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

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

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30 September, 2007

Separating climate fact from fiction

This week is especially challenging for citizens trying to separate fact from fantasy in the climate debate. From the excited rhetoric of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's high-level event in New York, the pontifications of Ted Turner at the Clinton Global Initiative or politicians pandering for the green vote at President Bush's leaders summit, the public is in dire need of self-defense strategies.

The most reliable tool is simple skepticism. "I don't believe you; prove it" is an appropriate response to Al Gore and his climate campaigners. But such a charge is politically incorrect when applied to climate change so most people need something more passive, a climate change propaganda detector. Here's what will cause alarm bells to ring on a properly tuned detector:

* Activists claiming natural events are unnatural, or normal events abnormal. This guarantees that claims we are seeing more extreme events are always right. The "warmest/wettest/driest/snowiest/windiest" actually means the most extreme in the official record, which for most of the world is less than 50 years. Such a short time interval guarantees records will be set all the time.

* Speculation and exaggeration presented as unbiased fact. It's revealing to compare U.N. and other political pronouncements about climate with the scientific research that supposedly backs them. Conditional words - "could," "may" or "possibly" - that appear in the science papers vanish when the issue becomes political. Ban Ki-moon's assertions in May are classic: "The recent report of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emphasizes that the science on climate change is very clear, that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and that this is happening because of human activities." IPCC scientists concluded no such thing, but the secretary-general's exaggerations draw more attention to his cause.

* Exploitation of basic fears, a common practice well-documented by Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore. Humans are naturally fearful of the environment because they know it can kill them. Animism, the earliest form of religion, revolved around worshipping and placating nature, even at the expense of human well-being. Much of today's environmentalism takes the same tack.

* Taking advantage of public ignorance about science. Mislabeling carbon dioxide as pollution is standard practice for many campaigners and politicians - Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat, has proposed a "Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act" riddled with this deception, and Mr. Gore often refers to CO2 as pollution. "Climate change is real," "The science is settled" and other meaningless but loaded assertions are used to manipulate public opinion by political operatives.

* Continuously shifting goalposts. Initially, global warming fears dominated public consciousness. Then, starting in 1998, the world began to cool while atmospheric CO2 continued to rise in complete contradiction to the theory. So the mantra became "climate change" and any variation could then be attributed to human activities. To avoid addressing the fact that climate change is a natural occurrence on all planets a new goal post shift is occurring; now the phraseology is "dealing with climate chaos."

* Continuously "upping the ante" if concerns do not seem sufficient, making statements everyone eventually understands to be ridiculous. John Ritch, director general of the World Nuclear Association, provided a perfect example in June: "Greenhouse gas emissions, if continued at the present massive scale, will yield consequences that are - quite literally - apocalyptic. ... If these predictions hold true, the combined effect would be the death of not just millions but of billions of people- and the destruction of much of civilization on all continents."

Climate alarmism may defeat itself by simply overplaying its hand. This week's conferences could speed that process, helping end what is becoming the most expensive science swindle in history. Let's hope so.

Source




Questioning 20th Century Warmth

In 2006, an article appeared in Science magazine reconstructing the temperature of the Northern Hemisphere back to 800 AD based on 14 smoothed and normalized temperature proxies (e.g., tree ring records). Osborn and Briffa proclaimed at the time that "the 20th century is the most anomalous interval in the entire analysis period, with highly significant occurrences of positive anomalies and positive extremes in the proxy records." Obviously, concluding that the Northern Hemisphere has entered a period of unprecedented warmth is sure to make the news, and indeed, Osborn and Briffa's work was carried in papers throughout the world and was loudly trumpeted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that publishes the journal Science.

A recent issue of Science contains an article not likely to receive any press coverage at all. Gerd Buerger of Berlin's Institut fuer Meteorologie decided to revisit the work of Osborn and Briffa, and his results raise serious questions about the claim that the 20th century has been unusually warm. Buerger argues that Osborn and Briffa did not apply the appropriate statistical tests that link the proxy records to observational data, and as such, Osborn and Briffa did not properly quantify the statistical uncertainties in their analyses. Buerger repeated all analyses with the appropriate adjustments and concluded "As a result, the `highly significant' occurrences of positive anomalies during the 20th century disappear." Further, he reports that "The 95th percentile is exceeded mostly in the early 20th century, but also about the year 1000." Needless to say, Gerd Buerger is not going to win any awards from the champions of global warming - nothing is more sacred than 20th century warming!

The reconstruction of past temperatures is a science unto itself, and the library contains many journals dedicated to the field. We could easily locate an article a week presenting a temperature reconstruction from some part of the planet that would call into question the notion that the 20th century was a period of unusual warmth. You may recall many essays we presented over the past five years examining the "hockey stick" depiction of planetary temperature (little change for 900 years, and suddenly 100 years ago, the temperature shot up) so merrily adopted by Gore and many others.

A large and important article appeared recently in Earth-Science Reviews regarding a long-term reconstruction of temperatures from Russia's Lake Baikal. In case you have forgotten your geography lessons, Lake Baikal is the world's deepest lake, it contains the world's largest volume of freshwater (20 percent of the global supply), and the lake has over 300 rivers flowing into it. Anson Mackay of University College London is the author of the article, and he notes that "the bottom sediments of the lake itself have never been directly been glaciated. Lake Baikal therefore, contains a potential uninterrupted paleoclimate archive consisting of over 7500 m of sedimentary deposits, extending back more than 20 million years." If that is not perfect enough, the Lake "is perhaps best well known for its high degree of biodiversity; over 2500 plant and animal species have been documented in Baikal, most of which are believed to be endemic." The Lake is a long way from the moderating effects of any ocean, and therefore, the Lake should experience large climatic fluctuations over long and short periods of time.

The trick to reconstructing temperatures here involves the shell remains of planktonic diatoms that have lived in the Lake for eons. During warm periods, some species of diatom phytoplankton flourish while during cold periods, some species flourish while most reduce production. Cores from the bottom of the Lake therefore contain a high-resolution temperature record for hundreds of thousands of years interpreted from biogenic silica left from the plankton.....

Of greater interest to us is what Lake Baikal can tell us about the most recent thousand years, and in particular, we are interested in the warming of the last 1000 years. Mackay notes that "between c. A.D. 850 and 1200, S. acus dominated the assemblage, most likely due to prevailing warmer and wetter climate that occurred in Siberia at this time." Well now, it certainly looks as if the Medieval Warm Period was noticed at the Lake. Next we learn that "Between c. A.D. 1200 and 1400, spring diatom crops growing under the ice decline in abundance, due in part to increased winter severity and snow cover on the lake, which is reflected in cooler early Siberian summers." The Little Ice Age then hit hard as Mackay finds "The diatom-inferred snow model suggests significantly increased snow cover on the lake between A.D. 1200 and 1775, which mirrors for the large part increases in snow cover in China during AD 1400-1900."

But here comes our favorite set of conclusions. Mackay writes "Diatom census data and reconstructions of snow accumulation suggest that changes in the influence of the Siberian High in the Lake Baikal region started as early as c. 1750 AD, with a shift from taxa that bloom during autumn overturn to assemblages that exhibit net growth in spring (after ice break-up). The data here mirror instrumental climate records from Fennoscandia for example, which also show over the last 250 years positive temperature trends and increasing early summer Siberian temperature reconstructions. Warming in the Lake Baikal region commenced before rapid increases in greenhouse gases, and at least initially, is therefore a response to other forcing factors such as insolation changes during this period of the most recent millennial cycle."

The Lake Baikal study shows that warming has occurred in the most recent century, but it is certainly nothing out of the ordinary and possibly to some degree explained by non-greenhouse forcing. The Osborn and Briffa proclamation that the 20th century was somehow out of the ordinary is certainly not confirmed by the incredible reconstruction from Lake Baikal.

Source




Amid the rush to biofuel, a warning

Nobel laureate fears growing reliance on grain-based fuels threatens world food supplies

In the food-versus-fuel debate, there's little doubt where Norman Borlaug's heart lies. The father of the "Green Revolution," Borlaug's life has been dedicated to increasing the food supply in the developing world. His work with grains is credited with saving millions of lives, and in 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. So Borlaug, now 93, watches with dismay as ever-greater amounts of the world's grain are turned into motor fuel for developed nations. "It isn't going to solve our energy problems, and it's going to disrupt our food system," Borlaug said Thursday. He stressed that he's not against biofuels, "up to a certain point." But using food as a fuel requires a careful balance, and Borlaug tilts his arms wildly to show how lopsided he thinks the balance has become.....

To increase food production, he advocated whole systems: developing dwarf varieties of wheat, using fertilizers on worn-out soils, battling plant disease and improving food-distribution systems. The results sent grain production soaring in the developing world. By some estimates, 1 billion lives have been saved. In recent decades, the race between the global supply and demand for food - a lively topic in the 1960s and 1970s - has mostly faded from public consciousness. Grain surpluses, not grain shortages, have produced most of the headlines. Global hunger and malnutrition still haunt parts of the globe, but less widely than before, and often because of war, not farming practices.

But Borlaug has never stopped working, even into his 90s. And now, suddenly, old issues like the world food supply are becoming hot topics once again in the public arena. This time, it's because of biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel. The rush to build corn-based ethanol plants is starting to transform agriculture. So much so that, if trends continue, Borlaug's native Corn Belt state of Iowa may soon need to import corn. "Pretty sad," Borlaug said, shaking his head. "In the next two to three years, if things continue to unfold as they are now, the price of meat is going to skyrocket." If that happens, "Then the shoe will be on the other foot," Borlaug said. "The general public has been saying, 'Oh, agriculture has been subsidized for this, that and the other.' "

Yet today's food-versus-fuel debate has a new element since 1970: growing concern about global climate change. Count Borlaug as a skeptic. "I do believe we are in a period where, no question, the temperatures are going up," he said. "But is this a part of another one of those (natural) cycles that have brought on glaciers and caused melting of glaciers?" He's not sure, and he doesn't think the science is, either. "How much would we have to cut back to take the increasing carbon dioxide and methane production to a level so that it's not a driving force?" he asked. "We don't even know how much."

So today a new debate is under way, as the world struggles with the proper balance between food production, fuel production, global hunger and global warming. What would Borlaug do? He'd like to turn back the clock to seek greater investment in alternative energy - fuel from plant waste, sunlight, water and wind. "What we should have done is to spend much more research on many different sources of energy, and we neglected that," he said. "If we have to start with grain, that's very different than starting with wood chips."

Source




RUSSIA: PROLONGATION OF KYOTO PROTOCOL INEFFECTIVE

The prolongation of the Kyoto Protocol on the reduction of carbon emissions, which expires in 2012, will be ineffective, the head of the Russian hydrometeorology service said. Speaking at the United Nations headquarters in New York, which hosted a one-day summit on climate change Monday, Alexander Bedritsky said: "Samples prove that the Kyoto Protocol is imperfect, and its prolongation in its existing form for the coming periods of cooperation will be ineffective."

The Kyoto Protocol obliges the 35 industrial states that have ratified the document to cut emissions by 5% below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. The United States, a major polluter, has pulled out from the protocol, saying this could damage its economy. Developed and developing countries have been locked in a dispute over who should bear the main burden of carbon emission restrictions.

The head of the Russian federal service added that despite obligations assumed by a number of countries, carbon emissions, blamed for global warming, continue to increase in most industrially developed countries, as well as in countries with developing economies. "The reality of the situation in a number of developed countries does not correspond with the dynamics of assumed obligations on the stabilization and reduction of emissions," he said.

The one-day summit, held ahead of the annual climate treaty conference in the Indonesian island of Bali in December, was attended by representatives of 150 countries, including more than 70 heads of state.

FULL STORY here




GREEN WITCH-HUNT CLAIMS ANOTHER SCALP

Virginia's state climatologist, whose doubts about global warming and utility-industry funding made him a lightning rod on climate-change issues, quietly left his position over the summer. Patrick J. Michaels, who held the position since 1980, remains as a part-time research professor on leave at the University of Virginia, reported Joseph C. Zieman, chairman of the school's Department of Environmental Sciences, to the Daily Progress of Charlottesville. Mr. Michaels has been a leading skeptic of global-warming theories. Although he thinks global warming is real and influenced by humans, he contends it is caused primarily by natural forces.

The administration of Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, asked Mr. Michaels last year to refrain from using his title when conducting non-state business because of fears his views would be perceived as an official state position. The governor's office said Mr. Michaels, appointed by Gov. John N. Dalton, a Republican, was not a gubernatorial appointee, contending that the climatology office became UVa.'s domain in 2000.

Mr. Michaels, 57, called his resignation a sad result of the fact that his state climatologist funding had become politicized, compromising his academic freedom. "It's very simple," he said. "I don't think anybody was able to come to a satisfactory agreement about academic freedom."

FULL STORY here

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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29 September, 2007

GEOENGINEERING WOULD BE MUCH CHEAPER AND BECOME EFFECTIVE MUCH SOONER

That the warmists insist on the quite impractical and unlikely route of CO2 reduction to achieve their proclaimed ends just shows that their real agenda is not what they make it out to be. It is a tool to make the hated Western society poorer, nothing else. Two articles below:

David Schnare, an environmental scientist and attorney associated with the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, told the U.S. Senate today that a solution to global warming is simple, cheap -- and no more than a few years away.

With geo-engineering, the doctor says, scientists are learning how to replicate natural phenomenon, like volcanic eruptions, to control global temperatures. Here are excerpts from prepared testimony the doctor submitted:

Geo-engineering is the deliberate modification of large scale geophysical processes ... The first of the two most common examples cited is placement of reflective aerosols into the upper atmosphere in order to reflect incoming sunlight and thus reduce global temperature.

The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 injected a significant amount of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, lowering the Earth's surface temperature by about (half a degree) the year following the eruption.

... Because these techniques mimic natural phenomena, we know more about how quickly and well they work than we do about the efficacy of attempting to reduce greenhouse gases. We have measured the effects of the natural processes and can state with considerable certainty, bordering of complete certainty, that they will produce the result sought. Although the effects of greenhouse gas reduction would occur over a period of no less than decades and more likely centuries, the effects of geo-engineering can (and will) be manifest in a matter of weeks after application. ... Geo-engineering is ... 200 to 2,000 times less expensive ... than exclusive reliance on carbon control.

Source

Two Greenies who really do believe:

Two of Britain's leading environmental thinkers say it is time to develop a quick technical fix for climate change. Writing in the journal Nature, Science Museum head Chris Rapley and Gaia theorist James Lovelock suggest looking at boosting ocean take-up of CO2. Their idea, already being investigated by a US firm, involves huge flotillas of vertical pipes in the tropical seas.

The two scientists say they doubt that existing plans for curbing carbon emissions can work quickly enough. "We are taking the very strong line that we are not going to save the planet by the regular approaches like the Kyoto Protocol or renewable energy," Professor Lovelock told BBC News. "What we have to do is to look at it in a systems sense, or a Gaian sense, and see if it's curable by direct action."

Professor Rapley, who has just moved to head up the Science Museum from a similar post at the British Antarctic survey, said the two men developed the ocean pipes concept during country walks in James Lovelock's beloved Devon.

Unbeknown to them, a US company, Atmocean, had already begun trials of a very similar technology. Floating pipes reaching down from the top of the ocean into colder water below move up and down with the swell. As the pipe moves down, cold water flows up and out onto the ocean surface. A simple valve blocks any downward flow when the pipe is moving upwards.

Colder water is more "productive" - it contains more life, and so in principle can absorb more carbon. One of the life-forms that might benefit, Atmocean believes, is the salp, a tiny tube which excretes carbon in its solid faecal pellets, which descend to the ocean floor, perhaps storing the carbon away for millennia.

Atmocean CEO Phil Kithil has calculated that deploying about 134 million pipes could potentially sequester about one-third of the carbon dioxide produced by human activities each year. But he acknowledges that research is in the early stages. "There is much yet to be learned," he told BBC News. "We need not only to move towards the final design and size (of the pipes), but also to characterise the ecological effects. "The problem we would be most concerned about would be acidification. We're bringing up higher levels of CO2 along with the nutrients, so it all has to be analysed as to the net carbon balance and the net carbon flux."

Atmocean deployed experimental tubes earlier this year and gathered engineering data. The pipes brought cold water to the surface from a depth of 200m, but no research has yet been done on whether this approach has any net impact on greenhouse gas levels. The company says a further advantage of cooling surface waters in regions such as the Gulf of Mexico could be a reduction in the number of hurricanes, which need warm water in order to form.

And Professors Lovelock and Rapley suggest that the ocean pipes could also stimulate growth of algae that produce dimethyl sulphide (DMS), a chemical which helps clouds form above the ocean, reflecting sunlight away from the Earth's surface and bringing a further cooling.

In recent years, scientists have developed a wide range of technical "geo-engineering" ideas for curbing global warming. Seeding the ocean with iron filings to stimulate plankton growth, putting sunshades in space, and firing sulphate aerosols into the atmosphere from a giant cannon have all been proposed; the iron filings idea has been extensively tested. But the whole idea of pursuing these "technical fixes" is controversial.

"One has to understand what the consequences of doing these things are," commented Ken Caldeira from the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University in California, who has published a number of analyses of geo-engineering technologies. "There are scientific questions of safety and efficacy; then there are the broader ethical, social and political dimensions, and one of the most disturbing is that if people start getting the idea that technical fixes are available and cheaper than curbing carbon emissions, then people might start relying on them as an alternative to curbing emissions. "So I think it's worth investigating these kinds of ideas, but premature to start deploying them."

Chris Rapley does not believe ideas like the ocean pipes are complete answers to man-made global warming, but may buy time while society develops a more comprehensive response. "It's encouraging to see how much serious effort is going into technical attempts to reduce carbon emissions, and the renewed commitment to finding an international agreement," he said. "But in the meantime, there's evidence that the Earth's response to climate change might be going faster than people have predicted. The dramatic loss of ice in the Arctic, for example, poses a serious concern for the northern hemisphere climate."

Professor Rapley said the letter to Nature, one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals, was intended to get people thinking about the concept of technical fixes rather than just to advocate ocean pipes. "If you think of how the science community has organised itself," he said, "with the World Climate Research Programme, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, International Polar Year and so on - you've got all this intensive interdisciplinary collaboration figuring out what Earth systems are up to and figuring out how they work, but we don't have a similar network working across the entire piece as to what we can actually do to mitigate and adapt."

He said there was a need for some sort of global collaboration to explore potential climate-fixing technologies. "Geo-engineering is one of the types of thing that are worth investigating," opined Ken Caldeira, "and yes, the amount of effort going into thinking of innovative solutions is far too little. "If we can generate 100 ideas, and 97 are bad and we land up with 3 good ones, then the whole thing will have been worthwhile; so I applaud Lovelock and Rapley for thinking along these lines."

He observed that human emissions of greenhouse gases are bringing huge changes to natural ecosystems anyway, so there was nothing morally difficult in principle about deliberately altering the same natural ecosystems to curb climatic change. But changing patterns of ocean life could potentially have major consequences for marine species. Whales that feed on krill, for example, could find their favourite food displaced by salps.

These would all have to be investigated, James Lovelock acknowledged. But, he said, it is time to start. "There may be all sorts of ecological consequences, but the stakes are terribly high."

Source




Let's make the world storm-proof

The idea that hurricanes are blowback for man's polluting ways overlooks the fact that it is only man - through development and construction - who can offset the impacts of freak weather

Chris Mooney has followed up his attack on the Bush administration's scientific record with a more personal examination of hurricanes (1). Storm World was written in response to Katrina, the category 3 hurricane that hit New Orleans in 2005 leading to the breach of the levee and the subsequent flooding of the city with around 1,700 deaths and material costs generally expected to exceed $100billion (2). Amongst the homes that were eventually destroyed was that of Mooney's mother.

Mooney explains that the modern discussion of hurricanes and their relation to global warming mirrors that of the nineteenth century. On the one hand is William (Bill) Gray, a student of Riehl who shot to fame by unveiling the first Atlantic seasonal hurricane forecasting system in 1984, and prides himself on his ability to crunch data and observe patterns, rather like Redfield. On the other hand are scientists like Kerry Emanuel, who rely on theoretical insight and computer modelling to provide an understanding of the weather that can lead to better predictions of future storm activity. Interestingly, both camps appear to agree that warming has occurred and both agree that warming will increase the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. They disagree, profoundly, on what is causing the current warming and how long it will last. Gray believes the warming is somehow related to the thermohaline cycle (5), while almost everyone else believes the warming is due to CO2 emissions. Gray maintains that the warming will soon reverse, as the thermohaline cycle changes, while his opponents believe that what warming has occurred will be at least maintained and will continue to increase as CO2 continues to be released.

Mooney does well to treat Gray's opposition to the consensus on global warming with proper respect, despite Gray's clearly eccentric views and often gross dismissal of his fellow scientists. It would be easy to dismiss Gray out of hand, forgetting that he pioneered the science of hurricane forecasting and has trained a vast number of younger leading hurricane specialists, many of whom now disagree with him. Science depends upon conviction and scepticism much more than consensus; it is grossly unfortunate to dismiss Gray's contribution as heretical. There are plenty of unknowns that Gray rightly draws attention to: the effects of clouds and ocean spray, stabilisation from warming at upper levels, the influence of the thermohaline circulation, and the effect of hurricanes themselves pulling up masses of cooler water. Unfortunately, however, Gray's basic objection to the global warming consensus - that we can't possibly understand the weather, it's too complicated and difficult - is simply unconvincing.

The bottom line question out of all this is: Are hurricanes getting worse because of global warming or not? Mooney is not trying to be catastrophic and self-consciously avoids hyperbole. `Certainly', he says early in his book, `[this work] is no polemic, no work of alarmism. our scientific understanding of the hurricane-climate relationship remains too incomplete to justify such an approach.' Towards the end of his book, the picture that Mooney paints is fairly mundane. In the Atlantic, at least, global warming is likely increasing the intensity, and probably frequency, of hurricanes. More hurricanes and hurricanes of increased intensity is a problem for those who live in the paths of hurricanes, but these problems are hardly new and need not be apocalyptic. The category 4 Galveston Hurricane of 1900 killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people, but modern construction and evacuation options should prevent that scale of death in modern Galveston. In fact, a seawall was built in the aftermath of 1900 and dredged sand was used to elevate the city. A category 3 hurricane that hit Galveston in 1915 killed 275 people, a massive reduction from the 1900 hurricane.

In contrast, a 1970 six-metre storm surge caused by a tropical cyclone equivalent to a category 3 hurricane killed some 300,000 to 500,000 people in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). A cyclone preparedness programme was put in place to warn people of future cyclones but, unlike Galveston, no major sea defences or cyclone-proof homes and bridges were built. In 1991, another intense cyclone with a six-metre storm surge hit Bangladesh and killed around 138,000 people.

Regions that can be hit by hurricanes and cyclones will inevitably be hit by hurricanes and cyclones regardless of the influence of global warming. Whether global warming really is increasing the intensity and incidence of such dramatic weather events, and it seems a fair bet that it is, these weather events fluctuate widely due to many factors that remain to be understood and are a long way from being controlled. Until we can control the weather, defences and evacuation plans can be engineered for the people who choose to live in vulnerable areas and, if necessary, people can permanently relocate.

It is important to recognise that what to do about hurricanes is a social rather than scientific question. It is one thing for scientists to draw attention towards a growing problem such as the potential for more intense and frequent hurricanes due to global warming. It is quite another to tell democratically elected governments how to manage energy policy and city defences in the light of that evidence. Mooney considers the role of science in political decision-making far too uncritically as a choice between `sound science', which emphasises a very high burden of proof before scientific information serves as the basis for significant political action, and the `precautionary principle', which asserts that we cannot wait for all the evidence to come in before we respond.

Both sound science and the precautionary principle fail to provide any resolution to the question of political action. An insistence on a very high burden of proof will mean waiting until something happens and then it is too late. On the other hand, taking action before it is necessary wastes resources. Wisdom lies in knowing when action is necessary, and that is a political decision not a scientific one.

Mooney laments that scientists are too enamoured to the peer-reviewed literature and too reluctant to make general political observations and recommendations. He wants scientists to `stop being only scientists, and realise that they must be communicators - and leaders, and examples - as well'. Following these recommendations will be disastrous for both science and politics.

Good scientists know that their data and observations can be misleading. A single line of investigation is rarely correct absolutely, which is why peer review is so important. It acts as a system of checks and balances to maintain an even keel towards the truth. Scientists respect this process because it generally works and affirms the legitimate nature of science by holding it up to proper scrutiny. Scientists who try to run around this process by appealing directly to the media or politicians undermine the credibility of scientific pursuit. Does Mooney really want scientists delivering their data direct to the media to support their plans for social reorganisation?

Although it might seem entirely sensible for scientists to inform public policy, there is a line between information and policy and between scientists and politicians. Scientists are not democratically elected; they have no popular mandate for deciding what Florida should do about hurricanes or how Bangladesh should organise building policy. However well-intentioned, shifting expertise into a position of authority without electoral support is a form of tyranny. Clearly Mooney does not see it that way, and probably neither do many people. The introduction of science into policy is generally regarded as benign, a well-intentioned and useful process. The aim is to protect life and liberty and not to undermine it. This is disarmingly unlike the tyrannies of the past and so it escapes popular opposition.

The problem, however, is that public and social policy is not something that can be decided by an empirical process that avoids public debate. People can, if they wish, decide to live on the coast in the face of increasing hurricanes. Society can, if it chooses, offset the cost of people being in harm's way. It is not the job of science to decide what is best for humanity; that is the job of the people. If science, even well intentioned and technically correct science, takes that decision away, then we have tyranny.

Source




SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS ON MAN-MADE OZONE HOLE MAY BE COMING APART

Reality aces the knowalls again. And the antarctic "ozone hole" has reached record sizes in recent years, DESPITE the abolition of CFCs. The latest reading is not as big as the record 28 million sq km holes that developed during 2000, 2003 and 2006 but is close to it. When will they admit that the whole CFC scare showed only how little they knew?

As the world marks 20 years since the introduction of the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer, Nature has learned of experimental data that threaten to shatter established theories of ozone chemistry. If the data are right, scientists will have to rethink their understanding of how ozone holes are formed and how that relates to climate change.

Long-lived chloride compounds from anthropogenic emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are the main cause of worrying seasonal ozone losses in both hemispheres. In 1985, researchers discovered a hole in the ozone layer above the Antarctic, after atmospheric chloride levels built up. The Montreal Protocol, agreed in 1987 and ratified two years later, stopped the production and consumption of most ozone-destroying chemicals. But many will linger on in the atmosphere for decades to come. How and on what timescales they will break down depend on the molecules' ultraviolet absorption spectrum (the wavelength of light a molecule can absorb), as the energy for the process comes from sunlight. Molecules break down and react at different speeds according to the wavelength available and the temperature, both of which are factored into the protocol.

So Markus Rex, an atmosphere scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany, did a double-take when he saw new data for the break-down rate of a crucial molecule, dichlorine peroxide (Cl2O2). The rate of photolysis (light-activated splitting) of this molecule reported by chemists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California1, was extremely low in the wavelengths available in the stratosphere - almost an order of magnitude lower than the currently accepted rate. "This must have far-reaching consequences," Rex says. "If the measurements are correct we can basically no longer say we understand how ozone holes come into being." What effect the results have on projections of the speed or extent of ozone depletion remains unclear.

The rapid photolysis of Cl2O2 is a key reaction in the chemical model of ozone destruction developed 20 years ago2 (see graphic). If the rate is substantially lower than previously thought, then it would not be possible to create enough aggressive chlorine radicals to explain the observed ozone losses at high latitudes, says Rex. The extent of the discrepancy became apparent only when he incorporated the new photolysis rate into a chemical model of ozone depletion. The result was a shock: at least 60% of ozone destruction at the poles seems to be due to an unknown mechanism, Rex told a meeting of stratosphere researchers in Bremen, Germany, last week.

Other groups have yet to confirm the new photolysis rate, but the conundrum is already causing much debate and uncertainty in the ozone research community. "Our understanding of chloride chemistry has really been blown apart," says John Crowley, an ozone researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. "Until recently everything looked like it fitted nicely," agrees Neil Harris, an atmosphere scientist who heads the European Ozone Research Coordinating Unit at the University of Cambridge, UK. "Now suddenly it's like a plank has been pulled out of a bridge." ......

Source




Unhealthy to use wood-burning fireplaces in winter

How did we ever survive in the past without California politicians to protect us?

Anyone who breathed the acrid smoke that hung across the Sacramento Valley when forest fires raged this summer must understand why the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District has proposed a common-sense rule to restrict wood burning this winter. From the beginning of November to the end of February, those cozy wood fires are the single largest source of lung-piercing fine particulate pollution.

The mixture of soot, smoke, metals, nitrates, sulfates and dust that residential fireplaces emit from burning wood penetrates deep into lungs. Exposure decreases lung function and aggravates asthma and bronchitis. In people with serious heart or lung disease, exposure to wood smoke can cause premature death.

In response to studies that documented serious health impacts, the federal government adopted stringent new standards that require local air districts to reduce the public's exposure to soot. To meet that standard, Sacramento air district officials have proposed Rule 421. It would prohibit residents in Sacramento County from burning wood or pressed logs and pellets in their fireplaces during the 25 to 30 bad air days of the year when particulate pollution is greatest, on those winter days when the air is still and smoke hovers close to the ground. Those who violate the rule would face fines of up to $50 for the first offense.

For local elected officials who sit on the air district board, the most controversial provision of the new rule bans the burning of pressed logs and pellets along with wood. Though less harmful than burning wood, pressed logs and pellets are still 100 times more polluting than natural gas. They contribute to the toxic stew that causes an estimated 90 premature deaths in the Sacramento metropolitan area every year. Rule 421 would cut soot pollution by one third in Sacramento County this coming winter, protect public health and save lives.

Source

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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28 September, 2007

GOODBYE KYOTO: CANADA TO JOIN ASIA-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

Prime Minister Stephen Harper used a United Nations conference aimed at saving the Kyoto Protocol as a backdrop yesterday to announce that Canada would join a rival climate change pact. Hours after urging all countries to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 50 per cent in any successor to Kyoto, Mr. Harper told reporters Canada would become the seventh member of the Asia-Pacific Partnership, a group nicknamed the anti-Kyoto partnership by some environmentalists. Seeking to portray Canada as a bridge-builder on the climate change file, Mr. Harper said he wants to be involved in the partnership so he can coax its members into joining a new deal under the United Nations when Kyoto expires in 2012.

The Asia-Pacific Partnership, created last year by Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea and the United States, has been criticized for lacking the mandatory targets contained in Kyoto. Together, the six countries account for nearly half the world's greenhouse-gas emissions. Mr. Harper has hinted previously that Canada would like to join the partnership. His announcement yesterday that this would happen at a meeting in New Delhi next month followed a speech in which he called for a "flexible, balanced" new UN plan to halve greenhouse-gas emissions from their 2006 levels by 2050. His government's plan calls for Canada to cut emissions by 60 to 70 per cent by 2050.

"It's critical that ... all major emitters have binding targets, and one of the reasons it's important for Canada to participate in the Asia-Pacific Partnership is these are the major emitters on the planet," Mr. Harper told reporters. "Those are the discussions we want to be involved in because these are the people that have to get involved in an effective global protocol, or we won't have such a protocol." Mr. Harper, who has been criticized for focusing on targets that are several decades away, told reporters that medium-term targets are also required.

FULL STORY here




BACK TO SQUARE ONE: CARBON TRADING ISN'T WORKING

The battle to beat climate change has come down to one weapon -- the price of carbon. And analysts say it is not working. Much lip service has been paid to cutting climate warming carbon emissions through measures such as improved energy efficiency, technological innovation, reduced demand, higher standards and carbon output restrictions. But in most cases the vital incentive is supposed to be provided by achieving a high price for carbon, from which all else would follow. Neither has happened and time is running out.

"The policy instrument of choice pretty well everywhere is a price for carbon, and it is not going to work," said Tom Burke of environment lobby group E3G. "To stop climate change moving from a bad problem getting worse to a worse problem becoming catastrophic, you have to make the global energy system carbon neutral by 2050 -- and that will not happen just using carbon pricing." Burke said what was urgently needed were strict technical standards and investment incentives to achieve the transition. "You have got to drive the carbon out of the energy system and then keep it out forever," he said. "In the first part of that you are making serious step changes. They are not going to be accomplished by marginal changes in price."

The European Union's carbon emissions trading scheme got off to a shaky start due to over-allocation of permits, but has now established a price of about 20 euros a tonne of carbon dioxide. There is also the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol on cutting global carbon emissions, under which developing nations effectively get paid for emissions foregone.

VERY POOR WEAPON

Together, these two have generated a global carbon trade worth billions of dollars and handed vast profits to some key players, but had little measurable effect on carbon emissions. "Governments are relying way too much on the price of carbon to deliver everything," said Jim Watson of Sussex University's Energy Group. "It is a prerequisite but not a panacea. It has to go hand in hand with regulations and technological developments, and they are sadly lacking," he said. "If you rely too much on the carbon price you give people the option of buying their way out of it. It is a very poor weapon in what is supposed to be a war to save humanity. "The oil price shocks of the 1970s didn't wean us off oil, so why should we believe that a high carbon price will wean us off carbon," he added.

The United States appears finally to have bought into the climate change argument having spent years rejecting the idea of man-made global warming, and is hosting a meeting of major emitting nations later this week. The United Nations is also holding a climate summit on Monday, ahead of a crucial meeting in December on the Indonesian island of Bali of UN environment ministers that is supposed to kick start talks on a new global climate treaty. But there is no consensus on what needs to be done or how to achieve it. While some countries want targets and timetables for emissions cuts, to others like the United States the idea is abhorrent.

"The price of carbon has had virtually no effect on the market so far and virtually no effect on climate change," said Oxford University economics professor Dieter Helm. "People like me who think the price of carbon is important don't think it is the only thing that matters. There must be more focus on energy efficiency, more research and development and more renewable energy. "The truth is that Europe has performed less well on carbon dioxide since the late 1990s than the United States -- and Europe is inside Kyoto and has an emissions trading scheme," he said.

Source




BRITISH GOVERNMENT: BINDING TARGETS FOR USA, FREE RIDE FOR CHINA

Britain pointedly called on the United States yesterday to join other rich nations making binding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions as dozens of world leaders held a summit on the danger of catastrophic climate change. Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, told the meeting at United Nations headquarters that "the greatest challenge we have ever faced as human beings" required action from every developed nation. "That means all of us, including the largest economy in the world, the United States, taking on binding reduction targets," he said. "It is inconceivable that dangerous climate change can be avoided without this happening."

Mr Benn's decision to single out the US during a visit to New York will be regarded in Washington as particularly provocative. President Bush skipped most of the UN meeting yesterday and was planning to attend only a working dinner last night. He has called his own two-day meeting of 15 major economies in Washington later in the week. Although he has abandoned his previous scepticism about man-made climate change and promises to negotiate a "long-term global goal" for cutting emissions, Mr Bush still envisages countries entering framework agreements voluntarily.

"It's our philosophy that each nation has the sovereign capacity to decide for itself what its own portfolio of policies should be," said James Connaughton, the President's chief environmental adviser. The White House remains hostile to international measures such as a cap-and-trade system on emissions, which might increase electricity bills for ordinary Americans, with Mr Connaughton questioning whether a "woman on fixed income in Ohio should pay for carbon dioxide reductions in the oil sector".

European diplomatic sources are complaining privately that Mr Bush's agenda is too limited and threatens to undermine their attempt for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which was never ratified by the US. Some say that they are already looking "beyond Bush" towards the 2008 presidential elections. Elizabeth Bast, spokeswoman for Friends of the Earth, said: "The US must join the rest of the world in tackling climate change within the United Nations framework, instead of promoting purely voluntary measures that will not achieve necessary emissions reductions."

The UN has tried to smooth over the potential conflict with Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, accepting an invitation to attend the Washington meeting. Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, represented the Bush Administration in the main session of the UN summit. But Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California Governor, upstaged her with his own appearance. "It is time we came together in a new international agreement that can be embraced by rich and poor nations alike," he said. "California is moving the United States beyond debate and doubt to action."

Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, claimed there was now "universal recognition" that the UN provided the right forum for negotiating global action. "The message is simple: we know enough to act; if we do not act now, the impact of climate change will be devastating."

Mr Benn said that a scheduled UN conference on climate change in Bali in December should start negotiations leading to an agreement by the end of 2009 on greenhouse gas emissions after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires. "The ultimate objective of the UN convention on climate change requires at least a halving of global emissions by the middle of this century," he said. At a breakfast appearance before the summit, the Environment Secretary said that he welcomed the "evolving" thinking on global warming by the United States. But he stopped short of calling for binding emissions targets for China's growing economy. "China in the end will have to decide what they are going to contribute," he said.

Source




Like it or not, coal is vital to Asia's growth

Those calling on China and India to `kick the coal habit', and opt for less sooty forms of energy, overlook the vast benefits of coal-use for those nations

In Sydney all last week, economic leaders and ministers from 21 nations held the annual meeting of Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC). Rich members of the organisation (Canada, the US, Japan, Australia) rubbed shoulders with poorer ones (China, Indonesia, Vietnam, South Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Mexico and Peru). Among the issues on the table? Climate change.

Fair enough. What is not so fair, however, is for Western commentators to use the APEC summit to hector China, South East Asia, Korea and also India, a non-member of APEC, about what economists call `choice of technique' in energy supply. These nations, Western environmentalist opinion now insists, should eschew the use of coal and instead embrace cleaner forms of energy.

Welcome to the haughty presumptions and condescending commands of Green Imperialism. The East, we are told, should not follow Cardiff, King Coal and the dirty Victorian way. It should not develop by following the path of soot along which, in decades gone by, we in the West so foolishly mired ourselves. Rather, the East should face up to its twenty-first century planetary responsibilities, and accept that its current enthusiasm for coal (but also its enthusiasm for cleaner nuclear energy) is dangerously misplaced.

Paul Brannen, head of campaigns at Christian Aid, expressed the new dogma in a letter to the UK Guardian: `Carbon has fuelled the rich world's wealth and development. But the devastating impact of climate change means that poor countries cannot now develop in the same way.' (1) Coal, it is felt, is `not an option' for the developing world. Yet in fact, coal will be an important source of energy for the whole world for many decades to come.

In 2005, there were just over 700 billion tonnes of reserves of hard coal and lignite in the Earth. North America had about 200 billion, Russia and its environs 150 billon, India and China 75 billon each, and South Africa 40 billion. The contribution of coal to power generation in different countries reflects its disposition: in 2003, it accounted for half the power generated in the US, two-thirds of that in India, 79 per cent of China's power, and 93 per cent of South Africa's (2). Altogether, coal is far from being a legacy of the nineteenth century. Though it was vital to the industrialisation of Britain then, it remains a sine qua non for three of the key economies of the twenty-first century - America, India and China.

The installed base of coal-fired power plants cannot be wished away as an outdated relic. Without coal, there would be no future for energy and indeed civilisation in large parts of the world. Moreover, though mining coal remains dangerous - especially in China - coal is cheap compared with other sources of fuel.

Cheapness is important to developing nations: they are as yet in little position to substitute other, more expensive energy sources for coal. Even China, with all the US Treasury bonds it owns, cannot afford to invest, either at home or abroad, in alternative fuels on the scale that would allow it to leave coal behind. What's more, coal is a key national resource for China and India. It is vital to something that environmentalists usually talk up: energy security.

Environmentalist thinkers and activists always feared international dependence in energy - particularly dependence on oil in the Middle East. From the green point of view, energy should always be local. However, the local nature of coal for countries like India and China is not seen as a benefit. Yet when accused of double standards, environmentalists point to the heavy carbon emissions that use of coal leads to. Those emissions are an incontestable fact. But what certainly can be contested is greens' dismissal of a technology that could make a difference to the way we use coal: carbon capture and storage (CCS). CCS is an approach which attempts to mitigate global warming by capturing the CO2 that is emitted from power plants and subsequently storing it instead of allowing it to be released into the atmosphere.

For all their mantra-like invocations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, greens rarely mention the fact that even the IPCC favours CCS: it names CCS as one of its `key technologies' for mitigating CO2 emissions (3). It's true that CCS is in its infancy, and it's also true that so far, capitalism is, as usual, not rushing to make the investments that will be required to test and then apply an innovation like CCS. But solar and wind power are also in need of major research and technological advance if ever they are to be a useful and efficient part of the world's energy portfolio: scientists in Japan and China, which are particularly expert in photovoltaic panels, will agree that really competitive devices are 20 or 30 years away. So why, if greens believe the price and viability of renewable energy will come right in time, do so many of them hold a means of dealing with emissions, such as CCS, to be a non-starter?

The answer is that, behind their hostility to coal and CCS, is something much bigger than the important issues of carbon emissions and the need to make the right, dispassionate choice of technique in energy supply. Environmentalists are selective in their optimism because they want to repudiate the twentieth century, not just the coal that, in large part, made that century happen. A little like Lady Macbeth, they guiltily want the dark spots of Western affluence removed. They have premonitions of doom, and are disillusioned with economic growth at home. As a result, they stigmatise burgeoning development in Asia, and especially the coal that fuels it, as a catastrophe.

More here




GM: where the science doesn't count

Today's climate change activists pose as `defenders of science'. Yet not so long ago, they irrationally rejected the scientific truth about GM crops

Hold the front page: `There is no change in the government's policy towards GM crops', says Hilary Benn of Britain's Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Benn's statement was a reaction to yesterday's scaremongering frontpage story in the UK Guardian. The Guardian headline said `The return of GM', and the report claimed that `ministers back moves to grow crops in UK'

It is hard to remember now, but in 2000 environmental campaigners were protesting all over the country, organising meetings and debates and breaking into premises, all to draw the public's attention to the dangers represented by. genetically modified organisms - crops, mainly. Lord Melchett, himself a former Labour cabinet minister turned Greenpeace activist, tore up GM crops. (My grandfather slaved away for his father at Imperial Chemicals Industries, dying young, as many did, because of the way the chemical fumes tended to accelerate your heart rate, leading to the `Tuesday death'. GM crops would help alleviate the need to use these kinds of chemicals.)

The GM debate was remarkable. In quite a short time, environmental campaigners brought to the surface intense public anxieties about the industrialisation of the food chain. Just before the debate about the introduction of GM foods, there had been another public health scare when one government scientist, Dr Robert Lacey, warned that by 1997 one third of Britain could be infected with the debilitating brain illness Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD), from eating beef contaminated with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)-inducing prions. As it turned out, you were about as likely to die of CJD as you were to be struck by lightning, and there is still no proven link with it and BSE - but public distrust of authority was at an all-time high.

There was no real argument against GM food. But people felt very disconnected from the authorities, having little faith in the public pronouncements that there was no risk. That alone was enough to make most people alarmed. Opportunistically, environmental campaigners realised that they could gain influence by stoking public fears. Activists like journalist Andy Rowell, language-school head Jonathan Matthews of the Norfolk Genetic Interest Network, the Open University academic Mae-Wan Ho, and the Guardian's George Monbiot stirred up a fantastic picture of rogue genes causing all kinds of extraordinary mutations as they passed through the food chain, or as they were carried on the wind from test-beds into `healthy' British meadows.

Of course, there was no scientific evidence whatsoever. The absence of even one example of a negative health impact from the introduction of GM crops in the US put some pressure on the greens. They latched on to examples that really did not demonstrate any danger. Some oil was contaminated, leading to deaths - but it turned out it was nothing to do with GM. And then the Rowett Research Institute's Dr Arpad Pusztai did some experiments on GM lectins in potatoes that seemed to show negative consequences in rats. The press and the environmentalists latched on to the case - except that it only showed that the introduction of poisonous lectins into potatoes was bad for rats. When Pusztai was sacked for overstating the implications of his tests, GM campaigners adopted his case as a cause c,lSbre, only slowly coming to the conclusion that they had indeed overstated the dangers highlighted in Dr Pusztai's tests.

Meanwhile, another hero of the anti-GM lobby, Mae-Wan Ho, who had been involved in biotechnology in the Seventies, was largely preoccupied with the philosophical meaning of genetics rather than hands-on bio-science, and was interested in resurrecting the ideas of the disgraced Soviet biologist Lysenko, and also Bergson's vitalist cult.

GM activists came under pressure from scientists. In a public debate between George Monbiot and biologist Steve Jones, Jones denounced Monbiot as a charlatan (they have since made up). Andy Rowell attacked the scientists for being the mouthpieces of big business. The peer review of Arpad Pusztai's work was denounced as a cover for a hidden agenda to force GM food on an unsuspecting public. Scientific verification was not to be trusted, said the activists, who invoked a higher bar, the `precautionary principle', which puts the onus of proof on those introducing technology that it could do no harm in the future.

Provoking the public's deepest uncertainties about the food chain proved a great success. Supermarkets withdrew GM food from their shelves and made it effectively unmarketable. In 2004, the New Labour government conceded that even the scientific experiments - the rapeseed fields that Melchett had torn down - should be stopped.

The activists, though, were not entirely happy that they had painted themselves into a corner of outright hostility to scientific method. They knew that if their irrational rejection of science and the modern world was made too explicit, people would find it difficult to go along with. On the other hand, the scientists were pretty bruised, too. They were desperate to win back some of the authority they had lost by being portrayed as tools of big business and proto-Frankensteins out to poison the public. Their subsequent pursuit of `public understanding' turned out to mean lots of committees, often full of green activists, seeking to influence the scientists' agenda.

On the issue of climate change, scientists and environmentalists found more to agree on. As the international diplomatic manoeuvres engendered a new science of climate change, there was more influence for those scientists who lent their research to heavy-duty warnings of global catastrophe. The environmentalists were thrilled to find that the one community that had been most resistant to their ideas were now providing the ammunition.

Once environmentalists had routinely attacked science, drawing on the caricatures of the scientific method found in the Frankfurt school of sociology. Now they were defenders of science against the supposedly `irrational' climate change deniers. The radical academic Bruno Latour, who had made a career arguing that science was nothing more than an ideological construct that reflected the interests of the powers-that-be, suddenly changed his mind over the issue of climate change. Protesters against the new runway at Heathrow summed up the activists' changed attitude to science. They marched with a banner that read: `We are armed only with peer-reviewed science.'

The new, more positive attitude to science on the part of the environmentalists, though, is the reason why the previous issue of GM is still unresolved. The pressure for a return to GM testing in Britain comes from the National Farmers Union, which is lobbying to be allowed to introduce the latest biotechnology. Whether a minister did or did not talk to the Guardian over the weekend about reintroducing GM, the government's explicit position is that there will be no return to GM testing.

Still the activists are alarmed. They have an intuitive understanding that they got away with a lot when they committed the UK to outright opposition to GM testing. The decision was an outrage against scientific experimentation. The activists' arguments back then were a lot more hostile to science than they are today. The Guardian suggests that the pro-GM lobbyists, too, think that the debate has moved on, and that GM crops can be defended on grounds that they might be a solution to the problems raised by global warming. But whatever the reason, Britain should be engaged in GM testing - not because it can help with the problems of global warming, but because it is the right thing to do.

Source

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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27 September, 2007

Ultimate Global Warming Challenge Ups Prize Money to $125,000 for Proving Humans Cause Catastrophic Climate Change

Press release from junkscience.com

The Ultimate Global Warming Challenge announced today that it raised to $125,000 the cash award to the first person to prove in a scientific manner that human emissions of greenhouse gases will cause catastrophic global climate change. (www.UltimateGlobalWarmingChallenge.com)

"Surprisingly no one has entered the contest yet," said Steven Milloy, founder and publisher of JunkScience.com and the sponsor of the Ultimate Global Warming Challenge. "I'm surprised since Al Gore, the United Nations and the mainstream media all seem to think that the notion of man made catastrophic global warming is a no-brainer," Milloy added.

The Ultimate Global Warming Challenge was launched on Aug. 7, 2007 with the popular and highly rated YouTube video entitled, "Can You Save Al Gore?" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=LBCRStksqL0).

"It appears that $100,000 is not enough to spur Al Gore and other climate alarmists to submit their proofs that humans are causing global warming," explained Milloy. "If it's a matter of money, Al Gore and the alarmists should just come out and tell us what sum it will cost the rest of us to see what proof they have."




Greeniness not aesthetic -- even in Oregon

A Bend woman is facing possible legal action for hanging her laundry out to dry. Susan Taylor, who lives in the upscale Awbrey Butte neighborhood, says she's trying to do the right thing for the planet by stringing up her family's clothes. But in doing so she's violating rules meant to keep up appearances in her subdivision, which means she might become a martyr in the so-called right-to-dry movement.

The trouble began last spring after Taylor, 55, decided to do her part to address global warming by stringing up her family's clothes between the pines behind their 2,400-square-foot house. "This is the right thing to do with what's going on with our climate," said the part-time nurse, standing beside her Toyota hybrid sedan.

But neighbors soon complained. In June, Taylor got a letter from the neighborhood's developer, Bend Brooks Resources Corp., saying she was violating Awbrey Butte's covenants, conditions and restrictions. The development's rules require that clotheslines, as well as garbage cans and lawn cuttings, be "screened

Source




Missouri: Ethanol straining aquifer

Nutty Federal policies make a real problem -- water shortage -- worse

The Ogallala Aquifer, which contributes to water supplies in eight states including South Dakota, would be further strained if current trends in ethanol production persist, according to a report released Thursday by an environmental advocacy group. "State agencies that are proposing ethanol plants need to be concerned about water withdrawal," said Timothy D. Male, senior scientist for Environmental Defense. "The direction we're taking is that not all biofuels are created equal, and we need to come up with standards through which we can evaluate all the fuels." State leaders and trade groups, however, defended ethanol as an important component of the rural economy and criticized some of the report's findings.

"I think they're hitting the panic button a little prematurely," said Matt Hartwig, spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group that promotes ethanol. "Our industry is very aware of natural resources, and we're very cautious in how we use those resources." Hartwig said ethanol plants go through a lengthy approval process and have to meet standards that include ensuring adequate water supplies. "We're also working on technologies that will continue to improve ethanol production efficiencies, which include reducing water use," he said.

Ethanol's popularity as an alternative fuel has reached an all-time high. With about 119 plants nationwide and 86 more on the way, the country's ethanol output was about 6 billion gallons last year, according to the RFA. But according to the Environmental Defense report, President Bush's goal of 35 billion gallons of ethanol by 2015 is "almost certain to result in a major increase in corn production." That increase will strain the underground aquifer, as well as grasslands that would be turned into cropland to grow the corn used in most ethanol plants.

The Environmental Defense report said new corn ethanol plants under construction in areas of highest depletion in the aquifer will increase the region's ethanol production by 900 percent. "This dramatic expansion of ethanol production has substantial implications for already strained water and grassland resources in the Ogallala Aquifer region," according to the report.

But Geoff Cooper, spokesman for the National Corn Growers Association in St. Louis, said of the additional 14 million acres of corn planted last year, none came from native grassland or pasture land "or anything like that." "To suggest corn is going to be planted on native grassland is a stretch, and we just don't see it playing out that way," Cooper said.

Water demands from the ethanol plants in areas where the aquifer is depleted "may reach 2.6 billion gallons per year for corn-to-fuel processing alone, and between 59 and 120 billion gallons per year for increased water demand if there are local increases in irrigated corn production," according to the report. The eight Ogallala states are Kansas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, South Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas.

Ethanol production in Kansas, which has nine ethanol plants, with a capacity of more than 270.5 million gallons, was expected to quadruple by 2010. The report said if four new ethanol plants in Kansas lead to any increase in local irrigated corn production, the plants would have an "even larger impact on water pumping demands in one of the most over exploited sections of the Ogallala Aquifer, where a large region of the water table declined by over 40 feet between 1980 and 1996." But Kansas Agriculture Secretary Adrian Polansky said ethanol plants in Kansas do not adversely affect the aquifer.

"Ethanol plants being put in place in western Kansas in the Ogallala Aquifer area have no impact on the water use in that area," Polansky said. "The Ogallala Aquifer area is basically closed to new appropriation." Polansky also said the increased demand for corn did not have a major effect on corn production in Kansas last year. Kansas farmers planted about 3.65 million acres of corn last year, and this year they planted 3.7 million acres. "That's hardly a significant change," he said. "I think it's very oversimplistic to try to make conclusions about what farmers' decisions will be because of ethanol."

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CZECH PRESIDENT CHALLENGES IPCC 'MONOPOLY' AT THE UN

"The increase in global temperatures has been in the last years, decades and centuries very small in historical comparisons and practically negligible in its actual impact upon human beings and their activities," Czech President Vaclav Klaus said at the world politicians' meeting on global warming today. The conference in New York has been organised by U.N. General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon.

Klaus said "the hypothetical threat connected with future global warming depends exclusively upon very speculative forecasts, not upon undeniable past experience and upon its trends and tendencies. These forecasts are based on relatively short-time series of relevant variables and on forecasting models that have not been proved very reliable when attempting to explain past developments."

