GREENIE WATCH MIRROR ARCHIVE The CRU graph. Note that it is calibrated in tenths of a degree Celsius and that even that tiny amount of warming started long before the late 20th century. The horizontal line is totally arbitrary, just a visual trick. The whole graph would be a horizontal line if it were calibrated in whole degrees -- thus showing ZERO warming

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

The blogspot version of this blog is HERE. The Blogroll. My Home Page. Email John Ray here. Other mirror sites: Dissecting Leftism. For a list of backups viewable at times when the main blog is "down", see here. (Click "Refresh" on your browser if background colour is missing) See here or here for the archives of this site
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April 30, 2013

1,000 words



This is an iron mine. Steel is made of iron, and wind turbines are predominantly made of steel. So when the anti-uranium brigade bemoans the incurable dangers of mining and then bows to wind turbines, they’re not being straight with you. Mining isn't pretty but thanks to modern technology and smart engineers, it's perfectly safe and absolutely necessary.





Fisker: Free to Make Flashy Cars in Finland

With nearly a year’s worth of exclusive reporting on Obama’s green-energy crony-corruption scandal, you might think we’ve covered them all—but the hits just keep on coming. This week Fisker is in the news due to its failure to meet a Monday payment on their Department of Energy (DOE) loan, with $10 million due, and Wednesday’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing: “Green Energy Oversight: Examining the Department of Energy’s Bad Bet on Fisker Automotive.”

Along with researcher Christine Lakatos, who writes The Green Corruption Files, I’ve addressed Fisker before. In last week’s column, I harkened back to an October 2012 report we did on 2009 stimulus-funded projects that were in trouble. We highlighted two companies on that list: Suntech and SoloPower. Suntech was recently put into bankruptcy and, about SoloPower, we said: “SoloPower’s power is waning.” On April 22, the Oregonian’s headline read: “SoloPower moves to power down Portland factory, gut remaining workforce.”

Fisker, the stimulus-funded company making $100,000+ electric cars in Finland, was also on that October 2012 list. At the time, I wrote: “Though the company has balked at Solyndra comparisons, Fisker may well be on ‘death’s door.’”

Despite defaulting “on loans or investment conditions at least four separate times” and squandering more than $1.3 billion in investment capital and government loan money, the company’s founder and former CEO, Henrik Fisker (Fisker left the company in March over “disagreements with management”), in testimony before the House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday, argued that the company was still viable. In both the opening and closing of his testimony, Fisker used the following statement regarding the company that bears his name: “Fisker still has the potential to build on these achievements if the company can secure financial and strategic resources.”

While Fisker’s testimony indicates that he is proud of the company’s “many notable achievements,” Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), declared in his opening statements: “Fisker should have never received taxpayer money; it was rated CCC+...it was a junk grade investment.” So why did Fisker get the loan in the first place and continue to receive funding even after it “missed a crucial production target?”

?While Wednesday’s hearing didn’t reveal any smoking gun, and Fisker claimed: “I am not aware and do not believe that any improper political influence was used in connection with the company's loan application or subsequent negotiations with the Department of Energy,” experience in reporting on the various stimulus-funded loan guarantee programs, grants and tax credits indicates otherwise.

True, unlike many of the other stories, no one from the Fisker organization itself served on Obama’s (now-disbanded) Jobs Council, nor is there an obvious connection such as a former DOE staffer sitting on the board. But, surprise, there are political connections nonetheless.

In the case of Fisker, the cronyism comes first in the form of the venture capital firm with private investments that needed government funds to make their 2008 investment good. The company in question? Kliener Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB)—which, according to New York magazine, “has both former Vice President Al Gore and John Doerr, a very big-ticket Obama donor, on its board of directors.” Doerr has had roles inside the Obama White House since early 2009, from jobs, to economics, to crafting the energy sector of the 2009-Recovery Act, from which his firm—KPCB—has been rewarded handsomely. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), in 2008, reported that the Fisker deal was “one of the first deals in which former Vice President Al Gore provided advice for Kleiner.” KPCB’s Managing Partner, Ray Lane, told the WSJ that their investment was more than $10 million and was “one of our bigger investments.”

In an earlier report, I said: “Doerr jumped on the Climate Change bandwagon in 2005 and credits Al Gore for his ‘environmental awakening’—though his conversion may have been more financial than spiritual, as he saw green-energy as the ‘mother of all markets’ and ‘the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century.’”

Despite a green-energy push from the White House, these funds haven’t “delivered the returns expected on the timeline expected for most venture capitalists.” In fact, Doerr admitted in a November 2009 speech that the government funding saved them: “If we’d been able to foresee the crash of the market, we wouldn’t probably have launched a green initiative, because these ventures really need capital. The only way in which we were lucky, I think, is that the government stepped in, particularly the Department of Energy. Led by this great administration that put in place these loan guarantees.”

Clearly the Fisker “investment” wasn’t going as well as KCBP expected. In Wednesday’s hearing, a 2009 email from Bernhard Koehler, Fisker cofounder and COO was addressed. In it, he pressured someone inside the DOE, regarding the need for the taxpayer-funded loan, because they couldn’t meet payroll.

The Fisker loan had three specific strikes against it: it had a dismal credit rating—a “junk bond” CCC+; it was initially rejected by the credit review board; and the loan was twice the value of the collateral. While the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) program received 150 applications, only 5 were awarded loans—and all had some political connections or ramifications: Fisker—$529 million; Ford—$5.907 billion, Nissan—$1.448 billion; Tesla—$465 million; and The Vehicle Production Group, LLC—$50 million.

Companies without connections didn’t get approved. In November, I reported on XP Technologies, one of those companies whose loan application was rejected. Alleging that “criminal activities did take place by DOE staff and affiliates,” XP Technologies has filed a lawsuit concerning the DOE’s denial. Following the publication of my column on XP Technologies, another applicant, who also didn’t have any political connections, contacted me. This applicant acknowledged that he really didn’t know the system and, therefore, looking back, wasn’t surprised that his application was denied. However, he told me that he received no help or encouragement from the DOE; they did nothing to make it easier for him. It was like they weren’t really interested in anyone but the favored few. Accepting applications was, perhaps, just for cover.

Fisker’s $529 million loan was approved in September 2009, and the first tranche was funded May 2010. But it took a lot of finagling to get there.

Vice President Biden stepped in to move the loan along—we don’t know why, but we know he did. (We also know more about other green-energy projects in which Biden was involved.) In August 2009, Fisker visited in Delaware a GM factory, which was scheduled to be shut down. According to a 2009 WSJ report, once politicians in the state got wind of Fisker’s possible interest, they ratcheted up the pressure. Saving the plant, according to officials involved in the decision, “gave fresh urgency to the DOE’s quest for Fisker.” However, by August, the December 2008 application still wasn’t approved. “Delaware's governor and congressional delegation began peppering U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu with calls on Fisker's behalf. They also had repeated discussions with Vice President Biden and his staff.” Five days after Governor Merkell had a September meeting with Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, “Chu announced the government had signed a provisional agreement” for Fisker’s loan. Part of the deal included, not just the $529 million DOE loan, but also $21 million in grants and loans from the State of Delaware.

On October 27, 2009, Biden toured Fisker’s Delaware plant to tout the DOE's Loan Program. ABC News reported: “Standing in a shuttered General Motors plant in Wilmington, DE, Vice President Biden proclaimed that a half-billion-dollar Department of Energy loan would transform the idled site into a production line for electric cars.”??“Biden heralded the Energy Department's $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company, called Fisker, as a bright, new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs,” and stated: “This is seed money that will return back to the American consumer in billions and billions and billions of dollars in good, new jobs.”

Referencing Delaware’s involvement, the state’s chief of economic development, Alan Levin said: “We had in the vice president a secret weapon.”

In addition to Doerr and Gore championing the Fisker Project, and the Biden “secret weapon,” Fisker had a few other friends in high places. The National Legal and Policy Center reports that Fisker was receiving advice regarding their loan application from Debevoise & Plimpton LLC, a law firm with a history of donating to President Obama and other Democrats—which taxpayers also funded. Too bad XP technologies, and other applicants without connections, didn’t know to hire Debevoise & Plimpton.

Now, we all know that Fisker never made one car in Delaware—or anywhere in the US. The Delaware plant is “absolutely empty.” We know that Fisker lost $557,000 on each flashy sports car it sold and has laid off most of its employees. And we know that Fisker will likely be the next taxpayer-funded green-energy project to go bankrupt.

While we do not know all the political connections that got Fisker a free ride to make flashy cars in Finland, we do know there is crony-corruption. As the WSJ reports: “The Obama Energy Department is keeping tight rein on documents, so we don't know.” We just don’t know.

SOURCE




On Global Warming Advocates and Scientific Consensus

By Victor Morawski

Commenting on John Kerry’s recent trip to China and his emphasis on anthropogenic (i.e. man caused) global warming as one of the most significant problems that the two nations should work together on solving, talk show host Rush Limbaugh voiced an opinion on science and scientific truth that the majority of his listeners and a majority of my readers share: that scientific truth is determined by how much our scientific views conform to the way the world actually is and not by mere human agreement.

Striking back at Kerry’s opinion that the science behind manmade global warming (or climate change if you prefer) is “settled” because a supposed “consensus of scientists” agrees that it is happening, Limbaugh said “science is not up to a vote. It either is or isn’t. Whatever it is, it is or isn’t, but it’s not up to a vote. Global warming doesn’t exist because a ‘consensus of scientists’ agree. Manmade global warming either is happening or it isn’t, but it isn’t up to a vote.”

One main reason for the enormous success that Rush has enjoyed over the years is that he speaks for the common man and, of course, woman. In his analyses of current events he articulates views his listeners may share but are unable to formulate for themselves with the clarity for which he is now famous. And this issue is a clear case in point.

To be sure, Kerry has spoken with the Chinese and others about a scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming as the official State Department Press Release on his visit bears out in saying that the “two countries took special note of the overwhelming scientific consensus about anthropogenic climate change and its worsening impacts.”

Investors.com notes that the consensus of scientists claim is a line that global warming alarmists repeat endlessly. And who can forget Al Gore’s continuing insistence on such a consensus as part of his claim that anthropogenic global warming is established science.

Yet it may seem unlikely to readers that these alarmists really mean by the claim what they seem to mean. Could they actually mean what Rush takes them to mean? Do they subscribe to the unlikely view that scientific truth is to be determined by the most votes?

Surprising though it may be to some, I am convinced that this is exactly what they mean and what many of them ascribe to as their view of scientific truth.

Most of those who point to consensus among the community of scientists as the determiner of scientific truth do not adhere to the sort of relativism that would make any view true if there is a consensus behind it.

Sometimes called “Cultural Relativism,” this view holds all beliefs to be equally valuable if supported by a cultural consensus. For science, this extreme form of relativism would set a primitive culture’s view that the earth is flat or resting on the back of an elephant on a par with our own culture’s view that the earth is a sphere, hurtling through space and subject to the laws of Newtonian Mechanics. Consequences like this make this sort of relativism an implausible candidate for a standard of scientific truth.

Most advocates of truth as consensus in science adopt some form of Instrumentalism, a view that judges the worth of scientific theories not by how well they succeed in describing the world as it actually is but by how useful they are at doing things like making successful predictions. On this view, the task of a theory is to be a useful instrument in scientists’ hands, not a mirror of reality. For Instrumentalists, some theories really are better than others not because they reflect reality better but because they are more useful. So, as science progresses, old theories are rejected and new ones are accepted not because what they say better corresponds to things in the world as they are but because they are more useful and less fraught with problems (anomalies) than the older theories.

But who makes the decision to leave an old theory and go to a new one? And who decides whether an old theory is too full of difficulties to keep around anymore? Why, the community of scientists, of course. Here is where consensus comes in. Instrumentalism adopts the Pragmatists’ view of truth as usefulness. As I once heard contemporary Pragmatist Richard Rorty put it, truth is a compliment we pay to theories that we find useful. It is the community of scientists that pays this compliment to theories that it finds useful. For people like John Kerry, Al Gore, and a supposed consensus of professional scientists, truth is a compliment we should pay to anthropogenic global warming as a theory.

That he indeed thinks that the theory is very useful in its predictions can be gleaned from Kerry’s recent remarks that “We are seeing the science of climate change come back to us now at a rate that is far faster and with far greater levels of damage than anything that scientists predicted 10, 15, 20 years ago,” Kerry said. “Every prediction that has been made is coming true, but coming true bigger and more dangerously.”

Now if truth really is consensus, then maybe Kerry’s followers would agree with him on the truth of his remarks but for those of us for whom truth is conformity with reality, his remarks are simply not borne out by the reality of the situation concerning the abysmal failure rate of modeled predictions on anthropogenic global warming. My own piece of a few weeks ago here and on Youtube discusses some of these failures in detail.

To return to Rush, in the same show he discussed a recent release by Reuters which points out that in response to the failure of those predictions scientists need to either cling to their theory that human activity has warmed the planet and hope that the warming returns much like an old girlfriend who has unexpectedly left town leaving no forwarding address, give into an opposing view that ocean oscillations might have a lot more to do with global heating and cooling than they figured or abandon their view that CO2 emissions (especially those that are man-caused) are a significant factor in planetary warming.

Fortunately, those who seek a refuge from objective truth in human consensus cannot hide from the truth of failed predictions. These failures are now making even the Pragmatists wonder whether the theory of anthropogenic global warming is useful enough to keep around.

SOURCE




Greenies would like natural gas -- if they liked anything

New data from the Environmental Protection Agency indicates that drilling for natural gas releases significantly less methane (the main component of natural gas) into the atmosphere than previously thought.

Twenty percent less.

This is not seen as good news for the ultra-environmentalists who fervently believe that any fuel made from fossilized plant or animal matter (coal or natural gas) is bad.

Using natural gas as a transportation fuel (especially for heavy-duty trucks, like 18-wheelers) or for the production of electricity dramatically cuts down on greenhouse gasses from burning diesel or coal, but it doesn't cut them to zero.

At one time - "one time" meaning from the year zero to 2009 - the amount of natural gas that America had available was limited. So limited that the chemical and pharmaceutical industry were worried that using it for anything else, like as a transportation fuel or to generate electricity, was a foolish use of a limited resource.

Since the middle of the last century a group called the Potential Gas Committee, that has a connection to the Colorado School of Mines, has issued a biennial report on how much natural gas is available for development in the United States.

Until the 2009 report the PGC's estimates were largely focused on "traditional" natural gas wells. In 2009 the PGC began reporting the amount of natural gas that is available from the huge shale deposits under the continental United States.

In 2007 the PGC reported available reserves as 1,321 trillion cubic feet. In the 2009 report, reserves jumped to 1,836 Tcf - an increase of almost 39 percent.

The conventional wisdom of the time suggested that represented a 100 year supply.

As better geology and drilling techniques have been developed, this year's report suggests reserves of 2,384 trillion cubic feet - another 30 percent bump in the amount of natural gas available under the United States. If the 2009 report represented a 100 year supply, we now have natural gas reserves of more that should last more than 130 years.

We have more energy stored in our natural gas reserves than Saudi Arabia has in its oil.

One of the issues with producing all that natural gas is the amount of methane that is released into the air at the well-head. People who want only battery-operated vehicles (recharged with electricity that is produced solely from non-fossil sources), or hydrogen fuel cells have used this free methane as one of their arguments against using natural gas as a replacement for diesel that is largely made from imported oil.

Oil has a minor role in the production of electricity. According to AP reporter Kevin Bego, "Since power plants that burn natural gas emit about half the amount of the greenhouse gases as coal-fired power, some say that the gas drilling boom has helped the U.S. become the only major industrialized country to significantly reduce greenhouse emissions."

Better mechanical techniques will continue to decrease the amount of methane released into the atmosphere even with more natural gas being recovered.

The EPA reported that 145 million metric tons of methane was released by natural gas drilling in 2011.

The next largest factor? "Enteric fermentation," accounts for another 137 million metric tons of methane released by cows when they … well, when cows are being cows. There is nothing to suggest that cows will become more efficient.

A recent New York Times article recently found that major shippers like UPS are moving away from imported diesel to domestic natural gas. Natural gas is cheaper than diesel, it is about 30 percent cleaner, and it is ours.

SOURCE





Support drilling, fracking, Keystone … and exports

We don’t need to restrict oil or gas exports. We need to open more lands to leasing and drilling

Paul Driessen

The interminable war on drilling, fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline has taken some bizarre turns. Now it’s getting worse, as opponents grow more desperate, and the moon again grows full.

Deepwater drilling, 3-dimension and 4-D seismic (the ability to visualize 3-D over many years), deep horizon horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, and other technological marvels have obliterated environmentalist claims that the United States and world are running out of oil and gas – and therefore we need to switch to subsidized, land-hungry, job-killing wind turbines, solar panels and biofuels.

Thanks to free enterprise innovation on state and public lands – and no thanks to President Obama, who has made nearly the entire federal onshore and offshore estate off limits to leasing and drilling – US oil and natural gas production has set an all-time record. The world is on the verge of doing so, as well.

Long-running geopolitics have been turned upside down, as OPEC, Russia and other oil superpowers wonder what hit them. Plastic and chemical manufacturers, steel makers, bus and fleet vehicle operators, and now long-haul truckers are already cashing in on the natural gas bonanza. So are electric utilities, especially with EPA continuing its war on coal, with more unnecessary heavy-handed air and water rules.

Global warming / climate change hysteria is also foundering on the rocks of reality. Average global temperatures haven’t risen in 16 years, seas aren’t rising any faster than 100 years ago, and storms, floods and droughts are no more frequent or severe than over multi-decade trends during the past century.

Evidence and reality simply are not cooperating with IPCC and Mann-made climate models. “Trust the computer models!” the alarmists plead. “If reality doesn’t comport with our predictions, reality is wrong.”

The US State Department has (yet again) said the Keystone XL pipeline poses few environmental problems and should be approved, to bring Canadian oil sands petroleum to Texas refineries – creating thousands of construction and permanent jobs, and billions in economic growth and government revenue.

Unacceptable! rants the Environmental Protection Agency. “State underestimated KXL’s potential impact on global warming and needs to do its studies all over again,” says EPA. Never mind that oil sands production would add a minuscule 0.06% to US greenhouse gas emissions and an undetectable 0.00001 degrees C per year to computer-modeled global warming, according to the Congressional Research Service. Do it over, until you get the answers we want, demand EPA and environmentalist ideologues.

Some 70% of Americans and 60% of Canadians support Keystone – and energy security (and jobs) outrank greenhouse gas reduction as a national priority by a 2-1 margin among Americans – says Canadian pollster Nik Nanos.

However, haters of hydrocarbons, modern living standards, free enterprise and personal liberty are not ready to surrender. They’ve launched a blitzkrieg flanking attack. This time they are outraged that some Keystone oil could be refined into diesel and other products and exported! to Europe or Asia – while some frack-based natural gas might be converted to LNG and likewise exported! around the globe.

Well, yes. When US refiners transform crude oil into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, heating oil, asphalt, waxes and petrochemicals, they ship some of these products overseas. Since Americans use less diesel than refineries manufacture (some parts of each barrel of crude can be converted only into diesel), refiners also export their excess diesel to Europe, which uses more diesel than gasoline, and Europeans ship their surplus gasoline to the USA, mostly to East Coast consumers. It’s a win-win arrangement that will be buttressed and safeguarded by Keystone pipeline transport of Canadian oil.

And yes, Cheniere Energy and other companies want to ship liquefied natural gas to foreign markets. It’s hardly surprising that anti-fracking activists would seize on this as yet another excuse for opposing this game-changing technology. It is hardly remarkable that Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) and other far-Left legislators would sponsor bills to block LNG exports.

What is shocking is that Dow and Huntsman Chemical, Alcoa Aluminum, Nucor Steel and other companies are joining the no-export campaign. They have convinced themselves that such exports will hurt their own selfish economic interests – and for PR reasons have packaged that notion into assertions that exporting any US natural gas is against America’s and the public’s economic interests. Nonsense.

America has barely begun to tap its vast shale gas and conventional natural gas deposits. It has not yet touched its methane hydrates. Together, these deposits will likely last a century or more. In addition, other countries are racing to develop their own conventional, shale and hydrate deposits – while still others will eventually recognize the folly of keeping their own deposits off limits. All this will gradually reduce demand for US natural gas exports, slow and prolong extraction, and keep gas prices low.

This interplay will also help ensure that more factories and power plants in more countries burn natural gas, thereby replacing coal and providing the economic wherewithal to enable China, India and other nations to install modern pollution abatement technologies on their now dirty power plants. That will greatly improve air quality and human health in countless cities, while reducing carbon dioxide emissions and reducing consternation among steadily dwindling numbers of climate alarmists.

American oil and gas development – and exports – will also provide an opportunity for our nation to “give back” to the world community for all the petroleum that our anti-leasing, anti-drilling policies have caused us to take from the world’s petroleum supplies for decades. All this activity will also spur further innovation in technologies to unlock still more energy. It will spur job creation, economic growth and government tax and royalty revenue collection here in the United States … and abroad.

Some 23 million Americans are still unemployed or underemployed; 128 million are dependent on various government programs, including 47 million on food stamps; and the United States is more than $16 trillion in debt. Unemployment in the construction trades is 14.7 percent. Black unemployment was 12.7% when President Bush left office; it soared to 16.7% by September 2011 under President Obama, and remains stuck at 14% today for black adults – and an astronomical 43% for black teenagers!

Drilling, fracking and exports can reverse these horrendous, intolerable, unnecessary statistics.

Misguided industrialists should stop railing against exports. They would do themselves and our nation far more good by putting their lobbyists and public relations staffs to work demanding an end to leasing, drilling and fracking bans that continue to dominate eco-liberal thinking, US energy policy (especially under the current administration).

Of 1.8 billion acres on our nation’s Outer Continental Shelf, only 36-43 million are under lease. That’s barely 2% of the OCS. Offshore territory equal to 78% of the entire US landmass (Alaska plus the Lower 48) is off limits! Even the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill cannot justify that.

Onshore, it’s just as bad. As of 1994, over 410 million federally controlled acres were effectively off limits to exploration and development. That’s 62% of the nation’s public lands – an area nearly equal to Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming combined. The situation has gotten progressively worse, with millions more acres – and vast energy, mineral and economic bounties – locked up in wilderness, park, preserve, wildlife refuge, wilderness study, Antiquities Act and other restrictive land use designations, or simply made unavailable by bureaucratic fiat or foot-dragging.

Drilling opponents claim to be protecting the environment. In reality, they simply detest hydrocarbons, modern living standards, free enterprise and personal liberty. Commonsense policies will rejuvenate our economy, put Americans back to work, and help fund government programs that Messrs. Obama and Reid profess to care so much about – while safeguarding ecological values we all cherish.

Via email




Russian Scientists: ‘We Could Face Cooling Period For 200-250 Years’

Global warming which has been the subject of so many discussions in recent years, may give way to global cooling. According to scientists from the Pulkovo Observatory in St.Petersburg, solar activity is waning, so the average yearly temperature will begin to decline as well. Scientists from Britain and the US chime in saying that forecasts for global cooling are far from groundless. Some experts warn that a change in the climate may affect the ambitious projects for the exploration of the Arctic that have been launched by many countries.

Just recently, experts said that the Arctic ice cover was becoming thinner while journalists warned that the oncoming global warming would make it possible to grow oranges in the north of Siberia. Now, they say a cold spell will set in. Apparently, this will not occur overnight, Yuri Nagovitsyn of the Pulkovo Observatory, says.

"Journalists say the entire process is very simple: once solar activity declines, the temperature drops. But besides solar activity, the climate is influenced by other factors, including the lithosphere, the atmosphere, the ocean, the glaciers. The share of solar activity in climate change is only 20%. This means that sun’s activity could trigger certain changes whereas the actual climate changing process takes place on the Earth".

Solar activity follows different cycles, including an 11-year cycle, a 90-year cycle and a 200-year cycle. Yuri Nagovitsyn comments.

"Evidently, solar activity is on the decrease. The 11-year cycle doesn’t bring about considerable climate change – only 1-2%. The impact of the 200-year cycle is greater – up to 50%. In this respect, we could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years. The period of low solar activity could start in 2030-2040 but it won’t be as pervasive as in the late 17th century".

Even though pessimists say global cooling will hamper exploration of the Arctic, experts say it won’t. Climate change and the resulting increase in the thickness of the Arctic ice cover pose no obstacles to the extraction of oil and gas on the Arctic shelf. As oil and gas reserves of the Arctic sea shelf are estimated to be billions of tons, countries are demonstrating more interest in the development of the Arctic. Climate change will also have no impact on the Northern Sea Route, which makes it possible to cut trade routes between Europe, Asia and America. Professor Igor Davidenko comments.

"The Northern Sea Route has never opened so early or closed so late over the past 30 years. Last year saw a cargo transit record – more than five million tons. The first Chinese icebreaker sailed along the Northern Sea Route in 2012. China plans it to handle up to 15% of its exports".

As Russia steps up efforts to upgrade its icebreaker fleet, new-generation icebreakers are set to arrive in the years to come. No climate changes will thus be able to impede an increase in shipping traffic via the Northern Sea Route.

SOURCE

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

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

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April 29, 2013

Greenhouse gas levels highest in 3m years

And yet temperatures are not rising! Funny, that!

Carbon dioxide concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere are on the cusp of reaching 400 parts per million for the first time in 3 million years.

The daily CO2 level, measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, was 399.72 parts per million last Thursday, and a few hourly readings had risen to more than 400 parts per million.

''I wish it weren't true but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400 ppm level without losing a beat,'' said Ralph Keeling, a geologist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the US, which operates the Hawaiian observatory.

The 450 ppm level is considered to be the point at which the world has a 50 per cent chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. Any higher and the odds of avoiding searing temperature rises of 4 or 5 degrees by the end of the century become prohibitively risky.

The rise in greenhouse gases corresponds with the extra amount of CO2 known to have been emitted by human activities, such as burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests. More greenhouse gases means more heat builds up at the Earth's surface.

The last time CO2 reached the symbolic milestone of 400 parts per million in the atmosphere - in the Pliocene era - temperatures rose by between 3 and 4 degrees and sea levels were between five and 40 metres higher than today. Carbon dioxide levels have been rising steadily since constant measurements began at the Hawaiian observatory in 1958, when the level was about 317 parts per million.

Levels of more than 400 parts per million have been recorded at a few polar monitoring stages in the past year but the Mauna Loa Observatory readings are considered the most definitive.

SOURCE



British Ministers 'not totally committed' on carbon

A parliamentary advisory committee has accused the Government of being only "half-committed" to low-carbon energy generation, warning that the UK is likely to miss emissions reduction targets as a result.

David Kennedy, the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), said Britain needs a huge investment in renewable, or clean, power infrastructure if it is to hit its target of a 50 per cent cut in CO2 emissions by 2025 on 1990 levels.

Emissions are currently a fifth lower than in 1990. While the recession has caused emissions to fall, the underlying trend in CO2 output is flat when it should be declining, Mr Kennedy said. "We won't be able to meet that target without significant measures – and they have to be taken now if it's going to happen by the mid-2020s."

He said potential investors in low-carbon energy – from wind-turbine blade makers to nuclear-power project developers – "need to know there is a market" for clean power. Unless they are confident about their likely returns – for example through guaranteed subsidies and the Government's commitment to hitting renewable energy targets – they are unwilling to risk investment.

"We don't know how the low-carbon technology market will look in the 2020s because the Government will not commit, and that uncertainty is stopping investment," Mr Kennedy added. "The Government is only half-committed to the future, and that is the worst of all worlds. This report reinforces the fact that there is a lot more to do to reduce our footprint, and the Government should not be patting itself on the back."

The CCC has published a report showing that Britain's carbon footprint has grown by 10 per cent in the past two decades, as a rapid rise in CO2 emissions generated by making the UK's imports outweighed reductions in those produced in this country.

Britain is the second biggest net importer of carbon emissions, after Japan, because much of its manufacturing industry has moved abroad.

SOURCE



British big brother to switch off your fridge: Power giants to make millions - but you must pay for 'sinister' technology

Fridges and freezers in millions of British homes will automatically be switched off without the owner’s consent under a ‘Big Brother’ regime to reduce the strain on power stations.

The National Grid is demanding that all new appliances be fitted with sensors that could shut them down when the UK’s generators struggle to meet demand for electricity.

Electric ovens, air-conditioning units and washing machines will also be affected by the proposals, which are already backed by one of the European Union’s most influential energy bodies. They are pushing for the move as green energy sources such as wind farms are less predictable than traditional power stations, increasing the risk of blackouts.

Last night critics:

* Condemned the principle that outside forces should be allowed to control appliances.

* Warned the new sensors would add £40 to the average price of white goods for consumers.

* Hit out at the energy giants who would make millions of pounds extra profit under the scheme, as it would save them from firing up reserve generators or paying factories to switch off furnaces to quell demand. There is no suggestion that consumers will be compensated for having their appliances shut down.

The sensors will automatically detect spikes in demand for power that the grid is struggling to meet, and temporarily shut off the appliances.

Viktor Sundberg, energy strategy manager at Electrolux, warned: ‘This is Big Brother technology on a grand scale. The device inside the fridge or freezer will automatically change the way the appliance operates in response to the output of the grid.

‘This method of shutting down household appliances could to be carried out almost instantly, saving the energy companies millions because they won’t have to start up the turbines or pay huge industrial companies to cut production. Consumers are not benefiting at all and will be left paying more when they buy the appliances, as well as having their private goods controlled by outside forces.’

David Davis, the former Tory leadership candidate, said: ‘There is a Big Brother element to this – and it also shows the energy suppliers passing down their incompetence to the customers. They should be supplying energy as customers need it, not the when they want to give it.

‘There is something Soviet about this. It’s a ridiculous idea and it should be opposed. I hope the Government puts its foot down.’

Nick Pickles, director of civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, said: ‘This sinister plan smacks of over- the-top intrusion into people’s houses. It should be the choice of consumers if they want to sign up to it, not slipped into our homes through fridges and freezers.’

The National Grid – a private company that made £2.6 billion profit in 2011 – is required by law to balance supply and demand in the network.

However the EU has set a target that 20 per cent of all electricity will be generated from green sources by 2012 – but these are unreliable, making the task more difficult.

The solution proposed by the National Grid, along with its counterparts in 34 European countries, is to install the controversial devices.

The National Grid supplies alternating current to homes at 240V and an frequency of 50 hertz (Hz). But because electricity cannot be stored in bulk, there are fluctuations in this.

When demand starts to outstrip supply, the frequency drops – when there is more power than needed, it rises.

Sensors in domestic appliances would check this frequency every 0.2 seconds, and if it fell to 47Hz – a level that would risk blackouts – the devices would kick in and shut fridges, freezers and ovens down. Across millions of homes, this would cut demand significantly and so restore the balance.

Presently, the National Grid can shut down power to industrial firms to balance the grid. They are compensated in such cases, but there is no proposal to pay consumers if they face similar interruptions

The sensors could also be used if supply of electricity outstripped demand, putting power stations in danger of ‘tripping’ and shutting down temporarily. If the frequency of the supply nudged towards 52Hz, the devices could make fridges become cooler, increasing demand and balancing out the system.

The move comes on top of separate initiatives to put ‘smart meters’ for gas and electricity in all British homes by 2019, giving energy firms real-time information on individual households’ usage.

The proposals were contained in a 63-page document drawn up by the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E). It has been agreed by the EU-wide body of energy regulators and was sent to the European Commission on March 27.

It is set to deliver its verdict on the proposals within three months, and they could then go to the European Parliament to be turned into legislation that would force manufacturers to install the monitors.

Appliances containing the sensors could be in shops within three years.

In its proposal, ENTSO-E stressed that shutting off appliances would only be a last resort, but admitted it could happen.

It argued: ‘The accumulated effect of switching off a large number of temperature-controlled devices will give a substantial reduction of load in the system.

‘In this way it should be able to prevent ..... large scale blackouts.’

The authorities insist appliances would only cut out for a few seconds, and that consumers will be able to set acceptable temperature ranges so fridges would not be switched off if they were already warm, and therefore food would remain fresh. But if ovens are switched off temporarily, it could affect the cooking time of meals.

Presently, the National Grid can shut down power to industrial firms to balance the grid. They are compensated in such cases, but there is no proposal to pay consumers if they face similar interruptions.

Experts believe household bills would not be affected because the scheme would just alter the time at which appliances are used, not their total energy consumption.

Adam Scorer, of Consumer Focus UK, said: ‘There is a lot more work that needs to be done before these proposals become acceptable for consumers. The costs and benefits need to be clear, the right consumer protections in place, people’s privacy assured and arrangements made so that consumers get paid for any services they provide to networks.’

Consumer groups throughout Europe have expressed ‘serious concern’ in a letter to ENTSO-E.

A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change admitted last night that the Government was unsure how the new technology would work.

He said: ‘There could be benefits to consumers, it could open up new ways to save on energy bills, but we also need to consider all other factors before responding to the Commission.’

A spokesman for National Grid said: ‘One of the proposed requirements is for a limited number of [future] temperature controlled devices such as fridges and freezers to have the capability to assist the real time balancing of electricity supply and demand by automatically switching off devices for short durations.

‘This should result in benefits to consumers as it will lead to a reduced requirement for additional back-up electricity sources.

‘It will have no material impact on the operation of fridges and freezers switching will be for a few seconds and only occasionally. ‘Consumers’ produce will remain cool in their fridges and frozen in their freezers.’

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Brainwashed Berkeley senior student shows appalling ignorance in her Global Warming Essay

But that's UCB

Every now and again, magazines and papers will let some enthusiastic young writer loose on the burning issues of the day. Kind of a “voice of the future” thing. Of course, the essays submitted are almost always excruciating; full of wild generalisations, logical fallacies, and naive suggestions of the “Why don’t we just make everything better?” variety, as though no one had ever thought of that before. A recent op-ed in The Daily Californian by Cody Dunitz, a senior at UC Berkeley, provides an instructive glimpse into how the global warming propaganda campaign has succeeded in foisting some dubious claims on to unquestioning young students.

Cody’s thesis is that global warming presents an imminent threat to the food supply because – get this – global warming is making winters warmer. “Sure, it’s nice that it’s sunny and warm in the winter now,” she argues, “but global climate change is negatively affecting agriculture around the world”. And for Californians that means warm winters where pests aren’t killed off, according to Cody.

Fact Check: as the UN’s FAO reported recently, it is expecting a “record wheat harvest” this year, and notes that prices for grains and sugar are “plummeting” because of availability.

Fact Check: As The Huffington Post reported, Californians have been shivering through ”very unseasonable freezing temperatures”. Outside of heated university dorms, it was a cold winter for most of California.

She warns that one result of the warmer winters caused by global warming is increased pesticide use as farmers battle an increase in pests. These pesticides, she tells us, “can stay on food even once they have reached the grocery store, may cause people to become sick”.

Fact Check: Recent figures from California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation show that none of the samples of fruit and vegetables had dangerous levels of pesticide residue. In fact, most fruit and veg checked had “no detectable pesticide residues” at all! So even if you subscribe to the “run to the hills” branch of pesticide scaremongering, you can’t argue that there’s a problem when the latest liquid chromatography mass spectrometry techniques show no pesticide residue whatsoever.

But (non-existent) pesticide residues are only one of Cody’s concerns. There’s the threat that global warming poses to the cherry supply for one. Oh yes. And avacodos, almonds, and even potatoes -

"Do you like cherries? Well, get ready to kiss their juicy deliciousness goodbye. You see, cherries need time to chill in order to grow. And to chill, they of course need cold weather. Since temperatures have grown warmer, there has been less chill time for cherries. This means that cherries have not been growing as well. If this continues, it could severely deplete the cherry supply. And no cherries to grow means no cherries for us to eat . . .

In California alone, the amount of almonds, walnuts, grapes and avocados are predicted to decrease significantly because of climate change. And not only that, scientists say that the crop yield for almost every single crop grown in California’s Central Valley will plummet nearly 30 percent in the near future."

I’m not even sure what to say about this. Cherries are going to disappear because of global warming? Then how was it that last year was a “bumper harvest” for cherry growers in Queensland, Australia, where the average winter temperature is around 86 Fahrenheit? Some varieties of cherry need a chill in the winter, some don’t. But cherries are grown all around the world, even in semi-tropical areas which don’t have a “winter” to speak of at all

In response to the demise of the cherry, and the reduction of other crops by a third “in the near future” Cody says that there are no easy solutions. She recommends only buying local food rather than those “vine-ripened tomatoes from Mexico”.

Fact Check: Even the Worldwatch Institute notes that local food isn’t more environmentally friendly than food shipped in. This is because the final delivery from the producer or packer to the supermarket or store accounts for a very low percentage of greenhouse gas emissions associated with food production – around 4% according to a study by Christopher Weber and H. Scott Matthews, of Carnegie Mellon University.

So local food isn’t going to help, contrary to what our eager young correspondent asserts. But not to worry, because buying local food was only the first part of her prescription. The kind of action Cody really wants to encourage in her readers is “getting involved in your local climate change organization, educating yourself on agricultural policies, voting for change and emailing your congressional representative to let them know you care about our food”.

So, after all the wild claims, the unfounded assertions about disappearing cherries, after all that, the only real, tangible idea Ms Dunitz has is to join a local global warming group, “vote for change” (whatever could that mean?) and writing to politicians to tell them that you care about food (I’m sure they’ll be fascinated). In short, this is about pushing a political ideology under the guise of environmental urgency.

Don’t mistake me: I’m absolutely sure that Ms Dunitz earnestly believes that she’s advocating for the environment. What this undergraduate essay shows is the way in which global warming is a political and cultural ideology, not a scientific theory, for those who espouse concern over it. It’s become a meme, an idea that is self-replicating, being used to draw impressionable young people into a set of political beliefs and ideas which don’t stand up even judged by their own claims.

In summary, then, this is the result of allowing activism into academia and the classroom, of allowing organisations to push simplistic messages of environmental catastrophe to trusting children. Dunitz’s essays shows no critical thinking at all. There’s no questioning of what she’s obviously been told, or imbibed from pamphlets and websites of climate change groups, no grappling with the issues. Instead, there’s a loose handful of vague suggestions such as buying fair-trade bananas (from the Carribean or Africa one assumes, both thousands of miles away) and not tomatoes from Mexico, literally just across the border from California. More critical thinking needed, less unquestioning acceptance of what lobby groups and well-funded organisations spoon-feed you.

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From Hunters & Fishermen to Greenies on Earth Day: “You’re Quite Welcome!”

“More than four decades after the first Earth Day,” declared President Obama in an address this week, “millions of Americans have answered the call to protect the environment. Today, let us do so again by joining together, raising our voices, and standing up for our planet and our future.”

But only last week, when millions of these very Americans “raised their voices,” an angry President Obama insulted them as “willful liars.” I refer, of course, to the defeat of the President’s pet gun-control bill at the hands of the so-called gun-lobby, made up (mostly, but not exclusively) of American sportsmen.

During his first presidential campaign Obama insulted many of these Americans as bitter yahoos who “cling to guns and bibles.”

Now stand back for an item willfully unknown or willfully ignored, by greenie-granola types:

For the last couple of decades hunters and fishermen have contributed over $1.5 billion per year towards environmental protection in the most genuine sense. To date, hunters and fisherpersons have shelled out over $20 billion for this worthy cause. A study by the National Shooting Sports Foundation found that for every taxpayer dollar invested in wildlife conservation, American hunters and fishermen contribute nine.

The Pittman-Robertson Act (1937), you see, imposed an excise tax of 10 per cent on all hunting gear. Then the Dingell-Johnson act (1950) did the same for fishing gear. The Wallop-Breaux amendment (1984) extended the tax to the fuel for boats. All of this lucre goes to “protect the environment” in the form of buying and maintaining National Wildlife Refuges, along with state programs for buying and maintaining various forms of wildlife habitat.

So please note: to "preserve nature," they don’t tax Birkenstock hiking boots and Ying-Yang pendants – but do tax my shotgun. They don’t tax Yoga manuals and Tofu tid-bits wrapped in recycled paper – but do tax my 30.06 deer rifle. They don’t tax binoculars or birding Field Guides with cutesy photos of the red-cockaded woodpecker and spotted Owl – but do tax the shotgun shells I blast at Mallards before arraying on my grill as Duck-K-Bobs (cooked rare and lovingly basted with plenty of butter, Cajun seasoning and teriyaki sauce).

Going further, they don’t tax Kayaks and rock climbing picks and ropes – but do tax my compound bow and rifle scope. They don’t tax the plastic water bottles on Mountain bikes (or the mountain bike itself, come to think of it) or the cutesy spandex shorts these yo-yos wear – but do tax my duck decoys and camo pants. They don’t tax Yanni and Enya CDs – but do tax the arrows I fling at Bambi before he sizzles on my grill as Bambi-burger (lovingly draped with thick bacon slices that dribble their appetizing fat into the meat while cooking. Then a chunk of cheddar cheese melted on top.)

You talk about a "Cheeseburger in Paradise," Jimmy Buffet! Try one from Bambi!

Ten cents of every dollar I spent on my hunting and fishing toys (I'd cite the total but my wife might read this) funds Federal and State "conservation" programs. From my guns and ammo to my duck calls and decoys, from my rods and reels to my lures and gaffs, from my trolling motor to the very fuel for my outboard – ten cents of every dollar in this ghastly expenditure funds habitat for Spotted Owls, Red Cockaded Woodpeckers, Bald Eagles, Ospreys, Manatees, Snail darters, Black-Footed Ferrets, California Condors, Florida Panthers and Sea Otters.

None of these creatures (from what I hear) make a decent Gumbo or even a passable Chili. I must be crazy. But I have no choice. And this avalanche of tax dollars comes on top of those I fork over for the stacks of licenses, and permits, and stamps I'm required to have before I set a foot afield or set my boat afloat. Last season these totaled $500. (But sweetie! There are huge fines for hunting and fishing without them!)

And all the above is on top of my voluntary dues and assorted donations to such as Ducks Unlimited. (But snookums! I thought you loved the duck print I brought home at 2: 45 AM from the DU Banquet/auction? And especially the picture of me with the nice Hooters girl who worked the keg in her camo bikini?) According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation these donations to such as DU, Pheasants Forever, etc. total $300 million a year.

As mentioned, just last year, hunters and fishermen (not birdwatchers, not rock-climbers, not kayakers, not nature-hikers) "contributed" $1.5 billion "big ones" “dollarinies,” “donuts” (to quote Steve Martin as The Jerk) to purchase and maintain places for greenie-weenies to frolic and nature-watch.

You'd think some thanks might be in order from these freeloaders – from the smarmy crowd not forced to buy any "Bird-Watching stamp" or "Hiking stamp," or "Kayaking stamp", or "Rock Climbing Stamp," or Yanni-Listening Stamp," or "Quartz-Crystal-Gazing-Stamp." You'd think Tofu-munchers might appreciate us hunters' funding habitat for their spotted owls, kangaroo rats, snail darters and louseworts, and bankrolling the scenery on their "nature trails" as they self-righteously plod along in their "earth-friendly" Birkenstocks and granola-flecked frocks., quartz crystals rattling in their pockets en route to a hillside Sunrise worship, crystal-gaze and Enya-listen.

We pay our way – in fact, we pay the hikers and bird-watchers way too. But rather than going afield as passive voyeurs, rather than regarding nature as a Disney cartoon, we accept nature's diktats. We revel in our role as full-fledged participants in her cycle of fang and claw (but add bullets, buckshot, broadheads, treble hooks and gaffs to the primal drama.)

You'd think the voyeurs might throw us a bone every now and then? Well, think again. Here's the Sierra Club's official position: "Wild animals should not be valued principally in terms of whether they can serve as targets. As members of the family of life, we should respect the moral right of all creatures to exist, to be free of unnecessary predation.”

Good because my family and friends regard my predation as absolutely necessary-- for family meals and dinner parties (Gumbo, steaks, burgers, nachos, fajitas, Chili, Po-boys, and on, and on…)

Anyway, you’re quite welcome, Greenies!

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A fevered Leftist imagination: 'Capitalism is trying to kill the planet, but the people are rising up’

From the Socialist Worker:

"Among them was the first featured speaker, Jill Stein, the Greens’ presidential candidate in 2012. “This is an incredible outpouring of support of those not going forward with Obama, but forward with the 99 Percent for system change and fundamental justice,” she said. “Capitalism is trying to kill the planet, but the people are rising up.”

Her remarks reflected the view of many participants that organizers of the February 17 mass demonstration had weakened the protest’s impact by presenting it as an expression of support for Obama, echoing his “forward” and “clean energy” slogans, for example. As several speakers noted, the Democratic administration now seems very likely to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

The February 17 action thus showed both the power of environmental protest and the futility of relying on the Democrats. As Jill Stein said, “The demonstration told Obama, ‘We’ve got your back,’ and then he stabbed us in the back.”

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

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

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April 28, 2013

Opposed to Drilling, Fracking, Keystone…and Exports

Paul Driessen

The interminable war on drilling, fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline has taken some bizarre turns. Now it’s getting worse, as opponents grow more desperate, and the moon again grows full.

Deep water drilling, 3-D and 4-D seismic (the ability to visualize 3-D over many years), deep horizon horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, and other technological marvels have obliterated environmentalist claims that the United States and world are running out of oil and gas – and therefore we need to switch to subsidized, land-hungry, job-killing wind turbines, solar panels and biofuels.

Thanks to free enterprise innovation on state and public lands – and no thanks to President Obama, who has made nearly the entire federal onshore and offshore estate off limits to leasing and drilling – US oil and natural gas production has hit an all-time record. The world is on the verge of doing so as well.

Long-running geopolitics have been turned upside down, as OPEC, Russia and other oil superpowers wonder what hit them. Plastic and chemical manufacturers, steel makers, bus and fleet vehicle operators, and now long-haul truckers are already cashing in on the natural gas bonanza. So are electric utilities, especially with EPA continuing its war on coal, with more unnecessary heavy-handed air and water rules.

Global warming/climate change hysteria is also floundering on the rocks of reality. Average global temperatures haven’t risen in 16 years, seas aren’t rising any faster than 100 years ago, and storms, floods and droughts are no more frequent or severe than over multi-decade trends during the past century.

Evidence and reality simply are not cooperating with IPCC and Mann-made climate models. “Trust the computer models!” the alarmists plead. “If reality doesn’t comport with our predictions, reality is wrong.”

The U.S. State Department has (yet again) said the Keystone XL pipeline poses few environmental problems and should be approved, to bring Canadian oil sands petroleum to Texas refineries – creating thousands of construction and permanent jobs, and billions in economic growth and government revenue.

Unacceptable! …Rants the Environmental Protection Agency. “State underestimated KXL’s potential impact on global warming and needs to do its studies all over again,” says EPA. Never mind that oil sands production would add a minuscule 0.06% to US greenhouse gas emissions and an undetectable 0.00001 degrees C per year to computer-modeled global warming, according to the Congressional Research Service. Do it over, until you get the answers we want, demand EPA and environmentalist ideologues.

Some 70% of Americans and 60% of Canadians support Keystone – and energy security (and jobs) outrank greenhouse gas reduction as a national priority by a 2-1 margin among Americans – says Canadian pollster Nik Nanos.

However, the haters of hydrocarbons, modern living standards, free enterprise and personal liberty are not ready to surrender. They’ve launched a blitzkrieg flanking attack. This time they are outraged that some Keystone oil could be refined into diesel and other products and exported! to Europe or Asia – while some frack-based natural gas might be converted to LNG and likewise exported! around the globe.

Well, yes. When US refiners transform crude oil into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, heating oil, asphalt, waxes and petrochemicals, they ship some of these products overseas. Since Americans use less diesel than refineries manufacture (some parts of each barrel of crude can be converted only into diesel), refiners also export their excess diesel to Europe, which uses more diesel than gasoline, and Europeans ship their surplus gasoline to the USA, mostly to East Coast consumers. It’s a win-win arrangement that will be buttressed and safeguarded by Keystone pipeline transport of Canadian oil.

And yes, Cheniere Energy and other companies want to ship liquefied natural gas to foreign markets. It’s hardly surprising that anti-fracking activists would seize on this as yet another excuse for opposing this game-changing technology. It is hardly remarkable that Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) and other far-Left legislators would sponsor bills to block LNG exports.

What is shocking is that Dow and Huntsman Chemical, Alcoa Aluminum, Nucor Steel and other companies are joining the no-export campaign. They have convinced themselves that such exports will hurt their own selfish economic interests – and for PR have packaged that notion into assertions that exporting any US natural gas is against America’s and the public’s economic interests. Nonsense.

America has barely begun to tap its vast shale gas and conventional natural gas deposits. It has not yet touched its methane hydrates. Together, these deposits will likely last a century or more. In addition, other countries are racing to develop their own conventional, shale and hydrate deposits – while other nations will eventually recognize the folly of keeping their own deposits off limits. All this will gradually reduce demand for US natural gas exports, slow and prolong them, and keep gas prices low.

This interplay will also help ensure that more factories and power plants in more countries burn natural gas, thereby replacing coal and providing the economic wherewithal to enable China, India and other nations to install modern pollution abatement technologies on their now dirty power plants. That will greatly improve air quality and human health in countless cities, while reducing carbon dioxide emissions and reducing consternation among steadily dwindling numbers of climate alarmists.

American oil and gas development – and exports – will also provide an opportunity for our nation to “give back” to the world community for all the petroleum that our anti-leasing, anti-drilling policies have caused us to take from other nations and the world at large for decades. All this activity will also spur further innovation in technologies to unlock still more energy. It will spur job creation, economic growth and government tax and royalty revenue collection here in the United States…and abroad.

More than 23 million Americans are still unemployed or underemployed; 47 million are on food stamps, 128 million dependent on various government programs; the United States is more than $16 trillion in debt. Unemployment in the construction trades is 14.7 percent. Black unemployment was 12.7% when President Bush left office; it soared to 16.7% by September 2011 under President Obama, and remains stuck at 14% today for black adults – and an astronomical 43% for black teenagers!

Drilling, fracking and exports can reverse these horrendous, intolerable, unnecessary statistics.

Misguided industrialists should stop railing against exports. They would do themselves and our nation far more good by putting their lobbyists and public relations staffs to work demanding an end to leasing, drilling and fracking bans that continue to dominate “progressive” thinking, US energy policy (especially under the current administration), and attitudes in California, New York and too many other states.

Of 1.8 billion acres on our nation’s Outer Continental Shelf, only 36-43 million are under lease. That’s barely 2% of the OCS. Offshore territory equal to 78% of the entire US landmass (Alaska plus the Lower 48) is off limits! Even the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill cannot justify that.

Onshore, it’s just as bad. As of 1994, over 410 million federally controlled acres were effectively off limits to exploration and development. That’s 62% of the nation’s public lands – an area nearly equal to Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming combined. The situation has gotten progressively worse, with millions more acres – and vast energy, mineral and economic bounties – locked up in wilderness, park, preserve, wildlife refuge, wilderness study, Antiquities Act and other restrictive land use designations, or simply made unavailable by bureaucratic fiat or foot-dragging.

Drilling opponents claim to be protecting the environment, but in reality simply detest hydrocarbons, modern living standards, free enterprise and personal liberty. Commonsense policies will rejuvenate our economy, put Americans back to work, and help fund government programs that Messrs. Obama and Reid profess to care so much about – while safeguarding ecological values we all cherish.

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No lonely planet

There won't be an overstuffed world, after all

Malthusians can breathe a sigh of relief: If current trends hold, human beings won't fulfill doomsday predictions by making like rabbits after all. Thanks to the success of incessant fear-mongering, the world's population is expected to peak soon and then begin a long slide downward. That's fewer of us "defacing" the planet.

A research team from the Autonomous University of Madrid and CEU-San Pablo University in Spain predicts the global population will begin to decline by the middle of the 21st century. Their study, published in the scientific journal "Simulation," used computer models to project population based on current fertility and death rates. It predicts that global population will reach its high-water mark around the middle of the century, then decline. By 2100, there will be only about 6.2 billion of us, about the same number as in 2000.

Only yesterday, on Oct. 31, 2011 (Halloween, as a matter of fact), the United Nations announced the birth of the 7 billionth baby - not in celebration, but in alarm. The U.N. called it the "Day of 7 Billion," and sounded "a call to action to world leaders to meet the challenges that a growing population poses." The U.N. Population Fund marked the occasion with a report that included a graph projecting a steep increase in the rate of human growth, and asked the scary question: "Will my grandchildren live in a world of 10 billion?"

The U.N. has spent decades and billions of dollars to bend the rate of childbirth downward, particularly in Third World nations, where large families are often considered essential to work the fields and hence survival. The new population study confirms the global body's success in persuading humans that less is more. "Overpopulation was a specter in the 1960s and '70s, but historically the U.N.'s low fertility-variant forecasts have been fulfilled," writes Felix F. Munoz, researcher and co-author of the project.

Behind population-control schemes lurk the pessimistic belief that one human being is a consumer; a billion is an environmental disaster. Thomas Malthus, an 18th-century Anglican clergyman, taught that population growth would eventually reach a tipping point and that famine and disease would kill numbers that threatened sustainability: "The increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence."

Malthus could not have predicted the miracles of the 21st century. Stephen Hawking, a famous theoretical physicist, has lived his 71 years with Lou Gehrig's disease, which has left him a quadriplegic. Modern medicine has redefined "the means of subsistence," allowing Mr. Hawking to project influence from his motorized wheelchair. He is living proof that efforts to limit human growth are foolhardy when a universe of God-given potential lives to be tapped within each person.

An empty world would represent failure for the human race, not success. Better to face the future with courage than be taken in by the doomsayers. Human ingenuity is the ultimate resource.

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Japan turns back to coal-fired power plants

The Japanese government is moving to speed up the environmental assessment process for new coal-fired power plants as its power sector struggles with a surging energy bill in the wake of the forced idling of much of the country's nuclear power plants following the Fukushima power plant meltdown in 2011.

At present, it can take up to four years for approvals for new plants to be processed.

According to Japanese media reports, the government intends to make 12 months the maximum period for assessing and approving new coal-fired power plants as its utilities seek to develop more power stations to stem surging energy supply bills.

The closure of much of the country's nuclear power capacity following Fukushima has forced the utilities to restart idled oil-fired power plants, which has pushed up energy bills significantly since oil is the most expensive fuel source.

And with the government considering the closure of much of the installed nuclear capacity over the medium term, the spotlight is back on coal as the cheapest energy source, notwithstanding plans to cut carbon emissions.

A commitment to slice 2020 carbon emissions by 25 per cent from their 1990 level will be revised by October, according to Japanese newspaper reports.

Tokyo Electric, which operated the Fukushima complex, is adding an estimated 2.6 gigawatts a year of coal-fired generation capacity from two new plants that started operation this month.

It is also sourcing electricity from two coal-fired plants operated by Tohoku Electric Power Co that have been restarted after being repaired following the devastating March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The No.2 unit at Tokyo Electric's Hitachinaka plant, with 1000 megawatts of capacity, began operating this month, along with the 600MW No. 6 unit at its Hirono power station. The utility is also purchasing half of the output from the No. 1 and No. 2 units at Tohoku Electric's Haramachi plant in northern Japan, each of which can generate 1000MW.

In total, these coal-fired power plants are expected to consume about 11.5 million tonnes of coal in a full year of operation.

The government's move to speed up the assessment process coincides with Tokyo Electric's call for tenders for the construction of new coal-fired power stations with 2600MW of capacity, which it wants to have in operation by the end of the decade, to replace lost nuclear capacity.

Of Japan's 50 nuclear power plants, just two are in operation at the moment. All were shut for a review of operating procedures after the Fukushima accident.

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Americans Bothered By The Way The Government Spends Taxes

Every year, April 15 is tax day. The morning's news shows featured last minute tax tips and other tax-related information. A new poll was discussed. When asked: "Thinking about paying taxes, which one of the following bothers you the most?" Surprisingly, "What you pay" received the lowest response, while the "Way the government spends taxes" was the highest. "Feeling that some don't pay fair share" was near the top and "Complexity of system and forms" was near the bottom." So people understand that it takes money to run the government and generally don't object to paying their taxes. It is what the government does with that money that frustrates us.

When asked about the way government spends taxes, responders were likely thinking of the green-energy crony-corruption spending on flawed ventures like Solyndra and the, now, fifty-plus other green-energy embarrassments that received taxpayer dollars as a result of President Obama's 2009 Stimulus Bill (as well as other green-energy funds) that poured nearly $100 billion into the pet projects of his donors.

Solyndra filed for bankruptcy in September 2011. It was just the bellwether; the first of many to come.

A year later Christine Lakatos and I profiled nearly 20 green-energy stimulus-funded companies that had gone bankrupt. The next week, we highlighted the other bookend: "companies/projects that received funding from various loan guarantee programs (LGP), grants, and tax incentives. These are projects that are still functioning, but are facing difficulties." One of those troubled companies was A123 Systems. One week after our report, A123 filed for bankruptcy. Nearly two months later, A123 was purchased by a large Chinese auto parts maker that has renamed the lithium-ion battery company B456. (Note: A123/B456's biggest customer is another company on our troubled list: Fisker Automotive-manufacturer of the $100,000+ electric sports car made in Finland-is now facing bankruptcy itself after efforts to find a Chinese investor "stalled.")

Wait. In his 2008 campaign, didn't Obama promise to "create five million new energy jobs over the next decade--jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced"? But our tax-payer dollars created jobs in Finland and have benefitted a Chinese company-Obamanomics outsourced. No wonder the "way the government spends taxes" tops the list. And most have no idea that the Obama administration is responsible for steering billions of our tax dollars from the stimulus and other clean energy programs to foreign-owned entities, of which big chunk was doled out in the form of free cash via the 1603 stimulus grant program.

But there's more-new news the poll respondents probably didn't even know about.

One day after the poll was taken, CNN Money reports: "China's Suntech Power has put its largest subsidiary into bankruptcy." What they don't mention is that China's Suntech Power benefitted from Obama's 2009 Stimulus Bill-receiving a $2.1 million credit from the Energy Department's stimulus-funded Advanced Energy Manufacturing (48C) Tax Credit. (Suntech was included in our 2012 "troubled" list.) In her blog, The Green Corruption Files, Lakatos states: "according to the Heritage Foundation, in November 2012, Suntech shed some employees, claiming that it was the 'U.S. International Trade Commission's 35.95% tariff on Chinese solar panels that was partially responsible for the 50 impending layoffs at its Arizona production facilities.'" Suntech was even blamed for the Solyndra debacle. In December 2011, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported: "China's major solar panel companies-whose low-cost products led some American factories to close, helped create the Solyndra controversy, and spawned talk of a trade war-were bankrolled in the United States by the world's largest investment banks." Those "investment banks" include some the same ones we have profiled in our previous reports that have deep ties to the Obama campaign and administration, and many green-energy projects that received loans, grants, and special tax breaks representing billions in stimulus money.

Suntech has more interconnections. Arizona's Mesquite Solar Project, which received $337 million in taxpayer money despite its non-investment grade rating by Fitch, was to be built with Suntech's solar panels and the power was to be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric-which has strong political presence in Washington, DC, and connections to billions in stimulus funds. California's PG&E, a company with "an extensive network of former high-ranking employees holding influential positions in government agencies at the federal and state level, has benefitted handsomely from government financing of green energy projects." The most controversial former PG&E employee to hold an influential government post is Cathy Zoi, a former energy analyst for the company, who we profiled in our report on George Soros.

There is much more that can be found in Lakato's Suntech report.

Another sparsely reported solar-power embarrassment was covered by Fox News on the same day the aforementioned poll was taken. "SoloPower, which makes thin-film solar panels at a new plant in Portland, OR, opened September 27 with an upbeat ribbon-cutting ceremony. Local and state politicians gushed about the company eventually operating four production lines and creating 450 well-paid green jobs." After its grand opening just months ago, SoloPower's power is waning: "The first production line was never completed," and "in January, the company had a round of layoffs."

This is not a surprise to those of us who watch the green-energy crony-corruption scandal. SoloPower was one of the worst-rated loans. One month before it received a $197 million loan guarantee to "support the retrofit of an existing building to operate a thin-film solar panel manufacturing facility in Portland, OR," Standard and Poors (S&P) gave SoloPower a credit rating of CCC+.

On March 29, 2012, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a report titled "The Department of Energy's Disastrous Management of Loan Guarantee Programs" which states: "S&P predicted that SoloPower will fail to meet its debt obligations." DOE emails, released on October 31, 2012, reveal that James McCrea, Senior Credit Advisor Loan Programs, called SoloPower "a completely uninspiring project."

Yet, in addition to the $197 million of US taxpayer money SoloPower was given from the DOE through the 1705 LGP, this European firm also received $40 million from Oregon taxpayers. Then in December 2012, "despite unfulfilled job and production promises and signs the Portland solar panel factory was sliding even further behind," Oregon officials tripled the "taxpayer's stake," said the Oregonian. Business Oregon approved a $20 million tax credit for SoloPower-which SoloPower then exchanged for $13.5 million in cash. After a management shake-up, Fox News reports, SoloPower is "trying to raise money by selling some of its equipment through a third party and is attempting to restructure its $197 million federal loan guarantee."

With the bad credit rating, the "uninspiring" label, and poor performance, why did SoloPower receive federal, state, and city funding-ultimately paid by the taxpayers? Because as the Oversight Committee report states: "What SoloPower lacked in economic value, it made up for in political connections."

Suntech and SoloPower are just two recent stories, part of a long list of bankrupt and/or "troubled" politically connected green-energy projects.

When President Obama released his FY2014 budget, it included new spending of nearly $1 billion "to support deployment and long-term development in the clean energy industries." Renewable Energy World appears gleeful. "It's been said before and it bears repeating that Obama has done more for solar than any previous US President." And: "The support of the federal government has led to an explosion in the amount of solar across America." Do you think?

In contrast, Tom Pyle, President of the American Energy Alliance, pointed out that the budget "represents the administration's desire to double down on bad energy policy." And, "calls for fast-track permitting for renewables" while never mentioning the Keystone pipeline. Pyle concludes his comments by saying: the President "hopes that the American people will forget the failures of the past four years, higher gasoline prices, skyrocketing electricity rates, bankrupt renewable firms, and billions in wasted taxpayer money on politically connected industries."

No wonder the "way the government spends taxes" tops the list of taxpayer's frustrations. Perhaps if "government's inability to learn from its mistakes" had been on the list, it would have been the number one choice.

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More Environmentalist Confusions

Tibor R. Machan

The New York Observer reported in its April 15, 2013, issue (B 1) that Leonardo DiCaprio is teaming up with Christie's in New York City, to hold a "major philanthropic auction." I am not interested in the details, which appear to me a kind of kiss up to fellow celebrities on the political/cultural Left. But the following statement from the actor is quite instructive:

The Observer reports: ''The world's forests, oceans and biodiversity provide us with innumerable benefits like oxygen to breathe, clean water to drink, and an abundant food supply,' Mr. DiCaprio wrote in a letter to artists asking for donations, on his foundation's stationary, the promotional item mentioned above. 'And yet our planet and these vital ecosystems that sustain life are under enormous pressures from modern civilization'."

Trouble is that from an environmentalist viewpoint the enormous pressure of which DiCaprio speaks is itself part of the environment, not some independent natural force. In short, modern civilization is part of the system! If it causes harm, that means the system itself is causing harm.

This is an inescapable fact. Environmentalists have no justification for removing people, including the people of modern civilization, from the environment. From their viewpoint, we are all in it together. We are all parts of nature, as well.

Interestingly a good many environmentalists are also animal rights champions and their argument includes the idea that human beings aren't different from other animals in crucial respects. Tom Regan has argued that non-human animals possess virtually the same level of consciousness as we do and thus ascribing to them basic rights such as human beings have is justified. The other main advocate of treating animals like humans are treated, which justifies "liberating" them, holds that the feelings and interests of non-human animals differ very little from those of human beings, something that once again warrants ascribing to them basic rights akin to those we ascribe to ourselves.

All this suggests that animal rights advocates who are environmentalists place human beings within the realm of nature. So the enormous pressure from modern civilization-i.e., people-is actually just one additional natural pressure, namely, evolutionary pressure.

The bottom line is that for environmentalists the contributions people make to environmental developments are natural ones and cannot be rejected as something alien. Pollution, technology, modern agriculture, etc., etc., are all part of nature as far as environmentalist are concerned (including Mr. DiCaprio). From his point of view, then, even the environmental movement is but an aspect of nature! Its battles are natural battles, no different in principle from hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.

I point out all this mainly to reduce the rhetorical heat emanating from too many environmentalists whereby what they like about the world counts as natural but what they do not counts as alien. That just will not do.

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Wind turbines 'could allow enemy jets to sneak into British airspace'

The Ministry of Defence is fighting plans for two giant wind turbines over fears the towers could mask enemy jets entering British airspace.

Officials at the Ministry of Defence say the 115ft towers are so big they could look like planes on monitoring equipment.

The MOD say radar could classify the turbines as a threat – automatically sending in fighter jets to investigate and allowing real enemies to sneak in.

They say the green energy devices would confuse computer systems designed to protect the UK – and don't want them put up.

Plans for the turbines have been submitted by Richard and Ian Lobb, who want to install the 50kW towers on their neighbouring farms in St Ewe, Cornwall.

But their application prompted a written objection from the MoD which warned the installation would cause "unacceptable interference" to an air traffic control (ATC) radar 30 miles away in Wembury, Devon.

Radar operators have to treat any unidentified object as a genuine threat – and could even have to scramble fighter jets to investigate.

Their objection said: "Wind turbines have been shown to have detrimental effects on the performance of MoD ATC radars.

"These effects include the desensitisation of radar in the vicinity of the turbines, and the creation of 'false' aircraft returns which air traffic controllers must treat as real.

"The desensitisation of radar could result in aircraft not being detected by the radar and therefore not presented to air traffic controllers."

MoD chiefs said controllers relied upon accurate radar readings to distinguish between military and civilian aircraft.

Their letter added: "The creation of 'false' aircraft display on the radar leads to increased workload for both controllers and aircrews and may have a significant operational impact.

"Furthermore, real aircraft returns can be obscured by the turbine's radar returns, making the tracking of conflicting, unknown aircraft much more difficult."

The wind farm proposal has also provoked opposition from locals who say the towers will be a blot on the picturesque Cornish landscape.

Graham Chaplin, who owns a smallholding near the proposed site, has collected signatures of 109 villagers calling on Cornwall Council to reject the plan.

He said: "The turbine will really be right on top of us. It's so close that we are going to suffer from noise pollution. But what's more worrying is that there is a public safety issue with these turbines.

"The MoD clearly says that operators cannot assume that it's just the wind turbine. They have to deal with it as if it was a real problem."

Cornwall Council is due to report back on the application by May 13.

A spokeswoman said the council does not comment on undecided applications.

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

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

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April 26, 2013

How rich Rockefellers battle the people’s pipeline

Americans concerned about gasoline prices were encouraged by the Pew Research Center’s new poll, whose headline blared, “Keystone XL Pipeline draws broad support.” A score box showed 63 percent supporting and only 23 percent opposing the pipeline that would transport oil from Canada’s vast Alberta oil sands deposits through the Plains states to Texas refineries.

“Every one-cent increase at the pump steals about $1 billion from the larger economy that consumers would have otherwise saved or spent on something else,” the Wall Street Journal has pointed out. High gasoline prices thus translate into lost jobs, lost tax revenues and lower living standards. Americans are beginning to understand that, as the Obama “recovery” gives them real-world economic lessons.

Unfortunately, the Pew report quickly deflated optimism over this support, when it tersely identified who the minority is: “liberals” — stanchions of Big Green’s circus tent. We have seen time and again that the liberal 23 percent can be a “majority” to President Obama, who wields executive orders to bypass the people.

As his administration approaches a decision, lame-duck politics says he could go either way — even with his own State Department’s second favorable environmental impact report on the KXL’s construction permit. Even with Alberta Premier Alison Redford saying that an Obama rejection would damage U.S.-Canada relations. “Canada relies on the U.S. for 97 percent of its energy exports,” Redford said, and “sees the new pipeline as critical to its economic well-being.” And even with ten governors and 22 lieutenant governors sending letters to the President, urging pipeline approval.

