DONKS HEADED FOR A TRADE-WAR WITH CHINA

Is the Democrat love affair with Communist governments over? Probably not. But it looks like green trumps red these days. Besides, China is probably not Communist enough now. A trade war with China would be incredibly stupid, however. China is far too big to bully. How would an atmospheric nuclear test in the waters off San Francisco go, for instance? If America can break its agreements, so can China. Obama could only come out of it with much mud on his face and the danger posed by the Greenies would be made plain for all to see. At the moment China is the only party talking reason about these matters. That's how low the standards in American political debate have sunk

A top adviser to the Chinese government on Tuesday warned that a proposed US border tax on carbon sensitive materials "smells of protectionism" and could spark retaliation from developing countries.

During a speech at New York University about how the US and China can forge a closer partnership, Tung Chee-hwa, vice-chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the Chinese government's official advisory, said that a proposed "border adjustment" programme could be challenged through the World Trade Organisation and that he was "distressed" by the new bill introduced to Congress.

The programme in question was introduced earlier this month by two powerful Democrats in the House of Representatives. The bill includes aggressive climate targets to be met through a green house gas emissions cap and trade programme, where companies would be eligible for rebates to compensate for cost they incur. More controversially, the US government would be able to levy import taxes on foreign manufacturers to cover carbon contained in US-bound products.

"This is particularly unfair to China," Mr Tung, who was chief executive of Hong Kong from 1997 until 2005, said.

In March, Steven Chu, US energy secretary, told Congress that a carbon border tax would help "level the playing field" with countries with looser carbon standards.

The legislation, introduced by Henry Waxman, California Democrat and chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and Edward Markey, Democrat from Massachusetts and Chairman of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee, aims to cut green house gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 and by more than 80 per cent by 2050, from 2005 levels. The draft proposal would require electricity suppliers to get 25 per cent of their power from renewable sources, such as wind and solar, by 2025. It would establish a national renewable energy standard and an energy efficiency standard aimed at cutting power demand by 15 per cent by 2020 and natural gas demand by 10 per cent.

On Tuesday Mr Tung said that China was taking its own aggressive measures to combat climate change but that he was concerned about the US taking a more protectionist stance. "The lesson from 1929 was that we went to protectionism and the whole world collapsed," he said. "China and America are on the same boat."

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'QUIET SUN' BAFFLING ASTRONOMERS

An email from Prof. Oliver Manuel [omatumr@yahoo.com]. Prof. Manuel is a skeptic in the field of astrophysics. He points out that the accepted theory of how the sun works appears to be wrong and that a better understanding of how the sun influences our climate is possible if we look at the facts about the sun instead of at that famed Warmist "consensus" which basically ignores the sun

Regarding the BBC report, 'QUIET SUN' BAFFLING ASTRONOMERS:

Yes, indeed, the Sun is quiet. Sunspots have disappeared! Earth is cooling.

Astronomers - especially those associated with NASA - are baffled because they chose to ignore cycles of solar activity and all other observations and space-age measurements over the past five decades that were unexplained by the Standard Solar Model (SSM) of a Hydrogen-filled Sun.

Angular momentum changes in the Sun cause deep-seated magnetic fields from the dense, energetic solar core to penetrate the visible solar surface (the photosphere) and produce cycles of sunspots and solar eruptions.

Earth's climate is closely linked to this cycle of angular momentum changes and to the number of sunspots at the solar surface.

You can see the Landscheidt solar cycles here:

Astronomers are baffled by the quiet Sun precisely because they continued to claim that our Sun is nothing but a homogeneous ball of Hydrogen, despite precise, space-age experimental data that directly falsify this claim. Some of the data are summarized in the papers below:

1. "Composition of the solar interior: Information from isotope ratios", Proceedings of the 2002 SOHO/GONG Conference on Helioseismology, European Space Agency SP-517 (editor: Huguette Lacoste, 2003) pages 345-348 :

2. "The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass", Physics of Atomic Nuclei 69 (2006) pages 1847-1856; Yadernaya Fizika 69 (Russian), number 11 (Nov 2006).

Astronomers need to address the experimental data, whether or not they agree with the interpretations given above.






Climate change science isn't settled

By Jan Veizer. Veizer is a distinguished university professor of geology (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and has researched the use of chemical and isotopic techniques in determining Earth's climatic history.

MANY people think the science of climate change is settled. It isn't. And the issue is not whether there has been an overall warming during the past century. There has, although it was not uniform and none was observed during the past decade. The geologic record provides us with abundant evidence for such perpetual natural climate variability, from icecaps reaching almost to the equator to none at all, even at the poles.

The climate debate is, in reality, about a 1.6 watts per square metre or 0.5 per cent discrepancy in the poorly known planetary energy balance. Let me explain.

