GLOBAL WARMING IS A SIGN OF A COMING ICE-AGE!

Two astronomers have produced evidence showing that -- so the evidence that there is in fact NO global warming going on at the moment is a great relief. Note however that we ARE overdue for another ice age. An excerpt from the latest paper:

Continuous sedimentary records of climate proxies from the ocean floor and ice sheets, together with accurately dated past sea level stands, leave little doubt that the primary cause of Pleistocene glaciations was the variation of the Earth's orbit around the sun. The orbital parameters were computed with high precision more than a century ago from the laws of celestial mechanics (Lagrange, 1871; Milankovitch, 1920 and Milankovitch, 1941). Radiometrically dated paleoclimatic proxies have been shown to have the same frequencies as astronomic variables (Hays et al., 1976), but the mechanism linking the two remains largely unexplained. It is commonly claimed that the climate response to insolation forcing is delayed by several millennia (Imbrie et al., 1984; Ruddiman, 2004). This may be true for the delay in the peak volume of polar ice behind the insolation forcing but is highly unlikely for the ice growth mechanism itself. Otherwise the rapid reaction of global climate to the relatively minor radiative influences of volcanic eruptions (Robock and Mao, 1995) and cosmic rays (van Geel et al., 1999; Hu et al., 2003) would be difficult to explain.

The greatest puzzle is the start of a glaciation at a time when the world's climate, similar and sometimes even warmer than today, was transformed into a glacial landscape by changing insolation. While greenhouse gases or snow and ice albedo provide efficient feedbacks (Shackleton, 2000; Ruddiman, 2003; Ruddiman and Raymo, 2003) the primary cause of the change must be external and the redistribution of incoming solar radiation is the only cause which meets the test of available data. The internal dynamics of disintegrating polar ice masses played an important role during deglaciations and may explain the 100 kyr cycle (Ridgwell et al., 1999; Ruddiman and Raymo, 2003). However, it probably had little importance at the start of a glacial.

The total annual insolation received at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) remains approximately constant through time. Only its geographic and seasonal distribution changes. The processes linking celestial mechanics to the workings of the climate system therefore require some part of the globe or some season to be exceptionally sensitive to solar radiation reaching the planet's atmosphere and surface (Berger et al., 1981).

Based on the above considerations we first determined in radiometrically dated paleoclimatic proxies the times of accelerated build-up of global ice. We then identified the orbital configuration and the geographic and seasonal distribution of insolation at those times. Lastly, we postulate the likely impact of the redistributed insolation on the climate system.....

Conclusion: We have suggested a hypothetical explanation for the origin of Pleistocene glaciations based on the radiometrically dated evidence of the climates of the past 400,000 yr. The hypothesis has not yet been fully tested in climate models. The key feature of the proposed orbital impact is the substantial increase of the equator-to-pole insolation and temperature gradients. The relatively rapid switches from the interglacial temperate "plateaus" into episodes of rapid coolings, difficult to explain by the slow sinusoidal changes of orbital elements, could be expected to follow hypothetical insolation thresholds terminating the arctic summer melt season and changing the nature of the ENSO cycle.

There is an important difference between the proposed natural global warming at the transition to a glacial and that modeled for the man-made increases of greenhouse gases. In the former case, the strongest warming would take place in the low latitudes in contrast to cooling in the high latitudes. It would be marked by an increase of the temperature gradient. The modeled greenhouse impact shows the peak warming in the high latitudes and a reduced equator-to-pole temperature gradient. Consequently, the increase in global mean temperature alone with unspecified latitudinal characteristics may not be the best indicator of man's impact on climate.

Because parameters of the earth's orbit are considerably less extreme today than at the end of the last three interglacials, we cannot directly predict the future natural climate development. However, we can test climate models by evaluating their response to known past variations of short-wave radiation. Meanwhile, we must take into account that past qualitative analogs of the current orbital setting, although of considerably larger amplitude than today, have likely increased the tropical and global mean temperature and were followed by the growth, not melt, of polar ice.







