Most Significant Global Warming Tipping Point Theory Bites the Dust

A scientific study on the results of the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill has yielded some surprising results that appear to disprove fears of methane release as a global warming “tipping point” to catastrophic warming.

The theory as currently incorporated by most climate models requires “tipping points” to go from mild anthropogenic warming to catastrophic global warming. The most plausible and significant of these potential tipping points has always been the release of methane triggered by warmer temperatures:

A piece in the latest issue of Science shows that there’s a considerable amount of methane (CH4) coming from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, where it had been trapped under the permafrost. There’s as much coming out from one small section of the Arctic ocean as from all the rest of the oceans combined. This is officially Not Good.

Here’s why: methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, significantly more powerful than carbon dioxide. There are billions of tons of methane trapped under the permafrost, and if that methane starts leaking quickly, it would have a strong feedback effect—warming the atmosphere and oceans, causing more methane to leak, and on and on. The melting of methane ice (aka “methane hydrates” and “methane clathrates”) is probably the most significant global warming tipping point event out there.

Scary stuff. However, the recent BP oil spill has given scientists the chance of an “impossible experiment” where just such a release of methane has occurred. And the results are now in:

Calling the results “extremely surprising,” researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Texas A&M University report that methane gas concentrations in the Gulf of Mexico have returned to near normal levels only months after a massive release occurred following the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion.

Kessler added: “Based on our measurements from earlier in the summer and previous other measurements of methane respiration rates around the world, it appeared that (Deepwater Horizon) methane would be present in the Gulf for years to come. Instead, the methane respiration rates increased to levels higher than have ever been recorded, ultimately consuming it and prohibiting its release to the atmosphere.“

Who would have thought it? Not all the myriad teams of climate scientists, obviously, with their billions in research grants, their supercomputers and climate models. But then, a research paper that ends something along the lines of “we conclude that there is no danger, and therefore no need for further study” is not likely to lead to a grant renewal is it?

So what are the implications for this most dangerous of tipping points? The researchers say that their empirical findings (note empirical – as opposed to models on a computer) prove that similar methane releases are not a cause for concern so far as global warming is concerned:

Kessler noted: “We were glad to have the opportunity to lend our expertise to study this oil spill. But also we tried to make a little good come from this disaster and use it to learn something about how the planet functions naturally. The seafloor stores large quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, which has been suspected to be released naturally, modulating global climate. What the Deepwater Horizon incident has taught us is that releases of methane with similar characteristics will not have the capacity to influence climate.”

And so another terrifying tipping point bites the dust. Expect to read all about this in the newspapers and to hear about it on TV. Or not. Maybe just here at Hauntingthelibrary.

SOURCE (See the original for links)




Warmists: 'We can't win the game, so let's change the rules'

Willis Eschenbach’s recent guest post at Watts Up With That? on the current state of ‘Climate science’ should be made compulsory reading in every classroom, every university science department, every eco-charity, every environmental NGO and in every branch of government. They won’t like it up ‘em, that’s for sure.

What Eschenbach says is so pure and simple and obvious you’d need to be as dumb as Chris Huhne not to get it:

The theory linking man-made CO2 with dangerous global warming is dead. It has been falsified. It has run smack bang into a “null hypothesis.” It has met its Waterloo. It has bought the farm. It has gone for a Burton. It has cashed in its chips, fallen off its perch, gone south, gone west, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the Choir Invisible. Man-made Global Warming has ceased to exist.

Eschenbach wrote his post in response to a bizarre speech prepared by Dr Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), which he intended to deliver to the American Meteorological Society. Trenberth is the arch-warmist perhaps best known for writing the Climategate email which went:

"The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t".

When Trenberth’s speech was pre-published on the internet it caused something of a stir, both for the way large chunks of it had been taken almost verbatim from another scientist and for its use six times of the word “denier”.

(Thanks to some kindly advice proferred by Steve McIntyre, Trenberth has now significantly altered his speech. But not – as I incorrectly reported earlier – by changing his six uses of the word “deniers” to “sceptics”. That loaded word deniers he has kept, which gives you an idea of the man’s zealotry. And also his foolishness: a good many in his audience at the AMS, being meteorologists rather than “climate scientists” tend very much to fall into the sceptic camp).