What is Obama likely to do? Some 82 percent of Republicans favor the pipeline, so revenge is not an unthinkable motive for a possible rejection. However, 70 percent of independents and 54 percent of Democrats also favor the KXL. Fogging the crystal ball is the ideological split among Democrats: 60 percent of the party’s conservatives and moderates support building the pipeline, compared to just 42 percent of liberal Democrats. That considerably flattens Obama’s upward slope toward a potential rejection, but doesn’t level it.

Obama’s decision may hinge on pleasing his base of global-warming advocates. This whole Keystone XL controversy was carefully conceived and organized as a “globally significant response” to global warming. Shutting down Alberta’s oil sands — by blocking both the US-bound Keystone XL pipeline and any other Alberta oil conduit, particularly a proposed link to Vancouver, British Columbia harbors and oil tankers bound for Asia — would supposedly reduce global warming. That’s propaganda, not reality.

As Environment Canada has observed, oil sands production contributes a mere 0.14 percent of global greenhouse gases, notes, and would add an undetectable 0.00001 degrees C per year to global warming, even if carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases really do drive climate change.

The anti-oil sands campaign — activists call them “tar sands” to evoke ugly images — was devised by the New York City-based Rockefeller Brothers Fund, using earmarked grants to recruit “a network of leading US and Canadian NGOs” and establish a “coordinated campaign structure” to act as its public face, according to a leaked PowerPoint presentation.

The first slide says, “The Tar Sands Campaign, Michael Northrop, Program Officer, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, July 2008.” Seven slides drive home the message that Rockefeller wants its paid campaigners to emphasize: Oil sands and Keystone represent “a globally significant threat” — with “Global Warming,” and “Oil Addiction” as the two “thought leader slogans” in the parade of old shibboleths that trigger brain freeze in Big Green followers. The rest was a coldly calculated, very practical plan to destroy Canada’s single most important export, with Rockefeller giving $7 million per year to activist groups to do the job.

Thinking people understand that being “addicted to oil” is like being addicted to breathing, better living standards, improved health and life itself. Just try getting along without it in a world where fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) contributed 82 percent of US energy use in 2012. The “green alternative” (wind and solar) provided a mere 3.3 percent of our overall needs in 2012; the rest was nuclear, hydroelectric and biomass (mostly wood). Relying on the “green alternative” is like trying to inhale only 3.3 percent as much as you usually do. There’s an energy gap there we need to account for.

Canadian researcher Vivian Krause exposed the Rockefeller funding for campaigns against Canadian energy exports in her October 2010 Financial Post story, “US foundations against the oil sands.” Five US foundations, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, funneled vast sums of money through the Tides Foundation’s Canadian organization, Tides Canada. The Tides family of operations is a notorious California-based funder of left-wing activists.

Krause wrote, “A large part of Tides Canada’s funding comes from the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. These are The Big Five. They give away about US$1.2-billion every year.” In a chilling reminder, she concluded, “If these foundations decide to undermine a foreign industry, they probably can.”

Later that fall, Krause testified before a Canadian House of Commons committee, prompting an audit of the Canadian arm of the Tides Foundation by the Canada Revenue Agency (Canada’s equivalent to the IRS). By Krause’s calculations, Tides, a co-funder of the Rockefeller oil sands campaign, has distributed $19 million to anti-Keystone groups since 2008.

Krause explains that the campaign strategy is intended to foster renewable energy by shifting investment capital away from so-called “dirty oil” and toward so-called “clean energy.” To this end, she said, “they ‘educate’ media, consumers and voters. They stigmatize fossil fuels as bad, thereby facilitating the positioning of renewables as good. It’s basic product positioning and ‘depositioning’ the competitor.”

Not surprisingly, the “education” is slanted. “We get only bad news about fossil fuels and good news about solar and wind,” Krause observes. “We don’t get the whole story.” What gets left out are the advantages of fossil fuels — and the limitations and harmful effects of renewables, like the tiny amount of energy they provide, and the terrible impacts they have on birds, bats and wildlife habitats. “Furthermore, some of the information that is perpetuated is out-dated, and some is plainly false.”

I asked Krause why the Rockefeller presence behind the anti-XL propaganda campaign was virtually invisible. She told me that it has been done quietly but not secretly. “The grants have been disclosed in online databases for years,” she said. “But nobody bothered to add them up and connect the dots.” Krause connected the dots to the networks of foundations that work together on targeted projects.

She directed me to a revealing but obscure source, “Design to Win: Philanthropy’s Role in the Fight Against Global Warming,” which was sponsored by six of “the usual suspects” I have learned to expect to find behind any global warming campaign: the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Energy Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Oak Foundation, and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Another source was, “A Strategy Planning Tool for Western Conservation,” prepared for the Hewlett Foundation by the Redstone Strategy Group, a brain pool of Ivy League hotshots not to be trifled with. Their strategy is to create eight massive national parks, each the size of Switzerland, as a way to stop the development of fossil fuels. Just fence industry out with parks — or Antiquities Act designations.

Anyone who thinks their local grassroots green group just pops up spontaneously in occasional protests needs to read either of these documents. They will find that the “roots” under the environmentalist “grass” are fertilized with bales of hundred-dollar bills. Rockefeller’s actions are quite open, if quiet. Krause said, “The strategy is articulated in discussion papers, but who reads them?”

Nobody except Vivian Krause, evidently. Her Twitter account, @FairQuestions, says, “I follow the money & the science behind enviro campaigns.” Her research and writing are impressive. Her blog profile states, “I work from my dining room table, using Google, on my own nickel. Not part of any political party, any industry, or any campaign.” Her work deserves more attention in the United States.

Krause’s discovery and exposé of the Rockefeller millions behind the anti-Keystone XL campaign could become a factor in Obama’s pipeline construction decision. It has already created Canadian suspicion of environmental groups dancing on the strings of US foundation money.

It’s not the money itself Canadians fear. It’s the way bales of US foundation cash can buy pressure by proxy, to impose undue foreign influence over Canada’s national energy policy and sovereignty.

One must hope Mr. Obama does not wish to be suspected of dancing on the same Rockefeller policy puppet strings as the Big Green bigwigs who were recently arrested protesting at his front door.

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Are you sure this is going to work? Scotland's first 'solar meadow' opens under grey skies and rain

They were built to slash a college's carbon emissions and save them tens of thousands of pounds in energy bills.

But some people must have been left wondering if the new 'solar meadow' will live up to its billing as it opened today under grey and rainy skies.

The site at the Midlothian campus of Edinburgh College in Dalkeith is Scotland's first solar meadow and one of the most northerly locations for the green technology in Europe.

The five-acre site cost œ1.2million to build and was designed by SSE Energy Solutions.

It promises to decrease the college's carbon emissions by 300,000kg a year and meet all the campus' electricity demands.

But dignitaries who turned out for the grand opening had to walk through the rain with not a beam of sunlight in sight.

Dressed in bright hi-viz jackets, the group including local MSP Colin Beattie, staff, students and business leaders, were pictured holding umbrellas aloft as they inspected the site.

Backers of the project also hope it will become a local attraction.

Wildflowers and various grasses are to be planted in the meadow to increase the site's biodiversity.

Professor Steve Tinsley, vice-principal of Edinburgh College, who is leading the project, said: 'We believe the solar meadow also looks great and will become a significant attraction for local people as well as visitors to the capital.

'It is also fantastic that the project has enabled the college to engage with schools and local community groups to develop their own renewable energy projects. 'It really is giving something back to the local community in more ways than one.'

The solar meadow, which can still generate energy under in overcast conditions, will also be used as a teaching facility for students.

'[The solar meadow] will help not only to provide the next generation of engineers with essential skills, but also allow the college to become less reliant on fossil fuel energy,' said Prof Tinsley.

The meadow will also be used as a research centre where the interaction between biodiversity and solar technology is analysed, including the effect of environmental conditions on the output from the solar panels such as weather and pollen.

Richard Chandler, SSE's head of green deal and energy solutions, said: 'The solar meadow will not only generate around 560,000 kWhrs every year, enough energy to power 170 homes, but is also a fine example of how industry and education can work well together.

'This project will bring benefits to the college, its students and the wider community as well as further strengthening Scotland's renewable energy resources.'

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Global COOLING Era to Bring Food Shortages and Social Upheaval Says New Climate Report

The inaugural edition of the recently published Global Climate Status Report (GCSR)¸ by the Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC), headquartered in Orlando, Florida, discloses startling new information about global food shortages and widespread social upheaval that is just around the corner; all the cause of the new global cooling era. This single source document from the SSRC details an apolitical, fact-based version of the Earth's climate status as measured by twenty four climate parameters. The summary conclusion of the report shows that the planet is heading into four decades of potentially dangerous, cold weather.

Mr. John L. Casey, SSRC founder, Editor of the GCSR, and author of the internationally acclaimed climate book, "Cold Sun" was recently named "America's best climate prediction expert" by Watchdogwire.com.

He elaborates on the stunning conclusions of the GCSR by saying, "The news isn't good, especially for those who still believe in manmade global warming and that mankind's CO2 emissions have a major role in climate change. They will be totally unprepared for this new cold era. Though we had issued a press release in February to announce the climate report, the specific findings from the full report and their implications for everyone on the planet are still largely unreported by the media and unknown to our leaders. It is certainly still surprising that what is likely one of the most important news stories for the next fifty years is completely ignored by the mainstream media, including most science periodicals.

For these reasons, I want to be very clear about what this report is saying. Here in the United States, we face the real prospect of major crop damage and food shortages as we get closer to the bottom of the next cold era estimated to be 2031. We should fully expect to see substantial crop losses during the 2020's along with accompanying food riots, and social unrest, especially in every major US city. That means we may have seven years, and likely less, to set aside the food we will need or make adjustments to our national food production and consumption practices in order to get through the global cooling onslaught with minimal damage.

This situation will be made much worse because the current administration of President Obama has its head in the sand on this global threat and unbelievably is still telling the world that the Earth is warming because of man's industrial greenhouse gas emissions. Nothing could be further from the truth according to the overwhelming evidence that climatologists and solar physicists around the world have compiled and is discussed in our global climate report for all to read."

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Scientists find heat-tolerant coral reefs that may resist climate change

Amid all the flim-flam below there is only one solid fact: Corals can survive higher temperatures -- as has often been shown elsewhere

Experts say that more than half of the world's coral reefs could disappear in the next 50 years, in large part because of higher ocean temperatures caused by climate change. But now Stanford University scientists have found evidence that some coral reefs are adapting and may actually survive global warming.

"Corals are certainly threatened by environmental change, but this research has really sparked the notion that corals may be tougher than we thought," said Stephen Palumbi, a professor of biology and a senior fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment.

Palumbi and his Stanford colleagues began studying the resiliency of coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean in 2006 with the support of a Woods Institute Environmental Venture Project grant. The project has expanded and is now being funded by Conservation International and the Bio-X program at Stanford.
"The most exciting thing was discovering live, healthy corals on reefs already as hot as the ocean is likely to get 100 years from now," said Palumbi, director of Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station. "How do they do that?"

Coral reefs form the basis for thriving, healthy ecosystems throughout the tropics. They provide homes and nourishment for thousands of species, including massive schools of fish, which in turn feed millions of people across the globe.

Corals rely on partnerships with tiny, single-celled algae called zooxanthellae. The corals provide the algae a home, and, in turn, the algae provide nourishment, forming a symbiotic relationship. But when rising temperatures stress the algae, they stop producing food, and the corals spit them out. Without their algae symbionts, the reefs die and turn stark white, an event referred to as "coral bleaching."

During particularly warm years, bleaching has accounted for the deaths of large numbers of corals. In the Caribbean in 2005, a heat surge caused more than 50 percent of corals to bleach, and many still have not recovered, according to the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, an international collaboration of government officials, policymakers and marine scientists, including Palumbi.

Havens of healthy reefs

In recent years, scientists discovered that some corals resist bleaching by hosting types of algae that can handle the heat, while others swap out the heat-stressed algae for tougher, heat-resistant strains. Palumbi's team set out to investigate how widely dispersed these heat-tolerant coral reefs are across the globe and to learn more about the biological processes that allow them to adapt to higher temperatures.

In 2006, Palumbi and graduate student Tom Oliver, now a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford, traveled to Ofu Island in American Samoa. Ofu, a tropical coral reef marine reserve, has remained healthy despite gradually warming waters.

The island offered the perfect laboratory setting, Oliver said, with numerous corals hosting the most common heat-sensitive and heat-resistant algae symbionts. Ofu also has pools of varying temperatures that allowed the research team to test under what conditions the symbionts formed associations with corals.

In cooler lagoons, Oliver found only a handful of corals that host heat-resistant algae exclusively. But in hotter pools, he observed a direct increase in the proportion of heat-resistant symbionts, suggesting that some corals had swapped out the heat-sensitive algae for more robust types. These results, combined with regional data from other sites in the tropical Pacific, were published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series in March 2009.

Global pattern

To see if this pattern exists on a global scale, the researchers turned to Kevin Arrigo, an associate professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford and an expert on remote satellite sensing of marine microalgae. Arrigo gathered worldwide oceanographic data on a variety of environmental variables, including ocean acidity, the frequency of weather events and sea-surface temperature.

Oliver then compiled dozens of coral reef studies from across the tropics and compared them to Arrigo's environmental data. The results revealed the same pattern: In regions where annual maximum ocean temperatures were above 84 to 88 degrees Fahrenheit (29 to 31 degrees Celsius), corals were avoiding bleaching by hosting higher proportions of the heat-resistant symbionts.

Most corals bleach when temperatures rise 1.8 F (1 C) above the long-term normal highs. But heat-tolerant symbionts might allow a reef to handle temperatures up to 2.6 F (1.5 C) beyond the bleaching threshold. That might be enough to help get them through the end of the century, Oliver said, depending on the severity of global warming.

A 2007 report by the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change concluded that the average surface temperature of the Earth is likely to increase 3.6 to 8.1 F (2 to 4.5 C) by 2100. In this scenario, the symbiont switch alone may not be enough to help corals survive through the end of the century. But with the help of other adaptive mechanisms, including natural selection for heat-tolerant corals, there is still hope, Oliver said.

"These findings show that, given enough time, many corals can match hotter environments by hosting heat-resistant symbionts," he explained. "While hopeful, the work also suggests that modern environments are changing so rapidly that corals may not be able to keep up. It comes down to a calculation of the rates of environmental change versus the rates of adaptation."

Heat-resistant corals also turn out to be more tolerant of increases in ocean acidity, which occurs when the ocean absorbs excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere--another potential threat to coral reefs. This finding suggests that corals worldwide are adapting to increases in acidity as well as heat, Oliver said, and that across the tropics, corals with the ability to switch symbionts will do so to survive.

Future protection

The problem of coral bleaching comes down to a collapse of the algae at the cellular level, Oliver explained. But the molecular biology of corals and their zooxanthellae under stress is shockingly understudied, he added.

To examine the corals and their symbionts at the molecular level, the researchers are collaborating with John Pringle, a professor of genetics at Stanford. Pringle and his lab have set up tanks where anemones, corals and their algae are exposed to a variety of treatments, including changes in temperature, acidity and light. That research is ongoing.

"What I hope is that we will learn some really deep and interesting things about the cellular and genetic mechanisms that allow this symbiosis to function, and about the mechanisms that come into play when the symbiosis is breaking down under stress," Pringle said. "The longer-range hope is that having that understanding will contribute to efforts in coral conservation."

The ultimate goal is to find protein biomarkers that indicate signs of heat stress and potential heat resistance, Oliver explained. Then coral reef managers could go to a reef, take small coral samples and test for the presence of the biomarkers to see how resilient the reef will be to higher temperatures.

"With this tool, managers could identify existing populations that may be more resistant to climate change and potentially prioritize their protection from everything else that kills coral reefs, like fishing and [agricultural] runoff," Oliver said.

"Although we are doing things to the planet we have never done before, it's hard to imagine that these corals, which have existed for a quarter of a billion years, only have 50 years left," Palumbi said. "And part of our job might be to figure out where the tougher ones live and protect those places."

SOURCE





Main Multiple Proxy Study Confirms "Global Warming" Skeptic Views - Modern Temps Not Unprecedented, Not Global

I commented briefly on this hokum on 22nd, pointing out some obvious problems. I also anticipated that more detailed critiques would be forthcoming and that such critiques would be scathing. And we see below that it is so. -- JR

Anti-science alarmists and pro-global warming ('AGW') scientists are very enamored with multi-proxy temperature reconstructions, which allows "researchers" to statistically blend and torture different forms of data to force a "confession" that modern warming has been "unprecedented" - however, as expert skeptics have discovered, these studies are often found to be empirically and statistically-challenged garbage and end up being a cornucopia of unintended contradictions...the new PAGES2K paleo-torture study is the latest example

The new Kaufman et al. study (aka as the 'PAGES2K' research) is getting its initial web-wide forensic review in multiple articles across the web, including here, here, here, here and here.

The chart on the left depicts those areas of the world that experienced modern warming supposedly greater than any warming over the last 2,000 years; and, the chart on the right represents those areas where modern warming was less than that of certain periods during the past 2,000 years. Both charts have the past 2,000 year atmospheric levels superimposed (the pinkish curve) on them.

It is from the Tisdale analysis that it first becomes apparent that the law of unintended consequences has interestingly come into play - the study's authors have actually built a case (be it likely an unforced error) that supports the views of the majority of catastrophic global warming skeptics/lukewarmers.

From the study itself, and a close review of the above images, we now know the following:

* First, as even the New York Times points out, this study determined that the Arctic was warmer during the 1940s to 1970s than during years of the late 20th century.

* Second, the study determined that periods prior to 1000AD had warmer temperatures in Europe. Confirms view of skeptics, check.

* Third, this study finds Antarctica was warmer, from the 2nd through 13th centuries, than during our modern era.

* Fourth, this study points out that true global warming has not taken place in the modern era, but regional strong warming has. Of the 7 regional areas analyzed, only 3 exhibit a strong warming (more likely only 2, see point #11 below). The other four regions, not so much. Confirms view of skeptics.

* Fifth, the study clearly indicates that major climate change is taking place at all times, in different manners, across the globe. Climate change is not some new modern phenomenon. Confirms view of skeptics.

* Sixth, the study shows atmospheric CO2 levels are not a cause of past major climate change. Throughout most of the last 2,000 years, CO2 levels are stable yet climate change is constantly happening. Confirms view of skeptics

* Seventh, the study documents that unprecedented regional warming takes place regardless of low/high atmospheric CO2 levels. Confirms view of skeptics

* Eighth, this study, in combination with the known recent global temperature trend (subsequent to this study's ending date of 2000AD), clearly makes an indisputable case that recent modern global warming is not as claimed: unprecedented; unequivocal; irrefutable; irreversible; nor dangerously accelerating. Confirms view of skeptics.

* Ninth, this study affirms that periods of "unprecedented" warming do not cause the IPCC's urban legend of "runaway," "tipping point," dangerous global warming. Of course, the hottest period ever recorded (Minoan era) in the ice cores over the last 4,000 years already proved that the mythical "tipping point" is just that. Confirms view of skeptics, check.

* Tenth, this study again provides proof that the AGW-alarmist researchers will use each and every attempt to remove and/or minimize the exceptional Medieval Warming Period that the vast majority of local/regional paleo research studies, and the historical literature, have well documented. It is simply freaking amazing that this group of researchers would present an analysis of Europe's past warming without the extreme and extended warming of the Medieval era (see chart of right).

* Eleventh, this study clearly proves to the public that the proponents of AGW-alarmism will utilize excessive cherry-picking of empirical paleo research to fabricate their "scientific" claims of modern "unprecedented" warming. Not only did this study exclude the preponderance of paleo-scientists' research that documents past extreme warming, but this study was brazen enough to include paleo temperature reconstructions that even a peer-reviewed science journal ultimately rejected because of its statistical flim-flam.

Without the infamous, widely discredited Gergis et al. study, it is highly likely that the "Australasia" region of the above chart on the left would have to be moved to the chart of the right, above - thus leaving just 2 regions of the world that may have had modern "unprecedented" warming in the 20th century, and only a single region of the world that had "unprecedented" warming since 1970 (recall that this study confirmed the Arctic was warmer from the 1940s to the 1970s). Confirms view of skeptics.

Conclusion: This multi-cherry-picking proxy study has many claiming that modern temps are the "hottest" across the globe, over the last 1,400 years. In fact, as the above information clarifies, some regions of the world had strong modern warming (that is, supposedly), while the majority did not.

As this study itself determines, global warming, cooling and climate change are not done in some lock step manner across the world in a monotonous cause and effect relationship with CO2.

Skeptics of both the IPCC's catastrophic global warming hysteria and the elites' CO2-kills fanaticism have pointed this out for years (if not decades).

The geological and historical records/datasets support the essentials of the non-hysterical skeptic/lukewarmers' analysis of climate change, and now this study suggests the alarmist community has inadvertently accepted many of the same views.

More HERE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)




GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA

Three current articles below

New paper finds global sea levels will rise only about 5 inches by 2100

A new peer-reviewed paper by sea level expert Dr. Nils-Axel Morner concludes that Australian government claims of a 1 meter sea level rise by 2100 are greatly exaggerated, finding instead that sea levels are rising around Australia and globally at a rate of only 1.5 mm/year. This would imply a sea level change of only 0.13 meters or 5 inches by 2100. Dr. Morner also finds no evidence of any acceleration in sea level rise around Australia or globally.

From the conclusion of the paper:

In view of the data presented, we believe that we are justified to draw the following conclusions:

(1) The official Australian claim [2,3] of a present sea level rise in the order of 5.4mm/year is significantly exaggerated (Figure 3).

(2) The mean sea level rise from Australian tide gauges as well as global tide gauge networks is to be found within the sector of rates ranging from 0.1 to 1.5 mm/year (yellow wedge in Figure 3).

(3) The claim of a recent acceleration in the rate of sea level rise [2,3,12] cannot be validated by tide gauge records, either in Australia or globally (Figure 3). Rather, it seems strongly contradicted [19,21,24,39-41]

The practical implication of our conclusions is that there, in fact, is no reason either to fear or to prepare for any disastrous sea level flooding in the near future.

Present-to-future sea level changes: The Australian case

By Nils-Axel Morner & Albert Parker

We revisit available tide gauge data along the coasts of Australia, and we are able to demonstrate that the rate may vary between 0.1 and 1.5 mm/year, and that there is an absence of acceleration over the last decades. With a database of 16 stations covering only the last 17 years, the National Tidal Centre claims that sea level is rising at a rate of 5.4mm/year.We here analyse partly longer-term records from the same 16 sites as those used by the Australian Baseline Sea Level Monitoring Project (ABSLMP) and partly 70 other sites; i.e. a database of 86 stations covering a much longer time period. This database gives a mean trend in the order of 1.5 mm/year. Therefore, we challenge both the rate of sea level rise presented by the National Tidal Centre in Australia and the general claim of acceleration over the last decades.

Related: NOAA 2012 report finds sea levels rising at less than half the rate claimed by the IPCC

SOURCE

Businesses don't want carbon tax: Abbott

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says businesses will be better off without a carbon tax, as power companies warn the coalition's climate policy will be tough to implement.

Power companies say the coalition's alternative "Direct Action" policy will be more difficult to run than Labor's carbon pricing mechanism, which Mr Abbott has vowed to repeal if elected prime minister.

The Energy Supply Association of Australian supports an emissions trading scheme (ETS), and says falling electricity demand will force the coalition to review its climate change policy if elected, The Australian Financial Review reports.

A number of business groups, including Wesfarmers Ltd and the Australian Industry Group, have recently called for the carbon tax to be scrapped and replaced with an ETS with a floating carbon price.

Mr Abbott said no business wanted to pay more tax than less.

"Obviously, every business that is currently paying the carbon tax, either directly or indirectly, will be better off without it," he told reporters in Victoria.

Scrapping the carbon tax and four agencies associated with it would make "life more affordable and more simple for everyone", he added.

The coalition insists its climate policy uses the market to tackle global warming via a carbon buyback approach that rewards innovation and initiative while meeting Australia's climate targets.

Its Direct Action Policy is designed to directly funds activities that reduce CO2 emissions - known as abatement - at the lowest possible cost.

SOURCE

Business bogged down by a dud carbon tax

Greg Hunt

AUSTRALIANS are being dudded by the carbon tax and the crash in the European market last week confirms it.

Sadly, the consequences are felt in lost jobs and increasing power prices while Europe heads in the other direction.

And here is just one example. Last Thursday morning I met with a cafe owner and the owner of a small local supermarket just south of Ulladulla. Both said the 15 per cent increase in their electricity prices due solely to the government's carbon tax was coming straight out of their pockets because they couldn't pass on the increases.

So in order to try to cut costs, the cafe owner had reluctantly let one young staffer go and was instead coming in at 5.30am and staying late into the evening to make up the gap.

The other had deferred hiring a staff member and was increasing his already long hours.

These are the real consequences of the carbon tax for people's lives - working longer and laying off staff - that the Prime Minister and Treasurer have ignored. Now however, they must finally take their heads out of the sand and acknowledge the real world impact of the carbon tax.

With the collapse of the European carbon price, to what The Economist called junk bond status, the Australian carbon tax is now about six times higher than the European price. While the European price has plummeted to $3.50, the Australian tax is $23. And while the European price is plummeting, Labor has locked in two more carbon tax rises. So the carbon tax goes up again on July 1 and then again next year. Two simple messages come out of this.

Firstly, the Australian tax is completely out of line with the rest of the world. Secondly, Treasury's own modelling assumes the carbon tax is set to soar to $37 per tonne by 2020. In the meantime the government has spent this money - in the same way it spent the mining tax before it was received.

Either government modelling is correct and we will be even more out of line with the rest of the world, or the carbon tax will face a multi-billion-dollar black hole and the deficit will get much worse.

The government's own figures show the carbon tax doesn't even reduce our emissions. At the cost of $9 billion a year it doesn't even achieve its policy objective.

SOURCE

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

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

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April 26, 2013

How rich Rockefellers battle the people’s pipeline

Americans concerned about gasoline prices were encouraged by the Pew Research Center’s new poll, whose headline blared, “Keystone XL Pipeline draws broad support.” A score box showed 63 percent supporting and only 23 percent opposing the pipeline that would transport oil from Canada’s vast Alberta oil sands deposits through the Plains states to Texas refineries.

“Every one-cent increase at the pump steals about $1 billion from the larger economy that consumers would have otherwise saved or spent on something else,” the Wall Street Journal has pointed out. High gasoline prices thus translate into lost jobs, lost tax revenues and lower living standards. Americans are beginning to understand that, as the Obama “recovery” gives them real-world economic lessons.

Unfortunately, the Pew report quickly deflated optimism over this support, when it tersely identified who the minority is: “liberals” — stanchions of Big Green’s circus tent. We have seen time and again that the liberal 23 percent can be a “majority” to President Obama, who wields executive orders to bypass the people.

As his administration approaches a decision, lame-duck politics says he could go either way — even with his own State Department’s second favorable environmental impact report on the KXL’s construction permit. Even with Alberta Premier Alison Redford saying that an Obama rejection would damage U.S.-Canada relations. “Canada relies on the U.S. for 97 percent of its energy exports,” Redford said, and “sees the new pipeline as critical to its economic well-being.” And even with ten governors and 22 lieutenant governors sending letters to the President, urging pipeline approval.

What is Obama likely to do? Some 82 percent of Republicans favor the pipeline, so revenge is not an unthinkable motive for a possible rejection. However, 70 percent of independents and 54 percent of Democrats also favor the KXL. Fogging the crystal ball is the ideological split among Democrats: 60 percent of the party’s conservatives and moderates support building the pipeline, compared to just 42 percent of liberal Democrats. That considerably flattens Obama’s upward slope toward a potential rejection, but doesn’t level it.

Obama’s decision may hinge on pleasing his base of global-warming advocates. This whole Keystone XL controversy was carefully conceived and organized as a “globally significant response” to global warming. Shutting down Alberta’s oil sands — by blocking both the US-bound Keystone XL pipeline and any other Alberta oil conduit, particularly a proposed link to Vancouver, British Columbia harbors and oil tankers bound for Asia — would supposedly reduce global warming. That’s propaganda, not reality.

As Environment Canada has observed, oil sands production contributes a mere 0.14 percent of global greenhouse gases, notes, and would add an undetectable 0.00001 degrees C per year to global warming, even if carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases really do drive climate change.

The anti-oil sands campaign — activists call them “tar sands” to evoke ugly images — was devised by the New York City-based Rockefeller Brothers Fund, using earmarked grants to recruit “a network of leading US and Canadian NGOs” and establish a “coordinated campaign structure” to act as its public face, according to a leaked PowerPoint presentation.

The first slide says, “The Tar Sands Campaign, Michael Northrop, Program Officer, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, July 2008.” Seven slides drive home the message that Rockefeller wants its paid campaigners to emphasize: Oil sands and Keystone represent “a globally significant threat” — with “Global Warming,” and “Oil Addiction” as the two “thought leader slogans” in the parade of old shibboleths that trigger brain freeze in Big Green followers. The rest was a coldly calculated, very practical plan to destroy Canada’s single most important export, with Rockefeller giving $7 million per year to activist groups to do the job.

Thinking people understand that being “addicted to oil” is like being addicted to breathing, better living standards, improved health and life itself. Just try getting along without it in a world where fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) contributed 82 percent of US energy use in 2012. The “green alternative” (wind and solar) provided a mere 3.3 percent of our overall needs in 2012; the rest was nuclear, hydroelectric and biomass (mostly wood). Relying on the “green alternative” is like trying to inhale only 3.3 percent as much as you usually do. There’s an energy gap there we need to account for.

Canadian researcher Vivian Krause exposed the Rockefeller funding for campaigns against Canadian energy exports in her October 2010 Financial Post story, “US foundations against the oil sands.” Five US foundations, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, funneled vast sums of money through the Tides Foundation’s Canadian organization, Tides Canada. The Tides family of operations is a notorious California-based funder of left-wing activists.

Krause wrote, “A large part of Tides Canada’s funding comes from the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. These are The Big Five. They give away about US$1.2-billion every year.” In a chilling reminder, she concluded, “If these foundations decide to undermine a foreign industry, they probably can.”

Later that fall, Krause testified before a Canadian House of Commons committee, prompting an audit of the Canadian arm of the Tides Foundation by the Canada Revenue Agency (Canada’s equivalent to the IRS). By Krause’s calculations, Tides, a co-funder of the Rockefeller oil sands campaign, has distributed $19 million to anti-Keystone groups since 2008.

Krause explains that the campaign strategy is intended to foster renewable energy by shifting investment capital away from so-called “dirty oil” and toward so-called “clean energy.” To this end, she said, “they ‘educate’ media, consumers and voters. They stigmatize fossil fuels as bad, thereby facilitating the positioning of renewables as good. It’s basic product positioning and ‘depositioning’ the competitor.”

Not surprisingly, the “education” is slanted. “We get only bad news about fossil fuels and good news about solar and wind,” Krause observes. “We don’t get the whole story.” What gets left out are the advantages of fossil fuels — and the limitations and harmful effects of renewables, like the tiny amount of energy they provide, and the terrible impacts they have on birds, bats and wildlife habitats. “Furthermore, some of the information that is perpetuated is out-dated, and some is plainly false.”

I asked Krause why the Rockefeller presence behind the anti-XL propaganda campaign was virtually invisible. She told me that it has been done quietly but not secretly. “The grants have been disclosed in online databases for years,” she said. “But nobody bothered to add them up and connect the dots.” Krause connected the dots to the networks of foundations that work together on targeted projects.

She directed me to a revealing but obscure source, “Design to Win: Philanthropy’s Role in the Fight Against Global Warming,” which was sponsored by six of “the usual suspects” I have learned to expect to find behind any global warming campaign: the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Energy Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Oak Foundation, and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Another source was, “A Strategy Planning Tool for Western Conservation,” prepared for the Hewlett Foundation by the Redstone Strategy Group, a brain pool of Ivy League hotshots not to be trifled with. Their strategy is to create eight massive national parks, each the size of Switzerland, as a way to stop the development of fossil fuels. Just fence industry out with parks — or Antiquities Act designations.

Anyone who thinks their local grassroots green group just pops up spontaneously in occasional protests needs to read either of these documents. They will find that the “roots” under the environmentalist “grass” are fertilized with bales of hundred-dollar bills. Rockefeller’s actions are quite open, if quiet. Krause said, “The strategy is articulated in discussion papers, but who reads them?”

Nobody except Vivian Krause, evidently. Her Twitter account, @FairQuestions, says, “I follow the money & the science behind enviro campaigns.” Her research and writing are impressive. Her blog profile states, “I work from my dining room table, using Google, on my own nickel. Not part of any political party, any industry, or any campaign.” Her work deserves more attention in the United States.

Krause’s discovery and exposé of the Rockefeller millions behind the anti-Keystone XL campaign could become a factor in Obama’s pipeline construction decision. It has already created Canadian suspicion of environmental groups dancing on the strings of US foundation money.

It’s not the money itself Canadians fear. It’s the way bales of US foundation cash can buy pressure by proxy, to impose undue foreign influence over Canada’s national energy policy and sovereignty.

One must hope Mr. Obama does not wish to be suspected of dancing on the same Rockefeller policy puppet strings as the Big Green bigwigs who were recently arrested protesting at his front door.

SOURCE



Are you sure this is going to work? Scotland's first 'solar meadow' opens under grey skies and rain

They were built to slash a college's carbon emissions and save them tens of thousands of pounds in energy bills.

But some people must have been left wondering if the new 'solar meadow' will live up to its billing as it opened today under grey and rainy skies.

The site at the Midlothian campus of Edinburgh College in Dalkeith is Scotland's first solar meadow and one of the most northerly locations for the green technology in Europe.

The five-acre site cost œ1.2million to build and was designed by SSE Energy Solutions.

It promises to decrease the college's carbon emissions by 300,000kg a year and meet all the campus' electricity demands.

But dignitaries who turned out for the grand opening had to walk through the rain with not a beam of sunlight in sight.

Dressed in bright hi-viz jackets, the group including local MSP Colin Beattie, staff, students and business leaders, were pictured holding umbrellas aloft as they inspected the site.

Backers of the project also hope it will become a local attraction.

Wildflowers and various grasses are to be planted in the meadow to increase the site's biodiversity.

Professor Steve Tinsley, vice-principal of Edinburgh College, who is leading the project, said: 'We believe the solar meadow also looks great and will become a significant attraction for local people as well as visitors to the capital.

'It is also fantastic that the project has enabled the college to engage with schools and local community groups to develop their own renewable energy projects. 'It really is giving something back to the local community in more ways than one.'

The solar meadow, which can still generate energy under in overcast conditions, will also be used as a teaching facility for students.

'[The solar meadow] will help not only to provide the next generation of engineers with essential skills, but also allow the college to become less reliant on fossil fuel energy,' said Prof Tinsley.

The meadow will also be used as a research centre where the interaction between biodiversity and solar technology is analysed, including the effect of environmental conditions on the output from the solar panels such as weather and pollen.

Richard Chandler, SSE's head of green deal and energy solutions, said: 'The solar meadow will not only generate around 560,000 kWhrs every year, enough energy to power 170 homes, but is also a fine example of how industry and education can work well together.

'This project will bring benefits to the college, its students and the wider community as well as further strengthening Scotland's renewable energy resources.'

SOURCE





Global COOLING Era to Bring Food Shortages and Social Upheaval Says New Climate Report

The inaugural edition of the recently published Global Climate Status Report (GCSR)¸ by the Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC), headquartered in Orlando, Florida, discloses startling new information about global food shortages and widespread social upheaval that is just around the corner; all the cause of the new global cooling era. This single source document from the SSRC details an apolitical, fact-based version of the Earth's climate status as measured by twenty four climate parameters. The summary conclusion of the report shows that the planet is heading into four decades of potentially dangerous, cold weather.

Mr. John L. Casey, SSRC founder, Editor of the GCSR, and author of the internationally acclaimed climate book, "Cold Sun" was recently named "America's best climate prediction expert" by Watchdogwire.com.

He elaborates on the stunning conclusions of the GCSR by saying, "The news isn't good, especially for those who still believe in manmade global warming and that mankind's CO2 emissions have a major role in climate change. They will be totally unprepared for this new cold era. Though we had issued a press release in February to announce the climate report, the specific findings from the full report and their implications for everyone on the planet are still largely unreported by the media and unknown to our leaders. It is certainly still surprising that what is likely one of the most important news stories for the next fifty years is completely ignored by the mainstream media, including most science periodicals.

For these reasons, I want to be very clear about what this report is saying. Here in the United States, we face the real prospect of major crop damage and food shortages as we get closer to the bottom of the next cold era estimated to be 2031. We should fully expect to see substantial crop losses during the 2020's along with accompanying food riots, and social unrest, especially in every major US city. That means we may have seven years, and likely less, to set aside the food we will need or make adjustments to our national food production and consumption practices in order to get through the global cooling onslaught with minimal damage.

This situation will be made much worse because the current administration of President Obama has its head in the sand on this global threat and unbelievably is still telling the world that the Earth is warming because of man's industrial greenhouse gas emissions. Nothing could be further from the truth according to the overwhelming evidence that climatologists and solar physicists around the world have compiled and is discussed in our global climate report for all to read."

SOURCE




Scientists find heat-tolerant coral reefs that may resist climate change

Amid all the flim-flam below there is only one solid fact: Corals can survive higher temperatures -- as has often been shown elsewhere

Experts say that more than half of the world's coral reefs could disappear in the next 50 years, in large part because of higher ocean temperatures caused by climate change. But now Stanford University scientists have found evidence that some coral reefs are adapting and may actually survive global warming.

"Corals are certainly threatened by environmental change, but this research has really sparked the notion that corals may be tougher than we thought," said Stephen Palumbi, a professor of biology and a senior fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment.

Palumbi and his Stanford colleagues began studying the resiliency of coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean in 2006 with the support of a Woods Institute Environmental Venture Project grant. The project has expanded and is now being funded by Conservation International and the Bio-X program at Stanford.
"The most exciting thing was discovering live, healthy corals on reefs already as hot as the ocean is likely to get 100 years from now," said Palumbi, director of Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station. "How do they do that?"

Coral reefs form the basis for thriving, healthy ecosystems throughout the tropics. They provide homes and nourishment for thousands of species, including massive schools of fish, which in turn feed millions of people across the globe.

Corals rely on partnerships with tiny, single-celled algae called zooxanthellae. The corals provide the algae a home, and, in turn, the algae provide nourishment, forming a symbiotic relationship. But when rising temperatures stress the algae, they stop producing food, and the corals spit them out. Without their algae symbionts, the reefs die and turn stark white, an event referred to as "coral bleaching."

During particularly warm years, bleaching has accounted for the deaths of large numbers of corals. In the Caribbean in 2005, a heat surge caused more than 50 percent of corals to bleach, and many still have not recovered, according to the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, an international collaboration of government officials, policymakers and marine scientists, including Palumbi.

Havens of healthy reefs

In recent years, scientists discovered that some corals resist bleaching by hosting types of algae that can handle the heat, while others swap out the heat-stressed algae for tougher, heat-resistant strains. Palumbi's team set out to investigate how widely dispersed these heat-tolerant coral reefs are across the globe and to learn more about the biological processes that allow them to adapt to higher temperatures.

In 2006, Palumbi and graduate student Tom Oliver, now a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford, traveled to Ofu Island in American Samoa. Ofu, a tropical coral reef marine reserve, has remained healthy despite gradually warming waters.

The island offered the perfect laboratory setting, Oliver said, with numerous corals hosting the most common heat-sensitive and heat-resistant algae symbionts. Ofu also has pools of varying temperatures that allowed the research team to test under what conditions the symbionts formed associations with corals.

In cooler lagoons, Oliver found only a handful of corals that host heat-resistant algae exclusively. But in hotter pools, he observed a direct increase in the proportion of heat-resistant symbionts, suggesting that some corals had swapped out the heat-sensitive algae for more robust types. These results, combined with regional data from other sites in the tropical Pacific, were published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series in March 2009.

Global pattern

To see if this pattern exists on a global scale, the researchers turned to Kevin Arrigo, an associate professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford and an expert on remote satellite sensing of marine microalgae. Arrigo gathered worldwide oceanographic data on a variety of environmental variables, including ocean acidity, the frequency of weather events and sea-surface temperature.

Oliver then compiled dozens of coral reef studies from across the tropics and compared them to Arrigo's environmental data. The results revealed the same pattern: In regions where annual maximum ocean temperatures were above 84 to 88 degrees Fahrenheit (29 to 31 degrees Celsius), corals were avoiding bleaching by hosting higher proportions of the heat-resistant symbionts.

Most corals bleach when temperatures rise 1.8 F (1 C) above the long-term normal highs. But heat-tolerant symbionts might allow a reef to handle temperatures up to 2.6 F (1.5 C) beyond the bleaching threshold. That might be enough to help get them through the end of the century, Oliver said, depending on the severity of global warming.

A 2007 report by the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change concluded that the average surface temperature of the Earth is likely to increase 3.6 to 8.1 F (2 to 4.5 C) by 2100. In this scenario, the symbiont switch alone may not be enough to help corals survive through the end of the century. But with the help of other adaptive mechanisms, including natural selection for heat-tolerant corals, there is still hope, Oliver said.

"These findings show that, given enough time, many corals can match hotter environments by hosting heat-resistant symbionts," he explained. "While hopeful, the work also suggests that modern environments are changing so rapidly that corals may not be able to keep up. It comes down to a calculation of the rates of environmental change versus the rates of adaptation."

Heat-resistant corals also turn out to be more tolerant of increases in ocean acidity, which occurs when the ocean absorbs excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere--another potential threat to coral reefs. This finding suggests that corals worldwide are adapting to increases in acidity as well as heat, Oliver said, and that across the tropics, corals with the ability to switch symbionts will do so to survive.

Future protection

The problem of coral bleaching comes down to a collapse of the algae at the cellular level, Oliver explained. But the molecular biology of corals and their zooxanthellae under stress is shockingly understudied, he added.

To examine the corals and their symbionts at the molecular level, the researchers are collaborating with John Pringle, a professor of genetics at Stanford. Pringle and his lab have set up tanks where anemones, corals and their algae are exposed to a variety of treatments, including changes in temperature, acidity and light. That research is ongoing.

"What I hope is that we will learn some really deep and interesting things about the cellular and genetic mechanisms that allow this symbiosis to function, and about the mechanisms that come into play when the symbiosis is breaking down under stress," Pringle said. "The longer-range hope is that having that understanding will contribute to efforts in coral conservation."

The ultimate goal is to find protein biomarkers that indicate signs of heat stress and potential heat resistance, Oliver explained. Then coral reef managers could go to a reef, take small coral samples and test for the presence of the biomarkers to see how resilient the reef will be to higher temperatures.

"With this tool, managers could identify existing populations that may be more resistant to climate change and potentially prioritize their protection from everything else that kills coral reefs, like fishing and [agricultural] runoff," Oliver said.

"Although we are doing things to the planet we have never done before, it's hard to imagine that these corals, which have existed for a quarter of a billion years, only have 50 years left," Palumbi said. "And part of our job might be to figure out where the tougher ones live and protect those places."

SOURCE





Main Multiple Proxy Study Confirms "Global Warming" Skeptic Views - Modern Temps Not Unprecedented, Not Global

I commented briefly on this hokum on 22nd, pointing out some obvious problems. I also anticipated that more detailed critiques would be forthcoming and that such critiques would be scathing. And we see below that it is so. -- JR

Anti-science alarmists and pro-global warming ('AGW') scientists are very enamored with multi-proxy temperature reconstructions, which allows "researchers" to statistically blend and torture different forms of data to force a "confession" that modern warming has been "unprecedented" - however, as expert skeptics have discovered, these studies are often found to be empirically and statistically-challenged garbage and end up being a cornucopia of unintended contradictions...the new PAGES2K paleo-torture study is the latest example

The new Kaufman et al. study (aka as the 'PAGES2K' research) is getting its initial web-wide forensic review in multiple articles across the web, including here, here, here, here and here.

The chart on the left depicts those areas of the world that experienced modern warming supposedly greater than any warming over the last 2,000 years; and, the chart on the right represents those areas where modern warming was less than that of certain periods during the past 2,000 years. Both charts have the past 2,000 year atmospheric levels superimposed (the pinkish curve) on them.

It is from the Tisdale analysis that it first becomes apparent that the law of unintended consequences has interestingly come into play - the study's authors have actually built a case (be it likely an unforced error) that supports the views of the majority of catastrophic global warming skeptics/lukewarmers.

From the study itself, and a close review of the above images, we now know the following:

* First, as even the New York Times points out, this study determined that the Arctic was warmer during the 1940s to 1970s than during years of the late 20th century.

* Second, the study determined that periods prior to 1000AD had warmer temperatures in Europe. Confirms view of skeptics, check.

* Third, this study finds Antarctica was warmer, from the 2nd through 13th centuries, than during our modern era.

* Fourth, this study points out that true global warming has not taken place in the modern era, but regional strong warming has. Of the 7 regional areas analyzed, only 3 exhibit a strong warming (more likely only 2, see point #11 below). The other four regions, not so much. Confirms view of skeptics.

* Fifth, the study clearly indicates that major climate change is taking place at all times, in different manners, across the globe. Climate change is not some new modern phenomenon. Confirms view of skeptics.

* Sixth, the study shows atmospheric CO2 levels are not a cause of past major climate change. Throughout most of the last 2,000 years, CO2 levels are stable yet climate change is constantly happening. Confirms view of skeptics

* Seventh, the study documents that unprecedented regional warming takes place regardless of low/high atmospheric CO2 levels. Confirms view of skeptics

* Eighth, this study, in combination with the known recent global temperature trend (subsequent to this study's ending date of 2000AD), clearly makes an indisputable case that recent modern global warming is not as claimed: unprecedented; unequivocal; irrefutable; irreversible; nor dangerously accelerating. Confirms view of skeptics.

* Ninth, this study affirms that periods of "unprecedented" warming do not cause the IPCC's urban legend of "runaway," "tipping point," dangerous global warming. Of course, the hottest period ever recorded (Minoan era) in the ice cores over the last 4,000 years already proved that the mythical "tipping point" is just that. Confirms view of skeptics, check.

* Tenth, this study again provides proof that the AGW-alarmist researchers will use each and every attempt to remove and/or minimize the exceptional Medieval Warming Period that the vast majority of local/regional paleo research studies, and the historical literature, have well documented. It is simply freaking amazing that this group of researchers would present an analysis of Europe's past warming without the extreme and extended warming of the Medieval era (see chart of right).

* Eleventh, this study clearly proves to the public that the proponents of AGW-alarmism will utilize excessive cherry-picking of empirical paleo research to fabricate their "scientific" claims of modern "unprecedented" warming. Not only did this study exclude the preponderance of paleo-scientists' research that documents past extreme warming, but this study was brazen enough to include paleo temperature reconstructions that even a peer-reviewed science journal ultimately rejected because of its statistical flim-flam.

Without the infamous, widely discredited Gergis et al. study, it is highly likely that the "Australasia" region of the above chart on the left would have to be moved to the chart of the right, above - thus leaving just 2 regions of the world that may have had modern "unprecedented" warming in the 20th century, and only a single region of the world that had "unprecedented" warming since 1970 (recall that this study confirmed the Arctic was warmer from the 1940s to the 1970s). Confirms view of skeptics.

Conclusion: This multi-cherry-picking proxy study has many claiming that modern temps are the "hottest" across the globe, over the last 1,400 years. In fact, as the above information clarifies, some regions of the world had strong modern warming (that is, supposedly), while the majority did not.

As this study itself determines, global warming, cooling and climate change are not done in some lock step manner across the world in a monotonous cause and effect relationship with CO2.

Skeptics of both the IPCC's catastrophic global warming hysteria and the elites' CO2-kills fanaticism have pointed this out for years (if not decades).

The geological and historical records/datasets support the essentials of the non-hysterical skeptic/lukewarmers' analysis of climate change, and now this study suggests the alarmist community has inadvertently accepted many of the same views.

More HERE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)




GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA

Three current articles below

New paper finds global sea levels will rise only about 5 inches by 2100

A new peer-reviewed paper by sea level expert Dr. Nils-Axel Morner concludes that Australian government claims of a 1 meter sea level rise by 2100 are greatly exaggerated, finding instead that sea levels are rising around Australia and globally at a rate of only 1.5 mm/year. This would imply a sea level change of only 0.13 meters or 5 inches by 2100. Dr. Morner also finds no evidence of any acceleration in sea level rise around Australia or globally.

From the conclusion of the paper:

In view of the data presented, we believe that we are justified to draw the following conclusions:

(1) The official Australian claim [2,3] of a present sea level rise in the order of 5.4mm/year is significantly exaggerated (Figure 3).

(2) The mean sea level rise from Australian tide gauges as well as global tide gauge networks is to be found within the sector of rates ranging from 0.1 to 1.5 mm/year (yellow wedge in Figure 3).

(3) The claim of a recent acceleration in the rate of sea level rise [2,3,12] cannot be validated by tide gauge records, either in Australia or globally (Figure 3). Rather, it seems strongly contradicted [19,21,24,39-41]

The practical implication of our conclusions is that there, in fact, is no reason either to fear or to prepare for any disastrous sea level flooding in the near future.

Present-to-future sea level changes: The Australian case

By Nils-Axel Morner & Albert Parker

We revisit available tide gauge data along the coasts of Australia, and we are able to demonstrate that the rate may vary between 0.1 and 1.5 mm/year, and that there is an absence of acceleration over the last decades. With a database of 16 stations covering only the last 17 years, the National Tidal Centre claims that sea level is rising at a rate of 5.4mm/year.We here analyse partly longer-term records from the same 16 sites as those used by the Australian Baseline Sea Level Monitoring Project (ABSLMP) and partly 70 other sites; i.e. a database of 86 stations covering a much longer time period. This database gives a mean trend in the order of 1.5 mm/year. Therefore, we challenge both the rate of sea level rise presented by the National Tidal Centre in Australia and the general claim of acceleration over the last decades.

Related: NOAA 2012 report finds sea levels rising at less than half the rate claimed by the IPCC

SOURCE

Businesses don't want carbon tax: Abbott

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says businesses will be better off without a carbon tax, as power companies warn the coalition's climate policy will be tough to implement.

Power companies say the coalition's alternative "Direct Action" policy will be more difficult to run than Labor's carbon pricing mechanism, which Mr Abbott has vowed to repeal if elected prime minister.

The Energy Supply Association of Australian supports an emissions trading scheme (ETS), and says falling electricity demand will force the coalition to review its climate change policy if elected, The Australian Financial Review reports.

A number of business groups, including Wesfarmers Ltd and the Australian Industry Group, have recently called for the carbon tax to be scrapped and replaced with an ETS with a floating carbon price.

Mr Abbott said no business wanted to pay more tax than less.

"Obviously, every business that is currently paying the carbon tax, either directly or indirectly, will be better off without it," he told reporters in Victoria.

Scrapping the carbon tax and four agencies associated with it would make "life more affordable and more simple for everyone", he added.

The coalition insists its climate policy uses the market to tackle global warming via a carbon buyback approach that rewards innovation and initiative while meeting Australia's climate targets.

Its Direct Action Policy is designed to directly funds activities that reduce CO2 emissions - known as abatement - at the lowest possible cost.

SOURCE

Business bogged down by a dud carbon tax

Greg Hunt

AUSTRALIANS are being dudded by the carbon tax and the crash in the European market last week confirms it.

Sadly, the consequences are felt in lost jobs and increasing power prices while Europe heads in the other direction.

And here is just one example. Last Thursday morning I met with a cafe owner and the owner of a small local supermarket just south of Ulladulla. Both said the 15 per cent increase in their electricity prices due solely to the government's carbon tax was coming straight out of their pockets because they couldn't pass on the increases.

So in order to try to cut costs, the cafe owner had reluctantly let one young staffer go and was instead coming in at 5.30am and staying late into the evening to make up the gap.

The other had deferred hiring a staff member and was increasing his already long hours.

These are the real consequences of the carbon tax for people's lives - working longer and laying off staff - that the Prime Minister and Treasurer have ignored. Now however, they must finally take their heads out of the sand and acknowledge the real world impact of the carbon tax.

With the collapse of the European carbon price, to what The Economist called junk bond status, the Australian carbon tax is now about six times higher than the European price. While the European price has plummeted to $3.50, the Australian tax is $23. And while the European price is plummeting, Labor has locked in two more carbon tax rises. So the carbon tax goes up again on July 1 and then again next year. Two simple messages come out of this.

Firstly, the Australian tax is completely out of line with the rest of the world. Secondly, Treasury's own modelling assumes the carbon tax is set to soar to $37 per tonne by 2020. In the meantime the government has spent this money - in the same way it spent the mining tax before it was received.

Either government modelling is correct and we will be even more out of line with the rest of the world, or the carbon tax will face a multi-billion-dollar black hole and the deficit will get much worse.

The government's own figures show the carbon tax doesn't even reduce our emissions. At the cost of $9 billion a year it doesn't even achieve its policy objective.

SOURCE

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

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

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April 25, 2013

The EPA Snake Pit

By Alan Caruba

Under President Obama, two women have been the director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Carol Browner, who served in the Clinton administration and was one of the "czars" Obama appointed; her acolyte Lisa Jackson, and up for the post is Gina McCarthy. Browner and Jackson went out of their way to conceal their internal communications from Congress and McCarthy lied to the committee considering her nomination.

How bad is the EPA? The Society of Environmental Journalists, on the occasion of the April 11 hearing on McCarthy’s nomination, released a statement that said, “The Obama administration has been anything but transparent in its dealings with reporters seeking information, interviews and clarification on a host of environmental, health and public lands issues.” The SEJ accused the EPA of being “one of the most closed, opaque agencies to the press.”

Apparently, the primary consideration for the job of EPA Director is an intense desire to destroy the use of hydrocarbons, oil, coal and natural gas, for transportation and all other forms of energy on which our economy depends. Obama, when campaigning in 2008, made it clear he wanted end the use of coal to generate electricity. At the time, fifty percent of all electricity was produced by coal and now that figure is in decline as coal-fired plants are being forced to close thanks to EPA regulations.

If Ms. McCarthy has her way, the cost of driving cars and trucks will go up in the name of protecting the health of Americans. As Paul Driessen, a senior policy advisor for the Committee For a Constructive Tomorrow, recently noted, “Since 1970, America’s cars have eliminated 99% of pollutants that once came out of tailpipes.” Joel Schwartz, co-author of “Air Quality in America”, points out, “Today’s cars are essentially zero-emission vehicles, compared to 1970 models.” The EPA’s latest attack on drivers is the implementation of “Tier 3 rules” intended to reduce sulfur levels to achieve zero air quality or health benefits.

Suffice to say that the air and water in America is clean, very clean. Whatever health hazards existed in the 1970s no longer exist. Like all bureaucracies, the EPA now exists to expand its budget and its control over our lives. The Heritage Foundation has calculated that Obama’s EPA’s twenty “major” regulations—those that cost $100 million or more annually—could cost the U.S. more than $36 billion per year. Obama’s EPA has generated 1,920 new regulations.

Don’t think of the EPA as a government agency. It is a weapon of economic destruction.

This has not gone unnoticed. A recent Wall Street Journal opinion by John Barrasso, a Republican Senator from Wyoming, noted that “During President Obama’s first term, EPA policies discouraged energy exploration, buried job creators under red tape, and deliberately hid information from the public.”

“Many EPA regulations,” said Sen. Barrasso, “chased microscopic benefits at maximum cost,” noting for example that “The EPA has proposed dropping the acceptable amount of ozone in the air from the 75 parts per billion allowed today to 60 or 70 parts per billion. The agency concedes that the rule would have a minimal effect on American’s health, but says it would cost as much as $90 billion a year. A study by the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation estimated it would eliminate up to 7.3 million jobs in a wide variety of industries, including refining.”

The other sector in the EPA’s bull’s eye is agriculture. Not content with laying siege to auto manufacturers, oil refineries, coal-fired plants, and all other energy users that might generate carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases, Barrasso noted that the EPA “has gathered personal information about tens of thousands of livestock farmers and the locations of their operations” which it then shared with environmental groups.

Writing in The Daily Caller, Henry Miller, a physician and molecular biologist and currently the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, characterized the EPA as “a miasma populated by the most radical, disaffected and anti-industry discards from other agencies,” adding that there was “entrenched institutional paranoia and an oppositional world view.”

“Unscientific policies and regulatory grandiosity and excess,” wrote Dr. Miller, “are not EPA’s only failings; neglecting to weigh costs and benefits is shockingly common, noting that “The EPA’s repeated failures should not come as a surprise because the agency has long been a haven for scientifically insupportable policies perpetrated by anti-technology ideologues.”

Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, writing in Forbes magazine, pointed out Gina McCarthy, the nominee to direct the EPA, “has a history of misleading Congress and the public about her agency’s greenhouse gas regulations. “At a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in October 2011, McCarthy denied motor vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards are “related to” fuel economy standards. In doing so,” said Lewis, “she denied plain facts she must know to be true. She did so under oath.”

“The EPA has no statutory authority to regulate fuel economy. More importantly, the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act prohibits states from adopting laws or regulations ‘related to’ fuel economy.”

The point of this exercise is demonstrate that the EPA is the very definition of a “rogue agency” for which neither laws, nor science, are of any consequence as it pursues policies that do incalculable harm at a time when the nation is deep in debt and in need of economic growth, not regulatory strangulation.

SOURCE





Understanding the Political and Economic Realities of a Carbon Tax

New Report to be Released: On May 3, the George C. Marshall Institute will release a new study considering efforts to create a national carbon tax.

Authored by James DeLong of the Convergence Law Institute, the study summarizes the political and economic forces that undermine the case for a carbon tax. DeLong presents five reasons to reject carbon taxes:

* Lack of Effect on Temperature - A carbon tax is assumed to have the effect of reducing temperature, but DeLong argues the evidence shows the impact "would be tiny" at the tax levels being advanced.

* Lack of Specificity About Future Energy Sources - Tax advocates fail to show what energy sources will emerge to replace current sources of supply or how this transformation of a capital-intensive energy sector would be accomplished.

* Neglect of Benefits from Fossil Fuels and CO2 Emissions - The carbon tax debate is solely focused on the "damages" wrought by CO2 emissions, but a fair evaluation must account for the benefits associated with production of CO2.

* Problems with Models - The carbon tax relies on the veracity of two rounds of complex computer models - one modeling the environment and humanity's purported impact on it and the other modeling the economy and the impact of imposing a carbon tax. Both sets of models have significant limitations.

* Political Pressures and Practical Problems - DeLong summarizes the regressive nature of a carbon tax, the negative impact on GDP and jobs, the effects on manufacturing in highlighting some of the consequences of a tax. Further, he points to managing the interactions with other taxes and regulations, as well as international issues as practical obstacles to the construction of an efficient carbon tax. Added to these are the inevitable tensions that will arise from the uneasy alliance of "Bootleggers" and "Baptists" (i.e., crony capitalists and environmentalists) that must unite to pass a carbon tax.

"The tax will not be implemented in the politically aseptic world of academic modelers, but in the real world of intense political pressures," DeLong argues. "Its assumed purity will not survive the onslaught."

On May 3, DeLong will discuss his findings. A panel discussion will follow.

Via email




Get ready for shale in Britain

The prospects for hydrocarbon production on the British mainland seem stronger than ever. On 10 April, Professor Richard Davies of Durham University's Energy Institute published a paper stating that fracking is not a significant source of detectible seismic events. Meanwhile, over the last year, there has been a series of leaks of the forthcoming report by the British Geological Survey which is to raise the UK’s estimated reserves of shale gas by some 300 times.

This is welcome news as it paves the way for a secure, domestic, low-cost solution to the thorny problem of replacing the UK’s obsolescent capacity to generate electricity, with a low-carbon footprint feedstock. Many of the deposits are in the North, which would benefit from the investment; but they are also present in the south. In order to make the most of the opportunity, new policy is in order.

HMG is trailing plans to share revenues to incentivise local authorities to welcome oil development. This is very much on the right track, though I would go further: let programs be configured to encourage local authorities to compete for funding, so that they share (say) ten percent of incremental tax receipts; and bid against each other for a further ten percent for development or remediation.

The Petroleum Act (1934) appropriated subterranean hydrocarbon rights from the land-owner to the Crown, at odds with other mineral rights. This anomaly was theoretical until now, as no substantial deposits had been discovered. In light of new technologies we need to reverse this policy which was recapitulated in the Petroleum Act (1998). The clauses concerned should be repealed so that the interests of land-owners are aligned with the public interest in low-cost energy.

This takes us to taxation. Oil prospecting is beset by a complex of penal taxes, compensating exemptions plus a history of opportunistic impositions. All of this adds to investment uncertainty. HMG should set itself to remove fiscal risk from the investment equation, by introducing a regime of simplified tax treatment for newly-lifted deposits of land-based hydrocarbons, to which it commits itself for at least the next ten years.

SOURCE






The real deniers of climate change: Foolish doom-criers stand fast despite a chill

By David Deming

The Northern Hemisphere is experiencing unusually cold weather. Snow cover last December was the greatest since satellite monitoring began in 1966. The United Kingdom had the coldest March weather in 50 years, and there were more than a thousand record low temperatures in the United States. The Irish meteorological office reported that March “temperatures were the lowest on record nearly everywhere.” Spring snowfall in Europe was also high. In Moscow, the snow depth was the highest in 134 years of observation. In Kiev, authorities had to bring in military vehicles to clear snow from the streets.

Cold-weather extremes are a natural climatic variation, and this is exactly the point. If the world were experiencing a climate crisis owing to global warming, there shouldn’t be a single record low temperature anywhere in the world. The Associated Press has assured us, though, that this cold spell is not only consistent with a warming globe, it is actually caused by global warming. The proffered explanation is that cold weather in Europe is a result of melting sea ice in the Arctic. If this special pleading strikes you as unusually tendentious, it is all in the best tradition of explaining away ex post facto any weather event that appears to contradict the ruling paradigm.

In 2000, British climate researcher and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change contributor David Viner told the Independent that “within a few years, winter snowfall will become a very rare and exciting event.” Sadly, he predicted, “children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” In 2008, environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in the Los Angeles Times that “snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don’t own a sled.”

On Feb. 6, 2010, the eastern United States was hit by a blizzard (“Snowmageddon”) that produced from 20 to 35 inches of snow. Three days later, a second blizzard added 10 to 20 more inches of snow. In Washington, D.C., it was the highest seasonal snowfall since record-keeping began in 1888. According to the National Climatic Data Center, there were “hundreds of record snowfall accumulations” across the United States during the 2009-10 winter season. Within a few days, the blizzards in the eastern U.S. were dismissed as the natural consequence of global warming. On Feb. 12, National Geographic News informed us that “global warming is the main culprit behind this month’s eastern U.S. snowstorms.”

On Feb. 8-10 of this year, the eastern United States was again struck by a blizzard that produced record snowfall, hurricane-strength gusts of wind, and left 700,000 people without electric power. On Feb. 18, the Associated Press provided the oxymoronic excuse that global warming produces “less snow and more blizzards.” You can’t make this stuff up.

Portraying cold weather as the result of global warming is only one aspect of the circus. Gems that stand out include claims that earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes are caused or will be made worse by global warming. Last year, we were told that global warming could “turn us all into hobbits,” the mythical creatures from J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels.

Confronted by an endless avalanche of such nonsensical drivel, it seems almost foolhardy to argue facts. There has been no increase in mean global temperature for 15 years. Drought is not increasing, nor are wildfires. Tornadoes are not increasing in frequency or intensity. Routine hurricanes such as Sandy and Katrina have been offered as evidence of climate change, but worldwide hurricane activity is near a 40-year low. Over the past 20 years, sea level has risen by about 5 centimeters an ominous trend unless you’re aware that since the end of the last Ice Age, global sea level has risen 120 meters.

At the end of March, the areal extent of sea ice in the Arctic was 3 percent below the 30-year average. Sea ice in the Antarctic, however, was elevated 24 percent. Global sea ice was above the 30-year mean and higher than it was in March 1980. Only the naive can be so logical as to reason that “global” warming, or lack thereof, should be evaluated in terms of “global” conditions rather than local. A study published in Nature Geoscience on March 31 concluded that the increase of Antarctic sea ice is caused by you guessed it global warming.

With each passing year, it is becoming increasingly clear that global warming is not a scientific theory subject to empirical falsification, but a political ideology that has to be fiercely defended against any challenge. It is ironic that skeptics are called “deniers” when every fact that would tend to falsify global warming is immediately explained away by an industry of denial.

SOURCE





Senators highlight climate change on Earth Day; Inhofe not impressed

Democratic senators marked Earth Day yesterday by taking to the floor to discuss the threat of climate change and lament Congress' inability to curb it through legislation.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said his state is particularly affected by sea-level rise because its low average elevation puts more of its land at risk of disappearing.

"The water is rising, Mr. President, and for those of us from coastal states, and in particular for those of us in Delaware, it's rising fast," he said.

The amount of sea-level rise Delaware will have to grapple with this century varies from estimate to estimate, but most predict the Atlantic Ocean will rise by at least half a meter, which Coons said would be enough to submerge Dover Air Force Base. If higher estimates prevail, whole towns could be underwater, he said.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) decried congressional inaction on climate change, especially in light of storms like last year's Superstorm Sandy, which required more than $50 billion in aid to affected states.

"A number of my colleagues in Congress don't believe that human activities contribute to climate change," he said. "Many others, I suspect, don't talk about climate change because addressing it requires making some difficult choices. But let's be clear about this: Climate change is already costing us."

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said he had spent part of the weekend attending Earth Day events in his home state.

"It is very clear that the planet is getting warmer," Wyden said. "The fires are getting more serious and catastrophic, the storms increasingly brutal, and it's very clear that now Democrats and Republicans have to come together around this issue."

Not everyone was fired up about the Earth Day messages.

"They just don't give up, do they?" said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) when asked about the floor speeches. The chamber's most vocal skeptic of the science of climate change, Inhofe said again that he believed man-made global warming had been discredited by events like the so-called Climategate incident of 2009. Furthermore, he said, history had shown that climate change legislation was and would remain a no-go in the Senate.

"I think all these people who are going crazy on Earth Day need to take a deep breath and say, 'Wait a minute, there must be some reason that not even a third of the U.S. Senate would support this thing, because they don't think that it's true,'" Inhofe said.

SOURCE






Hold Fast, South Dakota – keep facile and destructive climate alarmism out of your schools!‏

An informative article in South Dakota's Argus Leader presents the dilemma facing education administrators in that State as they prepare to debate and decide on whether to adopt 'The Nest Generation Science Standards' as released earlier this month..

The Argus Leader article notes

"A core idea in the standards is that “human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (global warming).”

“That idea is not controversial among the 41 scientists and educators who wrote the standards. But many politicians consider man’s influence on global climate change to be unresolved.”

And goes on to note:

“Three years ago, the South Dakota Legislature passed a nonbinding resolution that urged public schools to take a “balanced approach” when teaching climate change. It asserted the science on the subject is unsettled, open to interpretation and prejudiced by politics.”

There is wisdom here. But it is under threat from the new curriculum being offered to all States. It may or may not be adopted in South Dakota:

"Mary Stadick Smith, deputy secretary for the Department of Education, said there is no timeline for the agency’s review of the standards.“We need to review them carefully and we’re going to move forward cautiously to make sure these are the right things for our students,” she said."

She is being reasonable.

The simple-minded view that human contributions in particular, and rising CO2 levels in general, are major drivers of ‘global warming’ has received criticism for decades from scientists, and Mother Nature has helped them along by refusing to cooperate with the dramatically rising temperature plots produced, after a great deal of pampering, by global climate models (GCMs), and widely promoted by such as the IPCC.

SOURCE

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

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

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April 24, 2013

Lewandowsky has finally got his journal article published

Not in print yet but listed as "Early" by a reputable journal. Abstract below. It's the same old hokum with no approach to random sampling or any other kind of representative sampling. As such, his findings are not generalizable to any known population -- and certainly not to climate skeptics. Comments on the first pre-print also noted sampling problems, with an apparently very biased "sample" underlying the findings.

