Greenies can't even manage a consistent "ad hominem" attack

Following is an attack by Andrew Dessler on Inhofe's "400 skeptics" report. What it overlooks is given below the attack:

Today's member of the "Inhofe 400" truly epitomizes the expertise and credibility of the group of experts that the good senator has assembled to demonstrate the obvious flaws in the theory of human-induced global warming. He is Chris Allen, weather director at WBKO, the ABC affiliate for south-central Kentucky. On his blog, Chris says this about global warming:

My biggest argument against putting the primary blame on humans for climate change is that it completely takes God out of the picture. It must have slipped these people's minds that God created the heavens and the earth and has control over what's going on. (Dear Lord Jesus...did I just open a new pandora's box?) Yeah, I said it. Do you honestly believe God would allow humans to destroy the earth He created? Of course, if you don't believe in God and creationism then I can see why you would easily buy into the whole global warming fanfare. I think in many ways that's what this movement is ultimately out to do - rid the mere mention of God in any context. What these environmentalists are actually saying is "we know more than God - we're bigger than God - God is just a fantasy - science is real...He isn't...listen to US!" I have a huge problem with that.

Noted meteorologist Allen, a certified meteorologist and weather center director for his station, had many reasons to doubt a "climate crisis." Dessler only focuses on his God quotes (which were not included in Senate report). Once again, if this (and Chemical Engineer Thomas Ring who has authored scientific reports) is Dessler's strongest argument against the report, he is spending a lot of time to have no impact.

Another "ad hominem" attack on Allen that Greenies are very fond of is defused here

And if you are going to focus on God quotes, then we need to consider the religious pronouncements of IPCC honcho Sir John Houghton (Co-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Scientific Assessment Working Group) and others. One quote from the great man:

"Christians and other religious people believe that we've been put on the earth to look after it. Creation is not just important to us, we believe also it is important to God and that the rest of creation has an importance of its own... we are destroying forests, important forests"

Sir John has published articles, as his right, in religious journals. He has said:

Even a recent meeting of (not all Christian) people about climate change on the island of Patmos declared that not to care for the earth is a SIN. But have we as Christians thought about repenting for our lack of care for the earth?

So, on the Dessler reasoning, the whole IPCC output must be disregarded, seeing that one of its central figures is a religious nut. Far be it from me to argue!






Do polar bears need U.S. protection?

The mainstream media article below is cautious but does record evidence that the bears are fine

Do polar bears, which have become the poster child for the potential ravages of future global warming, need special protection from Uncle Sam now? That's the question under consideration at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which is poised to recommend whether the icon of the Arctic should be officially designated as a threatened species - even though the bear's numbers currently are not in precipitous decline.

The judiciousness of protecting the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), in anticipation that its frozen habitat will be thawing as a consequence of climate change, is a matter of hot debate. Many scientists say Arctic wildlife is experiencing the repercussions of a warming planet more rapidly than organisms in other regions, but others say listing the bear would cause economic hardship and do next to nothing to save its habitat.

"This is a complex issue because we have most polar bear populations not showing significant declines at the moment, but we have a lot of climate models and data showing great losses in the foreseeable future," says Chris Tollefson of the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the federal agency responsible for protecting wildlife and their habitats. The service's recommendation is due by Jan. 9.

If listed, the polar bear would be the first mammal listed as threatened as a consequence of global warming, and the federal government would be required to take action to protect it in Alaska, the only place in the US the bear lives, and in places the US issues permits. The ESA defines a threatened species as one likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future.

With as many as 25,000 wild polar bears dispersed across five countries, the species is not exactly teetering on the edge of oblivion, say opponents of the effort. The World Conservation Union (IUCN), though, reports that five of the Arctic's 19 polar bear populations are already experiencing declines, as the bears lose habitat and food because of melting sea ice. Bear populations that are currently stable will also face sink or swim conditions in the future if temperatures rise as projected, say researchers. The United States Geological Survey predicts that habitat loss, primarily from global warming, will slash the world's polar bear population to one-third of its current level by mid-century.