No scientific consensus exists, "contrary to many self-assured and self-serving proclamations" about the causes of the ongoing climate changes, Klaus said. The arguments of both parties in dispute - i.e. those believing in "man's dominant role in recent climate changes" and those who support the hypothesis about "its mostly natural origin" - are so strong that they must be listened to carefully, Klaus continued. "To prematurely proclaim the victory of one group over another would be a tragic mistake and I am afraid we are making it," Klaus continued.

"Different levels of development, income and wealth in different places of the world make worldwide, overall and universal solutions costly, unfair and to a great extent discriminatory. The already-developed countries do not have the right to impose any additional burden on the less developed countries. Dictating ambitious and for them entirely inappropriate environmental standards is wrong and should be excluded from the menu of recommended policy measures."

He proposed that the U.N. organise two parallel inter-government discussion panels and issue two competing reports on climate changes. "To get rid of a one-sided monopoly is a condition sine qua non for an efficient and rational debate. Providing the same or comparable financial backing to both groups of scientists is a necessary starting point," Klaus said.

Commenting on the issue for public Czech Radio (CRo) later today, Klaus said "Let's not create a false illusion that we share a single expected opinion. This is simply just the huge cheat and trick ... the gentlemen such as [Al] Gore and [Martin] Bursik have created." He alluded to former U.S. vice-president and to the Czech Green Party (SZ) chairman, respectively....

In his New York speech Klaus said that "as a result of the scientific dispute there are those who call for an imminent action and those who warn against it. Rational behaviour should depend on the size of the probability of the risk and on the magnitude of the costs of its avoidance." "As as a responsible politician, as an economist, as an author of a book on the economic of climate changes, with all available data and arguments in mind, I have to conclude that the risk is too small, the costs of eliminating it too big and the application of a fundamentally-interpreted precautionary principle a wrong strategy," Klaus stated.

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Climate promises so much hot air

Comment from Australia

What is it about climate change that attracts charlatans? While the focus has been on the Howard Government these past few days, what about the political snake-oil salesmen who would have you believe that we can reduce carbon emissions and fix global warming in the near term? That we can pull it off without noticeable economic or political pain and without worrying about what developing countries do. All bunkum. But you wouldn’t know that just by listening to the siren songs of the federal ALP or the Greens. They tell us breezily we can have it all, no worries. Where is the probing, sceptical media when these sorts of porkies are told?

Labor’s climate change policy represents the sort of brazen deception that Hugh Mackay would have no hesitation labelling “shameless mendacity” had it been offered up by the Liberal Party. But because Mackay and his progressive friends are barracking for Kevin 07, they have gone missing in action on the issue of what an ALP government can, and will, deliver on climate change.

A couple of striking recent developments in NSW tell us what a real live ALP government would be forced to do if it got its hands on the levers of power. It doesn’t bear any resemblance to the cuddly, idealistic promises of the Kevin 07 campaign. Federal Labor is hoping nobody will notice the yawning gap between what can be delivered on climate change without passing through the public’s pain barrier and what Peter Garrett and co are holding out to us.

Which is why we ought to take a close look at NSW, where this problem is writ large. The NSW Iemma Government is acutely aware of the chasm between reality and spin because it actually holds the reins of government.

Exhibit one from the NSW Government reality file is Moolarben. A few weeks ago, the NSW Government approved the development of a massive new coal mine at Moolarben near Mudgee despite loud protests from environmental and residents groups. Moolarben is huge. The Sydney Morning Herald reported it would produce 504 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, equivalent to 168 million more cars on the roads and almost as much climate change pollution as Australia generates in a year. If you’re a climate change purist, this is surely a disaster. But the iron law of political reality meant it had to be approved. A cleaner environment tomorrow is no substitute, electorally speaking, for jobs and prosperity today.

As Tasmanian forestry unions taught us at the previous election, the first duty of any Labor government is to preserve and enhance the jobs of union members. Utopian promises of a clean, green environment free of coal mines and timber workers must always surrender to reality.

This is one reason that those telling you it is possible to have meaningful and binding international targets on carbon emission in the near term are practising a fraud. If the NSW Government cannot say no to the jobs generated by the coal industry, can we realistically expect developing countries such as China to do so?

And any scheme that imposes real and effective targets on developed countries but not on developing countries is no more than a scheme to export jobs from Australia to China. Now, Bob Brown and Garrett may have no objection to that. But the hard heads in the ALP know better.

Exhibit two from the NSW school of practical political reality. The NSW Labor Government realises that NSW needs at least one large new power station to “keep the lights on”, to quote Premier Morris Iemma. But as Tony Owen told the Government in his report, it cannot afford to have one without privatising the NSW electricity retailing sector at a minimum, and probably also the generation sector as well.

Herein lies not one but two delicious ironies. Privatising the power industry in order to fund a new power station, inevitably coal-fired, shatters two sacred tenets of the left-wing faith. Thou shalt not privatise. Thou shalt not build more coal-fired power stations.

The need to preserve the jobs of electricity workers, no matter what the cost, will likely mean privatisation will fail because the unions will oppose it, just as they did when former premier Bob Carr and his treasurer Michael Egan went down that path in 1997. Already the unions who pull the NSW Government’s strings have vetoed privatisation.

Interestingly, according to reports in The Daily Telegraph, they have done an unholy deal with the NSW Government to keep any dispute between them quiet until after the federal election. Similarly, if NSW needs a coal-fired power station to keep the lights on, they will get one. At public expense. No matter what climate change commandments are broken in the process. Union jobs will always outrank the cost to the public and certainly trump a clean atmosphere.

The hard men from Labor’s NSW Right faction learned those lessons of practical politics along with their two-times tables. And the key lesson for voters is that federal ALP is run by such practical men today. Men such as Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan. They know, though they are not saying, that Garrett, Anthony Albanese and ALP promises of a clean, green tomorrow are all just flim-flam election material. They know that, pre-election, the vast gap between what they promise on climate change and what an ALP government can actually deliver needs to be filled with a combination of smoke, mirrors and lies.

Should Labor win the federal election, these childish stunts will stop and the real business of governing will begin. Perhaps we should be grateful: adhering to idealistic targets, butchering the coal industry and banning electric hot-water systems will simply impoverish Australians and send jobs offshore without making a jot of difference to world carbon levels or global warming.

If we think the Chinese are going to stop opening new coal-fired power stations because we veto new Moolarbens and won’t sell them coal, we have a shaky grip on reality. So the realpolitik of the ALP hard heads is infinitely to be preferred to the Pollyanna-type views of the dreamers who write the campaign ads and the jingles about clean green futures.

But it would be nice to think that when this inevitable deceit is practised upon us, it would be fearlessly exposed. To think that the left-wing faithful, the artists, poets, actors and playwrights will complain about a lack of public decency in public life, led by Mackay, excoriating the mendacious in public office. To think the intelligentsia will moan about being lied to and write books titled, Not Happy, Kev.

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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26 September, 2007

Scientists Counter AP Article Promoting Computer Model Climate Fears

Post below lifted from Marc Morano.

Nearly two dozen prominent scientists from around the world have denounced a recent Associated Press article promoting sea level fears in the year 2100 and beyond based on unproven computer models predictions. The AP article also has been accused of mischaracterizing the views of a leading skeptic of man-made global warming fears. The scientists are dismissing the AP article, entitled “Rising Seas Likely to Flood U.S. History”(LINK) as a “scare tactic,” “sheer speculation,” and “hype of the worst order.” (H/T: Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters.org - LINK)

Dr. Richard S. Courtney, a climate and atmospheric science consultant and a UN IPCC expert reviewer ridiculed the AP article. “Rarely have I read such a collection of unsubstantiated and scare-mongering twaddle. Not only do real studies show no increase to rate of sea level change, the[AP] article gives reasons for concern that are nonsense,” Courtney told Inhofe EPW Press Blog on September 23.

UN IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr Vincent Gray, of New Zealand slammed the article as well: “This [AP article] is a typical scare story based on no evidence or facts, but only on the ‘opinions’ and ‘beliefs’ of ‘experts’, all of whom have a financial interest in the promotion of their computer models,” Gray wrote to the Inhofe EPW Press Blog.

Swedish Professor Wibjorn Karlen of the Department of Social and Economic Geography at Stockholm University: “Another of these hysterical views of our climate,” Karlen wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog regarding the AP article. "Newspapers should think about the damage they are doing to many persons, particularly young kids, by spreading the exaggerated views of a human impact on climate,” Karlen explained. The September 22, 2007 Associated Press article promoting future computer generated climate fears, appears just days before a high profile UN climate summit in New York Citythis week. The AP’s Seth Borenstein has a history of promoting unverifiable climate fears of the future (See: “AP Incorrectly claims scientists praise Gore’s movie” from June 2006 – LINK )

This AP report comes at a time when the peer-reviewed science is continuing to debunk the foundation of man-made climate change fears. (See "New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears" (LINK)

Alabama State Climatologist Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, stated that the AP mischaracterized his views on sea level in the article promoting climate fears a hundred years from now. “[My] discussion [with the AP reporter Seth Borenstein] was primarily about the storm surges which come from hurricanes - that's the real vulnerability. The sea level is rising around 1 inch per decade, but sea level is like any other climate parameter - its either rising or falling all the time. To me, 16 inches per century is not a significant problem to deal with. But since storm surges of 15 to 30 feet occur in 6 hours, any preventive strategy, like an extra 3 feet of elevation, would be helpful,” Christy wrote to the Inhofe EPW Press blog. “Thinking that legislation can change sea level is hubris. I did a calculation on what 1000 new nuclear power plants operating by 2020 would do for the IPCC best guess in the year 2100. The answer is 1.4 cm – about half an inch (if you accept the IPCC projection A1B for the base case.) Also, there doesn't seem to be any acceleration of the slow trend,” Christy explained.

Borenstein's AP article stated: “Ultimately, rising seas will likely swamp the first American settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad that sent the first American into orbit, many climate scientists are predicting. In about a century, some of the places that make America what it is may be slowly erased.”

Borenstein, who only quotes six scientists in the article, of which only one can be labeled a climate skeptic, uses the generic phrase “several leading scientists say." [EPW Blog Note: This blog report alone quotes nearly twodozen climate experts countering the AP’s “report” on sea level]

Borenstein’s article also claims alarming sea levels “will happen regardless of any future actions to curb greenhouse gases, several leading scientists say. And it will reshape the nation.” “Storm surges worsened by sea level rise will flood the waterfront getaways of rich politicians—the Bushes' Kennebunkport and John Edwards' place on the Outer Banks. And gone will be many of the beaches in Texas and Florida favored by budget-conscious students on Spring Break,” Borenstein’s AP article continued.

But prominent scientists are speaking out and denouncing the article a mere hours after its publication. Here is a sampling of scientists’ reaction to the AP story:

State of Florida Climatologist Dr. Jim O'Brien of Florida State University countered the AP article. “The best measurements of sea level rise are from satellite instrument called altimeters. Currently they measure 14 inches in 100 years. Everyone agrees that there is no acceleration. Even the UN IPCC quotes this,” O’Brien wrote to EPW on September 23. O’Brien is also the director of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies. “If you increase the rate of rise by four times, it will take 146 years to rise to five feet. Sea level rise is the ‘scare tactic’ for these guys,” O’Brien added.

Climate researcher Dr Vincent Gray, of New Zealand, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports going back to 1990: "The IPCC never makes predictions, only projections" -- what might happen, or be 'likely' if you believe the assumptions in the model. No computer model has ever been shown to be capable of successful prediction", Gray wrote to the Inhofe EPW Press Blog on September 23. “Actual data on sea levels are unreliable. Long term figures are based on tide-gauge measurements near port cities prone to subsidence and damage of equipment from severe weather. Many recent and more reliable measurements show little recent change. Satellite measurements have shown a recent rise which may be temporary,” Gray added.

Dr. Boris Winterhalter, a retired Senior Research Scientist and Coordinator for national international marine geological research at the Geological Survey of Finland: “Even the worst case scenario is half of that quoted by Associated Press. This is a hype of the worst order. This whole scare builds on GCM's which we know mimic Earth processes very simplistically and are thus most unreliable,” Winterhalter told Inhofe EPW Press Blog on September 23. “I, as a marine geologist, am abhorred. I just looked at the USGS (US Geological Survey) site and am astonished that none of the references or fact sheets seem to refer to IPCC Fourth Assessment Report released this spring,” Winterhalter added.

Dr. Richard S. Courtney, a climate and atmospheric science consultant and a UN IPCC expert reviewer: “Global sea level has been rising for the 10,000 years since the last ice age, and no significant change to the rate of sea level rise has been observed recently,” Courtney wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog on September 23. "A continuing rise of ~2 mm/year for the next 100 years would raise sea level by ~0.2 m as it did during the twentieth century. And it is hard to seeany justification forAndrew Weaver's claim (as quoted by AP) that ‘We're going to get a meter and there's nothing we can do about it, unless Weaver is talking about the next 500 years,” Courtney wrote. “Simply, there is no reason to suppose that sea level rise will be more of a problem in this century than it was in the last century or each of the previous ten centuries,” he concluded.

Geophysicist Dr. David Deming of University of Oklahoma. “Projections of sea-level rise are based on projections of future warming, fifty or a hundred years hence. And these projections are based on speculative computer models that have numerous uncertainties,” Deming wrote in a September 23, e-mail to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “These models cannot even be tested; their validity is completely unknown. In short, predictions of future sea-level rise are nothing but sheer speculation,” Deming added.

Swedish Professor Wibjorn Karlen of the Department of Social and Economic Geography at Stockholm University: “I have used the NASA temperature data for a study of several major areas. As far as I can see the IPCC “Global Temperature” is wrong. Temperature is fluctuating but it is still most places cooler than in the 1930s and 1940s,"Karlen wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog regarding the AP article. “The latest estimates of sea level rise are 1.31 mm/year. With this water level increase it will take about 800 years before the water level has increased by 1 m if not conditions change before that (very likely). Society will looks very different at that time,” he added.

Emmy Nominated Meteorologist Art Horn says AP loves ‘a scary story’ “Fearless forecasts from people who likely have never made real time, real world predictions. We who have worked in the real world of everyday weather forecasting for decades understand what it's like to be burned, even when you felt the forecast was a lock. I'm of the belief that most if not all of these predictions come from people who don't know much about the nature of prediction,” Horn wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog the day after the AP article was published. “Working with computer models that don't even start with a climate remotely similar to the real world can't give you results that are in any way close to useful. But the AP and all news organizations love a scary story. I know, I worked as a TV meteorologist for 25 years. If it will generate a buzz they will run with it,” Horn explained. “Making predictions about how much sea level will rise helps to insure the money train will continue. There will be people in seats of power that will continue to feed money to universities, research facilities and people like [NASA’s] James Hansen.

Greenpeace co-founder ecologist Dr. Patrick Moore noted the AP article was way off base from even the UN IPCC predictions. “The IPCC predicts 18 - 59 cm, i.e. their high end is about half predicted in the AP story, and the AP story warns of a possible three meters,” Moore told Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “The sea was 400 feet (130 meters)lower than today at the peak of the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago. This is an average of 72 cm/100 years. Most of this occurred between 18,000 and 6,000 years ago so there were periods when the sea rose more that 1 meter per 100 years,” Moore concluded.

Former Harvard physicist Dr. Lubos Motl: “There's no good reason to expect more than 3 millimeters per year in average. It's been really 1.5 mm in the last 50 years, and 2 mm per year in 1900-1950. The rate has actuallyslowed down according to some papers,” Motl wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “Any model that predicts significant acceleration [of sea level] with growing CO2 is falsified or nearly falsified by the observed data. It's crazy to think that this slow gradual rise is anything that would justify any actions besides the houses that have to be either moved or protected on the centennial scale,” he added. “Any calculation that wants to indicate that the effects of sea level rise are a significant portion of the life or the economy is simply a miscalculation,” he concluded.

Chemist and agronomist Paavo Siitam: “Despite some doom and gloom predictions, excluding waves washing onto shores by relatively rarely occurring tsunamis and storm-surges, low-lying areas on the face of our planet have NOT yet been submerged by rising oceans... so probably low-lying areas along shorelines of Canada and the USA will be SAFE into foreseeable and even distant futures,” Siitam wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “By the way, I'd be happy to buy prized oceanfront properties at bargain prices, anywhere in the world, when unwarranted, panic selling begins. The dire predictions will not come true this century,” he added.

IPCC 2007 Expert Reviewer Dr. Madhav Khandekar, a Ph.D meteorologist: “I cannot help but conclude that this is one more example of scare-mongering by some very reputed scientists inthe atmosphere/ocean science. I am disappointed to find that none of these scientists seem to want to refer to the excellent work of Prof Morner of Stockholm University who was the President of the INQUA commission for Maldive Islands SLR and who has discounted & dismissed theMaldive Islands 'disappearing' in ONE hundred years or even earlier accordingto some scare-mongerers!” Khandekar wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “Besides Prof Morner's excellent studies, the scientists named in the news story seem to have ignored another well-documented study by Simon Holgate , an oceanographer in UK, whose paper in GRL( Geophysical Research Letters, 2007) has analyzed nine long sea-level records from 1903-2003 and the study finds that the SLR from 1953-2003 was about 1.5 mm/yr while the SLR from 1903-1953 was about 2 mm/yr, so there is NO ESCALATING sea level rise at present,” Khandekar explained. “If the earth's climate enters into a mini ice age by 2035-2040 as several solar scientists are suggesting now, we may NOT even see half the sea level rise as quoted above,” he added.

Atmospheric physicist Dr. Fred Singer: “The key to Borenstein’s story is the first very word: 'Ultimately.' Yes -- with sea level continuing to rise at therate of about seven inches per century (as it has in past centuries), Florida will be flooded in afew 1000 years,” Singer, co-author of “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years,” wrote. Singer added sea levels will rise “unless a new ice age begins sooner -- lowering sea level -- asocean water turns into continental ice sheets.”

Dr. Art Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine: “Long term temperature data suggest that the current - entirely natural and not man made - temperature rise of about 0.5 degrees C per century could continue for another 200 years. Therefore, the best data available leads to an extrapolated value of about 1 foot of rise during the next two centuries,” Robinson explained to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. ”There is no scientific basis upon which to guess that the rise will be less or will be more than this value. Such a long extrapolation over two centuries is likely to be significantly in error - but it is the only extrapolation that can be made with current data. There may be no sea level rise at all. No one knows,” he added.

Accuweather chief meteorologist Joe Bastardi, who specializes in long-range forecasts, slammed the AP article for being offering up "a series of anything can happen and probably will statements." “As someone who competes in the private sector and gets fired if my forecasts are not supply enough merit to be right enough for clients to benefit, I would welcome the kind of padding one has in making such outrageous long range forecasts that no one still alive will be able to verify,” Bastardi explained.

Ivy League forecasting expert Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania and his colleague Kesten Green Monash University in Australia: “Dire consequences have been predicted to arise from warming of the Earth in coming decades of the 22nd Century. Enormous sea level rises is one of the more dramatic forecasts. According to the AP’s Borenstein, such sea-level forecasts were experts' judgments on what will happen,” Armstrong and Green wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “As shown in our analysis experts' forecasts have no validity in situations characterized by high complexity, high uncertainty, and poor feedback. To date we are unaware of any forecasts of sea levels that adhere to proper (scientific) forecasting methodology and our quick search on Google Scholar came up short,” Armstrong and Green explained. “Media outlets should be clear when they are reporting on scientific work and when they are reporting on the opinions held by some scientists. Without scientific support for their forecasting methods, the concerns of scientists should not be used as a basis for public policy,” they concluded.

The Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in the UK, an advisor to the Science and Pulblic Policy Institute, who has authored numerous climate science analyses (LINK): “Given the absence of credible evidence for extreme sea-level rise over the coming century in the peer-reviewed literature, theIPCC has been compelled to reduce its sea-level estimates. The mean centennial sea-level rise over then 10,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age has been 4 feet per century; in the 20th century sea level rose less than 8 inches; and the IPCC's current central estimate is that in the coming century sea level will rise by just 43 cm (1 ft 5 in),” Monckton wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog.

Canadian economist Dr. Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph in Ontario (who was key in debunking the infamous “Hockey Stick”) pointed out that real estate values would be plummeting on the coastlines if the AP article was accurate. “If what they're saying is true, we will see the effect on land values long before we see the effect on sea levels. They are saying that it is certain that all sea-level waterfront property around the US will be worthless in 50-100 years. Since the market is very efficient at discounting future certainties into present values, US beachfront property ought to be losing at least 20 percent of its remaining value every decade from now on,” McKitrick wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. ”It might be worth asking some real estate agents, especially in places like Hollywood and the Hamptons, where there seems to be such a consciousness of global warming, if beachfront owners are beginning to dump their properties at a discount. Because, of course, if some people have inside information that this land is really going to be worthless soon, they'll be the first ones to cash out and move to higher ground,” he concluded.

As EPW previously reported in a comprehensive report debunking fears of Greenland melting and a scary sea level rise, many prominent scientists dismiss computer model fears. (LINK)

Ivy League geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack of the University of Pennsylvania, explains that sea level is only rising up 1.8 millimeters per year (0.07 inches) -- less than the thickness of one nickel "Sea level is rising," Giegengack said, butit's been rising ever since warming set in 18,000 years ago, he explained according to a February 2007 article in Philadelphia Magazine. “So if for some reason this warming process that melts ice is cutting loose and accelerating, sea level doesn’t know it. And sea level, we think, is the best indicator of global warming,"he said.(LINK) Giegengack also noted that the historyof the last one billion years on the planet reveals"only about 5% of that time has been characterized by conditions on Earth that were so cold that the poles could support masses of permanent ice." (LINK)

Prominent scientist Professor Nils-Axel Morner, declared "the rapid rise in sea levelspredicted by computer models simply cannot happen." Morner, a leading world authority on sea levels and coastal erosion who headedthe Department of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University,notedon August 6, 2007: "When we were coming out of the last ice age, huge ice sheets were melting rapidly and the sea level rose at an average of one meter per century. If the Greenland ice sheet stated to melt at the same rate - which is unlikely - sea level would rise by less than 100 mm - 4 inches per century." Morner, whowas president of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution from1999 to 2003, has published a new booklet entitled"The Greatest Lie Ever Told," to refute claims of catastrophic sea level rise. (LINK)




AMAZON FOREST SHOWS UNEXPECTED RESILIENCY DURING DROUGHT

That pesky reality again

Drought-stricken regions of the Amazon forest grew particularly vigorously during the 2005 drought, according to new research. The counterintuitive finding contradicts a prominent global climate model that predicts the Amazon forest would begin to "brown down" after just a month of drought and eventually collapse as the drought progressed. "Instead of 'hunkering down' during a drought as you might expect, the forest responded positively to drought, at least in the short term," said study author Scott R. Saleska of The University of Arizona. "It's a very interesting and surprising response." UA co-author Kamel Didan added, "The forest showed signs of being more productive. That's the big news."

The 2005 drought reached its peak at the start of the Amazon's annual dry season, from July through September. Although the double whammy of the parched conditions might be expected to slow growth of the forest's leafy canopy, for many of the areas hit by drought, the canopy of the undisturbed forest became significantly greener -- indicating increased photosynthetic activity.

Saleska, a UA assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and his colleagues at the UA and at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil used data from two NASA satellites to figure out that undisturbed Amazon forest flourished as rainfall levels plummeted. "No one had looked at the observations that are available from satellites," said Didan, an associate research scientist in the UA's department of soil, water and environmental science. "We took the opportunity of the most recent drought, the 2005 drought, to do so." "A big chunk of the Amazon forest, the southwest region where the drought was severest, reacted positively," said Didan, a NASA-EOS MODIS associate science team member.

FULL STORY here




GM: where the science doesn't count

Today's climate change activists pose as `defenders of science'. Yet not so long ago, they irrationally rejected the scientific truth about GM crops

Hold the front page: `There is no change in the government's policy towards GM crops', says Hilary Benn of Britain's Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Benn's statement was a reaction to yesterday's scaremongering frontpage story in the UK Guardian. The Guardian headline said `The return of GM', and the report claimed that `ministers back moves to grow crops in UK'

It is hard to remember now, but in 2000 environmental campaigners were protesting all over the country, organising meetings and debates and breaking into premises, all to draw the public's attention to the dangers represented by. genetically modified organisms - crops, mainly. Lord Melchett, himself a former Labour cabinet minister turned Greenpeace activist, tore up GM crops. (My grandfather slaved away for his father at Imperial Chemicals Industries, dying young, as many did, because of the way the chemical fumes tended to accelerate your heart rate, leading to the `Tuesday death'. GM crops would help alleviate the need to use these kinds of chemicals.)

The GM debate was remarkable. In quite a short time, environmental campaigners brought to the surface intense public anxieties about the industrialisation of the food chain. Just before the debate about the introduction of GM foods, there had been another public health scare when one government scientist, Dr Robert Lacey, warned that by 1997 one third of Britain could be infected with the debilitating brain illness Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD), from eating beef contaminated with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)-inducing prions. As it turned out, you were about as likely to die of CJD as you were to be struck by lightning, and there is still no proven link with it and BSE - but public distrust of authority was at an all-time high.

There was no real argument against GM food. But people felt very disconnected from the authorities, having little faith in the public pronouncements that there was no risk. That alone was enough to make most people alarmed. Opportunistically, environmental campaigners realised that they could gain influence by stoking public fears. Activists like journalist Andy Rowell, language-school head Jonathan Matthews of the Norfolk Genetic Interest Network, the Open University academic Mae-Wan Ho, and the Guardian's George Monbiot stirred up a fantastic picture of rogue genes causing all kinds of extraordinary mutations as they passed through the food chain, or as they were carried on the wind from test-beds into `healthy' British meadows.

Of course, there was no scientific evidence whatsoever. The absence of even one example of a negative health impact from the introduction of GM crops in the US put some pressure on the greens. They latched on to examples that really did not demonstrate any danger. Some oil was contaminated, leading to deaths - but it turned out it was nothing to do with GM. And then the Rowett Research Institute's Dr Arpad Pusztai did some experiments on GM lectins in potatoes that seemed to show negative consequences in rats. The press and the environmentalists latched on to the case - except that it only showed that the introduction of poisonous lectins into potatoes was bad for rats. When Pusztai was sacked for overstating the implications of his tests, GM campaigners adopted his case as a cause c,lSbre, only slowly coming to the conclusion that they had indeed overstated the dangers highlighted in Dr Pusztai's tests.

Meanwhile, another hero of the anti-GM lobby, Mae-Wan Ho, who had been involved in biotechnology in the Seventies, was largely preoccupied with the philosophical meaning of genetics rather than hands-on bio-science, and was interested in resurrecting the ideas of the disgraced Soviet biologist Lysenko, and also Bergson's vitalist cult.

GM activists came under pressure from scientists. In a public debate between George Monbiot and biologist Steve Jones, Jones denounced Monbiot as a charlatan (they have since made up). Andy Rowell attacked the scientists for being the mouthpieces of big business. The peer review of Arpad Pusztai's work was denounced as a cover for a hidden agenda to force GM food on an unsuspecting public. Scientific verification was not to be trusted, said the activists, who invoked a higher bar, the `precautionary principle', which puts the onus of proof on those introducing technology that it could do no harm in the future.

Provoking the public's deepest uncertainties about the food chain proved a great success. Supermarkets withdrew GM food from their shelves and made it effectively unmarketable. In 2004, the New Labour government conceded that even the scientific experiments - the rapeseed fields that Melchett had torn down - should be stopped.

The activists, though, were not entirely happy that they had painted themselves into a corner of outright hostility to scientific method. They knew that if their irrational rejection of science and the modern world was made too explicit, people would find it difficult to go along with. On the other hand, the scientists were pretty bruised, too. They were desperate to win back some of the authority they had lost by being portrayed as tools of big business and proto-Frankensteins out to poison the public. Their subsequent pursuit of `public understanding' turned out to mean lots of committees, often full of green activists, seeking to influence the scientists' agenda.

On the issue of climate change, scientists and environmentalists found more to agree on. As the international diplomatic manoeuvres engendered a new science of climate change, there was more influence for those scientists who lent their research to heavy-duty warnings of global catastrophe. The environmentalists were thrilled to find that the one community that had been most resistant to their ideas were now providing the ammunition.

Once environmentalists had routinely attacked science, drawing on the caricatures of the scientific method found in the Frankfurt school of sociology. Now they were defenders of science against the supposedly `irrational' climate change deniers. The radical academic Bruno Latour, who had made a career arguing that science was nothing more than an ideological construct that reflected the interests of the powers-that-be, suddenly changed his mind over the issue of climate change. Protesters against the new runway at Heathrow summed up the activists' changed attitude to science. They marched with a banner that read: `We are armed only with peer-reviewed science.'

The new, more positive attitude to science on the part of the environmentalists, though, is the reason why the previous issue of GM is still unresolved. The pressure for a return to GM testing in Britain comes from the National Farmers Union, which is lobbying to be allowed to introduce the latest biotechnology. Whether a minister did or did not talk to the Guardian over the weekend about reintroducing GM, the government's explicit position is that there will be no return to GM testing.

Still the activists are alarmed. They have an intuitive understanding that they got away with a lot when they committed the UK to outright opposition to GM testing. The decision was an outrage against scientific experimentation. The activists' arguments back then were a lot more hostile to science than they are today. The Guardian suggests that the pro-GM lobbyists, too, think that the debate has moved on, and that GM crops can be defended on grounds that they might be a solution to the problems raised by global warming. But whatever the reason, Britain should be engaged in GM testing - not because it can help with the problems of global warming, but because it is the right thing to do.

Source

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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25 September, 2007

Unbelievably Disgraceful Global Warming Hysteria by the AP

Post below lifted from Newsbusters. See the original for links

The political battle over climate change has clearly taken a dramatic turn for the worse this month, for it now seems media are actually competing to see which outlet can present the most hysterical report concerning imminent planetary doom at the hands of manmade global warming. After ABC News published a disgraceful photo essay featuring computer generated pictures of drowned American cities at its website last Friday, followed by NBC News reporting Monday that Greenland's ice sheets are melting so quickly that it "could ignite worldwide disaster," the Associated Press on Saturday cautioned that "In about a century, some of the places that make America what it is may be slowly erased." Seems almost like they're playing a game of "Can You Top This" doesn't it?

Sadly, as demonstrated by some of the following lowlights from this truly irresponsible piece of detritus, media are clearly putting on a full-court press to scare Americans into believing the world will quickly come to an end if we don't start doing exactly what soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore tells us:

Ultimately, rising seas will likely swamp the first American settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad that sent the first American into orbit, many climate scientists are predicting. In about a century, some of the places that make America what it is may be slowly erased.

Nice way to start an article, wouldn't you agree? Sadly, that was just the beginning:

Rising waters will lap at the foundations of old money Wall Street and the new money towers of Silicon Valley. They will swamp the locations of big city airports and major interstate highways.

Excuse me, but Silicon Valley -- which this author lives just north of -- is nowhere near the Pacific Ocean, hence the term "valley." As such, this warning is absurd, and completely lacking any factual basis. But I digress:

Storm surges worsened by sea level rise will flood the waterfront getaways of rich politicians-the Bushes' Kennebunkport and John Edwards' place on the Outer Banks. And gone will be many of the beaches in Texas and Florida favored by budget-conscious students on Spring Break.... This past summer's flooding of subways in New York could become far more regular, even an everyday occurrence, with the projected sea rise, other scientists said. And New Orleans' Katrina experience and the daily loss of Louisiana wetlands-which serve as a barrier that weakens hurricanes-are previews of what's to come there. Florida faces a serious public health risk from rising salt water tainting drinking water wells, said Joel Scheraga, the EPA's director of global change research. And the farm-rich San Joaquin Delta in California faces serious salt water flooding problems, other experts said.

Honestly, this level of fear-mongering by the world's leading wire service is totally inexcusable, and author Seth Borenstein should be required by his bosses to share views held by the hundreds and likely thousands of scientists around the world who completely contest the hysterical projections he has offered in this abomination.

After all, it is one thing for press outlets to only present one side of this debate. That's was media bias is all about. However, when they begin to offhandedly paint such dire and vivid pictures of imminent disaster, it is certainly incumbent upon them to also offer the views of experts who in no way agree with these alarmist prognostications. Yet, nowhere in this piece, or in the aforementioned reports by ABC and NBC, was one contrary analysis presented. As a result, this isn't close to journalism. This is alarmist propaganda that all involved in the news media should deplore rather than emulate.

It is indeed a sad commentary that three years after CBS News intentionally presented a fraudulent Air National Guard memo during an installment of "60 Minutes," the professionalism and ethics in this industry have actually deteriorated even further. This raises an important question: Just how much worse can this situation get?




Iron fertilization jerks to life again

Scientists are considering a plan to combat climate change by dumping millions of tons of iron into the ocean to alter its chemical make-up. They believe the iron could act as a "fertiliser", promoting the growth of tons of plankton that would soak up carbon dioxide from the surrounding sea water. When the plankton died, their bodies would sink into the deepest waters and sediments, where the carbon would be locked up indefinitely. The theory, known as "ocean fertilisation", has long caused controversy among marine scientists, many of whom doubted that it could work. This week leading researchers will meet at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts for a scientific conference to discuss the idea.

The renewed interest follows experiments by Planktos, an American firm, which seeded the Pacific ocean with 100 tons of iron particles, creating a bloom of plankton earlier this year. "Researchers have carried out a dozen other scientific trials and some have shown interesting results," said Dr Ken Buesseler, a scientist at Woods Hole.

Two years ago he led an expedition that dumped iron fertiliser into parts of the Pacific and measured the impact on plankton. He found that iron fertilisation did cause a surge in plankton, but there were big variations in the amount that eventually got locked into the sea bed. In one area about half the plankton sank into the "twilight zone" where their carbon was locked away, but in others this fell to just a few per cent. "Ocean fertilisation needs a lot more research, but if there is a chance that we could use it to cut atmospheric carbon we have to look at it," said Buesseler.

Buesseler and Scott Doney, a colleague, are hosting the Woods Hole conference which will bring leading scientists together with Planktos and other commercial companies. Russ George, chief executive of Planktos, said adding a single ton of iron could remove as much as 100,000 tons of dissolved CO2 from the oceans. "Historic increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have changed ocean chemistry and reduced iron availability. Replacing iron artificially on a large scale could promote the growth of enough plankton to completely combat climate change," George said.

Dr David Santillo, a senior scientist at the Greenpeace research laboratories at Exeter University, said iron fertilisation was a foolish idea. "There is no proof that the plankton blooms result in carbon being locked into sediments," he said. "Adding iron on such a scale will also damage natural ecosystems."

The Woods Hole conference comes amid increased anxiety over climate change. Tomorrow Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, will convene the largest meeting of world leaders on climate change at a UN general assembly. It will be followed by a meeting in Washington on Thursday and Friday, convened by President George W Bush, for the leading economies to discuss energy security and climate change.

Source




CHINESE INDUSTRY WILL OBSTRUCT EMISSIONS POLICIES

China's focus on industrial growth may frustrate the country's efforts to build an emissions trading system to cut pollution, a top environment official said on Monday, despite Beijing's push for cleaner development. China's Finance Ministry has said the country hoped to launch a pilot scheme for emissions this year likely to cover acid-rain causing sulphur dioxide and other health-damaging chemicals but not greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

But local government officials or industry could sabotage such a scheme, said Pan Yue, deputy chief of the State Environmental Protection Administration. "With China's heavy and chemical industries developing so rapidly, even if businesses have excess pollution emission rights, I'm afraid they would not sell them in the marketplace," Pan wrote in weekly newspaper the Study Times.

The world's biggest emitter of sulphur dioxide has promised to cut emissions of major pollutants by 10 per cent between 2006 and 2010, but last year failed to meet its annual goal. China is also the number two producer of carbon dioxide, but opposes caps under the UN Kyoto Protocol.

Pan, an outspoken politician who has yoked his environmental agenda to broader calls for political and economic reform, said without rigorous monitoring, businesses and their government patrons would conceal true emissions. "Local protectionism would always mean that for the sake of GDP and other interests, it would allow a business with rights to emit 1,000 tonnes of sulphur dioxide to emit 2,000 tonnes and then report it as only 900 tonnes," he said.

China needs to do more research before it embraces any emissions rights trading, Pan added. Pan's comments reflected the frustration of SEPA officials seeking to contain the country's pollution while many potential policy levers remain in the hands of stronger departments whose priority is stoking economic growth.

Pan advocated a pollution tax, which would charge high-pollution industries and exporters for their right to release emissions. He said a fuel tax would also appear "when conditions are ripe". He also urged special excise duties on imports of high-polluting vehicles and scrap metal.

Source




The enormous costs of "alternative" energy

ANWR's 4 billion, perhaps mythical, barrels shouldn't be drilled because it represents less than a year of gross domestic oil consumption. How many times have you heard that? It is a famous example of statistical misdirection applied by the Haters... of us lovable puppy dog-like oil and gas folk. Using similiar logic, perhaps we shouldn't plant any crops this year because it only represents a years worth of food. Let them eat... Yellow Cake. In any case, I want to share some real stats with you... the kind that are a little harder to "misdirect".

Fun Fact 1) Gasoline contains 116,000 BTU's/gal, and takes around 22,000 BTU's/gal to find, drill, transport, and refine. NET POSITIVE BTU? 94,000 BTU's or a little bit short of 5:1 leverage, or, put another way Return on BTU Investment.

Corn based ethanol contains 76,000 BTU's/gal, and takes 98,000 BTU's/gal to plant, grow, harvest, and refine. NET POSITIVE BTU? Uhhh. None. -22,000 actually. Less than payback. Kinda like saying "we lose money on every deal but we make it up in volume". I implored the oil and gas lobbying organizations to NOT attack ethanol subsidies by pointing out this physical limitation to lawmakers, because farmers get knee jerk defensive when you try to rip their snouts away from their Pork Trough, an item so important that it nearly is equivalent to a breathing tube... they cannot exist wihtout it anymore... and hell, the negative BTUs are gonna come from hydrocarbons anyway, heh heh.

To be fair, I think human ingenuity in the processing realm will eventually make corn-based ethanol a BTU break even or slightly positive energy contributor across the board given time. But chemistry dictates that it will never be as good as oil... and not even Congress can change chemistry, although I am certain they think they can. The REALLY sad fact is that corn-based ethanol approaches the same efficiency of some of the drilling deals I have been involved with lately... and nearly all the MLP's I see right now! I wonder what Enervest's John Walker would say about that? He stood up last week in front of hundreds of I-bankers in Dallas and slammed the current MLP craze. A brave man, Walker. a real Texas Ranger.

So, Fun Fact #2) Getting back to ANWR, I thought it might be fun to calculate how many windmills would be needed to make up ANWR. Probably not the kinda fun YOU have, but it suffices for my puny existence. Seeing that efficiency is the key to all of this, I propose we model the most efficient windmills... large, 2500 KW wind turbines. These bad boys are 3-pronged and have a windmill diameter nearly 250' long. At a nice, optimal 10 MPH average windspeed, these puppies produce around 1 GWh per year... the energy equivalent of a little over 600 BO per year. Giving it the benefit of the doubt, lets round up to 2 BOPD. A straight line 2 BOPD with no decline but a physical equipment life of 20-30 years.

Cap cost per one of these turbines is around $2.5 million, installation north of another $500,000, and the operating cost around 1.5% cap cost per year, or $3,000 per month. I have no idea what the bonus or royalty is, because these are contracts with landowners, not leases, and are not recorded and I have heard they contain very onerous non-disclosure clauses.

OK, us oil and gas guys and anyone else that has the remotest understanding of Net Present Value are already feeling queasy with these numbers because, at, say $75 per barrel, our $150 per day, or $4,500 per month revenue not including royalties is looking pretty mind numbingly bad... $1,500 per month to cover a $3,000,000 capex and site prep investment. That is a 2000 month (167 year) payout for an operation that has an equipment life of 360 months. In other words, the basic proposition is SPECTACULARLY uneconomic. Maybe those MLP's aren't looking so bad after all...

So why would anyone do this kinda deal? Some weird California "sub-prime" wind farm mortgage financing available? No... they do it the old fashioned, big corporation way... they get the government to take away our hard earned dollars by force and give it to them. Corporate welfare... Except that when applied to Green technologies, it somehow become magically transformed into Not Corporate Welfare, although Not Corporate Welfare looks, smells, and behaves exactly like Corporate Welfare.

In order to make this a Break Even proposition, it needs to have Not Corporate Welfare of $8 dollars for every dollar's worth of energy generated at market value. For a rational return of say, 2 points over T-Bills, or 7% IRR, from this, a whole lotta Not Corporate Welfare has to happen. Like nearly $20 dollars for every dollar's worth of energy generated at market value. By turning it around and trying to figure out what cap and site cost would make this economic dictates that a $350,000 cap and site investment would yield non-subsidized break even, and $195,000 would yield a 7% rate of return. This is a LONG way from the $2.5 million GE is getting paid to build energy plants at 20 times market rates.

Let's get back to ANWR. For these magic value destroying beasts, with their 250' wingspan, the most efficient spacing is 1500', or, for the sake of simplicity, 160 acre spacing. 4 windmills per section. 8 BOPD per section. Granted, it doesn't have a decline curve, but...

In order to make up for ANWR's 200 days of production, spread out over 20 years, (the minimum lifespan for the windmill equipment) we need to produce 500,000 BO/D equivalent from wind. So we just need 125,000 sections of windy land to make up for the 1 or 2 sections they propose using in ANWR. The 125,000 sections will contain 500,000 windmills with a cap and fab cost of 1.5 trillion dollars and an annual operating cost of nearly 20 billion dollars. To put this area into perspective, it is a little less than 50% of the area of Texas, twice the area of New Mexico, or the combined area of New York, West Virginia, Maryland, Massachussetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connectictut, Delware, and Rhode Island.... OK, forget Jersey.

1.9 trillion dollars for 4 billion barrels. That is an all in cost of $475 per barrel of oil that we chose NOT to produce in ANWR, and the trade of the East Coast in exchange for 1 sq mile of never-endangered mosquito habitat. Hmmmm. Maybe not a bad trade. Perhaps I need to rethink this.

The politicians felt so bad about fleecing all the taxpayers with this pork explosion that they chose to include in their new energy bill that domestic oil and gas producers are primarily responsible for paying for crazy Wind costs via extended federal fees and taxes on the stuff we produce for cheap, so that WE specifically have the happy distinction of underwriting General Electric's huge future trillion plus dollars in revenues in the name of Wind Energy. This is tantamount to having bananas subsidize candy bars as "nutritional supplements". I have only one thing to say about this. Blow Me.

Source




INDIAN GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL POLITELY REJECTS STERN REVIEW

The development projects India is undertaking to reduce impacts of climate change is already cutting into its GDP. In 2006-07, India used 2.17% of its GDP on projects that will help communities adapt to climate change and reduce their vulnerability to climate change. This was disclosed on Thursday by Jayant M Mau-skar, joint secretary in the environment ministry, at a conference on climate change organised at the Vatavaran Film Festival here. Mauskar said, "In 2000-01, India was spending 0.63% of its GDP on climate change adaptation and mitigation which has now risen to 2.17%. So we can say that Nicholas Stern's argument (that climate change action does not hurt economy much) is perhaps not true."

Stern, in his report on climate change for the UK, he had stated that taking action to reduce climate change would not hurt the growing economies of countries like India. The official, in a way, has showcased the argument that India could be taking to the negotiating table at the UN meeting on climate change when developed countries ask it to undertake cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

The pressure has been building on India and China to agree to some kind of emission cuts. The EU has been saying that it is the only way to convince the US and Australia to undertake commitments in the new phase of the Kyoto Protocol - something both countries stayed off saying it would hurt their economies without any real gain.

The ministry reached this figure by back calculating and claiming that several government programmes already address the key factors increasing vulnerability to climate change. The government has claimed that 22 programmes in crop management, 19 in drought proofing, 19 in health, six in risk finance, six in disease control, 12 in forestry and 30-odd in poverty alleviation fit the bill.

But some experts have contested these figures, proffered earlier in official meetings. While it is understood that India would use such a line of defence along with other more robust weapons in its armoury to defend any move to push it into commitments, experts have warned that such claims would not pass close scrutiny.

The next battle of sorts on the issue could come at the September 22 US-hosted meeting of major economies on energy security and climate change - what is informally called the meeting of the biggest polluters, the way US defines it - where India is also an invitee. At the last G8 meeting, the PM had laid down India's line that it would, despite its economic development, not exceed the per capita emissions beyond what the developed countries have or reach.

Source

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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24 September, 2007

MORE ON THE "MAMMOTH DUNG" FANTASY

Previous comment here. Popular summary of recent research followed by journal abstract below:

Permafrost melting not a problem

"A re-examination of projected melting of Arctic permafrost from global warming indicates that massive releases of methane from permafrost degradation are unlikely in this century. During the 20th century, humans' increasing greenhouse gas emissions have made Arctic regions warmer, causing permafrost to melt. Model projections indicate that, as the climate warms, permafrost will continue melting and methane bound in frozen sediments could escape to the atmosphere. Because methane is also a greenhouse gas, this would exacerbate global warming. One permafrost model, presented in late 2005, indicated that near-surface Arctic permafrost will completely degrade during the 21st century.

Now, Delisle has critically reviewed this model, finding it to lack necessary initial parameters. He offers an alternative model designed to have a more complete mathematical formulation of the physical processes in permafrost. It projects that surface permafrost will persist in areas north of 70§N latitude. Permafrost will also endure at depth between 60§N and 70§N. Delisle notes that ice-core analyses previously made by other scientists indicate minimal release of methane during warm periods in the last 9,000 years. Based on the new model and the ice-core findings, he concludes that scenarios calling for massive releases of methane in the near future from degrading permafrost are questionable."

Source

Journal abstract:

Near-surface permafrost degradation: How severe during the 21st century?

By G. Delisle

A previously presented model on nearly complete near-surface permafrost degradation in the Arctic during the 21st century is critically reviewed. An alternative model with a more complete mathematical formulation of the physical processes acting in permafrost terrain is presented, which suggests that permafrost will mostly prevail in this century in areas north of 70øN. Furthermore, permafrost will survive at depth in most areas between 60ø to 70øN. Based on paleoclimatic data and in consequence of this study, it is suggested that scenarios calling for massive release of methane in the near future from degrading permafrost are questionable.

Source




MORE DISSENTING SCIENTISTS

In a small college town like Corvallis, Ore., it's not unusual that George Taylor would ride a bike to his job on the Oregon State University campus. He commutes this way for the exercise, he says, but also because it's good for the planet. Mr. Taylor manages the Oregon Climate Service, and much of his work has to do with global warming. "I'm certainly in favor of doing prudent things to reduce the human impact," he says. But unlike most climate scientists, he does not believe that anthropogenic (human-caused) greenhouse gases - mainly from coal-fired power plants and motor vehicles spewing carbon dioxide - are the main culprits. In fact, he says, "It's my belief that in the last 100 years or so natural variations have played a bigger role."

Among the forces of nature he cites are changes in solar radiation, "very significant influences" of the tropical Pacific (El Ni¤o and La Ni¤a events in decades-long cycles), as well as changes in Earth's tilt and orbit over cycles lasting thousands of years. Above all, says Mr. Taylor, who is past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, "The climate system is very, very complex, and the more we learn, the more we see that we really don't understand it."

Taylor may be in the minority among climate experts, but he is not alone. Other planets in our solar system have expanding and contracting ice caps, too, other skeptics point out, and those worlds have no people as far as we know - certainly no gas-guzzling muscle cars and trucks. Antarctica and Greenland at times have been warm and green before humankind in--vented machines, indicating to these skeptics that this is just a natural cycle.

In Phoenix, where it's been very hot indeed this summer, Warren Meyer has written "A Skeptical Layman's Guide to Anthropogenic Global Warming." He is not a professionally trained climate scientist, but he studied physics and engineering at Princeton University, then earned an MBA at Harvard University before entering the business world. Like Taylor, Mr. Meyer cites other possible factors - ocean oscillations and currents, sunspot cycles, and recovery from the "Little Ice Age" (which ran for roughly three to four centuries, up to the mid-19th century) - to argue that "we are a long way from attributing all or much of current warming to man-made carbon dioxide."

He says he's carefully studied the official reports and assertions about global warming and come to the conclusion that "it's a funny sort of anthropomorphic hubris to say that we know what 'normal' is or even know what the cycles are. "Look, there's a lot going on here that we've observed for a very short time," Mr. Meyer says. "We have all these complicated cycles happening, and many of them last for thousands or millions of years. And we've observed them carefully for - what? - 30 years?"

Meyer's engineering background is in feedback and control theory, so he especially takes issue with the belief among many climate scientists (as well as activists such as former Vice President Al Gore) that what had been a long-term, stable climate system is now dominated by "positive feedback ." Positive feedback means that as temperatures rise in extraordinary fashion there will be a tendency for global warming to speed up. One example is when light-colored sea ice melts to reveal darker ocean water, which in turn absorbs more heat, which melts more ice.

Meyer contends that in physics (and in nature) the tendency is just the opposite: a "negative feedback" will occur as CO2 levels rise - in other words, cooling mechanisms will set in. In the case of carbon dioxide and global temperature, "future CO2 has less impact on temperature than past CO2," he says.

One bit of recent research may give some weight to Meyer's argument. Researchers at the University of Alabama's Earth System Science Center in Huntsville studied heat-trapping tropical clouds thought to result from global warming. They found an apparent decrease in such clouds as the atmosphere warms, allowing more infrared heat to escape from the atmosphere. The cloud decrease appears to be "negative feedback," meaning that as warming continues it sets off another process that counters its effects.

Neither Taylor nor Meyer (nor most other climate change skeptics, some of whom call themselves "global-warming optimists") deny that modern human development in the form of additional greenhouse gases has played a role in warming the planet. But most of them agree with Meyer when he says, "To this day, there's still no empirical proof of how much warming is coming from CO2. There's a lot going on, and it's almost impossible to pick effects out." ......

Source




Naughty biofuels

A renewable energy source designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is contributing more to global warming than fossil fuels, a study suggests. Measurements of emissions from the burning of biofuels derived from rapeseed and maize have been found to produce more greenhouse gas emissions than they save. Other biofuels, especially those likely to see greater use over the next decade, performed better than fossil fuels but the study raises serious questions about some of the most commonly produced varieties.

Rapeseed and maize biodiesels were calculated to produce up to 70 per cent and 50 per cent more greenhouse gases respectively than fossil fuels. The concerns were raised over the levels of emissions of nitrous oxide, which is 296 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Scientists found that the use of biofuels released twice as much as nitrous oxide as previously realised. The research team found that 3 to 5 per cent of the nitrogen in fertiliser was converted and emitted. In contrast, the figure used by the International Panel on Climate Change, which assesses the extent and impact of man-made global warming, was 2 per cent. The findings illustrated the importance, the researchers said, of ensuring that measures designed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions are assessed thoroughly before being hailed as a solution. "One wants rational decisions rather than simply jumping on the bandwagon because superficially something appears to reduce emissions," said Keith Smith, a professor at the University of Edinburgh and one of the researchers.

Maize for ethanol is the prime crop for biofuel in the US where production for the industry has recently overtaken the use of the plant as a food. In Europe the main crop is rapeseed, which accounts for 80 per cent of biofuel production. Professor Smith told Chemistry World: "The significance of it is that the supposed benefits of biofuels are even more disputable than had been thought hitherto." It was accepted by the scientists that other factors, such as the use of fossil fuels to produce fertiliser, have yet to be fully analysed for their impact on overall figures. But they concluded that the biofuels "can contribute as much or more to global warming by N2 O emissions than cooling by fossil-fuel savings".

The research is published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, where it has been placed for open review. The research team was formed of scientists from Britain, the US and Germany, and included Professor Paul Crutzen, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on ozone. Dr Franz Conen, of the University of Basel in Switzerland, described the study as an "astounding insight". "It is to be hoped that those taking decisions on subsidies and regulations will in future take N2O emissions into account and promote some forms of 'biofuel' production while quickly abandoning others," he told the journal's discussion board.

Dr Dave Reay, of the University of Edinburgh, used the findings to calculate that with the US Senate aiming to increase maize ethanol production sevenfold by 2022, greenhouse gas emissions from transport will rise by 6 per cent.

Source




Green Hypocrisy's Gold Standard

Soros versus poor Romanians

Is billionaire investor George Soros using environmental pressure groups to block a gold-mining project for his own financial benefit? Last week the Romanian government suspended the environmental review process for Canadian company Gabriel Resources' proposed gold-mining project in the Transylvanian village of Rosia Montana. The ostensible reason for the suspension was a court challenge filed by the local anti-development activist group and the U.S.-based Open Society Institute about some paperwork unrelated to the environmental review.

As discussed previously in this column and in the documentary "Mine Your Own Business," controversy over the mine has been fabricated by what has seemed to be a leaderless and slapdash international collection of green non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, all oddly focused on this one mining project in a remote part of eastern Europe. But the curtain is rising on the NGOs' efforts to stop the mine and it seems that Soros, through the Open Society Institute he chairs, may be at the controls for reasons that have little to do with protecting the environment.

