Doing the math on melting ice

An email from Tom Still [rileystill@mindspring.com]

Global warming alarmists who study polar ice behavior delight in using very large numbers to scare the rest of us. In an AP report of a report by a spokesman for the Britian - based Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research says the ice down there is melting "...faster than we thought."

Quoting AP:

The melting "also extends all the way down to what is called west Antarctica," said Colin Summerhayes, executive director ...." of the Britain-based Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. [...]

By the end of the century, the accelerated melting could cause sea levels to climb by 3 feet to 5 feet ª- levels substantially higher than predicted by a major scientific group just two years ago.[...]

Summerhayes said the biggest of the western glaciers, the Pine Island Glacier, is moving 40 percent faster than it was in the 1970s, discharging water and ice more rapidly into the ocean. The Smith Glacier, also in west Antarctica, is moving 83 percent faster than in 1992.[...]

Together, all the glaciers in west Antarctica are losing a total of around 114 billion tons per year because the melting is much greater than new snowfall, he said. "That's equivalent to the current mass loss from the whole of the Greenland ice sheet," Summerhayes said.

Looked at another way, it's more weight than 312,000 Empire State Buildings.

114,000,000,000 tons of ice/water per year. Run for the hills!!

But wait.... By my computation the continent of Antarctica contains - get this -- 19,000,000,000,000,000 tons of ice. Assuming that 10% of the ice is West Antarctica Ice Sheet, it would take 167,000 years to melt all that ice at the alarming rate of 114 Bn tons per year.

The area of the oceans is 3,475,000,000,000,000 sq feet. By my calculation, if the WAIS is 10% of all the ice, then it would take 96 years to raise sea levels 12 inches at the alarming rate of 114,000,000,000 tons of melt per year (3,600,000,000,000 cuft).

Mr. Summerhayes says this rapid melt rate may have been going on since 1970 or 1993.

But meanwhile a recent study by Woppelmann et al., cited here indicates that sea level rise has been very constant since 1893.

"... since mean sea-level rose at a constant rate over the entire 114 years [up to and including 2007], it seems highly unlikely that the historical increase in the atmosphere's CO2 content -- which accelerated dramatically over this time interval -- could have been the ultimate cause of the steady mean sea-level rise."

The rapid rate of melt since possibly 1970 (or 1993) apparently has been having no added effect on the rate of sea level rise. So, from now on I will be very careful not to be frightened, at face value by reports of massive ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland. There really is a lot of ice at these two places.





Carbon Regulation: One Scientist's Unscientific Dream?

There's an understandably growing unease about the likely prospect that the Obama administration will soon choose to regulate CO2 as a pollutant. But that disquiet would likely turn quickly to rage if more people knew the truth about the scientific conclusions on which this unprecedented incursion on both industry and individual freedom was based. You see, it appears that those conclusions weren't based on accepted scientific procedure at all, but were instead predetermined -- and perhaps by a single man.

Our story unfolds just weeks after Barbara Boxer's pet cap-and-trade bill -- the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008 -- crashed and burned on the Senate floor last June. The wounded California Democrat called Dr. Roy Spencer before her Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (SEPWC), hoping to punish predominantly Republican dissenters by publicly ridiculing Spencer's positions on climate change.

But much to the scornful Inquisitor's visible chagrin, the climatologist testified quite persuasively that "two modes of natural climate variability -- the El Nino/La Nina phenomenon (Southern Oscillation), and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation" can explain as much as 70% of all measured warming since 1970. Then the former NASA senior scientist lashed out against the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which he accused "has remained almost entirely silent" about the "possible role of internal climate variations in the warming of the last century." They were, after all, commissioned to deal exclusively with human influence on the climate and thereby weren't motivated in the least to find any natural explanations. Unflustered by Boxer's unrelenting rudeness, Spencer recalled a rather remarkable -- and remarkably overlooked -- experience, exposing the bias of the United Nation's sainted climate panel:

"In the early days of the IPCC, I was visiting the head of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy -- the director, Dr. Robert Watson, who later became the first Chairman of the IPCC. He informed me and a work associate with me that since we had started to regulate Ozone depleting substances under the 1987 Montreal Protocol, the next goal, in his mind, was to regulate Carbon Dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning. This was nearly twenty years ago. There was no mention of a scientific basis for that goal. So, as you can see from the beginning of the IPCC process, it has been guided by desired policy outcomes, not science."

Indeed, shortly after leaving OSTP, Watson chaired the panel, where he also acted as both working group leader and editor of its 2001 Third Assessment Report (TAR). That was the report that reignited Al Gore's warming obsession, predicting average surface temperature would increase by 1.4 to 5.8 Celsius degrees over the period of 1990 to 2100. Needless to say, it blamed "human activities," for the "unusual warming" of the twentieth century, relying heavily on immediately challenged computer models and a later debunked millenial-scale record based on climate proxies (the MBH98 reconstruction aka the "hockey stick graph") that diminished the extent of the "Little Ice Age" (1500-1850) and virtually omitted the Medieval Warm Period (800-1300).

Coincidentally, a colleague of Dr. Spencer's, atmospheric scientist John Christy, served as one of the report's lead authors. Dr. Christy, Alabama's State Climatologist, also recalls an interesting conversation -- this one between three fellow TAR contributors at an IPCC lead authors' meeting in New Zealand:

"After introducing myself, I sat in silence as their discussion continued, which boiled down to this: `We must write this report so strongly that it will convince the US to sign the Kyoto Protocol.'"

Not surprisingly, Christy soon found that such unempirical predisposition originated right at the top when he testified along with Watson before John McCain's Senate Commerce, Science, and Justice Committee in May of 2000. The subject was the "Science Behind Global Warming," but the topic-contrary Kyoto-centric statements of the man leading an organization supposedly charged with unbiased research prompted Christy to later write:

"And, while the 2001 report was being written, Dr Robert Watson, IPCC Chair at the time, testified to the US Senate in 2000 adamantly advocating on behalf of the Kyoto Protocol, which even the journal Nature now reports is a failure."

As Dr. Christy added in a recent email, "Thus he was overtly advocating a policy position while heading up the IPCC." Several attempts to contact Dr. Watson for comment produced no response.

Of course, TAR's bias transcended its chairman and a few compromised lead authors. As discussed in two previous pieces, this was the same report the irregularities of which prompted another of its "authors," Dr. Richard Lindzen, to himself testify before the SEPWC. The MIT Professor of Meteorology told the committee that the vast majority of scientists contributing to the full report played virtually no role in preparing the unscientific yet principally cited Summary for Policymakers -- often written to further political agendas and the primary basis of media hype and public understanding -- nor were they given the opportunity to review and approve its contents. And that all scientists were pressured into toeing the IPCC's AGW line and defending its questionable climate models:

"...throughout the drafting sessions, IPCC `coordinators' would go around insisting that criticism of models be toned down, and that `motherhood' statements be inserted to the effect that models might still be correct despite the cited faults. Refusals were occasionally met with ad hominem attacks. I personally witnessed coauthors forced to assert their `green' credentials in defense of their statements."

Reports of such impropriety plague the panel's history. In fact, many of the 650-plus international scientists disputing IPCC methods and conclusions are former or current contributors.

Keep in mind that not only did the propaganda of the 2001 Assessment provide alarming imagery for Al Gore's inconvenient nonsense sci-fi flick, but its inverted scientific method of results preceding data collection and analysis blazed the trail for its 2007 successor's most widely disseminated fabrication -- that the probability that humans burning fossil fuels causes climate change is 90%. The continuous quoting of which has spawned a planet of irrationally self-conscious carbo-phobes and empowered the pernicious policymaking it now faces.....

With green believers ruling both the Executive and Legislative branches, and a Judicial majority voting sympathetically alongside them in April of 2007, these words from Lindzen just one month prior have never rung more foreboding:

"Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life."

Needless to say -- our language offers countless pejoratives for governments that control lives through big lies, extortion and intimidation. Not to mention the scientists who formulate or sustain those lies.

More here






THE GREEN-JOB ENGINE THAT CAN'T

Inefficient eco-friendly technologies destroy more jobs than they create.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to transform America's energy economy by creating millions of "green jobs." Accepting his party's nomination at the Democratic convention in Denver, Obama proclaimed: "I'll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy-wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced." This new energy economy, Obama explained weeks later at the second presidential debate in Nashville, would be an "engine of economic growth" to rival the computer and one, moreover, that we could build "easily."

Though he would have quibbled with Obama over details, Republican candidate John McCain similarly praised the virtues of creating millions of these environmentally friendly jobs, both as an answer to the nation's economic woes and as a way to reduce carbon emissions.

In a time of grave economic uncertainty, it's surely positive news that we can agree on the benefits of green jobs, right? Not quite. If the green-jobs claim sounds too good to be true, that's because it is. Holding it up to the light exposes it as economically hollow. Making matters worse, a powerful green-jobs movement has emerged, made up of left-wing antipoverty activists and union leaders, all of them clamoring for a more conventional kind of green: government dollars.

More here







BBC gullibility again

James Lovelock, the British chemist and alleged expert on climate change, suggests that 80% of mankind will be wiped out by climate change and that the hot planet will last for 100,000 years. So persuasive is his assertion that it was asserted on BBC World's HARDtalk as a fact today. What ever happened to science and to journalism?

