GREENIE WATCH

2012-01-29T15:55:00.003+11:30

A record of failed predictions

The acid test of any scientific theory is its ability to generate accurate predictions. David Evans shows below that Warmism has a comprehensive record of failed predictions. The Warmist predictions for the future must also therefore be expected to be wrong. Excerpt only below

There are literally thousands of feedbacks, each of which either reinforces or opposes the direct warming effect of the extra CO2. Almost every long-lived system is governed by net feedback that dampens its response to a perturbation. If a system instead reacts to a perturbation by amplifying it, the system is likely to reach a tipping point and become unstable (like the electronic squeal that erupts when a microphone gets too close to its speakers). The earth’s climate is long-lived and stable— it has never gone into runaway greenhouse, unlike Venus — which strongly suggests that the feedbacks dampen temperature perturbations such as that from extra CO2.

What the Data Says

The climate models have been essentially the same for 30 years now, maintaining roughly the same sensitivity to extra CO2 even while they got more detailed with more computer power.

How well have the climate models predicted the temperature? Does the data better support the climate models or the skeptic’s view?

Air Temperatures

One of the earliest and most important predictions was presented to the US Congress in 1988 by Dr James Hansen, the “father of global warming”:

Figure 3: Hansen’s predictions [6] to the US Congress in 1988, compared to the subsequent temperatures as measured by NASA satellites [7]

Hansen’s climate model clearly exaggerated future temperature rises. In particular, his climate model predicted that if human CO2 emissions were cut back drastically starting in 1988, such that by year 2000 the CO2 level was not rising at all, we would get his scenario C. But in reality the temperature did not even rise this much, even though our CO2 emissions strongly increased – which suggests that the climate models greatly overestimate the effect of CO2 emissions.

A more considered prediction by the climate models was made in 1990 in the IPCC’s First Assessment Report:[8]

Figure 4: Predictions of the IPCC’s First Assessment Report in 1990, compared to the subsequent temperatures as measured by NASA satellites

It’s 20 years now, and the average rate of increase in reality is below the lowest trend in the range predicted by the IPCC.

Ocean Temperatures

The oceans hold the vast bulk of the heat in the climate system. We’ve only been measuring ocean temperature properly since mid-2003, when the Argo system became operational.[9][10] In Argo, a buoy duck dives down to a depth of 2,000 meters, measures temperatures as it very slowly ascends, then radios the results back to headquarters via satellite. Over three thousand Argo buoys constantly patrol all the oceans of the world.

Figure 5: Climate model predictions [11] of ocean temperature, versus the measurements by Argo [12]. The unit of the vertical axis is 1022 Joules (about 0.01°C).

The ocean temperature has been basically flat since we started measuring it properly, and not warming as quickly as the climate models predict.

Atmospheric Hotspot

The climate models predict a particular pattern of atmospheric warming during periods of global warming; the most prominent change they predict is a warming in the tropics about 10 km up, the “hotspot”.

The hotspot is the sign of the amplification in their theory (see Figure 1). The theory says the hotspot is caused by extra evaporation, and by extra water vapor pushing the warmer wetter lower troposphere up into volume previously occupied by cool dry air. The presence of a hotspot would indicate amplification is occurring, and vice versa.

We have been measuring atmospheric temperatures with weather balloons since the 1960s. Millions of weather balloons have built up a good picture of atmospheric temperatures over the last few decades, including the warming period from the late 70’s to the late 90s. This important and pivotal data was not released publicly by the climate establishment until 2006, and then in an obscure place. [13] Here it is:

Figure 6: On the left is the data collected by millions of weather balloons. [14] On the right is what the climate models say was happening.[15] The theory (as per the climate models) is incompatible with the observations. In both diagrams the horizontal axis shows latitude, and the right vertical axis shows height in kilometers.

In reality there was no hotspot, not even a small one. So in reality there is no amplification – the amplification shown in Figure 1 does not exist.[16]

Outgoing Radiation

The climate models predict that when the surface of the earth warms, less heat is radiated from the earth into space (on a weekly or monthly time scale). This is because, according to the theory, the warmer surface causes more evaporation and thus there is more heat-trapping water vapor. This is the heat-trapping mechanism that is responsible for the assumed amplification in Figure 1.

Satellites have been measuring the radiation emitted from the earth for the last two decades. A major study has linked the changes in temperature on the earth’s surface with the changes in the outgoing radiation. Here are the results:

Figure 7: Outgoing radiation from earth (vertical axis) against sea surface temperature (horizontal), as measured by the ERBE satellites (upper left graph) and as “predicted” by 11 climate models (the other graphs).[17] Notice that the slope of the graphs for the climate models are opposite to the slope of the graph for the observed data

This shows that in reality the earth gives off more heat when its surface is warmer. This is the opposite of what the climate models predict. This shows that the climate models trap heat too aggressively, and that their assumed amplification shown in Figure 1 does not exist.

More HERE

Plimer challenges the climate scaremongers with answers to 101 questions

The second print run of Ian Plimer’s How to Get Expelled From School is now shipping, the publisher, Connor Court, told Australian Conservative. The first print run sold out before Christmas.