Without our atmosphere, the Earth would be a frozen ice ball. Natural greenhouse warming, due to atmospheric blanket, raises the temperature by about 33C. At least two-thirds of this warming is attributed to the greenhouse effect of water vapour.

Water vapour, not carbon dioxide, is by far the most important greenhouse gas. Yet the models treat the global water cycle as just being there, relegating it to a passive agent in the climate system. Energy that is required to drive the water cycle and generate more water vapour must therefore come from somewhere else: the sun, man-made greenhouse gases, other factors or any combination of the above.

Note, however, that because of the overwhelming importance of water vapour for the greenhouse effect, existing climate models are unlikely to yield a definitive answer about the role of carbon dioxide v the sun, for example, and the answer must be sought in past records.

The past climate record does indeed resemble the trend in solar output. However, because three decades of satellite data show only limited variability, the solar output would have to be somehow amplified to explain the entire magnitude of the centennial warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change argues that because no amplifier is known, and because the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide did increase from 280 parts per million to 370ppm, man-made greenhouse gases must be responsible for most of the energy imbalance.

But this is an assumption, an attribution by default, not an actual empirical or experimental proof that carbon dioxide is the driver. Yet such attribution is then taken as a fact in the subsequent complex model calibrations of climate sensitivity to CO2.

If, however, an amplifier to solar output does exist, and empirical observations detailed below argue for its existence, the need to attribute the energy input to man-made greenhouse gases would diminish accordingly. So how realistic is the basic model assumption that the tiny - biologically controlled - carbon cycle drives the climate via the passively responding huge water cycle?

Nature tells us that it is the other way around. Surely, the blossoming of plants in the spring is the outcome, not the cause, of the warming sun and abundant rain.

Our atmosphere contains 730 billion tons of carbon as CO2. Each year about 120billion tonnes of carbon are cycled via plants on land and 90billion tonnes via oceans. Human emissions account for about seven billion to 10billion tonnes, or less than 5 per cent, of the annual CO2 flux.

From the point of view of interaction of the water and carbon cycles it is important to realise that for every unit of CO2 sequestered by a plant from the atmosphere almost 1000 units of water must be lifted from the roots to the leaf canopy and eventually evaporated back into the air.

The required huge energy source is the sun. Solar energy drives the water cycle, generating a warmer and wetter climate while invigorating the biological carbon cycle. The sun also warms the oceans that emit their CO2.

Atmospheric CO2 is thus the product and not the cause of the climate, as demonstrated by past records where temperature changes precede changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations and fluxes: ice cores, the 1991 Mt Pinatubo volcanic eruption in the Philippines or seasonal oscillations are instructive examples.

But what might be the complementary source of energy that could account for the disputed 1.6W/m2?

Clouds are a mirror that reflects solar radiation back into space. The amount of solar energy reflected by the Earth is about 77W/m2 and the difference between cloudless and cloudy skies is about 28W/m2. Therefore a change of just a few per cent in cloudiness easily can account for the disputed energy discrepancy.

Clouds are an integral part of the sun-driven water cycle; however, formation of water droplets requires seeding and this is where solar amplification likely comes into play. Empirical and experimental results suggest that cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere may generate such initial seeds, particularly over the oceans. While the actual mechanisms are still debated, the correlations between cloudiness and cosmic ray flux already have been published.

The amplifying connection to the sun comes via its electromagnetic envelope, called the heliosphere, and a similar envelope around the Earth, the magnetosphere. These act as shields that screen the lethal cosmic rays from reaching our planet. A less active sun is not only colder but its heliospheric envelope shrinks, allowing more cosmic rays to reach our atmosphere and seed more clouds, and vice versa. Indeed, satellite data for the past decade shows a 25per cent shrinking of the heliosphere that is coincident with the halt, or even decline, in planetary temperature since 1998: a trend at odds with the ever rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

We also have direct evidence for the above scenario. Cosmic rays, when hitting the atmosphere, generate a cascade of cosmogenic nuclides that then rain down to the Earth's surface and can be measured in ice, trees, rocks and minerals. Such records over the past 10,000 years correlate well with the highly variable climate, while the contemporary concentrations of CO2, measured in ice cores, are flat around the low pre-industrial levels of 280ppm with no resemblance to climate trends.

These centennial to millennial correlations, coupled with direct observations of coincidence of cloudiness with cosmic rays and temperature in central Europe since 1978, argue that the sun and its amplifying mechanism must play a leading role in climate control even if the cosmic ray signal proves no more than an indirect measure of solar variability.

