PARTICLE MISREPRESENTATION

When the Environmental Protection Agency cuts allowable particle pollution levels more than 45 percent, you might expect commendations from environmentalists and the press. You'd be disappointed. EPA recently proposed reducing allowable daily levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from 65 micrograms per cubic meter (ug/m3) down to 35 ug/m3. The change would nearly double the number of pollution monitoring locations that violate federal PM2.5 standards. Environmentalists were unimpressed. Clean Air Watch complained "President Bush Gives Early Christmas Present to Smokestack Industries." According to the American Lung Association "EPA Proposes `Status Quo' Revisions to PM [Standards]."....

A more realistic assessment is that EPA substantially tightened its PM2.5 standard, but by a bit less than its science advisory panel recommended, and not by nearly as much as environmentalists wanted. That this could be called "status quo" is a mark of how detached from reality the bizarre world of air pollution politics has become....

EPA's Clean Air Science Advisory Committee (CASAC), a group of outside scientists and health experts, recommended somewhat tougher standards than EPA proposed-a 30 ug/m3 daily limit, and a 13-14 ug/m3 annual limit. Activists wanted EPA to go further still. The Lung Association pressed for a daily standard of 25 ug/m3 and an annual of 12 ug/m3. This would have put about 75 percent of America's metropolitan areas in violation of the standards. Although EPA didn't go as far as CASAC recommended, calling EPA's proposal "status quo" is a gross misrepresentation. Environmentalists are also creating the false impression that current standards are weak and that little is being done to reduce particulate matter. For example, John Balbus of Environmental Defense claimed "The old standard was so weak that there was room to lower the number without actually making big improvements on the ground."

In reality, 35 percent of the nation's PM2.5 monitors exceeded the annual PM2.5 standard in 1999 -- the year that EPA began national PM2.5 monitoring, and two years after EPA adopted the standard. Only the 8-hour ozone standard had a higher violation rate. And regardless of where the standard is set, "big improvements" have indeed occurred on the ground. Average PM2.5 levels dropped 15 percent from 1999 to 2004.

Frank O'Donnell of Clean Air Watch pilloried the new standards for "not requiring any additional cleanup from the power industry beyond what's already planned under earlier, industry-friendly rules." O'Donnell fails to mention that those ostensibly "industry-friendly" power-plant rules reduced sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions nearly 33 percent between 1990 and 2003, and require future SO2 emissions to be reduced another 77 percent below 2003 levels. SO2 is by far the largest source of industrial PM2.5 in the eastern U.S., and existing requirements will get rid of most of it.....

It is possible that EPA's tougher PM2.5 standard won't require any new emission-reduction requirements in some metropolitan areas. If so, it won't be because the new standard is lax, but because EPA has already clamped down so severely on the major sources of PM2.5 that no additional regulations would be necessary. Leave it to environmentalists to turn the stringency of past regulations into an apparent liability....

The debate over where EPA should set PM2.5 standards also confuses process -- the standards -- with the actual measures that reduce PM2.5. The fact that federal air pollution regulations are generally national or at least multi-state in scope means that PM2.5 will continue to go down all over the U.S., including in places that already comply with EPA's proposed standards.

Could public debate on air pollution be any more absurd? EPA proposes a new standard that would reduce allowable peak PM2.5 levels by 45 percent and that would double the national PM2.5 non-attainment rate. Yet environmentalists call this "status quo" with a straight face, health scientists claim EPA ignored their recommendations, and journalists endorse these false assessments.

Environmentalists then criticize the standard on the grounds that it might not require adoption of any new regulations, ignoring that this could only be true if EPA had already adopted regulations sufficiently demanding to attain the new standard. Perhaps next time environmentalists would be appeased if EPA instead delayed any actual pollution reductions until after a new standard is adopted.

Polls continue to show that most Americans mistakenly believe air pollution has been worsening and that too little is being done to improve air quality. With our current band of "reliable sources" for air pollution information, is it any wonder?


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MORE ABOUT GREENLAND'S GLACIERS

An email from John McLean (mcleanj@connexus.net.au)

Rignot and Kanagaratnam (2006) claim that atmospheric warming is the cause of the acceleration of Greenland's glaciers are highly doubtful.

For starters the acceleration appears to be occurring at a few glaciers in the west - Jakobshavn Isbrae, Nordenskiold and some "unsurveyed" glacier(s) for which the melting was estimated but lacks verification - and in the south east. By my calculation of the given figures, the "SMB 2005" values for glaciers in northern Greenland should total -0.4, not -2.3 and this new figures indicates a deceleration since year 2000.

(Rignot was quoted widely as saying that these northern glaciers are "waiting" to warm but what a metaphysical absurdity from a scientist!)