Professor Plimer penned the best-selling Heaven and Earth in 2009. His new book continues to examine the issues surrounding the massive climate change scare-up and brings historical perspective to the issue. Plimer is Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at The University of Melbourne and arguably Australia’s best-known geologist.

Professor Plimer says that past natural climate changes have been larger and more rapid than the worst case predictions, yet humans adapted. Is human-induced global warming the biggest financial and scientific scam in history? If it is, we will pay dearly, he says:

Life [today] is far better than 100 years ago. We eat better, live longer, have better housing and have a richer life. Environmental ideologies are attractive and form part of personal growth. But, an ideology embraced without analysis of practical aspects is vacuous. Global warming is a fad. Once there are consequences that affect a comfortable life, then another issue will be found. And embraced again with passion. What is the next scare campaign? Ocean acidification? Biodiversity?

Climate change has been with us for the 4,500 million year history of planet Earth. This is what climate does. It always changes. Changes in our lifetime may be natural.

If you have wondered if pupils, parents and the public being fed political propaganda on climate change, this book provides an opportunity to find out.

In one section of the book, Professor Plimer lists 101 simple questions to ask teachers, activists, journalists and politicians – and provides you with answers. Here’s just one of them:

If we have dangerous warming and the global temperature has increased by 0.8°C since the Little Ice Age, does this mean that the ideal temperature for life on Earth is that of the Little Ice Age?

During the Little Ice Age, people died like flies and it was really not a good time to be on Earth. Besides the cold, there were crop failures, famine, cannibalism and disease. As a child, you might have been on the menu. It was certainly not an ideal temperature then. However, a clever teacher would put you in your place and may suggest that the ideal temperature for an Eskimo is not the ideal temperature for someone living in the jungles of Borneo. You could then come back and suggest that this shows that humans can adapt to a great range of temperature so why worry about a warmer world.

The Galileo Movement is promoting the book to schoolteachers and school librarians, with an offer of a free copy. Full details of the offer are available at Connor Court.

SOURCE

"Smart" meter cock-up in Britain

Millions of green energy meters may have to be replaced because the technology is not working properly. Homes and businesses which have already installed the digital devices have had problems switching to cheap deals and are even being hit with extra fees. Many meters could have to be stripped out altogether and reinstalled with a Government-approved model.

A Daily Mail investigation has revealed how some small businesses are being charged 20p a day simply to have a smart meter while many homeowners are being asked to give readings to energy firms because the technology is not transmitting their data properly.

The latest green energy fiasco is the result of suppliers pressing ahead with installing their own smart meters before the Government has decided on a standard model.

Every home and small business is due by 2019 to get a smart device, which is designed to show people how much energy they are using by the minute, so encouraging them to cut back to save money and energy.

However, even though installing the meters does not officially begin until 2014, many energy companies, including E.ON and Npower, are already doing so. This is because they will need to replace around 30million old electricity meters and 23million gas meters by the 2019 deadline.

Energy regulator Ofgem estimates four million smart meters are likely to be installed before 2014, while British Gas confirmed it has put in 400,000 so far.

However, because details of how the smart meters will work are not expected to be announced by the Government until March, many of the current devices may not be compatible and could have to be replaced in the future.

The scheme is due to cost energy companies £11.7billion, which they plan to pass on to consumers by hiking prices. Smart meters are expected to add £6 to the average annual bill by 2015.

In a letter to suppliers, energy watchdog Ofgem said it was also concerned that suppliers may not be able to read meters installed by a rival company. This renders the new technology useless if customers want to switch deals – in effect, the smart meter would work like the old types of ‘dumb’ meters currently in homes.

A spokesman said: ‘The meters being installed at present are not built to a common technical specification. As such, when a customer changes supplier, the new supplier may not be able to utilise the advanced functionality. ‘Furthermore, if the meter is not a compliant smart meter then it will have to be replaced by the end of the rollout.’

Consumer groups have also warned the green scheme is fast becoming a costly disaster. Zoe McLeod, of Consumer Focus, said: ‘We have repeatedly raised concerns about the cost and installation of smart meters. Customers – who will ultimately foot the bill – need to be confident that they will see tangible benefits.’

Last year, Money Mail revealed concerns that energy companies would try to sell expensive products to homeowners when installing smart meters.

Consumer groups have also warned that the devices will allow suppliers to cut off energy at the ‘flick of a switch’ without even having to enter people’s homes.

SOURCE

How the Friends of the Earth lost their focus

Their critics complain that the environmental activists came to represent 'Interminable meetings, not action'.

"Good gracious” exclaimed the newly retired ambassador, surveying my bald pate. “It’s Geoff Lean, isn’t it? We last saw each other when we exposed the illegal selling of a tiger skin in 1979.”

Thursday evening was that kind of an occasion. Friends of the Earth – which I have been covering since its formation in 1970 – was, rather belatedly, celebrating its 40th anniversary in a fashionable but forbidding London nightclub, and hundreds of its former campaigners were staging noisy mini-reunions with each other and with a few long-standing outsiders, like me.