What Eschenbach focuses on, though, is Trenberth’s absurd demand that the “null hypothesis” on AGW theory be reversed. That is, instead of having to prove AGW exists, what people should now be required to prove that it doesn’t exist. (!)

Here’s an excerpt from Eschenbach’s hilarious demolition of this nonsense:

"Gotta love the style, though, simply proclaiming by imperial fiat that his side is the winner in one of the longest-running modern scientific debates. And his only proffered “evidence” for this claim? It is the unequivocal fact that Phil Jones and Michael Mann and Caspar Amman and Gene Wahl and the other good old boys of the IPCC all agree with him. That is to say, Dr. T’s justification for reversing the null hypothesis is that the IPCC report that Dr. T helped write agrees with Dr. T. That’s recursive enough to make Ouroboros [the mythical snake that eats its tail] weep in envy".

Do read Eschenbach’s post in full. Eschenbach goes on to offer a long list of things climate ’scientists’ should do if they’re ever to be taken seriously again:

* Stop avoiding public discussion and debate of your work.

* Stop secretly moving the pea under the walnut shells.

* Enough with the scary scenarios, already.

* Speak out against scientific malfeasance whenever and wherever you see it.

* Stop re-asserting the innocence of you and your friends.

* STOP HIDING THINGS!!!

Will any of this happen? It’s about as likely, I’d say, as my winning gold in the 100 metres at the 2012 London Olympics. The reason for this is that “Climate Change” has long since abandoned any connection it had now with actual science. It is an ideology. A religion. A psychopathology.

That’s why the people on this planet now inhabit two parallel universes. On the one hand are the true believers, such as NASA’s Dr James Hansen, who believes his compatriots are “barbarians”, that US democracy is “dysfunctional” and that the best way to sort out the world’s carbon problems would be to invite some kind of global, Chinese-led eco dictatorship.

These true believers also include this eco-loon at Treehugger who appears to admire China’s no-nonsense way of meeting its five-year energy-efficiency targets: by “cutting power to industry and imposing rolling blackouts.”

According to the Treehugger this is brutal, statist, anti-human example is something we could learn from:

"It’s worth noting the difference in political culture: What do you think would have happened if the US had such an energy-reduction target to hit, but a sagging economy got in the way?
I can tell you with some certainty: We would have missed that mark".

Then, on the other side of the planet, living in a parallel universe, are the rest of us. We look at James Hansen’s quotes and think: “Hang on a second. This is the guy in charge of one of the world’s four main climate data sets. He’s paid for by the US taxpayer, supposedly to represent US interests. And he’s a scientist who’s supposed to be politically neutral. Is it just me – or has one half of the world gone totally mad?”

Or as Dr Kevin Trenberth might say if only he weren’t so committed to the wrong cause, “This AGW sham. It’s a travesty!”

UPDATE

I’ve been urged – and rightly so – to draw your attention to the equally brilliant refutation of AGW at WUWT (commissioned by the GWPF) by the mighty Dr Richard Lindzen. (H/T D Simmons)

When an issue like global warming is around for over twenty years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue. The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence, and donations are reasonably clear. So too are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of CO2 is a dream-come-true.

After all, CO2 is a product of breathing itself. Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted because it is necessary for ‘saving’ the earth. Nations have seen how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages.

But, by now, things have gone much further. The case of ENRON (a now bankrupt Texas energy firm) is illustrative in this respect. Before disintegrating in a pyrotechnic display of unscrupulous manipulation, ENRON had been one of the most intense lobbyists for Kyoto. It had hoped to become a trading firm dealing in carbon emission rights.

This was no small hope. These rights are likely to amount to over a trillion dollars, and the commissions will run into many billions. Hedge funds are actively examining the possibilities; so was the late Lehman Brothers. Goldman Sachs has lobbied extensively for the ‘cap and trade’ bill, and is well positioned to make billions. It is probably no accident that Gore, himself, is associated with such activities.