Sadly, unscholarly work such as that by Lewandowski is common in the academic literature, particularly so in Psychology. Psychologists normally study either white rats or their own students. Results from such studies permit no valid generalizations to people at large but psychologists generalize anyway.

I once critiqued a psychology article that purported to study militarism using a sample of 47 Quakers. I kid you not. And in the medical literature I know of a case where a researcher studied the Mediterranean diet IN SWEDEN!

NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax
An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science

Stephan Lewandowsky et al.

Although nearly all domain experts agree that carbon dioxide emissions are altering the world’s climate, segments of the public remain unconvinced by the scientific evidence. Internet blogs have become a platform for denial of climate change, and bloggers have taken a prominent role in questioning climate science. We report a survey of climate-blog visitors to identify the variables underlying acceptance and rejection of climate science. Our findings parallel those of previous work and show that endorsement of free-market economics predicted rejection of climate science. Endorsement of free markets also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer. We additionally show that, above and beyond endorsement of free markets, endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the Federal Bureau of Investigation killed Martin Luther King, Jr.) predicted rejection of climate science as well as other scientific findings. Our results provide empirical support for previous suggestions that conspiratorial thinking contributes to the rejection of science. Acceptance of science, by contrast, was strongly associated with the perception of a consensus among scientists.

SOURCE





The quite fascinatingly stupid case of the minimum carbon price

The Wall Street Journal picks up on the quite fascinatingly stupid imposition by the current government of a minimum price on carbon permits. This could only have been done by people entirely ignorant of how a cap and trade system works: not a wholly desirable attribute in those supposedly running a cap and trade system:

"The European Parliament's rejection this week of the Commision's proposed carbon-permit price-fixing scheme is good news for economies across Europe—except for the U.K.'s, which is likely to suffer from the lower carbon-emissions prices that result...........The carbon price floor, which came into effect April 1, was supposed to increase investment in "green" energy projects in the U.K. by ensuring that carbon-permit prices could not fall below a certain level—starting at £16 per ton of carbon this year and rising to £30 per ton in 2020............The European Commission's idea for shoring up the price of carbon permits—withholding the supply of permits from the market—was voted down this week by the Parliament, and the permit price only fell farther. As of Thursday is stood at €2.80 (£2.40) a ton—just 15% of the Cameron government's floor."

I know, I know, many of you are more sensible than I am when it comes to this climate change thing. I'm still under the delusion that it's a problem we should do something about. But at least I do understand the role of price in a cap and trade system. In a carbon tax system, the other viable alternative action, it is the tax, the price of carbon emissions, that reduces them. In a cap and trade system it is instead the number of permits issued which reduces emissions. The price for such a permit is simply telling you how tough it is to meet that cap. Thus, the lower the price of the permit the better for all. It shows that reducing emissions is actually quite simple and quite cheap.

In this case, we're seeing that eliminating the marginal emissions necessary to stay under the cap costs less than £2.40 a tonne. Quite why the British government insists that everyone should pay £16 a tonne for it is known only to the more frenzied minds within it. In a cap and trade system a low price for permits is a good idea, a welcome sign that it's all less of a problem than we had thought.

As I say I do indeed think that carbon emissions are a problem that we ought to do something about. But I do also think that we should not use this as an excuse to do fascinatingly stupid things: like artificially raising a price that we are gloriously grateful about being low. The cost of reducing emissions that is.

SOURCE




Consensus And Controversy: New Report On The Global Warming “Battlefield”

By SINTEF, the largest independent research organisation in Scandinavia



This report outlines the main positions and debates surrounding the literally hot topic of man-made global warming. Inspired by social studies of science and technology, the goal of the report is to document, describe and take stock of this potent scientific and public “battlefield” that plays out arguably some of the more pressing issues of our time.

Presenting two broad “ideal type” of positions involved in the science of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), the “consensus” and the “contrarian” perspectives, the report analyses both their cultural premises and places them in relation to the philosophy of science.

The report positively concludes that an alleged near unanimous scientific consensus on AGW, that “the science is settled”, is overstated. The report finds a robust, critical scientific discourse in climate related research, yet it highlights that a “consensus-building” approach to science might represent a politicised and unscientific belief in science – a belief in tension with the ethos of “normal science”.

The report calls for a continuing questioning, critical, and undogmatic public debate over man-made global warming, and a clearer separation between science and policy.

Introduction

The debate about man-made global warming is literally a hot topic. In fact it’s a discourse, and an empirical prospect, as some would argue, with quite a deadly intensity. This is a report about that debate. The title of the latest book by one of the central scientists in this field is telling: ”The hockey stick and the climate wars” (Mann 2012). This alleged ”climate war” is a scientific, political, economic, social and moral public field that is co-constructed and intersects in numerous ways, and which, to some extent at least, is characterized by the rhetoric of apocalypse, war and the communicative logic of the military trenches. Several other popular titles illustrate this: “The Suicidal Planet: How to prevent global climate catastrophe (Hillman 2007); “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity” (Hansen 2009); ”Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming” (Hoggan and Littlemore 2009); “The Climate Crisis” (Archer and Rahmstorf 2010); “Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence” (Parenti 2011).

The language of fear and constructions of “catastrophe” regarding global warming has been firmly established during the last two decades, and professor of climate change Mike Hulme argues that this language has been embellished in the post 9/11 era (2009: 66). A report by the Institute of Public Policy Research in London commented on a comprehensive study of climate change discourses in the British media from 2006/2007 the following way: “The alarmist repertoire uses an inflated language, with terms such as “catastrophe”, “chaos” and “havoc”, and its tone is often urgent. It employs a quasi-religious register of doom, death, judgement, heaven and hell” (2007: 55). Likewise, the widely popular “tipping point” metaphor signifies the possible coming of sudden apocalypse.

The goal of this report is to enter this more or less inhospitable battlefield and take stock of the debate about anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. This will be done by both describing and counting the particular actors, activities and technologies (of both enchantment and production) performing on the scenes of this “theatre of war”, and also by bringing to the table a more distanced and analytical perspective of the field as such, using as a guiding metaphor the (hopefully) neutral UN-observers’ approach to zones of conflict and tension. The zone we are entering here and its particular mix of morality, science, politics, and polemics can certainly be explosive, confusing, and condescending.

There are several reasons for writing such a report. Needless to say, the debate on anthropogenic global warming is of high significance and consequence to people and society. More specifically, because of all that is publicly written and said about the dangers of global warming, one could easily get the impression that the major scientific issues on the subject is settled, and that the debate is, or is being, closed and “black boxed” (Latour 1987). On the other hand, there seems to be vocal and persistent scientists and advocates that on various grounds resist the alleged consensus. These voices sometimes claim that their legitimate dissent is silenced and marginalised in both scientific and public discourse. Thus, an explicit goal of this report has been to give the dissenting or “contrarian” perspectives a serious treatment. Has the science of anthropogenic global warming reached such a level of consensus saturation and cohesion that the debate is, legitimately or not, closed and “black boxed”? To be able to answer this question the contrarian perspectives receives relatively more space in this report. This choice is also justified by the wide attention and institutional support and promotion the consensus perspective(s) have received, not least through the IPCC.

In a 2007 speech before the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, Gro Harlem Brundtland, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy on Climate Change (and also former Prime Minister of Norway, and former Director-General of the World Health Organization) conveyed the mixture of politics, polemics, science and morality when she, in relation to global warming, famously stated that: “So what is it that is new today? What is new is that doubt has been eliminated. The report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear. And so is the Stern report. It is irresponsible, reckless and deeply immoral to question the seriousness of the situation. The time for diagnosis is over. Now it is time to act.”

This statement has several significant and problematic aspects that will be discussed in this report. Has doubt been eliminated in the case of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming? Is it possible to eliminate doubt, and are efforts to do so pursuits pertinent to science and democracy in open societies? Is it immoral and reckless to question and doubt? The Brundtland statement displays both explicitly and implicitly key premises upon which the debate on global warming is being played out, and this report seeks to unfold some of the most important of these premises.

As noted above, in the American vernacular the particular geo-political arenas of war is often labelled a “theatre of war”. Even though the subject matter of this report is both deserving of, and demands to be taken highly seriously, the theatre metaphor is in itself also quite appropriate. The debate on global warming has a theatrical ambience to it on several levels. It abounds with stories of tragedy, untergang and apocalypse, of crisis, saviours and salvation, and in several of these also (unintended) genres of melodrama and comedy is not difficult to detect. It borrows several of its communicative scripts from classical narratives, often including plots of good and evil, of culprits and heroes, and of nature’s ultimate revenge upon the unlimited folly of a humanity of myopic fools and malfeasants.

The theatrical tropes of the debate is also squarely pinpointed by the fact that the play’s definitive number one villain and enfant terrible is the agent and actor (or rather “actant” in the vocabulary of actor-network-theory) that goes by the name of CO2. Carbon dioxide.

This gas is quite literally the “smoking gun” (Archer and Rahmstorf 2010: 11) of the play, metaphorically represented as something like the (Lord of The Rings’) Sauron in the saga of global warming, and believed to play the major role in causing anthropogenic global warming – with all its possible detrimental consequences. Yet CO2 is also a major actant in photosynthesis and the life-giving production of oxygen. With CO2 at the centrepiece of the play, inhabiting this radically doubleedged position of being both the gas of life and death, global warming as eschatological tales of humanity’s end-times, and its embedded counter narrative of secular (or rather quasi-religious) earthly resurrection and salvation through heroic deeds and technological measures, the drama of global warming attains the level of meaning that myths are made of.

1.1 The’four’myths’of’climate’change

To further explicate the cultural premises for understanding the debate about global warming, this section outlines the four core narratives, or myths, that arguably frame the discourse on climate change. [...]

More HERE



Belgian Scientists: Double Standards In Climate Change

The authors of this paper recently presented their views on climate science at the Royal Academy of Belgium. No French or Belgian newspaper was willing to publish their assessment. Questioning the impact of mankind on climate change is evidently still a taboo in the French-speaking world.

The conference on climate change held in Doha (Qatar) last December ended in failure once again. However, the news reported in the media about this 18th conference on climate change were fully in line with the well-rehearsed mantra: the Earth is warming up, human emissions of greenhouse gases are mainly to blame for this warming up, and we are approaching disaster. We have only one climate, but communication about it seems to be plagued by double standards.

For a few years now British, American, Italian or German media have given sceptical scientists the opportunity to express their opinions on the validity of the statements released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the organisation responsible for the official line of thought on climate matters. Nothing like that has been seen in the French or Belgian media which persist in portraying scientific sceptics, at best as sold out to the oil lobbies, at worst as troubled individuals, greedy for public recognition and fame and as such not worthy to be proponents in a serious debate.

The authors of this contribution were recently been granted the honour of presenting their point of view as climate sceptics at the Royal Academy of Belgium. During a series of six well-attended lectures we showed, among other things, that:

The climate has always changed. This was true during ancient times and it has also been true since the beginning of the modern era. These climate changes have always been, and still are, independent of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere;

During Roman times and the Middle Ages temperatures were observed well in excess of those currently experienced. From the 16th till the 19th century a cold period referred to as the “Little Ice Age” predominated. All these changes took place without mankind being held responsible. We believe that the increase in temperatures that occurred during a certain part of the 20th century is the result of a recovery from this cold period. These various events can be explained by a combination of warm and cold cycles of different magnitudes and duration. Why and how this happens is not yet fully understood, but some plausible explanations can be put forward;

The so-called “abnormally rapid” increase in global temperatures between 1980 and 2000 is not unusual at all. There have in fact been several such periods in the past, during which temperatures rose in a similar manner and at comparable rates, even though fossil fuels were not yet in use;

Temperature measurements do not necessarily correlate with a building up or a decrease in heat since heat variations are energy changes subject to thermal inertia. Apart from heat many other parameters have an influence on temperature. Moreover the measurement of temperatures is subject to numerous large errors. When the magnitude and plurality of these measurement errors are taken into account, the reported increase in temperatures is no longer statistically significant;

The famous “Hockey-stick” curve, known as the Mann’s curve and presented six times by the IPCC in its penultimate report, is the result among other things of a mistake in the statistical calculations and an incorrect choice of temperature indicators, i.e. proxies. This lack of scientific rigour has totally discredited the curve and it was withdrawn, without any explanation, from subsequent IPCC reports;

Even though they look formidably complex, the theoretical models employed by the climate modellers are simplified to the extreme. In fact there are far too many (known and unknown) parameters that influence climate change. At the moment it is impossible to take them all into account. The climate system is extremely complex, containing not only chaotic components but also numerous positive and negative feedback loops operating according to various different time scales. Which is why the IPCC wrote in its reports that: “…long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible” (page 774, Third report). This is very true. To this day all the climate predictions based upon these models have turned out to be totally incorrect. Strangely, nobody seems to care;

The relationship between CO2 and temperature, obtained from the Vostok ice cores, shows that a building up of CO2 occurs 800 to 1000 years after an increase in temperature is observed. Hence the increase in the concentration of CO2 is a consequence of the warming of the climate, not its cause;

But the coup de grâce to the “warmists’ theory” – certainly not yet visible in the French and Belgian media – comes from the observation that for the past fifteen years or so the global temperature of the Earth has remained constant. During the same period CO2 emissions have increased by far more than in the past, reaching an unparalleled record this year. Honest climate scientists admit that this observation is an embarrassing inconvenience for their theory. However, attempts to make us believe that the Earth is continuing to warm up persist. Will we have to wait for another twenty, twenty-five or thirty years for the global warming advocates to finally admit that there is no unambiguous correlation between the global temperature of the Earth and human-generated CO2 emissions?

The claim that Hurricane Sandy is due to human CO2 emissions is totally unfounded and has been vigorously contested by numerous meteorologists. This regrettable distortion of the facts has been denounced in an open letter, addressed to the General Secretary of the UN and signed by more than 130 world-renowned scientists, including one of the present authors;

Finally the “abnormal” melting of the Arctic Sea ice, that made the headlines of numerous journals during this summer, was also observed during previous decades. Amazingly the record high increase in Antarctic Sea ice that occurred at exactly the same time has been completely ignored by the very same media. Moreover, no mention has been made of the current, particularly rapid, regeneration of the Arctic Sea ice.

These ten statements are facts. We would be ready to accept that they could be wrong, if evidence were presented to scientifically disprove them. In the meantime, and in view of the lack of coherence and unreliability associated with the numerous predictions made by the IPCC, it is time to set the record straight. The public and politicians must be informed about the hypothetical character of the predominant ‘consensus’ on climate change, which has been uncritically disseminated in the media for more than ten years. If it ever existed, this so-called “climate change consensus” has now been totally undermined by the facts.

Despite the opportunity that we were given by the Royal Academy to raise this issue, we were unable to find any French or Belgian newspaper willing to publish this text. Questioning the impact of mankind on climate change is evidently still a taboo over here.

SOURCE





Met Office Now Admits Arctic Sea Ice Didn’t Cause Cold Winter

In a new report entitled “Why was the start to spring 2013 so cold?,” the chief of the UK MET Office now admits that decreased Arctic sea ice or “Arctic amplification” was not responsible for the unusually cold spring 2013 in Europe, finding “little evidence from the comparison between the cold spring of 1962 and this year that the Arctic has been a contributory factor in terms of the hypothesis” of “an increased probability of extreme weather events that result from prolonged conditions, such as drought, flooding, cold spells, and heat waves.”

According to the report, “Figure 13 shows the midtroposphere temperature anomalies for 1962 and 2013; over the Arctic they are almost identical and reflect the negative NAO pattern. It is hard to argue that Arctic amplification had changed the equator to pole temperature in a systematic way to affect the circulation this spring.”

Excerpt:

There have been some suggestions that the rapid decline of Arctic sea ice, especially during summer, is responsible for this year’s cold spring. It is argued [8] that amplification of global warming over the Arctic is reducing the equator to pole temperature gradient, thereby weakening the strength of the mid-latitude jet streams. In turn this may lead to slower progression of upper-level waves and would cause associated weather patterns in midlatitudes to be more persistent, potentially leading to an increased probability of extreme weather events that result from prolonged conditions, such as drought, flooding, cold spells, and heat waves.

This hypothesis remains contentious [9], however, and there is little evidence from the comparison between the cold spring of 1962 and this year that the Arctic has been a contributory factor in terms of the hypothesis proposed above. Figure 13 shows the midtroposphere temperature anomalies for 1962 and 2013; over the Arctic they are almost identical and reflect the negative NAO pattern. It is hard to argue that Arctic amplification had changed the equator to pole temperature in a systematic way to affect the circulation this spring.

SOURCE





Nicene Creed for Environmentalism

Every religion needs a creed. A set of beliefs that its followers can adhere to. A flag they can rally around in good times and bad.

An early example is the Nicene Creed, drafted in the fourth century to explain exactly what Christians believed.

With the coming of Earth Day, Americans are reminded once again that modern environmentalism has morphed into a religion. For example, we can expect to be reminded that today’s cold weather and floods are caused by “climate change,” the exact same phenomenon that supposedly caused last year’s hot weather and droughts.

So to help environmentalist believers focus, it’s time for them to have their own Nicene Creed. Feel free to read it at Earth Day celebrations, or any appropriate worship services:


"We believe in one Planet, Mother of us all: the Earth, fragile and endangered by pollution, both seen and unseen.

We believe in one agency, the EPA, the only thing standing between us and oblivion, created by Washington to protect us, its god-like rulings must never be questioned, we understand its decisions are begotten, not made.

EPA is of one with the Father, the federal government. Through it all things were made, for us and for our salvation.

EPA hands down judgments as if from heaven: It was given power by Richard Nixon, has grown inexorably, and now has the ability to make men bend to its will.

EPA was crucified under George W. Bush; it suffered greatly but soldiered on. And now has arisen again to write new regulations which must be treated as Scripture;

Under Barack Obama, EPA has ascended to new heights and is seated at the right hand of the Father, the federal government.

It will never cease attempting to judge people and companies, whether living or dead, and its kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Planet, the Earth, the giver of life, which may soon be completely destroyed by man-caused global warming.

Through the Father, the federal government, and the Son, the EPA, Earth is worshiped and glorified.

It has spoken through the Prophet, Rachel Carson.

We believe in climate change, regardless of what the evidence may show.

We acknowledge that humans are the source of all environmental sins.

We look for redemption thorough recycling,

And look forward to a completely regulated life to come.

Amen."


SOURCE

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

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

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April 23, 2013

New Scafetta sea level paper separates and recognizes the natural oscillations behind background acceleration in tide gauge records

The result is that the real sea level accelerations are very small. Some of the major papers claiming catastrophic sea level rise for the 21 century are strongly rebutted

Multi-scale dynamical analysis (MSDA) of sea level records versus PDO, AMO, and NAO indexes

N. Scafetta

Abstract

Herein I propose a multi-scale dynamical analysis to facilitate the physical interpretation of tide gauge records. The technique uses graphical diagrams. It is applied to six secular-long tide gauge records representative of the world oceans: Sydney, Pacific coast of Australia; Fremantle, Indian Ocean coast of Australia; New York City, Atlantic coast of USA; Honolulu, US state of Hawaii; San Diego, US state of California; and Venice, Mediterranean Sea, Italy. For comparison, an equivalent analysis is applied to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) index and to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index. Finally, a global reconstruction of sea level (Jevrejeva et al. in Geophys Res Lett 35:L08715, 2008) and a reconstruction of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index (Luterbacher et al. in Geophys Res Lett 26:2745–2748, 1999) are analyzed and compared: both sequences cover about three centuries from 1700 to 2000. The proposed methodology quickly highlights oscillations and teleconnections among the records at the decadal and multidecadal scales. At the secular time scales tide gauge records present relatively small (positive or negative) accelerations, as found in other studies (Houston and Dean in J Coast Res 27:409–417, 2011). On the contrary, from the decadal to the secular scales (up to 110-year intervals) the tide gauge accelerations oscillate significantly from positive to negative values mostly following the PDO, AMO and NAO oscillations. In particular, the influence of a large quasi 60–70 year natural oscillation is clearly demonstrated in these records. The multiscale dynamical evolutions of the rate and of the amplitude of the annual seasonal cycle of the chosen six tide gauge records are also studied.

Climate Dynamics, April 2013.






Glorious Lenin's birthday Earth Day, comrades

From Oleg the Armenian



A day of action to save the earth from farmers, ranchers, mining, timber, oil, chemical companies, and anyone else who seeks to utilize the planet's resources to enhance, enrich, and extend the lives of people worldwide.

Characterized by the media's massive awareness drive to (a) remind the world that U.S. capitalists are raping the earth, stealing its riches, and causing environmental problems; (b) advocate a greater government control of land, resources, and industries; and (c) increase the ever growing white male guilt levels. A great way to hijack spring cleaning and politicize the rebirth of nature.



SOURCE





The hate is never far beneath the surface with the Green/Left

Ira Einhorn was on stage hosting the first Earth Day event at the Fairmount Park in Philadelphia on April 22, 1970. Seven years later, police raided his closet and found the "composted" body of his ex-girlfriend inside a trunk.

A self-proclaimed environmental activist, Einhorn made a name for himself among ecological groups during the 1960s and '70s by taking on the role of a tie-dye-wearing ecological guru and Philadelphia’s head hippie. With his long beard and gap-toothed smile, Einhorn — who nicknamed himself "Unicorn" because his German-Jewish last name translates to "one horn" —advocated flower power, peace and free love to his fellow students at the University of Pennsylvania. He also claimed to have helped found Earth Day.

But the charismatic spokesman who helped bring awareness to environmental issues and preached against the Vietnam War — and any violence — had a secret dark side. When his girlfriend of five years, Helen "Holly" Maddux, moved to New York and broke up with him, Einhorn threatened that he would throw her left-behind personal belongings onto the street if she didn't come back to pick them up.

And so on Sept. 9, 1977, Maddux went back to the apartment that she and Einhorn had shared in Philadelphia to collect her things, and was never seen again. When Philadelphia police questioned Einhorn about her mysterious disappearance several weeks later, he claimed that she had gone out to the neighborhood co-op to buy some tofu and sprouts and never returned.

It wasn't until 18 months later that investigators searched Einhorn's apartment after one of his neighbors complained that a reddish-brown, foul-smelling liquid was leaking from the ceiling directly below Einhorn's bedroom closet. Inside the closet, police found Maddux's beaten and partially mummified body stuffed into a trunk that had also been packed with Styrofoam, air fresheners and newspapers.

After his arrest, Einhorn jumped bail and spent decades evading authorities by hiding out in Ireland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and France. After 23 years, he was finally extradited to the United States from France and put on trial. Taking the stand in his own defense, Einhorn claimed that his ex-girlfriend had been killed by CIA agents who framed him for the crime because he knew too much about the agency's paranormal military research. He was convicted of murdering Maddux and is currently serving a life sentence.

SOURCE






Stop Me Before I Buy Food

There is no problem too flimsy for California's nanny lawmakers, as witnessed by the many laws that state solons have proposed to keep constituents from getting free plastic bags at the grocery. Those teensy plastic bags are cheap. They're lightweight. They're energy-efficient. People use them a lot, which means that they can end up as litter. That can be ugly. So Sacramento Democrats keep concocting bills to outlaw their idea of blight -- not the homeless and not unemployment but bags. When Sacramento lawmakers see an opportunity to stick it to employed people who buy things, nothing can stop them.
State Sen. Alex Padilla has a bill similar to a bill by Assemblyman Marc Levine that would ban grocers and big retailers from giving away single-use plastic bags but would allow them to charge for recycled paper bags.

"The goal and purpose behind the legislation is to wean us off of single-use bags period," Padilla told me. Single-use bags, he explained, create litter and drive up recycling costs for local governments.

As if to prove that the law is aimed at working stiffs who pay taxes, Padilla's SB 405 even exempts participants in California's Women, Infants and Children supplemental food program by requiring stores to provide reusable grocery bags or recycled paper bags to WIC participants.

Can't WIC participants recycle? I asked Padilla. "That's done out of a concern, which some have raised, on the impact on low-income families," he explained.

When making laws, California's lawmakers often ignore the most abiding of all laws, the law of unintended consequences.

The American Progressive Bag Alliance, which represents makers of plastic bags, held a conference call Tuesday to warn of adverse consequences to the state's effort to combat global warming. (I like how the group calls itself "progressive" as if they were a bunch of San Francisco supervisors.) Paper bags require more water to make than plastic bags, Chairman Mark Daniels argued. Reusable bags save energy only if people wash and reuse them. Then there's the California jobs issue.

Padilla is confident that Californians will use reusable bags. Hence, his bill would help the environment.

A California Senate Environmental Quality Committee analysis of Padilla's SB 405 discusses the possible "public health implications," as reusable bags "can harbor bacteria such as coliform bacteria." Washing bags can help, the analysis noted; alas, a study found that 97 percent of Californians and Arizonans said they never wash their bags.

No worries. SB 405 would require reusable bags to include cleaning care instructions. Because people always read the many warnings and instructions mandated by state law -- yes, that was sarcasm -- the Padilla warning just might reduce the number of consumers who don't wash their bags so that -- what? -- maybe only 96 percent of consumers will be at risk of getting sick from their unwashed reused bags.

That's why the Romans cooked up the term "caveat emptor" (let the buyer beware).

It may well be that in another 10 years, Sacramento will have to come up with a new law to deal with a glut of unused reusable bags.

I look around California and see serious problems -- undereducated children, one of the country's highest unemployment rates, homeless people and violent crime. In San Francisco, the sidewalks often smell, and it's not because of single-use plastic bags.

To sum up, the Padilla bill probably would reduce litter, but it could increase greenhouse gases and could make people sick. And it most definitely would inconvenience consumers.

But in this state, if there's one group Sacramento can push around, it's not people who make the streets unseemly, and it's not the menaces to society; it's hardworking taxpayers who buy things. They are the softest target.

SOURCE





Electric car sales lose their spark: Just 3,600 are sold in Britain under scheme to give motorists £5,000 subsidy if they buy one

Electric car sales are set to slump below expectations despite efforts to support them with taxpayer subsidies, a report concludes today.

The report says motorists still find 'zero-emission' vehicles too expensive, less efficient and less practical than conventional petrol and diesel vehicles.

Only 3,600 electric vehicles have so far been sold under a scheme that gives buyers a £5,000 taxpayer subsidy. The Government has also allocated £300million to boost public charging points.

The report was commissioned jointly by the RAC Foundation and the UK Petroleum Industry Association.

It says: 'Sales of electric cars are set to fall far short of official expectations. Electric vehicles remain a controversial subject.'

Predictions for the future are also dismal despite official encouragement by Prime Minster David Cameron, Labour opposition and environmental groups.

The 154-page report called 'Powering Ahead - the future of low-carbon cars and fuels', added: 'Battery electric vehicles face major challenges in gaining market share because of their high prices and limited range.

'Breakthroughs in technology, particularly in the cost and performance of batteries are required before plug-in hybrid and battery electric vehicles can achieve significant market share.'

The report concedes 'Advocates will say that their market share has increased by hundreds of percentage points over the last years, and that this trend will continue.

'Critics will reply that this still only represents a small fraction of the market.'

But the RAC report highlights how the Goverment's advisory Committee on Climate Change has said it would be 'feasible and desirable' to have up to 1.7million fully electric and plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2020.

'But most industry analysts predict the number will be significantly lower', it notes.

'Even the more positive assessments foresee only 200,000 plug-in hybrid and pure battery powered cars being sold each year in the UK by 2020.

'Some experts think sales of these types of vehicle will actually be as low as 40,000,' it says citing a review for them by consultants Ricardo-AEA of authoritative market forecasts .

'To put these numbers in perspective, just over 2 million new cars were sold in the UK in 2012. In total there are about 29million cars on the road in the UK. '

Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said: 'It is more than two years since the Government introduced the plug-in car grant.

'Yet even with subsidies of £5,000 per vehicle available only 3,600 cars have been purchased through the scheme.

'This report concludes that the key to making electric cars a commercial success is a major advance in battery technology.

'Until then these vehicles are likely to remain too expensive and too impractical to penetrate the mass market.'

The subsidy scheme rises to more than £8,000 for vans. The 11 vehicles eligible for the subsidy include the Nissan Leaf and Vauxhall Ampera.

SOURCE





Australia: Controversy over gas exploration

A FAILURE to embrace coal seam gas has prompted the Federal Opposition to accuse the New South Wales Government of destroying its major economic hope.

Speaking to an energy conference in Sydney on Thursday, Opposition spokesman for resources Ian Macfarlane said the state had to follow Queensland's lead in building up the industry.

Mr Macfarlane also criticised NSW for imposing too many restrictions on the gas sector.

He reportedly told the conference how NSW had dithered while Queensland had thrived.

"Instead of drilling 1000 wells each year, (NSW) built just one well in two years," he said.

Mr Macfarlane said the NSW government needed to spruik the industry and warn the public of potential job losses.

NSW has imposed stringent restrictions on the emerging CSG sector in the state after fierce opposition, particularly along its northern coastline.

CSG opponents claimed victory after two major gas companies Metgasco and Dart Energy stalled plans to develop in the region.

SOURCE

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

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

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April 22, 2013

A new hockeystick!

I reproduce below a Warmist take on some recent research, followed by the journal abstract. It's interesting to note their finding that there was great variation in different regions of the earth. Not much of what was observed of climate was global.

Their claim that there was no such thing as a Medieval warm period has been exhausively debated previously with worldwide evidence confirming the phenomenon so is unlikely to hold up. One suspects that as with the last hockeystick (Marcott et al.) the authors will eventually admit that the finding is "not robust".

The point that the authors fail to stress, however, is that the warming of the last c.150 years is very slight -- less than 1 degree Celsius -- and hence no basis for any alarm even if it continues, which it is not doing

UPDATE: Note also that thermometer records (much more accurate than the proxies used below) show that the warming took place over the last c.150 years, not just from 1971, as claimed below. The 1971 date complies with Warmist theory but not the facts

Warming over the 20th century produced the hottest global average temperatures in 1400 years, a major scientific research project has found.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Monday, an international team of scientists reconstructed temperatures over the past 2000 years using proxy records such as tree-ring measurements, pollen sampling, coral reefs, ice cores and historical records.

The study found that the global warming that began in the late-19th century reversed a long cooling trend across the planet that lasted well over 1000 years.

One of the authors of the paper, Dr Steven Phipps from the University of NSW's ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, said: "The striking feature about the sudden rise in 20th century global average temperature is that it comes after an overall cooling trend that lasted more than a millennium.
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"This research shows that in just a century the Earth has reversed 1400 years of cooling."

When the reconstructed temperatures are averaged across the planet, the best estimate of past temperatures finds 1971–2000 was warmer than any other time in nearly 1400 years.

But some of the seven different regions studied may have experienced similar or warmer temperatures at other times.

The paper says the findings do not consider uncertainty associated with the temperature estimates, and the reconstruction for each area covered different periods within the 2000 years, depending on the availability of data.

In Australia and Asia, the reconstructed temperature was highest during 1971–2000 than at any other period over the studied timelines.

The paper says the millennium-long cooling trend – and earlier warmer temperatures – were primarily driven by natural cycles in the Earth's orbit and some volcano and solar activity. But natural influences do not account for the dramatic global temperature rises of the 20th century, the report says.

Rising greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to human activity, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels and, while the recent warming is a global trend, other temperature anomaly periods – such as the Mediaeval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age – occurred only regionally.

Professor Jonathan Overpeck, visiting fellow of the Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research, said it confirmed that recent global and continental-scale warming was "very unusual" in recent Earth history and was driven mostly by human emissions of greenhouse gases.

SOURCE

Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia

By Moinuddin Ahmed et al.

Abstract

Past global climate changes had strong regional expression. To elucidate their spatio-temporal pattern, we reconstructed past temperatures for seven continental-scale regions during the past one to two millennia. The most coherent feature in nearly all of the regional temperature reconstructions is a long-term cooling trend, which ended late in the nineteenth century.

At multi-decadal to centennial scales, temperature variability shows distinctly different regional patterns, with more similarity within each hemisphere than between them.

There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age, but all reconstructions show generally cold conditions between AD 1580 and 1880, punctuated in some regions by warm decades during the eighteenth century.

The transition to these colder conditions occurred earlier in the Arctic, Europe and Asia than in North America or the Southern Hemisphere regions.

Recent warming reversed the long-term cooling; during the period AD 1971–2000, the area-weighted average reconstructed temperature was higher than any other time in nearly 1,400 years.

SOURCE

Bummer: According to Al Gore, we now have only three years "to avert a major [CO2-induced] catastrophe that could send our entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction"

No sign of it yet but that's prophecy for you

[2006] "Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction . . ."

This quote, spoken by Al Gore in his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” embodies the fear that is driving the modern environmental movement.

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Celebrate Earth Day by Expanding Our Carbon Footprint

Every year I celebrate Earth Day with tips and ideas on how readers can expand their carbon footprint. Below you’ll find the newest, top ten ways I recommend to expand your carbon footprint on May 22nd, 2013 Anno Domini.

10) Take unnecessary trips in your electric car.

Run that battery down to nothing. Electric cars need fuel and that fuel comes from power plants run mostly on coal. There’s no quicker way to expand your carbon footprint than using that “green” car and powering it up nightly.

9) Use a Metro Light Rail system instead of your car.

“When taken as a whole, then,” writes Cato’s Randal O’Toole, “most transit systems with light rail use more energy and emit more greenhouse gases per passenger kilometre than they did when they operated only buses. Most also use more energy and emit more carbon dioxide, per passenger kilometre, than typical automobiles.”

O’Toole says that light rail only appeals to: 1) downtown real estate interests; 2) Seimens, the light rail contractor; and 3) people who hate autos.

All aboard!

8) Move to Germany!

Yes, the model for renewable energy development in the industrial world has yielded impressive results. And they do it by subsidizing a new, technological breakthrough that’s coming to you very soon. Yes, very soon we’ll all be able to power our electric vehicles through coal-powered plants that supplement coal with the use of wood.

Mmmm. I don’t know about you, but I just love the smell of a wood fire wafting around the city. It makes it smell like Christmas- or Winter Holi-Day for of you who are only “spiritual.” For atheists, the smell can remind you of December 25th, 2012 C.E.

7) Build a wind farm.

You too can find out what rural, depression era residents knew: The widespread adoption of wind power eventually will lead to the creation of a large, nationalized effort to electrify the country with more reliable, fossil or hydro-based electrical generation, just as they did with the Tennessee Valley Authority. Since nuclear and hydro are impossible to permit, prepare for coal-fired and oil-fired plants to come out of mothballs.

There’s nothing like the smell of diesel wafting around a city to remind people that it’s Earth Day, C.E. Infinity or, for those of us who are heretics and apostates, May 22nd, 2013 A.D.

6) Move into Al Gore’s house.

No house in America uses more fossil fuel than Big Al’s. According to one source Gore buys coal left over from the age of Charles Dickens, extracted by Welsh miners, who on average were paid less than a penny per day. It’s transported to America an old diesel powered bulk freighter named I’ll Always Be the Real Number 43.

Gore then uses the black, Welsh, rock to boil water that heats his 23 swimming pools, 271 waterfalls and keep his mountain streams at a constant 77 degrees for the benefit of his pet coy.

There are other ways moving in with Al can help expand our carbon footprint. Can our readers identify them all?

5) Buy a Chevy Volt.

In addition to the massive amount of fossil-fuel generated electricity, that Volt uses the pollution from the manufacture and disposal of the $8,000 battery, there is one other ways that the Chevy Volt expands our earth’s environmental footprint.

While spontaneous engine fires so far have failed to consume an entire Volt, the winner of the 2012 European Journalist award for Car of the Year (C.E.), scientists estimate that a fully consumed GM green car would emit more carbon than another Al Gore run for the presidency.

There, I’ve done it: Gore 2016?

4) Blog about the vast right-wing conspiracy.

No new technology in the past 30 years has contributed to increasing fossil fuel emissions than the adoption of computer technology. From server farms, to high- speed networks, to computer chip enabled phones, tablets and PCs, the electronic age is consuming more and more electricity.

And since the U.S. has failed to adopt progressive, European renewable energy policies like burning wood in stoves, water heaters and furnaces, the leading sources of renewable hot air in the U.S. comes from blogging.

So plug in those IPhones, tablets and PCs. And write with indignation about Big Oil, while pretending to be green.

“Let’s Pretend,” as we know, is a very important keystone of many liberal policies.

3) Support 420!

Quick: Does anyone know how much carbon is in a gram of weed? Does anyone who cares about weed, care about the environment? If you had to pick between smoking weed and the environment, which would you pick?

That’s right, you’d be eating brownies or drinking tea made from ganja.

Bunch of Tea Baggers.

2) Live in a tiny house.

OK, living in a tiny house will do nothing to expand your carbon footprint. But it would be really funny to see you guys blow out the fuse box of a mini house when you overload the electrical system charging you car, your tablet, your PC, your phone and your E-420 stick, while washing your clothes in a mountain stream.

Actually, I think ALL environmentalists should be forced to register as high-capacity B.S. magazines and forced to live in houses measuring only 200 square feet.

Although I think the right of free speech shouldn’t be abridged, no one should be allowed to dish out as much bull as they do and cause as much damage without some control over how quickly they re-load.

1) Occupy Wall Street, again.

Who can forget the day the people who Occupied Wall Street in order to save the world left behind 26 loads of garbage?

“I pick up garbage [for a living], and these were some of the worst smells I’ve ever experienced,’’ one sanitation worker told the NY Post.

Gives a whole new meaning to carbon footprint.

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EU’s Empty Climate Policy Reflects the Impossibility of a Global Climate Treaty (which is great for humankind)

I’ve long argued that the European Union’s climate policy is full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing. During the last 20 years, EU officials have been quick to blather about their supposed leadership on climate, based on a putative “success” reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But this has always been a mirage. In fact, EU emissions reductions since its adoption of the Kyoto Protocol have been largely derivative of unintended consequences stemming from three events that have nothing today with climate mitigation policy. They are: (1) the shutdown of Soviet-bloc heavy industry; (2) the United Kingdom’s “dash to gas”; and (3) the Great Recession.

Meanwhile, EU’s actual climate policies have been ongoing failures. Take the EU’s goal of improving energy efficiency 9% by 2016 and 20% by 2020. Ex-EU bureaucrat whistleblowers recently told EUractiv that EU member states have relied on “tricks and abuses” to create the appearance that they are on track to achieve the targets. In January, the European Court of Auditors published a scathing audit of how EU member states spent almost $6.6 billion in subsidies to achieve the energy efficiency targets. From the press release:

“None of the projects we looked at had a needs assessment or even an analysis of the energy savings potential in relation to investments”, said Harald Wögerbauer, the ECA member responsible for the report, “The Member States were essentially using this money to refurbish public buildings while energy efficiency was, at best, a secondary concern.”

In order to better control the earth’s thermostat, the EU also has implemented a Soviet-style, green energy production quota of 20% by 2020. While member states have spent billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies in order to support the EU’s green energy goals, the EU Commission in late March warned that, “There are reasons for concern about future progress; the transposition of the directive [the green energy production quota] has been slower than wished, also due to the current economic crisis in Europe.”

In layman’s terms, this means that a lot of European countries spent a lot of money on expensive, green energy during the boom-time 2000s. But the boom has since gone bust, and these countries are now reducing unsustainable green energy subsidies. Because the green energy industry cannot compete without ever-more generous taxpayer give-aways, EU bureaucrats are justifiably concerned that their green energy production quota won’t be met.

But the EU’s biggest joke of a climate policy—by far—has been the Emissions Trading Scheme, a cap-and-trade. It’s actually failed twice. During its first phase, the over allocation of carbon rationing coupons led to windfall profits for utilities, but no actual emissions reductions, as the carbon price plummeted. This week, during its phase three, the Emissions Trading Scheme collapsed again, and this time, it appears to be down for good. According to an article from yesterday’s EUractiv,

"The EU’s flagship scheme for cutting carbon emissions suffered one of the most serious setbacks in its chequered history on Tuesday (16 April), when MEPs voted against a proposal to shore up the price of carbon in the Emissions Trading System (ETS)."

The proposed reform – known as “backloading” – aimed to reverse the plummeting price of carbon that has resulted from a surplus of permits in the ETS market. If successful, the reform would have resulted in the postponement of a series of auctions of carbon permits.

But MEPs in Strasbourg voted 334 against the reform, with 315 in favour, leading green campaigners to condemn the defeat as a “monumental failure” to mend the carbon trading market, which is Europe’s flagship climate policy and the biggest in the world. “They have lost all credibility on climate leadership,” said Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist."

EU bureaucrats shouldn’t fret over their climate policy failures, which were inevitable. In a anarchic order of global states defined by self-help, no block of countries could ever sacrifice on behalf the whole, especially if these countries’ sacrifice was expensive, yet would fail to solve the problem at hand. Realism similarly dooms any chance that there could ever be a global regime to fight climate change. According to the International Energy Agency, it would cost $45 trillion through 2050 to implement the climate goals adopted by the United Nations. There is ZERO precedent for burden sharing of that magnitude among the states of the world, save for global warfare. Despite the alarmists’ best efforts, global warming will never be perceived as a clear and present danger on par with world war. The upshot is that there’s a snowball’s chance in hell for a viable climate treaty.

As I and others have argued before, this guaranteed inaction is a great thing, because climate policies are worse for human kind than climate change.

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Late blooming cherry trees in DC prove global cooling

Using Warmist logic they do anyway

As we have previously noted, the peak bloom date of DC’s cherry blossom trees has been delayed this year. While it was originally predicted to take place during March 23-26, it wasn’t until last Tuesday—April 9th—that it actually started, checking in 20 days later than last year.

Earlier peak blooms in past years have triggered a variety of global warming-related news articles. The Huffington Post characterized the cherry blossom trees as humanity-serving “global warming canaries” and the Washington Post suggested that the trees could one day be blooming in winter. However, this year’s late peak bloom date has not received the same treatment. As a matter of fact, we can’t find any examples of GW being discussed in connection with this year’s late peak bloom. (Are we the only exception?)

Well, today we can definitively announce that peak blooming actually began to plateau in 1998, much like what happened to global warming in general. After the unusually hot year of 1998 (which has been attributed to El Niño), temperatures have actually stopped rising.....

Washington Post’s Jason Samenow wrote an alarmist piece last year called “D.C.’s cherry blossoms have shifted 5 days earlier: what about global warming and the future?” in which he claimed that “there is no reason to think the shift towards earlier bloom dates will not continue”. Samenow has yet to comment on this year’s absence of an earlier peak bloom, even though his article surely begs for a follow-up. What is Samenow, a plateau denier? Where’s he getting his funding from, the Spring in February Foundation?

Whatever conclusions are to be drawn from various climate change indicators, one thing is rather obvious: GW alarmists say next to nothing when the conclusive, definitive, slam-dunk evidence runs counter to their claims.

More HERE






Claims and facts about climate change in Australia

by Des Moore

The attempt to portray a picture of ever-rising temperatures continues despite the absence of supporting evidence. It is typified by frequent references to purported and much-repeated "records”, such as “the hottest start to April for eight years” and the supportive claims of “experts” with Nobel Laureate awards in a science, but not necessarily ones awarded for achievements in climate climate science.

For example, The Age recently ran a letter from Professor Peter Doherty denying a pause in temperature increases and arguing that a sceptical Spooner cartoon was based on misinformation. Doherty argued that climate scientists are not likely to make errors because they could be subjected to claims of scientific fraud. The professor, it should be noted, won his 1996 Nobel for advancing understanding not of climate or meteorology but the human immune system. (for Spooner's response to Doherty, see the bottom of this column)

About a month ago Quadrant Online published my analysis of published temperature data, compiled with help from physicist Dr Tom Quirk, showing that the global average recorded a fall in February. The latest data (see the chart below from John Christy, University of Alabama at Huntsville, and drawn from satellite data) shows there was no change in March and confirms there has been no substantive change in annual global average temperatures between 2002 and 2012. I also pointed out that there has been no change worth noting in the 16 years from 1998, while adding that account needs to be taken of the effects attributable to the “high” El Nino activity of that year.



For Australia, following the fall in February, there was an increase in average temperatures in March, but the increase did not fully offset the February fall, and the March level could scarcely be described as “high” (see the chart below). As I have previously pointed out, the failure in recent years to witness a coincidence of temperature and emission increases – supposedly the basis of the scientific consensus -- is nothing new, also having been evident in earlier years.



It remains the case that, while there was an increase in average temperature in the Australian summer (defined as December, January and February), whether that summer temperature was a recent “record” depends on the data source used. Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) data shows that the average temperature in the summer just passed was fractionally higher than in previous summers of the past 25 years or so, while satellite data shows the average was lower than a number of previous summers (see the chart below).



In my earlier Quadrant analysis I drew attention to the Angry Summer report of March 4 by the government’s Climate Commission and to one of the false claims by its head, the paleontologist Tim Flannery, who said: “If you look at the whole Earth system, you can see that strong warming trend”.

Earlier this month the Commission published yet another report with the following heading and introduction:

"THE CRITICAL DECADE: Extreme weather

How quickly and deeply we reduce greenhouse gas emissions will greatly influence the severity of extreme events our children and grandchildren experience. But due to additional greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the climate system now contains significantly more heat compared to 50 years ago. The severity and frequency of many extreme weather events are increasing due to climate change. Extreme weather has always occurred.

This means that all extreme weather events are influenced by climate change.”

The way in which the phrase “climate change” is used here is, of course, nonsensical: extreme or other weather events must reflect some change in climate. The question is what is causing the change? More substantially, is there evidence that extreme weather events have increased over the past 50 years? If so, does this reflects increased emissions of greenhouse gases?

The IPCC published a report in March 2012 on “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation”, but this did not advocate quick and deep reductions in greenhouse gases. While it concluded that “climate change has led to changes in climate extremes such as heat waves, record high temperatures and, in many regions, heavy precipitation in the past half century”, it also noted that while “some extreme weather and climate events lead to disasters, others do not”. The report suggested that “policies to avoid, prepare for, respond to and recover from the risks of disaster can reduce the impact of these events and increase the resilience of people exposed to extreme events”. In short, its authors advocated policies of adaptation to climate change, rather than the urgent reduction of emissions.

“The main message from the report is that we know enough to make good decisions about managing the risks of climate-related disasters. Sometimes we take advantage of this knowledge, but many times we do not,” said Chris Field, Co-Chair of IPCC’s Working Group II, which together with Working Group I produced the report. “The challenge for the future has one dimension focused on improving the knowledge base and one on empowering good decisions, even for those situations where there is lots of uncertainty,” he said.

“The IPCC released the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the report in November, 2011. The full report ... provides the basis for the key conclusions first presented in the SPM. It offers a greater understanding of the human and economic costs of disasters and the physical and social patterns that cause them. It enables policy-makers to delve into the detailed information behind the findings to examine the material on which the IPCC based its assessments.”

In adopting an adaptation approach to extreme weather problems, the IPCC report on extreme weather is clearly not on the alarmist track being followed by the Climate Commission. Could the Commission be accused of committing scientific fraud?

It claims to have been “established to provide all Australians with an independent and reliable source of information about the science of climate change, the international action being taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the economics of a carbon price”. It also claims to be “made up of experts from a range of fields relevant to climate change and is not subject to Government direction. The Commission is also supported by a Science Advisory Panel.”

A case can clearly be made that, at the very least, the Commission is not a reliable source of information even by the low standards of the IPCC. The status of the Commission was discussed last Sunday in an interview by Andrew Bolt with Professor Bob Carter (the transcript can be found here), who pointed out that none of the Commissioners is an expert on climate science.

The best that might be said of their expertise is that they make fit correspondents for the letters page of The Age, which perhaps says even more than their lack of credentials about the degree of seriousness with which their utterances should be taken.

FOOTNOTE: In the following day's Age, Spooner took Professor Doherty to task:

"I am concerned as to why Professor Peter Doherty (Letters, 8/4) does not consult the authorities relied on by the IPCC when lecturing deniers about global warming since 1997. I refer him to an interview with Professor Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (BBC, 13/2/2010); James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in his paper of March 28, 2013; the UK Met office (Hadcrut 4) graph published 24/12/12 and acknowledged by none other than Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC (Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 22/2/2013)".

None of these sources oppose the possibility of dangerous climate change but they all confirm there has been no statistically significant increase in annual global temperatures for between 12 and 17 years. If carbon dioxide emissions have risen about 8 per cent for the last 16 years, why haven't temperatures risen in line with all the computer model projections?

John Spooner, The Age

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

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

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April 21, 2013

The prophet -- a new Ezekiel raging at the world

Controversial scientist Dr James Hansen has issued his direst warning yet for humanity as he quit his job at Nasa to concentrate on raising awareness of climate change.

Hansen wrote that he decided to step down 'so that I can spend full time on science, drawing attention to the implications for young people, and making clear what science says needs to be done.'

He also published a paper outlining what he calls 'Venus syndrome' - where global warming becomes so bad Earth can no longer sustain human life.
Dr James Hansen and a climate change day of action: He has warned a failure to deal with climate change could result in the planet being not only ice-free but human-free'

Dr James Hansen and a climate change day of action: He has warned a failure to deal with climate change could result in the planet being not only ice-free but human-free'

'It it is not an exaggeration to suggest, based on best available scientific evidence, that burning all fossil fuels could result in the planet being not only ice-free but human-free,' he claims.

'If we burn all the fossil fuels it is certain that sea level would eventually rise by tens of meters,' he claims.

'The only argument is how soon the rise of several meters needed to destroy habitability of all coastal cities would occur.

'It is also possible that burning all fossil fuels would eventually set off a hyperthermal event, a mini-runaway.'

According to a new paper which Hansen posted on the Columbia University website, the 'runaway' effect of climate change could cause Earth to become like Venus

'Earth can 'achieve' Venus-like conditions, in the sense of ~90 bar surface pressure, only after first getting rid of its ocean via escape of hydrogen to space,' he writes.

'This is conceivable if the atmosphere warms enough that the troposphere expands into the present stratosphere.'

According to the New York Times, Hansen will step down from his $180,000 a year position to join a number of lawsuits challenging the federal and state governments for their failure to police industry over man’s effect on the climate, the New York Times reported.

'As a government employee, you can’t testify against the government,' he said.

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Analysis finds planetary harmonics control solar activity and subsequent climate change

A new post at ClimateMonitor.it by Carlo Tosti demonstrates that the global temperature record since 1880 is highly correlated to solar activity, and that solar activity is in turn highly correlated to the harmonics of planetary motion.

These correlations and accumulating evidence of an amplified solar effect on Earth's climate would tend to suggest a "unified theory" of climate change, whereby gravitational effects from planetary motions cause small changes in solar activity, which are then amplified via cosmic rays/clouds [Svensmark's theory of cosmoclimatology], ozone, and ocean oscillations to cause large changes in Earth's climate.


Blue = global temperature; red = solar activity

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History trumps climate scientists

Climate alarmist claims are at odds with reality

Many blame the public’s confusion over global warming on a widespread ignorance of science. A scientific grounding wouldn’t hurt but it also wouldn’t help much — few laymen, no matter how well informed, could be expected to follow the arcane climate change calculations that specialized scientists wield.

The much better explanation for the public’s confusion lies in a widespread ignorance of history, not least by scientists. Any child can understand that the Romans conquered the world when temperatures were warmer than today, that the Dutch invented the ice skates during the Little Ice Age five hundred years ago, and that melting glaciers off Newfoundland a century ago produced the iceberg that sunk the Titanic. Each of these well documented periods shreds speculations from climate alarmists, such as their assertion that the Arctic is only now warming, or that temperatures had been relative stable over the past one or two thousand years, and only in the last century climbed dramatically.

This week’s scary climate change news, courtesy of an article in Nature Geoscience, claims that temperatures in the Antarctic peninsula are the hottest they’ve been in the last 1000 years. This claim follows a “reconstruction” of the climate using a boatload of assumptions.

Another article on the Antarctic in the same issue of Nature Geoscience is less scary, in part because it employs history to buttress scientific conclusions. “If we could look back at this region of Antarctica in the 1940s and 1830s, we would find that the regional climate would look a lot like it does today, and I think we also would find the glaciers retreating much as they are today,” said lead author Eric Steig of the University of Washington. Steig’s study made use of actual temperature records taken by sailors, explorers and scientists over the past two centuries in the tropics and beyond.

The vast Antarctic, of course, has been mostly inaccessible, but numerous expeditions to the region, beginning with James Cook’s voyage in the 1770s, provide actual, rather than scientifically surmised or reconstructed, data. The explorers from Australia, Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden and Switzerland tell us, for example, that the contours of the continent continually changed. Antarctica’s Bay of Whales, used by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen in 1911 and Richard Byrd expeditions in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, changed so often and became so unstable that in the 1950s it became unusable as a port and in the 1980s, after a 99-mile-long iceberg broke off it, the bay disappeared entirely.

Those unaware of this history would be easily taken in by dramatic media footage over the last decade of icebergs breaking off Antarctic glaciers, accompanied by breathless prose warning that global warming had unleashed unprecedented changes. Those unaware of more recent history would not know that since the mid 1950s the U.S. has maintained a continual base at the south pole. The temperatures it recorded – actual, not reconstructed readings – show the south pole to be colder today than when it was established more than 50 years ago.

History has similar tales to tell at the north pole and environs. “It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated,” wrote the president of London’s Royal Society to the British Admiralty in 1817. In urging an expedition, he stated “new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.”

Many expeditions were in fact made, by the British and others, and the Northwest Passage would be several times traversed, first by the same Amundsen who had earlier explored the Antarctic. History shows us that the Arctic has oftentimes warmed, making a mockery of claims that the modest recent warming is in any way extraordinary.

A newspaper report this week from the Alaska Dispatch recalls that Alaska’s all-time high temperature – 100 degrees Fahrenheit – occurred in 1915. A newspaper headline from Australia during World War II asks: “The North Pole, Is It Warming?” The answer: “From soundings and meteorological tests taken by the Soviet explorers who returned this week to Murmansk, Russia’s-sole Ice-free Arctic port, it was concluded that near Polar temperatures are on an average six degrees higher than those registered by Nansen [a Norwegian explorer] 40 years ago.”

The rich historical evidence from the Arctic is as nothing compared to those from heavily populated Europe and Asia, where written accounts describe how changes in temperature affected what crops could be grown and where people could live. We learn that in the warmer-than-today period a thousand years ago – the Medieval Warm Period — grapes grew in Britain and Scandinavians farmed Greenland. We learn that during the warmer-still period two thousand years ago – the Roman Warm Period – olives grew in Germany and citrus trees in Britain.

We learn that history trumps science when the science is speculative, politicized, and at odds with reality.

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Consensus undermines credibility

Einstein’s special theory of relativity, unlike quantum mechanics, makes sense to me as a layman. It seems unarguable, as one explanation I read put it, that a light beam travelling from the ceiling of a moving train takes longer to reach the floor from the point of view of an observer on the platform than for someone on the train; and correspondingly that the train traveller on his return will have aged less than the observer. No more need be said; end of story. Hold on, that’s not at all scientific.

Science accepts nothing at face value. Planes were sent speeding around the globe replete with atomic clocks to check the theory. It was not falsified. If it had been, then however convincing was the theory it would have been proved wrong. As Gopnik so well puts it: the approach of modern science “is simply the perpetual assertion of experience over authority, and of debate over dogma”.

A friend of mine accepts the truth of serious man-made global warming because he maintains that the majority of climate scientists believe it to be so. Leaving aside the validly or otherwise of his premise; his is a layman’s appeal to authority, which is reasonable enough it seems to me.

The overwhelming majority of us have no way of determining whether CO2 emissions will cause runaway global warming. We must, perforce, rely upon the scientific community. But, and it’s a big but, we are entitled as laymen to understand that scientists are forever foraging away trying to disprove the global warming theory.

It would be unsettling if scientists started describing the global warming theory as “settled” or of giving that impression to impressionable commentators. That is a layman’s term properly reserved for describing things like the coincident landing of two cannon balls of different weight dropped from the same height at the same place at the same time.

What I want to know is that climate scientists are, figuratively speaking, scaling the heights of the Tower of Pisa cannon balls in hand. Nothing that I read or hear gives me confidence that this is happening with any conviction. Is this simply a communications problem? Has every country got a Tim Flannery front-man inadvertently queering the pitch and putting science in a bad light? Or, is there really something rotten in the state of climate science?

SOURCE





Australia: Green laws set to jeopardise mining work

MAJOR mining and resource projects could be delayed indefinitely and existing projects seriously impacted if Federal Government environmental laws were passed by Parliament, leading businesses have claimed.

The Federal Government has announced changes to the laws, which will allow it to intervene in developments where there is a significant impact on groundwater like the Great Artesian Basin.

But resource companies complained that the laws were so prohibitive that if they were in force today, they would still be waiting for approvals that were granted for the LNG projects in Gladstone and were approved in 2010.

In a submission to a Senate committee investigating the changes, QGC said the amendments could mean its existing project could be radically amended by future approvals.

It said the changes could even mean the currently lawful exploration for gas could become unlawful and the environmental impact statement process could be delayed by another two years.

It would also mean an "ongoing and unlimited information loop".

"Even though the QCLNG project has already been referred to the Federal Environment Minister and approved, any amendments to the project and any complementary project required to feed the already approved LNG trains will be caught by the Bill," QGC said.

"The Bill does nothing to protect proponents from the risk that conditions may be imposed in the context of an amended approval, which might necessitate changes to how existing production activities are carried out," QGC said.

"Supply planning will now need to factor in the likelihood of substantial delays in approval and the impact of a change from adaptive management."

BHP Billiton said the changes could also impact its existing operations.

"Given the large number of approvals, licences and permits that relate to mining operations and the frequency that these are renewed, amended or extended, the practical outcome will be that current operations will very quickly no longer qualify for prior authorisation exemption," the company said.

Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke said if the resource companies believed that the current processes had captured community confidence "then they have been living under a rock".

"Australia's water resources are among our most vital natural resources and it is important that we ensure they are protected," Mr Burke said.

"The proposed amendments will ensure that coal seam gas and large coal mining developments must be assessed and approved under national environment law, if they are likely to have a significant impact on a water resource.

"Realistically, whenever I have made a decision on coal seam gas, the Australian public would expect that we are taking into account all the impacts on our precious water resources."

SOURCE




One crazy religion is not enough for Pakistan -- now they are getting Warmism too

Latest from the WWF: Eco-Indoctrination of Slum Kids. In Pakistan, the WWF is enlisting university students to develop an “environmental conscience” among the poorest of the poor

Multiple news sources in Pakistan are reporting that Bahria University has signed a memorandum of understanding with the World Wildlife Fund (see here, here, and here).

The university – which says it “plays a major role in grooming future leaders” of that country – has campuses in both Islamabad and Karachi. The WWF will “provide Internships and Community service to 147 students.” What will those internships involve? Here’s a direct quote:

"The programme aims to provide the students with environmental education and facilitate in their professional development. Through this programme the students will be exposed to the real environmental challenges faced by Pakistan. They will closely work with the slum schools and after getting trained by WWF-Pakistan’s trainers, they will provide the same education to those poor children. WWF-Pakistan and Bahria University Islamabad want to develop the environmental conscience of students and inculcate a sense of individual responsibility towards nature conservation."

Wow. 21st-century environmentalism, as practiced by groups such as the WWF, is characterized by religious fervour mixed with a particular political perspective. People who work for the WWF embrace an anti-capitalist, leftist worldview. (Nature is fragile. Humans are sinners. Consumerism is bad. Industry is rapacious.)

Would it be a good thing if a university arranged for 147 impressionable future leaders to complete internships with the Church of Scientology? Would it be OK if, as part of those internships, they spent time in slum schools spreading this same Church of Scientology gospel to poor kids?

Don’t children who live in slums have more pressing issues? Don’t they face enough challenges without being subjected to WWF-sponsored eco-indoctrination sessions? Does the WWF have nothing better to do than prey on some of the world’s most vulnerable souls?

Developing an “environmental conscience” and a “sense of individual responsibility toward nature” is something that comes naturally to people – after they’ve moved into decent housing with proper sanitation, electricity, and access to medical services.

According to two of the news stories mentioned above, the WWF is:
the world’s largest independent conservation organisation with over 5 million supporters worldwide, working in more than 100 countries, supporting around 1,300 conservation and environmental projects.

This claim of being “independent” almost certainly appeared in a press release and was directly cut-and-pasted. Too bad it’s absolute rubbish. The truth of the matter is that the WWF runs an entire bureau devoted to helping its various chapters access European Union funding. As it says on the WWF website:

"The European Commission is an important donor for the WWF network and funds several projects every year."

If you take money from governments you are not independent. If you rely on a steady stream of it, year after year, you are assuredly not standing on your own two feet, beholden to none.

If I hadn’t seen the above announcement regarding Bahria University I would have had no idea that the WWF runs offices in 11 different Pakistan communities. Eleven.

This is in a country in which – for every live 100,000 births – 260 women die of pregnancy-related complications. (By comparison, the maternal mortality rate in Canada and the UK is 12 women per 100,000.)

Twenty-one times as many women are dying unnecessarily in Pakistan – and the WWF is funding 11 offices aimed at saving the environment.

SOURCE

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

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

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April 19, 2013

The Marcott et al. "trick"

They put their own dates on the proxies they used in order to get the conclusion they wanted.

I have put up various comments on the Marcott paper before but I think the comments by Ross McKitrick below are the clearest so far -- and therefore worth adding here

On March 8, a paper appeared in the prestigious journal Science under the title A reconstruction of regional and global temperature for the past 11,300 years. Temperature reconstructions are nothing new, but papers claiming to be able to go back so far in time are rare, especially ones that promise global and regional coverage.

The new study, by Shaun Marcott, Jeremy Shakun, Peter Clark and Alan Mix, was based on an analysis of 73 long-term proxies, and offered a few interesting results: one familiar (and unremarkable), one odd but probably unimportant, and one new and stunning. The latter was an apparent discovery that 20th-century warming was a wild departure from anything seen in over 11,000 years. News of this finding flew around the world and the authors suddenly became the latest in a long line of celebrity climate scientists.

The trouble is, as they quietly admitted over the weekend, their new and stunning claim is groundless. The real story is only just emerging, and it isn’t pretty.

The unremarkable finding of the Marcott et al. paper was that the Earth’s climate history since the end of the last ice age looks roughly like an upside down-U shape, starting cold, warming up for a few thousand years, staying warm through the mid-Holocene (6,000 to 9,000 years ago), then cooling steadily over the past five millennia to the present. This pattern has previously been found in studies using ground boreholes, ice cores and other very long-term records, and was shown in the first IPCC report back in 1990. Some studies suggest it was, on average, half a degree warmer than the present, while others have put it at one or even two degrees warmer. A lot of assumptions have to be made to calibrate long-term proxy measures to degrees Celsius, so it is not surprising that the scale of the temperature axis is uncertain.

Another familiar feature of long-term reconstructions is that the downward-sloping portion has a few large deviations on it. Many show a long, intense warm interval during Roman times 2,000 years ago, and another warm interval during the medieval era, a thousand years ago. They also show a cold episode called the Little Ice Age ending in the early 1800s, followed by the modern warming. But the Marcott et al. graph didn’t have these wiggles, instead it showed only a modest mid-Holocene warming and a smooth decline to the late 1800s. This was odd, but probably unimportant, since they also acknowledged using so-called “low frequency” proxies that do not pick up fluctuations on time scales shorter than 300 years. The differences between the scale of their graph and that of others could probably be chalked up to different methods.

The new, and startling, feature of the Marcott graph was at the very end: Their data showed a remarkable uptick that implied that, during the 20th century, our climate swung from nearly the coldest conditions over the past 11,500 years to nearly the warmest. Specifically, their analysis showed that in under 100 years we’ve had more warming than previously took thousands of years to occur, in the process undoing 5,000 years’ worth of cooling.

This uptick became the focus of considerable excitement, as well as scrutiny. One of the first questions was how it was derived. Marcott had finished his PhD thesis at Oregon State University in 2011 and his dissertation is online. The Science paper is derived from the fourth chapter, which uses the same 73 proxy records and seemingly identical methods. But there is no uptick in that chart, nor does the abstract to his thesis mention such a ­finding.

Stephen McIntyre of climateaudit.org began examining the details of the Marcott et al. work, and by March 16 he had made a remarkable discovery. The 73 proxies were all collected by previous researchers, of which 31 are derived from alkenones, an organic compound produced by phytoplankton that settles in layers on ocean floors, and has chemical properties that correlate to temperature. When a core is drilled out, the layers need to be dated. If done accurately, the researcher could then interpret the alkenone layer at, say, 50 cm below the surface, to imply (for example) the ocean temperature averaged 0.1 degrees above normal over several centuries about 1,200 years ago. The tops of cores represent the data closest in time to the present, but this layer is often disturbed by the drilling process. So the original researchers take care to date the core-top to where the information begins to become useful.

According to the scientists who originally published the alkenone series, the core tops varied in age from nearly the present to over a thousand years ago. Fewer than 10 of the original proxies had values for the 20th century. Had Marcott et al. used the end dates as calculated by the specialists who compiled the original data, there would have been no 20th-century uptick in their graph, as indeed was the case in Marcott’s PhD thesis. But Marcott et al. redated a number of core tops, changing the mix of proxies that contribute to the closing value, and this created the uptick at the end of their graph. Far from being a feature of the proxy data, it was an artifact of arbitrarily redating the underlying cores.

Worse, the article did not disclose this step. In their online supplementary information the authors said they had assumed the core tops were dated to the present “unless otherwise noted in the original publication.” In other words, they claimed to be relying on the original dating, even while they had redated the cores in a way that strongly influenced their results.

Meanwhile, in a private email to McIntyre, Marcott made a surprising statement. In the paper, they had reported doing an alternate analysis of their proxy data that yielded a much smaller 20th-century uptick, but they said the difference was “probably not robust,” which implied that the uptick was insensitive to changes in methodology, and was therefore reliable. But in his email to McIntyre, Marcott said the reconstruction itself is not robust in the 20th century: a very different thing. When this became public, the Marcott team promised to clear matters up with an online FAQ.

It finally appeared over the weekend, and contains a remarkable admission: “[The] 20th-century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions.”

Now you tell us! The 20th-century uptick was the focus of worldwide media attention, during which the authors made very strong claims about the implications of their findings regarding 20th-century warming. Yet at no point did they mention the fact that the 20th century portion of their proxy reconstruction is garbage.

The authors now defend their original claims by saying that if you graft a 20th-century thermometer record onto the end of their proxy chart, it exhibits an upward trend much larger in scale than that observed in any 100-year interval in their graph, supporting their original claims. But you can’t just graft two completely different temperature series together and draw a conclusion from the fact that they look different.

The modern record is sampled continuously and as a result is able to register short-term trends and variability. The proxy model, by the authors’ own admission, is heavily smoothed and does not pick up fluctuations below a time scale of several centuries. So the relative smoothness in earlier portions of their graph is not proof that variability never occurred before. If it had, their method would likely not have spotted it.

What made their original conclusion about the exceptional nature of 20th-century warming plausible was precisely the fact that it appeared to be picked up both by modern thermometers and by their proxy data. But that was an illusion. It was introduced into their proxy reconstruction as an artifact of arbitrarily redating the end points of a few proxy records.

In recent years there have been a number of cases in which high-profile papers from climate scientists turned out, on close inspection, to rely on unseemly tricks, fudges and/or misleading analyses. After they get uncovered in the blogosphere, the academic community rushes to circle the wagons and denounce any criticism as “denialism.” There’s denialism going on all right — on the part of scientists who don’t see that their continuing defence of these kinds of practices exacts a toll on the public credibility of their field.

SOURCE (See the original for links and graphics)





Is the Great Climate Alarm Winding Down?

Environmentalism is properly the ideology of controlling everything, which is called totalitarianism.’ Thankfully, it is difficult to squash human ingenuity, and industrialization will be a hard beast to slay, though it is neither impossible nor even complicated

While debate still swirls around climate change, recent reporting shows the debate’s hot and cold episodes cycle pretty in tune with changes in weather. Perhaps it will help to stand back and take a broad view.