And for once the pressure group, long past its youthful best, had something to celebrate besides longevity. The day before, it had scored its first significant victory for many moons when the Appeal Court ruled illegal a Government attempt to cut the feed-in tariff for solar power before the end of a consultation on the move. And there are signs that it may be beginning to revive itself after years of decline.

But the conversations – over hairily organic canapes made from food due to go to waste – were about the past, not the future. John Denham, the former Labour cabinet minister, even bumped into the man who had given him his first job, as an energy efficiency advisor for the organisation in 1977.

He, and many others from that time, reminisced about the cramped, cluttered, two-room offices in Soho’s Poland Street, where most of FoE’s – to give it its deliberately aggressive acronym – best campaigns were born. The group burst to national attention in 1971 when Schweppes stopped making its bottles returnable: on a sunny Saturday a procession of friends took 1,500 non-returnable ones back to the company’s headquarters, under the slogan: “Don’t let them Schh... on Britain.”

The demonstration’s lightheartedness – contrasting with the often ugly confrontations of the time – caught the public imagination, and over the next weeks local groups sprang up across the country. FoE went on, within three years, to win famous victories in stopping Rio Tinto Zinc from digging a vast copper mine in the Snowdonia National Park, preventing the Scottish hamlet of Drumbuie being turned into a site for building oil rigs, and persuading the government to ban the import of whale products and leopard and tiger skins.

More important, it kick-started still-continuing debates on whaling, nuclear power, renewables, transport policy, food wastage, and energy efficiency. It introduced then-revolutionary, but now commonplace, concepts, such as that building roads rarely solves congestion because it increases traffic, or that human error is the main cause of nuclear accidents and is hard to eliminate.

At the time, it seemed that FoE’s feisty group of young campaigners would rise to the top of British public life, but none, apart from Denham, did so. My ambassador, Tim Clarke (who represented the EU in Tanzania), and its most effective executive director, Tom Burke (who became a key advisor to three consecutive Conservative environment ministers before ending up at his former adversary Rio Tinto), achieved some prominence, while another early campaigner, Amory Lovins, became an alternative energy guru in America. Most, impressively, continued to pursue their concerns in academia or other pressure groups.

David Green, who gave Denham his job, spent many years in the unglamorous business of promoting combined heat and power generation. Early wildlife campaigners Sue Clifford and Angela King set up Common Ground, which has fought to save Britain’s orchards. And Fiona Weir, perhaps its best air pollution campaigner, now runs the single parent charity Gingerbead.

Meanwhile FoE grew in size, and shrank in effectiveness. Campaigners increasingly became over-specialised and over-concerned with trying to affect government policy behind the scenes, confusing access with influence, activity with achievement. Like many other green pressure groups it became increasingly seduced by the establishment it once challenged. And despite a few big successes – such as securing the 2008 Climate Change Act – it had relatively little impact.

Last year, a former executive director, Charles Secrett, accurately accused it and other green groups of being “out of touch, ineffective and bureaucratic”, adding: “Interminable meetings, not action, are the order of most days.”

FoE’s present leadership, however, does recognise the problem, and is finally trying to tackle it, starting with a long-overdue restructuring. The campaign team is being shaken up and new issues, which concern a broader public than just environmentalists, are being taken on. One such project on energy bill increases – mainly caused by the rising cost of fossil fuels – has already started, another on saving collapsing bee populations starts in April.

“There are finally some good signs, even if they are so far more organisational than operational”, says Tom Burke. The pressure group must hope that, for it, life can begin again at 40.

SOURCE

Australia: Ethanol critics push to overturn NSW fuel rule

OPPONENTS of a state government plan to ban regular unleaded petrol from July 1 are expecting to force a debate in Parliament and increase pressure on the Premier, Barry O'Farrell, to abandon the move.

Under a convention introduced by Mr O'Farrell, a petition of 10,000 signatures will trigger a debate if it is sponsored by an MP.

The Australasian Convenience and Petroleum Marketers Association wrote to 1200 petrol station owners last month asking them to display a petition opposing the plan under which petrol stations will be forced to replace regular unleaded with an ethanol blend, E10.

About 6000 people have signed the petition since January 5, the association's general manager, Nic Moulis, said. Mr Moulis said he had already been discussing sponsorship of the debate with MPs, whom he declined to name, and was optimistic that one of them would agree.

The petition calls for an indefinite suspension of the switch to E10 and a "full independent review" of the Biofuels Act, under which the change is scheduled to occur.

The association argues the switch will be costly for service station owners due to the need to modify their petrol supply infrastructure. It says it will particularly hit those retailers who do not sell E10, many of which are in regional areas.

On Monday, leaked cabinet documents revealed the government had pushed ahead with the ban despite advice from several agencies that it would increase petrol prices and may be unconstitutional.

The same day the Herald revealed research that suggested up to 750,000 motorists would pay more than $150 a year extra as they would be forced to use premium unleaded because their cars were not compatible with E10.

As part of its campaign the petroleum marketers association is encouraging station owners to display a flyer saying: "Want to pay over 10 cents per litre more for your fuel?"