The sale of indulgences is already in full swing with organizations selling offsets to one’s carbon footprint while sometimes acknowledging that the offsets are irrelevant. The possibilities for corruption are immense.

Archer Daniels Midland (America’s largest agribusiness) has successfully lobbied for ethanol requirements for gasoline, and the resulting demand for ethanol may already be contributing to large increases in corn prices and associated hardship in the developing world (not to mention poorer car performance).

And finally, there are the numerous well-meaning individuals who have allowed propagandists to convince them that in accepting the alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue For them, their psychic welfare is at stake.

SOURCE






Greens Lie, Africans Die

Fina’s little body shook for hours with teeth-chattering chills. The next day her torment worsened, as nausea and vomiting continued even after there was nothing left in her stomach. Finally, her vomiting ebbed and chills turned to fever, drenching her body in sweat. Then more chills, fevers, nausea, convulsions, and constant, unbearable pain in every muscle, bone and joint.

She cried out, and tears mixed with sweat. But no one could help her. She had no money for doctors, medicines or a hospital room. She didn’t even have a mother or father to comfort her. All the orphanage school staff could do was caress her, pray and hope she’d get better – and wait for her to die.

And in agony that never stopped from the time the malaria first struck her down, Fina Nantume did die. So did 49 of her classmates, out of 500 students in the APEA Primary School for orphans in Kampala, Uganda, in 2005. Most of the survivors were also afflicted with malaria at least once that year. Some became permanently brain damaged. Others died in subsequent years.

Fina didn’t have to die. None of these spirited, beautiful young students had to die. None of them had to get malaria. The disease is preventable, treatable and curable.

Then why did they? Why does half the world’s population remain at risk of getting malaria? Why are some 250 million people infected annually – with 90% of the agonizing chills, fevers, nausea, brain damage and death occurring in sub-Saharan Africa?

It’s said malaria is a disease of poverty, and poor countries don’t have enough funds, doctors or medicines to treat the disease – or prevent it in the first place. True enough. But malaria is also, and much more so, a disease of callous, intransigent environmental extremism and wanton disregard for human life. A disease whose prevention is hampered, and actively thwarted, by pervasive opposition to mosquito-killing insecticides, and mosquito-repelling DDT.

Anti-pesticide activists say they support other interventions: education, “capacity building,” modern drugs and bednets. Indeed, international funding for malaria prevention and treatment has risen from perhaps $40 million in 1998 to almost $2 billion in 2010. Millions of women and children now sleep under insecticide-treated nets. Millions now get diagnosed quickly and receive decent care and medicines.

These anti-malaria programs “saved nearly 750,000 lives over the past ten years.” the World Health Organization enthusiastically asserts. “That represents an 18% reduction in child mortality, compared with 2000.” That’s wonderful news. But it’s not good enough.

We would never tolerate 18% as “good enough,” if American or European kids’ lives were at stake, or if a 70-90% reduction in disease, misery and death rates were possible. And it would be possible, if we could end the lies and obstructionism that restrict access to mosquito killers and repellants that can dramatically reduce infection rates and the need to treat a quarter-billion cases of malaria every year.

But the lies and obstruction are prevalent, and effective. Here are just a few of the most egregious. “Nets are just as good as insecticides.” Prevention should always be the first line of defense. That’s why we chlorinate drinking water and vaccinate people against measles, mumps, polio and flu. Insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs) certainly help and should be used. But they are a supplement to, not a substitute for, larvacides, insecticides and DDT that kill mosquitoes and keep them away from people.

Bednets help if they’re used regularly and properly. They don’t help if they’re torn, people are working, there are only enough nets for a family’s small children and pregnant women, or it’s too hot to sleep under one. Indoor residual spraying (IRS) eliminates behavior as a consideration; it protects everyone in the house, 24 hours a day.

“Bednets are more cost-effective than indoor spraying.” This assertion is backed by several studies, appartently financed by anti-pesticide groups and ITN manufacturers. However, the studies compare bednets with IRS using pyrethroids like ICON, instead of DDT. Pyrethroids are far more expensive and must be applied more often than DDT, which raises IRS costs significantly. The studies also fail to include all the costs associated with manufacturing and distributing the nets. Independent analyses found that nets are actually four times more expensive than spraying the inside walls of homes with DDT.