Climate realists have long been aware that global average surface temperature had stopped sometime around 2000, and even a few years before. Lately alarmists had to admit it. The period with no warming is now as long as was period of warming on which fears were based—17 years according to a leaked draft of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)—despite continued rise of atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration.

Observed global average temperatures (GAT) are, in fact, below IPCC’s 2007 Assessment Report’s lowest—and most confident—temperature predictions. The new view in the leaked AR5 shows a complete reversal of the AR4 view, which still touted catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming.

Prominent climate alarmists had to respond. Some, like Michael “Hockey-Stick” Mann, remain stalwart. Others, like James Hansen, first admitted the global temperature standstill was real, then, in what may have been a faux pas, said the lack of increased warming was due to an increase in global coal consumption.

IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri acknowledged the “stalled” climate trend but employed the usual alarmist tactic and asked for more time to prove his predictions, thus kicking the can forty years down the road.

Even the U.K. Meteorological office produced updated reports on its temperature predictions, saying it expects no warming in the next five years. Previously, it had forecast an additional 0.1 degree Celsius in that time.

Indeed, the wheels seem to be falling off the climate alarmists’ wagon. Acclaimed physicist Freeman Dyson recently explained that the problem rests in the very heart of climate-change theory (if we can dignify it with that word): the substitution of (hopelessly unrealistic and guess-filled) modeling for experimental and real-world observation. With yet another hockey-stick depiction of past temperatures biting the dust, one wonders when not just the public but also political leaders will at last say, “Enough, children. Quit your fantasies and get back to the real world!”

The bottom line is that no one can say any longer that the world is warming dangerously.

This is in part due to the inherent faultiness of computer models used to predict future warming, which cannot even predict the past, let alone accurately predict the future. Yet, these climate models are the primary basis for increasing government involvement in (and spending on) climate change.

It wouldn’t be so terrible if the projected costs for some of the fixes didn’t cost trillions upon trillions of dollars. Britons are particularly subject to increased electricity and heating bills due to the exorbitant cost of wind power.

True science waits for answers, as opposed to playing guessing games and expecting homage. But that sort of post-normal science has crept into almost all the governments of the industrialized world. The fallacious thinking, post-normal science, and unwarranted alarmism have crept into Christian churches as well.

The fight isn’t over, and environmentalists are looking for influence wherever they can find it. And as it appears in the U.N. Earth Charter, among other places, it’s a dangerous influence.

Environment? Capitalism’s Is Best

Environmentalism affects every facet of life, not just economy and political freedom, though it certainly touches those. Dr. E. Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance likes to quip, “’Environment’ means my surroundings, and I can’t think of anything that isn’t my surroundings. So environmentalism is properly the ideology of controlling everything, which is called totalitarianism.”

Thankfully, it is difficult to squash human ingenuity, and industrialization will be a hard beast to slay, though it is neither impossible nor even complicated.

Standard of living has risen everywhere across the planet and continues to rise. Total wealth is also up. The cost of almost everything is down relative to income, including even the cost of catastrophe. There has never been less hunger or disease. Nothing is likely to stop this trend—unless it’s environmentalism, particularly because it plugs high-cost, low-reliability “renewable” energy over low-cost, high-reliability fossil fuels and nuclear.

Various means of trying to limit energy have been proposed, from a carbon tax to total cessation of fossil fuel use. All limit economic development, crucial to standard of living, and with it human health and well being. Any action that punishes the use of energy, including making it more expensive, undermines human life.

But for environmentalists, that’s okay. Sir David Attenborough, like many Greens and proponents of population control, expresses environmentalism’s implications for respect (or lack thereof) for human life:

We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.

Such dangerous, anti-human thinking threatens everything the industrialized world has accomplished in the last two centuries with regard to health, prosperity, and political and legal reforms.

Although despite its grim outlook on the scientific front reports of climate alarmism’s death are greatly exaggerated, still it’s not doing well in the court of public opinion. That is likely due to the increasing absence of the predicted climate apocalypse, but the victory isn’t secure yet.

Activists in government and elsewhere continue rallying the troops. They can still inflict a huge amount of damage through new global or national legislation or court actions.

The Renewable Fuel Standard, for instance, which requires turning 40% of the U.S. fuel crop into ethanol as a “clean” fuel additive, is responsible for an extra 192,000 starvation deaths per year in developing countries and impoverishes everyone.
President Obama is trying to find new ways to apply old laws to break up the gridlock in the politically opposed houses of our bicameral legislature.

New political appointees to the EPA and other government organizations are trying to strictly limit or tax carbon emissions, sulfur emissions, and mercury emissions.

All of these measures cost money—money a growing world could better use in other ways, like reducing hunger and disease. If EPA wants to reverse the trend of increasing wealth and decreasing disease, poverty, and starvation, it is on the right track.

SOURCE





Climythology

by Peter Smith, commenting from Australia

Nobody with a life outside of “Greensville” cares very much anymore about climate change, earlier known as global warming. Do you even hear it now being discussed over cafe lattes in Balmain? No, you don’t. Only Tim Flannery and his alarmist ilk care. But political parties in Western democracies, as we have learnt to our great cost on the immigration front, have a life of their own, distant from the populace.

They have great moral purposes to pursue. Therefore governments of whatever complexion continue to pour billions of dollars of borrowed funds into schemes and businesses to support the production of inefficient energy. Nothing like this has happened before. We know that because industrial progress has largely been unremitting; built on cheap and progressively cheaper energy. Going backwards has not heretofore been favoured, if for no other reason than nasty nations, insistent on making progress, would have taken advantage, and invaded and subjugated their more primitive neighbours. And we know that because it regularly happened.

Is it possible that governments have collectively lost their senses? Yes, it is, when plagues of locusts or other pests in future years might effectively ground the ethanol-dependent US fleet and Air Force. Ditto here, if the Katter Party, aka, the Ethanol Party, has its way.

The risk to alarmists is that governments will catch up with the climate insouciance of their electorates and stop wasting money. Among other things, money will be saved by sacking people like Flannery and removing all of those research grants directed towards proving the undisprovable, which is that climate change does indeed exist and will eventually engulf our grandchildren in the most horrible of fates. Only research grants based on climate propositions which potentially can be shown to be false, in Popperian fashion, will be left standing; and few in number they will be.

What to do? The answer chosen by the alarmists is to become more alarmist in the hope of panicking the common man and woman or, at least, raising them from their torpor.

Hence we had Mr Flannery spruiking the latest report of the Climate Commission. He spoke of the angry summer; of 123 records broken; of it all taking us into new climate territory; and so on into what the PM might call hyper-bole. I don’t want to comment on this except to say that in Sydney I thought it was a very mild summer. Those who want a less personal, more scientific, debunking of Flannery’s flannelling might care to look at an excellent article in The Australian by Murray Salby, professor of climate at Macquarie University. He shows conclusively, so far as I can tell, as a non-scientist, that the summer just gone was unexceptional.

What does this all mean? In my view it means that alarmists seemingly have little affinity with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This doesn’t mean that carbon dioxide is not warming the planet and thereby laying in store future grief. It means that snake-oil salesman are pushing the line and lessening our ability to find the truth. Let me give an instance from Flannery’s performance on the ABC’s 7.30 program.

Leigh Sales referred to figures showing that global temperatures had plateaued for the past 15 years or so. Flannery could have said, as did Dr Rajendra Pachauri when similarly challenged, that 15 years was too short a period to draw a conclusion or he could have tried to give some possible scientific reasons why the effect of CO2 emissions was being offset. Instead he chose to say that temperatures had not plateaued, but had continued to rise, when the temperature of “the oceans, the air and the land” are taken together. This is pure and simply sophistry at its most blatant and disgraceful. How can anything this man says be taken seriously after this?

If I were to suspend a solid body in a pan of water over a fire, the water would gradually heat as the hot air rose and transfer its heat to the surface of the solid body and, in turn, to the innards of the solid body. If I were to extinguish the fire I would expect the temperature of the whole mass of water and the solid body to continue to rise for a while. This is only my schoolboy physics or is it common sense?

In any event, the point at issue is not whether the temperature of the water and land are rising but whether CO2 emissions are materially heating the atmosphere. If the atmosphere cools or remains at a constant temperature for long enough in the face of rising CO2 emissions, it will be difficult to maintain the view that man-made global warming is a problem requiring the expenditure of billions of dollars and a resort to wholesale reliance on inefficient and unreliable green energy.

What is at stake is much too important to be the plaything of vested interests, fools or charlatans on either side of the argument.

According to Professor Salby, who I referred to above, the mean temperature in Australia in January this year was lower than in two previous Januaries during the time since 1979 when (accurate) satellite measurements have been available. And he notes that the summer from December to February “is even less remarkable”. If this is so, and it is surely verifiable, how can this summer be evidenced as being particularly untoward and “angry”?

We need people of objectivity and moderation in the climate arena, not snake-oil salesmen, if we are ever to get at the truth and put in place whatever practical and cost-effective action might possibly be called for; if in fact any such action is required.

SOURCE





Green energy on the back foot after carbon trading blow

Coal-fired electricity generation has seen a resurgence in Europe over the past two years

It's been a bad week for efforts to develop green energy around the world. A new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) says that progress towards carbon-free energy production has basically stalled.

"Despite much talk by world leaders," said IEA executive director, Maria van der Hoeven, "and despite a boom in renewable energy over the last decade, the average unit of energy produced today is basically as dirty as it was 20 years ago."

The IEA uses a complex calculation called the carbon intensity index to show how much CO2 is emitted to provide a given unit of energy. The index stood at 2.39 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of oil in 1990. By 2010, it has shrunk fractionally to 2.37 tonnes.

The major reason for such a small reduction of that period, according to the IEA, was the resurgence of coal. And it continues to grow. Globally, coal-fired electricity generation rose by an estimated 6% from 2010 to 2012 , faster than non-fossil energy.

The major growth in coal came from developing economies, with China accounting for 46% of global coal demand in 2011.

But it's not just them. Europe, the region that likes to think of itself as perhaps the greenest in the world, has also seen a return to coal in the last couple of years. While the US has turned to shale gas, Europeans have once again embraced the black stuff, as the cost of coal has plummeted.

However, it is not all bad news for the green sector. Renewables such as solar and wind have boomed in 2011 and 2012, perhaps driven by government spending. They accounted for 19% of global electricity generation in 2011 which according to the report is "broadly on track to meet a 2C scenario by 2020" for a globally altered climate.

Electric vehicle sales have doubled (still a measly 110,000) while hybrid vehicles have finally broken the one million sales mark.

But turning this oil tanker (perhaps coal carrier is a better metaphor?) is not going to be easy.

And efforts will not have been helped by a vote in the European Parliament that rejected an attempt by the Commission to prop up the extremely ailing EU carbon market.

The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has been seen as the world's best attempt to cut carbon by means of cap and trade. Essentially, 12,000 or so electricity generators and industrial heavy users of energy have had their emissions limited by EU law. The development of this market was seen as critical to both cutting emissions and driving investment in green energy.

But too many allowances were issued over the past few years - and the market price collapsed. The Commission attempted to rectify this by reducing the number of allowances due to issued in the next two years, a proposal known as backloading.

The Parliament though wouldn't wear it. Many MEPs held to the view that the collapsing carbon price was an accurate reflection of the real economy.

Some environmental campaigners have also welcomed the backloading breakdown. They argue that the market hasn't worked as it essentially has become a means of avoiding real carbon cuts by paying someone else to do them.

"We believe the failed backloading vote points to the fact that we need alternative tools - direct, ambitious, just regulatory policies," said Hannah Mowat from Fern, a NGO that has been working on carbon issues for a decade.

"We are now trying to galvanize support around more effective tools to achieve emissions reductions. " she added.

There is now going to be a serious amount of head-scratching among European academics and politicians on the best ways forward for green energy.

SOURCE





Europe Faces a Crisis in Energy Costs

The signs are everywhere. Britain has been unable to reach a deal for its first new nuclear power station since the 1990s. Spain, once a clean-energy enthusiast, has slashed its backing for wind and solar power.

Even the European Union’s flagship environmental achievement of recent years, its Emissions Trading System for carbon dioxide, is beset by existential doubts. On Tuesday, the European Parliament batted away an effort to bolster anemic carbon prices on the E.T.S.

Prices for permits to emit greenhouse gases, which have fallen as low as €3 per metric ton, are just a fraction of what they were a few years ago, meaning that they are no longer doing their intended job of inducing utilities and manufacturers to invest in new technology and switch to cleaner fuels.

Evidently, members of the European Parliament were more concerned about any further raising of energy costs that some European companies already say are putting them at a competitive disadvantage.

Europe is lurching through an energy crisis that in many respects parallels its seemingly unending economic crisis. Across Europe, consumer groups, governments and manufacturers are asking how their future energy needs can be met affordably and responsibly.

It is a question that is far more acute than in the United States, where the shale gas revolution has done wonders to ease energy angst. “Europeans are getting increasingly concerned about energy,” said Corin Taylor, an analyst at the Institute of Directors, a British business group. “Manufacturers are looking at U.S. energy prices with envy, and if they can, they are making investments in North America.”

European countries have yet to demonstrate that they can or in some cases even want to exploit their own potential shale gas troves. At the same time, most of Europe’s indigenous sources of oil and natural gas are in decline, making increased dependence on imports almost inevitable.

In some ways, Europe is a victim of its own success. It has made remarkable progress in switching to a future beyond oil and natural gas. For instance, last year, a hefty 23 percent of European power demand was met by electricity generated by renewable sources like wind and solar, compared with just 13 percent in 2002. This shift was “driven primarily by generous support policies for renewables,” said Susanne Hounsell, an analyst at the energy research firm IHS CERA in Paris.

But achievements like that have also brought problems. Most green electricity sources cannot compete with coal and natural gas on their own and require subsidies that are passed on to industry and consumers. The more power they generate, the higher those costs. Direct charges for renewables add about 18 percent to German household electric bills, with indirect costs putting on more.

In Britain, climate charges add 19 percent to the electricity prices that large manufacturers pay, according to Jeremy Nicholson, director of the Energy Intensive Users Group, which represents heavy industry. That helps make industrial processes that are heavy users of electricity, like aluminum smelting or steel making, endangered species in Britain.

Europe’s energy policies were conceived in a very different era, the early to mid-2000s and even before, when economic growth was robust and there seemed to be lots of leeway to add a few euros onto the cost of electricity, if that might help combat climate change.

In Europe today, to take only a couple of examples, steel production is down about 30 percent since before the financial crisis, and new car sales hit their lowest level last year since 1995. It is hard not to conclude that economic activity like manufacturing is decamping and moving to places like Asia and, increasingly, the United States.

European energy policy makers do not seem to have figured out that the world has changed. Britain, for instance, has just instituted a carbon tax on top of E.U.-wide carbon charges. The effort to raise the carbon price on the E.T.S. while Cyprus was melting down is another sign of tin-eared European policy making.

The vote against the changes to the E.T.S. could prove a wake-up call. Europe is probably going to achieve its objective of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 — mainly because the recession has cut industrial production and even driving. Now comes the harder part: cutting emissions 90 percent or so by 2050. Baby steps like a mini carbon tax are not going to get Europe there, analysts say.

A real debate on energy may be in the cards for the first time in years. “We are in the realpolitik of climate change now, where costs and competitiveness do matter,” said Fabien Roques, another analyst at IHS CERA.

“Our whole energy policy needs to be rethought. We don’t need to go for hell for leather in one go to meet targets,” said Ann Robinson, head of consumer affairs at uSwitch, a British company that provides consumer advice.

Ms. Robinson argues that instead of rushing huge investments into largely unproven and enormously expensive technologies like offshore wind, a phased approach would be preferable and would leave time for scientific advances that might produce cheaper and more effective solutions. Britain, where the average annual household energy bill has doubled to about £1,335, or $2,040, since 2006, is approaching a “tipping point” where large numbers of people decide to “switch off heat permanently,” she said.

SOURCE






Global Warming Slowdown: The View from Space

Since the slowdown in surface warming over the last 15 years has been a popular topic recently, I thought I would show results for the lower tropospheric temperature (LT) compared to climate models calculated over the same atmospheric layers the satellites sense.

Courtesy of John Christy, and based upon data from the KNMI Climate Explorer, below is a comparison of 44 climate models versus the UAH and RSS satellite observations for global lower tropospheric temperature variations, for the period 1979-2012 from the satellites, and for 1975 – 2025 for the models:



Clearly, there is increasing divergence over the years between the satellite observations (UAH, RSS) and the models. The reasons for the disagreement are not obvious, since there are at least a few possibilities:

1) the real climate system is not as sensitive to increasing CO2 as the models are programmed to be (my preferred explanation)

2) the extra surface heating from more CO2 has been diluted more than expected by increased mixing with cooler, deeper ocean waters (Trenberth’s explanation)

3) increased manmade aerosol pollution is causing a cooling influence, partly mitigating the manmade CO2 warming

If I am correct (explanation #1), then we will continue to see little warming into the future. Additional evidence for lower climate sensitivity in the above plot is the observed response to the 1991 Pinatubo eruption: the temporary temperature dip in 1992-93, and subsequent recovery, is weaker in the observations than in the models. This is exactly what would be predicted with lower climate sensitivity.

On the other hand, if Trenberth is correct (explanation #2), then there should be a period of rapid surface warming that resumes at some point, since the climate system must eventually try to achieve radiative energy equilibrium. Of course, exactly when that might be is unknown.

Explanation #3 (anthropogenic aerosol cooling), while theoretically possible, has always seemed like cheating to me since the magnitude of aerosol cooling is so uncertain it can be invoked in any amount desired to explain the observations. Besides, blaming a lack of warming on humans just seems a little bizarre.

The dark line in the above plot is the 44-model average, and it approximately represents what the IPCC uses for its official best estimate of projected warming. Obviously, there is a substantial disconnect between the models and observations for this statistic.

I find it disingenuous for those who claim that, because not ALL of individual the models disagree with the observations, the models are somehow vindicated. What those pundits fail to mention is that the few models which support weaker warming through 2012 are usually those with lower climate sensitivity.

So, if you are going to claim that the observations support some of the models, and least be honest and admit they support the models that are NOT consistent with the IPCC best estimates of warming.

SOURCE

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

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

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April 18, 2013

NPR visits a Warmist experiment in Australia

And the experiment makes it look like coral reefs will be in trouble if the much-foretold global warming ever arrives. Would Warmists ever get any other result?

In real-life, however, corals survive well in a whole range of temperatures. Australia's Great Barrier reef stretches over 1600 miles roughly North to South, including temperate zones and near-equatorial zones. It is one vast natural experiment on the effect of temperature variation on coral growth. And guess where in those 1600 miles corals grow best? The warmest part!

So the Warmists on the reef fiddle around with fishtanks and ignore the reality just out the window. What a joke! But reality never has suited the Green/Left. It's a sad commentary on a lot of people but, basically, you have to be a crook to be a Warmist

Scientists have been worried about coral reefs for years, since realizing that rising temperatures and rising ocean acidity are hard on organisms that build their skeletons from calcium carbonate. Researchers on Australia's Great Barrier Reef are conducting an experiment that demonstrates just how much corals could suffer in the coming decades.

As we burn fossil fuels - we're talking about oil, gas and coal - carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere. Now, there are debates about how quickly that is changing the global climate, but there is no question that billions of tons of carbon dioxide have soaked into the ocean. That's making waters more acidic, which puts some ocean ecosystems at risk, particularly coral reefs. We sent NPR science correspondent Richard Harris to Australia's Great Barrier Reef to look into these consequences. His first stop was a research station on Heron Island.

RICHARD HARRIS, BYLINE: Heron Island is surrounded by a reef that is home to sea turtles, sharks, rays, brilliantly colored fish, and hundreds of other species. The spectacular scenery draws snorkelers from around the world. The island also hosts one of the world's major coral reef labs, run by the University of Queensland, and research there shows that the reefs are in trouble. Scientist Sophie Dove plunges her arms into a tank the size of a kettle drum.

SOPHIE DOVE: OK. We'll start with the plates. Uh-huh.

HARRIS: She and research assistant Annamieke van den Heuvel are weighing chunks of coral.

ANNAMIEKE VAN DEN HEUVEL: Two hundred and forty-six point nine.

DOVE: Do you want to just check the zero when I take this away?

HARRIS: Dove has recreated a simplified version of the coral ecosystem in a dozen large tanks.

DOVE: And so in each tank here we basically - I can lift up the lid - this is one of our - this is our present-day tank, if you like.

HARRIS: The water temperature and the carbon dioxide levels match the conditions on the present-day reef.

DOVE: We've got little mushroom corals, fungia, brain corals, stylophera pistolata there. It's a very common coral around the world. We've got these corals that look like bunches of flowers. They're called lobophelia.

HARRIS: The corals in this tank look healthy. And as she weighs them, she seems that they've been growing since she transplanted them here nearly a year ago. Then she opens the next tank.

DOVE: We'll hop from present day, and the next one along here is the worst of the future with a thing we call business as usual or do nothing tank.

HARRIS: Dove is pumping much warmer water with lots of added carbon dioxide into this tank. This is what the world's oceans are likely to look like later in this century when the schoolchildren visiting this island today reach middle age.

DOVE: And as you look into here, it looks quite different, as you will see.

HARRIS: Oh yeah.

DOVE: OK. So there's lot of this slimy, yucky mess(ph) of cynobacteria.

HARRIS: Clumps of black gunk swirl along the surface of the tank.

DOVE: We find that cynobacterial (unintelligible) tend to do really well in the future. The slippery slope to slime seems to be the way to go.

HARRIS: Not so for the coral. Most of it has either died or turned white, which means the organisms that live inside the coral have moved out.

DOVE: So as you see, the future is not a great place. Here's - the needle(ph) coral is underneath here. It's gone. And there's really not very much left alive.

HARRIS: In all there are four sets of tanks here: the healthiest coral are in a tank that simulates pre-industrial conditions. The present day tank looks almost as good, but the coral looks progressively worse in tanks with increasing carbon dioxide and temperature.

DOVE: We can make this a little bit (unintelligible)...

HARRIS: Now, plenty of small-scale experiments in the lab have shown that corals suffer in hotter waters and in more acidic conditions. This experiment puts those two threats together, since that's what the reefs of the future will face. Dove tries to be dispassionate about her findings, but the site touches the human chord.

DOVE: I feel pretty sad when I look into this. You know, I look at the others, the control tank, and I think, well, that would be nice if we could at least stay like that.

HARRIS: But doing so would mean civilization would have to stop burning fossil fuels immediately. That's not going to happen. Instead, once the carbon dioxide concentrations get high enough in the ocean, the stony structure of the reef actually starts to dissolve. That's bad news for the vibrant life that lives on the reef.

DOVE: There's no reef building going on here. It's reef dismantling that's going on here. Maybe some fish can survive in this type of environment, but I think we're going to lose a lot of the fish capabilities, you know, for fishing and everything. So people who are trying to live off what the reef offers them, this is going to be much harder. From a tourist's point of view, I don't imagine this is something that tourists would feel that attracted to come and see.

HARRIS: And as the reefs erode, they will offer less protection from the storm surges generated by the typhoons that sweep ashore here in Australia and throughout the South Pacific.

ANDREAS ANDERSON: Millions of humans are dependent on the reefs today.

HARRIS: Andreas Anderson is a reef scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. He says increasing ocean acidity is a big threat to the millions of people who depend on the fish that in turn depend on the reef. He says experiments like the one on Heron Island suggest the reefs face bad times ahead later in this century, but the weakness of studies like this is that they change conditions for the corals in one sudden shock.

ANDERSON: So what we don't really understand is, you know, how quickly will this happen, to what extent will it happen. Will organisms be able to acclimatize or adapt to this over a longer time scale?

HARRIS: The best case is that the change will be slow.

ANDERSON: If it breaks down very rapidly, we are definitely in big problems. But if it takes thousands of years, then, you know, perhaps it's not so bad.

HARRIS: Sophie Dove knows no experiment is perfect, but hers is designed to look for hints that corals can adapt to their new circumstances, and she doesn't see any sign of that. We will have more definitive answers soon enough because this experiment isn't simply confined to tanks at research stations - it's playing out on every coral reef in the world.

SOURCE

This post also up on Coral reef compendium





How a Warmist lied with statistics

James Lawrence Powell did a Google-type search of a scientific database in an attempt to find how many scientific papers support or reject global warming. Like the slippery Naomi Oreskes, he found overwhelming support for warming: 13,950 results "For" and 24 results "Against" -- a result very reminiscent of election results proclaimed by dictators -- and as believable. But Warmists and tyrants appear to need such dubious props. A comment on the rather hilarious methodology used below

In the never ending quest for alarmists to one up their incompetent friends they continue to seek out new ways to demonstrate their own computer illiteracy. Enter James Powell who in a meaningless analysis is apparently ignorant that the 'Web of Science' database does not have a "peer-reviewed" only filter and the existence of a search phrase in a returned result does not determine it's context. Thus, all that can be claimed is there were 13,950 meaningless search results not "peer-reviewed scientific articles" for a query of the 'Web of Science' database - with 24 chosen by strawman argument.

1. The context of how the "search phrases" were used in the results was never determined.

2. The results are padded by not using the search qualifier "anthropogenic".

3. The 13,950 results cannot be claimed to be peer-reviewed as the Web of Science does not have a peer-reviewed only filter.

4. It is a strawman argument that skeptics deny or reject there has been a global temperature increase of a fraction of a degree since the end of the little ice age.

1. Context matters

The existence of a search phrase in a returned result does not determine its context. So making any arguments for or against an implied position relating to the use of a phrase by simply looking at numerical result totals is impossible.

Thus, Powell's 13,950 meaningless search results include ones irrelevant to the global warming debate such as:

"Case study of visualizing global user download patterns using Google Earth and NASA World Wind (Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, Volume 6, Issue 1, October 2012) - Ziliang Zong et al."

2. Padding the Results

Powell padded his search results total by using the phrases; "global warming" and/or "global climate change" instead of "anthropogenic global warming" [man-made global warming], which would have significantly reduced the number of returned results. Without the qualifier "anthropogenic", results are included where no claim of explicit endorsement or rejection of AGW can be made.

Others alarmists have been challenged to search for the phrase, "anthropogenic climate change" using Oreskes (2004) methods and they only got 108 returned results. These low number of results are not useful to sell the type of propaganda alarmists like Powell are looking for.

Much more HERE (See the original for links)





Not even a tenth of one degree: Our "warming" oceans

We discussed Dr. Roy Spencer’s post More on Trenberth’s Missing Heat in my recent post and in the cross post at WattsUpWithThat.

One of the points Roy made: a change in ocean heat content is presented in terms that look impressive: Joules times 10^22 or Joules with oodles of trailing zeroes. However, in terms that most people are familiar with, temperature, the warming of the global oceans since 1955 was a minute change. Roy wrote:

"Because of the immense heat capacity of the deep ocean, the magnitude of deep warming in Scenario 3 might only be thousandths of a degree. Whether we can measure such tiny levels of warming on the time scales of decades or longer is very questionable, and the new study co-authored by Trenberth is not entirely based upon observations, anyway."

The NODC presents their ocean heat content data through their webpage here. There, they also include a link to the 2012 paper by Levitus et al that introduced their dataset for depths of 0 to 2000 meters World Ocean Heat Content and Thermosteric Sea Level change (0-2000 m),1955-2010. In the abstract, Levitus et al identify the change in temperature of the volume of water that makes up the global oceans to depths of 2000 meters, or about 6560 feet:

"We provide updated estimates of the change of ocean heat content and the thermosteric component of sea level change of the 0–700 and 0–2000 m layers of the World Ocean for 1955–2010. Our estimates are based on historical data not previously available, additional modern data, and bathythermograph data corrected for instrumental biases. We have also used Argo data corrected by the Argo DAC if available and used uncorrected Argo data if no corrections were available at the time we downloaded the Argo data. The heat content of the World Ocean for the 0–2000 m layer increased by 24.0 ± 1.9 × 1022 J (±2S.E.) corresponding to a rate of 0.39 W m?2 (per unit area of the World Ocean) and a volume mean warming of 0.09°C."

That’s right. According to Levitus et al 2012, the average temperature of the global oceans to depths of 2000 meters warmed a miniscule 0.09 deg C (or 0.16 deg F) from 1955 to 2010. Granted, the heat capacity of the ocean is much greater than the atmosphere, but that warming of 0.09 deg C strains believability. Are we able to sense such a small change?

Some might think Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson is correct with what he wrote in a June 2012 The Sunday Times article titled Kaboom! It’s my turn to play fantasy climate change: "Science fiction is thriving; only today it’s all being written by global warming enthusiasts."

More HERE





Carbon not Culprit in Global Warming, Science Is Say Scientists

A new paper that recently replaced the old paper that settled the science of global warming is now out - and not a moment too soon, either.

Because the new paper essentially says: “Um, guys? Never mind.”. Ok, they don't really say that, but actually they really do.

“Sea level rise is one of the big issues of global warming. It could potentially swamp coastal cities or make them far more vulnerable to storms, such as Hurricane Katrina,” says Science World Report, apparently a wholly owned division of Wayne’s World Publishing, operating under the motto “It Certainly Does Suck.”

“Now, though, a study has revealed that it's possible to greatly slow the rate of sea level rise by cutting ‘short-lived climate pollutants,’” continues Science World, “as opposed to more long-lived greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide.”

If you’re like me you are wondering how they greatly slow the rate of sea level rise by cutting these short-lived climate pollutants. The answer: The short-lived climate pollutants seem to have an outsized influence on global warming when compared to carbon.

Oh my. I’m glad that they finally, absolutely, 100-percent and finally- did I say finally?- understand ALL the mechanisms behind global warming.

To think all this time they were blaming carbon when it was actually these Johnny-come-lately short-lived-climate pollutants, that we’ll now call Teenage Mutant Short-Term Pollutants for marketing and branding purposes.

If I were carbon, I’d be pissed. Or at least half pissed.

“Mitigation of the four short-lived climate pollutants (Teenage Mutant Short-Term Pollutants),” writes Nature Climate Change, “methane, tropospheric ozone, hydrofluorocarbons and black carbon, has been shown to reduce the warming trend by about 50% by 2050.”

Carbon alone isn’t responsible for so-called global warming, say these federally funded international scientists. They don’t say it, but really, that’s what they are saying.

For federal funding purposes, however, the scientists say that we must act now against these new threats or risk…you know it’s coming… even bigger temperature increases later that could possible result in even more federal funding!

“If the [Teenage Mutant Short-Term Pollutants] mitigation is delayed by 25 years,” says Nature, “the warming from pre-industrial temperature exceeds 2?°C by 2050,” exceeding current estimates…somehow.

But that’s not the only settled science that has been revised by the April edition of Nature Climate Change.

In the April edition, Nature acknowledges that global warming has been paused, at least between the period from 2000 to 2010. This time the culprit is much more insidious- and wet.

It seem the “ocean”- that is the body of water that makes up 70 percent of the globe and acts as an ideal energy absorption mechanism- has been slowing down the increase in temperatures. Its almost as if nature designed it that way.

To think! The largest energy absorption mechanism in the world is responsible for sucking up excess energy?

No way!

Quick: Ban all high-capacity bodies of water over 16 oz.

And we all thought Mayor Bloomberg was an idiot for trying to ban Big Gulps. Ok, he is an idiot, but he’s also a scientific trendsetter.

Coincidence?

No, as we will see shortly, being an idiot and a scientific trendsetter isn’t mutually exclusive.

“Despite a sustained production of anthropogenic greenhouse gases,” writes Virginie Guemas, Francisco J. Doblas-Reyes, Isabel Andreu-Burill, and Muhammad Asif, in Retrospective prediction of the global warming slowdown in the past decade, “the Earth’s mean near-surface temperature paused its rise during the 2000–2010 period. To explain such a pause, an increase in ocean heat uptake below the superficial ocean layer has been proposed to overcompensate for the Earth’s heat storage. …Here we show successful retrospective predictions of this warming slowdown up to 5 years ahead, the analysis of which allows us to attribute the onset of this slowdown to an increase in ocean heat uptake.”

To those of us who lack both the federal training and the federal funding that these scientists have, it might seem like this study “proves” that previous global warming models, which failed to predict this pause in warming, could be flawed in their ability to predict the future.

But that’s where federal scientists come in and deploy massive funding that you and I frankly just won’t ever have access to.

Because with that funding they find: “Our results hence point at the key role of the ocean heat uptake in the recent warming slowdown. The ability to predict retrospectively this slowdown not only strengthens our confidence in the robustness of our climate models, but also enhances the socio-economic relevance of operational decadal climate predictions.”

See? Nothing to worry about. Being wrong, in retrospect, just proves how right they were all along.

Glad they settled that bit of science for us. Otherwise us non-scientists might get the impression that they were, well, wrong.

And just think of all the federal funding that would go to waste, retrospectively.

SOURCE




Europe’s New Anti-Green Majority Scores Huge Victory

EU Parliament Refuses To Save Its Dying Carbon Market

The European Union’s flagship program to fight global warming suffered a major blow Tuesday when lawmakers rejected a proposal aimed at shoring up the region’s carbon-emissions trading system, putting its survival in doubt.

After the European Parliament’s surprise afternoon vote, spooked investors drove the price of emissions permits down by nearly half. Benchmark electricity prices also fell.

The legislature derailed—at least temporarily—a plan to push up permit prices by postponing issuance of new permits for between five and seven years. Electricity generators and others must buy the permits in order to emit carbon dioxide.

Europe’s so-called Emissions Trading System, first launched in 2008, was designed to raise the cost of polluting and discourage the production of greenhouse gases to protect the environment.

But lately, politicians’ focus on generating jobs and sparking growth in a region struggling to recover from recession is relegating green concerns to second place behind economics.

“It was a vote of reason,” said Poland’s environment minister, Marcin Korolec. Poland, one of the EU’s less-affluent members, has been outspoken in its opposition to the measure, which it said could hamper development.

The parliament’s Environment Committee after the vote said that some lawmakers felt that “a rise in the carbon price would erode the competitiveness of European industry and be passed on in household energy bills.”

Germany’s Minister of Economic and Technology Philipp Rösler welcomed the rejection of the backloading plans as an “excellent signal” for an continuing economic recovery. “Reducing supply CO2 allowances would equate to an intervention into a functioning market system,” and further burden industry, he said.

The EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, which devised the so-called backloading plan, said it regretted parliament’s move. And the EU’s Council of Environment Ministers said it would try to draw up an alternate plan.

“Today’s vote is a historic failure,” said Joris den Blanken, EU climate policy director at environmental advocacy group Greenpeace. Without action to deal with an oversupply of permits, the trading system won’t “dissuade polluters and promote investments in cleaner production.”

Slack demand for electricity and an abundance of permits in the market helped push the price of emitting a ton of carbon below 5 euros earlier this year, down from nearly €30 in 2008. After the vote, the price dropped to €2.55 before recovering partially to €3.2.

Without the backloading plan to increase scarcity on the emissions permit market, “the ETS will almost certainly collapse,” said Kash Burchett, a London-based analyst at consulting company IHS Energy.

“Prices will likely sink below €1 per ton as participants recognize that there is no political will at present to restore the market mechanism to functioning order,” he said.

That, in turn, would severely undercut the credibility of Europe’s carbon market as a key element of the bloc’s goal to reduce emissions 20% from 1990 levels by 2020.

Rob Elsworth, Brussels based campaigner for Sandbag, a U.K. nonprofit organization campaigning for effective carbon markets, said the vote sent the wrong message to companies, the public and the international community.

“It’s now incumbent on those MEPs who said they support the long-term success of the EU ETS to act to prevent the EU’s climate policy from drifting dangerously off course.”

The backloading proposal put forth by the Commission called for delaying the auction of 900 million permits by five to seven years. Analysts said it could take time for the Commission to come up with a new plan.

Late in the day Tuesday, contracts for 2014 German baseload power fell, to €39.55 per megawatt hour from €41 per megawatt before the vote.

Investors, watching falling electricity prices and worried that utilities will have to write down the value of permits they now hold, drove down power company shares.

SOURCE






EU Carbon Collapse Deals Blow To Australian Climate Policy

[Australia's Labor Government] will revise down its carbon tax revenue estimates following a crash in the European carbon market, at a likely multi-billion dollar cost to the federal budget.

The EU’s carbon price sank to 2.55 euros ($A3.24) in trading overnight, as legislators rejected a proposal to save the market from collapse.

The federal budget currently assumes a $29 carbon price in 2015, when Australia’s carbon trading scheme is linked to the EU carbon market.

Climate Change Minister Greg Combet told the ABC: “We will continue with our plans to link with the European emissions trading scheme from 1 July 2015, which is still over two years away.

“But this year’s budget, as is usual practice by Treasury, will include a revised forecast for a carbon price in 2015-16 in Australia.”

He said the carbon revenue slump “is another way the global financial crisis has hit the budget”.

Much of the revenue from the carbon tax is pumped out into the economy in the form of household compensation.

The EU carbon price peaked at nearly 30 euros in 2008, but an abundance of permits and weak demand for electricity as a result of the European recession has pushed down the price down.
Yesterday, the price dropped below 3 euros before recovering partially to 3.20 euros.

Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said the fluctuating carbon price in Europe showed Australia would be linking its scheme to a “deeply unstable” system.

Australia’s carbon tax was five and a half times higher than the European tax, and completely out of step with the rest of the world, he said.

More HERE

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

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

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April 17, 2013

The Second-string 'Hockey Team'

By Gordon J. Fulks [gordonfulks@hotmail.com]. Fulks holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago, Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research. He refers below to an attack on Don Easterbrook by Warmist pinheads at Western Washington University

The ongoing battle over Global Warming with Western Washington University geology professors has been fascinating for what it reveals about second tier supporters of the apocalypse who have backgrounds in science but not in climate science.

These are not the knowledgeable first string players on the 'Hockey Team,' working together to manipulate climate data and keep opponents from challenging them in the scientific journals, as Climategate revealed. There are no Michael Manns, no Phil Jones, no Gavin Schmidts, and no James Hansens here. These are the Inspector Clouseaus of the climate clique, the suave but hopeless practitioners of bumbling politicized science.

What distinguishes them from the Great Global Warming Guru James Hansen? The most obvious thing about Hansen is that he can discuss a wide range of topics related to Global Warming and display considerable scientific insight. He does not resort to popular political tactics based on consensus, authority, or belief. For instance, he and I agree about the lack of global warming for more than a decade, about Milankovitch cycles, nuclear power, and radiation safety.

He even uses a temperature reconstruction of this Holocene interglacial period similar to what I prefer. It shows the gradual average temperature decline over the last few thousand years as we sink toward the next ice age.

We also agree that ethanol-based motor fuel is a carbon reduction scam that needs to be abandoned. I chuckled with him about the difficulties he must face coming from Iowa where government-subsidized corn ethanol is very popular among those making money from it.

Had we gotten into a detailed discussion of carbon dioxide, we would have disagreed substantially. But that would have involved questions of 'climate sensitivity' where he is completely aware of the need to invoke an amplification from water vapor, because CO2 alone lacks sufficient horsepower.

Perhaps it was the wine or the fact that we are both astrophysicists that kept things constructive. Clearly, neither of us wanted to fall into the black hole of scientific nonsense, even though our disagreements about a climate catastrophe are profound.

The Professor Clouseaus from WWU are a world apart. Gone is the congenial atmosphere and discussion among colleagues where the objective is to find common ground before addressing difficult questions. These professors are going for a knockout blow against 'deniers' whom they equate with cranks.

Emeritus Professor of Geology Don Easterbrook was their lone crank, until I came along. Then there were two!

When I pointed out that many well-known physicists have views similar to mine, they supposed that physicists do not understand the complexities of climate, as they do. “FINE,” I said, “Show me!” “Let's have a seminar at WWU.”

That precipitated panic and retreat with a helpful twist. One professor admitted to an insufficient knowledge of climate science to argue with me. But just as one blunder after another never discouraged Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther, Professor Clouseau (played in this case by Dave Hirsch) was sure that 'consensus' is the way we properly do things in science.

Oh, really? The geological establishment has been famous for clinging to the majority opinion even when it is no longer scientifically viable and consequently being wrong time after time. One prominent example involves J. Harlen Bretz, once a high school biology teacher from Seattle, who proposed that the unusual geology of Eastern Washington was caused by catastrophic floods from an ice age lake in Montana and not by gradual erosion over millions of years. He spectacularly prevailed over the 'consensus' with convincing logic and evidence.

Similarly, the concept of 'continental drift' overcame stiff establishment resistance to become the present paradigm.

In 1905 a little Jewish man who was but a clerk in a patent office challenged the perception that Classical Physics was 'settled.' He recognized that the two hundred year old theory of Newtonian Mechanics had to be significantly modified to keep Maxwell's equations unchanged in a moving frame.

Although popular opinion quickly embraced Albert Einstein, he was content to wait decades for the necessary physical evidence to back up his new concepts of space, time, and gravity. To no surprise, Einstein understood how science works.

The Professor Clouseaus at WWU fall flat with their attempts to short circuit the scientific method using 'consensus.' If they want to legitimately participate in climate discussions, they should learn something about this topic and discuss it with their peers, including physicists.

Although many scientists seek assistance in understanding complex topics by consulting the most informed among us (like Don Easterbrook), the bottom line still comes down to the best 'logic and evidence.' All else is a sideshow.

Via email




The Psychology of Groupthink on Climate Change Hysteria

Most sensible people who are not financially dependent upon the climate change grave train are sensible enough to fully realise man cannot control climate and extreme weather. Yet, incredible though it may seem, there still remain some, who are otherwise intelligent, who still believe the claims of reversible impending human caused climatic destruction of the entire globe. How can this be? What drives people to cling to such strange and extreme beliefs?

The overwhelming need for many individuals to blindly and unquestioningly follow others is commonly known as ‘mob mentality’, ‘herd mentality’ or ‘groupthink’. Groupthink has been described thus: “It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative ideas or viewpoints.”

Clearly, groupthink is a manifestation of consensus thinking and blind adherence to peer group pressure irrespective of the facts or consequences. Indeed, eight symptoms of groupthink have been established which highlight this abandonment of rational judgement:

* Illusion of invulnerability – Creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks.

* Collective rationalization – Members discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions.

* Belief in inherent morality – Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions.

* Stereotyped views of out-groups – Negative views of “enemy” make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary.

* Direct pressure on dissenters – Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views.

* Self-censorship – Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed.

* Illusion of unanimity – The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous.

* Self-appointed ‘mindguards’ – Members protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group’s cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions.

The consensus nature of groupthink and the collective rigidity and irrationality of their attitudes may result in extreme measures to preserve the consensus, even to the point of attacking any who disagree and perceiving them to be enemies who must be silenced:

“Mob mentality is similar to groupthink and spiral of silence. Groupthink is a communication theory and term coined by social psychologist Irving Janis (1972). It occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of “mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment” (p. 9).

Groups affected by groupthink ignore alternatives and tend to take irrational actions that dehumanize other groups…….

It’s symptoms include the illusion of invulnerability. This illusion creates a belief in inherent morality and superiority and in the rightness of their cause. Members in a groupthink atmosphere ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions; they hold a stereotyped views of out-groups, i.e. they hold a negative view of outsiders as the “enemy” make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary.

They put a direct pressure on dissenters and are put under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views. Members censor themselves, which is a major symptom of spiral of silence and those in the group, particularly the leader have created and illusion of unanimity.

Each group has self-appointed gatekeepers, i.e., members who protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group’s cohesiveness, view, and decisions……….

Groups engaging in groupthink do not allow dissenting voices and are prone to fanatical and dangerous coercion methods……….

A government practicing groupthink and the perpetuation of propaganda to control its citizens is demonstrated in communist countries such as North Korea (Cummings, 2009; Kim, Han, Shanahan, & Berdayes, 2004). The closed regime of Kim Jong Il censors and controls the state-run media and uses propaganda to suppress its citizens by not promoting free-thinking and questioning authority and an unwillingness to voice opposing opinions.”

Climate Change Hysteria and Groupthink

From the above, the connection between climate change hysteria and groupthink is blindingly obvious. This connection has been noted by Paul MacRae, who comments:

“But it’s baffling that alarmist climate scientists are so certain that additional carbon dioxide will produce a climate disaster, even though there is little empirical evidence to support this view, and much evidence against it, including a decade of non-warming. This dogmatism makes it clear, at least to those outside the alarmist climate paradigm, that something is very wrong with the state of “consensus” climate science.

There are many possible reasons for this scientific blindness, including sheer financial and career self-interest: scientists who don’t accept the alarmist paradigm will lose research grants and career doors will be closed to them.

But one psychological diagnosis fits alarmist climate science like a glove: groupthink. With groupthink, we get the best explanation of “how can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong………….

It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus………….

Climate scientists who dare to deviate from the consensus are censured as “deniers”—a choice of terminology that can only be described as odious. And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change explicitly aims for “consensus” in its reports—it does not publish minority reports, and yet it is impossible that its alleged more than “2,000 scientists” could completely agree on a subject as complicated as climate.

Climate alarmists will, of course, angrily dispute that climate science groupthink is as strong as claimed here. However, groupthink is clearly identified in the 2006 Wegman report into the Michael Mann hockey stick controversy. The Wegman report was commissioned by the U.S. House Science Committee after Mann refused to release all the data leading to the hockey stick conclusions, conclusions that eliminated the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in order to show today’s warming as unprecedented.

In fact, as mathematician Steve McIntyre discovered after years of FOI requests, the calculations in Mann’s paper had not been checked by the paper’s peer reviewers and were, in fact, wrong.

The National Academy of Sciences committee, led by Dr. Edward Wegman, an expert on statistics, identified one of the reasons why Mann’s paper was so sloppily peer-reviewed as follows:

"There is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis. However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility."

In other words, alarmist climate scientists are part of an exclusive group that talks mainly with itself and avoids groups that don’t share the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis and alarmist political agenda. Overall, Wegman is describing with great precision a science community whose conclusions have been distorted and polarized by groupthink.”

MacRae concludes:

"In short, it is clear that groupthink—a later, more scientific word for “tribalism”—is strongly at work within alarmist climate science, however much the affected scientists refuse to recognize it.

As a result of tribalism (groupthink), alarmist climate science makes assertions that are often extreme (polarized), including the explicit or implicit endorsement of claims that global warming will lead to “oblivion,” “thermageddon,” mass extinctions, and the like. Indeed, one of the ironies of climate science is that extremist AGW believers like Gore, Hansen and Schneider have succeeded in persuading the media and public that those who don’t make grandiose claims, the skeptics, are the extremists.

Group polarization offers a rational explanation for extreme alarmist claims, given that the empirical scientific evidence is simply not strong enough to merit such confidence. It is likely that even intelligent, highly educated scientists have been caught in what has been called the “madness of crowds.” Indeed, writing in the Times Higher Education magazine, British philosopher Martin Cohen makes this connection explicit:

"Is belief in global-warming science another example of the “madness of crowds”? That strange but powerful social phenomenon, first described by Charles Mackay in 1841, turns a widely shared prejudice into an irresistible “authority”. Could it *belief in human-caused, catastrophic global warming] indeed represent the final triumph of irrationality?"

There is strong psychological evidence that alarmist fears of climate change are far more the result of groupthink and the group polarization process than scientific evidence and, yes, this alarmist groupthink has indeed led to the triumph of irrationality over reason.”

SOURCE






North Dakota Builds A Refinery, First In The U.S. Since '76

The U.S. has not opened a new oil refinery since Gerald Ford was in the White House. But that will change next year. So where will the next facility be? In North Dakota, where the locals aren't afraid to drill.

When the Dakota Prairie refinery west of Bismarck, N.D., starts turning crude into usable — and essential — products in 2014, it will be the first to open in America since 1976. This probably isn't what the green-energy president wants to have happen on his watch.

But he can't step on the refinery as he has the Keystone XL pipeline, so he'll have to live with it.

America's future as the global fossil-fuel king is a reality while Barack Obama's green economy is simply a fantasy. Fracking on nonfederal land has turned the U.S. into the top petroleum-producing country in the world, having passed Saudi Arabia in late 2012.

A British Petroleum report issued earlier this year said America is likely to hold the top spot for a decade.

The future is not only in conventional wells but in the fracking revolution that's pumping oil from shale in Eagle Ford of South Texas, the Marcellus formation of the Allegheny Plateau and the Monterey deposit in California.

And then there's the Bakken formation in North Dakota, where bountiful production has made the Dakota Prairie refinery — and three others in the planning stages — a necessity. The heavy equipment used in the oilfields needs a nearby source of fuel that the refinery will provide.

While much of the country is mired in joblessness, oil-flush North Dakota has openings to fill. The unemployment rate is 3.2%, the lowest in the country.

In the 12 counties located in the Bakken region — where employment has increased by 60% since 2009 — the jobless rate was 1.8% at the end of last year.

Each oil rig of the more than 200 in the area employs about 120 workers while pipe-laying and other infrastructure jobs employ thousands more.

Then there are the spinoff jobs created by businesses that provide the goods and services the growing worker population needs.

Pay has increased, as well. Average weekly wages in the Bakken region have risen 40% since 2009.

Simply put, the Obama economy isn't stumbling along in North Dakota as it is in much of the rest of the country. The good citizens should feel blessed he isn't their governor.

SOURCE




An end to zombie politics needed

When Tony Blair signed up for Kyoto, it was a cost-free policy for the UK as it coincided with the “dash for gas” which he inherited. But our adherence to Kyoto targets isn’t cost-free any more. Now we are subsidising wind-farms, solar energy etc so that the UK average energy bill has risen by 18% for this reason alone.

On 8 February, Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading posted a graph, subsequently globally anthologised, drawing attention to the mismatch between climate change models and some seventeen years without measurable climate warming. To be fair, the meaning of the graph is contested, with diehard proponents of classical “Anthropogenic Global Warming” (AGW) spluttering that it is premature to make much of the statistical meaning of the recent figures; or that the warming is taking place under the sea where we can’t measure it.

This is weak stuff: contrary to the campaigners the science turns out to be far from settled; indeed by the tests climate practitioners have set themselves their predictions are falling apart. Honest scientists are now revisiting their theories and models.

So let the Prime Minister launch a Royal Commission to revisit the evidence, modelling and consequent policy. The composition of such a Commission would have to be carefully chosen to ensure balance. The public interest needs statisticians and scientists from outside the hermetic world of “climate science” to challenge insiders robustly and in full view. Also in the interests of transparency, the DPP should seize data such as papers from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia for examination by forensic statisticians. The Commission should be given ample time to get it right - five years at least.

Over the period of its review the Government should suspend surcharges on energy bills, subsidies to energy suppliers or technologies, and generally the obligations of the Secretary of State for Energy under the Climate Change Act (2008).

We may expect the Liberal Democrats to object, but they may not want to stand in the way of a good-faith re-examination of the evidence. If they do, they have handed the Tories a priceless wedge issue for 2015.

SOURCE





EPA’s Tier 3 tyranny

High cost, no benefit does nothing to forestall agency’s quest for ecological utopia

Pau Driessen

President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has already promulgated a tsunami of 1,920 regulations, many of which will bring few health or environmental benefits, but will impose high economic and unemployment costs, often to advance the Administration’s decidedly anti-hydrocarbon agenda. The Heritage Foundation has calculated that his EPA’s twenty “major” rulemaking decisions (costing $100 million or more annually) alone could cost the United States over $36 billion per year.

The latest example involves a third layer (or tier) of rules that the agency says will clean the nation’s air and save lives, by forcing refineries to remove more sulfur and other impurities from gasoline. EPA and refiners call the proposal Tier 3 rulemaking. Tier 3 tyranny is more accurate – as the rules would cost billions of dollars but bring infinitesimal benefits, and will likely be imposed regardless.

Since 1970, America’s cars have eliminated some 99% of pollutants that once came out of tailpipes. “Today's cars are essentially zero-emission vehicles, compared to 1970 models,” says air pollution expert Joel Schwartz, co-author of Air Quality in America.

In addition, he notes, more recent models start out cleaner and stay cleaner throughout their lives. “As a result, fleet turnover has been reducing on-road emissions by an average of about 8 to10 percent per year.” Over time, that has brought tremendously improved air quality, and continues to do so.

Moreover, since 2004, under Tier 1 and 2 rules, refiners have reduced sulfur in gasoline from an average of 300 ppm to 30 ppm – a 90% drop, on top of previous reductions. Those benefits are likewise ongoing. Using EPA’s own computer models and standards, a recent ENVIRON International study concluded that “large benefits in ground-level ozone concentrations will have accrued by 2022 as a direct result” of Tier 1 and Tier 2 emission standards and lower gasoline sulfur levels” that are already required by regulation.

By 2022, those existing emission reduction requirements will slash volatile organic pollutants by a further 62%, carbon monoxide by another 51% and nitrous oxides 80% more – beyond reductions achieved between 1970 and 2004.

But even this is not enough for EPA, which now wants sulfur levels slashed to 10 ppm – even though the agency’s models demonstrate that Tier 3 rules, on top of these earlier and ongoing reductions, would bring essentially zero air quality or health benefits.

Viewed another way, further Tier 3 improvements would amount to reduced monthly ozone levels of only 1.2 parts per billion (peak levels) to 0.5 ppb (average levels). These minuscule improvements (equivalent to 5-12 cents out of $100 million) could not even have been measured by equipment existing a couple decades ago. Their contribution to improved human health would be essentially zero

To achieve those zero benefits, the new Tier 3 standards would cost $10 billion in upfront capital expenditures and an additional $2.4 billion in annual compliance expenses, the American Petroleum Institute says. The sulfur rules will raise the price of gasoline by 6-9 cents a gallon, on top of new fuel tax hikes and gasoline prices that have rocketed from $1.79 to $3.68 per gallon of regular unleaded over the past four years. These and other hikes will ripple throughout the economy, affecting commuting and shipping, the cost of goods and services, the price of travel and vacations. (White House and EPA officials claim the Tier 3 rules would only add only a penny per gallon to gasoline costs, but that is highly dubious.)

EPA believes the additional sulfur reductions are technologically possible. Its attitude seems to be, if it can be done, we will require it, no matter how high the cost, or how minimal the benefits.

Citizens need to tell EPA: “The huge improvements to date are enough for now. We have other crucial health, environmental, employment and economic problems to solve – which also affect human health and welfare. We don’t have the financial, human or technological resources to do it all – especially to waste billions on something where the quantifiable health benefits payback is minimal, or even zero.”

Moreover, there are better ways to reduce traffic-related urban air pollution. Improve traffic light sequencing, to speed traffic flow, save fuel, and reduce idling, emissions, driver stress and accidents, for example. That’s where our efforts should be concentrated.

Another basic problem is that EPA always assumes there is no safe threshold level for pollutants – and pollution must always and constantly be ratcheted downward, eventually to zero, regardless of cost.

This flies in the face of what any competent epidemiologist knows: the dose makes the poison. There is a point below which a chemical is not harmful. There are even chemicals which at low or trace quantities are essential to proper operation of our muscular, brain and other bodily functions – but at higher doses can be poisonous. There are also low-level chemical, radiation and pathogen exposures that actually safeguard our bodies from cancer, illness and other damage, in a process known as hormesis.

Even worse, this Tier 3 tyranny is on top of other highly suspect EPA actions. The agency has conducted illegal experiments on humans, used secret email accounts to hide collaborations with radical environmentalist groups, and implemented 54.5 mpg vehicle mileage standards that will maim and kill thousands more people every year, by forcing them into smaller, lighter, less safe cars.

EPA also expanded the ethanol mandate to promote corn-based E15 fuels (15% ethanol in gasoline). That means we must turn even more food into fuel, to replace hydrocarbons that we again have in abundance (thanks to fracking and other new technologies) but our government won’t allow us to develop, and to substitute for cellulosic ethanol that doesn’t exist (but EPA tells refiners they must use anyway). So corn farmers get rich, while consumers pay more for gasoline, meat, fish, eggs, poultry and other products.

The agency is also waging war on coal, automobiles and the Keystone XL pipeline – based on assertions that carbon dioxide emissions are causing “dangerous manmade global warming.” Even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, NASA, British Meteorological Office, and many once alarmist scientists now acknowledge that average planetary temperatures have not budged in 16 years, and hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts and sea level rise have shown no statistically significant variation from century-long averages – even as CO2 levels have “soared” to 395 ppm (0.0395% of Earth’s atmosphere). True scientists increasingly recognize solar and other complex, interconnected natural forces as the primary drivers of Earth’s ever changing and unpredictable weather and climate.

These inconvenient truths have apparently had no effect on Administration thinking. Perhaps rising indoor CO2 emissions from larger EPA and White House staffs have “weirded” their thinking. The EPA’s yellow brick road to Eco-Utopia is not one our nation should travel. It will not take us to an economic recovery, more jobs, a cleaner environment, or improved human safety, health and welfare.

Nothing in the Clean Air Act says EPA needs to promulgate these rules. But nothing says it can’t do so. It’s largely discretionary, and this Administration is determined to “interpret” the science and use its executive authority to restrict and penalize hydrocarbon use – and “fundamentally transform” America.

EPA administrator nominee Gina McCarthy says EPA will “consider” industry and other suggestions that it revise greenhouse gas and other proposed rules. However, neither she nor the President has said they will modify or moderate any policies or proposals, or retreat from their climate change agenda.

We are desperately in need of science-based legislative standards, commonsense regulatory actions, and adult supervision by Congress and the courts. Unfortunately, that is not likely to be forthcoming anytime soon, and neither Republican Senators nor the House of Representatives seem to have the power, attention span or spine to do what is necessary. Where this all will end is therefore anyone’s guess.

Via email





Australia: Conservative State (Qld.) government rolls back Greenie tree-clearing laws

THE largest rollback of environmental protection in Australia's history is under way as the State Government waters down vegetation protection laws.

If an amendment Bill passes through Parliament in its current form, it will become legal to clear regrowth habitat for koalas, endangered mahogany gliders and cassowaries.

This is despite a written commitment from Premier Campbell Newman to conservation group World Wildlife Fund before the last election, saying he would "retrain the ... current level of vegetation protection".

WWF spokesman Nick Heath said yesterday there was no record of any government winding back laws to such a degree. "This is a clear breach of Newman's commitment," he said.

"If the amendments pass, 700,000ha of endangered forest could be cleared. This would accelerate the extinction of animals in regrowth areas."

Mr Cripps, who will make a speech to the Rural Press Club today entitled "Taking the axe to Queensland's tree clearing laws", said amendments supported agricultural growth, while retaining environment protections.

"Twenty years of Labor Government had allowed the pendulum to swing too far towards extreme green policies at the expense of jobs in rural and regional communities," he said.

Before laws were introduced in 1999, more than 750,000ha a year was cleared, mostly for pasture. This was reduced to 77,590ha in 2009-10.

Greens spokeswoman Larissa Waters said amendments weakened rules to allow some farmers to assess their own clearing.

SOURCE

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

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

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16 April, 2013

Fracking support going bipartisan

As he weighs whether to allow fracking in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is under intense pressure from the oil and gas industry, Republican lawmakers and long-struggling communities eager to see the drilling technique jump-start the state’s economy.

But last week, the governor came under pressure from another source — a fellow Democrat. In a strong endorsement of hydraulic fracturing, former Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell urged Mr. Cuomo to “do as I did: Step back and look at the facts. See the bigger picture.”

In a piece for the New York Daily News, Mr. Rendell touted the benefits of fracking that he saw firsthand as drilling in the Marcellus Shale helped revive long-depressed towns in the western and northern reaches of Pennsylvania.

It’s just one example of how fracking has earned unusually broad support from across the political spectrum, breaking down partisan barriers in surprising ways.

The hydraulic fracturing process extracts oil and natural gas from deep within shale rock formations by injecting high-pressure mixtures of water, sand or gravel and chemicals.
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell saw firsthand how drilling in the Marcellus Shale helped revive long-depressed towns in parts of his state. He is trying to convert fellow Democrats.

Fracking’s loudest and most effective cheerleaders aren’t just from inside the industry or from the Republican Party. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, also has become a champion of the process, as have Democratic members of Congress from oil- and gas-producing states. Leading Democrats who have offered kind words for fracking include California Gov. Jerry Brown and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, whose state is one of the nation’s prime beneficiaries of the revolutionary drilling technique.

President Obama’s pick to head the Energy Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Ernest Moniz, has come under fire from environmental groups in large part for his strong backing of fracking and his argument that natural gas produced by fracking can serve as a “bridge fuel” to a greener future.

“This is actually a very interesting situation for the Democratic Party. There are still Democrats who believe that the party is not just a party of environmentalism and feminism,” said Robert Nelson, a public policy professor at the University of Maryland who specializes in environmental issues.

Some Democrats think the party “is actually a party of jobs and good management and sensible environmental improvement,” he said.

Mr. Hickenlooper is one Democrat searching for a balance between environmental protection and energy production, and he has overseen dramatic increases in that production since he became governor. Mr. Hickenlooper also defended fracking in front of Congress and sued at least two Colorado towns that have tried to ban the process through local ordinances.

Last week, Mr. Hickenlooper took to a debate stage at the University of Denver to defend fracking and the state’s right to overrule local governments that want to curb the process in their jurisdictions.

Like Mr. Moniz, he also made the case that fracking for natural gas will help the U.S. transition from coal and its heavier carbon footprint.

“Inexpensive natural gas is the best opportunity we have to transition to a greener economy,” Mr. Hickenlooper said.

Mr. Rendell and Mr. Hickenlooper, like all other Democrats who back domestic oil and gas development, certainly aren’t arguing for lax environmental regulations. Colorado’s fracking regulations, for example, are among the toughest in the nation.

More HERE




Who needs DDT when you've got Kidney beans?

DDT wiped out bedbugs so thoroughly that it was a long road back for them -- but back they are

A traditional Balkan bedbug remedy has been shown stab and trap the biting insects, according to a paper in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Just in time, too. Bedbugs have made a dramatic comeback in the U.S. in recent years, infesting everything from homes and hotels to schools, movie theaters and hospitals. Although not known to transmit disease, their bites can cause burning, itching, swelling and psychological distress. It helps to catch infestations early, but the nocturnal parasites' ability to hide almost anywhere, breed rapidly and "hitchhike" from place to place makes detection difficult. They can survive as long as a year without a blood meal.

Current commercial prevention methods, including freezing, extreme heating, vacuuming and pesticides, can be costly and unreliable. Many sufferers resort to ineffective, potentially dangerous measures, such as spraying non-approved insecticides themselves rather than hiring a professional.

Now researchers have documented how microscopic hairs on kidney bean leaves are effective pest control and they're developing materials that mimic the geometry of the leaves. The work was motivated by a centuries-old remedy for bedbugs formerly used in Bulgaria, Serbia and other southeast European countries. Kidney bean leaves were strewn on the floor next to beds and seemed to ensnare the blood-seeking parasites on their nightly forays. The bug-encrusted greenery was burned the next morning to exterminate the insects.

Through painstaking detective work, the scientists discovered that the creatures are trapped within seconds of stepping on a leaf, their legs impaled by microscopic hooked hairs known botanically as trichomes.

Using the bean leaves as templates, the researchers have microfabricated materials that closely resemble them geometrically. The synthetic surfaces snag the bedbugs temporarily but do not yet stop them as effectively as real leaves, suggesting that crucial mechanics of the trichomes still need to be determined.

Theoretically, bean leaves could be used for pest control, but they dry out and don't last very long. They also can't easily be applied to locations other than a floor. Synthetic materials could provide a nontoxic alternative.

"Plants exhibit extraordinary abilities to entrap insects," said entomologist Catherine Loudon of UC Irvine, lead author of the paper. "Modern scientific techniques let us fabricate materials at a microscopic level, with the potential to 'not let the bedbugs bite' without pesticides."

"Nature is a hard act to follow, but the benefits could be enormous," said entomologist and co-author Michael Potter of the University of Kentucky. "Imagine if every bed bug inadvertently brought into a dwelling was captured before it had a chance to bite and multiply."

SOURCE





Blow Off Pampered Greenies, Build Keystone XL

Recycling is fine. Conservation is fine. But sometimes greenies cross the line. They expect you and me to go jobless and hungry so they can save a porcupine.

President Obama has been pampering his radical greenie friends for far too long. Even the Presidents’ State Department has thrice declared Keystone XL to be environmentally safe. Let’s build it already.

Keystone XL is a well-thought-out project that has been in the hopper since 2005 when TransCanada Corp. initially proposed it. Canada’s National Energy Board approved the project on its end in 2007. Five years later, in April of 2013, Canada is still patiently waiting for us to approve this no-brainer, win-win $7 billion jobs and energy infrastructure project.

Here are the facts. Keystone XL would mean:

* A daily surge of between 700,000 and 800,000 barrels of crude oil for America.

* Stronger relations with our neighbor and ally, Canada.

* No significant negative impact on the environment.

* Employment for individuals in the construction sector, which has been hard-hit by the recession (the construction unemployment rate is over 16 percent).

The Keystone XL pipeline would initiate in Alberta and then traverse across six states in the contiguous U.S. to its final destination of Texas Gulf Coast refineries. One of these six states is Nebraska, home of Obama’s dear friend Warren Buffet.

Buffett opposes Keystone XL because it means that he will lose some of the profit he’s pulling from his $26 billion 2009 investment in Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Company.

Railroads are highly dangerous, inefficient and unreliable as a means of transporting crude oil. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that pipelines transport more crude at less risk of incurring a leak or spill than railroads and that railroad spills are up more than tenfold. Plus, pipelines take routes that are located further from dense population zones, making them safer, even if there is a spill.

Luckily for you, Buffet does not represent Nebraska in the U.S. Senate. Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) recently authored H.R. 3, which would bypass President Obama’s unconstitutional and unreasonable use of executive authority (known as a “presidential permit” in this case) to block Keystone XL.

This month, Robert E. Hogfoss and Catherine D. Little published a piece in the National Law Journal explaining that: “… permits are a creation of the executive branch alone, with no legislative authorization and limited judicial review to date. Presidential permits are intended to provide executive branch review of trans-border facilities and commercial activities between the United States and either Canada or Mexico. No statute authorizes their creation or use, and few regulations govern their review or issuance.”

In other words, there is no hard constitutional or statutory basis for presidential permits. The President really has no business controlling or blocking free enterprise in America or the development of America’s natural resources. But, U.S. Presidents have become quite savvy at finding legitimate-sounding ways to grant themselves whatever power the Constitution does not give them.

President Roosevelt was the first U.S. President to use his executive authority to claim that Congress would need a so-called “presidential permit” in order to approve trans-border natural gas or electric operations. And the rest is history. President Obama now appears to be contemplating using a “presidential permit” to stall Keystone XL.

I recently asked Canadian writer Alex Snyder to give me his take on Keystone XL:

“Canada relies on America for 97 percent of its energy exports, so to say this deal is important for our country would be accurate. The main environmental concerns from certain groups in America is the fact that there is a risk of an oil spill… First, there's risk of a spill in any oil transportation method, so the argument is invalid. Second, tar sands are becoming more environmentally friendly due to stricter environmental regulations from the Canadian government. American environmental groups show little understanding of Canadian politics when they question production methods. Additionally, most companies in the oil sands are continually improving extraction methods to limit their environmental impact, and have incentive to do so. No oil company enjoys the negative publicity that arises from environmental carnage. …Canadians realize Keystone XL… should be approved; it’s just embarrassing that it’s being held up by environmental fanatics.”

The bottom line is that we risk jeopardizing our relationship with Canada and losing economic growth opportunity out of false fears of environmental repercussions. Let’s stop pampering the greenies and build Keystone XL.

SOURCE






The Right Climate Stuff - CPAC 2013, Washington, DC, March 15, 2013



[94-minute video] Apollo 7 Astronaut and author Walter Cunningham and two former NASA engineers discuss why they are urging government agencies to cease their "unbridled advocacy" of Anthropogenic Global Warming & Return Integrity to the Scientific Method. The video features presentations by Cunningham; Harold Doiron, consultant to NASA and commercial rocket developers; and Thomas Wysmuller, meteorologist, New York University and the Royal Dutch Weather Bureau.





An open letter to David Attenborough about polar bears

by John Happs

Dear Sir David,

I have written to you previously to congratulate you on the excellence of your wildlife documentaries. There is no doubt that your dedication and professionalism have brought pleasure, information and awareness to millions of viewers around the world.