A leaked October 2006 internal memo from an eastern European branch of Soros' Open Society Institute pleads for help from other central and eastern European NGOs to pressure the Romanian government to stop the Rosia Montana mine, which the memo emphatically (and bizarrely) refers to as a "resource curse." The memo says the Rosia Montana project "could become a landmark case for keeping bad government in check" where "bad government," according to the tone of the memo, seems to mean any action of which Open Society disapproves.

Could this memo reflect nothing more than overzealous underlings acting without Soros' personal approval and direction? That explanation seems unlikely given Soros' April 17, 2007, letter to Wayne Murdy, the chairman and CEO of Newmont Mining Corp., a corporate shareholder in Gabriel Resources. In the letter, Soros pressures Murdy to use Newmont's shareholder status to, in turn, pressure Gabriel Resources. "I feel it is my duty to advise you to consider carefully any further involvement with Gabriel Resources and the Rosia Montana project," Soros wrote.

This advice came with a not-so-veiled threat to Newmont's reputation: "I understand that Newmont is committed to the highest standards of environmental management, employee health and community safety. An investment in a dubious project such as Rosia Montana should not be allowed to call such admirable commitments into question," Soros closed the letter.

But what's really dubious is the game Soros seems to be playing. The Rosia Montana is a project that is designed to comply with all European and international standards and will include a voluntary clean-up of a nearby mine that was in operation from the time of the Roman Empire until the fall of the communist Romanian government at the end of the Cold War. But while Soros and his NGO minions bemoan the proposed Rosia Montana mine, Soros has his own extensive mining interests.

According to a review by MineWeb.com, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings indicate that the Soros Fund owns $25 million worth of stock in the Aluminum Corporation of China and more than $40 million of stock in several gold-mining companies. It's quite possible that Soros' mining interests are even more extensive since the filings do not cover his personal investments and other investments that don't require reporting to the SEC.

While Soros noted in his letter to the Newmont CEO that the Romanian legislature was considering a ban on the use of cyanide in mining, Soros recently purchased an interest in Gabriel Resources' competitor Goldcorp, which uses cyanide in its mining. Soros' criticism of Gabriel Resources' use of cyanide is even more bizarre given that the standard for cyanide in mining waste under which the Rosia Montana project would operate is about 10 times stricter than the Nevada state standard under which Goldcorp operates.

The Soros groups in Romania oppose the relocation of part of the village of Rosia Montana, yet no similar opposition appeared when a village was moved so that the Soros-owned mining company Apex Silver could develop the San Cristobal mine in Bolivia in the 1990s. What's with all this hypocrisy on the part of Soros? Could it be that the estimated $10 billion in gold that might be extracted from Rosia Montana would put downward pressure on gold prices and adversely impact Soros' gold investments? Is it possible that Soros is trying to torpedo Gabriel Resources' project so that one of his own mining interests can take over the Rosia Montana mine? I would have liked to ask George Soros these questions, but a call to the Open Society Institute was not returned.

Soros' shenanigans aside, none of this inspires confidence in the Romanian government, which needs foreign direct investment to fuel much-needed economic growth. Although Gabriel Resources so far has complied with the rule of law, the Romanian government nevertheless seems to have bowed temporarily, at least to pressure from Soros-led NGOs. This action should give serious pause to Western companies contemplating investing in Romania. Despite compliance with applicable standards and substantial direct investments, Western companies may well find themselves in a "Banana Republic" atmosphere where the rule of law is disregarded, anti-development activists fronting for outside special interests call the shots and anything goes.

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Combat global warming? There are better things we can do for the Earth

Some good points in Bjorn Lomborg's latest book

There is both global warming and global cooling on the planet Earth. There always has been and there always will be, because temperature change is cyclical: The Earth's temperature oscillates up and down, ebbs and flows, over decades and centuries. Sometimes the earth warms, as it did in the Roman Warming period (200 B.C. to A.D. 600), the Medieval Warming period (900 to 1300) and in modern times from 1910 to 1940. And sometimes it cools, as it did in the Dark Ages (600 to 900); the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850) and from 1940 to the late 1970s.

The National Center for Policy Analysis's new Global Warming Primer (www.ncpa.org/globalwarming/) shows that over the past 400,000 years, "the Earth's temperature has consistently risen and fallen hundreds of years prior to increases and declines in CO2 levels" (emphasis added). For example, about half of the global warming increases since the mid-1800s occurred before greenhouse gas emissions began their significant increases after the 1950s, and then temperatures declined well into the 1970s when CO2 levels were increasing.

During the 20th Century the earth warmed by one degree Fahrenheit, and today the world is about 0.05 degree warmer than it was in 2001. These small increases have led the global-warming establishment to demand that we adopt the international Kyoto policy of stopping the growth of CO2 emissions so that global warming does not destroy us all. Or in Al Gore's words, "At stake is nothing less than the survival of human civilization and the habitability of the earth for our species."

Six years ago Danish scholar Bjorn Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist" took a look at the global-warming data and found it to be far less threatening than the Gore globalists were claiming. Mr. Lomborg's new book "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide To Global Warming," makes the case that while "global warming is real and man-made," the Kyoto approach is the wrong way to improve the lives of the world's people.

First, "Cool It" shows that global warming saves lives rather than killing people. Second, it shows that the Kyoto approach of spending some $180 billion each year to end global warming would reduce CO2 by such a small amount that few lives would be saved or improved, even if the United States had signed on and even if every signatory nation met its CO2 targets (which few have). If instead the resources were used for combating malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, indoor and outdoor air pollution, and dirty drinking water, the world would be a far better place for humans.

Finally, he gives a perfect example of why the Kyoto approach is foolish and an adaptation approach would be far better. Global warming is supposedly killing people. The 35,000 deaths from the August 2003 European heat wave were, in Al Gore's view, an example of what "will become much more common if global warming is not addressed." But the actual data put things in perspective. Whereas 2,000 people died in the United Kingdom in that heat wave, last year the BBC reported that deaths caused by cold weather in England and Wales were about 25,000 each winter, and 47,000 a year, in the winters of 1998 to 2000. Similarly, in Helsinki, Finland, 55 people die each year from heat and 1,655 from cold. In Athens, Greece, a much warmer place, the deaths from excess heat are 1,376 each year and the deaths from cold 7,852. All told, Mr. Lomborg calculates that about 200,000 people die in Europe each year from excessive heat, and 1.5 million from excessive cold.

So global warming will save human lives. "While cutting CO2 will save some people from dying from heat," Mr. Lomborg concludes, "it will simultaneously cause more people to die from cold."

Mr. Lomborg believes that while we must develop low-carbon technologies, "many other issues are much more important than global warming." Malaria kills more than one million people each year, and some four million die from malnutrition, three million from HIV/AIDS, 2.5 million from various air pollutants, and nearly two million from lack of clean drinking water. Solving these problems would save more lives and do more to improve the human condition than spending money on global CO2 reduction.

The final table in the book dramatically makes the case. Fully implementing Kyoto would cost $180 billion per year, but for $52 billion per year we could do much better by tackling the challenges Mr. Lomborg mentions. The world would avoid 28 billion malaria infections (and 85 million deaths) over a century, instead of Kyoto's avoidance of 70 million infections (and 140,000 deaths). There would be one billion fewer people in poverty instead of Kyoto's one million fewer, and 229 million fewer people would suffer from starvation rather than Kyoto's two million.

Consider Mr. Lomborg's traffic example. In the U.S. each year, 42,600 people die and 2.8 million are injured from traffic accidents. If we were to lower speed limits to five miles an hour, almost no one would die. But automobile transportation is important to our economy and our people, so we work on seat belts, speed limits and better highways rather than 5 mph speed limits. Like traffic accidents, "global warming is strongly caused by people, and we have the technology to reduce it to zero," so we could curtail our use of fossil fuels and thus sharply reduce global warming. But Mr. Lomborg points out that "the benefits from moderately using fossil fuels" for "light, heat, food, communication and travel" vastly outweigh the cost to our society.

"Cool It" makes the case for helping the world's individuals rather than the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change goal of reorienting our lifestyles away from consumption and individual ownership and toward free time instead of wealth. "Our ultimate goal," Mr. Lomborg says, "is not to reduce greenhouse gasses or global warming per se but to improve the quality of life and the environment."

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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23 September, 2007

PESKY! Arctic sea ice is returning after low point

Mustn't laugh!

Arctic sea ice may have started rebuilding after reaching a record low, according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. Arctic ice now covers 4.18 million square kilometres, the agency said Thursday, up from 4.13 million on Sept. 16, which appears to have been the minimum. Some variability could still occur, however, the agency cautioned.

The previous record low for Arctic sea ice was 5.32 million square kilometres, set on Sept. 20-21, 2005, and the average low at the end of the summer melt is 6.74 million square kilometres.

The Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans along the coasts of Canada and Alaska remains open but is starting to refreeze, the centre said. The Northeast Passage along the coast of Siberia is closed by ice, according to the research co-operative.

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SHOCK, HORROR: CLIMATE CHANGE MAY HELP RAINFOREST

It does in any case take some pretty wacky models to predict that warming will REDUCE precipitation. Warmer oceans evaporate more so should produce more rainfall

Climate change may lead to lush growth rather than catastrophic tree loss in the Amazonian forests, researchers from the US and Brazil have found. A study, in the journal Science, found that reduced rainfall had led to greener forests, possibly because sunlight levels are higher when there are fewer rainclouds.

But scientists cautioned that while the finding raises hopes for the survival of the forests, there are still serious threats. Climate models have suggested that the forests will suffer as the region becomes drier and will release huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

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THE HISTORY OF ENVIRONMENTAL ALARMISM AND ITS POLICY IMPACT

Environmental hysteria leads to poor and self-contradictory policy-making according to Hysteria's History: Environmental Alarmism in Context, a new report released today by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI). In Hysteria's History, author Amy Kaleita, policy fellow in Environmental Studies at PRI, charts the progression of hysteria starting with Rachel Carson's influential book Silent Spring up to the current global warming controversy.

"A major challenge in developing appropriate responses to legitimate problems is that alarmism catches people's attention and draws them in," said Dr. Kaleita. "Alarmism is given more weight than it deserves, as policy makers attempt to appease their constituency and the media." Examples of poor and self-contradictory policy choices in California include:

Taxpayer money spent on a lawsuit against nearly the entire automobile industry in North America to seek damages that have not yet occurred.

The Low Carbon Fuel Standard recently promulgated by the governor of California to promote the use of ethanol in the state's fuel supply. Ethanol reduces fuel efficiency, which means drivers will need to burn more fuel to go the same distance.

San Francisco's ban on the use of plastic bags in city businesses. In reality, the manufacture of paper bags releases more greenhouse gases than the manufacture of plastic bags.

"Environmental alarmism should be taken for what it is-a natural tendency of some portion of the public to latch onto the worst, and most unlikely, potential outcome," said Dr. Kaleita. "Alarmism should not be used as the basis for policy. Where a real problem exists, solutions should be based on reality, not hysteria."

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Excerpt from: HYSTERIA'S HISTORY: ENVIRONMENTAL ALARMISM IN CONTEXT

By Amy Kaleita, Ph.D with Gregory R. Forbes

Lessons from the Apocalypse

Apocalyptic stories about the irreparable, catastrophic damage that humans are doing to the natural environment have been around for a long time.

These hysterics often have some basis in reality, but are blown up to illogical and ridiculous proportions. Part of the reason they're so appealing is that they have the ring of plausibility along with the intrigue of a horror flick. In many cases, the alarmists identify a legitimate issue, take the possible consequences to an extreme, and advocate action on the basis of these extreme projections. In 1972, the editor of the journal Nature pointed out the problem with the typical alarmist approach: "[Alarmists'] most common error is to suppose that the worst will always happen."82 But of course, if the worst always happened, the human race would have died out long ago.

When alarmism has a basis in reality, the challenge becomes to take appropriate action based on that reality, not on the hysteria. The aftermath of Silent Spring offers examples of both sorts of policy reactions: a reasoned response to a legitimate problem and a knee-jerk response to the hysteria. On the positive side, Silent Spring brought an end to the general belief that all synthetic chemicals in use for purposes ranging from insect control to household cleaning were uniformly wonderful, and it ushered in an age of increased caution on the appropriate use of chemicals. In the second chapter of her famous book, Carson wrote, "It is not my contention that chemical insecticides must never be used. I do contend that... we have allowed these chemicals to be used with little or no advance investigation of their effect on soil, water, wildlife, and man himself."

In this passage, Carson seemed to advocate reasoned response to rigorous scientific investigation, and in fact this did become the modern approach to environmental chemical licensure and monitoring. An hour-long CBS documentary on pesticides was aired during the height of the furor over Silent Spring. In the documentary, Dr. Page Nicholson, a water-pollution expert with the Public Health Service, wasn't able to answer how long pesticides persist in water once they enter it, or the extent to which pesticides contaminate groundwater supplies. Today, this sort of information is gathered through routine testing of chemicals for use in the environment.

However, there was, as we have seen, a more sinister and tragic response to the hysteria generated by Silent Spring. Certain developing countries, under significant pressure from the United States, abandoned the use of DDT. This decision resulted in millions of deaths from malaria and other insect-borne diseases. In the absence of pressure to abandon the use of DDT, these lives would have been spared. It would certainly have been possible to design policies requiring caution and safe practices in the use of supplemental chemicals in the environment, without pronouncing a death sentence on millions of people.

A major challenge in developing appropriate responses to legitimate problems is that alarmism catches people's attention and draws them in. Alarmism is given more weight than it deserves, as policy makers attempt to appease their constituency and the media. It polarizes the debaters into groups of "believers" and "skeptics," so that reasoned, fact-based compromise is difficult to achieve. Neither of these aspects of alarmism is healthy for the development of appropriate policy.

Further, alarmist responses to valid problems risk foreclosing potentially useful responses based on ingenuity and progress. There are many examples from the energy sector where, in the presence of demands for economy, efficiency, or less pollution, the marketplace has responded by developing better alternatives. That is not to say that we should blissfully squander our energy resources; on the contrary, we should be careful to utilize them wisely. But energy-resource hysteria should not lead us to circumvent scientific advancement by cherry-picking and favoring one particular replacement technology at the expense of other promising technologies.

Environmental alarmism should be taken for what it is-a natural tendency of some portion of the public to latch onto the worst, and most unlikely, potential outcome. Alarmism should not be used as the basis for policy. Where a real problem exists, solutions should be based on reality, not hysteria.

Source (PDF)




BRITAIN: IS AL GORE'S GLOBAL WARMING MOVIE BALANCED OR BIASED?

A lorry driver is taking the Government to court over a film that he believes is biased and shouldn't be shown to children in schools. 'The debate over the science of climate change is well and truly over." So said David Miliband in February. Mr Miliband, who was then environment secretary, was responding to a report from the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This left the minister so confident that there was nothing more to say on the matter that he and Alan Johnson, the then education secretary, announced that they would be sending a film about climate change to all 3,385 secondary schools in England.

A neutral, objective assessment of the evidence, perhaps? One that took care to present all sides of the argument so that pupils could make up their own minds? Not at all: it was Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, described by Mr Johnson as "a powerful message about the fragility of our planet". Since ministers regarded the debate as well and truly over, they were "delighted" to send school children a polemic that took as its central thesis the argument that climate change - the increase in global temperatures over the past 50 years - was mainly the result of man-made carbon dioxide emissions. This is indeed the view of the IPCC, and most of the world's climate scientists. But other people disagree.

One of them is Stewart Dimmock, 45, a lorry driver and school governor from Kent. His sons, aged 11 and 14, attend a secondary school in Dover which has presumably received a copy of Mr Gore's film. "I care about the environment as much as the next man," says Mr Dimmock. "However, I am determined to prevent my children from being subjected to political spin in the classroom."

You might think there ought to be a law against this - and there is. Section 406(1)(b) of the Education Act 1996 says that local education authorities, school governing bodies and head teachers "shall forbid... the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school". And if political issues are brought to the attention of pupils while they are at a maintained school, the authority, the governors and the head are required by the next section of the Act to take "such steps as are reasonably practicable to secure that... they are offered a balanced presentation of opposing views".

What precisely do these words mean? No court has yet ruled on them. But that opportunity will come in a week's time when Mr Dimmock takes legal action against Ed Balls, the new Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. Mr Dimmock's lawyers are trying to prevent the film being shown in schools. At this stage, they are asking for permission to challenge the Schools Secretary's decision to distribute it. This was refused in July after a written application. But if permission is granted at an oral hearing next Thursday, the judge is expected to consider the merits of Mr Dimmock's application for judicial review straight away.

A day in court, with expert evidence, does not come cheap - especially if Mr Dimmock loses and has to pay part or all of the Government's costs. Where will the money come from? "The funding is a private matter for him," says John Day, Mr Dimmock's solicitor. Mr Day will not be drawn further, but he does confirm that his client is an active member of the New Party. Its manifesto says that "political opportunism and alarmism have combined in seizing [the IPCC's] conclusions to push forward an agenda of taxation and controls that may ultimately be ineffective in tackling climate change, but will certainly be damaging to our economy and society".

What, though, of the issues? According to his solicitor, Mr Dimmock accepts that the planet is getting hotter; he is not trying to prevent climate change being taught in schools. What he does not accept is that sending out a 93-minute film made by the former vice-president of the United States is the right way to do it. "Gore has gone on record as saying he believes it is appropriate to over-represent the facts to get his message across," says Mr Day. "One of the very clear inferences from the Gore film is that areas such as Bangladesh will be under water by the end of the century. He is talking about sea levels rising by 20 feet."

But this is not backed up by the IPCC, the solicitor says. Their view is that sea levels will rise by 1.3 feet over the next 100 years. A rise of 20ft would require rising temperatures to continue for millennia.

"This film is a very powerful piece of work, says Mr Day. "There is a real risk that children are going to gulp on this and just digest it and accept it." Michael Sparkes, also from the law firm Malletts, adds that Mr Gore's central premise - that carbon dioxide emissions are causing the recently observed global warming - is taken by the film as proved. "There is no discussion of the fact that the climate is changing naturally all the time, whether warming or cooling," he said. He questions the examples given in the film, suggesting that there are often local causes for shrinking lakes and melting glaciers.

Mr Dimmock's lawyers will therefore argue that distributing this film to schools is either unlawful under section 406 of the 1996 Act or unlawful because it does not offer the balance required by section 407.

But, says the Government, balance is precisely what we are providing. Teachers need only go to a public website called teachernet.gov.uk to download and print - at their schools' expense - a 48-page guidance note. The current version of this note acknowledges that "teachers have a duty to give a balanced presentation of political issues and to avoid political indoctrination". It advises teachers to divide the film into three strands: Areas where there is undisputed scientific consensus, such as the clear evidence that global temperatures are rising; Areas where there is a "strong scientific consensus but where a small minority of scientists do not agree", for example that gas emissions from human activity are the main cause of climate change. "When dealing with such issues teachers may wish to refer to alternative views but make it clear that they do not accord with the weight of scientific opinion," the Government says; and Areas where there is political debate, such as how we should respond to climate change. "When addressing these areas, teachers must take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that pupils are offered a balanced presentation of opposing views."

The Schools Department says: "The law does not prevent teachers or schools from showing material which includes expressions of political opinion. But it does require that, when such material is shown, the opinion is presented in a balanced way."

Mr Day says his client is not satisfied with this. "You have a fundamentally flawed film, scientifically and politically, where the onus is being placed on teachers to draw the thorns and to remedy the defects," he says. "Is that fair on teachers?" Whether the written guidance is enough to balance the impact of Mr Gore's undoubtedly political views will no doubt be at the heart of next week's hearing. But is the debate over the science of climate change "well and truly over"? Not a chance.

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Bottled water: You can't win

Article below from the elite Smith College of Massachusetts

Along with the integration of local food into the dining halls, the advent of the new blue water bottles proves to be another large step in Smith's sustainability movement. In late August, the GrAccourt Gate issued a statement that claimed Smith to be "at the leading edge of a movement to wean Americans off bottled water." The intention to reduce bottled water consumption is undoubtedly noble, considering the prolific evidence of its detriments including lax federal regulations regarding the water's cleanliness and the possibility of environmental damage to local communities and ecosystems caused by excess pumping. Also of note is our continued reliance on oil, perpetuated by the process of shipping plastic bottles - made in China, for example - to the United States.

Yet in the midst of "saving money and resources," what effect does Smith's new plan have on the individual? What is the impact of using the snappy new Smith-blue water bottle? Let us begin with the ironic matters, if only because they are more entertaining: The bottles are still made in China and they're essentially non-recyclable, saying so on the bottom of the bottle. This fact is discreetly noted by the number "7" within the recycling symbol. Recycling numbers range from one to seven and denote the different kind of plastic used in the construction of the product. In our case, the number seven means that our bottles are constructed out of polycarbonate - a blend of multiple plastics - which complicates the recycling process. It is the active ingredient in the polycarbonate, bisphenol A (BPA), that is the main concern of this article.

Bisphenol A is a synthetic estrogen that was created in the 1930s and is used in the production of polycarbonate plastics. However, as the plastic ages, whether from prolonged use or exposure to corrosive matter in the form of acids, bases or heat (aka soda, milk or dishwashers), BPA detaches chemically and seeps into our drink. The side effects of this exposure, however small, are numerous according to studies performed by government and university scientists. The biggest of these potential problems is the permanent alteration of DNA. There continues to be an ongoing debate over the truth and severity of this issue by scientists and the American Plastics Council. The scientists claim that BPA (a pseudo-estrogen) interrupts communication between traditional estrogen receptors found on the cell membrane and the genes which rely upon estrogen signaling. This interruption can alter physiological processes such as brain growth and reproductive development. The majority of scientific studies have been performed on laboratory mice, though, which have received doses of BPA in proportion to the average levels thought to be present in humans.

The presence of BPA is seemingly ubiquitous in our lives. It is found not only in water bottles, but also in baby bottles, the inside lining of canned foods, dishware and sunglasses, to name a few. While the detrimental side effects of BPA have been scientifically proven, this article is by no means a call to revolt against all things polycarbonate. Rather, it is meant to raise the consciousness on this issue and aimed to point out the difficulty in choosing a truly alternative "safe" method to the "wrong" methods made obvious through public slander.

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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22 September, 2007

From Marc Morano's climate roundup to September 20, 2007

NASA's 1971 Warning: 'New Ice Age Coming'

Excerpt: NASA scientist James E. Hansen, who has publicly criticized the Bush administration for dragging its feet on climate change and labeled skeptics of man-made global warming as distracting "court jesters," appears in a 1971 Washington Post article that warns of an impending ice age within 50 years. "U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming," blares the headline of the July 9, 1971, article, which cautions readers that the world "could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts." The scientist was S.I. Rasool, a colleague of Mr. Hansen's at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The article goes on to say that Mr. Rasool came to his chilling conclusions by resorting in part to a new computer program developed by Mr. Hansen that studied clouds above Venus. The 1971 article, discovered this week by Washington resident John Lockwood while he was conducting related research at the Library of Congress, says that "in the next 50 years" - or by 2021 - fossil-fuel dust injected by man into the atmosphere "could screen out so much sunlight that the average temperature could drop by six degrees," resulting in a buildup of "new glaciers that could eventually cover huge areas."

Source

NASA Recalculates hottest year in U.S. Yet Again: 1934 & 1998 Declared Tied Now

Excerpt: On Sept 15, Jerry Brennan observed that the NASA U.S. temperature history had changed and that 1998 was now co-leader atop the U.S. leaderboard. By this time, we'd figured out exactly what Hansen had done: they'd switched from using the SHAP version - which had been what they'd used for the past decade or so - to the FILNET version. The impact at Detroit Lakes was relatively large - which was why we'd noticed it, but in the network as a whole the impact of the change was to increase the trend slightly - enough obviously to make a difference between 1934 and 1998 - even though this supposedly was of no interest to anyone.

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Antarctic Ice Grows to Record Level according to U. Of Illinois Polar Research Group

Excerpt: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - New historic SH sea ice maximum and NH sea ice minimum - The Southern Hemisphere sea ice area has broken the previous maximum of 16.03 million sq. km and is currently at 16.26 million sq. km. This represents an increase of about 1.4% above the previous SH ice area record high. The observed sea ice record in the Southern Hemisphere (1979-present) is not as long as the Northern Hemisphere. Prior to the satellite era, direct observations of the SH sea ice edge were sporadic.

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Laurie David Admits to "Error" in kid's Global Warming Book

Excerpt: Laurie David, writing in her Huffington Post column, defends her new left-wing kid's book, The Down to Earth Guide to Global Warming. The Hollywood producer turned children's author is attacking a recent study for catching that a graph used as in her book mislabeled CO2 and temperature in an advantageous way..... The error that SPPI caught is not minor. I have read David's book, and she and Cami Gordon do not make much of an effort to prove that mankind's activities are causing global warming, or that the current trend of temperature change is abnormal when compared to prior cycles. Instead, she takes this for granted and offers a passing reference to a graph with CO2 atmospheric concentration and temperature (p. 18) as proof that economic activity threatens to wipe out penguins and polar bears.... Of course, since David has previously stated that the goal of her book is to manipulate children, we shouldn't be surprised that the entire second half is comprised of nothing but tips like this.

Source

UK truck driver sues to stop Gore's film in schools:

'I am determined to prevent my children from being subjected to political spin in the classroom'

Excerpt: Mr Dimmock's lawyers will therefore argue that distributing this film to schools is either unlawful under section 406 of the 1996 Act or unlawful because it does not offer the balance required by section 407.... What he does not accept is that sending out a 93-minute film made by the former vice-president of the United States is the right way to do it. "Gore has gone on record as saying he believes it is appropriate to over-represent the facts to get his message across," says Mr Day. "One of the very clear inferences from the Gore film is that areas such as Bangladesh will be under water by the end of the century. He is talking about sea levels rising by 20 feet." But this is not backed up by the IPCC, the solicitor says. Their view is that sea levels will rise by 1.3 feet over the next 100 years. A rise of 20ft would require rising temperatures to continue for millennia. "This film is a very powerful piece of work, says Mr Day. "There is a real risk that children are going to gulp on this and just digest it and accept it."

Source

Meteorologist Craig James Debunks claims on Northwest Passage

The headline in this press release from the European Space Agency reads "Satellites witness lowest Arctic ice coverage in history". In history! That sounds like a long time. However, when you read the article you find "history" only goes back to 28 years, to 1979. That is when satellites began monitoring Arctic Sea ice. The article also says "the Northwest Passage - a long-sought short cut between Europe and Asia that has been historically impassable." I guess these people flunked history class. It has been open several times in history, without ice breakers. The first known successful navigation by ship was in 1905.

Source

Kyoto projects harm ozone layer: U.N. official

Excerpt: The biggest emissions-cutting projects under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming have directly contributed to an increase in the production of gases that destroy the ozone layer, a senior U.N. official says. In addition, evidence suggests that the same projects, in developing countries, have deliberately raised their emissions of greenhouse gases only to destroy these and therefore claim more carbon credits, said Stanford University's Michael Wara.

Source

Waste at Starbucks: Coating on coffee cups puts lid on recycling

Excerpt: Starbucks goes through roughly 2.3 billion paper cups a year and touts its national award for using cups made of 10 percent recycled material. The sleeves on the cups even plead, "Help us help the planet." But don't be confused. Starbucks promotes recycling on its cups, but the cups themselves aren't recyclable here or in most other cities nationwide. "Well, they tricked me," said Nicole Mejias, 22, a self-described Starbucks freak. "I immediately associate recycling with Starbucks because of their cups. That's so hypocritical. I would have never guessed" that the cups weren't easily recyclable. The reason: The plastic coating that keeps the cup from leaking also prevents it from being recycled with other paper products. That could be overcome, but it would cost more. Anything can be recycled, but "The system is not designed to take the individual Starbucks cups," said Steve Sargent, director of recycling for Rumpke Recycling, Columbus' largest recycler.

Waste Management, North America's largest recycler, won't take the cups, either. But many employees have been telling customers otherwise. They say their Seattle-based employer never made the situation clear.

"I totally thought the cups were recyclable. I think almost everyone did," said Melanie O'Brien, an Otterbein College student studying environmental initiatives who has worked at Starbucks.

Source

Gore charges $25,000 per person for meet-and-greet in Australia

Excerpt: Mr Gore made his comments after reporters were asked to leave the lunch venue. Despite the cost, lunch in the 700-seat room at the Sydney Convention Centre was a sell-out, as is tomorrow's event in Melbourne. VIP packages, which included a spot close to Mr Gore and a meet-and-greet with him, cost $25,000..... "It's [the Arctic] melting 10 times faster than previously recorded. Experts are now saying that if we don't act with urgency, the entire ice cap could be completely gone in less than 23 years."

Source

Climate change as an excuse to 'tax the [bleep] out of us'

Excerpt: Christopher Alleva On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal featured a discussion with Michael O'Leary, CEO of low fare Irish airline, Ryanair. Portrayed as kind of a swashbuckler, O'Leary offered up an interesting array of comments on the airline industry and the regulatory environment, but he saved up his most scathing attacks for the new climate change taxes with which Britain is hitting the airlines. His profanity-laced tirade regarding these taxes is right on the money, literally! Mention airlines and carbon dioxide in the same sentence, and he begins peppering his language with four-letter words.

Earlier this year, before becoming Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown raised taxes on air travel to and from the U.K. The then-Treasury chief's stated purpose was fighting climate change. Mr. O'Leary, whose airline serves more than a dozen British airports, demurs: "He just raised taxes on airlines. It has [bleep]-all to do with climate change! We've written several letters . . . to the Treasury, asking what the money's going to be spent on. We still haven't gotten a reply." They can't reply because that money went straight to the general fund to pay for pensions and the national health system!

O'Leary wasn't done yet, laying bare, the whole global warming business for the fraud that it is. "...the problem with all this environmental claptrap . . . it's a convenient excuse for politicians to just start taxing people. Some of these guilt-laden, middle-class liberals think it's somehow good: 'Oh, that's my contribution to the environment.' It's not. You're just being robbed--it's just highway [bleeping] robbery." He observes that passenger airlines are responsible for only 2% of carbon dioxide emissions world-wide: "It's less than marine transport, and yet I don't see anyone [saying], you know, 'Let's tax the [bleep] out of the ferries.' "

Source

Greenhouse gas mandates burden poor

Excerpt: the Edison Power Research Institute issued a report that provided an economic analysis of California's climate initiatives - a prototype of the one by which Florida is now modeled. The EPRI says cumulative costs to the California economy, just to meet its 2020 targets, could range from a hefty $104 billion to $367 billion and lead to a future of severe electricity shortages in the state. Put another way, the policy would cost every California household a staggering $31,900, or about two-thirds of one year's median income for all residents.

This would even be worse for blacks and Hispanics, where the costs would be about 90 percent of one year's household income. The EPRI further states that poorer households in California would bear a much larger burden relative to their income than would wealthier households. While all consumers would face persistently higher energy and energy-induced prices, the impact of these cost-of-living increases is far heavier on families earning $30,000 than on families earning more than $1 million a year. For the record, only 7 percent of California's population is African-American, as compared with nearly 16 percent in Florida - and most Florida residents who are older than 65 live on fixed incomes. These are, sadly, the people who are often most susceptible to the economic harm these climate change policies would most assuredly spawn.

Source

Letter from Morano to NBC's Anne Thompson on Greenland's 'Skewed Reporting'

Excerpt: Dear Anne: The NBC Nightly News segment tonight was a classic case of skewed reporting. Why did you not mention that Greenland temps were highest in 1941 or that the 30's and 40's were the warmest decades according to multiple peer reviewed studies? Why did you not mention that the rate of warming was twice as fast in the early part of 20th century (long before man-made CO2 could have been responsible?) Why do you only interview one activist scientist who is an advisor to Gore? There are many ice and sea level experts you could have contacted (many listed in below Senate report) Why did you do a Greenland ice story by relying on the last 15 years of temperature data? Please read below and plan on a follow up segment that actually educates the viewers, not one that cherry picks the last 15 years and shows scary maps of flooding. The segment shown tonight on NBC News is just the standard boiler plate alarmist nonsense. You will probably win many journalism awards with this, (such is the sad state of much of environmental reporting today) but the viewers are being woefully misinformed.

Source

Colorado Springs Gazette Cites EPW Reports

Excerpt: The only disasters caused by global warming exist in contrived computer models so unreliable they can't replicate yesterday's weather, let alone the next century's temperatures. Almost daily, new evidence is offered to refute the claims of global warming alarmists.

"An abundance of new peer-reviewed studies, analysis and data error discoveries in the last several months has prompted scientists to declare that fear of catastrophic man-made global warming `bites the dust,' and the scientific underpinnings for alarm may be `falling apart,' " according to U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.

Source

New Pacific Research Institute Report Reviews the History of Environmental Alarmism and Its Policy Impact

Excerpt: "A major challenge in developing appropriate responses to legitimate problems is that alarmism catches people's attention and draws them in," said Dr. Kaleita. "Alarmism is given more weight than it deserves, as policy makers attempt to appease their constituency and the media." Examples of poor and self-contradictory policy choices in California include: Taxpayer money spent on a lawsuit against nearly the entire automobile industry in North America to seek damages that have not yet occurred. The Low Carbon Fuel Standard recently promulgated by the governor of California to promote the use of ethanol in the state's fuel supply. Ethanol reduces fuel efficiency, which means drivers will need to burn more fuel to go the same distance. San Francisco's ban on the use of plastic bags in city businesses. In reality, the manufacture of paper bags releases more greenhouse gases than the manufacture of plastic bags.

Source

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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21 September, 2007

GLOBAL WARMING: FORECASTS BY SCIENTISTS VS SCIENTIFIC FORECASTS

An email to Benny Peiser from Dr. Paul Georgia [PGeorgia@ff.org], Executive Director, Center for Science & Public Policy:

On September 13, Professor Scott Armstrong presented his research on climate forecasting on Capitol Hill. His power point slides and video are now available for viewing. See here

Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, has initiated a backlash as scientists, heretofore absent from the global warming debate, have begun to criticize Mr. Gore, and by extension, much of the underpinnings of the global warming hypothesis.

One such critic is Professor Scott Armstrong, a leading expert on forecasting at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Armstrong hasn't just criticized Mr. Gore; he has put his money where his mouth is by challenging the former VP to a $10,000 bet, based on climate predictions.

Professor Armstrong, along with his colleague Professor Kesten Green with Monash University's Business and Economic Forecasting Unit in New Zealand, conducted an audit of Chapter 8 of the IPCC's Working Groups I report, The Physical Science Basis. They found no evidence that the IPCC authors were aware of the primary sources of information on forecasting. They also found that there was only enough information within the IPCC report to make a judgment on 89 of the total 140 forecasting principles as described in Professor Armstrong's book, Principles of Forecasting. Of these 89 principles, the IPCC violated 72.

They conclude that, "We have been unable to identify any scientific forecasts of global warming." They also concluded, "Prior research on forecasting suggests that in such situations a na‹ve (no change) forecast would be superior to current predictions."




Geographer and climatologist: Earth is not becoming desertified, it's greener all the time

Interview from Spain with Anton Uriarte -- who has studied the climate for more than a quarter of a century and believes that it has not been demonstrated that human activity has been the cause of global warming:

A few days ago we were all wrapped up, and now we're in shirtsleeves. Has the weather gone crazy?

We're not talking about any madness. There's a logical explanation.

Which is?

For the planet as a whole, February was a warmer month than normal. We received masses of cold polar air, but the Arctic wasn't left empty. Warm air from Greenland filled the Arctic. Greenland has had one of the warmest Februaries in its history. The air moves, the Earth is round and continually interchanges air masses between the tropics and the poles.

Here it's cold, but in other parts of the world it's hot; and vice versa.

Yes. In August 2003 we suffered a heat wave because of the arrival of air from Africa; but in the Atlantic and Russia they were quite a lot colder than normal.

Is the climate changing ?

The climate has always been changing. It's in imbalance.

It's unforeseeable.

The Earth being spherical, the tropics always receive more heat than the poles and the imbalance has to be continually rectified. They changes places because of the tilt of the earth's axis. And, moreover, the planet isn't smooth, but rough, which produces perturbations in the interchange of air masses. We know the history of the climate very well and it has changed continuously.

Yes, but now it's said that the main cause is man

The discussion is about to what extent the climatic change is the product of human activity. There are 6 billion human beings on earth, and that's well known.

Enough to show how we've changed the landscape.

Yes. And this also has repercussions for the climate, not just industry. It's evident that the Earth is a human planet, and that being so, it's quite normal that we influence the atmosphere. It's something else altogether to say that things will get worse. I believe that a little more heat will be very good for us. The epochs of vegetational exuberance coincided with those of more heat.

On a geological scale, the last glaciation ended not long ago.

About 11,500 years ago.

And now we're in a warm interglacial period.

Yes. Since then, there have been changes in the climate but they have been less pronounced. This is another thing which people are not clear about: in warm periods, when there are more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere - more CO2 and water vapour - climate variability is less. In these periods greenhouse gases, which act as a blanket, cushion the differences between the tropics and the poles. There is less interchange of air masses, fewer storms. We're talking about a climate which is much less variable. There is another misunderstanding: they augment the extremes, the waves of cold and heat

Isn't it so ?

Let's take the monsoons. The data that we have, which go back about 120 years, show that there is no tendency to increase or decrease. For tropical cyclones, if anything, there is a slight tendency to a decrease. The fact that this year has been a major one for cyclones doesn't impact this tendency.

Glaciers and deserts

There is alarming news, such as the disappearance of the perpetual ice of Kilimanjaro

The ice of Kilimanjaro occupies two square kilometres. It's not much. It's minute, compared to the 16 million square kilometres of snow spread among the continents. It's been calculated that in 1912, there were 12 million square kilometres, which is still quite a lot. And we know that it has diminished over the twentieth century. But it's not certain that it's due to a rise in temperatures. Satellite measurements in fact indicate a cooling. Some believe that humidity might have diminished, others that solar radiation has increased. At planetary scales, it appears that glaciers have retreated, but with some exceptions.

And what about desertification ?

To believe that the Earth is desertifying is totally erroneous. Satellite images show the opposite to be true: the Earth is becoming greener. Firstly, because there is more CO2 and this has augmented photosynthesis. Secondly there is nothing to say that warming should be accompanied by drought. At the moment we are suffering a major drought in Spain because winter has been affected by the situation in the North, by the cold. In Spain it rains more in warm weather than in cold; and in the situation of the planet too. In climate history the warmest epochs have always been the most rainy.

But there are islands and coasts condemned to disappear under the sea.

Not so. The sea is not flat, nor is its level the same everywhere. Changes in salinity mean that in some places, sea level is higher than in others: the north Baltic, with fresher water, is 40cm higher than the south. In the Atlantic, there are differences of metres. With phenomena like El Nino, it will rise in some places and fall in others. The south pole is at -40oC. With a warming of two degrees, very little is going to change. Moreover, in Antarctica, the tendency is towards cooling.

Can we relax then ?

Yes, there's no need to be worried. It's very interesting to study it, but there's no need to be worried. There are a minority of scientists, among them myself, who believe that to say that man is causing a climatic change is a fairy tale.

Source




EXTREME FLOODS OF SOUTHWEST GERMANY

Discussing: Burger, K., Seidel, J., Glasser, R., Sudhaus, D., Dostal, P. and Mayer, H. 2007. Extreme floods of the 19th century in southwest Germany. La Houille Blanche: 10.1051/lhb:2007008.

Background

One of the cardinal creeds of the world's climate alarmists is that there will be more severe flooding in a CO2-enriched warmer world; and one of their cardinal claims is that 20th-century warming has been unprecedented over the past two millennia ... and maybe a whole lot longer (Hansen et al., 2006). Hence, the world should have experienced some truly phenomenal flooding over the past century or so, and especially over the last few decades. But has it?

What was done

In a study that sheds some light on this question as it pertains to southwest Germany, Burger et al. review what is known about flooding in this region over the past three centuries, which takes us back into the Little Ice Age, when according to climate-alarmist "wisdom" flooding should have been much less significant than it has been recently.

What was learned

The six scientists report that the extreme flood of the Neckar River (southwest Germany) in October 1824 was "the largest flood during the last 300 years in most parts of the Neckar catchment." In fact, they say "it was the highest flood ever recorded [our italics] in most parts of the Neckar catchment and also affected the Upper Rhine, the Mosel and Saar." In addition, they report that the historical floods of 1845 and 1882 "were among the most extreme floods in the Rhine catchment in the 19th century," which they describe as truly "catastrophic events," and speaking of the flood of 1845, they say it "showed a particular impact in the Middle and Lower Rhine and in this region it was higher than the flood of 1824 [our italics]." Finally, the year 1882 actually saw two extreme floods, one at the end of November and one at the end of December. Of the first one, Burger et al. remark that "in Koblenz, where the Mosel flows into the Rhine, the flood of November 1882 was the fourth-highest of the recorded floods, after 1784, 1651 and 1920," the much-hyped late-20th-century floods of 1993, 1995, 1998 and 2002 not even meriting a mention.

What it means

Real-world data from southwest Germany argue strongly against the climate-alarmist contention that global warming - due to whatever - leads to the occurrence of more severe flooding. Other data from other parts of the world - see Floods in our Subject Index - generally do the same.

Source

Journal abstract follows:

Climate variability, floods and their impacts in Central Europe have received increasing attention in Germany in recent years. In the course of this process, historical floods receive increasing attention in research works and in applied flood protection. The research group "Xfloods" from the University of Freiburg (Germany) is part of the initiative by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for a "Risk Management of Extreme Flood Events" (RIMAX). The investigations have a special focus on past extreme floods in southwest Germany. The research project integrates the information from historical data to identify and quantify extreme flood events as a basis for flood risk management. The data is extracted from historical records from 1500-1900 and supplemented by instrumental observations, which are available since the middle of the 18th century. In such a way, the results from this project can contribute to a safer handling of extreme floods in the future.

The study area is situated in the southwestern part of Germany and encompasses the Upper Rhine Valley and the eastern Rhine tributaries like the Neckar. This region was affected by different historical flood events, e.g. in 1824, 1845 and 1882. By means of the flood event from October 1824 in the Neckar catchment, the detailled reconstruction of historical floods will be presented.




New Lack of Evidence Boosts Certainty of Darwinism

From Scrappleface

Recent discoveries indicating no direct line of descent from ape-like creatures to modern man have further bolstered anthropologists' belief that Darwin's theory of descent-with-modification by natural selection must certainly account for the rise of Homo sapiens.

New research on a pair of recently-unearthed African skulls shows that Homo habilis and Homo erectus most likely did not descend one from another, as scientists have believed for years, but that the two diminutive hominids lived as neighbors during the same epoch. Other recent research indicates that Homo sapiens lived at the same time as Neanderthals.

Far from casting doubt on Darwin's theory, experts say that the lack of evidence and contradictory discoveries have helped to build "a consensus of certainty in the field."

"Finding little physical evidence to substantiate the theory only means there must still be a great deal of supportive evidence out there to be found," said an unnamed editor of the journal Nature, which plans to publish a paper on the African skulls this week. "The more we realize how little we know, the more certain we are that we're right. As I once read in a scholarly paper somewhere, `faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen'."




CONFERENCE ON INTEGRITY IN SCIENCE FOCUSES ON IPCC

A claimed "first world conference on research integrity" opens in Lisbon, Portugal, today. The conference media release explains: "The controversies surrounding the recent assessment report of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) demonstrates how research integrity is a critical issue not only for the science community, but for politicians and the society as a whole as well. In August 2007 the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had to withdraw previous published historical climate data.

The incident came after a British mathematician discovered that the sources used by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) have disregarded the positions of weather stations, plus intentionally using outdated data on China from 1991 and ignoring revised data on the country from 1997.

Now 350 concerned scientists, scientific managers and magazine editors from around the world are scheduled to attend the event in Lisbon, initiated and organised by the European Science Foundation (ESF) and the US Office for Research Integrity (ORI). It marks a milestone for the science community as it will link all those concerned parties in a global effort to tackle the issue head on.

"At the very least, countries should know how misconduct will be handled in other countries and whom to contact if they have questions. A more ambitious goal is to begin to harmonize global policies relating to research integrity," says Conference Co-Chair Nicholas Steneck from the University of Michigan.

"By now there are no consistent global standards for defining and responding to major misconduct in research. Definitions and practices vary from country to country and even institution to institution. Improper practices that could be ignored in one country could get a researcher dismissed from a position in another country," Steneck adds.

The conference will be focusing on both individual and institutions' responsibilities, and of funding agencies as well as publishers, according to Conference Co-Chair Tony Mayer from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Mayer is also the former Senior Science Policy Adviser to the ESF.

Jose-Mariano Gago, the Portuguese Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Janez Potocnik, the European Commissioner for Research, Angel Gurri?a, the Secretary-General, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and Tim Hunt from the Cancer Research UK, South Mimms will kick off the event by participating in the opening talks. .

In his keynote address, Paul David form the Oxford University, UK, and Stanford University, Palo Alto, U.S., will give an overview on analytical and empirical studies of ORI on the problem of scientific misconduct. David is well known for his research in the economics of science and technology, with special reference to the impact of intellectual property rights protections on the direction and conduct of 'open science' research.

Howard Alper, Professor of Chemistry and Vice-President Research at the University of Ottawa, and winner of the first Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal in Science and Engineering, Canada's most prestigious award for science and engineering, is also affiliated with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada, because he is also an expert in the situations in developing and emerging countries. From his experiences he presents the best practices for the benefit of a society.

Herbert Gottweis from the Institute of Political Sciences, University of Vienna, Austria, will reconsider the Hwang gate from 2005 and present the lessons learned. Gottweis is vice-president of the Austrian Research Fund (FWF) and coordinator of the PAGANINI ("Participatory Governance and Institutional Innovation") project of the European Union.

The conference will also touch on the situation in developing and emerging countries, where scientists often have to produce publications in numbers under pressure to achieve the formal scientific qualifications. Thus voices from Africa, like that from Amaboo Dhai, University of the Witwatersrand Medical School, Steve Biko Centre for Bioethics, Parktown, South Africa, will also be heard. In addition, Annette Flanagin of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Muza Gondwe, University of Malawi, College of Medicine, Blantyre, will contribute their experiences from the "African Journal Partnership Project". Flanagin is the author of the JAMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors, now in it's 10th edition.

In other words the World Conference on Research Integrity focuses on an open sore of science, taking into consideration the reality, legal and institutional aspects, as well as regional, social and psychological environments in which scientists work.It intends to be the beginning of the healing process.

Source

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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20 September, 2007

MAMMOTH DUNG AND CYCLICAL CHANGES IN THE SIBERIAN PERMAFROST

Read the bit of attention-seeking below then see immediately after it part of what you are NOT being told

Sergei Zimov bends down, picks up a handful of mud and holds it up to his nose. It smells like a cow patty, but he knows better. "It smells like mammoth dung," he says. This is more than just another symptom of global warming.

For millennia, layers of animal waste and other organic matter left behind by the creatures that used to roam the Arctic tundra have been sealed inside the frozen permafrost. Now, climate change is thawing the permafrost and lifting this prehistoric ooze from suspended animation.

But Zimov, chief scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences' North Eastern Scientific station, three plane rides and eight times zones away from Moscow, believes that as this organic matter becomes exposed to the air, it will accelerate global warming faster than even some of the most pessimistic forecasts. "This will lead to a type of global warming that will be impossible to stop," he said.

When the organic matter left behind by mammoths and other wildlife is exposed to the air by the thawing permafrost, his theory goes, microbes that have been dormant for thousands of years spring back into action. They emit carbon dioxide as a byproduct and -- even more damaging in terms of its impact on the climate -- methane gas.

Zimov, who has studied climate change in Russia's Arctic for almost 30 years, says the microbes are going to start emitting these gases in enormous quantities. Here in Sakha, a republic in the northeastern corner of Siberia, the belt of permafrost containing the mammoth-era soil covers an area roughly the size of France and Germany combined. There is even more of it elsewhere in Siberia. "The deposits of organic matter in these soils are so gigantic that they dwarf global oil reserves," Zimov said.

U.S. government statistics show mankind emits about 7 billion tons of carbon per year. "Permafrost areas hold 500 billion tons of carbon, which can quickly turn into greenhouse gases," Zimov said. "If you don't stop emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere ... the Kyoto Protocol will seem like childish prattle," he said, referring to an international pact aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions.

It might be easy to dismiss the 52-year-old, with his beard and shock of wavy hair, as an alarmist crank, but his theory is grabbing attention in the scientific community. "There's quite a bit of truth in it," said Julian Murton, member of the International Permafrost Association. "The methane and carbon dioxide levels will increase as a result of permafrost degradation."

A United Nations report in June said there was yet no sign of widespread melting of permafrost that could stoke global warming but noted the potential threat. "Permafrost stores a lot of carbon, with upper permafrost layers estimated to contain more organic carbon than is currently contained in the atmosphere," the report said. "Permafrost thawing results in the release of this carbon in the form of greenhouse gases, which will have a positive feedback effect to global warming."

At Duvanny Yar on the shores of the Kolyma River, the phenomenon that Zimov describes in speeches at scientific conferences can be seen first hand. The steep-sided riverbank, until now held up by permafrost, is collapsing as the ice melts. Every few minutes, a thud can be heard as another wedge of soil and permafrost comes tumbling down, or a splash as a chunk falls into the river. Nearby, Zimov points to an area unaffected by the melting so far -- a forest of larch trees with berries and mushrooms and covered with a soft cushion of moss and lichen. Farther down the slope though, the landscape is covered with trees toppled over as the soil disintegrates. Brooks murmur down the slope carrying melted ice.

Elsewhere, places that five or 10 years ago were empty tundra are now dotted with lakes -- a result of thawing permafrost. These "thermokarst" lakes bubble with methane, over 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

The permafrost thaw affects those rare outposts where humans have settled. In Chersky, a town of 3,000 people, apartment blocks have cracks running through their walls as the earth beneath them subsides. Many have been demolished because they were no longer safe.

So few people live in or visit this wilderness that the changing landscape on its own is unlikely to worry people on the other side of the world. But Zimov warned that people everywhere should take notice, because within a few years, the effect of the permafrost melting in Siberia will have a direct impact on their lives. "Siberia's landscape is changing," he said. "But in the end, local problems of the north will inevitably turn into the problems of Russia's south, the Amazon region or Holland."

Source

I reproduce below a report from 16 Jan 2006

SIBERIANS SHIVER IN RECORD COLD

Record low temperatures were felt in western Siberia over the weekend, with temperatures in the Tomsk region reported at minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit and lower. "This morning people felt Arctic weather," a local meteorologist told the Interfax news agency Friday. A state of emergency was declared in the Tomsk region, where at least one man died because of the cold and hospitals treated dozens of people daily for cold-related health problems, while public transportation and electricity supplies were disrupted, The Moscow Times reported Monday. In the Novosibirsk region, temperatures fell to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit -- the lowest in 100 years. In the city of Krasnoyarsk, celebrations for the Russian holiday known as Old New Year's Eve were canceled Friday after temperatures were also predicted to fall to minus 40. In the Komi-Permyatsky autonomous district, where temperatures were as low as minus 49 Fahrenheit, 85 people -- mostly preschoolers -- were evacuated from a settlement after a heating system serving 600 residents failed, Interfax reported Saturday. There was some good news, however: Scientists in the Tyumen region said the thousands of school closures across Siberia would reduce the spread of an expected flu epidemic among schoolchildren.

Source

So what is going on? Simple: Siberia is affected by a regular climate cycle called the Arctic Oscillation. So its temperature can vary considerably from year to year. There is no evidence of an overall change beyond the changes due to the oscillation. Read all about it here and here




GUARDIAN'S CLIMATE HYPE CALLED "MISLEADING AND ALARMIST"

We don't know yet whether melting icecaps play any role, but scare stories don't help, says Jose Rial, professor of geophysics at the department of geological sciences, University of North Carolina [jose_rial@unc.edu]

Your article (Melting icecap triggering earthquakes, September 8) is misleading and alarmist. As a climatologist/seismologist working on glacial seismic activity in the Jakobshavn glacier basin - precisely the area your reporter mentions - I know that local earthquakes (or glacial quakes) are actually fairly common in the area and have been for a long time. I also know that there is no evidence to suggest that these quakes "are happening far faster than ever anticipated" in the region, as Dr Corell of the global change programme at Washington's Heinz Centre is quoted as saying.

Glacial earthquakes in Greenland have been monitored for decades using the global seismic network, and although their number has increased over the last five to six years - likely due to Arctic warming - in Jakobshavn their number has actually decreased since 1996, according to a recent report by G Ekstr”m and V Tsai from Columbia University. However, because these scientists used sensors quite remote from the area, small quakes may have been missed in Jakobshavn, which is not as glacially quake-active as other studied areas in eastern and north-western Greenland.

To take a closer look, in 2006 and again in 2007 I deployed an array of 10 seismic sensors near Swiss Camp, a permanent glaciological station some 50km north of the Jakobshavn glacier, operated by the University of Colorado. The unique data gathered by the close array have given us a better idea of what dynamic processes are involved in glacial quakes, as well as the realisation that it is still too early to know what it all means in terms of the evolution of the Jakobshavn glacier, or the icecap.