"When we look at the current and projected condition of transit sea ice, it is clear that the species as a whole is facing an increasingly formidable habitat," says Andrew Derocher, a biologist at the University of Alberta in Canada and chairman of the IUCN's Polar Bear Specialist Group.

Polar bears rely on frozen sea ice to hunt, find mates, and make dens for rearing their young, and have been known to migrate across areas the size of Montana. Loss of sea ice and changes in its distribution are believed to be causing some bears to compete for habitat and even to eat other bears to survive. The problem has been pronounced in the west Hudson Bay of Canada, where polar bear numbers have dropped by about 25 percent since the 1980s, partly due to a lack of adequate habitat for dens, researchers say.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) has publicly opposed the ESA listing. Such a move could cause economic hardship through federal restrictions on development and oil industry projects - all without increasing the polar bear's numbers, argues the Palin administration. "We know listing polar bears as endangered or threatened will not cause sea water to freeze," Governor Palin wrote to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne in 2006, as conservation groups petitioned the FWS to research the need to list the bear. Mr. Kempthorne will approve or deny the FWS recommendation.

Even within the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, where global warming is considered a threat to the state, many regard the reasoning behind preemptively listing the polar bear as flimsy. "There is currently a healthy population of polar bears worldwide," says Ken Taylor, the department's deputy commissioner. "We are concerned that if they use climate modeling to project 45 years ahead, we might be getting too subjective scientifically."

Some conservationists are not optimistic about the polar bear's chances of making the list. "The Bush administration always manages to surprise us by ignoring the science at the expense of the environment," says Brendan Cummings, attorney with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) based in Tucson, Ariz., which petitioned to have the bear listed.

Dr. Derocher at the University of Alberta, who has seen the loss of Arctic habitat firsthand during his 25 years studying polar bears, argues that the science is solid and that it's time for governments to protect species made vulnerable by climate change. "For some people, the proof of this won't be reliable until the last polar bear drowns," he says.

Conservationists expect that many species of plants and animals will be listed under the ESA in coming years. Federal marine mammal scientists are currently studying the viability of Pacific walrus populations in Alaska, and the CBD petitioned late in December to list the ribbon seal as threatened. Two coral species, the elkhorn and staghorn, were listed as threatened last year due to global-warming-induced habitat degradation.

Source





Global Warmists Exploit the Holocaust

When Ellen Goodman likened climate skeptics to holocaust deniers last February, she raised more than a few eyebrows. Yet, hers was not the first reprehensible use of that fetid analogy, nor, unfortunately, would it be the last. In truth, environmentalists' deplorable trivialization of Hitler's genocide can be traced as far back as the late 1980's (by an ambitious senator from Tennessee) and as recently as last month by the scientist considered to be the world's premiere global warming researcher.

In 1989, Al Gore wrote a scare piece for the New York Times under the improbable title An Ecological Kristallnacht. Listen. Predicting a laughable 5 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures "in our lifetimes," he warned that unless we

"profoundly change the course of our civilization, we face an immediate and grave danger of destroying the worldwide ecological system that sustains life as we know it."

Boiler-plate eviro-mumbo-jumbo, to be sure. But the man who would be king of the greens then ratcheted the rhetoric down a few notches by invoking nightmares 50 years past:

"In 1939, as clouds of war gathered over Europe, many refused to recognize what was about to happen. No one could imagine a Holocaust, even after shattered glass had filled the streets on Kristallnacht. World leaders waffled and waited, hoping that Hitler was not what he seemed, that world war could be avoided. Later, when aerial photographs revealed death camps, many pretended not to see. Even now, many fail to acknowledge that our victory was not only over Nazism but also over dark forces deep within us."

Kristallnacht -- German for "Crystal Night." The very name elicits lurid images of that dark night in November of 1938 when Germans throughout the land were awakened to the sights and smells of burning synagogues and the noise of shattering window glass and the screams of innocent Jews being savagely beaten. A night when thousands of Germans, reading the signal that Jews were vogelfrei (fair game), joined Hitler's Sturmabteilung (brown shirts) in killing at least one hundred and dragging 30 thousand more men, women, and children one step closer to the death and agony awaiting them in Nazi concentration camps.