Convention on Biological Diversity: Looking for the Pot-o-Green at the End of the Proverbial Rainbow

Many proposals to regulate bio-resources will impede progress and minimize benefits

Anti-free enterprise activists are at it again. This time they're using the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which gave signatory nations and indigenous people sovereignty over their biological resources. During the coming months, World Trade Organization (WTO) and CBD delegates will meet again in Geneva and elsewhere, to devise an international legal framework to control access to the resources - and ensure "fair and equitable sharing" of any financial or other benefits that might come from utilizing genetic materials and "traditional knowledge" to create new drugs.

Unfortunately, many aspects of the CBD are counterproductive. One of the most damaging proposals would curtail existing patent rights for pharmaceutical products derived from plants, under the guise of "benefit sharing." This proposal is based on several fallacies and would have serious negative consequences for biotechnology and the Convention's stated goals.

Fallacy 1: Existence equals value.

The Stone Age didn't end because our ancestors ran out of stones - and the Iron Age didn't begin because iron ore deposits suddenly appeared on our planet. The resources were always here. But until human creativity - our "ultimate resource" - figured out how to extract, refine and forge ore into things people needed, those deposits had no value.

Likewise with the notion of "green gold," the activists' (and Convention's) assumption that vast untapped wealth lies within these biological resources - and must be protected from "bio-pirates" who want to "patent them for private profit." Unlike gold, these bio-resources do not have intrinsic value. Genetic resources are valuable only if researchers are allowed to discover their pharmacological secrets and create affordable new drugs that address health problems better than alternatives. Until then, all this potential bio-wealth is just a pot of green gold at the end of the rhetorical rainbow.

Invention is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration, and lots of cash. Unlocking the pharma vault in some Amazon plant might be relatively easy if locals already use it to relieve pain (aspirin), suppress appetites (hoodia) or cure malaria (artemisinin), for instance. Most often, though, it takes years of expensive trial-and-error research, followed by years in the drug-approval-process briar patch.

On average, companies invest 10 years and $800 million, to screen over 5,000 compounds, get 5 into human clinical trials, and launch a single new drug. Only 3 of every 10 successful new drugs generate revenues greater than their R&D costs; those three must finance all the unsuccessful efforts. Research with natural bio-resources faces even longer odds: only one sample in 250,000 will eventually yield a commercial drug, though many may provide leads to other drugs.

Moreover, the mere discovery of a resource does not garner a patent or create value. A patent will be granted - to safeguard the investment, intellectual property rights, process and product - only if a creative new process ensures probable commercial success and public benefit.

Fallacy 2: A big UN program is better than small bilateral agreements.

Politics, ideology and infighting often impede progress. Nearly 7 years after the WHO's Roll Back Malaria campaign was launched, malaria rates are up 10% and 10 million more people have died - while a straightforward South African program cut rates and deaths by 93% in three years.

In the decade before the CBD was signed, Costa Rica entered into agreements with drug companies to provide biological samples, in exchange for up-front fees, royalties, laboratories, equipment and training for local scientists. It's now advising other developing nations. Today, the CBD is still moribund, as parties continue to squabble over definitions of fundamental terms like "bio-piracy" and "bio-prospecting." Worse, NGOs like Friends of the Earth insist that there is no such thing as legitimate bio-prospecting. To them, all bio-prospecting and patenting of genetic resource inventions is piracy, virtually any corporate engagement with indigenous people should be prohibited, and limiting biotech patentability is just one step toward eliminating all patents for biotech products.

Fallacy 3: Battling corporate biotechnology will spur development.