Lets deal with journalism first. Stephen Sackur, who now fronts HARDtalk, is normally no slouch. He has a solid journalistic career behind him - strong history as a tough foreign correspondent for the BBC and then the solid BBC Washington correspondent - a well respected position and he did sterling work, covering the Lewinsky scandal, Clintonomics and the various forms of Clintongate. He also covered the Bush election by the Supreme Court. He has hosted HARDtalk since 2004, when he replaced journalist and novelist Tim Sebastian. Yet here is talking about science and technology and he quotes this absurb claim by Lovelock as if it were a statement of fact.

Journalists have generally given up on seeking to understand science, but instead look for the next scientist who will say something strange so that they have a "story". This is why we have such a warped view of all sorts of scientific work - climate change, mad cow disease, obesity being good examples. The trick is to take a general position and then find extreme cases which "prove" the position. This is not scientific reporting or indeed journalism. As we lose more and more science trained journalist to be replaced by more and more journalists who have no other education but a degree in journalism (what exactly is that?), then we can expect science reporting to go very strange. This is why people like Dr James Hansen of NASA can get such a strong press coverage - the more outrageous they are (coal trains are "death trains" and coal powered power stations are "factories of death" according to Hansen - see an earlier blog post) the more likely they will be reported, all in the name of science.

Then there is the problem of science, or more accurately, sensationalism masquerading through a person who used to be scientist who has now become a polemicist. Lovelock is today's example - last week it was James Hansen and no doubt others will follow. Lovelock suggests that some 5 billion will die as a result of global warming and climate change and, because he used to be a scientist, this is then presented as some sort of scientifically based "evidence" when in fact it is total speculation (a.k.a. "bullsh*t"). Most people have got to the point when they don't know what to believe, especially when serious journalists report speculation as science. The consequence is that both science and journalism get a bad name and both get exploited by the lunatic fringe who make a living from bullsh*t.

We need some journalistic standards, like triple sourcing and fact checking, to come back into science reporting. We need scientists to stop pretending to be something they are not. We need rational, evidence based conversations. Otherwise, we will just discredit good science, good journalism and rational, evidence based dialogue.

SOURCE





CALIFORNIA CLIMATE REGULATIONS LIKELY TO SEND SOME SILICON VALLEY JOBS TO JAPAN

California regulators Thursday adopted the world's first mandatory measures to control highly potent greenhouse gases emitted by the computer manufacturing industry. The new rules would cover 85 plants, mostly in Silicon Valley. They require most computer chip makers to slash releases of sulfur hexafluoride and other fluorinated gases by more than half over the next three years. The chemicals are used in small amounts but "pose a danger to the planet because they have such a high capacity to trap atmospheric heat," said Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the Air Resources Board.

The fluorinated gases are 6,500 to 23,900 times more potent than carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas emitted by automobiles, power plants and refineries, among other sources. A single pound of sulfur hexafluoride has the same heat-trapping potential as 10 metric tons of carbon dioxide, or an automobile trip around the Earth.

The move to control the global-warming impact of the high-tech industry is part of a broad plan to slash the state's greenhouse gas emissions by about 15% by 2020. California's climate plan covers nearly every sector of the economy, including automobiles, power plants and municipal landfills. [...]

Not all companies were pleased. "The financial impact is going to be severe," Gus Ballis, a spokesman for chip maker NEC Electronics America Inc., a subsidiary of NEC Electronics Corp. in Japan, told the board. The Sacramento-area facility, one of California's largest high-tech plants, will have until 2014 to comply because it is retooling. But, Ballis warned, "We're potentially on the chopping block -- whether they are going to keep us or pull our production back to Japan."

Twenty-eight plants account for 94% of fluorinated gas emissions. Twelve already comply with the new standards. The remaining 16 would have to spend a total of $37 million to reduce their emissions, the air board said. An additional 57 facilities release such small amounts that they would only have to meet reporting requirements

More HERE





Senate may save Australia from destructive Warmist laws

Can the Senate save Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong from their global warming folly? It can, and it might, if it rejects the Government's attempts to prematurely lock Australia into a flawed carbon trading scheme. There is a growing unease in government and Opposition ranks that the Government's plan to push through its climate change legislation by the end of June is too hasty, as more and more questions are raised about its emissions trading scheme. Not least, there is the important question of its timing.

Ask yourself, do you believe that the worst global recession since the Depression, with job losses accelerating, is the time for Australia to introduce a carbon trading scheme that will squeeze growth, jobs and investment? Business certainly doesn't.

The Prime Minister and his Climate Change Minister do. The Government's white paper on its carbon pollution reduction scheme (better known as an emissions trading scheme) was released on December 15, as the world's advanced economies and many others were experiencing the sharpest quarterly contraction in economic growth in decades. It acknowledges the seriousness of the financial and economic crisis but declares this does not mean we can ignore the threat climate change poses to our long-term economic prosperity: "On the contrary, this current crisis makes it more important we secure the long-term prosperity that comes from rebuilding the low pollution economy of the future."

If you swallow this, you presumably also believe the planet faces imminent catastrophe as a result of global warming. The reality is that delaying action for a year or two isn't going to make much difference. Nothing Australia does can have much impact on the stock or flow of global greenhouse gasses, and if the time is used to improve policy we will actually be better off.

The timing issue is raised in an important report prepared in January for a Senate committee by the former head of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Brian Fisher, now at Concept Economics. Fisher reviewed Treasury modelling of the economic impact of reducing carbon emissions. "The global financial crisis and its flow-on to the real economy has altered dramatically the context in which Australia will be introducing an emissions trading scheme and taking, in all likelihood, unconditional action to reduce emissions, Fisher says. "By contrast, the Treasury modelling exercise and much of the ... scheme design has assumed, often explicitly, a continuation of strong global and domestic growth, both in the implementation phase of the ETS and in the longer term."

Fisher notes that an ETS imposes a new cost on Australian producers and consumers, and says a critical concern is the impact of this additional cost of production on Australian firms when company balance sheets have deteriorated dramatically, investment plans have been shelved and workers dismissed. In many countries, including Australia, the global financial crisis has reinforced the primacy of economic growth and jobs in national policy debates.

Steven Chu, President Barack Obama's new Secretary of Energy, told The New York Times earlier this month that reaching agreement on emissions trading legislation would be difficult in the present recession because any scheme to regulate greenhouse gas emissions would probably cause energy prices to rise and drive manufacturing jobs to countries where energy was cheaper. Obama officials concede that Congress is unlikely to pass such legislation in time for the international climate change conference in Copenhagen in December to try to agree on a new global treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

The problem is that Rudd and Wong have locked themselves in, even if Rudd the pragmatist would privately like to back off his timetable for introducing an ETS scheme, given the economic crisis. Here is where the Senate comes in. Negotiations are still going on, but one way or another a Senate committee will consider the Government's carbon pollution reduction scheme legislation and it will also be able to consider alternatives.

The opportunity has arisen because of the farce over the Government's announcement that the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics would hold an inquiry into "the choice of emissions trading as the central policy to reduce Australia's carbon pollution". Whatever Rudd's intention, this was a major miscalculation on several grounds. The terms of reference clearly suggested the need to consider alternatives to the Government's emissions trading scheme and were widely seen as the Government rethinking its commitment to this scheme. This opened a Pandora's box that the Government has been unable to close by withdrawing the inquiry reference on the risible grounds that Malcolm Turnbull was playing politics with it. What a shock.

The Government is most unlikely to meet its deadline of passing its legislation by June 30 and there is a better than even money chance that the Senate will reject the legislation. The Government will find itself facing an unholy alliance of the Greens, the Nationals and the Liberals, all opposed to the CPRS, if for different reasons.

The Greens' Christine Milne has already declared that having no scheme would be better than being locked into the CPRS, the Nationals will also vote against, and so, if Turnbull has any political nous, will the Liberals. The Government, while no doubt secretly relieved at being rescued from a trap of its own making, will then be able to blame Turnbull for climate change vandalism and threatening the survival of the planet. But while this is a risk, Turnbull has a powerful political card to play. He can legitimately accuse the Government of putting its obsession with introducing an emissions trading scheme by July 2010 ahead of Australian jobs and businesses.

With Australian unemployment rising to 7 per cent on the Government's own forecasts and quite possibly heading higher in an election year, with the impact of world recession, and the Government itself saying the No1 economic issue is jobs, Rudd is likely to be quite vulnerable. More so because he and Wong have conned Australians into believing that they can make a personal contribution to saving the planet under the Government's scheme, when they can't at all. All they are doing is making life easier for carbon-emitting businesses.

A Senate rejection of the ETS in present economic circumstances is in the national interest and it would offer the opportunity to allow an independent body - the Productivity Commission - to look at the Government's scheme without ideological blinkers on.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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Obama's $646 Billion Cap-And-Trade Green Tax

As I see it, the most important single item in President Obama's budget is his commitment to a cap-and-trade plan (to limit and reduce carbon emissions). It represents nothing less than an absolutely breath-taking attempt at reengineering the entire American economy. The White House expects the system will begin generating revenue for the government in 2012. By auctioning off carbon permits, the White expects the plan to bring some $80 billion a year between from 2012 to 2019.