Much more important, spraying DDT once or twice a year keeps 80% of mosquitoes from entering the home, irritates those that do enter, so they leave without biting, and kills any that land. No other chemical, at any price, has these repellency and irritation features. DDT helps doctors treat more patients with often scarce ACT drugs and dramatically slash disease and death rates – often by 90% or more.

“Mosquitoes will become resistant to DDT.” This is highly unlikely. DDT use today is restricted to disease prevention, whereas pyrethroids are used extensively in agriculture and ITNs, greatly increasing the risk of resistance to these DDT “alternatives.” Once that happens both non-DDT indoor spraying and bednets will become far less effective, and malaria rates could skyrocket. In addition, there is no evidence that mosquitoes have ever become resistant to DDT’s repellency and irritation effects.

Moreover, reliance on nets and pyrethroid sprays significantly reduces prevention and increases the need for treatment. This can stretch scarce hospital, medical staff and drug resources to the breaking point. It increases the likelihood that malaria parasites will become resistant to Artemisia-based drugs, especially monotherapies. And it magnifies the pervasive and growing problem of substandard and counterfeit drugs replacing scarce supplies of reputable ACT combination therapies.

“DDT has dangerous side effects.” Greenpeace, Pesticide Action Network, Environmental Defense, International POPs Elimination Network and affiliated radical groups love to say “some researchers think” DDT and its break-down byproduct DDE “could” inhibit lactation, “may” weaken immune systems and are “associated with” low birth weights in babies. Not only is this rank speculation, but malaria definitely has all these side effects; it also causes severe brain damage, an inability to work for weeks on end, and agonizing death. Opposing DDT use on the basis of bogus side effects is infinitely worse than opposing cancer-curing chemotherapy because of the nasty and very real side effects of vincristine, asperaginase, methotrexate and other chemo drugs.

“DDT will poison the global biosphere.” Anti-pesticide zealots claim even indoor spraying with DDT will “contaminate” soils and waters for decades and “damage entire regional environmental systems.” Baloney. IRS involves small amounts of DDT on walls. The chemical and its derivatives break down. Detection does not equal destruction. Our ability to detect chemicals at the equivalent of one second in 32 years does not equate with damage to any organism, and certainly not to entire ecosystems.

There is no magic bullet. We need every weapon in our arsenal to control and eradicate this vicious disease. DDT and insecticides aren’t necessary or appropriate in every case – but when needed health officials must be able to employ them, without recrimination or retribution.

The “net” effect of these bald-faced lies is that anti-pesticide zealots are perpetuating poverty, misery, disease and death in malaria-endemic regions all over the world. Safe in offices made malaria-free by the very chemicals, technologies and prosperity they deny to others, these baby killers and their financial benefactors are violating the most basic human rights of people in poor nations: the right of access to technologies that enhance and safeguard life.

Their reign of terror must end, before they usher in a disaster of truly epidemic proportions.

SOURCE





Going broke by going green

Obama Administration energy policies are impairing our jobs, revenues, economy and health

President Obama’s healthcare program came under intense scrutiny in 2010. As we enter 2011, we need to open our eyes to what is really going on behind his green energy propaganda, as well. To some, it may not seem as desperate an issue as healthcare, but it will grow to become just as devastating to those citizens among us who are poor, because access to affordable energy affects everything we do.

The administration’s green policies are being thrust into a precarious American economy. Every “green scenario” shows raised energy costs across the board. Not only will the average person pay more for energy; many will lose their jobs as the forced transition to alternative power sources rocks the stability of current energy-producing and energy-using companies.

Skyrocketing energy prices and lost jobs also mean millions of otherwise healthy Americans are subjected to new health threats: higher air conditioning, heating, transportation and other energy bills. For those who cannot afford the increased costs, this can mean death from heat stroke and hypothermia; reduced budgets for healthy food, proper healthcare, home and car repairs, college, retirement, and charitable giving; and psychological depression that accompanies economic depression.

