisions should not be made by unilateral orders from the president” using a 106-year old law.

Environmental leaders expect Obama to try to take tougher action on limiting greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants if reelected.

Obama hinted as much during a speech to a crowd of Colorado State University students in August.

“We’re on track to emit fewer greenhouse gases this year than we have in nearly 20 years,” he said. “You can keep those trends going. That all happened because of you.”

SOURCE

Climate skepticism is racist!

Or so Grist seems to argue in the excerpt below:

The retreat of climate from U.S. politics is not something that happened slowly and gradually. It was a fairly sharp break.

Throughout the decade from 1998 to 2008, Democrats swung around more solidly behind climate concern, but Republican sentiment stayed roughly steady. Right around 2008, however, there was a sharp uptick in skepticism about climate change, almost exclusively among far-right conservatives.

Now, what happened in 2008 that might have turned conservatives against climate? Hm … thinking … wait, wasn’t there an election that year? Why yes, I believe there was. Black Democrat took office, as I recall.

More HERE

Siemens in talks to sell solar business

German engineering group Siemens (SIEGn.DE) is to sell its solar energy business as part of its cost-saving program, and is already holding talks with potential buyers.
"Due to the changed framework conditions, lower growth and strong price pressure in the solar markets, the company's expectations for its solar energy activities have not been met," Siemens said on Monday.

A sale of the solar business will leave Siemens with wind and hydro power in the renewable energy sector.

The move is part of a savings program Siemens announced this month, seeking to tackle a growing gap with peers in terms of gross margins, such as Swiss group ABB (ABBN.VX) or U.S.-based General Electric (GE.N).

Siemens has said it would review underperforming businesses as part of the plan. The businesses up for sale - solar thermal and photovoltaic - have 680 employees and generated less than 300 million euros ($391 million) revenue last year. They posted losses exceeding that figure.

Siemens shares were up 0.3 percent to 78.56 euros by 0827 GMT, while Germany's blue-chip DAX index .GDAXI was down 0.2 percent.

Siemens has not yet said how much money it aimed to save or how many jobs could go as part of its new program, dubbed Turbine 2013. It was due to announce further detail when it publishes its full-year results on November 8.

SOURCE

Why We Should Allow the Wind Production Tax Credit to Blow Away

One of the most guarded secrets in Washington, the city of smoke and mirrors, is the economic damage generated by the wind production tax credit (PTC) – an example of crony capitalism in its highest form that has major backers in the Democratic and Republican parties. The PTC was created twenty years ago as a temporary measure to help wind power become cost-competitive with conventional electricity sources. Unfortunately, like so many other government-backed investments in the private sector, the business model of the wind industry has become dependent on continued taxpayer support and state mandates.

If lawmakers don’t approve an extension for the PTC before the end of the December, the wind subsidy will disappear, and according to the wind lobby, thousands of government-supported jobs are expected to evaporate. Once assumed to be a slam dunk for corporate welfare, the wind PTC has come under increased scrutiny and attack from Governor Romney, fiscal-responsible Members of Congress led by Senator Lamar Alexander and Congressman Mike Pompeo, free market groups, and private sector interests that are harmed by the subsidy.

This loose, informal coalition faces a formidable alliance, composed of the Obama Administration, the wind lobby, and its environmentalist allies. President Obama, playing electoral politics with the issue, has raised Governor Romney’s opposition to the PTC extension numerous times, particularly in the battleground states of Colorado and Iowa – where the wind industry is entrenched.

On its face, of course, the wind PTC appears benevolent and a worth-while public policy goal. The wind lobby certainly works hard to sell the jobs created by the subsidy and the clean energy generated by wind. After all, who doesn’t support job creation and clean energy?

These are noble goals, but unfortunately, the PTC really doesn’t do either very well.

Let’s look at jobs saved. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, a one-year extension of the PTC will cost the taxpayer roughly $12 billion.[1] If we simply assume that the wind lobby is correct that 37,000[2] jobs will disappear, the average job saved by the subsidy would cost the taxpayer over $329,000. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage of a wind assembly worker was roughly $27,000 in 2009 – a tenth of the average cost of the jobs saved by the extension.[3] This gap between the average cost and median wage leaves a person scratching his or her head. Where did the rest of the money go? Investment bankers? Or is it just the case of incredibly inefficient and costly technology?

And the clean energy produced by the nation’s wind turbines? The wind lobby doesn’t include a major fact in its talking points to the public – the wind doesn’t blow when it’s hottest or as much during the day, times when electricity demand is highest. And when wind does blow in the middle of the night and produces electricity, there’s nowhere to store it. In policy geek terms, wind is known as an intermittent source – and not baseload. Today, about 85% of total wind capacity does not operate during peak hours on the highest demand days of the year.[4]

So what does that mean in practical terms? Well, wind energy isn’t reliable when the consumer needs electricity the most. Plain and simple.

Of course, utilities can’t tell their customers that their air conditioning and internet went down in the middle of the day because the wind wasn’t blowing outside, so they use back-up power sources that are reliable, such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear, to produce the needed electricity. So despite what the wind lobby and the environmentalists say, wind doesn’t actually displace fossil fuels. It only makes the generation of electricity by those fossil fuel generators more expensive. In the end, consumers see their electricity bills increase without a corresponding reduction in emissions of pollutants or carbon dioxide – a point that the wind lobby desperately tries to hide.

It gets worse. Because of the way the subsidy works, the PTC actually deters real investment in our energy sector and undermines our nation’s grid reliability. Wind farms receive payment from the federal government for producing electricity, regardless of actual market demand. Consequently, wind producers have no incentive to turn their turbines off when market demand is incredibly low in the middle of the night and most people are asleep.

In fact, the PTC handout is so generous that it’s profitable for wind farms to pay the grid to buy their electricity when no one really wants it.

More HERE

Will Declining Arctic Ice Make UK Winters Colder?

There have been various claims recently that the shrinking of Arctic ice could be acting to make our winters colder and snowier. The arguments usually centre around changing jet streams and atmospheric blocking patterns.

We looked at one such claim last month, which had failed to explain that the same blocking patterns, that their models theorised about, had been found back in the 1960’s and had, according to scientists such as HH Lamb, been caused by expanding Arctic ice!

The BBC also reported earlier in the year about another study by Jiping Liu of the Georgia Institute of Technology, which made similar claims.

Forecasts of terrible winters, of course, are not new. In October last year, we were confidently told by the Daily Mail and others that we were in for another freezing winter. In the event the UK ended up having a pretty mild one!

The claims seem to centre around the fact that cold, snowy winters have become more prevalent, both in the UK as well as the US and Europe, in the last few years since the deterioration of ice cover in 2007. A whole 5 years! Are they seriously making assumptions and projections around such a short span of time?

Still, giving them the benefit of the doubt, how do recent UK winters compare to earlier ones, particularly the 1960’s and 70’s, when the Arctic was becoming colder and ice expanding?

Figure 1

Clearly, recent cold winters are nothing unusual, when compared with earlier decades. What was unusual was the run of mild winters during the 1990’s and early 2000’s. It is also worth noting that the variability from one year to the next, which has been seen recently, is not unusual in the slightest. The record cold winter of 1962/63 was sandwiched between two mild winters. Similarly with 1978/79 and other years. There is nothing weird about it, it’s just weather.

Figure 2 takes the analysis back to 1911. While recent winters have not been as mild, on the whole, as those of 1995-2005, they have not been unusual in comparison with earlier ones.

Figure 2

Indeed, over the last century, the most remarkable thing about our winter climate is that so little has actually changed.

SOURCE

Australia: Uranium mining go-ahead in Queensland a blow to the Greens

THE State Government's snap decision to overturn a 23-year ban on uranium mining paves the way for an $18 billion industry, thousands of jobs and $900 million in royalties.

Premier Campbell Newman's announcement yesterday came just 11 days after writing to the Australian Conservation Foundation saying he had "no plans to approve the development of uranium in Queensland".

Green groups have slammed the move, labelling it dangerous, rushed and made with little or no consultation.

Mr Newman said the backflip was sparked by Prime Minister Julia Gillard's trip to India to open negotiations on uranium exports, which put the issue back on the agenda.

He said the world had moved on from the conflict the issue caused decades ago when the ban was put in place and he had personally never been opposed to uranium mining.

"It was not until the events of last week where we said 'this is crazy'," Mr Newman said. "South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia are all in the game and the Prime Minister and her ministers are urging us to overturn the ban," the Premier said.

"In fact, Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson urged Queensland to overturn the ban, back in June. "Why do we have this position given our own party is extremely supportive?"

He said the only real surprise had been the strong views in support from the Labor Party.

Mr Newman said he took the option of a policy review to yesterday's Cabinet meeting in Goondiwindi but Ministers urged him to go further and were "adamant" that the ban be overturned.

"There has been serious public debate about the issue over the course of several months," Mr Newman said.

But the Government is facing criticism it rushed the decision without consultation after going to the polls claiming it had no plans to lift the ban.

Green groups said it took less than 11 days for Mr Newman to change his mind after he wrote to the Australian Conservation Foundation on October 11 stating that the Government's position was "crystal clear" and it had "no plans to approve the development of uranium in Queensland".

Mount Isa City Council recently called on the Government to resume uranium mining, to reinvigorate the area and offer employment. Mount Isa Mayor Tony McGrady said the lifting of the ban allowed explorers to move in and search for deposits and that could lead to discoveries of other commodities.

Cr McGrady - a former Labor mining minister - defended the Premier. "What Mr Newman said was that uranium mining was not high on his list of priorities," he said.

"It's come down now to making a decision on uranium and he's done so because he realised there's jobs involved and royalties for the State Government."

Cr McGrady said his council had only last week called for Mr Newman to "at least instigate an inquiry as to whether there should be a uranium industry in Queensland".

A three-person committee will be named shortly to oversee the recommencement of uranium mining.

The decision even took the mining industry by surprise because it had been expecting a preliminary review.

But the Queensland Resources Council said it seemed that when there was "no marching in the streets" following the call for a debate on the issue the Government decided to move ahead.

Chief executive Michael Roche said the Government's decision would provide a strong boost to the regional economies of the north and northwest.

"It will create jobs and economic opportunities, including for indigenous Queenslanders," Mr Roche said.

He said three mines in Queensland would generate about 1000 permanent jobs and 2500 in construction. Most would be in the Mt Isa-Gulf area.

The estimated economic value of uranium in Queensland is $18 billion and a royalty of 5 per cent would deliver $900 million in royalties.

Several companies have spent years exploring for uranium in Queensland, speculating the ban would be overturned. Summit Resources has spent about $40 million in recent years in exploration in Queensland. Its share price spiked dramatically yesterday when the decision was announced.

However, it is likely that it will take at least four years for any project to get developed because of the strict environmental approvals needed from both the State and Federal governments.

A hazardous materials port would also have to be built to cope with the exports.

Queensland's last operating uranium mine, Mary Kathleen, about 80km west of Mount Isa, closed in 1982 after 30 years in use.

The Goss Labor government won office in 1989 with a policy of no new uranium mining, an effective ban that has applied ever since.

Ironically on the exact same day in Brisbane in 1977, 371 people were arrested at an anti-uranium protest in Brisbane, including a Labor senator.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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23 October, 2012

"Moms Clean Air Force" –clueless and dangerous

I mentioned the sheep-like bleating of a Ms Dominique Browning here on 21st. There are few things more absurd than an angry sheep!

Ms Browning is a member of "Moms Clean Air Force" so does rather invite being shot down. Another volley from another blogger below:

Mom’s Clean Air Force, as reported on the AWEA [wind lobby] site, is calling for an extension of the PTC [wind subsidy] for these reasons:

* Wind is free.

* Wind is clean.

* Wind is renewable.

* Wind is non-polluting.

* Wind doesn’t harm children’s health.

Clueless and dangerous they be for these simple reasons:

Wind is free. Yes, so is gravity. And both are forces in nature, not fuels. You cannot buy or sell forces. They exist.

Wind is clean. Again, wind is a force. It cannot be clean or dirty. Wind energy is clean, maybe? If these moms really believe this, I would hate to see their idea of clean children and clean houses. Wind energy requires mining, refining, manufacturing, transporting and maintenance, none of which is clean.Why do people think wind is clean?

A. The AWEA says it is (you remember those folks who get billions of your tax money?). Just because these people have a huge stake in the business, their words are true and pure. Unlike the money grubbing oil companies. Wait…..the oil business owns a lot of wind “farms”, a very large number of wind “farms”. This is confusing. Oil lies, wind doesn’t, oil owns wind, so wind lies but wind doesn’t lie…..My head hurts.

B. Wind may be considered clean because turbines spring forth from magic seeds. It’s a wind “farm” after all.

C. They want to feel good about themselves by doing something to “save the planet”. Research is not part of that activity in many cases. It’s about feeling good, not knowing good.

Wind is renewable. Seriously? It isn’t even controllable. How can it be renewable? Is there some magic process heretofore kept secret that turns on wind when we need electricity? Can we make the wind blow where the turbines are? If the wind stopped tomorrow, can we restart it?

Wind is non-polluting, wind energy that is. Except for the mining, manufacturing, refining, transportation and maintenance. Maybe the mines for iron ore, bauxite, copper ,etc used in wind turbines have some exemption from the laws of nature and create no pollution? The leaks of hydraulic fluid from the turbine nacelles must evaporate before hitting the ground. The “wind cowboys” (technicians for those who don’t watch The Weather Channel) drive Nissan Leafs or live on site so they create no CO2 emissions. When the turbines no longer produce energy, the turbines turn to dust and return to the earth from which they came.

Wind does not harm children’s health. No, it doesn’t harm these women’s children. This is the most disturbing attitude/belief of all. Mining, refining, and manufacturing of turbines is often done in third world countries with lax or non-existent environmental laws. So sweet Suzy and darling Bobby are safe, while Raja and Pedro die from chemical exposures from the refineries near their homes, or their parents die in mining or manufacturing accidents.

There is an entire valley in China irradiated by rare earth mining, but since Suzy and Bobby are safe, who cares? The utter selfishness and callousness of this attitude is imponderable. How can a mother not care that all the ‘clean wind energy” costs the lives of parent and children in other countries. It’s horrifying.

Jumping on the “wind is perfect” bandwagon may be emotionally satisfying and puff up one’s self-esteem, but doing it blindly and foolishly will cost these Mom’s children and grandchildren far more than the status quo ever could. If the fantasies of these moms are believed and acted upon, the future for their children will quite probably include unreliable, massively expensive power.

The ensuing conflicts over who can use the scarce, expensive electric power will undoubtedly make the hysteria over particulates in the air created by power plants look trivial . But Mom’s Clean Air Force can proudly proclaim they put their children into a world with clean air and that was all that mattered.

SOURCE

"Experts" criticize British conservative skeptic

But the experts failed to explain what is alarming about their own figures -- that temperatures had risen on average by only 0.8C over the last 140 years. If they had tried to explain, all their unfounded assumptions would have come tumbling out

An eminent scientist has criticised a council chief for denying man’s role in global warming. Prof Eric Wolff, science leader at the British Antarctic Survey, based in Madingley Road, said Cllr Nick Clarke was wrong to assert that global warming “may not exist” and “is not caused by human activity” if it does.

Cllr Clarke, the leader of Cambridgeshire County Council, was also criticised by Tony Juniper, a former director of Friends of the Earth, who condemned his comments as a “huge embarrassment” and accused the Conservative of cherry-picking data.

However Cllr Clarke has won support from members of his party – who loudly cheered as he defended his position at the authority’s latest meeting.

His blog posting on the subject drew on Met Office figures which showed there had been no discernible rise in global temperatures in the last 16 years.

Pinned down at the meeting on whether he believed that man-made climate change existed, Cllr Clarke said he had “no idea”.

Prof Wolff said global temperatures could only be analysed over lengthy periods, and that they had risen on average by 0.8C over the last 140 years.

He said it was natural to expect variability from this trend – but that the world “really is warm”, with eight of the 10 warmest years on record occurring in the last decade.

Prof Wolff said: “There is no doubt that carbon dioxide concentrations have been increasing, and basic physics tells us that extra carbon dioxide causes warming – exactly what we have been seeing in recent decades.

“Climate science shows the complex ways in which natural factors add noise to the warming trend, but it is not helpful to pretend it isn’t there.”

Dr David Reiner, an expert on the politics of climate change at the Cambridge Judge Business School, said it was a “shame” that Cllr Clarke had “spouted off” and not drawn on the city’s scientific expertise.

Speaking at the meeting, Cllr Clarke said the point of his blog posting on the subject had not been scientific, but to demonstrate that anyone who spoke out against the established orthodoxy was condemned as a “heretic who will bring about the demise of mankind”.

He said the council needed to reduce its energy consumption, but argued subsidies to tackle climate change were hurting Cambridgeshire’s economy.

SOURCE

World Food Prize winner says climate change impacts everything

I think he is saying rather less than some think: "The impact of climate change includes both drought and floods" is so vague as to be meaningless

The Israeli scientist being honored in Des Moines this week with the 2012 World Food Prize is warning that climate change will make a difference in food production worldwide. Daniel Hillel pioneered innovative irrigation techniques which helped improve the growth of crops in arid regions around the world.

More recently, Hillel has been researching ways for agriculture to adjust to a changing climate. “Altogether the climate will change. Its bound to change. It’s already begun to change and agriculture will be affected. All phenomena will become more intensive in a warmer world,” Hillel explains.

Hillel discounts those who question whether human activity is affecting temperatures around the world. “There is no doubt in the minds of the sound scientific community that we are changing the climate and there will be consequences,” Hillel says.

“It is for us to convince policymakers that it is a real phenomenon.” Hillel says the impact of climate change includes both drought and floods. Hillel will be officially honored at a ceremony at the statehouse on Thursday.

SOURCE

Another way of stopping the windmill madness

Some Benzie County residents launched a new weapon in their efforts to block rural wind turbine development: helicopters.

Turbines can't be built near heliports — lift-off and landing pads for helicopters — and experts believe turbine opponents' tactic could reverberate statewide, just as Michigan's alternative energy debate intensifies.

Benzie's Joyfield Township — once considered part of a four-township site for an industrial wind farm — could soon have up to eight licensed, stand-alone public heliports. It would give the rural farming township of 800 souls south of Benzonia more heliports than the rest of Michigan combined.

Joyfield's sudden emergence as a would-be heliport epi-center raised the level of skepticism among some township residents.

"It seems pretty fishy to me," said Susan Zenker, who lives near one of the proposed heliports. "I know all of the people who have applied, and as far as I know not one of them has a helicopter."

Zenker said she's not sure if she should worry that helicopters could soon spook her horses, or if she should be angry about an "unethical" sham designed to prevent her from leasing land for a wind turbine.

State officials acknowledge the heliports could prevent construction of wind turbines or any structure taller than 200 feet within almost a one-mile radius of the landing pads.

SOURCE

Why is the earth's surface warmer than the radiation it receives would suggest?

I think it is because of adiabatics -- the straightforward heating effect of atmospheric pressure -- but everybody else seems to prefer complex theories -- JR

John O'Sullivan

Leading Aussie skeptic blogger, Jo Nova, is currently holding the second compelling debate about the validity of disputed numbers woven into the cornerstone of global warming science: the so-called greenhouse gas effect theory (GHE).

Now that even the U.S. presidential contest is a “global warming free zone” it is becoming clear that not just the political, but the scientific edifice of this international scam is collapsing. The biggest remaining obstacle is vested interest scientists who are either incapable or refuse to examine a very simple element of the GHE: the supposed “33 degrees” of measured warming that makes our planet “warmer than it would otherwise be.”

In a spirit of refreshing openness, Jo Nova has recently been leading the way on this matter. In September she hosted the superb paper by Dr Jinan Cao that questioned the applicability of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation in the formation of the “33 degrees” number.

Now Nova’s blog is running a welcome critique of ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon’ the book that first propelled discussion of the GHE center-stage. Already the comments are lively. Sadly there exists an element that prefers name-calling over civilized debate and my co-authors and colleagues who support the book are being labeled “dunderheads,” “cranks,” and “deniers.” Ok, so let’s do simple analysis even a dunderhead can fathom. Take, for instance, the claimed “33 degrees” of so-called greenhouse gas warming cited as “fact” proving the “theory.”

Contrary to popular myth this “33 degrees” is not observed, empirical fact at all. The book’s authors and converts to our science say it is the product of a botched equation by NASA’s Dr. James E. Hansen from the 1980′s. Currently, my article on this is doing the rounds.

Dr. Pierre Latour earlier this year proved that Hansen’s “33 degrees” is the result of a fatal mixing of a scalar temperature value with a vector temperature value (not permitted in either math or physics). That no one questioned this till we ‘Slayers’ did suggests it is perhaps among the most successful elements of the GHE fraud. Pointedly, it duped two top skeptic climatologists, Dick Lindzen and Roy Spencer, among other leading skeptics, who never questioned its validity and when challenged opted to play “follow my leader.”

It appears Lindzen first swallowed the bogus “33 degrees” number at least since March 1990, as proven by his paper ‘Some Coolness Concerning Global Warming’ AMS, Vol 71. In September 2010 on his blog Spencer admitted he merely followed Lindzen’s lead. But Spencer went further and actually asserted (crassly) that Hansen’s “33 degrees” number offers a “real-world observed radiative-convective equilibrium.”

But both Spencer and Lindzen are shown, since March 2012, to have circled the wagons obstinately avoiding the issue. Despite our urging neither will apply due diligence to verify the providence of the number. But if they had looked more closely at the “33 degrees” from the outset they would have seen that the first value Hansen used to obtain it is a 3-D measure (a vector) of the infrared radiation emitted by Earth back into outer space (255K). Hansen then put that alongside a 2-D measure (288K), which is an average of surface weather stations (a scalar). That’s how Hansen and government climate science “got” it’s 33 degrees greenhouse gas effect.

But anyone trained in higher math or physics knows this is not a permissible procedure as it’s the equivalent of adding apples to oranges. Earlier this year Latour and others on our team had a good-natured, but vigorous private email discussion with Lindzen, Spencer and other leading lights. Despite our insistence neither would address the matter. In fact, despite engaging with us on other issues they obstinately pretended we never raised the “33 degrees” problem even though we referred them to our articles on it. Nonetheless, Spencer thereafter blogged an attack piece against me; is this the real measure of a “leading skeptic scientist?” Not only that, it seems Fred Singer was then recruited and he, too, joined the name-calling fraternity labeling us “deniers.”

In his attack piece Singer laments, “One can show them [the 'Slayers'] data of downwelling infrared radiation from CO2, water vapor, and clouds, which clearly impinge on the surface. [My emphasis]

Contemplate closely the emphasis on the vague “clearly impinge” as it seems even Fred is having doubts here because he balks at asserting any actual energy is being transferred. He then writes, “But their minds are closed to any such evidence.” Oh, come on, Fred. Does “clearly impinge” mean you are claiming carbon dioxide adds/delays heat loss or not? This is why Fred, Roy and Dick need to come out and be less mealy-mouthed.

As such we are regrettably forced to conclude that leading skeptic climatologists are disinclined to own up to their gaffe probably because they have decades invested in this junk science – quite simply it’s too shaming for them. Indeed, if Spencer, Lindzen and Singer were true skeptics they would meet us in open debate and resolve this “33 degrees” issue once and for all.

But because the better part of a year has elapsed and they won’t man up, I’ve now emailed Jo to ask she show some leadership on this Down Under. I await her reply and hope she will host an open debate on our readily proved/disproved contention. Be assured, if the “33 degrees” number is proven bogus there is nothing left of substance (ie. as measured in our atmosphere) to sustain this collapsing “theory.”

SOURCE

The (metaphorical) tap filling up the oceans sometimes just turns off

Ice sheets retreating due to global warming often suddenly stabilise for "decades to centuries" no matter that the warming is still going on, scientists have found. The new research would seem likely to have an impact on forecasts seeking to predict sea-level rise in coming times.

Boffins at Cambridge, Durham and Sheffield universities and others at the British Antarctic Survey came together to produce the new investigation, which sought to examine the way in which fast-moving "ice streams" move from major ice sheets - such as the Greenland and Western Antarctic ones - to the sea. The streams are very important, as they carry 90 per cent of the ice moving into the ocean.

“Ice streams are like taps filling a bath," explains Dr Chris Stokes of Durham uni - in this case the bath being the world's oceans.

"The problem here is that we do not know if something is suddenly going to turn them up or even turn them off," he adds.

In this case Stokes and his colleagues didn't find anything which would open up the taps: but they did find something which turns them off, often for lengthy periods.

"Our research shows that the physical shape of the channels is a more important factor in controlling ice stability than was previously realised," says Dr Stewart Jamieson.

The boffins found this out by developing a simulation which matched what actually happened to a particular ice sheet as it retreated at the end of the last Ice Age:

The researchers looked at the landscape of the seafloor in Marguerite Bay, in the Antarctic Peninsula, and saw that during a rapid phase of recession 13,000 years ago, retreat paused many times. Using a computer model designed to work in situations of rapid change, they found they could reproduce the same pattern in a series of simulations. These showed that ice dragged on the sides of the channel more where it was narrow, causing retreat to slow and in places temporarily stop for decades to centuries before retreat continued.

"We find that retreat of the Marguerite Bay Ice Stream following the [Last Glacial Maximum] was highly nonlinear and was interrupted by stabilizations on a reverse-sloping bed, where theory predicts rapid unstable retreat," the researchers wrote in their new paper, published in Nature Geoscience.

Comment

It would seem that current predictions of sea level rises to be expected on a given timescale with a given amount of global warming will need to be revised - downwards.

As the most up-to-date predictions are not very alarming anyway, it could be that sea level rises just aren't that big a worry, over say the next century anyway.

SOURCE

Australia: Green/Left alliance on the nose in a Leftist stronghold

ACT is Australia's version of DC

TRIUMPHANT Liberal leader Zed Seselja says ACT voters have rejected a Labor-Greens alliance in Saturday's election.

But he's stopped short of claiming victory, with the opposition falling one seat short of majority government in the 17-seat legislative assembly.

It will take days of negotiation with the Greens before a new minority government can be formed in the territory.

The Liberals, on the back of their biggest-ever primary vote, are on track to take eight seats to Labor's seven giving them their highest representation in the 23-year history of self-government.

With more than 70 per cent of the vote counted at 10.50pm (AEST), Labor had 39.1 per cent of the overall vote (up 1.7pc on 2008), to the Liberals 38 per cent (up 6.4pc) and the Greens 11 per cent (down 4.6pc)

A surprise Labor casualty could be Attorney-General Simon Corbell who might lose his seat to fellow Labor candidate Meegan Fitzharris.

The Greens drop from four seats to two with their leader Meredith Hunter still in a tight race with Summernats car festival founder Chic Henry, running for the Australian Motorists Party. If she loses, the Greens would have only one seat in the assembly.

Mr Seselja said the election result was a rejection of both Labor and the Greens. "Most importantly it is a rejection of their alliance," he told the party faithful. "It would be a rejection of the verdict of the people if the Labor Party and the Greens were to now forge a closer alliance. "We are ready to deliver the kind of government the ACT deserves."

Labor leader Katy Gallagher said it was not the night for victory speeches from any party. "We're not arrogant, we're not coming out saying we have won this election," she told supporters. "We've won the highest primary vote, we've increased our vote, we've held our seats and we've seen a swing towards us."

Ms Gallagher noted more than half the electorate voted for "a progressive government", referring to the combined Labor-Greens vote of 50.1 per cent.

Mr Seselja reiterated earlier pledges that he wouldn't offer the Greens a ministry as part of any negotiations, unlike in 2008.

But he shied away from questions on whether or not he would negotiate with them at all.

Liberal MLA Jeremy Hanson said: "Should we get eight seats we have a very strong case for government."

However, Greens MLA Shane Rattenbury said the minor party would not be taking the number of seats won into account.

"We want to make sure there's a stable government for four years," he told AAP. "We delivered that this term, we expect to deliver it in the coming term."

The Greens had a duty to the one-in-eight Canberrans who voted for the party to deliver on as many of their policies as possible, Mr Rattenbury said.

"We're quite open to talking to both of them (major parties) and that's something we will start in the next few days," he said. "We won't see an agreement to form a government, one way or the other, for quite some days yet."

Labor MLA Andrew Barr said a Liberal-Greens alliance would be "extraordinary" since "they are just a world apart".

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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22 October, 2012

The REALLY inconvenient truths about global warming

The "Daily Mail" is not backing down

Last week The Mail on Sunday provoked an international storm by publishing a new official world temperature graph showing there has been no global warming since 1997.

The figures came from a database called Hadcrut 4 and were issued by the Met Office and the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University.

We received hundreds of responses from readers, who were overwhelmingly critical of those climate change experts who believe that global warming is inevitable.

But the Met Office, whose lead was then followed by climate change campaigners, accused The Mail on Sunday of cherry-picking data in order to mislead readers. It even claimed it had not released a ‘report’, as we had stated, although it put out the figures from which we drew our graph ten days ago.

Another critic said that climate expert Professor Judith Curry had protested at the way she was represented in our report. However, Professor Curry, a former US National Research Council Climate Research Committee member and the author of more than 190 peer-reviewed papers, responded: ‘A note to defenders of the idea that the planet has been warming for the past 16 years. Raise the level of your game. Nothing in the Met Office’s statement ... effectively refutes Mr Rose’s argument that there has been no increase in the global average surface temperature for the past 16 years.

‘Use this as an opportunity to communicate honestly with the public about what we know and what we don’t know about climate change. Take a lesson from other scientists who acknowledge the “pause”.’

The Met Office now confirms on its climate blog that no significant warming has occurred recently: ‘We agree with Mr Rose that there has only been a very small amount of warming in the 21st Century.’

Here, we answer some of the key questions on climate change – and invite readers to make their own choice ....

Q. Is the world warming or not?

A. The Hadcrut 4 figures that show a ‘pause’ in warming lasting nearly 16 years are drawn from more than 3,000 measuring stations on land and at sea. Hadcrut 4 is one of several similar global databases that reveal the same thing: that since January 1997 there has been no statistically significant warming of the Earth’s surface.

Between 1980 and the end of 1996, the planet warmed at a rate close to 0.2 degrees per decade. Since then, says the Met Office, the trend has been a much lower 0.03 degrees per decade.

However, world average temperature measurements are subject to an error of plus or minus 0.1 degrees, while any attempt to calculate a trend for the period 1997-2012 has an in-built statistical error of plus or minus 0.4 degrees. The claim that there has been any statistically significant warming for the past 16 years is therefore unsustainable.

Q. Did The Mail on Sunday ‘cherry-pick’ data to disguise an underlying warming trend?

A. Some critics claim this newspaper misled readers by choosing start and end dates that hide the continued warming.

In fact, we looked at the period since 1997 because that’s when the previous warming trend stopped, and our graph ended in August 2012 because that is the last month for which Hadcrut 4 figures were available.

In April, the Met Office released figures up to the end of 2010 – an extremely warm year – which meant it was able to say there had been a statistically significant warming trend after 1997, albeit a very small one. However, 2011 and 2012 so far have been much cooler, meaning the trend has disappeared. This may explain why the updated figures were issued last week without a media fanfare.

Q. But isn’t it true that the science is ‘settled’?

A. Some scientists say the pause is illusory – if you strip out the effects of El Nino (when the South Pacific gets unpredictably warmer by several degrees), and La Nina (its cold counterpart), the underlying warming trend remains. Both phenomena have a huge impact on world weather.

Other experts point out one of the biggest natural factors behind the plateau is the fact that in 2008 the temperature cycle in the Pacific flipped from ‘warm mode’, in which it had been locked for the previous 40 years, to ‘cold mode’, meaning surface water temperatures fell. A cold Pacific cycle causes fewer and weaker El Ninos, and more, stronger La Ninas.

Prof Curry said that stripping out these phenomena made ‘no physical sense’. She added that natural phenomena and the CO2 greenhouse effect interact with each other, and cannot meaningfully be separated. It’s not just that the ‘cold mode’ has partly caused the plateau.

According to Prof Curry and others, the previous warm Pacific cycle and other natural factors, such as a high solar output, accounted for some of the warming seen before 1997 – some say at least half of it.

Other scientists say that heat has somehow been absorbed by the waters deep in the oceans. However, the evidence for this is contested, and there are no historical records with which to compare recent deepwater readings.

In the wake of the pause, the scientific ‘consensus’ looks much less settled than it did a few years ago.

More HERE

Obama Washington Wink-Winking like crazy at EPA

President Obama is among the slickest practitioners ever of the Washington Wink-Wink -- what professional politicians in both parties do when they say one thing while planning to do something else entirely.

There was, for example, Obama's 2008 campaign promise to "cut the federal deficit in half." And that "net federal spending cut" he would achieve by the end of his first term? Anybody think he didn't know then that his first term would explode the deficit and spending to historic highs?

Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, sees more of the same from Obama on the Environmental Protection Agency front, which the Oklahoma Republican described in a detailed report he issued yesterday.

Here's the first wink: "Obama has spent the past year punting on a slew of job-killing EPA regulations that will destroy millions of American jobs and cause energy prices to skyrocket even more," Inhofe said. "From greenhouse gas regulations to water guidance to the tightening of the ozone standard, the Obama-EPA has delayed the implementation of rule after rule because they don't want all those pink slips and price spikes to hit until after the election."

For the second wink, Inhofe quotes Obama's former White House environmental czar Carol Browner, who recently reassured impatient environmentalists with these words: "I can tell you, having spent two years in the White House with the president, that this is not a fad. The president believes deeply in these issues ... there is no doubt in my mind this will be a big part of his to-do list and he will remain committed in the next four years."

In other words, Browner was saying, just wait, because Obama fears he might not get re-elected if he went ahead with his EPA plans before the election.

Here are just a few of many examples cited by Inhofe of costly new Obama-inspired regulations that EPA will impose on the economy after Nov. 6:

* Greenhouse gas regulations, including the infamous "cow tax." The EPA will finalize proposed regulations that will virtually eliminate coal use in electricity generation, thus driving consumer electric bills sky-high. This cluster of new regulations will also impose an annual fee on farmers for every ton of greenhouse gases emitted by their animals. The EPA estimates that 37,000 farms and ranches will have to pay on average a $23,000 annual "cow tax."

* New regulations will so severely reduce permissible ozone emissions that the EPA estimates the cost to the economy will be $90 billion per year. Other studies put the cost as high as $1 trillion. Split the difference between the estimates, and the result still means the loss of millions of jobs.

* New Tier III regulations will cut permissible sulfur emissions by two-thirds. That will add as much as 9 cents to the cost of a gallon of gas, according to Inhofe.

* The EPA's new coal ash regulation will cost as much as $110 billion over two decades and destroy more than 300,000 jobs, mostly in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri.

This week, the Columbia Journalism Review and Pro Publica released a report stating that Obama has proved more secretive in some respects than his immediate predecessor in the Oval Office, George W. Bush. One of those quoted by CJR/PP is Society of Environmental Journalists President Ken Ward Jr., a staff reporter for the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette, who tweeted this yesterday: "The Obama EPA is the most difficult to get information and answers out of that I've covered in 20 years."

That's the kind of transparency we get from politicians who do the Washington Wink-Wink.

SOURCE

On gas prices, Obama dodges, weaves and changes subject

On the same day that electric-car battery manufacturer A123 Systems announced its bankruptcy -- having won and consumed a $249 million federal green energy grant -- President Obama argued that the federal government must spend even more on similar boondoggles.

Why? "Because China, Germany, they're making these investments," Obama said in Tuesday's debate. "And I'm not going to cede those jobs of the future to those countries. I expect those new energy sources to be built right here in the United States."

It is a pity that gall is not an energy resource.

Having already thrown billions of taxpayer dollars away in search of his green energy unicorn, Obama wants to expand upon this failure, as if we're only a few more bankruptcies away from achieving full energy independence.

Obama's comments were prompted by a pointed question put to him during the debate: Did he agree with his energy secretary, Steven Chu, that it is not his job to lower gas prices? Obama avoided answering the question and instead changed the subject. He argued that his administration has worked to expand energy production, even fossil fuels. "All of these things have contributed to us lowering our oil imports to the lowest level in 16 years," he said.

It is true that oil imports have fallen, but mostly for reasons that have nothing to do with Obama: increases in domestic production on private land and new "fracking" technologies that the Obama administration has been working to regulate more stringently. The weak economy, for which Obama does not want to take credit, is another factor.

As for the reserves actually within Obama's control, he has seen to it that less oil, not more, has been extracted. Production on federal land was down 14 percent in the last year. (Obama tried to dispute this and even claimed that production on federal land has risen, but the figure comes from his own federal Energy Information Administration.) Data from the federal Bureau of Land Management confirm this another way: The number of oil leases on federal land has fallen every year since Obama took office -- from 53,431 in 2009 to 49,173 last year. This despite the high price of oil.

The rest of Obama's energy policy suggests an approach very much in tune with Chu's comments that we mentioned earlier this week -- his pining for $7 per gallon gas. Recall that Obama placed a blanket six-month ban on Gulf drilling after the BP disaster. Before the courts slapped down this scientifically unjustifiable policy, the administration's move had shut down production throughout the region. Obama also rejected the Keystone XL pipeline project, which would make domestic oil resources more mobile and more profitable. In the Tuesday debate, Obama mocked the project. "With respect to this pipeline that Gov. Romney keeps on talking about," he said, "we've built enough pipeline to wrap around the entire Earth once."

As Romney noted, the real proof of success is "what the price is that you're paying at the pump." In January 2009, the average national price was $1.67 a gallon for regular, according to AAA. Today, the price is $3.76. That shouldn't make anybody happy -- except maybe Energy Secretary Chu.

SOURCE

Recycled water raises safety concerns

This winter, an Arizona ski resort, Snowbowl, will be the first to use treated sewage water, and sewage water alone, to make manmade snow. Recycling’s usually a good thing, but opponents of the plan worry about chemicals left in the snow, and an August report by a civil and environmental engineer says that the recycled water, already used for irrigation in Flagstaff green spaces, may contain antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

As Virginia Tech’s Amy Pruden describes in an unpublished report, covered by The New York Times Green blog, her group tested reclaimed water from various green spaces irrigated by Flagstaff’s recycled water and found five of the eight antibiotic resistance genes that they were testing for. These genes allow disease-causing bacteria, such as Staphylococcus aureus, to flourish despite antibiotic treatments. It’s unclear whether the bacteria in the wastewater that contain these genes are disease-causing, but growing them in a dish to find out is the next step, Pruden told the Times. Finding antibiotic-resistant bugs in the water would shift concern to alarm, she said.

Pruden is not the first researcher to be concerned about the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in effluent from wastewater treatment plants. A University of Michigan lab previously found that wastewater treatment plants were a source of antibiotic-resistant bugs. The plants foster bacterial growth to break down organic matter, then treat the effluent with ultraviolet light or chlorine to kill bacteria before discharging the wastewater, but the treatment doesn’t kill all microorganisms.

Nothing has changed in response to the findings yet, but Pruden has been appointed to an advisory panel in Flagstaff that will decide how to respond to the possibility of having antibiotic resistant bacteria in water already used for irrigation. Snowbowl plans to start spraying manmade snow around Thanksgiving

SOURCE

Get orf our land! (or how my village blew away a 140ft turbine)

By James Delingpole

Two months ago my family and I finally moved out of the Big City and into paradise – a pretty rented cottage on a 2,500-acre estate in Northamptonshire with lakes, Capability Brown parkland, a 12th Century church, a ruined Elizabethan haunted house, an 18th Century walled garden and an ancient bluebell wood teeming with badgers, bats, deer and rare birds.

But what we didn’t know was that there was a snake in the garden: a planning application for an ugly 140ft wind turbine on the hill overlooking our new idyll.

The first I heard of it was when a woman called Sue accosted me at the Fawsley village fayre. ‘We’re so glad you’re here,’ she said. ‘Now you can help lead our fight against the wind turbine!’

Flattering though this was, I had to explain that I’m a troublemaker not an organiser. Sure, I could help out with an angry article, but if she wanted a leader she’d have to look elsewhere. Run a campaign? I can scarcely run a bath.

But from that moment on our paradise felt lost. Every time I went for a walk I couldn’t help glancing up at that hill, wondering how it would look when the wind turbine came. I thought of the sunrises it would blight, the low-frequency noise, the birds and bats it would slice and dice, and the hundreds of thousands of pounds going into the landowner’s pocket while the neighbours had their landscape ruined.

A fortnight ago, our worst fears came true. Sue emailed me to say the turbine had been recommended for approval by the planning officer. With only a week before the meeting when a decision would be made, we had left it too late. Only 12 people had written to object and planning approval was surely now a formality. ‘If only we’d put up more resistance earlier,’ said Sue.

At this point something in me snapped. There are things worth fighting for, and for me this was one of them. Come what may, the dragon must be slain.

What you don’t realise until you’ve fought one of these wind applications is just how grotesquely rigged the system is in favour of the developer.

Apply to your council’s planning department for a slightly bigger than normal conservatory and they’ll likely turn you down flat. On the other hand, propose to erect a noisy, gleaming white industrial wind turbine twice the height of the tallest oak tree.....

Incredibly, it’s the developer (not the council) who gets to commission all the expert environmental, architectural, acoustic and ecological surveys assessing the proposed turbine’s impact. Is it any surprise that these surveys generally tend to find in favour of the person who has paid for them – of course there won’t be any noise, the bats will do fine, and the turbine will meld perfectly into the landscape.

