U.S. SAYS NO SHIFT IN CLIMATE CHANGE STANCE

The United States will fight climate change by funding clean energy technologies and will continue to reject emissions targets or cap and trade schemes, its chief climate negotiator Harlan Watson said on Thursday. Germany wants G8 countries at a meeting it hosts next month to agree to halve climate-warming carbon emissions by 2050 and promote carbon trading as a way to penalise greenhouse gas emissions. British Prime Minister Tony Blair also wants the United States to take a tough stand, and global warming featured at his farewell summit with U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington on Thursday. But such demands on the world's biggest carbon emitter are set to fall on deaf ears. "We don't believe targets and timetables are important, or a global cap and trade system," Watson told Reuters, speaking on the fringes of a U.N. hosted climate change meeting in Bonn. "It's important not to jeopardize economic growth." Watson also rejected the idea of a long-term target, say to halve or more greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century.

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ANOTHER CLIMATE SUMMIT IN RUINS AS GERMANY'S OSTPOLITIK CRUMBLES

Germany had hoped for a deal on climate change Ian Traynor in Brussels and Luke Harding in Moscow Germany's hopes of striking a new grand bargain between Russia and Europe, locking both into a close embrace for years to come, have been dashed before a crucial EU-Russia summit. As the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, flew to Samara on the Volga last night for dinner with President Vladimir Putin and to open today's summit, it was clear that the meeting was being hijacked by a long list of disputes focused on eastern Europe and the Balkans. Currently chairing the EU, Germany has prepared the summit as an opportunity to secure Russian agreements on energy security, human rights and climate change. But Berlin's wooing of Moscow has fallen foul of the worsening estrangement between President Putin and the west in recent months.

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AMERICAN STEEL INDUSTRY MAY LOSE OUT TO CHINA OVER EMISSION CAPS

Dan Reynolds Pittsburgh Business Times As forces across the country gear up to control carbon dioxide emissions, the chief executive of a major Pittsburgh manufacturer sounded a cautionary warning on Wednesday. John Surma, the chairman and CEO of U.S. Steel Corp. (NYSE: X), which employs about 43,000 globally, said jobs in the Pittsburgh and national steel industry could be in jeopardy if efforts to curtail so-called greenhouse gasses aren't implemented in a fair and measured manner. "If it were to be done too significantly and too quickly, it could be dire," said Surma, who said any rush to limit greenhouse gases could expose the flank of U.S. steelmakers to steel made in China, where carbon dioxide restraints won't be as readily applied. Surma made the comments after a breakfast address to members of the Pittsburgh Technology Council at Downtown's Omni William Penn Hotel. During his talk, Surma said the science to remove carbon dioxide emissions from the iron and steel making process is still decades away.

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THE ROYAL SOCIETY'S 'MOTTO-MORPHOSIS'

It is an ominous sign that the prestigious scientific institution has changed its motto from 'on the word of no one' to 'respect the facts'. Nullius in Verba, the motto of the prestigious Royal Society in London, is usually translated as 'on the word of no one'. When it was coined back in 1663, it was intended to distance science from the methods of the ancient universities, which relied heavily on the personal authority of the scholars. 'On the word of no one' highlighted the independent authority that empirical evidence bestowed on science; knowledge about the material universe should be based on appeals to experimental evidence rather than authority.

Lately, however, the Royal Society has dropped any mention of 'on the word of no one' from its website. Instead, it talks of the need to 'verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment'. Lord May of Oxford, erstwhile president of the Royal Society and former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, offers us a whole new translation: 'respect the facts.' This provides the title of his recent review in the Times Literary Supplement (TLS), in which he gave the scientific nod of approval to seven recent publications on climate change, including books by George Monbiot, Al Gore and Sir Nicholas Stern (1).

The Royal Society's 'motto-morphosis' - where it has gone from saying 'on the word of no one' to demanding that we 'respect the facts' - points to an important shift in the way that scientific authority is used to close down debate these days.

FULL STORY here




If you break a CFL light bulb...

A quick calculation shows that the 5 mg of mercury in an energy-conserving CFL is enough to fill an average size room (100 cubic meters volume) with the 0.05 mg/cubic meter vapor concentration that is considered hazardous for long term chronic exposure. Since this is the rule for laboratories, it probably does not account for people who might be especially sensitive, including infants, small children and pregnant women. As with allergies, different people can have vastly different responses to exposures to toxins.

The admonition to open the window for 15 minutes after a CFL break does not account for the various sizes / shapes of rooms, placement of windows (or absence thereof) and whether there is adequate cross-ventilation. And of course, it is not so convenient to ventilate a room thoroughly with outdoor air during the dead of winter in a northern clime.

Far be it from me to fuel a scare, but CFL backers are the global warming alarmists, after all, who have much less science to back up their claims for concern about climate change. It might be instructive to review the OSHA regulations concerning handling of mercury employed at CFL manufacturing plants. I bet the precautions are quite stringent.

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Think Tank Challenges Greenpeace to Meet Transparency Standards

Statement of National Center Vice President David Ridenour on Greenpeace's "ExxonMobil's Continued Funding of Global Warming Denial Industry":

Today The National Center for Public Policy Research is challenging Greenpeace and its affiliates to disclose the sources and amounts of its 2006 donations exceeding $50,000. If it does so, The National Center for Public Policy Research will do the same.

We're making this challenge in light of allegations in Greenpeace's May 17 report, "ExxonMobil's Continued Funding of Global Warming Denial Industry," which suggests that it is improper for 41 groups, including The National Center for Public Policy Research, to accept contributions from ExxonMobil because the positions of at least some of them on climate issues is not precisely in accordance with those of Greenpeace.

Most of the groups singled out for criticism in the Greenpeace report work on a wide variety of public policy issues. For most of the groups, climate policy is just a small fraction of their portfolio.

Greenpeace - perhaps based on its own behavior - assumes that donations influence the stands groups such as ours take. They do not. So that the public can judge for themselves, we're challenging Greenpeace to complete transparency through disclosure of major gifts.

Funding from energy companies is not what is fueling the vigorous climate debate. What is fueling the debate is genuine, sincere belief that great uncertainties remain - both on the science and on the appropriate public policy response.

As the stakes, and the costs, of the climate debate are immense, it is entirely proper that many voices and perspectives be considered - not just those of Greenpeace and its allies. If Greenpeace disagrees with others, it might more productively use its resources debating the issue itself, rather than focus on the fact that certain groups also addressing climate issues receive less than 1% of its revenue from ExxonMobil -- as ours did.

Greenpeace has profited more from corporate largesse than The National Center for Public Policy Research and similar groups ever will. Although Greenpeace has a policy against accepting direct corporate donations, the group just received a $27 million bequest from the heir of a major shipping company, a company which emitted 7.13 million tons of CO2 in 2005 (about .12% of ALL U.S. CO2 emissions).

Further, Greenpeace Executive Director John Passacantando's compensation is three times - perhaps more - the total amount of corporate contributions The National Center for Public Policy Research received in 2006. Perhaps that fact puts things a little more into perspective.

If Greenpeace expects its call for public disclosure of grants of other groups to be taken seriously, they should lead by example. If not, they're the real "denial industry."

Source

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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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