It is unfortunate that your article led with the falling-sky statement: "The Greenland icecap is melting so quickly that is triggering earthquakes as pieces of ice several cubic kilometres in size break off." Actually, just the opposite seems to happen. As ice melting increases, the number and size of glacial quakes eventually decreases, since there is more water around to lubricate ice motions (quakes occur if there is enough friction to temporarily keep ice from sliding smoothly).

We find that the area where glacial quakes are strongest and most frequent is along the margins of the ice stream that feeds the glacier, where ice rubs against the rock in the deep valley along which the ice stream moves; we find no evidence that the ice has been "fused to the rock for hundreds of years" and is just now breaking apart. Actually, it will take years of continued surveying to know whether anything here is "accelerating" towards catastrophe, as the article claims.

I believe that to battle global climate change effectively we need the strong support of a well-informed, actively engaged public. There is great urgency indeed in all these climate matters and I understand the threat of climate change to society; but the evidence needs to be there before we needlessly alarm the public who sustain our research.

Source




REALITY CHECK: POLAR BEAR DIE-OFF NOT HAPPENING

Wildlife research director dismisses dire forecast by U.S. agency

Fears that two-thirds of the world's polar bears will die off in the next 50 years are overblown, says Mitchell Taylor, the Government of Nunavut's director of wildlife research. "I think it's na‹ve and presumptuous," Taylor said of the report, released by U.S. Geological Survey on Friday, which warns that many of the world's polar bears will die as sea ice vanishes due to a warming climate. "As the sea ice goes, so go the polar bears," said Steve Amstrup, who led the study.

But Taylor says that's not the case. He points to Davis Strait, one of the southern-most roaming grounds of polar bears. According to the USGS, Davis Strait ought to be among the first places where polar bears will starve due to shrinking seasonal sea ice, which scientists say will deprive the bears of a vital platform to hunt seals. Yet "Davis Strait is crawling with polar bears," Taylor said. "It's not safe to camp there. They're fat. The mothers have cubs. The cubs are in good shape."

Other than Davis Strait, which is hunted by Inuit from Pangnirtung, Iqaluit and Kimmirut, the USGS also predicts polar bears will perish in Baffin Bay, Foxe Basin, and South and West Baffin. In fact, the USGS predicts the only polar bears to survive by the end of the century will be those found in Canada's Arctic archipelago, and on the west coast of Greenland. Those in Alaska and Russia, and in much of Nunavut and all of Nunavik, will have perished.

But Taylor says the report is needlessly pessimistic. While he agrees that seals are essential food for bears as they fatten up during the spring and summer months - seal blubber makes up half of the bears' energy intake - he also suspects bears will be able to supplement their diet with other foods, such as walrus. During the summer months polar bears may also forage on berries, sedges and other plants, as well as bird eggs, to supplement their diet. And Taylor also points out female polar bears go nine months without eating at all during pregnancy.

Besides, Taylor says he and numerous Inuit hunters have seen bears catch seal without the presence of sea ice. Bears sometimes find a place on shore to pounce on seals swimming by. Or they may catch seals caught in tidal pools, or sneak up on their prey at night. Taylor even suggests polar bears may float still on the water to fool seals into thinking they are hunks of sea ice.

The Government of Nunavut is conducting a study of the Davis Strait bear population. Results of the study won't be released until 2008, but Taylor says it appears there are some 3,000 bears in an area - a big jump from the current estimate of about 850 bears. "That's not theory. That's not based on a model. That's observation of reality," he says. And despite the fact that some of the most dramatic changes to sea ice is seen in seasonal ice areas such as Davis Strait, seven or eight of the bears measured and weighed for the study this summer are among the biggest on record, Taylor said.

Yet anecdotes abound of skinny polar bears wandering from their traditional hunting grounds in search of food - such as an email circulated recently with a photo of a gaunt bear with skin hanging off its bones, spotted 160 kilometres inland from Ungava Bay. Taylor bristles at that photo's mention. He says the bear is clearly an elderly male in its late 20s, rather than a young female, as it has been otherwise identified. "It probably wandered out there to end its life in peace," he said. "That's nature. It's not climate change."

He also questions the claim that the papers used to support the position of the USGS on polar bears have been peer reviewed. "The first time I saw them was when I downloaded them today," he said. Taylor characterizes much of the public discussion over, as one headline has called it, "the appalling fate of the polar bear," as "hysteria."

Taylor admits he does not see eye to eye with many other polar bear biologist, many of whom have expressed concern over whether polar bears will survive in a warmer climate. "Unlike all the others, I live in the north. My friends and neighbours are Nunavummiut," he said. "I'm talking to people about polar bears all the time."

The Geological Survey produced its report to assist the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in its decision on whether to list polar bears as an endangered species. If polar bears make the endangered list, it would effectively end the U.S. sports hunt, which brings about $2 million to Nunavut communities each year. The Fish and Wildlife Service has until January 2009 to make its decision. Two-thirds of the world's polar bears live in Canada.

Source




HOW FLAWED ARE IPCC CLIMATE MODELS?

Discussing: Lucarini, V., Calmanti, S., Dell'Aquila, A., Ruti, P.M. and Speranza A. 2007. Intercomparison of the northern hemisphere winter mid-latitude atmospheric variability of the IPCC models. Climate Dynamics 28: 829-848.

What was done

The authors compared, for the overlapping time frame 1962-2000, "the estimate of the northern hemisphere mid-latitude winter atmospheric variability within the available 20th century simulations of 19 global climate models included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] 4th Assessment Report" with "the NCEP-NCAR and ECMWF reanalyses," i.e., compilations of real-world observations produced by the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), in collaboration with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and by the European Center for Mid-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF).

What was learned

Quoting the five Italian researchers, "large biases, in several cases larger than 20%, are found in all [our italics] the considered metrics between the wave climatologies of most IPCC models and the reanalyses, while the span of the climatologies of the various models is, in all cases [our italics], around 50%." They also report that "the traveling baroclinic waves are typically overestimated by the climate models, while the planetary waves are usually underestimated," and that "the model results do not cluster around their ensemble mean," which is another way of saying they are all over the place.

What it means

Quoting once again the scientists who performed the model tests, "this study suggests caveats with respect to the ability of most of the presently available climate models in representing the statistical properties of the global scale atmospheric dynamics of the present [our italics] climate and, a fortiori ["all the more," as per Webster's Dictionary], in the perspective of modeling [future] climate change." Indeed, it gives one pause to question most everything the models might suggest about the future.

Source

Journal abstract follows:

We compare, for the overlapping time frame 1962-2000, the estimate of the northern hemisphere mid-latitude winter atmospheric variability within the available 20th century simulations of 19 global climate models included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-4th Assessment Report with the NCEP-NCAR and ECMWF reanalyses. We compute the Hayashi spectra of the 500 hPa geopotential height fields and introduce an ad hoc integral measure of the variability observed in the Northern Hemisphere on different spectral sub-domains. The total wave variability is taken as a global scalar metric describing the overall performance of each model, while the total variability pertaining to the eastward propagating baroclinic waves and to the planetary waves are taken as scalar metrics describing the performance of each model phenomenologically in connection with the corresponding specific physical process. Only two very high-resolution global climate models have a good agreement with reanalyses for both the global and the process-oriented metrics.

Large biases, in several cases larger than 20%, are found in all the considered metrics between the wave climatologies of most IPCC models and the reanalyses, while the span of the climatologies of the various models is, in all cases, around 50%. In particular, the travelling baroclinic waves are typically overestimated by the climate models, while the planetary waves are usually underestimated, in agreement with what found is past analyses performed on global weather forecasting models. When comparing the results of similar models, it is apparent that in some cases the vertical resolution of the model atmosphere, the adopted ocean model, and the advection schemes seem to be critical in the bulk of the atmospheric variability.

The models ensemble obtained by arithmetic averaging of the results of all models is biased with respect to the reanalyses but is comparable to the best five models. Nevertheless, the models results do not cluster around their ensemble mean. This study suggests caveats with respect to the ability of most of the presently available climate models in representing the statistical properties of the global scale atmospheric dynamics of the present climate and, a fortiori, in the perspective of modeling climate change.




Global warming attracts the dumb and the devious

IT'S a toss-up as to who's making a bigger fool of themselves over climate change: our politicians or our Miss Earth contestants, Andrew Bolt writes from Australia

At least the girls in the Miss Earth beauty pageant can afford to look stupid, since they aren't in charge of anything important, like the vanishing water supplies of our cities. They've just wanted to preach green messages in a bikini and tiara, as they fought last week for the titles of Miss Earth Australia, Best in Swimsuit and Best Environmental Speech. So, we could smile to read contestant Snezana declare that "Salinisation (sic) of land is one of the major environemtal (sic) crises facing Australia", and Kirra warn that "the biggest problem in our enviroment (sic) today is our lack of water". At worst we'd have wondered how badly we teach English as Angelique demanded help for an "environmnet" in danger, and Natalia wept for an "enviornment (sic) that sustains us".

How cute, these earnest bikini babes, so keen to save something they cannot even spell. But how scary, too, that many of these contestants want to save this thing they cannot spell from a threat they cannot understand. You see, someone - a few of the girls dobbed in Al Gore - has filled their pretty heads with such wild fears of global warming that poor Amanda now wails that "the human race will eventually become extinct".

Scared silly, like so many children now, by professional panic merchants, it seems there's nothing these girls won't now blame on global warming; even tsunamis caused by earthquakes. Christine, for instance, says she's been worried about global warming "from when the tsunami happened in Thailand back in December 2004". "Hey! Me too," squeals Georgina. "Aside from an increase in natural disasters such as the fateful tsunami of 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, smaller changes to weather patterns are slowly being recognised."

Of course, we mustn't blame the girls for believing something so stupid when even Great Guru Gore has falsely suggested global warming caused Hurricane Katrina, the melting snows of Kilimanjaro, the drying of Lake Chad, the immigration of Pacific islanders and whatever else he dreams up when flying here to tell us to cut the kind of emissions he just blew out the back of his jet.

And I ask again: Who really is making a bigger fool of themselves over global warming; these harmless beauty contestants or our politicians, now watching our dams drain dry? The girls may think global warming causes earthquakes, but our politicians just as stupidly claim it's causing our cities to run out of water. Here is New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma last Friday, explaining why Sydney is getting permanent water restrictions: "The changes brought by climate change are going to change the way we use water." Victoria's politicians have used the same line. Here is our since departed Minister for No Water, John Thwaites, excusing water restrictions that are killing our playing fields and gardens: "So all the evidence points to a significant involvement of global warming in the present drought."

How handy, that global warming bogyman. Blame global warming for Melbourne's dams now being 7 per cent lower now than they were even last year, when things got grim. Blame global warming for the Brumby Government having to reassure us last week that Melbourne won't run out of drinking water this year, at least. Gosh, don't blame the Government instead for having such a green phobia about a new dam that we may run out of water the year after. What deceitful men. Or stupid.

For a start, no scientist can tell if any drought yet has been caused by the slight global warming of 0.7 degrees thought to have occurred last century. Let's not forget we've had many droughts before in our "land of droughts and flooding rains". Indeed, the driest five years in NSW in the past century were from 1940 to 1944, and Victoria's past five years have been no drier than what we suffered then, too. Bureau of Meteorology figures suggest we may just be returning to the drier weather of the first 45 years of last century.

In NSW, the average annual rainfall back then was just 475mm. Then came years of plenty, averaging 567mm, but since 1996 the annual rainfall has fallen back to an average of 511mm - still well up on the usual rainfall of the post-war years. So what drought? Victoria's weather has followed much the same pattern: Dry years until 1945, followed by years of good rain until a decade ago, when the dry returned. Our average annual rainfall from 1996 has been 571mm, much less than the post-war average until then of 671mm, but not much less than the pre-war average of 603mm.

Droughts come and droughts go, and it's impossible to see the influence of any man-made global warming. So why should this make you furious with our politicians? Because the history of this continent's weather should have told them to prepare for dry years of the kind we've had so often before. Because it should have told them they were mad to waste dam water on environmental flows for rivers that had survived years far drier than these. And because by blaming global warming instead of themselves, they make sweet girls like Miss Earth's Krystle shake on their stilettos, sure that "the ultimate end of existence of Earth and man is global warming". Fear not, Krystle, stupidity will kill us more surely than global warming.

Source

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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19 September, 2007

Shaky NASA astrophysics too

An email from Oliver Manuel [omatumr@yahoo.com], Emeritus Professor, Nuclear Chemistry, University of Missouri-Rolla

Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit seems to be witnessing a meltdown at NASA as he continues to find evidence of changes in the experimental temperature database which Dr. James E. Hansen used as evidence for global warming.

I suspect that NASA has used some of the same tricks to peddle AGW (anthropologic global warming) that it used to promote the myth that planet Earth is heated by a steady, H-fusion reactor in the core of a Hydrogen-filled Sun.

Since the 1969 Apollo Mission returned the first lunar soils loaded with solar-wind-implanted material, NASA has successfully manipulated the press and access to funds, samples, and Lunar Science Conferences to hide experimental evidence that planet Earth is heated by a neutron star at the core of an iron-rich Sun - the remains of an object that exploded five (5) billion years ago and ejected the material that now orbits it.

More from Prof. Manuel here. Believers in the sanctity of pronouncements from physics might like to consider just two recent headlines from PhysOrg: Research overturns accepted notion of neutron's electrical properties and Magellanic clouds: Single measurement throws out everything we thought we knew




Judge tosses global warming lawsuit

A federal judge on Monday tossed out a lawsuit filed by California that sought to hold the world's six largest automakers accountable for their contribution to global warming. In its lawsuit filed last year, California blamed the auto industry for millions of dollars it expects to spend on repairing damage from global-warming induced floods and other natural disasters.

But District Judge Martin Jenkins in San Francisco handed California Attorney General Jerry Brown's environmental crusade a stinging rebuke when he ruled it was impossible to determine to what extent automakers are responsible for global-warming damages in California. The judge also ruled that keeping the lawsuit alive would threaten the country's foreign policy position. Jenkins said it's up to lawmakers, rather than judges, to determine how responsible automakers are for global warming problems.

The state sued Chrysler Motor Corp., Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and the U.S. subsidiaries of Japan's biggest manufacturers, Honda North America, Nissan North America and Toyota Motor North America.

Separately, the automakers are challenging a California law in federal court that requires them to reduce vehicle carbon emissions by 2009.

A federal judge in Vermont recently rejected the industry's position that only the federal government can make such demands in upholding that state's nearly identical law.

Source




MARS, LIKE EARTH, HAS CYCLICAL COLD AND WARM AGES, STUDY SAYS

Mars has gone through 40 ice ages during the past five million years that regularly send the planet's permanent ice sheets cascading toward the equator, then melting backward, a new theory suggests.

The climate changes are likely driven by cyclical fluctuations in the planet's orbit that alter the amount of sunlight that falls on the planet's surface, says astronomer Norbert Schoerghofer of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Understanding the sun's exact role in the Martian ice ages could help solve longstanding puzzles about the red planet. It could also help scientists better understand Earth's complex climatic systems, which are also affected by orbital variations. The new theory appears in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

Mystery of the Ice

In recent years extensive amounts of ice have been discovered below the surface of Mars. Much of the ice mysteriously survives far from the planet's poles. Schoerghofer suggests that this ice is newer than previously believed.

"Earlier theories have tried to explain this ice with snowfall that would have happened some five million years ago [but struggle] to explain how that ice could have stayed there," Schoerghofer said. "I'm saying it didn't stay. It went away and then came back many, many times."

According to Schoerghofer, much of Mars's ice is formed by vapor diffusion-the seeping of gas directly into underground pockets during cold periods. "The water cycle on Mars is very different than what we see on Earth," said Joshua Bandfield, a research specialist at Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration who was not involved in the study.

FULL STORY here




Cap-and-Trade Could Cost Average Family $10,800 in Lost Income

Proposed Global Warming Policy Likened to 1970s-Era Energy Crunch

A cap-and-trade scheme for controlling greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) would impose significant economic costs on the U.S. economy and is not a sound policy response to current concerns about global warming, says renowned economist Arthur Laffer in a new study released today.

"Dr. Laffer's analysis is another death knell for the cap-and-trade approach to addressing concerns over carbon dioxide emissions," said Steven Milloy, executive director of the Free Enterprise Education Institute (FEEI), the nonprofit group sponsoring the study. "The Department of Energy, Congressional Budget Office and, now, Dr. Laffer have all concluded that cap- and-trade would be disastrous for the U.S. economy," added Milloy.

Laffer's analysis, entitled "The Adverse Economic Impacts of Cap-and- Trade" concludes that:

-- Cap-and-trade may reduce U.S. economic growth by 4.2 percent -- even to achieve the comparatively modest GHG reductions of the Kyoto Protocol i.e., GHG emissions 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012). The cost to reach the ultimate goal of some GHG control proponents (e.g., reducing GHG emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050) would be significantly greater. Moreover, these estimates may underestimate the actual cost as they assume the government would auction the rights to emit greenhouse gases -- as opposed to simply giving them away, which is the approach often discussed in the Congress.

-- Because fossil fuels (oil, coal and natural gas) provide 86 percent of current U.S. energy needs and it is not currently feasible to substitute contribution of alternative energy sources in the near-term, a GHG cap could effectively become an energy production cap -- or an energy supply shock.

-- During the previous energy supply shocks of 1974-75, 1979-81 and 1990- 91, the economy declined, unemployment rose, and the stock market declined in value.

-- Based on the energy efficiency responses to the energy supply shocks of the 1970s, the U.S. economy could be 5.2 percent smaller in 2020 compared to what would otherwise be expected if cap-and-trade regulations are imposed. This equates to a potential income loss of about $10,800 for a family of four for the initial Kyoto GHG reduction target.

"Cap-and-trade is a simply dreadful policy option that is being pushed by Alcoa, BP, Caterpillar, Conoco Phillips, Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, Dupont, General Electric, PepsiCo and the other big business interests that belong to the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP)," said the FEEI's Tom Borelli. "Global warming pork-barrel spending and corporate welfare are what they're after," Borelli added.

"USCAP members hope that, through a cap-and-trade scheme, Congress will simply give them and other special interests what amounts to essentially 'free money' -- as much as $1.3 trillion dollars over the next 10 years under legislation recently introduced by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) -- as well as other competitive business advantages," explained Milloy. "Not only is cap-and-trade likely to misdirect taxpayer monies and rob hard-working Americans of income, it's not at all clear that it will produce any environmental benefits whatsoever," he added.

"The Laffer paper confirms that cap-and-trade is a lose-lose proposition," said Borelli. Given the well-established relationship between economic prosperity and a clean environment, it's hard to see how harming the economy won't also harm the environment," Borelli concluded.

Source




Pesky Humberto

Hurricane Humberto hit the Texas Gulf Coast with little warning. In the wake of the storm even the experts are wondering just how it happened.

"While this was forecast to become Tropical Storm Humberto, I don't think any forecaster or any model for that matter brought it to a tropical hurricane with winds at 85 miles an hour," said CBS 42 Meteorologist Susan Vessell. "That was a big surprise."

Storm warnings first went out at 10 a.m. Wednesday, leaving less than 18 hours until a hurricane hit land.

Joe Arellano with the National Weather Service has been predicting hurricanes for 30 years -- but he didn't predict this. "Our forecasts are getting better," Arellano said. "We have better technology, satellite, radar, computer models that we use. But there's always the thing about Mother Nature. It doesn't always agree with the models. It does its own thing."

He says the warm, shallow water near the coast fueled Humberto, and he credits a cold front for helping the Category 1 hurricane blow quickly across the coast.

"That was one good thing about the storm," Arellano said. "It didn't spend enough time over open waters. It could have been a Category 2 or 3 if it had more time over the Gulf of Mexico."

The state of Texas had plans in place, even before Humberto was upgraded to a hurricane. The governor deployed 200 military soldiers, a half dozen helicopters, search and rescue crews, and swift water rescue teams to the area.

Source

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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18 September, 2007

News: Arctic Ice At Record Lows. Not News: Antarctic Ice At Historic High

Post below lifted from Say Anything

The low level of arctic ice, of course, has all the global warming zealots really concerned.  But what’s funny is that it has also just been announced that Antartica has ice extent at a level not seen since 1979.

What’s really funny, however, is that the Associated Press and the rest of the media are only picking up on one of these stories.

Gee, I wonder why that is?




CLIMATE CHANGE'S GREAT DIVIDE: ECONOMISTS VS POLITICIANS

The biggest political battle in Washington over climate change may not pit Democrats against Republicans. Instead, it could be economists versus politicians. Many academics, even conservatives, favor a tax on carbon emissions. Many lawmakers, including some liberals, fear a political backlash against new fees. They lean toward a cap-and-trade system, which would set a limit on carbon-dioxide emissions and require companies to obtain permits to release carbon dioxide into the air.

Still, both sides say important principles are at stake. A cap-and-trade system, say its critics, could reward big polluters if it bases its allotment of permits on how much industries emit now. It also could spark a lobbying frenzy as industries fight to turn the system to their advantage. Defenders of cap and trade say it will provide a better incentive to cut emissions because companies can sell excess permits. They call a tax heavy-handed.

"The concern about taxes is understandable because people think you're going to raise their electricity bill by putting a tax on coal," says Kenneth Green, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who advocates a carbon tax. "But with cap and trade you're still going to raise the cost of their electricity."

The tax-increase crowd includes prominent Democratic economists -- such as former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz -- and Republican economists such as N. Gregory Mankiw, a former Bush adviser and defender of President Bush's 2001 and 2003 income-tax cuts.

Business and environmental groups as well as organized labor generally back cap and trade. They are joined by Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, as well as Republican John McCain. At least five carbon-emission bills have been introduced on Capitol Hill, and the issue is expected to be taken up this fall. Both cap and trade and a carbon tax attempt to use market incentives to get businesses and consumers to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, which is a gas produced by burning fossil fuels and, according to scientists, is a contributor to global warming.

Imposing a tax or fee on each ton of carbon emitted would encourage technologies that produce less carbon, advocates say. It would raise the price to consumers of activities that burn carbon, such as driving. "If there's an iron law in economics, it's that if you raise the price, you lower demand. And so if you raise the price of burning fuels, you'll lower demand for them," says Mr. Green. An American Enterprise Institute paper estimates that a tax of $15 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted would increase the cost of a gallon of gasoline by about 14 cents and the price of coal-fired electricity by $1.63 per kilowatt-hour.

Critics observe that higher prices would have a particularly harsh impact on the poor; proponents say carbon-tax revenues could be used to lower income or payroll taxes to offset that.

A cap-and-trade system would place a limit on the total amount of carbon dioxide that could be emitted nationwide, with that cap gradually tightening over a certain period of time. Companies would be allocated and -- under most scenarios -- eventually be sold permits allowing them to spew a certain amount of carbon dioxide into the air each year. Most proposals envision permits being tradable. Companies could buy or sell them on a market if they were emitting more or less than they expected. One advantage of this system: It sets a clear limit for emissions. Also, it gives companies the lure of potentially making money if they can sharply curb pollution. "By imposing a value on pollution reduction, it creates a race for the pot of gold that rewards the people who figure out how to bring down global-warming emissions," says Fred Krupp, president of the advocacy group Environmental Defense.

Many of the cap-and-trade programs being touted on Capitol Hill would mimic a tax by making companies pay to buy emissions permits, a cost they would pass along to consumers in much the same way as a tax. The Congressional Budget Office estimates a 15% cut in emissions would cost the poorest households an additional $677 a year in current dollars.

Some cap-and-trade proposals include what is known as a safety valve, which is often likened to a tax because it allows companies to pay a fixed fee to emit more carbon dioxide than permits allow. Under a proposal by Republican Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D., N.M.), companies could pay $12 per metric ton of carbon "in the event that it is too difficult to reduce emissions." That fee would increase five percentage points above the inflation rate every year. The government could use the money from selling permits to lower taxes or, under many proposals, fund research into low-emission technologies.

Most political momentum appears to be behind cap and trade. Later this month, Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an Independent who caucuses with Democrats, and Republican Sen. John Warner (R., Va.) are expected to unveil a cap-and-trade bill. Labor groups, including the United Steelworkers, support the bill from Sen. Bingaman.

Still, some carbon-tax proposals are kicking around. Rep. John Dingell (D., Mich.) is expected to introduce one this fall, though he has said the bill is an attempt to show how unpopular such a tax would be. "I sincerely doubt that the American people are willing to pay what this is really going to cost them," he said in a cable-television interview.

Source




A TIMELY REMINDER: JULIAN SIMON ON THE STATE OF HUMANITY

The 1980 Global 2000 Report to the President began by stating that "if present trends continue, the world in 2000 will be more crowded, more polluted, less stable ecologically, and more vulnerable to disruption than the world we live in now."

In the Introduction to The Resourceful Earth, which I edited in 1984 with the late Herman Kahn, we rewrote that passage, stating, "If present trends continue, the world in 2000 will be less crowded (though more populated), less polluted, more stable ecologically, and less vulnerable to resource-supply disruption than the world we live in now."

The years have been kind to our forecasts--or more important, the years have been good for humanity. The benign trends we then observed have continued. Our species is better off in just about every measurable material way. And there is stronger reason than ever to believe that progressive trends will continue past the year 2000, past the year 2100, and indefinitely.

When we widen our scope beyond such physical matters as natural resources and the environment--to mortality, the standard of living, slavery and freedom, housing, and the like--we find that the trends pertaining to economic welfare are heartening also. Please notice that this benign assessment does not imply that there will not be increases in some troubles--AIDS at present, for example, and other diseases in the future, as well as social and political upheavals. New problems always will arise.

But the assessment refers to broad aggregate measures of effects upon people rather than the bad phenomena themselves--life expectancy rather than AIDS, skin cancers (or even better, lifetime healthy days) rather than a hole in the ozone layer (if that is indeed a problem), and agriculture rather than global warming. We have seen extraordinary progress for the human enterprise, especially in the past two centuries. Yet many people believe that conditions of life are generally worse than in the past, rather than better.

We must therefore begin by discussing that perception, because it affects a reader's reaction to the facts. Pessimism about the environment and resources is so universal that it needs no documentation. The comparison one chooses is always crucial. A premise of The State of Humanity is that it usually makes sense to compare our present state of affairs with how it was before. That is the comparison that is usually relevant for policy purposes because it measures our progress.

FULL ESSAY here




Let us bin the moral fable of climate change

Eco-ethics, with its rules about waste, water and energy-use, is a new brand of conservatism that is sucking the fun out of life

Climate change as parable

There is a phrase that one hears again and again these days: `Climate change is happening, and humans are responsible.' This phrase is used to open articles, or at the start of speeches, and it is always used with great gravity and meaning. It appears to be a factual statement about an environmental problem, or a scientific observation about cause and effect. But that is not really what it is. It is really a morality tale: it is a statement about the meaning of human activity, and a call for us to change our ways. The parable of climate change involves the three following steps:

* unrestrained human action/energy-use has dangerous unintended consequences on the natural world

* we need to take responsibility for this, and be `aware of our impact'

* we need to change our behaviour, to check our energy-use and consumption of resources.

The dominant impulse is not so much solving climate change, as reorganising life around it. Restraint becomes the primary ethic in life. Cutting back carbon emissions becomes the way you show that you are a good person, or a good institution. This parable has such force that people move seamlessly from an account of Arctic sea ice melt to a call for personal energy cutbacks. One recent list of what `the science demands' in response to climate change included such measures as: the banning of outdoor heaters and garden lighting; abandoning all road-building; freezing and then reducing airport capacity; even the closing of all out-of-town shopping centres. By asking a few critical questions, we can start to separate the morality tale from the physical reality of carbon dioxide emissions.

First: Why is the production of carbon dioxide described as a matter of `guilt'? Why is climate change something that each of us has to take to heart and reflect on deeply, and admit our personal responsibility for? Why do people say that they buy carbon offsets to clear their conscience? In the past, pollution was not seen as a question of guilt. It was seen as unfortunate, a mistake, something that we had not intended to happen. No factory intended to blacken the sky; it was a byproduct of the only available energy source at the time. Pollution was a problem to be solved, with alternative energy sources, filters, and the like.

Over the past 100 years, a number of different scientists formulated the theory of the greenhouse effect - indeed, some predictions generated by one Swedish scientist in the 1890s are pretty similar to those we have today. But nobody, not once, saw the warming effect of carbon dioxide emissions as a question of `guilt'.

Second, why should climate change demand a reduction in energy consumption? In the early twentieth century, Londoners' coal fires were causing smog over the city, but nobody told them to consider the impact of their actions, to change their behaviour, to perhaps limit themselves to one coal fire a day. Instead they said: switch to smoke-free fuels. Because the fact is that people use the energy source that is available. In a rational, civilised society, policymakers would respond to climate change by developing new sources of energy. The aim would be to allow people to continue with their lives, with minimum disturbance.

Such policy options might include rolling out nuclear power, or developing nuclear fusion, or using engineering to counteract the warming of the atmosphere. There are scientists working on all of these questions, but they are doing so with very little funding and with very little support. Indeed, there is actually great resistance to the idea that climate change can be solved. Those who propose manmade solutions to climate change are often called `naive'; they are accused of `evading the question', or `avoiding taking responsibility'. Indeed, they are probably suffering from a form of `climate change denial'.

The account of climate change is not an account of the production of a particular gas, which is having particular effects. Instead, it is a moral story about the dangers of hubris, and the need for personal limitation. At base, the climate change parable is a new brand of conservatism. It is no coincidence that we use the term `climate change'. In the 1980s, the phenomenon was known as the `greenhouse effect'; in the 1990s and early twenty-first century it was `global warming'. These previous terms were more concrete and descriptive, describing the mechanism of the build-up of carbon dioxide, or its result in warming the atmosphere.

`Climate change' refers less to a particular process or effect, than to the phenomenon of change itself. The problem, for us, is change; that our actions have caused something to change (which could mean hotter, drier, wetter, even colder). The concern is with instability itself, a fact reflected by the slogan `Stop Climate Chaos', the rallying cry of green activists.

There is a great deal of angst even about the cycles of the seasons. This year in the UK, apparently, April was too warm and May was too cold, and June and July were too wet. It is reported with great gravity that certain trees are flowering a full eight days earlier than previously. Or, with more angst, that some animals and plants are `confused' about the seasons. Behind all this lies the classical conservative cry, `things are not what they were!' Climate change ethics represent a new conservatism, only this is a conservatism that has no social good that it wants to defend, no traditional institutions, traditional culture, or traditional communities.

With eco-ethics, both the anxiety about change and the objective of social stability are discussed in terms of the flux of wind and rain. Eco-ethics critiques social change by talking about melting ice and confused beavers; and it aims to stabilise society by gearing all aspects of life towards the goal of a stable climate.

The distinguishing features of eco-ethics

There are three ways in which eco-ethics is distinctive, compared to previous forms of ethics. First, eco-ethics is preoccupied with making less impact. `Erase your carbon footprint', we are told. The overriding aim of eco-ethics is to use fewer resources, and produce less waste. It becomes a profound and meaningful thing to examine the contents of your dustbin, or to scrutinise your electricity bill. These measures of consumption and impact become the way to judge your life, and the less the impact, the better the life.

So if you wanted to evaluate the success of this salon [in central London, where this speech was first given], you would ask: how many plastic cups, empty bottles of wine, and plastic wrappers did it produce? And the fewer wrappers and cups, the better would be your evaluation of the event. You might set targets for future salons, perhaps by reducing attendees, or having us swigging straight from the bottle. Then you might realise that some people came by car or took long journeys, and in future you might only allow those who could come on foot or by bike.

Such calculations are now performed on everything from the Superbowl to flushing the toilet. We are judged by the trail we leave behind. The question is not what our activity adds to the world in human terms, only the resources it takes away. Ethics and morality has taken very many guises in the past, some better than others. But at base they were always about the questions of how to live more, and how to live better.

Think about ethicists' obsessions: that we shouldn't be jealous, bitter or rancorous; that we shouldn't lie in bed all morning or eat too much for lunch. The recommendations are different, but the aim is the same: to yield a vital, productive individual, somebody who develops their powers and focuses them in the wisest and most effective way, for their own good and the good of others. Benjamin Franklin asked himself every morning, `What good will I do today?'; and every night he asked, `What good have I done today?' All the vices - sloth, jealousy, lying, conceit - are essentially negative energies that eat you up and demoralise you, and corrode relationships. All the virtues - resolution, industry, honesty, self-control - are about focusing on your task, and working effectively with others.

So ethics should be about doing more, and doing better. Eco-ethics, however, is about making less mess.

Second, eco-ethics abstracts from the meaning of our actions. Think of the carbon calculator, our current measure of virtue. This is a form of measurement that completely abstracts from the meaning of the things we do. So the value of a plane flight is measured in terms of the carbon dioxide molecules spewed out by the plane's engines. You could have been taking a plane to see a sick relative, or to see a prostitute, but your action is measured the same way: in parts per million.

Environmentalists often say: the planet doesn't care either way. The planet doesn't care why you did something, because the damage is the same. Here they are taking the vantage point of nonhuman life to evaluate the things that we humans do. This is an alienated, indifferent eye, which knows nothing of love or obligations or goals, or any of the other reasons that we act.

Augustine recommended faith, hope and charity as three pillars of Christian morality. The French revolution gave us liberty, equality and fraternity. These are very different, but they are in their own ways resonant, meaningful principles by which to live life. Now, with eco-ethics, what do schoolchildren get? Water, waste, energy. When children now are encouraged to engage in self-reflection, or self-restraint, it is in relation to the water they use, the waste they produce, and the energy they consume.

When I was at school, I remember plotting ecological pyramids of exchanges of energy and resources between layers of organisms, from plants at the bottom to carnivores at the top. This is how schoolchildren are now asked to evaluate their own lives - as organisms, exchanging substances with their surrounding environment. This is an ecological worldview, not a human worldview.

Third, eco-ethics avoids the question of choice. Eco-ethics is not really a matter of moral choice, but of behaviour change. Eco-ethics handbooks are really just lists of things to do. They are full of instructions for how to behave. Five things that you can do to save the planet; 10 things to save the planet; 77 things; 99 things. You just need to read the instruction, `turn your washing machine down to 30 degrees', and do it. Then the next instruction, `Wash your windows with vinegar'. Some books even have one instruction for every day of the year, so you don't even have to decide which thing to do when. Individual reflection is not involved, which is why it is possible to have an `ethical makeover'. Somebody can come into your house, change your brand of washing powder, tell you what to do differently, and you now are an ethical person.

But really there is no morality without choice. Morality is based on the moral agent, whose life is a choice for him, who can consider and decide on the right thing to do. Socrates asked `How should we live?', and ethics was born with that question. Morality was born with the person who is not a cog in a social machine, but a free, conscious being, who aims to develop himself and others. The process of self-development cannot be about reproducing a series of instructions. It must be about reflecting on the options, deciding what to do, doing it, evaluating your actions, deciding again.

Before the question `How should we live?' was raised, life was essentially pre-ethical. The aim was to reproduce expected patterns of behaviour, performing your allotted role as a father or husband, as a person of particular station in a particular place. Certain duties were expected of you. You could rebel and fail to fulfil them, but there was no question, `What is best for me to do?' Confucius is an example of a pre-ethical philosophy. He gives great lists of instructions: you have to wear this kind of fur with this colour; you have to greet somebody in such a way; you have to lie in bed facing this direction; your bedclothes must be a certain length. This is what we have now with eco-ethics: a list of duties, a series of instructions about how to behave. You can choose to follow or to ignore these instructions, but not to debate them.

At base, eco-ethics is a way out of moral dilemmas. Genuine morality is difficult, and involves evaluating and deciding for yourself. It is hard to choose between two courses of action, both of which have something for and against them. It is hard to add something to the world. The question `What good did I do today?' is scary, because on many days we do not do any real good; we do not add anything discernible to the world. It is uncomfortable to have that kind of reckoning. It is much easier to fall back on the application of rules, and to say that the good life comes in lists of 10/35/100 things to do. It is much easier to ask not `what did I add?' but `how did I limit my impact?'

Yet, of course, we do not live in ancient China, or pre-Socratic Greece. Nor do we live as organisms in an ecological pyramid. We live as free individuals. We do in fact have to build and direct our own lives. We face tens of meaningful choices a day, about how we spend our time, whom we associate with, and what work we do. We face the dilemmas of competing demands and competing ambitions, between work and relationships, friends and family. Ethical thinking should help us to understand everyday dilemmas, to pose them as part of human condition, so that they become a question of the direction of human energy towards human goals.

In a time of eco-ethics, we still make these personal choices, but they are unguided and unscrutinised. The things that are of consequence go on - work, friends, lovers, holidays - but they are seen as of no consequence. Meanwhile, the things that really are of no meaningful consequence - our rubbish, our energy bills - are the focus of great introspection and dialogue.

The social/political role of eco-ethics

The first important role for eco-ethics is providing a mission for institutions. The second is to provide a meaning and structure for consumerism. Over the past two years, there has been a rapid take-up of eco-ethics by institutions. A huge range of public institutions, including scientific, political, educational, religious, business, even artistic institutions, are now promoting awareness about climate change, and calling on the public to limit their energy consumption.

These institutions have done this, not in response to an environmental emergency, but to an internal crisis of mission. These are public institutions largely built up in the nineteenth-century world, with its bourgeois self-confidence and engaged public culture. They have found it hard to deal with today's more atomised and uncertain times, and have for the past decade or so been casting around, redefining themselves as agents of social inclusion, or as businesses, or whatever they could get their hands on. Now, wherever you see institutions with doubt about what it means to be a good politician, or a good school, or a good museum, you will see that they have made tackling climate change one of their priorities.

Indeed, when you see a wind turbine or solar panel on top of a public building, it is a sure sign that people inside the building do not know what they are doing. Look at St James' Church, just down the road in Piccadilly: if its spire was a sign of spiritual aspiration, the roof covered in solar panels is a sign of spiritual angst. Institutions start to justify themselves in terms of their own energy efficiency. I was recently asked to a museums conference about `museums and sustainability', which I thought must be about how long objects will last and what to do when they corrode, and so on. But it was actually about the energy efficiency of museum buildings. Curators were spending two days talking about cavity wall insulation.

Eco-ethics allows institutions to short-circuit the question of their own purpose, and their relationship to the public, and to make a mission of restraint. It is astounding just how many institutions have issued the public with instructions on how one should boil a kettle.

Eco-ethics has moved with a particular force into the political sphere. The whole question of democratic legitimacy has been a nagging preoccupation since the 1990s. Political parties have all struggled to reposition themselves after the erosion of their mass, class-based social foundations. Through climate change, politicians have discovered that they can escape the problem of democratic legitimacy. Their role is now not to represent the public, but to safeguard a stable climate, and to tell the public how to `do their bit' towards this end. It is no doubt more attractive, and simpler, to be managers of climate stability than it is to be the representatives of an unruly, unpredictable electorate.

Eco-ethics is a continuation of trends in politics over the past decade or more. Politics since the 1990s has essentially been about maintaining social stability. Think about the buzzwords of policy, from `governance' to `social inclusion'; or the wars that elites have fought - the war on drugs, the war on crime, the war on terror - which were about maintaining order in the face of unpredictable, destablising threats. Climate change ethics is really the latest war for social order. The period when Tony Blair started talking about climate change was in 2005 and 2006 - the period when the war on terror really started to stall. What you see is Blair using exactly the same language as the war on terror, only in reference to climate change: `This is the greatest threat facing humanity; it is our duty to act now before the threat materialises; to allow us to live in peace and security..' etc.

The fight against climate change answers the same essential needs as the war on terror, but for politicians it is potentially less controversial and problematic. Terrorists answer back and fight back. Any war that involves a human enemy is going to be complicated; your rhetoric will be tested. Eco-ethics is directed at the skies, at the mysterious forces of the atmosphere. Here there are no political interests, no enemies, no parties - it is a pristine terrain, on which a politician such as Al Gore can conduct his own performance without fear of consequence.

It is a terrain on which politicians can call for their primary wishes - social stability and social restraint - only they can do so outside the problematic terms of political vocabulary. They can draw their authority from the heavens; the climate becomes the phantom demos to which they appeal. They speak on behalf of the planet, just as Egyptian pharaohs would draw their authority from the sun. Eco-ethics provides a conservative mechanism through which society can be managed, a cause in the name of which energies can be dampened, tensions calmed. It is a public mission that avoids the question of the purpose of the public.

Eco-ethics also provides a meaning and structure for consumerism. As individuals, our role as consumers structures our relationships with others, and in many cases provides our main source of meaning and identity. We not only do not produce, but we do not identify with the process of production. Products often seem to appear as if from nowhere, and our consumption of them appears as a purely private matter; we find it hard to see the cooperation or creativity that went into making them. This personal reliance on consumption produces a great deal of angst. Our use of energy and materials appears often as selfish, erratic and insatiable, and we feel a need for some kind of structure, or mechanism for control.

This is the need that eco-ethics answers. Only in appearance is it anti-consumption: in actual fact, it is a restrained, hyper-aware form of consumption.

Nobody is saying that we should go to live in the woods, or give up our cars, washing machines, TVs or cookers. You can drive, we are told, but you should drive the right kind of car - not a 4x4, not too big or too fast, but preferably one that is half-electric. And you should drive it in a `restrained manner', a technique known as eco-driving, which is now part of the driving test. Eco-driving means no abrupt acceleration or deceleration, keeping the tires pumped up, and removing surplus baggage from the boot.

You don't have to throw away your washing machine, but you should wash at 30 degrees. When you cook, turn off the oven five minutes before the dish is done, and don't open the oven door during cooking. Buy an energy-efficient TV, and unplug it at the socket when you have finished watching.

The main thing is that you are aware of your impact, and you make these small gestures of restraint. You must be conscious of the downsides of your actions, and you must take steps to check yourself. It doesn't matter whether this has much practical impact or not: Princess Anne explained recently that she was green because she sometimes took the train to London, instead of being driven in a car.

The response to consumerist angst is therefore a state of extreme self-consciousness and self-restraint, where our passions are not so much channelled to more productive ends as they are kept in check. It is an ethics of restraint that seeks to absorb tensions and dissatisfactions, by simply dampening them down. Climate change ethics also imbues consumer choices with a universal purpose. Every time you half-fill the kettle, you are saving the world. Every time you change a lightbulb, history is on your shoulders.

It is only through the mediating link of the climate that we now think that we can work towards the common good, that our acts add up to more than the sum of their parts. Liberals once said that if every man pursued his private interest, he served the public good. Now, apparently, we are connected not through the development of the market, but through personal acts of restraint in the name of climate stability.

Life beyond eco-ethics

My main concern with eco-ethics is that it allows us to stop thinking about the meaning and point to life. It is like a layer of scaffolding built across society, which allows every individual, and every institution, to avoid the questions that they find hard to answer. Eco-ethics allows us to avoid the question of human purpose, by directing all our actions towards the clouds.

None of this is an inevitable response to environmental emergency. We put instructions for living into the mouth of the climate, just as men once did with the mouths of the gods. The climate change parable, just like the Bible, was written by humans - and just like the Bible, it expresses our own peculiar breed of fears and preoccupations.

Questioning eco-ethics will encourage us, as both individuals and institutions, to stand on our own two feet, to choose for ourselves, and to justify our work in its own terms. Because all the apparent problems of our times could actually be our advantage. All the moral angst, the uncertainty about how to live, the lack of fixed political frameworks or associations - all of this, which we experience as a problem, could actually be turned to our benefit.

At present we flee from uncertainty, and seek eco-handbooks for living. But there is another option: to grasp this situation as an opportunity. Indeed, in the course of history, it is often the periods of flux and uncertainty that have been the most productive. These are periods where things are rethought from scratch, presumptions questioned, and new schools of thought are born and new ways of living invented. And that, I guess, is our choice: between a future of managing climactic stability, or the messy, tumultuous business of building our lives on their own foundations.

Source

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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17 September, 2007

Global warming 'is good and is not our fault'

Global warming is an entirely natural phenomenon and its effects can even be beneficial, according to two leading researchers. Recent climate change is not caused by man-made pollution, but is instead part of a 1,500-year cycle of warming and cooling that has happened for the last million years, say the authors of a controversial study.

Dennis Avery, an environmental economist, and Professor Fred Singer, a physicist, have looked at the work of more than 500 scientists and concluded that it is very doubtful that man-made global warming exists. They also say that temperature increase is actually a good thing as in the past sudden cool periods have killed twice as many people as warm spells.

Mr Avery, a senior research fellow at the Hudson Institute, an independent US think-tank, said: "Not all of these researchers who doubt man-made climate change would describe themselves as global warming sceptics but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see. "Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people. "It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine, plagues and disease."

In contrast, they say there is evidence that wildlife is flourishing in the current warming cycle with corals, trees, birds, mammals and butterflies adapting well. In addition, sea-levels are not rising dramatically and storms and droughts have actually been less severe and frequent.

The authors claim that the change is not man-made because the most recent period of global warming took place between 1850 and 1940 when there were far less CO2 emissions than today. They claim to show strong historical evidence of an entirely natural cycle based on data of floods on the Nile going back 5,000 years. Evidence is citing showing records of Roman wine production in Britain in the first century AD.

Prof Singer, a specialist in atmospheric physics at the University of Virginia, said: "We have a greenhouse theory with no evidence to support it, except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events. "The models only reflect the warming, not its cause." They also say that natural temperature change can be caused by fluctuations in the sun.

The authors spent months analysing scientific reports and papers for their book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years. Their aim was to undermine claims made by Al Gore, the former US vice-president, in his film An Inconvenient Truth, that shows the extent of man-made global warming.

Source




Hypocritical attack on refinery

Our national priorities are horribly out of whack when it comes to BP, energy and the environment. BP proposes to increase its refinery capacity 15 percent by tapping the practically unlimited oil available in the tar sands of Canada. This will have immense benefits for the country in terms of greater energy independence and increased availability of oil.

To achieve this goal, BP proposed to slightly increase discharges of sludge, which would not only be well within federal standards but would be miniscule in comparison to discharges of other industries. On the face of it, this would be a most healthy and desirable trade-off between energy and the environment.

However, our environmental friends oppose even the slightest increase in discharges, preferring to maintain the absolutist, tunnel-vision goal of zero increase in discharges, regardless of the obvious and major benefits that would accrue.

Now, BP is to develop technology at a cost of $40 million which will supposedly eliminate the need to increase the discharge of sludge. But what if it is only 95 percent effective? What if 5 percent still must be discharged into the lake? Will environmentalists once again rise up in outrage to oppose this development as well, while continuing to deny the people access to more plentiful oil?

Meanwhile, the City of Chicago pours millions of gallons of sewage, i.e., fecal matter, in the lake and no one even says "boo." Isn't this an increase in pollution? Does whether or not it is an "increase" depend on who is doing the increasing? Yes, we want clean water to drink. But we also want plentiful oil to run our cars and heat our homes. Both these goals are part of the human environment, and can be achieved by constantly working toward establishing reasonable, life-supporting trade-offs between energy and the environment.

Source




Carbon capers

There's an admonition about putting the brain in gear before engaging the mouth-or something like that. Ample evidence that some people's minds seem to be in neutral while they engage their environmental guilt came out in two recent press articles reporting news of the "carbon-neutral" scam.

Alan Zarembo writes in the Los Angeles Times about the remorseful who buy carbon "offsets" to ease their polluter guilt. That's all there is to it because no other benefits accrue except to some who happily take the supposed wrongdoer's money-and ours.

The entrepreneurial spirit is a wondrous thing and, of course, no harm occurs if all parties to a deal are satisfied. But two things define carbon offsets as a fraud: implied, but nonexistent tangible benefits, and public funds usurped to support some at the expense of others.

Now get this scenario: Liberal Galena Gotrocks of Beverly Hills, California has someone estimate that her rich-and-famous lifestyle emits 20 tons of carbon dioxide each year. She hires a middleman from Freakout Energy, Inc. and gives him $12 per ton (($240) to help pay for two windmills located in an Eskimo village near Point Barrow, Alaska. "Like, it makes me feel better about flying my jet to New York," says Galena.

Freakout, Inc. and other contributors can cover only a fraction of the high cost of the windmill project. So, how do they recover costs and profit? You probably guessed it. Our taxes are blowing in the wind. Here's how it works.

Alaska Congressman Ernest Earmarks suggests that Freakout apply for an alternative energy grant from the Department of Commerce. The federal grant covers $750,000 of the $1 million project. The Alaska Department of Frozen Assets offers a state grant for $250,000. The Eskimos who operate the windmill project use the energy to run refrigerators in their igloos and Freakout sells the rest to a local utility for long-term profits. Galena flies her jet guilt free.

You are probably thinking what a Pennsylvania dairy farmer, Connie Van Gilder, said about a subsidized methane producing project on her farm to contain greenhouse gases escaping from 400 Holstein cows: "We still don't understand it all. Its hard for us to fathom, to see what it is doing." Me, too, Connie. Van Gilders got $631,000 from state and federal grants to help pay for the $750,000 project they would have financed without public funding. Their contract with Native Energy, a carbon dioxide offset company, for 29,000 tons of guilt was about $2.40 per ton; giving them a tidy "bonus."

I didn't make this one up. These scams are springing up all over the U. S. of A.

Here in North Carolina, N.C. GreenPower a Raleigh nonprofit, struggles to compete with other states in these feel-good ventures. It receives $4 a month-enough to burn a 100-watt light bulb for one hour with "renewable" powered electricity-from thousands of contributing dupes through their fossil-fuel utility bills. Unfortunately, our state legislators recently laid their guilt on the rest of us by law. North Carolinians now must pay up to $34 a year extra, tacked on to each electric utility bill, to subsidize state-sponsored renewable energy and efficiency projects.

Even some environmentalists have more sense than to support energy production through N.C. GreenPower. Elizabeth Ouzts, state director of Environment North Carolina observed that, for those who "want to go above and beyond," home improvements and buying energy efficient appliances would have a greater impact, according to an article by John Murawski, staff writer for the Raleigh News & Observer.

When energy costs increase through market-driven supply and demand economic laws, people will conserve without government intervention. Unfortunately, and increasingly, our feckless political representatives hinder our individual best interests and freedom of choice by legislating schemes that favor the interests of a few at the expense of the rest of us.

Mr. Zarembo, in his L. A. Times article, sums up the carbon-neutral scam: These "ridiculously good" deals don't lead to any "additional emissions reductions," he writes. "Beneath the feel-good simplicity of buying your way to carbon neutrality is a growing concern that the idea is more hype than solution."

Thank you, Mr. Zarembo and Mr. Murawski. It's encouraging to know that some journalists will expose an environmental hoax perpetrated on us by irresponsible politicians in collusion with environmental groups that pursue socialist agenda. Sadly, it's not enough to protect us from these public predators

Source




ECONOMY FIRST: BRITISH GOVERNMENT CONCERNED ABOUT UK CAR INDUSTRY

The government's minister for competitiveness is calling on the European Commission to be realistic about new exhaust emissions limits. Stephen Timms MP, speaking at BMW's Oxford factory, said: 'The automotive industry is very well aware of the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.' Referring to the EC proposed limits, likely to take the form of an average figure across a company's whole range of cars, he said: 'We are still at a very early stage in that debate. 'The UK will want to see targets that are demanding, that deliver reduced emissions, but we shall also be asking for achievable targets that take account of the diversity of the sector.' In February the European Commission published its proposal that new vehicles should emit no more than 130g/km of CO2, compared with 162g/km in 2005.

Source

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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16 September, 2007

I like it: Jane Fonda to Blame for Global Warming

In their regular "Freakanomics" column which will appear in this Sunday's edition of The New York Times Magazine, Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, pose this question: "If you were asked to name the biggest global warming villains of the past 30 years, here's one name that probably wouldn't spring to mind: Jane Fonda. But should it?"

The authors observe that Fonda's antinuclear thriller "The China Syndrome," which opened just 12 days before the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, helped stoke "a widespread panic." Fonda became a high-profile anti-nuke activist in an already-strong movement. The nuclear industry halted plans for expansion. "And so," they continue, "instead of becoming a nation with clean and cheap nuclear energy, as once seemed inevitable, the United States kept building power plants that burned coal and other fossil fuels. Today such plants account for 40 percent of the country's energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions.

"Anyone hunting for a global-warming villain can't help blaming those power plants -- and can't help wondering too about the unintended consequences of Jane Fonda."

Of course, there were many other factors in the nuclear industry decline, including cost over-runs, disposal of nuclear waste, the threat of terrorism and numerous other accidents beyond TMI. Then there was, ahem, Chernobyl. But the columnists cite the "big news" that with global warming fears mounting, "nuclear power may be making a comeback in the United States," with plans for two dozen reactors on the drawing boards.

Will they get built? The authors conclude that "it may all depend on what kind of thrillers Hollywood has in the pipeline."

Source




Even the experts cannot predict hurricanes a few months in advance

But Greenies say they can predict 50 years hence

Hurricane expert William Gray downgraded his 2007 Atlantic storms forecast slightly Tuesday, but he still predicted above-average activity for the remaining three months of the season, with six more hurricanes, three of them major.

A combination of a weak La Nina and low pressure readings in the Atlantic usually indicate an active season, said forecaster Phil Klotzbach, a member of Gray's team at Colorado State University.

