The thing that strikes me about the postulation in the article, is that it relies on the validity of the alleged increase in Global mean temperature over the next few years. Of course this is bunk. Our weather has been cooling for a while now and will continue to cool for a while more. Hence the Global Warming figures are absolute fictitious speculation
The thing that strikes me about the postulation in the article, is that it relies on the validity of the alleged increase in Global mean temperature over the next few years. Of course this is bunk. Our weather has been cooling for a while now and will continue to cool for a while more. Hence the Global Warming figures are absolute fictitious speculation
Arn
Absolutely true. NONE of the IPCC's projections have come even close to being true. NONE. I'll post on that later.
Genetic engineering to reduce gas from cows. This Baxter guy says: "All this high-minded thinkin' gives me confidence and pride in our way of making a living." "how 'bout finding the gene or chromosome that affects digestive efficiency? Does it exist? Is cloning raising its hand in the back row? "Genetic manipulation will probably be the driving force for medical miracles in the next 50 years."
On the edge of common sense: Future cow will produce less methane By Baxter Black
Amid the calls that there should be a Greenhouse Gas Tax on ruminant animals (meaning cows; NOT meaning goats, rice, termites or water buffalo), exciting research is being done genetically to address the issue.
Purebred breeders have long kept track of individual animals. Many qualities are examined. Average Daily Gain is a prominent marker used to evaluate the performance. But, even more critical is conversion (pounds of feed per pound of gain). A "good conversion" means it takes less feed to produce a pound of beef.
The significance of using less feed correlates directly to producing less methane and carbon dioxide.
Studies in fed cattle have shown that the difference between the top third of the pen and the bottom third can be as high as 40 percent. Forty percent less feed to produce that same pound of beef, thus 40 percent less greenhouse gases expired in the atmosphere.
Is that a reasonable trait to search for when selecting breeding stock?
If it were within reality, it would be the equivalent of hybrid cars, quadrupling our nuclear reactors, or capturing all the hot air that comes out of Congress to turn windmills on Washington Mall.
At present, we can envision selectively breeding to increase cattle that convert more efficiently. But how 'bout finding the gene or chromosome that affects digestive efficiency? Does it exist? Is cloning raising its hand in the back row?
Genetic manipulation will probably be the driving force for medical miracles in the next 50 years.
We have achieved miracles in plant production since Booker T. Washington tickled his first sweet potato. It is a science that is scary yet breathtaking.
In 50 years, the questions of "man-made" global warming may be proven, or forgotten like Global Cooling and Worldwide Famine or the Y2K collapse. Regardless, being able to use less natural resources; be they oil, grain, coal, trees or grass, just makes sense. Agricultural research, private and public, is at the forefront on finding the answers. Agriculture can't put a man on the moon, but we can feed China.
All this high-minded thinkin' gives me confidence and pride in our way of making a living. Even when I'm slogging out into the lot to check on a calvy heifer. We may not have methane on our minds but ... somebody does. http://www.amarillo.com/sto...1909/new_news6.shtml
OH, I think this is far over the edge of common sense, I don't think common sense could even be seen in the rear view.
Our politicians haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, observes Christopher Booker.
For the second time in little over a year, it looks as though the world may be heading for a serious food crisis, thanks to our old friend "climate change". In many parts of the world recently the weather has not been too brilliant for farmers. After a fearsomely cold winter, June brought heavy snowfall across large parts of western Canada and the northern states of the American Midwest. In Manitoba last week, it was -4ºC. North Dakota had its first June snow for 60 years.
There was midsummer snow not just in Norway and the Cairngorms, but even in Saudi Arabia. At least in the southern hemisphere it is winter, but snowfalls in New Zealand and Australia have been abnormal. There have been frosts in Brazil, elsewhere in South America they have had prolonged droughts, while in China they have had to cope with abnormal rain and freak hailstorms, which in one province killed 20 people.
None of this has given much cheer to farmers. In Canada and northern America summer planting of corn and soybeans has been way behind schedule, with the prospect of reduced yields and lower quality. Grain stocks are predicted to be down 15 per cent next year. US reserves of soya – used in animal feed and in many processed foods – are expected to fall to a 32-year low.
In China, the world's largest wheat grower, they have been battling against the atrocious weather to bring in the harvest. (In one province they even fired chemical shells into the clouds to turn freezing hailstones into rain.) In north-west China drought has devastated crops with a plague of pests and blight. In countries such as Argentina and Brazil droughts have caused such havoc that a veteran US grain expert said last week: "In 43 years I've never seen anything like the decline we're looking at in South America."
In Europe, the weather has been a factor in well-below average predicted crop yields in eastern Europe and Ukraine. In Britain this year's oilseed rape crop is likely to be 30 per cent below its 2008 level. And although it may be too early to predict a repeat of last year's food shortage, which provoked riots from west Africa to Egypt and Yemen, it seems possible that world food stocks may next year again be under severe strain, threatening to repeat the steep rises which, in 2008, saw prices double what they had been two years before.
There are obviously various reasons for this concern as to whether the world can continue to feed itself, but one of them is undoubtedly the downturn in world temperatures, which has brought more cold and snow since 2007 than we have known for decades.
Three factors are vital to crops: the light and warmth of the sun, adequate rainfall and the carbon dioxide they need for photosynthesis. As we are constantly reminded, we still have plenty of that nasty, polluting CO2, which the politicians are so keen to get rid of. But there is not much they can do about the sunshine or the rainfall. It is now more than 200 years since the great astronomer William Herschel observed a correlation between wheat prices and sunspots. When the latter were few in number, he noted, the climate turned colder and drier, crop yields fell and wheat prices rose. In the past two years, sunspot activity has dropped to its lowest point for a century. One of our biggest worries is that our politicians are so fixated on the idea that CO2 is causing global warming that most of them haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, with all the implications that has for whether we get enough to eat.
It is appropriate that another contributory factor to the world's food shortage should be the millions of acres of farmland now being switched from food crops to biofuels, to stop the world warming, Last year even the experts of the European Commission admitted that, to meet the EU's biofuel targets, we will eventually need almost all the food-growing land in Europe. But that didn't persuade them to change their policy. They would rather we starved than did that. And the EU, we must always remember, is now our government – the one most of us didn't vote for last week.
(CNSNews.com) - U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern said that there was “no question” that China would receive both financial and technological assistance from the United States as part of upcoming climate change talks to be conducted in Copenhagen, Denmark.
“This is a developing country issue, which includes China,” Stern told reporters on Friday. “I think there is no question that a Copenhagen agreement is going to have to include mechanisms to provide the financial flows and technological assistance to developing countries.”
The Copenhagen talks are part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), the U.N. body responsible for negotiating the Kyoto Protocol and its successor treaty, negotiation of which will be finalized in Copenhagen this December.
China, called a developing country by the U.N., is being given a special definition by U.S. negotiators who want any final agreement to reflect that despite its vast swaths of undeveloped rural countryside, China is rapidly urbanizing, boasting fully modern cities. Stern outlined this split personality, saying China was “both” a developed and a “developing” country.
“I’ve said on a number of occasions now that it’s accurate that China is in effect both a developed and a developing country at this point,” said Stern. “They are developed in some of their major cities, Beijing and Shanghai, but they’re still developing and still quite poor in a large part of the countryside.”
Regardless, the United States will be spreading the wealth China’s way, helping them to meet whatever final carbon emissions reduction goals come out of Copenhagen.
“It [assistance] needs to focus both on mitigation – the means of producing your CO2 emissions, putting you on a low carbon path – and adaptation, which has to do with dealing with the effects of climate change that has already happened,” said Stern, then, “yes, there will need to be those [assistance] mechanisms.”
Stern acknowledged that the details of precisely how the United States would assist China had yet to be worked out, explaining that there were many questions which need to be answered before December.
“There are a whole host of questions that are important, issues that are important with respect to how to structure a financing mechanism: what institutions to use, what governments to use, where the sources of the money are going to come from, whether it’s between public or private markets, all of those things are under discussion,” he said.
In its Input to the Negotiating Text, a skeleton proposal outlining what the United States would like the Copenhagen agreement to say, the State Department introduced a new criterion reflecting its nuanced view of China’s development.