On a more critical note, I expressed to you my concern about public comments you have made about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW).

I provided ample documented evidence to show that:

(a) Carbon dioxide has never driven global temperature over geologic time;

(b) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) process and findings cannot be trusted;

(c) The broader scientific and political communities are now seriously questioning the alarmist message of CAGW.

In the BBC1 series on Africa you claimed that the wildlife there was at a “pivotal moment in their history” and “Africa’s climate is certainly changing. Some parts of the continent have become 3.5oC hotter in the past 20 years.”(1)

When challenged about this, the BBC indicated that the claim of a 3.5oC rise over 20 years was sourced from a Christian Aid report. The BBC acknowledged that the 3.5oC claim, based on that NGO source, had no basis in fact and the statement would be removed when the program was repeated. To its credit, the BBC honoured that commitment.

I am concerned when you, Sir David, lend your reputation and authority to bolster alarmist messages about dramatic Arctic sea ice retreat and, by unsubstantiated association, the threat to polar bear populations (2)

The Oasis Nature Channel has presented a series of programs entitled Extinctions, about animals under threat. The first of the series was about polar bears, which they referred to as the canaries in the global-warming coalmine, ignoring the fact that polar bear numbers are actually the highest since records began. (3)

Spreading unwarranted alarmism about CAGW and the demise of polar bears appears to be the hallmark of a number of radical environmentalists and other vested interest groups. For instance, in his book We are the Weather Makers (4) Australia’s Chief Climate Commissioner, Professor Tim Flannery writes:

“With each year, starving females give birth to fewer cubs.” (P93)

And

“In the spring of 2006, for the first time Inuit began to find drowned polar bears: the ice is now too far from shore.” (P93)

And

“So fast are the changes that there are likely to be few or no polar bears in the wild by around 2030.” (P94)

Other alarmists, such as Steven Amstrup, have said that polar bears, depending on sea ice for hunting seals, are in trouble because sea ice is decreasing due to global warming. (5)

The alarmist World Wildlife Fund (WWF) claimed that polar bears with triplet cubs have been declining, yet recent sightings from Arctic guides report "frequent sightings of polar bear mothers with triplets.” (6)

Serial alarmist Dr Andrew Derocher from the World Conservation Union, also knows how to make exaggerated and emotive statements about global warming and subsequent threats to polar bears. He says:

“It’s not fun to see a mother bear watch her cubs falling dead because she can no longer nurse them.”

And

“We want governments to be ready with conservation and management plans for polar bears when a worst-case climate change scenario happens.” (7)

In 2004, Dr Lara Hansen from the WWF said that bears in the Hudson Bay region could become so thin by 2012 they may no longer be able to reproduce. (8)

If the public were to take seriously such alarmist messages about dangerous global warming and the plight of the polar bear they could be led to believe that:

(a) Global warming is melting all the Arctic sea ice;
(b) Polar bears will be isolated from their food supplies;
(c) Polar bears are already starving;
(d) Polar bears are endangered. Soon they will only be found in zoos.

So what facts about polar bears should be conveyed to the public and politicians by responsible media personalities? The answer to this question should be sought from those who have both expertise in this area and no vested interest in promoting alarmism about Arctic ice and polar bears.

There is little doubt that, several decades ago, polar bears were under threat. In the 1950’s their numbers were down to around 5,000 although they were not threatened by climate change. Rather they were facing threats from high-powered rifles and few restrictions on hunting.

Today, about 450 polar bears are legally killed and skinned annually in Canada, essentially by Inuit hunters in Nunavut. Polar bear pelts can fetch a minimum of 1,750 USD. (9)

Thanks to the introduction of the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act and the 1974 International Agreement for the Conservation of Polar Bears, hunting is now restricted and numbers now exceed 25,000.Arctic biologist Dr Mitchell Taylor is currently studying 13 populations. He says:

"Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present." (10)

Dr Susan Crockford a zoologist & evolutionary biologist at the University of Victoria, Canada points out that polar bears have adapted to severe climate change in the past and they will adapt in the future. She says:

“Polar Bears successfully adapted to times when there was both much less, and much more, Arctic sea ice than exists today. Polar bears obviously have strategies for surviving dramatic changes in sea ice conditions – we just don’t know yet what all of them are.” (11)

Dr. Olafur Ingolfsson, from the University of Iceland, has conducted extensive field research in the Arctic. He says:

“We have this specimen that confirms the polar bear was a morphologically distinct species at least 100,000 years ago, and this basically means that the polar bear has already survived one interglacial period.” (12)

A study by Miller et al. (2012), published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has demonstrated that polar bears are superbly adapted to the extreme Arctic environment and that brown bears and polar bears have had sufficiently independent evolutionary histories over the last 4 million to 5 million years to leave imprints in the polar bear nuclear genome that are associated with ecological adaptation to the Arctic environment. (13)

Dycka et al. (2007) reported:

“We found that spring air temperatures around the Hudson Bay basin for the past 70 years (1932–2002) show no significant warming trend and are more likely identified with the large-amplitude, natural climatic variability that is characteristic of the Arctic. Any role of external forcing by anthropogenic greenhouse gases remains difficult to identify. We argue, therefore, that the extrapolation of polar bear disappearance is highly premature. Climate models are simply not skilful for the projection of regional sea-ice changes in Hudson Bay or the whole Arctic.” (14)

Arctic sea ice has been extremely variable over the last few million years and polar bears have already demonstrated an ability to survive short-term (decadal) and long-term (glacial-interglacial) fluctuations of ice, as has the polar bear’s main source of food – the Arctic seal. Both are extremely well-adapted to their highly changeable environment.

More HERE






Not Yet Time to Declare Victory over Climate Anti-Capitalists
By Peter Wilson

Some climate change skeptics have begun to express optimism recently, based in part on a mildly skeptical article in the normally true-believer Economist magazine. On AT, for example, Jonathon Moseley argued in "The Coming Global Warming Voter Backlash" that the planet hasn't been warming since 1998, and global warming zealots can prevaricate for only so long before voters rise up and throw the bums out.

Mr. Moseley's article was well-written, but it has one fatal flaw: it appeals to rational argument and scientific facts. Global warming activists, for all their appeals to "Science," have a religious conviction that won't be swayed by such arguments.

Consider the following:

1. That Economist article, the so-called final nail in the coffin -- ends with several paragraphs warning about how "the world has pumped out half a trillion tonnes of carbon since 1750," concluding: "Despite all the work on sensitivity, no one really knows how the climate would react if temperatures rose by as much as 4°C. Hardly reassuring."

2. Gallup released its annual poll of attitudes toward global warming this week. Americans who "personally worry about global warming" rose from 55% in 2012 to 58% in 2013. Furthermore, "[c]urrently, 57% of Americans say global warming is caused by human activities, up from 50% in 2010." It's tough to get a meaningful voter backlash from the remaining 42-43%.

3. Media: The promotion of warmism in the mainstream media continues unabated. Never mind the Huffington Post; on Monday, the conservative Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by two Fellows at the conservative Hoover Institution, former Reagan cabinet member George Schultz and 1992 Nobel laureate in economics Gary S. Becker. The authors call (once again) for "a revenue-neutral tax on carbon," which they call "a major pollutant." Unless they're referring to bits of carbon in fly ash, I assume that they mean carbon dioxide -- which is a non-toxic gas essential for plant life. Calling CO2 a pollutant is idiotic and destructive in that it distracts from efforts to control real pollutants.

Schultz and Becker naively believe that the federal government will keep its hands out of the carbon tax cookie jar, just like it did with Social Security lockbox. They further note that "[t]he tax should also further increase over time if the apparent severity of the climate effects is growing." And who would make this determination? Every "superstorm" like Hurricane Sandy will henceforth justify tax hikes.

4. Courts: As I mentioned, only the uninformed believe that CO2 is a pollutant. Except, oh yeah, in 2007, the Supreme Court found in Massachusetts v. EPA that carbon dioxide qualifies as a pollutant and is subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. In June 2012, the New York Times reported:

"A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that heat-trapping gases from industry and vehicles endanger public health, dealing a decisive blow to companies and states that had sued to block agency rules... The judges unanimously dismissed arguments from industry that the science of global warming was not well supported and that the agency had based its judgment on unreliable studies. "This is how science works," they wrote. "The E.P.A. is not required to reprove the existence of the atom every time it approaches a scientific question."

5. Then there's the United Nations, where work at the IPCC goes merrily along. We read on their home page that "[p]reparations for Assessment Report 5 enter final stage."

Over at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change webpage, we learn that Bonn, Germany is preparing for the "second session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP 2)" later this month. The Framework Convention announces that another country "deposited its instrument of accession to the Kyoto Protocol" -- namely, that massive carbon-based economy of..Afghanistan:

"The Kyoto Protocol will enter into force for Afghanistan on 23 June 2013. This brings the total number of States and regional economic integration organizations that have deposited instruments of ratifications/accessions/approvals/acceptances to 192."

Almost all of the 193 members of the United Nations, including North Korea and Somalia, have signed on -- with the notable exception of Canada (Go Canada!), which renounced the treaty in 2005. One state has signed but does not intend to ratify: the United States.

6. In the federal government, we have Barack Obama community-organizing an army of unelected bureaucrats in the EPA and various agencies, encouraging extra-legislative rulemaking.

An article in Forbes in 2011 reports: "According to the GAO, annual federal climate spending has increased from $4.6 billion in 2003 to $8.8 billion in 2010, amounting to $106.7 billion over that period."

7. State and local government: Two years ago, I posted an article on AT on "Global Warming Alarmism's Long March through State and Local Institutions":

"State climate legislation is not limited to the bluest states. A 2009 report from the [Pew Center for Climate and Energy Solutions] lists 36 states with State Climate Action Plans [in 2013, two more states have climate plans "in progress."] Thirty states have mandatory Renewable Portfolio Standards requiring a percentage (on average 20%) of electricity to be supplied by renewable sources. Five more states have RPS "goals." States without an official Climate Plan are sure to have numerous climate programs. Alaska has a Climate Change Sub-Cabinet position in former Governor Palin's office. Red state, oil-rich Texas is home to the Texas Climate Initiative, the Texas Emissions Reduction Plan, and the Texas State Energy Conservation Office. The Mayor of San Antonio is pushing a green jobs initiative. Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston are all members of Clean Cities Coalitions, and not surprisingly, Austin has its own Climate Protection Program, whose goal is "to make Austin the leading city in the nation in the fight against climate change."

Rather than backing off, states are upping the ante. California recently pushed ahead suicidal mandates that require 33% of electricity to be renewable, three-quarters of which must be generated in the state.

International organizations like ICLEI -- Local Governments for Sustainability -- continue to do their work year after year.

8. The foundation world, including the Pew Charitable Trusts, overwhelmingly supports the warmist cause, with huge sums in funding for lobbying and research (that starts with AGW as an assumption rather than a hypothesis).

In sum, aside from the media, the U.N., federal, state and local governments, the U.S. population, charitable foundations, the Supreme Court, and federal courts, we're winning the battle. And I never got around to universities and schools, popular culture...

At least the House of Representatives doesn't appear to be going wobbly.

SOURCE

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

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

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



15 April, 2013

A global warming sucker on Daily Kos

Below are a few excerpts from an article headed "Michael Mann is a Modern Hero and we need to acknowledge that!". The author appears to be an (uncapitalized) don mikulecky. He sounds just like the old Soviet admirers I used to know in the days of the USSR. Like the old Communists, he knows the truth but refuses to believe it -- as you will see from the excerpt below. He quotes an accurate summary of how Mann has been criticized but does he show where the criticisms are wrong on the facts? Not at all. His only answer is to brand it all as "lies" and invoke a conspiracy theory.

And he doesn't even know his own case well. His point No. 1 below was contradicted in the latest attempt (by Marcott et al.) to resurrect the hockey stick. I quote from the Marcott paper: "Current global temperatures of the past decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of the Holocene temperature history". In other words, the temperature now is COOLER than it has been.

What a pathetic old thicko don is! He has just read Michael Mann's self-serving book and swallowed it whole!

You can google your heart out and you will find garbage like this

First, I would like to summarize some of the recent developments in the controversy over whether or not humans have created a climate catastrophe. One of the key aspects that the United Nations, environmental groups and the media have promoted as the “smoking gun” of proof of catastrophic global warming is the so-called ‘hockey stick’ temperature graph by climate scientist Michael Mann and his colleagues. This graph purported to show that temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere remained relatively stable over 900 years, then spiked upward in the 20th century presumably due to human activity. Mann, who also co-publishes a global warming propaganda blog reportedly set up with the help of an environmental group, had his “Hockey Stick” come under severe scrutiny. The “hockey stick” was completely and thoroughly broken once and for all in 2006. Several years ago, two Canadian researchers tore apart the statistical foundation for the hockey stick. In 2006, both the National Academy of Sciences and an independent researcher further refuted the foundation of the “hockey stick.”

This is but one example of the lies and deceit out there on the web. These blogs and postings are part of a coordinated effort financed by the oils and coal industries, among others, linked into a right wing dominated set of publications and news channels.
Mann describes the way they work. It is something that makes the Nazi propaganda machine look primitive. To counter this, without the massive amounts of funding the deniers have, Mann created RealClimate, a blog where rapid responses to the lies and organized attacks could be countered.

Two things we know with extremely high confidence:

1. Recent warming is unprecedented in magnitude and speed and cause (so the temperature history looks like a Hockey Stick).

2. Michael Mann, the lead author on the original Hockey Stick paper, is one of the nation’s top climatologists and a source of first-rate analysis.

We know these things because both the Hockey Stick and Mann have been independently investigated and vindicated more times than any other facet of climate science or any other climate scientist.

SOURCE





The Greenies even misrepresented Carson

Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace but now much more skeptical, offers the following quote from his book:

"And it turns out that right from the start, extremist interpretations of Rachel Carson’s writings from the early 1960s were responsible for these millions of unnecessary deaths. On page 12 of Silent Spring, she states clearly, “It is not my contention that chemical insecticides should never be used.” Rather she argued against their “indiscriminate” and “unchecked” use. This was reasonable seeing that at the time thousands of tons of DDT were being aerially sprayed on millions of acres of farmland, with little regard for their impact on water, wildlife, or even non-target insects. It was not Rachel Carson who was unreasonable, but rather the extremists who used her writings to further a zero-tolerance agenda in their efforts to obtain political power on the back of what should have been a more sensible, balanced environmental and health agenda.

If you search the Internet for “Rachel Carson, malaria,” you will find hundreds of recent websites accusing her of genocide and mass murder and comparing her to Hitler and Stalin. I’m thankful she is not alive to see this undeservedly harsh backlash. I hope her descendants and friends have thick skins."

Via email




A Greenie lie from Australia

Opposition to the proposed natural gas processing hub near James Price Point in Northern West Australia, was NOT widespread in the area concerned.

A DAY after Woodside's decision to abandon its $40 billion Kimberley gas plan and a month after Colin Barnett's emphatic win in the west, a key tenet of an extraordinary environmental campaign can be exposed for what it always was - a great Green lie.

The battle over Woodside's facility at James Price Point was turned into middle Australia's cause celebre by rock stars and Green royalty such as Missy Higgins, John Butler and Bob Brown.

While environmentalists will today be celebrating news that Woodside has all but walked away from the proposal, they can't escape the election result that should finally kill the false notion that the majority of Kimberley residents - including thousands of indigenous Australians - did not want the project to go ahead.

Consider this: in the lead-up to the March 9 election the Greens threw everything they had at the remote seat vacated by Labor's retiring Carol Martin, the first indigenous woman to be elected to an Australian parliament.

Martin, along with the Kimberley Land Council, the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Cultural Centre, and the Kimberley Language and Resource Centre, which represents the 29 tribal groups across the region, backed the project because they believed it would break the cycle of indigenous welfare dependency, particularly in tourist town Broome, and create jobs.

Year after year organisations and identities such as Environs Kimberley, WWF Australia, the Wilderness Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation claimed the majority of locals did not want the project in their backyard (despite it being 60km north of Broome) and that the original consenting vote among traditional owners was somehow corrupt. However, three of the four parties - the Liberals, the Nationals and Labor - supported James Price Point. The Greens, standing alone, made no apologies for their stance.

Liberal Jenny Bloom picked up 25.7 per cent of the primary vote, Michele Pucci of the Nationals 18.4 per cent, Labor's Josie Farrer 26.7 per cent and the Greens' Chris Maher secured 23.5 per cent. So seven out of 10 people eligible to vote supported a party that wanted the project to go ahead. That is about as comprehensive a vote of support as any proponent of the development could wish for.

The green rhetoric that worked so effectively in the faraway east had the complete opposite effect closer to the action in the west.

According to Newspoll, Green support slowly evaporated, from 12 to 8 per cent, as their Kimberley campaign evolved in the six months to March. On election day they were punished and now hold just one (upper house) seat in the WA parliament, down from five a few years ago.

While Woodside says the green campaign had little to do with its latest announcement, it's hard not to think that in some way it did.

As for the Greens, they must decide whether their role was worth their current political irrelevancy. And the wishes of the local indigenous population for a brighter future have again been shattered.

SOURCE




Wood heater link to heart, lung diseases

But it's "sustainable"

Hundreds of thousands of Australians are endangering their health by the regular use of wood heaters at home.

About 1 million homes regularly use wood-burning heaters, despite links to heart and lung disease. Health and environment experts are calling on the federal government to better regulate their use.

In a submission to a Senate inquiry into the impact of air quality on health, a Launceston lung specialist, James Markos, said there was no safe threshold for the fine particle pollution that resulted from wood-burning heaters, just as there was no safe threshold for exposure to tobacco smoke.

Along with irritating existing conditions such as asthma and emphysema, studies had found that prolonged exposure to wood smoke was an "important environmental risk factor" in fatal heart or lung disease or lung cancer, he said.

At particular risk were those with lung disease, children, older people and those who lived in valleys, where smoke could get trapped.

The inquiry, which holds its first hearing on Tuesday, comes as the Council of Australian Governments environment council released a discussion paper on national action to reduce emissions from wood heaters.

According to the paper, wood heater emissions are a "significant" contributor to particle pollution in Australia during winter. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has found 10 per cent of homes used wood heaters as the main source of heat. This adds up to about 1.1 million wood heaters around the country, with about 25,000 new ones sold each year.

While state governments and local councils have introduced schemes to reduce wood heater emissions and a review of the Australian standards for emissions is now under way, an Edith Cowan University adjunct professor, John Todd, has told the inquiry a national taskforce was needed.

The environment consultant argued that there had been little change in wood heater technology for 30 years, and the government should invest in research to produce cleaner-burning heaters. "This is a national problem," Dr Todd said.

The Australian Medical Association said the "big issue" was that the exact impact of wood smoke on health was not being measured. Its president, Steve Hambleton, said that even though average air quality was monitored in Australia, it needed to be checked in specific pockets.

The Australian Home Heating Association already has a proposal to change the national standard for wood heaters, to reduce the particulate matter per kilogram of wood burnt, from 4 grams to 2.5 grams. General manager Demi Brown said owners could also minimise smoke if they used their heaters correctly.

Ms Brown said that governments needed to better enforce compliance standards for wood heaters. She said her organisation had notified state environmental protection authorities several times about heaters for sale that were not certified, or that differed from their certified design. They received no reply or follow-up, she said.

But she noted that wood heating emitted fewer greenhouse gases than other forms of home heating, and provided a warmth no other energy source could rival.

Parliamentary secretary for sustainability Amanda Rishworth said the government was participating in the inquiry and would respond to its findings.

SOURCE






'Trust Us, Skeptics Are Crooks'

By Russell Cook

One of the most overlooked aspects of the anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming (AGW) issue is the way it defends its science conclusions by saying nobody offers valid scientific critiques. The science is settled.

Anyone suggesting otherwise is branded an anti-science heretic, with the mere mention of the words "skeptic climate scientists" bringing on withering accusations about skeptics being paid by the fossil fuel industry to lie about the issue.

Notice the problem there? We have an unsupported assertion about settled science, and adjectives about skeptics that are impossible to misinterpret -- "invalid," "anti-science," "heretic," "corrupt," "liar."

This fault becomes impossible to miss in an analogy any ordinary citizen can understand:

Imagine yourself at an informal car show, where you stop alongside another fellow to admire a pretty blue '80s-era sports car. The owner sees your interest and exclaims, "This is an extremely rare 1983 Corvette. You probably won't see any others in your lifetime." But the other fellow scoffs, "This is probably no older than an '84 model. GM made over 50,000 of 'em that year. There's plenty of discussion among auto experts about this."

Corvette owner's option #1 reply: "Don't listen to this guy. He worked at the Dodge trucks division in the late 1960s, he knows nothing about Chevys, he hasn't written any articles in Chevy or Corvette magazines, and in fact, he belongs to groups associated with people who advocate new technology over preserving automotive cultural icons. He's an anti-history nut who would wipe out every junkyard on the planet. Look at the organizations he's associated with, which get money from new-tech industries. They channel money to people like him so he can spew anti-automotive history propaganda! Despite what he says, every car collector organization in the country agrees that any 1983 Corvette is extremely rare, and they are all unanimous on our need to rise up and protect our history against these deniers of our heritage! We need to have a national discussion on preserving our history, and anyone who doesn't agree with this is an ignorant anti-history zealot who'd scrap any car more than ten years old!"

Option #2: "I understand the gentleman's assumption. GM made only 43 of these; supposedly all were scrapped after being officially used only by the factory. It's said that the only 1983 unit in existence is at the National Corvette Museum, which had been hidden for years, but I have verified information to prove that this was a second hidden one, and I will be more than glad to compare notes with this gentleman in order to establish this one as genuine. And I openly invite anyone else to prove me wrong, because I want to be absolutely certain that what I claim is correct beyond a shadow of a doubt."

Swap out the Corvette in this situation for man-caused global warming, swap the doubter for skeptic climate scientists, swap the owner for AGW promoters, and swap yourself into the shoes of the bystander listening to the #1 reply.

Your automatic reaction should be, "Wait a minute. That other fellow said your car is probably not a 1983. You never disputed what he said. Why did you respond with this diatribe?"

That reaction has been missing from the global warming issue. Almost from the inception of the issue, it has been suggested the matter was closed and that skeptics had questionable motives when they criticized the idea of the phenomenon being largely driven by human-induced greenhouse gases.

A particular phrase from physicist John Droz's recent Science Under Assault presentation to North Carolina legislators succinctly captures the problem. To fully comprehend the science of anything we see, we must understand that "real science is about adjudicating the facts, not casting aspersions on the source."

As common citizens without science expertise, the majority of us are forced to leave the debate over the actual causes of global warming to the scientists. But we can participate in another process -- namely, finding out for ourselves whether the narratives about the issue and its scientists ring true. Examples include whether a commonly heard description about skeptics being "climate deniers" is true, when elemental examinations of skeptic reports indicate that it's more accurate to say they dispute that the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has conclusively made the case for human-induced greenhouse gases being the primary driver of global warming.

Thus, what explains the "denier" label when the mere presence of some degree of global warming is not being disputed by the skeptics?

Worse, there is the accusation about skeptic scientists being crooks.

In the time between 1991 and late 1995, a few book references and magazine/newspaper articles suggested that skeptic scientists were out to "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)" at the behest of the coal industry, supposedly proven by a leaked memo with that implied exact instruction.

Then ex-Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan publicly re-emerged in December 1995, more or less simultaneously with his infamous Harper's magazine "The Heat Is On" article, and in an NPR "Living on Earth" radio show interview. In the latter, he reworded the memo phrase as "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact." Each event is a case study on mimicking the "Corvette owner's option #1 reply" tactic above.

From that point forward, luminaries such as Al Gore credited Gelbspan as a Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist who discovered and exclusively exposed the "reposition global warming" memo and other associated leaked memos, which were "evidence" of a fossil fuel industry disinformation campaign reminiscent of the way the tobacco industry employed "shill experts" to confuse the public about the hazards of cigarette smoking. However, detailed examination of publicly available information instead points out the following: others wrote briefly about the memos before Gelbspan did, including Gore; the Pulitzer organization does not recognize Gelbspan as a Pulitzer winner; in 1995 he hadn't been working as a journalist for years; and when the otherwise hard-to-find memos are read in their full context, they appear to be nothing more than inter-office guidelines for conducting a pilot project ad campaign.

One more critical point: nobody corroborates the accusation that Gelbspan began to make famous back in late 1995; scores of people only repeat it.

For an issue supposedly rooted in pure science, it's hard to overlook how promoters of man-caused global warming have every appearance of being not only anti-intellectual, but also blatantly anti-science when they want us to unquestioningly ignore an entire side of the issue based on a yet to be proven accusation that skeptic climate scientists are corrupted by industry funding.

The elemental question to be asked is, if the media and the public relied on this accusation as an excuse to dismiss skeptics out of hand for nearly twenty years when it was never a valid excuse from the start, how long will this tactic be used before it ends up collapsing the entire global warming ideology?

SOURCE





EcoFascist ignores the facts

As even Pachauri and Hansen agree, there has been no global warming for around 17 years -- so the various events our mini-Hitler invokes CANNOT be due to warming. But what does he care about that? What he wants is to "steamroll" people

To paraphrase Hemingway, climate change first comes gradually and then all at once. Now that the negative impacts of changing climate have become undeniable, there is also a dawning realization that—at this point—climate change is unstoppable. This puts into wistful perspective the developing consensus that we should do something about it. Witness Obama’s bold statement in the State of the Union Address that he is prepared to use executive powers if Congress doesn’t act. A cautious politician, it’s doubtful that he would have been so bold unless he felt that he had the public’s backing. And it’s great—except it’s too late. We’re in for it, and the rash of extreme weather events is giving us a taste of what “it” might be.
Superstorm Sandy

The time to act was at least 25 years ago—back when George H.W. Bush promised to take action (he deep sixed that promise almost immediately after his inauguration). Given the lag in the climate system, the extreme floods, droughts, storms, storm surges, and tornado swarms are partly a response to greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere of past years that we have since exceeded. The accelerating release of the greenhouse methane—the crystal meth of global warming—from the melting permafrost in the warming Arctic will continue regardless of whatever actions the developed nations agree to take in the coming years. It’s quixotic to think that humanity can take any action to reverse the overtaxing of the oceans’ ability to absorb CO2 (evidenced by the seas’ increasing acidity) on any timeframe meaningful to those living today.

The most unsettling thing about the accelerating pace of extreme weather events is that they may signal that even as the momentum in the rise of CO2 makes it difficult to reverse the cause of climate change, we are entering a new period in which change itself comes ever more rapidly. The retreat of the Arctic sea ice shows us how this works. The white surface of sea ice reflects about eight times the heat of open water. So, as the ice retreats, heat that previously was reflected from the surface and trapped below the ice is now absorbed and released, vastly amplifying the pace of change.

So how should we respond? Most obviously, we should stop making things worse. Tax penalties, tax credits, and import tariffs can nudge consumers, producers, and exporters towards reducing emissions without wasting more years on fruitless international negotiations or creating cumbersome new bureaucracies.

Most importantly, we need leaders with the courage to steamroll the deniers and the vested interests.

More HERE

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

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

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



14 April, 2013

Sweeping definition of "pollutant" used by EPA to attack small gold miners in Idaho

As many of you are already aware, the EPA has made notice they will be enforcing their NPDES (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System [AKA waste or discharge]) permit here in Idaho specifically targeting gold miners who use small suction dredges. This permit has been on the books since 1972.

This permit was originally drawn to regulate "Those who would introduce a pollutant into a river". It was drawn specifically for sewer treatment plants, fish cannery and such.

A few years back a conservation group argued sediment is a pollutant and although it is still being argued in courts whether a small dredge "introduces anything" (we dredgers pick it up and put it down), legally, the EPA is assuming we introduce a pollutant because, "There is no law which says we don't". (This was one of the opening introductory lines by Tracy DeGerring [EPA Permit Authorizations]) while reading the introductory overview during the recent EPA webcast April, 9 2013).

So here we are. Several streams closed and/or reduced for dredging including the Lovely Salmon River from Long Tom Bar (end of the road) to Hammer Creek near Whitebird. The rest of the Salmon and its tributaries have been closed for years due to Wilderness and other worthy reasons.

What's the problem? The problem is it is a bad idea and is not legal. Yes the EPA can and will legally enforce this. But to do so for one "violator" and not another (potentially worse) violator falls into discrimination, nepotism, and favoritism. How?? Because it would be illegal to enforce upon one group while ignoring other violators. I guarantee, this likely means you if you use the Salmon. I spoke with Tracy DeGering about the accuracy of my interpretation and she confirmed the following to be true.

On some rivers maximums for sediment and/or pollution discharge have been legally defined. On the Salmon there is NONE allowed without a EPA NPDES permit.

Do you own or operate a jet boat? The sediment your wake washes from the beach as you pass is regulated by this permit and if you do not have one you are not legal. Not only are you required to have it, it is not available to you, but the fines are.

Do you fish? Have you ever lost a piece of lead in the Salmon? As a scuba diver I must say there is an alarming amount of lead on the floor of the river! I deter. You are a violator. You have just INTRODUCED A POLLUTANT (LEAD) into the Salmon which is well outlined by the EPA as not legal on the ENTIRE length of the Salmon from its source to its mouth.

And the biggest violator! All of us for peeing in the river! Urine is Sewage, a pollutant. FYI it is NOT sterile and IS full of pharmaceuticals, phosphates, hormones, nitrogen, bacteria's and sometimes disease. The USFS policy stating dilution is the solution is a large violation of EPA policy. (Boy, isn't overlapping government fun!) About 10,000 users float the Middle Fork of the Salmon and another 10,000 the Salmon through the Frank Church Wilderness. They typically average 6 day trips. This is 60,000 user days on these two sections alone mostly in four months (the lowest, clearest water which does matter to the EPA, it is the most difficult period to meet compliance). A busy Saturday in August will host 1,500 great people floating the one day section at Riggins. These folks all introduce urine into the Salmon which is defined as a pollutant and therefore requires a permit (which is not available) Penalty for non compliance $16,000.00/day minimum to $37,500.00 maximum. . And the best part, not just EPA can enforce. Any citizen can sue any violator. 'Ain't that great!

If you rinse the sand off your feet before entering your raft, or rinse the boat at the end of the day....Violation!

We (small suction dredgers) must, and do, comply with regulations written by Idaho Department of Water Resources, Marine Fisheries, Army Corp of Engineers, Idaho Dept of Lands, United States Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, The Idaho Fish and game, and more. Then, IF, we comply with ALL of the over lapping government, only then, can we dredge in specifically defined areas. And that's OK by me! But by introducing the enforcement of this EPA permit, it is the end of my livelihood, and dredging on the Salmon, and the end of an era where free thinkers and risk takers had a shot at a better life, literally a pot of gold.

I Love Riggins and Support Commerce AND ENVIRONMENT. I hate condescending hypocrisy, and multi-layer over lapping bureaucracy. I am not asking for crazy regulations on the groups mentioned. I AM the groups mentioned! I am asking PLEASE, EVERYONE, consider what the impact of this permit has on every river user including you.

Travis Hollon stated it well. "The Indians would have survived had they banded together. But when the Calvary overthrew one tribe, the neighboring tribe said, "Good riddance, we've been fighting with those guys for a hundred years"". They simply didn't realize they were next...and so on, and so it goes.

Via email




Exhibitionists

The Leftist need for attention really is a pain

From living in trees for months on end to lying in front of bulldozers, eco-activists are notorious for finding attention-grabbing ways of getting their message across.

But members of the environmentalist group F*** For Forest have taken green campaigning to new - and obscene - extremes, by using porn to raise money for the world's threatened rainforests.

The Norwegian non-profit organisation charges subscribers £10 per month to view footage of staff members and volunteers having sex on its website, then puts the proceeds towards rainforest conservation projects in South America.

The group say the money they make goes directly to eco-projects and cuts out middle-men

Founded in 2004 by Tommy Hol Ellingsen and his Swedish partner Leona Johansson, FFF is the subject of a new documentary by Michal Marczak, who followed the group's exhibitionist members as they journey to the Amazon rainforest to work with a threatened Peruvian tribe.

Hol Ellingsen told the Guardian he saw no reason why sex and sexual imagery should not be used to promote good causes.

'The human body is considered more offensive and threatening than most other things in the industrial world, like cars, but I don't see the naked body as a threat to the morals or values of modern society,' he said.

The group's founder said he saw no reason why sex and sexual imagery should not be used to promote good causes

'Why we are destroying the planet may be somehow connected to the values modern humans have created for themselves.'

Mr Marczak's documentary, also named F*** For Forest, documents the group's day to day existence in Berlin, where they can be seen inviting strangers to contribute to the website - as well as producing some of their own material.

It then follows them as they meet the Peruvian tribe - an encounter that is understood to yield less than successful results.

FFF are said to be disappointed at their portrayal in the documentary, arguing that the film-makers 'manipulated' the situation by faciliating the meeting with that particular tribe.

FFF estimates it has raised approximately 100,000 euro, or £85,000, per year since it was established in 2004

Mr Marczak has admitted he set up the expedition captured in his film, but insists he did not set out to prejudice viewers against the group.

FFF estimates it has raised approximately 100,000 euro, or £85,000, per year since it was established in 2004 - cash it has ploughed into buying land and promoting indigenous lifestyles in South America.

Mr Marczak told the Guardian that the group's methods, while bizarre, were in fact relatively effective compared to some other large-scale NGOs who arrive in the Amazon with western money, the bulk of which gets lost to middle-men.

He said FFF - in the sense that they give money directly to small scale eco projects - are 'doing it the right way'.

The documentary F*** For Forest will be in UK cinemas from April 19.

SOURCE





EPA nominee promoted questionable coolant made by company with Obama ties

Gina McCarthy, President Obama’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, faces some tough questions Thursday morning at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. One of those is why she championed an “ozone-friendly” refrigerant that has proved to be less than friendly to both the environment and humans.

In 2011, McCarthy, then assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, approved the use of HFO-1234yf, hailing it as a life-saving and environmentally sound chemical for use in cars’ air conditioning systems. The EPA also offered incentives for automakers using the refrigerant, which was developed by Honeywell and DuPont.

“This new chemical helps fight climate change and ozone depletion,” said McCarthy at the time. “It is homegrown innovative solutions like this that save lives and strengthen our economy.”

But tests by Mercedes-Benz engineers last year found that when HFO-1234yf came in contact with a car’s hot engine, it burst into flames. As it burned, it emitted hydrogen fluoride, “a chemical far more deadly to humans than hydrogen cyanide, emitted in such amounts that it turned the windshield white as it began to eat into the glass,” according to Americans for Limited Government.

When vented into the air the substance also degrades to trifluoroacetic acid, which can be harmful to plants.

Mercedes-Benz subsequently banned the refrigerant and recalled the cars that already had it installed. BMW followed, And in March, Volkswagen also said it will stop using it, according to AutoBlog Green.

Not only is the refrigerant flammable and toxic when burned, it doesn’t strengthen the U.S. economy, ALG said. The compound is produced in China and Japan, and U.S. plants that produce the current industry standard refrigerant can’t be retrofitted to make it.

Honeywell CEO Dave Cote lobbied Congress on hydrofluorocarbons for two years, according to ALG, until the EPA approved his company’s refrigerant. He has also been an outspoken supporter of President Obama and his 2009 stimulus package.

As Obama’s nominee for EPA administrator, McCarthy’s role in approving an apparently unsafe and unprofitable refrigerant deserves a closer look.

SOURCE




EU's chief science advisor gives shale gas go-ahead

The EU’s chief scientific advisor has said that evidence allows the go-ahead for extracting shale gas, the energy source at the centre of a European policy tug-of-war.

The EU executive launched a green paper on 27 March, setting out Europe's energy and climate aims for 2030, with Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger taking a favourable position on shale gas.

"I am in favour of producing shale gas, particularly for safety reasons, and to reduce gas prices," he said. "In the United States, which is a big producer of shale gas, the price of gas is four times less than in Europe."

Shale gas has triggered an industrial revival in the United States, which the International Energy Agency expects to become almost self-sufficient in oil and gas by 2035.

But crippling production costs, exploration closures, and government-level environmental concerns have seen the industry’s expansion in Europe waver.

EU climate chief circumspect on shale

Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard has adopted a less favourable tone on shale gas, believing its extraction in Europe bears little comparison with the United States.

“We do not expect that it will be so easy in Europe: geological conditions are different, and so are environmental rules and the activity of soils,” she told reporters at the launch of the Commission green paper last month.

But Anne Glover, the chief scientific adviser to Commission President José Manuel Barroso, contradicted this view and gave a scientific green light to shale.

Speaking at a debate on science and policy-making in Brussels on 9 April, she said: “As with all energy production, there will be risks involved whether that is wind or coal power,” Glover told the audience at the debate, organised by the European Policy Centre, a think tank.

“We should not go into a denial phase. From my point of view the evidence will allow us to go ahead [with shale production]. But in terms of extraction and production there are non-scientific issues to be debated,” Glover said.

Europe 'in the denial phase'

António Fernando Correia de Campos, the Portuguese MEP who chairs the Parliament’s science and technology options assessment panel, also endorsed shale during the debate. Although he said he was not speaking on behalf of any parliamentary group or committee, Correia de Campos said Europe was “in the denial phase” on shale gas.

He said it was clear that within five years Europe would be importing shale gas from the US because it cost a quarter to a fifth of current European gas imports. “We are basing our opinion on the denial paradigm, which is one step behind the precautionary principle,” Correia de Campos said.

Member states remain divided on their approach to shale. Last October, British Chancellor George Osborne announced potential tax breaks for domestic shale. The same month Poland declared its push for the gas, saying it would invest some €12.5 million to develop exploration by 2020.

But large-scale production has proved difficult, with European governments and major energy companies recently suspending or halting exploration, and France has imposed a moratorium on shale gas drilling.

SOURCE




"It's for the children"

A classic Leftist claim. Invoking children is supposed to turn off all your critical facilties

A corporate coalition that includes big clothing and food companies says in a new joint statement that confronting global warming is “one of America's greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century.”

They're also offering a warning to climate skeptics.

“We cannot risk our kids’ futures on the false hope that the vast majority of scientists are wrong. But just as America rose to the great challenges of the past and came out stronger than ever, we have to confront this challenge, and we have to win,” states a joint declaration from more than 30 companies.

Companies that signed the new “climate declaration” include Nike, Starbucks, Timberland, L’Oreal, Levi Strauss & Co., Ben & Jerry’s, Eileen Fisher, computer giant Intel, and the Portland Trailblazers basketball team.

The declaration, organized by the sustainable business and investment group Ceres, broadly makes the case that policymakers should take bolder action on climate, arguing, “what made America great was taking a stand” and “seizing opportunities.”

“[I]n doing this right, by saving money when we use less electricity, by saving money to drive a more efficient car, by choosing clean energy, by inventing new technologies that other countries buy, and creating jobs here at home, we will maintain our way of life and remain a true superpower in a competitive world,” it states.

The declaration itself steers clear of policy specifics, but the coalition is calling on Congress to pass climate legislation.

“From droughts that affect cotton crops to Hurricane Sandy, which caused extensive damage to our operations, climate affects all aspects of our business,” said Eileen Fisher, CEO of the apparel company that bears her name. “As a socially and environmentally responsible company, we are trying to affect positive change, but business can't do it alone. We need the support of strong climate legislation.”

A press release accompanying the declaration states, “The signatories ... are calling for Congress to address climate change by promoting clean energy, boosting efficiency and limiting carbon emissions.”

Major climate bills face grim prospects in the current Congress, but President Obama is planning new measures using executive actions, although the White House has not laid out a detailed agenda.

SOURCE




A CORRUPT AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE ORGANIZATION

Three reports below about crookedness at Australia's largest scientific research organization, the CSIRO. The Green/Left have no committment to truth and honesty. "There is no such thing as right and wrong" is their gospel. So they eventually destroy anything they get control of. And given their support for global warming and persecution of any kind of dissent, it is clear that the Green/Left now run the CSIRO. See here and here and here and here and here

CSIRO faked documents, whistleblower tells court

A senior CSIRO manager who blew the whistle on the alleged illegal use of intellectual property by CSIRO was forced out of the country's peak scientific body after senior staff convened "sham" job selection panels and faked an official document in an attempt to mislead him, a court has heard.

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal made a damning assessment of the internal workings of the national science institute and criticised two senior executives for giving unreliable evidence in court. One of those men is group executive Calum Drummond, whose position sits one rung below CSIRO's chief executive.

But despite the tribunal's dramatic castigation, the boss of CSIRO, Megan Clark, told a Senate estimates committee in February there would be no internal investigation of the matter, nor any disciplinary action taken against the two senior staff.

CSIRO's treatment of Martin Williams, a highly successful former business manager, may not have been unique. An investigation by the Herald has found that in some sections of the organisation, bullying is rife. In February, the CSIRO announced an independent inquiry would review claims of bullying and harassment, chaired by the former Commonwealth ombudsman Dennis Pearce.

In the case of Mr Williams, whose job "was to keep scientists out of jail" by ensuring contracts were legally vetted, things began to unravel in mid 2008 when the CSIRO division he worked for merged with two others and he found himself without a position.

But instead of following normal procedures to redeploy Mr Williams - a deputy of the former Textile and Fibre Technology division who brought in more than $53 million of research funding over a decade - senior staff gave him conflicting advice, disregarded company policy and convened "sham" selection panels, the tribunal heard.

In one instance, a senior manager, Damien Thomas, sent an email to Mr Williams that the tribunal's Deputy President James Constance concluded was "deliberately false".

The affair left Mr Williams with a severe mental illness and unable to work: "The bullying completely destroyed my health," Mr Williams said.

In a 10-day hearing last year, his case against the Commonwealth's workplace insurer, Comcare, exposed CSIRO's woeful redundancy process.

Deputy President Constance found the "inconsistent and at times ill-considered" advice given to Mr Williams by senior staff a significant contributor to his illness. He made no findings on the panel selection process.

"I am satisfied that the conflicting advice was a result of insufficient care being taken in the management of Mr Williams' situation or of a deliberate intention to mislead Mr Williams," he said.

He also found Dr Drummond, the former head of the merged division, now group executive of manufacturing, materials and minerals, an unreliable witness.

A spokesman for the CSIRO, Huw Morgan, said the tribunal's findings related to the witnesses' poor memory of the events and were not a reflection of their professional conduct.

Mr Williams' duty to authorise CSIRO partnerships could put him at odds with the organisation's scientists, including several researchers he alleges "fell into contract" with the Victorian government using intellectual property not owned by CSIRO.

Mr Morgan said while a funding proposal was submitted to the government, a partnership was never approved or agreed to.

Mr Williams, who has not been able to work since September 2008, said the CSIRO had transformed from a benevolent organisation into a ruthlessly competitive workplace, that was burdened by pressure to generate income.

"I got nothing. I got worse than nothing."

SOURCE

CSIRO accused of more shabby tactics



In late 2004, Sylwester Chyb was teaching at the prestigious Imperial College in England when the award-winning entomologist was presented with an exciting opportunity - becoming a molecular cell biologist at Australia's peak scientific body.

Urged by CSIRO to accept the position and promised he would lead a team working towards discoveries in the area of his specialty - insect neurobiology - Dr Chyb saw a bright future in Australia.

But within days of uprooting his family in 2005 and moving to Canberra, things began to fall apart. Now the eminent scientist is taking the CSIRO to court, accusing it of bullying, deception and breach of contract. "It was the biggest mistake of my life," Dr Chyb said.

His experience is the latest revelation in a Fairfax Media investigation into the workings of Australia's peak science organisation, which has revealed evidence of serious mismanagement and questionable practices.

There were clear warning signs even as Dr Chyb negotiated his contract. According to his statement of claim, shortly after his final interview, Dr Stephen Trowell, an official in the same division, invited him for a coffee at the CSIRO Discovery Centre at Black Mountain.

"I had never heard of Stephen Trowell, but he claimed to be working in my area," Dr Chyb recalled. "He said, 'Don't worry, if you're unsuccessful, then you can work for me."'

It was only years later Dr Chyb discovered that his appointment had been recommended by external reviewers to the CSIRO to overcome Dr Trowell's perceived shortcomings.

Dr Trowell's comment was troubling because it would have been a significant demotion for the Oxford and Cambridge-educated scientist. After he raised his concerns, the contract Dr Chyb signed had another scientist identified as his line manager. Despite this, Dr Chyb's statement of claim in the Federal Court says that on his first day of work he discovered that Dr Trowell was indeed his boss and would remain so until midway through the following year.

It was a portent of what was to come. He became increasingly upset at what he perceived to be a campaign against him and he contributed to the tension with what he acknowledges was direct language. The funding promised for long-term research into insect chemoreception he says largely never materialised.

In mid-2009 his division bosses refused him permission to accept a publishing deal for a groundbreaking book on the Drosophila, or fruit fly, which is a widely used laboratory model organism. He was not allowed to work on it even in his own time.

In the end it was the breakdown of Dr Chyb's relationship with Dr Trowell that led to his departure. It was only years later that he discovered an external review by international science leaders had made a frank assessment of Dr Trowell's scientific standing.

"The committee considers that although the leader has a track record of patenting and as a CEO of a start-up company … he does not have as much credibility as the committee feels necessary," the document said.

"The addition to this group of Dr S. Chyb, a researcher with a good publication record and interest in insect gustatory receptors is seen as a positive development."

In April 2009 Dr Trowell accused Dr Chyb of intimidating a younger scientist; he was forced to formally apologise a few days later for an email he circulated containing the allegation.

At the end of the year a misconduct investigation was sparked, which led to Dr Chyb's departure. He had been accused of trying to profit from the accommodation allowance CSIRO gave a recruit - he had moved into a studio flat Dr Chyb and his wife owned - but Dr Chyb had expressly sought permission for the transaction. Now CSIRO is relying on this allegation as part of its defence against Dr Chyb's legal claim.

While he was defending that accusation Dr Chyb discovered a discrepancy in the money budgeted for his researcher's relocation on a document which carried his signature. Dr Chyb was sure he had never signed it.

And he was right. An external investigation commissioned by CSIRO found his signature had been electronically forged on to the page.

The investigation against Dr Chyb over the researcher's stay never eventuated. Instead, CSIRO made Dr Chyb's position redundant.

"They painted a picture of no-compromise, blue-sky science," he said. "But [I] ended up working … on very applied projects. There would be no way I would give up my permanent job for that."

Dr Chyb's court hearing is set down for later this year.

SOURCE

Straight out swindle by CSIRO

The CSIRO has duped one of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies into buying anti-counterfeit technology which could be easily compromised - passing off cheap chemicals it had bought from China as a "trade secret" formula.

The Swiss-based multinational Novartis signed up two years ago to use a CSIRO invention it was told would protect its vials of injectible Voltaren from being copied, filled with a placebo and sold by crime syndicates.

Police and drug companies are battling counterfeiters who are selling fake medicines that have killed hundreds of people. Last year Interpol seized 3.75 million units of fake drugs and arrested 80 people.

The invention sold to Novartis to protect against such counterfeit attacks - a microscopic chemical powder painted on the neck of its Voltaren ampoules - was being marketed by DataTrace DNA, a joint venture of CSIRO and DataDot Technology, a publicly listed company.

But a Fairfax investigation has established that CSIRO officials and Datadot executives misled Novartis about the technology in order to close the deal, after receiving explicit internal warnings the Novartis code could be easily duplicated.

Now, hundreds of millions of Voltaren ampoules across the world could carry the easily compromised DataTrace product. The injectible version of the drug is not approved for use in Australia.

Three months before the deal was signed, the scientist working on the technology, Gerry Swiegers, issued a last caution against proceeding. "The code which has been offered to Novartis may not be fit for purpose … because the code material is commercially available from a variety of vendors," Dr Swiegers wrote to DataTrace in March 2010. "If there is a serious counterfeiting threat to the Novartis ampoules, then this code risks being quickly and easily cracked in a counterfeiting attack. Serious questions could then be raised, especially if the successful counterfeiting attack resulted in injury or death."

But the deal went ahead anyway in July 2010. And despite having promised to supply a unique tracer code, DataTrace issued Novartis cheap tracer it had bought in bulk from a Chinese distributor.

The bulk tracer had been earmarked for low-risk applications with no real security concerns. But when DataTrace sold it to Novartis, it said the formula was a trade secret, and Novartis is believed to have been contractually forbidden from trying to identify its make-up.

Asked in general about industry practice, Jeff Conroy, the chief technology officer of Authentix, a rival company, said it was common "to require either a non-disclosure agreement and/or a non-reverse engineering clause when supplying a security material". It would be "very typical" to not disclose the precise material used in the tracer.

Had Novartis reverse-engineered the tracer potentially in breach of its contract, it would have been able to identify its components and check whether the phosphor formula was available elsewhere. In fact, at least two firms were selling the identical material to hundreds of firms around the world.

Damning internal documents seen by Fairfax show DataTrace and some of the most senior officials at the CSIRO knew that Novartis was being misled in a deal believed to be worth $2.5 million.

On August 7, 2009, Greg Twemlow, the DataTrace manager who engineered the deal with Novartis, emailed CSIRO managers Peter Osvath and Geoff Houston with this subject line: "Proposed answer to the question, 'is our Tracer code commercially available'."

"This is how we propose to answer the question if it's posed. We want everyone answering consistently. Answer: The CSIRO will make your Novartis codes using their Trade Secret methods and I'm sure you'll appreciate the importance of secrecy for Novartis and all of our clients. Having said that there may well be a possibility that aspects of the code could be simulated with commercially available products."

But it was much more than a possibility. Mr Twemlow himself confirmed this was the case in a "highly confidential" paper he prepared for a January 2010 DataTrace meeting attended by CSIRO officials. "We currently source end-product, ie we deploy the product as purchased by us for our clients," it said.

A leaked email list from one of the potential suppliers of the phosphor, a British company called Phosphor Tech, "indicates that many hundreds of companies could be buying the same materials we use for Tracers".

"The key question from our clients has generally been, 'Do we make our own Tracers?' Our answer has always been that CSIRO handles this."

Mr Twemlow himself understood the risks, according to internal company correspondence. "Greg, when we talked just before Xmas [2009] you indicated that if we used Chinese lamp phosphors in high security applications, then it would be 'only a matter of time' (your words, not mine) before the system would be copied and compromised," Dr Swiegers wrote in January 2010.

"The lamp phosphors were meant for bulk applications, not high security ones. This is especially significant in pharmaceutical applications where counterfeit pharmaceuticals could have serious safety implications (life-and-death implications)."

Mr Twemlow said on Wednesday he was bound by confidentiality agreements but that "it was a detailed and complex proposal to a large company … I was the sales guy." He said the final decision on the transaction was taken by others." Dr Swiegers, who was retrenched from CSIRO after a bitter falling-out, has since been agitating for reform of the peak scientific body.

Counterfeiting was such a serious commercial and public health risk that Novartis went to extraordinary lengths to ensure DataTrace and CSIRO had security measures in place to prevent the code from being cracked.

In April 2010, Dr Osvath completed a Novartis questionnaire guaranteeing the "protocols" CSIRO would employ "for secure freight logistics … with appropriate security measures".

The next month he sent an email to Mr Twemlow and others regarding an $8000 quote to create a "secure lab" at the organisation's Clayton campus in Melbourne. The money was spent installing a wall and security access readers on the lab doors - features which may have assisted in convincing Novartis that its tracer code could not be compromised.

"I was wondering whether it would also suit DataTrace's purposes, to have signage on the door, identifying the area as a 'DataTrace Lab'," he wrote. "While it will be used for other purposes … it might be useful for you, and not stretching the reality too far."

In fact, a team of auditors from Novartis had already visited Australia to check on the company's claims. In August 2009, the team visited CSIRO's Clayton campus and was given a series of presentations by the company, including one by Dr Osvath on "CSIRO: secure supply and support for DataTrace DNA/Novartis project".

In July 2010 DataTrace announced a five-year deal with an unnamed pharmaceutical company to the stock exchange.

Just three months after the deal was announced to the market, CSIRO sold its 50 per cent stake of the company, worth $1.3 million, for 8.93 per cent of DataTrace's parent company, DataDot Technology.

SOURCE

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

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

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12 April, 2013

Relentless Liars: The Great Green Edifice is Crumbling



By Alan Caruba

The New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club emailed to invite me to attend a “conversation on climate change in a post-Sandy New Jersey” intended to focus on the “impacts of fossil fuel pollution” later this month. “We need to take action to address and prevent the future impacts of climate change. Hurricane Sandy was the latest storm in an increasing trend of more extreme and severe weather.”

There isn’t “an increasing trend of more extreme weather” unless you include the current cooling cycle that has been in effect for the last 17 years, causing longer, more intense winters around the world. I doubt that the Greens can do anything about the Sun which has been in a natural cycle of reduced radiation.

As for hurricanes like Sandy, meteorologists will confirm that on average the U.S. can expect two major storm systems, categories 3 to 5, every three years. In all categories, the average is about five hurricanes that make landfall every three years. So, there is no increasing trend of more extreme weather. There is just the weather.

As far as the Sierra Club and comparable multi-million dollar environmental organizations are concerned, when they say that want to “prevent future impacts of climate change” they are either delusional, thinking that anything can be done to prevent hurricanes, blizzards, and other aspects of the weather or they are talking about imposing a carbon tax on the emissions of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases. Congress has already rejected that.

And it’s not just the Sierra Club. The same day their invitation arrived, Friends of the Earth emailed to say “The Pacific Northwest is currently engulfed in a struggle over the dirty future of coal and coal exports in the U.S. If the biggest coal companies in the world have their way, we could have 140 million tons of coal barreling through Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon each year. That’s up to 60 trains per day in some of our neighborhoods and more than 1,000 ships a year through our sensitive waterways!” Can you say fear-mongering? Lies about coal? And a total ignorance of the value to the economy of its use and export?

The Greens regard anything that would provide energy for any reason to anyone as the enemy.

That is why “a panel of experts will discuss fossil fuel projects in our state, their impacts, and ways to reduce that pollution.” Fuel is not pollution. Fuel is what we use to heat or cool our homes, drive our vehicles, provide electricity, and conduct the business of the nation. The air and water in New Jersey is so clean we actually invite people to live here, start businesses here, and to visit as tourists to enjoy it.

“Cutting greenhouse gas emissions from dirty fuel sources is critical to protecting New Jersey” said the invitation. Carbon dioxide levels have actually been rising. More lies. As James Taylor, the Managing Editor of Environmental & Climate News, noted in March, “New data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise but global temperatures are not following suit. The new data undercut assertions that atmospheric carbon dioxide is causing a global warming crisis.”

Since carbon dioxide is vital to the growth of all vegetation, from your flower garden to the abundance of crops that feed us and all livestock, reducing it is a very bad idea.

Need it be said that the local chapter is also gearing up to oppose a new natural gas pipeline for the state? Think jobs. Think lower energy costs. Now extrapolate that to the Keystone XL pipeline and to other expanded sources of energy and the benefit to the nation’s economy.

The old guard of the environmental movement is passing from the scene and the entire edifice of the global warming hoax is crumbling. Jim Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) since 1981 has announced his retirement. It was Hansen who told a congressional committee in 1988 that the Earth was heating up. That was the same year that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by two United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nation Environmental Program.

Larry Bell, a columnist for Forbes magazine, recently urged the U.S. to cease funding the IPCC along with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. “While the amount we give to the UNFCC and IPCC may seem like a tiny pittance in the realm of government spending largess, it’s important to realize that (the) true costs of that folly amount to countless billions in disastrous policy and regulatory impact.” Together they have received a total average of $10.25 million annually, set to increase in the FY 13 budget request to $13 million. They are a total waste of money, representing the greatest hoax of the modern era and the redistribution of our wealth.

Environmental organizations are all about controlling our lives. In March, a peer-reviewed paper by the American Institute of Biological Sciences titled “Social Norms and Global Environmental Challenges” was published in their annual journal BioScience. “Substantial numbers of people will have to alter their existing behaviors to address this new class of global environmental problems.”

Too many governments around the world, our own and particularly those in Europe, have passed all manner of laws and invested billions in “green energy” projects, only to discover they are a huge waste and that ordinary people have other ideas regarding the technologies that actually do enhance and improve their lives.

Greens are relentless liars and their lies appear daily in our print and broadcast media. Reality, though, is impacting their efforts. Facts are stubborn things.

Greens are far less interested in the environment than they are in imposing restrictions on the use of energy and the general welfare of humanity. It is pure fascism and always was.

SOURCE




Reducing atmospheric CO2 would take centuries anyhow

From Environmental Research Web:

"With a middle-of-the-road scenario for carbon dioxide removal, however, a 20th century-like climate could be restored by the late 24th or early 25th century, MacDougall found. But simulated surface air temperature would still be above the pre-industrial temperature by the end of the 30th century, even for the fastest carbon removal scenario he modelled, as oceans gradually release their stored heat.

"Restoring climate will require removal of more carbon from the atmosphere than was originally emitted by man, MacDougall said. In some scenarios, 115-190% of anthropogenic emissions will need to be sequestered."

SOURCE





Is global warming a hoax? Catholic Online interviews a skeptic

Over the past two weeks, Catholic Online had the opportunity to interview Global Warming skeptic and author, Dr. Mark Hendrickson who is an adjunct faculty member, economist, and fellow for economic and social policy with The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College.

Readers on Catholic Online have been critical of the flurry of articles featuring news about global climate change, mostly authored by myself. I promised readers a little more balance and to interview a climate change skeptic to showcase the other side of the debate.

I came across Dr. Mark Hendrickson, a widely published conservative commentator and writer. His article on Forbes.com, which we republished here, gave me pause and an opportunity to consider some noteworthy arguments against anthropogenic global warming.

Although I remain concerned about the issue as a problem created by poor creation care on the part of humanity, I wholeheartedly agree that we should provide another viewpoint for our reader's discussion and consideration. I will also admit that Dr. Hendrickson makes some points that are worth consideration.

COL: Now Mark, what qualifies you to speak as an expert on Global Warming?

HENDRICKSON: I hesitate to describe myself as an expert, inasmuch as that word might best be reserved for climate scientists. I am, however, comfortable with describing myself as knowledgeable about the subject. I have followed it for over 20 years.

There are similarities between the study of economics and the study of climate change-specifically, the fact that nobody can predict the future, because there are far too many factors for anyone to know, and also due to the constant possibility of X factors (unanticipated events) happening.

I think my training as an economist and a logical thinker enables me to detect at least some fallacies, lapses in logic, or manipulation-in short, I have a pretty well developed crap detector. Certainly, any reasonably intelligent person can detect inconsistencies in arguments. (Perhaps the outstanding example of this: The admission by the late global-warming enthusiast, Stephen Schneider that, throughout history, warm periods PRECEDED rises in atmospheric CO2. We all know that cause cannot follow effect.)

I agree with the climate scientist who described the climate as a "coupled nonlinear, chaotic system"-a fancy way of saying, "unpredictable." That means that I do not hold a position as to whether the world will get warmer or cooler in coming decades, because I don't know-and neither does anyone else.

COL: Global warming, real or a hoax?

HENDRICKSON: If, by global warming, you mean do I think the climate has warmed over the last 100-150 years, the answer is yes. The world emerged from a little ice age in the 19th century. We should be getting warmer now.

Is the theory of man-made global warming a hoax? I think so. Let's say either a hoax or an error. It's a hoax when perpetrated by those who let a political agenda shape science rather than the other way around. Otherwise, I believe it to be an error. A principal reason I make that assertion is because many of the advocates of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory have abandoned their own theory. For years they tried to convince us that the more CO2 humans injected into the atmosphere, the hotter the world would get. Now, after 15 or so years of no warming, they admit that the world could cool for 40-50 years even as total CO2 emissions continue to increase. What may one deduce from this? Answer: At the very least, that other factors outweigh CO2 in terms of impact on the climate, and at most, that CO2 is not a significant factor in climate change.

COL: What about all those graphs showing some degree of climate change? I'm not really talking about the infamous hockey stick, but just the multitude of graphs which reveal some degree of warming. What's the deal with those?

HENDRICKSON: Graphs? They're only as good as the data entered into them. It's the same with computer programs-garbage in garbage out, the oldest principle of computer science. At one point in the 1990s, there were two-dozen major computer programs dedicated to explaining and projecting future climate change, but no two of the 24 computer programs came to the same conclusion. That leaves two possibilities: 23 of the 24 computer programs are wrong, in which case the problem is how do you know which of the 24 to rely upon? Or, they all are wrong. Neither choice is very palatable, nor lends much heft to the arguments of those insisting in AGW.

COL: The satellite data doesn't lie. Images show the Arctic ice cap is shrinking, the Antarctic ice cap is thinning, the tundra is greening, and the temperatures, particularly about the Earth's poles, is warming. Sea level has risen so that coastal communities in Alaska and the Pacific are relocating and locks on the Thames and in the Netherlands must now close more frequently. We have also seen an increase in the occurrence of extreme weather events. Isn't this evidence enough that's something's happening?

HENDRICKSON: Satellite data showed no statistically significant warming in the last two or three decades. Other scientific data show that the Antarctic ice cap is adding 27,000,000,000 tons of ice per year. I believe that the last two or three winters have seen much more ice in the Arctic that in the years immediately prior to that, but it is an essentially irrelevant point. Arctic ice should be of no concern because the Arctic is an open ocean, and according to Archimedes' principle, the water level will be the same whether it is frozen or in liquid form.

During the medieval warm period, which was warmer than today, coastal areas and supposedly climate sensitive places like Greenland were not being inundated.

As for an increase in the occurrence of extreme weather events, that is very much under dispute, what is known as that we are more aware of such events because of increased media coverage and because of increased population density. As for whether there are actually more such events, that is an open question at best.

COL: I read what you wrote about Al Gore's use of Global Warming as his "political hobgoblin." [will provide link]. I'm no fan of Gore and his video didn't convince me of much either. Still, that's a fairly bold statement. Do you have any evidence that shows Gore was deliberately using GW as a hobgoblin to frighten the masses? Right or wrong, could it be he is sincere in his concern?

HENDRICKSON: Whether Mr. Gore is sincere or cynical is something I'm in no position to judge. There can be no doubt though that Mr. Gore has pursued a politically activist agenda designed to channel money into alternative energies in which he has been invested and from which he has profited greatly. In other words, he has a vested financial interest and a conflict of interest in his policy advocacy.

COL: My understanding is that there is a strong consensus among climatologists that global warming is real and that it's a threat. You say this isn't so. Tell me about your figures.

HENDRICKSON: Consensus is a political concept, not a scientific concept. Consensus is not truth. The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine obtained over 30,000 signatures by scientists with advanced degrees urging our government to take no radical actions to combat alleged global warming.

COL: If less than 20 percent of scientists once believed global warming was a threat, what caused all of them to change their mind? New, more accurate data, or something else?

HENDRICKSON: There is a double standard in the media in regard to scientists speaking on the global warming issue. If they are in the private sector, and perhaps have received funding from an energy company, their word is automatically discredited. On the other hand, if their funding depends on federal grants, they are automatically believed.

One phenomenon that has concerned me over the years is that most of the AGW skeptics have been older scientists-those who have retired or are economically independent. In fact, there have been several prominent scientists who, upon resigning from government employment, immediately began to speak out against the AGW theory. Sorry I can't recall the names. One was the first woman to get a doctorate in-mmm, meteorology? That may not be the right discipline.

Where do you get your numbers "proving" or documenting that most scientists now agree with AGW theory???

COL: Let's say there's just no such thing as global warming. The climate is fine. Shouldn't we still practice good stewardship or what I call, creation care? In other words, shouldn't we avoid wonton CO2 emissions and other forms of pollution because it is simply wrong to litter and pollute?

HENDRICKSON: Of course we should practice commonsense stewardship. I disagree, though, with the characterization of CO2 as a pollutant. Oxygen, water, and carbon dioxide (which, being a necessary nutrient of plant life, sits as the base of the human food chain) are the three most essential building blocks of life on earth.

COL: Now, let's say global warming is a real and serious threat. What do we do about it?

HENDRICKSON: Whatever we do, let us not cripple ourselves economically, because at some future time, when a genuine and serious environmental danger arises, we will need every resource at our disposal to cope with such an eventuality. Keep our powder dry and not waste it tilting at windmills.

SOURCE




An argument of desperation: Global warming affects the oceans only

The debate over global warming and climate change has reached a fever pitch in recent years as both climate scientists and their skeptics have tried to prove one side right over the other, although scientific research heavily favors the former. Contention has flared up once again after an article in The Economist noted that over the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface remain flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The skeptics say they had achieved a victory, but climate scientists rebuffed them with new findings that suggest warming is still taking place—just not where everyone thought.

It is true that warming effects have slowed down since 2000 despite an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. But Virginie Guemas of the Catalan Institute of Climate Sciences in Barcelona said on Sunday that it’s because oceans have helped mitigate warming trends. Approximately 30 percent of warming has been shouldered by ocean depths of below 700 meters since 2000, she found, which helps account for the slowdown elsewhere. However, she believes the heat may return to the surface in the next decade. Her findings are supported by a 2012 study and one produced earlier this year that detail the same.

SOURCE




U.S. Government report says don't blame global warming for freak of nature 2012 US drought

Last year's huge drought was a freak of nature that wasn't caused by man-made global warming, a new federal science study finds.

Scientists say the lack of moisture usually pushed up from the Gulf of Mexico was the main reason for the drought in the American heartland.

Thursday's report by dozens of scientists from five different federal agencies looked into why forecasters didn't see the drought coming. The researchers concluded that it was so unusual and unpredictable that it couldn't have been forecast.

"This is one of those events that comes along once every couple hundreds of years," said lead author Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Climate change was not a significant part, if any, of the event."

Researchers focused on six states — Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri and Iowa — but the drought spread much farther and eventually included nearly two-thirds of the Lower 48 states. For the six states, the drought was the worst four-month period for lack of rainfall since records started being kept in 1895, Hoerling said.

He said the jet stream that draws moisture north from the Gulf was stuck unusually north in Canada.

Other scientists have linked recent changes in the jet stream to shrinking Arctic sea ice, but Hoerling and study co-author Richard Seager of Columbia University said those global warming connections are not valid.

Hoerling used computer simulations to see if he could replicate the drought using man-made global warming conditions. He couldn't. So that means it was a random event, he said.

Using similar methods, Hoerling has been able to attribute increasing droughts in the Mediterranean Sea region to climate change and found that greenhouse gases could be linked to a small portion of the 2011 Texas heat wave.

SOURCE





This Week’s Dumbest Global Warming Overreach

It was hot in Washington, D.C. yesterday. Unfortunately, some Democrats couldn’t just sit back and enjoy it. The Hill reports:

"House Democrats on Wednesday pointed to today’s record-setting heat in Washington D.C. as the latest sign that the Earth is warming.

"Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) managed a speech on the House floor in which several Democrats joined to say that Congress needs to find a way forward on climate change in light of the growing number of incidents of extreme weather, which included Hurricane Sandy last year. …

"Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) also cited today’s weather as a bad sign.

“In Memphis, it does occasionally get hot, but it also does in Washington. I think it’s supposed to be 90 today,” Cohen said."

Apparently no one has explained to these Democrats that the law of conservation of energy dictates that if it is unusually warm in one place, it will be unusually cold somewhere else. The warm spot isn’t evidence of global warming, any more than the cold spot is evidence of global cooling. If I sound testy about this, it is because where I live, in a Minneapolis suburb, we got six inches of snow this morning, with more coming down. This is what my yard looks like:



No global warming here. Unfortunately. And it isn’t just Minnesota; it was only 39 degrees in Arlington, Texas yesterday, the coldest temperature ever recorded at the start of a Rangers game.

Back in D.C., the Democrats had the House chamber to themselves as they whined about the heat:

"Blumenthal said he invited House Republicans to join his floor discussion on climate change, but said no Republican accepted."

I suppose that is because the Republicans were sensible enough to enjoy the day by going golfing.

SOURCE

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

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

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11 April, 2013

Warmer summers now? An amusing bit of cherrypicking

Anybody wondering why they went back only 600 years for comparisons? Easy-peasy: They avoid the Medieval Warm Period that way. There's no such thing as an honest Warmist. There probably was once but not in the present era of climate stasis

SUMMERS in the northern hemisphere are now warmer than at any period in six centuries, according to climate research published in the science journal Nature.