SOURCE

Wind power very disruptive in poor countries

Wind's biggest impact may be in the developing world – indeed, according to the Global Wind Energy Consortium, 2011 was the first year the developing world installed more wind power facilities than the developed world. India is now fifth in wind power production. China, the global wind leader, installed more wind power in 2009 than existed on the planet prior to 2003. Morocco recently finished its first wind farm (200 megawatts) and, with plans to grow its capacity 10-fold by 2020, expects to export electricity to Europe.

For all the hope that wind energy offers a world eager to move away from costlier, more environmentally disruptive forms of electric power production, the industry is barreling into some of the same controversies and conflicts that its predecessors in natural resource exploitation faced, particularly in the developing world.

On one hand, says Paul Veers, chief engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory: "The wind business is doing something no new electricity source has done in almost half a century – it's beginning to make an impact."

On the other hand, says Dan Kammen, a University of California, Berkeley, renewable energy scholar working on leave at the World Bank: "The conflicts that come up [with wind] are exactly the same ones that come up in basically every other land-based activity. We have done this in the past over Manifest Destiny and national security. The issue of the moment happens to be green energy, but there has been a history of this."

Towering turbines, often with blades as long as 30 yards, are installed in huge groups – wind farms – and require large tracts of land. Acquisition of that land has been a sometimes violent flash point in the new "wind rush.

The growth of wind power is driven partly by demand: China's electric power demand has doubled in just a decade, and India's peak demand is 12 percent higher than its available supply.

But also, national and international subsidies and incentives – such as carbon offsets that allow companies to invest in clean energy to "offset" carbon emissions in their dirtier businesses – have driven wind industry growth. Critics of the incentives say that every new turbine represents a blank check to pollute elsewhere. Supporters say it's a market-based solution meant to ease business into clean energy.

For Kyoto signatory nations it has meant a global rush to acquire land for wind turbines. Wind projects have been successful – notably, in Tamil Nadu, India, which experts like Ms. Shukla and Mr. Kammen cite as a model of responsiveness to local need and manageable scale.

Indeed, wind energy projects do generally inject economic benefits wherever they're built, but the development process often sparks anger, especially among poor landowners.

"What we see in many places, if not most places around the world, is very much what I would describe as the colonial model, where Europeans would go to Africa and other places and they say 'OK, we are going to develop this,' " says James Anaya, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. "And the deal that is being offered, in the end, is not a good one."

In 2001, Mr. Anaya won a landmark case in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that involved logging rights in Nicaragua and established that indigenous people have exclusive right to their lands. He says that too often a government or business acquires land through unequal negotiations, in which indigenous people aren't given all the information or options.

Negotiating any wind contract is complex. Often in the developing world, communities are poorly educated or largely illiterate and don't understand the implications of a contract. They may simply have no access to legal and technical advice and they may be powerless to negotiate. And because parcels are small, they can be destroyed by turbine construction.

Kammen, a strong supporter of wind power, says that by comparison, biofuels have a far worse record than wind development for land grabs. Rampant abuses in Tanzania, he says, recently led to a ban there on all new biofuel investment. He says that most conflicts involving wind energy deal with land occupied – but not owned – by indigenous groups, such as in the Kutch District of India, where a case pitting local herders against Indian wind giant Suzlon Energy Ltd. went to the high court there. He worries about such conflicts arising with Morocco's nomadic herders.

In 2010, the Monitor documented a case in Dhule, India, where 2,000 adivasi – or tribesmen – were forced to accept hundreds of wind turbines on their traditional lands. They'd lived on the land for generations but had dubious title. The government gave the land to Suzlon, which, in some cases, bought out owners.

However, ownership doesn't guarantee fair treatment. In Honduras a wind energy company recently forced indigenous Lenca people who did have land title to take on a wind farm, paying each farmer as little as $80 per year to lease the land. In many cases, the owners were barred from their land.

Cases like this, in which landowners are either coerced into a contract or don't understand what they are signing, are beginning to worry indigenous rights activists.

"You are talking about land that is the basis for the existence and survival of cultures – of entire social-culture dynamics that define a people," says Anaya. "You are talking about the cultural survival of these people."

Elsewhere, it's not clear what effect the wind boom is having on civil rights. China has doubled production capacity in each of the past five years. It has a history of driving people from land for hydropower, but wind experts say China's grip on information makes it hard to know if the same goes for wind projects.

Asked about the conflicts cited here, Shukla says her industry organization is unaware of any wind development projects that have caused poor landowners any strife.

In the Great Plains of the United States, many native American communities have joined a movement to direct all development on their lands. "The tribes were no longer satisfied with business as usual ... other people coming in, building some economic development project, owning it, taking the profits out, and leaving the tribe with it at the end of its life," says Robert Gough, a consultant with the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy, which represents 10 Great Plains tribes.

Many tribal communities there say they pay high electricity costs or have no electricity at all. So the council decided no wind farms will be built on tribal land unless the tribe has controlling interest.

Mr. Gough says the tribes have struggled to find partners because of these demands and because federal investment incentives are designed for businesses, not municipalities or reservations.

But communal bargaining is catching on. In southern Wyoming, 2,000 owners have pooled 2 million acres in "wind associations."

Many countries are trying to start domestic wind industries. For example, 15 years ago, foreigners built China's turbines; now Chinese corporations do it.