“With respect to developing country Parties whose national circumstances reflect greater responsibility or capability,” the proposal reads, before outlining that these special countries must implement their own, distinct carbon reduction plans like developed states.
China is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world and it, along with the third-largest emitter India have been the source of U.S. objection in international climate negotiations, with the State Department arguing that any agreement that did not reflect the two countries’ contributions to greenhouse gas emissions would be unfair.
Stern said that China was finally coming around, saying that the Chinese understood that climate change could not be contained without their participation and that the size of their carbon emissions put them in a special category of polluters.
“The stark reality, though, is that the world cannot contain climate change, we cannot avoid dangerous levels of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, without very significant effort by China,” Stern said. “We talked very openly and candidly and in a lot of detail about what needs to be done on both sides to advance to a successful outcome in Copenhagen.”
China, he said, would be expected to reduce their emissions below where they otherwise would be if no actions were taken. Developed countries must generally reduce their emissions below an as-yet-to-be-determined yearly level -- for example, the level of emissions in 1990 used by the Kyoto Protocol.
“We are expecting China to reduce emissions very considerably compared to where they would otherwise be,” said Stern. “That’s not an absolute reduction below where they are right now, because they [China] are not quite at that point yet. In that respect, the developed and developing countries are different.”
[This message has been edited by fierobear (edited 06-17-2009).]
Marc Sheppard Yesterday, the White House released an over-the-top climate report, meant to bolster waning public support (through fear-mongering) for the administration’s disastrous carbon taxation scheme. But as overly-alarming as was the document itself, its portrayal by ABC’s crack meteorologist Sam Champion on today’s Good Morning America may have redefined hysterical reporting.
Over a dramatic video of surging seas, raging wildfires and hammering hurricanes, an ominous voice warns that “climate change is happening all over America and if we don’t act now it will drastically affect where and how we live in the future.” And then offers this stark advice: “If you’re thinking of retiring in Florida, think Twice.”
Proclaiming that “sea levels are expected to rise three to five feet by late this century,” the video flashes the cover of the Obama administration’s Global Climate Change Impacts In the United States report [PDF]. Through the magic of animation, the report is seen opening to a page depicting a Section titled “Coastal areas are at an increasing risk from sea-level rise and storm surge.” A graphic of the Sunshine State below claims to represent “Florida with 3-feet of sea-level rise” and warns that “Areas in Red would be underwater with a 3-foot sea-level rise predicted this century.” That same voice-over (Champions?) identifies the sunken regions: “This 13 agency report shows Southern Florida disappearing, with the Everglades, Florida Keys and parts of Cape Canaveral under water.” True, the report dismisses even IPCC AR4’s worst-case predictions of 10 to 23 inches SLR by 2100 as faulty and instead claims that “average estimates under higher emissions scenarios are for sea-level rise between 3 and 4 feet by the end of this century.” It even suggests as much as 6.5 feet.
Alarmist nonsense, to be sure. But nowhere in this report can either the page ABC highlighted or any of its claims of Southern Florida and the Keys doing a lost continent of Atlantis impression be found. That page, shown at 0:36, simply does not exist in the report. So then, exactly where did it come from?
Marc Morano of Climate Depot has put together a “Sampling of Scientific Reactions to [the government] report,” which includes Meteorologist Joe D'Aleo’s assessment that “this is not a work of science but an embarrassing episode for the authors and NOAA [primary report contributors, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration].” D’Aleo points out that they’ve “delivered a document even more alarmist than the UN IPCC.”
And yet, not alarming enough, it would appear, for the Waxman-Markey proponents over at ABC.
** Update 6/17/09 1910 EDT
AT reader Mike Malone pointed me to the White House website, and to the fact that the graphic ABC misrepresented as part of the official report is, in fact, a slide from the PowerPoint presentation used to launch the report yesterday. That leaves two questions: Why was this startling (albeit alarmist standard issue) claim included in the frantic speech-making event yet excluded from the actual report? And why did ABC deliberately imply otherwise by creating the animation depicting the report being turned to a page containing the claim? Any guesses?
2.5 do you really think the Obama administration can or even would go to a foreign country (Holland) to wipe out a discussion thread? You really need to think this one through.
2.5 do you really think the Obama administration can or even would go to a foreign country (Holland) to wipe out a discussion thread? You really need to think this one through.
Arn
I really have no idea, or if it would be difficult or not, just a thought. There are just alot of great things in this thread that many powers that be would not like. Doesn't have to be any administrations really, there are probably plenty of hackers who might think being "green" is more important than freedom of speech too.
The US is doing better at controlling its carbon emissions than most other countries, without Kyoto mandates. Thus reports Drew Thornley at The American (the Journal of the American Enterprise Institute).
"According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), carbon-dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels increased 0.7 percent in the United States from 2000 to 2006, far below the worldwide increase of 21.6 percent. During the same period, emissions grew 4.9 percent in Europe, 37.6 percent in the Middle East, and 52.3 percent in Asia. Major developing nations saw big increases. India, Malaysia, and China's emissions increased 27.7 percent, 45.8 percent, and 103 percent, respectively."
So the world, or at least the American Enterprise Institute, is now catching up to the American Thinker, which in 2007 reported on this same phenomenon.
"If we look at that data and compare 2004 (latest year for which data is available) to 1997 (last year before the Kyoto treaty was signed), we find the following.
Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%. Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%. Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%. Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%."
As Drew Thornley quotes Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Steve Rayner of Oxford University: "[the Kyoto Protocol] as an instrument for achieving emissions reductions, has failed . . . It has produced no demonstrable reductions in emissions or even in anticipated emissions growth."
For those concerned about absolute levels of emissions rather than percentage increases, Thornley also reports
"In 2006, China passed the United States as the world's biggest carbon emitter, and its lead is growing daily. The EIA projects that China's energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide will exceed American emissions by almost 15 percent in 2010 and by 75 percent in 2030. In 1990, China and India together accounted for 13 percent of the world's emissions; in 2005, their contribution was 23 percent; and in 2030, they are expected to account for 34 percent of the world's emissions."
Winter grips 90 per cent of north, migratory birds can't breed
It is the winter that refuses to go away in northern Manitoba and most of the eastern Arctic. Prolonged cold snowy conditions in the Hudson Bay area are expected to obliterate the breeding season for migratory birds and most other species of wildlife this year. According to Environment Canada, the spring of 2009 is record-late in the eastern Arctic with virtually 100 per cent snow cover from James Bay north as of June 11. May temperatures in northern Manitoba were almost four degrees C below the long-term average of -0.7, and in early June, temperatures averaged three degrees below normal. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration images confirm snow and ice blanket all of northern Manitoba, part of northern Ontario and almost all of the eastern Arctic as of June 12. U.S. arieal flight surveys confirm the eastern Arctic has no sign of spring so far. "I have lived in Churchill since the 1950s, and this the latest spring I have ever seen here," said local resident Pat Penwarden. "The spring of 1962 was almost this bad." Six-foot snowdrifts blocked Churchill-area roads. A thick blanket of snow, in places three- and four-feet deep, coated 90 per cent of the local taiga in northern Manitoba. Ecotourists, who normally flock to northern Manitoba every June to see birds and other wildlife, cancelled their plans this June "in droves," according to local ecotourist specialists. Snowy conditions are largely to blame. "It is like a winter landscape," said Ruth Baker, a Michigan tourist who spent June 9 to 12 at Churchill. "I couldn't believe the snowdrifts, like mountains of snow". Researchers confirm that the lateness of the spring of 2009 dooms local birds to a virtually complete reproductive failure. According to Robert Jefferies, professor emeritus of botany at the University of Toronto, the last time there was a late spring in northern Manitoba, in 1983, there was a total reproductive "bust" in lesser snow geese. Most species of birds did not nest at all. Aerial inventories of fall migrant geese from the eastern Arctic that year confirmed 0.005 per cent of the fall population comprised juvenile birds, compared to the normal figure of over 50 per cent. According to Cornell University researchers, currently at Churchill, shorebird nesting is already three-weeks late, and has yet to start. The first Canada goose nests were initiated on June 7, more than one month later than normal, and probably not early enough to allow goslings to mature before the fall migration flight. Canada geese are the first birds to nest in northern Manitoba. Many northern birds require more than 100 days to nest, incubate young and rear offspring to a condition suitable for fall migration. According to Robert Rockwell of The City University of New York, who studies geese in northern Manitoba, if the geese have not begun incubating clutches of eggs before June 11, there is almost no chance that their offspring will be strong enough to endure the long southbound fall flight. In 1983, that was the case, and 1983 was not nearly as late as 2009. Research by Hugh Boyd, scientist emeritus at the Canadian Wildlife Service, states late Arctic springs reduce northern waterfowl production by up to 90 per cent, with very late springs having a devastating impact. According to Vern Thomas, a University of Guelph researcher, record-late springs produce "reproductive failures" in northern geese. "These late springs generate reproductive busts," confirmed Joe Jehl, who has studied birds in northern Manitoba since the late 1960s and recently retired from the Smithsonian Institution. Studies at Churchill show that in late springs, female birds delay nesting, and rather than starve for lack of food, they re-absorb already-formed eggs to benefit from their nutritional content. Nesting often does not occur under those conditions. In 2004, a late spring caused many northern Manitoba migratory birds to abandon nesting efforts and head back south in late June, more than two months early. Recent late springs in the Hudson Bay area have been more frequent than normal: 2004, 2002, 2000 and 1997. According to NOAA scientists, although the Arctic is warming, more frequent annual oscillations in temperature are likely to occur, often resulting in late springs. "Such major oscillations are part of a bumpy ride toward global warming," said Thomas Karl of the National Climate Center. "For awhile at least this will be the shape of things to come." Vegetation is also impacted upon by late Arctic springs, with green-up about three weeks late this year. Consequently, herbivorous animals have delayed breeding "People often confuse climate with weather, and this spring is a weather phenomenon," said an Environment Canada spokesperson. Robert Alison is a Victoria-based wildlife biologist and writer with a PhD in zoology.