Harvard University researchers analysing evidence from Arctic tree rings, ice cores, lake sediments and thermometer records said recent warm temperature extremes in high northern latitudes "are unprecedented in the past 600 years" both for magnitude and frequency.

"The summers of 2005, 2007, 2010 and 2011 were warmer than those of all prior years back to 1400," they reported in the journal published on Wednesday.

"The summer of 2010 was the warmest in the previous 600 years in western Russia and probably the warmest in western Greenland and the Canadian Arctic as well," they said.

"These and other recent extremes greatly exceed those expected from a stationary climate."

SOURCE





Munich Re are liars too

Some excerpts from Pielke Jr.

Last October Munich Re, one of the world's largest reinsurance companies, issued a press release in which they made a remarkable claim about a new study of normalized economic losses related to thunderstorms in the United States:

"In all likelihood, we have to regard this finding as an initial climate-change footprint in our US loss data from the last four decades."

To date no studies of economic losses associated with weather events have successfully identified a signal of human-caused climate change in loss data. This conclusion was underscored by the IPCC which surveyed the literature and concluded in its 2012 Special Report on Extreme Events that "Long-term trends in economic disaster losses adjusted for wealth and population increases have not been attributed to climate change, but a role for climate change has not been excluded."

The claimed discovery was thus of tremendous significance. But fantastic claims before peer review deserve, as Andy Revkin has warned, caution.

Munich Re did prepare a report (which was not made readily available) in conjunction with its press release, but no peer reviewed paper. They later promised that peer reviewed support for the claim would soon be forthcoming:

"[Ernst] Rauch [head of Munich Re's Climate Center] said Munich Re researchers have submitted a paper for peer review that shows how climate change is resulting in intensifying storms in the United States. The forthcoming study, he says, points for one of the first times "toward an attribution of climate change to losses."

This week, the promised study -- Sander et al. 2013, hereafter SEFS13 -- was published in the journal Weather, Climate and Society of the American Meteorological Society.

As one looks a little bit closer at the public representations made by Munich Re about the paper and the paper itself, one quickly finds -- as is all too common in climate science -- that the strong public claims simply cannot be supported by the actual research, and the paper suffers from an obvious fatal error. Let's have a look.

The further one reads into the press release the further it deviates from the claim expressed in its title. The paper says the following about attribution of loss trends:

"[A] high probability is assigned to climatic variations primarily driving the changes in normalized losses since 1970. Due to the chosen methodology, the current study has not been able to conclusively attribute the variability in severe thunderstorm forcing situations and losses to either natural climate variability or anthropogenic climate change."

Got that? The paper says nothing conclusive about attribution. It is not an "initial climate change footprint." It does not support the claim that "climate change effects increasingly influencing US thunderstorm losses."

In fact, the paper says much the opposite: attribution of losses to climate change was not achieved in the paper. Perhaps the media is getting wise to these games, because there has been almost no media coverage of the sensational claim trumpeted in the headline of the press release put out a few days ago -- a claim, which if it were correct, would deserve broad coverage.

But it gets worse.

The paper argues that the causal mechanism leading to greater thunderstorm variability is the frequent claim that it is the consequence of an atmosphere holding more water vapor:

"Trapp et al. (2007, 2009) have found that climate-model-based projections display indications of a regime in which increasing specific humidity (as the main contributor to increasing CAPEml over time) increases the annual frequency of severe thunderstorm environments (defined by the product of CAPEml and DLS) in a transient climate model experiment since 1950."

The paper further explains:

"As a precondition of rising CAPEml, monthly observations of near surface specific humidity during the period 1973–1999 (HadCRUH, Peterson et al. 2011) show a clear increase in the Northern Hemisphere. In eastern North America this increase equals 3.6 (±2.7) %. This was shown to be in coarse statistical agreement with the results from (anthropogenically forced) GCM runs over this period (Willett et al. 2010)."

It is here where the reader of the paper might find themself being taken for a fool.

Willett et al. 2010, the source cited by SEFS13, provides estimates for changes in "near surface specific humidity" for a large number of regions around the world

Eastern North America, which is cited explicitly in SEFS13, is found where you would expect it and is labelled ENA. You might wonder why SEFS13 did not say anything about CNA- Central North America, which is otherwise known as "tornado alley.". I sure did.

You can clearly see that the vast majority of normalized US thunderstorm losses actually occurs in Central North America -- CNA. This conclusion is insensitive to small errors in the mapping of the CNA region onto SEFS13 Figure 1.

So, what do Willetts et al. 2010 actually say about changes in "near surface specific humidity" in the CNA region 1973-1999?

It is not hard to find as it appears in the same table as the ENA data which was reported by SEFS13. In fact, it appears in the row just above. It says that there has been no change in "near surface specific humidity" in Central North America 1973 to 1999. The numbers are 1.9 (±4.1) %. Surprised?

So let's recap:

Munich Re claimed to have discovered the first "climate change footprint" in economic loss data.

That was incorrect.

Munich Re claimed in the headline of the press released announcing SEFS13 that "climate change effects increasingly influencing US thunderstorms."

That turns out not to be supported by the paper, which actually concludes the opposite.

SEFS13 argues a causal mechanism between increasing humidity, thunderstorm variability and by extension, to normalized losses.

The paper fails to report that in the region where most US thunderstorm activity and damage has occurred, the data shows no change in humidity 1973 to 1999 -- undercutting its core argument.

The paper reports data for an accompanying region where there has been an increase in humidity, but very few losses.

Misleading public claims. An over-hyped press release. A paper which neglects to include materially relevant and contradictory information central to its core argument. All in all, just a normal day in climate science!

SOURCE






Greedy green land grabbers

“Clean Development Mechanism” schemes drive out African villagers for “carbon offset” profits

Ron Arnold

On Sunday, February 28, 2010, armed troops evicted villagers in Uganda’s Mubende district, to make way for a tree plantation. The troops were acting on behalf of a British forestry company that claims it fights global warming. The trees will supposedly absorb carbon dioxide, so that carbon-credits can be sold to transnational polluters, to stave off “dangerous manmade climate change and disruption.”

Long-time villagers in thriving communities were beaten by gun-toting soldiers who burned homes, destroyed crops and butchered livestock. Eight-year-old Friday Mukamperezida was sick in bed at home and was burned to death, while his mother was out getting medicine for the boy. Olivia Mukamperezida, the mother, was on her errand when she ran into friends who frantically told her to get home fast. When she got there, the house was sputtering to ashes. “I just cried,” she told a reporter. She buried her son’s bones, but isn’t sure if the grave is still there, now that the forest company planted its trees.

These are among the charges contained in a civil suit filed by 1,489 Mubende claimants in the High Court of Uganda at Nakawa. A report by the British group Oxfam corroborates the claims. The New York Times and other media outlets reported the story.

New Forests Company, the London-based carbon credit seller, denies the claims and says the settlers living in its leased land in the Namwasa and Luwunga Forest Reserves were illegally trespassing transients, who left in a “peaceful” and “voluntary” manner. In 2005, the government of Uganda had granted NFC a 50-year license to grow pine and eucalyptus forests – non-native, water-hungry, invasive species – in three districts of one of the world’s poorest nations, which desperately needs the fees and taxes.

NFC has attracted investment from international banks and private equity funds since 2008. The European Investment Bank (EIB), the EU’s financing institution, has loaned NFC five million Euros ($6.5 million) to expand one of its Ugandan plantations. Oxfam assessed NFC with puzzlement:

“It has economic power, professional expertise, and close political support. It has a hands-on chief executive with local knowledge and ethical credentials. The company and its investors have clear environmental and social standards they commit to uphold, and corporate social responsibility and accountability principles are embedded at the heart of its operations.

“Given all this, how is it possible that thousands of people in affected communities have alleged that land clearances, which have taken place to make way for NFC’s operations in Uganda, have been accompanied by distress and violence, and have left many in a state of poverty?”

NFC posted its response to Oxfam, arguing that the encroachers are “illegally occupying land leased to an independent third party, NFC.” It relies upon an “extensive and exhaustive government-driven authentication process,” which it says confirmed that only 31 families on the Namwasa Reserve, and none in the Luwunga reserve, had legal rights to remain on the land. It insists that it is respecting the rights of these families and that dealing with “illegal” settlers is solely at the discretion of the NFC, which regards the thousands of others who were living on the land as “illegal encroachers” who do not have a legitimate claim to compensation.

The evictions were legal, within the letter of the law, NFC maintains. However, the villagers had won a temporary injunction in 2009, ordering the evictions stopped, though they were given a deadline to vacate company premises under police surveillance. The deadline was February 28, 2010, and NFC enforced it immediately. The horrifying events of that day became part of court filings seeking compensation.

New Forests operates projects in Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and Rwanda, where its combined deals total around 222,000 acres. In its defense, it said it runs education, health and income-generating programs with local communities. In Uganda, it says, it has built school rooms, health clinics, wells and latrines, and runs literacy programs, while out-sourcing some tasks to local businesses.

I asked my young Ugandan friend, Steven Lyasi, to see what he could find out locally. He sent a mountain of news clips showing that New Forests Company enjoys an excellent reputation with the national government, in media and environmental circles, and is backed by deep-pocket investors, including the World Bank. It wants to tap an emerging multibillion-dollar market trading carbon-credits under the Kyoto Protocol and its successors. Some of Al Gore’s millions came from that Enron-like paper “market.” The company says it could earn up to $1.8 million a year.

The Uganda government issued a rebuttal of the Oxfam report, Clarification by Govt of Uganda Regarding the Case Study by OXFAM.
All this is legal, but is it right? Absolutely not, says a growing body of professionals who blame corrupt climate science, avaricious profit seekers, and a soul-less, pitiless bureaucratic machine.

British geographer David Harvey calls the process “accumulation by dispossession,” the result of a Kyoto Protocol program called the “Clean Development Mechanism.” The CDM provides for emissions reduction projects that generate “Certified Emission Reduction” units (CERs), which may be marketed in government-approved emission trading schemes – based on the increasingly dubious assumption that CO2 causes runaway global warming. The CDM legalizes the purchase of CERS by industrialized countries and allows companies to invest in emission reduction projects that are cheapest globally.

But they are cheapest only for the investors and their operations. For the people who live on the land they covet, the price is everything they own and possess. In the private sector this would be called a Ponzi scheme. In government circles it’s called saving the planet. The new critics call it “Green Grabbing.”

This hideous new imperialism has become a global ignominy that thankfully is now being tracked by professionals, who evaluated it last year in the British peer-reviewed Journal of Peasant Studies.

A special issue, “Green Grabbing: A new appropriation of nature?” revealed some of the forces behind green land grabs like those in Uganda. “Things green have become big business.” They require “the construction and perpetuation of a sense of crisis,” the analysts explain. “There would be no carbon-trading without the science-policy discourses that have discerned global warming.”

As the New York Times reported, “Development experts say there is a dark side to some ostensibly ‘green’ market initiatives: the appropriation of resources for biofuels production, carbon offsets, ecotourism and so on can have devastating consequences for local people.”

Melissa Leach, director of Britain’s Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability Center, is one of the three authors of the special issue. She wrote “Green grabbing: the dark side of a green economy,” posted by the Green Economy Coalition. “We are seeing a new kind of colonization,” said Leach. “Small farms and villages that have thrived alongside nature are being replaced by a landscape of grabbed concessions, while people, if they have any rights at all, are being reduced to laborers in ecosystems in which they no longer have any stake.” Or any rights to justice or due process.

She points out how this vulture environmentalism is victimizing developing countries: “Green grabbing involves novel forms of valuation, commodification and markets for pieces and aspects of nature, and an extraordinary new range of actors and alliances. Pension funds and venture capitalists, commodity traders and consultants, GIS service providers and business entrepreneurs, ecotourism companies and the military, green activists and anxious consumers, among others, find once-unlikely common interests.”

Green grabbing is simple greed – rabid, self-righteous green greed. Where’s the justice in that, and why is it immune to the rigid regulation that governments force upon industry and common stock traders? What happened to the environmental credo of making industries pay for all the costs they impose on others?

And yes, Leach said even the military. In Guatemala, she noted, the government has authorized turning the Maya Biosphere Reserve into a “Maya-themed vacationland,” which, she wrote, “will generate ecotourism profits, while conveniently assisting the government's war on drugs and counter-insurgency. In the process, people are being violently excluded.”

I have been to Tikal, where Guatemalan soldiers stopped our expedition bus at the entrance gate, to interrogate each visitor – and sell us little US$10.00 English-language tourist guides, which everyone was prudent enough to purchase.

So not all green grabbing is about “global warming control” – just enough to highlight the perfidy of the whole concept. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels climbed steadily for the past 17 years, but planetary temperatures did not budge. That is sending carbon traders into full panic mode. Billions in paper climate credit fortunes stand to evaporate like Enron stock shares, if the CO2-temperature disconnect continues.

So we get panicky movies, like the current flop “Greedy Lying Bastards,” diverting attention from inconvenient facts and attacking climate change “deniers.” Well, who are the real greedy lying bastards?

I nominate the Greedy Green Land Grabbers.

Via email



Fracking causes as much seismic activity as 'jumping off a ladder': Controversial method for extracting gas is 'extremely unlikely to trigger an earthquake we would feel'

A controversial process used to extract shale gas causes tremors equivalent to someone ‘jumping off a ladder’.

Fracking, which involves blasting underground rock deposits with water and chemicals to release trapped pockets of gas, has been blamed for triggering earthquakes.

But a study has concluded ‘it is extremely unlikely that any of us will ever be able to feel an earthquake caused by fracking’.

After examining hundreds of thousands of gas extraction operations, the scientists found only three instances where resulting shocks could be detected by residents above ground.

In contrast, they found other man-made activities, such as mining and waste-disposal, are much more likely to trigger noticeable seismic activity.

Lead researcher Professor Richard Davies from Durham University’s Energy Institute, said the risk of fracking resulting in seismic activity that could be felt on the surface is ‘not significant’.

‘In almost all cases, the seismic events caused by hydraulic fracturing have been undetectable other than by geoscientists. It is also low compared to other man-made triggers,’ he said.

‘By comparison, most fracking-related events release a negligible amount of energy roughly equivalent to or even less than someone jumping off a ladder onto the floor.’

He added: ‘It is extremely unlikely that any of us will ever be able to feel an earthquake caused by fracking.’

A forthcoming report by the British Geological Survey is expected to announce that shale gas deposits are far larger than previously predicted. Industry experts say we could be sitting on enough gas reserves to supply the nation for more than a century.

David Cameron wants to see Britain at the heart of the ‘shale gas revolution’, and Chancellor George Osborne has pledged to offer lucrative tax breaks and a simplified regulatory regime to the industry in a bid to promote investment.

Fracking was temporarily halted at Britain’s only test drill site in 2011, after two small earthquakes woke some residents in Blackpool – they were 2.3 in magnitude.

Operations were allowed to resume in December after Energy Secretary Ed Davey announced greater restrictions aimed at limiting the likelihood of tremors.

Critics say any shale gas energy boom will scar the countryside and pollute water supplies. Lawrence Carter of Greenpeace said: ‘People’s apprehensions about fracking go well beyond earth tremors. 'Communities are concerned about industrialisation of the English countryside, including noise, increased traffic, falling house prices and environmental damage.’

The Durham team compared data from all earthquakes resulting from human industrial activity since 1929. They found the largest fracking tremor was at Horn River Basin in Canada in 2011 and had a magnitude of 3.8 on the Richter scale.

‘A tremor of 3.8 would feel like a little shudder to most people, like a lorry going down the road or someone jumping off a ladder,’ said Professor Davies.

He added: ‘Earthquakes caused by mining can range from a magnitude of 1.6 to 5.6, reservoir-filling from 2.0 to 7.9 and waste disposal from 2.0 to 5.7.’

A Department of Energy and Climate Change spokesman said: ‘An independent panel of experts commissioned by DECC concluded there was a small risk that fracking could cause relatively minor seismic activity.

'As a result, the Government has set out that any fracking must be carefully monitored and will be stopped at the first sign of seismic activity.’

SOURCE




Europe 'falling behind US and blighted by energy costs'

Europe is falling dangerously far behind the US in productivity growth and is blighted by crippling energy costs, the pan-EU industry federation has warned.

“Europe doesn’t have an energy policy. It has a climate policy,” said Markus Beyrer, head of BusinessEurope.

Mr Beyrer said the US is running away with the shale energy revolution, leaving Europe’s companies in the dust. Spot gas prices are now four to five times higher in Europe, with grim implications for the chemical industry.

“Shale gas is a game-changer and we need to have a discussion based on the evidence, not based on risks,” Mr Beyrer told The Daily Telegraph. France has imposed a moratorium on shale exploration and few countries have yet to take decisive action.

Mr Beyrer said Europe’s carbon trading scheme is a muddle with “mutually distorting objectives” that drive up energy costs without much benefit for the climate. The latest twist is a switch to coal by EU power companies, playing havoc with CO2 goals.

“Nobody is happy. The US and even China are making more progress with renewable targets than we are,” he said.

Equally worrying, he said, is that Europe is slipping further behind in industrial efficiency, chiefly due to rigid labour markets. “Labour productivity in US manufacturing has increased by 1.8pc since the early 2000s, compared with 0.66pc in the Euro Area,” he added.

The transatlantic gap in economic growth reached 2.6pc last year after the eurozone crashed back into recession, the highest since 1993. Citigroup expects the gap to widen further to 3.4pc by 2014 as EMU remains stuck in slump, with extreme levels continuing into the latter part of the decade.

This will have profound compound effects. Euroland’s overall GDP will slip from 78pc of US levels to 66pc by 2025. “We expect very different recovery paths, reflecting differing policy choices,” said the bank.

America’s per capita income will be 9-10pc higher than the 2007 level by 2017; the eurozone’s will be 3-4pc lower, worse than Japan’s Lost Decade.

The problems facing the eurozone were underlined on Tuesday with figures showing that German exports fell in February. Exports fell by 1.5pc compared with January of this year and by 2.8 pc from February 2012, official figures said.

In France, the second biggest eurozone economy, the trade deficit widened as a drop in exports was not made up for by a bigger drop in imports.

SOURCE





The Looming Population SHRINKAGE

A model based on global population data spanning the years from 1900 to 2010 has caused a research team to predict the opposite of what Doomsday Prophets of the 1960s and beyond insisted would happen - the number of people on Earth will stabilize around the middle of the century and perhaps even start to decline.

The results coincide with the United Nation's downward estimates, which claim that by 2100 Earth's population will be 6.2 billion, if low fertility and birth rate continues on its current path, below the 7 billion we are at now.

The numerical model developed by a team from the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and the CEU-San Pablo University seems to confirm the lower estimate, in addition to a standstill and even a slight drop in the number of people on Earth by the mid-21st century. The population prospects between 1950 and 2100 provided by the UN were used to conduct the analysis published in the journal Simulation.

"This is a model that describes the evolution of a two-level system in which there is a probability of passing from one level to another," as explained to SINC by Félix F. Muñoz, UAM researcher and co-author of the project.

The team considered the Earth as a closed and finite system where the migration of people within the system has no impact and where the fundamental principle of the conservation of mass –biomass in this case– and energy is fulfilled.

"Within this general principle, the variables that limit the upper and lower zone of the system's two levels are the birth and mortality rates," Muñoz pointed out and recalled the change that occurred in the ratio between the two variables throughout the last century.

"We started with a general situation where both the birth rate and mortality rate were high, with slow growth favouring the former," he added, "but the mortality rate fell sharply in the second half of the 20th century as a result of advances in healthcare and increased life expectancy and it seemed that the population would grow a lot.

However, the past three decades have also seen a steep drop-off in the number of children being born worldwide."

The model's S-shaped sigmoid curve reflects this situation with an inflection point in the mid-1980s when the speed at which the population is growing starts to slow down until it stabilises around 2050.

The data also reflect the downward trend in the UN's series of prospects. "Overpopulation was a spectre in the 1960s and 70s but historically the UN's low fertility variant forecasts have been fulfilled," Muñoz highlighted.

As recently as 1992 it was predicted that there would be 7.17 billion people on Earth by 2010 instead of the actual 6.8 billion. In fact, the fertility rate has fallen by more than 40% since 1950.

"This work is another aspect to be taken into consideration in the debate, although we do not deal with the significant economic, demographic and political consequences that the stabilisation and aging of the world population could entail," the researcher concluded.

SOURCE

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

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

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10 April, 2013

Was Margaret Thatcher the first climate sceptic?

Margaret Thatcher was the first leader to warn of global warming - but also the first to see the flaws in the climate change orthodoxy

A persistent claim made by believers in man-made global warming – they were at it again last week – is that no politician was more influential in launching the worldwide alarm over climate change than Margaret Thatcher. David Cameron, so the argument runs, is simply following in her footsteps by committing the Tory party to its present belief in the dangers of global warming, and thus showing himself in this respect, if few others, to be a loyal Thatcherite.

The truth behind this story is much more interesting than is generally realised, not least because it has a fascinating twist. Certainly, Mrs Thatcher was the first world leader to voice alarm over global warming, back in 1988, With her scientific background, she had fallen under the spell of Sir Crispin Tickell, then our man at the UN. In the 1970s, he had written a book warning that the world was cooling, but he had since become an ardent convert to the belief that it was warming.

She found equally persuasive the views of a third prominent convert to the cause, Dr John Houghton, then head of the UK Met Office. She backed him in the setting up of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988, and promised the Met Office lavish funding for its Hadley Centre, which she opened in 1990, as a world authority on "human-induced climate change".

In bringing this about, Mrs Thatcher played an important part. It is not widely appreciated, however, that there was a dramatic twist to her story. In 2003, towards the end of her last book, Statecraft, in a passage headed "Hot Air and Global Warming", she issued what amounts to an almost complete recantation of her earlier views.

She voiced precisely the fundamental doubts about the warming scare that have since become familiar to us. Pouring scorn on the "doomsters", she questioned the main scientific assumptions used to drive the scare, from the conviction that the chief force shaping world climate is CO2, rather than natural factors such as solar activity, to exaggerated claims about rising sea levels. She mocked Al Gore and the futility of "costly and economically damaging" schemes to reduce CO2 emissions. She cited the 2.5C rise in temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period as having had almost entirely beneficial effects. She pointed out that the dangers of a world getting colder are far worse than those of a CO2-enriched world growing warmer. She recognised how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, Left-wing political agenda which posed a serious threat to the progress and prosperity of mankind.

In other words, long before it became fashionable, Lady Thatcher was converted to the view of those who, on both scientific and political grounds, are profoundly sceptical of the climate change ideology. Alas, what she set in train earlier continues to exercise its baleful influence to this day. But the fact that she became one of the first and most prominent of "climate sceptics" has been almost entirely buried from view.

SOURCE





Margaret Thatcher: Hot Air And Global Warming

An excerpt from her 2002 book "Statecraft" below:

The doomsters’ favourite subject today is climate change. This has a number of attractions for them. First, the science is extremely obscure so they cannot easily be proved wrong. Second, we all have ideas about the weather: traditionally, the English on first acquaintance talk of little else. Third, since clearly no plan to alter climate could be considered on anything but a global scale, it provides a marvellous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism.

All this suggests a degree of calculation. Yet perhaps that is to miss half the point. Rather, as it was said of Hamlet that there was method in his madness, so one feels that in the case of some of the gloomier alarmists there is a large amount of madness in their method. Indeed, the lack of any sense of proportion is what characterises many pronouncements on the matter by otherwise sensible people. Thus President Clinton on a visit to China, which poses a serious strategic challenge to the US, confided to his host, President Jiang Zemin, that his greatest concern was the prospect that ‘your people may get rich like our people, and instead of riding bicycles, they will drive automobiles, and the increase in greenhouse gases will make the planet more dangerous for all.’

It would, though, be difficult to beat for apocalyptic hyperbole former Vic President Gore. Mr Gore believes: ‘The cleavage in the modern world between mind and body, man and nature, has created a new kind of addiction: I believe that our civilisation is, in effect, addicted to the consumption of the earth itself.’ And he warns: ‘Unless we find a way to dramatically change our civilisation and our way of thinking about the relationship between humankind and the earth, our children will inherit a wasteland.’

But why pick on the Americans? Britain’s then Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, has observed: ‘There is no greater national duty than the defence of our shoreline. But the most immediate threat to it today is the encroaching sea.’ Britain has found, it seems, a worthy successor to King Canute.

The fact that seasoned politicians can say such ridiculous things – and get away with it – illustrates the degree to which the new dogma about climate change has swept through the left-of-centre governing classes. [...]*

SOURCE




Is renewable energy law good for NC? No.

Taylor Smith

One of the most effective ways to reduce the purchasing power of every person and business in North Carolina would be to raise energy costs.

Everyone and everything relies on energy, so artificially increasing the price of electricity automatically reduces the amount of money left over to spend on anything else. Unfortunately, this is exactly what the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) does to N.C. residents.

Passed in August 2007, the RPS requires investor-owned utilities to generate 12.5 percent of their retail electricity sales from renewable energy by 2021. Municipal utilities and cooperatives must meet a target of 10 percent renewables by 2018.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, those renewable but intermittent energy sources, such as wind and solar, are significantly more expensive per kilowatt-hour than conventional sources, and those costs are being passed along to ratepayers.

Supporters say these costs pay for greater environmental protection, but there is little evidence of that. Wind and solar technologies are diffuse, which means harnessing them requires copious amounts of land, resulting in reduction of wildlife habitat, which scientists say is the leading cause of species endangerment.

What about pollution? If there’s one thing you can’t argue against, it’s that renewables are 100 percent pollution-free, right? Wrong. Every second the sun doesn’t shine or a wind turbine doesn’t spin, fossil fuel generators are required to provide electricity instead. Revving fossil fuel generators up and down this way can emit more pollutants than if they were allowed to run more efficiently as the primary power source.

So what are N.C. residents getting in return for their higher costs? Reduced economic competitiveness, less investment, and diminished job growth. The beneficiaries are the companies that produce the renewable electricity.

A report by the John Locke Foundation and Beacon Hill Institute found ratepayers will fork over nearly an additional $2 billion from 2008 through 2021 because of the RPS mandate. This means by 2021 the real disposable income of North Carolinians will shrink by nearly $59 million and more than 3,500 net jobs will be lost.

But far more serious is the matter of who the law hurts most: low-income families and seniors.

Families living on a low income and seniors on a fixed income have the least capacity to spend higher percentages of their income on energy, so they’ll feel the most pain. A repeal of the renewable portfolio standard would provide them much-needed relief.

In some ways, the standard is like a giant, regressive tax increase. And like many tax hikes, the RPS reduces government revenue instead of increasing it. It cuts revenue by reducing growth while placing further strain on government budgets through higher energy costs. That will surely lead to even more tax hikes. The renewable portfolio standard is truly all pain and no gain.

Whether you’re a fiscal conservative, social egalitarian or environmentalist, the renewable portfolio standard is a severe violation of your principles. It’s no surprise that in the past three years legislators in states such as Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan, Montana, and Ohio have introduced bills to repeal the requirements, and several more states are considering reducing or freezing them.

Legislation was filed in North Carolina last month to repeal the standard. With unemployment above 9 percent, North Carolina is in no position to force expensive energy on the state’s hard-pressed consumers. Renewable energy can and should have a chance to develop, but it shouldn’t be done on the backs of the people, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, by mandating the use of higher-cost intermittent energy sources.

SOURCE




Climate change skeptics seize on reports showing temperatures leveling

From Fox News:

Climate change skeptics are doing a bit of gloating following a series of mainstream media reports that acknowledge what those skeptics have long held -- the earth is not warming, at least not in the last 10 years.

"The idea that CO2 is the tail that wags the dog is no longer scientifically tenable," said Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com, a website devoted to countering the prevailing acceptance of man-made global warming.

In recent weeks, Der Spiegel, the Telegraph and the Economist have reported the unexpected stabilizing of global surface temperatures. Even former NASA scientist and outspoken climate change activist James Hansen has acknowledged the 10-year lull.

Morano said: "In the peer-reviewed literature we're finding hundreds of factors influence global temperature, everything from ocean cycles to the tilt of the earth's axis to water vapor, methane, cloud feedback, volcanic dust, all of these factors are coming together. They're now realizing it wasn't the simple story we've been told of your SUV is creating a dangerously warm planet."

Many climate scientists and environmentalists agree with Morano's description of climate complexity, but reject his denials of global warming as a problem.

"This is a highly complex calculation to make in the first place. The short period of time, only 10 years in which the increasing temperature has leveled, really doesn't tell us very much other than the fact that temperatures may still be rising but just not as fast as they were before," said Elgie Holstein, the senior director for strategic planning at the Environmental Defense Fund and a former assistant secretary at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"What's compelling about the climate science," Holstein said, "is that we have literally thousands of the world's leading scientists around the country pretty much saying the same thing about where we're headed, and it's not reassuring."

But the surface temperature stabilization suggests that computer models which predict harsh consequences of global warming may need reassessing.

As The Economist put it on March 30, "It may be that the climate is responding to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in ways that had not been properly understood before. This possibility, if true, could have profound significance both for climate science and for environmental and social policy."

Indeed, no one disputes that levels of carbon dioxide are increasing globally, but CO2's impact has not been as great as many scientists had predicted.

"In the peer-reviewed literature, they've tried to explain away this lull," said Morano. "In the proceedings of the National Academy of Science a year or two ago they had a study blaming Chinese coal use for the lack of global warming. So, in an ironic twist, global warming proponents are now claiming that that coal use is saving us from dangerous global warming."

Holstein believes the temperature lull is not entirely unexpected or unpredicted.

"We're within ranges of these climate models that are saying we're still on track to some pretty troublesome impacts if we don't do something about it," he said.

A Gallup survey conducted March 7-10 found 58 percent of Americans say they worry a great deal or fair amount about global warming.

That was up from 51 percent in 2011 -- but still below the 62-72 percent levels seen between 1999 and 2001.

SOURCE




Rajendra Pachauri’s Conspiracy Theory

It takes chutzpah to accuse other people of something you yourself are peddling. But that ("projection") is what the Green/Left do

Climate skeptics are routinely accused of being conspiracy theorists. For example, Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has claimed that much of the criticism directed at his organization relies on “unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.”

But Pachauri is peddling a conspiracy theory of his own. According to him, the reason the world isn’t taking his climate change advice has nothing to do with the IPCC’s profound credibility problems. It isn’t because he himself behaves like an activist rather than a dispassionate scientist.

No, Pachauri has a far more exciting explanation: it involves a conspiracy of “powerful vested interests.” If it weren’t for evil oil companies using their influence behind the scenes, he implies, all would be well with the world.

In an article he wrote for the Guardian newspaper in 2010, Pachauri laid it on thick, referring to “vested interests” on four separate occasions (not counting the subtitle at the top):

It is a well-known fact that powerful vested interests and those opposed to action on climate change are working overtime to see that they can stall action for as long as possible.

…powerful vested interests are perhaps likely to get overactive in the coming months, and would perhaps do everything in their power to impede progress towards a binding agreement that is hoped for by the end of 2010…

…given the slow pace of progress and the power that vested interests exercise over legislative and policy initiatives…

…thwarting the efforts of skeptics and vested interests, who will do everything possible to maintain the status quo.

There are many vested interests. Some of them are aligned against Pachauri’s worldview. Many are aligned with it.

To complain about oil companies trying to protect their interests while ignoring the fact that firms involved in wind and solar power, carbon offsets, or green investment funds are doing exactly the same thing is intellectually dishonest.

To overlook the massive vested interest that Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, the Environmental Defense Fund, and hundreds of other organizations now have in selling the public alarming stories is naive.

Yet that is exactly what Pachauri does. He shines a light on a tiny sliver of the battlefield, screams and shouts about what’s happening there, but studiously ignores everything else going on around it.

In fact, people on all sides of the climate debate – and, indeed, at all points along the political spectrum – are susceptible to conspiracy theories.

For example, many of us are prepared to believe that electric cars would be commonplace today if it weren’t for a conspiracy involving oil companies and auto manufacturers that extends back to the early 1900s. (See the documentary film, Who Killed the Electric Car?)

But real life is more complicated than that. In recent years Fisker Automotive received generous assistance from the US government ($529 million in low-interest loans). So did the maker of the battery for its plug-in hybrid cars (a $250 million grant). Despite all of that, Fisker has now fired 75 percent of its workforce and hired bankruptcy lawyers.

Last month, Reuters published a story titled Electric cars headed toward another dead end. It reported that recent developments suggest that electric cars still aren’t ready “for prime time – and may never be.” In the words of this article,

despite billions of dollars in investment…[electric vehicles] continue to be plagued by many of the problems that eventually scuttled electrics in the 1910s and more recently in the 1990s. Those include high cost, short driving range and lack of charging stations.

When we embrace a conspiracy theory, we adopt an over-simplified view of a complex situation. More disturbingly, we reduce other people to comic book characters – pure-hearted good guys and nefarious evil-doers.

On occasion, we’re all guilty of this sort of thinking. When Rajendra Pachauri accuses people of being conspiracy theorists, therefore, he’s merely saying they’re human. Ho-hum.

Now can have a grownup conversation about why so many people distrust his organization?

SOURCE





The falsehoods never stop

An EPA backgrounder below:



“Declining Snow Cover”??? They’ve GOT to be kidding!!!

“Albedo” = reflectivity from snow cover and clouds. Siberian, Asian, and Eurasian snow-cover albedo eclipsed that of 2007-2008 this year. 2007-08 was the prior all-time snow cover extent record since satellites began tracking it 47 years ago. The enormous snow cover was initiated with record open Arctic and attendant Lake/Ocean Effect snows on land surrounding the Arctic.

Snowpack, covering Asia all the way to the Himalayas and Istanbul, reflected GigaWatts of sunlight at all wavelengths, most of which CO2 does NOT intercept and re-radiate back down to the surface.

The resulting colder temperatures assured that moisture entering Eurasia from the North Sea, Baltic, Atlantic, and Mediterranean would fall mostly as snow, adding to albedo as winter ended. For a video explanation see here (Video).

This year the Baltic set a late season ice cover record too!

Simply stated: EPA has lost its focus on environmental poisons and carcinogens. Its vision has been blurred by stupidly useless concentration on CO2.

Correction to that sentence: The EPA is not behaving in a “…stupidly useless…” manner. The real objective they have is to get the public ready to accept some kind of carbon taxation that will “correct” the climate, and then, with alacrity, deliver the tax!

So I should have used a term such as “subterfuge” or “slight-of-hand” to describe what is going on. Carbon taxation with a real effect on climate is a non-starter, and cannot and will not work. For petrochemical “husbandry” or pollution abatement, taxation is one possible vehicle when properly targeted, but CO2 is not a poison, and certainly not the appropriate target

SOURCE

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

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

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9 April, 2013

Another stupid prophecy

The fact that the area under wine grapes worldwide has been expanding steadily for decades must not be mentioned, I guess. Even New Zealand is now a major exporter of good stuff (particularly sauvignon blanc). Why mention facts when an unfounded prophecy will do?

WHICH is more important, pandas or pinot? Researchers say that is a question conservationists and wine-growers will have to answer in the coming years as climate change sparks a hunt for cooler places to grow wine grapes, even if those places are home to sensitive animal populations.

Already, big players in the global wine industry are eyeing land in northern climes as rising temperatures force them to consider growing in places other than the most popular spots in the Mediterranean, Australia and California.

But an anticipated 25 to 73 per cent loss in suitable growing area in the current major wine producing parts of the world by 2050 may put water resources and wildlife on a collision course with vineyards, researchers say.

The regions of Bordeaux and the Rhone Valley in France along with Tuscany in Italy are expected to experience big declines in suitable land area, said the study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Meanwhile, much more land area to grow vineyards is anticipated to open up in western North America and northern Europe.

"When we started out, we thought this was science fiction and now we are pretty sure it is science fact," said Lee Hannah, lead author of the study that maps how wine-making regions around the world will change as temperatures heat up.

"Mediterranean Australia and Mediterranean Europe are the places that get hit the hardest," Hannah told AFP. "Those areas are experiencing a loss of about two-thirds of the area that is currently suitable for wine growing."

Faced with a loss of millions of acres, some growers are switching to different grape varieties, but by 2050 many places will be simply too hot and dry for any varieties, Hannah says.

Irrigation and micro-misters could be a last resort, but they are also a concern because "vineyards may be needing to tap freshwater resources in regions where there is often not enough freshwater to go around as it is right now," he said.

"Southern France will see a lot of declining suitability," Hannah said, estimating an 80 per cent loss in land that is suitable for wine-growing there as growers move north, shifting the basis of the country's region-based wine industry.

Another big concern is how China will cope with the changes without harming pandas by infringing on their natural habitat, researchers said.

"Ironically, China - which is the world's fastest growing wine-producing region - happens to have all of its best wine suitability in panda habitat," Hannah said.

China's forest tenure reforms that hand over control of forests to local communities could be a danger to panda habitat if those localities chose to clear the way for agriculture, including wine-growing, he said.

While most European-style wine currently grown in China originates from a peninsula near Beijing, conservationists hope China's government will take steps to protect panda habitat in the central mountains from wine-growers, Hannah says.

SOURCE




Geoffrey Lean is slowly reversing his lean

An environmentalist from way back, Mr. Lean is finding it hard to justify climate alarm these days. So he is starting to air some doubts. Even since last January (second article), he has come a long way. Under the heading "time to rein back on doom and gloom?" he writes in the London Telegraph as follows:

There are important, and possibly hopeful, developments in the complex, contentious world of climate science that might finally give us all a sense of spring. For some recent research suggests that climate change might not be as catastrophic as the gloomiest predictions suggest.

The research, moreover, comes at a time when many experts are beginning to despair that warming can be prevented from running out of control. Six weeks ago, for example, Prof Sir Robert Watson – the deeply respected former chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – said he believed the world had now missed its chance to keep the average rise in global temperature to less than 2C – the level at which dangerous effects are thought inevitable. But if the new research is right, it might be held below this ominous threshold after all, if determined worldwide action is taken.

Prediction, as they say, is tough, especially when it’s about the future – and that’s especially true when it comes to the climate, whose complexity we only partially understand. It is, as we all know, naturally immensely variable. And the effect of human intervention is subject to long timelags: it will be decades, even centuries, before the full consequences of today’s emissions of carbon dioxide become clear.

As a result, scientists and policymakers draw on the past to predict the future. Until now, they have therefore placed much weight on the rapid temperature increases in the Eighties and Nineties. But for at least a decade, these have dramatically slowed, even as carbon dioxide emissions have continued to increase.

None of this justifies the frequent claim by climate sceptics that global warming has stopped, and may now reverse. Long lulls have occurred before, only for temperatures to resume their relentless rise. And eight of the nine hottest years on record have still all occurred since 2000. But it does suggest that the rapid recent warming may have been as anomalous as the present pause.

It also raises the possibility that carbon dioxide may be less potent than has been thought in heating the planet. Again, this is not to say, as some sceptics attest, that it is innocent – the science showing that it is a greenhouse gas has been established for more than 150 years and accords with the very laws of physics. But it may be less guilty than once supposed. And this is reinforced by recent findings that emissions of soot, or black carbon – which patient readers may remember I have been banging on about for years – are causing twice as much warming as previously estimated, meaning that the contribution of CO2 must be correspondingly less.

The new research focuses on the arcane but crucial issue of “climate sensitivity”. This is normally expressed as the amount of warming that would eventually result from doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from its level before the Industrial Revolution – something which, on present trends, we will achieve in the next few decades.

The resulting increase has long been put at between 1.5C and 4.5C (the threefold range itself gives some idea of how little is known): the best guess has been 3C, which would be likely to have devastating effects on the climate. But the latest findings – which stretch over several papers from different, well-established scientists – suggest that the rise may be towards the lower end of that big range, possibly less than the 2C danger level.

The researchers themselves are quick to emphasise that their results should not diminish attempts to combat climate change. Their research could be wrong; after all, other equally distinguished scientists have concluded that climate sensitivity is much greater. Even if it is right, their new estimates for temperature rise still range widely, and the upper end still exceeds the danger mark.

Furthermore, the actual effects of temperature rises in the real world can blow away such calculations. Sea ice in the Arctic, for example, has already shrunk to levels not expected to occur for decades – and has done so during the current slowdown in overall global temperature rises.

Besides, a broader problem remains: on present policies, atmospheric CO2 levels will not stop rising when they reach the doubling point, but go on soaring past it – meaning that the world will still reach the danger point, even if more slowly.

So while governments must urgently adopt measures to cut emissions of black carbon – mainly from diesel engines and inefficient Third World cooking stoves – they will also have to do much more to control carbon dioxide.

The new research might just give the world a much-needed breathing space. But it would be foolhardy to breathe out for long.

SOURCE



Wooden heads in Europe

WHICH source of renewable energy is most important to the European Union? Solar power, perhaps? (Europe has three-quarters of the world’s total installed capacity of solar photovoltaic energy.) Or wind? (Germany trebled its wind-power capacity in the past decade.) The answer is neither. By far the largest so-called renewable fuel used in Europe is wood.

In its various forms, from sticks to pellets to sawdust, wood (or to use its fashionable name, biomass) accounts for about half of Europe’s renewable-energy consumption. In some countries, such as Poland and Finland, wood meets more than 80% of renewable-energy demand. Even in Germany, home of the Energiewende (energy transformation) which has poured huge subsidies into wind and solar power, 38% of non-fossil fuel consumption comes from the stuff. After years in which European governments have boasted about their high-tech, low-carbon energy revolution, the main beneficiary seems to be the favoured fuel of pre-industrial societies.

The idea that wood is low in carbon sounds bizarre. But the original argument for including it in the EU’s list of renewable-energy supplies was respectable. If wood used in a power station comes from properly managed forests, then the carbon that billows out of the chimney can be offset by the carbon that is captured and stored in newly planted trees. Wood can be carbon-neutral. Whether it actually turns out to be is a different matter. But once the decision had been taken to call it a renewable, its usage soared.

In the electricity sector, wood has various advantages. Planting fields of windmills is expensive but power stations can be adapted to burn a mixture of 90% coal and 10% wood (called co-firing) with little new investment. Unlike new solar or wind farms, power stations are already linked to the grid. Moreover, wood energy is not intermittent as is that produced from the sun and the wind: it does not require backup power at night, or on calm days. And because wood can be used in coal-fired power stations that might otherwise have been shut down under new environmental standards, it is extremely popular with power companies.

The upshot was that an alliance quickly formed to back public subsidies for biomass. It yoked together greens, who thought wood was carbon-neutral; utilities, which saw co-firing as a cheap way of saving their coal plants; and governments, which saw wood as the only way to meet their renewable-energy targets. The EU wants to get 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020; it would miss this target by a country mile if it relied on solar and wind alone.

The scramble to meet that 2020 target is creating a new sort of energy business. In the past, electricity from wood was a small-scale waste-recycling operation: Scandinavian pulp and paper mills would have a power station nearby which burned branches and sawdust. Later came co-firing, a marginal change. But in 2011 RWE, a large German utility, converted its Tilbury B power station in eastern England to run entirely on wood pellets (a common form of wood for burning industrially). It promptly caught fire.

Undeterred, Drax, also in Britain and one of Europe’s largest coal-fired power stations, said it would convert three of its six boilers to burn wood. When up and running in 2016 they will generate 12.5 terawatt hours of electricity a year. This energy will get a subsidy, called a renewable obligation certificate, worth £45 ($68) a megawatt hour (MWh), paid on top of the market price for electricity. At current prices, calculates Roland Vetter, the chief analyst at CF Partners, Europe’s largest carbon-trading firm, Drax could be getting £550m a year in subsidies for biomass after 2016—more than its 2012 pretax profit of £190m.

With incentives like these, European firms are scouring the Earth for wood. Europe consumed 13m tonnes of wood pellets in 2012, according to International Wood Markets Group, a Canadian company. On current trends, European demand will rise to 25m-30m a year by 2020.

Europe does not produce enough timber to meet that extra demand. So a hefty chunk of it will come from imports. Imports of wood pellets into the EU rose by 50% in 2010 alone and global trade in them (influenced by Chinese as well as EU demand) could rise five- or sixfold from 10m-12m tonnes a year to 60m tonnes by 2020, reckons the European Pellet Council. Much of that will come from a new wood-exporting business that is booming in western Canada and the American south. Gordon Murray, executive director of the Wood Pellet Association of Canada, calls it “an industry invented from nothing”.

Prices are going through the roof. Wood is not a commodity and there is no single price. But an index of wood-pellet prices kept by the Argus Biomass Report rose from $116 a tonne in August 2010 to $129 a tonne at the end of 2012. Prices for hardwood from western Canada have risen by about 60% since the end of 2011.

This is putting pressure on companies that use wood as an input. About 20 large saw mills making particle board for the construction industry have closed in Europe during the past five years, says Petteri Pihlajamaki of Poyry, a Finnish consultancy (though the EU’s building bust is also to blame). Higher wood prices are hurting pulp and paper companies, which are in bad shape anyway: the production of paper and board in Europe remains almost 10% below its 2007 peak. In Britain, furniture-makers complain that competition from energy producers “will lead to the collapse of the mainstream British furniture-manufacturing base, unless the subsidies are significantly reduced or removed”.

But if subsidising biomass energy were an efficient way to cut carbon emissions, perhaps this collateral damage might be written off as an unfortunate consequence of a policy that was beneficial overall. So is it efficient? No.

Wood produces carbon twice over: once in the power station, once in the supply chain. The process of making pellets out of wood involves grinding it up, turning it into a dough and putting it under pressure. That, plus the shipping, requires energy and produces carbon: 200kg of CO2 for the amount of wood needed to provide 1MWh of electricity.

This decreases the amount of carbon saved by switching to wood, thus increasing the price of the savings. Given the subsidy of £45 per MWh, says Mr Vetter, it costs £225 to save one tonne of CO2 by switching from gas to wood. And that assumes the rest of the process (in the power station) is carbon neutral. It probably isn’t.

Over the past few years, scientists have concluded that the original idea—carbon in managed forests offsets carbon in power stations—was an oversimplification. In reality, carbon neutrality depends on the type of forest used, how fast the trees grow, whether you use woodchips or whole trees and so on. As another bit of the EU, the European Environment Agency, said in 2011, the assumption “that biomass combustion would be inherently carbon neutral…is not correct…as it ignores the fact that using land to produce plants for energy typically means that this land is not producing plants for other purposes, including carbon otherwise sequestered.”

Tim Searchinger of Princeton University calculates that if whole trees are used to produce energy, as they sometimes are, they increase carbon emissions compared with coal (the dirtiest fuel) by 79% over 20 years and 49% over 40 years; there is no carbon reduction until 100 years have passed, when the replacement trees have grown up. But as Tom Brookes of the European Climate Foundation points out, “we’re trying to cut carbon now; not in 100 years’ time.”

In short, the EU has created a subsidy which costs a packet, probably does not reduce carbon emissions, does not encourage new energy technologies—and is set to grow like a leylandii hedge.

SOURCE





Climatologists are no Einsteins, says his successor

Freeman Dyson is a physicist who has been teaching at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton since Albert Einstein was there. When Einstein died in 1955, there was an opening for the title of "most brilliant physicist on the planet." Dyson has filled it.

So when the global-warming movement came along, a lot of people wondered why he didn’t come along with it. The reason he’s a skeptic is simple, the 89-year-old Dyson said when I phoned him.

"I think any good scientist ought to be a skeptic," Dyson said.

Dyson came to this country from his native England at age 23 and immediately made major breakthroughs in quantum theory. After that he worked on a nuclear-powered rocket (see video below). Then in the late 1970s, he got involved with early research on climate change at the Institute for Energy Analysis in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
"I just think they don't understand the climate," he said of climatologists. "Their computer models are full of fudge factors."

That research, which involved scientists from many disciplines, was based on experimentation. The scientists studied such questions as how atmospheric carbon dioxide interacts with plant life and the role of clouds in warming.

But that approach lost out to the computer-modeling approach favored by climate scientists. And that approach was flawed from the beginning, Dyson said.

"I just think they don’t understand the climate," he said of climatologists. "Their computer models are full of fudge factors."

A major fudge factor concerns the role of clouds. The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide on its own is limited. To get to the apocalyptic projections trumpeted by Al Gore and company, the models have to include assumptions that CO-2 will cause clouds to form in a way that produces more warming.

"The models are extremely oversimplified," he said. "They don't represent the clouds in detail at all. They simply use a fudge factor to represent the clouds."

Dyson said his skepticism about those computer models was borne out by recent reports of a study by Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading in Great Britain that showed global temperatures were flat between 2000 and 2010 — even though we humans poured record amounts of CO-2 into the atmosphere during that decade.

That was vindication for a man who was termed "a civil heretic" in a New York Times Magazine article on his contrarian views. Dyson embraces that label, with its implication that what he opposes is a religious movement. So does his fellow Princeton physicist and fellow skeptic, William Happer.

"There are people who just need a cause that’s bigger than themselves," said Happer. "Then they can feel virtuous and say other people are not virtuous."

To show how uncivil this crowd can get, Happer e-mailed me an article about an Australian professor who proposes — quite seriously — the death penalty for heretics such as Dyson. As did Galileo, they can get a reprieve if they recant.

I hope that guy never gets to hear Dyson’s most heretical assertion: Atmospheric CO-2 may actually be improving the environment.

"It’s certainly true that carbon dioxide is good for vegetation," Dyson said. "About 15 percent of agricultural yields are due to CO-2 we put in the atmosphere. From that point of view, it’s a real plus to burn coal and oil."

In fact, there’s more solid evidence for the beneficial effects of CO-2 than the negative effects, he said. So why does the public hear only one side of this debate? Because the media do an awful job of reporting it.

"They’re absolutely lousy," he said of American journalists. "That’s true also in Europe. I don’t know why they’ve been brainwashed."

I know why: They’re lazy. Instead of digging into the details, most journalists are content to repeat that mantra about "consensus" among climate scientists.

The problem, said Dyson, is that the consensus is based on those computer models. Computers are great for analyzing what happened in the past, he said, but not so good at figuring out what will happen in the future. But a lot of scientists have built their careers on them. Hence the hatred for dissenters.

"It was similar in the Soviet Union," he said. "Who could doubt Marxist economics was the future? Everything else was in the dustbin."

There’s a lot of room left in that bin for the ideas promulgated by people dumber than Dyson. Which is just about everyone.

SOURCE





The Attack of the Global Warming Islamist

John Ransom has fun blasting Green/Left critics who email him. Three of the emails and his replies below

Undocumented Intelligence wrote: Ransom wants to make climate change concern all about being liberal. Actually, it's all about being rational and not blinded–as Ransom is--by an ideology that is highly inconvenienced by an overwhelming body of expert scientific evidence.

Dear Comrade Undoc:

Look, I’m not the one who declares every weather event a product of climate change. What I object to is that many scientists and most members of the media write ill-informed opinion pieces that they wrap in the fish paper of scientific discourse. And then if one disagrees with them, they pretend like we’re just too stupid to understand basic science.

For example, last year I wrote about scientists who were trying to make the case that polar bear cannibalism was more prevalent than previously understood – thanks to our friend, global warming. The basis of these “scientific” assertions was 3 (three) pictures that were taken “from the decks of ecotourism and research boats anchored a few hundred yards away.”

Getting past the fact that the scientist in question was the guy who waaaaay undercounted polar bears, setting off the “Oh my God. Those cute polar bears will ALL die!” hysteria, I don’t think you can actually make a scientific case of increased polar bear cannibalism without an underpinning of science.

But that doesn’t stop Global Warming Islamists from argue on behalf of utterly stupid science.

I don’t doubt that the earth is warmer than at some time in the past; and there likely is some man-caused component to it. But the dire predictions, based on flawed models of the alarmists, which have been going on three decades now, frankly have not come to fruition. It’s time for the global warming crowd to admit that there is something about their science that they have fundamentally wrong.

As my 5th grade science teacher, Ms. Gallaghan, would have recognized, three pictures of polar predation makes a hypotheses not a conclusion.

But too many scientists and practically all the media don’t recognize the difference between hypotheses and facts. I’m guessing the Associated Press has outlawed the use of the word hypotheses as too offensive because it calls their religion into question.

Remember: Never let science interfere with a good pro-global warming opinion.

Global Warming Islamist wrote: Ransom makes much of "the most accurate map ever" how vegetation could change in the region.” Yet he never points out that the actual paper makes no such claim. The Daily Mail added that hyperbole.

Dear Comrade Global Warming Islamist:

I didn’t have to mention that the paper makes no claim to be “the most accurate map ever!” The Daily Mail, one of your propaganda rags, does it for them.

And here’s the question that I always ask you Islamist: Since you yourself have admitted that the newspaper inserted the hyperbole, why don‘t you condemn the hyperbole?

It undermines your case by allowing people like me to point out the ridiculousness of the mainstream media when it comes to global warming. They huff and puff, taking things out of context and generally misinform people what the scientific conclusions mean.

And that’s not the worst of it. You then allow the conversation to be hijacked by ALGORE, Inc. who is nothing but a con man and whose only interest is in making money off of hysteria- all because he couldn’t be president.

Think of this: He lost to George W. Bush. You have to live with THAT.

Until you rid yourself of these fools, you’ll be a loser. And an Islamist. You practice a religion, not science.

Myer2 wrote: I see you have a much better grasp of science than all the people who actually know something. What changes in the "universe" make it hot or cold on our planet? The av temp is higher today than anytime in recorded history despite the "snow in central Europe" -Combat Global Warming: Be Gay for a Day

Dear Comrade Number 2,

No, it’s not actually hotter now than anytime in recorded history.

“Our results indicate that global mean temperature for the decade 2000–2009 has not yet exceeded the warmest temperatures of the early Holocene (5000 to 10,000 yr B.P.),” writes researchers from Harvard and Oregon State.

I understand your confusion though because the study quoted above was used by the media to say: “We’re right. Pass the Carbon Tax! Ban automobiles. Ban Big Gulps.”

But, as usual their hyperbole has turned to hyperventilation. As the site RealClimate.org acknowledges: “This discussion needs to be conducted in a sober and unexcited manner; it does not help to overburden the [debate] with symbolic meaning. In some media reports, [some data] has even been hyped as “a pillar of the Kyoto protocol” …or as “proof that humans are warming the Earth”. This is a serious misunderstanding of the scientific meaning of these data.

And before you send email or make comments that point out that RealClimate.org and I have disagreements about global warming, I’ll make the simple observation that we can disagree about some things and still agree about others.

I agree with them that you guys aren’t sober.

SOURCE




Obama regime ramps up teaching of global warming in schools

New science curriculum standards for United States schools, expected to be unveiled this week, include an increased emphasis on man-made climate change from kindergarten through 12th grade. Climate change is already a part of many schools’ science curriculum, but the new guidelines significantly expand the topic and are expected to be adopted by 41 states.

The Next Generation Science Standards teach that “Human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (‘global warming’),” according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute.

At the same time, British schools are moving away from teaching climate change to kids under 14, causing alarm among British climate activists.

The New York Times highlighted the contrast:

New science teaching standards in the United States will include extensive lessons on human-made climate change. Expected to be unveiled this week, the guidelines will bring the subject to classrooms in up to 40 states, in many cases for the first time.

Eighth-grade pupils should understand that “human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (global warming),” according to the Next Generation Science Standards. …

The new U.S. science standards — which are far more extensive than just an inclusion of climate change in school curricula — have been put together by a wide-ranging number of stakeholders, including 26 states, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as Andrew C. Revkin reported last year.

In the United Kingdom, a proposal by the Department of Education would have the subject be stricken from the geography curriculum for pupils up to the age of 14. Under the proposal, which is still under review, climate change would be mentioned just once, in the chemistry section, the Guardian reported last month.

What the Times fails to note is that man-made global warming is hardly a consensus theory among scientists. Several new studies show the earth hasn’t gotten any warmer in at least the last decade.

“It’s a shame that American school kids are being taught claims of certitude on an isse that continues to unravel before our eyes,” Marc Morano, communications director for Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, told The Washington Examiner.

The U.K. newspaper The Daily Telegraph, German magazine Der Spiegel, and The Economist have all recently acknowledged the evidence suggesting global warming isn’t the catastrophe climate change advocates want school children to think it is.

He noted that for kids under 15, global warming isn’t even something they’ve experienced, if the studies on global temperatures are correct. Some of them are learning climate change as scientific fact it in school, and others are hearing two sides of the story, but none of them have firsthand knowledge of the issue.

The Next Generation standards are voluntary, but with 40 states expected to adopt them, students aren’t likely to hear anything in their science classes. The standards seek to codify climate change and man’s role in the problem as a part of students’ education, Morano said.

“To teach kids there’s a consensus… is a major disservice to children, and a disservice to education,” he said.

SOURCE

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

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

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8 April, 2013

The Terminator terminates the facts

Schwarzenegger: ‘Over the last 100 years, sea levels have risen about 7 inches’ in SanFran Bay; Reality: No sea level rise in last 70 years

Arnold needs to stop reading the propaganda and get some facts. In his LATimes op-ed, Ah-nold says:

"This report spells out many other negative effects that rising temperatures will cause in California. Over the last 100 years, sea levels have risen about 7 inches, and the San Francisco Bay Area is already feeling the effects. A sewage system there was flooded with saltwater, and the 101 Freeway has seen flooding. This isn’t a distant threat."

Check out the data for yourself. Show us the sea-level rise.

SOURCE




A brief on the canard that Warmists are more credible because they have out-published skeptics

Warmist Greg Laden offers this graphic to marginalize confidence in climate skeptics:



[The author of the graphic can't even spell "consensus". The URL for the graphic names it as "global warming concensus". Warmists are not the best of minds -- JR]

Without quibbling about precise numbers, why has comparatively little research been published by skeptics?

1. No government funding. With few exceptions (Spencer and Christy come to mind), the federal government (the overwhelmingly largest funder of climate research) doesn’t fund skeptics. But it has funded warmism to the tune of tens of billions of dollars since at least the Clinton administration. Without money and access to expensive data and instruments, original climate research is nearly impossible.

2. Journal bias. Many (most? virtually all?) relevant journals refuse to publish skeptics — even letters to the editor. Indeed the publishers of these journals (like the NAS, AAAS and Nature publishing) are highly partisan when it comes to climate research.

3. Warmist-enforced journal bias. As discussed here, journals are policed by warmists such as Michael Mann to make sure that skeptics aren’t published. Those that dare to publish skeptics are targeted and punished.

4.Being a skeptic is a career damaging. If you want to end your career as a climate researcher, announce your skepticism. This is most likely the case because of #1. If the only significant funder of climate research favors warmism, then that’s what you do (or at least your institution will, with or without you). Consider how Penn State was willing to degrade itself to keep its cash cow (Michael Mann).

Why doesn’t it matter that skeptics have published many fewer papers?

Just like you don’t need to be Steven Spielberg to figure out whether a movie is any good, you don’t need to be a professional climate researcher to figure out that, say, the hockey stick is hokey. As long as science is not a black box (which is what Mann’s hokey stick was until McIntyre and McKitrick began their work), it can be evaluated.

SOURCE

From what I can see, ALL academic fields are clubs of the like-minded that adamantly reject anything that might seriously question the accepted ideas. To do otherwise would damage too many childish egos -- JR





Smart Money Abandoning Renewable Energy

British Petroleum is still one of the world’s biggest oil companies. But as early as the late 1990’s they didn’t want you think of them that way. CEO Lord John Browne of Madingley argued that “the transition to alternatives could be accelerated by changing industry practices today.” While other oil companies eschewed climate change alarmism, BP embraced it. In 2002, Lord Browne declared: “Climate change is an issue which raises fundamental questions about the relationship between companies and society as a whole, and between one generation and the next,”

As a result, Mother Jones reported in 2006: “BP vowed to cut its own CO2 emissions and invest heavily in solar, wind, and other alternative technologies; it even supported … the Kyoto climate treaty.”

BP jumped into renewables and their moniker underwent an evolution from British Petroleum to BP, then to Beyond Petroleum. Between 2000 and 2005 BP invested $500 million into solar power and $30 million on wind and have invested more than $4 billion in alternative energy in the US since 2005. At the time, according to the Wall Street Journal, BP turned a profit on its solar business but not on wind. In 2005, Browne “decided that the energy giant should enter unknown territories of wind, solar and hydrogen power” which began a “re-branding” designed to “capture public affection” by positioning “themselves as environmentally friendly enterprises.”

The switch seemed to be sound strategy. ExxonMobil didn’t agree.

Comments from a 2008 blog post on ExxonMobil’s position as “obstructive over climate change” included the following: “Given that oil isn’t going to last a whole heck of a lot longer, would not a good business strategy be to start investing in renewable energy?” and “Just from a corporate survival perspective, better start learning, and fast. Carbon is the low-hanging energy fruit and soon to become an economic dead end. What company wants to keep going down a dead end?” BP thought it was “prudent to start diversifying now as a kind of insurance policy.”

ExxonMobil took a different course. In 2005, then-CEO Lee Raymond, said: “What all these people are thinking about doing, we did 20 years ago—and spent $1 billion, in dollars of that day, to find out that none of these were economic.” “In the late 1970s, as oil prices skyrocketed, Exxon diversified into an array of fossil-fuel alternatives, including nuclear and solar energy.” “After several years, Exxon still couldn't see prospects for renewable energy turning into a money-maker, especially since oil prices were falling in the 1980s. In the mid-1980s, the company decided to get out of the business.”

Raymond had “an unabashed skepticism about the potential of alternative energy sources like wind and solar.” He saw “Spending shareholders’ money to diversify into businesses that aren't yet profitable—and that aim to solve a problem his scientists believe may not be significant” as “a sloppy way to run a company.”

Wall Street agreed. According to Mother Jones, in 2006, Wall Street “worried that even a small increase in investment in non-oil alternatives would distract BP’s focus from its core business—oil.” Commentators and analysts began mocking BP as being “Beyond Profits.”

Yet, critics of Exxon’s approach, in 2008, feared “that the company’s reluctance to explore alternative energy will prove to be bad business judgment in the long run.”

Andrew Logan of Ceres, a Boston-based environmental group, sees two possible scenarios: “One is that all the scientists in the world are wrong, in which case there’s no climate change, in which case Exxon will do well.” He then says: “But if the scientists are correct and we have to find a way to transform the way we use energy, then Exxon is going to lag significantly behind its competitors.”

It is obvious now, nearly a decade later, which was the sound strategy. Global warming is not the manmade crisis it was predicted to be in the mid-2000s and we know that oil is “going to last a whole heck of a lot longer.” Today, innovation and imagination are producing record quantities of domestically produced oil and gas. Robert Bryce reports: “we won’t hit peak oil until we hit peak imagination.” And, Exxon’s Raymond made the right choice to get out of renewable energy.

On April 3, BP announced that it was selling its US wind assets—estimated to be worth $1.5-3.1 billion. The announcement stated that BP has decided sell the US wind energy business “as a part of our continuing effort to … re-position the company for sustainable growth” and that it would “unlock more value for shareholders.”

In a speech in late 2012, BP’s general manager for global energy markets, Mark Finley, praised the rapid growth of renewable energy—claiming it had increased by 18% last year, “the tenth year in a row for double-digit growth.” Though, he acknowledged that “renewables make up such a small slice of the world’s energy portfolio now—only about 2%—that even at such a blistering growth rate they are unlikely to significantly displace fossil fuels in the next two decades.”

Addressing renewables growth, Finley said it was happening “most typically in places where the governments can afford the subsidies needed to help these fuels compete. The key challenge going forward is: when things grow fast, subsidies get expensive fast. So can these forms of energy achieve economies of scale that will allow them to compete without subsidies?”

“That is the real question.”

Yes, that is the real question, and apparently, BP got the answer. Without subsidies, renewables cannot compete—BP is bailing. Addressing wind energy’s future, Amy Grace, a New York-based analyst at New Energy Finance, said: “There’s limited visibility beyond 2014 about what the assets will be worth as a tax credit supporting turbines is set to expire at the end of this year.”

Additionally, having now actually lived with the presence of industrial wind turbines, people no longer want them “imposed on their communities.” On April 4, the Falmouth, MA, Board of Selectmen and the Falmouth Finance Committee held a joint meeting and unanimously stood by the selectmen’s prior vote to remove the town’s wind turbines. Residents say: “they're suffering headaches, dizziness and sleep deprivation and often seek to escape the property where they've lived for more than 20 years."

SOURCE




British bird charity makes a killing... from windfarm giants behind turbines accused of destroying rare birds

The RSPB is making hundreds of thousands of pounds from the wind power industry – despite the turbines killing millions of birds every year.

Golden eagles, hen harriers, Corn Buntings and other rare and threatened species are especially at risk, conservationists say.

Yet in its latest ‘partnership deal’, the bird charity receives £60 for every member who signs up to a dual-fuel account with windfarm developer Ecotricity.

It also receives £40 each time a customer opens an account with Triodos Bank, which finances renewable industry projects including wind turbines.

In a previous partnership with Southern & Scottish Electricity (SSE), which invests in wind and other renewable energy, the RSPB admits to having made £1 million over ten years.

The charity claims that windfarms play an important role in the battle against climate change, which ‘poses the single greatest long-term threat to birds and other wildlife’, and that wind turbines caused only ‘significant detrimental effects’ when poorly sited.

But critics argue there is no such thing as a well-sited windfarm and that the charity has been taken over by green zealots.

Conservationist Mark Duchamp, whose international charity Save The Eagles monitors bird deaths caused by wind farms, said: ‘The fact that such an organisation [the RSPB] is not taking this problem seriously is scandalous.

'They are supposed to protect birds. Instead they are advocating on behalf of an industry which kills birds. What could be more wrong and absurd than that?’

Dr John Etherington, former reader in ecology at the University of Wales and author of The Wind Farm Scam, said: ‘It seems to me that for some time now a green faction has penetrated a whole range of bodies and that the RSPB is one of them.

‘For an organisation that supposedly protects birds to team up with an industry that kills birds on the basis of unverifiable predictive models about climate change is just bizarre.

‘We are many years into discovering that these bloody machines kill birds in large numbers. Why is the RSPB still sticking up for them?’

Some members have complained that the RSPB isn’t nearly as active as it ought to be in fighting turbine applications – even in sites of ornithological value.

‘Instead of giving the turbine people hell, they usually end up giving them the green light,’ said Peter Shrubb, an RSPB member of 30 years, who is particularly appalled by the organisation’s plans to erect a 330ft turbine at its own headquarters in Sandy, Bedfordshire.

As an example of the danger, two hen harriers were killed by turbine blades in April last year at the Griffin windfarm at Aberfeldy in Scotland, run by the RSPB’s former partner SSE.

The charity waited eight months to announce the news but made no criticism of its former partner. Instead it said: ‘It is important to remember that climate change still poses one of the biggest threats to birds and other wildlife.’

It added that ‘windfarm collisions ...... remain very rare indeed’.

BUT according to research by the ornithological society SEO/Birdlife, each wind turbine kills between 110 and 330 birds a year.

This means that worldwide, wind turbines kill at least 22 million birds a year.

The RSPB has disputed these figures, insisting: ‘Our own research suggests that a well-located wind farm is unlikely to be causing birds any harm.’

A spokesman for Ecotricity said that at one of its test sites near the Bristol Channel, the turbines had killed no more than four birds in five years.

Conservationists claim the wind industry has a vested interest in covering up the true extent of bird deaths.

Wildlife biologist Jim Wiegand recently wrote that the industry has known since the early Eighties that ‘propeller-style turbines’ could never be safe for birds of prey.

Mr Wiegand added: ‘With exposed blade tips spinning in open space at up to 200mph, it was impossible. Wind developers also knew they would have a public-relations nightmare if people ever learned how many eagles are actually being cut in half.

'To hide this awful truth, strict windfarm operating guidelines were established – including high security, gag orders in leases and other agreements, and the prevention of accurate, meaningful mortality studies.’

Anecdotal evidence from the US and Australia also suggests that windfarm operators often hide the bodies of dead birds in order to avoid being fined

Another trick, described by Wiegand, is for windfarm developers to confine their searches to limited areas directly below the wind turbines – leading to official body counts that grossly underestimate the true extent of bird mortality.