Worse still, under current planning law, the presumption is in favour of renewable energy schemes. In other words, unless you can prove that the adverse effects of a turbine will ‘significantly and demonstrably’ outweigh its supposed carbon-reduction benefits, then the application is likely to be approved regardless of how strongly the local community objects.

This cruel injustice is spreading heartbreak, misery and fear across our land. The length of Britain – from the Stopit Meddon campaign in North Devon to once-wild and unspoilt Orrin in Ross-shire, Scotland – small groups are engaged in desperate battles to spare their cherished patch of the countryside from ruin.

All they want is peace. Instead, they’re having their nerves shredded, their spare time eaten up, and their savings exhausted in a frantic guerrilla war against ruthless, powerful developers with bottomless pockets and an insatiable appetite for the vast subsidies wind farms attract.

How to win against so mighty a foe? Simple. You have to call on the same reserves of courage, ingenuity, determination and raw cunning that in the past helped us see off the Spanish Armada, Napoleon’s navy and Hitler’s Luftwaffe. I’m not exaggerating. Truly, the Blitz spirit is alive and well in your nearest anti-wind-farm campaign group.

A few urgent phone calls later and our entire community was mobilised. From the lord of the manor to the lowliest tenant, from the village’s two resident hot-shot barristers to the former bass guitarist from Echo And The Bunnymen, from the children at the village school to the woodsman on the estate, everyone was determined to do their bit.

By the weekend before the hearing our position had changed from totally hopeless to not-entirely futile. Our crack team had spotted any number of serious flaws in the planning application. Nearly every conservation body going had raised objections, including English Heritage.

Quite why the planning officer had decided to override these objections – and in a protected landscape area too – was a mystery.

A mystery, it turned out, that the council’s planning committee found as baffling as we did. At a packed meeting – preceded by a demonstration by the village’s placard-wielding children – we were first astonished, then almost tearful with gratitude, as one by one the members of the planning committee at Daventry District Council stood up to say how appalled they were that such a blight was even being considered in an area so beautiful and unspoilt. They rejected the idea by nine votes to one.

I’d love to end the story at the glorious pub celebration where jubilant villagers – many of whom had never met until we were united through struggle – toasted the wisdom of those councillors and the power of local democracy. But sadly I can’t.

Since then I’ve heard the landowner is going to appeal against the decision and try to force through a wind turbine that no one (except him) wants and which will disfigure our neighbourhood.

Our community’s plight is by no means an unusual one. Something has gone badly awry with both our energy policy and our planning laws. Is anyone at Westminster listening?

SOURCE

21 October, 2012

Hitler had nothing on this Chinese ethical monstrosity

Chairman Mao might have regarded him as an interesting thinker, though

Some of his "ideas":

Taking drugs like Ritalin to enhance cognition may help with the global population problem, since there's a link between cognitive ability and lower birthrate."

Give people hormone treatments to have "smaller children". Also, maybe put on a "meat patch" like a nicotine patch before heading to a restaurant, to curb your enthusiasm for eating meat.

Drugs to help you write checks to Oxfam, drugs to help you avoid eating meat, genetically engineered cat-like eyes, and "human engineering" to make people smaller

SOURCE

Be Liberal Or Be Branded “Anti-Science”

Scientific American is an ideological magazine more than a science journal. In a current column, Shawn Lawrence Otto throws the “anti science” canard at those who disagree with the Science Establishment’s ideological views. From, “Anti Science Beliefs Jeopardize U.S. Democracy:”

Indeed, in this election cycle, some 236 years after Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, several major party contenders for political office took positions that can only be described as “antiscience”: against evolution, human-induced climate change, vaccines, stem cell research, and more. A former Republican governor even warned that his own political party was in danger of becoming “the antiscience party.”

Well, let’s see: The term “evolution” can mean many things. Few deny natural selection, but most in America also deny some neo-Darwinists’ assertions that the theory proves the truth of materialism and the absence of God. Young Earth Creationism is religion, I agree, but my colleagues at the Discovery Institute are pursuing a heterodox scientific theory of intelligent design. It may be incorrect, but it isn’t anti science to hypothesize and investigate it. Indeed–as just one example–fellows at the DI predicted early on that “junk DNA” wasn’t ”junk,” for which they were ridiculed by some. Yet, so it isn’t.

Human induced climate change is scientifically controversial, particularly since there has been no statistically significant warming in the last 16 years and some of the computer models that alarmists used to try and panic the population have proved wrong. I could be snarky and say, garbage in, garbage out: But the truth is climate is too complex for the kind of predictions we are supposed swallow whole and then, in reliance thereon, turn our economies heads over heels about.

Stem cell research is an ethics debate, not a science debate: Hence, it is as about as accurate to say that anti embryonic stem cell/cloning research advocates are anti science as it is to say that the pro side is anti ethics. Opposing vaccines because of the supposed danger they present, I think, is hysterical and wrong–and dangerous–but anti science? Perhaps.

I do think the animal rights movement’s false claim that we do not benefit from animal research is anti science–but Otto doesn’t mention it. However, it is not anti science to say that we shouldn’t do it despite the benefits we receive. Dangerously wrong, in my view. But an ethics issue, not a science one.

And the following assertions seem a classic example of what psychologists call projection:

It gives me no pleasure to say this. My family founded the Minnesota Republican Party. But much of the Republican Party has adopted an authoritarian approach that demands ideological conformity, even when contradicted by scientific evidence, and ostracizes those who do not conform. It may work well for uniform messaging, but in the end it drives diverse thinkers away—and thinkers are what we need to solve today’s complex problems.

If any group around today seeks to stifle diverse thinking it is the Science Establishment, which not only refuses to countenance counter arguments to its beliefs and convictions–but actively seeks to stifle them–to the point that they (in my view) are undermining the public’s trust in science by conflating it with policy or ideology; the very phenomenon they bemoan.

Otto’s agenda becomes crystal clear when he goes after pro lifers, based on Todd Akin’s idiotic statement about “legitimate rape.” But the anti science advocates in that debate–if we want to throw that epithet around–are pro choice types who deny a gestating fetus is a human life and that we begin as unique human individuals at the completion of fertilization.

So, how do these disputes jeopardize our democracy? Pretty weakly stated:

In an age when science influences every aspect of life—from the most private intimacies of sex and reproduction to the most public collective challenges of climate change and the economy—and in a time when democracy has become the dominant form of government on the planet, it is important that the voters push elected officials and candidates of all parties to explicitly state their views on the major science questions facing the nation. By elevating these issues in the public dialogue, U.S. citizens gain a fighting chance of learning whether those who would lead them have the education, wisdom and courage necessary to govern in a science-driven century and to preserve democracy for the next generation.

In other words, agree with our (liberal) policy prescriptions or be deemed an anti science rube. What rubbish.

SOURCE

Rage about climate that mentions not one scientific fact

Dominique Browning is clearly a follower. She has swallowed the Al Gore guff whole and without question. "Authorities" turn her on, apparently. In different times she would have marched for Hitler, Stalin or Mao

Over here at Moms Clean Air Force, I’ve been–I’ll admit it–profoundly depressed that the candidates have blown their chance to talk about the most important issue facing our planet. Climate Change.

Two debates down. A moderator who says “Whoops! Ran out of time to ask about climate. So sorry!” Well, I’m sorry too. And I’m angry. Angry as hell and high water.

Two debates about “domestic policy” and not one word has been uttered about the chaotic domestic weather we’ve been enduring. Not one word about our unreliable climate. Not one word about the pain and suffering visited upon millions of Americans because of runaway greenhouse gas pollution. Not one word about the ugly legacy we will leave our children.

And now, one debate left to go. The topic? Foreign policy.

I’ve been walking around in a funk about this, my mental climate as agitated as it has ever been, thinking, well, that’s that. We won’t hear a word. And then, the lightbulb–LED, naturally–popped on!

We have one more chance–before we vote–to demand that the candidates talk about climate change. And we have a moral imperative to demand that.

Because climate change is one of the most urgent and important foreign policy issues Americans will ever face.

Our Earth’s atmosphere has been compromised by air pollution. And we all breathe the same air, when you get right down to it. We must demand that the candidates give us their plans to slow, and then reverse, the changing climate that is bringing us tragic and extreme storms, flooding, heat waves, and droughts.

Noah had to choose only a pair of every single species to enter his Ark. Is that a position we want to put our children in?

Whether you believe the story of Noah and his Ark literally, or metaphorically–it makes no difference. The fact is, life in a world with an unreliable, chaotic climate means that we–and our children–are going to face some very hard choices, very soon, about who lives. And who dies.

We don’t have to go there. Anywhere in the world.

Tell our candidates: Break Your Climate Silence.

Or imagine how you are going to look your children in the eye and answer one, sad question: Why didn’t you stop this, when you could?

More HERE

What is ethical energy and why aren't the candidates talking about it?

When it came to gas prices and energy production, the second presidential debate last Tuesday played like the footnotes to the first one: same points, just more detail. President Obama claimed that oil production is up because of his policies, and Mitt Romney claimed that "the president's right in terms of the additional oil production, but none of it came on federal land."

Then they waged the battle of the facts. Romney said, "Oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production was down 9 percent. Why? Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands, and in federal waters."

Obama retorted, "Very little of what Gov. Romney just said is true. We've opened up public lands. We're actually drilling more on public lands than in the previous administration."

What's a confused voter to do? The website of Rob Bradley's Institute for Energy Research is a good guide because of its wealth of independent sources. A 2011 Congressional Research Service report stated that the U.S. increase in oil production came from private and state lands, which comprise about 70 percent of total U.S. oil production.

Obama's Energy Information Administration reports that last year federal oil output was down 13 percent and natural gas down 9 percent. Romney fudged a point. The EIA also noted that federal offshore production was down 77 million barrels, or 17 percent, mostly due to Obama's drilling moratorium after the Gulf of Mexico's Deepwater Horizon disaster.

A little EIA fact opened a big question: The majority of oil production on federal lands -- about 80 percent -- is now located in offshore waters. What happened to all those oil lands in the West?

Interior Department records show that the government leases less than 6 percent of its onshore lands for oil and gas development -- 38.5 million acres in 2011, down from 47.2 million in 2008. Obama slowed the rate of leasing: new acres leased dropped 55 percent from 11.6 million to 5.2 million, and the number of new leases fell by 42 percent from 9,661 in 2008 to 5,568 in 2011.

The administration of George W. Bush approved 20,479 drilling permits in its last two years; Obama has approved only 12,821. Obama has doubled the time it takes to get a drilling permit from 154 days in the Bush years to 307 days in 2011.

When Romney told Obama, "You cut permits and licenses on federal land and federal waters in half," the president replied, "Not true, Gov. Romney." Romney hounded Obama for about five minutes about it. Neither budged.

To get some perspective on this exchange, I called Marc Morano, communications director of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a positive voice on environment and development issues. Morano told me about his Climate Depot project and its current campaign, "Ethical Energy."

The idea, he told me, is this: Limits on North American drilling, mining, pipelines and energy extraction only increase U.S. reliance on "conflict energy" from places like the Middle East, Venezuela and China, where human rights and environmental protection may be less than desirable.

The concept arose from Canadian political gadfly and best-selling author Ezra Levant. His 2011 book "Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada's Oil Sands" poses the challenging questions: "With the oil sands at our disposal, is it ethically responsible to import our oil from the Sudan, Russia, and Mexico? How should we weigh carbon emissions with human rights violations in Saudi Arabia? And assuming that we can't live without oil, can the development of energy be made more environmentally sustainable?"

Morano's conclusion: "Gov. Romney's all-the-above carbon based energy goals are the moral and ethical choice for the United States."

SOURCE

Reality unwelcome

Their own figures show that there is no cause for alarm but Warmists keep shrieking on. Why the flight from reality? A partial answer below

Twenty-five years ago, in 1987, the rock band Fleetwood Mac recorded a song with a chorus sung by composer Christine McVie that went, “Tell me lies, tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies….”

So many people, were you or I to ask them whether or not they preferred to be told the truth and dealt with honestly, would respond immediately in the affirmative.

Yet, seldom is this the case, I’ve found, in practice.

Contrary to our commonly held romantic notions about good trumping evil, and truth prevailing over lies, the reality is all too often far less glowing. The most attractive women don’t vie for the man of honorable intent and high intellect, but for the scheming user – the pedestrian con-artist who again and again repeats his pattern of deceit with the willing, doe-eyed cooperation of his conquests. He’s normal, they think. He fits in. And yes, he lied to me . . . but they’re such sweet little lies . . . .

It seems to me after long experience that people in general don’t really want the truth. They only want that which comforts them. They have no desire to actually be right – only to feel right. And this is, after all, the only reason government and politics exist in the first place.

Believe me absolutely when I say that my view of truth is nothing if not Doestoevskian: I would rather live with it above all else, no matter how painful, or difficult to accept. And I speak from the standpoint of one who has on numerous occasions, and continues to this day, to pay the emotional cost of that dedication. I would still have it no other way, regardless.

There’s a line from another Fleetwood Mac song that says, “Rumors make bad lovers.” Just like lies and other untruths. Like any hollow charade you want to name.

SOURCE

Perverse Environmentalist Oil Sands Ethics

The duplicity and hypocrisy of environmental pressure groups seem to be matched only by their consummate skill at manipulating public opinion, amassing political power, securing taxpayer-funded government grants, and persuading people to send them money and invest in “ethical” stock funds.

In the annals of “green” campaigns, those against biotechnology, DDT and Alar are especially prominent. To those we should now add the well-orchestrated campaigns against Canadian oil sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Oil has been seeping out of Northern Alberta soils and river banks for millennia. Native Americans used the bitumen to waterproof canoes, early explorers smelled and wrote about it, and “entrepreneurs” used it in “mineral waters” and “medicinal elixirs.”

Today, increasingly high-tech operations are extracting the precious hydrocarbons to fuel modern living standards in Canada and the United States. Enormous excavator/loading shovels and trucks used in open pits during the early years are giving way to drilling rigs, steam injection, electric heaters, pipes and other technologies to penetrate, liquefy and extract the petroleum.

The new techniques impact far less land surface, use and recycle brackish water, and emit fewer air pollutants and (plant-fertilizing) carbon dioxide every year. Water use for Alberta oil extraction is a tiny fraction of what’s needed to grow corn and convert it into ethanol that gets a third less mileage per gallon than gasoline. Affected lands are returned to forest and native grasslands at a surprising pace. And the operations are removing oil that would otherwise end up in local air and water.

Instead of requiring perpetual subsidies, á la the “renewable” technologies that President Obama intends to redouble if he is reelected, the oil sands generate vast sums in royalties and taxes: an anticipated $690 billion into federal and provincial coffers all across Canada over the life of the project. That’s on top of tens of thousands of jobs of every description, including nearly 2,000 Native Canadians (Aboriginals), whose communities have enjoyed soaring living standards since the operations were launched. In fact, the oil sands project will ultimately generate 11,219,000 person-years of high-paying employment from Alberta to British Columbia, Ontario and the Maritime Provinces, say government sources.

This North American oil is displacing millions of barrels of annual US oil imports from some of the least savory countries on Earth, while adding billions of barrels a year to planetary petroleum production, and thereby keeping world oil prices lower than they would otherwise be.

These are huge benefits. The oil sands project is hardly perfect. It causes environmental impacts, just as all human enterprises do, especially those that provide energy. Indeed, even fantasy fuel projects – wind, solar and biofuel boondoggles that provide comparatively minuscule amounts of energy, but require billions in taxpayer subsidies – have enormous ecologicalimpacts. Here’s the most important point:

Canada’s oil sands (and the Keystone Pipeline that will bring their petroleum to the United States) must be evaluated on environmental and ethical grounds that compare them to real world alternatives to them – not to some utopian energy resource that exists only in the minds of idealists, ideologues and special interest environmental pressure groups.

These critics viciously attack Alberta and the oil sands industry – accusing them of “blood oil,” environmental devastation and unethical practices. In reality, oil sands petroleum is among the most ethical and ecological on Earth, especially when compared to real-world alternatives like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Sudan, Russia, Ecuador and Venezuela, whose human rights violations, terrorism sponsorship and reckless environmental records are legendary. And yet oil sands critics give them a free pass, while heaping opprobrium on Canada.

Whole Foods says oil sands fuel “does not fit our values.” Perhaps the grocer and its “ethical” colleagues prefer values espoused in alternative oil-supplying nations on rights of women, children, gays and foreign housekeepers; stoning, lashing and lopping off hands and heads; treatment of civilians during wars in Chechnya and Darfur; massacres and environmental degradation in the Nigerian delta region; rigged elections and Swiss bank accounts for oil proceeds; or treatment of aboriginals, minorities and Christians.

Perhaps Whole Foods, Sierra Club, NRDC, Obama’s EPA and allied critics prefer to look toward China, which provides 95% of the rare earth metals that are essential for wind turbines and solar panels. Those operations have brought unprecedented air and water pollution, cropland and wildlife habitat wastelands, widespread radiation contamination, and cancer and lung disease in workers and local residents.

28% of Canadian oil industry jobs held by women is “not enough,” intones Kairos, a left-leaning coalition of churches. Compared to what? Women’s jobs in Saudi Arabia or Iran? The 3.5 million more American women who have ended up on poverty rolls since President Obama took office?

Some 1,600 ducks died after landing in an oil sands waste pit several years ago. A repeat of this isolated incident is increasingly unlikely as open pit mining and oil-water separation pits are replaced by in situ drilling and steam. Nevertheless, using analytical methods that only IPCC climate alarmists would appreciate, the “respected” Pembina Institute conjured up the fantastical “calculation” that “more than 160 million birds would die from oil sands development” over the coming decades.

The claim is not merely wild fear-mongering. It ignores the growing impact of wind turbines on raptors, and attempts by industrial wind developers to get US Fish & Wildlife Service “programmatic take” permits: 007 Licenses to Kill thousands of eagles, hawks, whooping cranes and other protected birds every year without fear of prosecution.

Greenpeace routinely pillories oil sands companies as “climate criminals,” while the US Environmental Protection Agency uses their oil sands CO2 emissions to justify denying Keystone Pipeline permits. (Greenpeace lost its Canadian tax-exempt status, but still manages to con contributors out of vast sums, to retain its status as a $340-million-per-year pressure group. EPA conducts illegal experiments on humans, to justify regulations that are killing thousands of coal mining and utility jobs.)

These positions reflect adherence to the shaky hypothesis of catastrophic manmade global warming and unsupportable claims that the oil sands contribute disproportionately to a looming climate Armageddon. However, Alberta environment office show that “greenhouse gas” emissions from oil sands plummeted 38% between 1990 and 2009, and are now 5% of Canada’s total GHG emissions – and equal to or lower than CO2/GHG emissions from petroleum operations in Nigeria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

So-called “ethical funds” likewise excoriate oil sands developers like Total, Syncrude and Imperial Oil, while promising investors that their money will purchase shares in “responsible” companies that don’t produce fossil fuels, do nuclear power or contribute to climate change. Co-operative Bank’s is one of those modern day snake oil “entrepreneurs.” Its über-ethical Sustainable Leaders Trust (don’t you love that name?) makes that pitch – and then invests client cash in Third World coal mines … and oil sands!

The rogues’ gallery of oil sands critics and their shady dealings is so vast that someone could write a book about them. In fact, Ezra Levant did exactly that. His Ethical Oil is an eye-opening companion to my own Eco-Imperialism, which chronicles the often lethal misdeeds of other self-righteous pressure groups.

Their misrepresentations, double standards and questionable practices would get them brought up on fraud charges, if they were oil companies or non-“ethical” investment “trusts.” It’s time to apply the same legal and ethical standards to these “socially responsible” outfits that they insist on applying to the corporations they denounce.

Perhaps a few state attorneys general or Eric Holder’s replacement will do exactly that.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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20 October, 2012

Fascism old and new

The Eternal Human explores the dehumanization in environmentalism. A remake of 'The Eternal Jew', the infamous Nazi documentary that dehumanized Jews.

Alaska argues polar bear not threatened

Judges too respectful of officialdom

A LAWYER arguing for the US state of Alaska that polar bears are not a threatened species has run into sceptical appeals court judges.

Alaska, along with hunting groups and others, is appealing the 2011 decision by a federal judge that the government correctly listed polar bears as threatened, under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Polar bears are the first and only species listed solely on the basis of threats from global warming.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service says melting sea ice means two-thirds of the world's polar bears could be gone by 2050.

Murray Feldman, a lawyer from Boise, Idaho, who is representing Alaska and the other appellants, argued on Friday that polar bears are doing fine and don't need the protection of the threatened status.

"Polar bears occupy the entirety of their historic range, with population at an all-time high," Feldman argued in front of the US Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia.

The three-judge panel did not immediately rule. But at least two of the judges were sceptical of some of Feldman's arguments.

Judge Harry Edwards sounded unimpressed with Feldman's claims that the Fish and Wildlife Service used flawed population forecasting models.

The judge said those models simply confirmed other findings and were not a key part of the decision to list the bears. "It's beating up on something that appears not critical," Edwards said.

He and Judge Merrick Garland also questioned Feldman's repeated use of US Geological Survey statements to argue against the listing. Edwards said that argument ignored the agency's conclusion that the bears should have been listed as not only threatened, but endangered.

Arctic sea ice melted to a record low this summer, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which said the seasonal melting is more rapid than expected.

Polar bears spend much of their lives hunting seals from sea ice.

Biologists say the melting makes it harder to find the seals and forces the bears to swim tremendous distances between ice, putting them at risk for drowning.

Feldman, arguing for Alaska, told the judges that Fish and Wildlife used uncertain predictions and failed to connect the dots between habitat loss and the huge predicted drop in bears.

But Katherine Hazard, a lawyer for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the listing was based on decades of research and an extensive look at sea ice melting. "They identified no science the agency should have considered and didn't," Hazard told the judges of the appellants' argument.

SOURCE

Energy prices: Turning up the political heat in Britain

Can the Prime Minister really do anything to lower households’ soaring gas and electricity bills?

Do not be surprised if a relation gives you a thick woolly jumper for Christmas – we are all going to be a lot colder this winter. In the last week, three of Britain’s largest energy companies, British Gas, Npower and Scottish Power, announced rises in gas and electricity prices that will add between £80 and £110 to the typical annual household bill. The steep rise follows a similar increase at SSE, another of the UK’s “big six” energy giants.

Combined with rising food, petrol and rail prices, the energy hikes will pile financial pressure on families. By December average household bills will hit £1,312 a year, up from just £552 in 2004. Research has found that nine out of 10 households – some 22 million dwellings in the UK – plan to ration energy use this winter to save money, which may be good news for high-street knitwear retailers but will be less healthy for everyone else.

It was against this backdrop that David Cameron waded into the debate. In an attempt to turn the political thermostat up on the large energy companies, the Prime Minister told the House of Commons on Wednesday that firms such as British Gas will be required by law to give customers their lowest available tariffs. His announcement took everyone by surprise, including officials at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), who had not agreed on the policy. The Coalition spent yesterday frantically rowing back after a severe case of burst policy pipes across Westminster.

So what is the truth about energy prices? Is there anything that politicians can do to lower them? Or will consumers just have to put more money aside to cover the ever-increasing cost of heating homes?

There is no question that consumers are getting hammered. While average household incomes have risen by 20 per cent since 2004, average energy bills have risen by 151 per cent, according to uSwitch.com, the price comparison website. An estimated 5.6 million households will be in “fuel poverty” next year – defined as those that spend over 10 per cent of their income on adequately heating their home – according to the charity National Energy Action.

Energy firms argue that they have had to raise prices due to the increased cost of gas and electricity on the commodity markets. They also blame the array of energy-efficiency taxes imposed by the Government. Figures from Ofgem, the regulator, partially back this up. The proportion of a gas bill made up by the wholesale cost has hovered between 50 and 60 per cent for the past five years. But environmental taxes have significantly added to a bill. Green taxes account for around £75 of a £1,000 bill and this is set to double to £150 over the next three years.

Energy companies argue that their profit margins are low at around 5 per cent, which is about the same as “pile-it-high-sell-it-cheap” supermarkets. But they are also masters of bamboozlement when it comes to the different tariffs they offer consumers, which in turn sow confusion, lack of trust and the suspicion that we are being ripped off.

Between them, the big six energy firms and the UK’s eight smaller providers offer around 80 tariffs. The public simply do not know whether they are getting a good deal. Just tapping details of my annual bill – £1,200 – and my south-west London postcode into a price comparison site brings up 54 alternative tariffs. Some claim to save me £222 a year while others will cost over £80 more.

None of the rates is simple to understand. Some of the “cheapest” deals come with hefty cancellation fees and will automatically dump me back into a more expensive tariff after just over a year. Certain cheaper deals also require me to manage the account online rather than by post or phone. Alternatively, some of the more “expensive” tariffs have no cancellation fees and offer fixed prices until 2015.

It was into the complex issue of tariffs that the Prime Minister stepped this week. Mr Cameron said that he would force firms to give every customer the cheapest deal possible. At the moment, homeowners are automatically placed in costly “standard” tariffs unless they have specifically asked for a cheaper deal. Such a move might save around 20 million homes up to £200 a year. However, Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary, speaking the day after the PM’s intervention, said that rather than automatically place people on the cheapest tariff, firms must notify customers of the best available deals.

The difference in approach is subtle but huge. Mr Cameron’s scheme would mean state intervention in a free market and forcing companies to offer a fixed low price. Mr Davey’s approach is one step back from compulsion: it would put the onus on homeowners to shop around for the best deal, with a nudge from the suppliers. In the end, John Hayes, the Tory Energy Minister, said that Mr Cameron’s plan was one of a “number of options” under consideration.

The energy industry was incensed by Mr Cameron’s announcement, accusing him of forming “policy on the hoof”. Insiders said that even if Mr Cameron’s idea was put into practice, it might not make any difference. If firms had to offer the “cheapest” deal to householders, there would be nothing to stop them ditching their lowest tariffs so that more expensive deals became the “cheapest”.

“The danger is that they will pull their cheap deals and put everyone on more expensive standard tariffs, meaning that people will end up paying more,” said Mark Todd, director of Energyhelpline.com.

By the time the Government realised how tricky this proposed policy would be, the consumer group Which? was calling on the Prime Minister to “stick to the promise”. The timing of Mr Cameron’s intervention was unfortunate. Today, Ofgem will announce its plans to reform the household energy market by simplifying the number of tariffs on offer and making bills easier to understand. The bold statement from the top is likely to confuse this message.

The truth is that the Government’s hands are tied. While there is clear political capital in wanting to help hard-pressed families, the commercial realities limit its options.

First, the Government is partly to blame for the price rises due to its green taxes. Second, government intervention in a functioning and open market would probably be anti-competitive and would certainly go against the beliefs of most Tory and Lib Dem MPs. And third, George Osborne needs the firms to invest in next-generation energy provision – be it shale, wind or nuclear – before the lights go out. He needs their money, their goodwill and their co-operation. Telling them to fix their prices is certainly not the way to do this.

Some critics have called for a Competition Commission inquiry to force the big six to break themselves up, but this would be costly and take years. That said, the Government’s policy thus far has been about increasing competition, not meddling with prices. Last year, when Mr Davey was Consumer Minister, he told me that government intervention in the energy market was off the agenda.

“The only way to tackle [high prices] is to ensure that we have got competitive energy markets,” he said. “I would be surprised if The Daily Telegraph would be keen for us to intervene in the market. We have shown that it actually works the other way round – state intervention can be very inefficient and lead to higher prices. Competition is what you need to deliver.” What he said next tells you all you need to know about the Government’s power to reduce prices: “But we have also got to be realistic. A lot of these prices are global prices… we have to be modest about our ability to impact that.”

We should brace ourselves for many cold winters to come.

SOURCE

North Dakota to build first U.S. oil refinery in 30 years

America hasn’t seen a new oil refinery built in 30 years. That is until this upcoming year, when North Dakota will begin construction on a $400 million refinery.

Nine years ago, North Dakota’s Three Affiliated Tribes asked the Department of Interior to put land in a trust for the building of this refinery, which will be used to produce feed for the tribe’s buffalo herd.

Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Oct. 10 that the tribe will have control of the land and may begin constructing the refinery next spring.

Given the timing of this announcement, weeks before the presidential election, it begs the question was this decision politically motivated on the part of Team Obama or just mere coincidence?

Tribal Chairman Tex Hall told the Associated Press that the refinery will process about 20,000 barrels of oil daily into diesel fuel, gasoline, jet fuel, propane and naptha, as reported by Bloomberg Businessweek.

The state of North Dakota is now the nation’s No. 2 oil producer; producing an average of more than 700,000 barrels of oil each day. Salazar estimates that this new refinery will create 140 new jobs for the state.

While it’s exciting for the state of North Dakota and even the nation to have a brand new oil refinery it seems a bit out of character for this administration to approve of this project.

“This wouldn’t be the first time Obama has taken politically motivated actions,” says Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government (ALG). “If history is any judge, it is unlikely that the EPA and other regulators in a second Obama term would ever let this refinery open its doors.”

After all, it seems the desire of many elected legislators, government bureaucrats and radical environmental groups is to rid Americans of their oil-dependent lifestyles.

California illustrates this perfectly. The state has some of the most stringent fuel regulations in the nation, thanks to its accommodation of radical environmental policies. Due to these regulations, when a couple of its refineries went down due to maintenance and pipeline misfortunes, the price of gasoline hit an all-time high, as no other market could ease the burden. In fact, The Wall Street Journal reports that “over the last two decades four refineries in the state have shut down rather than invest in expensive upgrades to comply with fuel regulations.”

However, this problem doesn’t just plague the Golden State. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hasn’t exactly rallied behind the oil industry either. Restrictions on refinery upgrades and construction, constraints on moving crude oil to East Coast refineries, and other compliance costs all create further strain on refineries. In fact, three East Coast refineries have already closed, costing thousands of jobs and causing the Department of Energy to warn that pump prices are likely to soar even higher in Eastern states.

Meanwhile rather than tackling the high prices of fuel, this current administration busily works on energy alternatives like biofuels and electric vehicles by way of the taxpayer dime.

There is a huge demand for this refinery in the oil-producing state of North Dakota. And because the refinery is on tribal land, transportation costs of the refined diesel fuel will be lower as the state’s normal 23-cents-a-gallon tax will not apply.

As the Department of Interior seems to be on board with this one refinery, imagine if this same door opened for other companies wanting to build refineries? With more American oil and gas going to market, prices will be lowered across the board and many more American jobs would come available.

Even if politically motivated, allowing this refinery to be built is a step in the right direction.

SOURCE

Gas Prices Are Up Because of Obama's Offshore Ban

In the Hofstra presidential debate, President Obama said: "when I took office, the price of gasoline was $1.80. Why is that? Because the economy was on the verge of collapse." Wrong. Prices collapsed because we signaled to the world that we were finally moving forward with developing America's massive offshore oil and gas resources - and they shot back up when Obama reimposed the offshore ban.

Obama's ridiculous story that the doubling of gasoline prices under his watch is a result of economic recovery doesn't fit the facts. According the National Bureau of Economic Research, responsible for officially designating when recessions start, the recession began in December of 2007. The average price for a gallon of gasoline that month, according the Energy Information Administration, was $3.02. The price rose for the next seven months with the country in recession. The price peaked in July of 2008 at $4.06 a gallon, more than half a year into recession, exacerbating economic pain and spurring the national protest movement that gave us "Drill Here, Drill Now" and "Drill, Baby, Drill."

That July 2008 peak coincided with a critical policy change. On July 14, 2008, President Bush lifted the executive branch moratorium on offshore drilling that his father had put in place. That indicated a consolidation of support for offshore drilling that stalled the run-up in prices at the pump. In the next two months, the average price dropped more than thirty cents to $3.70.

Grassroots activists pressed even harder, demanding Congress lift the remaining barrier to offshore drilling, the appropriations rider that had been in place since 1981. The pressure on Obama was so intense that he even reversed his opposition, claiming on August 1, 2008, that he would support offshore drilling under some circumstances.

Meanwhile, activists ratcheted up pressure on Congress and the White House, urging Congress to let the ban expire. Facing organized opposition in Congress, a Bush veto threat, and overwhelming public opinion in favor of drilling, Nancy Pelosi caved. After 27 years, the ban on offshore drilling was officially lifted on October 1, 2008.

With the moratorium lifted, markets anticipated future production of the estimated 19.1 billion barrels of oil (equal to 30 years of imports from Saudi Arabia) in the Outer Continental Shelf. Market psychology abruptly reversed, and the price at the pump dropped sharply.

It reached a low of $1.79 in January 2009, the month of Obama's inauguration. That's no coincidence.

The first order of business for Ken Salazar, Obama's new secretary of the Interior, was to stop the pending opening of the former moratorium waters - supposedly temporarily. That announcement was made on February 10, 2009. By April, prices were back over two dollars. By June, when the recession officially ended, the price was $2.63 - up more than 80 cents from when Obama took office while the economy was still in recession.

Prices spiked up again starting in May of 2010, which is when Obama and Salazar imposed an illegal moratorium (literally; Salazar was held in contempt of court because the moratorium was based on a politically corrupted report) in the Gulf of Mexico as an overreaction to the BP spill.

By December of 2010, Obama had fully and permanently reimposed the old moratorium that Bush and Congress had lifted in 2008. So now we're back where we were in summer of 2008, with prices around four dollars and vast offshore American energy resources locked up by politicians. The facts are clear - the pain at the pump is not, as Obama suggested, a result of a supposedly strong economy. It is a result of his own disastrous policy.

SOURCE

Getting to the bottom of America’s oily debate

In the second presidential debate, President Obama and Gov. Romney had a difference of opinion on the facts about America’s energy development.

President Obama: “So here’s what I’ve done since I’ve been president. We have increased oil production to the highest levels in 16 years. Natural gas production is the highest it’s been in decades. We have seen increases in coal production and coal employment.”

Gov. Romney: “… the president’s right in terms of the additional oil production, but none of it came on federal land. As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production is down 9 percent. Why? Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands and in federal waters.”

So who is right about what? What is the truth about America’s energy production?

Well, they’re both right. President Obama is correct when he makes a blanket comment such as America’s oil production is up. And Romney is correct also when he says that oil production is up on private lands but down on federal lands.

In April, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) further expounded this fact in a Washington Times article:

“… the federal government owns and completely controls almost 2.5 billion acres of land and offshore zones, including our Outer Continental Shelf, an area that is actually larger than the entire land mass of the United States. What’s been happening with oil production there? The government’s own director of the Bureau of Land Management, Bob Abbey, testified to Congress on this very point recently: Oil production is actually down 14 percent on federal property and down 17 percent offshore from a year ago.”

Need further proof? The Energy Information Agency (EIA) chart reflecting crude oil and lease production from federal and Indian lands shows a definite drop in production on offshore federal lands between 2010 and 2011.

Though that same figure did increase in 2009 and 2010, it must be remembered that those increases are due to permit and leasing decisions by Obama’s predecessor — not because of any action taken during this current Administration.

As far as current offshore oil production, Obama has greatly limited permits to the Gulf since the BP oil spill in 2010. In fact, permitting in the Gulf of Mexico is still more than 40 percent below levels prior to the oil spill. Given that the majority of oil production on federal lands—around 80 percent—is located in offshore waters, it is little wonder that production on these lands is dropping.

Though when Obama says oil production is up, he is correct. Looking at the big picture of U.S. oil production, the numbers are up. And again, Gov. Romney is correct when he said the numbers are only up on private land — where the federal government doesn’t have near as much control.

Institute of Energy Research (IER) compares oil production on federal lands to private lands:

“Comparing the loss in federal oil production to production in the oil producing states, we find the decrease expected in oil production from the federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico between fiscal years 2010 and 2012 of 112 million barrels is about equal to the oil produced in the state of North Dakota in 2010 (113 million barrels) and it is 50 percent higher than the oil produced in the state of Oklahoma in 2011 (74 million barrels).”

The report further explains the increase in production on private lands and why businesses prefer to explore oil opportunities on these and state lands:

“According to CRS [Congressional Research Service], 96 percent of the increase in oil production between fiscal years 2007 and 2012 came from private and state lands and production there increased 11 percent in fiscal year 2011 from fiscal year 2010 levels. Oil producers prefer to explore for oil and drill on private and state lands because there is a lot less red tape involved and much shorter approval times, which means it is less costly to invest and drill for oil on state and private lands than on federal lands.”

North Dakota alone has become the nation’s No. 2 oil producing state and next year will start construction on the first new oil refinery built within the U.S. in 30 years.

It takes roughly a week to less than a month in states like North Dakota, Ohio and Colorado to be approved for an oil drilling permit. On the other hand, in 2012, it can take close to a year for that permit to be approved for use on federal lands—a time increase of 100 percent since 2005, according to IER.

It is clear President Obama has not increased oil production and instead seems to have stifled its growth on federal lands.

But maybe the most convincing argument as to why President Obama isn’t the oil man he claims to be—his record, his policies and his appeasement to the radical environmentalist agenda. He loves his windmills, solar panels and electric cars—despite the heavy toll these unsustainable, unaffordable and unrealistic energy sources have had on the American taxpayers.

With gas prices on the rise in states like California and throughout the country, it is clear any increase in oil exploration is in spite of Obama’s policies, and that this Administration would rather invest in highly speculative “green” energies instead. Unless, of course, he is engaging in a debate where his answers determine his future employment—at that point, Obama tries to morph into America’s oilman.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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19 October, 2012

Climate Warmer 1000 Years Ago

A new paper, looking back at the climate of the past two thousand years, published in the journal “Climate of the Past,” will either cause something of a stir, or provide confirmation of what some regard as having already emerged from the peer-reviewed scientific literature. The title of the paper is, “The extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere temperature in the last two millennia: reconstructions of low-frequency variability,” by B Christiansen of the Danish Meteorological Institute and F C Ljungqvist of Stockholm University. The link to the journal is here, and the paper can be read in its entirety here.

The climate of the past few hundred years is of clear importance because it allows scientists to put today’s warm period into context, and provides some evidence of the influence of the quantity of greenhouse gasses that mankind has injected into the atmosphere. In much literature and during many debates statements to the effect that it is warmer now than it has been for thousands of years are frequently used.

As the authors point out the major problem with reconstructing the climate of the past few thousand years is that the so-called instrumental period – for which we have direct measurements – only stretches back as far as the middle of the 19th century. To overcome this researchers in this paper compile an impressive number of temperature proxies situated in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere. There are 91 in total, comprising ice-cores, tree-rings (density and width), lake and sea sediments, historical records, speleotherms, and pollen. All of them go back to 1500 AD and 32 go back as far as 1 AD.

The reconstruction of past climate has improved significantly in the past few years due to the availability of more proxies and better statistical analysis. The authors acknowledge this and point out the differences that are emerging from the reconstructions conducted about a decade ago. They mention two such reconstructions performed by Michael Mann that they say, perhaps typically for the period, show little variability. They add they display, “little evidence for previous temperature anomalies comparable to those of the 20th century.” The authors conclude that previous climate reconstructions “seriously underestimate” variability and trends in the climate record of the past two millennia.

This new analysis shows that the warming we have seen in the late-20th century is not unprecedented, as can be seen in figure 1. Seen in the reconstruction is a well-defined peak of temperature between 950–1050 AD. They also find that the first millennium is warmer than the second.

The researchers conclude: “The level of warmth during the peak of the MWP (Medieval Warm Period) in the second half of the 10th century, equaling or slightly exceeding the mid-20th century warming, is in agreement with the results from other more recent large-scale multi-proxy temperature reconstructions.”

Ljungqvist et al. also show that, “on centennial time-scales, the MWP is no less homogeneous than the Little Ice Age if all available proxy evidence, including low-resolution records are taken into consideration in order to give a better spatial data coverage.”

In conclusion this impressive piece of research makes a significant contribution to a growing body of evidence that both the global extent of the MWP, and the temperature was similar, or even greater than the Current Warm Period, even though the atmospheric CO2 concentrations today are some 40% greater than they were during the MWP.

Some argue that without anthropogenic greenhouse gasses the world would have cooled in the past few decades. That might be the case, but the statement that it is warmer now than it has been for thousands of years is untrue. The rate of warming seen recently is also not unprecedented.

In the context of climate sensitivity – the real world climatic reaction to increasing greenhouse gasses – and climate model uncertainty, it is an interesting question to ask: if Nature alone in the past can produce temperatures like those we see today, why can’t she do so again?

SOURCE (See the original for links)

Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature As Warm In 1775 As Today

Another piece of research using climate proxies has cast some light on the recent evolution of sea surface temperature in a region of the Atlantic.

The researchers, from the National University of Mexico and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the USA, writing in the journal Paleoceanography, point out that accurate low-latitude sea surface temperature records that predate the instrumental era (post-1850) are needed to put recent warming in the context of natural climate variability and to understand what they describe as the possible influence of anthropogenic climate change on this variability.

They obtain a most interesting 235-year-long sea surface temperature reconstruction based on annual growth rates of coral (Atlantic coral Siderastrea sidereal) at three sites in Mexico located within the Atlantic Warm Pool (AWP). The point out that AWP surface temperatures vary in concert the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) – a basin-wide, quasiperiodic (60–80 years) oscillation of North Atlantic sea surface temperatures.

They find that the annual growth rates of all colonies are significantly, inversely correlated to regional sea surface temperatures. The temperature data they obtain shows an additional multidecadal sea surface temperature cycle prior to instrumental record that suggests that AWP multidecadal variability, and likely AMO variability, persisted since at least 1775 AD with an amplitude comparable to that of the instrumental era.

