Global warming 'is good and is not our fault'

Global warming is an entirely natural phenomenon and its effects can even be beneficial, according to two leading researchers. Recent climate change is not caused by man-made pollution, but is instead part of a 1,500-year cycle of warming and cooling that has happened for the last million years, say the authors of a controversial study.

Dennis Avery, an environmental economist, and Professor Fred Singer, a physicist, have looked at the work of more than 500 scientists and concluded that it is very doubtful that man-made global warming exists. They also say that temperature increase is actually a good thing as in the past sudden cool periods have killed twice as many people as warm spells.

Mr Avery, a senior research fellow at the Hudson Institute, an independent US think-tank, said: "Not all of these researchers who doubt man-made climate change would describe themselves as global warming sceptics but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see. "Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people. "It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine, plagues and disease."

In contrast, they say there is evidence that wildlife is flourishing in the current warming cycle with corals, trees, birds, mammals and butterflies adapting well. In addition, sea-levels are not rising dramatically and storms and droughts have actually been less severe and frequent.

The authors claim that the change is not man-made because the most recent period of global warming took place between 1850 and 1940 when there were far less CO2 emissions than today. They claim to show strong historical evidence of an entirely natural cycle based on data of floods on the Nile going back 5,000 years. Evidence is citing showing records of Roman wine production in Britain in the first century AD.

Prof Singer, a specialist in atmospheric physics at the University of Virginia, said: "We have a greenhouse theory with no evidence to support it, except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events. "The models only reflect the warming, not its cause." They also say that natural temperature change can be caused by fluctuations in the sun.

The authors spent months analysing scientific reports and papers for their book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years. Their aim was to undermine claims made by Al Gore, the former US vice-president, in his film An Inconvenient Truth, that shows the extent of man-made global warming.

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Hypocritical attack on refinery

Our national priorities are horribly out of whack when it comes to BP, energy and the environment. BP proposes to increase its refinery capacity 15 percent by tapping the practically unlimited oil available in the tar sands of Canada. This will have immense benefits for the country in terms of greater energy independence and increased availability of oil.

To achieve this goal, BP proposed to slightly increase discharges of sludge, which would not only be well within federal standards but would be miniscule in comparison to discharges of other industries. On the face of it, this would be a most healthy and desirable trade-off between energy and the environment.

However, our environmental friends oppose even the slightest increase in discharges, preferring to maintain the absolutist, tunnel-vision goal of zero increase in discharges, regardless of the obvious and major benefits that would accrue.

Now, BP is to develop technology at a cost of $40 million which will supposedly eliminate the need to increase the discharge of sludge. But what if it is only 95 percent effective? What if 5 percent still must be discharged into the lake? Will environmentalists once again rise up in outrage to oppose this development as well, while continuing to deny the people access to more plentiful oil?

Meanwhile, the City of Chicago pours millions of gallons of sewage, i.e., fecal matter, in the lake and no one even says "boo." Isn't this an increase in pollution? Does whether or not it is an "increase" depend on who is doing the increasing? Yes, we want clean water to drink. But we also want plentiful oil to run our cars and heat our homes. Both these goals are part of the human environment, and can be achieved by constantly working toward establishing reasonable, life-supporting trade-offs between energy and the environment.

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Carbon capers

There's an admonition about putting the brain in gear before engaging the mouth-or something like that. Ample evidence that some people's minds seem to be in neutral while they engage their environmental guilt came out in two recent press articles reporting news of the "carbon-neutral" scam.

Alan Zarembo writes in the Los Angeles Times about the remorseful who buy carbon "offsets" to ease their polluter guilt. That's all there is to it because no other benefits accrue except to some who happily take the supposed wrongdoer's money-and ours.

The entrepreneurial spirit is a wondrous thing and, of course, no harm occurs if all parties to a deal are satisfied. But two things define carbon offsets as a fraud: implied, but nonexistent tangible benefits, and public funds usurped to support some at the expense of others.