The science of climate change continues to evolve and regardless of the outcome of the climate debate, observational data suggests that we may be served well by basing our climate agenda, scientifically and economically, on a broader perspective than that in the IPCC outlined scenarios. Our pollution abatement and energy diversification goals could then be formulated, and likely implemented, with less pain.

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The Killers & Kooks of Earth Day

A Rush Limbaugh transcript

Now, we've just honored some great people on Earth Day, but here is a story from some newspaper called The Bulletin. It is an American paper, I guess it's Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Bulletin. "Today is Earth Day, a holiday created to honor the planet and to raise the consciousness of man's effect on the environment. Philadelphia has a very strong tie to this day. One of its native sons, Ira Einhorn, was a co-founder of the environmentalist jubilee. But Mr. Einhorn has another line on his resume. In addition to being a environmental guru, he is the Unicorn Killer. While a student at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Einhorn dated a Bryn Mawr College graduate by the name of Holly Maddux. When the affair ended in 1977, Mr. Einhorn went into a jealous rage and murdered her." This is a founder of Earth Day.

By the way, the Unabomber was an environmentalist as well. So was the Son of Sam. So is the most recently added name to the FBI's top ten most wanted list an environmentalist. But Mr. Einhorn "concealed his crime for 18 months by stuffing Ms. Maddux's body in a trunk that he kept in his apartment. The foul odor of the decomposing corpse coming from Mr. Einhorn's Powelton Village apartment caused neighbors to complain. In 1979, police found the trunk stored in a closet in Mr. Einhorn's apartment. Ira Einhorn, member of the counterculture pantheon, one of the founders of the environmentalist movement, icon of the liberal intelligentsia, was charged with murder. But it was not just a simple murder, it was a gruesome case of domestic violence. At the bail hearing, Mr. Einhorn was praised by a contingent of luminaries -- all testifying to his character. There were Ivy League professors, an Episcopalian minister and corporate executives who worked with Mr. Einhorn raising funds. They all stated under oath that he was a man of the greatest integrity."

Arlen Specter was Mr. Einhorn's attorney. "He managed to get the bail set at the unheard of amount of $40,000 for the suspected murderer. Only 10 percent was needed to free him. Barbara Bronfman, heiress to the Seagram liquor fortune, paid it. Proclaiming his innocence, Mr. Einhorn told all that he was framed. He said it was the CIA or the FBI who committed the murder and they were trying to frame him for it because of his political activities. Some will note that another notorious Philadelphia murderer, Mumia Abu-Jamal, used this defense a few years later. Like Mumia, Mr. Einhorn had no shortage of leftist followers. Mr. Einhorn skipped bail and left Philadelphia in 1981." Founder, environmentalist movement and Earth Day. Just like the Unabomber, murderers, just like the most recent addition to the FBI's top ten most wanted list, a leftist environmentalist. And yet Janet Napolitano, head of the Department of Homeland Security, sends out this memo warning of returning veterans who might commit acts of terror in the United States.

I got some e-mails from people who want the rest of the Ira Einhorn story. Here's the rest of the Ira Einhorn story: "More than a decade passed when the DA's office tried Mr. Einhorn in absentia after being unable to locate him. He was convicted in 1993. Several years after the absentia conviction, in 1997, Mr. Einhorn was located. He was living in France with a new girlfriend -- a Swedish woman. The District Attorney's office in Philadelphia immediately asked to have him extradited. However, the humane French refused to extradite Mr. Einhorn. French officals cited the use of capital punishment in Pennsylvania and the conviction in absentia as reasons for their refusal. Mr. Einhorn was able to convince the French courts not to extradite him until he received the promise of a new trial. A Pennsylvania legislator, Dan O'Brien, introduced a bill in the Pennsylvania General Assembly that allowed granting Mr. Einhorn a new trial, if he asked for it, and if the French extradited him. The bill did not vacate the original verdict. When France began extradition, Mr. Einhorn's representatives requested the European Court of Human Rights to review the case. The request was denied. He was extradited to Pennsylvania in July 2001. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison October 17, 2002."

We're talking here, if you just joined us, about the founder of Earth Day. But as the writer, Michael Tremoglie, at the Philadelphia Bulletin says, "There is a little mentioned irony about the Einhorn saga. Ira Einhorn was arrested for murder March 28, 1979, the day the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident occurred. Ira Einhorn, environmentalist, was charged with murder during the same period as one of the greatest environmental accidents in United States history. But the real irony is that more people died in the apartment of Ira Einhorn, co-founder of Earth Day than at Three Mile Island. The environmentalist killed more people than the so-called environmental disaster. Happy Earth Day."