Land withdrawals and leasing and permitting delays don’t just lock up vast energy storehouses. They kill jobs, eliminate billions in government bonus, rent, royalty and tax revenues – and force us to spend other billions to import more oil that we could produce right here at home.

The White House agenda represents a double power grab. It usurps state, local and private sector control over energy prices and generation, and gives it to unelected Washington bureaucrats. It also seizes our reliable, affordable energy, and replaces it with expensive, intermittent power.

While many Americans are duped into thinking renewable energy sources are the ticket to a clean world, they have not looked at the downside to these energy sources. Replacing fossil fuel power with coerced renewable energy means millions of acres will be covered with turbines and solar panels, and built with billions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and rare earth metals. It means millions of acres of forest and crop land will be converted to farming for inefficient biofuels that also require vast inputs of water, pesticides, fertilizers and hydrocarbon fuels.

Moreover, wind and solar facilities work only 10-30 percent of the time, compared to 90-95 percent for coal, gas and nuclear power plants. Even worse, prolonged cold is almost invariably associated with high atmospheric pressure, and thus very little wind. On December 21, 2010 – one of the coldest days on record for Yorkshire, England (undoubtedly due to global warming) – the region’s coal, gas and nuclear power plants generated 53,000 megawatts of electricity; its wind turbines provided a measly 20 MW, or 0.04% of the total. The same high pressure, no wind scenario happens on the hottest summer days.

“Renewable” and “clean” energy projects received $30 billion in subsidies under the gargantuan stimulus bill. They got another $3 billion in the “lame duck” tax deal. Federal wind power subsidies are $6.44 per million BTUs – dozens of times what coal and natural gas receive, to generate 1/50 of the electricity that coal does. At current and foreseeable coal and gas prices, wind (and solar) simply cannot compete.

As to “green” jobs, Competitive Enterprise Institute energy analyst Chris Horner calculates that the stimulus bill’s subsidies for wind and solar mean taxpayers are billed $475,000 for each job created. Texas Comptroller Susan Combs reports that property tax breaks for wind projects in her state cost nearly $1.6 million per job. “Green energy” is simply unsustainable, environmentally and economically.

President Obama and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson may be convinced that we face a manmade climate change crisis, and unacceptable health risks from power plant and refinery emissions. However, their “climate science” is little more than a self-proving theory: no matter what happens – hotter or colder, wetter or drier, more storms or fewer – it’s “proof” of global warming.

Thousands of scientists say there is yet no real evidence that we face such a crisis, and most coal-fired power plants and refineries have already reduced their harmful emissions to the point that only the most sensitive or health-impaired would be harmed.

The problem is not runaway global warming. It is a runaway and unaccountable federal bureaucracy.

Putting the green power grab into even sharper focus are these eye-opening comments from two “socially responsible” CEOs, who have lobbied the Congress, EPA and White House intensely for cap-tax-and-trade, far tougher emission policies and still more subsidies. We thank the Wall Street Journal for bringing them to our attention.

EPA’s regulations “increase operating costs for coal-fired generators and ultimately increase the price of energy” for families and companies that need electricity, observed Exelon CEO John Rowe. “The upside for Exelon is unmistakable. Exelon’s clean [mostly nuclear] generation will continue to grow in value in a relatively short time. We are of course positioning our portfolio to capture that value.”

“Even without legislation in Congress, EPA is marching forward in terms of regulating carbon dioxide,” noted Lewis Hay, CEO of NextEra Energy, America’s largest producer of wind and solar power. “That puts us in a very good position.”

The Journal summarized the situation succinctly in a recent editorial: “The EPA is abusing environmental law to achieve policy goals that the democratic process rejected, while also engineering a transfer of wealth from the 25 states in the Midwest and South that get more than 50 percent of their electricity from coal. The industry beneficiaries [of these destructive regulations] then pretend that this agenda is nothing more than a stroll around Walden Pond, when it’s really about lining their own pockets.”