"At the end of the day, developing countries are energy deficient. And they do need power," says Shukla. "You want to be able to give them energy that is cleaner than what we have been providing across the world."

SOURCE

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2012-01-28T16:41:00.001+11:30

No Need to Panic About Global Warming

There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy

Editor's Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "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." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money."

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

If elected officials feel compelled to "do something" about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.

Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of "incontrovertible" evidence.

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

SOURCE

Correlating CO2 And Temperature In The Geologic Record

If we accept Warmist claims about the accuracy of temperature and CO2 proxies we get some very awkward findings about long-term trends

During the Ordovician, CO2 was more than ten times higher than at present. Global temperatures ranged between very hot and an ice age. We can state with 100% certainty that as CO2 increases, temperatures will either go up, go down, or stay the same.

SOURCE

Green Lebensraum: The Nazi Roots of Sustainable Development

By Mark Musser

Much of the European Union's green sustainable development plans are largely based on government controlled land use planning theories rooted in the lebensraum tradition. Literally, lebensraum means "living space." Lebensraum was originally developed by German geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904) and then greatly expanded under the banner of National Socialism (1933-1945).

Ratzel is the father of modern political geography which is commonly called geopolitics. He believed history was largely a natural evolutionary development of peoples looking for geographical living space. Ratzel also held that expanding borders reflected the biological health of a nation. The National Socialists adopted Ratzel's mixing of evolutionary theory, biology, and geopolitics in their own version of lebensraum.

Karl Haushofer (1869-1946), who was an early advisor to Hitler, was the link between Ratzel and National Socialism. Karl Haushofer's father was a friend of Ratzel. Karl was a member of the Thule Society before it was converted into the Nazi Party in 1920. Haushofer was also the mentor of Rudolf Hess, who was a green vegetarian mystic. Hess was Hitler's personal secretary up until 1941. Haushofer and Hess helped Hitler write Mein Kampf.

There was also a strong connection between lebensraum and the growing political empire of the Nazi SS under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler and Walther Darre. Himmler and Darre promoted a "back to the land" movement under the SS slogan of "blood and soil." In Darre's racist ideology, the economic catastrophe of the 1920's confirmed the decadence of the modern cosmopolitan city life. Darre believed that greedy foreign capitalism coupled with international Marxist class warfare divided the German race so that it was not allowed to sustain itself in the soil of its own homeland.

The hunger pangs of the 1920's were blamed on the international city, largely run by Jewish capitalists and communists. Darre and Himmler believed cosmopolitan cities arrogated themselves above the laws of life and nature. The answer to this crisis, therefore, was to get the German race out from under the yoke of dirty industrial cities and re-ruralize them "back to the land." In this way, the German race could recover its cultural and physical health based on a green socialistic agrarianism that was designed to compete against the cultural decadence of the cities.

There was not enough space in Germany itself to re-ruralize the population "back to the land." Without more living space there could be no proper marriage between German blood and soil. Additional lebensraum was required. It would therefore be sought in Eastern Europe and western Russia.

When the SS began to implement its "back to the land" campaign, it found itself in conflict with other powerful forces in Germany. However, by the mid to late 1930's the Office for Spatial Research and Space Planning was set up by the Nazi hierarchy to provide technocratic solutions on how to properly balance all the competing desires of the nation -- everything from the war economy, to industrial needs, housing, and even environmental protection. Sustainable development as a political ideal was thus pioneered under the auspices of Nazi spatial planning.

During the war, the SS had grandiose plans to use research garnered from the Office of Spatial Planning to create an eco-imperial empire in the conquered eastern territories. Inspired by SS planners Konrad Meyer (1901-1973), Emil Meynen (1902-1994), and Walter Christaller (1893-1969) , sustainable development as an applied political policy was to be implemented on the eastern front behind advancing German lines. Shockingly, under the SS, Ratzel's lebensraum came to mean living space for sustainable development.

The SS planned to use industry in the conquered eastern territories along with slave labor to pay for and build master planned communities. The eastern territories would also be filled with socialistic green garden villages and farms, together with national parks, forests, and many cockamamie renewable energy projects. Behind enemy lines, the living space of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia would be cleansed of unnatural Jews and Slavs who were unworthy of the soil they lived on. In particular, planning schemes based on Walter Christaller's Central Place Theory would be applied on a scale unachievable in Germany thanks to the fact that the Nazis were first going to cleanse the landscape. Christaller advocated a hierarchy of towns and villages wrapped around a central city that was to maximize economic and administrative efficiency for state planners.

Toward the end of the war, Nazi spatial and environmental planners destroyed massive quantities of records. They then re-organized themselves into the 'Academy for Area Research and Regional Planning" and the 'Institute for Spatial Planning.' In 1946, Karl Haushofer committed suicide. Konrad Meyer survived Nuremberg and later continued his work in spatial planning and sustainable development. Walter Christaller joined the Communist Party in 1951. His Central Place Theory is sometimes even considered a model for sustainable development and the so-called Green Economy. Emil Meynen, a leading geographer of the Third Reich, became an environmental spatial theorist after the war. He was also present at the infamous Wannsee Conference where the destruction of the Jews was discussed from a technocratic point of view.