And not to leave this out, Investor's Business Daily, with a great editorial today called, "Save Capitalism," they say, "Wednesday's airwaves, print media, cable news shows and Webosphere will be filled with nonsense about the scourge of capitalism, corporations and humanity. All of it will ignore the real truth. ... Every year Steven Hayward, a scholar at the Pacific Research Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, compiles his Index of Leading Environmental Indicators. And every year, his findings contradict the alarmists' warnings that the world is on the edge of environmental cataclysm. From evidence 'that tropical rain forests may now be expanding faster than they are being cut down' to the improving health of US ocean fisheries to better outdoor air quality in American cities with the worst air pollution, Hayward shows there's more to be optimistic about than there is to be troubled about. The Environmental Protection Agency has also published its own Report on the environment. Last year's report, the most recent, indicates outdoor air quality has improved, there's been a net gain in wetland acreage, public-source drinking-water problems are uncommon and forest land is expanding after declining for a century.

"Of the estimated 1 billion people who will observe Earth Day worldwide this year, few will know about the progress that has been made. Fewer still will know how it was made. The media, uninterested in looking at the real story, will simply credit the environmental movement for the improvements," when in fact it has been capitalism. Greener is richer.

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EU EMISSIONS TRADING SCHEME IS AN EXPENSIVE FAILURE

The EU's emissions trading scheme has so far failed to deliver any reductions in CO2 emissions while at the same time strangling energy-efficiency investment in the electricity sector, according to a former European Commission official.

Jørgen Henningsen, a senior adviser at the European Policy Centre, a Brussels think-tank, was addressing a conference organised by the combined heat and power generation sector (CHP) on Tuesday (21 April).

Speaking at the event, Henningsen, who has previously worked as a director at the Commission's environment department and once held a position at DG Energy and Transport, argued that there was "no reason for optimism" in the next few years regarding energy savings from technologies like CHP.

He singled out the EU executive as the biggest obstacle in the way of developing the technology.

The Commission has acknowledged that installing cogeneration capacity in power stations could help the EU to cut down its CO2 emissions significantly. This is because CHP plants operate at a far higher efficiency level than conventional power stations, as they produce both electricity and useful heat at the same time.

However, Henningsen argued that the Commission had based its climate policy overwhelmingly on the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme, which is not delivering on its original purpose of cutting emissions cost-effectively.

"The Commission has clearly been over-optimistic about the contribution of emissions trading to CO2 reductions. So far, the system has hardly delivered anything and the low CO2 prices at present support the fear that not only the present trading period, but also the 2013-20 period, will be a failure," Henningsen said.

More HERE






NEW REPORT SETS OUT THE "OVERLOOKED" EVIDENCE AGAINST CLIMATE ALARMISM

A 110-page report by an international team of climate experts published today by the independent Fraser Institute examines critically-important scientific evidence that has been overlooked or omitted in government reports that blame climate change on carbon dioxide emissions.

The report, Critical Topics in Global Warming, supplements the Fraser Institute's Independent Summary for Policymakers, a 2007 analysis of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report.

The new peer-reviewed report's seven chapters investigate published scientific literature on issues such as the effects of ocean oscillations and solar variations on climate, historical climate variability, statistical challenges in climate analysis, uncertainties in climate modeling, and quality problems in temperature measurement systems. The report leaves no doubt that the science is far from "settled" on climate change.

The new report reviews published evidence demonstrating such critically important points as:

- Natural oscillations of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans-not increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere-explain 20th century weather changes in the United States, Greenland, and the Arctic, as well as the reduction of Arctic sea ice.

- Arctic air temperatures over the last century correlate better with average incoming solar radiation than levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

- Evidence from around the world reveals climatic conditions in the Medieval era were warmer than the recent era. As the report states: "Late 20th century temperatures are not unprecedented, falling well within the range of natural millennial-scale variability, particularly in comparison to the interval 1,000 years ago when there was 25 per cent less carbon dioxide in the air than there is today."

- The popularized notion that carbon dioxide "traps heat" in the atmosphere, thereby raising temperatures as in a greenhouse, is inaccurate. As the report states: "The atmosphere does not actually work like a greenhouse ...Unlike the greenhouse case, whether or not temperature changes, and how it changes, depends on the details. And the details cannot be determined from first principles."

- Extensive problems in the global weather station network, including urbanization near the thermometers and a sharp loss of monitoring sites in the early 1990s, indicate the likelihood of an upward bias in many published global surface warming trends.

- Climate trend analysis has been skewed by a failure to properly account for long-term persistence. New statistical modeling work has challenged the view that recent trends are outside natural variability.

- Computer-based climate modeling has contributed to our understanding of the climate, but it is insufficient as the basis of global warming theory. Too much emphasis on modeling discourages scientists from pursuing alternative, complementary scientific strategies that are essential for moving ahead.

The complete study can be downloaded at www.fraserinstitute.org

SOURCE

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