The American Association of Petroleum Geologists, an international organization of over 30,000 earth scientists, supports expanding scientific climate research into the basic controls on climate, specifically including the geological aspects of climate change. This research should be undertaken by appropriate federal agencies involved in climate research and their associated grant and contract programs. Such support includes major research efforts into potential effects of decreasing as well as increasing temperatures and the mitigation of such effects. This research is important to sustain the ability of agriculture to feed the growing global population as well as to understand the effects of a colder climate upon society.
Geologists who study past climate variations understand that current climate warming projections fall well within documented natural variations in past climate. Therefore, for scientific reasons, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists does not support placing a carbon tax upon fossil energy sources as a tool to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, nor do we support any implementation of the Kyoto Protocol prior to Senate ratification.
Rationale
One of the most contentious debates in American public policy today encompasses proposals to restrict emissions of the minor atmospheric gas carbon dioxide in order to mitigate a perceived human influence on global climate. Current proposals (Kyoto Protocol signed by the executive branch of the U.S. government, but not ratified by Congress) would federally tax crude oil at the rate of about $43.50 per barrel (1). No reduction in existing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would result from this massive transfer of wealth from the private sector into the federal government.
Recognizing the potential impact on the United States and world economy of such taxation and restriction of energy use, it is important that greenhouse theories be tested thoroughly and quickly. Scientific examination of the government case for such draconian taxation does not support the supposition of human-induced global climate change; in fact, the study resulted in recognition that the supposition is neither provable nor disprovable. The following observations are germane to the position:
Scientific research has been stimulated by the proposal. Recently published research results do not support the supposition of an anthropogenic cause of global climate change (2).
Detailed examination of current climate data strongly suggests that current observations do not correlate with the assumptions or supportable projections of human-induced greenhouse effects.
Background: Geologists know that --
Climate is constantly changing, and has varied significantly over human history. Climate changes over any time scale chosen, whether as small as a decade or as long as a geologic era.
Natural variability has been demonstrated to exceed any supportable estimate of human-induced variability.
Earth is still emerging from the Little Ice Age (A. D. 1250 - 1850). Significant rises in global temperature are a predictable consequence. The current level of global warming is real and natural.
Geologic controls on climate are significant. Long term changes can be demonstrated to occur congruently with geologic tectonic changes. Little is truly understood of the controls on short term changes. Solar variability, for instance, is significant in centennial to millennial changes, among other possible controls that should be examined.
Attempts to engineer Earth's very complex climate before understanding natural controls on climate are risky, if not impossible.
Summary
Science requires that all aspects of theory be investigated and that assumptions be tested.
Human-induced global temperature influence is a supposition that can be neither proved nor disproved. It is unwise policy to base stringent controls on energy consumption through taxation to support a supposition that cannot be substantiated.
Climate naturally varies constantly, in both directions, at varying rates, and on many scales. Warming events have been historically good for most human society, while cold events have been deleterious to much of society. It is vital that climate research to examine the effects of a colder climate also be supported. Critical target areas of this research should include the potential impact of climate change on food production. Further research should concentrate on mitigation techniques to combat any serious effects of either colder or warmer climate, naturally or artificially caused, on the ability of the world to feed itself.
The AAPG urges that any actions to implement or to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and any future declarations of climate policy be delayed until there is better understanding of present climate and the impacts of policy implementation, as well as some provision for mitigating errors in policy. There is no current viable substitute for petroleum-based fuels in the world's energy budget and economy.
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Bottled water has high environmental costs
Is there anything the Greenies are happy about? I myself think that drinking bottled water is foolish on cost-benefit grounds but cost-benefit is not what it is all about. It is a modern-day potlatch (purchase of prestige) and people are welcome to spend their money any way that's legal if they want. As modern Puritans, the Greenies do however hate conspicuous consumption and potlatch is clearly that so they had to find SOME way of criticizing bottled water
BOTTLED water, the world's fastest growing beverage, carries a heavy environmental cost, adding plastic to landfills and putting pressure on natural springs, the author of a new US report said today. "Bottled water is really expensive, in terms of environmental costs and economically," said Ling Li, who wrote the report for the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute.
While many in developed countries thirst for safety, cleanliness, taste and social cachet when they buy bottled water, more than one billion of the world's poorest lack access to clean drinking water, bottled or not.
And in developed countries, bottled water may be scrutinised using lower standards than plain tap water, the report said. The environmental impact can start at the source, where some local streams and underground aquifers become depleted when there is "excessive withdrawal" for bottled water, according to the report.
In addition to the energy cost of producing, bottling, packaging, storing and shipping bottled water, there is also the environmental cost of the millions of tonnes of oil-derived plastic needed to make the bottles. "The beverage industry benefits the most from our bottled water obsession," Ms Ling said. "But this does nothing for the staggering number of the world's poor who see safe drinking water as at best a luxury and at worst an unattainable goal." Worldwatch estimated 35 to 50 per cent of urban dwellers in Africa and Asia lack adequate access to safe potable water.
Most water is bottled in polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, which requires less energy to recycle and does not release chlorine into the atmosphere when burned. But recycling rates have declined: about 23.1 per cent of PET water bottles were recycled in the United States in 2005, compared with 39.7 per cent 10 years earlier, the report said.
Bottled water costs from 240 to 10,000 times as much as water straight from the tap. In dollars, that means such water sold in most industrialised countries costs $US500 to $US1000 ($605 to $1210) a cubic metre compared with US50 cents (60 cents) a cubic metre in California, where the quality of tap water is high. World consumption of bottled water more than doubled between 1997 and 2005, with the United States being the largest consumer. US residents drank nearly 28.6 billion litres in 2005, the report found. Among the countries that use bottled water, India's consumption nearly tripled for the period, and China's more than doubled between 2000 and 2005. Mexico, Brazil, Italy, Germany, France, Indonesia and Spain round out the top 10.