Repulsion mission accomplished. Gore then dared compare the world's failure to respond then to contemporary environmental complacency and "dark" self-interest:

"In 1989, clouds of a different sort signal an environmental holocaust without precedent. Once again, world leaders waffle, hoping the danger will dissipate. Yet today the evidence is as clear as the sounds of glass shattering in Berlin."

The audacity of recalling the very sounds that evoked the tag Kristallnacht to suggest that those disregarding Gore's personal delusions of our "self-destructive behavior and environmental vandalism" are somehow synonymous with a "world [that] closed its eyes as Hitler marched" betrays a mind at once deluded and devious. Not to mention, outrageous, as noted by Matt Brooks when the same words appeared in Gore's 1992 book, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. The executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition added that:

"For the vice president to equate the utter horror and the tremendous tragedy of Kristallnacht to try and invoke the passion of people about the environment is an insult to all the people who were victims of the Holocaust."

Outrageous, indeed -- yet merely the first act of a word play that would continue after Gore's vice-presidential intermission and the U.S Senate's unanimous 1997 vote not to consider the Kyoto Protocol for ratification

Much more here





Bye Bye, Light Bulb

Just like that--like flipping a switch--Congress and the president banned incandescent light bulbs last month. OK, they did not exactly ban them. But the energy bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bush sets energy-efficiency standards for light bulbs that traditional incandescent bulbs cannot meet.

The new rules phase in starting in 2012, but don't be lulled by that five-year delay. Whether it's next week or next decade, you will one day walk into a hardware store looking for a 100-watt bulb--and there won't be any. By 2014, the new efficiency standards will apply to 75-watt, 60-watt and 40-watt bulbs too.

Representatives of Philips and General Electric, two of the biggest lightbulb makers, say there's nothing to be concerned about. And Larry Lauck of the American Lighting Association says, "I think everyone's pretty happy" with the new law. But then, the lighting industry has no reason not to be: People will need light, whatever the law says--according to Randy Moorehead of Philips, there are four billion standard-size (or "medium base") light sockets in America alone.

So if you're GE or Philips or Sylvania, the demise of the plain vanilla lightbulb is less a threat than an opportunity--an opportunity, in particular, to replace a product that you can sell for 50 cents with one that sells for $3 or more. Yes, the $3 bulb lasts longer. Yes, it cuts your electricity bill. Mr. Moorehead says that when every one of those four billion light sockets has an energy-saving bulb in it, the country will be saving $18 billion a year on its electric bill. That's $4.50 per bulb--and the bulb makers are standing by to make sure a substantial portion of those "savings" get transformed into profits for them.

Now it may be that those bulbs are worth more--because they last longer, etc. But some of those bulbs, like compact fluorescents and Philips' new "Halogena-IR" bulb, are already available. Currently they command all of 5% of the lightbulb market. That means that, whatever value proposition GE and Philips are selling, consumers aren't buying.

What we bulb buyers needed, it seemed, was a little nudge. Or, if you want to be cynical about it, the bulb business decided to migrate its customers to more-expensive--and presumably higher-margin--products by banning the low-cost competition. "I was kind of involved at the very beginning" of this legislation, Mr. Moorehead says modestly. Indeed, in December 2006, Philips announced a campaign to encourage governments all around the world to phase out low-cost bulbs by 2015.

Now, I'm sure that Philips and GE and Sylvania all want to make the world a better place and so on. But if they can do so while at the same time getting the government to force their customers to pay 10 times as much for their products, well . . . did they mention that they're making the world a better place? The light bulb that costs 10 times as much does, it is true, last four times as long. But if you're a lightbulb maker, that's a pretty good trade. If you're a consumer, you have to decide that for yourself. Except that, after the ban, you won't be allowed to any more. You just got traded up, forcibly, to a "better" product.