The first two months of the Atlantic season, June and July, had average activity with two named storms but no hurricanes. August was about average, with one hurricane, Dean, which grew into a powerful Category 5 storm before hitting Central America.

Gray has been forecasting hurricanes for more than two decades, and his predictions are watched closely by emergency responders and others in coastal areas.

Before the start of the June-through-November Atlantic hurricane season, his team forecast 17 named storms and nine hurricanes. The team revised that forecast slightly downward in early August to 15 named storms and eight hurricanes.

Source




More propaganda from "Lancet"

Fight climate change, cut down on red meat? If you make dozens of unproven and wrong assumptions, what they say is correct

PEOPLE should limit their meat-eating to just one hamburger per person per day to help stave off global warming, according to Australian scientists. That would be their contribution to a proposed 10 per cent cut in global meat consumption by 2050, a goal that would brake greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture yet also improve health for rich and poor nations alike, it says. The paper has been released online as part of a seminar by the Lancet British medical weekly into the impacts of climate change on global health.

Its authors point out that 22 per cent of the planet's total emissions of greenhouse gases come from agriculture, a tally similar to that of industry and more than that of transport. Livestock production, including transport of livestock and feed, account for nearly 80 per cent of agricultural emissions, mainly in the form of methane, a potent heat-trapping gas.

At present, the global average meat consumption is 100g per person per day, which varies from 200-250g in rich countries to 20-25g in poor countries. The global average should be cut to 90g per day by 2050, with rich nations working to progressively scale down their meat consumption to that level while poor nations would do more to boost their consumption, the authors propose. Not more than 50g per day should come from red meat provided by cattle, sheep, goats and other ruminants.

The authors were led by Anthony McMichael, professor at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University, Canberra.

"Assuming a 40 per cent increase in global population by 2050 and no advance in livestock-related greenhouse gas reduction practices, global meat consumption would have to fall to an average of 90 grammes per day just to stabilise emissions in this sector,'' the paper said.

"A substantial contract in meat consumption in high-income countries should benefit health, mainly by reducing the risk of ... heart disease... obesity, colorectal cancer and, perhaps some other cancers. An increase in the consumption of animal products in low-intake populations, towards the proposed global mean figure, should also benefit health.''

According to a study published in July by Japanese scientists, a kg of beef generates the equivalent of 36.4kg of carbon dioxide, more than the equivalent of driving for three hours while leaving all the lights on back home.

Source




Google warming

Post below lifted from Don Surber. See the original for links

Google billionaires Larry Page and Sergey Brin are so concerned about global warming. From Google’s corporate blog:

Soon we plan to begin installation of 1.6 megawatts of solar photovoltaic panels at our Mountain View campus. This project will be the largest solar installation on any corporate campus in the U.S., and we think it’s one of the largest on any corporate site in the world.

They’ve invested $40 million in a company that plans to market an electric sports car.

We believe this project demonstrates that a large investment in renewable energy can be profitable. If the business community continues to increase investments and focus on energy efficient and renewable power generation technologies, we have a good feeling that our future will be bright.

OK, that’s what they say. Read about it here. Here is what they do. According to the International Herald Tribune: They fly around in a corporate jet. Last time I looked, a Boeing 767-200 is not powered by solar energy.

That NASA has an airfield near San Francisco is an outrage. Shouldn’t it be landing people on the Moon? I forgot. NASA got out of that business 35 years ago. Now it’s researching global warming and coming up with computer models that “prove” we’re going to hell in a handbasket next week. And naturally, it gives a nice parking space to the corporate billionaires.

Steven Zornetzer, associate director for institutions and research at NASA Ames Research Center, said: “It was an opportunity for us to defray some of the fixed costs we have to maintain the airfield as well as to have flights of opportunity for our science missions. It seemed like a win-win situation.”

Here’s an idea: Why doesn’t NASA go back to working on aeronautics and space, and get the hell out of the private airport business? Here’s another idea: Why doesn’t NASA quit sucking up to corporate billionaires? Here’s one more idea: Why don’t these two rich fatcats spend their own damned money building their own damned airfield and quit mooching off the taxpayers?

And here’s one final idea: Why don’t these two guys who preen about global warming put their money where their big mouths are and ditch the corporate jets? They can bicycle to their meetings.

Change the name from Google to Halliburton and the city of San Francisco would explode in rage.




GREEN FOLLIES ARE DESTROYING THE ENVIRONMENT: OECD

Governments need to scrap subsidies for biofuels, as the current rush to support alternative energy sources will lead to surging food prices and the potential destruction of natural habitats, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development will warn on Tuesday. The OECD will say in a report to be discussed by ministers on Tuesday that politicians are rigging the market in favour of an untried technology that will have only limited impact on climate change.

"The current push to expand the use of biofuels is creating unsustainable tensions that will disrupt markets without generating significant environmental benefits," say the authors of the study, a copy of which has been obtained by the Financial Times.

The survey says biofuels would cut energy-related emissions by 3 per cent at most. This benefit would come at a huge cost, which would swiftly make them unpopular among taxpayers. The study estimates the US alone spends $7bn a year helping make ethanol, with each tonne of carbon dioxide avoided costing more than $500. In the EU, it can be almost 10 times that.

It says biofuels could lead to some damage to the environment. "As long as environmental values are not adequately priced in the market, there will be powerful incentives to replace natural eco-systems such as forests, wetlands and pasture with dedicated bio-energy crops," it says.

FULL STORY here

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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15 September, 2007

Britain: THE SNOBBERY BEHIND ZAC AND DAVE'S 'TAX THE PLEBS' PLAN

Once, just once, wouldn't it be a joy to pick up a newspaper or turn on the television to find a complete absence of anything to do with politics? The problem is: politicians abhor a vacuum. If there's newsprint or airtime available, they think it is their divine duty to fill it, even at the expense of boring us all to distraction. Not a day goes by without some new crackpot scheme being hatched. Politicians wake up each morning determined to find fresh ways of picking our pockets and intruding still further into our lives. None of it is ever thought through properly.

Take yesterday, for instance. On one page, ministers announce they want to cut prison overcrowding. On the next, they call for motorists using mobile phones on the move to be jailed for two years. Go figure.

The "climate change" hysteria has proved a godsend for prodnoses and punishment freaks. I doubt there is a single country on earth where the entire political class has so completely taken leave of its senses over alleged global warming. Here in Britain, it has been seized upon as an exciting new weapon with which to inflict more taxes, fines and regulations on us. You expect this kind of nonsense from Labour and especially from Gordon Brown, who has never met a tax he doesn't like. Socialists have only ever had a passing acquaintance with the concept of individual liberty and low taxation. But when it comes to banging the climate-change gong, [Conservative leader] Call Me Dave and his gang are obsessed to the point of mental illness.

CMD's latest wheeze for winning power is a plan to put 2,000 pounds on the price of a family car and ban plasma TVs. Brilliant. That should go down well in the marginals, along with his other cunning scheme to make Britain the only place in the world to call a halt to airport expansion. Egged on by his Old Etonian mate Zac Goldsmith, whose dad made part of the family fortune tearing up large chunks of Bolivia, Dave also wants to restrict essential road building. So if your village is crying out for a new by-pass, forget it. Think of all the polar bears whose lives you're saving.

Where does Cameron get the idea that millions of swing voters are desperate to pay even more for their cars than they do already? Or that people will give up their plasma TVs for the sake of some unspecified rainforest? Why pick on plasmas? Are we supposed to go back to cumbersome cathode ray sets? It's not so long ago we were told they were destroying the Earth's crust in landfill sites. Are we supposed to stop watching television altogether?

What about all those people who make a living manufacturing, selling and servicing televisions? What are they to do - go and work in a windmill? Surely the Tories are the party of small government, individual choice and low taxes, or they are nothing. Yet here they are making common cause with "zero growth" eco-loonies who knit their own toilet paper.

More here




Climate Round Up (to September 13, 2007) below from Marc Morano, Communications Director, U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee

(Note: Laurie David was one of former Vice President Al Gore's producers for "An Inconvenient Truth.")

Press Release: SPPI Exposes Fundamental Scientific Error in Laurie David's "Global Warming" Book for Children

A fundamental scientific error lurks in a book calculated to terrify schoolchildren about "global warming", Robert Ferguson, SPPI president, announced today: "The Down-To-Earth Guide to Global Warming", by Laurie David and Cambria Gordon, is intentionally designed to propagandize unsuspecting school children who do not have enough knowledge to know what is being done to them. A new SPPI paper briefly examines a cardinal error, found on page 18 of the David book, where she mousetraps children: "The more the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the higher the temperature climbed. The less carbon dioxide, the more the temperature fell. You can see this relationship for yourself by looking at the graph. What makes this graph so amazing is that by connecting rising CO2 to rising temperature scientists have discovered the link between greenhouse-gas pollution (sic) and global warming."

The SPPI paper states, in part: What really makes the David-Gordon graph "amazing" is that it's egregiously counterfactual. Worse, in order to contrive a visual representation for their claim that CO2 controls temperature change, the authors present unsuspecting children with an altered temperature and CO2 graph that reverses the relationship found in the scientific literature. The manipulation is critical because David's central premise posits that CO2 drives temperature, yet the peer-reviewed literature is unanimous that CO2 changes have historically followed temperature changes.

Case in point, on page 103 of their book, David cites the work of Siegenthaler et al. (2005). However, Siegenthaler et al. clearly state the opposite, that CO2 lags "with respect to the Antarctic temperature over glacial terminations V to VII are 800, 1600, and 2800 years, respectively, which are consistent with earlier observations during the last four glacial cycles." "Parents and teachers should be concerned enough to demand that the publisher, Scholastic Books, recall, pulp and correct the error before mores copies reach innocent children," said Ferguson.

Source. Full Report on David's Book here




New doubts on global warming in revised NASA temperature data

Excerpt: Imagine basing a country's energy and economic policy on an incomplete, unproven theory - a theory based entirely on computer models in which one minor variable is considered the sole driver for the entire global climate system. This is precisely what former Vice President Al Gore, Senate Environment Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer and others want their nation to do.

They expect Americans to accept on blind faith the thesis that human carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are causing catastrophic climate change. Boxer, Gore and their allies readily resort to emotional bullying against anyone who dares question this dogma. Their pronouncements - Boxer's juvenile "the American people have the will to slow, stop and reverse global warming" is a prime example - are merely displays of arrogance that expose their lack of basic science understanding, and their complete disrespect for public intelligence.

The policies they advocate are wholly unjustified scientifically and have extraordinarily damaging economic implications for the developed world. The scientific method, which even grade-schoolers know, provides that science advances through hypotheses based on a set of assumptions. Other scientists challenge and test those assumptions in what philosopher Karl Popper called the practice of "falsibility." Trying to disprove hypotheses is what real science is all about. Yet the hypothesis that human addition of CO2 would lead to significantly enhanced greenhouse warming was quickly accepted without this normal scientific challenge....

Four of the 10 warmest years on record are now acknowledged to have occurred when human production of CO2 was minimal, in the 1930s. The past decade now includes only three of the 10 warmest years. Will Gore withdraw "An Inconvenient Truth" pending necessary corrections?

A second "proof" of human CO2-caused warming, according to the U.N.'s IPCC, was a claimed increase in global temperatures of about one degree Fahrenheit over 130 years. This was asserted to be outside natural variability. But the uncertainty in the measurements was more than 0.3øF, meaning possible values could vary by as much as 66 percent of the total change.

The source of this temperature calculation, University of East Anglia's Professor Phil Jones, has refused to disclose which temperature records were used and how he "adjusted" them. Clearly, the IPCC's conclusions must be viewed with considerable suspicion until they provide full disclosure on the Jones data.

The meaning of these revelations is clear: Computer models are the basis of all forecasts used by alarmists. These models used temperature data that is now known to be suspect or completely wrong. Will Gore, Boxer and the IPCC call for a rational re-evaluation of the global warming scare? Don't bet on it - accurate science was never a hallmark of this crusade.

Source




Marie Claire Magazine calls for 'global cooling' so women can wear $41,000 of winter apparel

Excerpt: In one picture the female model sits in a $7,595 Prada "feather-and mohair-trimmed coat." She's holding a "Preserve the world now" sign as an RV sits parked and power lines stretch out behind her. In another picture, the same model oversees seven men painting a banner that appears to read "Resistance" and "Rise Up." Particularly dramatic was the protest photograph. A black-and-white image with the model holding a megaphone, "Stop Global Warming" painted on the street, fog meant to look like smoke or tear gas clouding the scene. The protesters held signs proclaiming: "Save Earth," "[No] Plastic," and "Be the Change" as the same menacing power lines stretch behind them.

Source




Column: Global warming is not about the Science

FOR YEARS, supporters of global warming alarmism have repeated an odd refrain: Even if we're wrong, we're right. Sen. Timothy E. Wirth, D-Colo., said it in 1988, as the National Journal reported. "What we've got to do in energy conservation is (to) try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."

Source

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

*****************************************



14 September, 2007

UPDATE TO "IPCC PEER REVIEW PROCESS AN ILLUSION"

(Article mentioned here yesterday. Following is an email to Benny Peiser from John McLean [mcleanj@connexus.net.au])

As the author of the article in question I'd like to point out that subsequent to the writing of that paper I have found that 2 more reviewers of the pivotal 9th chapter had a vested interest in the IPCC's findings. One of was from an IPCC technical support group and the other was responsible for the "Frequently Asked Questions" in the report. (Yes, we can puzzle over who might have been frequently asking those questions!) That brings the numbers to 62 reviewers in total for chapter 9, 8 of whom of were government representatives, 23 with a vested interest and just 21 who appear to be impartial. The total explicit support for the IPCC's claim came from just 4 reviewers, one incidentally being a government representative. Overwhelming endorsement? Not exactly...

But what of the peer review process? In this case it is more like the review of a literature survey and is limited to either suggesting additional or alternative references, or commenting on whether the conclusions presented are in accordance with the cited references. As I said in the paper, the IPCC has for years ben highly influential in the directions of research into climate science an inevitable this research results in papers, so it is no surprise that most papers follow the accepted line. The consequent shortage of contrary papers places significant limits on the ability of the reviewers to point to alternative papers and it's a point emphasized by a response that I quote "There are many more papers in support of the statement than against it."




Pesky Southern hemisphere data ignored yet again

Post below lifted from Newsbusters. See the original for links

NewsBusters reported Sunday that the media's fascination with record low ice in the Arctic ignored history while relying on satellite data that's only been around since 1979.

At the same time, the press have totally boycotted news from the Southern Hemisphere where ice and snow levels are currently at their highest since data have been collected. Pretty convenient wouldn't you agree? Meteorologist Joe D'Aleo wrote at IceCap Tuesday:

While the news focus has been on the lowest ice extent since satellite monitoring began in 1979 for the Arctic, the Southern Hemisphere (Antarctica) has quietly set a new record for most ice extent since 1979.

Yet, that's not all the media are hiding from you about this region:

While the Antarctic Peninsula area has warmed in recent years and ice near it diminished during the Southern Hemisphere summer, the interior of Antarctica has been colder and ice elsewhere has been more extensive and longer lasting, which explains the increase in total extent. This dichotomy was shown in this World Climate Report blog posted recently with a similar tale told in this paper by Ohio State Researcher David Bromwich, who agreed "It's hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now". Indeed, according the NASA GISS data, the South Pole winter (June/July/August) has cooled about 1 degree F since 1957 and the coldest year was 2004.

As such, this is yet another instance of media deciding what is and isn't newsworthy. How disgraceful.




The "consensus" myth again

A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares. More than 300 of the scientists found evidence that 1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age and/or that 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun's irradiance. "This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that a scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850," said Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Dennis Avery.

Other researchers found evidence that 3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly; 4) that our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings; 5) that human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice as many people as heat; and 6) that corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate.

Despite being published in such journals such as Science, Nature and Geophysical Review Letters, these scientists have gotten little media attention. "Not all of these researchers would describe themselves as global warming skeptics," said Avery, "but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see."

The names were compiled by Avery and climate physicist S. Fred Singer, the co-authors of the new book "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years", mainly from the peer-reviewed studies cited in their book. The researchers' specialties include tree rings, sea levels, stalagmites, lichens, pollen, plankton, insects, public health, Chinese history and astrophysics.

"We have had a Greenhouse Theory with no evidence to support it-except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events," said co-author Singer. "On the other hand, we have compelling evidence of a real-world climate cycle averaging 1470 years (plus or minus 500) running through the last million years of history. The climate cycle has above all been moderate, and the trees, bears, birds, and humans have quietly adapted."

"Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people," says Avery. "It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine and plagues of disease." "There may have been a consensus of guesses among climate model-builders," says Singer. "However, the models only reflect the warming, not its cause." He noted that about 70 percent of the earth's post-1850 warming came before 1940, and thus was probably not caused by human-emitted greenhouse gases. The net post-1940 warming totals only a tiny 0.2 degrees C.

The historic evidence of the natural cycle includes the 5000-year record of Nile floods, 1st-century Roman wine production in Britain, and thousands of museum paintings that portrayed sunnier skies during the Medieval Warming and more cloudiness during the Little Ice Age. The physical evidence comes from oxygen isotopes, beryllium ions, tiny sea and pollen fossils, and ancient tree rings. The evidence recovered from ice cores, sea and lake sediments, cave stalagmites and glaciers has been analyzed by electron microscopes, satellites, and computers. Temperatures during the Medieval Warming Period on California's Whitewing Mountain must have been 3.2 degrees warmer than today, says Constance Millar of the U.S. Forest Service, based on her study of seven species of relict trees that grew above today's tree line.

Singer emphasized, "Humans have known since the invention of the telescope that the earth's climate variations were linked to the sunspot cycle, but we had not understood how. Recent experiments have demonstrated that more or fewer cosmic rays hitting the earth create more or fewer of the low, cooling clouds that deflect solar heat back into space-amplifying small variations in the intensity of the sun.

Avery and Singer noted that there are hundreds of additional peer-reviewed studies that have found cycle evidence, and that they will publish additional researchers' names and studies. They also noted that their book was funded by Wallace O. Sellers, a Hudson board member, without any corporate contributions.

Source




NATURAL CLIMATE CHANGE IGNORED: Playing with models preferred to reality

By Prof. Akasofu, the former director of the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska

Climate change reared its head again last week at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Sydney, where participating heads of state struggled to reach a consensus on how to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). The political squabbling, global warming true believers will say, stands in stark contrast to the scientific consensus that the greenhouse effect, a product of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, is causing dramatic climate change.

There's just one problem with this view: There's a lot less to that "scientific consensus" than meets the eye. When millennial climate change patterns are mentioned, many people point to the "2,500 scientists from 130 countries" who have agreed that global warming is caused by the greenhouse effect. Yet not even the International Panel of Climate Change to which these people refer presents definitive scientific proof that the present warming is mostly caused by the greenhouse effect. It is simply an assumption that has morphed into a fact.

Since the physics behind CO2's greenhouse effect has long been well known, the IPCC made the assumption that post-1900 warming was caused by it. They assembled a large number of scientists, mostly meteorologists and physicists (but, interestingly, not many climatologists), and tried to prove their hypothesis using supercomputer models. They have continued to work in this way despite important new evidence from ice-core data showing that temperature rises tend to precede CO2 increases by about 1,000 years.

With all of the media attention that this assumption now enjoys, natural temperature changes have been mostly forgotten. Yet in reality they persist; they're simply not being studied. This is the single greatest failing of the IPCC.

Meanwhile, a tree-ring study that was conducted to estimate historical temperatures was published in 1999. It showed that over the years, global temperatures had decreased gradually between the years 1000 and 1900, at which time they suddenly began to increase. Its graph was nicknamed "the hockey stick" because of its shape and it has been prominently displayed in the summary of the IPCC's 2001 report. After glancing at this figure, many policy makers, environmental advocacy groups and scientists around the world were convinced that the greenhouse effect began after 1900.

But the hockey-stick graph was later discredited. Two Canadian statisticians found that the authors of the graph made a statistical error in dealing with the tree-ring data. After correcting the error, the two researchers could not reproduce the sharp upturn of the curve -- even though they were using the very same data.

In understanding the present warming trend, it is absolutely essential to learn more about climate change in the distant past -- or at least during the last 1,000 years. But many scientists, particularly younger ones, prefer to work only with data collected after 1975, when satellite data became available. With only 30 years worth of data, their results are little more than climatological snapshots of what is really a slow, long-term process. The latest accurate satellite images of sea ice distribution in the Arctic Ocean today can be obtained by clicking on a computer screen; but it is impossible to obtain such quality data for periods before 1975.

It is for this reason that only a minority of scientists are studying natural climate change, including multi-decadal oscillations and centurial climate change, which is the true realm of climatology. These areas have not been priorities for the IPCC. They should be. During winter, England's Thames River would once freeze solid. This occurred on and off between 1400 and 1800 during a period called the "Little Ice Age" when temperatures dropped by as much as 1.5 degrees Celsius, which came after the medieval warm period around 1000.

The anomaly of the Little Ice Age corrected itself, of course, through something called rebounding. The rebounding rate is estimated at 0.5 degrees Celsius per century. Since our present warming rate is roughly 0.6 degrees Celsius per century, the greenhouse effect caused by CO2 may represent only a 0.1 degree Celsius increase in temperature over the course of a century.

There is no doubt that global warming is in progress. But much of it can be attributed to the rebounding effect from the Little Ice Age. Recovering from a cool period is, of course, warming -- but it is nothing to panic about. Ice core data from the Greenland ice sheet show many periodic warming and cooling periods during the last 10,000 years. The present warming phase is far from the warmest.

Scientists have no clear knowledge of the cause of the Little Ice Age and of the subsequent rebound; or of the Big Ice Age; or of a warm period when the Arctic Ocean had no ice; or of the medieval warming period. In fact, IPCC scientists do not understand the causes of the rapid increase of temperature from 1910 to 1945; or the decrease from 1945 to 1975, when CO2 levels were rising.

Without understanding these recent changes, it is premature for the IPCC to jump to the conclusion that CO2 is the main cause of the last 30 years of global warming. Many people claim scientists proved the greenhouse effect with models run on supercomputers. But a supercomputer is not a crystal ball. Scientists merely enter observed (or expected) CO2 amounts into a computer and, using an algorithm, a projection emerges.

No computer can accurately represent such a gigantic system as the Earth with all its unknown processes, such as the causes of the medieval warm period and the Little Ice Age. Therefore, no supercomputer, no matter how powerful, is able to prove definitively a simplistic hypothesis that says the greenhouse effect is responsible for warming.

Most people, including scientists who specialize in climatology, are not aware of this weakness. In fact, the whole science of climate change based on supercomputers and algorithmic models is still in its infancy. A supercomputer cannot provide an approximate estimate of the temperature in 2050 or 2100 because scientists are not able to instruct it with all the unknown processes that may be at play. Any conclusions drawn from such results -- which may be seen as nothing more than an academic exercise -- cannot and should not serve as hard facts on which to base major international policies.

The booming Far East is home to a series of economies which have become the factories of the developed world. This arrangement provides economic benefits but also makes it impractical for Asian nations to reduce their CO2 output. In fact, many political leaders in China have declared it hypocritical for the Western world to make such a demand.

A truly environmentally friendly policy would invest in innovation -- in order to increase energy efficiency -- and not try to stifle whole economies by attempting to do away with CO2 based on faulty science and wild assumptions. It would be better for Asian countries such as China, India and South Korea to invest in researching nuclear fusion as a future energy source.

In the meantime, the integrity of climatology as a respectable science has to be rehabilitated by bringing it back from its present confused state and separating it entirely from politics. Only then can real progress be made in predicting future climate patterns. At the same time, environmental advocacy groups should return to their original goal of protecting the environment from those things over which humanity truly does have control.

Source




FORGET KYOTO: HOUSEHOLD ENERGY USE RISING IN INDUSTRIAL COUNTRIES

Despite the growing political commitment to tackling global warming, individual energy use and carbon emissions in the leading industrial countries have actually increased in recent years, the new head of a major energy advisory group said Monday. Nobuo Tanaka, the first non-European chosen to lead the International Energy Agency, said during an interview that Europe, Canada, Australia and particularly the United States had to do much more to increase energy efficiency if they wanted to have any credibility when calling on India and China to act. "The leading industrial countries are not on a path to sustainable energy future," said Tanaka, a Japanese economist and diplomat who became the IEA's executive director Sept. 1. "There was a big effort to increase efficiency during the 1980s because of the oil price shocks," he said. "But these efforts subsided over the 1990s."

The statistics were released in Berlin as energy and environmental ministers from 20 countries met to prepare for the United Nations climate talks in Bali, Indonesia, in December. They should shift some of the spotlight away from India and China, which along with the United States are among the world's biggest producers of CO2 emissions. The IEA serves as an advisory body for the big energy consuming nations - industrial countries belonging to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris.

According to Tanaka, from 1990 to 2004, energy consumption by households increased to 26 percent from 23 percent of total energy consumption, while services increased by one percentage point to 14 percent. Passenger transport jumped to a 26 percent share, from 23 percent, and freight transport by one percentage point to 11 percent.

FULL STORY here

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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13 September, 2007

"The Never-Never Declaration - An APEC Reality Check"

A press release below from Australian group, "The Carbon Sense Coalition" (info@carbon-sense.com) -- in the wake of the strong climate focus during the recent APEC meeting of heads of government in Sydney

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called for a Royal Commission of Enquiry [an independent but government-funded judicial enquiry with wide powers] into the scientific evidence for man-made climate cvhange. The Chairman of "Carbon Sense", Mr Viv Forbes, said that the Sydney APEC Declaration was a clear signal that most APEC nations are not going to swallow the pseudo-science and economic poison being peddled by Dark Greens from yesterday's states like Europe and New Zealand.

The APEC nations told Australia, as politely as possible "You may commit economic suicide if you wish, but we are not going to put our feet on the sticky paper." This "Never-Never" declaration is a warning call that Australia should re-examine the basis for its enormous waste of money on "Global Warming".

China and India recognise clearly that "Global Warming" is just another European plan to hobble economic competition from Asia. The Global Warming Scam would deny cheap clean power to millions of energetic Asians.

France closed its last coal mine in 2004 and is now heavily dependent on nuclear power. German coal mines are no longer economic, and even in Britain, fewer than 5,000 coal miners work the mines that once fuelled an empire. Thanks to their Dark Greens, Europe is now dependent on imported coal for steel production and gets its power from imported uranium and gas piped in from Russia and beyond.

France has always envied and feared the cheap and abundant coal of the Anglo American world. The world dominance of Britain and then America in steel, manufacturing, metals, steam, railways, electricity and naval power was fuelled by coal, supported later by oil. China and India are about to tread the same road. The Dark Greens of Europe, secretly supported by their decaying industrialists, fear the growing power, energy and competitiveness of these emerging giants.

This is not about climate - it is about using public hysteria to benefit certain countries, business interests and ideologies. There was no declaration of carbon emission targets from last week's Russian delegation to Queensland. Russian scientists are not sucked in by distortions, exaggerations, half truths and poor science being peddled by the likes of Al Gore and Bob Brown.

The Russians, the Arabs, the Indians and the Chinese cannot believe the apparent stupidity of the English speaking world. They have no intention of adding to their energy costs or forcing their businesses to waste money on dreamtime research such as carbon sequestration - they are cynically planning exploit the declining competitiveness of western industries and to milk stupid westerners of any "carbon offset credits" they can find or invent.

There is already a groundswell of opposition from well informed scientists, engineers and individuals all over the world to the lack of evidence supporting the Greenhouse Religion. A recent scientific conference in Melbourne organised by the Lavoisier Society drew scientists and delegates from all over Australia and South Africa. Even the PM's own backbench contains well informed climate sceptics, and the ranks of scientific sceptics are growing all over the world.

A Royal Commission taking evidence from more than a few government or United Nations hacks would soon establish the facts that:

* 1934 was the hottest year of the twentieth century.

* There was no global warming from 1940 to 1980, a time when CO2 emissions grew strongly.

* There has been no global warming since 1998.

* Current temperatures are not extreme or unusual.

* Past records and scientific evidence show that changing surface temperature is more likely to be a cause (not a result) of increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

* CO2 and water vapour have always been essential components of the atmosphere. Neither is toxic, both tend to retain some of the sun's warmth, and both are absolutely essential and beneficial to all life on earth.

* The most likely causes of variations in surface temperature are connected with solar cycles, variations in the heat output of the sun and eras of volcanic activity.

* More CO2, water vapour and warmth in the atmosphere would be a boon to most of humanity.

* There is empirical evidence to suggest that earth's temperature is more likely to fall than rise - ice ages are more normal than today's balmy climates.

* There is significant scientific opposition to the proposition that man's emissions of CO2 are causing global warming or any other harm.

Earth's climate is always changing and we must do what every generation of our ancestors did - "adapt to whatever nature has in store for us". Our ability to adapt is severely reduced by crippling our economy and misdirecting billions of dollars of research funds into nonsense like carbon sequestration or rich man's toys like windmills and solar panels.

While billions of dollars are being spent on na‹ve attempts to build ever more complex computer models of atmospheric heat circulation, our oceans are largely unexplored. The vast deposits of methane under our oceans are both a threat and a promise for future generations, but too little research is being done in this field. And the hundreds of thousands of undersea volcanoes, which may hold the key to past and future climate change, remain largely unmapped and un-monitored.

Australia, an island almost alone in the Great Southern Ocean which circles the globe, should take the lead in ocean research instead of letting scheming politicians from abroad mis-direct our research priorities to spurious questions.




'More Art Than Science'

Pointed comment below lifted from Taranto. See the original for links

So a couple of weeks ago we were in New Orleans, on the precise anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall two years ago. And the weather wasn't bad. What happened? Isn't it hurricane season? And weren't hurricanes supposed to get even worse courtesy of "global warming"? It didn't quite work out that way, as Bloomberg reports:

Hurricane researchers, who forecast seven more storms this season, have flubbed the past two annual estimates because of unusual El Nino and La Nina weather phenomena in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The predictions reflect variables that make this kind of weather forecasting "more art than science," said Eric Blake, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Two of the nine Atlantic hurricanes predicted already have occurred for the season that ends Nov 30. Last year, five storms emerged after nine were anticipated.

Remember that: Weather forecasting is "more art than science." Except of course when the forecasters want to dismantle our entire industrial economy. Then it's settled science that no one may even question.




BOGUS NASA STUDY

I've been thinking about my criticism of a U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) study of tornadoes and hail in the previous post. I realize now that I was far too lenient on those who conducted the study. The study should never have been funded. It should never have passed the peer review process and it should never have been published in any scientific journal.

The authors apparently are ignorant of the fact temperatures in most of the U.S. change drastically over a year's time. Seasonal changes are particularly drastic in "tornado alley" in the central U.S. A mere 5F (2.5C) increase in temperature would only mean that spring and summer might occur a few days earlier. Passage of a cold front or warm front can change the high temperature by 10F (5 C) or more in a single day. A strong cold front of the type that sometimes produces strong tornadoes may have a 30 F (15 C )or more difference in temperature in areas only 50 miles (70 km) apart. (NOTE: metric measures not intended to be exact equivalents).

If researchers want to study tornadoes and hail under different temperatures they don't need any elaborate computer program. They just need to compare the number of tornatoes and amount of hail that occur on days with different temperatures, including different upper air temperatures. For example, the day before an EF 5 tornado destroyed Greensburg, Kansas, on May 4, temperatures in Dodge City ( to the west) and Wichita ( to the east) were in the mid 60's to 71 F. ( 19 - 21.7 C) The high temperatures the day of the tornado briefly reached 84.9 (29.4) (Dodge City) and 80.1 (26.7) (Wichita) before dropping to 69 (21) (Dodge City) and 73.9 (23.3) (Wichita) at the time of the tornado about 10:00 PM. CDT.

Strong tornadoes that just missed my hometown of Hutchinson, Kansas, in the early 90's occurred on days when the temperature only reached into the low 70's (around 22 C). One of them briefly was as strong as the Greensburg tornado . The biggest tornadoes generally occur in the early spring months when the air coming in from the north is still 20 - 30 F (10 - 15 C) or more below the temperature to the south. Generally the most important characteristic of the air from the south is the dew point rather than the temperature. All the tornadoes mentioned above occurred with dew points in the upper 60's (around 18 C).

Source




'FEEL GOOD' VS 'DO GOOD' ON CLIMATE CHANGE

After looking at one too many projections of global-warming disasters - computer graphics of coasts swamped by rising seas, mounting death tolls from heat waves - I was ready for a reality check. Instead of imagining a warmer planet, I traveled to a place that has already felt the heat, accompanied by Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish political scientist and scourge of environmentalist orthodoxy.

It was not an arduous expedition. We went to an old wooden building near the Brooklyn Bridge that is home to the Bridge Cafe, which bills itself as "New York's Oldest Drinking Establishment." There's been drinking in the building since the late 18th century, when it was erected on Water Street along the shore of Lower Manhattan.

Since record-keeping began in the 19th century, the sea level in New York has been rising about a foot per century, which happens to be about the same increase estimated to occur over the next century by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The temperature has also risen as New York has been covered with asphalt and concrete, creating an "urban heat island" that's estimated to have raised nighttime temperatures by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. The warming that has already occurred locally is on the same scale as what's expected globally in the next century.

The impact of these changes on Lower Manhattan isn't quite as striking as the computer graphics. We couldn't see any evidence of the higher sea level near the Bridge Cafe, mainly because Water Street isn't next to the water anymore. Dr. Lomborg and I had to walk over two-and-a-half blocks of landfill to reach the current shoreline.

The effect of the rising temperatures is more complicated to gauge. Hotter summer weather can indeed be fatal, as Al Gore likes us to remind audiences by citing the 35,000 deaths attributed to the 2003 heat wave in Europe. But there are a couple of confounding factors explained in Dr. Lomborg's new book, "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming." The first is that winter can be deadlier than summer. About seven times more deaths in Europe are attributed annually to cold weather (which aggravates circulatory and respiratory illness) than to hot weather, Dr. Lomborg notes, pointing to studies showing that a warmer planet would mean fewer temperature-related deaths in Europe and worldwide.

The second factor is that the weather matters a lot less than how people respond to it. Just because there are hotter summers in New York doesn't mean that more people die - in fact, just the reverse has occurred. Researchers led by Robert Davis, a climatologist at the University of Virginia, concluded that the number of heat-related deaths in New York in the 1990s was only a third as high as in the 1960s. The main reason is simple, and evident as you as walk into the Bridge Cafe on a warm afternoon: air-conditioning.

The lesson from our expedition is not that global warming is a trivial problem. Although Dr. Lomborg believes its dangers have been hyped, he agrees that global warming is real and will do more harm than good. He advocates a carbon tax and a treaty forcing nations to budget hefty increases for research into low-carbon energy technologies.

But the best strategy, he says, is to make the rest of the world as rich as New York, so that people elsewhere can afford to do things like shore up their coastlines and buy air conditioners. He calls Kyoto-style treaties to cut greenhouse-gas emissions a mistake because they cost too much and do too little too late. Even if the United States were to join in the Kyoto treaty, he notes, the cuts in emissions would merely postpone the projected rise in sea level by four years: from 2100 to 2104.

FULL STORY here




IPCC PEER REVIEW PROCESS AN ILLUSION, CRITIC CLAIMS

Climate data analyst John McLean has written an analysis of the reviewer comments to the UN's most recent IPCC Assessment Report released in April. In "Peer Review? What Peer Review?" McLean writes, "The IPCC would have us believe that its reports are diligently reviewed by many hundreds of scientists and that these reviewers endorse the contents of the report. Analyses of reviewer comments show a very different and disturbing story."

In Chapter 9, the key science chapter, the IPCC concludes that "it is very highly likely that greenhouse gas forcing has been the dominant cause of the observed global warming over the last 50 years". The IPCC leads us to believe that this statement is very much supported by the majority of reviewers. The reality is that there is surprisingly little explicit support for this key notion.

Among the 23 independent reviewers just 4 explicitly endorsed the chapter with its hypothesis, and one other endorsed only a specific section. Moreover, only 62 of the IPCC's 308 reviewers commented on this chapter at all. As with other chapters, simple corrections, requests for clarifications or refinements to the text which did not challenge the IPCC's conclusions are generally treated favourably, but comments which dispute the IPCC's claims or their certainty are treated with far less indulgence.

In a related finding, McLean observes, "The dominance of research presupposing a human influence also means that the IPCC editing teams are likely to consist of people predisposed to view the situation in that light." Adds McLean, "The problems continue into the authorship of these reports. According to IPCC documents, scientists are nominated by governments or explicitly invited by scientists already associated with the IPCC. What a wonderful way to position scientists who support a government agenda on climate and then fill out the IPCC with like-minded individuals."

Concludes McLean, "The IPCC reports appear to be largely based on a consensus of scientific papers, but those papers are the product of research for which the funding is strongly influenced by previous IPCC reports. This makes the claim of a human influence self-perpetuating and for a corruption of the normal scientific process."

The full paper can be read here

Source

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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12 September, 2007

THINGS ONLY CLIMATE CHANGE CAN DO

An email from John A [climateaudit@gmail.com] of Climate Audit

As you've noted, the BBC have declined to bore the license-payers into submission with "Planet Relief" although I think that its a shame that we don't get to save the environment by switching it off and doing something else instead. I think they might not have covered the costs of the "artists" fees let alone paid the cameramen, but that's just me.

So Richard Black and his merry band of "consciousness raisers" (what cute names they have for propagandists these days) will have to fall on the old standbys of reporting every extreme weather event as if it were the last portent of doom and every climate model as the definitive future of the planet. And to round off the good work, peppering every science or nature article with ridiculous non-sequiturs and flourishes of anti-science designed to bamboozle.

So in what can only be described as "Things only climate change can do" we have this story of hope where black-throated and red-throated divers are recovering in numbers in Scotland thanks to some artificial floating rafts. But this being a nature story there has to be a climate change angle and so right at the end a Dr Mark Eaton ends with this chilling warning:

Dr Mark Eaton, an RSPB scientist, said: "We feared the numbers of red-throated divers might drop because the warming of the North Sea seems to be reducing stocks of the fish they feed on. "The black-throated diver could also be at risk in the future, despite the recent increases. If climate change causes loch temperatures to rise, the small fish the birds feed on could grow too large to eat."

So there we have it. Climate change reduces the number of fish in the North Sea, but might make fish thrive in the lochs so much that they become too large to swallow. It's a double-edge sword of doom is climate change. I'm only grateful that in the last few million years climate hasn't changed by anything like the horrendous changes we see today, leaving the poor birds unable to cope. Obviously Dr Eaton is an expert in these matters, which is why nobody will call him on it. Certainly not the BBC.




The dissection begins

Below is an early report of the now-beginning investigations into Hansen's analytical methods. Large areas of arbitrariness are already appearing -- including methods that bias the temperature record -- in which direction, do you think?

I have been spending some time (my wife would say “too much time”) examining how the Hansen Bias Method influences the temperature record. We have already observed that the Hansen method introduces an error in cases where the different versions are merely scribal variations. See http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2019 and discussion.

The cause of the error has also been pinned down: in the case where a scribal version has only two of three monthly temperature values in a quarter available, Hansen calculates the anomalies of the available two months. It is important to note that the anomalies are the difference between the month’s recorded value and the month’s average value for the period of scribal record. Hansen takes these anomalies, averages them, and then sets the estimate of the “missing” month’s anomaly equal to this average. The “missing” monthly temperature value is then estimated by adding the estimated anomaly to the scribal record’s mean for the month. This occurs even when there is a temperature value available for the missing month in another scribal record. From the two available monthly values and the third, estimated monthly value a quarterly average is calculated, followed by a calculation of the annual average from the quarterly averages. Finally, for the two scribal records that are being combined, Hansen averages the annual averages for the overlap period, and, if there is a difference between the two averages, determines that to be a bias of one version relative to another and adjusts the earlier version downwards (or upwards) by the amount of the bias.

While the method clearly will corrupt the data set, there doesn’t seem to be any reason why it would introduce a material bias in northern hemisphere or global trends. We’ve observed cases in which the method caused early values to be falsely increased (Gassim) and cases where the method caused early values to be falsely reduced (Praha), and one’s first instinct is that Hansen’s method would not affect any overall numbers. (Of course that was one’s initial impression of the impact of the “Y2K” error on the US network.)

However, that proves not to be the case, because of a “perfect storm” so characteristic of climate errors. Hansen’s network outside the US has 2 main components: GHCN records, which all too often end in 1990 for non-US stations (USHCN records continue up to date); and 1502 MCDW stations (mainly airports). The MCDW reports started in January 1987 and continue to the present day.

In Siberia, to take an important case under discussion, the overlap between the MCDW record and GHCN record is typically 4 years - from January 1987 to December 1990 or so. Here’s where the next twist in the perfect storm comes in. Instead of calculating annual averages over a calendar year, Hansen calculates them over a “meteorological year” of Dec-Nov. While there may be a good reason for this choice, it has an important interaction with his “Bias Method”.

Even if the two versions are temperature-for-temperature identical in the overlap period, the MCDW series is “missing” the December 1986 value and the 1987 DJF quarter must be “estimated”. Now suppose that Jan-Feb 1987 are “cold” (in anomaly terms) relative to December 1986 (also in anomaly terms). As it happens, this seems to be the case over large parts of Asia (other areas will be examined on another occasion). The variations in Asian anomalies are very large. Let’s say that over large regions of Asia, the Dec 1986 anomaly was 2.5 deg C higher than the Jan-Feb 1987 anomaly. And let’s say that all other values are scribally equal.

Under Hansen’s system of comparing annual anomalies, this difference of 2.5 deg C will enter into the average of 4 years ( in effect being divided by 48 months) and then rounded up to a “bias” of 0.1 deg C. Since the MCDW version is “cold” relative to the prior GHCN version, the GHCN version extending to earlier values will be lowered by 0.1 deg C.

It looks like there may be a domino effect if there is more than one series involved, with the third series extending to (say) the 1930s. Hansen combines the first two series (so that the deduction of 0.1 deg C is included in this interim step.) When the early scribal version is compared to the “merged” version, the early scribal version now appears to be running “warm” relative to the adjusted version by 0.1 deg C. So it “needs” to be lowered as well.

The net effect is to artificially increase the upward slope in the overall temperature trend for most of the stations we have studied. As noted earlier, this process can bias records in the other direction, but stations with the requisite conditions have been hard to come by - Gassim being one of the few.

Source




More global warming hype

Popular Science published a special issue in August. The lead article is a puff piece on climatologists Konrad Steffen who made a career on the ice pack of Greenland. "Koni", as he is known to climate colleagues and friends has spent 32 years in the high Arctic, the last 15 on Greenland.

Using dramatic pictures like the portrait of Steffen, beard and mustache encrusted with ice, face framed by a heavy fur cap, peering out sunglasses that reflect the weather station on the ice pack you don't have to be the Amazing Kreskin to figure out where they're going with this one.

"...Steffen personally customized and deployed much of the instrumentation that tells the scientific world, hour by hour and year by year, the conditions on the Greenland ice sheet and how they're changing. We call this phenomenon 'dynamic response,' " Steffen says. "What happens is that the melting accelerates as meltwater funnels down to the bedrock. At the bottom, the water acts as a lubricant, flowing under the outlet glaciers and allowing the ice to slip into the sea more quickly. We hadn't expected that ice sheets could react to warming so quickly."

"...In fact, new data that Steffen and his colleagues are just beginning to truly understand suggest that the seemingly dire warnings in the recent reports from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may turn out to be profoundly understated.The current acceleration could be a short-term adjustment to the warmer temperatures, Steffen says, or it might last much longer."

In other words, their 15 years of data may be a meaningful or it may not be. Well at least Koni looks good for the picture. Never fear, the author of the piece is ready to counter this honest but uncertain assessment. What source does he turn to salvage the whole exercise? Who else but NASA's infamous Dr. James "Whopper" Hansen. Steffen isn't willing to make sensational unsubstantiated claims but scientists like lead NASA climatologist James Hansen is more than ready and willing. He says he believes

"Zwally and Steffen's observations, coupled with new data from Antarctica, suggest that a major polar melt may be commencing. They point to a phenomenon called the albedo effect, in which melting ice exposes more land and water, causing the earth's surface to become less reflective, and to absorb more of the sun's energy"

After all the hype and spin the author concedes that the Greenland ice changes are poorly understood. The lead investigator is unwilling sweeping conclusions so they trot out James Hansen to sound the alarm. This is becoming a recurring pattern

Source




PREVIOUSLY UNRECORDED HURRICANES UPSETTING GLOBAL WARMING THEORIES?

Recent research may shed new light on whether the increase in hurricane activity on the Gulf Coast is part of a cycle that could end in a couple of decades, or a long-term climate trend that could last for centuries. Two studies published this summer contend that the number of hurricanes counted in the early 20th century is lower than the number that actually formed. The reason: Weather-recording technology has improved to the point that scientists can see tropical storms now that they never would have known about 100 years ago.

The findings are important because in recent years, several researchers have factored in historical data to show that hurricane seasons have become more active. They have theorized that the more active seasons are linked to global warming. But those theories could come into question if there were more hurricanes in the past than previously believed. "If what I've done is reasonable, then taking into account what was missed, there's nothing you can relate to global warming," said Chris Landsea, a National Hurricane Center researcher who published one of the papers.

In the long run -- the very long run -- that would be good news for Mobile and other coastal cities, which enter every summer worrying about the death, destruction and rising insurance premiums that hurricanes can bring. Insurance industry officials have said that they would be forced to raise rates and drop customers along the coast if global warming proves to create more risk for hurricane damage.

Landsea said he believes that global warming causes fewer hurricanes because it increases vertical wind shear, which tears apart the storms. The cyclones that do form see a slight increase in intensity, he said, but the difference is so small that humans couldn't measure it.

The two studies, one by Landsea and one by Stony Brook University professors Edmund Chang and Yuanjian Guo, differ on how many storms were missed in the early part of the century. Landsea believes that there were an average of 2.2 cyclones missed each year from 1900 to 1965, and that those missed cyclones totally eliminate any notion of a recent upward trend in storms.

FULL STORY here




BUSH TAUNTS EU OVER MISSED KYOTO TARGETS

Apparently tired of being berated by the European Union, US President George W Bush said on Sept. 5 that the claim he didn't care about climate change was "preposterous" and berated Europeans for trumpeting their binding Kyoto emission-reduction targets and not meeting them. Speaking at a joint press conference in Sydney with Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Bush also made a strong pitch for nuclear power and its capacity to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are heating up the planet. "Now, I know that some say, "Well, since he's against Kyoto, he didn't care about the climate change,'" Bush said. "That's urban legend, and it's preposterous"

Bush, in Sydney to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, said the binding reduction targets enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol and championed by European countries "just didn't make sense for the United States." The US and Australia are the only industrialised countries to reject the 1997 UN-sponsored Kyoto initiative, arguing it would adversely affect their economies and that Kyoto is flawed because it doesn't rope in big developing country polluters like China, India, Indonesia and Brazil.

Bush said that at June's Group of Eight summit of leading industrialised nations in Germany, he "took the message that said to our partners that if you really want to really solve the global climate change issue, let's get everybody to the table." "Let's make sure that countries such as China and India are at the table as we discuss the way forward," he added. "Otherwise, I suspect if they feel like nations are going to cram down a solution down their throat and not give them a voice on how to achieve a common objective, they'll walk."

FULL STORY here

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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11 September, 2007

A man with one blind spot (apparently)

The writer of the excerpt below is Clive Hamilton, executive director of the Leftist Australia Institute. He starts by acknowledging how baseless political scares usually are so the naive reader might think him plausible when he says that global warming is the exception. It's a clever approach from a diehard warmist but when he gets to the point of hinting at the need to "suspend" democracy, I hope most people can see the Stalinist behind the mask.

His lack of intellectual seriousness can also be seen in his reliance on the pronouncements of chief climate hysteric James Hansen -- who in typical Stalinist style relies of fudged statistics to make his case. If his statistics are not fudged, why will he not release the raw data on which they are based? It's a gross breach of normal scientific procedure not to give open access to your data so Hansen's refusal speaks for itself. It shows he has much to fear from independent examination of his work. Even with the roadblocks put up by Hansen, McKitrick recently found glaring errors in Hansen's statistics so the unreliability of what Hansen says is more than mere suspicion. Hamiliton should know all that but his aim is obviously propagation of panic, not the propagation of truth

As we see next below, Hansen has just now under great pressure at last disgorged some of his "secrets" but where that will lead us remains to be seen. The release has however already raised fresh questions. See below

POLITICAL actors typically engage in exaggeration to advance their agenda, and in the case of climate change the situation is no different. The Labor Party exaggerated the likely damage due to the introduction of the GST, despite the fact that Paul Keating wanted to introduce just such a tax. The Coalition is exaggerating the economic effects of Labor's industrial relations policy. Social-welfare campaigners often overstate the extent of poverty, hoping that appreciation of the magnitude of the problem will spur the public or politicians into doing something about it. Environmental campaigns are no different. Environmentalists have often overstated the effects of environmental decline.

The risks of nuclear power, though considerable, have been exaggerated. The dangers of urban air pollution have been inflated. The threats posed by DDT, lead pollution and pesticides, while significant, have usually been presented as much scarier than they actually are. And the likely effects of genetically modified crops have been blown out of proportion. The purpose of political exaggeration is to stimulate stronger emotional responses, usually fear, and make us more likely to act in the way desired. When your opponents are busily exaggerating the other way, the pressure is almost irresistible.

Yet there is one area where the opposite is the case, where the protagonists on one side have for years systematically understated the dangers. Climate scientists have been afraid to talk about the true extent of the dangers of global warming. Those who have looked closely at what the scientists are concluding believe that the truth is so frightening that, if told, it will stop people from acting, rather than stimulate them to do more. There is a cavernous gap between the urgency of the warnings from science and the political response to it. The concern among the public is way ahead of that of our politicians but it remains true that the public simply has no grasp of the magnitude of the disaster that looms ahead of us.

Nowhere in the rich world, except perhaps in the US, is this radical disconnect greater than in Australia. In June the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics carried a paper by James Hansen and others clarifying the danger of human-induced climate change. Hansen is widely recognised as the world's most eminent climate scientist. The authors concluded that an additional warming of 1C above the year-2000 level will have effects that "may be highly disruptive", using expected sea-level rise as the best indicator of danger. A 1C increase above the 2000 level means an average temperature increase of about 1.7C above the pre-industrial age average. The authors' analysis suggests that this "tipping point" is almost locked in.

They acknowledge that avoiding this danger point is "still technically feasible" but in practice keeping global temperatures from rising by less than 2C is now beyond us. As industrial activity in China and India increases, the effects of global warming will be intensified. In short, we are already past the point that locks in 2C of warming, and will without question go well beyond it. Even a 3C rise is looking very hard to avoid. Very few people, even among environmentalists, have truly faced up to what the science is telling us.

This is because the implications of 3C, let alone 4C or 5C, are so horrible that we look to any possible scenario to head it off, including the canvassing of "emergency" responses such as the suspension of democratic processes.

More here




Hansen disgorges something

Comment below by Steve McIntyre

Hansen has just released what is said to be the source code for their temperature analysis. The release was announced in a shall-we-say ungracious email to his email distribution list and a link is now present at the NASA webpage.

Hansen says resentfully that they would have liked a “week or two” to make a “simplified version” of the program and that it is this version that “people interested in science” will want, as opposed to the version that actually generated their results.

Reto Ruedy has organized into a single document, as well as practical on a short time scale, the programs that produce our global temperature analysis from publicly available data streams of temperature measurements. These are a combination of subroutines written over the past few decades by Sergej Lebedeff, Jay Glascoe, and Reto. Because the programs include a variety of
languages and computer unique functions, Reto would have preferred to have a week or two to combine these into a simpler more transparent structure, but because of a recent flood of demands for the programs, they are being made available as is. People interested in science may want to wait a week or two for a simplified version.

In recent posts, I’ve observed that long rural stations in South America and Africa do not show the pronounced ROW trend (Where’s Waldo?) that is distinct from the U.S. temperature history as well as the total lack of long records from Antarctica covering the 1930s. Without mentioning climateaudit.org or myself by name, Hansen addresses the “lack of quality data from South America and Africa, a legitimate concern”, concluding this lack does not “matter” to the results.

Another favorite target of those who would raise doubt about the reality of global warming is the lack of quality data from South America and Africa, a legitimate concern. You will note in our maps of temperature change some blotches in South America and Africa, which are probably due to bad data. Our procedure does not throw out data because it looks unrealistic, as that would be subjective. But what is the global significance of these regions of exceptionally poor data? As shown by Figure 1, omission of South America and Africa has only a tiny effect on the global temperature change. Indeed, the difference that omitting these areas makes is to increase the global temperature change by (an entirely insignificant) 0.01C.

So United States shows no material change since the 1930s, but this doesn’t matter, South America doesn’t matter, Africa doesn’t matter and Antarctica has no records relevant to the 1930s. Europe and northern Asia would seem to be plausible candidates for locating Waldo. (BTW we are also told that the Medieval Warm Period was a regional phenomenon confined to Europe and northern Asia - go figure.]