Jakobshavn Isbrae is more than 5km wide and from the picture in "Science" the Kanggerdlusuaq glacier appears to likewise be very wide. This suggests that the glaciers are grounded on subsea rocks and the weight of ice has acted as a brake.

A branch of the north-Atlantic drift current takes warm water down the east coast of Greenland and up the west coast to Disko Bay. Over the last 5 years this has produced a regular patch of warmer water off south-eastern Greenland and into the Davis Strait. (When I travelled up the west coast by coastal ferry in September 2003 the ship's captain remarked that winter sea-ice was no longer reaching as far south as it had 5 years before, which confirms both the current and the warming).

I surmise that these warmer waters have melted the bottom of various glaciers, which has reduced the friction on the rocks beneath and allowed the glaciers to accelerate. It is as simple as that!

Air temperature appears to have little or no effect. Over the last 4 years the annual average temperatures at Angmagssilak, in eastern Greenland, have been roughly the same as those for the much longer period from 1928 to 1963. The temperature in 2003 was abnormally high but those of 2002, 4 and 5 were exceeded several times in that earlier 35 year time-frame. From my recollection of graphs of the long-term variation in ocean levels no significant increase in sea level occurred during this extended period of local warming.

One wonders why some people are so enthusiastic about blaming atmospheric temperatures for every natural event. Could it be a repeat of the hype that followed 2002 being the warmest year since 1998 or it just that after more than 20 years the AGW lobby are still unable to prove their case?

PS. When I visited Jakobshavn at the end of summer 2003, at least 15km of ice extended from the last patch of open water back to the edge of the ice cap. The ice at least 10km upstream showed the kind of structure that "Science" shows in an image accompanying Dowdeswell's article and attributes to icebergs which formed and then rejoined the main glacier. A much more likely cause of fracturing is the traverse of the hills (probably of granite) seen in the background of the image. Never let the facts get in the way of a good caption!







CONSENSUS STATEMENT ON HURRICANES AND GLOBAL WARMING

From Science Policy

Under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization's Commission on Atmospheric Sciences, its Tropical Meteorology Research Program Panel has just issued a statement on hurricanes and global warming (here in PDF).

The statement is significant not only because it was drafted by nine prominent experts, but because it includes in its authorship Kerry Emanuel, Greg Holland (second author of Webster et al. 2005), Ton Knutson, and Chris Landsea. Frequent readers will recognize these names as people not always in agreement. That they came together to produce a consensus statement is good for the community, and also gives a good sense on where they agree and disagree.

While the statement has enough background and language to allow anyone to selectively cherry pick from it in support of any perspective, here is the take-home message from the statement

"The research issues discussed here are in a fluid state and are the subject of much current investigation. Given time the problem of causes and attribution of the events of 2004-2005 will be discussed and argued in the refereed scientific literature. Prior to this happening it is not possible to make any authoritative comment."

Therefore, for those of us not involved in primary research on hurricanes and climate change, any conclusions, or predictions about how future research will turn out, about the role of global warming in hurricanes will necessarily be based on non-scientific factors. If you are like the IPCC, then you will assume that observed climate phenomena can be explained by natural variability unless and until the thresholds of "detection and attribution" can be achieved. This is a high threshold for identification of greenhouse gas effects on climate, and it is of course not the only approach that could be taken. But it is the approach of the IPCC.

If you are politically or ideologically motivated to use the threat of stronger hurricanes in pursuit of some goal, then you will bet that a link will indeed be established. And similarly, if you are politically or ideologically motivated to discount the threat of stronger hurricanes in pursuit of some goal, then you will bet that no link is immediately forthcoming.

The reality is that the present state of science does not allow us to come to a conclusion that global warming has affected hurricanes (e.g., see this PDF). It is suggestive, and different experts disagree about what future research will tell us. I'd bet that this condition of uncertainty about future research will be with us for a long time. Thank goodness its resolution is not of particularly large importance for understanding and implementing those actions known with certainty to be most effective with respect to hurricane impacts (e.g., here in PDF).






NAO MAY ACCOUNT FOR CYCLICAL PATTERN OF HURRICANE INTENSITY

An email from S. Fred Singer (singer@sepp.org)

It seems to be generally accepted now that the frequency of tropical cyclones has not been increasing. But there is a valid scientific debate about the intensity of hurricanes -- not their frequency - and both sides may be right. Here is my personal view:

1. First, the physics of the problem: There is no question that hurricanes derive their energy from the latent heat of water vapor evaporated from the sea surface. Therefore, a warmer sea-surface temperature should produce a stronger hurricane.

2. But the Gulf of Mexico is generally warmer than the Atlantic - a well-known geographic anomaly. So it is only necessary for the North Atlantic Oscillation to shift the hurricane track into the Gulf. This may account for the observed cyclical pattern of intensity, which seems to match that of the NAO.

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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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