Emotional polemics don't generate progress. Companies and investors don't have to go where they aren't wanted - or to countries that attack intellectual property rights, pirate patented products, or threaten to impose fines and overturn drug patents years after the fact. At the 2001 WTO Ministerial meeting in Doha, activists attacked corporate patents for HIV/AIDS medicines - and succeeded only in reducing investment in developing new generations of AIDS drugs. Limiting patentability for biotech will simply hurt those with the most to gain from transferring technology and research opportunities to developing countries, through legitimate bio-prospecting. The legal wrangling and threats have also played a major role in causing industry to lose interest in exploring rainforests for prospective drugs - and switch to synthetic drug development in labs. At this point, CBD countries would be better off if they worked with industry to reignite interest in biological resources.

Fallacy 4: A complex international regime will bring benefits to developing countries.

In fact, 50% of zero is nada. Countries that create cumbersome, unfriendly, counterproductive legal regimes generate little investment, and fewer benefits. Those that participate in a system that's already produced thousands of life-enhancing drugs will build a future founded in science, property rights and wealth-generation, ensuring better lives for their people. When obstacles are strewn in the path of investment, innovation, discovery and patent protection, investors and researchers seek less risky opportunities, such as "combinatorial chemistry" with synthetic molecules. In the Philippines, Colombia and virtually every other country that has created such obstacles, bio-prospecting has evaporated.

The result is that the next generation of biological drugs is never born - and countries and indigenous people who might actually have the next taxol, cortisone, artemisinin or hoodia never realize their dream of turning it into a blockbuster.

Governments, companies, NGOs, indigenous people and patients alike agree that benefits from commercial development of new products from genetic resources should flow back to their providers. But developing countries don't need another symbolic victory. They need real, tangible benefits. That means recognizing these basic principles, abandoning polemics and the search for pots of green gold, and agreeing on workable, mutually acceptable definitions for basic terminology. Most of all, it means crafting a bilateral or global system that eliminates legal minefields . encourages and rewards investors, companies and researchers for their risk-taking and dogged persistence . and ensures the creation - and sharing - of real benefits that can come only from real discoveries.

It's a lesson that should probably be applied to a lot of public policy debates these days.

Source





AIR POLLUTION REALITIES

No area outside California comes anywhere close to having "some of the worst air pollution in the nation." And yet a search through newspapers both large and small reveals that journalists and environmental activists have collectively put more than half the country into this category.....

This is all a bit ridiculous. Even without looking at any air pollution monitoring data, it is obvious that most of these claims must be wrong. But to see just how wrong, let us compare the claims with actual air pollution monitoring data....

Note that no area outside California comes anywhere close to having "some of the worst" ozone air pollution in the country. An additional irony is that even if we remove California from the comparison, most of the areas cited in the news articles above still would not make it into the "some of the worst" fraternity. For example, the worst location in Texas has about 50 to 100 percent more ozone exceedance days per year than the worst locations in Ohio, New York, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C. The Washington Post's claim of high levels of air pollution in Phoenix, Arizona, and the Bradenton Herald's claim of high pollution levels in Florida are particularly absurd. But not quite as absurd as New Jersey PIRG's claim that Passaic County has "some of the worst air pollution in the country." Passaic County does not even have some of the worst air pollution in New Jersey. In an average year, the worst location in New Jersey has nearly three times as many eight-hour ozone exceedance days as Passaic.

Most of the news stories cited above are really about ozone, even though they usually refer generically to "air pollution." There are a few reasons for this. First, many of the stories reported on the release of reports from environmental activists, such as the American Lung Association's State of the Air and the Public Interest Research Group's Danger in the Air. These reports focused only on ozone until their 2004 editions, when PM2.5 was added. Second, some of the stories were focused more generally on the summer "ozone season," which runs from May through September and often generates news stories in areas that fail to comply with federal standards. And third, national PM2.5 monitoring data did not become widely available until around the middle of 2002....