President Obama is urging U.S. lawmakers before their month-long summer vacation on Aug. 3rd to come up with bills on health care reform and global warming.
The 942-page Waxman-Markey energy bill in the House -- known as "The American Clean Energy and Security Act" (H.R. 2454) -- aims to create new jobs, save Americans hundreds of billions in energy costs, reduce global warming and pollution, and wean the country off imported oil. If passed it would fail in every way.
Already environmental activists and interest groups are involved in propaganda campaigns to scare people into clamoring for climate legislation to avoid "climate catastrophe." Not only is my 10th District Congressman Rep. Mark Kirk being pressured through telephone calls to his constituents to support health care reform that includes a government public plan, but Kirk is also the target of TV ads on Fox News urging him to vote for "The American Clean Energy and Security Act."
A study at the Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis in Washington, D.C. has found that by 2035 the proposed Waxman-Markey global warming legislation would inflict GDP losses of $9.4 trillion, raise an average family's energy bill by $1,241, and destroy on the average 1,145,000 jobs. (Morning Bell: What is the Bigger Threat? Global Warming or Global Warming Legislation). Meanwhile China and India will be firing up coal-fired power plants, benefiting economically, while this nation's regulates itself to death.
Given the possible economic down side of enacting the Waxman-Markey energy bill and how its "cap-and-trade" provision would control and penalize large industrial sources that emit carbon dioxide, it would seem prudent to first examine the urgency for enacting global warming legislation
On Wednesday, June 17, an interesting graph appeared in the Wall Street Journal. (Building Up /Total Carbon-Dioxide Emissions). It indicated that even if the U.S. were to reduce its output of CO2 by 50%, it would have no perceptible effect on the world environment as enormous amounts of CO2 is produced by nature every year. Further stated was that such an effort "will probably destroy the economy, reduce the dollar to junk status, and end the U.S. as a free and productive country as we know it."
Not to be overlooked, especially by Chicagoans, is The Heartland Institute, a 25 year old non-partisan think tank located in Chicago, IL. On June 2nd it sponsored the Third International Conference on Climate Change in Washington, D.C. Released at the conference was a 880-page report -- Climate Change Reconsidered -- that challenges point by point the flawed claims of a 2007 U.N document embraced by the Obama administration. The appendix lists the names of 31,478 American scientists who have signed a petition-- including 9,029 with PhD's, which states in part: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of Earth's climate." (The Climate-Change Report the UN Failed to Write).
There is massive deceit taking place among advocates of global warming through doctored data, misrepresented study findings, and flawed computer simulations that amounts to a government-created Ponzi scam that surpasses the shame of the Madoff scandal. As such global warming is not and never was the crisis so many politicians and activists claim it is. Fraud by investment gurus earn them jail and fines; no punishment awaits fraud on the public by government officials.
Efforts made to control emissions of greenhouse gases would not only be ineffective and completely pointless as carbon dioxide is not an atmospheric pollutant, but also extremely expensive. The net result of the Waxman-Markey energy bill would be to vastly expand power in Washington, D.C., while functioning as a tax on the American people by raising the cost of energy and the price paid for all goods and services.
Thanks again Fierobear. It is too bad most of the general public just doesn't understand this. Of course alot of those same people would be sucked in by any ponsi scam.
Don't feel bad if you haven't because virtually no one else has read it either.
It is a 1200 page monstrosity of a bill that Stacy McCain points out is about as transparent as cotton candy:
Here's the timeline [for HR 2454]: Introduced - 5/15/09 Reported with amendments out of Energy & Commerce - 6/5/09 Discharged by Education & Labor and Foreign Affairs Committees - 6/5/09 Discharged by Financial Services, Science & Technology, Transportation, Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Ways & Means Committees - 6/19/09 Placed on the Union Calendar, Calendar No. 90 - 6/19/09 (This version is 946 pages) Submitted to House Rules Committee - 6/22/09, 4:22pm (This version is 1,201 pages)
So, where along the line does the bill suddenly expand by 300 pages? According to the New York Times, the various committee chairs held behind the scenes meetings and hashed out a compromise with no allowance for public input. (What lobbyists were involved in those meetings?) And now we are expecting a Friday vote on a bill that has had no public hearing in a committee with jurisdiction over it and that is not yet available in the main engine of public disclosure, THOMAS.
This raises serious questions about how we expect Congress to disclose their activities to the public. Is a bill posted to the House Rules Committee and not THOMAS truly publicly available? While the bill may be available for 72 hours prior to consideration, the public does not have reasonable access to it. Nor does the public know how the final details were reached.
Here we go again. The bill is to be voted on Friday. No public debate because who the hell has read the darn thing? This massive, nation-altering bill will pass into law and nobody - except perhaps ultra-liberal Congressman Henry Waxman - knows anything about it exept bits and pieces.
The House Democrats can do this simply because of their massive majority. And the question of how much the senate will be able to change the bill is up in the air. A lot of horse trading went on in the House to get this bill to the floor so in any House-Senate conference, it is likely that most of what's in the House bill will end up in the final version.
Yes - but at least we'll be saved from global warming.
The Climate Change Climate Change The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere.
Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.
If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.
Associated Press
Steve Fielding .Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.
In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.
The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)
The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.
Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence." Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.
The rise in skepticism also came as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected like Mr. Obama on promises to combat global warming, was attempting his own emissions-reduction scheme. His administration was forced to delay the implementation of the program until at least 2011, just to get the legislation through Australia's House. The Senate was not so easily swayed.
Mr. Fielding, a crucial vote on the bill, was so alarmed by the renewed science debate that he made a fact-finding trip to the U.S., attending the Heartland Institute's annual conference for climate skeptics. He also visited with Joseph Aldy, Mr. Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, where he challenged the Obama team to address his doubts. They apparently didn't.
This week Mr. Fielding issued a statement: He would not be voting for the bill. He would not risk job losses on "unconvincing green science." The bill is set to founder as the Australian parliament breaks for the winter.
Republicans in the U.S. have, in recent years, turned ever more to the cost arguments against climate legislation. That's made sense in light of the economic crisis. If Speaker Nancy Pelosi fails to push through her bill, it will be because rural and Blue Dog Democrats fret about the economic ramifications. Yet if the rest of the world is any indication, now might be the time for U.S. politicians to re-engage on the science. One thing for sure: They won't be alone.
