'Green' Politicians Add to Gas Price Woes

Amid the race between politicians to capitalize on consumer anger at high gas prices, at least one member of Congress, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., expressed a much-needed perspective on the problem -- these same politicians own a share of the blame. During an interview with Larry Kudlow earlier this week about rising gas prices, Rep. Blackburn observed, "If we're going to work toward [energy independence], we're going to have to do some things differently. Now, I can tell you one of the things that I wish had been done differently is over the past 30 years, we have had environmental extremists driving energy policy in this country, saying no to everything."

Certainly increased demand for oil from the growing Chinese and Indian economies and instability in the Middle East are major pressures on oil prices, but both Republicans and Democrats have added to these pressures by allowing the environmental movement to tie our energy policy in knots. Bowing to environmentalist demands since the 1970s, Congress has blocked oil and gas drilling from areas like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (10.4 billion barrels of oil, according to the U.S. Geological Service) and the Outer Continental Shelf (86 billion barrels of oil, according to the Minerals Management Service).

As Cuba works out deals with Canadian, Spanish and Chinese companies to explore for oil as close as 50 miles to Key West, Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., - apparently trying to appease the League of Conservation Voters which has given him a 10 percent rating - dubbed a proposal by Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., to allow drilling 20 miles off the Florida coast as "crazy." Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla., also oppose OCS drilling thanks to oil spill hysteria whipped up by the Sierra Club. Environmentalists helped pressure Congress in 1990 to require "reformulated" gasoline (RFG) supposedly to reduce the formation of ground-level ozone or smog. The RFG process requires use of additives such as ethanol or MTBE.

The RFG requirement raised the price of gasoline not only because of the cost of the additives but because different areas of the country require different blends of fuel to address different air quality circumstances. The 17 so-called "boutique" fuels used around the country make the national gasoline supply less fungible, which causes supply bottlenecks.

And for all this pain, there appears to be little gain from RFG. A 1999 report from the National Research Council reported that, "the net impact of RFG on ambient ozone concentrations...is a few percent. For this reason, it is difficult to quantify the specific contribution of the RFG program to the apparent downward trend in ozone." The final kick-in-the-teeth to consumers from the RFG program came last year when environmental groups like the Natural Resource Defense Council pressured Congress to not provide legal liability protection for MTBE makers, who will stop using the additive in gasoline on May 1. (MTBE from leaking underground storage tanks had been detected in groundwater around the country, raising the specter of lawsuits against MTBE manufacturers). Gas prices will soon jump again in many parts of the country as refiners try to avoid future MTBE-related legal liability by switching to the more expensive ethanol additive.

The policy missteps didn't all occur in Congress. In the 1990s, the environmentalist-friendly Clinton Administration made Environmental Protection Agency air quality standards much more stringent. Because states that fail to meet these standards stand to lose federal highway money, state governments now require gasoline refineries to install expensive air emissions equipment. The equipment is so expensive that it makes the expansion of existing refineries economically unattractive to investors - and you can forget about the construction and permitting of new refineries.

The problem here is that domestic refineries are operating at or near capacity -- limiting supply and putting more pressure on prices. A weather calamity like Hurricane Katrina can strike the weak link -- Gulf Coast refineries - thereby limiting supply further and forcing the importation of more expensive gasoline to meet demand.

Not only are the alleged health and environmental benefits of these EPA regulations in doubt, but the EPA is getting ready to make the air quality standards even more stringent - virtually guaranteeing that expanding refinery capacity will proceed very slowly, if at all.

President Bush encouraged fuel conservation this week. That sounds reasonable and it may even be a temporary strategy for reducing gasoline demand and, therefore, prices. But conservation is not a viable long-term strategy for growing the economy. We're going to need more energy in the future, not less.

Of all the proposals and ideas offered by politicians this week, only Rep. Blackburn's questions Congress' role in the problem. No other politician has even come close to hinting that Congress has allowed our national energy policy to be hijacked by environmentalists. I'm all for environmental protection measures that do more good than harm. I'm also all for private research into alternative energy technologies that make economic sense and don't require subsidies. None of this, however, requires that politicians simply knuckle under to junk science-fueled environmental extremists.

Source






"FINLAND MUST BUILD SIXTH NUCLEAR POWER STATION TO REACH KYOTO GOALS"

Paavo Lipponen (soc dem), the Speaker of the Finnish Parliament, was quoted as saying in the Friday issue of Uutisp„iv„ Demari, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) organ, that Finland must build a sixth nuclear power station. "Attaining the goals of the Kyoto protocol on climate change would not have been possible without the fifth nuclear power station. The goals that are to be set after 2012 cannot by reached without a sixth one," Mr Lipponen told the paper. "The next government will face this question. We cannot afford to waste any time."

Mr Lipponen also noted with approval the recent announcement by the Green League that it could see itself working with pro-nuclear government partners. "It seems that energy policy is drawing away from the sort of fundamentalism in which someone, like the Greens or Greenpeace, knows for certain what energy form is absolutely acceptable or unacceptable." "In government you cannot have your cake and eat it. It is not acceptable that one first joins the government but then criticises it from the outside."

NewsRoom Finland, 28 April 2006





IARC DIRECTOR: "GLOBAL WARMING CAUSES NOT PROVEN"

When would they yell "fire!" about global warming, Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg asked Bush administration officials at a hearing Wednesday, after the officials repeatedly declined to recommend action. The officials weren't moved by the New Jersey senator's plea, but his metaphor drew a response a few minutes later from Syun-Ichi Akasofu, director of the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks. "We're not sure if the house is really on fire, and to put the water there, making water damage, may be more damaging," Akasofu said.

