THIS SHOULD KILL THE MERCURY MANIA

But it won't

According to several new studies on mercury levels in the United States, any reduction of such emissions at American power plants would have minimal impact since the factories currently produce less than 1 percent of the total mercury that ends up in our air, land and water. The studies by the Center for Science and Public Policy (CSPP) also reveal that the mercury emissions from Yellowstone National Park and other natural sources dwarf the amount coming from the 1,100 coal-fired power plants in the U.S.

In the Jan. 21 study entitled "Fish, Mercury and Cardiac Health: A Review of the Current Literature," the CSPP reported the latest scientific data show curbing power plant mercury emissions would have no significant impact on atmospheric levels of mercury. "This hypothesis appears supported by the presence of higher levels of mercury in 550-year-old Alaskan mummies than levels in a recent sample of pregnant native Alaskan women," said Robert Ferguson, executive director of the CSPP, a public policy research group based in Washington, D.C.

The CSPP findings come as the Bush administration prepares to implement a component of the Clear Skies initiative which calls for reducing mercury emissions from U.S. power plants by 70 percent by 2018. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states the agency is "committed to regulating and reducing power plant mercury emissions for the first time ever" beginning March 15, while some environmentalists and members of Congress have called for even greater reductions in mercury emissions -- up to 90 percent.

But according to the CSPP, the scale of these reductions wouldn't have any practical effect on the environment. "Current levels of methyl mercury production ... could simply continue unchanged even if all U.S. coal-powered plants were shut down, resulting in zero emissions," Ferguson told the Cybercast News Service. Aside from airborne mercury emissions, a companion study released by CSPP also noted: "Strong scientific evidence does suggest that most, if not all, of the trace amounts of methyl mercury contained in ocean fish are not connected to the inorganic form of mercury emitted by power plants."

The CSPP reports also observe that, "mercury is ubiquitous in our environment, the oceans alone containing tens of million of tons of mercury." One major source of natural mercury emissions noted in the studies is Yellowstone National Park; the CSPP cited an Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Lab report showing that Yellowstone "could emit or exceed as much mercury as all of Wyoming's eight coal-fired power plants combined."

The Idaho study stressed that emissions from Yellowstone National Park, with its network of geothermal features, do not pose a health threat to visitors or park employees but added, "since Yellowstone is the headwaters of important tributaries to the Missouri (Yellowstone River) and Columbia (Snake River), no one knows how far the natural contamination carries through the Earth's air and water systems."

In addition, the CSPP reports state that forests and peat lands in the U.S. also produce more mercury than U.S. power plants.

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GREENIES AS ENEMIES OF SCIENCE

Questioning these Torquemada wannabes is seen as heresy, not reasonable enquiry

When it comes to climate change, "sceptic" is a dirty word. Scientists who dissent from the strict orthodoxy on man-made global warming have been shouted down, labelled dupes of the US oil industry, even branded "climate change deniers" - a label with obvious historical connotations. Instead of taking up the sceptics' case, the accepted response of our illiberal age is to yell: "You can't say that!"

But is not scepticism crucial to scientific inquiry? Timothy Ball, a leading climatologist, says that those trying to test the theory of anthropogenic climate change - "a normal course of action in any real scientific endeavour" - are now being "chastised for not being in agreement with some sort of scientific consensus, as if a worldwide poll of climate experts had been taken, and as if such a consensus would represent scientific fact. Nothing could be farther from the truth; science advances by questioning, probing and re-examining existing beliefs."

We need to separate the science from the politics. Let the experts thrash out the evidence. But let them do so free from the pressures of a political climate in which human intervention is always seen as the problem rather than the solution, precaution is always privileged over risk, and the worst possible outcome is always assumed to be the best bet.

Perhaps those commanding us to "face up to what we have done" to the world might first face up to the dangers of reducing complex scientific issues to a simplistic political message, and presenting moralistic sermons as scientific laws. Whatever the true impact on the environment of burning fossil fuels, there seems a real risk of damaging the atmosphere of scientific inquiry by burning sceptics at the stake.

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ANOTHER DEMOLITION OF THE ARCTIC REPORT

Excerpts:

A report in November from a group of students of the Arctic, "Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) 2004," projects that warming of the Arctic will lead to disastrous results for indigenous people and animals.

Unfortunately, the report and its press release are internally inconsistent and based on false assumptions and previously identified inaccurate research.........

While data of Canada and the United States may be of good quality and internally consistent, there is question about the data quality of the former Soviet Union. The closing of weather stations there and the degradation of data consistency -- and possibly quality -- raises concerns about the surface station database used to determine recent temperature changes.

Temperature data compiled for the Mys Smidta station on Russia's east Arctic coast illustrates the nature of data reported and used for some Arctic locations in the last decade. In addition, although the ACIA report concludes that there is general warming, the report illustrates for the central and eastern Canadian Arctic, Greenland and the adjacent seas (Sub-Region IV) that temperatures have cooled by 2 degrees Celsius over the last 50 years. This suggests that the temperature variability does not reflect a global or polar trend, but rather can be related to data issues and redistribution of heat.

Adverse impact projections for these areas that data indicate cooling are based solely on computer models that predict warming of 4-7 degrees Celsius.

All of the ACIA projections are based on forward computer models, and therefore the accuracy and reliability of these models are crucial to conclusions drawn from their projections. Global Circulation Models have not yet been successful in back modeling of recorded climate history through the Little Ice Age and into the Medieval Climate Optimum (to about A.D. 900). This inability to model pre-industrial revolution climate change probably is a result of not recognizing that solar and orbital variability, not human emissions, drive climate change (for instance, see Bond et al, 2001; and Zahn, 2002; also Fischer et al, 1999).

Models empirically fit to parameters in which greenhouse gases are the primary drivers of climate change and will not be successful in modeling past climates. In an effort to counter this argument, Mann et al (1999) claimed that there was no global medieval warm period prior to the Little Ice Age -- a claim now discredited by both restudy of their database and by new studies (Esper et al 2002; Soon et al, 2003; McIntyre and McKitrick, 2004).

The ACIA report presents a projection of impacts that would result if temperature increases occur as projected by the modeled warming trend they adopted from the IPCC. The understanding of potential impacts provides some utility for planning possible response to global warming. However, the computer models for predicting temperature increase, the amount of temperature increase and the cause for temperature increase are beyond the scope of the impact assessment and data and are still very much involved in scientific examination, testing and debate.

Arctic and Northern Hemisphere civilization has arisen in the last 10,000 years in response to natural global warming. Trying to project where further warming will change conditions provides utility but would be more useful if it more thoroughly examined impacts presented by a range of temperature change conditions -- including cooling, moderate warming and even extreme warming. For example, the study did not address the impacts of continued cooling in the Canadian Arctic sub-region if the cooling trends exhibited over the last 50 years continue.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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