I have to give the Obama Administration credit for seeing the signs and acting promptly.
All scientific evidence (that's not predisposed to support GW) suggests global warming and cooling are cyclical and that we have been in a warming trend, but with the sun moving into a new phase of expected low activity, we can expect the global climate to start cooling in the coming decades.
What does all this mean? Simple. Stir up a panic about GW now, pass whatever bills you want to get passed, and 10 years from now when scientists are reporting declining temps you can sit back smugly and say "I told you so" and brag about how great your plans worked and that you saved the world.
It's a no lose scenario, politically. Even if temps go up, you can then say it's because we didn't act fast enough and do enough because of the Republicans.
Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) had a few choice words about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) landmark climate-change bill after its passage Friday.
When asked why he read portions of the cap-and-trade bill on the floor Friday night, Boehner told The Hill, "Hey, people deserve to know what's in this pile of s--t."
Using his privilege as leader to speak for an unlimited time on the House floor, Boehner spent an hour reading from the 1200-plus page bill that was amended 20 hours before the lower chamber voted 219-212 to approve it.
Eight Republicans voted with Democrats to pass the bill; 44 House Democrats voted against it. Pelosi's office declined to comment on Boehner's jab. But one Democratic aide quipped, "What do you expect from a guy who thinks global warming is caused by cow manure?"
Even though Sen. Majorty Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) holds the bill's fate in his hands, House Republicans intend to hammer Speaker Pelosi's signature climate-change measure over recess.
And GOP Conference Chairman Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.) said "we have only just begun to fight” as he left the Capitol Friday night.
Pence encouraged GOP rank-and-file lawmakers to hold energy summits in their districts over the Independence Day recess. In the recess packets sent home with members, he even included directions on how to organize energy summits.
The goal of holding an energy forum is to “educate your constituents about the Democrats’ national energy tax legislation and let them know what 'all of the above' solution you support.”
"All of the above” solution is a reference to the Republicans' plan that would increase the use of and exploration for domestic energy supplies.
Further, officials with the House GOP's campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, confirm that they will run with paid media over recess in districts of conservative Dems who voted for the bill. The official would not reveal details on the ad buys at this time.
One Democrat was upset that his leaders would needlessly force vulnerable Dems to vote for a bill that will come back to haunt them. Mississippi Rep. Gene Taylor (D) voted against the measure that he says will die in the Senate.
"A lot of people walked the plank on a bill that will never become law," Taylor told The Hill after the gavel came down.
Mitchell Taylor, who has studied the animals for 30 years, was told his views 'are extremely unhelpful’ , reveals Christopher Booker
ver the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming.
This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN's major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world's leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week's meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.
Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined. Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.
He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists' agenda as their most iconic single cause. The famous photograph of two bears standing forlornly on a melting iceberg was produced thousands of times by Al Gore, the WWF and others as an emblem of how the bears faced extinction – until last year the photographer, Amanda Byrd, revealed that the bears, just off the Alaska coast, were in no danger. Her picture had nothing to do with global warming and was only taken because the wind-sculpted ice they were standing on made such a striking image. Dr Taylor had obtained funding to attend this week's meeting of the PBSG, but this was voted down by its members because of his views on global warming. The chairman, Dr Andy Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor's, frankly explained in an email (which I was not sent by Dr Taylor) that his rejection had nothing to do with his undoubted expertise on polar bears: "it was the position you've taken on global warming that brought opposition".
Dr Taylor was told that his views running "counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful". His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – was "inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG".
So, as the great Copenhagen bandwagon rolls on, stand by this week for reports along the lines of "scientists say polar bears are threatened with extinction by vanishing Arctic ice". But also check out Anthony Watt's Watts Up With That website for the latest news of what is actually happening in the Arctic. The average temperature at midsummer is still below zero, the latest date that this has happened in 50 years of record-keeping. After last year's recovery from its September 2007 low, this year's ice melt is likely to be substantially less than for some time. The bears are doing fine.
[This message has been edited by fierobear (edited 06-28-2009).]
Sen. Inhofe Calls for Inquiry Into 'Suppressed' Climate Change Report Republicans are raising questions about why the EPA apparently dismissed an analyst's report questioning the science behind global warming.
A top Republican senator has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency's alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming.
The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin's report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined.
"He came out with the truth. They don't want the truth at the EPA," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla, a global warming skeptic, told FOX News, saying he's ordered an investigation. "We're going to expose it."
The controversy comes after the House of Representatives passed a landmark bill to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, one that Inhofe said will be "dead on arrival" in the Senate despite President Obama's energy adviser voicing confidence in the measure.
According to internal e-mails that have been made public by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Carlin's boss told him in March that his material would not be incorporated into a broader EPA finding and ordered Carlin to stop working on the climate change issue. The draft EPA finding released in April lists six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, that the EPA says threaten public health and welfare.
An EPA official told FOXNews.com on Monday that Carlin, who is an economist -- not a scientist -- included "no original research" in his report. The official said that Carlin "has not been muzzled in the agency at all," but stressed that his report was entirely "unsolicited."
"It was something that he did on his own," the official said. "Though he was not qualified, his manager indulged him and allowed him on agency time to draft up ... a set of comments."
Despite the EPA official's remarks, Carlin told FOXNews.com on Monday that his boss, National Center for Environmental Economics Director Al McGartland, appeared to be pressured into reassigning him.
Carlin said he doesn't know whether the White House intervened to suppress his report but claimed it's clear "they would not be happy about it if they knew about it," and that McGartland seemed to be feeling pressure from somewhere up the chain of command.
Carlin said McGartland told him he had to pull him off the climate change issue.
"It was reassigning you or losing my job, and I didn't want to lose my job," Carlin said, paraphrasing what he claimed were McGartland's comments to him. "My inference (was) that he was receiving some sort of higher-level pressure."
Carlin said he personally does not think there is a need to regulate carbon dioxide, since "global temperatures are going down." He said his report expressed a "good bit of doubt" on the connection between the two.
Specifically, the report noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend over the past 11 years, that scientists do not necessarily believe that storms will become more frequent or more intense due to global warming, and that the theory that temperatures will cause Greenland ice to rapidly melt has been "greatly diminished."
Carlin, in a March 16 e-mail, argued that his comments are "valid, significant" and would be critical to the EPA finding.
McGartland, though, wrote back the next day saying he had decided not to forward his comments.
"The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision," he wrote, according to the e-mails released by CEI. "I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office."
He later wrote an e-mail urging Carlin to "move on to other issues and subjects."
"I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research, etc., at least until we see what EPA is going to do with climate," McGartland wrote.
The EPA said in a written statement that Carlin's opinions were in fact considered, and that he was not even part of the working group dealing with climate change in the first place.
"Claims that this individual's opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false. This administration and this EPA administrator are fully committed to openness, transparency and science-based decision making," the statement said. "The individual in question is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue. Nevertheless the document he submitted was reviewed by his peers and agency scientists, and information from that report was submitted by his manager to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding. In fact, some ideas from that document are included and addressed in the endangerment finding."
The e-mail exchanges and suggestions of political interference sparked a backlash from Republicans in Congress.
Reps. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Darrell Issa, R-Calif., also wrote a letter last week to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson urging the agency to reopen its comment period on the finding. The EPA has since denied the request.
Citing the internal e-mails, the Republican congressmen wrote that the EPA was exhibiting an "agency culture set in a predetermined course."
"It documents at least one instance in which the public was denied access to significant scientific literature and raises substantial questions about what additional evidence may have been suppressed," they wrote.
In a written statement, Issa said the administration is "actively seeking to withhold new data in order to justify a political conclusion."
"I'm sure it was very inconvenient for the EPA to consider a study that contradicted the findings it wanted to reach," Sensenbrenner said in a statement, adding that the "repression" of Carlin's report casts doubt on the entire finding.
Carlin said he's concerned that he's seeing "science being decided at the presidential level."
"Now Mr. Obama is in effect directly or indirectly saying that CO2 causes global temperatures to rise and that we have to do something about it. ... That's normally a scientific judgment and he's in effect judging what the science says," he said. "We need to look at it harder."
The controversy is similar to one under the Bush administration -- only the administration was taking the opposite stance. In that case, scientist James Hansen claimed the administration was trying to keep him from speaking out and calling for reductions in greenhouse gases.