After the war, social engineering based on Aryan biology was replaced with a blander form of socialism, but its ties to environmentalism and sustainable development continued unabated and grew exponentially in the decades to come. Environmental planners just exchanged brown paint with red paint -- all the while keeping the interior green. German spatial planners played an early critical role in the development of the EU's sustainable development policies.

Today, the EU is fond of using the concept of "territorial cohesion" and "supra-nationalism" in the place of lebensraum. Its stress on multiculturalism has converted the old Nazi nationalism into an EU Super State. Instead of promoting German supremacy, the EU is now promoting European supremacy. In fact, the EU is using environmental social engineering, i.e., sustainable development, to hasten the evaporation of national borders.

Yet in spite of this multicultural super-state emphasis, Germany has still become the heart of the EU from both a financial and an environmental point of view. EU's expansion has thus only served to strengthen Germany's influence, not weaken it. The global warming apocalypse was first popularized by Austrian Nazi Guenther Schwab in the 1960's, but it was the German green movement in the 1980's that helped convert the theory into the worldwide political issue it has since become.

Today, the EU even has sustainable development plans and ideas for the western Russian living space. Ironically, 65 years after the end of World War II, lebensraum has returned to the gates of Moscow, this time without panzers. The EU is also in North Africa. It wants to cover the Sahara with solar panels for the sake of renewable energy.

Lebensraum is not dead. Ratzel's geopolitics is still in vogue today under the guise of the EU's sustainable development plans. While the Nazi past has been completely ignored and willfully forgotten in the development of the EU's environmental sustainability policies, the geopolitical epicenter of the green movement has been and continues to be: Germany.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

Another green company bites the dust

Another green company on the government dole, Ener1, has gone bankrupt

ALG President Bill Wilson responded to the bankruptcy of Ener1 stating, “As early as 2008, an investment advisory firm Citron Research had issued dire warnings about Ener1, saying the company was ‘just a corporate shell company with a long history of failed businesses based on exaggerated promises’, citing the company’s long and shady history. When it was proposed that the ‘stimulus’ be used to give $118.5 million to Ener1, Americans for Limited Government worked with media to help expose this bogus firm for what it was. Predictably, it turns out those warnings were correct, unfortunately for taxpayers.”

This company had boondoggle written all over it from the very beggining.

In a series of articles in the Washington Times, Ener1′s connections to Vladimir Putin were exposed causing ALG’s Bill Wilson to comment in emails to the media, “If Ener 1 is even being considered for an Department of Energy loan or grant someone needs to lose their job or worse. Congress needs to look into this outrage immediately and put a stop to it now. It is as if we were subcontracting Los Alamos to the Iranians”

These loans from Department of Energy to green companies never seem to pay off. Here are some of the facts. In July of 2008 Citron research came to the following conclusion on Ener 1 .

"It is Citron’s opinion that Ener1 is just a corporate shell company with a long history of failed businesses based on exaggerated promises. Management has tried everything from video games to visualization software to set top boxes for television. All of these businesses have failed — miniscule revenues and never a penny of profit delivered to investors. They purchased Delphi’s years-old attempt to get a lithium battery business going, and got a sublease on a manufacturing plant in Indianapolis. Since then we haven’t seen a single sign of a viable business.”

As of 3/23/2009 Ener 1 is in line for a $480,000,000. Loan from the Department of Energy and is applying for part of the $2 billion grant that is part of the Advanced Battery Manufacturing Initiative in the stimulus plan.

Now it gets interesting. As of late February(2009), some 62% of Ener1’s outstanding shares were owned by privately held Ener1 Group. In turn, 66% of Ener1 Group — a recent participant in a $5.7 million loan to Think Global, which is trying to emerge from bankruptcy — is held by Bzinfin, a British Virgin Islands company whose “indirect beneficial owner” is Boris Zingarevich, a Russian businessman. Zingarevich had close ties to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

SOURCE

Why Brits are no longer so keen on being green: Number of people willing to change the way they live falls by 10%

Public concern about climate change is on the wane

The number of people willing to alter the way they live in the hope of making a difference to global warming fell by around 10 per cent last year. There was also a sharp drop in those who regarded themselves as ‘fairly concerned’ about climate change.

The figures, released by the Government yesterday, suggest that doubts about global warming have been growing since the summer of 2009. This was before the damage inflicted on the cause by the ‘Climategate’ scandal later that year, in which leading scientists were accused of manipulating data to support the case of man-made climate change.

The credibility of global warming and concern about halting it appears to have been affected by the succession of three cold winters between 2008 and 2010.

More recently, doubts about the efficiency of wind turbines and the high costs of the Coalition’s drive for renewable energy have seen enthusiasm for the cause dwindling.

Fewer than two thirds now say they are at least ‘fairly concerned’ about climate change or that they are prepared to do something about it, figures published by the Department for Transport said.

According to the research, carried out by the Office for National Statistics, the share of the population who were at least fairly convinced that climate change was happening has dropped from 86 per cent in 2006 to 76 per cent last summer.