What's remarkable about this bit of market interference is that there is, basically, nothing wrong with the present-day, Edison-style lightbulb. It's not a lawn dart or a lead-painted toy or a magnet that will perforate your kid's intestines if he swallows it. It is what it is, and for most people in most applications, it was good enough. So the lightbulb makers and the environmentalists convinced Congress to ban them for no better reason than they believed everyone would be better off with something else.

Note that the lightbulb makers didn't need a ban to convince consumers to "upgrade." Microsoft, Dell, Apple and any number of other companies manage to convince the Joneses that they need a better "one"--whatever it is--every few years. If Philips wanted a Halogena-IR bulb in every socket, it had only to put them on the market at a price that made them irresistible compared to the 50-cent bulb of yore. Likewise with the much hailed compact fluorescent. They have been on the market a good deal longer than Philips's fancy new incandescent. The prices have come down and the quality has gone up. But not, apparently, enough for 95% of the bulb-buying public.

A few years back, one could have argued with a straight face that consumer awareness of the benefits of CFLs was inadequate. No more. The sticking point lies at that ineffable nexus between price and quality--with all that "quality" implies, whether it be service life, the delay between flicking the switch and full power, or color temperature or the look of the thing.

There are billions to be made--and spent--figuring out how to get consumers to pay more for something. This year Steve Jobs convinced a million people to pay $400 for a cell phone in a market in which many people believe that the phone should come free with a service contract. But why worry about making a product so good people feel they have to have it, when you can instead get the government to tell them they have no choice?

Don't fault the bulb makers for this. If Microsoft could get a law passed requiring users to upgrade Windows, they'd probably go for it, too. Same with Detroit--"Buy a hybrid, or else!" would probably suit them fine. But do remember this the next time a company goes to Washington to save the world: They'll end up doing it at your expense.

Source






Australia: A more realistic comment on the "risk" to coral reefs

Corals may move from warming seas. A change from the garbage about corals dying out. Corals already have a huge North/South geographical range -- which means a huge range of temperature tolerance

If their watery world continues to warm as climate change scientists predict, Western Australia's corals may head south to cooler climes. That's the message from US and Australian researchers who compared the behaviour of the state's corals then and now. Since "then" was 125,000 years ago, University of Queensland paleoecologist John Pandolfi and geologist Benjamin Greenstein of Cornelle College in Iowa are confident their findings are not a short-term blip.

The implication is that conservation managers should help ensure that corals have an "escape route" beyond existing parks and protected areas, claimed Professor Pandolfi. "Paving the way to southern refugia is a step in the right direction for coral conservation," he argued. "These refugia could be very important for reseeding northern reefs if the environmental conditions return to a more favourable state."

According to their research _ reported in the journal Global Change Biology _ fast-growing branching corals, Acropora, will likely be the first to move, possibly as far south as Margaret River or even around the corner to Albany. "We've already seen some movement of the Acropora," said Professor Pandolfi, with UQ's Centre for Marine Studies. "Rottnest Island (off Perth) has Acropora coral and it didn't have any 20 years ago," he said.

Along with Professor Greenstein, Professor Pandolfi took advantage of Western Australia's "natural laboratory", a 1500-km-long stretch of living and fossil coral reefs. They paired five ancient and modern reefs: two at Ningaloo and Shark Bay in the north, two more in the Houtman-Abrolhos Islands and Geraldton-Leander Point and the most southerly site at Rottnest Island. They assessed the diversity and distribution of coral species living in the ancient and modern communities and then compared the data. The results suggested that coral diversity expands and contracts according to the water temperature.

While that gives hope that if reefs can shelter in cooler refugia they'll survive global warming, Professor Pandolfi said he and Professor Greenstein looked only at temperature. He claimed managers must work to protect reefs from human impacts like pollution, as sea and carbon dioxide levels rise and stress the coral. "The better the health of the reefs the better off they'll be in handling change," said Professor Pandolfi. "We have to keep an eye out and give them a chance to escape."

Source

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