The sea surface temperature reconstruction shows that it remained within 1 deg C of recent values during the past 225 years, consistent with previous reconstructions.

The graph they produce is fascinating. It shows a decline in sea surface temperature from 1773 to 1860, then a peak at 1880 which then declines to 1910. The year 1910 is a significant one for those studying rises in sea level as it is from 1910 that the gradient of recent sea level rise changes and persists that that rate of increase to the present day.

The rise in sea surface temperature since 1910 is qualitatively the same as the rise in global surface temperature over this period, a rise between 1910 – 40, a slight decline to about 1980 and a rise thereafter.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

British PM accused of 'making up' policy as Government 'chaos' over energy continues

David Cameron has been accused of causing 'chaos' over energy policy after ministers appeared to row back from his announcement that firms would be forced to switch customers on to the cheapest tariffs.

Labour said the Government's energy policy was a "shambles," amid claims that the Prime Minister's announcement had taken ministers and officials from the Department for Energy by surprise.

The Energy Secretary, Ed Davey, delivered a speech at the CBI this morning in which he made no mention of Mr Cameron's plan and instead said that the Government would tackle rising prices by promoting competition within the market.

Forced to respond to an urgent question in the House of Commons to explain the confusion, John Hayes, the Energy Minister, said that forcing firms to switch customers to a lower rate was one of a "number of options being considered" by the Government ahead of the Energy Bill, which will be unveiled next month

His words appear to row back from Mr Cameron's announcement at Prime Minister's Question Time, in which he promised: “I can announce that we will be legislating so that energy companies have to give the lowest tariff to their customers.”

As well as Mr Davey, the energy industry is said to have been unaware of the plan in advance, and experts immediately warned that it could cause further suffering from consumers, as companies withdrew competitive rates and offered a single tariff.

Asked if he was knew about Mr Cameron's announcement before it was made, Mr Hayes said: "The Prime Minister comes to this House weekly to be scrutinised by this House.

"Does he give me advance of every question? Does he get notice of every question? The answer is of course, no.

"I think the Prime Minister was completely clear. We will use the Energy Bill to get people lower tariffs and of course there are different options to be considered in that process. "But those options will be discussed with the industry, they will be discussed with consumer groups and more than all of that they will be effective in a way that only this Government and, I'm bound to say, that this minister, is well known for."

Caroline Flint, the shadow energy secretary, said that Mr Cameron had been "making up policy as he goes along," claiming that the confusion resembled a scene from the BBC satire, The Thick of It.

She told the Commons: "Yesterday the Prime Minister threw energy policy into confusion, caused chaos in the energy industry and I think I have to say it left his own ministers at a loss over what Government energy policy actually is."

"Now it appears energy companies will not be forced to put all customers on cheaper tariffs after all."

"We all mis-speak from time to time and the Prime Minister was under a lot of pressure yesterday. "But for the Government to spend a day pretending to have a policy they have no intention of implementing is no way to run the country. It is like something out of The Thick of It."

Labour claimed that Mr Davey, a Liberal Democrat, had failed to answer the urgent question, and had left it to Mr Hayes, because he was unwilling to defend Mr Cameron.

In his speech at the CBI, the Liberal Democrat minister said that prices would come down because of increased competition in the market, with suppliers given incentives to boost supply levels.

He did not mention forcing suppliers to offer their cheapest rates, instead saying: "Our reforms will stabilise consumer prices. With the increased diversity in the energy mix they herald and the long-term contracts for suppliers, we will shift decisively away from the current situation where volatile global gas prices determine the market electricity price.

"So our reforms are good news for consumers, including for business consumers. They are long overdue."

His lack of acknowledgement of the Prime Minister's plain appeared to confirm rumours that the Liberal Democrats had not been consulted about his proposal.

Ironically, also in his speech, Mr Davey had addressed reports that he had clashed with George Osborne, the Chancellor, over subsidies for green technology, promising business leaders that both sides were now signed up to energy reforms which are due to be put before the Commons next month.

He said: "Believe me when I say that no one would be happier to see the politics taken out of energy policy. "What could make life easier for the Energy and Climate Change Secretary than political consensus?

"So I hear your message ... and I can say with confidence that the Coalition is united behind these energy market reforms."

The main energy suppliers were also unaware of Mr Cameron's announcement, while U-Switch, the price comparison watchdog, warned that it would lead companies to stop special deals and offer only one rate.

SOURCE

Winners and losers energy policies

We can and must rejuvenate our economy by developing America’s resource bounties

Paul Driessen

Governor Mitt Romney strongly supports North American energy independence as the foundation of renewed US employment and prosperity. President Obama is waging war on fossil fuels, job creation, and efforts to end our economic recession and reduce dependence on Middle Eastern and Russian oil.

Romney’s emphasis on careful analysis and due diligence brought him and Bain Capital notable winners like AMC Entertainment, Burger King, Burlington Coat Factory, Domino’s Pizza, Dunkin’ Donuts and Staples. Obama’s focus on ideology, political calculation, cronyism and campaign contributors produced scandalous losers like A123, Abound Solar, Crescent Dunes, Ener1, Fisker, Mountain Plaza, Solyndra, Tesla, and a host of wind and biofuel projects that would collapse if their taxpayer subsidies were cut off.

Not surprisingly, US gasoline prices are double what they were the day Obama took office. Some 25 million Americans are without full-time jobs – leaving 23% of the workforce unemployed, involuntarily working part-time or at jobs where they are overqualified, making far less money than they did previously, or no longer looking for a job. Our 64% “labor participation rate” is at a 30-year low.

There are still 4.5 million fewer jobs than in 2007, even though our population has grown; the hourly wage of college-educated Americans age 23 to 29 fell 4.7% between 2007 and 2011; median household income plummeted $3,040 since the recession (supposedly, officially) ended in June 2009; and a record 45 million Americans are on food stamps.

Meanwhile, the ever-unstable Middle East is even more unstable. Terrorists murdered our ambassador to Libya. A pitiful anti-Islamist video excused riots in Egypt, where a Muslim Brotherhood leader is now president. More than 33,000 have died in a nasty Syrian civil war. Internecine conflicts continue in Iraq and elsewhere. The seemingly perpetual Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains poised to intensify. the Taliban and Al Qaeda continue to build power and launch vicious attacks, such as gunning down the US embassy’s Yemeni security chief in Sana’a. And we are importing oil from brutal human rights violators.

Outside the Middle East, the Putin government is using energy to pressure and blackmail European nations dependent on Russian oil and gas, while orchestrating anti-fracking campaigns to keep EU countries from tapping their abundant shale gas supplies. Politics, events and human rights violations raise further questions about Russia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Nigeria and Sudan. And many of these countries are among our most important oil suppliers – because we refuse to develop our own deposits.

Since oil is sold in a world market, producing more in the United States means we could import less from abroad, free up more oil for other nations, and push prices down. Exporting US natural gas and drilling, fracking and production expertise would make other nations less dependent on the Middle East and Russia, bring natural gas prices down further, turbo-charge economies, and encourage African countries to use gas to generate electricity, rather than “flaring” it as an unwanted byproduct of oil production.

Romney understands this. He is calling for more oil and natural gas production here in the United States, changes to excessive and counterproductive federal regulations that raise energy costs and kill jobs, and increased use of friendly Canadian oil to serve America’s consumers. He knows this will protect us against disruptions in Middle East oil supplies, reduce the flow of American dollars to totalitarian human rights violators, create American jobs, increase tax revenues, and jumpstart our sluggish economy.

President Obama, by contrast, continues to ignore reality and embrace policies based on hope, green dreams, and a determination to “fundamentally transform” America’s Constitution, economy, society and business system. He continues to waste billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize unreliable, unsustainable, inefficient, insufficient energy forms that are at best decades from competing in the free market – even as 80% of Department of Energy grants and loans went to companies owned or controlled by Obama contributors; DOE restructured its $465 million loan to Tesla, to make sure the electric-car company doesn’t run out of cash right before the election; and President Obama says malnourished, energy-deprived Africans should avoid fossil fuels and rely instead on wind, solar and biofuel power.

Many recipients of involuntary taxpayer largesse are donors to Obama and Democrat re-election campaigns; have electoral clout in crucial swing states, where corn growers and others benefit from ethanol, wind and solar schemes; or provide crucial propaganda and campaign services via government employee and labor unions and tax-exempt radical environmentalist organizations.

While Obama turns his back on the reliable fossil fuels that power America’s economic engine, he denounces and demonizes companies that produce this hydrocarbon energy, pay billions of dollars in taxes and support millions of American jobs. He singles out America’s oil and natural gas sector for discriminatory tax increases and excessive regulations, and makes more and more federal lands, waters and resources off limits to responsible exploration and development.

Environmental activists and the Obama Administration express outrage about subsidies for traditional, efficient means of generating electricity, which amount to $0.25-$0.44 (25-44 cents) per megawatt-hour for coal and natural gas and $1.59 per MWH for nuclear. But they are eerily silent about enormous subsidies for wind ($23.37 per MWH) and solar electricity ($24.34 per MWH).

They express equal outrage about importing petroleum from Canada’s oil sands via the Keystone Pipeline – but are silent about imports of thick, gooey crude from Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. They brag about increased US oil and gas production on private lands, but insist that there be little or no drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Rocky Mountains or even National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, which Congress set aside decades ago specifically to safeguard our national security by increasing exploration in areas with the best potential for oil and gas.

Lisa Jackson’s Environmental Protection Agency is imposing draconian restrictions on power plants and other CO2 sources, as another way of “skinning the cat” and hyper-regulating coal out of the US energy picture, after Congress rejected cap-tax-and-trade legislation. Meantime, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) has introduced the Managed Carbon Price Act, which analysts say will impose regressive taxes that will rise to $5.20 per gallon of gasoline by 2024 and equally hefty surcharges on other hydrocarbon use.

The impact on transportation, shipping, commuting, manufacturing, jobs and families is frightening to contemplate. So is the fact that these actions are coming even as Britain’s Meteorological Office released data showing that the world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago – and that average global temperatures rose an impossible-to-measure and statistically insignificant 0.03 degrees C per decade.

Meanwhile, Germany, Italy and Japan plan to phase out nuclear power, thereby increasing their use of natural gas and coal for electricity – while China and India plan to build 900 new coal-fired power plants to electrify their growing economies. All will pump millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – dwarfing any reductions the USA might achieve by closing more power plants and further shackling our economy.

The Administration’s actions have been arrogant, irresponsible and autocratic. Win or lose in November, the White House, EPA, DOE and Interior Department will impose boxcars of punitive new regulations that have been put on hold until November 7.

We can dig ourselves out of this hole. We can and must rejuvenate and reinvigorate our economy, by developing America’s resource bounties.

We don’t need to “fundamentally transform” America’s economy, society and free enterprise system. We need to fundamentally transform the anti-hydrocarbon culture that pervades the Congress, White House, Executive Branch and radical environmental groups that have brought us to where we are today.

Received via email from the author

Warmist paper withdrawn

I had some succinct comments on this bit of nonsense on May 20. Warmists have a severe problem with selective vision -- not being able to see what is staring them in the face if it conflicts with their theories. I was rather ill in most of May but some things just leap out at you. It seems that they leaped out at a few other people too -- JR

In June, we wrote about the withdrawal of a paper claiming that temperatures in the last 60 years were warmest in the last 1,000 years. At the time, we reported, following posts by others, that the authors had been made aware of errors in their work and were withdrawing it to correct their calculations.

For several months, the page housing the Journal of Climate study read: "The requested article is not currently available on this site."

It still does. But another page that should house the paper now reads, as commenter Skiphil notes: "Due to errors discovered in this paper during the publication process, it was withdrawn by the authors prior to being published in final form."

In June, one of the authors, David Karoly, told us and others he expected to resubmit the paper to the journal, and that’s what the University of Melbourne also reports on top of the original press release about the paper (also noted by Skiphil):

"Scientific study resubmitted.

An issue has been identified in the processing of the data used in the study, “Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium” by Joelle Gergis, Raphael Neukom, Ailie Gallant, Steven Phipps and David Karoly, accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate.

The manuscript has been re-submitted to the Journal of Climate and is being reviewed again."

SOURCE (See the original for links)

GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA

Three current articles below

Renewables energy target 'driving up prices'

THE Australian Energy Markets Commission has warned that the renewables energy target is distorting power markets, both driving up power prices for consumers while causing uneconomic outcomes for generators and their owners.

"I do have some issues with the competitive sector of the electricity market," the commission's chairman, John Pierce, told a business forum earlier today.

"The renewables energy target, especially, [since] one consequence is to depress wholesale [electricity] prices and drive retail [electricity] prices up." This is because electricity generated from renewable energy sources such as wind earns much of its revenue from renewable energy certificates and not primarily from the electricity market, unlike competing generators.

And, due to its intermittent source of energy, it will produce electricity even when it would not be economic to do so, which forces down power prices to unrealistic levels.

As a result, the wholesale price of electricity has been driven down by rising renewables output, which can make it uneconomic for larger generators to produce electricity, and make it difficult for investors to back new projects in the future.

"That is reflected by changes of state regulators changing wholesale producer allowances, moving away from marginal cost basis to using estimates of spot prices on the [national electricity market]," he said.

This will undermine the competitive position of the smaller, independent power retailers, who do not own their own source of electricity supply, and ultimately may reduce the level of competition in the electricity markets.

Separately, the NSW Minister for Energy, Chris Hartcher, said the poor management of the electricity sector had resulted in electricity distributors over-investing as much as $1.8-1.9 billion over the past five years.

In Victoria, the figure was a more modest $400 million, he said.

This is due to the poor way the sector has been managed by the Australian Energy Regulator, which approves spending plans of the network companies. As a result, NSW wants the AER to be separated from the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission, he said.

Mr Hartcher ruled out reducing the reliability standard of electricity supply in NSW, which has been the subject of some debate as the source of much of the over-investment in capacity in the network.

"Reliability is not an area of compromise," he told the forum. Rather, he is looking for greater spending efficiencies, along with changes to work practices, to keep a lid on power prices.

Earlier today, the Productivity Commission released a report, highlighting the poor management of the electricity sector in unnecessarily driving up power prices.

Mr Pierce's comments followed the decision earlier this week of EnergyAustralia, known formerly as TruEnergy, to shut down one of its generators at the Yallourn power station in Victoria. It blamed weak demand and the impact of the carbon price for its decision.

SOURCE

Despised HOV lanes of freeway to be scrapped by new conservative government

The High Occupancy Vehicle lanes beloved of Greenies are called T2 and T3 lanes in Queensland. Brisbane also has a "Green bridge" over which buses only are allowed. Lets's hope that nonsense ends soon too

THE despised T2 lanes on the Pacific Motorway will be scrapped next year and replaced with a total of four general traffic lanes, increasing the road capacity by 50 per cent.

Transport Minister Scott Emerson will announce the changes on Thursday which will be in place by mid-2013 at a cost of $5 million.

The reconfiguration means the removal of two of the "shoulders" or "police enforcement lanes" which flank the three existing traffic lanes.

Mr Emerson said the price tag was a bargain compared with the $100 million it would cost to build the extra lanes, if the T2 lanes were retained. "The T2 lanes had 10 years and the feedback that I get from most people who use this road is that they don't think it's being used sufficiently to justify it continuing," Mr Emerson said. "It's important to realise that by getting rid of the T2 lane we actually get an extra lane as well. "That's a pretty big win for motorists."

He said the eight-lane section would run for 5km from the Klumpp Rd interchange to the Gateway Motorway merge, before reverting to six lanes.

"The Pacific Motorway during peak times looks like a car park and so this announcement will mean greater capacity for motorists travelling on this stretch," Mr Emerson said.

Paul Turner from peak motoring body RACQ welcomed the decision and urged the Brisbane City Council to also consider the future of its T2 and T3 lanes on suburban streets.

"The T2 lane (on the M3) has caused more congestion than it's solved because it's forced traffic into two lanes which could be three, or even four as it turns out," Mr Turner said.

"Overall we think lanes that artificially limit the traffic haven't worked and we'd like to see them removed."

He said the lanes' removal would reduce poor behaviour by frustrated motorists.

A spokesman for Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said BCC recently removed the T2 lane on Tiber St at Norman Park which was less than 1km long.

SOURCE

"Public" bikes in Brisbane spark little interest

WITH some 165 cities around the world now operating public bike-sharing schemes, it seems that any globally-aspiring city must have one.

They are part of a familiar checklist for cities striving to become the greenest, the most innovative, the most liveable.

* Show-stopping architecture? Check.

* Thriving cafe/restaurant/bar scene? Check.

* Non-stop stream of cultural events? Check.

* Bike share scheme? Check.

In 2010, Brisbane and Melbourne introduced Australia's first schemes, which work by allowing subscribers access to a network of bicycles docked in stations scattered around the city. Brisbane has up to 2000 bikes and 150 stations, while Melbourne has 600 bikes and 50 stations.

Such schemes show a lot of promise in helping address critical environmental, social and planning issues faced by cities, but only if they are implemented with local conditions in mind, not copied and pasted, as appears to have been the case in Australia.

As a result, the Australian schemes are at risk of being more ornamental than functional.

Both Brisbane and Melbourne's have attracted criticism for their underwhelming performance, leading to adjustments on the run.

Prices have been lowered, helmets made available and sign-up methods streamlined in the hope of enticing more people to subscribe.

Recent reporting indicates that the measures have had some impact in increasing usage, albeit from a low base.

Although, when set against the experience of similarly-sized schemes in comparable cities, usage rates are still much lower.

So, why haven't people taken to bike sharing in Australia yet?

New research led by Elliot Fishman from the Queensland University of Technology sheds some light on this. He and his colleagues asked people about their attitudes and behaviours regarding Brisbane's CityCycle bike sharing scheme.

The results are instructive, though not all that promising for a quick fix.

First, participants indicated that they would be more likely to use CityCycle if they could do so spontaneously. This is related in large part to mandatory helmet requirements.

Being required to wear a helmet for schemes such as CityCycle is akin to "opening up a pub and then asking everybody to bring their own glasses", Fishman told the ABC.

Australia is the only country operating a bike-share scheme with mandatory helmet requirements. Mexico City, for example, repealed its helmet law in preparation for its bike-sharing scheme.

The problem in Brisbane is not helped by other compounding factors, including the prohibitively lengthy sign-up process and 10pm closing of docking stations.

Survey participants were apprehensive about using CityCycle because of concerns about safety, which result from a lack of appropriate bicycle infrastructure and the perceived negative attitude of car drivers toward cyclists.

Although safety is an issue relating to cycling in general, the success of CityCycle is dependent on it being approachable for people without extensive cycling experience.

If unchanged, this is likely to fundamentally undermine the success of the scheme. Overcoming such barriers will not be quick and easy.

Mandatory helmet laws have considerable support, infrastructure takes years to rollout, and the attitudes of cyclists and drivers toward one another will likely be slow to change.

Nor is it a good look, in the meantime, having 150 fully-stocked bike stations around Brisbane acting as gentle but ever-present reminders of the scheme's limits.

In rushing to keep up with the Joneses, it seems that local realities have been underestimated or, worse, overlooked. It is, of course, not a bad thing looking for inspiration over the fence. It would be foolish to think that other places didn't have worthwhile ideas for making Australian cities better places to live, work and visit. It's just not much use unless you have your own house in order. And worse if you forget about the house altogether.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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18 October, 2012

Short hiatus

My cable connection is down at the moment so I am working off a slow wireless connection only. I will therefore take a day off posting here. The connection is expected back up some unknown time later today so I may get to post something here later on. Inshallah!

17 October, 2012

Ya gotta laugh: Those dratted pesticides

The death and illness described below is no laugh but the Green/Left diagnosis of the causes is. See my comment at the foot of the article

What is killing sugar-cane workers across Central America? Chronic kidney disease has killed tens of thousands of young men and is becoming more deadly. But nobody knows exactly what it is, or what to do about it

It is stage five they fear the most. Stage five is the mysterious sickness in its deadliest form. "I'm entering stage five," Edilberto Mendez tells me as his wife looks on fretfully. I'm in their small home on the floodplains of Lempa River, in the dank sugar-lands of rural El Salvador, where they live in a community with about 150 other families. "How many others in the village have died of this?" I ask.

"Three close friends, just last year," says Edilberto. His wife interrupts, counting out on her fingers. "And my nephew, my brother, and Ramon, Carlos, Pablo…" She pauses. "I know three Pablos who have died of this."

Edilberto's kidneys are beginning to fail. It means dialysis. "This is what they've told me," he says with a defensive shrug. "But I'm still walking around. I've seen many people have dialysis. As soon as they try it, they die. I don't want it." Edilberto has his wife to support, his deaf-mute 27-year-old son, and his six-year-old granddaughter.

"If you don't have dialysis you'll die," I say. "And then what will happen to your family?"

"They will be homeless."

Behind him, Edilberto's wife has started to cry. Holding a tissue to her face, she weeps: "He's the only one I have."

"Of those you know who have already died of the disease," I ask, "how many have worked in the sugar fields?"

"All of them."

It goes by many names, but around here they call it "the malady of the sugar cane". It's a quiet epidemic that has been preying on Central America for at least 20 years, killing impoverished landworkers in their tens of thousands across Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Guatemala. And it is becoming ever more deadly. Between 2005 and 2009, incidents in El Salvador rose by 26%. By 2011 the chronic kidney disease (CKD) that is killing Edilberto had become the country's second-biggest killer of men.

That year the health minister, María Isabel Rodríguez, made a dramatic appeal to the international community for help, telling them: "It is wasting away our populations." But nobody knows what to do about it, because nobody knows what exactly it is. In the wealthier west, CKD is largely caused by hypertension or diabetes, but most of the victims here have neither. And it attacks the kidneys in an unusual way. Rather than damaging the filtering system, as in ordinary CKD, this disease seems to have an impact on the tubules – the part of the kidney where the composition of the urine is determined. At the moment, the only scientific consensus is that it's real, and unexplained. I have travelled to El Salvador to investigate the mystery of the malady.

In the rutted streets and chicken-pecked yards of rural El Salvador, I hear many theories. Something in the air or something in the water. Something in tyres, in painkillers or in Chinese herbal medicine. Leftover DDT from the prewar years, when the land in the region was all cotton fields. There is a common belief that modern agrochemicals, as used by the sugar companies, are responsible. The health minister believes this – she has told a press agency so – as does Edilberto. Now 46, he worked the sugar fields for 15 years, where his job was to plant seeds and to spray pesticide, herbicide and fertiliser. "I took the risk, always the risk," he tells me, shaking his head.

But academics in the US who have been trying to solve the mystery believe these El Salvadorians to be mistaken. Professor Daniel Brooks, of Boston University's School of Public Health, tells me: "It's natural to think that, on the one hand, workers have been exposed to pesticides and on the other they have this disease, therefore pesticides must have caused the disease. It's very human to make that connection. But that doesn't necessarily mean they are causing CKD. While I'm aware that the group in El Salvador has this hypothesis, and I'm always open to being convinced, our data just don't seem consistent with it."

Brooks's team began studying the disease in 2009. In the Nicaraguan sugar fields they found rates of CKD in cane cutters and seed cutters – the most strenuous jobs – to be higher than in pesticide applicators, who have greater exposure to agrochemicals. In short, it's more heat that seems to correlate with more disease, and not more chemicals. "We also tested construction workers, stevedores and miners, excluding people who had ever worked at a cane company," he says. "They had elevated levels, too. And what do they all seem to have in common? They're high manual-labour jobs." A further study, published in the American Journal of Kidney Disease, found increased levels of kidney damage in El Salvador's hot, low-lying areas but not in its cooler high-altitude sugar plantations, despite similarities in agrochemical use. But is it really heat that's killing the thousands?

We are speeding along the storm-wet roads of Bajo Lempa, on El Salvador's low-lying western coast, past roadside pineapple sellers and one-storey dwellings of brick and wood when I see them, a fleet of them, disappearing into a field. The immature sugar cane grows up past their shoulders, rows and rows of it, the narrow leaves forming spiny corridors whose ends are so distant they are impossible to see. The workers have blue containers strapped to their backs. They are spraying.

I ask the driver to stop, and we climb our way delicately over the barbed-wire fence. To my surprise the boss, the jefe, nods permission for me to photograph the process. A tractor is pulling a flatbed trailer along the plantation's edge. On it, two workers mix a livid-yellow potion in huge plastic barrels. They wear no protection. One of the men stirs the mixture with a tree branch. He has a wounded finger tied in a rudimentary bandage. Soon the sprayers emerge from cane, sodden from the rain-drenched foliage. They refill their packs, pouring the thick, acrid-smelling liquid from buckets. There's no drinking water in evidence, nor any for washing skin. They have yellow stains on their clothes and on their bare fingers.

Even being close to the barrels gives me a spinny, achey pressure in my temples, of the kind you might experience when sniffing too much amyl nitrate. They wear trainers, cotton shirts and tracksuit trousers, old football tops tied around their faces. One has a baseball cap with a big black dollar sign.

I learn that the mixture is of five chemicals: amine, terbutryn, pendimethalin, 2,4-D and atrazine. I don't know what they are, but can Professor Brooks's theory really be correct? That they have nothing to do with the disease in all these sugar workers?

More HERE

The Green/Left often talk about the planet but they are very unworldly. Am I the only one who knows that you can easily make alcohol out of sugarcane? That is where rum comes from, after all. So I will eat my hat if the poor workers above are not making hooch from it. And the sort of hooch they produce in poor countries has a long track record of damaging and killing people. Do I need to say any more? But I suppose it is politically incorrect to suggest that poor people might be responsible for their own misfortune

Health concerns over sustainable fuel

BIODIESEL made from soy and canola produces compounds that can cause serious respiratory disease, researchers say.

A team from the Queensland University of Technology says the discovery could lead to restrictions on the use of biodiesel as an alternative to fossil fuel.

The team looked at a range of biologists made from soy, tallow and canola.

They found that burning diesel fuels with a high percentage of biodiesel - up to 80 per cent - produced higher emissions of compounds linked to respiratory disease.

The compounds, called reactive oxygen species, form on surface of small soot particles in exhaust emissions.

Reactive oxygen species can lead to the cell damage called oxidative stress which, over long periods of time, can progress to serious respiratory disease.

Postdoctoral fellow Dr Nicholas Psoriasis says care must be taken to guard against respiratory illness that could result from new fuels.

"Now we've identified a component of the emissions that causes the problem we can start to look for solutions," Dr Psoriasis said in a statement on Wednesday.

The team is now trying to understand the way the reactive oxygen species in the emissions are generated, and how to remove them.

Their work is aimed at providing the transport industry with fuels that have a favourable environmental impact and are acceptable from a human health perspective.

SOURCE

Warming 'not direct species threat'

The writers below have to spin their results in a Warmist direction but their basic finding is that no species can be shown as adversely impacted by global warming.

Global warming is more likely to cause extinctions by disturbing the balance of nature than by the direct effect of higher temperatures, a study has found.

Warmer conditions could upset species interactions by reducing prey numbers or spreading disease, said scientists. But there was little evidence that hotter conditions in themselves threatened species survival.

US researchers published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B

They reviewed 136 studies that suggested a link between climate change and local loss of species. In only seven cases focusing on extinction could a primary cause be identified.

Of these, none showed a straightforward link with higher temperatures. Instead, most pointed to interactive factors such as loss of prey species or increased disease spread.

Seven other studies of population declines related to climate change showed a similar pattern.

Lead author Professor John Wiens, from Stony Brook University, New York, said: "Dozens of studies have shown local extinctions and declines that appear to be associated with recent, human-related climate change.

"For most of these cases, the primary cause of the declines has not been identified, highlighting our worryingly limited knowledge of this crucial issue. However, where causes have been identified, changing species interactions have been found to be key in the majority of cases.

"Because many of these impacts have already happened and climate has changed only a little so far relative to the predicted changes in the next 100 years, our results suggest that these shifting interactions may make even small climatic changes dangerous for the survival of populations and species."

Examples of species made locally extinct because of the knock-on effects of climate change included a planarian worm, a bighorn sheep and coral-living fish. Population declines associated with climate change were seen in three bird species and a family of tropical frogs.

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Public Misperception of Climate Change Is a Function of Too Much TV

Yale and George Mason University recently released a poll detailing public perception of weather and climate change. Judging from the results, it can only be concluded that Americans watch too much TV, and have no problem being tricked by trick questions.

The survey is long, cumbersome, and sometimes asks things guaranteed to get answers full of sound and fury with little significance, i.e., the trick ones.
Notwithstanding GM's Protests, No One Wants The Chevy Volt Patrick Michaels Patrick Michaels Contributor
Climate Change Alarmists Can't Seem To Buy A Major Hurricane Patrick Michaels Patrick Michaels Contributor
President Obama Should Heed Mayor Daley's Words, And Stop Backing Losers Patrick Michaels Patrick Michaels Contributor
A Hungry World Population? Oh Well, Let Them Eat Ethanol! Patrick Michaels Patrick Michaels Contributor

For example:

How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements [sic]:

“Global warming is affecting weather in the United States?” (strongly agree, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree, don’t know/no answer).

The correct answer has to be a completely meaningless “strongly agree”, but the public—perhaps sensing the irrelevance of the question, generally toned it down to “somewhat”.

Why is this a certainty, and why is it irrelevant?

Greenhouse gases alter the flow of radiation in the atmosphere, resulting (generally) in a slightly warmer surface and slightly cooler temperatures far aloft. Such a change must affect the weather, in the same way that pouring a glass of water into a small pond must affect the pond. You can’t escape that.

But is this at all relevant? The fine folks at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) have this thingy called the “Climate Extremes Index” (CEI), which counts really hot days, big storms (rain and snow), tornadoes, etc…It does not include tropical cyclones (hurricanes and tropical storms) because there are other pretty good metrics to gauge their severity. (Hint: global hurricane power is near its lowest ebb, and the U.S. hasn’t seen a major hurricane hit for the longest period in at least 150 years). Here is the CEI:

NCDC’s Climate Extremes Index shows that we have pretty much returned to the level of extreme events we experienced early in the last century, before we emitted many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The Yale/GMU survey then goes on to demonstrate our national scientific illiteracy.

Some people say that global warming made each of the following events worse. How much do you agree or disagree?(strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, somewhat agree, strongly agree).

* The current drought in the Midwest and Great Plains?

That one is best tested by actually looking at the numbers, to examine the relationship between global temperature and U.S. drought. The correlation is zero. Please look here for the gory details.

71% of the public somewhat or strongly agree. Well, since they can’t be expected to actually run the numbers, they have to be gaining their perception from something other than reality. People watch too much TV.

* The severe storm (known as a “derecho”) that knocked down trees and power lines from Indiana to Washington DC in June of 2012?

This time, 64% of the respondents somewhat or strongly agree.

Yet another case for a bit of research. Derechos are thunderstorms with damaging straight-line winds, as opposed to tornadoes, which are thunderstorms with a strong rotational component. They’re different expressions of the same phenomenon, i.e. strong thunderstorms. So, examining tornado data yields the answer to this question.

This has been done so many times by so many people that I am ashamed to manfully rap this dead equine. Yeah, new Doppler radar sees more tornadoes than before, but you don’t need a radar to know when there’s been a category 3 or higher twister. Depending upon how loose you want to be with your statistics, the frequency is either staying the same (conservative stats) or actually in decline (loosey-goosey stats).

The perception of increasing wind storm severity may have to do with The Weather Channel’s endless variations of the “my cat Missy almost blew away when a cold front came through” story (queue the Da-dum, Da-dum, Dad um music). People watch too much TV.

The list goes on through forest fires, high temperatures, this year’s pleasant spring and (horrors!) mild winter. In some of these cases, there is a scientific case—particularly during the cold seasons—that this is where the human warming signal should first escape from year-to-year climate noise, but the CEI shows that this hasn’t happened—yet.

The survey then goes on to ask quite a few other questions. A most telling disconnect is between the public’s perception of droughts and reality. Pretty much around the country, people say they are becoming more common.

Here’s the reality, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

Percent of the U.S. wet or dry. Anyone who sees global-warming related trends here probably thinks Congress will produce a balanced budget.

There’s simply no overall trend. Divided geographically, drought has become recently more frequent in the Southwest while the Northeast has become wetter. None of this shows up in the Yale/GMU survey data.

People perceive increased drought because this is a big country and usually about one-sixth of it is experiencing some level of drought, making it easy for a camera to find a shriveled cornfield every summer. People watch too much TV.

It would have been nice if the Yale/GMU survey would have asked folks how much money they would spend to stop all these misperceived horrors, but Stanford has beaten them to that punch. The answer is–not very much.

SOURCE

Monbiot doing his best to keep the flame of fear alive

He has actually learnt a lot by now but he still manages to think of a "what-if" that gives him a horn

I believe we might have made a mistake: a mistake whose consequences, if I am right, would be hard to overstate. I think the forecasts for world food production could be entirely wrong. Food prices are rising again, partly because of the damage done to crops in the northern hemisphere by ferocious weather. In the US, Russia and Ukraine, grain crops were clobbered by remarkable droughts. In parts of northern Europe, such as the UK, they were pummelled by endless rain.

Even so, this is not, as a report in the Guardian claimed last week, "one of the worst global harvests in years". It's one of the best. World grain production last year was the highest on record; this year's crop is just 2.6% smaller. The problem is that, thanks to the combination of a rising population and the immoral diversion of so much grain into animal feed and biofuels, a new record must be set every year. Though 2012's is the third biggest global harvest in history (after 2011 and 2008), this is also a year of food deficit, in which we will consume 28m tonnes more grain than farmers produced. If 2013's harvest does not establish a new world record, the poor are in serious trouble.

So the question of how climate change might alter food production could not be more significant. It is also extremely hard to resolve, and relies on such daunting instruments as "multinomial endogenous switching regression models". The problem is that there are so many factors involved. Will extra rainfall be cancelled out by extra evaporation? Will the fertilising effect of carbon dioxide be more powerful than the heat damage it causes? To what extent will farmers be able to adapt? Will new varieties of crops keep up with the changing weather?

But, to put it very broadly, the consensus is that climate change will hurt farmers in the tropics and help farmers in temperate countries. A famous paper published in 2005 concluded that if we follow the most extreme trajectory for greenhouse gas production (the one we happen to be on at the moment), global warming would raise harvests in the rich nations by 3% by the 2080s, and reduce them in the poor nations by 7%. This gives an overall reduction in the world's food supply (by comparison to what would have happened without manmade climate change) of 5%.

Papers published since then support this conclusion: they foresee hard times for farmers in Africa and south Asia, but a bonanza for farmers in the colder parts of the world, whose yields will rise just as developing countries become less able to feed themselves. Climate change is likely to be devastating for many of the world's poor. If farmers in developing countries can't compete, both their income and their food security will decline, and the number of permanently malnourished people could rise. The nations in which they live, much of whose growth was supposed to have come from food production, will have to import more of their food from abroad. But in terms of gross commodity flows the models do not predict an insuperable problem.

So here's where the issue arises. The models used by most of these papers forecast the effects of changes in averaged conditions. They take no account of extreme weather events. Fair enough: they're complicated enough already. But what if changes in the size of the global harvest are determined less by average conditions than by the extremes?

SOURCE

800.000 German Households Can No Longer Pay Their Energy Bills

Germany’s consumers are facing record price rises for green energy. Social campaigners and consumer groups complain that up to 800 000 households in Germany can no longer pay their energy bills.

Over the last few days, it has become obvious that the Green Energy Levy will rise to record levels next year. The first thing Peter Altmaier, Germany’s federal environment minister, would say is this: consumers should save electricity. After a meeting with local authorities, the energy industry, consumer advocates and charities he announced that to achieve this he wants to send free energy consultants to all households in Germany.

His proposal, however, was met by massive criticism: the chief executive of the Joint Welfare Association, Ulrich Schneider, said: “It would be naive to think that growing poverty caused by rising energy costs can be solved by free energy-saving advice.” The environment minister of Lower Saxony pointed out that energy advice was already available. What was needed now was an immediate response to the rising cost of electricity.

A few days later, Altmeier finally said that he wanted to shake up the Renewable Energy Act and thus get any further expansion of the renewable energy under control.

Electricity and heating costs overwhelm German households

The fact remains that as of next year electricity will be more expensive for Germans than ever before. This is all the more frustrating as they have to pay increasingly more for other things too. Yet energy costs are turning into a so-called ‘second rent’, making life for Germans ever more expensive.

Some years ago the tariffs for water, sewage, refuse collection and street cleaning were regarded as a nuisance, but looming price increases for energy are focusing Germans’ attention, says the Association of German Tenants in Berlin. “The disproportionate rise in electricity and heating costs makes living costs a growing problem for many households,” said DMB director Lukas Siebenkotten.

On average 34 percent of net household income are spent on rent and energy. That is more than ever. And it is only partly because housing rents are rising: The Association of House and Apartment Owners has found that energy prices have increased far more than rents in the past 15 years. According to the Association of Energy Consumers, heating and hot water costs now comprise 41 percent of bills on average - and rising.

Hundreds of thousands cannot pay their bills

Especially for small household budgets – with real incomes more or less stagnant for many years – energy costs are becoming increasingly intolerable. In 2009, Germans spent about 100 billion Euros for energy – an average of 2,500 Euros per household. Social campaigners and consumer groups complain that up to 800 000 households in Germany can no longer pay their electric bills. If the rise in energy prices continues, this “second rent” could soon exceed the main rent in some parts of Germany.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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16 October, 2012

Failed Met office attempt to slime their way out of their own findings

They ignore statistical significance and errors of measurement. By doing the same one can equally show global cooling. The Met office "reply" is here. Comments below by David Whitehouse

In response to an article in the Mail On Sunday that points out the absence of a recent temperature rise in the Met Office’s newly released Hadcrut4 global temperature database the UK Met Office released a statement that is misleading.

The Mail On Sunday article uses the Met Office’s Hadcrut4 database that was updated from 2010 to the present day last week.

We live in the warmest decade of the instrumental era (post-1850), and most of the warmest years have occurred in the past decade, but what the Met Office ignores to say is that, at present, we live on a temperature plateau – there is no recent upward trend in global temperature.

The Met Office says that the world has warmed by 0.03 deg C per decade since 1997 based on their calculation of the gradient in the Hadcrut4 dataset. But what the Met Office doesn’t say is that this is statistically insignificant. The gradient of the trendline in Hadcrut4 is very sensitive to the start and end dates used as temperatures vary significantly month-to-month, so the Met Office is being misleading in quoting trendlines for a particular start and end date without taking into account how the scatter of the data, the errors in the temperature measurements, and short-term changes affect the statistical confidence in the resulting trendline.

Trendlines from 1997 to August 2012 vary between 0.04 to 0.02 deg C per decade with an associated error of 0.04 deg C per decade. This has to be considered along with the error in annual global temperature measurements of 0.1 deg C. Hence there is no case to be made for a statistically significant increase in global temperatures as given in the Hadcrut4 dataset between 1997 and August 2012.

Quoting trendlines without errors can mislead. For instance the trendline between January 2002 and August 2012 in Hadcrut4 is negative, being minus 0.04 deg C per decade: Between January 2003 and August 2012 it is minus 0.05 deg C per decade – that is global cooling. Would the Met Office be happy to quote such figures in the same way they have for 1997 onwards and state that the world has cooled in the past decade? Only when the errors are incorporated, which the Met Office did not do, can these be seen to be statistically insignificant.

The Met Office also says that if they were to calculate a linear trend from 1998 (a strong El Nino year) to August 2012 it would show a warming more substantial that 0.03 deg C per decade. Actually the warming since 1998 is the same – 0.03 deg C per decade – and again statistically insignificant.

The year 1997 – roughly the start of the recent temperature standstill – is not cherrypicked. Before that year there is a statistically significant increase to 2012, after 1997 there is not.

The Met Office says the 15-year standstill is not unusual. This is true but again the Met Office is being economical with the truth. The IPCC concluded that the period 1960-80 marked the start of mankind’s domination of the Earth’s climate via greenhouse gas forcing. The period before 1960-80 the IPCC regarded as being solely due to natural factors. In the pre 1960-80 period there was a standstill between 1940-80. In the post 1960-80 period there was warming between 1980 – 96 and a standstill thereafter. The mankind-dominated era has only one standstill, which is becoming the dominant global climatic feature of this era.

Only a few years ago the Met Office said that temperature standstills of a decade were common (about one in eight decades), but that temperature standstills of 15 years were not supported by their climate models. They appear to have altered their view as the observed temperature standstill lengthens. The Met Office’s track record in predicting global temperature changes has been dismal.

The Met Office says that climate change can only be detected in multi-decadal timescales. In the three decades since the IPCC said that mankind dominated the Earth’s climate there has been equal timespans of warming and temperature standstills. Which one do they consider to be more significant?

It is disappointing, if not misleading, that when the Hadcrut4 data was announced in March, with data only available to 2010 (a warm El Nino year), the Met Office promoted it with a press release and briefings to journalists. They told Louise Grey of the Daily Telegraph that the Hadcrut4 data showed that the world had warmed even more than expected in the past ten years and that the warming between 1998 – 2010 was 0.1 deg C.

When the full dataset was available, in the past week, showing global temperatures to August 2012, and telling a very different story, no press release was produced.

Postscript.