Over the same period, those who felt fairly concerned fell from 81 per cent to 65 per cent, and numbers willing to change their behaviour went down from 77 per cent to 65 per cent.

Fewer people said they were willing to use public transport or reduce how often they used their car, and only one in five said they would cut back on air travel. Most opposed higher taxes on air travel and petrol.

The findings came as the Government published a risk assessment warning of thousands of deaths because of climate change in coming decades. The report from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said Britain risks ‘sleepwalking into disaster’.

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman said: ‘It shows what life could be like if we stopped our preparations now, and the consequences such a decision would mean for our economic stability.’

But Dr Benny Peiser, of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: ‘Climate change is dropping off the political agenda. The person in the pub no longer cares. It is bottom of their list of priorities.’

SOURCE

Spain Suspends Subsidies for New Renewable Energy Power Plants

Spain halted subsidies for renewable energy projects to help curb its budget deficit and rein in power-system borrowings backed by the state that reached 24 billion euros ($31 billion) at the end of 2011.

“What is today an energy problem could become a financial problem,” Industry Minister Jose Manuel Soria said in Madrid. The government passed a decree today stopping subsidies for new wind, solar, co-generation or waste incineration plants.

The system’s debts were racked up as revenue from state- controlled prices failed to cover the cost of delivering power. Costs have swollen in the past five years because of an increase in regulated payments for the power grid, support for Spanish coal mines and subsidies for renewable energy plants.

“It’s clear they have to make major cuts,” said Francisco Salvador, a strategist at FGA/MG Valores in Madrid. “The government has already ruled out a significant increase in prices, so the cuts will fall in many places and the spotlight is on renewables, but not just on renewables.”

Renewables companies fell on the Spanish action. Vestas Wind Systems A/S (VWS), the biggest wind-turbine maker, slid as much as 2.9 percent in Copenhagen. Abengoa SA, a Spanish engineering firm specializing in solar mirrors, dropped as much as 2.2 percent in Madrid and Iberdrola SA (IBE), the biggest renewable energy producer based in Bilbao, declined as much as 1.5 percent.

First Step

Spain’s decision is a “first step” to rein in debts, and officials are working on a broader package of measures, Soria said. The nation isn’t planning a levy on hydropower or nuclear plants, nor will it take on power-system liabilities, he said.

The Spanish action follows Germany’s announcement last week that it would phase out support for solar panels by 2017 and the U.K.’s legal battle to reduce its subsidies for the industry.

Spain was an early mover in developing renewables plants, and support for wind energy helped Iberdrola become the world’s biggest producer of clean power, with plants in the U.S. and Brazil. The industry sustains about 110,000 Spanish jobs, according to the Renewable Energy Producers Association.

The government is wrestling with competing priorities as it struggles to convince investors it can meet a target to cut the budget deficit to 4.4 percent of gross domestic product this year, from 8 percent last year, while trying to create jobs in a country where 23 percent of workers are unemployed.
Horse Bolted

“This is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted,” said Peter Sweatman, chief executive officer of consultant Climate Strategy. “The risk is that Spanish firms that are recognized global leaders in renewable energy feel their position undermined by lack of domestic support.”

Generating capacity is about twice Spain’s peak demand following a boom in investment in solar panel installations and combined-cycle gas-fired plants, while the country is ahead of its targets for clean power production, Soria said. The suspension won’t affect operating plants or projects that have already been approved for subsidies by the government, he said.

“It’s a real positive for the developers, the owners of assets, because it removes the risk of retroactive cuts,” said Sean McLoughlin, a renewable energy analyst at HSBC Plc. “The government could certainly have done that again when you think of how much it’s costing them but have decided not to. This suggests that the government is listening to the industry.

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, 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

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2012-01-27T17:28:00.002+11:30

Scrap carbon tax say British politicians who believe it will have 'devastating effect' on industry

A carbon tax being introduced next year will increase household electricity bills and could have a ‘devastating effect’ on industry, MPs say. In a damning report they claim the ‘carbon price floor’ will saddle businesses with higher green penalties than the rest of Europe while failing to deliver any environmental benefits.

The Energy and Climate Change Committee urged the Treasury to scrap the plan and warned against revenue-raising exercises ‘disguised as a green policy’.

Chancellor George Osborne announced the levy on businesses for every tonne of carbon they emit last March. Starting at £16, it will almost double to £30 by 2020 for users of coal.

By 'going it alone' on setting a minimum levy, the UK faces the prospect of industry relocating to elsewhere in Europe, MPs warned.

Higher carbon costs also mean electricity prices will increase as the UK ends up effectively subsidising other European states, they added.

Committee chairman Tim Yeo said: 'The Chancellor was right to say we won't save the planet by putting the UK out of business. 'Ironically, however, it is the Treasury's decision to set a Carbon Price Floor that could result in industry and electricity production relocating to other EU countries. 'Unless the price of carbon is increased at an EU-wide level, taking action on our own will have no overall effect on emissions other than to out-source them.

'A revenue raising exercise disguised as a green policy won't help anybody, the price of carbon has to be increased at an EU level to kick-start investment in clean energy.'