Now get this scenario: Liberal Galena Gotrocks of Beverly Hills, California has someone estimate that her rich-and-famous lifestyle emits 20 tons of carbon dioxide each year. She hires a middleman from Freakout Energy, Inc. and gives him $12 per ton (($240) to help pay for two windmills located in an Eskimo village near Point Barrow, Alaska. "Like, it makes me feel better about flying my jet to New York," says Galena.

Freakout, Inc. and other contributors can cover only a fraction of the high cost of the windmill project. So, how do they recover costs and profit? You probably guessed it. Our taxes are blowing in the wind. Here's how it works.

Alaska Congressman Ernest Earmarks suggests that Freakout apply for an alternative energy grant from the Department of Commerce. The federal grant covers $750,000 of the $1 million project. The Alaska Department of Frozen Assets offers a state grant for $250,000. The Eskimos who operate the windmill project use the energy to run refrigerators in their igloos and Freakout sells the rest to a local utility for long-term profits. Galena flies her jet guilt free.

You are probably thinking what a Pennsylvania dairy farmer, Connie Van Gilder, said about a subsidized methane producing project on her farm to contain greenhouse gases escaping from 400 Holstein cows: "We still don't understand it all. Its hard for us to fathom, to see what it is doing." Me, too, Connie. Van Gilders got $631,000 from state and federal grants to help pay for the $750,000 project they would have financed without public funding. Their contract with Native Energy, a carbon dioxide offset company, for 29,000 tons of guilt was about $2.40 per ton; giving them a tidy "bonus."

I didn't make this one up. These scams are springing up all over the U. S. of A.

Here in North Carolina, N.C. GreenPower a Raleigh nonprofit, struggles to compete with other states in these feel-good ventures. It receives $4 a month-enough to burn a 100-watt light bulb for one hour with "renewable" powered electricity-from thousands of contributing dupes through their fossil-fuel utility bills. Unfortunately, our state legislators recently laid their guilt on the rest of us by law. North Carolinians now must pay up to $34 a year extra, tacked on to each electric utility bill, to subsidize state-sponsored renewable energy and efficiency projects.

Even some environmentalists have more sense than to support energy production through N.C. GreenPower. Elizabeth Ouzts, state director of Environment North Carolina observed that, for those who "want to go above and beyond," home improvements and buying energy efficient appliances would have a greater impact, according to an article by John Murawski, staff writer for the Raleigh News & Observer.

When energy costs increase through market-driven supply and demand economic laws, people will conserve without government intervention. Unfortunately, and increasingly, our feckless political representatives hinder our individual best interests and freedom of choice by legislating schemes that favor the interests of a few at the expense of the rest of us.

Mr. Zarembo, in his L. A. Times article, sums up the carbon-neutral scam: These "ridiculously good" deals don't lead to any "additional emissions reductions," he writes. "Beneath the feel-good simplicity of buying your way to carbon neutrality is a growing concern that the idea is more hype than solution."

Thank you, Mr. Zarembo and Mr. Murawski. It's encouraging to know that some journalists will expose an environmental hoax perpetrated on us by irresponsible politicians in collusion with environmental groups that pursue socialist agenda. Sadly, it's not enough to protect us from these public predators

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ECONOMY FIRST: BRITISH GOVERNMENT CONCERNED ABOUT UK CAR INDUSTRY

The government's minister for competitiveness is calling on the European Commission to be realistic about new exhaust emissions limits. Stephen Timms MP, speaking at BMW's Oxford factory, said: 'The automotive industry is very well aware of the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.' Referring to the EC proposed limits, likely to take the form of an average figure across a company's whole range of cars, he said: 'We are still at a very early stage in that debate. 'The UK will want to see targets that are demanding, that deliver reduced emissions, but we shall also be asking for achievable targets that take account of the diversity of the sector.' In February the European Commission published its proposal that new vehicles should emit no more than 130g/km of CO2, compared with 162g/km in 2005.

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The Lockwood paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even be the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL 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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