In their regular "Freakanomics" column which will appear in this Sunday's edition of The New York Times Magazine, Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, pose this question: "If you were asked to name the biggest global warming villains of the past 30 years, here's one name that probably wouldn't spring to mind: Jane Fonda. But should it?"
The authors observe that Fonda's antinuclear thriller "The China Syndrome," which opened just 12 days before the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, helped stoke "a widespread panic." Fonda became a high-profile anti-nuke activist in an already-strong movement. The nuclear industry halted plans for expansion. "And so," they continue, "instead of becoming a nation with clean and cheap nuclear energy, as once seemed inevitable, the United States kept building power plants that burned coal and other fossil fuels. Today such plants account for 40 percent of the country's energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions.
"Anyone hunting for a global-warming villain can't help blaming those power plants -- and can't help wondering too about the unintended consequences of Jane Fonda."
Of course, there were many other factors in the nuclear industry decline, including cost over-runs, disposal of nuclear waste, the threat of terrorism and numerous other accidents beyond TMI. Then there was, ahem, Chernobyl. But the columnists cite the "big news" that with global warming fears mounting, "nuclear power may be making a comeback in the United States," with plans for two dozen reactors on the drawing boards.
Will they get built? The authors conclude that "it may all depend on what kind of thrillers Hollywood has in the pipeline."
Source
Even the experts cannot predict hurricanes a few months in advance
But Greenies say they can predict 50 years hence
Hurricane expert William Gray downgraded his 2007 Atlantic storms forecast slightly Tuesday, but he still predicted above-average activity for the remaining three months of the season, with six more hurricanes, three of them major.
A combination of a weak La Nina and low pressure readings in the Atlantic usually indicate an active season, said forecaster Phil Klotzbach, a member of Gray's team at Colorado State University.
The first two months of the Atlantic season, June and July, had average activity with two named storms but no hurricanes. August was about average, with one hurricane, Dean, which grew into a powerful Category 5 storm before hitting Central America.
Gray has been forecasting hurricanes for more than two decades, and his predictions are watched closely by emergency responders and others in coastal areas.
Before the start of the June-through-November Atlantic hurricane season, his team forecast 17 named storms and nine hurricanes. The team revised that forecast slightly downward in early August to 15 named storms and eight hurricanes.
Source
More propaganda from "Lancet"
Fight climate change, cut down on red meat? If you make dozens of unproven and wrong assumptions, what they say is correct
PEOPLE should limit their meat-eating to just one hamburger per person per day to help stave off global warming, according to Australian scientists. That would be their contribution to a proposed 10 per cent cut in global meat consumption by 2050, a goal that would brake greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture yet also improve health for rich and poor nations alike, it says. The paper has been released online as part of a seminar by the Lancet British medical weekly into the impacts of climate change on global health.
Its authors point out that 22 per cent of the planet's total emissions of greenhouse gases come from agriculture, a tally similar to that of industry and more than that of transport. Livestock production, including transport of livestock and feed, account for nearly 80 per cent of agricultural emissions, mainly in the form of methane, a potent heat-trapping gas.
At present, the global average meat consumption is 100g per person per day, which varies from 200-250g in rich countries to 20-25g in poor countries. The global average should be cut to 90g per day by 2050, with rich nations working to progressively scale down their meat consumption to that level while poor nations would do more to boost their consumption, the authors propose. Not more than 50g per day should come from red meat provided by cattle, sheep, goats and other ruminants.
The authors were led by Anthony McMichael, professor at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University, Canberra.
"Assuming a 40 per cent increase in global population by 2050 and no advance in livestock-related greenhouse gas reduction practices, global meat consumption would have to fall to an average of 90 grammes per day just to stabilise emissions in this sector,'' the paper said.
"A substantial contract in meat consumption in high-income countries should benefit health, mainly by reducing the risk of ... heart disease... obesity, colorectal cancer and, perhaps some other cancers. An increase in the consumption of animal products in low-intake populations, towards the proposed global mean figure, should also benefit health.''
According to a study published in July by Japanese scientists, a kg of beef generates the equivalent of 36.4kg of carbon dioxide, more than the equivalent of driving for three hours while leaving all the lights on back home.
Source
Google warming
Post below lifted from Don Surber. See the original for links
Google billionaires Larry Page and Sergey Brin are so concerned about global warming. From Google’s corporate blog:
Soon we plan to begin installation of 1.6 megawatts of solar photovoltaic panels at our Mountain View campus. This project will be the largest solar installation on any corporate campus in the U.S., and we think it’s one of the largest on any corporate site in the world.
They’ve invested $40 million in a company that plans to market an electric sports car.
We believe this project demonstrates that a large investment in renewable energy can be profitable. If the business community continues to increase investments and focus on energy efficient and renewable power generation technologies, we have a good feeling that our future will be bright.
OK, that’s what they say. Read about it here. Here is what they do. According to the International Herald Tribune: They fly around in a corporate jet. Last time I looked, a Boeing 767-200 is not powered by solar energy.
That NASA has an airfield near San Francisco is an outrage. Shouldn’t it be landing people on the Moon? I forgot. NASA got out of that business 35 years ago. Now it’s researching global warming and coming up with computer models that “prove” we’re going to hell in a handbasket next week. And naturally, it gives a nice parking space to the corporate billionaires.
Steven Zornetzer, associate director for institutions and research at NASA Ames Research Center, said: “It was an opportunity for us to defray some of the fixed costs we have to maintain the airfield as well as to have flights of opportunity for our science missions. It seemed like a win-win situation.”
Here’s an idea: Why doesn’t NASA go back to working on aeronautics and space, and get the hell out of the private airport business? Here’s another idea: Why doesn’t NASA quit sucking up to corporate billionaires? Here’s one more idea: Why don’t these two rich fatcats spend their own damned money building their own damned airfield and quit mooching off the taxpayers?
And here’s one final idea: Why don’t these two guys who preen about global warming put their money where their big mouths are and ditch the corporate jets? They can bicycle to their meetings.
Change the name from Google to Halliburton and the city of San Francisco would explode in rage.
GREEN FOLLIES ARE DESTROYING THE ENVIRONMENT: OECD
Governments need to scrap subsidies for biofuels, as the current rush to support alternative energy sources will lead to surging food prices and the potential destruction of natural habitats, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development will warn on Tuesday. The OECD will say in a report to be discussed by ministers on Tuesday that politicians are rigging the market in favour of an untried technology that will have only limited impact on climate change.
"The current push to expand the use of biofuels is creating unsustainable tensions that will disrupt markets without generating significant environmental benefits," say the authors of the study, a copy of which has been obtained by the Financial Times.
The survey says biofuels would cut energy-related emissions by 3 per cent at most. This benefit would come at a huge cost, which would swiftly make them unpopular among taxpayers. The study estimates the US alone spends $7bn a year helping make ethanol, with each tonne of carbon dioxide avoided costing more than $500. In the EU, it can be almost 10 times that.
It says biofuels could lead to some damage to the environment. "As long as environmental values are not adequately priced in the market, there will be powerful incentives to replace natural eco-systems such as forests, wetlands and pasture with dedicated bio-energy crops," it says.
FULL STORY here
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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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Jim Hansen and his twin
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