In an official response to comments on the Met Office website criticising the Mail on Sunday article by David Rose the Met Office have said regarding their trend of 0.05 deg C in Hadcrut4, “…the figure is not intended to show significant warming has occurred. We agree with Mr Rose that there has only been a very small amount of warming in the 21st Century.”

This is clearly in contradiction to the original message of the Met Office’s release, i.e. that there had been warming in the past 16 years. One could ask what is their evidence that the warming in the 21st Century is “very small” when by their own admission their figures are not intended to show statistically significant warming had occurred. As we have pointed out if one uses the Met Office technique of deducing warming one finds that the trend in the 21st Century is negative – i.e. there has been cooling.

SOURCE

Liberals’ green-energy contradictions

Al Gore is about 50 times richer than he was when he left the vice presidency in 2001. According to an Oct. 11 report by The Post’s Carol D. Leonnig, Gore accumulated a Romneyesque $100 million partly through investing in alternative-energy firms subsidized by the Obama administration.

Two days after that story ran, Mitt Romney proclaimed at a rally in Ohio’s Appalachian coal country: “We have a lot of coal; we are going to use it. We are going to keep those jobs.” Thousands cheered.

The juxtaposition speaks volumes about the Democratic Party, and about modern liberalism generally. As the Democrats become more committed to, and defined by, a green agenda, and as they become dependent on money from high-tech venture capitalists and their lobbyists, it becomes harder to describe them as a party for the little guy — or liberalism as a philosophy of distributive justice.

Gore’s sanctimony doesn’t help. The erstwhile Tennessee populist bristles at any suggestion that his climate crusade is about money. And, no doubt, he cared about the planet before he got rich. Still, his investments, including in such flops as Fisker, the maker of $100,000 plug-in hybrid cars, create a patent conflict of interest. This hurts his credibility — if not about climate change per se, then certainly about the particular solutions he advocates.

But that’s not the worst contradiction in the Democrats’ doing-well-by-being-green ethos. Green energy is not cost-competitive with traditional energy and won’t be for years. So it can’t work without either taxpayer subsidies, much of which accrue to “entrepreneurs” such as Gore, or higher prices for fossil energy — the brunt of which is borne by people of modest means.

Consider California’s “net metering” subsidy for solar-panel users. As the New York Times reported in June, the program hugely benefits well-off consumers who can afford to install photovoltaic panels. They get sun power for their homes — plus an excess supply that utilities must buy. Thus utilities must also pay to keep them on the grid. Those costs get passed along to everyone else — including low-income customers.

For a sense of where this may lead, look at Germany, whose crash program to replace nuclear power with wind and solar is boosting electricity rates. Der Spiegel reports that 200,000 long-term unemployed lost power in 2011 because they couldn’t pay their electric bills.

Democrats try to square this circle by talking up “green jobs,” but expensive electricity is bad for industry, as Germany is discovering. Fact is, subsidies for green energy do not so much create jobs as shift them around.

The “smart grid” was a $3.4 billion item in the 2009 stimulus bill, touted as the key to vast new efficiencies in power distribution. Maybe that’s a good idea, but one way smart grids work is by making human meter-readers obsolete — just as solar panels put coal miners out of work.

Small wonder that the United Mine Workers of America — a core Democratic constituency if there ever were one — has refused to endorse Obama in 2012 as it did in 2008. The union hasn’t backed Romney, but he is campaigning hard for rank-and-file votes. That a private-equity baron is getting a hearing in the coal fields should give liberals pause.

Obviously, creative destruction is part of what makes capitalism go. There’s no inherent reason to protect coal mines any more than buggy-whip makers. The biggest threat to coal country comes from vast new supplies of natural gas, not from wind and solar.

The point remains: Government, with its inevitable susceptibility to lobbying and favoritism, should not be picking winners and losers, whether through green subsidies or tax breaks for oil and gas.

It’s one thing to lose your job because a competing firm built a superior mouse trap; it’s quite another, justice-wise, to lose it because a competitor talked the government into taking its side.

There must be a better way to pursue the legitimate goals of environmentalism.

Meanwhile, Gore and his partners carry on rent-seeking. The greatest Tennessee populist of all would surely have disapproved.

“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes,” President Andrew Jackson wrote in 1832. “[W]hen the laws undertake to add . . . artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society — the farmers, mechanics, and laborers — who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government.”

SOURCE

Climate spin is rampant

Over the years, the political debate over climate change has been waged on many fronts. At various times at the center of the debate, we've seen green jobs, SUVs, Al Gore and climate "deniers." The latest front in this battle is extreme weather.

Earlier this week, Munich Re, a large German reinsurance company, fueled this debate with a report claiming that it has identified "the first climate change footprint in the data from natural catastrophes" in the damage caused by thunderstorms in the United States since 1980. USA Today put the claim on steroids by announcing on its front page, "Climate change behind rise in weather disasters."

A big problem with the claim by Munich Re and its amplification by the media is that neither squares with the actual science of climate change and disasters.

Along with colleagues around the world, I've been studying climate change and disasters for almost 20 years, and we just had a scientific paper accepted for publication this week on damage from U.S. tornadoes since 1950. What we found may surprise you: Over the past six decades, tornado damage has declined after accounting for development that has put more property into harm's way.

Researchers have similar conclusions for other phenomena around the world, ranging from typhoons in China, bushfires in Australia, and windstorms in Europe. After adjusting for patterns of development, over the long-term there is no climate change signal — no "footprint" — of increasing damage from extreme events either globally or in particular regions.

What about the United States? Flooding has not increased over the past century, nor have landfalling hurricanes. Remarkably, the U.S. is currently experiencing the longest-ever recorded period with no strikes of a Category 3 or stronger hurricane. The major 2012 drought obscures the fact that the U.S. has seen a decline in drought over the past century.

Such scientific findings are so robust that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded earlier this year that over the long-term, damage from extreme events has not been attributed to climate change, whether from natural or human causes.

So if the science is so clear on this subject, why then are companies and campaigners, abetted by a willing media, engaged in spreading misinformation?

The debate over climate change is well known for excesses on all sides. Those who claim that the issue is a hoax actually have a lot in common with those who see climate change in every weather extreme. The logic behind such tactics is apparently that a sufficiently scared public will support the political program of those doing the scaring.

Andrew Revkin, who has covered the climate issue for decades for The New York Times, explains that "the media tend to pay outsize attention to research developments that support a "hot"conclusion (like the theory that hurricanes have already been intensified by human-caused global warming) and glaze over on research of equivalent quality that does not." This leads to an amplification of "findings" such as the report presented by Munich Re this week and a complete blackout of coverage of our peer-reviewed paper on declining tornado damage.

Does it matter that campaigners and the media are actively peddling disinformation? For the most part, probably not, as the public is by now used to such nonsense on just about every subject from unemployment figures to Barack Obama's birth certificate.

But there is one group that should be very concerned about the spreading of rampant misinformation: the scientific community. It is, of course, thrilling to appear in the media and get caught up in highly politicized debates. But leading scientists and scientific organizations that contribute to a campaign of misinformation — even in pursuit of a worthy goal like responding effectively to climate change — may find that the credibility of science itself is put at risk by supporting scientifically unsupportable claims in pursuit of a political agenda.

SOURCE

Wind and solar: investments to avoid

Renewable energy is the future, say environmentalists. But for green and ethical investors it has turned into a nightmare, with makers of wind and solar power systems among the worst-performing stocks in recent years.

Take Vestas, the Danish wind turbine maker. Early investors enjoyed sparkling returns, with shares leaping from 34 Danish kroner in 2003 to 698 in 2008 – a 20-fold rise. But since then, beset by the loss of government subsidies, cost overruns, production delays and competition from China, the price has collapsed. Today it is trading at 35 kroner – so someone investing in 2008 will have lost nearly 95% of their money.

In August Vestas revealed it had slumped into losses and shed another 1,400 jobs, bringing total redundancies for the year to more than 3,700. It had planned to construct a plant at Sheerness docks in Kent to supply turbines for expected deep-water North Sea windfarms, but this was axed in June.

Solar panel manufacturers have also burnt a hole in investors' pockets. Look at SunTech, the world's biggest maker of PV (photovoltaic) panels, based in Wuxi, China. Its private equity backers (notably Goldman Sachs) made a fortune when it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2005, making well over 10 times their original investment. So did the people who bought at the initial share launch, with the shares shooting from $20 to $79 in late 2007. And today? They are changing hands at just 92 cents. First Solar, another one-time darling of Nasdaq, collapsed from $308 in April 2008 to $23 last week. Solar is an industry awash with overcapacity in China, falling prices and declining government subsidies.

Funds that specialise in renewable energy have fallen a long way short of expectations. Impax Environmental, an investment trust, has lost 20% over the past five years, while BlackRock New Energy investment trust has done even worse, falling 49.9% since 2007. It's a salutary reminder to avoid investment fads and bubbles.

Meanwhile, many "sin" stocks screened out by ethical investors have outperformed. At the turn of the century, in the midst of the "TMT" (technology, media and telecoms) stock market bubble, tobacco companies were the market's most unloved sector. Shares in British American Tobacco, makers of Dunhill, Kent, Lucky Strike and Pall Mall, were changing hands at 224p. Today they fetch £31.93.

SOURCE

Obama's Green Jobs Promise: 355 Jobs and Counting

In Thursday night’s Vice Presidential debate, the Administration’s green agenda was, once again, part of the verbal sparring. The exchange ended with Congressman Ryan’s unanswered question: “Where are the 5 million green jobs…?” Moderator Martha Raddatz cut him off mid-question, steering the conversation elsewhere: “I want to move on here to Medicare and entitlements. I think we've gone over this quite enough.”

Ryan didn’t finish his question. Vice President Biden wasn’t pressed into an uncomfortable answer that would have wiped the smile off his face.

Had Ryan not been interrupted and been allowed to finished the question, he likely would have continued: “…Candidate Obama promised in 2008 when he pledged to jumpstart the economy with an influx of green jobs. Many times, he specifically stated: ‘I will invest $15 billion a year in renewable sources of energy to create 5 million new energy jobs over the next decade—jobs that pay well; jobs that can’t be outsourced; jobs building solar panels and wind turbines and a new electricity grid; jobs building the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow, not in Japan, not in South Korea but right here in the U.S. of A. Jobs that will help us eliminate the oil we import from the Middle East in 10 years and help save the planet in the bargain. That's how America can lead again.’ Where are those green jobs?”

Had Biden answered, he might have tried the same line Obama used in the 60 Minutes interview clip that didn’t air on national television: “We have tens of thousands of jobs that have been created as a consequence of wind energy alone”—though that hardly adds up to 5 million. Try as he might, Biden couldn’t have smiled his way through a recitation of green jobs created through the proposed $15 billion a year. It is not a happy story. In fact, through the 2009 stimulus, more than $15 billion a year was allocated for green energy projects—which in his four-year term would have added up to $60 billion. Instead, while the numbers quoted vary, $80-90 billion has been made available for green energy projects.

With the assistance of researcher Christine Lakatos, I have been chronicling Obama’s stimulus-funded green energy failures. First we looked at the companies that have gone bankrupt, and then those that are heading that way—or, at least, have financial issues. Within those reports, we frequently addressed specific green jobs failures. For example, regarding Fisker, the electric car made in Finland, we say:

“ABC reported: ‘Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department's $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright, new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs.’ Those jobs didn’t materialize—at least not in America. … Two years after the loan was awarded, the Washington Post stated that Fisker ‘has missed early manufacturing goals and has gradually pushed back plans for U.S. production and the creation of thousands of jobs’… Now, in 2012, Fisker Automotive is laying off staff in order to qualify for more government loans. So, President Obama’s ‘green’ energy stimulus was supposed to create jobs; now it’s destroying jobs so that companies can get more stimulus?”

About now-bankrupt, and under-investigation for fraud, Abound Solar, we wrote:

“President Obama, in July 2010, praised Abound Solar, which was to make advanced solar panels … He believed these plants would be huge job creators: ‘2000 construction jobs and 1500 permanent jobs.’ In December 2011, CEO Craig Witsoe called Abound Solar the “anti-Solyndra” saying that his company is “doing well and growing.” However, just months after that optimistic report, Abound Solar filed bankruptcy…”

Due to the various loans, grants, and subsidies, it would take an investigative team made up of dozens of people to ferret out each and every true green-energy job that was created, absent that, we are hitting the high points in attempt to answer Ryan’s question: “Where are the 5 million green jobs?”

Short answer, even optimistically—and perhaps deceptively, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) news release, only 3.1 million green jobs were created. To reach this number, BLS counts jobs that “were associated with the production of green goods and services,” specifically those which “are found in businesses that produce goods and provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources.” It is important to note that most of these 3.1 million jobs are primarily pre-existing jobs that have been reclassified as “green.” Once those existing jobs were shifted into the green column, through three-quarters of 2011 only 9,245 new “green” jobs were generated when the White House touts generating over 200,000 new jobs by 2010.

The House Oversight Committee wondered, just what are those jobs that are “associated with the production of green goods and services?”

On June 6, 2012, at a House Oversight hearing Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) questioned BLS Director John Galvin on his agency’s green jobs numbers. Through Galvin’s reluctant responses (he didn’t want to be there), we learned that the Obama administration’s labor department counts oil lobbyists, bus drivers, garbage men, etc., as green jobs—shameful, embarrassing, deceptive. According to how BLS rates green jobs, I have a green job. I qualify under several headings. After all, I do education and public awareness on environmental issues. Next time I am at a social event, where I am asked the inescapable: “What do you do?” I’ll respond: “I have a green job.”

Complete details can be found in a report on the “Green Job Myth” from the Institute for Energy Research (IER). It states: “the green-job definition is extremely broad and includes both direct and indirect jobs.” Each of the following would qualify:

A person who sweeps the floor in a solar-panel manufacturing facility

A driver of a hybrid bus

A school bus driver

An employee who fills the bus with fuel

An employee involved in waste collection or water and sewer operations

A clerk at a bicycle repair shop

A manufacturer of rail cars

An oil lobbyist whose company is engaged in environmental issues

An employee of an environment or science museum.

Now that we know what the BLS constitutes as a green job—even recycled ones; those that already existed—we’ll look at the billions of taxpayer money spent on green jobs. We’ll focus specifically on just two programs: the Loan Guarantee Program and the Renewable Energy Grant Program.....

There is one other part of the 2008 campaign promise that I must address. Obama talked about these jobs of the future: “jobs building solar panels and wind turbines and a new electricity grid … Jobs that will help us eliminate the oil we import from the Middle East.” I have to point out that jobs “building solar panels and wind turbines and a new electricity grid” do nothing, absolutely nothing, to “help us eliminate the oil we import from the Middle East.” Wind and solar produce electricity—with which Middle Eastern oil has virtually no connection (unless you tie in the failed electric car efforts). We have enough coal, natural gas, and uranium within our borders to provide for our electrical needs for centuries to come. Connecting electricity generation and Middle Eastern oil is at best a marketing campaign, at worst: a scare tactic. To “help eliminate the oil we import from the Middle East,” we need to develop our abundant domestic oil resources, not subsidize wind and solar.

While millions of Americans were preparing to watch the debate, I was part of a group gathered in a restaurant to watch the debate between New Mexico’s senatorial candidates: Republican Heather Wilson (my former Congressman) and Democrat Martin Heinrich (my current Congressman). Toward the end of our local debate, Heinrich accused Republicans of turning “their back on the jobs of the future.” With the history of the “jobs of the future,” as Obama called them in the 60 Minutes clip, the Republicans have been wise to turn their backs and run far, far away.

Where are the 5 million jobs Obama promised? I doubt that Biden’s smiling now.

Much more HERE

Green stimulus profiteer comes under IRS scrutiny

Vice President Biden snickered during last week's debate at the suggestion there was waste, inefficiency or cronyism in the 2009 stimulus bill.

If he can stop cackling for long enough, Biden, the self-proclaimed "stimulus sheriff" should sit down with the IRS officials and the federal inspector general who are investigating a solar company owned by leading Obama donor and subsidy recipient Elon Musk.

Musk, as he cashes in on his solar investment by taking his company SolarCity public this month, had to make an awkward admission in his financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing SolarCity, the SEC filings reveal, and at the same time the Treasury Department's inspector general is investigating the company. The question at hand: Did President Obama's Treasury Department inappropriately give stimulus money to Musk's company.

Obama's stimulus transformed a long-standing tax credit for renewable energy investment into a direct grant from Treasury, worth 30 percent of a company's investment in a renewable project. Musk's company has applied for approximately $325 million in these stimulus grants, according to the SEC filing.

Treasury found that SolarCity repeatedly overstated the value of its investments, the SEC filings indicate. In those cases, Treasury awarded smaller grants than SolarCity had tried to claim. Now the department's IG and the IRS are doing a broader audit of the projects for which SolarCity and other large solar companies got stimulus cash. Investigators want to know if the companies regularly overstated the value of their investments and thus got overly generous taxpayer grants.

While no government body has accused SolarCity of wrongdoing, the company disclosed: "[I]f at the conclusion of the investigation the Inspector General concludes that misrepresentations were made, the Department of Justice could decide to bring a civil action to recover amounts it believes were improperly paid to us."

The Obama administration's possible mismanagement of the grant program is one issue here. Musk's intimate ties to politics are another.

Musk is the paradigmatic political entrepreneur, launching businesses that seek to capitalize on government favors and lobbying clout rather than provide goods or services that consumers demand.

Musk is CEO of and the biggest investor in Tesla Motors, an electric car company that depends on stimulus money and other subsidies. He also founded Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, whose primary customer is the federal government.

Musk has personally given more than $100,000 to Obama's re-election campaign, including two gifts of more than $30,000 each to the Obama Victory Fund, which divides the money between the maximum allowable donations to the Democratic National Committee and the maximum to the Obama campaign. (Musk has also given generously to Republicans.)

Keep those max gifts in mind when Obama says he rejects donations from lobbyists. Musk is not a registered lobbyist, but he lobbies. Hard. In early 2010, auto industry news site Autoblog described his lobbying on Tesla's behalf: "Musk flew to Washington D.C. at least a dozen times since early 2009 to help make the case to the Department of Energy for nearly half a billion dollars in low interest loans as part of the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program."

Tesla got that $465 million loan from Obama's DOE in order to produce the Model S, an all-electric plug-in car, which will also benefit from other stimulus goodies. This summer, Tesla began delivering the taxpayer-subsidized cars at $50,000 a pop.

Musk touts SpaceX as the cutting edge of free-enterprise space exploration, but so far the company's revenue seems to come mostly from Uncle Sam. My Washington

Examiner colleague Richard Pollock reported that NASA has given $824 million to SpaceX through a special program known as the Space Act Agreements, which circumvents much of the oversight in other federal spending. Most notably, SpaceX just delivered freight to the International Space Station.

Musk's Obama ties go beyond his maximum donations.

One of Tesla's major investors is the Westly Group, founded by Steve Westly, who also sat on Tesla's board of directors. Westly is a top-tier Obama bundler, having raised more than $1.5 million for Obama over his two elections, according to the New York Times.

Obama put Westly on an energy policy advisory board, which was charged with giving recommendations on modifying federal subsidies to buyers of electric cars.

Musk has also recruited some of K Street's best-connected Democratic lobbyists. In the weeks after Obama's election in 2008, SolarCity and Tesla both hired McBee Strategic, the lobbying firm at the center of the green-energy subsidy universe. SolarCity and Tesla also retain the Podesta Group, founded by Obama confidant and transition director John Podesta.

Joe Biden might find this all funny, but taxpayers, if they knew, wouldn't likely be entertained.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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15 October, 2012

About that drought -- America is not the world

Britain's wettest start to autumn for 12 years as South West continues to be battered by torrential rain

Britain is set to suffer its wettest autumn for over a decade with more rain and gale winds sparking further flood warnings.

After the UK’s wettest summer in a century, England and Wales are now on course for the wettest start of autumn for 12 years, the Met Office has said.

The southwest has seen five times the usual amount of rain so far this, drastically increasing the risk of floods for the forthcoming week.

The Met Office warned of ‘no let up’ with showers tomorrow and Monday, followed by blustery showers on Tuesday and rain for all on Wednesday - with a severe weather alert issued for floods in the southwest.

The outlook to October 27 said: ‘Continuing very unsettled with rain or showers for most parts, occasionally heavy, with strong winds.’

England and Wales were drenched by 132mm of rain from September 1 to October 10 and with no sun on the horizon, the UK is on track to push the September and October rainfall total to around 220mm. This is the highest since 2000, the wettest autumn on record, when 302mm fell.

St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly, has had 124mm of rain - compared to the 11-day October average of 27mm. Cornwall’s 107mm at Camborne is more than 300 per cent of the usual 34mm.

This autumn’s downpour is especially dramatic as a majority of the rain has fallen in the past three weeks. Met Office forecaster Dave Britton said: ‘The first three weeks of September saw relatively little rain.’

British Weather Services tweeted: ‘Three significant bands of rain will fall over the next week, with already high river levels and water tables.’

Met Office forecaster Charlie Powell said: ‘There’s no let up in the pattern, with bands of rain next week interspersed with drier periods.’

The Met Office added: ‘Ground in the South-West remains saturated and the threat of further heavy on Wednesday means the public are advised to be aware localised flooding is a risk.

SOURCE

UPDATE: "Data released by MeteoGroup showed that 14.25in of rain fell in June, July and August, making it the wettest summer since 1912. Britain saw just 143 hours of sunshine in the same period."

Pesticides not yet proven guilty in bee dieoffs: study

Contrary to some previous studies, crop pesticides are unlikely to cause devastating declines in honeybee populations, the authors of new research say.

Writing in the Sept. 20 issue of the journal Science, U.K. scientists from the University of Exeter and Food and Environment Agency said more work is needed to predict the impact of widelyused agricultural insecticides, called neonicotinoids, on honeybees. The U.K. researchers in particular took issue with one previous study that they said failed to correctly reflect the rate at which honeybee colonies recover from losing members.

Sudden losses of honeybee colonies in the United States and Europe, estimated at between 30 percent and 90 percent of colonies since 2006 in the U.S. alone, have alarmed scientists, policymakers, farmers, and beekeepers. Beyond producing honey, the insects are prime crop pollinators.

Neonicotinoids are among the most widelyused agricultural insecticides. Honeybees ingest residues of the chemicals as they gather nectar and pollen from treated plants.

Previous research has been cited by scientists, environmentalists and policymakers as evidence of the future impact of these pesticides on honeybees, the authors of the Science study said.

Past research led by French scientist Mika‰l Henry showed that the death rate of bees increased when they drank nectar laced with a neonicotinoid pesticide, thiamethoxam. It calculated that this would cause their colony population to collapse. The U.K. group said this research was probably instrumental in the French government's recent decision to ban the use of thiamethoxam, a neonicotinoid used in Cruiser OSR, a pesticide produced by the Swiss company Syngenta.

The new work explains how the calculation may have used an inappropriately low birth rate, said study author James Cresswell of the University of Exeter. "We know that neonicotinoids affect honeybees, but there is no evidence that they could cause colony collapse," he added. The drastic honeybee population declines have been dubbed colony collapse disorder.

"When we repeated the previous calculation with a realistic birth rate, the risk of colony collapse under pesticide exposure disappeared," he added. "I am definitely not saying that pesticides are harmless to honeybees, but. our research shows that the effects of thiamethoxam are not as severe as first thought."

SOURCE

Climate change is much worse in North America than in Europe?

The actuaries at insurer "Munich Re" seem to say so. According to the report below damage due to bad weather has quintupled since 1980 in North America but only doubled in Europe. How come? Isn't the warming supposed to be global? Doesn't the pattern suggest something local rather than global? No logic there at all. Not worth translating

Die Zunahme gewitterbedingter Naturkatastrophen in Nordamerika ist "mit großer Wahrscheinlichkeit" auch auf den Klimawandel zurückzuführen. Das geht aus einer Studie des Rückversicherers Munich Re hervor, der über die weltweit größte Datenbank zu Schadensereignissen durch Naturkatastrophen verfügt. Kein Kontinent wird demnach häufiger von Unwettern heimgesucht als Nordamerika. Dort haben sich die Unwetterschäden seit 1980 nahezu verfünffacht - in Europa stellten die Experten dagegen nur eine Verdopplung fest. Die Gesamtschäden beliefen sich in diesem Zeitraum in Nordamerika auf gut eine Billion (1000 Milliarden) Dollar. Der Einfluss des Klimawandels lasse sich vor allem an den gewitterbedingten Naturkatastrophen ablesen, sagt Peter Höppe, Chef der Georisikoforschung der Munich Re. 2011 seien in Nordamerika durch Tornados, Hagel und Starkniederschläge Schäden in Höhe von 47 Milliarden Dollar entstanden - mehr als doppelt so viel wie im bisherigen Rekordjahr 2010. "Für gewitterbedingte Ereignisse sehen wir zum ersten Mal klare Indizien für einen schon einsetzenden Einfluss des Klimawandels", so Höppe.

SOURCE

Not just North Atlantic Phenomenon: Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age both now found in Ecuador

The Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age in the Eastern Ecuadorian Andes

M.-P. Ledru1, V. et al.

Abstract.

To better characterize the climate variability of the last millennium in the high Andes, we analysed the pollen content of a 1100-yr-old sediment core collected in a bog located at 3800 m a.s.l. in the páramo in the Eastern Cordillera in Ecuador. An upslope convective index based on the ratio between cloud transported pollen from the andean forest to the bog (T) and Poaceae pollen frequencies, related to the edaphic moisture of the páramo (P), was defined to distinguish the atmospheric moisture from the soil moisture content of the páramo. Results showed that between 900 AD and 1230 AD, the Medieval Climate Anomaly interval was warm and moist with high T/P index linked to a high ENSO variability and a weak South American Summer Monsoon (SASM) activity. Between 1230 and 1650 AD, a dry climate prevailed characterized by an abrupt decrease in the T/P index related to lower ENSO variability with significant impact on the floristic composition of the páramo. During the Little Ice Age, two phases were observed, first a wet phase between 1650 and 1750 AD linked to low ENSO variability in the Pacific and warm south equatorial Atlantic SSTs favored the return of a wet páramo, and a cold and dry phase between 1750 and 1810 AD associated with low ENSO variability and weak SASM activity resulting in drying of the páramo. The Current Warm Period marks the beginning of a climate characterized by high convective activity, the highest in the last millennium, and weaker SASM activity modifying the water stock of the páramo. Our results show that the páramo is progressively loosing its capacity for water storage and that the variability of both tropical Pacific and Atlantic SSTs matters for Andean climate patterns although many teleconnection mechanisms are still poorly understood.

Clim. Past Discuss., 8, 4295-4332, 2012

Hoo boy: High-flying, mansion-dwelling, chauffeured-car-using, soft-core-porn-writing IPCC chief Pachauri urges us to live like Gandhi

The Green/Left think they are the real people and the rest of us are just cattle

BIMTECH was highly honoured as Dr Pachauri lifted the spirit of the event with his gracious presence. Dr. Pachauri pondered over some of the great sayings by Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi had once said that there are seven things that will destroy us -Wealth without Work, Pleasure without Conscience, Knowledge without Character, Commerce without Morality, Science without Humanity, Religion without Sacrifice and Politics without Principle. Dr Pachauri opined that there is a huge significance of Gandhi’s message in the present context and it is not enough to remember Gandhi just once a year. Moving on to the present scenario he discussed how the Indian industry should regard itself as a trustee and a servant of the poor. Making money has always been the motive of all the corporates but its vulgar display is what is making the situation worse.

Dr. Pachauri spoke of adopting a holistic pattern of development that ensures sustainability of the ecosystem, equality between people and welfare of the society at large. The model being used by the west will have dire consequences and if we as a country continue to do so by being consumerist and exploitative then we are going to blow up this planet by 2050...

Dr. Pachauri illuminated the gathering by providing incredible insights into the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of our nation. He categorically mentioned a few virtues that can be drawn from the life of Gandhi, his idea of leading a simple life and giving back to what one has taken from the society. The environment that nurtures us cannot be annihilated for our own interests. The role of the society is to pass on the benefits of this nature, to the future generation, increased and not impaired in value.

More HERE (See the original for links)

Al Gore is a great fat tick feeding on fear

Al Gore’s commitment to promoting green energy has brought him widespread acclaim, a Nobel Prize and even an Oscar. It’s also brought him more than a pretty penny.

The author of An Inconvenient Truth has swelled his net worth to about $100 million, largely due to his investments in green energy, after being worth less than $2 million during his time as Vice President, The Washington Post reports.

That's big money for the lifelong devotee of environmental responsibility, who in his last year as Vice President only garnered a $181,400 salary. Even the film version of "An Inconvenient Truth," despite being among the top-ten highest grossing documentaries of all time, netted much less than Al Gore earned through investments.

For more on Al Gore's investments in green energy read the full WaPo article..

Gore isn’t the only one who’s betting on green energy. The United States invested $51 billion in renewable energy in 2011 , second only to China in a year where green investments hit a record high.

He also has to thank the Obama administration's 2009 stimulus package. The $80 to $90 billion worth of government investment in green energy has helped to grow many of the companies Gore and his renewable energy-based hedge fund Generation Investment Management have put the majority of their money in. In fact, nine of 11 companies that Gore endorsed during a 2008 presentation on fighting climate change received government investment, WaPo reports.

Few will need reminding, however, that not all investments in green energy turn out to be as sustainable as the technology those dollars hope to bring about. Bankrupt solar energy company Solyndra is one of the primary examples of renewable energy investment gone wrong after the company failed despite a $527 million loan from the U.S. government.

But the success rate of renewable energy companies may be far higher than some, particularly Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, would like to admit. During the first Presidential debate, Romney claimed that over half the green energy companies benefitting from stimulus dollars failed. In fact, just 1.4 percent of the U.S. dollars invested in green energy went to companies that had failed by the end of 2011, CleanTechnica reports.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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14 October, 2012

Hey! What about that consensus?

We were told that the consensus is always right. Now the same people are saying it's wrong. Typical Green/Left lack of consistency of course.

But it's just a friendly football match among propagandists anyway: Totally isolated from reality. Recent bad weather CANNOT be a result of global warming. Why? Because there has been none for around 15 years. Things that don't exist cannot cause anything

In a break with the mainstream scientific consensus, a few prominent climate scientists now argue that there have been enough episodes of drought and intense heat in the last 10 years to establish a statistical pattern of extreme weather due to global warming.

One of those scientists is NASA climatologist James Hansen. In a study published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he noted that dramatic events like droughts and heat waves affected just 1% of Earth's surface between 1950 and 1980; in the last 30 years, that figure has jumped to 10%.

"We can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies ... were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small," he and his colleagues wrote.

Hansen isn't the only one who suspects that the signature of climate change can be seen in recent weather trends.

Around the world, "the incidence of drought is consistent with what the climate models are predicting," said John Seinfeld, an atmospheric researcher at Caltech. "It certainly doesn't appear to be out of line to conclude that this last summer could be statistically attributed to global warming."

In the U.S., the summer ranked as the third-hottest in the nation's history.

Among laypeople, the perception that extreme weather is getting worse — and that it's linked to climate change — is increasingly taking hold.

Nearly 75% of Americans now say global warming is affecting the weather in the U.S., according to a poll released this week by scientists at Yale University. The poll found that about 60% of Americans reported experiencing an extreme heat wave or drought this year, while an equal percentage said weather had worsened over the last several years. A companion poll reported earlier this year that 8 in 10 Americans had personally experienced at least one extreme weather event in the last year, and more than one-third said they had suffered as a result.

Jerry Lubell narrowly missed being one of them this summer, as a 100-foot wall of flames approached his Colorado Springs, Colo., home. The fire spared his house but left him shaken.

"It has me thinking," said the retired nuclear engineer, a longtime skeptic of the idea that human activity is behind global warming. "I haven't changed any fundamental opinions yet, but I might."

Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that the planet is getting hotter and that mankind's use of fossil fuels is largely responsible.

When fossil fuels are burned, carbon dioxide is produced and traps heat within the atmosphere. The more that's added, the hotter it gets. It's not the only greenhouse gas, but it's the one many scientists focus on because it stays in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years.

The average global temperature has risen by 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit over the last century, [Wow! That's a huge rate of change!] a period that gave rise to mass-produced automobiles and commercial aviation, among other developments. Altogether, modernization has led to an 800% increase in global fossil fuel consumption since 1900, with a corresponding jump in emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

As the temperature rises, evaporation increases and draws more water from soil. Experts predict that moist areas of the planet will become wetter, while dry areas will become drier.

Still, most climatologists say science can draw no clear link between climate change and specific weather events like hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or heat waves.

"We're living in a warmer world," said William Patzert, a climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. "But to say that the hurricanes are more intense, that the tornadoes are more frequent, that the droughts are longer, that the floods are more serious, the forest fires are larger and more frequent — I'm not there."

"Sometimes it's hotter, sometimes it's colder, sometimes it's drier, sometimes it's wetter," added Tapio Schneider, an environmental engineering professor at Caltech. "Not all of that is climate change."

Asking whether the summer's record heat was evidence of global warming is like asking whether steroids helped a baseball player hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth inning during the World Series, said Anthony Leiserowitz, an environmental scientist with the Yale Project on Climate Change. If the player was able to hit home runs before he took steroids, it would be impossible to know whether any particular home run could be traced directly to performance-enhancing drugs. However, at the end of the season, it would be clear that the player hit home runs with greater frequency.

"That's what we have here," Leiserowitz said. "We've juiced the world's climate system by putting these gases in the atmosphere."

SOURCE

Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released... and here is the chart to prove it

The article below is from the mass-circulation "Daily Mail" in Britain. The writer is one of their general journalists

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week. The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.

The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported. This stands in sharp contrast to the release of the previous figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 – a very warm year.

Ending the data then means it is possible to show a slight warming trend since 1997, but 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler, and thus this trend is erased.

Some climate scientists, such as Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, last week dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions.

Others disagreed. Professor Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate science department at America’s prestigious Georgia Tech university, told The Mail on Sunday that it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’.

Even Prof Jones admitted that he and his colleagues did not understand the impact of ‘natural variability’ – factors such as long-term ocean temperature cycles and changes in the output of the sun. However, he said he was still convinced that the current decade would end up significantly warmer than the previous two.

The regular data collected on global temperature is called Hadcrut 4, as it is jointly issued by the Met Office’s Hadley Centre and Prof Jones’s Climatic Research Unit.

Since 1880, when worldwide industrialisation began to gather pace and reliable statistics were first collected on a global scale, the world has warmed by 0.75 degrees Celsius.

Some scientists have claimed that this rate of warming is set to increase hugely without drastic cuts to carbon-dioxide emissions, predicting a catastrophic increase of up to a further five degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

The new figures were released as the Government made clear that it would ‘bend’ its own carbon-dioxide rules and build new power stations to try to combat the threat of blackouts.

At last week’s Conservative Party Conference, the new Energy Minister, John Hayes, promised that ‘the high-flown theories of bourgeois Left-wing academics will not override the interests of ordinary people who need fuel for heat, light and transport – energy policies, you might say, for the many, not the few’ – a pledge that has triggered fury from green activists, who fear reductions in the huge subsidies given to wind-turbine firms.

Flawed science costs us dearly

Here are three not-so trivial questions you probably won’t find in your next pub quiz. First, how much warmer has the world become since a) 1880 and b) the beginning of 1997? And what has this got to do with your ever-increasing energy bill?

You may find the answers to the first two surprising. Since 1880, when reliable temperature records began to be kept across most of the globe, the world has warmed by about 0.75 degrees Celsius.

From the start of 1997 until August 2012, however, figures released last week show the answer is zero: the trend, derived from the aggregate data collected from more than 3,000 worldwide measuring points, has been flat.

Not that there has been any coverage in the media, which usually reports climate issues assiduously, since the figures were quietly released online with no accompanying press release – unlike six months ago when they showed a slight warming trend.

The answer to the third question is perhaps the most familiar. Your bills are going up, at least in part, because of the array of ‘green’ subsidies being provided to the renewable energy industry, chiefly wind.

And with the country committed by Act of Parliament to reducing CO2 by 80 per cent by 2050, a project that will cost hundreds of billions, the news that the world has got no warmer for the past 16 years comes as something of a shock.

It poses a fundamental challenge to the assumptions underlying every aspect of energy and climate change policy.

More HERE

'Devastating' power bill rises to hit 10m homes: British Gas to raise prices by £100 from next month

British Gas will provoke fury today by announcing an inflation-busting rise in energy bills – even though the price of power has fallen over the past year.

A dramatic increase of up to 9 per cent is expected, which would add more than £100 to the average family’s heating and power bill from next month.

The rise will affect ten million households – more than 40 per cent of the country – and plunge more people into fuel poverty just as the winter months set in.

Millions of families are already struggling to pay their energy bills amid the biggest squeeze on household incomes for more than 60 years.

The price rise will lead to renewed claims that energy giants are profiteering. An average dual-fuel bill for British Gas customers is already £1,260 and it could rise to £1,375, consumer groups warned last night. The firm’s parent company Centrica posted profits of £1.7billion in the first half of this year.

But even though the price of buying electricity on the open market is 6 per cent lower than it was 12 months ago, the big six energy firms are all expected to hike their prices before Christmas.

Caroline Flint, Labour’s energy spokesman, said people would not understand why bills had to rise when British Gas was making so much money. ‘Hard-pressed families and businesses need much more transparency on costs, pricing and profits to know whether they’re getting a fair deal,’ she said.

‘Unless ministers get to grips with spiralling energy bills, people will rightly think that this Government is completely out of touch with families and pensioners struggling to make ends meet.’

Michelle Mitchell, of the charity Age UK, said: ‘Reports of price hikes as we head into winter will be leaving many older people feeling extremely anxious about their heating bills. Cold homes pose a serious risk to the health of older people, yet a huge number of older people cannot afford to heat them properly.’

Energy bills have doubled in the past decade and last year each of the big six hiked prices. British Gas pushed them up by 18 per cent for gas and 16 per cent for electricity.

Energy firms are expected to blame rising costs on meeting environmental regulations laid down by the Government and the EU.

SOURCE

Green energy out of gas?

While the discussion is still alive to cut Big Bird’s taxpayer subsidy as a first step to tackling America’s budget woes, it’s a mere drop in the bucket compared to another industry taxpayers do not need to be assisting.

Green energy. The Daily Caller reports on a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report estimate that $24 billion was spent in 2011 to subsidize fuels and energy technologies, “with $20.5 billion in tax preferences and $3.5 billion in Department of Energy spending programs.”

Furthermore, “78 percent of all tax subsidies and 54 percent of DOE subsidies went to alternative energy projects,” The Daily Caller states.

Where has this spending got us? A CNN Fact Check report asks the question, “Are half of ‘green’ energy firms helped by stimulus out of business?”

In the 2009 stimulus package, $90 billion was authorized for “green” energy. CNN states, “Part of 2009′s much larger $787 billion stimulus package, this money went toward things like the weatherization of more than 770,000 homes and cleaning 688 square miles of land formerly used for Cold War-era nuclear testing. Many individual companies did benefit directly. The government website that tracks stimulus spending lists 27,226 individual awards under the “Energy/Environment” section, totaling just shy of $34 billion.”

Accounting for all green infrastructures, like high speed rail, the Brookings Institute claims the total spent thus far on “green” energy and projects is $51 billion.

However, what stands out most about this spending is the $535 million loan given to California-based solar panel company Solyndra that went bankrupt—taking all that money down with it. Another company, Ener1, also went belly-up after receiving $118 million from taxpayers. Evergreen Solar Inc. also went bust after reportedly receiving $5.3 million of stimulus cash.

But what matters most to Americans are the jobs that came out of all this spending. HotAir summarizes a Reuters article on the results:

The Obama administration has been reduced now to arguing that its $90 billion expenditure will result in 827,000 “job years” over the course of Obama’s term in office. For those who are counting, that would be 276,000 jobs lasting three years. Even in “job years,” that comes to $108,827 per job-year; in jobs, it comes to $326,481. And the “job-years” construct carries a heavy subtext of a lack of permanence, too.”

Since the green energy trend is falling apart elsewhere in the world, now would be a good time for Gov. Mitt Romney to spread his wings farther than just Big Bird and end taxpayer money going to failing and expensive green energy policies.

While Big Bird makes for a cute political ad for President Obama, the giant yellow bird should be the least of his worries. Americans are likely more concerned about the $90 billion of their money he’s wasted.

SOURCE

Obama’s ‘green’ trade war

A partial revival of the Smoot-Hawley folly

Not content with Ben Bernanke’s currency war — which attempts to cheapen prices for U.S. exports overseas by devaluing the dollar — the Obama Administration has decided to go for the real thing, slapping new tariffs on Chinese solar imports.

As reported by Reuters, the U.S. Commerce Department accused China of “‘dumping’ solar cells and panels in the United States at prices 18.32 percent to 249.96 percent below fair value” and is setting “additional countervailing duties ranging from 14.78 to 15.97 percent to combat Chinese government subsidies, significantly higher than preliminary levels.”

The U.S. has already slapped duties on Chinese-made wind turbine towers, too, reflecting White House unease with the costs of making “green” energy here in the U.S. — Chinese companies are producing the same solar panels and wind turbines for pennies on the dollar compared to their U.S. counterparts.

But the new policy still will not create “green” jobs in the U.S.

Manufacturing in emerging economies in recent decades has simply been more cost-effective, and with jobs shifting overseas. In 1979, 19.5 million Americans worked in manufacturing. Today, it’s just 11 million.

That trend will only be addressed by addressing the high cost of doing business in the U.S. — through lower taxation and a strong dollar — not by sparking a trade war.