FOX News' Major Garrett contributed to this report.
We're in the middle of pretending to save the planet, baby.
If it's about helping "the environment," suspend reason and salvation is yours. As I'm sure you've heard a lot of smart and compassionate folks tell you lately, doing something -- anything! -- is better than doing nothing.
So the House did something. It passed a "cap and trade" bill that would ration energy, destroy productive jobs, levy the largest tax increase in United States history and, for kicks, penalize foreign trade partners who fail to engage in comparable economic suicide.
Now, assuming there are no speed-reading clairvoyants in the House, no one who voted for the 1,200-page bill -- plus the 300-page amendment dropped the morning of the vote -- possibly could have read it.
And any scum-sucking scoundrel who points out that "doing nothing" already includes spending billions on renewable energies and living under thousands of regulations is, as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman shrewdly noted, a traitor to humankind.
Speaking of doing nothing: Though it has the potential to stagnate the economy, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, according to the Environmental Protection Agency itself, would not create any reductions in emissions by 2020. The piddling impact of the bill is documented across the ideological spectrum.
So after the House passed the bill, I, curious about the particulars, sent a query to Rep. Betsy Markey, D-Colo., because hers was one of the votes that put the bill over the top. Markey had been on the fence regarding cap and trade, so surely, she gave the bill a thorough once-over before voting. Not surprisingly, I received no reply.
When I later caught Markey swinging at softballs on television, I realized that she probably had been too busy boning up on her talking points to take the time to slog through 1,500 pages of a radical and generational shift in energy policy.
As terrible as this bill is -- and America's only hope is that a more reasonable Senate will kill it -- Markey and others have mastered the art of passing environmental legislation. Throw in "green jobs" or a "new energy economy" and you are golden. What kind of insensitive monster is going to stand in the way of a windmill?
If you're really in a fighting mood, drop a line about "energy independence" -- and don't we love to hear that one? But do not under any circumstances, as Markey did, stray from your script to offer this remarkably ill-informed myth: "We are now beholden," Markey claimed, "to unstable governments in the Middle East for the majority of our oil."
That's scary stuff. And it brings up an important point: Cap and trade schemes do nothing to foster energy independence, though they hold the distinct possibility of making us more "dependent" on foreign oil imports.
Having to pay for expensive carbon credits will be an incentive for many American companies to close their carbon-emitting businesses and move abroad to places less devoted to destroying themselves.
The House's cap and trade also means that any energy that does not rely on windmills or solar panels -- so, nearly all energy -- could become cheaper to import rather than refine here.
It is also distressing, but not surprising, to hear a politician assert that trading with foreign nations means we are beholden to them rather than explain how trade makes partners more peaceful, makes us competitive and makes everyone more prosperous.
But even if you measure trade as Markey does, we do not import the "majority" of our oil from "unstable" "Middle Eastern" countries.
According to the Energy Information Administration, the top sources for U.S. crude oil for many years have been Canada and Mexico -- with Saudi Arabia third.
Saudi Arabia is a terrible place ruled by religious fascists (whom no American president ever should hold hands with or bow to), but it is rather stable, considering.
Not that it makes any difference, mind you. Something, after all, needs to be done.
Last week, prior to voting for the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, House Republican Leader John Boehner spent the better part of an hour reading from the 1201-page bill and the associated 300-page addendum, which had been dumped on Congress' door at 3:09AM. He did so, he told The Hill, because he believed "people need to know what's in this pile of s-it."
Congressman Boehner was correct. There may be no better description of what's in this phony legislation, designed to supposedly halt global warming.
First, a couple quick facts:
Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, it's a fertilizer. It accounts for a feeble .038 percent of the atmosphere. According to the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, a research wing of the Department of Energy, only 3.2 percent of that thin atmospheric component is created by anthropogenic emissions.
The earth's temperature has only risen 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 150 years, and most of that occurred prior to the 1940s. The Thirties was the hottest decade on record, with 22 of the current 50 states having established their all-time high temperatures during that sizzling ten years. There has been no warming of the earth's climate since 1998, and in the past 18-24 months there has been a slight cooling.
Anthropogenic global warming is a myth, and therefore there is no need for the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. Climate change is simply an excuse for another massive government attempt at control and giveaways.
For example, buried on pages 1014-1016 of the bill is the "Monthly Energy Refund." According to this plan, for those with a gross income that "does not exceed 150 percent of the poverty line...a direct deposit," of an undisclosed amount of money, will be sent "into the eligible household's designated bank account..."
On pages 502-503 we find the "Low Income Community Energy Efficiency Program," whereby grants will be issued "to increase the flow of capital and benefits to low income communities, minority-owned and woman-owned businesses and entrepreneurs..."
Further proving this is actually a welfare scheme, on page 973 we discover that for workers who lose their manufacturing jobs because the caps on their companies are too repressive, and their employer either has to shut down, or move operations to the Third World to avoid regulation, the "adversely affected worker" shall receive 70 percent of their prior weekly wage, "payable for a period not longer than 156 weeks." In addition, on pages 986-987 we read the unemployed worker can submit up to $1,500 in job search reimbursements, and get another $1,500 to cover his moving expenses.
And then there are the new federally mandated building codes, which will supersede local rules and regulations. The new codes will be enforced by a green goon squad. On pages 319-324 we read the Secretary of Energy "shall enhance compliance by conducting training and education of builders and other professionals in the jurisdiction concerning the national energy efficiency building code." These EPA badge-wearing G-Men will be funded both through global warming revenues procured through the cap and trade scheme, as well as by $25 million designated annually from the Department of Energy "to provide necessary enforcement of a national energy efficiency building code..."
Oh, but there's more of the stinky stuff Mr. Boehner was referring to. A new office will be created at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government's primary weather body. If this bill becomes law, NOAA will have a "Climate Service Office," as described on pages 1083-1087 of the document. This new office will "ensure a continuous level of high-quality data collected through a national observation and monitoring infrastructure..."
Question: shouldn't NOAA already be doing this? If not, perhaps the idiotic forecasts of gloom and doom from the government's chief global warming forecaster James Hansen, who supposedly relies on NOAA products for his scare tactics, have been incorrect after all, due to corrupt data?
Anyone can see through this charade -- the Climate Service Office will ensure that skeptics and deniers are silenced, and that all research will be controlled and monitored to ensure that global warming is the lie of the land.
In a further effort to perpetrate this fraud, on page 1102 we discover the "Summer Institutes Program and the Regional Climate Center." According to the bill: "The purpose of the program is to provide training and professional enrichment by providing opportunities for interaction between participants and climate scientists in a research and operational setting to-enable middle school and high school teachers to integrate weather and climate sciences into their curricula: and encourage undergraduate students to pursue further study and careers in weather and climate sciences."
This is nothing but government sponsored brainwashing, folks.
Thank you Mr. Boehner, for saying it like it is. You, sir, are a great American. Now let's place pressure on the Senate to keep this sucker bill from passing its stinky gas.
The professional penalty for offering a contrary view to elites like Al Gore is a smear campaign
Wherever Jim Hansen is right now -- whatever speech the "censored" NASA scientist is giving -- perhaps he'll find time to mention the plight of Alan Carlin. Though don't count on it.
Mr. Hansen, as everyone in this solar system knows, is the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Starting in 2004, he launched a campaign against the Bush administration, claiming it was censoring his global-warming thoughts and fiddling with the science. It was all a bit of a hoot, given Mr. Hansen was already a world-famous devotee of the theory of man-made global warming, a reputation earned with some 1,400 speeches he'd given, many while working for Mr. Bush. But it gave Democrats a fun talking point, one the Obama team later picked up.
So much so that one of President Barack Obama's first acts was a memo to agencies demanding new transparency in government, and science. The nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Lisa Jackson, joined in, exclaiming, "As administrator, I will ensure EPA's efforts to address the environmental crises of today are rooted in three fundamental values: science-based policies and program, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency." In case anyone missed the point, Mr. Obama took another shot at his predecessors in April, vowing that "the days of science taking a backseat to ideology are over."