1) What this is, of course, is a de facto business tax that will get passed along to workers and consumers. (Not to mention the impact on economic growth.) And not a small tax, at that. Over that same period, the White House expects regular corporate taxes to bring in some $3.8 trillion dollars. So the cap-and-trade auction impose an additional 20 percent tax or cost above that level. And remember that we already have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world.

2) Of that $80 billion, $15 billion would go toward "clean" energy investment. The rest would pay for his Making Work Pay tax credits. So what we have is, in essence, an enormous wealth transfer from job creators to consumers.

3) Let me also go back to something I wrote last summer:

Here is what William Pizer, an economist at Resources for the Future and a lead author on the most recent report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said at a symposium earlier this week here in Washington: "As an economist, I am skeptical that [dealing with climate change] is going to make money. You'll have new industries, but they'll be doing what old industries did but a higher net cost.... You'll be depleting other industries."

Of course, many economists will recognize "the green is good for growth" trap that Obama and Clinton have stumbled into. It's just a modern iteration of the famous "broken windows fallacy" where people mistake the shifting of wealth and resources for the creation of new wealth and resources.

Pizer went on to say that calls for dramatic reductions in carbon emissions-the Democrats want 80 percent, John McCain 65 percent-were also unrealistic unless there was"some event"that really galvanized public opinion. Instead, what he predicted was a modest price on carbon via a cap-and-trade plan, a greater push for efficiency, and more regulation of energy-intensive industries.

SOURCE





Carbon Audacity

By Kathleen Hartnett White

The ever-widening recession apparently will not delay the Obama Administration's plans to mandate carbon reductions. Last week, the administration's two most senior decision-makers on climate change stated that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will declare that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a pollutant endangering human health within the legal meaning of the Clean Air Act. White House climate czar Carol Browner and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced that EPA will make this "endangerment finding" to coincide with the two-year anniversary of the 2007 Supreme Court ruling driving EPA's decision.

Ms. Browner claimed that this decision would actually help the deteriorating economy by providing the legal clarity needed for investment in carbon mitigation. What happened to EPA's recent economic analysis of carbon cuts, predicting annual declines in America's Gross Domestic Product, millions of lost jobs, and 50-150 percent increases in energy prices within 10 years?

The silver lining the administration sees in exorbitant carbon mandates imposed on a recessionary economy: federal revenues from the sale of carbon allowances. Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, acknowledged that the administration's budget includes the government's sale of carbon allowances to generate billions in new federal revenues - potentially $300 billion a year according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.

President Obama has consistently advocated auction of even the initial allowances in a carbon cap and tax/trade schemes. This means a power plant would have to purchase federal approval merely to keep operating at current levels. Legislation creating this colossal carbon tax would be the biggest tax increase ever, surpassing in real dollars the 1942 law providing funds for World War II. If included in budget reconciliation bills - which cannot be filibustered - it would only require 50 votes in the U.S. Senate.

The EPA's legal endangerment finding on CO2 is key to this policy. The EPA decision would unleash the onerous regulatory scope of the Clean Air Act. Although Browner said the initial regulations would not be too broad, courts are unlikely to give EPA this leeway. Throughout the 30-year history of the Act, environmental organizations have used the courts successfully to compel EPA action. Steadily expanding air quality rules have arisen far more from court rulings and out-of-court settlements than legislation.

Recall that an endangerment finding is connected to the EPA's blueprint for economic disaster issued last July, the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to Regulate Greenhouse Gases. The Bush Administration declined to make the finding whether CO2 is or is not a harmful pollutant but agreed to issue the Notice - apparently a quid pro quo with EPA. A most unusual administrative action, the White House issued and simultaneously condemned the Notice in an accompanying memo signed by five Cabinet secretaries.

An odd preface for his own action, former EPA Administrator Steve Johnson noted that using the Clean Air Act to regulate CO2 "could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority that would have profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy and touch every household in the land."

EPA's long-expected endangerment finding is anything but bland news. Once made, the force of federal law mandates the regulation of a mind-boggling scope of human activity. The legal debate about global warming will be over at the stroke of a federal bureaucrat's pen. The Obama Administration will then have the leverage to design whatever carbon tax it prefers.

The Supreme Court ruling behind EPA's actions did not dictate that CO2 be declared a pollutant. The 5-4 ruling required that EPA merely make and reasonably justify an endangerment finding, one way or the other. The Bush Administration avoided this formal decision evidently because of irresolvable disagreement between EPA career staff and the White House.

Al Gore, the world's most celebrated global warming alarmist, repeatedly preaches that carbon cuts of the magnitude needed to "save" the planet will require a "total transformation of our economy." If the first few weeks are any indication, let there be no doubt in the Obama administration's willingness to use carbon policy as a major tool in such a mission.

SOURCE






CARBON CAPPING ALREADY KILLING CALIFORNIA JOBS

President Barack Obama reiterated his promise to impose invasive and strict carbon caps on our nation's economy last night. He failed to mention what effect they would have on our nation's economic recovery. Fortunately for the rest of the nation, but unfortunately for them, California has already adopted strict new carbon capping rules. The result? They are a jobs killer.

Only a few years ago, CalPortland planned on keeping its plant here operating as long as Mount Slover's limestone held out. ... But the company says the plant's future is now uncertain. The recession has sent cement prices plunging, lowered profits and forced CalPortland's drivers to cut back on hours. And the company says it faces new expenses: the cost of meeting California's new requirements that manufacturers take steps to curb emissions of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas linked to global warming.

State regulators have projected that retrofitting the state's 11 cement plants would cost $220 million and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 12 percent per ton of cement. But CalPortland's executives say it would cost more than that to retrofit the Colton plant alone. "We don't have enough limestone left to invest $200 million," said James A. Repman, the company's president.

The key to this story are the completely unreliable cost predictions by the state. When the left tries to cram the world's biggest carbon tax down the throats of the American public, they are going to have tons of "scientific" studies claiming to show that carbon capping will be a net gain for the economy. As California's experience shows, these studies the left puts out are worthless. The New York Times reports:

State regulators predicted in an economic analysis last fall that the climate law would create 100,000 jobs in the state and increase per-capita income by $200 annually by 2020. The upfront cost for the first five years after the law takes effect, they estimated, would be $31.4 billion, about $8.5 billion more than the savings in those years. But if carbon-control costs were spread over the lifespan of the new equipment, the $25 billion in annual costs in the year 2020 would be more than offset by $40 billion in savings....

But the projections were strongly criticized as unrealistic by the affected industries and by independent economists who reviewed the analysis - including two from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, which supports the emission reduction goals.

In one withering review, Matthew E. Kahn of the University of California, Los Angeles said the analysis unconvincingly portrayed the law as "a riskless free lunch." Another economist, Robert N. Stavins of Harvard, said the regulators were "systematically biased" in ways "that lead to potentially severe underestimates of costs."

All of the left's "green job" claims are nothing but phantom job creation. Carbon capping is a jobs killer, not a jobs creator.

SOURCE






The Green Energy Fantasy

Will a green energy industry be an engine of economic growth? Many want us to think so, including our new president. Apparently a booming green economy with millions of new jobs is just around the corner. All we need is the right mix of government "incentives." These include a huge (de facto) tax on carbon emissions imposed through a cap-and-trade regulatory scheme, as well as huge government subsidies for "renewable," carbon-free sources. The hope is that these government sticks and carrots will turn today's pitiful "green energy" industry, which produces an insignificant fraction of American energy, into a source of abundant, affordable energy that can replace today's fossil-fuel-dominated industry. This view is a fantasy -- one that could devastate America's economy. The reality is that "green energy" is at best a sophisticated make-work program.

There is a reason why less than two percent of the world's energy currently comes from "renewable" sources such as wind and solar--the very sources that are supposedly going to power the new green economy: despite billions of dollars in government subsidies, funding decades of research, they have not proven themselves to be practical sources of energy. Indeed, without government mandates forcing their adoption in most Western countries, their high cost would make them even less prevalent.

Consider that it takes about 1,000 wind turbines, occupying tens of thousands of acres, to produce as much electricity as just one medium-sized, coal-fired power plant. And that's if the wind is blowing: the intermittency of wind wreaks havoc on electricity grids, which need a stable flow of power, thus requiring expensive, redundant backup capacity or an unbuilt, unproven "smart grid."

Or consider the "promise" of solar. Two projects in development will cover 12.5 square miles of central California with solar cells in the hope of generating about 800 megawatts of power (as much as one large coal-fired plant). But that power output will only be achieved when the sun is shining brightly -- around noon on sunny days; the actual output will be less than a third that amount. And the electricity will cost more than market price, even with the life-support of federal subsidies that keeps the solar industry going. The major factor driving the project is not the promise of abundant power but California's state quota requiring 20 percent "renewable" electricity by 2010.

More than 81 percent of world energy comes from fossil fuels, and half of America's electricity is generated by burning coal. Carbon sources are literally keeping us alive. There is no evidence that they have -- or will soon have -- a viable replacement in transportation fuel, and there is only one in electricity generation, nuclear, which "green energy" advocates also oppose.

We all saw the ripple effects last summer when gas prices shot above $4 per gallon, and higher transportation costs drove up prices of everything from plane fares to vegetables. If green policies cause a permanent, and likely far greater, hike in the cost of all forms of energy, what shockwaves would that send through our already badly damaged economy? We don't want to find out.