All the Administration is accomplishing is to force American companies and consumers to pay extra for foreign solar and wind technologies, and in turn to pay more for overpriced U.S.-made goods. All parties will be hurt in the process.

Meanwhile, Obama’s apparent strategy for converting the U.S. to a “green” economy is to make alternative solar and wind energy more expensive. On its own, the move might actually have made conventional options for electricity such as coal more attractive.

But Obama is trying to drive up prices there too.

According to Department of Energy’s estimates, by 2017 the cost of coal per megawatt hour will triple from about $35 to anywhere from $97 to $139. This comes on the heels of Obama policies to require existing and new coal-burning power plants to use pricey “green” technologies that will cost consumers billions of dollars extra every year.

So, the only way the Department of Energy’s 2017 projection can show alternatives like wind and solar to be viable is to triple the cost of coal. No word yet from the Department on how Obama’s “green” trade war with China will impact wind and solar prices.

Meanwhile, although Federal Reserve quantitative easing programs have seemingly boosted U.S. exports, this has been more than offset by higher oil prices paid to energy exporters. The trade deficit has actually increased as Americans pay more at the pump.

If we’re in a trade war, we’re apparently losing.

In the Great Depression, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was enacted to make imported goods imported more expensive. The thought was to incentivize the purchase of U.S.-made goods during a devastating economic downturn.

It only made things worse. U.S. exports took a big hit immediately as the world retaliated, dropping from $3.84 billion in 1930 to $2.08 billion in 1931, and bottoming out in 1932 and 1933 at $1.61 billion and $1.67 billion.

Now Obama is attempting to do the same thing again. For someone who has repeatedly reminded us that we are in the worst economy since the Great Depression, it seems Obama and his Administration have not learned a thing from the Depression’s history.

SOURCE

Another one down

A Danish wind turbine company whose subsidiaries received over $50 million in U.S. stimulus dollars announced on Friday it has cut more than 800 jobs in the United States and Canada this year and may be forced to lay off another 800 employees in North America.

This is yet another green energy company that received wasteful stimulus funds and does not even have anything to show for it.

According to Reuters, Vestas, the wind turbine maker, saw its order intake go down by 24 percent during the first half of the year.

"The U.S. wind industry has slowed, largely due to the uncertainty surrounding the Federal Production Tax Credit extension," said Martha Wyrsch, head of Vestas-American Wind Technology, Inc.

Vestas said without more tax credits and stimulus funds, the company will have trouble competing.

Vestas executives, according to Reuters, told investors that "it would stop non-profitable projects," especially in Europe and America, where demand for its products have plummeted.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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12 October, 2012

Glaciers Cracking in the Presence of Carbon Dioxide?

Note that this is just computer modelling. Why can't they study ice directly? It's not exactly hard to find. Models will usually give you what you want. Reality is more pesky

And reality would suggest that any such effect is trivial (note that they offer no quantification of the effect). How, for instance, do the conclusions below fit in with the geologic record, that of CO2 rising in apparent response to global warming only to be followed by an almost equally dramatic temperature fall despite all the extra CO2 around? Judging from the record, CO2’s alleged ability to reduce the earth’s albedo by breaking up ice does nothing to alter the monotonous timing of one Ice Age after another.

New research, published October 11, in IOP Publishing's Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, has shown that CO2 molecules may be having a more direct impact on the ice that covers our planet.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute for Technology have shown that the material strength and fracture toughness of ice are decreased significantly under increasing concentrations of CO2 molecules, making ice caps and glaciers more vulnerable to cracking and splitting into pieces, as was seen recently when a huge crack in the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica spawned a glacier the size of Berlin.

Ice caps and glaciers cover seven per cent of Earth -- more than Europe and North America combined -- and are responsible for reflecting 80-90 per cent of the Sun's light rays that enter our atmosphere and maintain Earth's temperature. They are also a natural carbon sink, capturing a large amount of CO2.

"If ice caps and glaciers were to continue to crack and break into pieces, their surface area that is exposed to air would be significantly increased, which could lead to accelerated melting and much reduced coverage area on the Earth. The consequences of these changes remain to be explored by the experts, but they might contribute to changes of the global climate," said lead author of the study Professor Markus Buehler.

Buehler, along with his student and co-author of the paper, Zhao Qin, used a series of atomistic-level computer simulations to analyse the dynamics of molecules to investigate the role of CO2 molecules in ice fracturing, and found that CO2 exposure causes ice to break more easily.

Notably, the decreased ice strength is not merely caused by material defects induced by CO2 bubbles, but rather by the fact that the strength of hydrogen bonds -- the chemical bonds between water molecules in an ice crystal -- is decreased under increasing concentrations of CO2. This is because the added CO2 competes with the water molecules connected in the ice crystal.

It was shown that CO2 molecules first adhere to the crack boundary of ice by forming a bond with the hydrogen atoms and then migrate through the ice in a flipping motion along the crack boundary towards the crack tip.

The CO2 molecules accumulate at the crack tip and constantly attack the water molecules by trying to bond to them. This leaves broken bonds behind and increases the brittleness of the ice on a macroscopic scale.

SOURCE

Obama thinks CO2 "eats" planet

It FERTILIZES the planet, in fact

President Barack Obama warned his supporters about the threat of global warming and vowed that more money to subsidize green energy firms would prevent it.

“By the way, yes, my plan will reduce the carbon pollution that is eating our planet because climate change is not a hoax,” Obama said at a campaign rally at the Bank United Arena at the University of Miami. “More droughts and hurricanes and wildfires, that’s not a joke. That’s a threat to our children’s future, and we can do something about it.”

Obama said that he planned to spend more money to subsidize green projects such as wind and solar if elected to a second term. Obama’s Republican opponent Mitt Romney has criticized him for spending $90 billion on green energy companies, many of which went into bankruptcy.

This week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced it is seeking information from the Department of Energy about a $400 million loan to Abound Solar, which recently filed for bankruptcy. Abound was the fifth stimulus-funded green energy firm and the third to file for bankruptcy after Solyndra and Beacon Power.

Obama vowed to pay for the subsidies by taking away tax breaks to oil companies.

“So, now you’ve got a choice. My plan would cut our oil imports in half and invest in the clean energy that has created thousands of jobs all across America,” the president said at the Florida rally.

“Not just oil and natural gas, but wind and solar and clean coal technologies and fuel efficient cars and long lasting batteries. If you want to know how we’re paying for it, one of the things we do not allow oil companies to collect another $4 billion in taxpayer-funded corporate welfare every single year,” Obama added.

SOURCE

Europe seeing 'golden age of coal', not gas - IEA

This must be causing a lot of weeping and wailing and garnishing of teeth in Greenie circles

Europe is seeing a 'golden age of coal' thanks to cheap U.S. exports, said a senior gas analyst at the International Energy Agency (IEA), an advisory body which last year proclaimed the world was heading for a 'golden age of gas.'

Europe is exempt from a surge in unconventional gas sources that led the agency to declare the start of a new era for the fuel because on the old continent demand for gas in power plants has been largely replaced by cheap coal.

"In Europe no golden age of gas will come. Europe is an exception to the revolution," Anne-Sophie Corbeau, senior gas analyst at the IEA, said at a conference in London.

She said gas was losing the battle in Europe's power plants against cheap coal coming from the U.S., where the discovery of shale gas has left huge oversupply in unwanted coal.

"We may be talking of a golden age of coal in Europe and this is (in) contrast with what is happening in the U.S.," Corbeau said, echoing comments from the IEA's head made in Vienna on Thursday.

In her medium-term gas market outlook, she added that former Soviet states and North America will be the main suppliers of gas globally, followed by Asia Oceania - mainly Australia - and the Middle East.

Growing supply from other continents stands in sharp contrast with Europe, where gas production is forecast to drop nearly 20 percent until 2017.

Gas importing countries should also not expect any additional supply coming from the world's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter Qatar, where no new projects are being developed in the coming five years, Corbeau said.

Additionally, demand from Middle Eastern countries such as the UAE or Oman will sap some of Qatar's supply.

SOURCE. (Yes. I know it's "gnashing")

"Green" tax dodgers

The Internal Revenue Service urged a bankruptcy judge to reject solar panel maker Solyndra LLC's bankruptcy plan Wednesday, saying it amounts to little more than an avenue for owners of an empty corporate shell to avoid paying taxes.

"The undeniable conclusion is that tax benefits drive this plan," attorneys for the IRS wrote in a bankruptcy pleading.

Arguing that the bankruptcy court ought not confirm a plan "whose principal purpose is tax avoidance," attorneys said in filings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware that the tax breaks would be worth more money than funds set aside for creditors.

Taxpayers are on the hook for more than a half-billion dollars after the company filed for bankruptcy last year, just two years after winning a loan guarantee from the Department of Energy.

What's more, government attorneys said that as far back as 2010, Solyndra owners had "planned meticulously" to be able to use Solyndra's net operating losses to offset future tax liabilities.

"The only reason for the shell corporation to exist post-confirmation is to enable its owners to exploit these tax attributes, which would be lost in liquidation," the IRS argued in court papers.

One owner valued the so-called tax attributes at $150 million, dwarfing the $7 million to $8 million set aside by the reorganization plan for unsecured creditors, according to the government's objection, which was filed by the Justice Department on behalf of the IRS.

Under Solyndra's reorganization plan, two big investors in the company, Madrone Partners LP and Argonaut Ventures, together would own nearly all of a shell company formed in the wake of Solyndra's bankruptcy reorganization.

But the IRS said in court papers that there was little reason for the shell company to exist other than to help the owners avoid taxes. Argonaut is the investment arm of a family foundation headed by Oklahoma businessman George Kaiser, a fundraiser for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Madrone has ties to the family that owns Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

SOURCE

Germany's Green Energy Transition In Crisis

They're spending more and more for less and less

German citizens will be paying a total of more than €20 billion ($25.7 billion) next year to promote renewable energy. This is more than €175 for an average three-person household, a 50 percent increase over current figures. The development is an embarrassment to Germany’s coalition government.

Germany plans to abandon nuclear power by 2022, but its government hasn’t been doing enough to ensure that the project succeeds. Needed infrastructure and technology is lacking, and coordination is a mess. Meanwhile, weary consumers are paying more for electricity, and the supply is in jeopardy.

On Monday, grid operators announced a significant increase in electricity prices in Germany, prices that are already the second-highest in Europe.

The price hike is the result of an assessment under the Renewable Energy Act (EEG), a sort of green-energy solidarity surcharge that is automatically added to every consumer’s electricity bill. Under the agreement reached in the last round of negotiations, the assessment will increase from 3.6 cents to 5.4 cents per kilowatt hour.

With the new rates, German citizens will be paying a total of more than €20 billion ($25.7 billion) next year to promote renewable energy. This is more than €175 for an average three-person household, a 50 percent increase over current figures. And then there are the additional charges a consumer pays for the electricity tax, the cogeneration assessment, the concession fee and value-added tax.

The development is an embarrassment to Germany’s coalition government, made up of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP). In recent months, the government has denied claims that the gradual transition to green energy could cost German citizens a load of money.

Broken Promises

In a government statement issued in June 2011, Chancellor Angela Merkel promised that prices would remain stable. “The EEG assessment should not increase above its current level,” she told the German parliament, the Bundestag. Economics Minister Rösler said that there could even be “room for decreases.” The environment ministers, first Norbert Röttgen and then Peter Altmaier, behaved as if Germany’s phase-out of nuclear energy was not going to cost anything, even as they handed out billions in subsidies to owners of homes with solar panels and wind-farm operators.

Merkel must now deal with the consequences of her statement that the energy turnaround was to be the most important domestic project in the legislative period. Within a few hours after the nuclear reactor disaster in Fukushima in March 2011, she had transformed herself from a proponent into an opponent of nuclear energy. At the time, most Germans supported the chancellor. But now, more than a year later, they are losing confidence in her ability to get it right. German politician and EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger says that he doubts “whether German consumers will accept rising electricity prices resulting from the energy turnaround in the long term.”

The rising cost of electricity is also a burden on businesses. According to Oettinger, energy costs now represent the biggest liability for Germany as a place to do business, especially in light of the marked increase in the number of blackouts and voltage fluctuations in the grid.

Consumer advocates view the electricity price as a social issue, not unlike the price of bread in ancient Rome. The Paritätischer Gesamtverband, an umbrella association for social-welfare groups, estimates that about 200,000 recipients of benefits under the Hartz IV welfare reform program for the long-term unemployed saw their power shut off last year because of unpaid bills. The VdK, Germany’s largest welfare organization, uses the term “electricity poverty” and is sharply critical of what it sees as a “glaring violation of basic social rights.” According to the VdK, it is unfair that citizens are being asked to bear much of the burden of costs and risks associated with the energy turnaround.

Wasted Time and Money

This Wednesday, Environment Minister Altmaier plans to unveil a proposal on how to move forward with legislation designed to promote green energy. Members of the Bundestag from the ruling coalition want to exempt a growing number of companies from the green energy assessment. FDP parliamentary floor leader Rainer Brüderle is calling for a moratorium on new roof-based solar modules and wind turbines. Meanwhile, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Green Party are discussing whether energy providers should be compelled to offer special rates for low-income customers. Economics Minister Rösler, whose visit to a boiler room in Hönow marked the beginning of a new promotional campaign, wants to encourage citizens to conserve energy.

The central question in all of this is whether the money coming from electricity consumers is being spent wisely. If the federal government wants to have all of Germany’s nuclear power plants phased out by 2022, why is it doing so little to ensure that the project will succeed?

Billions are currently being spent on the unchecked expansion of solar energy — a technology that contributes the least to a reliable power supply in Germany, which isn’t exactly famous for abundant sunshine. The comparatively efficient building renovation programs, on the other, have come to a standstill because the federal and state governments have been quarreling over funding for more than a year now....

Meanwhile, Germany's 16 federal states are developing their own concepts, some of which are at odds with each other. Bavarian Governor Horst Seehofer says that his state plans to develop a self-sufficient energy supply. But David McAllister, the governor of the northern state of Lower Saxony, has a plan based on supplying Bavaria with large amounts of electricity from wind farms off the North Sea coast.

What some grid operators, power plant owners and scientists are doing today is nothing short of flabbergasting. There are power plants that are not connected to the grid, power masts without lines, and power lines leading to nowhere.

More HERE

Australia: Another "green" firm bites the dust

AUSTRALIA'S largest manufacturer of clean energy producing wind turbine towers has collapsed spectacularly, sending another 156 workers home yesterday.

They joined a further 154 who were laid off immediately on Monday after the company called in voluntary administrator Ferrier Hodgson.

Ferrier Hodgson confirmed the 156 Wacol workers were told to report back to the facility on Monday.

The loss of clean energy jobs enraged the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union, which warned that without strong anti-dumping laws and tougher industry participation more manufacturers would shut down.

AMWU State Secretary Rohan Webb said imported turbine towers for major wind farm projects endangered local manufacturing jobs.

"Sadly for these areas, skills and technology will now also be lost to Australian manufacturing," Mr Webb said.

Ferrier Hodgson partners Peter Gothard, Jim Sarantinos and Timothy Michael were put in charge of four companies in the RPG Group on Friday: RPG Holdings, Rollpress Proplate Group, RPG (SA), and RPG Pipe.

"The business is primarily involved in the construction of large steel structures, such as wind power-generation towers, the pilings for wharfs and bridges, pipes and other steel structures for the mining and renewable energy sectors," Ferrier Hodgson said in a statement.

"The administrators are hopeful that ongoing support from all stakeholders will allow for a sale of the remaining businesses to take place and the employment of staff preserved."

Dismissed staff were yet to discover if they would receive their full entitlements, with creditors due to place their claims before administrators at a meeting on Wednesday.

RPG is a 60-year-old Queensland company, which began life as GM Gurr - a small fabricator - before expanding into heavy steel processing and fabrication, and production of wind turbine towers.

A statement by federal member for Oxley Bernie Ripoll, whose electorate encompasses the Wacol facility, said "to date 83 per cent of projects for wind turbines have been locally manufactured. RPG has supplied in excess of 50 per cent of these towers".

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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11 October, 2012

Good news about polar bears suppressed, but guesswork is fine

This article from yesterday (Oct 09, 2012) caught my eye: “How many polar bears live in the Arctic?” by Jill Burke

Buried deep within this article (page 3, in the default format) is this statement by US Fish & Wildlife polar bear biologist Eric Regehr:

“In 2009, when the PBSG [Polar Bear Specialist Group] issued its population status reports, it listed the Chukchi Sea population, which Alaska shares with Russia, as being of unknown size, but one thought to be in decline because of anecdotal reports about possible over-harvesting in Russia. But now, newer research yet to be published has scientists reconsidering the status designations of the Chukchi population, Regehr said. It appears the bears in this area are reproducing well and maintaining good body condition.“

[Indeed, the latest PBSG report (Obbard et al. 2010:63) lists the Chukchi subpopulation status as “reduced” and current trend as “declining” even though the population size is "unknown." It also states that “The trend is believed to be declining and the status relative to historical levels is believed to be reduced based on legal/illegal harvest levels that were thought to be unsustainable. Sea ice loss is one of the highest levels in the Arctic.”]

So, it turns out that what these expert polar bear biologists “believed” to be the case – without any data to back it up – is not actually true. Even with “sea ice loss [at] one of the highest levels in the Arctic,” polar bears are doing just fine. Sort of makes you wonder what else polar bear experts “believe” to be true but actually isn’t.

However, what really popped out at me was the tossed-off comment that the results of this potentially game-changing study for US polar bears (since the Chukchi subpopulations is shared between the US and Russia) have not yet been published. Nor are we told who did the study or when, even though it is complete enough for Regehr to be discussing the results with a journalist.

Finally, some good news to report, but no peer-reviewed study to quote or examine.

Again, results are in but we are not allowed to see the data. Sound familiar? See my earlier post on the critical evidence for western Hudson Bay polar bears that is also unpublished.

Really makes me wonder how many polar bears live in the Chukchi Sea? Sounds to me like they still don’t have an estimate but I suspect when they get one, we might be surprised by how big it is.

SOURCE

An example of what complete socialist control means for the environment

Socialists are only "green" if it doesn't hobble their power

If you're looking for a lakeside retreat on a budget, it's likely you could easily pick up a villa near to Russia's beautiful Lake Karachay and still have change left for a new sofa.

But it's probably worth bearing in mind that in 1990 just standing on the shore for an hour would give you a radiation of dose of 600 roentgen. In case you were wondering, that's more than enough to kill you.

The lake, in Russia's south-west Chelyabinsk region, close to the modern border with Kazakhstan, is located within the Mayak Production Association, one of the country's largest — and leakiest — nuclear facilities.

Built in the Forties as Soviets moved armament production east to avoid the Nazi invasion, Mayak was one of the Russia's most important nuclear weapons factories and was off limits to foreigners for 45 years.

It was only after President Boris Yeltsin signed a 1992 decree opening up the area that Western scientists were able to gain access - and promptly declared it the planet's most polluted area.

In their long decades of obscurity, the nuclear engineers at Mayak spent their time mainly having nuclear meltdowns and dumping radioactive waste into the river.

The watered-down waste was a cocktail of radioactive elements, including long-lived fission products such as Strontium-90 and Cesium-137–each with a half-life of approximately thirty years.

When their facility's existence was finally acknowledged, the Chelyabinsk region had seen a 21 per cent increase in cancer, a 25 per cent increase in birth defects, and a 41 per cent increase in leukaemia.

The nearby Techa river, on which several villages relied for water, was so contaminated that up to 65 per cent of locals were stricken with radiation sickness.

Prevented from mentioning radiation in their diagnoses, doctors treating those who had fallen ill termed the sickness 'special disease'. Even then, these notes were classified until 1990.

The rural communities surrounding the nuclear facility suffered greatly from their government's nuclear arms race with the U.S.

Eager to catch up with the technological development of Western weapons, the Mayak engineers didn't worry too much about safety and the facility suffered several major accidents in the Fifties and Sixties.

By the mid-Fifties they decided, belatedly, to cease dumping nuclear waste into nearby lakes and rivers, instead pumping it into a row of vats. Then in September 1957 they exploded with a force equivalent to about 85 tons of TNT, spewing about 70 tons of radioactive waste a mile high.

The dust cloud spread isotopes of cesium and strontium over 9,000 square miles, affecting some 270,000 Soviet citizens and their food supplies.

With their waste storage system obliterated, authorities decided to direct Malak's constant flow of radioactive effluent into Lake Karachay, which lacked any surface outlets making engineers optimistic that anything dumped there would be entombed indefinitely.

This worked okay for ten years, until a severe drought struck the whole of Chelyabinsk. Lake Karachay gradually began to dry up, exposing the radioactive sediment in its basin. The spread of toxic dust peppered about 900 square miles of land with Strontium-90, Caesium-137 and a host of other unpleasant elements.

Today, huge tracts of Chelyabinsk remain uninhabitable as a result of the river contamination, the 1957 blast and the 1967 drought. Lake Karachay's surface is now more concrete than water, but its contamination is still not contained.

Estimates suggest approximately a billion gallons of groundwater have been contaminated with 5 megacuries of radionuclides and even today, the local population still does not know the actual levels of radioisotopes in its home grown products.

SOURCE

'Soviet-style’ wind farm subsidies to face the axe in Britain

“Soviet-style” green subsidies for wind farms must be scrapped because turbines are blighting local communities, the new Environment Secretary said on Tuesday.

Owen Paterson, who took on the role last month, said wind developers should “stand on their own two feet” instead of asking for money from the state.

He said green technologies such as wind farms might actually have a worse impact than climate change, because they are causing “public insurrection”.

“There are significant impacts on the rural economy and the rural environment, all of which probably weren’t intended when these things were thought up,” he told an event at the Conservative Party conference. “It is not very green to be blighting the economy in one area.”

Mr Paterson said he would write to the Department of Energy with his view on ending green subsidies as part of a Government review of support for renewable energy.

“If you start having subsidies you end up with a Soviet-style system, where politicians make decisions that might actually be better made by the market,” he added.

Mr Paterson said he believes humans are contributing to climate change but “some of the steps we are taking might actually cause more damage than the original problems itself”.

His comments came as Greg Barker, the climate change minister, promised that the Government was dealing with the “never-ending gravy train of green subsidies” to bring down energy bills.

The Conservative minister insisted the party was “not abandoning its green pledges” or “scaling back” its commitment to tackling climate change.

But he acknowledged the green industry needed to “tighten their belts, do more for less and make subsidies go further” to get a better deal for the taxpayer. Mr Barker promised that the Coalition would “cut subsidy where we can and put value for money at the heart of our policies”.

The Government is facing mounting criticism for sending out mixed messages on energy policy and climate change. Some companies are concerned after David Cameron appointed two ministers who are critical of wind farms, cut subsidies for renewable energy and unveiled a tax break for the gas industry.

The insulation industry also claims that the Coalition’s decision to end grants for green home improvements will lead to 16,000 job losses before a new regime comes in next year.

Seven power firms this week threatened to leave Britain over fears they will not get enough Government support to invest in low-carbon technologies like nuclear and wind farms.

After weeks of division on green issues, Conservative sources said there is a new push within the party to “get back on the same page”.

Conservatives are split between pro-green modernisers, those worried about the cost of subsidies and back-bench MPs angry about the blight of wind farms in their constituencies.

The senior source said there would be a drive re-invent the Conservatives’ green agenda as a pro-business policy that will help boost growth and create jobs.

The Department of Energy is led by Ed Davey, a Liberal Democrat, who won a battle against George Osborne to stop deep cuts to green subsidies this year. In return, the Chancellor introduced tax breaks for the oil and gas industry, including new measures to help controversial “shale” extraction.

On Tuesday night, Mr Paterson described shale gas as a “God-given” windfall that would help Britain solve its energy problems.

SOURCE

California’s self-inflicted gas shortage

By Rebekah Rast — In September 2008, before Barack Obama was elected president and Steven Chu appointed Department of Energy Secretary, Chu stated, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

Thanks in large part to strict pollution limitations and refinery and pipeline misfortunes, one state is now much closer to those levels.

Gas prices hit an all-time high in California at an average of $4.6140 a gallon, due to a reduced supply and a volatile market.

California has some of the most stringent fuel regulations in the nation; making it so no other energy markets can step up to take some of the burden off consumers needing to fill up their gas tanks. Therefore, if a refinery goes down, Californians are left with little choice but to pay a premium price for gasoline.

Unfortunately this is just one more crisis—of a very long list—that California has brought on itself by its own unabashed actions.

The Wall Street Journal reports that “over the last two decades four refineries in the state have shut down rather than invest in expensive upgrades to comply with fuel regulations.”

As refineries come back online in the state, prices should lower and stabilize. However, it may not last long.

The Wall Street Journal continues: “Any relief Californians feel will be short-lived. The state’s cap-and-trade program, which charges businesses for emitting carbon, will take effect this November. Oil companies warn they’ll pass on the costs to consumers.”

The carbon trading market opens in California on Nov. 14. The Sacramento Bee summarizes the cap-and-trade program:

“Under the program, more than 400 big industrial users will be subject to an emissions ceiling, or “cap.” They will receive tens of millions of emissions allowances, each one representing the right to emit a ton of carbon. The total amount of available carbon credits will decline slightly each year.”

Though a similar market is used in Europe to try and cap greenhouse emissions, it hasn’t been used in the U.S. on such a broad scale. Ten percent of the carbon credits will be sold at an auction, while the rest will be given away for free. Big companies and businesses that buy up the 10 percent will be able to sell them to others.

The Sacramento Bee explains that in the first year the burden of buying these credits will be $1 billion and is set to increase each year.

A small business doesn’t stand a chance of competing in this market. Likewise, consumers of these businesses will also take a hit as products, including gasoline, become more expensive.

While it may be comforting in the short term to know that California Gov. Jerry Brown instructed the California Air Resources Board to increase the fuel supply by allowing the immediate sale of cheaper and readily available winter-blend gasoline, which the state typically sells after Oct. 31, he is capable of doing much more. He could just as easily request the very-Democrat California Assembly and Senate to roll back the regulations that got California into this mess of exorbitantly higher gas prices on average than the rest of the nation.

Furthermore, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) requested the federal government investigate the high prices afflicting the state and wonders whether gasoline companies are illegally raising gas prices.

The Hill quotes a letter from Sen. Feinstein to Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz, which states, “California’s consumers are all too familiar with energy price spikes which cannot be explained by market fundamentals, and which turn out years later to have been the result of malicious and manipulative trading activity.”

Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government (ALG), says the answers to these high prices are easily found in the state’s strict regulations and lack of supply. “It would seem California’s overzealous attempt to rid the world of all greenhouses starting in its backyard by overtaxing and overregulating the energy market, thus limiting supply, might be a market fundamental being overlooked by Sen. Feinstein.”

Meanwhile, the Department of Energy, under the direction of Secretary Chu is working on new energy alternatives like biofuels and electric vehicles to get Americans off their addiction to oil.

However, The Wall Street Journal warns that very limited biofuels qualify under California’s strict pollution rules—corn ethanol is not one of them—and could result in the closing of even more oil refineries.

It’s hard to find a state that heaps more trouble on itself than California. As it further kowtows to the wishes of Secretary Chu and the Obama administration it should expect a lot more than just higher gas prices.

And the rest of the country should take note of where America’s leaders would like to steer the nation—directly down the Golden path currently being paved with high energy prices and even more soon-to-be failing businesses.

SOURCE

Romney Campaign Should Take Note of European Fatigue with Green Energy

Both Gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama have expressed support for green energy initiatives throughout the campaign. But in their debate last Wednesday, Romney quickly pivoted away from the concept when he was asked to discuss tax policy. Obama has accused the former Massachusetts governor of favoring large tax breaks for oil companies and individual wealthy Americans at the expense of the middle class. In response, Romney seized upon the political favors Obama has extended to costly and ineffective green schemes that subtract away from genuine job opportunities for unemployed Americans.

In just one year, Obama “invested” $90 billion worth of breaks into the “green energy world,” Romney informed audience members. By comparison, Romney noted, the oil companies received about $2.8 billion in tax breaks each year and most of this is directed to small companies. Here is Romney’s complete statement.:

“Now, I like green energy as well, but that’s about 50 years’ worth of what oil and gas receives. And you say Exxon and Mobil. Actually, this $2.8 billion goes largely to small companies, to drilling operators and so forth. But, you know, if we get that tax rate from 35 percent down to 25 percent, why that $2.8 billion is on the table. Of course it’s on the table. That’s probably not going to survive you get that rate down to 25 percent. But don’t forget, you put $90 billion, like 50 years’ worth of breaks, into — into solar and wind, to Solyndra and Fisker and Tester and Ener1. I mean, I had a friend who said you don’t just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers, all right? So this — this is not — this is not the kind of policy you want to have if you want to get America energy secure.”

This is the right touch of potent, forceful rhetoric, rooted in objective facts that will keep Romney on offense. But going forward he should reject the premise of green energy and green jobs. If they are losing their luster in Europe, it’s a sure sign they have very little political staying power in America. No less than European Union Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger is now advising against new climate targets. He is also lobbying in favor of pro-industrial policies and against global warming initiatives.

“I strongly advise against more stringent targets after 2020”, Oettinger said in comments to the European Parliament. During the years 2007 to 2009, there had been too many “do-gooders” in the European Parliament and climate policy enthusiasm had become excessive,” he added. It was useless “to go to Greenland and hug polar bears.”

Back in Britain, a power regulator now warns of impending blackouts and higher electricity prices, compliments of stringent environmental regulations.

“Coal fired-generation is likely to close earlier than expected under EU environmental legislation and the risk of a shortfall in electricity is highest in 2015/16,” Ofgam says in a report.

This is a remarkable turnaround from just a few years ago and sure sign that the Romney campaign is in position to mount a vigorous assault against anti-energy policies.

Back in America, even former Vice-President Al Gore seems to be taking a walk away from green energy. The Street reports that Gore’s company has refrained from making any substantial investments in wind, solar and biomass. But he is investing in a natural gas pipeline.

“If these green energy projects were viable investments with the real potential for profitable returns that could power our nation, they would not need one cent of subsidies from taxpayers,” Americans for Limited Government Bill Wilson said. “It’s time to pull the plug on these subsidies, not to pander to the supporters of a failed idea.”

It would seem that Romney has been advised to offer up accolades to green energy. That may have been understandable going back a few years when the concept was political fashionable. That no longer holds. Out of work Americans would like to hear more about the opportunity cost of the $90 billion that Obama is putting into green energy at expense of new job opportunities.

SOURCE

EPA's ‘Science’ Evokes Nazi Death Camp Memories

The "EPA has admitted to a federal court that it asks human guinea pigs to sacrifice their lives for regulatory purposes-and $12 per hour." That was a recent news item reported by JunkScience.com's founder, Steve Milloy.

"EPA has responded to our emergency motion for a temporary restraining order against its ongoing human experiment (called ‘Captain') involving the air pollutant" known as "fine particles."

In a declaration to the court by an EPA clinical research studies coordinator he said that participants were provided with information about them, noting that "if you are a person that for example lives in a large city like Los Angeles or New York" where on a hot summer day one can often see a haze in the air "and you have an underlying unknown health condition, or, you may be older in age, chances are you could end up in the emergency room later on that night, wondering what's wrong, possibly having cardiac changes that could lead to a heart attack; there is the possibility you may die from this..."

"You may die from this." That did not, however, deter the EPA from conducting the study in which participants were exposed to such particles.

Milloy points out that "Every law, regulation and code developed since World War II strictly prohibits human sacrifice (i.e., significant injury or death) for no health benefit to the patient" and the $12 per hour payment is not deemed a benefit. "Moreover," said Milloy, "EPA has repeatedly stated in numerous regulatory documents and public statements that there is no safe level of exposure to particulate matter", and that any exposure can kill within hours or days.

A Wall Street Journal article on June 16th and titled "EPA Seeks Tighter Standard on Soot" reported that "The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday proposed tighter national standards for soot pollution" deeming it "the latest chapter in a long-running battle between the Obama administration and industry over environmental restrictions."

"Particulate matter forms in the atmosphere as a result of smokestack and tailgate emissions" and the EPA wants to set a new level of 12 to 13 micrograms per cubic meter." The current standard is 15 micrograms. We are talking about things so small it would take an electron microscope to measure them. The notion of protecting people about anything at this level is absurd. Next thing to go would be children's sandboxes.

In practical terms, tightening the standards would make it even more difficult for industrial facilities to get permits to operate. Milloy warns that "The EPA is a government horror story that is responsible for trillions of dollars in lost economic growth, trampled rights and liberties and perverted science."

There is, however, something far more ominous about the EPA's particulate study.

In an AmericanThinker.com article, Mark Musser, the author of "Nazi Oaks", a book about the environmental zealotry of the leaders of the Nazi regime, connected the sweeping Nazi environmental legislation that preceded the racially charged anti-Semitic Nuremburg Laws that led ultimately to "the final solution"; the deliberate murder of millions of Europe's Jews and millions, too, deemed enemies of the state.

Referencing Milloy's exposure of the EPA human experimentation in which diesel fumes were piped from a running truck mixed with air into the lungs of participants. In his commentary Musser noted that "They even had a gas chamber set up to accommodate the environmental research project that shockingly recalls the death camps of Poland."

"The whiff of the Jewish holocaust is thus unmistakable," notes Musser. "When the Nazis found out how difficult it was in practice to shoot so many Jews on the Eastern Front at the outset of the war, they switched to gassing them in mass at death camps with engine fumes. Such gassing methods became infamous at Treblinka where almost one million Jews were killed."

The commandant of Auschwitz, another death camp, was Rudolf Hoess. He belonged to the SS whom Musser describes as "the greenest faction of the Nazi Party. It was run by Heinrich Himmler who was an animal lover, vegetarian, and organic farm enthusiast" and Musser says it was the environmentalism that was "at the heart of the holocaust at death camps like Treblinka."

There is a very thin line between the EPA's particulate experiments and the death factories of Treblinka and Auschwitz, and it is more than just a hint of the kind of thinking at the EPA that would condone it.

Environmentalism is synonymous with a hatred of humanity, an oft-stated wish that millions must die to protect the Earth.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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10 October, 2012

New Paper Confirms CO2 Lagged Global Temperature – Models Get It All Wrong Again
Today website Die kalte Sonne tells us there’s a new paper appearing in the Geophysical Research Letters on the relationship of CO2 and temperature.

Let’s recall how Al Gore in his Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth proudly stood before the CO2-temperature curve of the last several hundred thousand years and fooled his gullible audience into thinking that CO2 drove global temperature in the past, and not vice versa.

Too bad Gore didn’t take a closer look at the curves. If he had, he would have noticed that temperature rose first with CO2 following, and so CO2 could not possibly have been the main driver. What really happened is that a warming Earth warmed the oceans, which in turn released CO2 into the atmosphere. That’s the real inconvenient truth.

Now there’s a new study by Jinho Ahn et al of Seoul National University. His team has taken another look at the temperature fluctuations 39,000 years ago. What did they find? Did CO2 lead temperature, or was it the other way around.

The data don’t lie, but obviously Gore does. The results were clear: In the abstract the authors write: "This rise in CO2 was synchronous with, or slightly later than, a rapid increase of Antarctic temperature inferred from stable isotopes.”

Morover, it was thought that atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature in Antarctica varied on millennial time scales and that these changes were gradual. But the authors of the paper write: "In a detailed analysis of one event we now find that approximately half of the CO2 increase that occurred during the 1500-year cold period between Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) events 8 and 9 happened rapidly, over less than two centuries.”

Lüning and Vahrenholt at Die kalte Sonne find this interesting. They write: "…about half of the total CO2 increase took place within just 200 years. This brings up important questions. The authors point out that the models based on the CO2 cycle are unable to to reproduce the rapid changes in CO2 condentrations.”

Back to the drawing board for climate modellers. But this time they really ought to put the horse before the cart.

SOURCE

Reef Alarmists Jump The Shark

The Great Barrier Reef is doomed again. A recent widely publicised scientific study reports the dramatic finding that it has lost half its coral in the last 27 years. Forty-eight precent of the loss is attributed to storm damage, with bleaching and crown-of-thorns starfish being responsible for 10% and 42% respectively. The average annual rate of coral loss over the 27-year period was estimated to be 3.38% and growth was put at 2.85%, leaving a net decline of 0.53% per year. Further effort and research on starfish control is suggested to be the most promising means of reversing the decline. Elimination of the loss due to starfish would leave a net gain of 0.89%.

While the news reports present the appearance of scientific precision and certainty, examination of the study itself reveals a number of doubtful assumptions, undisclosed conditions and instances where strong conflicting evidence is unmentioned. Examples of this include:

* The margin of error in visual surveys of coral cover is high and unassessed; yet, they are presented to hundredths of a precent without any qualifying explanation, as if they are precisely accurate. Coral cover is highly variable between reefs and over different areas or at different years on the same reef. Visual estimates of the percentage of coral cover can differ significantly, depending on where, when and by whom the observations were made. Also, many of the observers doing the surveys upon which this study is based were inexperienced students primed by learned expectations of threats to the reef.

* The reef is vast and in any given year surveys sample only a small portion. The reported sudden decline in coral cover in the last couple of years is almost certain to have been exaggerated by surveys made to assess the damage from severe cyclones crossing the reef in 2009 and 2011, with few or no surveys in unaffected areas in those years.

* The study states, “Cyclone intensities are increasing with warming ocean temperatures….”

This statement is unsubstantiated and contrary to available evidence. The most definitive recent studies find no increase in tropical cyclone frequency or intensity. On the GBR severe cyclone activity for the past century has also been well below the level for the preceding century. The study also states:

“The recent frequency and intensity of mass coral bleaching are of major concern, and are directly attributable to rising atmospheric greenhouse gases.”

No evidence exists for this claim. The mass-bleaching events of recent decades have coincided with surface water warming resulting from periods of extended calm associated with strong El Niño events. This impedes normal evaporative cooling as well as wave driven mixing. There is no evidence of any increase in the frequency or strength of El Niño events, and climate models project increased wind speeds from warming, not more calms. The report further states:

“Water quality is a key environmental driver for the GBR. Central and southern rivers now carry five- to ninefold higher nutrient and sediment loads from cleared, fertilized, and urbanized catchments into the GBR compared with pre-European settlement.”

No actual measurements of pre-European sedimentation rates exist. These are only estimates and extrapolations from unverified proxies which may or may not represent what is claimed. What is certain is that the inshore areas of the GBR are heavily blanketed in sediments that have accumulated over thousands of years and turbidity in coastal waters is overwhelmingly governed by re-suspension of these sediments through wave action, not by current day runoff from the land.

The most widely cited study purporting to show a large increase in sedimentation after European settlement was based on an increase in barium in coral skeletons just after 60,000 head of cattle were introduced into the Burdekin area in 1870. This was attributed to an increase in erosion caused by the cattle. But this period also coincided with the ending of an extended period of extreme drought and no explanation has ever been offered for why the barium level has subsequently decreased despite the million head of cattle now in the same catchment.

The assumption that levels of turbidity in flood runoff events are almost entirely attributable to farming and grazing is unwarranted, and it is readily observable that runoff turbidity from crop and grazing areas is often markedly less than from undisturbed natural areas. Crops and grasses are simply better at retaining soil than is either the rainforest or open eucalypt woodland they have replaced. Sediment-trapping by dams and cessation of the widespread annual burning practiced by the pre-European inhabitants of the area can also be expected to have reduced sediment outflows.

There is good reason to expect that agriculture and grazing may well have resulted in a net reduction in levels of sediment discharge, compared to pre-European condition. The claims of multi-fold increases in sedimentation are simply speculation wrapped in techno-waffle and presented as fact.....

The core claim is that the reef has lost half of its coral in the past 27 years and that: “Without significant changes to the rates of disturbance and coral growth, coral cover in the central and southern regions of the GBR is likely to decline to 5–10% by 2022.”

If this is true, the implications for future research and management are profound. It means that the current condition of the GBR is essentially no better than that of the heavily exploited and effectively unmanaged reefs of the Caribbean or SE Asia. It means all the money and effort that has gone into management and research has been an abject failure. It means that the promised “resilience” to environmental impacts that was the major justification for greatly expanded green zones and sundry other stringent and costly restrictions on productive usage have achieved nothing, and that the vaunted resilience has been just another theoretical academic fantasy. It means that the claims of having the best managed reefs in the world have been only a self-serving delusion. It means that all the past assertions of successful management have been untrue and the research supposedly supporting it has been either grossly incompetent or a deliberate misrepresentation.

Worse still, this all took place when, for nearly three decades the reef, was supposedly dying off in clear view of all the experts and they even had the surveys to confirm it. Were they too slack to look at their data until now or did they hide it because it didn’t suit their agenda at the time? If they were that incompetent or dishonest in the past, why should we now believe them now?

On the other hand, if the whole business of threats to the reef has simply been grossly exaggerated then it is also time to end the charade. In addition to rent-seekers there is abundant evidence of a variety of other unhealthy influences being involved as well. These include media sensationalism, political pandering for green votes, postmodern scientific corruption, “noble cause” corruption, ill-informed eco-evangelism and bureaucratic empire building.

Regardless of the reef-salvation industry’s industry’s motives, its efforts can only be viewed as either honest but incompetent or duplicitous and self-serving. It is time to severely cut the funding for this elaborate and costly farce. By their own reckoning the reef saviours have failed miserably and we can no longer afford them.