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Clinton, Obama sign onto to Boxer's $4,500 climate tax on American families
Senate Environment & Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have proposed the "Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act" aimed at combating climate change....
FACT: A new MIT study concludes that the Sanders-Boxer approach would impose a tax-equivalent of $366 billion annually, or more than $4,500 per family of four, by 2015. And the annual costs will grow after 2015.
The Kyoto Protocol would have imposed an equivalent tax of over $300 billion a year, 10 times the size of the Clinton-Gore tax increase of 1993. In addition to the MIT study, a new Congressional Budget Office study released recently, details how a carbon cap-and-trade system would result in massive wealth redistribution from the poor and working class to wealthier Americans.
Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), EPW Ranking Member, said today: "Carbon caps would artificially and needlessly raise the cost of energy the most on the people least able to afford it. It astounds me that any Senator could support such a proposal."
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Inconvenient truths
By David Deming, Ph.D. (David Deming is a geophysicist, an adjunct scholar with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs and associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma).
The largest single factor driving the debate on global warming is the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth. The movie has been marketed as a scientific documentary, but in fact it is an artful and deceptive propaganda film.
The claims made in An Inconvenient Truth are either wrong, disingenuous, or misleading. Gore frightens his audience by showing the breakup of the Larsen Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula. He then states that if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet were to melt it would raise sea levels worldwide by 20 feet. But Gore conveniently neglects to inform us that over the last several decades, 80 to 90 percent of Antarctica has been growing colder, in direct contradiction to greenhouse theory. The main ice accumulation in Antarctica is not melting, it's getting thicker.
Gore leads his audience to believe that for the last 650,000 years of Earth's climate history, carbon dioxide has determined temperature. But it's well documented in the scientific literature that changes in temperature preceded changes in carbon dioxide. Temperature controlled carbon dioxide by regulating the release and absorption of this gas from the oceans.
An Inconvenient Truth fails to inform viewers that projections of future warming from carbon dioxide are based on computer models whose reliability and accuracy are completely unknown. As a scientist who has done computer modeling and studied geophysical inverse theory, I find it alarming that people are seriously considering restructuring our entire civilization on the basis of computer models that cannot even be tested.
Gore's claim that "zero percent" of scientists disagree on global warming is not true, and demonstrates a profound ignorance of science and the provisional nature of scientific knowledge. The former vice president of the United States could also use a lesson on basic economics. He makes the remarkable claim that we won't damage our economy by switching from fossil fuels - which are inexpensive, reliable, and abundant - to alternative fuel sources that are expensive, unreliable, and scarce. Europe's experience demonstrates otherwise. As reported in the Washington Post April 9, Europe's attempt to reduce carbon dioxide emissions has proven to be a bureaucratic nightmare, with high energy prices, unforeseen consequences, and "significant economic costs." European businesses are losing customers to Chinese competitors.
Oh yes, China. The Chinese currently have 2,000 coal-fired power plants, and are proceeding to enthusiastically grow their economy by building a new plant every week. Incredibly, Al Gore says that China should get a free pass on carbon dioxide. He wants the average American to shoulder the responsibility for stopping global warming. The package for An Inconvenient Truth instructs us how to accomplish this. We are supposed to alter the composition of Earth's atmosphere by switching from incandescent to fluorescent light bulbs, keeping the tires on our cars properly inflated, and planting trees. These recommendations are only exceeded by pop singer Sheryl Crow's recent assertion that global warming can be stopped by restricting the use of toilet paper.
On the morning of April 8, Charlotte, North Carolina, experienced a low temperature of 21 degrees Fahrenheit. It was the coldest temperature ever recorded in Charlotte for the month of April. But if you think record cold weather is going to falsify global warming, you're hopelessly naive. On April 11, a Purdue professor told the Christian Science Monitor that "this is what you might expect of global warming," because global warming "isn't necessarily always a warmer climate, but a more variable climate." In other words, all weather variations are evidence for global warming. I can't make this stuff up.
Global warming has long since moved from scientific hypothesis to pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo. It is the latest and most successful in a long line of disingenuous excuses to wage war on technology, progress, and the human mind. The predatory demagogues who peddle this dangerous nonsense are enemies of the human race.
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A "Green" prison?
Toilet paper is becoming a sought after commodity at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility after officials began limiting inmates to one roll at a time to trim costs. Officials say the prison has long had a limit, but they learned recently that it hadn't been enforced. Increased enforcement began this month. Under the prison policy, inmates are restricted to four rolls of toilet paper each month or on an "as-needed" basis.
Steve Schneider, public information officer for the prison, said officials also restated restrictions on other personal items, including soap and toothpaste, as a result of stockpiling and overuse. The increased enforcement has angered many of the more than 1,600 inmates housed at the facility.
"Some take this for granted," inmate Carl Kennedy said in a letter to The Hutchinson News. "But in here it's part of a safeguard for widespread infections. We use it to blow our noses, clean sinks, toilets and tables." Prison officials said the policy could save the prison nearly $600 each month if each inmate uses one less roll each month. "There are a lot of things that individually don't cost much," said Kansas Department of Corrections spokeswoman Frances Breyne. "But when you multiply that by hundreds, it makes a drastic impact."
Schneider insists inmates won't go without toilet paper. Charmin four-packs can be purchased at the prison canteen for $2.70, and anyone who produces an empty roll will receive a new roll of toilet paper. One side effect of the policy could be that toilet paper will become a new form of currency among inmates. "Anything you restrict becomes a thing of value," Schneider added. "It automatically becomes a means of dealing and trading."
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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 generally 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
For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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