Regardless of one's views on global warming -- and there is ample scientific evidence to reject the claim that man-made carbon emissions are causing catastrophe -- the fact is that kneecapping the fossil fuel industry while diverting tax dollars into expensive, impractical forms of energy will not be an economic boon, but an economic disaster.

We in developed countries take industrial-scale energy for granted and often fail to appreciate its crucial value to our lives -- including its indispensable role in enabling us to deal with drought, storms, temperature extremes, and other climate challenges we are told to fear by global-warming alarmists. If we want to restore economic growth and reduce our vulnerability to the elements, what we need is not "green energy" forced upon us by government coercion but real energy delivered on a free market

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Greenies target toilet paper

Americans like their toilet tissue soft: exotic confections that are silken, thick and hot-air-fluffed. The national obsession with soft paper has driven the growth of brands like Cottonelle Ultra, Quilted Northern Ultra and Charmin Ultra - which in 2008 alone increased its sales by 40 percent in some markets, according to Information Resources, Inc., a marketing research firm. But fluffiness comes at a price: millions of trees harvested in North America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of trees from rare old-growth forests in Canada. Although toilet tissue can be made at similar cost from recycled material, it is the fiber taken from standing trees that help give it that plush feel, and most large manufacturers rely on them. Customers "demand soft and comfortable," said James Malone, a spokesman for Georgia Pacific, the maker of Quilted Northern. "Recycled fiber cannot do it."

The country's soft-tissue habit - call it the Charmin effect - has not escaped the notice of environmentalists, who are increasingly making toilet tissue manufacturers the targets of campaigns. Greenpeace on Monday for the first time issued a national guide for American consumers that rates toilet tissue brands on their environmental soundness. With the recession pushing the price for recycled paper down and Americans showing more willingness to repurpose everything from clothing to tires, environmental groups want more people to switch to recycled toilet tissue. "No forest of any kind should be used to make toilet paper," said Dr. Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist and waste expert with the Natural Resource Defense Council.

In the United States, which is the largest market worldwide for toilet paper, tissue from 100 percent recycled fibers makes up less than 2 percent of sales for at-home use among conventional and premium brands. Most manufacturers use a combination of trees to make their products. According to RISI, an independent market analysis firm in Bedford, Mass., the pulp from one eucalyptus tree, a commonly used tree, produces as many as 1,000 rolls of toilet tissue. Americans use an average of 23.6 rolls per capita a year.

Other countries are far less picky about toilet tissue. In many European nations, a rough sheet of paper is deemed sufficient. Other countries are also more willing to use toilet tissue made in part or exclusively from recycled paper. In Europe and Latin America, products with recycled content make up about on average 20 percent of the at-home market, according to experts at the Kimberly Clark Corporation.

Environmental groups say that the percentage is even higher and that they want to nurture similar acceptance here. Through public events and guides to the recycled content of tissue brands, they are hoping that Americans will become as conscious of the environmental effects of their toilet tissue use as they are about light bulbs or other products.

Dr. Hershkowitz is pushing the high-profile groups he consults with, including Major League Baseball, to use only recycled toilet tissue. At the Academy Awards ceremony last Sunday, the gowns were designer originals but the toilet tissue at the Kodak Theater's restrooms was 100 percent recycled.

Environmentalists are focusing on tissue products for reasons besides the loss of trees. Turning a tree to paper requires more water than turning paper back into fiber, and many brands that use tree pulp use polluting chlorine-based bleach for greater whiteness. In addition, tissue made from recycled paper produces less waste tonnage - almost equaling its weight - that would otherwise go to a landfill.

Still, trees and tree quality remain a contentious issue. Although brands differ, 25 percent to 50 percent of the pulp used to make toilet paper in this country comes from tree farms in South America and the United States. The rest, environmental groups say, comes mostly from old, second-growth forests that serve as important absorbers of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas linked to global warming. In addition, some of the pulp comes from the last virgin North American forests, which are an irreplaceable habitat for a variety of endangered species, environmental groups say.

Greenpeace, the international conservation organization, contends that Kimberly Clark, the maker of two popular brands, Cottonelle and Scott, has gotten as much as 22 percent of its pulp from producers who cut trees in Canadian boreal forests where some trees are 200 years old. But Dave Dickson, a spokesman for Kimberly Clark, said that only 14 percent of the wood pulp used by the company came from the boreal forest and that the company contracted only with suppliers who used "certified sustainable forestry practices."

Lisa Jester, a spokeswoman for Procter & Gamble, the maker of Charmin, points out that the Forest Products Association of Canada says that no more than 0.5 percent of its forest is harvested annually. Still, even the manufacturers concede that the main reason they have not switched to recycled material is that those fibers tend to be shorter than fibers from standing trees. Long fibers can be laid out and fluffed to make softer tissue.

Jerry Baker, vice president of product and technology research for Kimberly Clark, said the company was not philosophically opposed to recycled products and used them for the "away from home" market, which includes restaurants, offices and schools. But people who buy toilet tissue for their homes - even those who identify themselves as concerned about the environment - are resistant to toilet tissue made from recycled paper.

With a global recession, however, that may be changing. In the past few months, sales of premium toilet paper have plunged 7 percent nationally, said Ali Dibadj, a senior stock analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, a financial management firm, providing an opening for makers of recycled products.

Marcal, the oldest recycled-paper maker in the country, emerged from bankruptcy under new management last year with a plan to spend $30 million on what is says will be the first national campaign to advertise a toilet tissue's environmental friendliness. Marcal's new chief executive, Tim Spring, said the company had seen intense interest in the new product from chains like Walgreens. The company will introduce the new toilet tissue in April, around Earth Day. Mr. Spring said Marcal would be able to price the new tissue below most conventional brands, in part because of the lower cost of recycled material. "Our idea is that you don't have to spend extra money to save the Earth," he said. "And people want to know what happens to the paper they recycle. This will give them closure

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Ulster Environment Minister: Climate change is a ruse to push draconian policies and high taxes

Environment Minister Sammy Wilson has claimed the Labour Government is using climate change to push through draconian policies and high taxes. Sammy Wilson, of the Democratic Unionist Party, ridiculed ideas such as a carbon credit card and other moves focusing on emissions. He clashed with Whitehall earlier this year after objecting to a climate change advert from London which mentioned carbon. He said: "I can understand why it is important that the message be gotten over by a government which has now so many policies, so many intrusive policies. "I can understand why they want to get the subliminal message over. That's the only way the Government is going to succeed in getting people to accept the draconian increases." He said these increases included taxation and challenges to people's ability to travel.

Mr Wilson was appearing before the Stormont Environment Committee which recently passed a vote of no confidence in him over the climate change adverts row. He dismissed part of it as "insidious" government propaganda and questioned the idea that turning off a light could save the world.

In 2006 then environment secretary David Miliband suggested carbon credit cards could be issued as part of a nationwide carbon rationing scheme. An annual allowance would be allocated, with the card being swiped on various items such as travel, energy or food. Mr Miliband said people who used less than their allowance could sell any surplus to those who wanted more.

Mr Wilson alleged: "Those are the kind of policies which are being put forward to get people to accept that, then you have got to persuade them that there's some drastic things coming down the road." The minister has faced criticism from environmental groups and members of the committee.

However, the Democratic Unionist Assembly member for East Antrim put in a pugilistic performance today in defending his attitude to the climate change adverts. He added: "When a minister from Westminster says it doesn't matter what the view of the devolved administrations across the UK are, we have decided on this, we are not even prepared to enter into a discussion ... I think I was probably standing up for the rights of the devolved administration."

He said he believed in improving energy efficiency because it made "common sense" to do so and dismissed any calls for him to go. "I have done the job to the best of my ability, I have done it diligently. Do I always get it right? Probably not, because I am not infallible. "If it came to votes of no confidence I can dispense with them because if I thought I was not doing my job right I would resign."

The minister alleged some of the global warming doomsayers had been the most vociferous in the past, "wanting to spray glaciers black" to ward off an ice age, despite the industrial revolution. He was involved in clashes with Ulster Unionist Assembly member David McClarty who cited the recent arrival in Britain of a Catholic bishop who questioned the truth of the Holocaust after being asked to leave Argentina. He said Mr Wilson's views were also "abhorrent" to some people here.

The minister said there was no comparison between the reality of the dead bodies of the Holocaust and the "theory" of climate change amid claims in the committee that Mr McClarty's intervention was inappropriate.

UUP committee member Roy Beggs accused him of seeking scientific backing from an American institute partly funded by the oil industry. But Mr Wilson said it was a small percentage of support and claimed many scientists expressing concern had links with environmentalists.

There have been warnings of catastrophic flooding and large areas of the planet turned into desert if the rate of global warming is not checked. Sinn Fein MLA Daithi McKay said: "I think the environmental sector has no confidence in the minister, the general public has no confidence, his Executive colleagues and even members of his own party have no confidence in him."

Mr Wilson had calculated the carbon footprint of many of his critics on the committee. He said Mr McClarty circumnavigated the world on Assembly business and added that a perfectly good train service from his East Londonderry constituency to Belfast could significantly reduce the amount of carbon he was responsible for.