Except, that is, when it comes to Mr. Carlin, a senior analyst in the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics and a 35-year veteran of the agency. In March, the Obama EPA prepared to engage the global-warming debate in an astounding new way, by issuing an "endangerment" finding on carbon. It establishes that carbon is a pollutant, and thereby gives the EPA the authority to regulate it -- even if Congress doesn't act.
Around this time, Mr. Carlin and a colleague presented a 98-page analysis arguing the agency should take another look, as the science behind man-made global warming is inconclusive at best. The analysis noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend. It pointed out problems with climate models. It highlighted new research that contradicts apocalyptic scenarios. "We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA," the report read.
The response to Mr. Carlin was an email from his boss, Al McGartland, forbidding him from "any direct communication" with anyone outside of his office with regard to his analysis. When Mr. Carlin tried again to disseminate his analysis, Mr. McGartland decreed: "The administrator and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. . . . I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office." (Emphasis added.)
Mr. McGartland blasted yet another email: "With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate." Ideology? Nope, not here. Just us science folk. Honest.
The emails were unearthed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Republican officials are calling for an investigation; House Energy Committee ranking member Joe Barton sent a letter with pointed questions to Mrs. Jackson, which she's yet to answer. The EPA has issued defensive statements, claiming Mr. Carlin wasn't ignored. But there is no getting around that the Obama administration has flouted its own promises of transparency.
The Bush administration's great sin, for the record, was daring to issue reports that laid out the administration's official position on global warming. That the reports did not contain the most doomsday predictions led to howls that the Bush politicals were suppressing and ignoring career scientists.
The Carlin dustup falls into a murkier category. Unlike annual reports, the Obama EPA's endangerment finding is a policy act. As such, EPA is required to make public those agency documents that pertain to the decision, to allow for public comment. Court rulings say rulemaking records must include both "the evidence relied upon and the evidence discarded." In refusing to allow Mr. Carlin's study to be circulated, the agency essentially hid it from the docket.
Unable to defend the EPA's actions, the climate-change crew -- , led by anonymous EPA officials -- is doing what it does best: trashing Mr. Carlin as a "denier." He is, we are told, "only" an economist (he in fact holds a degree in physics from CalTech). It wasn't his "job" to look at this issue (he in fact works in an office tasked with "informing important policy decisions with sound economics and other sciences.") His study was full of sham science. (The majority of it in fact references peer-reviewed studies.) Where's Mr. Hansen and his defense of scientific freedom when you really need him?
Mr. Carlin is instead an explanation for why the science debate is little reported in this country. The professional penalty for offering a contrary view to elites like Al Gore is a smear campaign. The global-warming crowd likes to deride skeptics as the equivalent of the Catholic Church refusing to accept the Copernican theory. The irony is that, today, it is those who dare critique the new religion of human-induced climate change who face the Inquisition.
[This message has been edited by fierobear (edited 07-03-2009).]
Orszag nails it: The 'largest corporate welfare program' ever
President Obama is calling the climate bill that the House passed last week an "extraordinary" achievement, and so it is. The 1,200-page wonder manages the supreme feat of being both hugely expensive while doing almost nothing to reduce carbon emissions.
The Washington press corps is playing the bill's 219-212 passage as a political triumph, even though one of five Democrats voted against it. The real story is what Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House baron Henry Waxman and the President himself had to concede to secure even that eyelash margin among the House's liberal majority. Not even Tom DeLay would have imagined the extravaganza of log-rolling, vote-buying, outright corporate bribes, side deals, subsidies and policy loopholes. Every green goal, even taken on its own terms, was watered down or given up for the sake of political rents.
Begin with the supposed point of the exercise -- i.e., creating an artificial scarcity of carbon in the name of climate change. The House trimmed Mr. Obama's favored 25% reduction by 2020 to 17% in order to win over Democrats leery of imposing a huge upfront tax on their constituents; then they raised the reduction to 83% in the out-years to placate the greens. Even that 17% is not binding, since it would be largely reached with so-called offsets, through which some businesses subsidize others to make emissions reductions that probably would have happened anyway.
Even if the law works as intended, over the next decade or two real U.S. greenhouse emissions might be reduced by 2% compared to business as usual. However, consumers would still face higher prices for electric power, transportation and most goods and services as this inefficient and indirect tax flowed down the energy chain.
The sound bite is that this policy would only cost households "a postage stamp a day." But that's true only as long as the program doesn't really cut emissions. The goal here is to tell voters they'll pay nothing in order to get the cap-and-tax bureaucracy in place -- even though the whole idea is to raise prices to change American behavior. At the same time -- wink, wink -- Democrats tell the greens they can tighten the emissions vise gradually over time.
Meanwhile, Congress had to bribe every business or interest that could afford a competent lobbyist. Carbon permits are valuable, yet the House says only 28% of the allowances would be auctioned off; the rest would be given away. In March, White House budget director Peter Orszag told Congress that "If you didn't auction the permit, it would represent the largest corporate welfare program that has ever been enacted in the history of the United States."
Naturally, Democrats did exactly that. To avoid windfall profits, they then chose to control prices, asking state regulators to require utilities to use the free permits to insulate ratepayers from price increases. (This also obviates the anticarbon incentives, but never mind.) Auctions would reduce political favoritism and interference, as well as provide revenue to cut taxes to offset higher energy costs. But auctions don't buy votes.
Then there was the peace treaty signed with Agriculture Chairman Colin Peterson, which banned the EPA from studying the carbon produced by corn ethanol and transferred farm emissions to the Ag Department, which mainly exists to defend farm subsidies. Not to mention the 310-page trade amendment that was introduced at 3:09 a.m. When Congress voted on the bill later that day, the House clerk didn't even have an official copy.
The revisions were demanded by coal-dependent Rust Belt Democrats to require tariffs on goods from countries that don't also reduce their emissions. Democrats were thus admitting that the critics are right that this new energy tax would send U.S. jobs overseas. But instead of voting no, their price for voting yes is to impose another tax on imports from China and India, among others. So a Smoot-Hawley green tariff is now official Democratic policy.
Mr. Obama's lobbyists first acquiesced to this tariff change to get the bill passed. Afterwards the President said he disliked "sending any protectionist signals" amid a world recession, but he refused to say whether this protectionism was enough to veto the bill. Then in a Saturday victory lap, he talked about green jobs and a new clean energy economy, but he made no reference to cap and trade -- no doubt because he knows that energy taxes are unpopular and that the bill faces an even tougher slog in the Senate.
Mr. Obama wants something tangible to take to the U.N. climate confab in Denmark in December, but the more important issue is what this exercise says about his approach to governance. The President seems to believe that the Carter and Clinton Presidencies failed by fighting too much with Democrats in Congress. So his solution is to abdicate his agenda to Congress -- first the stimulus, now cap and trade, and soon health care. We wish he had told us he was running to be Prime Minister.
Cap and trade will do for the Chinese and the Russians what all their military might failed to do...bring the United States to its knees. By the way, has anyone noticed that many of the movers and shakers in the environmental movement pushing Trap and Raid are also activists/former members in the Socialist/Communist movement (including our fearlessly incompetent Chief Executive)? If BHO were a member of the military, he likely would not be able to obtain a Secret clearance; he would not pass muster on a background investigation, due to his past associations...now he's the man controlling the nuclear trigger.
[This message has been edited by Vonov (edited 07-04-2009).]
Early this evening while sitting outside with my friend's house in San Bernardino, we saw two very low flying military jets. They went right over his house and headed into Ontario Airport. They were black and about the size of 727s. We figured they had some VIPs aboard but wondered what the big event that was bringing them here. Then we realized that Jackson's funeral is Tuesday at the Staple's center. Wonder if the plane was full of congress people and senators dirtying up the sky and wasting tax payer's money to get a photo opp? If a bunch shows up you can bet they were in the two planes.
DUE TO THE UNUSUALLY COOL AND WET CONDITIONS IN JUNE...HERE ARE SOME INTERESTING FACTS TO NOTE:
THIS JUNE IS TIED FOR THE 8TH COOLEST ON RECORD. THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE WAS 67.5...3.7 DEGREES BELOW NORMAL...WHICH ALSO OCCURRED IN 1897.
THIS WAS THE COOLEST JUNE SINCE 1958...WHEN THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE WAS 67.2 DEGREES.