PM2.5 is monitored at about 1,000 unique locations around the country. Some cities, such as Bakersfield or Birmingham, have more than one PM2.5 monitoring location within the city limits. In such cases, only the worst location is included in the figure. The only exception is Los Angeles, which covers a very large land area. The Lynwood and Los Angeles monitoring sites are both within the Los Angeles city limits but are about ten miles apart. Liberty, Pennsylvania, is the worst location outside California, but it is still well below California's worst areas. Compared with Rubidoux, the worst location in the country, Liberty is more than halfway toward attainment of the federal standard. Thus, just as for ozone, no area outside California can be said to have "some of the worst" particulate air pollution in the nation....

PM2.5 levels are in a state of transition. From 1999-2002, the worst locations in California were well above the highest non-California levels. However, while PM2.5 levels have been dropping around the United States, California has made very rapid progress. The worst levels in California were comparable to Liberty, Pennsylvania, and Birmingham, Alabama, during 2003 and 2004. Furthermore, owing to a long stretch of stagnant air during the winter of 2003-2004, Logan, Utah, chalked up some of the highest short-term PM2.5 levels of recent times. So for PM2.5 there are now three cities outside California that can truthfully be said to have "some of the worst" particulate air pollution in the country. Still, this provides no comfort for the news stories cited above, since almost all of them were written before the middle of 2004, when data on particulate levels during 2003 would have first become available. And in any case, hardly any of those stories were about the handful of non-California cities that could realistically vie for the "worst particulate pollution" title.

While much air pollution exaggeration involves a "some of the worst" claim, the director of the American Lung Association's Santa Clara, California, chapter took a different approach, asserting simply that "we've got the same smog problems in the [San Francisco] Bay Area that they have in Los Angeles." Figure 3 shows that it would be hard to make a more erroneous statement about the relative air quality of southern California and the Bay Area. As of the end of 2004, the entire Bay Area complied with all federal air pollution standards. Nevertheless, some local reporters have not caught on to the Bay Area's low air pollution levels. Reporting on ALA's 2005 installment of State of the Air, the Oakland Tribune ran the headline "Air Pollution Still Abysmal in Bay Area."

Uncovering journalists' and activists' air pollution bloopers makes for good sport, but the constant and ubiquitous inflation of air pollution levels has sinister implications. Activists depend on public fear and outrage over air pollution to keep the donations flowing and maintain their political power. Constantly claiming that virtually everyone breathes "some of the worst air pollution in the country" helps to create and maintain the desired but unwarranted climate of fear and anxiety.

Journalists should be acting as a check on these exaggerations, but they are not. Part of the problem may be that journalists, like much of the public, consider environmentalists to be the presumptive guardians of the public good. Reporters get much of their information on air pollution levels from activists' reports such as State of the Air and Danger in the Air. News stories on these reports suggest that most journalists take the information in them at face value and pass it along without even cursory validation. The exaggerations have been repeated so often by ostensibly credible sources that they are now "common knowledge." Many of the news stories quoted above do not even source their "some of the worst" assertions. They have quietly become an unquestioned part of the zeitgeist.

Polls continue to show that most Americans "know" many things about air pollution that are in fact not true. Reporters and activists bear much of the responsibility. Environmentalists have a strong incentive and desire to keep people scared about the environment, even when fear is unwarranted, and they are unlikely to reform their behavior. But we should expect more from journalists. The public's interest is in getting an accurate portrayal of air pollution levels, trends, and health risks. But this can only happen if journalists treat environmentalists' claims with the same skepticism appropriate for other interested parties in environmental debates.

More -- much more -- here





The Pickett's Charge of climate alarmism : "The release on June 8 of a statement signed by 11 separate national science Academies on global warming represents the Pickett's charge of climate alarmism. Not only has it dashed against the rock of the defensive position of the United States, but the attempt has also needlessly thrown away the academies' reputations for unbiased information, just as Pickett's charge threw away General Lee's reputation for invincibility. Climate alarmists in the scientific community now face a long retreat, while the victory of the President Bush's position on the issue seems assured. Even the hopes for European intervention are dashed."

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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.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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