Mr Wilson levelled similar points at other committee members but neglected to produce figures for his own travel. He had just stepped off a plane from Westminster, where he is MP for East Antrim. Mr McKay said Sinn Fein was doing its part to cut down on unnecessary travel by discouraging its MPs from attending.

Meanwhile, an AA survey of 15,806 drivers said more than half of drivers over-estimated their vehicle's contribution to global warming. The AA claimed this made them an "easy target" for punitive council green schemes. It said road transport accounted for approximately a fifth of emissions, industry a third, and domestic users a quarter. AA president Edmund King said: "Our research also shows that motorists do consider fuel efficiency when buying a car. However, there seems to be a 'green' bandwagon that more councils are jumping on to penalise drivers for parking charges based on their cars' CO2 emissions. "In reality, this is a green smokescreen to raise revenue which will do little to help the environment. "The AA Charitable Trust is encouraging eco-driving by offering free driver training and perhaps councils should be promoting such initiatives rather than penalising families who own larger vehicles."

Northern Ireland Green Party European election candidate Steven Agnew said the minister was defying substantial evidence and world opinion. "The minister is saying that saving energy is only an issue for the poor and that the wealthy can keep wasting energy if they can afford to. This is a foolish and dangerous suggestion. "1,918 people have signed our 'fire Sammy Wilson' petition, which indicates how dissatisfied people are with our minister of environment."

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Green bureaucrats holding Australian economy to ransom

By Michael Costa

Believe it or not, if Kevin Rudd is genuine about stimulating our economy, rather than borrowing enormous sums of money he should talk to Peter Garrett. Why? Because his misguided Environment Minister and the department he runs are holding up billions of dollars of investment.

The way Garrett's department administers the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act provides a perfect rebuttal of Rudd's recent neo-interventionist call for greater government involvement in economic development. The act gives Garrett enormous powers. It requires that he approve any developments likely to have a significant impact on things the act protects, such as world heritage sites, national heritage properties, wetlands of international importance, threatened species and ecological communities, migratory species and marine areas, as well as nuclear actions including uranium mines. If that weren't broad enough, it also requires Garrett's approval of actions that affect commonwealth land. What you need to know is that the act is at present subject to a statutory review, but we'll come back to that.

The act is the federal equivalent of a range of state acts. These overlapping pieces of state and federal environmental legislation are a nightmare for economic development. New projects are subject to dual assessment processes and separate approval. One tier of government may approve a project that then is rejected by another. This creates investment uncertainty and adds to the cost of projects, costs that then are passed on to consumers. When he was environment minister, Malcolm Turnbull streamlined processes by concluding bilateral agreements with all states, except Victoria and the ACT, to create common environmental assessment of projects. Nonetheless, project approval still requires each tier of government to sign off.

Unfortunately, with the change of government, industry players have noticed a change in attitude. Garrett's department has become more interventionist. According to property industry body Urban Taskforce, the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts' interference and slow response to requests is making it virtually impossible to meet statutory timelines. Indeed, interference from DEWHA has reached farcical proportions. Petty disputes between the department and the states over the wording of newspaper ads hold up projects worth billions of dollars. Part of the problem is that DEWHA bureaucrats prefer to talk to their state counterparts, with whom they share a common environmental ideology, rather than to state planning officials who they see as pro-development.

The Property Council of Australia says its experience with the act has been that there has been little consistency or certainty for stakeholders and that some items of national environmental significance do not have sufficient evidentiary support to justify their retention on the list. Their public counsel argues that items included on any list should be based on rigorous scientific evidence, not anecdotal evidence, and observes that staff making determinations generally do not have specialist expertise on relevant NES or planning matters, and little appreciation of economic realities.

Under Garrett the act has become the last hope for theological environmentalists who fail in their opposition to projects at the local or state level. Catering to the insatiable demands of these people is costing the economy billions of dollars when the Prime Minister is putting the nation in hock in the hope of avoiding a technical recession. Critical land release projects have been delayed by the capricious action of these unaccountable bureaucrats. In the Sydney basin, for example, where for many years the state government was reluctant to release land, the Edmondson Park land release is being held up by DEWHA.

This is despite the fact planning for this release has been under way since at least 2000 and has involved numerous consultations between the state government, developers, local councils and the community. The principal developer is Landcom, a state government agency. At issue is the so-called Cumberland Plain woodland ecological community. Green groups have used this issue to restrict urban development in western Sydney for almost a decade. The result? More costly and less affordable housing.

Under the influence of theological environmentalists the development of NSW's Hunter Valley has been a frequent victim of the department's political interventionism. A particularly notorious example of this department pandering to green groups has been its frustration of a popular tourist development on Newcastle's Nobbys Headland on the grounds that the gap between two structures had heritage significance.

The handling of a residential development at North Cooranbong in the Hunter Valley, undertaken by the Johnson Property Group, shows just how out of control Garrett's department has become. This project was approved by all relevant NSW government departments, complied with the state government's regional strategy and conservation plan and the developer had provided environmental offsets in accordance with NSW legislation. Despite this, after eight years of assessments, Garrett's department intervened at the last moment and is demanding more land be quarantined for ecological reasons, which will have the effect of increasing the price of land packages by $30,000, making the project financially unviable. The result? Hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs lost to the local economy.

But here's the catch. As if the present administration of the act weren't bad enough, there is a concerted attempt by environmentalists to use a statutory review to extend its scope and powers. Green groups want to include global warming as an assessment trigger. Their goal? Nothing less than to close down the nation's coal industry. But that's not all. This trigger is so broad it could be applied to all human activity undertaken on land. This would effectively give the department the right of veto over any future development of the Australian economy. Now that would be a recipe for recession.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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Current theories about Antarctic Climate Change

The Greenie explanation (below) for the fact that 91% of the Earth's glacial mass (Antarctica) is actually cooling is that it is just a "local" phenomenon (A big locality, though. Antarctica is 50% bigger than the USA). So what is there to say that Arctic changes are not "local" too? There is in fact plenty of reason to see Arctic changes as the product of local processes (changing ocean currents, vulcanism etc.) but you will not find much mention of that in the media. Arctic warming is always "global". Note that the acknowledgement below of Antarctic cooling completely undermines fears about sea-level rise. If 91% of earth's glacial mass is cooling, where is the meltwater going to come from?

At a time of dramatic warming and rapid sea ice decline in the Arctic, Antarctica has cooled slightly and sea ice has increased around it. Recent scientific progress in understanding how two distinct processes affect Antarctic climate reconciles these seemingly contradictory trends at the Earth's poles. In a nutshell, the difference arises from (1) a weak response to increasing greenhouse gases and (2) a cooling effect of the stratospheric ozone hole-both unique to the southern hemisphere.

That is not to say that the southern hemisphere is exempt from global warming. As in the north, the southern hemisphere as a whole has warmed over the past half century, but at a slower rate than in the north (Trenberth et al. 2007). The southern hemisphere has much less land surface and more ocean surface than the northern hemisphere; ocean surfaces warm more slowly than land because more energy is required to heat water, and because ocean mixing transports much of the heat downward away from the surface (Parkinson 2004; Levitus et al. 2005). In fact, the signal of human-induced ocean warming has been detected to a depth of at least 700 meters (Barnett et al. 2005). As in the north, southern-hemisphere warming has been greater at mid-latitudes than at the equator, but the high latitudes around Antarctica have cooled over the past four decades (Chapman and Walsh 2007; Parkinson 2006). Because Antarctica occupies only five percent of the surface area of the southern hemisphere, there is no contradiction in this relatively small region cooling as the hemisphere warms overall. Antarctica is among a minority of regions with unique local climate conditions that currently override the global warming trend, although this situation is likely to change in the future if greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise (Shindell and Schmidt 2004).

In spite of a moderate overall cooling trend, recent Antarctic climate change results from a mix of countervailing signals. A rapid net loss of sea ice occurred during the 1970s, followed by a slow gain. The geographic distribution of sea ice has changed, with the east gaining and the west losing sea ice. The gains and losses are each larger than the overall trend, indicating a high degree of variability and change in the Antarctic sea ice (Parkinson 2006). Scientists were surprised to discover recently that the land-based Antarctic ice sheet, which stores 60 percent of the earth's fresh water-the equivalent of 70 meters (228 feet) of sea level rise-has been losing slightly more ice each year than it is gaining (Shepherd and Wingham 2007). Most of the ice loss is from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the margins of which lie in the ocean (Velicogna and Wahr 2006). Warming of the ocean appears to be eroding this ice sheet at its edges (Shepherd et al. 2004; Rignot and Kanagaratnam 2006). Reaching northward from West Antarctica into the mid-latitudes, the Antarctic Peninsula has experienced the most dramatic warming in the region (Chapman and Walsh 2007; Turner et al. 2005). In a preview of the possible consequences of ice sheet erosion by the warming Southern Ocean, the Larsen B ice shelf, which was attached to the peninsula, disintegrated suddenly in February 2002; as a result, the land-based ice behind the shelf began to flow more quickly into the sea (Scambos et al. 2004). Scientists infer that widespread warming in West Antarctica could lead to many such events in the future, potentially leading to dramatic acceleration of global sea level rise (Alley et al. 2005). Clearly, the Antarctic climate is not changing monotonically in a single direction.