BELOW AVERAGE TEMPERATURES OCCURRED ON 23 OUT OF 30 DAYS THIS JUNE...OR 75 PERCENT OF THE MONTH.
CENTRAL PARK HAS NOT HIT 90 DEGREES IN THE MONTH OF JUNE THIS YEAR. THE LAST TIME THIS OCCURRED WAS BACK IN 1996.
CENTRAL PARK HAS NOT HIT 85 DEGREES IN THE MONTH OF JUNE THIS YEAR. THE LAST TIME THIS OCCURRED WAS BACK IN 1916. THIS HAS ONLY OCCURRED 2 OTHER TIMES...1903 AND 1886.
THE LAST TIME THAT CENTRAL PARK HIT 90 OR GREATER THIS YEAR WAS IN APRIL. THE LAST TIME THAT CENTRAL PARK HIT 90 IN APRIL...BUT NOT IN JUNE WAS BACK IN 1990.
THE LAST TIME THAT CENTRAL PARK HIT 85 OR GREATER THIS YEAR WAS IN MAY. THE LAST TIME THAT CENTRAL PARK HIT 85 IN MAY...BUT NOT IN JUNE WAS BACK IN 1903. THE LAST TIME THAT CENTRAL PARK HIT 85 IN APRIL...BUT NOT IN JUNE WAS ALSO BACK IN 1903.
THE LOWEST TEMPERATURE REACHED IN CENTRAL PARK IN THE MONTH OF JUNE WAS 50 DEGREES. THE LAST TIME THIS OCCURRED WAS BACK IN 2003.
THE LOW TEMPERATURE DIPPED BELOW 60 DEGREES 11 TIMES IN THE MONTH OF JUNE. THE LAST TIME THIS OCCURRED WAS IN 2003 WHEN IT OCCURRED 17 TIMES.
IT WAS THE SECOND WETTEST JUNE ON RECORD WITH 10.06 INCHES OF RAIN. THE WETTEST JUNE ON RECORD IS 2003 WITH 10.27 INCHES.
THERE WERE 19 DAYS THIS JUNE WHERE THERE WAS AT LEAST 0.01 INCHES OF RAINFALL. THIS HAS NEVER OCCURRED IN CENTRAL PARK.
AT LEAST A TRACE OF RAINFALL WAS REPORTED ON 23 OUT OF 30 DAYS THIS JUNE.
A report published yesterday by the National Wildlife Federation blames recent US “heavy storms and major floods” on the higher concentrations of atmospheric water vapor brought on by manmade global warming. Have any of these guys been outside lately?
Announcing the results on their website yesterday, NWF climate scientist Dr. Amanda Staudt explained:
“Global warming is partly to blame for these heavy rainfall events. Warmer air simply can hold more moisture, so heavier precipitation is expected in the years to come.” According to the report itself [PDF]:
“As the climate continues to warm, the atmosphere will be able to hold more water. With more moisture in the air, the trend towards increasingly intense precipitation events will continue. In the Midwest and Northeast, big storms that historically would only be seen once every 20 years are projected to happen as often as every 4 to 6 years by the end of the 21st century.”
And those words apparently led Public News Service to conclude and inform its readers that the warmer-air-driven “severe weather events” depicted by the NWF include “this summer's nearly non-stop rain in New England.”
As a resident of New York and frequent visitor to the Berkshires in Massachusetts, I can personally confirm the constant downpours.
But I can also affirm that last winter was among New England’s coldest ever, with record low temperatures being reported throughout the region. Like here and here and here. And that this unusually wet spring/summer also saw unusually low, not high, temperatures. Early June actually brought snow to areas of Northern New England. Boston’s mean temperature for June was 63.3°F. That ties it with June 1982 as the sixth coldest June on record there since records began in 1872.
And the entire Northeast has been experiencing similar patterns. In NYC’s Central Park, June 2009 was tied with 1897 as the 8th coldest since 1869 (that’s 151 years). A little to the west, Chicago had its coolest July 8 in 118 years.
And as to the NWF claiming that CO2 induced warmer air is causing our relentless rain, perhaps they should have first read this June 22nd piece from The Guardian. The British newspaper correctly reported that in the US Northeast, “June so far has been the coldest in 27 years and is on track to become one of the wettest Junes on record, according to weather research firm Planalytics, which has tracked such data since the 1930s.”
So why would a prestigious environmental group the likes of the NWF draw such laughably untimely correlations?
Perhaps their proposed remedy might lend some insight. Says Dr. Staudt: [my emphasis]
“Now is the time to confront the realities of global warming, including the increasing frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall events across the country. We must aggressively move toward a cleaner energy future and reduce global warming pollution, thereby ensuring that we avoid the worst impacts.” In fact, the report specifically recommends that global emissions be reduced “by at least 80 percent by 2050.” Which just happens to be the same figure the UN has been pushing as vital to the international climate agreement they’ll seek in Copenhagen in December.
Time runs short on this international con-job. That’s why the faster global temperatures continue to fall, the louder you can expect these opportunists to nonetheless yell “fire.”
As cap-and-trade advocates tie their knickers in knots over so-called "global warming," Mother Nature refuses to cooperate. Earth's temperatures continue a chill that began 11 years ago. As global cooling accelerates, global-warmists kick, scream, and push their pet theory -- just like little kids who cover their ears and stomp their feet when older children tell them not to bother waiting up for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.
Consider how the globe cooled last month:
-- June in Manhattan averaged 67.5 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.7 degrees below normal -- the coldest average since 1958. The National Weather Service stated July 1: "The last time that Central Park hit 85 in May...but not in June was back in 1903."
-- In Phoenix, June's high temperatures were below 100 degrees for 15 days straight, the first such June since 1913. In California's desert, Yucca Valley's June average was 83.5, 8.5 degrees below normal. Downtown Los Angeles averaged 74.5 degrees, five below normal.
-- Boston saw temperatures 4.7 degrees below normal. "This is the second coldest average high temp since 1872," veteran meteorologist and Weather Channel alumnus Joseph D'Aleo reports at Icecap.com. "It has been so cool and so cloudy that trees in northern New England are starting to show colors that normally first appear in September." Looking abroad, D'Aleo noted: "Southern Brazil had one of the coldest Junes in decades, and New Zealand has had unusual cold and snow again this year."
-- New Zealand's National Climate Centre issued a June 2 press release headlined, "TEMPERATURE: LOWEST EVER FOR MAY FOR MANY AREAS, COLDER THAN NORMAL FOR ALL."
-- South African officials say cold weather killed two vagrants in the Eastern Cape. Both slept outdoors June 26 and froze to death.
Simmer down, global-warmists retort. These are mere anecdotes, hand-picked to make them look silly.
Well, one would be foolish to challenge space-born satellites that gauge Earth's mean temperatures ---cold, hot, and average. Here again, evidence of global cooling accumulates like snow drifts.
"There has been no significant global warming since 1995, no warming since 1998, and global cooling for the past few years," former U.S. Senate Environment Committee spokesman Marc Morano writes at ClimateDepot.com. Citing metrics gathered by University of Alabama, Huntsville's Dr. Roy Spencer, Morano adds: "The latest global averaged satellite temperature data for June 2009 reveal yet another drop in Earth's temperature ... Despite his dire warnings, the Earth has cooled 0.74 degrees F since former Vice President Al Gore released 'An Inconvenient Truth' in 2006."
Earth's temperatures fall even as the planet spins within what global-warmists consider a thickening cloud of toxic carbon dioxide.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory at Mauna Loa, Hawaii consistently and reliably has measured CO2 for the last 50 years. CO2 concentrations have risen steadily for a half-century.
For December 1958, the Laboratory reported an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 314.67 parts per million (PPM). Flash forward to December 1998, about when global cooling reappeared. CO2 already had increased to 366.87 PPM. By December 2008, CO2 had advanced to 385.54 PPM, a significant 5.088 percent growth in one decade.
This capsizes the carbon-phobic global-warmist argument. For Earth's temperatures to sink while CO2 rises contradicts global warming as thoroughly as learning that firefighters can battle blazes by spraying them with gasoline.