On two separate occasions, Hansen, who two weeks ago contrasted royalty with “court jesters” saying that one does not “joust with jesters”, raised the possibility that the outside community is “wondering” why (using the royal “we”) he (a) “bothers to put up with this hassle and the nasty e-mails that it brings” or (b) “subject ourselves to the shenanigans”.

Actually, it wasn’t something that I, for one, was wondering about it all. In my opinion, questions about how he did his calculations are entirely appropriate and he had an obligation to answer the questions - an obligation that would have continued even if had flounced off at the mere indignity of having to answer a mildly probing question. Look, ordinary people get asked questions all the time and most of them don’t have the luxury of “not bothering with the hassle” or “not subjecting themselves to the shenanigans”. They just answer the questions the best they can and don’t complain. So should Hansen.

Hansen provides some interesting historical context to his studies, observing that his analysis was the first analysis to include Southern Hemisphere results, which supposedly showed that, contrary to the situation in the Northern Hemisphere, there wasn’t cooling from the 1940s to the 1970s:

The basic GISS temperature analysis scheme was defined in the late 1970s by Jim Hansen when a method of estimating global temperature change was needed for comparison with one-dimensional global climate models. Prior temperature analyses, most notably those of Murray Mitchell, covered only 20-90N latitudes. Our rationale was that the number of Southern Hemisphere stations was sufficient for a meaningful estimate of global temperature change, because temperature anomalies and trends are highly correlated over substantial geographical distances. Our first published results (Hansen et al., Climate impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, Science 213, 957, 1981) showed that, contrary to impressions from northern latitudes, global cooling after 1940 was small, and there was net global warming of about 0.4C between the 1880s and 1970s.

Earlier in the short essay, Hansen said that “omission of South America and Africa has only a tiny effect on the global temperature change”. However, they would surely have an impact on land temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere? And, as the above paragraph shows, the calculation of SH land temperatures and their integration into global temperatures seems to have been a central theme in Hansen’s own opus. If Hansen says that South America and Africa don’t matter to “global” and thus presumably to Southern Hemisphere temperature change, then it makes one wonder all the more: what does matter?

Personally, as I’ve said on many occasions, I have little doubt that the late 20th century was warmer than the 19th century. At present, I’m intrigued by the question as to how we know that it’s warmer now than in the 1930s. It seems plausible to me that it is. But how do we know that it is? And why should any scientist think that answering such a question is a “hassle”?

In my first post on the matter, I suggested that Hansen’s most appropriate response was to make his code available promptly and cordially. Since a somewhat embarrassing error had already been identified, I thought that it would be difficult for NASA to completely stonewall the matter regardless of Hansen’s own wishes in the matter. (I hadn’t started an FOI but was going to do so.)

Had Hansen done so, if he wished, he could then have included an expression of confidence that the rest of the code did not include material defects. Now he’s had to disclose the code anyway and has done so in a rather graceless way.

Source




The British conservatives get religion

The Conservatives will unveil tough regulations on televisions, fridges and other household appliances this week as part of a plan to make Britain a world leader in energy-efficiency, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal. Under the proposals, caps would be set on how much energy all electrical appliances can use. Goods exceeding those limits would be banned from sale after a set date. Household electrical goods would also have to be fitted with labels that would allow consumers to see at point of sale how much energy the device will typically use in a year and how it compares with its peers.

The Tories also plan to pull the plug on the "stand-by" function on many electrical goods, which accounts for more than 2 per cent of Britain's electricity use. Electrical goods that could be kept on stand-by indefinitely would also be banned from sale after a set date. The proposals are to be unveiled in the Conservatives' Quality of Life report, the last of the party's eight policy reviews.

Led by the millionaire environmentalist Zac Goldsmith and the former cabinet minister John Gummer, the report examines transport, housing, urban planning, public spaces, energy, waste and pollution. "Reducing our energy use through a massive commitment to energy efficiency in our homes should be the first priority of a government committed to tackling climate change," said a Tory source. The report says that while some progress has been made on making electronic goods more efficient, these gains have been largely undermined by the sharp increase in household goods in recent years. It is said that if all of Britain's 25 million mobile phone chargers were left switched off, the unused energy could power 66,000 homes for a year.

The review is also expected to unveil a series of green taxes, such as VAT on domestic flights and a "per-flight tax" on airlines. The report will also call for a moratorium on airport expansion and incentives for domestic air passengers to switch to trains. Higher taxes on 4x4 vehicles are also expected to be discussed, along with proposals to make cycling more -attractive.

Source




HOW TO DEFEND SOCIETY AGAINST SCIENCE

Excerpt below from an essay by Paul Feyerabend, a prominent and skeptical philosopher of science

I want to defend society and its inhabitants from all ideologies, science included. All ideologies must be seen in perspective. One must not take them too seriously. One must read them like fairytales which have lots of interesting things to say but which also contain wicked lies, or like ethical prescriptions which may be useful rules of thumb but which are deadly when followed to the letter.

Now, is this not a strange and ridiculous attitude? Science, surely, was always in the forefront of the fight against authoritarianism and superstition. It is to science that we owe our increased intellectual freedom vis-a-vis religious beliefs; it is to science that we owe the liberation of mankind from ancient and rigid forms of thought. Today these forms of thought are nothing but bad dreams-and this we learned from science. Science and enlightenment are one and the same thing-even the most radical critics of society believe this. Kropotkin wants to overthrow all traditional institutions and forms of belief, with the exception of science. Ibsen criticises the most intimate ramifications of nineteenth-century bourgeois ideology, but he leaves science untouched. Levi-Strauss has made us realise that Western Thought is not the lonely peak of human achievement it was once believed to be, but he excludes science from his relativization of ideologies. Marx and Engels were convinced that science would aid the workers in their quest for mental and social liberation.

Are all these people deceived? Are they all mistaken about the role of science? Are they all the victims of a chimaera? To these questions my answer is a firm Yes and No. Now, let me explain my answer. My explanation consists of two parts, one more general, one more specific. The general explanation is simple. Any ideology that breaks the hold a comprehensive system of thought has on the minds of men contributes to the liberation of man. Any ideology that makes man question inherited beliefs is an aid to enlightenment. A truth that reigns without checks and balances is a tyrant who must be overthrown, and any falsehood that can aid us in the over throw of this tyrant is to be welcomed. It follows that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century science indeed was an instrument of liberation and enlightenment. It does not follow that science is bound to remain such an instrument.

There is nothing inherent in science or in any other ideology that makes it essentially liberating. Ideologies can deteriorate and become stupid religions. Look at Marxism. And that the science of today is very different from the science of 1650 is evident at the most superficial glance. For example, consider the role science now plays in education. Scientific "facts" are taught at a very early age and in the very same manner in which religious "facts" were taught only a century ago. There is no attempt to waken the critical abilities of the pupil so that he may be able to see things in perspective.

At the universities the situation is even worse, for indoctrination is here carried out in a much more systematic manner. Criticism is not entirely absent. Society, for example, and its institutions, are criticised most severely and often most unfairly and this already at the elementary school level. But science is excepted from the criticism. In society at large the judgement of the scientist is received with the same reverence as the judgement of bishops and cardinals was accepted not too long ago. The move towards "demythologization," for example, is largely motivated by the wish to avoid any clash between Christianity and scientific ideas. If such a clash occurs, then science is certainly right and Christianity wrong.

Pursue this investigation further and you will see that science has now become as oppressive as the ideologies it had once to fight. Do not be misled by the fact that today hardly anyone gets killed for joining a scientific heresy. This has nothing to do with science. It has something to do with the general quality of our civilization. Heretics in science are still made to suffer from the most severe sanctions this relatively tolerant civilization has to offer.

But-is this description not utterly unfair? Have I not presented the matter in a very distorted light by using tendentious and distorting terminology? Must we not describe the situation in a very different way? I have said that science has become rigid, that it has ceased to be an instrument of change and liberation, without adding that it has found the truth, or a large part thereof. Considering this additional fact we realise, so the objection goes, that the rigidity of science is not due to human wilfulness. It lies in the nature of things. For once we have discovered the truth-what else can we do but follow it?

This trite reply is anything but original. It is used whenever an ideology wants to reinforce the faith of its followers. "Truth" is such a nicely neutral word. Nobody would deny that it is commendable to speak the truth and wicked to tell lies. Nobody would deny that-and yet nobody knows what such an attitude amounts to. So it is easy to twist matters and to change allegiance to truth in one's everyday affairs into allegiance to the Truth of an ideology which is nothing but the dogmatic defense of that ideology.

And it is of course not true that we have to follow the truth. Human life is guided by many ideas. Truth is one of them. Freedom and mental independence are others. If Truth, as conceived by some ideologists, conflicts with freedom, then we have a choice. We may abandon freedom. But we may also abandon Truth. (Alternatively, we may adopt a more sophisticated idea of truth that no longer contradicts freedom; that was Hegel's solution.)

My criticism of modern science is that it inhibits freedom of thought. If the reason is that it has found the truth and now follows it, then I would say that there are better things than first finding, and then following such a monster.

FULL ESSAY here




GLOBAL WARMING TEST

There is a global warming test here that is rather fun.

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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10 September, 2007

Aspirational climate goals needed - APEC

Tokenism is probably the safest electoral strategy at the moment

APEC leaders have agreed to the need for long-term aspirational goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Prime Minister John Howard said today, but they have not set any specific targets. "(They agreed) the need for a long-term aspirational, global emissions reduction, goal," he said in a statement read to camera.

After the conclusion of the first day of the APEC leaders' summit, Mr Howard released the so-called Sydney Declaration, which also requires all nations to be part of the solution to the global warming problem. "(It also includes) the need for all nations, no matter what their stage of development, to contribute according to their own capacity and their own circumstances to reducing greenhouse gases," Mr Howard said. The third component of the declaration is specific goals for the 21 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies on energy intensity and forestry, Mr Howard said.

The lack of specific greenhouse reduction targets was widely expected after a draft of the statement was leaked last month. "This is even worse than the low expectations people had because it doesn't even set a long-term aspirational goal, there's no figure like 50 per cent by 2050, or 20 per cent by 2020," Greenpeace's Ben Oquist said.

Mr Howard said the Sydney Declaration emphasised the "relevance of APEC". "It demonstrates that APEC is very much alive and kicking. It does illustrate again the strength in consensus-based diversity and informal meetings and this declaration does transcend a number of international divisions." The declaration affirms the primary importance of the United Nations framework to deal with climate change, a point China's President Hu Jintao indicated was critical to any agreement on the statement.

Mr Howard said APEC would add to the momentum on climate change, particularly a meeting of major economies dealing with the problem in Washington later this month and a UN forum in Bali in December. "The Sydney Declaration ... is very important in the march towards a sensible international agreement on climate change which recognises the need to make progress but also recognises that different economies bring different perspectives to addressing the challenge of climate change," he said.

In the statement, the APEC leaders declared their recognition that "economic growth, energy security and climate change are fundamental and interlinked challenges for the APEC region". "The dynamism of APEC, underpinned by open trade and investment, has reduced poverty, improved living standards and delivered economic and social development," the Sydney Declaration said. "Our success has relied in part on secure supplies of energy, the use of which has also contributed to air quality problems and greenhouse gas emissions. "We are committed, through wide-ranging and ambitious actions, to ensuring the energy needs of the economies of the region while addressing the issue of environmental quality and contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions."

Mr Howard said it was a major international challenge to meet energy needs and development priorities while at the same time addressing the problem of climate change. "In the Sydney Declaration, the leaders have moved to forge a new international consensus," he said. "We are serious about addressing, in a sensible way compatible with our different economic needs, the great challenge of climate change. "Each of us comes to the APEC table with different perspectives, reflecting both our diversity and strengths. "And yet in the Sydney Declaration we have agreed on three very important and quite specific things."

Source




BBC is still pro-warming

At first sight, the BBC's decision to scrap its much-heralded Planet Relief is puzzling. Planet Relief would have been presented by Ricky Gervais and Jonathan Ross, and was set to bring together numerous celebrities to raise awareness about climate change amongst the British viewing public. The BBC has justified its decision to scrap the programme on the basis that it is not the BBC's job to promote a crusade and `lead opinion on climate change'.

The notion that the BBC only presents the facts, rather than `raising public awareness' about climate change, is contradicted by its record. Virtually every BBC news item on climate change comes across like a health warning about the impending catastrophe facing humanity. Anyone who watches BBC News will be left in no doubt that virtually every flood, earthquake, drought or unusual natural occurrence around the world is a direct consequence of global warming.

That the BBC is less then fervently committed to balance on the issue of climate change was confirmed by one of its spokespeople: she said that the cancellation of Planet Relief was not due to concerns over impartiality. Some observers believe that poor viewing figures for July's Live Earth concert, which was shown on the BBC, may have influenced the decision to pull Planet Relief. And some BBC executives have noted that the public does not like being `lectured' to about climate change and other fashionable causes.

Myself, I would rather that Planet Relief was not cancelled. There is nothing wrong with giving campaigners the opportunity to `raise consciousness' about a problem they feel passionate about. I am far more concerned by the increasing trend to have items of consciousness-raising masquerading as news on national television. It is very difficult to have a grown-up discussion when a moral crusade, such as the one around climate change, is presented to the public as factual news.

The hysterical reaction of the moral crusaders on climate change to the scrapping of Planet Relief bears all the hallmarks of medieval religious zealotry. With their fondness for conspiracy theories, the crusaders claim that the scrapping of this programme was brought about by the nefarious activities of a `small but powerful cabal of climate change deniers' (1). One of the crusaders' arguments is that no one - including the BBC - can remain impartial on the issue of climate change. In other words, there can be only one legitimate and morally righteous view on the subject. The mildest hint of scepticism is denounced as morally unacceptable; thus the BBC has been attacked by one green writer for taking a `morally bankrupt decision' in shelving Planet Relief (2).

This idea that the `debate on climate change is over', and thus no dissent on the issue can be tolerated, is not confined to a tiny group of isolated illiberal fanatics. In February, Britain's former minister for the environment declared that `climate change deniers' had better shut up `since the debate over the science of climate change is well and truly over' (3).

Shutting down debate on climate change is one of the principal objectives of many of today's environmentalist crusaders. They have written numerous tracts denouncing the ideals of journalistic balance and objectivity, since applying such ideals to climate change assumes that there is more than one legitimate viewpoint on the subject. Journalists who seek balance on climate change are labelled `cowards' for refusing to take a stand against Evil. One writer has accused the BBC of putting balance before the `responsibility that we all share to avert the catastrophe that is unfolding' (4).

Exhorting the media to take sides on climate change, instead of upholding balance, green crusaders resort to cheap and superficial comparisons between climate change and slavery or the Holocaust. The implication is that anyone who thinks it is legitimate to have an open debate on climate change is a moral coward, or worse, someone who would have refused to take sides during the Holocaust.

Unfortunately, the BBC's decision to scrap Planet Relief does not represent a brave stand against the powerful current of illiberalism towards open discussion on climate change. It's simply a pragmatic decision motivated by the BBC's desire to maintain its present share of the viewing public.

Source




Is carbon-offsetting just eco-enslavement?

In offsetting his flights by sponsoring `eco-friendly' hard labour in India, David Cameron has exposed the essence of environmentalism

If you thought that the era of British bigwigs keeping Indians as personal servants came to an end with the fall of the Raj in 1947, then you must have had a rude awakening last week. In a feature about carbon offsetting in The Times (London), it was revealed that the leader of the UK Conservative Party, David Cameron, offsets his carbon emissions by effectively keeping brown people in a state of bondage. Whenever he takes a flight to some foreign destination, Cameron donates to a carbon-offsetting company that encourages people in the developing world to ditch modern methods of farming in favour of using their more eco-friendly manpower to plough the land. So Cameron can fly around the world with a guilt-free conscience on the basis that, thousands of miles away, Indian villagers, bent over double, are working by hand rather than using machines that emit carbon. Welcome to the era of eco-enslavement.

The details of this carbon-offsetting scheme are disturbing. Cameron offsets his flights by donating to Climate Care. The latest wheeze of this carbon-offsetting company is to provide `treadle pumps' to poor rural families in India so that they can get water on to their land without having to use polluting diesel power. Made from bamboo, plastic and steel, the treadle pumps work like `step machines in a gym', according to some reports, where poor family members step on the pedals for hours in order to draw up groundwater which is used to irrigate farmland (1). These pumps were abolished in British prisons a century ago. It seems that what was considered an unacceptable form of punishment for British criminals in the past is looked upon as a positive eco-alternative to machinery for Indian peasants today.

What might once have been referred to as `back-breaking labour' is now spun as `human energy'. According to Climate Care, the use of labour-intensive treadle pumps, rather than labour-saving diesel-powered pumps, saves 0.65 tonnes of carbon a year per farming family. And well-off Westerners - including Cameron, and Prince Charles, Land Rover and the Cooperative Bank, who are also clients of Climate Care - can purchase this saved carbon in order to continue living the high life without becoming consumed by eco-guilt. They effectively salve their moral consciences by paying poor people to live the harsh simple life on their behalf.

Climate Care celebrates the fact that it encourages the Indian poor to use their own bodies rather than machines to irrigate the land. Its website declares: `Sometimes the best source of renewable energy is the human body itself. With some lateral thinking, and some simple materials, energy solutions can often be found which replace fossil fuels with muscle-power.' (2) To show that muscle power is preferable to machine power, the Climate Care website features a cartoon illustration of smiling naked villagers pedalling on a treadle pump next to a small house that has an energy-efficient light bulb and a stove made from `local materials at minimal cost'. Climate Care points out that even children can use treadle pumps: `One person - man, woman or even child - can operate the pump by manipulating his/her body weight on two treadles and by holding a bamboo or wooden frame for support.' (3)

Feeling guilty about your two-week break in Barbados, when you flew thousands of miles and lived it up with cocktails on sunlit beaches? Well, offset that guilt by sponsoring eco-friendly child labour in the developing world! Let an eight-year-old peasant pedal away your eco-remorse.

Climate Care has other carbon-offsetting schemes. One involves encouraging poor people who live near the Ranthambhore National Park, a tiger reserve in Rajasthan, India, to stop using firewood for their stoves, and instead to collect cowpats and water and put them into something called a `biogas digester', which creates a renewable form of fuel that can be used for cooking and the provision of heat. One of the aims of this scheme is to protect the trees of the national park, as tigers are reliant on the trees. It seems that in the carbon-offsetting world, beast comes before man.

In these various scandalous schemes, we can glimpse the iron fist that lurks within environmentalism's green velvet glove. `Cutting back carbon emissions' is the goal to which virtually every Western politician, celebrity and youthful activist has committed himself. Yet for the poorest people around the world, `reducing carbon output' means saying no to machinery and instead getting your family to do hard physical labour, or it involves collecting cow dung and burning it in an eco-stove in order to keep yourself warm. It is not only Climate Care that pushes through such patronising initiatives. Other carbon-offsetting companies have encouraged Kenyans to use dung-powered generators and Indians to replace kerosene lamps with solar-powered lamps, while carbon-offsetting tree-planting projects in Guatemala, Ecuador and Uganda have reportedly disrupted local communities' water supplies, led to the eviction of thousands of villagers from their land, and cheated local people of their promised income for the upkeep of these Western conscience-salving trees (4).

The criticism of these carbon-offsetting schemes has been limited indeed. Since The Times revealed the treadle pump story last week, many have criticised carbon offsetting on the rather blinkered basis that it doesn't do enough to rein in mankind's overall emissions of carbon. Some talk about `carbon offsetting cowboys', as if carbon offsetting itself is fine and it's only those carbon-offsetting companies who go too far in their exploitation of people in the developing world who are a problem. In truth, it is the relationships that are codified by the whole idea of carbon offsetting - whereby the needs and desires of people in the developing world are subordinated to the narcissistic eco-worries of rich Westerners - that are the real, grotesque problem here.

More radical eco-activists argue that carbon offsetting is a distraction from the need for us simply to stop flying and producing and consuming. They claim that carbon-offsetting gives people in Western societies the false impression that it's okay to emit carbon so long as you pay someone else to clean it up for you. They would rather that we all lived like those treadle-pumping, shit-burning peasants. A group of young deep greens protested at the Oxford offices of Climate Care dressed as red herrings (on the basis that carbon offsetting is a `red herring'), arguing that: `Climate Care is misleading the public, making them believe that offsetting does some good.' (5) The protest provided a striking snapshot of the warped, misanthropic priorities of green youthful activism today: instead of criticising Climate Care, and others, for encouraging poor Indians to stop using machinery and to burn cow dung, the protesters slated it for giving a green light to Westerners to continue living comfortable lives.

Carbon offsetting is not some cowboy activity, or an aberration, or a distraction from `true environmentalist goals' - rather it expresses the very essence of environmentalism. In its project of transforming vast swathes of the developing world into guilt-massaging zones for comfortable Westerners, where trees are planted or farmers' work is made tougher and more time-consuming in order to offset the activities of Americans and Europeans, carbon offsetting perfectly captures both the narcissistic and anti-development underpinnings of the politics of environmentalism. Where traditional imperialism conquered poor nations in order to exploit their labour and resources, today's global environmentalist consensus is increasingly using the Third World as a place in which to work out the West's moral hang-ups.

The rise of the carbon-offsetting industry shows that a key driving force behind environmentalism is self-indulgent Western guilt. It is Western consumers' own discomfort with their sometimes lavish lifestyles - with all those holidays, big homes, fast cars and cheap nutritious foods - that nurtures today's green outlook, in which consumption has come to be seen as destructive and a new morality of eco-ethics and offsetting (formerly known as penance) has emerged to deal with it (6). It is no accident that the wealthiest people are frequently the most eco-conscious. British environmental campaign groups and publications are peppered with the sons and daughters of the aristocracy, while in America ridiculously super-rich celebrities (Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt) lead the charge for more eco-aware forms of consumption and play. The very nature of carbon offsetting - where the emphasis is on paying money to offset one's own lifestyle, in much the same way that wealthy people in the Middle Ages would pay for `Indulgences' that forgave them their sins - highlights the individuated and self-regarding streak in the Politics of Being Green.

Carbon-offsetting also shines a light on the dangerously anti-development sentiment in environmentalism. As the British journalist Ross Clark has argued, the success of carbon-offsetting relies on the continuing failure of Third World communities to develop. Clark writes: `Carbon-offset schemes.only work if the recipients [in the Third World] continue to live in very basic conditions. Once they aspire to Western, fossil fuel-powered lifestyles, then the scheme is undone.' Delegates to the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland in 2005 offset the carbon cost of their flights by donating to a charity that replaced the tin roofs of huts in a shantytown in Cape Town with a more insulating material, thus reducing the level of heat that escapes and protecting the environment. It sounds good, but as Clark points out: `The carbon emitted by delegates' flights will only continue to be offset for as long as the occupants of the huts carry on living in shantytown conditions.' If they were to improve their lives, and replace their insulated shacks with `much more power-hungry bungalows', then the carbon-offsetting scheme will have failed, says Clark. The shantytown-dwellers will have reneged on their side of the bargain, which is to remain poor and humble so that wealthy Western leaders can fly around the world in peace of mind (7).

Again, this is not `cowboyism' - it is mainstream environmentalism in action. From the increasingly hysterical attacks on China for daring to develop, to the emphasis on `fair trade' and `sustainable development' in the work of the myriad NGOs that are swarming around the Third World, the green message is this: poor people simply cannot have what we in the West have, because if they did the planet would burn. The treadle-pump scandal revealed in The Times only shows in a more direct form the way in which today's environmentalist agenda forces the poor of the developing world to adapt to poverty, accommodate to hardship, and effectively remain enslaved for the benefit of morally-tortured Westerners.

It is time to end this eco-enslavement, and put forward arguments for progress and equality across the globe. I would never pick up shit and use it to warm my home, or spend hours on a treadmill in order to raise water. Would you? Then why should we expect anyone else to do such things, especially in the name of making some rich snots feel better about themselves?

Source




Accuracy In Media comments on Newsweak

The extremists committed to the man-made global warming theory-that humans are causing the world to get hotter and that we have to drastically raise taxes and/or ration energy in response-are on the run. How else does one explain the sensational Newsweek cover story with the provocative headline, "Global Warming is a Hoax,*" over a photo of a boiling sun? Newsweek, a Washington Post property, claims to be telling us "The Truth About Denial," and to make sure everyone gets the point, it uses some form of the word "denial" 20 times, including "denial machine" 14 times.

The article, which is the worst kind of advocacy journalism, is a shoddy attempt to suggest that those opposed to the theory are like holocaust deniers. The asterisk in the Newsweek headline leads to a smaller note connecting the "hoax" charge to "well-funded naysayers who still reject the overwhelming evidence of climate change." Newsweek tells its readers that its cover story is about "the denial machine"-those against the theory.

The term "denial" is, of course, usually associated with "Holocaust denial"-the view that the Nazi destruction of millions of Jews in Europe was exaggerated or did not even occur. As such, the Newsweek story was a deliberate effort to smear opponents of the global warming theory. Perhaps the word "news" should be taken out of Newsweek. The magazine has become a shameless propagandist for one side in this debate.

What is at stake is our standard of living. In fact, while most observers and experts agree that the climate is changing and may even be warming over the long term, the real debate is over whether human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels, are responsible, and whether we can do anything about it. The critics of the theory cast doubt on that connection, noting the lack of definitive evidence of a cause and effect. There are other explanations for possible warming, such as solar activity.

Newsweek knows that, if the theory is accepted, this leads to demands for domestic and even international policies to reduce our standard of living by drastically cutting our access to energy. Those policies, in turn, lead to tax increases or energy rationing, even on a global basis. The United Nations, for example, has suggested a 35 cent-a-gallon gas tax, using the proceeds for increased foreign aid and other global purposes.

The Newsweek story is misleading, even false, in another key aspect. Senate staffer Marc Morano, a long-time conservative journalist and activist, points out that while those skeptical of the man-made global warming theory have received some $19 million, the forces favored by Newsweek have taken in closer to $50 billion, much of it from American taxpayers and channeled through federal and global agencies. This figure, of course, doesn't include the dollar value of all of the media coverage in support of the theory. That's $50 billion versus $19 million.

Morano works for Senator James Inhofe, ranking Republican member of the Senate Environment Committee. It was before this committee that Australian climate scientist Bob Carter testified that "In one of the more expensive ironies of history, the expenditure of more than $50 billion on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one."

Morano revealed that Newsweek reporter Eve Conant, who contributed to the piece and interviewed Senator Inhofe, "was given all the latest data proving conclusively that it is the proponents of man-made global warming fears that enjoy a monumental funding advantage over the skeptics." But Newsweek didn't and won't report that. The facts have taken a back seat to propaganda. Morano commented, "Journalism students across the world can read this week's cover story to learn how reporting should not be done. Hopefully, that will be Newsweek's legacy- serving as a shining example of the failure of modern journalism to adhere to balance, objectivity and fairness."

Under President Bush alone, according to the administration's own account, $9 billion has been spent since 2002 on "climate change research" devoted to promoting the controversial theory. The administration also boasts that "Multilaterally, the United States is by far the largest financial provider for the activities of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change." The latter is the controversial body that has most loudly sounded the alarm. The well-funded lobby, in truth, is financed by U.S. taxpayers. This is the story Newsweek won't tell....

Much more here




Leftist New Zealand government big on talk only

Clark's record on climate change undermines NZ credibility at APEC. It is a bit rich for Helen Clark to be telling other countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions when they are growing like there is no tomorrow at home, says National's Climate Change Spokesman Nick Smith. "New Zealand's emissions have grown by 12% since Helen Clark became Prime Minister. This compares to Australia's increase of 8%, 4% in the United States, and 2% in Japan, over the same period.

"Her record is the 18th worst in the OECD, and just makes a joke of her talk of carbon neutrality. "Helen Clark cannot be seen as credible in discussions about climate change because Labour set a target to reduce emissions by 20% by 2005, but then in Government have increased them by 12%. "New Zealand's record is particularly poor on forestry, where for the first time in fifty years significant deforestation is occurring with the loss of 40,000 hectares, or 32 million trees.

"New Zealand's energy record is also embarrassing. Our proportion of renewable power has dropped to an all time low, and during the term of this Government power generated from coal has trebled, from 4% to 12%. "Helen Clark cannot expect to be taken seriously on climate change at APEC when Labour's record at home is so awful".

Source

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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9 September, 2007

Misinformation hamstrings debate on climate change

Nicole Gelinas starts and ends her August 23 essay in the Wall Street Journal, titled "A Carbon Tax Would Be Cleaner," with errors that negate whatever insights the rest of the essay provides.

The opening sentence alludes to survey data showing most Americans believe "humans are contributing to climate change" and we should do something about it "right away." According to Ms. Gelinas, this justifies moving to a political solution even though "skeptics may grumble that the science isn't settled." This is ludicrous. Most surveys show deep disagreement and skepticism about alarmist predictions of global warming, and all surveys show large majorities oppose taking specific actions - such as raising energy taxes - to do anything about this so-called crisis. Despite a billion-dollar-a-year PR campaign by the left, the public is not demanding higher energy prices.

Ms. Gelinas proceeds to give cap and trade schemes a well-deserved trashing, but then closes her essay by saying "if it's true that a global warming consensus really exists - and not just in press releases and speeches - politicians and business leaders wouldn't be afraid to suggest [a carbon] tax. They would insist on it." She may think she is calling the bluff of politicians and business leaders who have been using global warming to gain attention or subsidies, but this comes much too close to endorsing a carbon tax.

Many politicians would sell out their voters in a New York minute in return for having a say in how hundreds of billions of dollars in new public revenue could be spent. And many corporate CEOs would sell out their customers with equal alacrity if they thought a carbon tax would weigh more heavily on competitors than on themselves.

Carbon taxes and more generally energy taxes are, in fact, a bad idea. They tax an important source of productivity growth, and hence slow economic growth. They are unrelated to the use of government services, and so fail a traditional test of good policy. They are less visible to taxpayers than either income or retail sales taxes, and thus (like the dreaded value-added tax, or VAT) enable governments to secretly raise more tax revenue than a fully informed electorate would allow.

And most importantly, energy taxes are not necessary. Scientists and economists are rapidly arriving at the same conclusion: global warming is not a crisis, and there is no need to raise energy prices to combat a nonexistent threat.

Source




The energy bill that wasn't

HUMAN EVENTS' readers are understandably difficult to shock these days with new examples of Congress' political arrogance. Yet, as the House of Representatives was putting the finishing touches on their version of what they oddly call an "energy bill" -- dedicated to restricting energy supplies as well as demand -- the Republican House Energy Action Team released an eye-catching missive exposing what may be a new low for the Democrat-controlled 110th Congress.

Despite the well-deserved ridicule of "carbon offsets -- those "indulgences" being sold to let liberals assuage their green consciences over using energy by, for example, promising to plant a tree -- our lawmakers are plotting to spend millions of your dollars on them. Where this "offset" green pork would wind up is anyone's guess. Al Gore and his company is one option, though the Financial Times notes how it's all a scam, anyway. (Is Gore a registered lobbyist, because he just pulled off a coup that would make Jack Abramoff blush?)

As bad or worse, Congress wants environmental activists to be able to impose liability on the government -- that is you, the taxpayer -- for supposedly causing "global warming" if a judge or jury in San Francisco thinks that would be a good idea.

The House Government Reform Committee under "Hollywood" Henry Waxman (D-CA) agreed to create a new litigation pathway through which plaintiffs -- "aggrieved parties" as the bill defines them -- can sue to make the government buy these indulgences in a mandatory drive to be "carbon neutral." He did so by sneaking a new basis for lawsuits into their massive anti-energy bill.

The amendment also exposes the taxpayer to liability for paying the aggrieved -- with a provision making sure their lawyers are taken care of too, of course -- harmed by the federal government causing global warming. (Investment advice: Go long on environmental ambulance chasers in the 9th Circuit, whose judges love such claims.)

At least they were nice enough to hurriedly scribble in the margins of the amendment a limitation that only U.S. citizens can do this.for now. (You can view this Pay the Trial Lawyers and Green Pressure Groups Act in the final version of the House anti-energy bill, which awaits "conference" with the Senate version, at pp. 291-295.) This quiet little provision was snuck in the bill as a very big favor to the environmentalist lobby that spent so much to restore Mr. Waxman's chairmanship.

For background, not everyone is able to simply march into court and sue someone -- particularly when the defendant is the government. To gain access to the courts one must demonstrate "standing" to sue. Jurisdictions vary on the specifics but essentially this means they must present a) a real, non-hypothetical harm, distinct from the general population, b) arising causally from someone else's actions, and c) to which a favorable decision could provide relief.

This requirement attempts (too often in vain) to thin the herd of litigants jamming our courtrooms. It is particularly troublesome to the environmental lobby as applied to their white whale, "global warming", because on any practical, non-emotive level it is impossible to empirically establish causation between human activities and any demonstrable climatic change, let alone for a particular defendant to do so. Further, they have problems proving that they could have been distinctly harmed by "global warming."

Should the environmentalists get past the gatekeeper requirements of standing and also having a "cause of action", for example, negligent infliction of harm by causing "global warming", they stand decent odds of encountering a sympathetic federal judge or jury. At that point we'll have a stampede as the greens seek to impose yet one more agenda on America through the courts that they could not obtain openly through the democratic process.

Recently, the 9th Circuit allowed an environmentalist lawsuit to proceed which seeks to block taxpayer supported (OPIC and ExImBank-financed) overseas energy projects on the basis they will cause global warming, on the absurd grounds that the plaintiffs uniquely enjoy national parks. This narrow exception still leaves the environmentalist extremists without a useful cause of action to apply more broadly.

Such a ridiculous proposition would require specific legislation. Have no fear, the Democrats are here. While the greens' doppelgangers in Congress are unable to pass Kyoto-style energy rationing legislation, they can sneak provisions into bills making lawsuits easier.

Congress pulled this stunt at a particularly brazen moment, with the electorate already suspicious in the face of an abandoned promise to eliminate earmarks, antagonized over a passport fiasco reminding us how the government inefficiently squanders their tax dollars, and fresh off a (for now successful) revolt involving "twelve million undocumented Americans".

Worse, it comes in the same legislation in which our inefficient but free-spending government also seeks to impose mandates to stop the private sector from what Congress just knows is too inefficient use of its own money -- a so-called "energy bill" that does little more than restrict supplies of energy including in ways that will drive up the cost of food (more than it already has), fuel, electricity and cars.

Mark Twain used to joke that everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it. Now we know the trial lawyers have decided to sue over it, and have found a great ally in the current Congress, which has agreed to set up hardworking taxpayers to funnel lucre into phony carbon offset schemes and trial lawyer pockets.

Source




Mine Your Own Business

One would think only a crazy couple would declare war on environmentalists by presenting them on film as snobs, hypocrites and enemies of the poor. Luckily for those of us who think one-sided debates are boring, Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney are just crazy enough to question the environmentalists' opposition to mining projects in poor countries in a documentary-"Mine Your Own Business"-that is gaining attention.

McAleer, an Irish journalist who covered Romania for the Financial Times, and McElhinney, his wife and co-producer, look at three mining investments: a gold project by Gabriel Resources in Rosia Montana, in Romania's Transylvania region; Rio Tinto's ilmenite project in Fort Dauphin, in Madagascar; and a vast Andean operation undertaken by Barrick Gold in Chile's Huasco Valley.

In the movie, many of the critics who claim to live in the affected areas are less than honest. One, a Swiss environmentalist who leads the opposition to mining in Romania, actually lives in the sort of town to which many of the impoverished peasants of Rosia Montana want to move.

The activists are adamant that the locals should preserve their "pristine" environment. A Belgian environmentalist says the people of Rosia Montana would rather use carts and horses than pollute the air with cars. "She says this to get noticed," counters a Romanian peasant who looks totally bewildered.

Half a world away, when confronted with the argument that denying the people of Fort Dauphin a chance to obtain jobs would keep them poor, the leading critic of the ilmenite project and the owner of a luxurious catamaran pontificates to Gheorghe Lucian, an unemployed Romanian traveling with the film's crew: "I could put you with a family here and you can count how many times people smile ... and I can put you with a family that is well-off in New York and London and you can count how many times they smile, and then you can tell me who is rich and who is poor."

You can imagine what this esoteric interpretation of wealth sounds like to Lucian, the Romanian who graduated from Rosia Montana's Technical College and is desperate to find a job. Two-thirds of his fellow villagers lack running water and use outside bathrooms even in freezing winter. For him, as for the other 700 prospective employees of the mining project back home, the choice is literally "between having a job and leaving."

The film crew also traveled to the Chilean Andes to find out who was leading the fight against Barrick Gold. It turns out-as one local villager explains-that those who oppose the investment are mainly rich landowners who don't want the peasants working on their lands for a pittance to flock to the mines for twice their current wages.

McAleer tells us that the claim the mining project will displace three glaciers that provide irrigation for local agriculture is false. The glaciers will not be affected and the company will build a reservoir to guarantee that local farmers have a decent supply of water.

Will this industrial progress in Romania, Madagascar or Chile pollute the environment? Well, the alternative is much worse. Communist-era gold mining, which was technologically backward, bureaucratic and unaccountable, turned Rosia Montana's river into disgusting filth. In Madagascar's Fort Dauphin, slash-and-burn agriculture-the sort the rural poor resort to in order to survive-has destroyed the rain forest.

It would be naive to think these mining companies are in it for altruistic motives-they obviously want to make a profit. But the truth-one that Lucian, the unemployed Romanian, discovers as he ventures beyond his country for the first time in his life-is that progress involves hard choices. The wealthy nations of today were themselves "pristine" environments in which people gradually gave up traditional ways of life to improve their living conditions. Who are we to deny the poor of today the chance to do well for themselves when an opportunity arises if they decide to take it?

Yes, moving from the traditional to the modern way of life involves costs. But as one British professor at Kent University says: "People need to be trusted to work these things out for themselves.... Environmentalists feel they have the moral authority to tell them what to do."

Not all nongovernmental organizations are as elitist and unfair to poor people as the many this film exposes. Not every mining project is as respectful of local choices as the ones depicted in this film. But this documentary speaks volumes about the Manichean vision that many bleeding-heart Americans and Europeans have of the dilemma between tradition and modernity in the developing world.

Source




Global Dimming

By Joel M. Kauffman, Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.

Yesterday evening (4 Sep 07) PBS ran a Nova on "Global Dimming." The thesis was that human-generated dust in the air has compensated for human-generated CO2 and held down the temperature rise, along with weaker solar output. This is nothing new, since the explanation for the 1940-1970 global cooling was a type of air pollution called sulfate aerosols.

The announcer spoke a climate shibboleth that the vast majority of climate scientists believed the human-generated "greenhouse gasses" caused global warming. The truth about this is the opposite; most scientists do not (Singer SF, Avery DT, Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years, Lanham, MD: Roman and Little field, 2006, p. 134). The most active of the "greenhouse gasses" was never mentioned by name; it is, of course, water vapor (Joel M. Kauffman, Water in the Atmosphere, J. Chemical Education, 2004, B81(8), 1229-1230). CO2 can hardly have been the cause of warming because its level in air has been higher than it is now at least 3 times between 1812 and 1962 as shown by 90,000 direct chemical measurements (Beck, E.-G., 180 Years of Atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods, Energy & Environment, 2007, 18(2), 259-282). Further, there is no recent correlation between CO2 levels and atmospheric temps as you may see easily from a NOAA graph.

The "star witness" was Dr. James Hansen of NASA who said that global warming has been about 0.8 deg C in the last century, most in the last 30 years. The only parts of the globe with most warming in the last 30 years are big cities. For example, the least populated counties of CA gained 0.2 deg C from 1910 to 2000, while the most populated counties gained 2.3 deg C (Goodridge, J. D., Comments on Regional Simulation of Greenhouse Warming Including Natural Variability. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1996, 77(July), 3-4), as did New York City. With an allowance for such urban heat island effects, the global temp. rise from 1905-1940 was similar to the one from 1970-2003 (www.giss.nasa.gov). Dr. Hansen's flawed USA ground station temps from 2000-2006 needed a Y2K correction provided by the Canadian Steve McIntyre showing that 1934 was the warmest year of the last 100, not 1998 or 2006; see for yourself. Objective reporting would have meant showing how Dr. Hansen's runaway climate warnings since 1987 have been overdone by using a rebuttal witness.

A David Travis did a clever experiment on the contribution of jet contrails to warming. He compared the days before 9/11 and 4 days after with the 3 days when all aircraft were grounded. He found that the day/night temp. difference was 1 deg C more when jets were absent. The culprit was said to be dust in the jet exhaust that caused water droplets to form. First, the effect of humidity on day/night temp. difference was understood at least 100 years ago. In the narration this difference somehow became equated to an overall warming. Next, jet exhaust is equal in numbers of molecules of water and CO2. At stratospheric temps. water vapor would form white ice trails pretty fast.

A Prof. Ramanathan said that anything done to create energy causes atmospheric pollution. What a shock for proponents of hydro, wind, solar and nuclear power! His claim was that the particulate pollution over the northern Malidive Islands from India was absorbing 10% of solar energy. He failed to rule out water droplets in the wispy clouds shown in a satellite photo.

Repetitive photos of industrial plants of unknown type were shown to demonstrate dust pollution, a common ploy. But some or all of the plants were emitting steam, not smoke.

The sun's output was claimed to have dimmed in the last 20 years, but others note that the opposite is true (Prof. Lance Endersbee, Climate Change is Nothing New! New Concepts in Global Tectonics, no. 42, Mar 07, Singer & Avery, above, p190-1).

Source




GREEN MINISTER PROMOTES CLIMATE SCEPTICISM

Germany's environment minister is usually famed for his tough stance on climate change but yesterday attention switched to his allegedly extravagant flying habits. Under the headline: "How our environment minister poisons the air," the newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported that Sigmar Gabriel often took planes to meetings. Citing a list from the defence ministry, the paper said he had taken more flights with military-run planes than any other minister in the first half of the year. Bild am Sonntag said about 425 flights had been made using military planes and helicopters in the first six months of 2007.

While most of these flights carried a large delegation, 34 had only one or two passengers. Mr Gabriel flew seven times alone or with one colleague. The Bild am Sonntag noted that Mr Gabriel and the family minister, Ursula von der Leyen, often flew from their home town of Hanover, especially at the start or the end of the week. Spokesmen for both politicians insisted all the flights were essential, adding they would otherwise have missed important meetings. [Meetings are obviously more important than saving the planet]

FULL STORY here

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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8 September, 2007

China loves Kyoto -- new climate plan sunk

I wonder why?

CHINA has dashed John Howard's hopes for an APEC deal on climate change, saying any new pact should be based on the Kyoto Protocol. Australia refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol. [Because Kyoto gives China free rein].

Chinese President Hu Jintao yesterday rejected John Howard's call for developing nations to shoulder tougher greenhouse emissions targets. "Climate change is an environmental issue. But, ultimately, it is a development issue," Mr Hu said. "We should, within the context of sustainable development, uphold the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol as the core mechanism and main avenue of co-operation." The Kyoto Protocol allowed developing countries greater leeway on emissions targets, placing a higher burden on developed nations.

Australia and the United States - the only major polluters not to ratify Kyoto - want developing nations to shoulder tougher emissions reduction targets. Climate change was the key subject in talks between Mr Howard and Mr Hu. The Prime Minister had hoped to make concrete progress on climate change at the Sydney summit, ahead of a federal election campaign. However Mr Hu said that he supported the differing responsibilities allowed under the Kyoto pact.

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer admitted it would be hard to bring China - one of the biggest polluters in the world - into a new emissions reduction system. "It's one of the great challenges of diplomacy; I'm not too pessimistic about it, I think we can at least make some progress here," he said.

The impasse means any APEC statement on climate change is likely to be a general statement of intent, rather than a detailed action plan. Mr Hu said he hoped the Sydney declaration would "send a clear signal to the international community to show their strong will and common resolve in tackling climate change".

Source




Is The Times New Global Warming Atlas Legit?

Post below lifted from Riehl World. See the original for links

The Daily Mail informs us:

The effects of global climate change are clear to see on the latest world maps.

In the four years since the last edition of the Times Comprehensive Atlas Of The World went on sale, cartographers have been forced to redraw coastlines and reclassify types of land.

Naturally, the most dramatic changes to the atlas would be heading the article, so let's see how they do as regards Global Warming.

They highlight the Aral Sea in central Asia, reduced by three-quarters in the past 40 years, and Lake Chad, which has shrunk by 95 per cent since 1963.

The Aral Sea: Since the 1960s the Aral Sea has been shrinking, as the rivers that feed it (the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya) were diverted by the then Soviet Union for irrigation.

Lake Chad: a remnant of a former inland sea which has grown and shrunk with changes in climate over the past 13,000 years. At its largest, around 4000 BC, this lake is estimated to have covered an area of 400,000 kmý ... An increased demand on the lake's water from the local population has likely accelerated its shrinkage over the past 40 years.

The Dead Sea is some 25 metres lower than it was 50 years ago.

The Dead Sea: Sometime around 10,000 years ago the lake level dropped dramatically, probably to levels even lower than today.

And sections of rivers including the Rio Grande and Colorado in America, the Tigris in the Middle East, and the Yellow River in China are now drying out each summer.

The Rio Grande is over-appropriated, that is, there are more users for the water than there is water in the river.

The Colorado River:  the heavy use of the river as an irrigation source for the Imperial Valley has desiccated the lower course of the river in Mexico such that it no longer consistently reaches the sea.

Global Warming doesn't appear to be changing the globe, at least not to the extent some might like us to believe. Good thing we have the Times Comprehensive Atlas Of The World to take care of that little problem, I suppose.

BIO-FOOLS: GREEN POLICIES MAY LEAD TO GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS

A huge increase in demand for oilseeds and vegetable oils for biofuel production could lead to a global food crisis as raw materials are switched to bioenergy output, Hamburg-based oilseeds analysts Oil World said. "It is high time to realise that the world community is approaching a food crisis in 2008 unless usage of agricultural products for biofuels is curbed or ideal weather conditions and sharply higher crop yields are achieved in 2008," it said.

Global grain and vegetable oil stocks are already at historically low levels and farmers around the world are switching plantings from oilseeds to grains because of record high cereals prices, it said, adding "The global supply and demand balance of the seven major oilseeds will become tighter than expected." "The global production deficit of 17 to 18 million tonnes relative to prospective consumption will enforce an unprecedented decline in oilseed stocks in 2007-08."

It estimated global 2007-08 production of the seven main oilseeds at 384.2 million tonnes, far below consumption of 401.8 million tonnes. This compares to 2006-07 production of 396.2 million tonnes and consumption of 387.3 million tonnes. The surge in consumption largely caused by biofuel production will cut 2007-08 season ending world stocks of the seven main oilseeds to 64.3 million tonnes from 81.9 million tonnes at the end of 2006-07. "This decline is unprecedented and will cut world stocks of the seven oilseeds at the end of the new season to only 16% of annual use," it said, adding this compared with stocks covering 21.1% of annual global use at the end of 2006-07.

Source




BBC BIAS AND THE POWER OF BLOGGERS

The BBC has abandoned plans for Planet Relief, a 'telethon' to raise awareness about climate change, which was being touted as a cross between Comic Relief (an annual BBC cringe-fest in which people give money to various good causes because comedians tell them to) and Al Gore's mega-flop Live Earth.

The report says: "The decision comes after executives said it was not the BBC's job to lead opinion on climate change." Which is exactly what they've been doing for the past several years - so what's changed? The report admits that: "...against the backdrop of intense internal debates about impartiality, senior news editors expressed misgivings that Planet Relief was too "campaigning" in nature and would have left the Corporation open to the charge of bias."

There has indeed been intense internal debate, with various senior BBC figures criticising the corporation for 'editorialising' on climate change - and this in the wake of a report by the BBC itself which essentially acknowledged that it was infected with a left-liberal culture. The BBC claims it scrapped Planet Relief because audiences 'prefer factual output on climate change'. This is a non-sequitor of course, because the BBC's factual programmes on climate change are every bit as biased as Planet Relief promised to be.

The real reason for the decision appears to be that the BBC realises the public is becoming sick of hysterical media coverage of the subject, as the failure of Live Earth demonstrated, so the BBC has decided it can have more influence on public opinion by dressing its editorialising up as 'factual' programming. Not surprisingly, environmentalists have slammed the BBC's decision as "cowardice", (damn, foiled by those pesky well-funded deniers again!). The report adds: "A number of right-wing commentators such as the Daily Mail's Keith Waterhouse also criticised the idea." The writer, environment correspondent and global warming doomsayer Richard Black, is clearly allowing his frustration to get to him here.

You'll notice that you'll rarely, if ever, see a commentator referred to as 'left-wing' by the BBC. Interestingly, however, Black adds that 'Many blogs run by climate skeptics groups regularly accuse the BBC of bias', and I think this is the really interesting point in all of this. Bloggers, have, of course been at the forefront of the resistance to claims that the debate is over, and have enabled research by skeptical scientists, which previously would have been confined to science magazines and easily suppressed by a hostile media, to be seen by millions.

Another area where bloggers have led the way is in exposing media bias. A few years ago it was almost impossible for the public to complain about biased reporting by the BBC. You could write to them, or phone them, and your complaint would be duly noted before disappearing into the system. Only a few 'right-wing' journalists and Tory MPs were able to draw attention to dishonest or misleading reports with any effect.

Blogs have changed all that, and brought together thousands of people who have been quietly seething at the BBC for years, but felt they were powerless to do anything about it; complaints about bias now appear daily, both on dedicated 'Beeb-watch' sites and mainstream blogs, and every omission, half-truth and lie is quickly thrown back in the faces of those responsible. There are clearly decent people in the BBC who are truly committed to impartiality, but I think we can chalk this one up to the bloggers.

Source




Greenies send bread prices skyrocketing in Britain: "Premier Foods will force shoppers to pay up to 8p more for a loaf of Hovis after raising the price of bread for the second time this year because of an "unprecedented" surge in wheat costs. The company, which makes Hovis, Mothers Pride and Homepride bread, said that it had no choice but to push through an increase given that wheat prices had doubled in the past 12 months after poor harvests around the world and the UK's dismal summer.... ..Mr Schofield warned that other food products were also facing inflationary pressure, in part because of the desire by governments to give over more farmland to biofuel products. He said: "Everyone is focusing on wheat and bread prices at the moment but there is a general inflation that hasn't been with us since the 1990s. "As long as governments are going to grow fuel there will be in effect an environmental tax on food."



British Yachtsman Who Counted On Global Warming to Cross Arctic Now Trapped by Ice: "In one of the most hilarious cases of being tripped up by dubious scientific hype, British yachtsman Adrian Flanagan attempted to be the first to sail across the arctic north of Russia. He based his hope on the fact that he believed in the Global Warming propaganda that the arctic is rapidly losing its ice thus making his trip possible. One little problem. Cold cruel reality has crushed the Global Warming hype and now Flanagan's boat is trapped by ice in the arctic. Besides the arctic ice, Wrong Way Flanagan now appears to have another problem. Remember those polar bears that Global Warming activists were warning us were endangered? Well, it now seems that the tables have been turned and those endangered polar bears are now endangering Flanagan"



LEONARDO DICAPRIO'S SNORE-FEST : "It's a good thing Leonardo DiCaprio made so much money from "Titanic" a decade ago. His environmental documentary, "The 11th Hour," has been a total bust at the box office. After 18 days in release, the film has grossed only $417,913 from ticket sales. The 90-minute snore-fest is playing on 111 screens this week, but that number is likely to be reduced this Friday. The film will be sent to DVD heaven after that. By comparison, Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim's similar but far more engaging "An Inconvenient Truth" had already made $3.5 million by its 18th day of release. I hesitated to say before "11th Hour" actually opened how mind-numbingly dull it was for fear that I would ruin it for those interested in the subject of global warming. But at Cannes, when the film by Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen was shown to journalists, nearly the entire room fell asleep.



Endangered Species Act out of control : ""Is a salmon born in a hatchery a different species from the same salmon born in the wild? It is hard to believe, but recent Federal court rulings are claiming that otherwise genetically identical fish are separate species, forcing an appeal being announced recently to the 9th Circuit Court. Two court decisions in the last two months show how much is at stake in these questions. In mid-June, Judge John C. Coughenour, of the Western District of Washington, ruled that 'human interference' and the 'unnatural' way that hatcheries maintain salmon populations was unlawful. The judge then ordered that the Upper Columbia River steelhead remain on the endangered species list. Just this month, Judge Michael Hogan in Eugene reached a similar conclusion. ... These decisions will dramatically affect a lot of people living in the Pacific Northwest."

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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7 September, 2007

IT'S THE JOOOOS WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR GLOBAL WARMING!

I wondered when the fruitcakes would get around to this. It took a British fruitcake

Israel is an apartheid state," was the most often-heard charge, closely followed by calls for a boycott. The West should cut its economic ties with the Jewish state, the speakers urged, and engage the "democratically elected" Islamists now running Gaza.

No, this was not a Hamas rally somewhere in the Palestinian territories. This was Brussels, where the European Parliament last week played host to the "United Nations International Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace." If the conference title's inversion of the truth is reminiscent of Communist-style propaganda, this is no coincidence. The meeting was organized by the U.N. Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, a Soviet-era body founded around the time of the 1975 U.N. "Zionism is racism" resolution.