Still, while every other continent on Earth has experienced a clear warming trend over the past five decades (Trenberth et al. 2007), Antarctica-the fifth largest continent-has shown no clear trend (Chapman and Walsh 2007). There are several key differences between the Arctic and the Antarctic that act in concert to explain the climatic departure between the two regions. Two of the most important factors are the predictably weak warming signal in the Antarctic compared to the Arctic, and the cooling effect of the human-induced stratospheric ozone hole above Antarctica.

As predicted by climate models, the southern hemisphere has warmed less than the northern hemisphere. The warming has occurred predominantly during the winter, and even Antarctica has warmed slightly during the winter, despite its average cooling across all seasons (Chapman and Walsh 2007). Winter is the time of year that climate models show the largest response to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. So, even though the warming signal is weak, the seasonal pattern is consistent with the human-enhanced greenhouse effect. Since Antarctic winters are much colder than necessary to freeze seawater, a little wintertime warming is insufficient to induce large-scale losses of sea ice without concurrent warming during the summer. In an experiment using a climate model to simulate global sea ice change over a century as a result of increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases, antarctic sea ice decreased by only 10%, while arctic sea ice decreased by 60% (Parkinson 2004). It is not surprising, therefore, that Antarctic sea ice has not mirrored the rapid decline of arctic sea ice.

But Antarctica is cooling and antarctic sea ice is expanding-something more than regionally weak global warming is afoot. That other factor is the ozone hole in the upper atmosphere (stratosphere) above Antarctica. Over the past four decades, the southern Westerlies-a ring of wind that encircles the southern hemisphere between 30ø and 60ø latitude-have become more intense and have moved closer to the South Pole in an ever-tighter ring around Antarctica. Whenever the Westerlies intensify-regardless of the cause-Antarctica tends to cool because surface air pressure inside the ring decreases (Marshall 2006). This is called adiabatic cooling and is the same reason that the temperature drops as one climbs a mountain. Although scientists are just beginning to study the physical mechanisms by which changes in the stratosphere affect ground-level climate (Baldwin et al. 2007), observations and model results both indicate that the greater amount of stratospheric ozone depletion over the South Pole compared to mid-latitudes has caused the southern Westerlies to shift poleward and intensify (Gillett and Thompson 2003; Shindell and Schmidt 2004). Since ozone depletion is strong over Antarctica but weak over the Arctic (Solomon et al. 2007), this strong cooling effect is unique to Antarctica.

To summarize, surface warming from the greenhouse effect is weaker in the southern hemisphere than in the northern hemisphere, whereas cooling from stratospheric ozone depletion is stronger in the south than in the north. Consequently, the Arctic has warmed dramatically, even as the Antarctic has experienced a small cooling trend. Climate models reproduce this pattern when they are driven by both greenhouse gas increases and stratospheric ozone depletion (Gillett and Thompson 2003; Shindell and Schmidt 2004). Hence, the present cooling of Antarctica is consistent with the rest of the Earth's surface warming in response to rising greenhouse gas concentrations.

The stratospheric ozone layer filters out harmful ultraviolet radiation from incoming sunlight. To protect public health and natural ecosystems, an international treaty-the Montreal Protocol-is phasing out the release of ozone-depleting chemicals to the atmosphere. According to climate models that correctly simulate the current cooling trend in Antarctica, if greenhouse gases continue to rise as the ozone layer recovers in future decades, the warming effect of greenhouse gases will begin to outweigh the cooling effect of ozone depletion (Shindell and Schmidt 2004). The result would be widespread warming in Antarctica, with attendant declines in sea ice and accelerated loss of land-based ice, with the latter contributing to accelerated sea level rise.

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Scientist Tells Congress: Earth in 'CO2 Famine'

`The increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind'. `Children should not be force-fed propaganda, masquerading as science'

Award-winning Princeton University Physicist Dr. Will Happer declared man-made global warming fears "mistaken" and noted that the Earth was currently in a "CO2 famine now." Happer, who has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers, made his remarks during today's Environment and Public Works Full Committee Hearing entitled "Update on the Latest Global Warming Science."

"Many people don't realize that over geological time, we're really in a CO2 famine now. Almost never has CO2 levels been as low as it has been in the Holocene (geologic epoch) - 280 (parts per million - ppm) - that's unheard of. Most of the time [CO2 levels] have been at least 1000 (ppm) and it's been quite higher than that," Happer told the Senate Committee.

"Earth was just fine in those times," Happer added. "The oceans were fine, plants grew, animals grew fine. So it's baffling to me that we're so frightened of getting nowhere close to where we started," Happer explained. Happer also noted that "the number of [skeptical scientists] with the courage to speak out is growing" and he warned "children should not be force-fed propaganda, masquerading as science."

Happer was pressed by the Committee on whether rising CO2 fears are valid. "I don't think the laws of nature or physics and chemistry has changed in 80 million years. 80 million years ago the Earth was a very prosperous palace and there is no reason to suddenly think it will become bad now," Happer added. Happer is a professor in the Department of Physics at Princeton University and former Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy from 1990 to 1993, has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences. Happer was reportedly fired by former Vice President Al Gore in 1993 for failing to adhere to Gore's scientific views.

"I believe that the increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind," Happer told the Committee. "What about the frightening consequences of increasing levels of CO2 that we keep hearing about? In a word, they are wildly exaggerated, just as the purported benefits of prohibition were wildly exaggerated," he explained. "At least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player," he added. "But the climate is warming and CO2 is increasing. Doesn't this prove that CO2 is causing global warming through the greenhouse effect? No, the current warming period began about 1800 at the end of the little ice age, long before there was an appreciable increase of CO2. There have been similar and even larger warmings several times in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age. These earlier warmings clearly had nothing to do with the combustion of fossil fuels. The current warming also seems to be due mostly to natural causes, not to increasing levels of carbon dioxide. Over the past ten years there has been no global warming, and in fact a slight cooling. This is not at all what was predicted by the IPCC models," Happer testified.

"The existence of climate variability in the past has long been an embarrassment to those who claim that all climate change is due to man and that man can control it. When I was a schoolboy, my textbooks on earth science showed a prominent `medieval warm period' at the time the Vikings settled Greenland, followed by a vicious `little ice age' that drove them out. So I was very surprised when I first saw the celebrated `hockey stick curve,' in the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC. I could hardly believe my eyes. Both the little ice age and the Medieval Warm Period were gone, and the newly revised temperature of the world since the year 1000 had suddenly become absolutely flat until the last hundred years when it shot up like the blade on a hockey stick. This was far from an obscure detail, and the hockey stick was trumpeted around the world as evidence that the end was near. We now know that the hockey stick has nothing to do with reality but was the result of incorrect handling of proxy temperature records and incorrect statistical analysis. There really was a little ice age and there really was a medieval warm period that was as warm or warmer than today," Happer continued.

"The whole hockey-stick episode reminds me of the motto of Orwell's Ministry of Information in the novel 1984: `He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.' The IPCC has made no serious attempt to model the natural variations of the earth's temperature in the past. Whatever caused these large past variations, it was not due to people burning coal and oil. If you can't model the past, where you know the answer pretty well, how can you model the future?" he stated.

"I keep hearing about the `pollutant CO2,' or about `poisoning the atmosphere' with CO2, or about minimizing our `carbon footprint.' This brings to mind another Orwellian pronouncement that is worth pondering: `But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.' CO2 is not a pollutant and it is not a poison and we should not corrupt the English language by depriving `pollutant' and `poison' of their original meaning. Our exhaled breath contains about 4% CO2. That is 40,000 parts per million, or about 100 times the current atmospheric concentration. CO2 is absolutely essential for life on earth. Commercial greenhouse operators often use CO2 as a fertilizer to improve the health and growth rate of their plants. Plants, and our own primate ancestors evolved when the levels of atmospheric CO2 were about 1000 ppm, a level that we will probably not reach by burning fossil fuels, and far above our current level of about 380 ppm. We try to keep CO2 levels in our U.S. Navy submarines no higher than 8,000 parts per million, about 20 time current atmospheric levels. Few adverse effects are observed at even higher levels."

"I do not think there is a consensus about an impending climate crisis. I personally certainly don't believe we are facing a crisis unless we create one for ourselves, as Benjamin Rush did by bleeding his patients. Many others, wiser than I am, share my view. The number of those with the courage to speak out is growing. There may be an illusion of consensus. Like the temperance movement one hundred years ago the climate-catastrophe movement has enlisted the mass media, the leadership of scientific societies, the trustees of charitable foundations, and many other influential people to their cause. Just as editorials used to fulminate about the slippery path to hell behind the tavern door, hysterical op-ed's lecture us today about the impending end of the planet and the need to stop climate change with bold political action. Many distinguished scientific journals now have editors who further the agenda of climate-change alarmism. Research papers with scientific findings contrary to the dogma of climate calamity are rejected by reviewers, many of whom fear that their research funding will be cut if any doubt is cast on the coming climate catastrophe. Speaking of the Romans, then invading Scotland in the year 83, the great Scottish chieftain Calgacus is quoted as saying "They make a desert and call it peace." If you have the power to stifle dissent, you can indeed create the illusion of peace or consensus. The Romans have made impressive inroads into climate science. Certainly, it is a bit unnerving to read statements of Dr. James Hansen in the Congressional Record that climate skeptics are guilty of "high crimes against humanity and nature."