Personally, I suspect that the surest way to save the reef would be to cut funding for management and research by half and link future cuts or increases to the balance of economic and environmental outcomes. I have little doubt that would soon effect a miraculous recovery.

Much more HERE

Plant making Volt batteries furloughs workers

President Obama touted it in 2010 as evidence "manufacturing jobs are coming back to the United States,” but two years later, a Michigan hybrid battery plant built with $150 million in taxpayer funds is putting workers on furlough before a single battery has been produced.

Workers at the Compact Power manufacturing facilities in Holland, Mich., run by LG Chem, have been placed on rotating furloughs, working only three weeks per month based on lack of demand for lithium-ion cells.

The facility, which was opened in July 2010 with a groundbreaking attended by Obama, has yet to produce a single battery for the Chevrolet Volt, the troubled electric car from General Motors. The plant's batteries also were intended to be used in Ford's electric Focus.

Production of the taxpayer-subsidized Volt has been plagued by work stoppages, and the effect has trickled down to companies and plants that build parts for it -- including the batteries.

“Considering the lack of demand for electric vehicles, despite billions of dollars from the Obama administration that were supposed to stimulate it, it’s not surprising what has happened with LG Chem. Just because a ton of money is poured into a product does not mean that people will buy it,” Paul Chesser, an associate fellow with the National Legal and Policy Center, told FoxNews.com.

The 650,000-square-foot, $300 million facility was slated to produce 15,000 batteries per year, while creating hundreds of new jobs. But to date, only 200 workers are employed at the plant by by the South Korean company. Batteries for the Chevy Volts that have been produced have been made by an LG plant in South Korea.

The factory was partly funded by a $150 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. LG also received sizeable tax breaks from the local government, saving nearly $50 million in property taxes over 15 years and another $2.5 million annually in business taxes. Landing the factory was hailed as a coup when shovels first hit the ground.

“You are leading the way in showing how manufacturing jobs are coming right back here to the United States of America,” Obama told workers at the ground-breaking ceremony. “Our goal has never been to create a government program, but rather to unleash private-sector growth. And we're seeing results.”

Randy Boileau, a spokesperson for LG Chem in Holland, told FoxNews.com that battery production is expected to pick up once Volt assembly lines in Detroit resume production on Oct. 15. He said the facility has spent the past two years building infrastructure and conducting pre-production “test runs.”

“The market conditions haven’t been as favorable, but this hasn’t slowed down plans one bit,” Boileau said. “LG Chem has repeatedly said that this facility is a critical component for them globally.”

Boileau pointed out the workers who are on furloughs one week a month are eligible to collect unemployment for that week, and he said the company covers the contributions to their individual benefits during the period.

The Volt has been plagued by low sales since it first rolled off the line three years ago. Orders have picked up for 2012 but are still well below projections.

Chesser said no amount of government subsidies can counter the practical problems posed by plug-in cars.

“Electric car batteries do not perform much better than they did 100 years ago," he said. "Research has not conquered the battery storage issue, and therefore the electric transportation ‘stimulus’ did not boost the ‘technology of the future,’ but instead a century-old technology as far as performance and capability goes.”

He added that the LG Chem plant's problems show that the unpopularity of electric cars despite heavy taxpayer subsidies has had more widespread negative effects than most realize.

“Billions of dollars were put into Volt research, and Ford received $5.9 billion in stimulus loans to retrofit plants to produce [electric vehicles]," Chesser said. "The battery companies like LG Chem that were supposed to service them have no customers to speak of. Their existence was solely based on access to taxpayer money.

“Had it been private investors rather than government bureaucrats making the decision, there either would have been a reality check about the industry, or only those who made individual decisions to invest would have lost their money, not taxpayers.”

SOURCE

Sun Sets on China's Solar Industry

On Friday, shares of Trina Solar closed at $4.62, down $0.18 for the day. The stock has been falling for a long time, declining more than 85% in the last three years. That’s not bad, however, considering Trina is a Chinese solar company. Rival Suntech Power has seen its shares, also listed on the Big Board, drop. They are at about 2% of their 2007 values. And Yingli Green Energy plunged 7.3% on Friday in New York, and it is now trading close to its five-year low.

In last two years, shares of Chinese solar cell producers have fallen by about half, and more price declines are on the way. The prospects for these manufacturers are poor.

More important, the seemingly intractable problems of the sector highlight the limits—and impending failure—of the country’s industrial policy. It’s not that Chinese technocrats did not accomplish their ambitious goals. They set out to create an industry that would dominate the world, and they succeeded. They aided solar cell manufacturers with easy credit from state banks—perhaps as much as $18 billion of cheap loans—and, some say, subsidies. As a result of central and local government support, Chinese manufacturers began to expand rapidly. Chinese competitors now own 70% of the world’s wafer-producing capacity.

Make that overcapacity. “Massive subsidies and state intervention have stimulated overcapacity more than 20 times total Chinese consumption and close to double total global demand,” said Milan Nitzschke, president of EU ProSun, in a statement released late last month. The company alleges that 90% of Chinese production had to be exported and that Beijing used subsidies to keep its manufacturers in business.

EU ProSun, a subsidiary of SolarWorld of Germany, has filed a complaint with the European Commission alleging China’s subsidies were illegal. The Commission is already investigating charges that Chinese producers have been dumping production in Europe. In July, ProSun filed an anti-dumping complaint with the Commission. European solar panel makers say Chinese companies have been selling at 80% below their cost.

Chinese producers are clearly worried about the investigations in Brussels. Europe, the world’s largest solar market, accounted for $27 billion of their sales last year. That was about a third of their production and 7% of all Chinese exports to the European Union.

The U.S., on the other hand, takes around 7% of China solar exports, and what is left of the American industry is filing trade actions against Chinese producers as well.

More HERE

Population haters

Some people in environmental lobbies seem to treat people as a kind of pollution. Although happy to see plants and other animals proliferate, they seem to regard humans as a kind of blot on an otherwise 'natural' landscape.

Human beings affect the planet, and always have done. Our hominid ancestors undoubtedly caused mass extinctions with their efficient hunting techniques, and our predecessors changed the appearance of the planet as agriculture developed. More recently our industry and transport systems have changed it.

We are told by some that the Earth cannot support its projected population, having neither the food, the water, the energy or the space to sustain it. None of this is likely to be true. Just as the Green Revolution transformed agricultural output in the 20th Century, so can genetically modified crops transform food production in the 21st Century. New techniques for water purification are developed almost annually, and the Earth is not short of water to treat. Gas will supply abundant energy for decades, and following close behind it is the steady reduction in the cost of photovoltaic power. And human beings, though they are found in every habitat on the surface of the Earth, occupy only a tiny fraction of its area.

As nations become richer, their people no longer need large families to supplement the family budget and to support them in old age. Population levels off as the world becomes wealthier, and is unlikely even to approach the levels touted by alarmists.
In fact human beings are as asset, not a burden. Their creative intelligence has created opportunities for many people to live more rewarding lives well above the subsistence level that was the lot of their predecessors. Human ingenuity and technical skill have given us wonderful cities in which to interact and co-operate with our fellow humans. Their intellect and creativity have given us buildings that lift the spirit, literature that inspires, music that elevates the soul, and paintings that convey insights into the human condition.

Humankind has faced problems and has used its ingenuity to solve them. It finds ways to make resources go further, fields to produce more crops, engines that are cleaner, and advances in transport and communication that shrink the world and enable us to interact with more of our species. Julian Simon described the human imagination coupled to the human spirit as "The Ultimate Resource."

SOURCE

UK may lift curbs on shale gas, offer tax help

The British government expressed support for shale gas on Monday, with the energy minister saying he hoped to allow more exploration and the finance minister talking of a favourable tax regime for the energy source opposed by many environmentalists.

Edward Davey, who heads Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), said he hoped to lift a suspension on new shale gas exploration that was imposed last year due to concerns about the fracking technology used to exploit it. "I hope it will prove possible for me to give a green light to shale," Davey told a gas conference in London.

Speaking at the ruling Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, central England, Chancellor (finance minister) George Osborne said he was considering a "generous new tax regime" to encourage investment in shale gas.

"The idea that we should be sitting on enormous energy reserves that could potentially create thousands of jobs and reduce consumer bills and not do anything about it is absolutely absurd," an aide of Osborne told reporters at the party conference.

The aide said one option for a shale gas tax regime would be to remove it from a supplementary charge on corporation tax that applies to offshore North Sea oil and gas exploration.

"I'm sure there are other options, but that is why we want to have a consultation with the industry," the aide added.

The government suspended the development of shale gas extraction last year after the work triggered two small earthquakes near Blackpool, in the northwest, adding to fears about hydraulic fracturing - a method of drilling through shale deposits to retrieve gas by injecting liquids and chemicals.

"In principle, I'm all in favour of exploiting new resources. I would welcome as much as anyone a way to boost Britain's indigenous gas supplies and to reduce energy prices to consumers and businesses alike," Davey said.

The British business lobby welcomed the government's move on proposals to provide incentives for shale gas exploration.

"It makes sense to maximise the amount of energy we can produce at home at reasonable cost," John Cridland, Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said in a statement.

"Incentivising the exploration of shale gas sits alongside investment in renewables," he added.

The energy ministry now has to decide whether to allow new holes to be drilled. Davey said his department was approaching the question with caution.

"I make no apology for being a little more patient. Questions about regulatory oversight and the involvement of communities need to be answered rather than simply dismissed," he said.

The British Geological Survey estimates Britain's onshore shale reserves at 5.3 trillion cubic feet (150 billion cubic metres), which would be enough to meet its gas consumption for one and a half years, although UK shale gas exploration firms such as Cuadrilla Resources have put their figures as high as 200 trillion cubic feet.

In the United States, a shale gas boom has resulted in a sharp rise in natural gas production, leading to a collapse in domestic prices and the possibility of the U.S. exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) by 2015.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

*****************************************

9 October, 2012

An extreme psychiatric nut

He is saying that skeptics are nuts but I think you just have to read the article to see who the nut is. He seems to be suffering from a case of extreme chronic anxiety that banishes all critical thinking. He sounds like a blubbering mess.

Psychiatrists are pretty wobbly at the best of times but when you get a member of a psychiatric sect ("Psychoanalytic Self Psychology"), as he is, all bets are off. They are extreme navel gazers. I had a shot at their "theory" years ago -- JR

By Robert D. Stolorow

On October 5, 2012, on the front page of the Huffington Post, appeared a terrifying image of melting arctic ice, accompanied by the chilling headline, “Arctic Ice Melt and Sea Level Rise May Be ‘Decades Ahead Of Schedule’”. Why have the majority of Americans and American politicians been largely oblivious to this extreme threat? I believe there are two principal reasons.

The first is unbridled narcissism. Psychoanalytic developmental theorist Erik Erikson famously characterized an essential aim of adulthood as generativity—the caring for the well being of future generations. Climate change most likely will not be a threat for most of us, but it will leave our children, grandchildren, and future descendents with catastrophes of unimaginable proportions. In the deplorable obliviousness and indifference to the problem of climate change, any concern for the well being of future generations is being blatantly trumped by narrow self-interest and greed.

The second is denial. What, precisely, is being denied? More than three decades ago I took my young son to a planetarium show at the New York Museum of Natural History. During that show it was predicted that a million years from now the sun will become a “red giant” that will engulf and destroy our entire solar system. This prospect filled me with intense horror. Why would a catastrophe predicted to occur in a million years evoke horror in me? Let me explain.

The horror that I felt was an extreme form of existential anxiety—the anxiety that accompanies our recognition that, as finite human beings, we are constantly threatened by impending possibilities of harm, disease, death, and loss, which can occur at any time. But what I felt at the planetarium show was more than that, because the sun’s becoming an engulfing red giant represents not just the destruction of individual human beings but of human civilization itself, a possibility vividly portrayed in the recent movie, “Melancholia.” The destruction of human civilization would also terminate the historical process—the sense of human history stretching along from the distant past to an open future—through which we make sense out of our individual existences. I want to call the horror that announces such a possibility apocalyptic anxiety. Apocalyptic anxiety anticipates the collapse of all meaningfulness. And it is from apocalyptic anxiety that we turn away when we deny the extreme perils of climate change.

We must renounce destructive narcissism and oblivious denial, embrace generativity, and face up to our apocalyptic anxiety before it is too late for the safety of future generations. President Obama brought tears to my eyes when, in his acceptance speech at the DNC, he contended that climate change and the threat it poses to human life on planet earth are not illusions. He was right, and we must not turn away!

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Leftist site moans that Americans are more skeptical

I'm guessing that most Americans will not be too perturbed to hear they are out of line with China, India, Brazil and France -- JR

When it comes to giving credence to those who refuse to believe global warming, the United States reigns supreme.
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When it comes to climate change, there is one area in which the United States leads all other nations: Our media gives more time and attention to climate deniers than other countries. A recent study from researchers at Oxford University and Birkbeck College took a look at the level of climate skepticism in media coverage in the United States, Brazil, China, France, India, and the United Kingdom. The study, which focused on a three-month period that spanned the “Climategate” scandal, shows that media in the United States gives voice to climate skeptics almost twice as often as Britain—second on the list. The graph below shows the number of articles containing voices skeptical of climate change as a percentage of the total:

The study also found that while climate critiques ran in most U.S. papers regardless of ideology, right-leaning papers left most of the claims uncontested. For example, the left-leaning New York Times ran 14 opinion pieces that included some form of climate skepticism. All of them were contested. The more conservative Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, ran 17 opinion pieces—seven of which were written by regular columnists—all but one of which was left uncontested.

By giving climate-change deniers a platform to broadcast their views, the media legitimizes them. As a result, we never get around to talking about what we should do to fight climate change; instead we're stuck debating whether climate change is real and, if so, whether it is caused by humans.

More HERE

Gov. Moonbeam backtracks on "green" fuel regulations

With gasoline prices reaching record highs across California over the last week, Gov. Jerry Brown moved on Sunday to alleviate some of the pain at the pump.

Mr. Brown directed the California Air Resources Board to take emergency steps to increase the supply of fuel in the state and allow refineries to immediately switch to a winter blend of gasoline that is typically not sold until November.

“Gas prices in California have risen to their highest levels ever, with unacceptable cost impacts on consumers and small businesses,” Mr. Brown, a Democrat, said in a prepared statement.

The sudden increase has surprised motorists who are already accustomed to high gas prices, particularly in this sprawling city.

The cost of gas jumped 20 cents per gallon on Thursday night. Prices have continued to climb since then, although more slowly, reaching a statewide average of $4.66 on Sunday, according to the AAA’s daily fuel gauge report.

Some motorists had begun to direct their frustration at Mr. Brown.

“Consumers in California are getting killed,” Judith Connolly, the owner of a media company, said as she filled up with premium gasoline on Friday. “We’re being penalized, and the rest of the country is paying far less. This is something that Jerry Brown really needs to deal with.”

Problems at several refineries in the state have been blamed for the rising prices. Two months ago, a fire knocked out a 245,000-barrel-a-day refinery in the Bay Area that has still not resumed full production. And last week, a power failure curtailed production at a refinery in Torrance. Full production resumed there on Friday.

Mr. Brown said he hoped that the switch to the winter-blend gasoline, which evaporates more quickly than gasoline sold during the summer smog season, would stop the climb in prices because it could increase fuel supplies in the state by up to 10 percent. Summer-blend gasoline is better for air quality.

Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, said a combination of factors, including regulations and geography, make gasoline supplies in California volatile. He said the unusually high prices were likely to level off in “days or weeks” and would not spread to the rest of the country. “It is very specific to California,” he said.

Gasoline prices in California are typically higher than in most of the country because of strict environmental regulations. Yet prices around the country also remain high. The national average on Sunday was $3.81 per gallon of regular gasoline, about 42 cents more than a year ago, the AAA said.

SOURCE

EPA Celebrates ‘Children Health Month,’ Encourages Recruiting Students for ‘Energy Patrols’ at School

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is celebrating Children’s Health Month this October by providing information and health tips on its website, including the importance of energy efficiency in schools.

On the website page is a link to a 26-page EPA report entitled, “Sensible Steps to Healthier School Environment.” In the report’s chapter on Energy Efficiency, the EPA presents a box with items to help establish “Energy Efficiency Opportunities for Schools.”

One of the items in the box reads, “Educate students and staff about how their behaviors affect energy use. Some schools have created student energy patrols to monitor and inform others when energy is wasted.”

For example, the Arizona Public School’s website provides information for setting up energy patrols. The website states “emphasize social action through environmental education gives students a chance to do something about environmental problems instead of just hearing about them.”

The APS website says that patrol members can be provided with ID tags, vests and clipboards. Their responsibilities include leaving reminders to better conserve energy in rooms they find that have the lights on but are unoccupied.

In Alabama schools, the energy patrols are described as groups of 10 to 20 students who are tasked with monitoring the school’s energy use.

“When lights are found on unnecessarily, they are quickly turned off,” the website states. “Periodically, thermostats are also checked to see that they stay at an energy saving 70 in the winter and 78 in the summer. All windows and doors will be noticed for efficient solar energy usage and all water leaks will be reported. Door hangers are left as reminders to do better and to provide encouragement or praise.”

The EPA report connects energy efficiency and children’s health by way of “greenhouse gas emissions.”

“By being more energy efficient, schools can save money and prevent greenhouse gas emissions,” the report states. “School districts can use the savings from improved energy performance to help pay for building improvements and other upgrades that enhance the learning environment.”

The report states that the more than 17,000 public schools in the United States “spend more than $8 billion annually on energy — more than is spent on computers and textbooks combined.”

Other issues addressed in the EPA report include asthma and asthma triggers, buses and vehicle idling, toxins such as lead and mercury and pesticides and pest management.

The report’s subtitle states the contents provide “cost-effective, affordable measures to protect the health of students and staff.”

SOURCE

The End Of Green: EU Plans Re-Industrialisation Of Europe

Back to the Roots: The European Commission wants to make Europe the continent of industry again. By 2020, the share of industry of GDP should be increased dramatically. Europe’s plans, however, have been met with concerns from climate campaigners.

The European Commission has re-discovered industry as a source of wealth creation. It has vowed to create better conditions for investment in innovation and factories and wants to increase the rate of industrial added value in Europe.

“The Commission expects to reverse the declining role of the industry”, according to a strategy paper on industrial policy which EU Commissioner Antonio Tajani will present on Wednesday.

The share of industry in the EU’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) should “be raised to 20 percent by 2020,” promises the policy paper.

Re-industrialisation and climate protection are contradictory

This is a huge goal. In 2000, 22 percent of the EU’s GDP came from industry. Today, the figure is about 15 percent, according to official figures. But Günther Oettinger, Commissioner for Energy, calls for even more: the target should have the same importance as climate targets of the EU, which should also be reached by 2020.

“We need a fourth 20 percent value”, in addition to the relevant requirements for the reduction of greenhouse gases, the share of renewable energy, and energy saving, Oettinger said in Berlin.

But that would signal a small revolution because the re-industrialisation of Europe and maintaining its climate goals are contradictory, as business representatives pointed out. Until now, the EU Commission has given unconditional priority to the EU’s climate targets.

EU countries neglect industrial production

“We are in the midst of de-industrialization,” Oettinger said at a Berlin meeting of the European People’s Party (EPP) to whom his party, the German Christian Democrats also belongs. According to the Commissioner, EU states have neglected industrial production; “some on purpose, others by negligence”.

The United Kingdom, for example, has promoted this development on purpose – in favour of the financial industry, the City of London, which is in crisis now: there is an army of bankers, “half as old as I am, twice as clever, with specs but unemployed,” said Oettinger. For Finland too, he has a dire prediction: “Nokia will probably not survive for much longer”, he noted.

Hugging polar bears is useless

“Europe must reindustrialise for the 21st Century”, Tajani urges in his strategy paper because a “strong industrial base is vital to a prosperous and economically successful Europe”. The problem is: “The investment outlook is bleak” – and therefore a “third industrial revolution” is urgently needed.

The plan includes four “pillars” in order to “restore the attractiveness of Europe as a production location”: Increased investment in factories and research and development, secondly, the expansion of the internal market and “the opening of international markets.” Thirdly, the Commissioner wants to “open access to international markets” for companies, especially small and medium-sized ones, through new trading arrangements, for example. Finally, the Commission intends to take care of education and training, and to better match supply and demand for labour.

But for Oettinger one point is missing: the gradual de-industrialization is also caused by EU policy. If Europe wants to change the plight of industry, then “the number of do-gooders in the Euro Parliament should not remain as high” as during the introduction and intensification of the European climate targets in 2007 and 2009. It is also useless “to fly to Greenland to hug polar bears,” said Oettinger – a dig at German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who visited Greenland in 2007 in order to make her climate ambitions clear.

CEOs against too much climate policy

ThyssenKrupp chief Heinrich Hiesinger raised harsh accusations at the EPP Congress: “Future generations expect from us jobs,” he said – and not only a cleaner environment. He testified about high costs for companies as a result of climate policies, warned of job losses as a result of carbon regulation and complained about rising energy prices caused by Germany’s green energy transition.

The head of copper producer Aurubis, Peter Will Brandt, said that industry was suffering from government interference. Among the Conservatives present at the EPP Congress, the CEOs found support. While the EU should comply with existing climate targets, “one should not top them up,” said the EPP Group chief in the European Parliament, the Frenchman Joseph Daul. “I strongly advise against more stringent targets after 2020”, Oettinger told his audience, many of them MEPs.

CO2 targets that are too ambitious cause companies to leave

The Commissioner promised that his stated goal is to link energy policy, for which he is responsible, “not only with climate policy but also with industrial policy” – and thereby revoked an alliance which wanted to make Europe the greenest economy in the world.
The currently valid targets should be met, Oettinger said. “But CO2 reduction targets that are too ambitious lead to the relocation of firms, and this does not help the environment and is bad for jobs and growth.” One example he mentioned: SGL Carbon, owned by German shareholders. The carbon manufacturer wants to produce in the United States – because of much lower energy costs there.

Now, Oettinger wants to do something about it. He stressed the price advantage the U.S. has with regards electricity, oil and gas from which companies benefit. But he knows the limits of European options, even without polar bears huggers: “Take for instance Qatar,” he said. Anyone who wants to build a factory there, “gets the land at the airport for free and the oil tank filled for 20 years, also free of charge.”"We cannot keep up with that.”

Translation Philipp Mueller

SOURCE

A good infographic

It looks like Mr Thielmans could make a personal contribution to the environment by eating less

The Socialist mayor of Brussels, Freddy Thielemans, says limiting the number of children born to parents in Brussels should be an issue up for discussion as part of his city’s effort to combat poverty. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports:

The mayor of Brussels has said that families with many children were “a problem found among Muslims, Jews and even Christians.” Speaking at a debate in Brussels on Sept. 27, Mayor Freddy Thielemans added that the city was incapable of providing housing solutions that match the demands of families with many children and that bringing into the world “so many children is irresponsible.”

Methods to reduce population growth “should be a matter for discussion,” he also said.

The English-language Belgian site Flanders News writes that Thielemans was addressing the demographic boom in Brussels which he believes has fueled poverty.

His spokesman later clarified that limiting the number of children isn’t actually part of any policy plan, and even added that the issue wouldn’t be in the purview of local authorities.

Flanders News quotes the spokesman saying: “It’s a fact: in Brussels there are many families with seven or eight children. They apply for social flats, but flats to accommodate such numbers do not exist.”

Belgian politicians – including members of his own Socialist Party – are expressing dismay at the mayor’s remarks. Philippe Moureaux, who is the Socialist mayor of Molenbeek, posted on Twitter (via JTA): “In a free society, having children is a right which cannot be up for negotiation.” Flanders News adds:

Politicians from other parties have given Mr Thielemans’s initiative the thumbs down: Belgian Interior Minister Joëlle Milquet, who heads the Christian democrat list in the City, can hardly believe the mayor made the pronouncement, while Francophone liberal Alain Courtois says it’s a bad idea.

This blog that tracks what it believes to be anti-Christian developments at the European Union, which is headquartered in Brussels, writes of the mayor’s idea:

This leaves us speechless. But Thielemans statement is only coherent in this de-christianized society where killing of babies and elderly people is a mean to keep public spending down. Why not officially limit the number of children? And when he claims that the “problem” of large families is equally distributed between Muslims, Jewish and Christians than he is targeting only the most traditional ones that still have children.

JTA reports that Brussels’ population is 1.1 million. It quotes Belgian sociologist Jan Hertogen’s statistics which show that Muslims make up 22 percent of the city’s population. According to the CCOJB which represents Belgium’s French-speaking Jews, between 20,000 and 30,000 Jews live in Brussels.

But for Mr. Thielemans, even a 2-3% Jewish population is apparently too much.

SOURCE

Mr Thielmans is also an enemy of free speech

Electric cars are big polluters

TheBlaze has reported on the not so green side of electric cars before — those being charged with electricity from coal-fired power plants contribute more pollution than their gasoline-fueled counterparts. Now, a report of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology takes a look at the manufacturing of electric vehicles and found that’s not so great for the environment either.

“Although EVs are an important technological breakthrough with substantial potential environmental benefits, these cannot be harnessed everywhere and in every condition,” the study authors write. “Our results clearly indicate that it is counterproductive to promote EVs in areas where electricity is primarily produced from lignite, coal, or even heavy oil combustion.”

Published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, the researchers found the production of electric vehicles is “more environmentally intensive” than those with an internal combustion engine. Producing the electric powertrains and traction batteries are among the factors that “add significantly to the environmental impacts” of production.

The study also took a look at the environmental impact of electric vehicles compared to traditional cars when it comes to actually taking them on the road. Like the study we reported on earlier this year, EVs with electricity supplied by coal were found to have more of a “global warming potential” — increasing it by a factor of 17 to 27 percent — compared to traditional cars. EVs using electricity supplied by the “average” European source reduced global warming potential by 20 to 24 percent though.

“Because production impacts are more significant for EVs than conventional vehicles, assuming a vehicle lifetime of 200,000 km exaggerates the GWP benefits of EVs to 27 percent to 29 percent relative to gasoline vehicles or 17 percent to 20 percent relative to diesel because production-related impacts are distributed across the longer lifetime,” the study states.

The authors also found “human toxicity potential” (HTP) was a “potentially significant category” when it comes to making the shift between EVs and traditional cars. They write that HTP estimates increase with EVs in production and use compared to combustion-engine vehicles. These health impacts come from the mining of metal and coal used by EVs.

The researchers do acknowledge in the study though that with these results, it is important to remember since EVs are new to the market and mass production, “it is difficult to fix specific values for some of the parameters influencing the impacts of EVs.”

Still, overall they write their best estimate for global warming potential of just producing electric vehicles is twice that of previously reported studies. This is because they found higher impacts as they related to the battery and included other electronic components of the car in their assessment. The team states that this inventory is “a significant improvement in transparency.”

For electric vehicles to provide the environmental benefits that are often already ascribed to them, the study authors believe improvements need to be made as to the materials being used to make electric vehicles and the sources that power them for them first.

SOURCE

Climate change is the perfect subject for connoisseurs of irony

The post below appeared in The Providence Journal of February 8, 2012

In putting together my book on manmade global warming, I found myself bathing in irony more or less continuously. Below is a list of climate ironies in 2012:

Those who purport to love nature the most may actually fear it the most, and are in the midst of a terror-laden campaign to “control” it via carbon modulation.

Those who most need plentiful and affordable carbon-based fuels, i.e. all those living in the Third World (in India, China, Africa, South America, and rural Appalachia) are the ones the climate elite would deprive of carbon-based fuels.

The statement that “the science is in” is inherently ironic. The science is never in, and saying so reveals an antipathy for science.

Computer models have no grip on future climate whatsoever, and yet it is their terrifying predictions that have been used to control the debate about climate.

“Big oil” funds mainstream, alarmist climate scientists far more than it funds skeptics.

Windmills, symbols of gentleness and modernity, play a destructive roll in the environment and represent a step backward for humanity.

In a feast of self-righteous guilt, the greatest CO2 emitter per capita, the United States, is also the most important producer of climate-terror science.

The fascination with carbon dioxide among the public, supposedly representing some knowledge of climate science, actually represents almost complete ignorance of the subject. Not one in a hundred people possesses an idea what past climate has looked like on the planet.

Sea level, specifically the fear of it rising, is the most potent tool in the alarmists’ arsenal, but sea level has never been stable. It cannot be. A hundred and ten thousand years ago, during what’s known as the Eemian interglacial, sea level was 15 feet higher than today. This oceanic “highstand” occurred without the help of a single internal combustion engine.

Carbon dioxide has been labeled pollution, but it is colorless, odorless, non-toxic plant food.

Needlessly raising fuel prices in the name of carbon mitigation has the inevitable effect of freezing people to death in their homes, among other negative consequences. The moral superiority of climate alarmists is its own potent form of irony.

Those keeping the torch of knowledge alight in our time, the skeptics, are seen by most as morally corrupt and intellectually inferior. Among the many honest and highly accomplished climate scientists receiving such ill treatment is Henrik Svensmark, the Dane whose theory of cloud modulation will likely revolutionize the world’s understanding of the climate system.

Al Gore has received a Nobel Prize for his supposed furthering of climate science knowledge among lay people. Al Gore is personally responsible for dramatically enlarging the CO2 obsession among the public and thus enshrouding the world in scientific ignorance.

Most people on the left with passionately held beliefs about climate are in no position to debate it intelligently. They “feel” and they “know,” but they cannot discuss. Ad-hominem attacks against scientists, and writers who dare question climate orthodoxy by the way, are perpetuated by what is possibly the most potent PR smear machine on Earth.

“Climate change” is a fabulously ironic notion in and of itself. Climate has always changed. That is what it does. Now is a very nice time to be alive, climatologically speaking. The good old days of climate are happening at this very moment, in other words. People, for myriad reasons, wish to believe that they are so significant themselves that they must be witnessing something new. They must be.

Most meaningful measurements of the ocean-atmosphere system have been taking place for an astonishingly short period of time, nowhere near long enough to begin talking about “climate.” The single most significant measurement is probably the ARGO buoy system, measuring ocean heat content. Deployed in 2003, the system has not shown anything like the increase in heat predicted by James Hansen.

The world is cooler today than 8,000 years ago, and practically no one knows it.

The icier time, the Little Ice Age, which extended from about 1350 to about 1850 and that is looked back on so fondly by Al Gore and others, was no cakewalk. It was colder, icier, harsher, as its name implies, with more frequent crop failures and the suffering that entailed.

That coastal erosion is taken as proof of “climate change” is especially ironic. When have ocean storms and sands resulted in anything else? A single storm in 1362 killed at least 25,000 people and completely remade the coastline for large parts of both the Netherlands and Denmark. If such a storm were to take place today, it would be presented as evidence of “climate change.” Without irony, of course.

Even recent episodes of weather and climate history are successfully hidden from public view in plain sight. During the recent drought in Texas and Oklahoma, actual scientists went on the record stating that it was the “worst ever,” which is patently false. If the Dust Bowl were to take place again today, in exactly the same way that it unfolded in the 1930s, it would be seen as evidence of CO2’s awful power.

SOURCE

Rays of hope as Britain switches to new light bulbs and a grey autumn

Now there is a full ban, a strange, grey spell has been cast over the house - but there may be a solution

Light. Is that so much to ask for? On these autumnal evenings, as I cycle back from the office in the dark, I dream of a cosy home, glowing with rosy-cheeked children and rooms lit up with good cheer to welcome me.

But no. Each day, as I turn the key in the latch, I am reminded of the curse that has been inflicted upon our family.

A month after the final stage of the European ban on traditional light bulbs coming into force, the full horror of the legislation has cast its strange, grey spell. My home does not glow, the cheeks of the children are not rosy, the cheer has been cancelled.

The ban has been a long time coming. First, 100-watt bulbs were phased out in 2009. Then, last year, the 60-watt bulb was switched off. In September came the final extinction of traditional lights, with 40-watt bulbs no longer allowed to be “placed on to the market”. Shops can sell any remaining stock, but they cannot order fresh incandescent products.

This will be the winter of my discontent, and no amount of compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) can make it glorious summer.

I am prepared to accept that the brightness of these bulbs has improved in recent years, but they are still a poor, dim second best to the golden glow given off by a heated filament.

They are also unforgivably ugly, containing a bulky “starter plug” in the base, which means they protrude above lampshades, poking out their unwelcome bald heads like monks at a brothel.

But most of all it is the quality of the light they emit that upsets me. The CFL bulbs drape everything in a sickly pallor reminiscent of Romanian orphanages.

Every time I sit down to read a book, my heart sinks as the page reflects back a deathly, damp patch of bluish grey; it turns lovingly prepared food into something served up in a 24-hour carvery; a family game of Scrabble becomes supervised recreation hour at Pentonville Prison.

There was a Fast Show sketch that featured “Nice Johnny”, an amateur landscape painter, whose cheery demeanour would disappear the moment he took out his black paint. His mood would turn to dark despair as he proceeded to destroy his canvas and scream “black, black, all black”. Well, I am like him, pining for the moon that is weeping in a secret room.

What makes me most despondent is that this gloom seems unnecessary. I am not some flat-earther who thinks polar bears should be shot. I compost, I have lagged the loft, I switch off the television at night. However, the Carbon Trust calculates that an energy-efficient light bulb saves about 35kg of carbon dioxide emissions each year when compared with a standard bulb. This sounds like an awful lot, but it is no more than the emissions caused in the production of a 1kg pack of mince, or 24 litres of orange juice.

Good-quality light is a thing of wonder, but only since my home has been cast into the Stygian gloom have I fully appreciated its powers.

There is a 1962 public information film called “Power comes to Widecombe”, which showed the residents of a pretty Dartmoor village celebrating the switching on of electricity. Yes, in the same month as the Beatles had their first hit and James Bond suaved his way into our cinemas, parts of rural Britain were divorced from fast cars and pop music. In this corner of Devon, they relied on candles and oil lamps. How they cheered in the village hall when the switch was flicked! They even danced a jig.

After months of pond-like gloom, I too intend to recreate that Widecombe jig and make my house sparkle once again.

Luckily, my local ironmonger has started stocking “rough service” bulbs. These are a hard-wearing version of the traditional incandescent bulbs designed for electricians and builders, who were exempted from the ban. There is a label on the back saying: “Not suitable for household illumination”. But, of course, as the man who runs the shop tells me: “That’s there to exploit the loophole. And these bulbs are what customers keep asking for. People are coming in and buying 30 or 40 of them at a time.”

The man at the Energy Saving Trust, a body designed to convert all our homes to pallid, zero-carbon boxes, tells me that it would be irresponsible to encourage people to switch to these products. Then he concedes: “They are just as safe, in fact probably safer, than a standard bulb. But you better not quote me on that.”

I have stocked up. And will forgo steak and orange juice for a week.

SOURCE

Debunking climate propaganda earns you a 'fail’ in British exam

Two weeks ago I described one of this year’s A-level General Studies papers which asked candidates to discuss various “source materials” on climate change. Drawn from propaganda documents wholly biased in favour of climate alarmism, these contained a plethora of scientific errors. I suggested that, if any clued-up students tore these “sources” apart as they deserved, they might have been given a “fail”.

Sure enough, an email from the mother of just such a student confirmed my fears. Her son is “an excellent scientist” who got “straight As” on his other science papers, but he is also “very knowledgeable about climate change and very sceptical about man-made global warming”. His questioning of the sources earned an “E”, the lowest possible score. His mother then paid £60 for his paper to be re-marked. It was judged to be “articulate, well-structured” and clearly well-informed, but again he was marked down with “E” for fail.

This young man’s experience speaks volumes about the way the official global-warming religion has so corrupted our education system that it has parted company with proper scientific principles. In his efforts to reform our dysfunctional exam system, Michael Gove should ask for this bizarre episode to be investigated.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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7 October, 2012

Crookedness born of desperation

The sort of nonsense reported below never ceases. It is cold weather (winter) that most sends people to hospital and kills them but there is a never-ending attempt from Warmists to "prove" that it is actually warm weather that is bad for you. There may indeed be some conditions made worse by warm weather (e.g. mosquito-borne diseases) but the balance is clearly the other way

The funny bit about the study below, however, was that it claimed to cover temperature effects on health but their survey included only the months from May to September! They left winter completely out of it! What joke "research"! There are few people more crooked than a Greenie

The journal article is: "The Effect of Temperature on Hospital Admissions in Nine California Counties". Check it for yourself

The risk of heading to the emergency room for certain conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke, kidney disease and low blood pressure rises slightly as temperature and humidity increase, according to a new study from California.

Researchers also found that for a few conditions, including aneurysm and high blood pressure, higher temperatures were tied to a drop in ER visits.

"What we know about climate change is that heat waves in California and throughout the world are going to become more severe and more intense," said Rupa Basu, the study's lead author and an epidemiologist at the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. "With that, we're realizing this might implicate more health effects" from future temperatures.

That heat waves can lead to more deaths is already known, and one recent report predicts150,000 additional heat-related deaths will occur in U.S. cities by 2100 because of climate change (see Reuters story of May 24, 2012).

Basu and her colleagues looked at the relationship between heat and specific health conditions, rather than deaths, during the warm seasons in California from 2005 to 2008.

During this period there were 1.2 million visits to emergency rooms, the researchers report in the journal Epidemiology.

Basu's team divided the state into 16 climate zones and compared emergency room visits each day in a given area to local variations in temperature and humidity outside.

For each 10-degree increase in temperature, they saw increased ER visits for a variety of conditions - from a 1.7 percent rise in ER visits for heart disease to a 4.3 percent rise in diabetes visits to a 12.7 percent increase in visits for low blood pressure.

Conditions diagnosed as heat illness or heat stroke rose nearly four-fold for every 10-degree climb on the thermometer, and dehydration visits increased by 25 percent.

Although the study could not pinpoint why certain health conditions are more likely to send people to the ER on hotter days, Basu said it likely has to do with how our bodies adapt to heat.

SOURCE

America, Britain and Japan are the countries most sceptical that man is to blame for global warming

It appears that the existence of global warming, once such a hotly contested issue is now widely accepted, but the extent to which mankind is behind the changes still divides opinion.

A recent online poll found the percentage of people who believe global warming is happening is consistently high across the world, but belief that man is to blame is much lower, with the US, Britain and Japan being the most sceptical.

Of the 13,500 people surveyed from 13 countries the majority agree global warming is happening, basing this opinion on increased or excessive rainfall, rising average temperatures and droughts.

There was still some discrepancy across countries, with 98 per cent of those surveyed in Hong Kong and Mexico believing in climate change, compared to 72 per cent in the United States.

However there was far more of a divide between nations when it came to belief in the reason behind global warming.

Global warming, or the rise of the earth's atmosphere is believed in large part to be due to an increase of greenhouse gases, produced by industry emissions, the burning of fossil fuels and large scale farming, becoming trapped in the atmosphere.

The rate of increase is rising, with two thirds of the recorded 0.8°C rise early 20th century having occurred since 1980.

In response to the question of whether human activity was mainly responsible for climate change the U.S. Britain and Japan all revealed a fairly high level of skepticism.

In the United States 58 per cent agreed human activity was a contributing factor while in Britain it was 65 per cent and 78 per cent in Japan.

These scores were markedly lower than other nations. In Hong Kong 94 percent of citizens agreed, followed by 93 percent in Indonesia, 92 percent in Mexico and 87 percent in Germany.

The poll was conducted for the insurance firm Axa by opinion poll group Ipsos and questioned people in Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States.

Though no explanation was offered for the differing levels of acceptance of mankind’s role in global warming there seems to be a divide between those countries that are developing and those that are highly industrialized.

SOURCE

Britain 'to be hit by 70s-style blackouts withing three years' and EU rules may also force up bills, warns Ofgem

Green rules coming from the EU threaten to plunge Britain into 1970s-style blackouts in three years and lead to energy bills doubling.

Millions could be pushed into fuel poverty – having to choose between heating or eating – because Brussels diktats are closing power stations needlessly, the Government’s energy regulator warned yesterday.

The plants that remain in Britain will not be able to keep up with demand by winter 2015, a dire report from Ofgem predicted.

The chance of blackouts, similar to those seen during the three-day week crisis of the 1970s, is currently rated as one in 3,300 by the energy regulator. But it could drop to as low as one in 12 over the next three years, Ofgem said.

The UK’s spare generating capacity, currently 14 per cent, could drop to 4 per cent or even shrink to nothing at the same time, it warned.

The ‘alarming’ findings have left senior figures in the energy industry desperately worried, sources say, as the vast scale of the challenges facing the UK’s energy future becomes clear.

If the report’s predictions come true, Britain could be left dependent on an unreliable undersea cable line with France for its emergency energy supply.

National Grid and the Government could order mothballed generating plants to fire up again to plug the energy gap. The battle to keep the lights on could then become a stand-off between British ministers trying to keep the country running and European bureaucrats trying to enforce rulings on the UK.

Ofgem said the UK faced ‘an unprecedented combination of the global financial crisis, tough environmental targets and the closure of ageing power stations that would increase the risk to consumers’ energy supplies and could lead to higher bills’.

The report warned that there ‘will be a significant reduction in electricity supplies from coal and oil plants over the period, primarily driven by closures required by European environmental legislation’.

It added: ‘The risk of electricity shortfalls is expected to be highest at the end of the period, in 2015-16 and 2016-17.’

The most damaging piece of EU ‘green tape’, industry insiders say, is a 2001 measure designed to limit emissions for older power stations. The Large Combustion Plant Directive forces all coal or oil-fired power plants built before 1987 to install expensive emissions-reducing equipment or face closure by 2015.