The scientist sitting next to Akasofu, though, said it is time to drag out the fire hoses. "We know enough now to take appropriate action," said Robert Correll, senior policy fellow with the American Meteorological Society. The two scientists offered their divergent views to a few members of the Senate Commerce Committee's subcommittee on global climate change, as well as a room packed with observers.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska and the full committee chairman, introduced Akasofu and sat through almost the entire three-hour hearing. Stevens said Akasofu had "dedicated a substantial portion of his life to this one area of science."

An activist group distributing information at the hearing questioned Akasofu's experience, though. "Global warming is not even Dr. Akasofu's primary area of study," said Ben Dunham, staff attorney for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, in a statement distributed to reporters. "He is an expert in the study of the aurora borealis, or northern lights."

Akasofu said after the hearing that while climate change isn't his primary field of research, he began learning about the issue when he was named director of UAF's Geophysical Institute in 1986. He delved more deeply into the subject in the 1990s while working to create IARC. Today, research at the center focuses on climate change. Akasofu became IARC director when it opened in 1998. "Dr. Akasofu conceived the idea of the Arctic research center," Stevens said. "This is an international center. Substantial Japanese funds have gone into that, as well as others."

Akasofu, in his testimony, said the Arctic climate has warmed in recent decades but scientists don't know how much warming is due to human production of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. Such gases, along with water vapor, absorb heat radiated from Earth and thus contribute to temperature increases, scientists say. "It is urgent to identify both natural and man-made components of the present warming," Akasofu said. The problem, Akasofu said, is that the most advanced computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, when fed real historical data, cannot reproduce what actually happened.

"This is what we call hind-casting. We're using the last 50 years of data ... so we think it's the best scientific test of the greenhouse hypothesis," Akasofu said. Using the scientific method, researchers observe global warming, hypothesize the causes and then seek to verify those hypotheses using supercomputers, Akasofu said. "If the computer simulation and observation agree, then our understanding becomes scientific fact," he said. "But if the computer cannot reproduce what we observed, then hypothesis has to be disproved." In fact, he said, the models fail to reproduce the strong warming that actually occurred in the continental Arctic in recent decades. Yet many scientists cling to their hypotheses, he said. "That gets into the area of what we call science fiction," he said.

After the hearing, Akasofu acknowledged that the computer models, not the hypotheses, could be the problem. However, he said, that is speculation and doesn't help answer the question. The models, run on the most powerful supercomputers in the world, are the best that scientists can do now, he said.

Others at the hearing, though, said some recent hind-casting has matched actual data far better than earlier efforts. Thomas Armstrong, director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Surface Dynamics Program, pointed to recent work by Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona in Tucson. "They were able to mimic very well the proxy record," Armstrong said. Proxies refer to historical physical phenomena, such as tree rings, that researchers correlate with historical temperatures.

Akasofu, in his testimony, emphasized that "it is incorrect to conclude that the present warming in the Arctic is due entirely to the greenhouse effect caused by man."

Lautenberg asked Akasofu whether he knew of any peer-reviewed scientific paper that made such a broad claim. Akasofu said he had not. "I believe that it is more the press that takes that view," Akasofu said.

Akasofu included a chart in his testimony that documented a 1.5-degree Celsius rise in average Arctic temperatures from 1920 through 1940 while worldwide fossil fuel consumption was relatively stable. Then, from 1940 through 1970, average Arctic temperatures dropped by nearly as much, even while worldwide carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion grew rapidly, Akasofu noted. That poses a challenge to the hypotheses that say greenhouse gases are the principal cause of the warming seen since 1970, he said. The apparent contradiction needs far more study, he said.

Correll, though, said the cooling between 1940 and 1970, which was also reflected to a lesser degree in global temperatures, was likely a natural phenomenon that masked the growing effects of carbon dioxide. Correll said it is clear that human influences caused most of the 1-degree Celsius overall increase in global temperatures during the past century. Sen. David Vitter, R-La. and the subcommittee chairman, asked Correll how he could be so sure. Correll said no computer climate model can reproduce the actual warming without adding in the effects of the human-produced carbon dioxide.

Akasofu was not convinced. "Our question is ... how many degrees and where?" he said. "And our observations show that the largest, most prominent warming was taking place in the continental Arctic. But somehow, the IPCC computer ... could not reproduce that. And that means to me it's something else."

Fairbanks Daily News, 27 April 2006






FIGHT AGAINST MALARIA NOT WORKING

Too much ideology involved

The World Bank has been accused of publishing false accounts and wasting money on ineffective medicines in its malaria treatment programme. A Lancet paper claims the bank faked figures, boosting the success of its malaria projects, and reneged on a pledge to invest $300-500m in Africa. It also claims the bank funded obsolete treatments - against expert advice.

The bank has denied the allegations and says it is investing $500m to $1bn over the next five years. But it also admits it is not easy, and sometimes "not even possible", to know exactly how much input from each donor goes into a specific activity.

The claims against the bank, made by 13 international public health experts headed by Amir Attaran, of Canada's University of Ottawa, centre on the financial pledges the fund made to fight malaria on the African continent and a programme in India. The researchers accused the bank of failing to reverse historic "neglect" of the battle against malaria and of hyping their spending on that battle in Africa....

The Lancet study also alleges that the World Bank hyped the results of its malaria control programme in India. They quote the bank saying that it reduced deaths from malaria in the Indian states of Gujarat by 58%, Maharashtra by 98% and Rajasthan by 79%. The authors say they doubted malaria could be reduced so markedly in such a short time and requested and obtained official statistics from India's own national malaria programme.

According to India's Directorate of National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, deaths from malaria rose in all three states in the 2002-3 period in question. "Because we were refused access to the original data sources, we cannot discern the cause of the bank's many statistical errors and particularly whether those errors arise from unintentional mistakes or from intentional data falsification or fabrication," the authors say...

More here

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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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