‘Wind turbines are always going to kill a disproportionately high number of birds of prey because they tend to be built in areas – uplands, mainly – where the best thermals are: in other words where the birds hover, perch and feed,’ said ecologist Clive Hambler, lecturer in biological and human sciences at Hertford College, Oxford.

The RSPB has objected to only six per cent of all new windfarm developments. But the charity’s conservation director Martin Harper claims it will always fight windfarm developments where birds are particularly threatened.

Henry Thoresby, an ornithologist who has fought several turbine applications, said that in his experience the RSPB is far too quick to withdraw its objections.

SOURCE





New EPA Rules Won't Help Environment, May Raise Gas Prices, Industry Says

New regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency aimed at eliminating sulfur emissions from cars and light trucks would have little benefit for the environment and could raise gas prices, according to a study produced for the American Petroleum Institute (API).

Conducted by the energy consulting firm Environ International, the study finds that EPA’s new rule would have little impact on the environment.

“Simply put, as proposed, the Tier 3 regulation will impose significant costs on making gasoline. And a study we commissioned by the environmental consulting group Environ concludes that ozone benefits touted by EPA would be only marginal at best,” API Group Director for Downstream and Industry Operations Bob Greco said on a conference call Thursday.

The regulations – published March 29 – call for the near elimination of sulfur from gasoline used in cars and light-duty trucks, cutting it from 30 parts-per-million (ppm) to 10 ppm by 2017.

EPA claims that the new standards, known as Tier 3, would save lives and clean up the environment.

“Over 158 million Americans are currently experiencing unhealthy levels of air pollution which are linked with adverse health impacts such as hospital admissions, emergency room visits, and premature mortality,” EPA said in its regulatory announcement.

“By 2030, the Tier 3 standards would annually prevent: Between 820 and 2,400 premature deaths; 3,200 hospital admissions and asthma-related emergency room visits; 22,000 asthma exacerbations; 23,000 upper and lower respiratory symptoms in children; 1.8 million lost school days, work days and minor-restricted activities.”

API, which represents all sectors of the petroleum industry, disputes EPA’s claims of environmental benefits, saying that because the reduction in sulfur content is so low, the environmental benefits will be few and the cost could be high.

“EPA’s new Tier 3 gasoline proposal is a prime example of what happens when regulators ignore facts and hard science,” Greco said Thursday.

The Environ study modeled the effect on the atmosphere from the EPA’s 10 ppm sulfur standard, which it called LEV [Low-Emission Vehicle] III, finding very little positive impact even during summertime, when air pollution is at its worst.

“[N]ationwide implementation of more stringent LDV [light duty vehicle] emissions standards similar to LEV along with further reductions in gasoline sulfur content would yield only very small additional improvements in 2022 summertime ozone concentrations,” the study found.

In other words, the study found that overall there would be only a 0.7 percent reduction in peak air pollution from implementing the stricter sulfur standards.

API said that if EPA further strengthens regulations – adding a proposed vapor pressure reduction requirement – it could result in as much as a $0.25 per gallon increase in the cost of gasoline. Vapor pressure determines the volatility of gasoline and is regulated to control how quickly it evaporates to control emissions.

API’s Greco said that Americans should not have to bear the cost of EPA’s poorly-designed regulations, no matter how well intentioned they might be.

“Americans shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of EPA regulations that lack a basis in science and will, at best, yield negligible environmental benefits,” he said. “These rules typify a troubling disconnect between EPA’s regulatory agenda and the everyday reality of America’s energy consumers.”

SOURCE





Europe’s Cap-And-Trade: ‘A Big Flop’

Europe's cap-and-trade system for reducing the release of greenhouse gases is broken, but not everybody wants to fix it. Industry has profited immensely from the plummeting prices of CO2 emissions certificates, and from lax checks on questionable environmental projects undertaken overseas.

Saving the climate? It doesn't seem all that difficult at first glance. All you have to do is fly from Germany to Zambia once in a while, as the German energy giant RWE's environment protection team does. It has made frequent trips to the capital Lusaka in recent years to distribute a total of 30,000 small stoves -- RWE's contribution to a good cause.

The stoves were intended to help poor families cook in a more environmentally friendly way. Biomass was to replace charcoal as cooking fuel. In an advertising brochure for RWE, the company that "travels around the world to help our climate" touts the campaign with the slogan "New Cooking Pots -- Less CO2." But RWE doesn't seem to have included such factors as air travel and the production of the stoves in its calculations.

Besides, the project wasn't entirely altruistic, because RWE will receive credits for its effort. The stoves in Lusaka are expected to save 1.5 million tons of CO2 by 2020, and in return, RWE's coal-fired power plants would be allowed to emit 1.5 million tons elsewhere. This sale of indulgences is called a "Clean Development Mechanism" (CDM). With such questionable projects in emerging and developing countries, which even include the renovation of coalmines in China, European companies can simply calculate away about 20 percent of their emissions.

In the end, the flood of such projects undermines the entire emissions trading system. "The most important tool of climate protection no longer works," says Eva Filzmoser of Carbon Market Watch in Brussels. Four years ago, the Austrian national began a solo effort to take a closer look at the emissions trading market. She still believed in the idea at the time. But Filzmoser found herself confronted with an industry that had grown to a volume of $90 billion almost overnight, an industry complete with certifiers, forecasters, dealers and hackers, who trafficked in certificates and created more and more absurd projects.

'A Big Flop'

They included the supposed cleanup of African garbage dumps, as well as the retrofitting of old coolant factories in China, which only seemed to be in operation because they yielded climate certificates.

It is because of Filzmoser and her staff of five employees that, starting in May, at least the most questionable of these projects will no longer be approved by the United Nations Climate Change secretariat. "The trade has turned into a big flop," she says, "a system of fraud."

The European Commission estimates that 1.7 billion tons in excess pollution rights were on the market in late 2012. Because of this oversupply, the price of emitting a ton of CO2 plummeted to only €4. The CDM projects were not the only reason for the price drop. Because of overly optimistic economic forecasts prior to the economic crisis and the correspondingly generous allotments, many of the 11,000 power plants and factories in Europe required to participate in emissions trading are now sitting on a mountain of unused certificates.

In recent years, they were allowed to save their certificates for the so-called third trading period, during which emissions reduction allowances are to slowly be reduced. This third period began in early 2013 and is supposed to last until 2020. The emissions trade, as well as the simultaneous gradual capping of emission rights in every country, is designed to reduce CO2 emissions in energy-intensive industries by 21 percent from 2005 to 2020. In the entire EU, this step is expected to achieve a 20 percent reduction relative to 1990 emissions levels.

To reach the target, however, many companies don't have to do anything at all, and not just because the cushion of their accumulated certificates often keeps them going for years. The EU will soon have reached its not overly ambitious emissions reduction targets because of the economic slowdown. As production dropped, many smokestacks were simply shut down.

Given such conditions, coal is seeing a renaissance that was hardly thought possible. Because certificates are so cheap, it is much more cost-effective to pollute the air with coal-fired power plants than switch to more environmentally friendly energy generation technologies.

Industry Outraged

To address the problem, European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard has proposed a drastic step: She wants to temporarily cut supply by remove 900 million emissions certificates from the system. The proposal is known as backloading. Not too long ago Hedegaard, from Denmark, was still convinced that the system was working "very well," but now she says: "It is not wise to deliberately continue to flood a market that is already oversupplied."

The industry lobby in Brussels is making a show of being outraged. The general director of BusinessEurope, one of the most powerful lobbying groups, wrote to European Parliament President Martin Schulz to demand a debate on backloading. For each of its counterproposals, the industry also presented supporters from the parliament, most of them liberal and center-right members from Germany and Poland.

The lobbyists' fight doesn't seem to be lost yet. While the Environment Committee voted in favor of backloading, the Industry Committee opposed it. The critical vote is planned for mid-April.

But industry's anti-backloading front in Brussels doesn't seem to be unanimous. Some companies have changed sides, like Düsseldorf-based energy giant E.on. In a joint memorandum with the non-profit public policy group Germanwatch, the company said it supported backloading. "Emissions trading is dead," E.on CEO Johannes Teyssen said last year. Nothing, he added, shows more clearly that the system has lost its effectiveness than the fact that brown coal is currently winning out in the competition with other energy sources.

Unlike pure production operations, energy groups like E.on could pass on almost any price to their customers, says Gordon Moffat of the European Confederation of Iron and Steel Industries. "Emissions trading seems tailor-made for the energy sector."

E.on's environmental forays are merely "industry interests disguised as climate protection," says Holger Krahmer, a member of the European Parliament for Germany's pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP). But German industry could hardly find a more fawning supporter than the Leipzig liberal, who is also his party's environmental policy spokesman.

A Deathblow to the System

Krahmer believes that climate protection threatens "civil liberties" and "fundamental human rights." What exactly those rights are isn't quite clear, not even in his booklet on the politics of climate policy. Backloading, at any rate, will be nothing but another deathblow to the poorly designed emissions trading system, says Krahmer.

Krahmer, however, questions even the assumption that CO2 emissions can in fact cause the earth's temperature to rise. There is, he says, simply no reason to price emissions.

Both Krahmer and FDP Chairman Philipp Rösler are unimpressed with government arguments that low prices for emissions certificates have threatened funding for many projects associated with the country's shift away from nuclear power and toward green energy, known as the Energiewende. "Ongoing interventions discredit the emissions trade," says Krahmer.

Green Party politician Bas Eickhout, however, believes that the system has already been discredited by lazy compromises with lobbyists. "What we get is typically European, a Swiss cheese perforated with compromises," says the Dutch politician. Letting a little air out of the inflated certificate trade isn't enough, he adds. Instead, he argues for a tightening of climate targets and, like Commissioner Hedegaard, wants to remove at last 900 million certificates from the market. But Eickhout wants them removed permanently.

That's because a new flood of emissions rights is about to hit the market, this time from Russia and Ukraine. European countries are also allowed to trade their certificates with these countries. The compensation options in Ukraine have developed phenomenally, says a local analyst. From January 2012 to March 2013 alone, he says, inspectors issued 185 million certificates for extracting coal from old waste heaps.

Spontaneous Combustion

In return for that many certificates, the Ukrainians would have had to extract an improbable five million tons of high-quality coal from scrap heaps in the last five years, the Ukrainian edition of Forbes calculated. The dubious climate argument is that the extracting activity (which had often been planned years in advance and, therefore, not actually eligible for certificates) prevents spontaneous combustion of the waste coal.

According to the Ukrainian analyst, the TÜV Rheinland technical inspection organization likes to certify these supposed climate-protection projects. One such case is in the Donetsk region, where TÜV retroactively certified a few million certificates for one of these waste-heap projects in late 2012. TÜV employees traveled to Ukraine from China to perform the inspection. A spokesman said that they had experience with Chinese Clean Development Mechanism projects that are "closely related" to the Ukrainian projects.

TÜV claims that performing a "retroactive" inspection within a few weeks in December 2012 covering the period from 2008 to 2012 is completely normal. Questions regarding the validity of the assumption that much of the coal in the waste heaps would have spontaneously combusted absent these measures went unanswered by TÜV Rheinland.
RWE's Zambia project is similarly dubious. Eva Filzmoser of Carbon Market Watch heard about it again recently. Employees with the project had reported to her that almost two-thirds of the stoves could no longer be found. In addition, the farmers hired to provide combustible biomass were only able to harvest a ton of bushes per months, and not the 1,000 tons needed.

Nevertheless, the TÜV Süd technical inspection organization credited the project with more than 43,000 tons in CO2 savings. The Munich-based inspectors, who had already been temporarily suspended by the UN because of lax inspections, characterize their work as "successful verification." But a former employee on the project says that no more than 10,000 tons are realistic. Perhaps RWE senses that the former employee is right, because the company has only sold a small share of the certificates so far. They fetched significantly more than the normal trading price -- because of the special quality of the project.

SOURCE

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

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

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7 April, 2013

Polar melt shakes up food chain



It does appear that the Arctic ice has in recent years been undergoing one of its periodic shrinkages. That such shrinkages are periodic and normal the image above shows rather vividly. It is a photograph showing U.S. nuclear submarine "Skate" surfaced at the North Pole on 17 March, 1959 -- a time when the ice-pack is at its seasonal thickest for the year. There was clearly very little ice-cap at all that year

When we note that the current shrinkage of Northern sea-ice has been accompanied by an EXPANSION of sea-ice at the SOUTH pole it becomes obvious that there is no global phenomenon involved -- merely local changes. That the article below claims the Arctic effect to be global is therefore a straight-out lie. The scientists concerned can hardly be unaware of the Antarctic ice expansion so the lie is a deliberate one


National Snow and Ice Data Center graph

Another reason why it is a deliberate lie is that even Rajendra Pachauri and Jim Hansen now concede that there has been NO global warming for over 15 years. And something that does not exist cannot cause ANYTHING, let alone "changes to the food chain". Even a Humean account of causation makes that clear

Major changes to the food chain, weather and landscape of Antarctica have provided stark evidence of the impact of global warming, a report on a polar expedition has revealed.

The preliminary report on the research by scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute near Boston suggest significant changes at the lowest level of the food chain, a vital source of sustenance for seabirds, seals and whales.

The Climate Commission recently said there was evidence natural events were being influenced by climate change as greenhouse gases accumulated and trapped measurable amounts of extra energy in the atmosphere and oceans.

The expedition senior scientist of the Australian Antarctic Division, Steve Nicol, said in 25 years of surveying Antarctica, this was the first time he had experienced rain.

The findings from the report are the focus of a new exhibition at the Australian National Maritime Museum.

Data from the expedition in 2010 is still being collated but a selection from the 20,000 images to be used for monitoring future change will go on show from Saturday in Elysium Antarctic Visual Epic.

"Warming is evident in the moistness of the air in this area of the world's driest continent. Rain is now not uncommon and whilst this may encourage plant life, it is probably detrimental to the health of many of the breeding birds," it found.

"This moistness also results in more snow falling and this too can affect the breeding habits of nesting birds when it falls during their incubation period, burying their eggs in the cold snow.

"The glaciers draining the ice caps of the islands and the mountains of the peninsula are shrinking, too. This has resulted in the formation of more icebergs and a greater run-off of freshwater."

Expedition leader Michael Aw said the team witnessed an increase in herbivores called salps, possibly at the expense of phytoplankton, which are consumed by fish and krill.

"The balance in the herbivore elements of the food chain determine the types of larger animals that can be supported," he said. "There are suggestions it is changing from one that supports krill and its predators [seabirds, seals, whales] to one that may result in more fish and possibly squid … The whales also feed on the krill so there is a chain reaction."

SOURCE




Cut fingers, cancer, bats and birds

Government bureaucrats delay life-saving road projects, but let wind turbines butcher bats

Paul Driessen and James H. Rust

Georgia residents recently learned that a rare bat has stalled state highway improvements. The May 2012 sighting of an endangered Indiana brown bat in a northern Georgia tree has triggered federal regulations requiring that state road projects not “harm, kill or harass” bats.

Even the possibility of disturbing bats or their habitats would violate the act, the feds say. Therefore, $460 million in Georgia road projects have been delayed for up to eighteen months, so that “appropriate studies” can be conducted. The studies will cost $80,000 to $120,000 per project, bringing the total for all 104 road project analyses to $8-12 million, with delays adding millions more.

Bats are vital to our ecology, agriculture and health. A single colony of 150 big brown bats can consume up to 1.3 million flying insect pests per year, Dr. Justin Boyles and other scientists point out, preventing crop damage and eradicating countless mosquitoes. If Indiana bats are expanding their range from Tennessee into Georgia, that could be good news.

“White nose syndrome” is impacting populations of hibernating bats in caves all over the Eastern USA. The infectious disease is probably fungal in origin, these scientists say, and the loss of North America’s bats to WNS could cost farmers $4-53 billion per year – and let mosquitoes proliferate.

At first blush, then, the delay-and-study decision by the US and Georgia Departments of Transportation (DOT) and US Fish and Wildlife Service to protect these voracious furry flyers makes sense. (The FWS enforces the Endangered Species Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act and similar laws.)

However, the Georgia bat study action is akin to obsessing about a cut finger, while ignoring cancer. The schizophrenic decision underscores how environmental concerns, DOT actions and federal threats to impose penalties or withhold highway funds too often seem to reflect ideologies, agendas and politics, rather than science or actual risks of harming a species.

It’s true that Peach State highway projects could conceivably affect bat colonies or daytime rest periods for these nocturnal creatures, to some small degree. But the road work will reduce accidents and crash-related deaths – and delays will likely result in more injuries and fatalities.

Meanwhile, other human activities are decimating bat populations all over America. But environmental groups remain silent, and state and federal wildlife “guardians” do little to stop the carnage. How is that possible?

The exempted activities involve heavily subsidized wind turbines that generate expensive, intermittent electricity and require “backup” hydrocarbon-fueled power plants for some 80% of their rated or “nameplate” capacity.

A US Geological Survey report investigated the causes and consequences of bat fatalities around the world. Other analyses have addressed the violent effects that wind turbines have on bats, which are vulnerable because turbines are especially busy at night, when bats are everywhere but electricity demand is at its lowest. Bats are struck by blades traveling 100-200 mph at their tips or felled by “barotrauma,” sudden air pressure changes that explode their lungs, as explained in a 2008 Scientific American article “On a wing and low air: The surprising way wind turbines kill bats.”

Supposedly “eco-friendly” wind turbines in the Mid-Atlantic Highlands kill tens of thousands of bats annually. The Fowler Ridge and Meadow Lake facilities in northwestern Indiana already have 475 gigantic turbines on 75,000 acres; an additional 150 wind turbines are planned; and all are in the middle of prime Indiana bat habitat.

Even worse, long after the slaughter began, the USFWS is evaluating whether to grant Fowler Ridge a 22-year “incidental take” permit, so that the turbines can continue decimating bats – and the operators can continue being exempted from laws and penalties that apply to everyone else.

Of course, bats aren’t the only victims. Numerous rare, vital and endangered bird species are also at risk from wind turbines – including whooping cranes, hawks, falcons, and bald and golden eagles.

To minimize public outrage over the eco-slaughter, Fish and Wildlife has changed its census methods for “whoopers” (to make it harder to calculate how many cranes have “gone missing” along their turbine-dotted Alberta-to-Texas migratory corridor); allows wind facility operators to use search methods that ensure that most dead and injured birds (and bats) will never be found; initiated a process to issue 30-year “incidental take” permits for killing bald and golden eagles; and refused to prosecute wind facility operators for annihilating birds and bats.

The proposed New Era Wind Farm in Minnesota will likely kill 8-14 bald eagles annually. It is yet another example of serious environmental impacts overlooked in the quest to “go green” and meet state “renewable” energy mandates – as though this wildlife destruction is “sustainable” or “acceptable.”

Projects like New Era or Shepherds Flat in Oregon also mean a person could be fined or jailed for possessing a feather from a bald eagle decapitated by a wind turbine – but the turbine operator would get off scot free.

A 2012 Spanish Ornithological Society study and 1993 studies in Germany and Sweden found that a typical wind turbine kills 333-1,000 birds and bats annually in Spain, up to 309 birds per year in Germany, and as many as 895 birds and bats in Sweden. World Council for Nature chairman Mark Duchamp estimates that turbines kill twice as many bats as birds.

That means the more than 40,000 turbines operating in the United States, often in or near important habitats, could easily be killing 13 million to 39 million birds and bats every year!

And yet, most environmentalist groups say nothing, and the Fish and Wildlife Service does nothing.

However, Georgia taxpayers must pay millions for bat studies – enriching researchers and reducing taxpayer wealth – to ensure that road projects do not disturb the flying mammals. Meanwhile, the state’s drivers and passengers must wait years for safety and other improvements to their highways.

Ironically, Indiana bats that are to be studied and protected in Georgia could get chopped in half en route by “Cuisinarts of the air” that Uncle Sam considers so holy the turbines must be safeguarded against endangered species laws, regardless of environmental costs.

Far too many other health, environmental and economic impacts are routinely ignored by developers and regulators alike, where wind turbines are concerned. That cannot continue.

As summer approaches, Americans should also consider what life will be like when windmills cause bat populations to crater. Freed of their natural predators, mosquitoes will thrive, and they have a much more unquenchable thirst for human blood than do bats of folklore and Dracula tales.

It’s high time that people’s safety – and truly devastating impacts on important bird and bat species – stopped taking a back seat to political agendas, crony corporatism and folklore environmentalism. It’s no longer acceptable to paraphrase Joseph Stalin’s obscene axiom, and say: A single bird or bat death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.

Via email



British shale gas 'could heat all homes for 100 years'

Britain is sitting on a "potentially massive" amount of shale gas that experts believe could heat every home for at least 100 years.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) is due to report on how much shale gas is under the country within weeks.

Sources close to the report say the current estimate of five trillion cubic feet is "almost certainly" due to be increased.

Dr Nick Riley, of the BGS, said: "We are sitting on potentially a massive resource, but whether we are able to extract it we do not know. We have to do the exploration and then we have to get the consent of the people."

In the Budget last week George Osborne, the Chancellor, signalled the go-ahead for shale gas by promising tax breaks and bribes for communities that allow drilling in their back yard.

Industry insiders say the BGS could report between 1,200 trillion and 1,800 trillion cubic feet of gas under the UK, mostly in northern England. The other main reserve is around the Hampshire basin in the Home Counties, including Berkshire, Sussex and Kent. There are also pockets in central Scotland, Wales and the Midlands. The top estimate would represent sufficient gas to heat UK homes for 1,200 years.

Usually it is only possible to extract about a third of shale gas deposits.

Even at conservative estimates, that presume just 10 per cent of 1,500 trillion cubic feet of gas is accessible, there would be enough gas to heat our homes for 100 years.

Hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – allows companies to extract previously inaccessible gas from shale by blasting water into the rocks underground.

Britain lifted an 18-month ban on fracking at the end of last year and already companies are gearing up to start drilling. Cuadrilla estimates there could be as much as 200 trillion cubic feet of shale gas in the Bowland shale alone

The exploration company is planning up to 10 wells around Lancashire over the next 18 months. Other companies ready to explore include IGas and Weir Group.

Past data about shale gas are based on basic geology and relatively shallow deposits. The new information from the BGS will be taken from much deeper wells.

Concerns remain around the possibility of triggering earthquakes, after initial fracking [allegedly] caused tremors and water contamination when gases leaked into the water table.

The BGS is also analysing the groundwater in shale gas areas so that when fracking begins it will be possible to tell if drinking water has been contaminated.

Promised Land, a film starring Matt Damon, to be released this month, presents the negative impact shale gas exploration can have, and is expected to add to safety concerns.

Balcombe in West Sussex has already set up a protest group and the campaign group Frack Off warns that other villages in the Home Counties could be in danger. Prof Richard Davies, of the Energy Institute at Durham University, said contamination of water was "extremely unlikely". Prof Davies said the well tops could be as small as a few feet high but there could be thousands.

"We will need hundreds to thousands of these wells to get enough production for this to make a difference." Shale gas is owned by the Crown, and firms would have to pay tax to the Government. But Prof Davies also sounded a note of caution: "The BGS can say what they like about the rocks under the ground and the gas in it but no one has produced a molecule yet."

SOURCE





The great recycling con trick: How 12million tons of carefully sorted British garbage is being dumped in foreign landfill sites

Millions of tons of household rubbish painstakingly sorted by families for recycling is being dumped abroad.

Whitehall has admitted that waste from recycling bins is being shipped to countries including China, India and Indonesia, where much of it ends up in landfill.

In papers published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, ministers concede that what happens to the 12million tons of 'green' waste shipped abroad every year is largely beyond their control.

The trade in sending rubbish abroad – mainly to Asia – has doubled over the past decade, as councils have increasingly turned to contractors to deal with mountains of waste generated by compulsory recycling schemes.

The law states that this rubbish should be recycled once it is sent abroad – but Defra now admits that in some countries it is simply dumped.

The department, headed by Owen Paterson, the Environment Secretary, said it plans to tighten inspections at ports to curb the illegal trade in green waste.

The Government has always insisted that household rubbish is carefully recycled – but the Daily Mail revealed earlier this year that large amounts are deemed unusable by recycling plants, and instead sent to landfill. Now the Environment Agency has confirmed that material sent to China, Indonesia and India is also buried, rather than recycled.

As well as household rubbish, Defra admitted that other waste dumped abroad includes used tyres, sent to China, and discarded televisions and computers, which end up in West Africa.

Doretta Cocks, of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collections, said: 'People will be very shocked by this development. 'Most people believe their rubbish is recycled in this country. Now it turns out there are container ships coming here from China filled with televisions and computers ... and going home stacked with containers filled with our recycled rubbish. That is shameful.'

The revelation comes after Defra launched a consultation with the waste industry about new recycling rules. Consultation documents concede that waste is being dumped abroad, although 'the exact extent of illegal shipping is unknown'.

If stricter checks were introduced, the department says 'our expectations are that the amount of waste exported illegally and then dumped in developing countries would reduce'.

The Environment Agency has asked councils to improve the quality of the recycling they collect, and to check what their contractors are doing with it.

It has told local authorities: 'In the UK and the EU, increasing amounts of waste collected for recycling are sent overseas for reprocessing. Much of the waste collected from households … will ultimately be exported.

'The majority of illegal waste exports we have intercepted include waste originally collected by or on behalf of local authorities via household recycling collection services.

'We are particularly concerned about illegal exports of mixed household waste mis-described as paper or plastic. These typically derive from poorly-performing household collection and sorting systems.'

The news that household recycling is being dumped in developing countries follows the admission by Defra in February that recycling claims are exaggerated.

Official figures say 43 per cent of all the household rubbish collected is recycled – but the ministry said that, in reality, processors reject most recyclable material, which then often ends up in landfill sites.

Defra has also acknowledged that the main reason for compulsory recycling schemes is not lack of landfill space or the need to combat climate change, but instead the demands of the EU's Waste Framework Directive, the latest version of which came into force last year.

Household recycling became the norm after Tony Blair's Labour government encouraged councils to pick up non-recyclable refuse every two weeks.

Mrs Cocks said: 'There has always been a big question mark over the recycling movement of the past decade. I fear we are now going to come under greater pressure to produce purer materials for recycling.

'We have not had proper rubbish collections for a decade, but I think soon we will get monthly collections.'

A spokesman for the department said: 'Trade in recyclable materials is a global market and we want to see UK businesses make money from it to help boost our economy. We would like to see our own recycling industry grow so that we can grasp this opportunity with both hands.'

SOURCE




From hedgehogs and bees to bluebells and daffs, victims of the UK's big freeze: How longest winter had hit wildlife

Warmists are always shrilling about the threat to wildlife from their prophesied global warming. In real life the threat to wildlife is from colder temperatures

We've shivered all through winter and put up with a freezing March. But just after one of the coldest April days for 20 years, there is a glimmer of hope of some warmth.

With the Easter holidays over, temperatures are expected to creep closer to the monthly average and even reach double-digits over the weekend.

However, it could be too late for many of our wildlife.

Conservationists fear hibernating species such as dormice, hedgehogs and bats will all struggle to find food as they wake up from the longest winter for 50 years … if many of them wake up at all.

There are concerns many will have died because they went to sleep without enough energy reserves to see them through the prolonged chill.

Those which come out of hibernation face frozen ground and a lack of insects caused by the late budding of plants.

Many early varieties of flowers are still to make an appearance. Almost a thousand wild bluebell flowerings were recorded at this point last year, but only four have so far been reported by conservationists.

Met Office forecaster Dan Williams said after March’s prolonged chill, milder conditions are expected for the next few days, although any truly warm weather may be a few weeks off.

He said: ‘You expect the winter months to be cold, but March has trumped all of them and was colder still. April really picked up where March ended. The weekend will be pretty decent, with dry conditions and good spells of sunshine, especially on Saturday. Temperatures could reach as high as 11C on Sunday, which is close to the seasonal average.’

The prolonged winter has resulted in a significant drop in early spring wildlife compared with last year, according to the Woodland Trust, which compiles public reports in its Nature’s Calendar recording scheme.

Ladybirds and cuckoos are lower both in terms of sightings and also more importantly their distribution across the country.

The number of common seven-spot ladybirds seen this year has fallen ten-fold, from 1,169 last year to 119, while hedgehog numbers are drastically down on previous years – half the number had woken from hibernation in March compared to the last two springs.

Wild creatures reliant on blooms and buds for food are particularly suffering, with the RSPCA expressing concern over the apparent loss of fledglings.

Last year, the charity was looking after 130 fledglings in March, but only has a handful in its centres this year, suggesting fewer births due to a lack of food.

In Swindon, hundreds of thousands of starlings were spotted over the town centre in what experts believe was an attempt to keep warm.

Britain’s rarest flower has also failed to bloom this year because of the washout winter. The majority of Britain’s population of snake’s head fritillaries grow in a 110-acre meadow near Cricklade in Wiltshire. But last year’s deluges have left the ground saturated and the plants are showing no signs of blooming, as they usually do in April.

Dr Kate Lewthwaite of the Woodland Trust: ‘The records we’ve received clearly highlight the prolonged delay to the arrival of spring with birds, insects and flowers all weeks behind compared to where we were last year. It is too early to say if there will be any long term impact this year but nature is remarkably resilient in the face of such extremes in weather.’

SOURCE




GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA

Three current reports below

Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Brisbane ahead of Great Barrier Reef campaign

The "threat" posed by coal mining is entirely imaginary. Coal has been mined for decades with no link to the reef established. Greenpeace just like mucking around in boats

THE new Rainbow Warrior docked in Brisbane's today, for the first time in 30 years, as Greenpeace prepares to launch its Queensland tour.

Berthed at Portside Wharf, the ship will be open to the public for tours later this week, as the environmental group readies for a new Great Barrier Reef campaign.

Greenpeace CEO David Ritter said its arrival has come at an important time as coal expansion threatens to destroy Queensland's reef and waterways. "If we want to stop coal barons destroying the Great Barrier Reef and all the jobs associated with it, we need to act now," he said.

Mr Ritter invited Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke and Premier Campbell Newman to come aboard and discuss concerns for the sustainability of the reef. "We are down here on the boat if Campbell Newman or Tony Burke would like to come down for a chat," he said. "They need to know it is simply not okay to destroy and industrialise the Great Barrier Reef."

Greenpeace has expressed anger at the Queensland government's support of a revised expansion of the controversial New Acland coal mine in the state's southwest, after previously announcing the mine's third stage would not go ahead.

But despite renewed plans for coal expansion, Mr Ritter said it was never too late for action. "I can't look my children in the eyes and say it's too late," he said.

"It's never too late. The decision is in the state and federal government's hands to say it's not too late to save the world, it's not too late to act."

Mr Ritter was tight lipped about plans to actively stop coal expansion in North Queensland but did not rule out any direct action as long as it was done so peacefully.

"Greenpeace always tries to directly prevent environmental harm. We don't shy away from that, but it is always done peacefully. It's hard wired into our team, peace is in our name," he said.

The Queensland campaign will kick off in Townsville on Friday when they rally support among local community members to put a stop to coal mining.

SOURCE

The reef that regenerated: Researchers find corals in Northern Australia healed themselves in just 12 years



Greenies are always talking about things that they think will "damage" reefs but reefs turn out to be pretty good at looking after themselves

A coral reef in Northern Australia severely damaged by warming seas has managed to completely heal itself in just 12 years, stunned researchers have found.

The team found that being left alone to breed on its own was key.

The discovery raises hope that other damaged reefs could 'regenerate'.

The new research shows that an isolated reef off the northwest coast of Australia that was severely damaged by a period of warming in 1998.

It was hit by coral bleaching, caused by higher water temperatures that break down the coral's symbiotic relationship with algae that provide food for coral growth.

However, the team found Scott reef has regenerated in a very short time to become nearly as healthy as it was before.

What surprises scientists, though, is that the reef regenerated by itself, found a study published Thursday in the journal Science.

James Gilmour and colleagues studied the Scott system of reefs on the edge of Western Australia’s continental shelf, which lost 70 to 90 percent of its corals to a climate-induced bleaching event back in 1998.

The researchers found that, although the corals’ reproductive abilities were reduced by the bleaching, coral cover still increased from 9 percent to 44 percent across the entire system in just 12 years.

The team say the finding is surprising because researchers have assumed that recovery from such bleaching events depends upon the delivery of larvae from other, nearby reef systems.

But, the Scott system of reefs is located 155 miles (250 kilometers) from the mainland or any other reefs.

So, Gilmour and his team suggest that herbivorous fish, which remained abundant in the undisturbed Scott system, even after the bleaching, kept microalgae in check and allowed coralline algae to thrive.

This set of conditions in turn provided a suitable substratum upon which young corals could establish and grow., they claim.

The study suggests that reef systems can recover using local sources of larvae, especially when fish are plentiful and human activities, which have been shown to slow coral recovery in the past, are limited.

At first, the reef grew slowly, mostly through the enlargement of existing coral colonies. But to really recover, the coral needs to sexually reproduce, creating sperm and egg that form embryos that then land on the ocean floor and grow into adult corals, if all goes well.

These larvae can survive for hundreds of miles, swept along by ocean currents, and colonize new areas under the right circumstances.

Larvae floating in from other reefs could have helped the reef, had it not been so isolated.

But amazingly, after about six years, the surviving corals matured and began to reproduce, creating even more new colonies than before the bleaching. 'They recovered, and the larvae they produced settled and survived, at much higher rates than is often reported,' Gilmour said. By 2012, the reef was basically back to its old self.

SOURCE

Greens braced for tough fight in Senate poll

Greens leader Christine Milne admits the party faces a tough fight in the September federal election to hold the balance of power in the Senate, with the possibility that senators Sarah Hanson-Young and Scott Ludlam will lose their jobs.

Speaking before her first anniversary as Greens leader next Saturday, Senator Milne predicted the election would be an uphill battle for the party.

"There's no doubt this is going to be a tough election for us … The tide is rushing in for the conservatives" at both federal and state levels, she said.

Dismissing recent poll results that put the Greens' lower house vote at 10 per cent - down slightly from the record 11.8 per cent primary vote the party gained at the 2010 election - Senator Milne said the election would not be about "numbers".

"It's about us holding the balance of power and holding our sitting members," she said.

"Scott Ludlam and Sarah Hanson-Young will be fighting it out with a conservative for the last seats [in Western Australia and South Australia]."

Amid the complex balance of power calculations, Senator Milne said Opposition Leader Tony Abbott needed only two more seats to gain control of the Senate.

While the Greens did not want to see an Abbott government in Canberra, the "overwhelming odds" were that the Coalition would easily win the election, she said.

But she said that if her party maintained the balance of power in the Senate, there would be opportunities for the Greens under the Coalition, despite their differences on big-ticket policies such as climate change and asylum seekers.

There was more likelihood of influencing the Coalition on gay marriage than staunchly Catholic elements of the Labor Party, Senator Milne said.

She pointed to her time leading the Tasmanian Greens from 1996 to 1998 when they supported a Liberal minority government and secured gay and gun law reform.

SOURCE

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

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

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5 April, 2013

World's solar power won't save ANY energy until 2020

A new study has claimed the vast construction of solar farms around the globe has used so much fossil fuel they will not contribute any 'real' energy to the world until 2020.

The Stanford University study analysed the fossil fuels used in the construction of solar panels.

It found the panels have only just begun to surpass the amount of energy ploughed into created new solar installations.

The energy used to produce solar panels is intense, the new report found. The initial step in producing the silicon at the heart of most panels is to melt silica rock at 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit using electricity, commonly from coal-fired power plants.

There is also an energy cost in shipping and installing the panels.

With continued technological advances, the industry is poised to pay off its debt of energy as early as 2015, and no later than 2020, the report concluded.

'This analysis shows that the industry is making positive strides,' said Michael Dale, who developed the method for assessing the industry's progress for the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

'Despite its fantastically fast growth rate, PV is producing – or just about to start producing – a net energy benefit to society.'

Supporters of solar power hope the industry will develop new, easier to produce panels.

'Developing new technologies with lower energy requirements will allow us to grow the industry at a faster rate,' said Sally Benson of Stanford's Global Climate & Energy Project.

To be considered a success – or simply a positive energy technology – PV panels must ultimately pay back all the energy that went into them, said Dale.

The PV industry ran an energy deficit from 2000 to now, consuming 75 percent more energy than it produced just five years ago.

The energy payback time can also be reduced by installing PV panels in locations with high quality solar resources, like the desert Southwest in the United States and the Middle East, the team believe.

They say many panels are simply installed in the wrong countries.

'At the moment, Germany makes up about 40 percent of the installed market, but sunshine in Germany isn't that great,' Dale said.

'So from a system perspective, it may be better to deploy PV systems where there is more sunshine.'

SOURCE




Why the Climate Movement is up against it

A Warmist sees through the dark glassily below: "The climate movement challenges human nature". And note that it's a "movement", rather than a science. Just another Messianic religion -- JR

The climate movement can’t be compared to any other social movement in history. Here’s why it’s unprecedented and why we need new strategies to transition from the current climate movement of the few to a vibrant worldwide movement of the many.

First, the climate movement is historically unique in scope and urgency. Never before has an issue involved every single human being on this planet, and never before has the window for action been so short. (An International Energy Agency report states that we have until 2017 to start the transition away from fossil fuels before irreversible calamity.)

Second, the climate movement challenges human nature. Past social movements have focused on immediate and visible injustices. People fought against the here and now for a better tomorrow and beyond. That model of activism is consistent with human nature: we are creatures of immediate benefit and short-term thinking. But climate change is a completely different animal. Yes, global warming is having an undeniable and tangible effect on people’s lives. But by the time enough people--especially in the US--have experienced enough of the consequences of climate change to be compelled to action, it will be too late to mitigate the effects of rising planetary temperatures. Therefore, fighting climate change means fighting something that is abstract now but will be real later. This requirement defies the deep pull of human nature. It is antithetical to our normal ways of thinking and acting. This is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to mobilize a climate movement. This is new territory. There is no parallel in human experience.

More HERE





Climate Science Humiliated…Earlier Model Prognoses Of Warmer Winters Now Today’s Laughingstock

“The Earth has a fever,” we were told. “The science is settled and the debate is over. Scientists are unanimous - 97% of them agree: climate change is real, and is happening now, and we’ve got to act quickly.”

Over more than two decades we were told again and again that everywhere was warming faster than everywhere else – especially winters were warming up quickly. Snow was becoming a thing of the past and children soon weren’t going to know what it is. “The warm winters that we are seeing are just a harbinger of what’s to come,” the media declared just a couple of years ago. The scientists were cock-sure.

Today we are finding that precisely the exact opposite is happening. Winters in Europe have turned colder and more severe. Central Europe has seen its 5th consecutive colder than normal winter in a row – a record since measurements began in the 19th century.

Climate scientists first reacted by claiming, “One winter does not make a trend“. Then they said that the cold winters were a local phenomenon. Finally they were forced to recently claim, “Cold winters now fit the picture of global warming!”

List of failed predictions

What follows are dozens of predictions for warmer winters made not long ago during the 2000s, many by leading scientists. What started as a simple Google search, turned into a list of false winter predictions for Central Europe, particularly Germany. By sheer coincidence reader Jimbo sent over his own list of false wintertime predictions made by “experts” in the US and Great Britain. I’ve combined the two lists and present one long list to you. Of course we still have to wait (90 years in some cases) to see how some of the predictions inevitably turn out, but current trends do not bode well for them.

Unfortunately, many of these predictions were passed on as reliable predictions to various sectors of industry, so that they could prepare for the new future that awaited. Many of these industries, like tourism, skiing, agriculture, highway maintenance, etc. based their investment decisions in part on these forecasts. As we now know, they turned out to be false – completely false – and the costs will be billions. Readers are welcome to suggest other false wintertime predictions, which we will gladly add to the list.

Failed winter climate predictions

(The first 33 concern mostly Germany and Central Europe)

1. “Due to global warming, the coming winters in the local regions will become milder.”
Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, University of Potsdam, 8 Feb 2006

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2. “Milder winters, drier summers: Climate study shows a need to adapt in Saxony Anhalt.”
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Press Release, 10 Jan 2010.

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3. “More heat waves, no snow in the winter“ … “Climate models… over 20 times more precise than the UN IPCC global models. In no other country do we have more precise calculations of climate consequences. They should form the basis for political planning. … Temperatures in the wintertime will rise the most … there will be less cold air coming to Central Europe from the east. …In the Alps winters will be 2°C warmer already between 2021 and 2050.”
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, 2 Sept 2008.

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4. “The new Germany will be characterized by dry-hot summers and warm-wet winters.“
Wilhelm Gerstengarbe and Peter Werner, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), 2 March 2007

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5. “Clear climate trends are seen from the computer simulations. Foremost the winter months will be warmer all over Germany. Depending of CO2 emissions, temperatures will rise by up to 4°C, in the Alps by up to 5°C.”Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, 7 Dec 2009.

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6. “In summer under certain conditions the scientists reckon with a complete melting of the Arctic sea ice. For Europe we expect an increase in drier and warmer summers. Winters on the other hand will be warmer and wetter.”
Erich Roeckner, Max Planck Institute, Hamburg, 29 Sept 2005.

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7. “The more than ‘unusually‘ warm January weather is yet ‘another extreme event’, ‘a harbinger of the winters that are ahead of us’. … The global temperature will ‘increase every year by 0.2°C’”
Michael Müller, Socialist, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Environment, in Die Zeit, 15 Jan 2007

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8. “Harsh winters likely will be more seldom and precipitation in the wintertime will be heavier everywhere. However, due to the milder temperatures, it’ll fall more often as rain than as snow.”
Online-Atlas of the Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, 2010

9. “We’ve mostly had mild winters in which only a few cold months were scattered about, like January 2009. This winter is a cold outlier, but that doesn’t change the picture as a whole. Generally it’s going to get warmer, also in the wintertime.”
Gerhard Müller-Westermeier, German Weather Service (DWD), 26 Jan 2010

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10. “Winters with strong frost and lots of snow like we had 20 years ago will cease to exist at our latitudes.”
Mojib Latif, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, 1 April 2000

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More HERE




Coal makes a comeback in Europe as conventional gas dries up

Europe’s declining competitiveness with U.S. industry has its leaders worried, but they admit having no hope of matching the shale revolution that is powering a revival of manufacturing across the Atlantic.

For Europe to remain in the game, energy taxes must be held in check and no new taxes levied, said the European Union’s energy commissioner, Gunther Oettinger.

Instead, Europe must use its energy more efficiently and the European Union’s 27 member countries should open their energy markets to cross-border competition, Oettinger said at a news conference last week in Brussels.

With its conventional gas fields nearly depleted and gas prices four times higher than in the United States, Europe would like to develop a thriving shale gas industry, but that seems unlikely in the near term.

“We do not have that many North Dakotas in Europe. We do not have those deserted areas where you can drill and no one is being asked or complaining,” said Connie Hedegaard, the European Union’s commissioner for climate action.

European drillers also face greater geological challenges, more stringent environmental regulations and stronger public skepticism of hydraulic fracturing.

“We will not see prices in Europe for shale gas come down to the level in the U.S.,” she said.

There is no E.U. regulation against unconventional drilling, although the environment commission is drawing up guidelines of best practices. Each country is free to chose whether to drill. So far, fracking has been conducted on a test basis, and two countries, France and Bulgaria, have banned the technique for now.

Oettinger and Hedegaard jointly were releasing a policy paper setting the framework for climate and energy targets for the decade after 2020. Documents released alongside the Green Paper made it clear the trends are not running in the climate’s favor.

Europe is in a quandary. For years, it has claimed to be a global leader in fighting climate change and slashing carbon emissions. Now it finds itself running out of conventional gas and turning back to dirty coal. Oettinger said onshore and North Sea gas deposits will be depleted by 2035 or 2040.

The price of imported gas from long-term contracts remains stubbornly high because Europe’s suppliers — Russia, Norway, Algeria and Qatar — link them to oil prices. Producing some shale gas would help Europe decouple the gas-to-oil index, the energy commissioner said.

In the meantime, coal is increasingly the option of choice.

Although Europe mines more than 70 percent of its own coal, it has been buying the surplus coal spurned by the U.S. power sector after American plants shifted largely to gas. These imports have “potentially halted, and to some extent reversed a two decade long trend of decreasing coal consumption,” says one document.

Coal is cheap not only because U.S. supplies are sold at bargain prices but because the penalty for emitting too much carbon has become almost insignificant.

Europe’s cap-and-trade program is meant to make it expensive for industry to pollute. Industries that emit more carbon dioxide than permitted must buy pollution permits from facilities that release less CO2 than allowed. The market price is determined by the availability of those permits.

In practice, the economic recession has led to an industrial slowdown, less emissions and an overabundance of permits for sale. Thus, the price of carbon has collapsed to less than €5 per ton.

That means buying carbon credits to burn coal is cheaper than fueling power stations with expensive gas. Analysts say a price of €20 is needed to incentivize power plants to switch to low-carbon energy.

“Coal has become a new and economically interesting input for power production in the E.U.,” says the paper. “The lifetime of power plants that were expected to close is now being extended, and as such the risk related to carbon lock-in for new fossil fuel developments increases.”

In Britain alone, the use of gas in power stations dropped 31 percent and the use of coal rose by the same amount from 2011 to 2012, driving a 4.5 percent increase in carbon emissions, according to figures released last week by the U.K. Department of Climate and Energy.

SOURCE





North Sea Fracking: Britain’s Next Energy Revolution?

A small oil drilling firm has announced its intention to develop offshore fracking in the central North Sea. Trapoil is working up plans that would extend the technology from its extensive use onshore in North America.

It claimed there could be more oil and gas from unconventional technology than all of the output so far produced from the North Sea.

Trapoil plans test drilling a well next year, if it can find a partner for the project.

The company said the well could be "game-changing", if it could prove that oil will flow out of tight reservoirs at a commercial rate.

The fracking process involves using high-pressure liquid to fracture shale rock in order to release oil and gas.

In a statement accompanying its annual results, Trapoil said: "The amount of oil potentially held in tight reservoirs is equal to, or probably greater than, all of the oil produced to date from the UK North Sea.

"The possible prize is therefore substantial, but this asset is still very much in its infancy and we will need to perform a considerable amount of work before drilling may occur."

The cost of "proof of concept" test drilling, targeted for 2014 and in partnership with Extract, is too expensive for a smaller drilling firm, so they would have to find a larger partner.

'Quite disappointing'

That reflects annual results for the London-based firm that are downbeat about the financial constraints smaller operators are facing.

It made a pre-tax loss of £10.8m last year. With its Athena field coming on stream last year, it had revenue of less than £2m, though that is expected to increase significantly during this year.

Trapoil had two discoveries last year, but recently announced its Magnolia prospect had been unsuccessful.

SOURCE




Pipelines and Pipe Dreams

Whom does Barack Obama want to please more -- out-of-work adults who would love a high-wage job building the Keystone XL pipeline or tony venture capitalists who travel cloistered in private jets when they're not complaining that Washington doesn't do enough about global warming?
On Wednesday night, the president attended a $5,000-a-head cocktail fundraiser, hosted by climate change capitalist Tom Steyer. On Tuesday, Steyer, who has been both a big Democratic donor and a vocal opponent of the Keystone pipeline, told the San Francisco Chronicle's Carla Marinucci that the president "knows exactly what's right on this issue, and he knows what to do."

Steyer added that he is "super-optimistic that if we make clear" the pipeline's cost to the health of Americans and the U.S. economy, "people will agree ... and political action will follow."

Steyer must think his money talks more loudly than the American people. A new Pew Research Center poll found that 66 percent of Americans support the pipeline; a mere 23 percent oppose it. That's probably because the State Department estimates that the $7 billion project would create 3,900 construction jobs annually. In January, 53 senators, including nine Democrats, sent a letter that urged the president to approve the project.

The president should heed public sentiment and approve Keystone. The pipeline fits with his promise of an "all-of-the-above policy" that utilizes "every source of American-made energy" -- both green energy and fossil fuels.

It's "shovel-ready."

American oil promotes energy independence. The pipeline would transport oil from the Alberta tar sands and the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Montana. Canada is an esteemed neighbor with strong trade reciprocation and a solid human rights record.

The Sierra Club calls the project "the dirtiest oil project in the country." It's not a pristine process. Extraction from tar sands releases more carbon into the atmosphere than other methods and leaves behind the sort of toxic ponds that can make even a Republican think, "Thank God for regulation."

There are mitigations, however, such as the lesser environmental toll involved in moving oil a shorter distance (from Canada, not Venezuela) via pipeline.

To true believers of global warming, however, Keystone's passage represents "game over" in their effort to block new energy exploration. In the name of science, they ignore technology and the reality of today's global economy. To wit: If Keystone doesn't move Alberta's oil, someone else will, and someone else -- read: China -- will use it.

Don't take my word for it. New York Times environmental blogger Andrew C. Revkin recently wrote that in the global oil market, "it's high demand that drives the oil-extraction imperative. Until you start to do the things we've been talking about to cut demand, you can blockade a certain pipeline or whatever but that oil will out. ... It'll be Nigeria or the Arctic if it's not Alberta."

In 2008, I asked Sierra Club Deputy Executive Director Bruce Hamilton where it would be OK to drill in California, and he refused to name any new projects.

Global warming's true believers seem to think that if they block smart projects, the laws of economics will evaporate and America will produce cheap green energy at no cost to anyone. Not in the real world.

SOURCE


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

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

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4 April, 2013

Green Tyranny

John Stossel

Environmental activists and politicians would like you to think that we must love their regulations -- or hate trees and animals.

I love trees and animals. But you can love nature and still hate the tyranny that environmental regulations bring.

The Environmental Protection Agency just announced it will boost gas prices ("only" a penny, although industry says 6 to 9 cents) to make another minuscule improvement to air quality.

In New York City, my mayor wants to ban Styrofoam cups, saying, "I think it's something we can do without."

Congress already dictates the design of our cars, toilets and light bulbs.

Originally, environmental rules were a good thing. I love the free market, but it doesn't offer a practical remedy to pollution. I could sue polluters for violating my property rights, but under our legal system, that's not even close to practical.

So in the '70s, government passed rules that demanded we stop polluting the air and water. Industry put scrubbers in smokestacks. Towns installed sewage treatment. Now the air is quite clean, and I can swim in the rivers around Manhattan.

But government didn't stop there. Government never stops. Now that the air is cleaner, government spends even more than it spent to clean the air to subsidize feeble methods of energy production, like windmills and solar panels. Activists want even more spending. A few years back, the Center for American Progress announced they were upset that "Germany, Spain and China Are Seizing the Energy Opportunity ... the United States Risks Getting Left Behind."

In this case, we're better off "left behind." After spending billions, those European governments made no breakthroughs, and now they're cutting back.

The Endangered Species Act was another noble idea. We all want to save polar bears. But now the bureaucrats make it almost impossible for some people to improve their own property.

Louisiana landowner Edward Poitevent wants to build homes and offices north of Lake Pontchartrain. He could provide safe high-ground housing to people eager to move away from areas that were flooded during Hurricane Katrina. But he is not allowed to build because the government decided 1,500 acres of his land should become a preservation area for a threatened species called the dusky gopher frog. None of these frogs currently live on his property. Poitevent told me, "The Fish and Wildlife Service has certified that the frog has not been seen in the state of Louisiana since 1967."

Fish and Wildlife Service officials said they were "not available" to talk with me about this. Instead, they posted a video on YouTube that says they work "with" landowners: "The Service has many voluntary partnership-based programs that can provide technical and financial assistance to manage species."

That sounds nice, but the government's handbook on how to work with them is an onerous 315 pages long.

The environmentalists so torment those who resist their schemes that some landowners tell each other, "If you find an endangered species, shoot, shovel and shut up!" That's mostly a joke. But it does happen, and it's one more way government regulations backfire.

Throughout the world, most reductions in pollution have been achieved because of capitalism, not government control.

Fracking for natural gas reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Even much-hated coal and oil provide benefits. Science writer Matt Ridley says, "Burning of fossil fuels is helping the rainforest in the Amazon to grow."

Ridley also points out modern industrial farming allows people to grow more food on less land, and so people cut down fewer trees. "New England used to be 70 percent farmland -- it's now 70 percent forest."

You can even see the difference between areas that get greener and ones that don't from space: The Dominican Republic is noticeably greener than its immediate neighbor, Haiti, mainly because the Dominican Republic uses fossil fuel instead of burning wood from its forests for fuel, as Haiti does.

Industry and technology, not regulations, are humanity's greatest contribution to the environment. Leave people their freedom, and they come up with new, smarter, more efficient and thus cleaner ways of doing things. Stifling that process with regulation isn't "progressive."

SOURCE





IMF calls on U.S. to institute $500 billion carbon tax

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has called upon the U.S., its largest contributor, to levy a $500 billion a year carbon tax on consumers to offset what it calls “underpriced” oil, coal, and other energy products.

This “mispricing” is supposedly leading to “excessive energy consumption,” which is “accelerating the depletion of natural resources” and contributing to climate change.

“The IMF is lobbying on behalf of environmentalist radicals, arguing that not implementing a half-trillion dollar a year carbon tax is a de facto energy subsidy,” Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson wrote in a letter to members of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade.

The IMF study, published on Jan. 28, states, “Consumer subsidies include two components: a pre-tax subsidy (if the price paid by firms and households is below supply and distribution costs) and a tax subsidy (if taxes are below their efficient level).”

In a statement, Wilson called the IMF’s view “warped.” He added, “not taxing being construed as a subsidy that economically crowds out anything is as Orwellian as it gets. There is no level of deception these people will not stoop to in order to hide their true ends.”

The study justifies these taxes as preventing climate change: “The efficient taxation of energy further requires corrective taxes to capture negative environmental and other externalities due to energy use (such as global warming and local pollution).”

In a March 27 interview, the IMF’s head of fiscal affairs, Carlo Cottarelli said, “Even where countries impose taxes on energy, they’re rarely high enough to account for all of the adverse effects of excessive energy consumption, including on the environment.”

Cottarelli claimed that not taxing carbon emissions in the U.S. by $500 billion a year “crowd[s] out public spending that can boost growth, including on infrastructure, education, and health care. Cheap energy can also lead to overconsumption of energy, which aggravates environmental problems, such as pollution and climate change.”

“Just think about what Cottarelli said. It’s a completely distorted view of reality. It is higher energy costs and increased taxes are what would actually dampen consumer spending in other areas,” Wilson explained.

Therefore, Wilson said, the IMF-proposed carbon tax is “just a means to an end by increasing governmental power over other these other areas of the economy, like health care and education, for one by raising $500 billion a year in additional revenue.”

“By strangling the economy for money and restricting energy consumption, people will naturally turn to governments for sustenance since producing value in the private sector will come at a much higher premium. What good is a job in the U.S. economy if a person cannot afford to drive there?” Wilson asked.

He also criticized the IMF for bailing out Greece, Portugal, and Ireland with $86.6 billion of bailouts, which the U.S. has contributed about $17 billion to, and the IMF’s role in levying a €5.8 billion savings deposit tax in Cyprus.

Wilson said the U.S. “should have nothing more to do with this radical outfit,” and called on Congress to reject the Obama Administration’s budget request to double the nation’s quota subscription in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to $130 billion from its current $65 billion level, converting part of the nation’s current $100 billion line of credit to the IMF.

If the Obama request was fulfilled, it would keep the nation’s total stake in the IMF at $165 billion.

“Not only should that request be rejected, but Congress ought to withdraw our quota subscription altogether, along with the $100 billion line of credit,” Wilson added in his letter to the House subcommittee, concluding, “Taxpayers should not be propping up bankrupt socialist states and the banks that fund them, let alone financing the lobbying efforts of radical environmentalists.”

SOURCE





"Frankenol" – End the Madness

The word “gasoline” no longer characterizes the stuff we put into our cars. Due to regulations forced on the refining industry, “Frankenol” might be more accurate.

This government-engineered, market-distorting fuel is a blend of 90 percent gasoline and 10 percent ethanol (E10). Originally conceived to breathe life into the fledgling U.S. ethanol industry and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, continued tinkering with the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) has turned the program into a nightmare.

The RFS requires refiners to blend increasing amounts of ethanol into the nation’s fuel pool annually. Last year they were responsible for blending a minimum of 13.2 billion gallons. This year the figure is higher at 13.8 billion gallons. By 2022, the RFS mandate will require 36 billion gallons.

To document compliance, refiners track the RINs (Renewable Identification Numbers) applied to every gallon of ethanol purchased, or they buy paper RINs which are credits paid to ethanol producers. In either case, refiners have to spend real money to comply with the law.

In creating the RSF program, the government assumed that gasoline demand would continue to rise. It was wrong. With more fuel-efficient vehicles, a lackluster economy, and higher prices at the pump, gasoline demand has declined to the lowest level in 18 years.

As a result, refiners are stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place: They have had to reduce fuel production because demand is down; yet they have to comply with the increasing ethanol mandate. This means they are buying more ethanol credits in the form of RINs but purchasing fewer gallons of ethanol. As a result, millions of gallons of corn-based ethanol are sitting in storage tanks, while the price of RINs has climbed 20-fold in the last 90 days. Industry analyst Byron King says the RIN credit gimmick has "added a dime, or more, per gallon to the national fuel bill in the first quarter of 2013 – in the face of stagnant or declining oil prices."

But that’s just part of the RFS’s market distorting impact. Ethanol contains less energy than crude oil-based gasoline, so motorists have to fill-up more often and needlessly spend more money. Furthermore, an estimated 42 percent of the nation’s 2012 corn crop will be consumed to make ethanol. Artificially driving up corn prices – particularly when much of the farm belt was drought stricken - has resulted in more expensive meat, poultry, and countless food products leaving consumers to bear the burden.

Research by the Heritage Foundation conducted last year indicated that U.S. ethanol production was responsible for increasing the price of corn by up to 68 percent. Stanford University’s Center for Food Security and the Environment warned, “Poor households in the developing world, where 70-80% of the budget is spent on food, [are] hurt the most.”

And there’s more. Ethanol producers looking to create a larger market for their fuel have convinced the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to allow the sale of E15, a fuel blend containing up to 15 percent ethanol. However, as AAA warns, E15 could "void car manufacturers warranties" since 95% of the nation's 240 million light duty vehicles can't handle the concoction. E15 "could result in significant problems such as accelerated engine wear and failure (and) fuel-system damage," according to AAA.

If that’s not bad enough, Son of RFS (RFS2) contains volumetric mandates for other biofuels, including cellulosic ethanol – although no commercial quantities of the advanced fuel are even available. For failing to use this fantasy fuel that can't be found, the EPA fined energy companies $6.8 million. Thankfully, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against the EPA and overturned the imposition of the phantom fuel fines.

One would think the judges’ ruling would stop this regulatory insanity. It didn’t. A few days after losing in court, the EPA mandated that 62 percent more cellulosic ethanol be blended into motor fuel in 2013.

However well intended way back when, the RFS is another example of government market intervention that has turned out badly. The RFS is casting a large, menacing and costly shadow over the production and marketing of motor fuels. Rather than making fuels better, it is making them worse. Rather than helping American consumers, it is siphoning money from their pockets.

Frankenol and its ugly Frankenfuel stepchildren should be abandoned on the scrap heap of failed policy prescriptions before they can cause more harm. Congress should repeal the RFS.

SOURCE





States show folly of energy mandates

With the Keystone XL pipeline on its way to final approval and President Obama’s picks to head the Departments of Energy and Interior announced, deep-pocketed environmental lobbying groups and activists that are a key part of the Democratic base are formulating their goals and agenda for Obama’s second term.

While Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has introduced carbon tax legislation, it is unlikely to pass the GOP-controlled House; and rather than make another attempt at cap and trade, which the Democrats couldn’t pass when they controlled all of Washington during Obama’s first two years in office, many think the next play will be for a national renewable energy portfolio standard (RPS) that would mandate that a certain percentage of the nation’s electricity be produced from renewable sources.

Fortunately there are the states, those fifty laboratories of democracy as former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis referred to them, to show us the negative impact that a national renewable energy standard would have. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia already have a renewable energy mandate on the books. These mandates inject government into the business decisions of utility companies, requiring them to procure energy from more costly and less reliable sources than they otherwise would.

The increased energy costs produced by renewable mandates are passed along to consumers in the form of higher utility bills. According to the Institute for Energy Research, utility bills in states with a renewable energy portfolio standard (RPS) are 40 percent higher on average than in states without one.

While the Sierra Club and many Congressional Democrats dream of enacting a national RPS, over a dozen bills have been introduced this year to repeal a number of them at the state level. In fact, a bill that would repeal North Carolina’s RPS will be heard in committee later this week.

In 2007, North Carolina became the first state in the South to impose a renewable energy portfolio standard. Since then, two things have occurred: 1) Enough time has passed that the economic harm wrought by the state’s energy mandate has become evident and 2) The composition of the state legislature has become more amenable to repealing misguided regulations like the state’s RPS.

Republicans won majorities in the state legislature in 2010 and took total control of state government for the first time in over 100 years with the election of former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory as governor last November.

Last month, Representative Mike Hager (R) introduced HB 298, legislation that would repeal North Carolina’s energy mandate. A companion bill was introduced in the state senate shortly thereafter. While an RPS repeal effort stalled in Kansas earlier this year due in large part to the political clout of the wind industry in that state, the North Carolina legislation has a shot of passing. And it’s not hard to see why, given the strong case had by proponents of RPS repeal.

North Carolina residents are all too aware of the way in which energy mandates drive up consumer costs. During the decade immediately preceding enactment of the state’s renewable energy mandate, utility bills in North Carolina grew by an average of 1.7 percent per year. Since the mandate’s imposition in 2009, utility bills have increase by an average of 2.29 percent — a 33 percent jump compared to the annual rate of growth prior to passage of the state’s RPS.

A John Locke Foundation study found that North Carolina’s renewable energy mandate, if it remains in place, would increase electricity costs for consumers by $1.8 billion and result in the loss of 3,500 jobs by 2021, the year in which the law is fully phased in and requires North Carolina utilities to generate 7.5 percent of their electricity from renewable sources. The report also found that the state RPS will depress economic growth and reduce in-state investment.

Repeal of the North Carolina’s RPS would stimulate the state economy by increasing disposable income for individuals and families, while raising the job-creating capacity of employers. The necessity of RPS repeal is all the more urgent in light of the state’s 9.4 percent unemployment rate, the fourth highest in the nation, and the fact that North Carolina taxpayers and businesses contend with the highest personal and corporate income tax rates in the Southeast.

By driving up utility bills, state renewable energy mandates act as a hidden tax. Additionally, this is a surreptitious tax that disproportionately hurts lower income households. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, households with an annual income of $50,000 or less really take a hit from expensive energy mandates. Approximately half of U.S. households earn less than $50,000 per year and these households spend the greatest share of their income on energy, spending significantly more on energy than they do on either food or health care. It is these households who bear the brunt of the state’s expensive energy mandate.

The hypocrisy of many on the Left is on full display in North Carolina this year. Many of the same lawmakers and organizations who have criticized proposals to eliminate the state income tax and shift to a consumption tax base as regressive policy that disproportionately hurts the poor are the very same people who vehemently support the state’s expensive energy mandate that hits the least among us the hardest.

It would be a huge loss for the coercive utopian lobbyists on Capitol Hill if North Carolina, a state that is home to the nation’s fastest growing city in Raleigh and largest banking center outside of Manhattan in Charlotte, were to get rid of its expensive energy mandate. Lawmakers in the Tar Heel State can certainly boost their constituents’ pocketbooks and bottom lines by repealing the state’s RPS. And in doing so they would also do a great service to the nation by taking wind out of the sails of efforts to impose this misguided policy on the rest of the country.

SOURCE




Carbon footprints

Okay, here’s the bombshell. The volcanic eruption in Iceland, since its first spewing of volcanic ash has, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet – all of you.

Of course you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress – it’s that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans and all animal life. I know, it’s very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of: driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kid’s “The Green Revolution” science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cents light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs …well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days.

The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere in just four days – yes – FOUR DAYS ONLY by that volcano in Iceland, has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this crud at any on time – EVERY DAY.

I don’t really want to rain on your parade too much, but I should mention that when the volcano Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in all its years on earth. Yes folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over one year – think about it.

Of course I shouldn’t spoil this touchy-feely tree-hugging moment and mention the effect of solar and cosmic activity and the well-recognized 800-year global heating and cooling cycle, which keep happening, despite our completely insignificant efforts to
affect climate change.

And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud but the fact of the matter is that the bush fire season across the western USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to reduce carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens every year.

Just remember that your government just tried to impose a whopping carbon tax on you on the basis of the bogus “human-caused” climate change scenario.

Hey, isn’t it interesting how they don’t mention “Global Warming” any more, but just“Climate Change” – you know why? It’s because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these global warming bull artists got caught with their pants down.

And just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions Trading Scheme – that whopping new tax – imposed on you, that will achieve absolutely nothing except make you poorer. It won’t stop any volcanoes from erupting, that’s for sure.

But hey, relax, give the world a hug and have a nice day!

SOURCE




Australian conservative leader forecasts job loss for prominent Warmist if the Coalition wins power at Federal Election

TONY Abbott has signalled he will sack Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery if he is elected as prime minister in September.

The Opposition Leader, who has vowed to dismantle the Climate Change department and merge it with the Environment Department in government, said he did not see the point of paying Professor Flannery around $180,000 a year for his views which were already public knowledge.

He said if elected as prime minister on September 14 and given the opportunity to revoke the carbon tax a whole range of climate change bureaucracies would also be axed.

"I suspect we might find the particular position you refer to might go with them," Mr Abbott told 2GB’s Ray Hadley when asked about Professor Flannery.

"It does sound like an unnecessary position given the gentlemen in question gives us the benefit of his views without needing taxpayer funding."

Professor Flannery, who penned the popular climate change book The Weather Makers, was appointed as Climate Commissioner in February 2011.

The 2007 Australian of The Year gets a salary of $180,000 for the three-day-a-week role.

Establishing the independent climate commission was a 2010 election commitment by Labor. It was originally slated to cost $5.6 million over four years.

Mr Abbott's comments come as Climate Change Minister Greg Combet says a new report warning Australia will soon face more extreme weather should serve as a warning to those who think action on cutting greenhouse gases can wait.

The report from the Climate Commission says climate change is already increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme weather like heatwaves, fires, cyclones, heavy rainfall and drought.

The report entitled Critical Decade: Extreme Weather, released on Wednesday, says the global climate system is warmer and moister than 50 years ago, with the extra heat making extreme weather events more frequent and severe.

[Note the carefully cherry-picked period. Had they chosen 15 years ago or 80 years ago there would have been no change. Warmists are SUCH frauds]

In response to the report, the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council warned that while they had experience combating extreme weather events, people cannot expect emergency crews to protect their communities from increasingly intense fires and floods.

Mr Combet said climate change was no longer a problem for future generations to solve, as the impacts were already being felt.

He said the scientific advice was that this was the critical decade to act, and effective policies now would determine the severity of climate change experience for years to come.

"Increasing greenhouse gas emissions is like loading the dice for more extreme weather events in the future," he said in a statement.

The past summer was Australia's hottest, capped by the longest and most extreme heatwave on record.

The southern part of the country - including key food-growing regions - is becoming more drought-prone while the northwest is getting wetter.

Chief climate commissioner Tim Flannery has warned that while one-off events do occur, record-breaking weather was becoming more common as the climate shifts.

The independent commission's report draws on the latest research and observations from bodies including the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and Australian and international universities.

Mr Combet said it was time for Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to "pull his head out of the sand" and listen to the advice of the experts.

It was time he was held accountable for his "reckless views" on climate change, and called on to explain how he'd propose tackling global warming.

"Australia needs responsible leadership and sound policies on climate change, not opportunistic scare campaigns and negative politicking," Mr Combet said, adding the coalition's Direct Action policy had been criticised by scientists, economists and business experts.

A survey released on Wednesday by the World Wildlife Foundation of nearly 1300 people nationwide showed 72 per cent believed humans were contributing to climate change.

SOURCE

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

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

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3 April, 2013

Kiwi scientists rally against climate change sceptic

But it's all abuse and appeals to authority. They mention not one scientific fact

New Zealand's top climate change scientists have rallied together to slam a visiting sceptic who is touring the country to proclaim global warming as a myth that should be ignored.