That anti-Semitic resolution was revoked in 1991 but the committee continued its activities in the resolution's original spirit. Speaker after speaker at the European Parliament on Thursday and Friday presented the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from an exclusively Palestinian perspective. Israel was accused of human rights violations while Palestinian terrorism and incitement went unmentioned.

The delegates invoked the Israeli occupation as the underlying cause for the conflict without mentioning the Palestinian rejectionism and violence that prevent further Israeli withdrawals. The "right of return" of millions of Palestinians, which would lead to the demographic destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, was upheld despite the official claim to favor a two-state solution.

Amid this standard-Israel-bashing, a few delegates managed to come up with a few innovative charges against the Jewish state. There was Clare Short, a member of the British Parliament and Secretary for International Development under Prime Minister Tony Blair until she resigned in 2003 over the Iraq war. Claiming that Israel is actually "much worse than the original apartheid state" and accusing it of "killing (Palestinian) political leaders," Ms. Short charged the Jewish state with the ultimate crime: Israel "undermines the international community's reaction to global warming."

According to Ms. Short, the Middle East conflict distracts the world from the real problem: man-made climate change. If extreme weather will lead to the "end of the human race," as Ms. Short warned it could, add this to the list of the crimes of Israel.

FULL STORY here




BBC bows to demands for objectivity

The BBC has scrapped plans for "Planet Relief", a TV special on climate change

The decision comes after executives said it was not the BBC's job to lead opinion on climate change. Celebrities such as Ricky Gervais were said to be interested in presenting the show, which would have involved viewers in a mass "switch-off" to save energy. The BBC says it cut the special because audiences prefer factual output on climate change.

Environmentalists slammed the decision as "cowardice". "This decision shows a real poverty of understanding among senior BBC executives about the gravity of the situation we face," said activist and writer Mark Lynas.

Source




GLOBAL WARMING UNLIKELY TO AFFECT FOOD PRODUCTION

Discussing: Xiong, W., Lin, E., Ju, H. and Xu, Y. 2007. "Climate change and critical thresholds in China's food security". Climatic Change 81: 205-221.

What was done

The authors used "the A2 (medium-high GHG emission pathway) and B2 (medium-low) climate change scenarios produced by the Regional Climate Model PRECIS, the crop model CERES, and socio-economic scenarios described by IPCC SRES, to simulate the average yield changes per hectare of three main grain crops (rice, wheat, and maize) at 50 km x 50 km scale" for the entire country of China.

What was learned

The four researchers from the Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing report finding that "the yield per hectare for the three crops would fall consistently as temperature rises beyond 2.5øC." However, they also found that "when the CO2 fertilization effect was included in the simulation, there were no adverse impacts [our italics] on China's food production under the projected range of temperature rise (0.9-3.9C)."

What it means

If air temperatures continue to rise throughout the next few decades - for whatever reason - it would appear to be imperative that the air's CO2 concentration continue to rise right along with them; for only under such conditions will China, as well as most of the rest of the nations of the world, be able to adequately feed the larger numbers of people that will reside within their boundaries just a few decades hence, without usurping unconscionable amounts of land and freshwater resources from what could be called wild nature, which actions would inevitably lead to the extinctions of innumerable species of both plants and animals.

Source

Abstract follows:

Climate change and critical thresholds in China's food security

By: Xiong, Weil et al.

Identification of `critical thresholds' of temperature increase is an essential task for inform policy decisions on establishing greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets. We use the A2 (medium-high GHG emission pathway) and B2 (medium-low) climate change scenarios produced by the Regional Climate Model PRECIS, the crop model - CERES, and socio-economic scenarios described by IPCC SRES, to simulate the average yield changes per hectare of three main grain crops (rice, wheat, and maize) at 50 km x 50 km scale. The threshold of food production to temperature increases was analyzed based on the relationship between yield changes and temperature rise, and then food security was discussed corresponding to each IPCC SRES scenario. The results show that without the CO2 fertilization effect in the analysis, the yield per hectare for the three crops would fall consistently as temperature rises beyond 2.5 C; when the CO2 fertilization effect was included in the simulation, there were no adverse impacts on China's food production under the projected range of temperature rise (0.9-3.9 C). A critical threshold of temperature increase was not found for food production. When the socio-economic scenarios, agricultural technology development and international trade were incorporated in the analysis, China's internal food production would meet a critical threshold of basic demand (300 kg/capita) while it would not under A2 (no CO2 fertilization); whereas basic food demand would be satisfied under both A2 and B2, and would even meet a higher food demand threshold required to sustain economic growth (400 kg/capita) under B2, when CO2 fertilization was considered.

Climatic Change, Volume 81, Number 2, March 2007, pp. 205-221




CHINA, DEVELOPING STATES RESIST PRESSURE ON EMISSION CUTS

Developing nations led by China and Southeast Asian states are resisting efforts by the US and Australia to forge a new framework for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, diplomats said Wednesday. Sharp disagreements over a statement on climate change to be issued at an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit here have highlighted the divisions, said the diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has put climate change high on the summit's agenda, proposing a new approach that would veer away from the Kyoto Protocol, the main international treaty on climate change. The Kyoto accord expires in 2012 and the APEC summit is one of a series of meetings at which plans for a post-Kyoto agreement on reducing the greenhouse gas emissions behind global warming are being discussed.

Australia and the US have rejected Kyoto on the grounds that it does not commit developing countries such as China and India to the same sort of emissions cuts as industrialized nations. Howard has proposed a 'new template' after 2012 calling on developing nations do more to cut their emissions. This has met with robust opposition from developing states, who accuse Australia of undermining the Kyoto accord and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC).

An Indonesian diplomat said Australia should allow the UNFCC to take the lead in planning strategies for the post-Kyoto world. The UNFCC is holding its meeting in Bali in December. 'We don't want any duplication of the UN framework. There should be no action plans in the [leaders'] statement' at the APEC summit, the diplomat said. A senior official said he and his colleagues from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations met Monday to coordinate their positions on a climate change statement. 'We're saying that for the purpose of the leaders' statement, you don't have to include the action agenda,' the official said. 'It should be a short statement and straightforward. They should not put in too many details.'

The ASEAN officials also insisted that the UNFCC should remain as the main framework for any post-Kyoto plan. 'China supports the ASEAN bloc,' he said. China, one of the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, has said it should not be expected to take drastic action because it needs to focus on lifting more Chinese out of poverty through economic growth.

But Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer urged developing nations to accept that they have to do more to cut gas emissions while addressing poverty. 'We should try to take a more inclusive view of addressing the issue of greenhouse gas emissions,' he told a news conference. 'Hopefully, through APEC, we will be able to make some progress in changing the paradigms of how the whole issue of climate change is addressed, but I have no illusions of that being easy,' he said.

Source




CALIFORNIAN GLACIERS DEFY GLOBAL WARMING

The debate over global warming has taken a pretty odd twist in Northern California. Up on Mount Shasta, the glaciers are not behaving like you'd expect. Big mountains often produce their own weather patterns. Mount Shasta, at 14,162 feet seems to have a mind of its own these days. Shasta has seven glaciers. The biggest is the one on the middle, Whitney Glacier. What has surprised scientists about the glacier is that if the theories about global warming are true, the glacier ought to be shrinking, but it's not. "Unlike most areas around the world, these glaciers are advancing, they are growing. Thirty percent in the last fifty years," says scientist Erik White.

White and mountain climber Chris Carr are Shasta experts. "Every year it's a little bit different. But the glacier changes dramatically, year to year," says Carr. So why are the glaciers larger today than they were a century or more ago? "Mount Shasta is right at the very northern end of areas influenced by El Nino and we're at the southern end of areas affected by La Nina. So between the two we get to see the benefits of that which means more snow and rain in this area," says White.

Snow scientists have been tracking the glaciers' size by comparing photos from a century ago to those taken decades later, and then using satellite data and computer modeling to determine the rate of growth. Those models predict Shasta will continue to receive more than normal snowfall, but if the temperature continues to rise, the glaciers will begin to recede.

For now, the growing glaciers are good news to the town of Mount Shasta which hosts the thousands of tourists who come to here to experience the thrill of ice climbing. You can climb mountain Shasta all the way to the glaciers to see for yourself, but, you'd better have good hiking equipment and be in good shape too!

Source

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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6 September, 2007

BATTLE LINES DRAWN AT APEC ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Developing nations led by China are set for a bruising battle here with the United States and Australia on climate change, a senior official at a summit of Asia Pacific nations said on Monday. The veteran Southeast Asian foreign ministry official, who asked not to be named, said talks to craft a separate leaders' statement on climate change are expected to be "bloody".

Ranged against developed nations such as APEC summit host Australia and the United States are China and a group of developing countries gravitating around Beijing's position, he said. "There's going to be a very big debate," the official told AFP. "The debates will just accentuate the differences."

Leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum are expected to issue a statement on climate change at the end of the September 8-9 leaders' meeting, but there have been differences on the content. The source said China felt Australia and the United States - the only two countries to have refused to ratify the Kyoto accord on curbing global warming - were trying to change the treaty's rules.

An Australian proposal for APEC to set a goal of reducing "energy intensity" across the region by 25 percent by 2030 would change commitments under Kyoto, the official said. His comments came after Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who made climate change a focus of the summit, admitted it would not set binding targets on reducing emissions of the greenhouse gases which are blamed for global warming.

Source




Give Up Your SUV -- And Other Nauseating Hypocrisy

You can't make this stuff up, folks. Last week, during a speech to a labor group in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards told the crowd: "One of the things [Americans] should be asked to do is drive more fuel-efficient vehicles." Asked if by saying that he was specifically telling Americans to give up their SUVs, Edwards replied, "Yes."

It's a wonder we Americans haven't choked to death on all the hypocrisy we've been force-fed of late. Naturally, Edwards owns and drives an SUV himself -- several, in fact. In Washington D.C. he often pilots his Cadillac SRX, while at his North Carolina spread -- a 28,000-square-foot manse more than ten times the size of the average American home -- one can easily spot several more those-aren't-Priuses (click to enlarge accompanying photo). Asked at the labor-group speech how he can reconcile asking other Americans to sacrifice while he's living so large, Edwards replied: "I have no apologies whatsoever for what I've done with my life. My entire life has been about the same cause, which is making sure wherever you come from, whatever your family is, whatever the color of your skin, you get a real chance to do something great in this country."

Translation: "I get to do something I call great (make millions off class-action lawsuits, buy a leviathan house and big cars for my family, and pamper my hair), but your 'real chance' ends with buying a transportation device that I've decided may affect the future of my precious spawn."

This is not a politically biased rant; today's nauseating two-facedness crosses party lines (i.e., our own Republican governor Mr. Schwarzenegger, who touts the environmental wonders of a "hydrogen highway" while his leased private jet etches thick carbon trails up and down the California coast). It's much more of an "us versus them" confrontation, "us" being any rich politico looking to protect his or her unfettered access to privilege and luxury, "them" being the suckers (you and me) being asked to sacrifice for the good of our noble caretakers (I must admit, though: Democrats do have a particular gift for projecting the green-bohemian persona while simultaneously snacking high on the food chain).

The ridiculousness of it all apparently knows no bounds. John Kerry recently appeared on Jon Stewart's show to promote his new green, "do as I say" bible, "This Moment on Earth" (co-written with his wife, Theresa Heinz Kerry, who ekes out her ascetic, earth-conscious existence in five gigantic mansions worth a combined $30 million). "We're running out of time," said Kerry, perhaps referring to a delay in refueling the couple's $1 million yacht or their $35 million Gulfstream jet. But, he noted, by reading his book "the little people can you can develop a sustainable way by which to live." Kerry, by the way, sustains himself on the road thusly (answering a 2004 query by the Detroit News): "Well, we have a couple of Chrysler minivans. We have a Jeep . . . and a PT Cruiser up in Boston . . . and we have some SUVs . . . and an old Dodge 600 that I keep in the Senate . . . and I also have a Chevy. A big Suburban."

Our own senator Dianne Feinstein wants us Californians to carpool and only run our dishwashers when they're full (both reasonable suggestions). But her motivation for our frugality isn't saving the earth -- it's to offset her many trips on her husband's Gulfstream IV. Aviation experts say that just one cross-country round trip on a GIV churns out between 83,000 to 90,000 pounds of carbon dioxide. Meantime, while the eco-moralizing Kerrys and Feinsteins are choking the clouds with private coast-to-coast jaunts, the average earth-raping American, on a per-capita basis, produces just 50,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from all activities (including driving those shameful SUVs) in an entire year. Let them eat carbon cake, John.

Indeed, the mere business of being green (or at least appearing to be) takes a nauseating toll. Of late, actor Leonardo DiCaprio has become a leading, high-profile spokesperson for the green movement because . . . well, he's pretty. Which is precisely why Vanity Fair, for its so-called "Green Issue" (printed on high-quality, non-recycled paper, by the way) flew Leo, photographer Annie Leibovtiz, and an untold number of assistants, makeup artists, and assorted hangers-on to Iceland to produce an earth-saving photograph of the Green Idol on a glacier alongside the polar bear cub Knut (who in fact was Photoshopped in from Berlin). Puffed VF: "Now three and a half months old, little Knut has become a powerful (if not controversial) symbol of what this planet has to lose to global warming. Such ecological concerns are familiar to actor and environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio, so it seemed natural to pair these two handsome boys on Annie Leibovitz's cover for this year's Green Issue."

You can almost hear the exchange at the Vanity Fair editorial meeting. Junior art director: "What if we really make a green statement, and just drive Leo and Annie down to the San Diego Zoo in a Prius and take a polar-bear shot there?" Editorial green director: "What? No way! We need to fly the entire crew halfway around the world and back and spend at least a few days hacking around on that precious ice to get the perfect green shot I want! Now, call my secretary and get a limo; I'm late for my lunch at the Four Seasons."

I doubt the Vanity Fair team even realized the irony of photographing their handsome eco poster boy in front of a Cessna Citation private jet (but, hey, it is a great shot).

Which finally gets around to my point: Our leaders and media pundits aren't panicking about global warming and touting the bliss of going green because they're actually worried about the future of the planet. They're making a fuss because they think global warming is going to affect them. Why, if New York City turns into Venice and LA dries up and Aspen melts, where are we going to host our gala save-the-earth benefit dinners? Why, I could even lose two or three of my six homes!

How do I know this is true? Because, thus far at least, global warming is -- as Al Gore actually gets right -- inconvenient, not a true problem. Sure, it's been a hot summer. Maybe hotter than usual. It might get a little worse, or it might not. We live on a geologically and atmospherically active planet; temperature variations are the norm. Sorry, Boomers: It's not always going to be 75 and sunny the way it was that glorious day at Woodstock. Meantime, turn up the air con a bit, or go for a swim. You're not going to die.

The thing is, while the hysterics are fretting about the "horrors" of global warming and the plight of poor little Knut, more than one million people (most of them women and children) are dying every single year -- today, right now -- of malaria. That's a problem we can fix, easily, inexpensively. A few strategic squirts of DDT, some smartly dispensed prophylactic medicines, and we could save the lives of more than one million people every single year almost overnight.

Does anybody care? Are they making movies and books about the malaria crisis? No, malaria is over there, not here. Right now, we've all got to focus on getting green and making everybody give up their SUVs so we don't burn up our planet. After all, it's a pretty long walk from the bullet-proof Suburban to the GIV. And I hate to sweat.

Source




CA: Commuters not flocking to public transit -- even when it is free

Why expose yourself to problem people and extra travelling time when you don't have to?

Hot weather has prompted another Spare the Air alert for Thursday, giving Bay Area residents another opportunity to take advantage of free transit rides. Today was the first such smog alert of the year. Yet the lure of free travel didn't seem to create a huge surge of extra riders on the Bay Area's trains, buses and ferries.

Some agencies are offering the free rides all day, but others - such as BART, Caltrain, the ferries and the Altamont Commuter Express trains - are only offering free morning rides. The same fare procedures will be in effect Thursday. The free-transit program kicks in on days when air quality officials predict particularly poor air quality that can lead to health problems. The goal is to lure people out of their cars to reduce smog. Vehicles are the top source of smog pollution, which worsens on hot days. Bay Area officials have paid for up to four such days of free transit this year. The smog season runs through Oct. 12.

Potentially record-breaking temperatures are expected today across the state. Heat advisories are in effect for Los Angeles and much of the Central Valley and power officials issued new calls today asking people to conserve. The California Independent System Operator, the agency in charge of the state's power grid, issued a Stage One alert and predicted that supplies will be short on Thursday as well. Last year there were three State One alerts, which are issued when the state's reserve power supplies falls below 7 percent.

Some transit systems saw modest ridership increases during the Spare the Air day. The Golden Gate ferries running from Larkspur to San Francisco carried 3,213 passengers this morning, almost 500 more than last Wednesday's morning commute, said spokeswoman Mary Currie. San Francisco Muni officials said that anecdotal evidence showed buses and streetcars were more crowded this morning. Drivers, station agents and passengers on BART, Caltrain, SamTrans and AC Transit said that if there were more passengers, the bump didn't seem to be significant.

BART's decision to add extra cars to the trains could have deflated the sense of crowding if there were a lot more people taking advantage of the free rides. Agency spokeswoman Linton Johnson said the ridership numbers won't be available until Thursday.

For Stuart Lee, 48, of Piedmont, it was just another day on an AC Transit bus, which he rides to work at the Oakland Police Department. "It was great because it was free," Lee said. The bus, however, was no more crowded than usual, he said. "It should have been."

One person who did take advantage of this morning's free rides was Rebecca Eisenhart, who took BART from Oakland to her job in San Francisco's Financial District. Eisenhart said she usually drives to work because her employer pays for half her parking. Today's trip was "hassle-free," said Eisenhart, adding she wanted to do her part to keep her car off the road. She acknowledged, however, that she expects to get behind the wheel again Thursday. "Honestly, when I'm in my car, it's one of the few times all day that I have all by myself, even if there are thousands of other cars around me," Eisenhart said.....

Officials decided to limit the hours on the trains and ferries after the systems' regular riders complained that their commutes were ruined by rowdy teens and others in search of a no-cost adventure. The incidence of petty crimes spiked on BART, for example, and crowds squeezed onto the ferries and Caltrain trains, making it uncomfortable for the regulars.

More here




EUROPE'S GREEN CON: CLIMATE FIGHT BRINGS MEGA PROFITS TO EU POWER FIRMS

European power companies are making billions of euros in excess profits in the European Union's battle to beat global warming by cutting emissions of carbon gases, and consumers are paying for it, economists say. The electricity generators are given, free of charge, permits to emit millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide which are currently worth around 20 euros a tonne, but are then charging consumers as if they had been made to pay for the permits. Michael Grubb, Chief Economist at the Carbon Trust and Director of Climate Strategies, calculates that this practice which he says is economically justifiable gives the industry windfall profits of some 20 billion euros (US$27.14 billion) a year. "It is free money," he told Reuters. "It's how you'd expect companies to behave, but politically and morally it is going to be hard to justify making so much money out of a scheme designed to reduce emissions -- with consumers footing the bill."

FULL STORY here




UK PUBLIC 'WARY OF GREEN TAX MOTIVES'

Nearly two-thirds of the public believe ministers are using environmental fears as an excuse to raise tax revenue, according to a poll. And research suggests their cynicism is justified - with green taxes raking in œ10 billion more for the Treasury than it would cost to offset the entire UK's carbon footprint. The figures are contained in a dossier compiled by pressure group the TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA). The document is likely to provide grim reading for politicians of all colours - including Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Tory leader David Cameron - who are committed to making individuals pay for habits which damage the environment. A survey carried out by YouGov for the TPA found that only a fifth of people thought politicians were genuinely trying to change behaviours using the tax system. In contrast, 63% believed they were using the issue as an excuse to pull in more cash. ... Using previous international research into climate change, the report estimated that covering the social cost of carbon emissions would have cost œ11.7 billion in 2005. But receipts from green taxes such as fuel duty, road tax and the Climate Change Levy totalled œ21.9 billion. On average every household in the UK paid œ400 more in levies than it cost to cover their own footprint, the TPA claimed.

FULL STORY here

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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5 September, 2007

Now dams cause global warming!

Between cow farts and dams, how will we ever survive? Greenies have always hated dams, of course. In the circumstances, it would seem in harmony with their beliefs to cut off the town-water supply to all Greenies. They might actually discover where town water comes from then: DAMS

THE world's dams are contributing millions of tonnes of harmful greenhouse gases and spurring on global warming, according to a US environmental agency. International Rivers Network executive director Patrick McCully today told Brisbane's Riversymposium that rotting vegetation and fish found in dams produced surprising amounts of methane - 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide.

"Often it's accepted that hydropower is a climate friendly technology but in fact probably all reservoirs around the world emit greenhouse gases and some of them, especially some of the ones in the tropics, emit very high quantities of greenhouse gases even comparable to, in some cases even much worse than, fossil fuels like coal and gas," Mr McCully said.

He said when water flow was stopped, vegetation and soil in the flooded area and from upstream was left to rot, as well as fish and other animals which died in the dam. They then released carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide into the air. "Basically they're factories for converting carbon into methane and methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas - it's less known than carbon dioxide but it's actually about 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide in terms of trapping heat in the atmosphere."

Mr McCully said global estimates blamed dams for about a third of all methane emissions worldwide. The Brazilian National Space Agency estimated that was about 104 million tonnes of methane each year, or 4 per cent of the human impact on global warming, he said.

Mr McCully said that was a lot for such a small sector. But he said it was an area that was under-researched so a clearer picture of how dams were contributing to global warming was not known. The only Australian research that had been done was on Tasmanian dams, which found emissions were around 30 per cent of a natural gas plant - a much higher reading than US dam emissions, Mr McCully said. Those readings would be higher in hotter parts of Australia, especially northern Queensland, he said. Mr McCully said greater energy efficiency needed to be researched to overcome the problem, including technology that could produce energy from the methane from dams.

The 10th annual Riversymposium, Australia's largest river management conference, brings around 500 delegates from 40 countries to Brisbane this week to discuss river health, damming practices, drought and climate change.

Source




EUROPE ISOLATED: INDUSTRIAL NATIONS REJECT EU'S CLIMATE POLICY

Industrial nations were shying away from fixing stiff 2020 guidelines for greenhouse gases cuts at U.N. talks on Friday in what environmentalists said would be a vote for "dangerous" climate change. A draft text at the U.N. talks dropped mention of steep cuts in greenhouse gases of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 as a non-binding "guide" for rich nations' work on a pact to fight global warming beyond 2012, delegates said. "We're still working on the text," said Leon Charles, the chair of the session from Grenada after overnight talks on the final day of August 27-31 meeting in Vienna of 1,000 delegates.

The European Union and many developing nations such as China and India wanted industrial states to use the stringent 25-40 percent range to guide future talks to force a shift away from fossil fuels, blamed by U.N. reports for stoking global warming. But Russia, Japan, Canada, New Zealand and Switzerland objected to setting the stringent range in negotiations about extending the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, the main plan for fighting global warming that runs to 2012, delegates said. "The lower the stabilization level (of greenhouse gases) achieved, the lower the consequent damages," the draft said.

It mentions the option of 25-40 percent cuts but drops a previous reference to them as an initial indicative range to guide future work. "This is voting for the apocalypse," said Stephanie Tunmore of environmental group Greenpeace. "The 25-40 percent range is needed to help avert dangerous climate change" such as more powerful storms, rising seas and melting glaciers, she said. "Japan is willing to let the typhoons roll in and the water flow onto its coastal land. Switzerland is committed to melt all its remaining glaciers," environmentalists said in a newsletter.

Kyoto binds 36 industrial nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 in a first step to contain warming that could bring more floods, desertification, disease and raise sea levels. The talks are the first chance for Kyoto backers to see if they can agree a range for industrial nations' talks on a new climate pact that many governments want to agree in 2009. The United States has not ratified Kyoto and thus is not involved.

President George W. Bush has separately called a meeting of major emitters in Washington on September 27-28. Cuts of 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 are the stiffest scenario by the U.N.'s climate panel in a May 2007 report seen as limiting global warming to 2.0 to 2.4 Celsius (3.6 to 4.3 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The EU, which has said it will unilaterally cut emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and by 30 percent if other nations follow suit, and environmentalists say that any gain in temperatures above 2 Celsius will bring dangerous changes.

Source




IPCC, POLICY NEUTRALITY AND POLITICAL ADVOCACY

We have commented in the past here about how the leadership of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has flouted its own guidance to be "policy neutral" by engaging in overt political advocacy on climate change. The comments by its Director Rajendra Pachauri reported today again highlight this issue: "I hope this [forthcoming IPCC] report will shock people, governments into taking more serious action as you really can't get a more authentic and a more credible piece of scientific work."

Imagine, by contrast, if the Director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, another organization with an agenda to be "policy neutral," were reported in the media to say of the agency's latest assessment on Iran, "I hope that the report will shock people, governments into taking more serious action." He would be looking for a new job in no time, I am sure. Why should climate change be treated differently?

The past reaction to my comments on political advocacy by IPCC leadership has been mixed. Some who share the IPCC's advocated agenda see no problem in the IPCC leadership engaging in such advocacy. Who wouldn't want such a group perceived as authoritative and legitimate on their side? (Similarly, I am sure neo-cons would welcome a CIA Director advocating action on Iran!)

By contrast some opposed to the advocated agenda have seized upon the obvious inconsistency in the IPCC's views on "neutrality" to try to impinge the credibility of the organization. From my perspective, while both of these perspectives are to be expected (and I am sure will make their views known in response), there is a third view that matters most -- and that is the question of the appropriate role of organized expertise in decision making, whether it is the CIA or IPCC. This last view is quite independent of (or it should be) what one thinks about the issues of climate policy.

It seems obvious that if the IPCC leadership is inconsistent in its statements on "policy neutrality" then it does risk becoming perceived as an organized interest, not unlike an NGO, which will eat away at its own authority and independence, which derives in no small part from its claims to "neutrality." The IPCC could correct this perception (or reality) of inconsistent behavior by removing its goal of being "policy neutral" and openly admit a political agenda that it is advocating. Alternatively, the IPCC's leaders could eschew public discussions of what they prefer for political outcomes.

Neither of these options seems particularly realistic. A formal departure from stated "neutrality" would harm the IPCC's credibility, so it won't do that. And the temptation to use scientific authority as a tool of politics is very strong, and won't stop unless scientific leaders in the IPCC suggest that it should stop. The best option of all, and which I recognize is fanciful dreaming on my part, would be for the IPCC to present decision makers with a wide range of policy options and their consequences, recognizing that the IPCC is an advisory body, not an advocacy group.

There should be room in public discourse on climate change for an authoritative group to comprehensively assess options and their consequences, recognizing that advisors advise and decision makers decide. The tension between the IPCC's stated objective of "policy neutrality" and behavior by its leaders that is decided "non-neutral" is unlikely be sustainable. The IPCC should come to grips with what it means by "policy neutral."

Source




NASA VS MCINTYRE: THE GUARDIAN STILL DOESN'T GET IT

No, the Guardian still managed to miss the importance of this: "An amateur meteorologist in Canada has embarrassed Nasa scientists into admitting that some of the data they used to show significant recent increases in global warming is flawed. As a result of Stephen McIntyre's calculations, climatologists at the Goddard Institute of Space Science in New York now accept that 1934 was historically the United States' hottest year since records began, not 1998 as they had claimed. It also turns out that five of the 10 warmest years on record in the US occurred before 1939, and only one is from the 21st century, raising questions over the statistics used in Al Gore's environmental film An Inconvenient Truth to highlight the faster pace of climate change."

It isn't that he's an amateur meteorologist, it's that he's a professional statistician. That the temperatures are moved around by a few hundreds of a degree, agreed, that they cover only the US, not the globe, agreed. But that there are statistical errors in this whole towering pyramid is a serious problem. As regular readers will know, I'm not a climate change "denialist", nor even sceptic. It's happening and we're causing at least part if not most of it (that being my personal opinion and it's worth exactly what you're paying for it). I do have problems with three things.

1) The SRES. The economic models which are used to provide the emissions numbers which are then fed into the computer models. I don't think they cover all of the likely, let alone possible, future paths. I think it's absurd that between TAR and AR4 that these were not updated: we're still working on pathways a decade old, when we know a great deal more now than we did then on which way the global economy seems to be going (for example, the A1 family, actually showing greater emissions, now seems more likely than A2 which is what Stern used).

2) What we should do about it, something which is again an economic argument, not a climate science one.

3) The details of the statistics in such things as temperature records and the adjustments made to them: exactly the area that McIntyre is working on. No, I don't think that there's been some mass conspiracy, nor lying. But we are trying to make decisions about trillions upon trillions of dollars here. You can even insert "the future of the human race" or "the future of the planet" rhetoric here if you wish.

For all the talk coming out of things like the Stern Review about insurance....well, OK, let's talk about insurance, shall we? Before we conclude that we do need to spend $13 trillion, or $25 trillion, or whatever today's number is, can we please go and spend a few million, perhaps a few tens of millions, checking our workings? That is a reasonable insurance policy, isn't it? Get everyone's workings out into the open and go over them again? Given that it is exam season, what's the advice given to everyone doing anything mathematical? Check your workings before you hand in the paper?

Source




CLIMATE HYSTERIA TEARING BRITISH TORIES APART

A ROW has broken out between leading Conservatives over plans to impose taxes on air travel, gas-guzzling cars and other environmentally damaging forms of transport. The proposals are contained in the party's long-awaited Quality of Life report, which will inform the Conservatives' policies on the environment, transport, food, energy and waste. It is expected to recommend the imposition of VAT [sales tax] on fuel for domestic flights and incentives to persuade air passengers to switch to trains for trips around Britain and northern Europe. It will also promote a big increase in cycling by making local authorities provide more cycle lanes and offering free bikes in cities.

The report, drawn up by Zac Goldsmith and John Gummer, is not due for publication until next week but John Redwood, a leading rightwinger, will launch an opening salvo today against some of its expected proposals, warning Gummer and Goldsmith "they need to steer a very careful course".

In an interview with GMTV, he will warn against a freeze on airport expansion, saying: "Airports are particularly important to Britain's economic growth." He will also attack plans to tax air travel, arguing that such taxes would cause "an economic loss" without "a green gain" since travellers could choose to fly from foreign airports. "You need to accept that there is going to be some airport and air travel growth and if it doesn't happen here, it'll happen elsewhere."

Goldsmith's supporters make it clear that the real differences between them and Redwood go much further than aviation. They are about the party's core beliefs in an era when climate change and quality of life rival the economy in importance. "We need to strike a new balance on these issues," said shadow environment secretary Peter Ainsworth. "We need a grown-up debate to work out how to reconcile competition with protecting the environment."

FULL STORY here

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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4 September, 2007

British class hate underlies many "environmental" causes

I wonder would British snobs be able to relate to the triumphant working-class culture here. They would be pathetic human beings to sneer at it but I suspect that they would sneer. Just the compere's hat would be deeply offensive to them. I suspect that a lot of American environmentalism is snobbish too. The Hollywood version does come to mind

This column is ... about the hate that dare not speak its name: class hatred. It is about hate-by-proxy: the distaste (I share it) for Dianamania, the dislike of supermarkets, the hatred (I'm not immune to it) of redtops [popular newspapers], the shudder (mine, sometimes) at low-cost airlines . . . all these allergens in the very air the top half of society must breathe have something in common. They remind us of the mob. I submit that, however weak or strong the justifications we may offer for our disapproval of a variety of features of what might be called mass culture, these various antipathies are inflamed by a single, secret anxiety, as old as the French Revolution, which in modern democracy we find it hard to acknowledge: fear of the common people.

Let's start with supermarkets: a touchy subject in modern Britain. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. "Supermarkets -- love 'em or loathe 'em" ran the intro to Jon Manel's series of discussions on the BBC Today programme, running all week. You'd have thought we were encountering one of the great questions of our time, the kind of debate that pits village against village and tears families apart: slavery, the Irish Question, Suez, Iraq, and Tesco.

Which is odd, because the series featured a specially commissioned poll whose most notable finding was that 79 per cent of respondents liked supermarkets. Among a curmudgeonly public it doesn't get much better than this: chocolate-covered cream puffs, Mother Teresa or a beach holiday in the Caribbean would be unlikely to outperform the British supermarket industry's 79 per cent approval-rating. So why, like a recurring theme through public debate in recent decades, does "down with supermarkets" keep elbowing its way into commentary and news? If I hadn't guessed already, a packed public meeting in Andover (where the radio programme took us) protesting against a proposed Tesco warehouse development, gave the game away to any listener with an ear for English accents.

People at the Andover meeting sounded posh. We heard none speaking with anything other than Received Pronunciation. Odd, for I know Andover; my nana lived there, and she had nothing against Tesco. But she was called Nana, not Gran, and that should alert you to something about the majority not present. Nana wasn't, and they aren't, posh. I have checked my hunch with locals and it was right: the driving force behind opposition to this development comes from the better-off: from the villages around the town; not from the estates and housing developments in the town itself.

Dislike of supermarkets is an overwhelmingly middle-to-upper-middle-class phenomenon. All classes use supermarkets, but it is the top half of society that voices (and genuinely feels) a distaste for them. Why? The same question may be asked about the wave of revulsion (I share it) that swept the middle-to-upper echelons of society after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, when images of public grief and crowd sentimentality dominated the news. Little had changed yesterday, ten years on. The accents among the crowds were rough. Those voicing distaste for Dianamania were well spoken. This was a well-born woman but the common people loved her and mourned her loss, and the Establishment dislikes both their love and their grief. Why?

And do you remember the arrival in Britain of satellite television? At first its big selling point was sport - football and boxing - plus American cartoons like The Simpsons; and its initial market penetration was stronger on council estates than country estates. With it came satellite dishes: inoffensive objects, a good deal more tasteful and less prominent than the ugly metal TV aerials already on almost every roof. Yet there were endless complaints and letters to broadsheet newspapers, and in some places the dishes were for a while banned as aesthetically unacceptable. Why?

Today we have low-cost airlines like Ryanair and easyJet. With them has come cheap-flight-phobia. My observation as a frequent Ryanair flier is that the better-off use these flights more or less in proportion to our comparative numbers, and a flight to Perpignan or Girona is typically a fair cross-section of British society. It is also, typically, full, with minimum leg-room and restricted luggage, and therefore (in pints of fuel per pound of flesh) the second-most-environmentally friendly form of flight (after hang-gliding) known to man. This has not prevented an often scathing campaign against the whole idea of cheap flights. Among voices raised in this cause I have yet to hear a working-class accent.

Luton is a more efficient and less bothersome airport than Heathrow, yet people I know affect disdain at the idea of flying from there. Why? You have only to remind yourself of the horror expressed by the educated in the 19th century at the advent of railways (Wordsworth shudders at the idea that any fool in Bakewell could be in Buxton in half an hour, and vice versa) to understand their modern counterparts' excess of eco-sensitivity in the face of cheap flying.

You have only to read the 18th-century coffee shop derision at the mass hysteria of the grieving London mob at the hanging of the Rev Dr Dodd to understand modern Highgate's horror of Dianamania. To understand today's snootiness about Tesco, recall the early 20th century's snootiness about the very idea of cooperative stores. Popular newssheets have appalled the well-bred since popular newssheets began. The Hillsborough tragedy brought mountains of wreaths nearly a decade before Diana.

Diana's death did not change Britain. It reminded the modern Establishment of its deep insecurity in the face of the English mob: an object of fear, wonder and distaste since long before Spanish travellers returned to the imperial court in Madrid with horror stories of rough and volatile crowds who shouted in public and kissed and embraced each other in front of strangers. Ever since the French Revolution the top half of English society has glanced nervously at the crowd outside the window and muttered "could it happen here?".

We don't really trust democracy. We don't really like our countrymen. We no longer dare say so, not directly. So we sneer at their shops, shudder at their newspapers, disapprove of their means of mobility, find their joys tasteless and recoil even from their grief.

Mock tacky TV soap-opera all you like - and then tune in to The Archers; joke about shell suits [jogging gear] then fork out for silk; bemoan the greenhouse gas emissions of a cheap flight then emit four times as much flying business class. But don't pretend this is about quality or worth, the environment, taste or even beauty. It's partly about class. It always has been. It still is.

Source




Global Warming, the Great Lifesaver

Bjorn Lomborg says balmier weather could ward off millions of deaths. Yes, Bjorn Lomborg, the controversial Danish economist, believes that "global warming is real and man-made." But he is convinced that we are not thinking the problem through correctly and are, in fact, lost in a kind of green fog about how best to deal with global warming and other major environmental threats. In this excerpt from his new book, "Cool It", Lomborg illustrates how a major climate-related killer goes underreported, while human deaths from heat waves make front-page news.

The heat wave in Europe in early August 2003 was a catastrophe of heartbreaking proportions. With more than 3,500 dead in Paris alone, France suffered nearly 15,000 fatalities from the heat wave. Another 7,000 died in Germany, 8,000 in Spain and Italy, and 2,000 in the United Kingdom: The total death toll ran to more than 35,000. Understandably, this event has become a psychologically powerful metaphor for the frightening vision of a warmer future and our immediate need to prevent it.

The green group Earth Policy Institute, which first totaled the deaths, tells us that as "awareness of the scale of this tragedy spreads, it is likely to generate pressure to reduce carbon emissions. For many of the millions who suffered through these record heat waves and the relatives of the tens of thousands who died, cutting carbon emissions is becoming a pressing personal issue."

While 35,000 dead is a terrifyingly large number, all deaths should in principle be treated with equal concern. Yet this is not happening. When 2,000 people died from heat in the United Kingdom, it produced a public outcry that is still heard. However, the BBC recently ran a very quiet story telling us that deaths caused by cold weather in England and Wales for the past years have hovered around 25,000 each winter, casually adding that the winters of 1998-2000 saw about 47,000 cold deaths each year. The story then goes on to discuss how the government should make the cost of winter fuel economically bearable and how the majority of deaths are caused by strokes and heart attacks.

It is remarkable that a single heat-death episode of 35,000 from many countries can get everyone up in arms, whereas cold deaths of 25,000 to 50,000 a year in just a single country pass almost unnoticed. Of course, we want to help avoid another 2,000 dying from heat in the United Kingdom. But presumably we also want to avoid many more dying from cold.

For Europe as a whole, about 200,000 people die from excess heat each year. However, about 1.5 million Europeans die annually from excess cold. That is more than seven times the total number of heat deaths. Just in the past decade, Europe has lost about 15 million people to the cold, more than 400 times the iconic heat deaths from 2003. That we so easily neglect these deaths and so easily embrace those caused by global warming tells us of a breakdown in our sense of proportion.

How will heat and cold deaths change over the coming century with global warming? Let us for the moment assume-very unrealistically-that we will not adapt at all to the future heat. Still, the biggest cross-European cold/heat study concludes that for an increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit in the average European temperatures, "our data suggest that any increases in mortality due to increased temperatures would be outweighed by much larger short-term declines in cold-related mortalities." For Britain, it is estimated a 3.6øF increase will mean 2,000 more heat deaths but 20,000 fewer cold deaths. Likewise, another paper incorporating all studies on this issue and applying them to a broad variety of settings in both developed and developing countries found that "global warming may cause a decrease in mortality rates, especially of cardiovascular diseases."

But of course, it seems very unrealistic and conservative to assume that we will not adapt to rising temperatures throughout the 21st century. Several recent studies have looked at adaptation in up to 28 of the biggest cities in the United States. Take Philadelphia. The optimal temperature seems to be about 80øF. In the 1960s, on days when it got significantly hotter than that (about 100øF), the death rate increased sharply. Likewise, when the temperature dropped below freezing, deaths increased sharply.

Yet something great happened in the decades following. Death rates in Philadelphia and around the country dropped in general because of better health care. But crucially, temperatures of 100øF today cause almost no excess deaths. However, people still die more because of cold weather. One of the main reasons for the lower heat susceptibility is most likely increased access to air-conditioning. Studies seem to indicate that over time and with sufficient resources, we actually learn to adapt to higher temperatures. Consequently we will experience fewer heat deaths even when temperatures rise.

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More pesky climate variability from natural causes: India's monsoons more variable than thought

India's monsoon is much more variable than previously thought, a new study by an Indian origin geologist has revealed. To study changes over long periods of time, Ashish Sinha of California State University in Carson, and his colleagues studied a section of stalagmite from a cave in eastern India.

First they dated its layers by looking at thorium and uranium isotopes, and then looked at levels of the oxygen-18 isotope in these layers. Higher oxygen-18 concentrations correlate with lower rainfall.

Findings revealed that in the past, rains have declined drastically for periods lasting up to 30 years, causing severe droughts. The monsoon supplies nearly 80 per cent of South-East Asia's rainfall, and is vital for agriculture. Instrumental records going back 150 years show that the monsoon has occasionally failed for several years at a time.

The findings appear in the Geophysical Research letters, reports New Scientist.

Source

Journal abstract follows:

A 900-year (600 to 1500 A.D.) record of the Indian summer monsoon precipitation from the core monsoon zone of India

By Ashish Sinha et al.

We present a near-annually resolved record of the Indian summer monsoon (ISM) rainfall variations for the core monsoon region of India that spans from 600 to 1500 A.D. from a 230Th-dated stalagmite oxygen isotope record from Dandak Cave. Our rainfall reconstruction, which spans the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the earliest portion of the Little Ice Age (LIA), indicates that the short instrumental record of ISM underestimates the magnitude of monsoon rainfall variability. Periods of severe drought, lasting decades, occurred during the 14th and mid 15th centuries and coincided with several of India's most devastating famines.

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L16707




The cost of cooling the climate

United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki Moon is convening a high level meeting on global warming at the U.N. headquarters on September 24. The idea is to jump-start the climate change negotiations for the 13th Conference of the Parties (COP-13) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). COP-13 is scheduled for December 3-14 in Bali, Indonesia.

President George W. Bush is also inviting representatives from the major industrial countries and large developing countries to come to Washington, DC to discuss climate change on September 27-28. The goal of both meetings is figure out what to do about reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, after 2012 when the Kyoto Protocol expires. Under the Kyoto Protocol most industrialized nations-with exception of the United States and Australia-have agreed to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent below what their 1990 levels.

What is the optimal climate change policy-the one that sets future emissions reductions to maximize the economic welfare of humans? Yale University economist William Nordhaus,perhaps the world's leading expert on the economics of climate change, has just released a new study, The Challenge of Global Warming: Economic Models and Environmental Policy,which estimates the costs of various proposed trajectories for limiting carbon dioxide over the next couple of centuries.

Nordhaus and his colleagues have developed a small but comprehensive model that combines interactions between the economy and climate called DICE-2007, short for Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy. Nordhaus first computes a baseline that assumes that humanity does essentially nothing to limit its output of carbon dioxide. By 2100 CO2 atmospheric concentrations would rise from the pre-industrial level 280 parts per million (ppm), to 380 ppm today, to 685 ppm in 2100. Global average temperature would rise by 2.4 degrees Celsius by 2100. In this baseline scenario, the DICE-2007 model estimates that the present value of climatic damages is $22.6 trillion. DICE-2007 includes damage to major sectors such as agriculture, sea-level rise, health, and non-market damages.

Nordhaus then uses his model to assess the ambitious CO2 reduction proposals made by British economist Nicholas Stern and former Vice President Al Gore. Nordhaus calculates that the Stern and Gore proposals for steep immediate emissions reductions produce very similar cost/benefit results. Nordhaus also evaluates explicit temperature and concentration goals, e.g., limiting average temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above current levels or greenhouse gas concentrations to no more than 1.5-times pre-industrial CO2 atmospheric concentrations.

So what did Nordhaus find? First, the Stern proposal for rapid deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions would reduce the future damage from global warming by $13 trillion, but at a cost of $27 trillion dollars. That's not a good deal. For an even worse deal, the DICE-2007 model estimates that the Gore proposal would reduce climate change damages by $12 trillion, but at a cost of nearly $34 trillion. As Nordhaus notes, both proposals imply carbon taxes rising to around $300 per ton carbon in the next two decades, and to the $600-$800 per ton range by 2050. A $700 carbon tax would increase the price of coal-fired electricity in the U.S. by about 150 percent, and would impose a tax bill of $1.2 trillion on the U.S. economy.

In addition, scenarios which attempt to keep the future average temperature increase below 1.5 degrees Celsius and concentrations below 1.5-times pre-industrial atmospheric concentrations are also not cost-effective. The DICE-2007 model calculates that both would cost more than $27 trillion in abatement costs and provide only about $13 trillion in reduced damages.

The optimal policy? Nordhaus reckons that the optimal policy would impose a carbon tax of $34 per metric ton carbon in 2010, with the tax increases gradually reaching $42 per ton in 2015, $90 per ton in 2050, and $207 per ton of carbon in 2100. A $20 per metric ton carbon tax will raise coal prices by $10 per ton, which is about a 40 percent increase over the current price of $25 per ton. A $10 per ton carbon tax translates into a 4 cent per gallon increase in gasoline. A $300 per ton carbon tax would raise gasoline prices by $1.20 per gallon.

Following this optimal trajectory would cost $2.2 trillion and reduce climate change damage by $5.2 trillion over the next century. "The net present-value global benefit of the optimal policy is $3.4 trillion relative to no controls," writes Nordhaus. "While this is a large number absolutely, it is a small fraction, about 0.17 percent, of the discounted value of total future income." Keep in mind that in this optimal scenario climate change damages would still accumulate to $17 trillion (lower than $22.6 trillion in the baseline case), but they are not abated because to do so would cost more than the benefits obtained.

A more optimistic scenario envisions the invention of a low cost zero-carbon technology. Such a technology would have a net value of around $17 trillion in present value. As Nordhaus notes, "The net benefits of zero-carbon substitutes are so high as to warrant very intensive research." Setting a price on carbon through a rising tax will encourage the development of such technologies. Another good way to hurry the process along would be to offer a substantial prize to the inventor of a cheap low carbon energy technology, e.g., perhaps a better battery, or paint-on solar cells.

Nordhaus cogently argues that neither doing nothing nor trying to halt global warming immediately are sensible policy targets. Nordhaus's study is certainly not the final word on climate change policy, but it would be a excellent starting point for climate change negotiators when they gather in New York, Washington and Bali this fall.

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REALITY CHECK: GLOBAL WARMING NOT A HOT PRIORITY FOR THE PUBLIC

Americans think global warming is real and serious. Poll after poll shows that there are not many climate skeptics left. The issue has received an enormous amount of media attention over the past several years, but it still doesn't rank at or near the top of issues people want the president and Congress to address. In January, when the Pew Research Center updated its yearly poll on priorities for the president and Congress, global warming ranked twentieth of twenty-three issues. Pew described concern about the issue as "lukewarm."

The poll was taken before the latest wave of media attention to global warming, but other more recent polls show the same pattern. In a survey taken in late May and early June by The Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University, the issue ranked eighth of ten issues examined. And it isn't just sentiment in the polls. According to the Pew Project on Excellence in Journalism, the media ratings for the July "Live Earth" concerts orchestrated to draw attention to the issue were "disappointing," with smaller than normal Saturday summer viewership.

Why doesn't the issue have a bigger public opinion footprint? First, many people see global warming as a problem for the future. Other issues such as the war in Iraq and health care seem more immediate to larger numbers of people. For most people, there have been few tangible manifestations of global warming. Polling on environmental issues over the past several decades shows that people are usually most concerned about problems they can see in their communities. Weather patterns seem unusually severe in many parts of the country, but the vagaries of the weather are a familiar story.

Another possible explanation relates to changing views of the media. When the environment emerged as a powerful political issue in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the media had more credibility than it has today. The media has joined government, labor and big business as powerful institutions about which the public is skeptical. In Gallup polls taken yearly since 2001, around three in ten have said the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated, while around 35 percent say it is generally underestimated. In Pew's most recent media usage survey from 2006, just 20 percent said that they believed all or most of what they read in Time magazine, for example. Time's overheated tag line for its April cover story on global warming, "Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid," probably only confirms the skeptics' suspicions about exaggeration.

It is also possible that Americans think they have been heard on the issue and will let politicians, interest groups and others take over. Again, the manner in which the environment emerged as an issue is instructive. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Americans decided that a clean and healthful environment was important to them. Once they agreed on the ends policy should serve, most people pulled away from the debate about the means -- that is, exactly what kinds of legislation should be enacted to ensure environmental progress. They had neither the time nor the knowledge to get involved in complex debates about ambient air quality or energy options. Americans aren't indifferent, but they are inattentive. Their benign neglect is a backhanded compliment to representative democracy, an indication of confidence in the process.

Lobbyists and activists can't pack their bags and go home. The debates in Washington on global warming will be as intense as ever, but most Americans will be on the sidelines. Interest groups will claim they have public opinion on their side in terms of how to respond to global warming, but how you word questions on complex hypothetical policy choices often determines the answers.

Finally, there may be another reason Americans have not elevated the issue. Most politicians younger than 81-year old House Environment and Public Works chairman John Dingell grew up with the environmental movement. We're all environmentalists now, and it is hard to make a political issue out of a commitment shared by most of the population.

George Bush's marks on virtually every aspect of his presidency are negative, including his handling of global warming, and Democrats lead the Republicans in every poll as the party better able to handle the issue. In a new Newsweek poll, 68 percent say Bush hasn't done enough, but in another question only 4 percent say they will vote on the basis of global warming. Nearly six in ten say the issue will be one of a number of issues that will be important to their vote. There is little evidence from the polls that taking on George Bush or the Republicans on the issue will make it a top-tier issue or increase its political weight.

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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3 September, 2007

UN CLIMATE TALKS GO NOWHERE

Parties to the UN's Kyoto Protocol wound up troubled talks here Friday with broad pledges, but no specific commitments, to deepen cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming. In a final document issued after hours of wrangling, they ditched a proposed text whereby industrialized countries would consider cutting their emissions by 25-40 percent by 2020 compared to their 1990 levels, diplomats said.

The goal had been spelt out in a draft statement backed by countries of the European Union but opposed by other delegations, notably Canada, Japan, Switzerland, New Zealand and Russia, they said. The figures had been spelt out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the world's top climate-change experts -- as an option for policymakers seeking to keep global warming to less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial levels.

Instead, the Vienna paper said Kyoto parties "recognized" the IPCC range and described it as providing "useful initial parameters for the overall level of ambition of further emissions reductions."

The talks took place under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A total of 175 of the 191 UNFCCC's members are parties to the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out at the end of 2012. Negotiations on a successor treaty to Kyoto take place in Bali, Indonesia in December, gathering all UNFCCC members.

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Eco-Narcissism

When you hear the phrase `eco-car', probably the first thing you think of is the Toyota Prius. Toyota's hybrid car, which combines electric and petrol engines to reduce fuel usage, and thus helps to `save the planet' from too much oil-use and grey exhaust fumes, has been a huge hit and has won widespread celebrity endorsement (1). Indeed, the word `Prius' has become synonymous with `hybrid car'. Just getting hold of a Prius can be hard work, as there are long lists of eco-aware drivers who want one.

Now, Japanese rivals Honda are getting a bit jealous of the success of Toyota's car. After all, Honda launched a planet-friendly hybrid driving machine of their own well before the Prius hit our roads. But Honda's models haven't proved nearly as popular as the Prius. Why not?

The success of the Prius isn't exactly based on how much money one will save. Yes, it will save you some money at the petrol pumps, as a Prius doesn't require as much petrol as other cars do, but the difference in the cost of upkeep between a Prius and a normal car isn't that great. In fact, there is some doubt as to whether the Prius is any better than many comparable diesel-powered models (2), which is a bit of a choker when you consider that the similarly sized Toyota Auris costs about 5,000 less than a Prius.

The saving grace for Prius owners is that the car has been given a privileged status by many city and regional authorities around the world. In London, the Prius is exempt from the Congestion Charge, saving drivers œ8 per day. Consequently, London's private-hire fleets of cars are buying more and more Prius vehicles. This privileging of one kind of car over another on London's streets shows, as we have argued on spiked, that the Congestion Charge actually has little to do with congestion, and is more about making moral judgements about good and bad kinds of driving (see London: still stuck in a jam, by Nico Macdonald). In California, Prius drivers won access to the car pool lane, in theory making their commute to work quicker; however, after the Californian authorities revised their fuel economy figures, they withdrew this privilege from the Prius.

Honda makes perfectly serviceable hybrid cars, too; in fact, it was the pioneer in the field. So why do so few people buy Honda hybrids? Why have `Civic' or `Insight' not entered the eco-lexicon in the way that `Prius' has? The answer is, partly at least, because they look the same as regular Honda cars. Honda made a conscious decision to keep the look of their regular models so that buyers would not be put off by hybrid cars that looked too new or exotic. But as MSNBC reported this week, that is no good for many eco-motorists who buy distinct-looking hybrid cars precisely to show off their green credentials.