It is time to face reality. Misnamed “green energy” policies severely undermine any opportunity America may have to rebuild her economy. Perpetuating current jobless rates would be just the tip of the iceberg if we follow the path that EPA and the White House have laid in front of us.

Let your legislators know that you do not support the White House’s current green programs. We cannot afford to go broke trying to go green.

SOURCE







Is 'Cuddly Green' a Trojan Horse for 'Nasty Fascist' in our schools?

Preamble

Many good and decent people are very concerned, rightly or wrongly, with 'the environment' in general and with 'climate change' in particular. I suppose those who read this blog are mostly sceptical about climate alarmism, but I also suppose they, like me, find that most people they know are both 'good and decent' and 'alarmed about climate change attributed to humans'.

The more I study the science and the politics of climate, the less impressed I am with the leaders, and the most active and outspoken, in the scientific and in the political wings of the 'movement to alarm people about their impact on climate'. There is a lot to be dismayed about.

One immediate impact of these people is to damage industrial economies by forcing expensive and unreliable energy burdens on to them through wind, wave, and biofuels, and neglecting or discouraging the development and improvement of more economic methods such as nuclear fission, or the burning of coal and gas.

A more alarming, and longer-term, impact is surely to be expected from the deliberate frightening of children in schools with talk of doom and gloom, and of how humans and their industrial technologies are such a problem.

But there is also something there which can, or ought to, frighten adults - especially any who are familiar with the wars and revolutions in or near Europe in the 20th century. Leftwing movements in the Soviet Union and in Germany in particular led to totalitarian regimes which engaged in destructiveness on a massive and heart-rending scale. The National Socialists in Germany were particularly emphatic about going back to Nature.

(An extended essay is referenced here in anticipation of any reader puzzled by my conflation of fascism with socialism)

Part One: two essays from Germany

The following passage, with a little editing, could easily be from the pen of a modern green-activist:

'We recognise that separating humanity from nature, from the whole of life, leads to humankind’s own destruction and to the death of nations. Only through a re-integration of humanity into the whole of nature can our people be made stronger. That is the fundamental point of the biological tasks of our age. Humankind alone is no longer the focus of thought, but rather life as a whole . . . This striving toward connectedness with the totality of life, with nature itself, a nature into which we are born, this is the deepest meaning and the true essence of National Socialist thought.'

These are the words of a Nazi ideologue (1), and are quoted in the study by Peter Staudenmaier entitled: 'Fascist Ecology: The "Green Wing" of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents'. He ends with this warning:

'For all of these reasons, the slogan advanced by many contemporary Greens, "We are neither right nor left but up front," is historically naive and politically fatal. The necessary project of creating an emancipatory ecological politics demands an acute awareness and understanding of the legacy of classical ecofascism and its conceptual continuities with present-day environmental discourse.

An 'ecological' orientation alone, outside of a critical social framework, is dangerously unstable. The record of fascist ecology shows that under the right conditions such an orientation can quickly lead to barbarism.'

(1) Ernst Lehmann, Biologischer Wille. Wege und Ziele biologischer Arbeit im neuen Reich, München, 1934, pp. 10-11. Lehmann was a professor of botany who characterised National Socialism as "politically applied biology."

Part Two: tips for eco-fascists

There are many links to be found that might help you (Googling 'eco-fascism' alone provides more than 300,000), but here are some aspects captured by a new blog, called 'HauntingTheLibrary', which digs out examples of what has been said or done or otherwise written about in the past, and presents it a modern context. I frame two of its posts in the context of writing a manual for the modern eco-fascist hellbent on taking control of our lives:

* First , persuade your people there is a massive threat facing them, a great danger:

'...In 1982 Mustafa Tolba of the United Nations Environment Program excoriated the world’s governments for failing to institute “ecologically sound management” and warned them, in an “official forecast” that if they didn’t mend their ways, “…by the turn of the century, an ecological catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust…”. Mustafa Tolba went on to become Executive Director for UNEP.'