Lord Christopher Monckton, a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher, says human-induced climate change is not happening.

The British aristocrat, the 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, is on a 16-venue nationwide speaking tour telling New Zealanders they shouldn't be worried about rising temperatures or sea levels.

Carbon taxes and emissions-trading schemes should also be scrapped because they are too expensive, he believes.

But government scientists and academics have warned that Lord Monckton's views are not based on science, and go against all the research they have done and read.

Dr James Renwick, associate professor of physical geography at Victoria University, dismissed Lord Monckton's views as "rubbish".

"He's a great showman and speaker, and climate change is a vehicle to self-publicise.

"But he has no training and has studiously avoided learning anything about science, I would say."

Niwa principal scientist Brett Mullan said Lord Monckton's views were "very damaging" for public perception.

Professor Dave Frame, director of the Climate Change Research Institute at Victoria University, described him as a "vaudeville act" to be ignored.

"Someone who goes around saying things we know are not true can actually be quite harmful."

More HERE



Monckton replies

"Kiwi scientists rally against climate change sceptic" (April 2) twice describes me as a climate change “denier”. That hate speech is inaccurate. I do not deny we can change the climate: I question how much we do.

The statement that “New Zealand’s top climate change scientists have rallied together to slam” me is inaccurate. A news agency reporter incited several scientists to comment. He did not let me reply.

The statement that I say “New Zealanders … shouldn’t be worried about rising temperatures or sea levels” inaccurately implies they are rising worryingly. Yet the IPCC’s climate-science head says warming has paused for 17 years. Sea level has risen for eight years at just 3.2 cm/century.

The statement that I oppose emissions trading because it is “too expensive” is inaccurate. I oppose it because it is cost-ineffective.

The statements that I have “no training” and “no scientific training” and have “studiously avoided learning anything about science” are inaccurate. I studied mathematics during my Cambridge degree course, have published several scientific and economic papers on climate change in learned journals, have lectured on climate at faculty level, and was last year’s Nerenberg Lecturer in Mathematics at the University of Western Ontario.

The unevidenced statements that I say things scientists “know are not true” and “pick data and statistics to suit [my] argument” are inaccurate.

The statement that I once argued for the quarantine of AIDS patients “in internment camp-like facilities” is inaccurate. I argued that, though quarantine (with no mention of internment camps) is the standard public-health response to a new, incurable and fatal infection, Western sensibilities would make it impossible. Tens of millions would die. Sadly, they did.

The statement that “the world’s leading scientists” predict the world will “heat up by 3% this century” is inaccurate. They predict 3 Cº warming, up 1%. Their predictions in all four IPCC Assessment Reports have proven exaggerated.

The implication that I deny any increase in greenhouse gases is inaccurate. I do not deny it: I question whether it matters.

The statement that I “promote [my]self as an ‘expert reviewer’ for the IPCC’s forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report”, implying I am not one, is inaccurate. I satisfied the IPCC that my publication record justified my appointment.

Via email



Arctic to experience explosive “greening” while Antarctic sea ice grows to record levels – both due to global warming

Both assertions in the SAME article! Talk about having it both ways!

Land within the Arctic circle is likely to experience explosive “greening” in the next few decades due to global warming, says a new study.

“Wooded areas in the Arctic could increase by as much as 52 per cent by the 2050s as the so-called tree line– the maximum latitude at which trees can grow – shifts hundreds of kilometres north, according to computer simulations published in the journal Nature Climate Change.”

[Note that this is a computer “simulation.”]

Meanwhile, a separate study by Dutch scientists says that ice shelves in Antarctica have in fact been growing thanks to global warming.

[Note that it is a fact that the ice shelves have been growing, not a simulation]

Meltwater from the Antarctic mainland provides a cold, protective “cap” for ice shelves because it comes from freshwater, which is denser than seawater, the team from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute said.

This would explain why sea ice around Antarctica has been growing, reaching the greatest-ever recorded extent in 2010, it suggested.

“This is a major, new piece of work with wide implications for assessing Antarctica’s ice mass in the coming decades,” said palaeo-climatologist Valerie Masson-Delmotte of France’s Laboratory for Climate and Environmental Science (LCSE).

She pointed to a worrying rise in sea levels in 2011 and 2012 … coming from mountains and also from Greenland and Antarctica, the two biggest sources of land ice on the planet."

[Really? Valerie thinks sea levels rose in 2011? Then why do Envisat satellite measurements show a decline?]

SOURCE

The above refers to an article in "The Australian". There is a similar article in The Daily Mail -- and no doubt elsewhere as well.




Combat Global Warming: Be Gay for a Day

A long last, scientists have revealed the single most important document ever. It’s a crayon-colored map showing how “trees” could grow in the arctic.

If finally, mercifully, any one of the so-called “climate models” that so far have failed to “model” climate accurately, suddenly and then accurately begin to “model” climate in real time, then, well, WOW!

“Experts say the wooded areas in the region could increase by 50% over the coming decades,” writes the UK’s Daily Mail, “and accelerate global warming in the process. Researchers have unveiled the most accurate map ever (!) of how vegetation could change in the region.”

THE MOST ACCURATE MAP EVER* is detailed in the latest issue of Nature Climate Change, a trade rag that panders to the climate racket.

Oh and you just wait until the United Nations gets a hold of this.

Maybe next year The Nature Group can start Nature Arctic Real Estate. With the housing bubble reflating thanks to more government money-that-never-has-to-be-paid, think of the fortunes government scientists, economists and well-connected social policy guys like ALGORE, Inc. can make selling icehouses to us Eskimos, er Inuits.

“It shows the potential for massive redistribution of vegetation across the Arctic,” continues the Mail, “with about half of all vegetation switching to a different class and a massive increase in tree cover. Experts say in Siberia, for instance, trees could grow hundreds of miles north of the present tree line.”

See? If redistribution of ANYTHING is involved, you know ALGORE, Inc. will find a way to cash in.

The new MOST ACCURATE MAP EVER (!) is one of those wonderful occurrences that demonstrates that the most frightening words in the English language have gone from “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” to “I’m a government-funded scientist, and I’m here to lecture.”

In the meantime, ThinkProgress has published a remarkable paper called Arctic Sea Ice Death Spiral And Cold Weather that proves, or at least, says - same thing if you are a liberal - that global warming is to blame for …cold weather in Germany.

Stumped by the fact that temperatures are not accurately reflecting current climate “models”- in fact temperatures have remained stable for 15 years- scientists on the government gravy train are trying to tie any weather event to so-called climate change.

Hurricanes? Global warming. Tornadoes? Global warming? Drought? Global warming? Blizzards, dropping temperatures, meteorites, Big Gulps? Global warming.

Even homosexuality has been tied to global warming via population control.

“With the natural world on the brink of demise largely because of overpopulation,” G. Roger Denson, a self-appointed social theoretician wrote on the Huffington Post, “unrestrained homosexuality, as one of a variety of ethical and democratic measures available to us today, offers perhaps the most natural option to be enjoined.”

Carbon credits for being gay? Anyone? We could funds it with a tax on NOT being gay.

If only everyone would be gay for a few days per year, or a few years per lifetime, it seems G. Roger is saying, we could be more ethical, unrestrained, under-populated, democratic and - most importantly - a lot colder. Or warmer if you live in one of those places that is unfortunate enough to be colder as a result of global “warming.”

But I do agree with the Democrat part if you capitalize the “d”.

As to the rest, please read fine print* carefully.

*Claims to accuracy, changes in maps, vegetation, flooding, gender attraction and increases or decreases in flora or fauna in any scenario are made for entertainment purposes only and are not to be relied on in any true and scientific sense, except as it applies to government funding. Please see the terms and conditions of all climate models before planting small shrubs, grasses, cereals or kisses on same sex, heterosexual friends.

SOURCE




Ernest Moniz and Fracking Drive Environmentalists crazy

Many environmentalists are unhappy about President Barack Obama’s nomination of Ernest Moniz, a professor of physics and engineering at MIT, to be Secretary of Energy.

As Director of the MIT Energy Initiative, Moniz assembled an all-star cast of MIT physical and social scientists to produce a June 2011 report that pointed to natural gas as an abundant, low-cost energy source that could sustain much of the world’s energy needs over the next several decades while we transition to wind, solar, tidal, geothermal and other carbon-free energy sources. It would also offer large environmental benefits because gas emits few conventional pollutants, and only about half as much carbon dioxide as the main transitional alternative: continued coal burning.

Implicit in the MIT vision was an understanding that shale gas development, using the technology known as “fracking,” should and will occur on a global scale. While a few groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund have been supportive, this is unacceptable to many others in the environmental movement. So they are striking out to discredit Professor Moniz, his views, and the additional large body of academic research and practical experience proving the efficacy and safety of fracking.

In the environmentalist blogosphere, for example, the discussions of natural gas and fracking take on a decidedly hostile tone. “Fracking is madness, a sign of a society gone completely insane and bent on self-destruction,” one blogger wrote recently. Said another: “The more we learn about a gas-drilling practice called hydraulic fracturing—or ‘fracking’—the more we see it as a zenith of violence and disconnect” in our world.

Although not nearly as extreme, related sentiments also are being expressed by many “mainstream” environmentalists. At a July 2012 “Stop the Frack Attack” rally, Sierra Club president Allison Chin described the thinking behind her organization’s new “Beyond Gas” campaign, warning against the “out-of-control rush to drill [that] has put oil and gas industry profits ahead of our health, our families, our property, our communities, and our futures. If drillers can’t extract natural gas without destroying landscapes and endangering the health of families, then we should not drill for natural gas.”

The movie Gasland put the skills of Hollywood to work in spreading a similar dire message.

The result of such environmental fear mongering—often covered uncritically in the media—has been to convince a surprisingly large number of people that fracking is dangerous, to people and the environment alike. As a result, New York State and Maryland have thus far refused to allow fracking within their borders; a Maryland legislative committee recently defeated a proposal for a legal ban, but just narrowly.

One agency missing in action has been the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2009 the U.S House of Representatives asked EPA to study the impact of fracking on drinking water. EPA agreed, but took two years to begin the research. Then, in December 2012 EPA issued a progress report that managed not to answer any of the key questions, promising continued research.

EPA seems paralyzed, recognizing the significant environmental benefits of natural gas, but fearful of challenging the fracking orthodoxies of its longtime environmental “movement” supporters.

Despite their strong opposition to fracking, few environmentalists seem to understand very well how the process actually works.

First, what is essentially a conventional oil and gas well is drilled vertically, typically to several thousand feet or more below the surface. When this is completed the more novel part of the fracking extraction process comes into play, applying techniques innovated in Texas in the 1990s. The well shaft previously drilled vertically is redirected to become horizontal, with the drilling continuing until the shaft stretches out horizontally about half a mile to a mile. When the drilling is finished, water, combined with chemicals designed to reduce friction and serve other purposes, is injected from the surface into the well shaft at very high pressures, thereby fracturing the shale rock formations far below, and making it possible to extract economically the natural gas embedded in the shale.

Occurring far underground (often 5,000 feet below the surface, for example, in the Marcellus formation in Pennsylvania), it is implausible that the shale fracturing—the “fracking”—could have any direct impacts on the land surface above or on the water aquifers that are typically located much closer to the surface. Indeed, some geologists think it is physically impossible.

There is, however, one new element to the fracking process that is not encountered in traditional oil and gas drilling. When the high water pressure is released after the fracturing of the shale, some 10 percent to 30 percent of the water comes back to the surface. This “flowback water” contains both natural contaminants picked up underground during the fracturing process and the chemicals used by the driller to facilitate the fracturing. The water must therefore be disposed of safely or—as is increasingly the case—be cleaned up and recycled for use in the next well.

This has proved to be the most environmentally challenging part of the fracking process. And abuses, such as dumping flowback water into rivers and streams, have occurred. As a result of increasing regulation, however, and growing recognition within the gas industry that its future depends on public acceptance, the treatment of flowback water has improved greatly. As the 2011 MIT report concluded, “the environmental impacts of shale development are challenging but manageable.”

The environmental movement is of course entirely correct to insist that natural gas be extracted from shale in an environmentally responsible way, and that local socio-economic disruptions be minimized so far as possible. With substantial progress already having been made and continuing in these areas, and with further delays having large environmental and economic costs of their own, the fracking controversy has become a very expensive distraction for our nation and the world.

SOURCE





Al Gore's Irish sparring partners

Seven years after Al Gore won an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, the former US presidential candidate is back on the media trail, this time with a book of doomsday environmental predictions called The Future. And, as sure as oceans rising follows glaciers melting, his foils – a redoubtable Irish husband-and-wife team called Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer – are hot on his heels.

"For a man who believes that fossil fuels will mean an end of all life on earth, it's odd that he chose to sell his Current TV (network) to oil funded Al Jazeera," Ann tells me. "It's odd too that he says that a large carbon-footprint, large homes and large cars will hasten that apocalypse, but he has all of them."

As producers of anti-environmentalism films such as Not Evil Just Wrong – made as a challenge to An Inconvenient Truth – and Mine Your Own Business, McAleer and McElhinney have long been sparring partners of Gore. In 2009, Phelim challenged the losing presidential candidate at a public meeting of environmental journalists and was shouted down and escorted out of the room by fellow hacks. Since then he and his Donegal-born wife Ann have continued to build their profile in the US, regularly appearing on networks such as CNN and Fox News. This year saw the release of Fracknation, a documentary about "the truth behind the search for natural gas", which has again raised the hackles of film critics and environmentalists stateside.

Following its release, The New York Post called McAleer "an expert practitioner of cinematic jujitsu." Others have been less charitable and the couple have been physically threatened by opponents of their work and have been called "Hitler's henchmen" by another irate viewer. "Although to be fair," Ann pipes up, "a comment we also hear a lot from Americans is 'aw, your accents are lovely'."

The first story they worked on together concerned Mihaela Porumbaru – the Romanian child, paralysed from the waist down, who was handed back to her Romanian foster parents, despite every effort on the part of her Irish carers to keep her here.

They subsequently worked on a documentary about foreign adoptions for the BBC.

"It concerned two children who had been adopted by evangelical Christians in Northern Ireland," Ann tells me. Over the following years they would research a number of adoption stories, and the work would take them to Indonesia, Vietnam, Romania and Bulgaria.

They would eventually move to America, where they would take an axe to the global warming hysteria, which had swept much of the country. Not Evil Just Wrong, their Michael Moore-esque riposte to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, caused a huge splash upon its release in 2009 and saw them become in-demand public speakers. Over the following years, they were featured on virtually every mainstream US television network and featured in publications like Variety and The New York Times.

The film broadly argues that the global warming measures that have been implemented by many governments are not justified by science and will in fact impoverish many Third World countries.

Their latest film, Fracknation, has been just as controversial and Ann has some choice words on the natural gas-tapping situation back home: "It's astounding to me that Leitrim, one of the most economically depressed counties in Ireland, has this amazing opportunity and that is being squandered based on inaccurate information. It's a real shame in Ireland that the coverage of the fracking story, from what I've seen at least, is very anti-fracking."

Learn more about Fracknation at www.fracknation.com

SOURCE

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

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

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2 April, 2013

WWU faculty find overwhelming scientific evidence to support global warming

By WWU GEOLOGY FACULTY — COURTESY TO THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

On March 26, 2013, a long-retired faculty member of our department, Don Easterbrook, presented his opinions on human-caused global climate change to the Washington State Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee at the invitation of the committee chair Sen. Doug Ericksen, R.-Ferndale.

We, the active faculty of the Geology Department at Western Washington University, express our unanimous and significant concerns regarding the views espoused by Easterbrook, who holds a doctorate in geology; they are neither scientifically valid nor supported by the overwhelming preponderance of evidence on the topic. We also decry the injection of such poor quality science into the public discourse regarding important policy decisions for our state's future; the chair of the committee was presented with numerous options and opportunities to invite current experts to present the best-available science on this subject, and chose instead to, apparently, appeal to a narrow partisan element with his choice of speaker.

We concur with the vast consensus of the science community that recent global warming is very real, human greenhouse-gas emissions are the primary cause, and their environmental and economic impacts on our society will likely be severe if we don't make significant efforts to address the problem. Claims to the contrary fly in the face of an overwhelming body of rigorous scientific literature.

We intend no disrespect to Easterbrook personally. We appreciate his previous service to our department and to Western. His present appointment as emeritus professor was made in light of his long-standing history at WWU. But people of the state of Washington need to understand that Easterbrook's ideas on anthropogenic global warming have not passed through rigorous peer review in the scientific literature. Additionally, Easterbrook's claims in this forum and elsewhere require the existence of a broad, decades-long conspiracy amongst literally thousands of scientists to falsify climate data and to prevent publication of opposing research. This opinion demonstrates a profound rejection of the scientific process and the fundamental value of rigorous peer review, and is also simply wrong.

Science thrives on controversies; it rewards innovative, unexpected findings, but only when they are backed by rigorous, painstaking evidence and rea soning. Without such standards, science would be ineffective as a tool to improve our society. It is worth acknowledging that nearly every technological advance in modern society is a direct result of that same scientific method (think the Internet, airplanes, antibiotics, and even your smartphone).

Easterbrook's views, as exemplified by his Senate presentation, are a stark contrast to that standard; they are filled with misrepresentations, misuse of data and repeated mixing of local vs. global records. Nearly every graphic in the hours-long presentation to the Senate was flawed, as was Easterbrook's discussion of them.

For example, more than 100 years of research in physics, chemistry, atmospheric science and oceanography has, via experiments, numerous physical observations and theoretic calculations, clearly demonstrated - and have communicated via the scientific literature - that carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas; its presence and variations in Earth's atmosphe re have significant and measureable impacts on the surface temperature of our planet. Alternatively, you can take Easterbrook's word - not supported by any published science - that the concentration and effects of carbon dioxide are so small as to not matter a bit.

In a specific example, Easterbrook referred to a graph of temperatures from an ice core of the Greenland ice sheet to claim that global temperatures were warmer than present over most of the last 10,000 years. First, this record is of temperature from a single spot on Earth, central Greenland (thus it is not a "global record"). Second, and perhaps more importantly, Easterbrook's definition of "present temperature" in the graph is based on the most recent data point in that record, which is actually 1855, more than 150 years ago when the world was still in the depths of the Little Ice Age, and well before any hint of human-caused climate change.

As the active faculty of the Western Washington Universit y Geology Department that he lists as his affiliation, we conclude that Easterbrook's presentation clearly does not represent the best-available science on this subject, and urge the Senate, our state government, and the citizens of Washington State to rely on rigorous peer-reviewed science rather than conspiracy-based ideas to steer their decisions on matters concerning our environment and economic future.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Western Washington University WWU Geology Department faculty members who authored this column are Douglas H. Clark, who holds a doctorate in geology; Bernard A. Housen, who is the department chair and holds a doctorate in geophysics; Susan Debari, who holds a doctorate in geology; Colin B. Amos, who holds a doctorate in geology; Scott R. Linneman, who holds a doctorate in geology; Robert J. Mitchell, who holds doctorates in engineering and geology; David M. Hirsch, who holds a doctorate in geology; Jaqueline Caplan-Auerbach, who holds a doctorate in geophysics; Pete Stelling, who holds a doctorate in geology; Elizabeth R. Schermer, who holds a doctorate in geology; Christopher Suczek, who holds a doctorate in geology; and Scott Babcock, who holds a doctorate in geology.

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Monckton replies to the above appeal to authority

They refer to only one bit of scientific data and Monckton demolishes that

Dr. Easterbrook, to whose excellent book of scientific papers on global warming I had the honour to contribute a couple of years ago, has been libeled. It is the rent-seeking global-warming profiteers of the WWU faculty, not Dr. Easterbrook, who are guilty of misrepresentation.

To take one of many examples of misrepresentation on their part, they attempt to challenge his statement to the effect that the GISP2 ice-core temperature record from Greenland shows that the temperature of air trapped in ice that formed on the summit plateau 8000 years ago was 2.5 Celsius degrees warmer than in the mid-19th century and, therefore, 1.8 Celsius degrees warmer than the present.

They attempt to tamper with the truth by suggesting that the air temperature in Greenland is not global; that the record stops in 1850, not the somewhat warmer present; and that, therefore, we cannot say the Holocene climate optimum from 10,000-6000 years ago was globally warmer than the present.

The racketeers of the WWU faculty either know they are wrong or are ignorant and pretending to know they are right. Either way, they are guilty of deliberate misrepresentation of the objective scientific truth. For it is well understood that temperatures in Greenland and Antarctica change by approximately twice the global average, by what is called "polar amplification".

This phenomenon occurs because the tropics cannot warm significantly. Advection takes any additional heat poleward. Therefore, if Greenland was 1.8 degrees warmer than the present 8000 years ago, the world was almost a degree warmer than the present at that time.

In fact, there has been no global warming for 17 years. This is one of many facts the WWU faculty chose not to mention. For the past eight years, according to the ENVISAT sea-level monitoring satellite, sea level has been rising at a rate equivalent to just 1.3 inches per century.

As an expert reviewer for the IPCC's forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report, I can also report that the IPCC itself plans to publish a graph showing that the predictions of global warming in all four of its previous multi-thousand-page quinquennial Assessment Reports have proven to be enormous exaggerations. The computer models it uses have failed.

Dr. Easterbrook, therefore, is a great deal closer to the current state of climate science than the money-grubbing gangsters of WWU, who ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves but are too politicized on the far Left to have the grace to blush.

And the Bellingham Herald should have known better than to publish their poisonously pietistic libel of Dr. Easterbrook, who deserves a handsome apology both from these grasping leeches and from the Herald. Shame on the lot of you.

Via email




New Climate Scandal Exposed

Roger Pielke Jr

Roger Pielke Jr documents the gross misrepresentation of the findings of a recent scientific paper via press release which appears to skirt awfully close to crossing the line into research misconduct.

Spot the difference

In 1991 the National Research Council proposed what has come to be a widely accepted definition of misconduct in science:

Misconduct in science is defined as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism, in proposing, performing, or reporting research. Misconduct in science does not include errors of judgment; errors in the recording, selection, or analysis of data; differences in opinions involving the interpretation of data; or misconduct unrelated to the research process.

Arguments over data and methods are the lifeblood of science, and are not instances of misconduct.

However, here I document the gross misrepresentation of the findings of a recent scientific paper via press release which appears to skirt awfully close to crossing the line into research misconduct, as defined by the NRC. I recommend steps to fix this mess, saving face for all involved, and a chance for this small part of the climate community to take a step back toward unambiguous scientific integrity.

The paper I refer to is by Marcott et al. 2013, published recently in Science. A press release issued by the National Science Foundation, which funded the research, explains the core methodology and key conclusion of the paper as follows (emphasis added):

Peter Clark, an OSU paleoclimatologist and co-author of the Science paper, says that many previous temperature reconstructions were regional and not placed in a global context.

“When you just look at one part of the world, temperature history can be affected by regional climate processes like El Niño or monsoon variations,” says Clark.

“But when you combine data from sites around the world, you can average out those regional anomalies and get a clear sense of the Earth’s global temperature history.”

What that history shows, the researchers say, is that during the last 5,000 years, the Earth on average cooled about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit–until the last 100 years, when it warmed about 1.3 degrees F.

The press release clearly explains that the paper (a) combines data from many sites around the world to create a “temperature reconstruction” which gives a “sense of the Earth’s temperature history,” and (b) “that history shows” a cooling over the past 5000 years, until the last 100 years when all of that cooling was reversed.

The conclusions of the press release were faithfully reported by a wide range of media outlets, and below I survey several of them to illustrate that the content of the press release was accurately reflected in media coverage and, at times, amplified by scientists both involved and not involved with the study.

Examples of Media Coverage

Here is Justin Gillis at the New York Times, with emphasis added to this excerpt and also those further below:

The modern rise that has recreated the temperatures of 5,000 years ago is occurring at an exceedingly rapid clip on a geological time scale, appearing in graphs in the new paper as a sharp vertical spike.

Similarly, at the NY Times Andy Revkin reported much the same in a post titled, “Scientists Find an Abrupt Warm Jog After a Very Long Cooling.” Revkin included the following graph from the paper along with a caption explaining what the graph shows:

Revkin’s caption: A new Science paper includes this graph of data providing clues to past global temperature. It shows the warming as the last ice age ended (left), a period when temperatures were warmer than today, a cooling starting 5,000 years ago and an abrupt warming in the last 100 years.

Revkin concluded: “the work reveals a fresh, and very long, climate “hockey stick.”” For those unfamiliar, a hockey stick has a shaft and a blade.

Any association with the so-called “hockey stick” is sure to capture interest in the highly politicized context of the climate debate, in which the iconic figure is like catnip to partisans on both sides. Here is Michael Lemonick at Climate Central:

The study… confirms the now famous “hockey stick” graph that Michael Mann published more than a decade ago. That study showed a sharp upward temperature trend over the past century after more than a thousand years of relatively flat temperatures. . .

“What’s striking,” said lead author Shaun Marcott of Oregon State University in an interview, “is that the records we use are completely independent, and produce the same result.”

Here is Grist.org, which refers in the passage below to the same figure shown above:

A study published in Science reconstructs global temperatures further back than ever before — a full 11,300 years. The new analysis finds that the only problem with Mann’s hockey stick was that its handle was about 9,000 years too short. The rate of warming over the last 100 years hasn’t been seen for as far back as the advent of agriculture.

To be clear, the study finds that temperatures in about a fifth of this historical period were higher than they are today. But the key, said lead author Shaun Marcott of Oregon State University, is that temperatures are shooting through the roof faster than we’ve ever seen.

“What we found is that temperatures increased in the last 100 years as much as they had cooled in the last 6,000 or 7,000,” he said. “In other words, the rate of change is much greater than anything we’ve seen in the whole Holocene,” referring to the current geologic time period, which began around 11,500 years ago.

Back to more mainstream outlets, here is how Nature characterized the study, offering a substantially similar but somewhat more technical description of the curve shown in the figure above:

Marcott and his colleagues set about reconstructing global climate trends all the way back to 11,300 years ago, when the Northern Hemisphere was emerging from the most recent ice age. To do so, they collected and analysed data gathered by other teams. The 73 overlapping climate records that they considered included sediment cores drilled from lake bottoms and sea floors around the world, along with a handful of ice cores collected in Antarctica and Greenland.

Each of these chronicles spanned at least 6,500 years, and each included a millennium-long baseline period beginning in the middle of the post-ice-age period at 3550 bc.

For some records, the researchers inferred past temperatures from the ratio of magnesium and calcium ions in the shells of microscopic creatures that had died and dropped to the ocean floor; for others, they measured the lengths of long-chain organic molecules called alkenones that were trapped in the sediments.

After the ice age, they found, global average temperatures rose until they reached a plateau between 7550 and 3550 bc. Then a long-term cooling trend set in, reaching its lowest temperature extreme between ad 1450 and 1850. Since then, temperatures have been increasing at a dramatic clip: from the first decade of the twentieth century to now, global average temperatures rose from near their coldest point since the ice age to nearly their warmest, Marcott and his team report today in Science.

And here is New Scientist, making reference to the exact same graph:

Shaun Marcott of Oregon State University in Corvallis and colleagues have compiled 73 such proxies from around the world, all of which reach back to the end of the last glacial period, 11,300 years ago. During this period, known as the Holocene, the climate has been relatively warm – and civilisation has flourished.

“Most global temperature reconstructions have only spanned the past 2000 years,” says Marcott.

Marcott’s graph shows temperatures rising slowly after the ice age, until they peaked 9500 years ago. The total rise over that period was about 0.6 °C. They then held steady until around 5500 years ago, when they began slowly falling again until around 1850. The drop was 0.7 °C, roughly reversing the previous rise.


Then, in the late 19th century, the graph shows temperatures shooting up, driven by humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions.The rate of warming in the last 150 years is unlike anything that happened in at least 11,000 years, says Michael Mann of the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, who was not involved in Marcott’s study. It was Mann who created the original hockey stick graph (see upper graph here), which showed the change in global temperatures over the last 1000 years.

Over the Holocene, temperatures rose and fell less than 1 °C, and they did so over thousands of years, says Marcott. “It took 8000 years to go from warm to cold.” Agriculture, communal life and forms of government all arose during this relatively stable period, he adds. Then in 100 years, global temperatures suddenly shot up again to very close to the previous maximum.

It seems clear that even as various media took different angles on the story and covered it in varying degrees of technical detail, the articles listed above accurately reflected the conclusions reflected in the NSF press release, and specifically the “hockey stick”-like character of the new temperature reconstruction. Unfortunately, all of this is just wrong, as I explain below. (If you’d like to explore media coverage further here is a link to more stories. My colleague Tom Yulsman got punked too.)

The Problem with the NSF Press Release and the Subsequent Reporting

There is a big problem with the media reporting of the new paper. It contains a fundamental error which (apparently) originates in the NSF press release and which was furthered by public comments by scientists.

In a belatedly-posted FAQ to the paper, which appeared on Real Climate earlier today,Marcott et al. make this startling admission:

Q: What do paleotemperature reconstructions show about the temperature of the last 100 years?

A: Our global paleotemperature reconstruction includes a so-called “uptick” in temperatures during the 20^th-century. However, in the paper we make the point that this particular feature is of shorter duration than the inherent smoothing in our statistical averaging procedure, and that it is based on only a few available paleo-reconstructions of the type we used. Thus, the 20^th century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions.
Got that?

In case you missed it, I repeat:

. . . the 20^th century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes . . .

What that means is that this paper actually has nothing to do with a “hockey stick” as it does not have the ability to reproduce 20th century temperatures in a manner that is “statistically robust.” The new “hockey stick” is no such thing as Marcott et al. has no blade. (To be absolutely clear, I am not making a point about temperatures of the 20th century, but what can be concluded from the paper about temperatures of the 20th century.)

Yet, you might recall that the NSF press release said something quite different:

What that [temperature reconstruction] history shows, the researchers say, is that during the last 5,000 years, the Earth on average cooled about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit–until the last 100 years, when it warmed about 1.3 degrees F.

So what the paper actually shows is the following, after I have removed from the graph the 20th century period that is “not statistically robust” (this is also the figure that appears at the top of this post):

Surely there is great value in such an analysis of pre-20th century temperatures. And there can be no doubt there will be continuing debates and discussions about the paper’s methods and conclusions. But one point that any observer should be able to clearly conclude is that the public representation of the paper was grossly in error. The temperature reconstruction does not allow any conclusions to be made about the period after 1900.

Does the public misrepresentation amount to scientific misconduct? I’m not sure, but it is far to close to that line for comfort. Saying so typically leads to a torrent of angry ad hominem and defensive attacks, and evokes little in the way of actual concern for the integrity of this highly politicized area of science. Looking past the predictable responses, this mess can be fixed in a relatively straightforward manner with everyone’s reputation intact.

How to Fix This

Here are the steps that I recommend should be taken:

1) Science should issue a correction to the paper, and specially do the following:
(a) retract and replot all figures in the paper and SI eliminating from the graphs all data/results that fail to meet the paper’s criteria for “statistical robustness.”
(b) include in the correction the explicit and unambiguous statement offered in the FAQ released today that the analysis is not “statistically robust” post-1900.
2) NSF should issue a correction to its press release, clarifying and correcting the statements of Peter Clark (a co-author, found above) and Candace Major, NSF program manager, who says in the release:

“The last century stands out as the anomaly in this record of global temperature since the end of the last ice age,” says Candace Major, program director in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences.

Full story




A comment on Marcott et al. from Ross McKitrick

"Hiding the (20th century) decline" once more

This isn’t just a filibuster, they are defending themselves on the grounds that their paper made an incredibly subtle misrepresentation and it’s the reader’s fault for not noticing. Without the closing uptick, the main implication of their reconstruction is that, in the 20th century, we experienced the coldest conditions of the Holocene. With the uptick, we experienced nearly the warmest. The sharp uptick in the instrumental record can only be compared against their reconstruction if they can show their low-frequency proxies are capable of registering such events. If the 20th century portion of their reconstruction does not have the same uptick as the instrumental record, we would conclude that it could have missed similar swings in earlier centuries as well, so the absence of such swings in the earlier part of their graph tells us nothing about the presence or absence of decadal and century-scale warming events. Likewise, an annual or decadal observation from the modern instrumental record cannot be compared against values from their reconstruction, if their reconstruction is not capable of resolving events at that time scale.

But that is precisely what they do in Figure 3 of their paper, and it is the basis of their claim that “Global temperature, therefore, has risen from near the coldest to the warmest levels of the Holocene within the past century, reversing the long-term cooling trend that began ~5000 yr B.P.” Without the uptick in their proxy reconstruction this kind of statement could never have been made. The presence of the uptick in the proxy graph validates their comparison of the instrumental record against the proxy record. By admitting that the uptick is not robust and cannot be a basis for any conclusions they have undermined their own findings, root and branch.

Moreover, they can’t conceal the fact that they defended the robustness of the uptick in their paper. Marcott et al. stated that a RegEM variant reconstruction eliminated 0.6 of the 0.7 C closing uptick, but that due to data limitations the difference between reconstructions was “probably not robust” (p. 1198). In the context this implies that they consider the size of the closing uptick to be insensitive to choice of methodology, in other words that the uptick is robust.

But now they say the 20th century uptick is not robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and is not the basis of any of our conclusions. Did they know this prior to drawing Figure 3 and inserting it in their paper, and if so, how could they not have been aware that it would convey a false impression to the reader? Contrary to Revkin, the issue isn’t just the definitive statements they made in the media but the claims they made in the paper itself.

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Important questions for Obama nominees

Interior, Energy and EPA nominees raise serious questions that need to be addressed

Craig Rucker

In his second inaugural address, President Obama pledged to address “the threat of climate change” because no one can avoid “the devastating impact of raging fires, crippling droughts and more powerful storms.” The President had said nothing about climate change during his reelection campaign –because that would have reminded millions of voters that he is committed to replacing hydrocarbons with expensive renewable energy and ensuring that electricity and gasoline prices skyrocket.

But with the election safely behind him, climate change is back on his agenda, even though the Earth has not warmed during the past 17 years; Hurricane Sandy did not end one of the longest stretches ever with no category 3 or higher hurricane making landfall in the USA; and longstanding “progressive” federal policies on timber cutting and fire suppression have made wildfires harder to control.

The President’s nominees to head the Interior and Energy Departments and Environmental Protection Agency – Sally Jewell, Ernest Moniz, and Gina McCarthy – are all supposedly much more mainstream than their highly controversial predecessors. The media has therefore criticized each of them from the Left, even though they are clearly all “team players” in a decidedly anti-fossil fuels administration.

Sally Jewell began her career as an engineer with Mobil Oil (now ExxonMobil), then switched to banking (advising on oil and gas asset management), before taking over as head of outdoors giant REI. She is touted as having business experience that is virtually nonexistent in the Obama Cabinet.

However, Jewell is being prodded to follow Bill Clinton’s practice of closing millions of acres from human activity, especially oil and gas and mineral leasing, but even livestock grazing. As a lifelong “outdoors enthusiast” whose “loyalties lie with those who view the public lands as a playground, not the source of commodities like minerals or meat” (according to Grist analyst Greg Hanscom), she may find land withdrawals an easy course to take – except where wind and solar installations are involved.

Although Jewell owns fossil fuel (and power) industry stock, she is also likely to toe the Obama line and support a carbon tax, further curbs on coal mining, more restrictions on Arctic oil and gas drilling, and similar actions. We think Congress should repeatedly question her on two major issues:

1) In light of the President’s “all of the above” energy policy and the clear challenge posed by Chinese ownership of most of the world’s rare-earth minerals, how does the need for energy and minerals development mesh with her and the President’s strategy for managing our nation’s public lands?

2) Given that all federal land lies within state boundaries, and that land use decisions affecting federal lands clearly affect state and local economies, what role should states play in decisions about declaring land within state boundaries as national monuments or other “off limits” categories – and regarding mineral leasing, livestock grazing, road building and other activities on federal lands?

Ernest Moniz has long championed the idea that revenues from fossil fuels and nuclear energy can help fund the transition to a “clean fuels” economy. He’s invested heavily in fossil fuel, renewable and “smart-grid” companies. He has not objected to hydro-fracking or offshore oil drilling. That has caused Leftists like Margie Alt of Environment America to complain that Moniz has a “history of supporting dirty and dangerous energy sources like gas and nuclear power.”

But such criticism is likely a smokescreen. Some suspect that Moniz is being brought onboard to be a lone administration voice in support of liquefied natural gas exports, despite testifying in 2011 that the U.S. will soon be a net natural gas importer, even as fracking was substantially increasing domestic supplies. Similarly, his criticism of the flawed Cornell University study that demonized shale oil as worse than coal on greenhouse gas emissions makes him the perfect choice for future hand-wringing over some new study claiming that fracking could cause serious new environmental problems.

We think the Energy nominee should also answer two vitally important questions:

1) Given that Earth has not warmed for 17 years, despite steadily increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, is it not time to question the wisdom of increasing energy costs for American consumers via carbon taxes, cap-and-trade or the EPA’s plans to rigorously regulate CO2?

2) Given the increasing focus on energy efficiency and conservation, what are the best ways to reduce transmission line losses; curtail impacts on agricultural lands, wildlife habitats, and bird and bat species from wind turbines, solar panels and biofuels; and help families and businesses reduce energy use and expenses – without further sacrificing employment, living standards, basic freedoms or ecological values?

Gina McCarthy as new EPA administrator raises quite different concerns. As Competitive Enterprise Institute analyst Marlo Lewis has noted, McCarthy is guilty of lying to Congress during 2011 testimony, when she and other EPA officials denied under oath that motor vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards played any role in agency implementation of 54.5 mpg fuel economy standards.

Lewis surmised that this false testimony was intended to protect EPA’s efforts to legislate climate policy under the guise of saving energy and implementing the Clean Air Act. The agency’s new fuel rules were devised with the auto industry during secret negotiations – but are unconstitutional Executive Branch lawmaking that will raise consumer costs and make cars smaller, lighter and less safe.

CEI energy policy director Myron Ebell also notes that McCarthy is up to her ears in the “Richard Windsor” scandal, in which outgoing EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson created a fictitious Windsor email address to hide her controversial communications from public scrutiny. As such, says Ebell, McCarthy has “a strained relationship with disclosure and transparency.” (And with honesty, many would add.)

These actions belie suggestions that McCarthy’s state regulatory experience and face-to-face involvement with industry make her better able than Ms. Jackson to work with the business community. She may well do so with large companies that seek more subsidies, special regulatory arrangements, or regulations that penalize smaller competitors, hurt the economy as a whole or allow renewable energy companies to avoid environmental rules that apply to other industries. But she is unlikely to have a sympathetic ear for companies that she views as “polluters.”

Unless Ms. McCarthy can give honest, satisfactory, public answers to two important questions, her nomination should be rejected outright:

1) Under what authority does EPA assert the right to twist existing law, to create new laws that exceed clear legislative language, the stated intent of Congress, and historical or legal precedent?

2) Under what authority does an EPA official have the right to lie under oath to Congress, or use secret email accounts – thereby implying that Members of Congress are inferior to the Executive Branch, and avoiding disciplinary action because a partisan Justice Department shields Executive Branch officials from prosecution for such unlawful behavior?

Jewell, Moniz and McCarthy would all would be loyal servants to the Obama camp. And though each key bureaucrat takes an oath to uphold the Constitution and serve the public, history shows that any personal views that conflict with the official agenda will likely be reshaped and compromised as department directors carry out their missions. So despite serious concerns that many Senators have over the nominees’ likely policies, we anticipate the Senate will confirm Jewell and Moniz quickly.

McCarthy is another matter. She has already demonstrated contempt for the Constitution and Congress itself. Thus, despite claims that her experience and temperament suggest she will work well with Congress and the states, such a person – absent public repentance and a promise to chart a new course – should not be rewarded with any new opportunities to lie to, mislead and harm the public. No matter how noble the ends are purported to be, they cannot justify unlawful and disruptive means.

Via email



Obama Creates More Wealth for Green Crony Soros

On Good Friday, a day fewer people would be paying attention to the headlines than on most other days, the Obama administration released news about its plans to raise the price of gasoline. Gasoline prices for the first quarter of 2013 are higher than the same time in 2012. Intentionally pushing prices up would seem stupid in the midst of a struggling economy—that is, if your goal is to help those most impacted by higher fuel and food prices, rather than boosting the bottom line for your billionaire donors.

The plans, announced Friday, call for stricter limits for sulfur in gasoline—from the current 30 parts per million to 10. (Sulfur is an important element that is found naturally in crude oil has many industrial uses.) The EPA estimates that the low-sulfur gasoline will raise the price of a gallon of gas by “less than a penny,” while industry sources say it will be closer to ten cents a gallon.

Energy analyst Robert Rapier, told me that the new regulations “will certainly make gasoline more expensive.” He said; “Note that diesel was historically less expensive than gasoline until the ultra-low sulfur diesel standard was passed. Since then, diesel has often been more expensive than gasoline. I am not saying whether or not those standards were needed, maybe they were. But the impact on cost is undeniable. I worked in a refinery when those standards were passed, and we spent a lot of capital making sure we could comply.”

Though air pollution is a worthy consideration, it is low on the public’s list of priorities, while gas prices are of utmost importance. If the public doesn’t see air pollution as a problem, and the President’s popularity has peaked, why would he put out policy that would hit the middle class the hardest? Because, despite his campaign rhetoric, he’s not “a warrior for the middle class.”

One year ago, Christine Lakatos launched her blog— “The Green Corruption Files”—through which she set out to prove that “green corruption is the largest, most expensive and deceptive case of crony capitalism in American history. Stay tuned as we expose one piece of this scandal at a time.” Last summer, Lakatos and I partnered to draw more attention to Obama’s Green-Energy Crony-Corruption Scandal. To date, I’ve written fifteen columns based on her research—this is the sixteenth.

A week ago, she posted her expose on George Soros and his profiting from his, apparent, insider information on green-energy investments. Within her post, Lakatos says: “be prepared for regulations and legislation that will, in some form or another, resemble cap-and-trade and demand additional funds to bank roll Obama’s efforts to save our planet.” Exactly one week later, the new EPA standards on gasoline were released. The standards will raise the cost of fuel—which has been the underlying goal of the Obama energy agenda: make what works more expensive so people will accept the high cost of “green energy” in the name of saving the planet. (Remember outgoing Energy Secretary Chu's 2008 statement: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”)

But, as the Soros story shows, it’s not about the planet, it’s about the profit. Soros’ investment portfolio shows he invests where he can make money—both traditional and green energy (though, as you’ll see, through Obama’s green energy emphasis, he has more control over green energy investments). In a 1998, 60 Minutes interview, Soros said: “I am basically there to make money. I cannot and do not look at the social consequences of what I do.”

Soros’ relationship with Obama goes back almost as far as his manipulation of money and markets.

It is reported that back before Obama became a Senator, or announced his presidential bid, and before the founding of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress (CAP), Morton Halperin, (the director of Soros’ Open Society Institute), John Podesta (the former Clinton White House chief of staff), Jeremy Rosner (a former speech writer for Bill Clinton), Robert Boorstin (a Democrat strategist and also a former speech writer for Clinton) and Carl Pope (a Democrat strategist and environmentalist) met in 2002 at Soros’ Long Island Southampton beach house to draft a plan to defeat President Bush in the presidential election of 2004. Without that meeting, Lt. Col. Robert “Buzz” Patterson, says: “Barack Obama would be … an unremarkable and unheard of state senator. Instead, Barack Obama is the President of the United States.”

Soros was an early donor to Obama’s senatorial race. “Soros and his family gave Barack Obama $60,000. This does not include money that Soros was able to funnel to so-called 527 groups (Moveon.org, for example) that have also been politically active; nor does it include money that Soros was able to raise from tapping a network of friends, business associates, and employees.”

Once Obama was running for president, Soros was there again with support to the tune of $5 million—which put him on the Forbes’ 2008 list of Obama’s Billionaire Buddies. But the king of contributions wasn’t done there, and in September 2012, Soros pledged $1.5 million in donations to a trio of super PACs backing Obama and congressional Democrats. Soros’ political contributions are widely known, as is his funding of left-leaning organizations such as CAP, The Tides Center and the Apollo Alliance—which all play a part in his ability to cash in on green.

Soros was instrumental at the least, integral at the most, in writing Obama’s 2009 Stimulus Bill that put nearly $100 billion into various green energy companies and projects. Additionally, there is a little-publicized connection between Soros, green energy advocacy, and the White House.

Since buying access, Soros has been a frequent White House visitorand met with Obama’s, then, top economist Larry Summers—exerting his influence.

The Soros-funded Apollo Alliance brags about its role in writing the 2009 Stimulus Bill. In an interview, the best-selling author of Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer, states: “Billionaire George Soros gave advice and direction on how President Obama should allocate so-called ‘stimulus’ money in a series of regular private meetings and consultations with White House senior advisers even as Soros was making investments in areas affected by the stimulus program.”

Schweizer, then, reveals, “In the first quarter of 2009, Mr. Soros went on a stock-buying spree in companies that ultimately benefited from the federal stimulus.” He continues: “It is not necessarily the case that Soros had specific insider tips about any government grants,” nevertheless, Soros’ “investment decisions aligned remarkably closely with government grants and transfers.” The majority of those investments were in green energy ventures that gained from the stimulus and/or government regulation such as BioFuel Energy that benefitted when the EPA announced a regulation on ethanol.

Shortly after the 2009 Stimulus, more to secure his investments than because of any core belief, Soros launched several new groupsto help propagate the manmade climate change narrative that is the foundation for green energy investments—without belief in manmade climate change, we don’t need renewables as there is no energy shortage.

Some of the little-publicized connections include Cathy Zoi, former CEOof Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, and who, while at the Department of Energy, oversaw the disbursement of more than $30 billionin green-energy stimulus funds. In early 2011, she resigned to work for a Soros fund: Silver Lake Kraftwerk. Another is Denis McDonoughwho has replaced Jack Lewas Obama’s Chief of Staff. McDonoughwas a Senior Fellow at Soros-funded CAP, which Bloomberg Newscalled: “an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals.” Other CAP/Obama advisors central to the green-energy scheme include Carol Browner, Van Jones, and Steve Spinner.

So, what return has Soros gotten on his stimulus-inspired stock buying spree plus investments in companies like First Solar and Solar City? Lakatos’ thorough research discovered that Soros’ green tab exceeds $11 billion of stimulus money (dwarfing Citibank’s) –– and we, the taxpayers, footed the bill. Keep in mind, this tally doesn’t factor in any profit Soros has made off these investments—or will continue to make as a result of Obama’s climate change agenda being pushed by EPA regulation.

As save-the-planet regulations and legislation come out of the Obama administration, which raise costs for the middle class and hurt America's struggling economy, remember the Soros story. It illustrates that Obama is not the "warrior for the middle class" he campaigned as, but he's most concerned about creating wealth for his "green cronies"—of which Soros is just one. This new EPA low-sulfur gasoline proposal is just the latest in a series of green regulations. We don’t know for whom it creates wealth, but we know it isn’t the middle class.

SOURCE

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

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

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1 April, 2013

The prophecies never stop

You don't need any data or facts for a prophecy so why not?

The Arctic will turn green due to rising temperatures within decades, warns a new study. The study forecasts that rising temperatures will lead to a massive 'greening' - increase in trees and shrubs - in the Arctic.

Scientists have revealed new models projecting that wooded areas in the Arctic could increase by as much as 50 per cent over the next few decades.

The research shows that this dramatic greening will also accelerate climate warming at a rate greater than previously expected.

Lead author Richard Pearson, a research scientist at the American Museum of Natural History's Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation, said: 'Such widespread redistribution of Arctic vegetation would have impacts that reverberate through the global ecosystem.'

Plant growth in Arctic ecosystems has increased over the past few decades, a trend that coincides with increases in temperatures, which are rising at about twice the global rate.

The research team - which includes scientists from the Museum, the University of York, AT&T Labs-Research, Woods Hole Research Centre, Colgate University and Cornell University - used climate scenarios for the 2050s to explore how the trend is likely to continue in the future.

The scientists developed models that statistically predict the types of plants that could grow under certain temperatures and precipitation. Although it comes with some uncertainty, the researchers said such modelling is a 'robust' way to study the Arctic because the harsh climate limits the range of plants that can grow, making this system simpler to model compared to other regions such as the tropics.

SOURCE





Britain has coldest Easter on record -- but cooling proves warming so not to worry

Britain had its coldest Easter day on record this weekend, with temperatures dropping as low as -12.5C to round off a freezing month.

The reading, taken in the early hours of Sunday in Braemar, northern Scotland, was the coldest Easter day since modern records began in 1960, eclipsing the previous record for an Easter day of -9.8C on Easter Monday in 1986.

It was also the coldest end to March for more than 150 years. According to the book Daily Temperature Extremes for Britain, the previous low for March 31 had been -10C at Balmoral, Aberdeenshire, in 1941.

On Saturday Braemar recorded an overnight temperature of -11.2C, making it the chilliest March 30 on record and bringing an appropriate end to the coldest March in half a century.

Scotland was not the only area to suffer, with temperatures reaching an icy -8.7C in Shap, Cumbria, and -6C in Odiham, Hampshire on Sunday morning, although some areas remained just above freezing.

A drop in wind is expected to make conditions feel slightly warmer during the day on Sunday, with temperatures of 5C-7C across most of the country, but the weather should remain colder than the seasonal average until mid-April at the earliest.

Most of the country should enjoy calm weather but scattered wintry showers are expected in southern coastal areas during the start of the week.

A Met Office forecaster said: "It will be mainly dry across the whole of the UK [on Sunday and Monday] with sunny spells and a low risk of a few wintry showers, mainly across southern parts but few and far between.

"The rest of the week will remain cold with easterly winds continuing, but it should be mainly dry with the chance of a few wintry showers but very isolated ones. A cold week, but dry with sunny spells."

March is on course to be colder than winter this year for the first time since 1975. The average monthly temperature until March 26 was 2.5C – colder than December (3.8C), January (3.3C) and February (2.8C).

SOURCE




New study says that Antarctic sea ice is expanding -- but ice is caused by warming so not to worry

GLOBAL warming has led to more ice in the sea around Antarctica and could help insulate the southern hemisphere from atmospheric warming.

A Dutch study says that unlike in the Arctic region, sea ice around Antarctica has expanded at a significant rate since 1985.

Published online in Nature Geoscience, the article suggests cool freshwater from melt beneath the Antarctic ice shelves has insulated offshore sea ice from the warming ocean beneath.

Richard Bintanja of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and colleagues say the Antarctic sea ice expands during southern hemisphere autumn and winter in response to this fresh, cool surface layer that freezes easily.

"Against the background of global climate warming, the expansion of Antarctic sea ice is an exceptional feature, which seems to be associated with decreasing sea surface temperatures in the Southern Ocean," they write.

"We predict that this mechanism will be a sizable contributor to the factors that regionally and seasonally offset greenhouse warming and the associated sea ice retreat."

They say the expanding sea ice may constitute a "feedback" that has the potential to oppose southern hemisphere atmospheric warming and amplify increases in global sea level.

Changes in sea ice can significantly modulate climate change because of its high reflective and strong insulating nature, the paper says.

SOURCE




Britain's carbon levy will be a 'stealth poll tax' on energy

The government's new carbon levy is effectively a “stealth poll tax” that will only work to put up household electricity bills and hand a windfall to old nuclear plants, the head of energy giant E.ON has warned.

The Treasury’s “carbon price floor” comes into effect on Monday and official estimates say it will add £5 to household bills this year, rising to about £50 by 2020.

The tax is intended to provide an incentive to invest in new wind farms and nuclear plants by making it more expensive to run coal and gas plants that emit carbon.

Tony Cocker, chief executive of E.ON UK, attacked the policy on the eve of its implementation, arguing that it simply “pushes up the price for electricity” and should be scrapped.

He told The Sunday Telegraph: “The carbon price floor is a tax and it’s pretty close to a stealth poll tax. It’s not based on ability to pay, it’s based on the requirement to keep warm and light your house.

“It was put in place with the stated objective of encouraging investment in low-carbon energy but it certainly doesn’t achieve that objective – it’s just a tax for the Exchequer.”

The measure is expected to raise billions of pounds for the Treasury over the next decade.

Mr Cocker criticised the lack of transparency over the tax. “It’s kind of hidden away,” he said. “If you called it an electricity tax or duty, like the fuel duty on cars, we could all understand that goes to the Exchequer.”

The carbon tax would also provide an unintended “windfall” subsidy for existing old nuclear and hydro plants, which is “completely unnecessary because it’s already been paid for”, he said.

European green policies already make polluting industries buy permits for each tonne of carbon they emit. However, the Government believes the prices have been too low and has introduced the carbon price floor to “top up” the cost per tonne of carbon dioxide.

But the tax has not proven enough to encourage new nuclear and wind power investors, with companies now being offered separate long-term subsidy schemes.

Because Britain is acting unilaterally in increasing carbon costs, critics say the tax will also have no effect on reducing carbon output.“If we charge more for carbon in the UK than is charged in Europe as a whole, all that means is we will burn less coal in the UK and the rest of Europe will burn more coal,” Mr Cocker said.

Manufacturers have called for the tax to be scrapped as they fear it will make British businesses uncompetitive compared with the rest of Europe. Ministers are planning a £150m compensation scheme to help compensate heavy industries.

On Friday, The Daily Telegraph revealed that newly appointed energy minister Michael Fallon had called the tax “absurd”. Mr Fallon has taken on a new role, as joint energy and business minister, working across the departments of Business and Energy in the hope of creating a unified approach.

In a meeting with business leaders in February, Mr Fallon, who at that point had not been given his new responsibilities, said that everyone would “have to pay” for the unintended consequences of the tax.

“This is a fairly absurd waste of your money, this situation we’re now in. Governments intervene in markets they don’t understand and there are consequences and we all have to pay for those consequences.”

Consumer groups have also called for the tax to be scrapped or for its proceeds to be used to help pay for energy efficiency measures. Companies such as EDF, which has a large existing nuclear fleet that is likely to benefit from the higher electricity price, have backed the policy, however.

Mr Cocker insisted his opposition to the carbon tax was not motivated by E.ON’s commercial interest, and said the impact on its power generation portfolio – which includes coal, gas and renewables – would be “relatively neutral”.

It will, however, serve to make E.ON’s Ratcliffe coal plant increasingly uneconomic to run. The company is considering options such as converting it to a biomass plant, which would burn wood instead of coal and be eligible for subsidies.

SOURCE




British government's climate watchdog launches astonishing attack on newspaper ... for revealing global warming science is wrong

By David Rose

The official watchdog that advises the Government on greenhouse gas emissions targets has launched an astonishing attack on The Mail on Sunday – for accurately reporting that alarming predictions of global warming are wrong.

We disclosed that although highly influential computer models are still estimating huge rises in world temperatures, there has been no statistically significant increase for more than 16 years.

Despite our revelation earlier this month, backed up by a scientifically researched graph, the Committee on Climate Change still clings to flawed predictions.

Leading the attack is committee member Sir Brian Hoskins, who is also director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College, London. In a blog on the Committee on Climate Change’s website, Sir Brian insisted: ‘The scientific basis for significant long-term climate risks remains robust, despite the points raised ...... Early and deep cuts in emissions are still required.’

He also claimed our report ‘misunderstood’ the value of computer models. Yet in an interview three years ago, Sir Brian conceded that when he started out as a climate scientist, the models were ‘pretty lousy, and they’re still pretty lousy, really’.

Our graph earlier this month was reproduced from a version first drawn by Dr Ed Hawkins, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science. Last week it was reprinted as part of a four-page report in The Economist.

The accuracy of computer forecasts is vital because they influence politicians and their key environmental advisers on how urgently to act on climate change – and how many billions of pounds they take from the taxpayer in ‘green’ levies.



The Committee on Climate Change claims such forecasts must be right because world temperatures have previously matched computer models’ ‘outputs’ for most of the past 60 years. Yet as this newspaper pointed out, for almost all of that 60-year period the models were not making predictions – because they did not yet exist.

Instead, the models had recently been making ‘hindcasts’ – backward projections based on climate simulations and tailored to actual temperatures. The evidence shows the models collapse when they try to forecast the future.

Author Andrew Montford, who runs the widely read Bishop Hill climate blog, leapt to The Mail on Sunday’s defence and said Sir Brian’s reliance on ‘hindcasts’ was ‘crazy, crazy stuff’.

David Whitehouse, of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the graph showed models were so unreliable that ‘if this kind of data were from a drugs trial it would have been stopped long ago’.

And last week, The Economist repeated our claims that many scientists now believe that previous estimates of ‘climate sensitivity’ – how much the world will warm each time the level of carbon dioxide doubles – are far too high.

In a key 2007 report, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested this was most likely to be about 3C, with 4.5C considered ‘likely’. However, recent research suggests the true figure is much lower – between 1.5C and 2C – giving the world many more decades to avoid disaster through effective new technologies.

The Committee on Climate Change, established by the 2008 Climate Change Act, advises the Government on setting ‘carbon budgets’ and CO2 emissions cuts. It is chaired by Lord Deben, who also heads Veolia Water UK, which connects windfarms to the National Grid.

SOURCE





Israel Begins Pumping Natural Gas From Offshore Field

Israel moved closer to its goal of energy independence on Sunday as natural gas from a large offshore field began flowing into the country, a harbinger of important change that will benefit the country strategically and economically, officials said.

“We are taking an important step toward energy independence,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement after the natural gas started flowing from the Tamar reservoir in the Mediterranean Sea to a terminal in the Israeli port of Ashdod, a journey that officials said would take 24 hours.

“We have advanced the natural gas sector in Israel over the last decade, which will be good for the Israeli economy and for all Israelis,” Mr. Netanyahu added.

Some questions were raised in Orthodox circles in Israel as to why the Tamar field had gone online on the Jewish Sabbath, the religiously mandated day of rest. During his traditional Passover visit to the country’s leading rabbis on Sunday, President Shimon Peres called that decision a “mistake” and said he did not know the reason for it, according to Ynet, a Hebrew news Web site, and some ultra-Orthodox Web sites.

A partnership of Noble Energy, based in Houston, and two Israeli companies, Delek Group and Dor Gas Explorations, carried out drilling operations at the Tamar site, about 56 miles west of the northern port city of Haifa, and discovered large gas reserves there in 2009.

Israel’s Ministry of Energy and Water Resources says that the Tamar field will supply 50 to 80 percent of Israel’s natural gas consumption needs over the next 10 years. About 40 percent of electricity in Israel has been generated from natural gas in recent years, and the rate of natural gas consumption is expected to rise to 50 percent by 2015, the ministry said.

The Tamar field went into production as a smaller natural gas reserve, known as Yam Thetis, at a site farther south, began to run dry.

But the subsequent discovery in 2010 of another major natural gas field off Israel’s northern coast, known as Leviathan, has even positioned Israel as a future energy exporter. Leviathan, discovered through the work of a partnership between Noble Energy and local companies, was said to have been one of the world’s largest offshore gas finds in a decade.

The Israeli government said in 2011 that it would set a tax rate on energy profits at 52 to 62 percent. Mr. Netanyahu said at the time that some of the money would go into a special fund devoted to education and the security of Israel.

The development of Israel’s natural gas sector in recent years has lessened the country’s dependence on foreign energy imports in an unstable and largely hostile region. The vulnerability of Israel’s supplies was underscored in the months after the 2011 ouster of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, when unidentified attackers bombed a gas pipeline in the Egyptian Sinai more than a dozen times, apparently to disrupt the flow to Israel.

Under a deal signed in 2005, Egypt had been supplying Israel’s Electric Corporation, a mostly state-owned utility, with up to 40 percent of the natural gas it needs.

Offshore exploration efforts have also underscored the need for clear maritime borders. Israel and Lebanon have been locked in a dispute over an area of the Mediterranean Sea that is potentially rich with energy resources.

SOURCE

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

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

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This site is in favour of things that ARE good for the environment. That the usual Greenie causes are good for the environment is however disputed.

Context for the minute average temperature change recorded: At any given time surface air temperatures around the world range over about 100°C. Even in the same place they can vary by nearly that much seasonally and as much as 30°C or more in a day. A minute rise in average temperature in that context is trivial if it is not meaningless altogether. Warmism is a money-grubbing racket, not science.

By John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia.


WISDOM:

"The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement" -- Karl Popper

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

'Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action' -- Goethe

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” -- Voltaire

Lord Salisbury: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe."

Some advice from long ago for Warmists: "If ifs and ans were pots and pans,there'd be no room for tinkers". It's a nursery rhyme harking back to Middle English times when "an" could mean "if". Tinkers were semi-skilled itinerant workers who fixed holes and handles in pots and pans -- which were valuable household items for most of our history. Warmists are very big on "ifs", mays", "might" etc. But all sorts of things "may" happen, including global cooling

Bertrand Russell knew about consensus: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" -- William of Occam

"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.” -- John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001

The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.' -- Doug L Hoffman


ABOUT:

This is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I have shifted my attention to health related science and climate related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic. Hence this blog and my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog. I may add that I did not come to either health or environmental research entirely without credentials. I had several academic papers published in both fields during my social science research career

Since my academic background is in the social sciences, it is reasonable to ask what a social scientist is doing talking about global warming. My view is that my expertise is the most relevant of all. It seems clear to me from what you will see on this blog that belief in global warming is very poorly explained by history, chemistry, physics or statistics.

Warmism is prophecy, not science. Science cannot foretell the future. Science can make very accurate predictions based on known regularities in nature (e.g. predicting the orbits of the inner planets) but Warmism is the exact opposite of that. It predicts a DEPARTURE from the known regularities of nature. If we go by the regularities of nature, we are on the brink of an ice age.

And from a philosophy of science viewpoint, far from being "the science", Warmism is not even an attempt at a factual statement, let alone being science. It is not a meaningful statement about the world. Why? Because it is unfalsifiable -- making it a religious, not a scientific statement. To be a scientific statement, there would have to be some conceivable event that disproved it -- but there appears to be none. ANY event is hailed by Warmists as proving their contentions. Only if Warmists were able to specify some fact or event that would disprove their theory would it have any claim to being a scientific statement. So the explanation for Warmist beliefs has to be primarily a psychological and political one -- which makes it my field

And, after all, Al Gore's academic qualifications are in social science also -- albeit very pissant qualifications.

A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were. But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count (we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.


SOME POINTS TO PONDER:

Climate is just the sum of weather. So if you cannot forecast the weather a month in advance, you will not be able to forecast the climate 50 years in advance. And official meteorologists such as Britain's Met Office and Australia's BOM, are very poor forecasters of weather. The Met office has in fact given up on making seasonal forecasts because they have so often got such forecasts embarrassingly wrong. Their global-warming-powered "models" just did not deliver

Here's how that "97% consensus" figure was arrived at

A strange Green/Left conceit: They seem to think (e.g. here) that no-one should spend money opposing them and that conservative donors must not support the election campaigns of Congressmen they agree with

To Greenies, Genghis Khan was a good guy, believe it or not. They love that he killed so many people.

Greenie antisemitism

After three exceptionally cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, the Warmists are chanting: "Warming causes cold". Even if we give that a pass for logic, it still inspires the question: "Well, what are we worried about"? Cold is not going to melt the icecaps is it?"

It's a central (but unproven) assumption of the Warmist "models" that clouds cause warming. Odd that it seems to cool the temperature down when clouds appear overhead!

To make out that the essentially trivial warming of the last 150 years poses some sort of threat, Warmists postulate positive feedbacks that might cut in to make the warming accelerate in the near future. Amid their theories about feedbacks, however, they ignore the one feedback that is no theory: The reaction of plants to CO2. Plants gobble up CO2 and the more CO2 there is the more plants will flourish and hence gobble up yet more CO2. And the increasing crop yields of recent years show that plantlife is already flourishing more. The recent rise in CO2 will therefore soon be gobbled up and will no longer be around to bother anyone. Plants provide a huge NEGATIVE feedback in response to increases in atmospheric CO2

Every green plant around us is made out of carbon dioxide that the plant has grabbed out of the atmosphere. That the plant can get its carbon from such a trace gas is one of the miracles of life. It admittedly uses the huge power of the sun to accomplish such a vast filtrative task but the fact that a dumb plant can harness the power of the sun so effectively is also a wonder. We live on a rather improbable planet. If a science fiction writer elsewhere in the universe described a world like ours he might well be ridiculed for making up such an implausible tale.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A "HEAT TRAPPING GAS". A gas can become warmer by contact with something warmer or by infrared radiation shining on it or by adiabatic (pressure) effects but it cannot trap anything. Air is a gas. Try trapping something with it!

Greenies are the sand in the gears of modern civilization -- and they intend to be.

The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees. So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Yet at the opening of 2011 we find the following unashamed lying by James Hansen: "We will lose all the ice in the polar ice cap in a couple of decades". Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.

The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones' Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive such scrutiny. So even after "Climategate", the secrecy goes on.

Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

Comparing climate alarmist Hansen to Cassandra is WRONG. Cassandra's (Greek mythology) dire prophecies were never believed but were always right. Hansen's dire prophecies are usually believed but are always wrong (Prof. Laurence Gould, U of Hartford, CT)

The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".

For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....

Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.

The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong. The most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly "Carmen" by Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first performed and the unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop. Similarly, when the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first performed in 1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience walked out. Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate are actually better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913, we KNOW that we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that supports Warmism is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").

Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Jim Hansen and his twin

Getting rich and famous through alarmism: Al Gore is well-known but note also James Hansen. He has for decades been a senior, presumably well-paid, employee at NASA. In 2001 he was the recipient of a $250,000 Heinz Award. In 2007 Time magazine designated him a Hero of the Environment. That same year he pocketed one-third of a $1 million Dan David Prize. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. In 2010 he landed a $100,000 Sophie Prize. He pulled in a total of $1.2 million in 2010. Not bad for a government bureaucrat.

See the original global Warmist in action here: "The icecaps are melting and all world is drowning to wash away the sin"

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against that claim.

Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as too incredible to be believed

Meanwhile, however, let me venture a tentative prophecy. Prophecies are almost always wrong but here goes: Given the common hatred of carbon (Warmists) and salt (Food freaks) and given the fact that we are all made of carbon, salt, water and calcium (with a few additives), I am going to prophecy that at some time in the future a hatred of nitrogen will emerge. Why? Because most of the air that we breathe is nitrogen. We live at the bottom of a nitrogen sea. Logical to hate nitrogen? NO. But probable: Maybe. The Green/Left is mad enough. After all, nitrogen is a CHEMICAL -- and we can't have that!

UPDATE to the above: It seems that I am a true prophet

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of "The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.

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

The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil fuel theory

Help keep the planet Green! Maximize your CO2 and CH4 output!

Global Warming=More Life; Global Cooling=More Death.

The inconvenient truth about biological effects of "Ocean Acidification"

The great and fraudulent scare about lead

Green/Left denial of the facts explained: "Rejection lies in this, that when the light came into the world men preferred darkness to light; preferred it, because their doings were evil. Anyone who acts shamefully hates the light, will not come into the light, for fear that his doings will be found out. Whereas the man whose life is true comes to the light" John 3:19-21 (Knox)

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

Recent NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).

In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility. Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units has occurred in recent decades.

The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us all a break!

If you doubt the arrogance [of the global warming crowd, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

The "precautionary principle" is a favourite Greenie idea -- but isn't that what George Bush was doing when he invaded Iraq? Wasn't that a precaution against Saddam getting or having any WMDs? So Greenies all agree with the Iraq intervention? If not, why not?

A classic example of how the sensationalist media distort science to create climate panic is here.

There is a very readable summary of the "Hockey Stick" fraud here

The Lockwood & Froehlich paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here and here and here for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.

As the Greenies are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer time series is used. A remarkable example from Sociology: "The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correla­tion coefficient between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi­tions and lynchings in Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal­ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic condi­tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added." So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been considered.

Relying on the popular wisdom can even hurt you personally: "The scientific consensus of a quarter-century ago turned into the arthritic nightmare of today."

Greenie-approved sources of electricity (windmills and solar cells) require heavy government subsidies to be competitive with normal electricity generators so a Dutch word for Greenie power seems graphic to me: "subsidieslurpers" (subsidy gobblers)




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