`That's a big part of why I bought the Prius', said one New York retiree who traded in his Honda Civic for the better-known, and more easily identified, Toyota Prius. `It opens up conversations, and I push my theory that we've got to do our best to conserve. If I'm driving a hybrid, I want people to know it.' (3) He's in good company, with right-on celebs like Leonardo Di Caprio happy to parade their planet-saving hearts on their sleeves (or in their driveways at least). Honda is so cheesed off with all of this that it is withdrawing its current hybrid models and replacing them with more distinctive designs.

Some of this desire to drive instantly recognisable `good cars' is vanity, wanting to be seen to be part of a new in-crowd. As such, green living has become a currency by which you can prove you're an intelligent, caring kind of person. Eco-living may prove to be as superficial as any other passing fad (remember the catwalk models who campaigned against fur only to be seen wearing it a couple of years later?) And there's more than a whiff of hypocrisy about rich celebs who make a song-and-dance about their Prius-driving ways but who keep a private jet parked in their personal hangars for long trips.

But the Prius fad is also a symptom of the deeply conformist nature of green living, where it seems the chosen ones are desperate to show their piety, just as the religious bores of the past did. From their pulpit in the front seat of their energy-saving eco-car, the enlightened can lecture the rest of us about our sinful ways. Their message? `Driving is bad - but if you must drive, make it a Prius.'

This desperate desire to be seen to be green is not just about the car you drive. From organic food to recycling, out-and-proud ethical living is all the rage. Ethical living is not entirely about impressing other people; for many, it also seems to serve a therapeutic function, a way of assuaging their guilt about their excessive consumption and comfortable lifestyles. But it seems that an important strain of the eco-lifestyle is to let everyone know you are being ethical, to proclaim your inherent goodness from the rooftops (in the form of ostentatious but largely useless windmills) or from the front of your recognisable hybrid cars (in the form of a smug look of concern at other, lesser drivers). Welcome to the era of eco-narcissism.

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Storm Surge

By BJORN LOMBORG

Even as the clean-up continues in the Atlantic Basin, a lot has been written about Hurricane Dean. Some commentators believe nature is sending us a message. They say that the effects of climate change are getting out of hand, and it is time to take action. We have heard this point many times before. With every "extreme weather event," passionate climate change activists ride a public wave of concern. Former Vice President Al Gore believes we must make drastic reductions in carbon emissions because weather-related disasters are on track to cost as much as $1 trillion by 2040.

Mr. Gore is right that there is a growing problem, but he has identified the wrong solution. The global cost of climate-related disasters has increased relentlessly over the past half century. Hurricane Dean has left behind many billions of dollars of damage. But when Mr. Gore links global warming to the spiraling increase in weather-related insurance costs, he misses the fundamental points.

It has become more popular than ever to reside in low-lying, coastal areas that are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather. In Florida, more people live in Dade and Broward counties today than lived in all 109 coastal counties from Texas through Virginia in 1930. It's obvious that more damage will occur when many more people with much more wealth live in harm's way.

No matter how you look at it, however, the prospect of $1 trillion of weather-related damage by 2040 is frightening. But it is just as frightening that we have developed a blinkered focus on reducing carbon emissions as a way to somehow stop the devastation of events like Hurricane Dean. Presumably, our goal is to help humans and the planet. Cutting carbon is a very poor way of doing that. If coastal populations kept increasing but we managed to halt climate warming, then research shows that there would still be a 500% increase in hurricane damage in 50 years' time.

On the other hand, if we let climate warming continue but stopped more people from moving into harm's way, the increase in hurricane damage would be less than 10%. So, which policy knob should we turn first: The climate knob that does so very little, or the societal knob that would do 50 times more?

It is obviously unrealistic to believe that we could turn either knob all the way. We cannot halt climate change entirely, just as we cannot hold back the wave of people moving into beach houses. If the United States and Australia were to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol and its binding restrictions were to last all the way until 2050, very little would be achieved: Hurricane damage would increase by half a percent less than it would without Kyoto. There are many more effective things we could do. Communities at risk should have better education, evacuation plans and relief distribution.

These are "ambulance at the bottom of the cliff" measures, but there are also plenty of proactive options, like regulating vulnerable land and avoiding state-subsidized, low-cost insurance that encourages people to build irresponsibly in high-risk areas. Policy makers can improve and better enforce building codes to ensure structures can withstand higher winds, and maintain and upgrade the protective infrastructure of dikes and levies. More investment could be made in improved forecasts and better warning systems. Reducing environmental degradation and protecting wetlands would mean fewer landslides and stronger natural barriers against hurricanes.

Conservative estimates suggest we could halve the increase in damage through these incredibly cheap and simple social policy measures. This was shown powerfully in a previous weather disaster, Hurricane Katrina, when one insurance company found that 500 storm-hit locations that had implemented all the hurricane-loss prevention methods experienced one-eighth the losses of those that had not done so. By spending $2.5 million, these communities had avoided $500 million in damage. Often, big benefits can come from cheap and simple structural measures like bracing and securing roof trusses and walls using straps, clips or adhesives.

We shouldn't ignore climate change. We should tackle it smartly. We should make a 10-fold increase in research to make zero-carbon energy cheaper in the future. This would be much more efficient than Kyoto, yet cost almost 10 times less.

In any event, hurricane damage is increasing, whether we like it or not. Kyoto would cost trillions and reduce increased damage by about 0.5%. Simple preventive measures would cost a small fraction of that cost, but do a hundred times better. Hurricane Dean is a reminder of nature's force. Over the past few years, we have focused on only one "solution" to extreme weather events. Imagine if we had spent our time and energy on approaches that would actually make things better in the future. We still have an opportunity.

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Another stabilizing feedback mechanism

Played down, of course

Permafrost - the perpetually frozen foundation of North America - isn't so permanent anymore, and scientists are scrambling to understand the pros and cons when terra firma goes soft. Permafrost serves like a platform underneath vast expanses of northern forests and wetlands that are rooted, literally, in melting permafrost in many northern ecosystems. But rising atmospheric temperatures are accelerating rates of permafrost thaw in northern regions, says MSU researcher Merritt Turetsky. In the report, "The Disappearance of Relict Permafrost in Boreal North America: Effects on Peatland Carbon Storage and Fluxes," in this week's online edition of Global Change Biology, Turetsky and others explore whether melting permafrost can lead to a vicious feedback of carbon exchange that actually fuels future climate change.

"The loss of permafrost usually means the loss of terra firma in an otherwise often boggy landscape," Turetsky said. "Roads, buildings and whole communities will have to cope with this aspect of climate change. What this means for ecosystems and humans residing in the North remains of the most pressing issues in the climate change arena."

Working closely with researchers from Southern Illinois University, Villanova University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Turetsky, assistant professor of crop and soil sciences and fisheries and wildlife, found that permafrost degradation has complex impacts on greenhouse gas fluxes from northern wetlands. Their study focused on peatlands, a common type of wetland in boreal regions that slowly accumulates peat, which is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation. Today, peatlands represent a massive reservoir of stockpiled carbon that accumulated from the atmosphere over many thousands of years. Peat blankets the permafrost and protects it like a thick layer of insulation.

"We find permafrost in peatlands further south than in other boreal ecosystems due to the insulating qualities of peat.So we have argued that these ecosystems serve as a very sensitive indicator of climate change," Turetsky said. "What will happen to peatlands when climate change disrupts these frozen layers, or perhaps more importantly what will happen to all of that stored carbon in peat, have remained big questions for us."

Their results were surprising.Turetsky and her colleagues studied areas affected by permafrost degradation across a large region of Canada. They initially expected to find that the melting ice would trigger a release of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, as previously frozen plant and animal remains became susceptible to decay. "This could serve as a positive feedback to climate change, where typically warming causes changes that release more greenhouse gases, which in turn causes more warming, and more emissions, and so on," she said.

But what the researchers actually found is not such a clear-cut climate story. Permafrost collapse in peatlands tends to result in the slumping of the soil surface and flooding, followed by a complete change in vegetation, soil structure, and many other important aspects of these ecosystems, Turetsky said.The study showed that vegetation responds to the flooding with a boost in productivity. More vegetation sequesters more carbon away from the atmosphere in plant biomass. "This is actually good news from a greenhouse gas perspective," Turetsky said.

However, the report also cautions that this flooding associated with collapsing permafrost also increases methane emissions.Methane is an important greenhouse gas, which is more powerful than carbon dioxide in its ability to trap heat in the earth's atmosphere. Turetsky said it seems the permafrost degradation initially causes increased soil carbon sequestration, rather than the large releases of carbon to the atmosphere originally predicted.But over time high methane emissions will balance - or outweigh - the reduction of carbon in the atmosphere. "Not all ecosystems underlain by permafrost will respond the same way," Turetsky cautioned. "It will depend on the history of the permafrost and the nature of both vegetation and soils." What is clear, she said, is that not even northern ecosystems can escape the wide reach of climate change.

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Greenie fiction about the planned Tasmanian pulp mill

HAS anyone bothered to ask Tasmanians if they really want to be "saved" by mainland "celebrities"? But what would Tasmanians know about their own island, right? That's why more than 100 kinda-famous people from nowhere near Tasmania have signed a petition to stop the island from building itself a $2 billion pulp mill in the Tamar Valley. Led by millionaire Sydney businessman Geoffrey Cousins, they are campaigning against another mainlander, Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, warning that if he doesn't stop this satanic mill he could lose his Sydney seat.

Stop Tasmania's mill, demand playwright David Williamson from the Sunshine Coast; tennis star John Newcombe from Sydney; actor Rachel Ward from near Coffs Harbor; radio host Wendy Harmer from Sydney; Fairfax executive Mark Burrows from Sydney; TV chef Kylie Kwong from Sydney; film director Phillip Noyce from Hollywood; A-list ex-headmistress Rowena Danziger from Sydney and arts critic Leo Schofield from Sydney. Hear them cry from their concrete haunts: Stop those Tasmanians from building their forest-murdering, planet-choking, water-fouling, wine-tainting pulp mill in the Tamar Valley, that Garden of Eden, or face ruin by people who live nowhere near the place.

That's quite some bullying, and by people who have little on their side but more cash and cachet than the average voter. Certainly more cash and cachet than the workers who'll get a job at this planned mill, or a cut of the taxes on its earnings. It's odd that these far-away celebrities can so easily assume the right to block a project in Tasmania that's been backed by that state's Government, checked by its environment experts and approved by its parliament with the support of Labor, the Liberals and independents. What kind of patronising is this?

But out of this celebrity intervention comes both a lesson and laugh. The lesson is in the hazard of green dreamers making a cause of some project far away, of which you and they know little and thus imagine much. For instance, from all the hype and the soft-focus pictures, you will by now think - as these celebrities seem to think - that the Gunns pulp mill will be built in a valley as pristine and beautiful as the day Gaia made it.... see the lingering footage on the ABC's 7.30 Report this week of misty fields, babbling brooks and serene hills, all with a soundtrack of dreamy music - a vision of paradise soon to be torn to shreds and blackened by A STINKING LOUSY PULP MILL.

Ah, the advantages of a little local knowledge, rather than some long-distance Dreaming. Attention: the mill is not going to be built in Eden, or in any of the 40 per cent of Tasmania that's now national parks and reserves, but in the Bell Bay industrial precinct. Its neighbours there will not be fauns and woodsprites, but heavy industries of the kind that have been in this zone for many, many years - a steel smelter, an aluminium smelter, a wood chip mill, a fibreboard plant, a power station, a fuel depot, and a few other factories of a kind to give a green believer the vapors. Shocking, I know, that such grunting, clanking, sweating businesses are allowed to exist, even with their emissions cut to negligible - as the emissions of the pulp mill most certainly will be.

But I have a newsflash for the denizens of Sydney's smartest cafes: man cannot live on green fundraising calendars alone. It's in fact industries such as these that give Tasmanians the cash that allows them, too, to enjoy the shows a Schofield recommends, the films a Noyce directs, the dinners a Kwong cooks, the private schools a Danziger runs, the plays a Williamson writes, and the health cookies of the nearby bakery which Cousins part-owns. Who knows, they might even choose to spend their dirty dollars on the high-minded paper that Burrows publishes.

Oh, did I mention paper? That reminds me of the laugh in this campaign to stop a mill that pulps wood for paper. How are the celebrities fighting this plant? Not just by running ads in a newspaper published in Turnbull's electorate. Cousins is also stuffing 50,000 letterboxes in Sydney with copies of the endless and emotive essay of author Richard Flanagan, which he says inspired him to go on his crusade. Wow - 50,000 copies of this booklet? That's quite some paper these anti-mill campaigners are using. Tasmania will need a new pulp mill to cope.

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The Lockwood 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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2 September, 2007

Bedbugs are back

DDT sent them close to extinction but they have now bounced back and only that wicked DDT will eradicate them again

Five decades after being declared officially dead, the most toe-curling of all America's critters has returned, with a spate of bloodsucking attacks on unsuspecting victims as they sleep. The culprit is Cimex lectularius - otherwise known as the common bedbug. Until recently it was known happily to Americans only from nursery rhymes.

Not any more. Up to 5mm in length, wingless, nocturnal and covered in microscopic hairs, the bedbug was supposed to have been eliminated from the US by the pesticide DDT, which was later banned by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1972 because of the damage it caused to fish, birds and other wildlife. But now the insect is back, and its sudden return has been proclaimed "one of the great mysteries of entomology". Over recent months bedbugs have been turning up in hospitals, nursing homes, cinemas, dry cleaners, schools, public housing and even some well-to-do residential homes.

They are attracted to the very thing that has caused the US, and the rest of the world, so much grief lately: carbon dioxide. While historically it is the carbon dioxide in human breath that has brought them out to feed, experts speculate that rising levels in the air could be behind their renaissance. Every day seems to bring a new tale of infestation - and, in the land that spawned the compensation culture, a new lawsuit.

Maya Rudelph, star of Saturday Night Live, is suing her New York landlord for $450,000 over a claim that her $13,500-a-month SoHo loft apartment is infested with the insects. In Ohio a woman is suing the Hilton hotel chain after she allegedly suffered more than 150 bites in a room, leaving her "physically scarred and emotionally damaged".

The bugs have been gone for so long now that few know how to deal with them. "We have a whole new generation of people in our profession who had never seen a bedbug," said Leonard Douglen, executive director of the New Jersey Pest Management Association, which organised a trade show at Rutgers University last week devoted to the pest's resurgence.

Another problem: with DDT banned, the bedbugs laugh in the face of the pyrethroid-based compounds now used against them. "We've had cases where we're spraying 200 to 300 times the label dose of toxins and we can't kill 'em," Michael Potter, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky, complained during a seminar in New York last week.

Anyone unsure of what a bedbug calls mealtime is invited by Dr Potter to look at a video posted on YouTube by his university. It shows a bug, in close-up, on the flesh of a victim. The bug appears translucent at first, but after injecting the human with saliva - which contains anticoagulants and anaesthetics - the bug turns crimson as it gorges on blood.

Bedbugs are hard to see, as are their eggs, of which they can lay six a day. Although they like to feed every five to ten days, they can survive without a bloodsucking session for as long as 18 months. The good news is that while they have been known to contain pathogens such as plague and hepatitis B, bedbugs have not been linked with the transmission of any diseases.

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Leo DiCaprio, Expert Climatologist

Movie "The 11th Hour" Serves as Latest Round of Silly, Self-Righteous Hollywood Environmentalism

No longer satisfied playing the role of vacuous teen dreamboat, actor Leo DiCaprio now presumes to play the role of meteorological expert on all things climate-related. Joining that vast herd of self-righteous Hollywood global-warming hysterics, DiCaprio last week opened his new "documentary" entitled The 11th Hour, which he both narrates and produced. No word yet on whether DiCaprio dons a white lab coat or horn-rimmed bifocals to fabricate that extra little sense of legitimacy and expertise.

According to a fawning summary in the reliably-partisan Los Angeles Times, DiCaprio peppers the film with "traumatic images of destruction" to advance his theme that "everyone and everything on Earth is linked and it will take a collective shift of individual determination to save the planet." Unfortunately for the dinosaurs, sabretooth tigers and Neanderthals, there was no prehistoric Leo DiCaprio to save them from similar destruction.

But this silliness is merely the tip of Leo's iceberg, assuming that icebergs still exist in our supposedly-sweltering sauna of a planet. And speaking of icebergs, isn't it also tragic that DiCaprio wasn't around in 1912 to stop that deadly wave of global cooling that doomed the Titanic? After all, his starring role in the movie of the same name should have been sufficient to raise his consciousness to that little climate cataclysm. Global warming, global cooling - what matters is not climatic reality, but the ability of well-meaning celebrities to morally preen before an adoring audience of clueless young minds.

Regardless, DiCaprio, who apparently also moonlights as a socio-political expert, aims to do much more than merely whip up a meringue of typical environmentalist hysteria. Rather, his ultimate goal is apparently nothing less than complete worldwide socio-economic reconstruction. According to DiCaprio, "the collapse of the environment is not the problem - it's a symptom. The real problem is industrial civilization and how we organize society." Can you say "Karl Marx?"

The mind boggles at the possible degree of social upheaval that he seeks. Does he actually intend to abolish all worldwide industry? Is it "goodbye manufacturing industry, and hello homemade sandals and garden sustenance?" Will pretentious Hollywood actors still be able to fly private jets and drive convoys of giant SUVs with blackened window tinting?

Levity aside, DiCaprio's bald partisan vitriol is nothing short of pathetic. On the movie's official website, DiCaprio narrates the usual tripe about "irreparable damage" to a supposedly-fragile Earth while sinister images of the White House, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice roll.

The official movie trailer subsequently trumpets the standard doomsday hyperbole, such as the claim that "the U.N. estimates that by the middle of the century, there may be 150 million environmental refugees." But don't hold your breath on that. DiCaprio and his silly army of associates in this nonsense would be well-advised to recall 1970s climate-change alarmist Paul Ehrlich, who boldly predicted worldwide starvation due to oncoming global cooling - yes, cooling.

Undeterred, the trailer then boldly pronounces that, "the tragedy is the potential extinction of humankind." A straight-faced DiCaprio then appears to appoint "our pivotal generation" (more pivotal than the World War II generation, Leo?) as responsible for "creating a sustainable world in time." Obligatory images of cute penguins and ridiculous contraptions such as ugly windmills and grass-covered buildings follow, creating a cavalcade of self-parody.

But never mind the facts. Years from now, when the utter absurdity of these enviro-economic fascists comes to light, such claims will be conveniently swept under the rug. By then, a new bogeyman will be fabricated by the Left to advance their collectivist, anti-freedom agenda.

In the meantime, however, this isn't all fun and games. It's easy to mock DiCaprio as the foolish airhead that he is, but the damage that he and people like him create is very real, and it's no laughing matter. Schoolchildren who will naturally be subjected to this nonsense are likely to swallow it wholesale, as will adult dupes who are unaware of the facts regarding natural climate fluctuation and the consequences of environmentalist orthodoxy.

Accordingly, everyone should do themselves a favor and read Christopher C. Horner's fantastic book entitled The Politically-Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism. It's the perfect antidote to the lunacy of Al Gore and Leo DiCaprio.

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THE CHALLENGE OF GLOBAL WARMING: ECONOMIC MODELS AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

This is an excerpt from the most recent contribution by econometrician Nordhaus. Nordhaus shows that the Kyoto approach is very inefficient in achieving its goals and that there is no urgency in dealing with any global warming

A. Preface

The issues involved in understanding global warming and taking policies to slow its harmful impacts are the major environmental challenge of the modern age. Global warming poses a unique mix of problems that arise from the fact that global warming is a global public good, is likely to be costly to slow or prevent, has daunting scientific and economic uncertainties, and casts a shadow over the globe for decades, perhaps even centuries to come.

The challenge of coping with global warming is particularly difficult because it spans many disciplines and parts of society. Ecologists may see it as a threat to ecosystems, marine biologists as a problem arising from ocean acidification, utilities as a debit to their balance sheets, and coal miners as an existential threat to their livelihood. Businesses may view global warming as either an opportunity or a hazard, politicians as a great issue as long as they don't need to mention taxes, ski resorts as a mortal danger to their already short seasons, golfers as a boon to year-round recreation, and poor countries as a threat to their farmers as well as a source of financial and technological aid.

This many-faceted nature also raises challenges to natural and social scientists, who must incorporate a wide variety of geophysical, economic, and political disciplines in their diagnoses and prescriptions. This is the age of global warming ... and of global-warming studies.

The present study uses the tools of economics and mathematical modeling to analyze efficient and inefficient approaches to slowing global warming. It describes a small but comprehensive model of the economy and climate called the DICE-2007 model, for Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy. The current study is a completely revised version of earlier models developed by the author and collaborators to understand the economic and environmental dynamics of alternative approaches to slowing global warming. It represents the fifth major version of modeling efforts, with earlier versions developed in the periods 1974-1979, 1980-82, 1990-1994, and 1997-2000. Many of the equations and details have changed over the different generations, but the basic modeling philosophy remains unchanged: to incorporate the latest economic and scientific knowledge and to capture the major elements of the economics of climate change in as simple and transparent a fashion as is possible. The guiding philosophy is, in Leonardo's words, that "simplicity is the highest form of sophistication."

B. Reader's Guide to the Book

The current volume combines a description of the new version of the DICE model along with several analyses of major issues and policy proposals. We begin with a brief outline of the major chapters for those who would like a map of the terrain. We begin this book with a Summary for the Citizen, which describes the underlying approach and major results. This chapter stands alone and can be usefully read by non-economists who want the broad overview as well as specialists who would like an intuitive summary.

Chapter II provides a verbal description of the DICE model. Chapter III then provides a detailed description of the model's equations. The actual equations of the model are provided in Appendix A, while the GAMS computer code is provided in Appendix B. More details on the computer code and derivation of the program are available online. Chapter IV then describes the alternative policies that are analyzed in the computer runs. These include everything from the current Kyoto Protocol to an idealized perfectly efficient or "optimal" economic approach. Chapter V presents the major analytical results on the different policies, including the economic impacts, the carbon prices and control rates, and the effects on concentrations and temperature. Chapters VI through IX provide further analyses using the DICE model. Chapter VI begins with an analysis of the impacts of incomplete participation. This new modeling approach is able to capture analytically the economic and geophysical impacts of policies which include only a fraction of countries or sectors; it shows the importance of full participation. Chapter VII presents preliminary results on the impacts of uncertainty on policies and outcomes. Chapter VIII is a policy-oriented chapter that examines the two major approaches to controlling emissions - prices and quantities - and describes the surprising advantages of price-type approaches. Chapter IX provides an analysis, using the DICE model framework, of the recent Stern Review of the economics of climate change.

The final chapter contains some reservations about the results and then provides the major conclusions of the study. For those who are interested in the derivation of the model and technical details, these are available in a full set of documentation in Accompanying Notes [2007].

FULL PAPER here




"Doomsday Clock" hijacked by climate change alarmists

Radical Environmentalists Continue Politicization of Doomsday Clock, Literally Equating Climate Change to Nuclear Weapons

What does the famed nuclear war "Doomsday Clock" have to do with climate change hysteria? According to Al Gore's minions, everything. For the first time since the Clock's inception, its hands have been advanced for a reason other than the prospect of nuclear war. Not because of mass terrorism, not an outbreak of catastrophic conventional war, not political instability in a nuclear-armed nation or other concrete event, but rather due to that trendy, all-purpose bogeyman of the left - climate change.

First introduced by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago in 1947, the iconic clock face shows the remaining "minutes to midnight," with midnight symbolizing humanity's nuclear destruction. The initial 1947 Clock showed seven minutes until midnight as the Cold War descended upon the world, and the minute hand has been advanced or turned back 19 times since that date in response to various geopolitical crises and the threat of global nuclear war. The Clock was advanced to just three minutes to midnight in 1949, when the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, and again to just two minutes in 1953, when the United States and Soviet Union tested advanced hydrogen bombs within nine months of one another.

During subsequent years, the Clock became increasingly politicized to reflect the leftist sympathies of its Board of Directors. For instance, the Board illogically turned the Clock back to 12 minutes in 1972 with the signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, even though this treaty actually eliminated missile defense protections.

The politicized nature of the Clock became even more obvious with Ronald Reagan's ascent to the White House. During the 1980s, the Board predictably expressed its antipathy toward President Reagan, who ultimately ended the Cold War without firing a shot, by advancing the minute hand all the way to just three minutes before midnight. The Board's naked political basis for this decision is best illustrated by quoting its own website:

"The United States seems to flout the few arms control agreements in place by seeking an expansive, space-based anti-ballistic-missile capability, raising worries that a new arms race will begin... Reagan scraps any talk of arms control and proposes that the best way to end the Cold War is for the United States to win it."

Yes, how silly of that foolish warmonger Ronald Reagan to think that America could actually "win" the Cold War. The Kremlin itself couldn't have stated it in a more one-sided manner. In this light, the recent addition of climate change hysteria to the Clock's calculation is merely a pathetic continuation of its gradual politicization.

Nevertheless, the blatant incorporation of global warming silliness is astounding and noteworthy. On January 17, 2007, giddy with anticipation of the release of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," the Board announced that it was advancing the Clock two minutes. Consequently, it now reads five minutes to midnight. According to the Clock's official website:

"We have concluded that the dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons. The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause dramatic harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival".

Of course, the Board neglects to mention that climate change hysterics in the 1970s asserted that global cooling, not global warming, was threatening massive crop failure and billions of human deaths through starvation. But that would be an "inconvenient truth," as Mr. Gore would say.

In what can only be charitably described as breathtaking absurdity, the Board proceeds to assert that climate change is second only to nuclear war in terms of its threat to human existence:

"Global warming poses a dire threat to human civilization that is second only to nuclear weapons".

Did the Board sleep through 9/11? Have they ever heard of Darfur? What about diseases such as malaria that still kill millions because environmentalists in wealthier countries oppose the use of simple preventative vaccines like DDT? One can only wonder what pet political issue the Clock's Board will attempt to dramatize by adding to its minute calculus. Socialized medicine? Secondhand smoke? Labor union protections? Trans-fats? Sadly, none of these would be a shock in light of the clock's politicized history.

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PRIEST OFFERS GREEN CONFESSION

Forgotten to recycle any newspapers or tin cans recently? Feeling guilty because you neglected to carbon offset your flight to somewhere, anywhere, outside England this summer? The Roman Catholic Church is at hand with a new line in "green confessions" to help eco-sinners to find forgiveness. Dom Anthony Sutch, the Benedictine monk who resigned as head of Downside School to become a parish priest in Suffolk, will be at the county's Waveney Greenpeace festival this weekend to hear eco-confessions in what is thought to be the first dedicated confessional booth of its kind.

Vested in a green chasuble-style garment made from recycled curtains, and in a booth constructed of recycled doors, he will hear the sins of of those who have not recycled the things they ought to have done and who have consumed the things they ought not to have done. Father Sutch tries to practise what he preaches but has turned the heating down so low at his church of St Benet's that at least one parishioner has fled to the warmer care of a neighbouring priest for winter services.

He told The Times: "It is not, I hope, blasphemous to do this. I do not think it is. It is just an attempt to make people conscious of the way they live. The Church is aware of green issues and of how aware we have to be of how we treat the environment. "I know the Pope has now set up his own airline, but I am told the Vatican will be planting trees every time it flies. I do think the way we treat our environment is important. "There is a huge amount of greed in the West. We have to be aware of the consequences of how we live."

FULL STORY here.

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The Lockwood paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowleging 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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1 September, 2007

THE "CONSENSUS" EVAPORATES

Comprehensive survey of published climate research reveals varied viewpoints

In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the "consensus view," defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes' work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.

Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy.

The figures are surprising. Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

These changing viewpoints represent the advances in climate science over the past decade. While today we are even more certain the earth is warming, we are less certain about the root causes. More importantly, research has shown us that -- whatever the cause may be -- the amount of warming is unlikely to cause any great calamity for mankind or the planet itself.

Schulte's survey contradicts the United Nation IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (2007), which gave a figure of "90% likely" man was having an impact on world temperatures. But does the IPCC represent a consensus view of world scientists? Despite media claims of "thousands of scientists" involved in the report, the actual text is written by a much smaller number of "lead authors." The introductory "Summary for Policymakers" -- the only portion usually quoted in the media -- is written not by scientists at all, but by politicians, and approved, word-by-word, by political representatives from member nations.

By IPCC policy, the individual report chapters -- the only text actually written by scientists -- are edited to "ensure compliance" with the summary, which is typically published months before the actual report itself. By contrast, the ISI Web of Science database covers 8,700 journals and publications, including every leading scientific journal in the world.

Source




European protectionists trump the Greenies



The European Commission has given in to industry pressure and extended the bloc's import duties on environment-friendly light bulbs made in China for another year. Critics argue the move is against Brussels' proclaimed support for energy efficiency and Europe's climate change ambitions.

Despite his previous intention, trade commissioner Peter Mandelson on Wednesday (29 August) suggested the EU's anti-dumping measure should go in a year, rather than straight away. "This case has once again shown the complexities of managing anti-dumping rules in a global economy and against the broad range of EU interests," Mr Mandelson stated.

The EU executive argues that a further delay on ceasing the tariffs - which add up to 66 percent on the value of bulbs - is justified by "overall community interest" to provide a sufficient transition period for European producers to prepare for it.

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An inconvenient fact

Dr. Patrick Moore -- a co-founder of Greenpeace and chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. in Vancouver comments the latest stupid climate movie

It seems like there's a new doomsday documentary every month. But seldom does one receive the coverage that Hollywood activist Leonardo DiCaprio's latest climate-change rant, The 11th Hour, is getting. When we're bombarded anew with theatrical images of our earth's ecosystems when the film opens across B.C. this Friday, I'm concerned that we're losing sight of some indisputable facts.

Here's a key piece of information DiCaprio, collaborator and long-time activist Tzeporah Berman and the leadership of my old organization Greenpeace are ignoring when it comes to forests and carbon: For British Columbians, living among the largest area of temperate rainforest in the world, managing our forests will be a key to reducing greenhouse gases

As a lifelong environmentalist, I say trees can solve many of the world's sustainability challenges. Forestry is the most sustainable of all the primary industries that provide us with energy and materials. Rather than cutting fewer trees and using less wood, DiCaprio and Berman ought to promote the growth of more trees and the use of more wood. Trees are the most powerful concentrators of carbon on Earth. Through photosynthesis, they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in their wood, which is nearly 50 per cent carbon by weight. Trees contain about 250 kilograms of carbon per cubic metre..... The relationship between trees and greenhouse gases is simple enough on the surface. Trees grow by taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and, through photosynthesis, converting it into sugars. The sugars are then used as energy and materials to build cellulose and lignin, the main constituents of wood.

There is a misconception that cutting down an old tree will result in a net release of carbon. Yet wooden furniture made in the Elizabethan era still holds the carbon fixed hundreds of years ago. Berman, a veteran of the forestry protest movement, should by now have learned that young forests outperform old growth in carbon sequestration. Although old trees contain huge amounts of carbon, their rate of sequestration has slowed to a near halt. A young tree, although it contains little fixed carbon, pulls CO2 from the atmosphere at a much faster rate.

When a tree rots or burns, the carbon contained in the wood is released back to the atmosphere. Since combustion releases carbon, active forest management -- such as removing dead trees and clearing debris from the forest floor -- will be imperative in reducing the number and intensity of fires....

In many countries with temperate forests, there has been an increase in carbon stored in trees in recent years. This includes the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Sweden.

The most important factors influencing the carbon cycle are deforestation on the negative side, and the use of wood, from sustainably managed forests, as a substitute for non-renewable materials and fuels, on the positive side.

To address climate change, we must use more wood, not less. Using wood sends a signal to the marketplace to grow more trees and to produce more wood. That means we can then use less concrete, steel and plastic -- heavy carbon emitters through their production. Trees are the only abundant, biodegradable and renewable global resource.

DiCaprio's movie, The 11th Hour, is another example of anti-forestry scare tactics, this time said to be "brilliant and terrifying" by James Christopher of the London Times. Maybe so, but instead of surrendering to the terror, keep in mind that there are solutions to the challenges of climate, and our forests are among them. This film should be a good, clear reminder for us to put the science before the Hollywood hype.

More here




The Gospel according to Gore

You may have missed it, but April 22nd was National Day of Hope, Prayer and Reflection about Global Warming - presumably not by the edict of the current administration. In the political world Bush is becoming more and more isolated in his stance on this subject. Other public figures are acquiescing one by one. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, who once seemed likely to be an unmovable bastion of big-business conservatism, has been converted and is on the cover of Newsweek, twirling a fragile and endangered world on his finger and announcing draconian measures to limit carbon emissions in California. He's a believer.

Global warming has galvanized the developed world. Liberals sound the warning, Conservatives respond with gradually mounting enthusiasm. Clergy fall to their knees in prayer and repentance. Atheists find new purpose and a moral lodestone. Americans slap concerned bumper stickers on their SUVs and flock to "An Inconvenient Truth". Hollywood swoons and bestows on Gore's slideshow two Academy Awards. The scientific community churns out technical paper after paper in the journals reporting the mounting evidence.

Or do they? Gore assures us of it, stating that there is no controversy. He refers to the multitudes of the world's top scientists voicing unmitigated concern through the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. He cites a study of a random sample of 928 articles on global warming, none of which were found to express doubt. There is a consensus.

However, Michael Crichton (best known for his novels but also a graduate of Harvard Medical School and a former postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies) warned his audience of the dangers of "consensus science" in a 2003 speech:

"Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

"Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. "Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus."

Think of Semmelweiss and puerperal fever. Think of Goldberger and pellagra. Even Gore's favorite example of continental drift highlights the folly of the scientific consensus that mocked Alfred Wegener's theory of Pangaea for half a century.

Al Gore Goes to Hollywood (but not to Caltech)

In his film Gore urges an auditorium full of students to "separate the truth from the fiction and the accurate connections from the misunderstandings". In keeping with that exhortation I watched the An Inconvenient Truth with careful attention to the research on which its arguments were founded. At the time of my second viewing, I began to take notes and read the scientific literature.

Within the first half hour of the film it is clear that Gore does not see global warming merely as a future threat. He states, "Now we're beginning to see the impact in the real world." The example of this impact that made the biggest impression on me was that of Lake Chad in Northern Africa. Gore showed dramatic satellite images demonstrating the rapid shrinking of the once-giant lake to near dryness since the turn of the previous century. He suggested that this water shortage has brought on the conditions that have lead to the tragedy and mass violence in the bordering areas of Niger and Darfur. This made me listen. What would it take for a lake of such magnitude to dry up? The warming must be dramatic indeed. I decided to Google it.

The Lake Chad deception

The first site that came up was Wikipedia, where I learned that, indeed, Lake Chad is a critical water source for over 20 million people and its rapid shrinkage is extensively documented. At this point the surface area is about 1,350 square km , down from its all time high of about 400,000 square km in about 4,000 BC. However, there were also some details that Gore failed to mention. The lake itself is only seven meters deep at its deepest. Its average depth currently is 1.5 - 4.5 meters depending on your source). Essentially, it is a large and geo-politically important swamp. For comparison, Lake Champlain covers approximately the same amount of land and has an average depth of 19.5 m and a max depth of 112. Lake George, with one-tenth the surface area, is almost nine times as deep.

It turns out Lake Chad has actually been dry multiple times in the past: in 8500 BC, 5500 BC, 2000 BC and 100 BC. Though Wikipedia and a paper in Journal of Geophysical Research on the topic agree that global climate change may have played a role, they also report that the major factors were significant local changes - a rapidly expanding population drawing water from the lake, the introduction of irrigation technologies and local overgrazing. Yes, these are anthropogenic causes, but they are neither global nor warming, and are utterly independent of CO2 . In addition, Africa as a continent experienced a dramatic shift towards dryer weather in the end of the 19th century that is not generally attributed to CO2 . (Coe, M.T. and J.A. Foley, Human and natural impacts on the water resources of the Lake Chad basin. Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres) 106, D4, 3349-3356. 2001) Gore might as well have photographed a glass of water on a picnic table, called it a lake, drunk its contents and then attributed the change to global warming. Was he purposefully misrepresenting the evidence or had he really not done his homework even on the most basic level?

The Kilimanjaro deception

The shrinking of the snows of Kilimanjaro is another dramatic example. Scientists have noted this phenomenon for over a hundred years. A search of the scholarly literature immediately produced Georg Kaser's 2004 article in The International Journal of Climatology on the subject. He states that all three of the major East African glaciers have seen significant retreat since the late 1800s. Kaser writes, "The dominant reasons for this strong recession in modern times are reduced precipitation and increased availability of shortwave radiation due to decreases in cloudiness". This dryness began relatively abruptly around 1880. "In contrast to this 'switch' in moisture conditions, there is no evidence of an abrupt change in air temperature.... Temperature increases in the tropics on the surface and in the troposphere have been little in recent decades compared with the global trend." The very shape of the glacier speaks out against Gore's theory: melting from temperature rise "would round-off and destroy the observed features within a very short time, ranging from hours to days". Indeed, a year and a half record from 2000-2002 showed that air temperatures never exceeded -1.6 degrees C (in fact, Gore's friend Lonnie Thompson reports that the temperatures never rose above -2 degrees C during his research there), and permafrost extends far below the edge of the glacier. (Kaser et al, Int. J. Climatol. 24: 329-339 (2004)) In other words, not only is the recession of Mt. Kilimanjaro's snowy peak probably not due to CO2 -induced temperature rise, it isn't even driven by temperature rise at all.

At this point I would like to make a note about methodology. To find the papers cited throughout this article I searched Google Scholar and occasionally individual publications, such as Science. (For example, when I wanted to find articles about Lake Chad, I typed in "Lake Chad", and for the ice core record, I entered "ice core record" and "ice core record timing".) I did not dig though dozens of studies to pick out these ones. Some of these papers, in fact, include statements affirming the authors' belief in global warming despite the lack of evidence for it in their study.

Perhaps you are wondering where Gore got his article proving the undisputed "consensus" on global warming. The original review of the scientific literature was published in a non-peer reviewed essay section of Science, written by Dr. Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at UCSD. Her search included articles with "climate change" as a keyword. The study was cited and expanded in a paper in the political journal, Globalizations, which added the analysis of popular media. A statement by Dr. Oreskes that was not included in the Globalizations article read, "The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility.." In light of that, I encourage you to look at the evidence for yourself, but I recommend you start with peer-reviewed articles before resorting to the essay section of Science, let alone the science section of Globalizatons or Newsweek.

There is one piece of evidence that is particularly accessible to medical students for critical analysis: Gore pointed out the potential for increases in infectious diseases due to expansion of areas suitable for insect vectors. To illustrate this he listed fifteen new or recently resurgent diseases: Ebola, Arena virus, Hanta virus, SARS, multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis (MDR TB), E. coli 0157:H7, Lyme disease, legionnaire's disease, Vibrio Cholerae 0139, Nipah virus, malaria, dengue fever, leptospirosis, West Nile virus, and Avian flu.

This litany of killers is impressive until you realize that out of the fifteen, only Lyme, malaria, dengue and West Nile virus are spread by insect vectors. A closer look at those four even further confounds the point. Lyme disease - far from being a tropical disease spreading northwards - originated in the temperate climate of Lyme, CT and spread South and West. Malaria is a disease confined to the tropics more for socioeconomic reasons than climatologic ones, and it was once prevalent in Siberia and Northern Europe. Its decline in these areas happened largely during warming periods of history. There has been a recent resurgence of malaria in some Eastern European countries that the WHO attributes to socioeconomic instability.

Paul Reiter from the Pasteur Institute in Paris published a letter in Emerging Infectious Diseases, refuting the section of the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) report on infectious diseases. (Reiter was actually drafted to be one of the authors of the IPCC report, but withdrew and actually threatened to sue the organization to have his name removed from the author list because he was so disgusted with the inaccuracy of the final product.) He focused on the misrepresentation of malaria and the lack of any evidence for climate-associated spread of dengue fever. Of these diseases, the one most commonly attributed to Global warming is West Nile Virus (WNV). Once again, the science doesn't hold up. The disease vector, Culex pipiens (also responsible for transmitting St. Louis encephalitis), is the most widely distributed mosquito in the world, common on every continent but Antarctica. Prevalent in temperate, not tropical, zones, it is readily found as far north as Nova Scotia. WNV's arrival in the US had nothing to do with changes in vector habitat conditions. (Emerg Infect Dis 6(4), 2000; and also Environmental Health Perspectives /Supplements Volume 109, Number S1, March 2001)

On the other hand, two of the diseases - SARS and MDR TB - are transmitted person-to-person by aerosolized droplets and are therefore more likely to be spread during cold weather when people are in closer quarters. This is evidenced not only by the pattern of their epidemiology (apartment buildings for SARS, prisons for TB) but also by the seasonal (winter) pattern that we see in the US of other infections transmitted through the respiratory tract. Conversely, it could be argued that increased use of air conditioners - one route of dissemination for Legionella pneumophilia - in a warmer world might lead to a higher incidence of legionnaire's disease. I guess. It's a stretch.

Arena virus, Hanta virus and leptospirosis are spread by aerosolized rodent feces or direct contact with rats. Human contact with rodent population is complex and poorly studied, but epidemiologic data show that it is largely related to precipitation and flooding, with no correlation to warming. (Climate Variability and Change in the United States: Potential Impacts on Vector and Rodent-Borne Diseases, Environ Health Perspect. 2001 May; 109 (Suppl 2): 223-233) The effect of climate change on pigs (the Nipah virus vector), chickens (Avian flu) and non-human primates (the presumed vector for Ebola) is not immediately obvious. (Though the effect of socioeconomic development on the incidence of people living in close contact with these animals is clear.) New strains of V. cholera and E. coli are spread the same way as the old strains: contaminated food or water - again, the role of climate, if there is any, is insignificant compared to socioeconomic and hygienic factors. (Oxford Handbook of Tropical Medicine, 2nd Ed. Eddleston, M et al. 2005)

To return to Gore's original point, however, there is no evidence that any of these diseases emerged or resurged due to global climate change. Talking about these diseases in an article about Global warming is like listing Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Idi Amin as examples of the depravity of American politicians. Like the tragedies in Darfur and the loss of Mt Kilimanjaro's glaciers their mention in An Inconvenient Truth is totally irrelevant and manipulative - just smoke and mirrors, a distraction from the dearth of good evidence.

But these kinds of "examples" go on and on: another is the storm argument. Are we having more storms, as the film states? Not according to an article last year in the journal Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics. "Any changes associated with warming of the surface compared to a smaller temperature rise in the lower-troposphere (and resultant changes in atmospheric stability) have not produced detectable impacts on intensification rates of tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic basin." (Balling, R. C. ; Cerveny, R. S. Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, Volume 93, Issue 1-2, pp. 45-51, 2006)

Shall we address them all: the drowning computer-animated polar bear, the simulated submersion of Calcutta...?

Even if every example of the current impact of CO2 driven temperature rise could be disproved, one stunning visual from the movie remains to haunt the viewer with doubts. Gore shows us two lines - one plotting temperature over the past six hundred and fifty thousand years, the other plotting atmospheric carbon dioxide. They appear to rise and fall with a synchronicity that would be the envy of many an aquatic acrobat. If temperature and carbon dioxide really have shown such a strong correlation over the centuries, isn't it still probable that CO2 drives temperature? This is possible, of course, provided that the CO2 rises coincide with or slightly predate the rises in temperature. Correlation is sensitive, but not specific - it can pick up a whole range of possible causes, but cannot prove causation. On the other hand, as we have all learned by now, if a sensitive test is negative, it can rule out a potential cause. Lack of correlation rules out proximate causation. Is CO2 inducing this global fever? Probably not.

The direction of causation fraud

That is, not if you trust the ice core records that Gore speaks so highly of in his Oscar-winning Powerpoint presentation. The Antarctic melting during the third glacial termination (210-225 thousand years ago) show that the CO2 rise lagged behind the temperature increase by about 800 years. An article by Fischer in Science reported a lag of 400-1000 years during all three glacial interglacial transitions on record. A later analysis using argon - which has been shown to correlate with temperature as well as the standard oxygen isotopes and would be less prone to inaccuracies in timing - confirmed the previously reported findings. That kind of a lag is easy to miss in charts covering hundreds of millennia, but it is hard to dismiss as insignificant on a practical level. The Fischer article states that the generally observed correlation between CO2 and temperature rise and fall is "connected to a climate-driven net transfer of carbon from the ocean to the atmosphere". In other words, the ocean acts as an enormous organism that exhales carbon dioxide during warming periods of earth's history, and absorbs it during periods of cooling. Caillon et al report that "this confirms that CO2 is not the forcing [that is, the causative factor] that initially drives the climatic system during a deglaciation". (Caillon, N. et al, Science 14 March 2003: Vol. 299. no. 5613, pp. 1728 - 1731; Fischer, H et al, Science 12 March 1999: Vol. 283. no. 5408, pp. 1712 - 1714).

The temperature records have more to tell: even with a cursory investigation of Gore's charts you will notice that the temperature rises during the early part of the 20th century. This rise begins decades before cars or planes were in use, at a time when the global economy was struggling under war and economic depression. Industry, and with it, CO2 emissions, didn't really take off until the post-war period, at which point temperatures went down. I'm not making this up.

"But these details are missing the point," I hear you cry. "The critical issue is that we're seeing extreme, rapid climate changes." Not really. If you look back at Gore's chart of the past couple hundred thousand years (though not his chart of the past 2000 years which does not resemble any other temperature record I've come across), even he shows our current temperature as still within the high end of the normal limits. His graph also reveals something else, noted by a team of Chinese scientists in The Geophysical Research Letters in 2003. In their paper Ming Tan and his colleagues record data taken from temperature proxies found in a 2560-year-old stalagmite. They report that, over this period warming and cooling trends have followed a distinct pattern: They report that, over this period warming and cooling trends have followed a distinct pattern: the warming occurring rapidly over approximately a century followed by gradual, multi-centennial cooling, creating what they described as a "saw-toothed pattern". (Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 30, No. 12, 1617, 2003. This article also contains a markedly different two millennia temperature record than that shown in An Inconvenient Truth.) Based on available records, the current warming curve is consistent with the known historical pattern.

Unlikely CO2, possible meteorites, probable sunshine

Carbon dioxide has never driven temperature. In fact, the evidence shows that historically, temperature has driven CO2 . We cannot rule out the possibility that CO2 could drive climate, just as it would be hard to rule out the possibility of a devastating meteor striking earth. But we are not enacting expensive legislation to erect retractable meteorite shields around major US cities, or pouring money into the development of meoteorite-proof material. No one is pressuring poor nations to sign treaties swearing they will dedicate a portion of their meager GDP to combat this potential threat. It would be absurd. And in that case we're talking about an event that has actually happened in the past.

So, if it isn't CO2 , what does drive climate change? I don't know. One convincing theory is that of solar magnetic activity and irradiance - two separate but generally coinciding phenomena. An article in the Astrophysical Journal in 1996 argues for a combined effect of greenhouse gasses and solar factors, with solar factors contributing a more significant amount. (The Astrophysical J., 472: 891-902, 1996 Dec 1) The authors of the article on the saw-toothed climate pattern favor the solar explanation, saying, "All centennial to sub-millennial scale cycles exhibited by the WTR [warm season temperature record] could be connected to solar variation cycles of about 208, 350, 700 and 950 years." (Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 30, No. 12, 1617, 2003) Other articles expressly denounce these solar theories or claim they are insufficient to account for the full extent of the warming. (The Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 25, No. 23, pp 4377-4380, Dec. 1, 1998; GSA Today, v. 14, no. 3, 1052-5173, 2004) There is the potential for localized anthropogenic warming effects secondary to changes in land use, which have been widely documented and are known as the "urban heat island effect". (e.g. The Urban Heat Island Effect at Fairbanks, Alaska, Theoretical and Applied Climatology; Volume 64, Numbers 1-2 / October, 1999, pp. 39-47) There are the ocean currents and oscillations, such as the Gulf Stream and El Nino, that have changed throughout the Earth's history and to which many significant warming and cooling effects are attributed. The fact is, weather is a complex, perhaps even chaotic, system. It is determined by multi-factorial processes. Some variables are independent and others are interdependent in complex and unpredictable ways. Some are subject to human manipulation, but we are utterly at the mercy of others.

Crichton states, "Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're being asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?" He goes on to point out:

"Let's think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horseshit? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?

"But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900. Remember, people in 1900 didn't know what an atom was. They didn't know its structure. They also didn't know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet. interferon..

"Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it's even worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the future. They're bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment's thought knows it."

Counting the cost of the precautionary principle

People will appeal to the Precautionary Principle - that it's better to be safe than sorry. Why not sign global treaties to limit carbon emissions? The April 16th Newsweek had a telling map entitled "Leaders and Laggers". Based on the Environmental Performance Index from Yale, it rated countries based on how environmentally friendly their policies were - the "leaders" dark green and the "laggers" in coal black. One immediately notes a rough correlation between wealth and environmental policy on this map. Why not encourage developing nations to get with the program and use more "clean energy"?

Well, why don't you have a solar paneled house? Probably because it's too expensive. No matter what we say about saving costs down the road, as a practical matter these solar technologies involve too much of an initial capital investment to be feasible for most Americans. Installation costs for one entirely solar house in Boston was $35,456. Presumably the technology will get cheaper and more efficient in the future, but this is where it stands today. A recent article came out about a group of Virginia Tech engineering students who designed a solar energy system to power a clinic in Getongoroma village in Southwestern Kenya. The high tech system will provide the clinic with an ample 24 kilowatt hours per day (25% more than was requested, but still 20% less than the average US household uses). The projected cost: $120,000. Surrounded by the relative riches of America, the project is still in the fund raising stage. How can we possibly be serious in prescribing this to countries where the average person earns a couple of dollars a day? James Shikwati, a Kenyan economist and author, has said, "The rich countries can afford to engage in some luxurious experimentation with other forms of energy. But for us, we are still at the stage of survival."

Of course, there are places where solar energy is the best option for electricity in developing countries. These are generally places that have no hope of getting connected with a power grid, such as remote clinics in agricultural communities in Kenya or guerilla-controlled areas of Burma. The technology generally used in clinics along the Thai-Burmese border, for example, utilizes solar panels which each cost $525. Sounds a little more reasonable, right? Each of these panels supplies 130 watts of power. If you have two incandescent light bulbs on in your house right now, you are probably exceeding this wattage. If you made coffee this morning, you used almost seven times this amount of power. The medics along the Thai-Burma border don't really focus much on immunizations because a refrigerator requires at least 200-700 watts of power. Of course, this also precludes the possibility of blood banks, in a part of the world where medics are frequently faced with treating postpartum hemorrhage, malarial hemolysis and trauma. At a household level, lack of refrigeration has profound repercussions in the form of prevalent and deadly diarrheal diseases that account for 50% of childhood mortality in this population. What else might you want in a clinic? An ultrasound? Cautery? A microscope that can be used at night? A pulse-oximeter? A UV lamp?

These affordable solar panels are a valuable stopgap, but they are by no means a permanent panacea for the word's energy needs. Economist James Shikwati says, "I don't see how a solar panel is going to power a steel industry, how a solar panel is going to power a railway train network. It might work to power a small transistor radio.. One clear thing that emerges from [this] debate is the point that there's somebody keen to kill the African dream. And the African dream is to develop." By telling developing countries to use "clean energy sources" what we are saying is, "You will not have electricity at all." We are saying, "You will live a life of backbreaking work. You will see at least one of your children die in early childhood, probably more than that. You will experience incomparably more painful and dangerous pregnancy and labor than women in developed countries, and you will face it more frequently because you will fear losing your children to disease, starvation or violence. You will be too busy struggling for survival to protest the rampant official corruption or the government troops who rape you, destroy your villages and disregard your votes. Ultimately, you will die 20-30 years younger than I will. "But it will be worth it, because I've been told there is a scientific consensus that all this is necessary to avert global warming."

Source




"Green" building goes brown

A YEAR after it was launched amid much green fanfare, the building touted as Australia's best environmental performer has come under fire because several of its environmental features do not yet work. Teething problems at CH2 - Melbourne City Council's new state-of-the-art offices - include a sewage recycling system not yet operating, extra lighting having been installed after staff complained it was too dark, rooftop turbines not performing to expectations, and problems with plumbing leaving unpleasant odours. There were concerns about "shower towers" mounted on the building's side, designed to provide an air-conditioning alternative. They are functioning now, but were shut in February after legionella was found in the building's cooling system.

When asked about the building's environmental performance, Lord Mayor John So said yesterday CH2 was producing 80 per cent fewer emissions than comparable office buildings. But his response is at odds with his own council's report two months ago, which conceded there was no data on the building's environmental performance because it had not yet been assessed.

Green building expert Peter Szental, the man responsible for Australia's first refurbished office building to get a six-star Green Star rating, commended the council on its vision, but said many of CH2's environmental initiatives did not yet work. "There's no chance they would get a six-star rating if they were audited," Mr Szental said. "If you're going to the cutting edge, obviously some things are not going to work. But we really need to know what works and what doesn't." Mr Szental also questioned council claims that productivity would increase by 4.9 per cent.

Staff in the building have complained about noise levels in the open-plan offices. And an overwhelming stench from waterless urinals has been another source of consternation.

Source

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The Lockwood paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowleging 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 be 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 a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

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

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