* Second, persuade them that strong government is the only answer:

' The NASA scientist at the heart of the global warming fiasco seems set to stir more controversy after declaring in an op ed piece for The South China Morning Post and a personally published follow-up that American democracy is not competent to deal with global warming, and communist China now represents the world’s “best hope”. '

There are, no doubt, many more steps required to make the manual complete, but these two seem quite enough to be getting on with. Teachers should be aware that there is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to eco-studies, nor to any pushing of the utterly unsubstantiated alarm about human influence on climate. And be aware that there are extremely sinister forces lurking in the wings, and perhaps also in the human psyche, that need to be watched very closely.

SOURCE





China-loving Greenies

November's election made it quite clear that the people of the United States do not want to radically change our society in the name of global warming. Pretty much every close House race went to the Republicans, while the Democrats won all the Senate squeakers. The difference? The House on June 26, 2009, passed a bill limiting carbon-dioxide emissions and getting into just about every aspect of our lives. The Senate did nothing of the sort.

The nation's most prominent publicly funded climatologist is officially angry about this, blaming democracy and citing the Chinese government as the "best hope" to save the world from global warming. He also wants an economic boycott of the U.S. sufficient to bend us to China's will.

NASA laboratory head James Hansen's anti-democracy rants were published while he was on a November junket in China, but they didn't get much attention until recently. On Jan. 12, the hyperprolific blogger Marc Morano put them on his Climate Depot site, and within hours, the post went viral. In a former life, Mr. Morano was chief global-warming researcher for Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican.

According to Mr. Hansen, compared to China, we are "the barbarians" with a "fossil-money- 'democracy' that now rules the roost," making it impossible to legislate effectively on climate change. Unlike us, the Chinese are enlightened, unfettered by pesky elections. Here's what he blogged on Nov. 24:

"I have the impression that Chinese leadership takes a long view, perhaps because of the long history of their culture, in contrast to the West with its short election cycles. At the same time, China has the capacity to implement policy decisions rapidly. The leaders seem to seek the best technical information and do not brand as a hoax that which is inconvenient."

Has this guy ever heard of the Gang of Four? Or the Cultural Revolution, which killed those who were inconvenient? Or the Great Leap Forward, which used the best technical information to determine that a steel mill in every backyard was a good idea?

Mr. Hansen has another idea to circumvent our democracy. Because Congress is not likely to pass any legislation making carbon-based energy prohibitively expensive, he proposed, in the South China Morning Post, that China lead a boycott of our economy:

"After agreement with other nations, e.g., the European Union, China and these nations could impose rising internal carbon fees. Existing rules of the World Trade Organization would allow collection of a rising border duty on products from all nations that do not have an equivalent internal carbon fee or tax.

"The United States then would be forced to make a choice. It could either address its fossil-fuel addiction ... or ... accept continual descent into second-rate and third-rate economic well-being."

The WTO, in fact, has not "ruled" that it can impose environmental tariffs of any kind, much less those of such magnitude that they would destroy the world's largest economy.

Mr. Hansen is just dreaming here. But that's not surprising. He has been very creative over the years.

In 1988, he reportedly told Bob Reiss, author of yet another apocalyptic screed, "The Coming Storm," that in the next 20 years, "The West Side Highway [in Manhattan] will be under water" and, "There will be more police cars" in New York because "well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up."

Well, there are more cops and less crime, and the West Side is high and dry. One out of three isn't bad for baseball, but it is horrendous for science.

In 1988, he testified in front of Congress, showing the temperature forecast for coming decades. He had three emission scenarios: One was labeled "A," which he called "business as usual." It actually underestimated the growth in greenhouse-gas emissions since then. Even with that error, which should have enhanced global warming more than he predicted, observed temperatures fell far short. He predicted 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming. This was an overestimate of more than 40 of what was observed between then and now.

How about his scenario "B," which assumes "decreasing trace gas growth rates?" That one overestimates warming by a bit less than 40 percent (37 percent, to be artificially exact). Scenario "C" is irrelevant, as it assumed massive cuts in emissions beginning in 1988.

His forecasts of climatic change for nearly the last quarter-century are fantasy, as is his notion that dictators are better than democracy and that our country should be bullied into submission.

SOURCE

***************************************

For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, 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 are mirrors of this site here and here

*****************************************