So, to defeat so-called "global warming," there is no need for the $864 billion Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, the Kyoto Protocols, elaborate new regulations, or United Nations guidelines. Instead, let the cold times roll.
It is one thing to have a national debate about a serious problem, with adults differing over which solution might work best. Reasonable people, for instance, can dispute whether growing federal involvement would heal or inflame our healthcare system's serious maladies.
But as so-called "global warming" proves fictional, those who would shackle the economy with taxes and regulations to fight mythology increasingly resemble deinstitutionalized derelicts on an urban street corner, wildly swatting at their own imaginary monsters.
There is no shortage of threats to our economy. America's unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing. Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won't bring jobs. Our nation's debt is unsustainable, and the federal government's reach into the private sector is unprecedented.
Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:
I am deeply concerned about President Obama's cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.
American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president's cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy. There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America's economy.
Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.
In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.
The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.
The Americans hit hardest will be those already struggling to make ends meet. As the president eloquently puts it, their electricity bills will "necessarily skyrocket." So much for not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.
Even Warren Buffett, an ardent Obama supporter, admitted that under the cap-and-tax scheme, "poor people are going to pay a lot more for electricity."
We must move in a new direction. We are ripe for economic growth and energy independence if we responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil. Just as important, we have more desire and ability to protect the environment than any foreign nation from which we purchase energy today.
In Alaska, we are progressing on the largest private-sector energy project in history. Our 3,000-mile natural gas pipeline will transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of our clean natural gas to hungry markets across America. We can safely drill for U.S. oil offshore and in a tiny, 2,000-acre corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if ever given the go-ahead by Washington bureaucrats.
Of course, Alaska is not the sole source of American energy. Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source. Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy.
We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama's plan will result in the latter.
For so many reasons, we can't afford to kill responsible domestic energy production or clobber every American consumer with higher prices.
Can America produce more of its own energy through strategic investments that protect the environment, revive our economy and secure our nation?
Yes, we can. Just not with Barack Obama's energy cap-and-tax plan.
Chinese President Hu Jintao left the G-8 summit before the international conference had tackled the issue of climate change. He was needed at home as violence raged in Xinjiang province as the Uighur protested against being made a minority in their own land by Beijing policy. There was much wailing in the media that the absence of China's leader made it more difficult to reach a global agreement on limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The problem, however, is China's position in talks with the G-8, not who is presenting it.
China wants to explore alternate energy sources, but for reasons economic not environmental. China would like to reduce urban pollution for health reasons, but not at the cost of growth. The bottom line is that Beijing does not accept the global warming thesis, but will exploit the phobia among Western liberals to gain a competitive advantage for the Chinese economy.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will meet in December at Copenhagen to draft a post-Kyoto Protocol treaty. The "roadmap" to this treaty was set at Bali in 2007. While developed lands like the United States are to have "quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives," the developing states are allowed to temper any such actions within "the context of sustainable development, supported and enabled by technology, financing and capacity-building." The double standard allows China, India, and others developing nations to provide safe havens for high emission industries, both domestic and those "outsourced" from developed countries which enact uneconomical Green regulations.
The diplomatic term is "differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities" as used in the July, 2008 G-8 Tokyo summit. Even with this double standard, the developing countries objected to the G-8 goal set last year of cutting by half world carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa (known as the Group of 5 or O-5) issued a statement declaring their split with the G-8 (United States, Japan, Russia, Canada, Italy, Germany, France, and United Kingdom). They rejected the notion that all should share in the 50 percent target, asserting that the "wealthier" countries have created most of the alleged environmental damage. "It is essential that developed countries take the lead in achieving ambitious and absolute greenhouse gas emissions reductions," said the O-5 statement. President Hu Jintao went further, saying "China's central task now is to develop the economy and make life better for the people,"
During a trip to Washington in March, Li Gao, Director of Climate Change at Beijing's National Development and Reform Commission, insisted that China's export sector be exempt from carbon emissions reductions in any post-Kyoto agreement. At the Bonn UNFCCC conference in June, Chinese diplomats stated that their country's emissions would actually be going up in future years as economic expansion continued. Chinese export industries accounted for half or more of the country's surge in carbon dioxide emissions since 2002, making China the world's number one emitter. Chinese manufacturing produces a carbon footprint two to five times the size of comparable American-based industries.
Yet, at Bonn, China demanded that the "rich" industrialized nations cut their emissions by 40 percent by 2020 from the 1990 level. Beijing denounced Japan's plan to cut its emission 15 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels, saying it "clearly falls short" of what is demanded by "the international community." The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill which passed narrowly in the U.S. House calls for only a 17 percent cut by 2020, but would be extremely expensive to implement with direr negative impacts on economic growth and American living standards. The higher UN goals would be truly devastating to the West, and would shift the world balance of wealth and power towards the rising states of China, India and the rest.
In a vain attempt to satisfy the developing nations within the principle of "differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities" the G-8 pledged at L'Aquila to cut their emissions by 80 percent to reach the 50 percent global reduction goal. This means the underdeveloped countries could make cuts well below the average. Yet, the developing nations were having none of it. Their future prosperity and security depends on continued economic progress and they will not endanger it. As a result the efforts of the G-8 made no impact on the position staked out a year ago by the O-5.
On July 8, State Councilor Dai Bingguo, who attended the outreach session of the G-8 Summit on behalf of the absent Hu Jintao, spoke to the O-5 delegations. He demanded that the international community "respect the right of developing countries to independent economic development, take into full account the specific national conditions of developing countries, and ensure that developing countries enjoy necessary room for development policies." In other words, they should not be constrained by Green regulations. In direct reference to the UNFCCC and the upcoming Copenhagen conference, Dai urged continued adherence "to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities." He then called "on countries around the world to take active actions in accordance with the Bali Roadmap, and urge developed countries to make an explicit commitment to continuing taking the lead in emissions reductions and providing developing countries with measurable, reportable and verifiable support in technology, funding and capacity building." An explicit program for an international transfer of wealth.
The real peril is that President Barack Obama will unilaterally commit the United States to crippling Green standards under cap-and-trade legislation (or EPA regulation), cemented in place by a post-Kyoto UN treaty. He will then try to bring China on board through a policy of "engagement" which Beijing will ignore. The result will be that the Chinese economy will continue to expand while the American economy will stagnate.
Beijing's position is the proper one to take. Washington should worry less about fanciful notions of global climate change and more about the reality of global economic change if America is to have a secure and prosperous future.
Could the best climate models -- the ones used to predict global warming -- all be wrong?
Maybe so, says a new study published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience. The report found that only about half of the warming that occurred during a natural climate change 55 million years ago can be explained by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What caused the remainder of the warming is a mystery.
"In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record," says oceanographer Gerald Dickens, study co-author and professor of Earth Science at Rice University in Houston. "There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models."
During the warming period, known as the “Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum” (PETM), for unknown reasons, the amount of carbon in Earth's atmosphere rose rapidly. This makes the PETM one of the best ancient climate analogues for present-day Earth.
As the levels of carbon increased, global surface temperatures also rose dramatically during the PETM. Average temperatures worldwide rose by around 13 degrees in the relatively short geological span of about 10,000 years.
The conclusion, Dickens said, is that something other than carbon dioxide caused much of this ancient warming. "Some feedback loop or other processes that aren't accounted for in these models -- the same ones used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for current best estimates of 21st century warming -- caused a substantial portion of the warming that occurred during the PETM."
In their most recent assessment report in 2007, the IPCC predicted the Earth would warm by anywhere from 2 to 11 degrees by the end of the century due to increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused by human industrial activity.
[This message has been edited by fierobear (edited 07-16-2009).]
The Climate Industry: $79 billion so far - Trillions to come
(a couple of quotes)
"There doesn’t necessarily need to be a conspiracy. It doesn’t require any centrally coordinated deceit or covert instructions to operate. Instead it’s the lack of funding for the alternatives that leaves a vacuum and creates a systemic failure. The force of monopolistic funding works like a ratchet mechanism on science. Results can move in both directions, but the funding means that only results from one side of the equation get “traction”."
"The most telling point is that after spending $30 billion on pure science research no one is able to point to a single piece of empirical evidence that man-made carbon dioxide has a significant effect on the global climate."