Even elementary school teachers and writers of children's books are enlisted to terrify our children and to promote the idea of impending climate doom. Having observed the education of many children, including my own, I am not sure how effective the effort will be. Many children seem to do just the opposite of what they are taught. Nevertheless, children should not be force-fed propaganda, masquerading as science. Many of you may know that in 2007 a British Court ruled that if Al Gore's book, "An Inconvenient Truth," was used in public schools, the children had to be told of eleven particularly troubling inaccuracies. You can easily find a list of the inaccuracies on the internet, but I will mention one. The court ruled that it was not possible to attribute hurricane Katrina to CO2. Indeed, had we taken a few of the many billions of dollars we have been spending on climate change research and propaganda and fixed the dykes and pumps around the New Orleans, most of the damage from Hurricane Katrina could have been avoided.

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GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE CHANGE, AIR POLLUTION, KYOTO PROTOCOL

Below are excerpts from Bill Steigerwalder's "Global Warming's Inconvenient Truths -- an Interview with Fred Singer"

Q: What did you think upon hearing of Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize?

A: First of all, I was really not surprised. The peace prize is a political exercise. Remember that Yasser Arafat got the peace prize for, ha, contributing to lasting peace in the Middle East. It's very interesting, the peace prize selection committee comes from the Norwegian Parliament, so they're all politicians. The government is a very left-wing government right now. I spoke about it this morning, in fact, and said that if the government changes -- if the Progress Party, which is an anti-immigration party, gains majority control -- it might give a peace prize to Pat Buchanan. It's purely political, unlike the other prizes, which are awarded by the Swedish academies and which are based on committees that know something about the subject.

Q: Have you seen Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth"?

A: Yes. I saw a slide show at a presentation, which he made in Washington. I saw the movie and I read the book. They're all the same amount of bunk. They're all very, very well presented -- very skillfully presented from a technical point of view. But the science is really shoddy.

Q: A lot of people have seen the movie but they don't really keep up on this global-warming debate, which is very complex and very nasty sometimes about which science is true and which isn't.

A: It is nasty, but it shouldn't be complex. The issue is very simple. The only really important issue is, is the warming we are experiencing now natural or is it man-made? That's really the only issue. Everything else is commentary.

Q: Now the Gore camp will say global warming is man-made and they'll point to all kinds of things to prove that.

A: And they're all wrong.

Q: Is there anything that they point to where you say, "Yes, that's true but .?"

A: Yes. There are a lot of things they point to where I say, "Yes, but.." For example, they say glaciers are melting. Yes, but. It doesn't tell you what the cause is. You see, any kind of warming, from whatever cause, will melt ice. Whether it's natural or man-made warming, the ice doesn't care. It will melt when it gets warmer. This is a trick that they do. They play this trick many times over -- showing the consequences of global warming, which really don't tell you what the cause is. And the only important question is, remember, "What is the cause? Is it natural or man-made?" If it's natural, then there is nothing we can do about it. It's unstoppable. We can't change the sun or influence volcanism or anything of that sort. We're not at that stage yet. It also means that all these schemes for controlling CO2 are useless, completely useless. It's all bunk.

Q: When you say global warming is natural, what is your chief culprit?

A: The sun. The sun. Definitely. The evidence we have shows an extremely strong correlation with solar activity. The (Earth's) temperature follows the solar activity and the correlation is very strong. The mechanism itself is still under some dispute, but we think in some way the sun influences cosmic rays, which in turn influences cloudiness.

Q: That doesn't even count the heat output of the sun, which changes over time, doesn't it?

A: Those are very small and are not enough to account for all the climate changes that we see. What is causing it is not just the heat of the sun, but emissions from the sun that we don't see -- except with satellites and spacecraft -- the so-called solar winds and magnetic fields.

Q: What about the things like the wobble of the Earth on its axis and the Earth's eccentric orbit around the Sun?

A: That's also important, but on a different time scale. For each time scale there is a particular cause. The time scale I'm talking about when I talk about direct solar influences are of the order of decades. The time scales that involve wobbles and orbits of the Earth around the sun involve times scales of 10,000 or 100,000 years.

Q: Can you give a synopsis of "Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years"?

A: Yes. Our book -- I co-authored it with Dennis Avery -- basically looks at published papers in the peer-reviewed literature by geologists and other paleo-scientists, oceanographers and so on, who have studied the climate records of the past. Every one of them shows this (roughly 1,500-year) cycle. It was first discovered in ice cores in Greenland. Then it was seen in ocean sediments in the Atlantic. And now it's been found everywhere, including in stalagmites in caves. In all kinds of climate records that you wouldn't think of that have been studied, you see this cycle. It shows warming and cooling -- that's an oscillation -- a slight warming and a slight cooling. It's not a big effect. But it could well account for the current warming. It can well account for the warming that occurred 1,000 years ago. It can well account also for what we call "The Little Ice Age," which occurred roughly 500 years ago.

Q: When people talk about the ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica growing or shrinking or melting completely, what should we know about that?

A: Well, the ice sheets of Greenland have not melted in historic time at all, even though it was much warmer 1,000 years ago and very much warmer 5,000 years ago. The ice sheets on Antarctica haven't melted for millions of years, because it's really quite cold there. There is always some melting that takes place during the summer, of course, when the sun shines directly on the ice. But in the precipitation that falls -- the rain and snow that falls -- soon turns to ice and grows the ice sheet back again.

Q: Is the quote-unquote "scientific consensus" that Al Gore and his acolytes are always speaking of growing stronger or weaker?

A: Let me put it this way: Many scientists, unfortunately, support the idea that the human influence on climate is very strong compared to natural influences. We don't. We see the evidence differently. But most scientists disagree with Gore on specifics. For instance, on sea level rise: The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control), which is the U.N.'s climate advisory body, has come out with its report and predicts a sea level rise on the order of a foot and a half per century. Al Gore has a 20-foot rise. So he's way out of line compared to the mainstream science.

Q: People like you, who think that global warming is not a crisis that demands instant or dramatic government action, are regularly accused of being tools of the oil, gas and coal industries. How do you defend yourself from that charge?

A: Ha, ha. Well, there are various ways. In the first place, I've held these views for a very long time. And secondly, I'm not a tool of the oil industry. In fact, when you think about oil -- let's take Exxon for an example -- what the global warmists are trying to do is to demonize coal. Why? Because coal emits more carbon dioxide than oil or gas. Well, if they do that -- if they prevent the use of coal -- it figures that it makes oil and gas more valuable. It drives up the price. Exxon has huge reserves of oil and gas. So, in a sense, Exxon should benefit from global-warming alarmism. I don't know if people have thought about that. It's not been commonly discussed that all these holders of oil and gas reserves benefit financially any time the global warmists prevent the use of coal.

Q: The global warming community thinks we're going to turn to wind and solar and ocean-wave energy to replace fossil fuels.

A: None of that is economic. It will produce some energy at a great cost. Put it this way: If it were economic, it would have been done by now. The only way you can do wind and solar is with large government subsidies. And you ask yourself, "Why should we all subsidize with our tax dollars something which is basically uneconomic?"

Q: Here's my McCarthy Era question: Do you now or did you ever get money or grants or whatever from energy companies?

A: Sure. I'd love to get more, but they only did it once, I think. It was unsolicited, unannounced, and I cashed the check immediately. I've been wishing for more, ha, ha, but they haven't given me any more. Now, don't forget that what they've given me amounts to a tiny fraction of 1 percent of our total cumulative budget (at SEPP.org). And don't forget that the energy companies give hundreds of millions of dollars -- which is at least 10,000 times as much as we're getting -- to researchers everywhere who are working to show that global warming exists and is human-caused.

Q: Do you have any explanation why the Al Gore camp has won the global warming argument in the mainstream media?

A: That's not really my field. I'm not sure they've won the argument in the media. I'm sure there are still many people in the media who are skeptical of Al Gore's arguments -- and they should be.

Q: Should they be skeptical of your arguments as well?

A: Some are skeptical of my arguments, yes, of course. That's because they haven't looked into it. In other words, I'm very convinced that when I talk to somebody one-on-one and show them the evidence, they will agree with me.

Q: As you've watched this global-warming debate evolve, are you optimistic that good science, honest science, will trump politics?

A: Yes, I'm optimistic because eventually it must do that. The problem is the word "eventually." In the meantime, a great deal of damage can be done to our economy as various schemes are being put forward to control CO2 emissions -- essentially to control the use of energy.

SOURCE






Japan's boffins: Global warming isn't man-made

Climate science is 'ancient astrology', claims report

Japanese scientists have made a dramatic break with the UN and Western-backed hypothesis of climate change in a new report from its Energy Commission. Three of the five researchers disagree with the UN's IPCC view that recent warming is primarily the consequence of man-made industrial emissions of greenhouse gases. Remarkably, the subtle and nuanced language typical in such reports has been set aside.

One of the five contributors compares computer climate modelling to ancient astrology. Others castigate the paucity of the US ground temperature data set used to support the hypothesis, and declare that the unambiguous warming trend from the mid-part of the 20th Century has ceased.