It was spawned out of the Brussels obsession with weaning all European countries off coal power. But because of Britain’s rich mining heritage, it is a measure that hits the UK harder than any other EU member. Nine of the UK’s coal and oil-fired power stations are destined to shut by 2015. This represents about 15 per cent of the UK’s total generating capacity. This would leave Britain dependent on imported gas – which comes with a notoriously volatile price tag.

Respected energy analyst Peter Atherton said: ‘What’s difficult now is that there is legislation in place that will shut down plants deliberately. There are very good plants that are being ordered to shut before they should. The rest of the coal fleet is under a sentence of death.’

At the moment market energy prices are about £50 per megawatt hour – the unit used to measure power. Mr Atherton said prices could ‘easily’ hit £100 per megawatt hour in 2015. Energy Secretary Ed Davey said the Government would respond to the report before the end of the year. He said: ‘Security of electricity supply is of critical importance to the health of the economy and the smooth functioning of our daily lives.’

Consumer groups called on the Government to protect homeowners from ever-rising bills. Richard Lloyd, director of consumer group Which?, said: ‘It’s alarming to hear Ofgem predicting that we could be relying more on imported gas in a matter of years which could mean further price rises for hard-pressed consumers.’

SOURCE

The Limits of Wind Power

Very high wind penetrations are not achievable in practice due to the increased need for power storage, the decrease in grid reliability, and the increased operating costs

Environmentalists advocate wind power as one of the main alternatives to fossil fuels, claiming that it is both cost effective and low in carbon emissions. This study seeks to evaluate these claims.

Existing estimates of the life-cycle emissions from wind turbines range from 5 to 100 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour of electricity produced. This very wide range is explained by differences in what was included in each analysis, and the proportion of electricity generated by wind. The low CO2 emissions estimates are only possible at low levels of installed wind capacity, and even then they typically ignore the large proportion of associated emissions that come from the need for backup power sources (“spinning reserves”).

Wind blows at speeds that vary considerably, leading to wide variations in power output at different times and in different locations. To address this variability, power supply companies must install backup capacity, which kicks in when demand exceeds supply from the wind turbines; failure to do so will adversely affect grid reliability. The need for this backup capacity significantly increases the cost of producing power from wind. Since backup power in most cases comes from fossil fuel generators, this effectively limits the carbon-reducing potential of new wind capacity.

The extent to which CO2 emissions can be reduced by using wind power ultimately depends on the specific characteristics of an existing power grid and the amount of additional wind-induced variability risk the grid operator will tolerate. A conservative grid operator can achieve CO2 emissions reduction via increased wind power of approximately 18g of CO2 equivalent/kWh, or about 3.6% of total emissions from electricity generation.

The analysis reported in this study indicates that 20% would be the extreme upper limit for wind penetration. At this level the CO2 emissions reduction is 90g of CO2 equivalent/kWh, or about 18% of total emissions from electricity generation. Using wind to reduce CO2 to this level costs $150 per metric ton (i.e. 1,000 kg, or 2,200 lbs) of CO2 reduced.

Very high wind penetrations are not achievable in practice due to the increased need for power storage, the decrease in grid reliability, and the increased operating costs. Given these constraints, this study concludes that a more practical upper limit for wind penetration is 10%. At 10% wind penetration, the CO2 emissions reduction due to wind is approximately 45g CO2 equivalent/kWh, or about 9% of total.

More HERE

GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA

Three current articles below

An attempted Gore-fraud fails

AN Australian filmmaker refused to sell footage of a firestorm to former US vice-president Al Gore - to use in Mr Gore's climate presentations - because the event was unrelated to climate change.

Chris Tangey from Alice Springs Film and Television recorded the phenomenon on Curtin Springs Station, 360km south-west of Alice Springs, while scouting locations for a film.

The footage has been an international sensation reported widely in global media.

In an email exchange with Mr Gore's office, Mr Tangey said using the footage in a climate-change framework would be "deliberately deceptive", the Northern Territory News reports.

"I am aware that you may have missed the reporting on the very localised nature of this firestorm," Mr Tangey wrote.

"However, in any case, I am confused as to why you would offer to buy a licence to use it at all unless you had conducted even elementary research which might indicate that this Mt Conner event had direct linkage to global warming/climate change."

Joel Lisonbee, manager of the NT Climate Services Centre, agreed and said he would not link such an event to global warming.

"This event was better described as a dust devil within a fire. Most of us have seen dust devils and know they are not uncommon," Mr Lisonbee said.

"You need hot, dry conditions but you get those in desert-like conditions everywhere, regardless of global warming."

Jill Martin, from Mr Gore's office, said the famed American climate change advocate wanted to use the footage for up to five years in his PowerPoint presentations to live audiences worldwide.

"Mr Gore recently saw the amazing footage of the fire tornado taken on September 11, and is interested in showing it during some of the presentations he gives on environmental topics," she wrote.

But Mr Tangey said it was "difficult for me to imagine a fire event less relevant".

SOURCE

Queensland Premier Campbell Newman blocks "Green" energy rating system for new residential units

CAMPBELL Newman has pulled out of a tougher 6-star national energy rating for new residential units to slash an average $1200 from the cost of building an apartment.

The Premier has also scrapped a deal with the Federal Government for mandatory reporting of energy efficiency standards of new buildings in a move he describes as cutting red tape.

But the Federal Government has accused him of making it harder for people to cut their energy bills.

The deals were agreed between Anna Bligh and Julia Gillard as part of a national program of energy efficiency rules.

Mr Newman's decision to pull out is a blow to Ms Gillard's plans to streamline rules through the Council of Australian Governments.

The new 6-star rating would require better minimum levels of insulation and glazing in new apartment buildings to cut energy use for heating and cooling.

But the Premier warned the new rating would drive up the cost of new buildings without getting much return in lower power costs.

The tougher standards are estimated by Queensland to add an average $1200 per unit to construction costs but are only expected to reduce electricity costs by about $54 a year.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Mr Newman said the higher 6-star rating was unnecessary in Queensland and suggested it was designed for the climate in other states.

"The Queensland Government cannot justify the cost of transitioning from 5-star to 6-star requirements, especially given that Queensland's climate makes our 5-star units generally more energy efficient than 6-star units in other states," Mr Newman said in the letter.

The Premier also hit out at plans for mandatory disclosure of energy, greenhouse gas and water performance in new units at the point of sale.

He said the scheme would breach his own election commitment to cut red tape and was "unlikely to increase consumer uptake of sustainability features in homes".

Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change Mark Dreyfus attacked the move.

"Energy efficiency means cheaper electricity bills," Mr Dreyfus said.

But the Premier was backed by the building and property industry.

Master Builders' director, housing Paul Bidwell said the Federal Government "had not proved the benefits outweigh the costs" of the 6-star system.

SOURCE

Greens lose, miners win, under new Qld. govt.

THE end of Queensland's Wild Rivers legislation has breathed new life into a planned Cape York mine which will deliver up to 1700 jobs and add $1.2 billion to the economy.

The State Government has granted Cape Alumina's Pisolite Hills significant project status, meaning it will have to develop an extensive environmental impact study before approval can be granted.

The project was frozen in 2010 when the Bligh Government imposed a 500 metre wide buffer zone around waterways near the project area as part of the declaration of the Wenlock River Basin as a wild river area.

Cape Alumina said this had the effect of reducing the bauxite resources available to the project "for no tangible environmental benefit".

The company said it will now restart negotiations with the traditional owners and expects to start development of the mine in 2014, should approvals be granted.

"The project will be a boon for the traditional land owners and Aboriginal people of Mapoon and other western Cape York communities and (will) provide them with a rare opportunity to gain social and economic independence and prosperity," the company's managing director, Graeme Sherlock said.

Cape Alumina's studies show that the project would boost economic activity by $1.2 billion and create or sustain more than 1700 jobs over the mines 15-year life.

The boost to the far north Queensland economy will be more than $600 million and 1300 jobs.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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5 October, 2012

Another prophecy fails

Seventeen years ago, back in 1995, a book called The Dying of the Trees: The Pandemic in America’s Forests appeared. It was written by Charles E. Little, who is described on the back cover as a “veteran environmentalist.” Inside, a brief bio tells us he “worked for thirty years in the environmental field.”

The preface of the book declares:

the trees are dying everywhere, including everywhere in the United States of America. [page ix]

The back cover declares in large, uppercase text:

A FINAL WARNING FROM OUR WANING AMERICAN FORESTS

To what did Little attribute the apparent crisis? You guessed it, our nasty industrial society. You know, the same material prosperity that has provided sanitation, powered medical facilities, and generally extended all of our lifespans. Here’s Little’s analysis:

We are almost certainly witnessing the accumulated consequences of some 150 years of headlong economic development and industrial expansion, with the most impressive of impacts coming into play since the 1950s – the Age of Pollution. [bold added, pages ix-x]

Also in the preface Little claims that:

One of the two oldest woodlands on earth is simply falling down – dead – the effect of a whole range of human-caused maladies, exacerbated (here as elsewhere) by the perfidies of the U.S. government. [page x]

The book talks about “a potentially catastrophic failure of global ecological balances” and “nightmarish biochemical and atmospheric feedback loops.” It frets about the consequences for future generations.

In other words, this is an eco-alarmist book. One in a long, long line of similar books promising disaster and devastation if we don’t take the author’s advice and renounce “headlong economic development.”

Within its pages experts who make dramatic, doom-and-gloom predictions are portrayed as heroes. Those who challenge them are described as “vituperative” and abusive (see page 23).

The book’s conclusions are, of course, grim. On page 231 Little writes:

What is to become of us now? Have we not crossed the threshold? Are we not dealing with nature in another zone? The endgame?

He references a 1993 article by E.O. Wilson titled Is Humanity Suicidal? He also quotes James Lovelock saying:

The human species is, in a word, an environmental abnormality.

Little tells us that we should plant billions of new trees, reduce “the pollution caused by gluttonous fossil-fuel use” back to the level of the mid-1950s, and stop “the cutting of forests” (page 232-233).

Using a tactic common to contemporary eco-activists, he tells us about his 12-year-old granddaughter who, he says:

worries constantly about the environment; sometimes she is sick with worry. [page 233]

He reports that, during the writing of the book, he suffered a

string of illnesses…so atypical that I must ascribe them, at least in part, to psychological causes. Despair. [pages 233-234]

The book’s final page contains phrases such as:

I have learned things I wish I had not learned…I have learned that we have crossed the threshold.

It warns that America’s forests are in such dire straits that they can’t possibly recover quickly. In his view, “at least a century” will be required to allow nature to begin (his italics) to “heal herself.”

Seventeen years later what can we conclude from all of the above? America obviously didn’t take Little’s advice. It continued to pursue economic prosperity for its citizens. It didn’t outlaw logging. Nor did it reduce its fossil-fuel consumption back to the level of the 1950s.

So were US forests wiped out? Were Little’s prophesies even remotely on target? Was his despair rational? Was it appropriate for his own environmental fixations to cast such a shadow over the childhood of his granddaughter?

In 2007, a mere 12 years after Little’s dismal tome appeared, the Society of American Foresters issued a glossy 76-page report titled The State of America’s Forests. The executive summary says that while the relationship between humanity and American forests has sometimes been bumpy, overall this is:

a story of regrowth, renewal, and abundance…

It further contains statements such as these (all direct quotes):

The number of acres of forestland in the United States has remained essentially the same during the past century.
Assessments of biodiversity on the nation’s forests have found that the annual rate at which species are listed as threatened or endangered has declined fivefold.
the standing inventory (the volume of growing stock) of hardwood and softwood tree species in US forests has grown by 49 percent between 1953 and 2006.

In other words, despite all his research and all his anxiety, Charles Little had no ability to predict the future as it would appear even 12 years later.

The parallels with climate activist Kevin Anderson, about whom I wrote recently, are eerie. Seventeen years ago Charles Little was prepared to deny his granddaughter and all of America’s other young people the rewards, experiences, and opportunities that come with a prosperous way of life.

In the name of protecting forests that were apparently never seriously threatened.

SOURCE

New science: Sea level rise not a problem for your children, or theirs (recurring)

A new, first-of-its-kind comprehensive scientific analysis has shown that there is little to fear from rising sea levels driven by global warming. The likelihood is that the 21st century will see rises much like those of the 20th, and even in the worst possible case sea levels in 2100 will be far below those foreseen by alarmists.

There's a catch, of course: on a timescale of many centuries, serious alarmist-type rises in sea levels are to be expected. Even if humanity ceases all carbon emissions right now, in the year 3000AD the seas will have risen by 1.1m, according to Professor Philippe Huybrechts and his team.

Nothing much doing until 2200AD at the earliest

As most Reg readers know, the various land-based ice sheets and glaciers of planet Earth today hold enormous amounts of water. As and when they melt, the potential is there for huge rises in sea level. This has led climate-alarmist campaigners to suggest in reputable peer-reviewed journals that "scientists" generally expect the seas to rise by a metre or more - flooding millions of homes - as soon as the year 2100.

In fact even the reliably alarmist Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change only forecasts 26-59cm rises in the 21st century, compared to the approximate 17cm seen in the 20th. That's because the vasty ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are so very vast that they will take a very long time indeed to melt, even under the much-elevated temperatures forecast under global warming theories.

“Ice sheets are very slow components in the climate system; they respond on time scales of thousands of years,” explains Professor Huybrechts.

According to a statement supplied to the Register:

"The researchers believe this is the first study to include glaciers, ice caps, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and the thermal expansion of the oceans into a projection of sea-level rises. They did so by using a climate modelling system called LOVECLIM, which includes components from a number of different subsystems.

The polar ice sheets are not normally included into projections due to computational constraints, whilst researchers often find it difficult to account for the 200 000 individual glaciers that are found all over the world in very different climatic settings."
Thus it is that the Professor Huybrechts and his colleagues, in new research published yesterday, estimate that even in the worst-case-possible situation the maximum rise in sea levels in 2100 will be approximately 30cm, well down at the low end of the IPCC range and less than twice the rise seen last century. More probably, the result will be lower and the 21st century will be much the same as the 20th in terms of sea levels.

Of course, if Huybrechts and his crew are right, bigger rises will still come - just not for centuries. Worst case, the 1m rise bandied about by doomsayers might be here in 2200AD: more likely, not until 2300 or even later. In the year 3000, no matter what we do, we'll have a rise of a metre or more and it could be as much as 4m or even 6.

The research is published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

“If climatic warming will be severe and long-lasting all ice will eventually melt," comments Professor Huybrechts.

“Mankind should limit the concentration of greenhouse gases at the lowest possible level as soon as possible. The only realistic option is a drastic reduction of the emissions. The lower the ultimate warming will be, the less severe the ultimate consequences will be.”

Comment and Background

With the greatest possible respect to Professor Huybrechts, while only a fool would fail to listen to his advice in his specialist subject - that is, how much sea level rise will there be assuming various global warming scenarios - his advice on what should be done about it (in which he is well out of his area of expertise) makes very little sense.

It should be borne in mind here that in most places the sea rises and falls every single day on a scale measured in metres, and even more during unusual events (big storms from certain directions when the moon is in certain positions etc). Existing human infrastructure that can cope with these comparatively everyday occurrences will not be much affected by rises on the 30cm scale, and it doesn't cost a lot to cope with such rises or indeed much bigger ones. (For example the Netherlands - most of which has always relied on artificial defences to keep out the sea since well back into pre-industrial times - plans to be ready for sea level rises of over a metre by 2100, and expects this to cost a relatively trivial €1bn per year, a small sum compared to any developed nation's roads budget - let alone a major cost such as health, welfare etc. Details here.)

It's also worth noting that by the year 2100 the USA (for instance) will on current rates have built enough new homes to replace all those that could be threatened by a 1m rise fourteen times over. By 2200 when such a rise might actually in the worst case have happened - this is assuming no economic growth and no Netherlands-style sea defence - 30-odd new homes will have appeared for every one lost to the sea.

By the year 3000, one might reasonably hope that people might be living on other planets: but even if they aren't, and provided we don't somehow permanently strangle the global economy (for instance by making energy hugely more expensive ...) it's safe to say that nobody will have noticed the costs of a few metres of sea level rise. It's more than likely that new construction materials or floating cities or flying cars or some other development will have made sea-level rises largely irrelevant: even if this doesn't happen, only a totally stagnant humanity that hadn't developed either economically or technologically from this point could really have been bothered by such sea level rises on such a timescale.

But an immediate and drastic cut in greenhouse-gas emissions, as Professor Huybrechts advocates, really would produce serious misery and hardship for billions of people - starting straight away and going on for a very long time if not forever. It is frankly bizarre advice to give, based on the results his team has produced.

Regardless of that, everyone now reading this can at least relax, happy in the knowledge that not only we but our children and our children's children (and their children even unto say the sixth generation) will not have to face so much as a metre of sea level rise.

SOURCE

Deutsche Bank Closes Down Climate Casino

For the last 5 years, Deutsche Bank has published an annual climate report, discussing investment opportunities in the field of climate change. The latest report, titled “Investing in Climate Change 2012″ was published in May 2012 and is available on the website of Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors. If you want, you can inform yourself on 104 pages about how you can make money with climate change.

But now the end has come for the seven-member team of the climate change analyst department in New York. On 30 September, Deutsche Bank shut down their climate department. Is Deutsche Bank chairman Anshu Jain having doubts in light of the global warming standstill now in its 14th year? On 28 September, Financial Times Germany reported the closure of DB’s climate change department:

“The New York-based department was supposed to stand for progress and perhaps also to show Deutsche Bank’s nicer side: Earning money via the mega-issue of climate change while helping to stop global warming. But under the leadership of its new bosses Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen, there is no more room for this image enhancement department. After all, what good is all this progressiveness when it isn’t reflected in profits on the balance sheets? [...]

Has Deutsche Bank said goodbye now to climate investments? Not really. The subsidiary DWS still manages around 5.3 billion Euros in existing funds. Some customers can still be enticed with the ‘Climate’ label …..”
SOURCE

The Importance of Long-Term Temperature and CO2 Data

While perusing a paper recently published in the Journal of Archaeological Science (Drake, 2012), we read the author's account of how most of the Greek palatial centers of the Late Bronze Age were either destroyed or abandoned between the 13th and 11th centuries BCE, and how thereafter - during what has come to be known as the Greek Dark Ages - the people affected by this climatic cooling suffered significantly in multiple ways until the advent of the Roman Warm Period.

But that is not what this editorial is about. What we found to be of most interest is something that has been known (by us and many others) about earth's climate for quite some time now; and that is the long-term temperature record produced by the Greenland Ice Sheet Project (GISP2), which is depicted below, as plotted by Drake but based on data reported by Alley (2004).

Figure 1. The past 5,000 years of the GISP2 temperature history of the Greenland Ice Sheet, adapted from Drake (2012), who denoted the general locations of the Late Bronze Age (LBA), the Roman Warm Period (RWP) and the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) in their original work.

In viewing this history, it is most interesting to note (and know) that over its first 4,800 years (that's 96% of the record) - when the temperature varied all over the place - the atmosphere's CO2 concentration was extremely stable, hovering between about 275 and 285 ppm; while over the last 200 years (the remaining 4% of the record), when the temperature shows but a fraction of a degree warming, the air's CO2 concentration rose by well over an extra 100 ppm.

Clearly, the air's CO2 content is not a major driver of earth's temperature. In fact, it may not even be a minor driver.

SOURCE

Call from the German Left: Comrades, Throw Out The Tree-Huggers!

The muesli cake milieu of green high earners is courted by all German parties – but many ordinary people no longer feel represented. The Social Democrats (SPD) in particular often try to be greener than the greens. But the comrades can only win elections if they get rid of their green obsession.

The SPD was once a party of progress and growth. You know it because at the end of a SPD party conference, everybody stands up and sings the old songs of the labour movement: “From the dark past bright light shines forth towards the future,” they sing, and “With us a new era is arriving”. The lyrics are about awakening and confidence, about new “housing blocks” and “hammer blows”.

Alas, all this has become folklore. In wide parts of the SPD, the idea of progress, awakening and heavy industry are quite out of fashion. Instead, the green Zeitgeist has gripped Social Democrats. Everything must be organic, must be resource-efficient and sustainable. Once, the comrades supported worker participation in board rooms and Labour Day. Today, many support the ecological transformation of the industrial society and Veggie Day.

The parliamentary commission on “Growth, Prosperity and Quality of Life” of the Bundestag (German Parliament) is dominated by ideologues like the former SPD environment secretary Michael Müller. Red and green apostles work here hand in hand. 30 years after former SPD Prime Minister of Hesse, Holger Börner, said that he would like to hit green riot thugs “in the face” with a batten, Social Democrats and Greens are using the intimate “Du”. They praise the meaningful sufficiency and work together to accustom citizens to a “culture of less”.

New technologies? Oh, there “greened” social democratic politicians wag considerably seriously with their fingers and apply the precautionary principle. They could be harmful to the environment after all. With regards genetically modified crops they are sceptical or hostile altogether. Stem cell research? Rather not. Nanotechnology? Only with caution. Shale gas development by means of fracking: only under the strictest conditions.

The so-called carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, with which carbon dioxide could be stored in underground landfills, has been met with resistance by SPD-governed German states in the Bundesrat (the upper house of the German parliament) after Greenpeace warned of possible “outgassing”.

“The SPD has turned from the party of technological progress into the party of technology rejection,” the former SPD chairman Franz Müntefering once complained, only proving, however, that he is a man of the past, according to his ecologically committed party colleagues.

Those who rent homes are financing the solar roofs of homeowners

The change in attitude shows itself most clearly in the debate about the rising cost of electricity. German citizens are forced to pay about 15 billion Euros this year to subsidise renewable energy, half of which for particularly inefficient photovoltaic. Next year this amount is likely to reach 20 billion Euros, which corresponds to 175 Euros per household. The money flows from the bottom up, i.e. from the poor to the rich. Those who rent flats finance the solar roofs of homeowners, a whole new interpretation of the solidarity principle to which Germans have to get used to. Consumer advocates are outraged. They estimate that already up to 600,000 people sit in the dark because they can no longer pay their electric bills. A windfall for the SPD, you might think.

But instead of getting upset about rising fuel poverty, some comrades are rather upset about the consumer advocates. An SPD’s spokesperson for the environment, Ulrich Kelber, accuses them of having a “short-term approach”. He supports solar subsidies; he has always fought significant subsidy cuts in past years. No wonder that the solar lobby considers Kelber a reliable ally. According to Kelbers’s website, photovoltaic companies donated total of 90,000 Euros to his local party group from 2007 to 2009.

The question is whether the green obsession is benefiting the Social Democrats politically. Manfred Güllner, head of the polling institute Forsa and long-time adviser to ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, does not think so. Güllner believes it is a political error to pay tribute to the supposedly green Zeitgeist: “The greener the entire political class becomes and the more unilaterally the vested interests of the green movement are implemented, the more the great majority of non-green, ordinary people feel neglected”, he writes in his new book The Greens – boom or crash?

Güllner, an SPD member since 1964, shows how his party has chummed up more and more with green high-income earners, driving away their former core voters. Instead of promoting social housing, the SPD watched how former residents in historical neighbourhoods were displaced by ecological restoration and beautification measures. Tempo 30 zones and local arts centres have been planned over the needs of ordinary people. With regards energy policy, the SPD has also made the mistake of plagiarizing the greens.

“When it comes to energy, what the majority of people are really interested in is whether or not, in the future, there will be enough and affordable energy for the public and businesses. This concern has been shoved into the background,” said the pollster.

Fight the Greens instead of chasing them

Indeed, there are a number of Social Democrats who share his analysis in principle. North Rhine Westphalia (NRW) economics minister Garrelt Duin, together with the chairman of the Young Socialists, Sascha Vogt, recently published a book titled Windmill meets Reality. It is a celebration of industry and technology. It is obvioius that Duin does not trust the Green Economy, and not just since German solar manufacturers are going bankrupt one by one.

The same is true for Hubertus Heil, the former SPD General Secretary, and the NRW state premier Hannelore Kraft. And the SPD’s party leader, Sigmar Gabriel, recently made the point that one should not forget that wind turbines could not be produced without steel, plastic, mechanical and electrical engineering.

Güllner’s advice to the SPD is to fight the greens, rather than to chase them. According to him, the green Zeitgeist is an elite phenomenon, a “narrow segment” as he sees it from the perspective of the pollsters. The green wave has never arrived among the vast majority of ordinary families, in contradiction to repeated claims. But while the ecologically correct muesli cake milieu is courted by all parties, many ordinary people feel poorly represented and have been turned off voting altogether. Güllner sees this as a threat to Germany’s political system.
According to him, it would be a blessing for German democracy if the comrades threw out the tree huggers

SOURCE

Al Gore Walks Away From Green Energy

Do as I say, not as I do?

When Al Gore talks, people listen. Just ask the folks who hand out Academy Awards and Nobel Peace Prizes.

Al Gore also talks to investors. Since 2007, the former Vice President in Bill Clinton's administration has been preaching the benefits of putting your money where his mouth is: Alternative energy.

But if Al Gore has any message for investors today, it might very well be this: "Stay the hell away from alternative energy!"

Not that he would say so. At least out loud.

Reading through the promotional materials he puts out through his company, Generation Investment, it is hard to tell whether his "Client Update" is selling investments in his Climate Solutions Fund or memberships in the Sierra Club.

"Scientific fundamentals continue to point to a need for urgent action on climate," Gore says. Just like his Oscar-winning movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," it has lots of cool charts and graphics.

Climate policy is still firmly on the political agenda and corporate climate-related activity is increasingly strategic. Innovation is driving costs down and improving the business case for low carbon and high efficiency solutions.

This goes on for 20 pages. But even Gore does not seem to be listening anymore.

Gore's company files a quarterly report with the SEC that tells a different story about the 30 stocks in its portfolio. His company's public investments in wind, solar, biomass and other alternative energy to combat climate change are practically non-existent.

But his portfolio is top-heavy in high-tech, medical instruments, and even more pedestrian investments in companies such as Amazon (AMZN), eBay (EBAY), Colgate Palmolive (CL), Nielsen (NLSN), Strayer University (STRA), and Qualcomm (QCOM).

He is also big in China, with stakes in a big Chinese travel agency, CTrip, and China's largest medical equipment manufacturer, Mindray Medical.

And if you want a piece of the natural gas pipeline game -- heavily dependent on the environmentally suspect fracking -- you can find that in Gore's portfolio as well with Quanta Services (PWR).

Generation Investment even had a piece of Staples (SPLS) at one point -- but that was before anyone realized that was Mitt Romney's love child.

Not an Apple (AAPL) to be found, despite the fact that Gore sits on its board of directors. But Generation Investment at one time did have a piece of General Electric (GE) and Procter & Gamble (PG) and that global warming game-changer, PayChex (PAYX).

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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4 October, 2012

Warmist finally notices Antarctica

In the NYT, Justin Gillis points out that the ice loss in the Arctic is greater than the ice gain in Antarctica -- but his use of extreme-group statistics greatly exaggerates the effect. Climatologist Patrick Michaels points out that by using all the data we find that the Arctic loss is only about twice the Antarctic gain. And that is no surprise since the Antarctic is already very cold and much of the Arctic loss was caused by storms rather than any warming.

The main point Gillis overlooks however is that the effects are not global. They are local -- completely the opposite of what Warmism predicts

Compared to the change in the Arctic, what does the Antarctic summer minimum look like? Well, the trend there is definitely opposite to the Arctic trend — summer sea ice is growing through time. But not by that much. And this past summer melt season did not set any record; it was only the sixth-highest minimum in the satellite era.

Again, let’s average the first five years of the satellite record, from 1979 to 1983. In that period, the sea ice left at the end of the summer melt season covered about 13.8 percent of the surface of the Southern Ocean. In the most recent five years, the average rose to 14.6 percent of the ocean.

So, expressed as a percentage of ocean cover, the decline going on in the Arctic is almost 25 times the increase going on in the Antarctic. Walt Meier, a top scientist at the snow and ice center, told me, “It should be pretty clear that the change in sea ice in the Arctic is much more substantial than what is happening in the Antarctic.”

We’ll do similar math for the winter maximum in Antarctica. In the first five years of the satellite era, the average sea ice peaked at 91.9 percent of the surface of the Southern Ocean. In the most recent five years, counting this record-high year, it increased to cover 92.9 percent of the ocean.

How does that compare to the trend in the Arctic for the same season? I’ll spare readers another deluge of numbers, but in percentage of ocean cover, the decline in Arctic winter ice is eight times as fast as the increase in Antarctic winter ice.

A search of skeptic blogs for that particular statistic comes up empty, somehow.

Now, don’t get me wrong: What is happening to sea ice in the Antarctic is very much an interesting scientific question. Why is it growing slightly even as the planet, over all, is warming up? Far from hiding anything, mainstream climate scientists are all over that issue, and have been for years. For a summary of their research, check out this fascinating article from the magazine Oceanography.

More HERE

Steve Goddard is wrong because he's right

Or something. Steve wrote that "Antarctica has broken the record for the greatest sea ice extent ever measured at either pole." Alex Halperin, news editor at the Leftist "Salon", didn't like that so he consulted a climatologist who told him:

"The end of the Antarctic winter — the northern hemisphere’s early fall — is generally when the expanse of Antarctic ice reaches its greatest breadth. Indeed, this year’s record high of 19.5 million square kilometers was a jump from 18.8 million last year. (The previous high of 19.35 was in 2006.) However, Meier called this year’s total “barely above what we might consider a normal range.”"

SOURCE

"So there!", Halperin seems to say, ignoring what he was told. His tame climatologist ADMITTED that Steve was right and the Antarctic extent was at a record high. Warmists really are pathetic

Warmist admits that Warmist policies are costly

The problem is that you don't always get to talk about political issues the way you want to. Your opponents get to talk about them too. And they won't be shy about labeling virtually any serious green policy as a price hike for consumers and a regulatory burden for business. What's more, conservatives have an unusual advantage when they say this: it's actually true. Things like carbon taxes and cap-and-trade policies really will increase the price of energy for consumers. That's the whole point. Conversely, if you limit yourself to generally popular issues like CAFE standards and building more solar plants in the desert, voters will support it, but only because the price hike is small enough (and hidden enough) that it has only a modest impact on climate change in the first place.

What really matters, then, is what happens when potential voters are presented with messaging from both sides. To get an idea of how effective this is, take a look at the Gallup polls below. The first poll asks people if the threat of global warming is generally exaggerated or not, and it hits bottom in 2006, at about the time of the release of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Then it starts to rise as conservatives fight back, reaching a peak in 2010, shortly after the release of the "Climategate" emails. It's gone down since then, which is good news, but it's still way higher than it was even five years ago. Likewise, the bottom chart shows that even Democrats and Independents are far more likely to think that news of global warming is exaggerated than they were back in 2006.

So there's a long way to go before public opinion is anywhere near where it needs to be. We need to get to a point where even if people know that it means an increase in gasoline and electricity prices — even if their noses are rubbed in it — they still support serious green policies. This is the work ahead of us.

More HERE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)

100 Million Examples of Global Warming Absurdity

It’s desperation time for global warming alarmists. Don’t believe me? Just look at what they’re parading as their best media story right now.

They’re in a frenzy this week, crying “The Sky Is Falling!” in light of predictions by a group called DARA that global warming will kill more than 100 million people during the next 18 years and destroy the global economy. Yes, you read that right – global warming will kill more than 100 million people during the next 18 years!

The predictions are laughable on their face. Perhaps if the head of some respected scientific organization made such claims, we would chalk up the ridiculous predictions as an early sign of dementia and mercifully decline to report the predictions so as not to embarrass the person as he or she checks out of the real world.

But this is not an accomplished scientist or a respected scientific organization making the ridiculous predictions. DARA is an obscure, heretofore irrelevant non-government organization dedicated to guilting people in wealthy nations into forking over money to the rest of the world due to a host of Western Democracy sins, and especially our climate change sins. The problem for DARA is that up until now, nobody has known or cared about the group’s existence. DARA has long been in the lower minor leagues of non-government organizations, assuming there is a lower minor league desperate enough to have them.

But DARA, as irrelevant as it was, figured something out. Make ridiculously unsupported global warming claims and big league environmental activist groups will beat a path to your door. In fact, the more ridiculously stupid the claims, the more street cred you will get with environmental activist groups and their liberal media sock puppets. So DARA decided to shoot for the big leagues and out-ridiculous every alarmist global warming prediction the group had ever seen.

Not that DARA made any effort to mask its alarmist, redistributionist predispositions. At the very beginning of the DARA paper making the alarmist global warming predictions, the group added a full page containing nothing but the words, “Dedicated To The Innocent Victims of Climate Change.”

Now THAT’S an objective scientific study for you!

So a heretofore irrelevant activist group with an economic self-interest in selling a global warming crisis absurdly and unverifiably predicts that global warming will cause catastrophic misery and death (over 100 million people killed during the next 18 years!), and the alarmists trumpet it like news of the Apollo astronauts first setting foot on the moon.

“Global Warming Wiped 1.2% from Global GDP, May Claim 100 Million Lives,” screams a headline in the International Business Times.

“Shocking Study: By 2030, Climate Change Could Kill 100 Million People,” claims Yahoo News.

“Climate Change Deaths Could Total 100 Million by 2030 If World Fails to Act,” reads a headline in the Huffington Post.

“Climate Change Reducing Global GDP by $1.2 Trillion,” claims a Businessweek headline.

It all comes down to credibility. Alarmists claim global warming will kill more than 100 million people during the next 18 years. Based on such an absurd prediction, they want us to trust them to reshape our society and govern the world economy.

No thank you – the rest of us live in the real world.

SOURCE

Crony Capitalism Gone Wild: Duke Energy CEO Backs President Obama

Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers sets a new standard for crony capitalism. While the vast majority of crony capitalists are pragmatic businessmen who pursue a partnership with President Obama for purely financial reasons, Rogers is a different breed.

Most CEOs are political agnostics and see cronyism as a shortcut to bypass the competitive free enterprise system to a pot of gold. These business executives walk a political tight rope, trying to balance the benefits of political favors against the risk of drawing media scrutiny and controversy of looting the public treasury.

For Jim Rogers, passion for progressive politics appears as great as being a CEO and making money.

In addition to reaping the financial benefits of collaborating with President Obama’s energy policy, Rogers exceeds the actions of crony capitalists by aggressively using Duke Energy’s assets to advance left-wing policies.

And Rogers does not stop there. Extraordinarily for a CEO, Rogers also aggressively seeks the media limelight to defend the president.

Duke Energy’s role in the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC exposed Rogers’ passion for the Democratic Party and President Obama.

Rogers went all in for the convention and for President Obama’s re-election. He was the co-chair of the host committee and according to news sources he personally donated $100,000 – the maximum allowed – to support the convention. Rogers and his wife gave $10,000 to the President’s campaign.

Clearly, what Rogers does with his personal time and money is his right.

However, Rogers crossed the conflict of interest line when he used Duke Energy’s assets to back the financing for the DNC by establishing a $10 million line of credit. The company also provided the Duke Energy building’s office space for DNC staffers as an in-kind contribution.

The line of credit was a creative way to circumvent the DNC ban of direct corporate support for the convention.

Using Duke Energy as a bank for the Democratic Party is inconsistent with expectations of shareholders that invested in a utility company.

Because the host committee fell short of its fundraising goal of about $37 million, according to Bloomberg News, it was forced to use the line of credit with the details of the Duke Energy loan to be revealed in a report to the Federal Elections Commission in October.

In addition using his company as a bank, Rogers also defended President Obama’s record. In an interview with Soledad O’Brien on CNN during the Democratic Convention, Rogers defended the President, saying, “Well, from an energy sector, we're better off today than we were four years ago. Think about it. President Obama pursued all-of-the-above strategy.”

By any objective measure, Obama’s energy policy is not for all sources of energy.

Jim Rogers’ answer totally ignored President Obama’s war on coal, and the dramatic rise in gasoline prices that are a result of the President’s energy policy. In fact, because of EPA regulations, Duke Energy is closing coal-fired power plants in Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and South Carolina.

Rogers was a major backer of the President’s cap-and-trade energy policy. In an effort to pass the law, Rogers aggressively lobbied for the legislation including testifying in Congress and joining the United States Climate Action Partnership – a coalition of businesses and environmental activist groups that want nationwide limits on carbon dioxide emissions.

Unsurprisingly, Rogers’ support of President Obama and his policies has rewarded Duke Energy and its CEO generously. Duke Energy was a grant recipient of Obama’s stimulus plan, including a whopping $200 million award from the Department of Energy for development of smart grid technology.

Rogers was also rewarded for his DNC fundraising chore by obtaining a speaking slot at the Democratic Convention.

It’s possible that Jim Rogers’ unwavering support of President Obama is motivated by seeking a position in the next Obama Administration if the President is re-elected. In 2008, The Washington Post mentioned Rogers as a candidate to head the Energy Department, and his herculean efforts supporting Obama in 2012 might be enough to secure the post.

Rogers denied he was angling for the Energy Department post in response to a question posed by my wife Deneen Borelli at Duke Energy’s 2011 shareholder meeting. Despite his denial, his actions point to a different conclusion.

Undoubtedly, Rogers has gone above and beyond to trumpet the progressive agenda, and to support the re-election effort of President Obama.

While crony capitalism undermines free enterprise, Roger’s form of progressive cronyism offers a more dangerous version, where a CEO uses his company to support his personal political beliefs and possibly secure his next job.

SOURCE

Polar bear alarmists use secret data too

How unsurprising

In my last post, Western Hudson Bay polar bears are not like the others – Part 1, I stopped at the point where the following question arose: “The documented decline in cub survival and condition of females documented above occurred between 1985 and 1992 – what about now?“

I promised to address that question in a separate post because it revealed some interesting issues that deserve star billing.

What I found might surprise you: apparently, virtually all of the data supporting a decline in the western Hudson Bay polar bear population since 1985 has been collected but has not been published. This revelation came from none other than the 2012 summary by Ian Stirling and Andrew Derocher that I’ve mentioned before here.

Stirling and Derocher (2012:2699) state that “the mean mass of adult females [in western Hudson Bay] declined (by about 20%) between 1980 and 2007 (Fig. 5).” It is this parameter (mean body mass of females), what they call “a proxy for body condition”, that has apparently had detrimental effects on reproduction (including production of triplets (litter size) and age at weaning) and cub survival that is “statistically linked to the progressively earlier breakup of sea ice.”

However, it turns out that the data used to construct Figure 5 (as well as Figure 4, “relationship between date of breakup and the physical condition of adult females and adult males…”) is not only out of date (it goes to 2007 only) but it uses unpublished data.

Not even “paper submitted” or “in review” but information collected from studies that have not been peer-reviewed and data that cannot be verified. [two similar figures appear in Stirling 2011, pgs. 290 ("fig. 20") & 285 ("fig. 19"), see my review of his book here].

I’ve copied Figure 5 from the Stirling and Derocher paper below. The “Stirling and Parkinson 2006″ paper cited in the original caption presents data from 1980 to 2004 only, which means the additional data (2005-2007) are held by in the private archives of Nick Lunn and Ian Stirling.

So what about the evidence that cub survival and other reproductive parameters (like litter size and age at weaning) in the WHB population have changed as a result of declines in the body condition of females since 1985?

Regarding recent proportion of independent yearlings (weaned 1.5 year olds), Stirling and Derocher (2012:2698) state:

“the proportion of independent yearlings fell from over 81% before 1980 to a mean of 34% in 1980-1992 (Derocher & Stirling, 1995). By the late 1990s, the proportion of independent yearlings dropped to <10 1999="1999" 2000s="2000s" al.="al." almost="almost" and="and" by="by" data="data" early="early" et="et" nonexistent="nonexistent" p="p" stirling="stirling" the="the" tirling="tirling" unpublished="unpublished" was="was">
Regarding incidence of triplets, Stirling and Derocher (2012:2698) state: “Triplet litters, which comprised 12% of 265 litters between 1980 and 1992 (Derocher & Stirling, 1995), are now rarely seen (I. Stirling, unpublished data).“

[update Sept. 28, 2012: Robinson et al. (2012:139) also cite unpublished data from Ian Stirling ("I. Stirling, Canadian Wildlife Service, personal communication") for the statement that triplets are "less commonly observed today." ]

Again, not “paper submitted” or “in review” but “take Ian Stirling’s word for it, you don’t need to see the numbers.” Conclusions based on information collected from studies whose methods have not been peer-reviewed, using data that cannot be verified by anyone.

So in fact, all three of the biological parameters that Derocher and Stirling (2012) claim changed in a significant way since the early 2000s in WHB – that are “statistically linked to progressively earlier breakup of sea ice” – are based on unpublished data. They have drawn conclusions based on data that we are not allowed to see.

If Stirling has up-to-date information that conclusively demonstrates how dire this situation is, why on earth has he – or whoever collected it – not published that data?

While Stirling and Derocher (2012) claim to “summarize the evidence” that documents the effects of “climate warming” on polar bears, it turns out there has been no published data available for size of WHB litters or proportion of independent yearlings since 1998 (Stirling et al. 1999) - 14 years ago – and no more recent data on cub survival in WHB since 1992 – 20 years ago (Derocher and Stirling 1995).

There has been no more recent data published on body mass of lone females since 2004, or of adult males and females with cubs in WHB since 1998 – 14 years ago – (Stirling et al. 1999:296; Stirling and Parkinson 2006:265), even though this is the data that suggests “climate warming” has been negatively impacting WHB polar bears since 1985!