The report by Japan Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) is astonishing rebuke to international pressure, and a vote of confidence in Japan's native marine and astronomical research. Publicly-funded science in the West uniformly backs the hypothesis that industrial influence is primarily responsible for climate change, although fissures have appeared recently. Only one of the five top Japanese scientists commissioned here concurs with the man-made global warming hypothesis.

JSER is the academic society representing scientists from the energy and resource fields, and acts as a government advisory panel. The report appeared last month but has received curiously little attention. So The Register commissioned a translation of the document - the first to appear in the West in any form. Below you'll find some of the key findings - but first, a summary.

Summary

Three of the five leading scientists contend that recent climate change is driven by natural cycles, not human industrial activity, as political activists argue. Kanya Kusano is Program Director and Group Leader for the Earth Simulator at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science & Technology (JAMSTEC). He focuses on the immaturity of simulation work cited in support of the theory of anthropogenic climate change. Using undiplomatic language, Kusano compares them to ancient astrology. After listing many faults, and the IPCC's own conclusion that natural causes of climate are poorly understood, Kusano concludes: "[The IPCC's] conclusion that from now on atmospheric temperatures are likely to show a continuous, monotonous increase, should be perceived as an unprovable hypothesis," he writes.

Shunichi Akasofu, head of the International Arctic Research Center in Alaska, has expressed criticism of the theory before. Akasofu uses historical data to challenge the claim that very recent temperatures represent an anomaly: "We should be cautious, IPCC's theory that atmospheric temperature has risen since 2000 in correspondence with CO2 is nothing but a hypothesis. "

Akasofu calls the post-2000 warming trend hypothetical. His harshest words are reserved for advocates who give conjecture the authority of fact. "Before anyone noticed, this hypothesis has been substituted for truth... The opinion that great disaster will really happen must be broken."

More here







FORGET CLIMATE HYPE: AMERICA NEEDS CHINA

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came under attack last week for soft-pedalling human rights during her visit to China. But then the U.S. appears to be in a weak position to lecture anybody about anything right now. "[O]ur pressing on those issues," she said, "can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis."

This might appear like an all-too-typical sacrifice of principle to pragmatism, but then there is little evidence that hectoring China about human rights has ever done much good.

China is of critical importance to the U.S. for all sorts of reasons, ranging from the U.S. need for China to keep buying U.S. debt, to China's unique diplomatic position vis a vis two of the three "axes of evil," North Korea and Iran. As Harvard celebrity historian Niall Ferguson has emphasized, it is the symbiotic relationship of "Chimerica" on which the global economy now depends.

China's non-democratic status at least means that it does not have to deal with the delusions of populist "do it yourself," beggar-thy-neighbour "solutions" to the current crisis. As a nation that depends as much as Canada on international trade, it is at least as concerned about the dangers of "Buy American" policies. Nevertheless, it will continue to buy America's debt as long as it believes that that is the key to global stability. In the longer term, the global economic system badly needs the Chinese miracle to reboot, and in particular for its domestic demand to be unleashed.

We obviously do not have access to everything that was discussed by Ms. Clinton while she was in China. The Chinese were probably particularly keen to assert their claim to Taiwan. The U.S. will also have asked China to exercise its influence to restrain Iran's nuclear program, and to continue to keep North Korea off its back.

China is keen to be recognized as a major global power, and to have more say in institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the Financial Stability Forum, membership of which is clearly more indicative of status than effectiveness. But if that's what China wants, why not?

The other alleged major item on Ms. Clinton's agenda was the climate change "crisis." Certainly climate change policy is in crisis, but given the range of real issues facing the two countries plans to control the weather seem almost frivolous, particularly given that global temperatures have - contrary to all the modelling of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - cooled over the past decade.

China has every reason to love parts of the UN climate boondoggle, in particular those schemes under which it receives great gobs of laundered cash to close down facilities at little cost. But it has no intention of participating in any grand schemes to cap and trade carbon dioxide emissions. Nor should it.

Both the Obama administration and that of Stephen Harper have declared that China must participate in any successor to the disastrous Kyoto Accord. This provision may have been made with full knowledge that China would never comply. It thus provides a great excuse for the collapse of negotiations at the forthcoming mega-meeting in Copenhagen (which will inevitably be spun as indicating the urgent need for more and bigger meetings).

To achieve any significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions would involve the further decimation of already flagging economies. Even more significant, it would have absolutely no impact on the climate.

China has very major pollution problems with which it is keen to deal, but these do not arise from the emission of carbon dioxide. During her China visit, Ms. Clinton visited a natural gas-fuelled plant built by General Electric and the Chinese government which is reportedly twice as efficient as a conventional coal-fired plant. It would be intriguing to know who paid for it.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson has pointed out that money funneled to China under the UN's "Clean Development Mechanism" in fact merely serves to promote the construction of more coal-fired plants. However, these represent far more of a danger to local Chinese health than global climate. Dripping hubris, and a condemnation of capitalist history that could only have delighted diehard communists (very few of whom now exist in China), Ms. Clinton said, while touring the GE-built plant: "When we were industrializing and growing, we didn't know any better; neither did Europe . Now we're smart enough to figure out how to have the right kind of growth." Just as "we" were smart enough to figure out how to manage the money supply, promote home ownership and regulate the banking sector.

China is still a country rife with human rights abuses (at least by Western standards), but has come a long way. From an historical perspective, economic growth is the best guarantor of increasing freedom, just as increasing freedom is the best guarantor of economic growth. Unfortunately, climate change policy threatens both growth and freedom. We should cheer China's opposition to it.

SOURCE







What if there is no Man-Made Global Warming? What then?

Here are some questions every American should ask their elected officials - especially those supporting "climate change" legislation: If it is proven that climate change is not man-made, but natural, will you be relieved and excited to know that man is off the hook? Will you now help to remove all of the draconian regulations passed during the global warming hysteria, since it was all wrong headed and harmful to the economy and our way of life?

Their answers to these questions should be very illuminating as to the true agenda they seek to impose. Is their agenda really about helping to protect the environment, or is it about creating a new social and economic order, using the environment as the excuse?

If they are supporting climate change legislation because of a genuine concern for the environment, then they should now be greatly relieved to know that true science is showing more and more evidence that there is no man-made global warming, and in fact, a natural cooling period has begun.

Last year, 52 scientists authored a much hyped report issued by the UN's IPCC which said global warming was man-made and getting worse. But in the past year, more than 650 scientists from around the world have now expressed their doubts about the reports findings - 12 times the number of IPCC global warming alarmists now agree it's bunk.

"I am a skeptic.Global Warming has become a new religion," says Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever. "Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly.as a scientist I remain skeptical," says Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, formally with NASA and called "among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years." Warming fears are the "worst scientific scandal in history. When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists," said UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh. "It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don't buy into anthropogenic global warming," said U.S. Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B, Glodenberg. Top these very few quotes with the fact that 34,000 scientists have now signed a petition saying global warming is probably natural and is not man-made.

Instead, they say the science shows warming actually stopped in 1999. That the brief warming period we experienced in the past decade was completely natural, caused, in part, by storms on the sun, not CO2 emissions from SUVs. The Sun storms have ended and now, a cooling period has begun. That's it. Done. Crisis over. Man is not to blame.

Hurray! The nation should be rejoicing. No need for expensive green cars, mercury-filled light bulbs, special house building materials, alternative energy, no bird- killing windmills, no special energy taxes, no extra government oversight committees, no more global climate change conferences - and no need for a Climate Czar. Carol Browner can go back into mothballs. We can finally clean out the ten feet of fuel on the bottom of the forests and prevent the massive forest fires. And that will help us reestablish the timber industry and all the jobs that were killed. We can drill American oil and end our dependency on foreigners who hate us. In fact, that stable source of energy and its prices will help restore the Detroit auto industry and all of those jobs. Why, we don't need a stimulus package - the economy will rebound on its own. We are free. The environment is not in crisis. Rejoice! Rejoice!

That silence you hear is the news media, which refuses to report what any skeptic has to say. That silence you hear is the lack of effort on Capitol Hill to start to pull back from the climate change hysteria. That silence you hear is from the White House where President of Change, Barack Obama now has an EPA director, a Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) director and a full blown Climate Change Czar, all working to impose huge cut backs in energy use, taxes, rules and regulations that will bring an already damaged economy to its knees - all in the name of man-made Global Warming - which doesn't exist. That silence you hear is from global corporations which have bought into Al Gores lie and invested heavily in the promised green economy. In fact, their dollars are the only thing green about any of it. Their commercials are promoting the lie and changing our way of life. None of them are about to change any of these policies, simply to accommodate a few scientific facts.

In spite of all the facts to the contrary, in spite of literally thousands of real scientists joining the ranks of the skeptics, Gore just told Congress that the Global Warming crisis is even worse than predicted. Obama said "the science is settled."

Why? Because global warming never was about protecting the environment. It was the excuse to enforce global governance on the planet, by creating a new global economy based on the environment rather than on goods and services. In short, it's all about wealth redistribution. Your wealth into a green rat hole. We used to call it communism. Now we call it environmentalism. It sounds so friendly. So meaningful. So urgent. The devastation is the same.

So, go ahead. Ask your elected representatives how they would react to the fact that global warming is not real. Are they happy and relieved, or do they continue to promote the same insanity called Climate Change? Their answers will tell you their true agenda.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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