And those dates of spring breakup of Hudson Bay sea ice that are apparently correlated to changes in polar bear life history traits? Those data are unpublished as well. See Stirling and Derocher’s (2012) figure 3 below, where the published data available stops at 1998 (taken from Stirling et al. 1999), even though the graph goes to 2007. And since it is now 2012, that graph is woefully out of date.

Why on earth did Stirling and Derocher not update that graph? Could it be that the data from 2009 (a very late breakup year) would make their line flatten out? See my discussion of a virtually identical figure that appears in Stirling 2011, reviewed here.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

*****************************************

3 October, 2012

Airhead California organization promotes global warming with a "bounty"

"A funded campaign asserting that over 95% of American scientists believe that global climate change is real and is most likely caused by humans has been launched with a $5,000 bounty on TruthMarket, the site that enables grassroots, crowd-funding of challenges to political, commercial and science misrepresentations

TruthMarket, a division of Truth Seal Corp., today announced that registered member, Ellen Davis, launched a campaign challenging climate change deniers to prove that more than 5% of credible American scientists dispute global warming or that it is likely caused by humans. The first person who can deliver verifiable evidence that significantly fewer than 95% of qualified American scientists believe in the reality of global climate change and that humans are a likely cause will win the $5,000 bounty."

More HERE

Greg Jefford has claimed the reward. Here's what he sent to Truth Market:

"Provide verifiable evidence that significantly less than 95% of American scientists believe in the reality of Global Climate Change and that humans are a likely cause."

My question: "Where are the definitions of 'verifiable,' 'evidence,' 'significantly,' 'believe in,' 'reality,' 'Global Climate Change,' and 'likely cause'?

We already know from the Zimmerman survey in 2008 of 10,257 scientists with a participation rate of 30.7%, that 97% of a final 79 respondents believed that human activity could have an impact on a change in the global mean temperature. Compared to this, the Global Warming Petition Project has been signed by 31,487 American scientists (over 9,000 with a Ph.D.) who believe:

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that the 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. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth”.

Inasmuch as 31,000 American scientists is a far, far larger number than ~30.7% of 10,257 American scientists (3,146), and since 9,000 Ph.D.s is a much larger group than Doran's 2831 Ph.D.s in his entire survey, it's pretty well verified, at least by surveys, that significantly fewer than 95% of American scientists "believe" in Global Climate Change (if this is defined as anthropogenic global warming and/or cooling, whichever happens to be the more convenient argument to make at any particular time). By comparing self-attested belief in these global climate change matters between two groups of self-selected (in their response) American scientists, we see that almost 10 to 1 American scientists do NOT "believe" either in a danger posed by "Global Climate Change" (or else why would you even be concerned about it?) or that humans have any discernible influence.

So you should really award that money to me. If Doran and Zimmerman's 2 question survey was sufficient for the Global Climate Change folks to claim vindication of their belief regarding support among scientists, then the voluntary signature of the Global Warming Petition Project is as valid a method of demonstrating the opposite belief.

You can send me the check at my registered address on your site.

The whole thing is obviously just a stunt so Greg might be waiting a while for his check

Sea Ice Sets All Time Record High

Antarctica has broken the record for the greatest sea ice extent ever measured at either pole.

If current trends continue, the Earth will be completely covered with ice much faster than the climate models predicted.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

Your Future, Courtesy of Climate Activists

The head of research at a prominent UK climate facility believes that those of us who use refrigerators and drive cars will need to be coerced into altering our lifestyles.

All the mixed messaging out there regarding global warming sure is confusing. We’re frequently told that there are “simple, low-cost solution[s]” and “easy ways” to curtail our energy consumption. The implication is that anyone who won’t go to such trivial effort to save the planet must be both irrational and irretrievably selfish.

But don’t be fooled. The UK ‘s Guardian newspaper is currently highlighting the views of prominent climate activists. These paint a starkly different picture of the kind of sacrifices we’re all expected to make – and provide a glimpse of the future these activists have in store for us. It’s a future few of us would consider tolerable.

Kevin Anderson (whom I’ve previously described as the ‘ration card man’) assures us that “the future does not have to be…bleak” while at the same time declaring that we “desperately need” “major changes in our lifestyle.” The high carbon-dioxide emitting turkeys, he says, “are going to have to vote for a low-carbon Christmas.”

Except that this gent’s commitment to the democratic process – in which we all actually get to vote and to determine our own fates – is less than inspiring. High emitters, he says will need to be coerced into getting with the program. I am not making this up. Here are his very words:

the poor, even as they strive to buy fridges and drive cars, are not to blame. It is those already leading high-carbon lifestyles that need to instigate or be coerced into a radical transition to a low carbon future. This is the real challenge… [bold added; backup link]

So what form will that coercion take? This is important. Is he talking about fines? Imprisonment? Re-education camps? What ethical and legal boundaries is this tyrant-wannabee not prepared to cross?

By no stretch of the imagination is Anderson a marginalized voice whose anti-social, anti-democratic ravings don’t matter. This man is the head of climate research at the UK’s Tyndall Centre. He is a professor at Manchester University. If his remarks about coercing others have sparked an outcry from appalled colleagues at either institution I’ve yet to hear about it.

But let us give him his due. He does appear to be leading by example:

I haven’t flown for almost eight years – and that will have to continue. I have halved the distance I drive each year and have significantly changed how I drive. I’ve done without a fridge for 12 years, but recently relented and joined the very small proportion of the world’s population that has a fridge – this I may have to reverse! I’ve cut back on washing and showering – but only to levels that were the norm just a few years back. All this is a start but it is not enough. [bold added]

Please notice that final line. Anderson hasn’t boarded a plane in eight years. He has gone without a refrigerator for 12. He bathes less frequently. The distance he drives diminishes continually. And still, he tells us, these measures are merely the beginning.

All of these restrictions, all of these daily privations, are – in his words – “not enough.”

Welcome to your future as envisioned by climate activists. More to the point, welcome to the future these people want your children and grandchildren to endure. And all in the name of preventing a highly speculative, decades-into-the-future, by-no-means-assured climate catastrophe.

SOURCE

Cats and dogs must go!

People around the world are worrying about their carbon footprint. But what about their furry friends' carbon pawprints?

Consider the numbers: there are currently around 1 billion pet cats and dogs worldwide (not to mention hundreds of millions of stray ones), and pet ownership rates are vastly higher in western countries. About 40% of US households own at least one dog, compared with about 6% of Chinese homes.

However, the gap is closing fast, as the number of pets and the demand for food and other goodies in developing countries spiral. In India, dog ownership is growing annually at double digit rates, while in Vietnam and Thailand, the number of dog owners increased by around 50% between 2004 and 2007.

The ecological consequences of pets are significant when you consider the land needed to produce the energy and resources required for a large dog are equivalent to that of a four-wheel drive Land Rover; a medium dog is equivalent to a VW Golf. Or so say Brenda and Robert Vale, authors of the provocatively titled Time to Eat the Dog. Among many reasonable observations they note that we face real problems “when everyone starts to have a big car, big house, big family and a big dog”. They also note that many pets in the west have larger ecological footprints than humans in some developing countries.

The rising affluence of pets is becoming a problem. Joe Nicora
So, while the rising population of pets is significant enough, the rising affluence of pets is also important. The range of products and services hitting the market and encouraging pet owners to humanise their pets is staggering. There are dog houses with reverse-cycle air conditioning, some with flat screen TVs, and there are DVDs specifically catering to the tastes of different animals. From pet treadmills to electric blankets, a spiralling number of online stores and big box pet warehouses are selling aspirational pets an energy-intensive good life.

As pet owners decide that “what’s good for me is good for my pet”, they are creating a large, powerful and emissions-laden industry. In the United States alone, pet care is currently a $50 billion industry, having almost doubled in a decade. It is a microcosm of the same problem occurring with humans as developing countries become more affluent.

At the heart of the decadence is the trend towards “luxury” pet food, and the biggest beneficiaries are the four corporations that dominate the booming pet care industry and control 80% of its largest component – the global pet food market.

With pet faeces reportedly making up 4% of waste to landfill in some cities, clearly a great deal of pet food is being made. The food itself requires hundreds of millions of tonnes of meat and grain, as well as vast amounts of energy, most of it drawn from fossil fuels. It then has to be tinned, bagged and transported to all points of the planet.

Who are the companies encouraging us to humanise our pets with their luxury pet food? Surprising as it sounds, think chocolate, toothpaste and cleaning products: the largest pet food manufacturers are Nestlé, Mars, Procter & Gamble and Colgate. Each of these companies would like us to believe that their booming pet care businesses are climate-friendly, but it’s mostly spin behind the earnest-sounding pitches.

More HERE

Indian nutcase is a fervent climate catastrophist but admits we can't predict key climate events

See the last paragraph below

J Srinivasan, professor at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore, goes through his work days secretly hoping for a global major climate crisis. As a leading climate change scientist in India, he knows that the country and the world are inching towards disaster. A serious crisis now would shake up people and make them act, he thinks. "I remember the ozone hole crisis while I was a student," says Srinivasan. "Scientists were talking about it for a long time, but they took action only when the hole appeared over the pole."

Srinivasan has reasons to worry, particularly for India. Some of his colleagues at the IISc have done the first multi-model study of climate change for India for the rest of the century. It makes grim reading, particularly after the year 2030. If the world does not cut down its carbon dioxide quickly, temperatures will rise - compared to pre-industrial times - over the Indian subcontinent by 1.7 to 2 degree centigrade by 2030, and 3.3 to 4.8 degree centigrade by 2080.

Since we have warmed by slightly less than a degree so far, the next 20 years would see an additional warming of nearly 1 degree centigrade. Says Govindaswamy Bala, professor at the Divecha Centre for Climate Change at the IISc: "This is the first multi-model study anyone has done over the Indian sub-continent, and it has shown agreement over historical data."

This study is to be published soon by the journal Current Science. Bala and his colleagues have used the new climate models that are going to be used for the next report of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). They were available around May this year, and the IISc team has been quick to use them to give the first forecasts. All other studies have looked at only one model, and there are large variations between predictions of different models. The average of different models, as done by the current study, shows good agreement with what has happened in the past. So it is considered a more reliable indicator of future climate trends than those predicted by individual models.

The temperature increase has serious consequences for the Indian sub-continent. Water is expected to become scarce, forests to decline and agriculture output to fall. All models forecast an increase in rainfall over the century, but no one can predict how this increase will happen. What would happen if the increase is over the sea, concomitant with a decrease over land? Models also predict increase in rainfall to happen in intense bursts and not spread over a long period. All this would point to a water scarcity over the sub-continent, although the precise amount will depend on how the rainfall is distributed over the country.

In the Current Science study, rainfall - if we do nothing about reducing carbon dioxide - would increase 4 to 5 per cent by 2030 and 6 per cent to 14 per cent by the end of the century. Also shown to increase is the frequency of extreme precipitation.

"We have very little ability to predict rainfall accurately," says Srinivasan. For example, in the last decade, the end of September has been a dry period. This is not in tune with what happened over the last century. No one knows why this happens.

SOURCE

Disaster foretold for the year 3000

A pretty safe prediction. None of us will be around to see if it happens or not

Greenhouse gas emissions up to now have triggered an irreversible warming of Earth that will cause sea levels to rise for thousands of years to come, new research has shown.

The results come from a study, published today (Oct. 2) in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, which sought to model sea-level changes over millennial timescales, taking into account all of Earth's land ice and the warming of the oceans -- something which has not been done before.

The research showed that we have already committed ourselves to a sea-level rise of 1.1 metres by the year 3000 as a result of our greenhouse gas emissions up to now. This irreversible damage could be worse, depending on the route we take to mitigating our emissions.

If we were to follow the high A2 emissions scenario adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a sea-level rise of 6.8 metres could be expected in the next thousand years. The two other IPCC scenarios analysed by the researchers, the B1 and A1B scenarios, yielded sea-level rises of 2.1 and 4.1 metres respectively.

More masturbation 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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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2 October, 2012

A picture is worth a thousand words

Low levels of Arctic ice at the moment are far from a "record"

Some data that Jim Hansen can't "adjust": USS Skate surfacing at the North Pole, March 17, 1959

SOURCE

Desperate tactics by anti-GM propagandists

On my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog, I called this "study" a fraud the day it came out in the press. Like so many Greenies, anti-GM propagandists tend to be devoid of ethics or honesty. Anything to advance their addled "cause". They are desperate to appear wiser than anybody else

Last week saw an outrageous abuse of scientific ethics which deserves wider coverage and denunciation in case it becomes widespread. French scientists based at Caen had a paper published in the journal "Food and Chemical Toxicology." The paper concerned the effects on rats who were fed supplements of the herbicide Roundup or a crop genetically modified to tolerate high levels of Roundup.

Unusually, as Arstechnica reports, journalists who wanted advance copies were obliged to sign an agreement not to show the findings to any outside experts before publication.

This unprecedented step meant that the usual process of peer review and assessment which is basic to science was thwarted. Usually scientific journalists contact outside experts in advance of publication to see what validity the new study has, and to comment on any weaknesses they might see.

In this case they were prevented from doing so, and the initial coverage lacked the analysis that customarily puts such papers in context. Following that initial coverage, the experts found much at fault in the survey.

"The authors used a strain of rats that is prone to tumors late in life. Every single experimental condition was compared to a single control group of only 10 rats, and some of the experimental groups were actually healthier than the controls. The authors didn't use a standard statistical analysis to determine whether any of the experimental groups had significantly different health problems."

Some of them were completely dismissive of any value the report might claim to have.

One called the work "a statistical fishing trip" while another said the lack of proper controls meant "these results are of no value." One report quoted a scientist at UC Davis as saying, "There is very little scientific credibility to this paper. The flaws in the test are just incredible to me."

The point is that the scientific authors deliberately prevented these flaws from being revealed at the time of publication. They had a field day of uncritical coverage, and violated all the ethics of scientific research to achieve that. The result is that for years to come anti-GM zealots will cite their findings without any of the criticism that undermined them.

As they say, a lie can be halfway round the world before truth gets its boots on.

SOURCE

Sea Level Fall Defies Climate Warnings

Because we have been having something like Noah's flood??

Global average sea levels fell by 5mm last year, presenting an inconvenient fact in a climate change narrative that warns of severe long-term threats to coastal settlements.

The 5mm decline was almost twice the rate of the 3mm-a-year average increase recorded over the past 20 years and three times the 130-year average rise rate of 1.7mm a year.

A paper published in Geophysical Research Letters and reported by the American Academy for the Advancement of Science yesterday claims to have found the answer to why sea levels fell, not rose. And, according to the paper, the retreat is only temporary.

The research, led by NASA scientist Carmen Boening from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California University of Technology, has blamed the unexpected sea level fall on the weather pattern that also caused chaos on land. The switch to a strong La Nina weather pattern, which was responsible for the big wet that flooded large parts of Australia, northern South America, and Southeast Asia in 2010 was also to blame for the shrinking oceans, the paper said. Put simply, the water had moved from the oceans to the land as rainfall. [Hey! what about the drought?]

Scientists used a combination of satellite and land data to match the decline in ocean mass, which explained the sea level drop, to an equivalent increase in land-based water storage.

This was done by measuring changes in gravity on the earth.

The paper said the temporary shift of water from the ocean to land was closely related to the transition from El Nino conditions in 2009-10 to a strong 2010-11 La Nina, which affected rainfall patterns worldwide.

The greatest changes in gravity occurred in areas where the rainfall increase had been greatest because of La Nina.

In addition, the total amount of land-based water storage linked up closely with the fall in sea levels. Sea levels eventually returned to the long-term trend of a gradual rise as the water moved from land back into the sea through natural processes.

The most recent findings were in line with historical data, which showed sea levels had fallen below trend during other periods of transition to a La Nina weather pattern.

Between 1992 and this year sea levels have contracted below the upward trend in 1993-1994, 1996-97, 1999-2000 and 2007.

John Church, from CSIRO’s Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre, said the latest data showed the global average sea level rise had returned to the two-decade trend of 3.1mm a year at the beginning of this year. And despite Australia playing a leading role in the average sea level decline for 2010-2011, Dr Church said the regional story was one of continued sea level rises.

Data maps published by CSIRO showed sea levels had risen particularly strongly in Northern Australia between 2002 and 2012, he said.

Projected sea level increases vary greatly and take account of thermal expansion, changes in glacier mass and changes in ice sheets and ice-sheet flow.

Most recent predictions have argued that a rise in sea levels of more than two metres as predicted by some models is “physically untenable”.

A rise of 80cm over the next century, at the top of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections, is considered more plausible.

SOURCE

British Wind farms given £34m to switch off when the wind is strong

Wind farm operators were paid £34million last year to switch the turbines off in gales. Two days last week saw householders effectively hand £400,000 to energy firms for doing nothing.

The arrangement compensates wind farms for the National Grid’s inability to cope with the extra energy produced during high winds.

The exact structure of the payments is mired in secrecy – even though families have to carry the cost in the form of higher power bills. Hidden payments discovered by the Mail show that wind farms are given much more money than previously thought.

It was always known the National Grid made ‘constraint payments’ – cash given to operators to temporarily shut down their turbines when electricity supply outstripped demand.

But what was not made public were details of so-called ‘forward trades’, in which the National Grid agrees a pay-out when the weather is expected to be stormy. The money is paid out even before a turbine shuts down.

Limited information about the forward trade deals is published in an obscure section of the National Grid website – and in a format that even energy experts have struggled to interpret. The National Grid has admitted £15.5million was paid out to energy operators in the form of conventional constraint payments in 2011-12 in England and Scotland.

But for the first time it has emerged that an even greater sum – £18.6million – was paid out in forward trades. It means the total payments for that year were £34.1 million, far higher than previously reported.

Lee Moroney, of the Renewable Energy Foundation, said: ‘The UK electricity market needs to become very much more transparent.

‘Wind farms are already heavily subsidised and it is only right that all payments made to wind farms to reduce output are in the public domain, so that consumers, who ultimately bear these costs, are able to judge whether the charges are reasonable.’

Murdo Fraser, a member of the parliament in Scotland, where many wind farms are sited, said: ‘Why have the authorities been so anxious not to release this information? Is it because they feared this would undermine any remaining public confidence in renewable energy policy? ‘People will wonder if they were trying to cover up the truth.

‘The revelation that vast sums are being paid to wind power developers will just lead to more and more people questioning government policy.’

Details of which energy firms scooped the money is kept secret because of ‘commercial confidentiality’.

Although the figures cover all forms of power generation, including coal and gas, energy experts say the overwhelming majority relates to wind energy.

On Monday and Tuesday last week, when it was exceptionally windy, the National Grid said it paid £16,118 in compensation. But only when prompted by the Mail did it admit the true figure – including forward trades – was £387,000.

Yesterday National Grid spokesman Chris Mostyn said: ‘We have a number of tools available to help us balance the network minute by minute and keep the lights on, and constraint payments are just one of those tools. ‘Our incentives are set by the regulator to operate the network as cost-effectively as possible, and it currently makes up less than 1 per cent of the average domestic bill.

‘We are always working with the industry to improve and develop the way we operate the Grid, as well as investing millions of pounds in the coming years to help move the power to where it’s needed.’

Up to 32,000 wind turbines could be built in England and Wales over the next 40 years to meet government targets. Many of the existing sites are owned by foreign firms which have made record profits in recent years.

SOURCE

Gas prices high? Here’s part of the reason

Are you paying a lot at the gasoline pump these days? Here’s part of the reason.

The 1990 Clean Air Act passed by Congress created minimum standards for gasoline nationwide that created a demand for boutique fuels. The purpose was to reduce emissions of dangerous chemicals, but lately seems to be doing more harm than good, according to Steven F. Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute.

Creating an artificial demand for ethanol additives added to the problem because states had created their own specialized standards under the act. The result is between 45 and 70 different blends of gasoline in the 50 states. The 34 states using some type of specially blended gasoline is one reason prices rise during summer when driving picks up increasing demand.

Also, the disparate fuel standards arbitrarily foisted on the market, segmented and undermined domestic competition among refiners of the fuel. That brought higher prices for specialized fuels and had the additional market distortion of discouraging foreign imports, skewing supply even more.

The bottom line is that these two effects alone tack on 10 cents to 15 cents per gallon, which adds to other costs at the pump. The government, here to help, brings with it a bill to be paid.

SOURCE

Obama Never Admits Green Failure

Marita Noon

If he succeeds in his run for a second term, President Obama doesn’t intend to tone down his efforts to push for green energy. Instead of learning from his mistakes, he plans to “do more.”

During his recent sit down with Steve Kroft for the interview that aired on 60 Minutes, the President was asked about green energy—though the clip was omitted from the program that the American public saw.

Kroft: “You said one of your big campaign themes was that green energy, the green economy, was going to be a tremendous generator of jobs and that has not turned out to be the case, yet.”

Obama: “We have tens of thousands of jobs that have been created as a consequence of wind energy alone. Is that enough? Absolutely not. Can we do more? Yes. … This is still an industry in its infancy. … Has it all paid off yet? Absolutely not. But I am not going to cede those new jobs, the jobs of the future, to countries like China or Germany that are making those same investments.”

One could argue that the $80 billion, plus, in stimulus funds that were designated for green energy projects have “paid off”—just not for the American tax payer. During the summer, with the help of researcher Christine Lakatos, I produced a series of reports on the Obama green-energy, crony-corruption scandal. Through those reports, we profiled a series of companies and showed how people with political connections to the Obama Administration had a return on their green energy investment that “paid off” at rates greater than anything available on Wall Street. Each report detailed the players involved, their connections to the White House and/or other high-ranking Democrats, such as the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and powerful Senator Diane Feinstein—something we can expect “more” of in his green-energy, green-economy emphasis during an Obama second term.

No, President Obama is not going to “cede.” He will not admit failure; he’ll do more. We can expect more failure— à la Solyndra, which is only the most well-known green energy, stimulus fund failure.

Here, in a new series of reports, Lakatos and I will expose the various failures of Obama’s green-energy expenditures: projects that have gone bankrupt (approximately 19), those that are heading that way (approximately 20), and the jobs he says he has created (at an average cost of $6.7 million per job)—all while raising energy costs, serving as a hidden tax on all Americans.

More HERE (See the original for links)

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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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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1 October, 2012

Important Global Warming Dates Coming Up

In a few months, we will reach the critical point when there has been no global warming for more than half of the RSS satellite temperature record – which extends back to 1978.

In a few weeks, we will reach the point when there have been no major hurricane strikes on the US for seven years, the longest such period since the civil war.

Alarmist scientists will continue to lie about CO2, because they have no useful job skills and would likely end up in a homeless shelter if the global warming research money quit flowing.

SOURCE

Blatant errors of fact in stupid Warmist article from historic university

Below is an email from Charles Battig [chas2rm2.va@embarqmail.com] to "UVA Today". It has received no reply. Respect for the facts is not for the UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, it would seem

Senior News Officer

Mr. Samarrai,

Your article, "Salt Marsh Carbon May Play Role in Slowing Climate Warming, Study Shows" contains statements regarding the mechanics of climate and carbon dioxide interactions which suggest a lack of understanding and scientific knowledge on your part. By doing so you cast needless doubt on the accuracy of the remainder of the article, the work of the researchers whom you depict, and the UVA Today image.

Carbon dioxide is not the "predominant" greenhouse gas as you claim. Water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas and is understood to account for approximately 95% of the greenhouse gas effect. Carbon dioxide makes up about 3.6 percent of the effect. The fraction of total carbon dioxide generated that is attributable to human activity is estimated at 3.22 percent. Thus human activity is estimated to contribute about 0.117 percent of the greenhouse effect...a long way from being "predominant." "A large portion of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is produced by human activities"...NOT.

"A warmer climate melts polar ice, causing sea levels to rise." Do you understand that there are two poles? If you are speaking of North polar ice (Arctic), it could all melt, as it has in the past, and there would be no change in sea level (try Googling Archimedes). The Antarctic (pole) has been adding to its total ice mass.

There has been no increase in atmospheric global temperatures for 12+ years; the rate-of-rise of sea level has recently stalled, and the longer term rate-of-rise remains stable at approximately 10-12 inches per century.

Does your "generally accepted scientific theory" include solar, solar radiation wavelength, and cosmic particle interactions?

I find it regrettable that such errors pass your editorial board.

Yours truly, Charles Battig, MD

Received via email

SoloPower: Another Solyndra in Waiting?

The Department of Energy's loan guarantee program has already had two significant failures in the solar industry, the best known being Solyndra. Now a third company, San Jose's SoloPower, seems to be following in Solyndra's footsteps and threatening to leave taxpayers on the hook for millions more.

Last August, as Solyndra was going bankrupt, the Department of Energy issued a loan guarantee in the amount of $197 million to help SoloPower manufacture their thin-film solar power product. Like Solyndra, SoloPower has a nice-looking product. Its panels are thin and flexible and don't require heavy brackets to mount on a roof. And like Solyndra, the company's plans to expand were welcomed by politicians excited about the promise of hundreds of new jobs.

But as was the case with Solyndra, SoloPower's product advantages don't necessarily mean the company will survive stiff competition from China. Industry analyst Andrew Soare of Lux Research tells Fox News that China can still undercut US manufacturers by 30 percent, making it difficult to see how SoloPower can compete in the marketplace. It's this ability to undercut price that doomed Solyndra and Abound, another failed solar power company with a government-backed loan.

William Yeatman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute says of SoloPower, "It looks like it will fail for the same reasons as Solyndra." If it does, taxpayers will once again be on the hook. So far, the stimulus-funded DOE loan program has lost $600 million on solar company bankruptcies.

SOURCE

New British CO2 tax will double UK electricity bills

There's a nasty shock in store for the British householder when a new 'carbon' tax comes into force

Fast approaching, if largely unnoticed, is yet another massive shock the Government has in store for us with its weirdly distorted energy policy. It is surprising to see what an abnormally high proportion of the electricity needed to keep our lights on has lately been coming from coal-fired power stations. Last Wednesday evening, for instance, this was over 50 per cent, with only 1.3 per cent coming from wind power. Yet by next March, we learn, five of our largest coal-fired plants, capable of supplying a fifth of our average power needs, are to be shut down, much earlier than expected, under an EU anti-pollution directive.

One reason why these plants are being hammered through their remaining quota of hours allowed by the EU is that a new UK tax comes into force next April, which aims to make fossil-fuel power significantly more expensive. In 2010, George Osborne announced his intention to impose, from April 2013, a “carbon floor price” of £16 on every tonne of CO2 emitted by British industry, rising to £30 a tonne by 2020 and £70 a tonne by 2030.

An explicit purpose of this tax is to make the cost of electricity from fossil fuels so uncompetitive compared with “renewables” that it will, in the Treasury’s words, “drive £30‑£40 billion” of investment into “low carbon” sources such as wind and nuclear. On paper, the effect of Osborne’s new tax on our electricity bills looks devastating.

Using the latest figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), our power plants burnt 40 million tonnes of coal in 2011, emitting 116 million tonnes of CO2. They also generated 175,000 gigawatt hours from gas, at just over half a tonne of CO2 per gigawatt. At £16 a tonne, this CO2 would cost £3.5 billion – on top of our total current wholesale electricity cost of some £19 billion. Thus the new impost would represent nearly 20 per cent added to our electricity bills next year, and would almost double them by 2030.

Some of this, however, we already pay through the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS), which counts towards our £16 floor price. Osborne’s calculation in 2010 was that, initially, we would have to chip in less than an additional £2 per tonne to make up the £16 price. (The ETS price at that time was predicted to continue rising towards £40.) Since then, however, with falling demand due to the EU’s recession, the price of EU carbon permits has fallen dramatically. To reach the initial £16 level, the Treasury says we will now have to pay nearly another £5, making our electricity significantly more expensive. But since it made that guess the EU price has slipped still further, to well under £6 – leaving a gap of £10 a tonne to be made up by Osborne’s tax, rapidly rising every year thereafter.

Thus, to meet that tax level in the years after 2013, we in Britain will have to pay electricity bills soaring to a level far higher than any others in Europe. All this is to promote the building of thousands more heavily subsidised windmills, which will in turn require us to build more gas-fired power stations to provide back-up for the constant fluctuations in wind speed. And these will be paying Mr Osborne’s fast-rising tax on all the CO2 they emit, with the bill to be picked up by the rest of us on a scale which, within 18 years, could alone almost double the cost of our electricity.

In short, the Treasury has made an incredibly damaging miscalculation. Even if there is little chance that our Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Davey, could get his head round such lunacy, perhaps someone might lay out for Mr Osborne the bill that his delusional new tax is going to land us all with.

SOURCE

Obama's Abandoned Power Plants

If voters knew how America's economy would look after two terms of President Barack Obama's administration, Mitt Romney would win in a landslide.

In the 2008 campaign, President Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that the “notion of no coal...is an illusion.” He noted that he favors a cap-and-trade system “[s]o if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

While Obama did not get to implement cap-and-trade, he found other ways to shut down coal burning power plants.

In the name of a rigidly anti-prosperity ideology, Obama's administration, through the Environmental Protection Agency, is continuing its war on jobs and reliable sources of energy. And like most onerous regulations, the true costs are not immediately visible.

As announced by Lisa Jackson, the chief EPA Administrator, three new regulations for air emission standards have been announced, which will cost American consumers more than $13 billion per year. Also, according to estimates by the Senate Republican Policy Committee, other rules dealing with coal ash and air could cost an additional $90 billion annually.

Obama's claim to have an "all-of-the-above" energy strategy is a ruse. Instead, his administration seems determined to extend our economic recession, while government bureaucrats find creative ways to make energy more expensive.

More than 2,000 employees of the coal industry were laid off this year, and that industry expects 10,000 more layoffs in direct and related jobs. In addition, as reported by Human Events, leaked documents from the Obama administration estimates that one rule on water quality requirements will be responsible for an additional 7,000 fired workers.

The new regulations are so extreme that, in effect, they require all new power plants must be powered by natural gas, an imperfect fuel.

This may make the natural gas lobbyists who work with the Obama administration happy, but the incredible amounts of methane expanded natural gas would not please environmentalists.

In five months, natural gas prices have increased by 52%, with the Obama administration's rules largely to blame. According to Reuters data, as demand is expanding globally, natural gas is quickly approaching a price which is $2 more than the same per unit, which results in higher energy prices for cash-strapped consumers who already heat their homes with natural gas.

Even though industry has been able to dramatically decrease noxious pollutants from coal over the past 40 years, Obama's heavy-handed rules have slashed coal production by one-third. In my state of Ohio, the coal industry has been devastated by drastic EPA regulations.

As you can see from this map, 175 fully-functional coal burning plants are being retired across the country, which puts further strain on our outdated energy grid while putting thousands of employees out of work.

Environmentalist groups aligned with the Obama administration, such as the Sierra club, are happy to see coal burning plants shut down, and have nearly 400 more plants targeted. But with the White House's emphasis on efficient "green energy" such as solar panels, they would not want to see the recent Heritage Foundation study which shows such a switch would increase a family's $200/month energy bill to $700.

President Barack Obama is playing favorites with sources of energy, while destroying jobs and hurting consumers. America is in desperate need of a new direction on energy policy.

SOURCE

Hollywood’s Frackin’ Fraud

Hollywood is releasing another of its preachy environmental epics this fall designed to take advantage of the public’s ignorance about an oil and gas drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing or fracking for short.

Producers of the 2012 environmentalist tale titled Promised Land already had their eyes on the Oscars following in the footsteps of Julia Roberts’ Oscar winning performance in Erin Brockovich, and Meryl Streep’s nomination for Silkwood.

Starring ardent Obama supporter Matt Damon, the movie seems to have been inspired by eleven residents from Dimock, Penn., who claimed that fracking had destroyed their water and their lives. The claims received so much national attention that Hollywood celebrities actually trekked to flyover Pennsylvania to show their concern by bringing drinking water to the people.

Unfortunately for the producers of Promised Land, after they had spent millions producing the movie, the story of the people of Dimock fell apart when their claims were actually tested.

The environmentalist movement, which has made attacks on fracking one of their core fundraising issues, their friends and advocates at Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency tested the ground water in the wells of those who filed complaints and determined that “there are not levels of contaminants present that would require additional action by the Agency.”

In other words, the water is just fine. Fracking has had zero impact upon it.

The implication of the EPA release is even more damaging in that the EPA notes that they had tested water submitted by the residents which, “indicated the potential for elevated levels of water contaminants in wells.”

This means that the EPA has, in nice language, determined that the Dimock eleven flat out lied, and the samples they submitted could not be replicated when actual field testing occurred.

Hollywood itself has struggled with factual manipulation in the fracking arena. Josh Fox, producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary Gasland, has been forced to admit that his big scene in the movie is not exactly what it seemed.

The point of Gasland was to show how damaging fracking was to the water supplies of communities, and it has a big reveal where the Michael Moore-wannabe documentarian turns on a water spigot and lights the water on fire. And for those wondering, no, the water wasn’t taken from Lake Erie.

Once again since truth couldn’t get in the way of the point of the movie, the documentary fails to reveal that the people who lived in that community had filed reports that due to high methane content in their ground wells from as far back as 1936, they were able to light their water on fire.

Phelem McAleer, director of the film, Not evil just wrong, confronted Gasland maker Josh Fox about the fact that the water burned well before fracking occurred, and got Fox to admit that he was well aware of the historic reports. Fox dismissed them and chose not to share them with his viewers because they did not fit his advocacy goal in the movie.

Besides the revelation that this has been going on for almost 80 years, kind of takes the edge off the dramatic impact

Now, after the critical success of Gasland, Hollywood is on the fracking trail in an attempt to build the storyline that hydraulic fracking is destroying small towns across America.

At least, unlike Gasland, with Promised Land, you know that it is fiction and should be viewed for entertainment value only.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.

The graphics problem: Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here and here

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This site is in favour of things that ARE good for the environment. That the usual Greenie causes are good for the environment is however disputed.

By John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia.

WISDOM:

"The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement" -- Karl Popper

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

'Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action' -- Goethe

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” -- Voltaire

Lord Salisbury: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe."

Bertrand Russell knew about consensus: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.” -- John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001

The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.' -- Doug L Hoffman

ABOUT:

This is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I have shifted my attention to health related science and climate related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic. Hence this blog and my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog. I may add that I did not come to either health or environmental research entirely without credentials. I had several academic papers published in both fields during my social science research career

Since my academic background is in the social sciences, it is reasonable to ask what a social scientist is doing talking about global warming. My view is that my expertise is the most relevant of all. It seems clear to me from what you will see on this blog that belief in global warming is very poorly explained by history, chemistry, physics or statistics.

Warmism is prophecy, not science. Science cannot foretell the future. Science can make very accurate predictions based on known regularities in nature (e.g. predicting the orbits of the inner planets) but Warmism is the exact opposite of that. It predicts a DEPARTURE from the known regularities of nature. If we go by the regularities of nature, we are on the brink of an ice age.

And from a philosophy of science viewpoint, far from being "the science", Warmism is not even an attempt at a factual statement, let alone being science. It is not a meaningful statement about the world. Why? Because it is unfalsifiable -- making it a religious, not a scientific statement. To be a scientific statement, there would have to be some conceivable event that disproved it -- but there appears to be none. ANY event is hailed by Warmists as proving their contentions. Only if Warmists were able to specify some fact or event that would disprove their theory would it have any claim to being a scientific statement. So the explanation for Warmist beliefs has to be primarily a psychological and political one -- which makes it my field

And, after all, Al Gore's academic qualifications are in social science also -- albeit very pissant qualifications.

A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were. But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count (we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.

SOME POINTS TO PONDER:

Climate is just the sum of weather. So if you cannot forecast the weather a month in advance, you will not be able to forecast the climate 50 years in advance. And official meteorologists such as Britain's Met Office and Australia's BOM, are very poor forecasters of weather. The Met office has in fact given up on making seasonal forecasts because they have so often got such forecasts embarrassingly wrong. Their global-warming-powered "models" just did not deliver

Here's how that "97% consensus" figure was arrived at

A strange Green/Left conceit: They seem to think (e.g. here) that no-one should spend money opposing them and that conservative donors must not support the election campaigns of Congressmen they agree with

To Greenies, Genghis Khan was a good guy, believe it or not. They love that he killed so many people.

Greenie antisemitism

After three exceptionally cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, the Warmists are chanting: "Warming causes cold". Even if we give that a pass for logic, it still inspires the question: "Well, what are we worried about"? Cold is not going to melt the icecaps is it?"

It's a central (but unproven) assumption of the Warmist "models" that clouds cause warming. Odd that it seems to cool the temperature down when clouds appear overhead!

To make out that the essentially trivial warming of the last 150 years poses some sort of threat, Warmists postulate positive feedbacks that might cut in to make the warming accelerate in the near future. Amid their theories about feedbacks, however, they ignore the one feedback that is no theory: The reaction of plants to CO2. Plants gobble up CO2 and the more CO2 there is the more plants will flourish and hence gobble up yet more CO2. And the increasing crop yields of recent years show that plantlife is already flourishing more. The recent rise in CO2 will therefore soon be gobbled up and will no longer be around to bother anyone. Plants provide a huge NEGATIVE feedback in response to increases in atmospheric CO2

Every green plant around us is made out of carbon dioxide that the plant has grabbed out of the atmosphere. That the plant can get its carbon from such a trace gas is one of the miracles of life. It admittedly uses the huge power of the sun to accomplish such a vast filtrative task but the fact that a dumb plant can harness the power of the sun so effectively is also a wonder. We live on a rather improbable planet. If a science fiction writer elsewhere in the universe described a world like ours he might well be ridiculed for making up such an implausible tale.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A "HEAT TRAPPING GAS". A gas can become warmer by contact with something warmer or by infrared radiation shining on it or by adiabatic (pressure) effects but it cannot trap anything. Air is a gas. Try trapping something with it!

Greenies are the sand in the gears of modern civilization -- and they intend to be.

The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees. So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Yet at the opening of 2011 we find the following unashamed lying by James Hansen: "We will lose all the ice in the polar ice cap in a couple of decades". Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.

The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones' Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive such scrutiny. So even after "Climategate", the secrecy goes on.

Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

Comparing climate alarmist Hansen to Cassandra is WRONG. Cassandra's (Greek mythology) dire prophecies were never believed but were always right. Hansen's dire prophecies are usually believed but are always wrong (Prof. Laurence Gould, U of Hartford, CT)

The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".

For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....

Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.

The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong. The most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly "Carmen" by Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first performed and the unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop. Similarly, when the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first performed in 1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience walked out. Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate are actually better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913, we KNOW that we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that supports Warmism is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").

Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Jim Hansen and his twin

Getting rich and famous through alarmism: Al Gore is well-known but note also James Hansen. He has for decades been a senior, presumably well-paid, employee at NASA. In 2001 he was the recipient of a $250,000 Heinz Award. In 2007 Time magazine designated him a Hero of the Environment. That same year he pocketed one-third of a $1 million Dan David Prize. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. In 2010 he landed a $100,000 Sophie Prize. He pulled in a total of $1.2 million in 2010. Not bad for a government bureaucrat.

See the original global Warmist in action here: "The icecaps are melting and all world is drowning to wash away the sin"

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against that claim.

Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as too incredible to be believed

Meanwhile, however, let me venture a tentative prophecy. Prophecies are almost always wrong but here goes: Given the common hatred of carbon (Warmists) and salt (Food freaks) and given the fact that we are all made of carbon, salt, water and calcium (with a few additives), I am going to prophecy that at some time in the future a hatred of nitrogen will emerge. Why? Because most of the air that we breathe is nitrogen. We live at the bottom of a nitrogen sea. Logical to hate nitrogen? NO. But probable: Maybe. The Green/Left is mad enough. After all, nitrogen is a CHEMICAL -- and we can't have that!

UPDATE to the above: It seems that I am a true prophet

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of "The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.

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".

The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil fuel theory

Help keep the planet Green! Maximize your CO2 and CH4 output!

Global Warming=More Life; Global Cooling=More Death.

The inconvenient truth about biological effects of "Ocean Acidification"

The great and fraudulent scare about lead

Green/Left denial of the facts explained: "Rejection lies in this, that when the light came into the world men preferred darkness to light; preferred it, because their doings were evil. Anyone who acts shamefully hates the light, will not come into the light, for fear that his doings will be found out. Whereas the man whose life is true comes to the light" John 3:19-21 (Knox)

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

Recent NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).

In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility. Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units has occurred in recent decades.

The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us all a break!

If you doubt the arrogance [of the global warming crowd, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

The "precautionary principle" is a favourite Greenie idea -- but isn't that what George Bush was doing when he invaded Iraq? Wasn't that a precaution against Saddam getting or having any WMDs? So Greenies all agree with the Iraq intervention? If not, why not?

A classic example of how the sensationalist media distort science to create climate panic is here.

There is a very readable summary of the "Hockey Stick" fraud here

The Lockwood & Froehlich paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here and here and here for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.

As the Greenies are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer time series is used. A remarkable example from Sociology: "The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added." So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been considered.

Relying on the popular wisdom can even hurt you personally: "The scientific consensus of a quarter-century ago turned into the arthritic nightmare of today."

Greenie-approved sources of electricity (windmills and solar cells) require heavy government subsidies to be competitive with normal electricity generators so a Dutch word for Greenie power seems graphic to me: "subsidieslurpers" (subsidy gobblers)