Energy generators and heavy industry, such as steel and ceramics, face an 'exorbitant' top-up tax of up to £25 per tonne of CO2 under current plans, according to the report. Although UK emissions will be reduced under the Treasury plans, overall levels across Europe may not, the report said.

It calls for EU targets to be toughened up to deliver a 30% emissions reduction target by 2020 and an overall 60-80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Mr Yeo added: 'Instead of going it alone, the Chancellor would be better-off working with other European Governments to make the EU Emissions Trading System more effective as a whole. 'Before phase three starts next year, EU countries must set aside pollution permits to end the glut that has caused the price of carbon to collapse.'

SOURCE

New scholarly book on Bangladesh and global warming

Because much of Bangladesh is close to sea-level, it is often cited by Warmists as threatened by inundation caused by global warming. It is refreshing therefore to have a book which looks closely at the actual Bangladesh situation (Hint: Bangladesh is actually gaining land). Some particulars of the book:

1. Title of the book: Climate Change: Issues and Perspectives for Bangladesh

2. Co-Editors: Rafique Ahmed, Ph. D, Professor, Geography and Earth Science, University of Wisconsin- La Crosse, La Crosse, WI, USA 54601 and ; S. Dara Shamsuddin, Former Professor, Geography and Environment, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh

3. Publisher: Shahitya Prakash, Paltan Tower 87, Purana Paltan Line Dhaka 1000 Bangladesh Phone: (880-2)-935-5058; and (880-2)-935-1657 E-Mail: shahityap@gmail.com Proprietor: (Mr.) Mofidul Hoque

4. Number of Pages (95 plus xvi pages): 111 pages. 5. Book Cover: Hard Cover (shown on the last page of this document)

6. ISBN: 984-70124-0133-0

7. Retail Price: Bangladesh Taka 500/-.

8. Number of Chapters: Eight Chapters Out of the eight chapters, three are contributed by US authors, one by an Indian author, and four by Bangladeshi authors. The first 4 chapters deal with the greenhouse effect, global warming, climate change; uncertainty in climate science & IPCC's role; Global Climate Modeling; and sea level change - with special reference to Bangladesh.

One chapter deals with the major global and national issues & concerns other than global warming/climate change. The other chapters are specific to the climatic and environmental issues in Bangladesh. (Please see the Table of Contents at the end of this document).

9. Authors’ Credentials (A) Five US and Indian Authors Ahmed, Rafique, Ph. D. (Co-Editor): Professor, Geography and Earth Science, University of Wisconsin – La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA; Specialization: Meteorology and Climatology. Wrote an undergraduate climatology textbook in Bangla for the universities and colleges in Bangladesh and West Bengal (India), Revised 4th Edition, 2010, published by Gyankosh Prokashani, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Published many papers in professional journals on various climatological aspects on Bangladesh. Professional Membership: American Meteorological Society (AMS), Association of American Geographer (AAG), Bangladesh National Geographical Association (BNGA), and Institute of Indian Geographers (IIG).

Christy, John R., Ph. D. Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, and Director of Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville; Alabama State Climatologist; IPCC Lead Author: 2001 TAR (Third Assessment Report); Contributor: 1992 IPCC Supplement; Contributor: 1994 Radiative Forcing of Climate Change; Key Contributor: 1995 SAR (IPCC Second Assessment Report); Contributing Author: IPCC 2007 Report (AR4) - Working Groups I and II; NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement; American Meteorological Society Special Award for satellite observations; Fellow, American Meteorological Society; testified to the US House (1996, 1998, 2003, 2006 (2), 2007, 2009) and Senate (1997, 2000, 2001 (2), 2003, 2007) Committees regarding lack of evidence for catastrophic climate change caused by humans.

Legates, David R., Ph.D. Professor, Geography and Physical Ocean Science and Engineering, University of Delaware, Delaware, USA; Climate Scientist and hydroclimatologist; Editor, Physical Geography journal (Climatology Section); Delaware State Climatologist; Director, Delaware Environmental Observing System, testified twice to the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works against an anthropogenic origin of global climate change: March 13, 2002 and July 29, 2003.

Lohar, Debashish, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Atmospheric Science Research Group of the Department of Physics, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India; Recipient of the V. Bhavanarayana Award of the Indian Meteorological Society; Best paper award recipient of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing; Chief Consultant, Express Weather; Life-Member of Indian Meteorological Society (IMS); and served as the Secretary of IMS - Kolkata Chapter during 2007-09.

Soon, Willie Wei-Hock, Ph. D. Astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA; Climate Scientist; worked on the relationship between Arctic surface temperature changes and solar variability; testified to the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works against anthropogenic origin of global warming, July 29, 2003. He is also the authors of “The Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection” (World Scientific Publishing, 2004; with Steven H. Yaskell) and “Introduction to Astronomy— Studying Astronomy Without the Luxury of Telescope” (University of Nigeria Press, 2004 with Pius N. Okeke).

Global Cooling Coming? Archibald uses solar and surface data to predict 4.9°C fall (!)

A fact-based alternative to the British Met Office model-run discussed yesterday

David Archibald, polymath, makes a bold prediction that temperatures are about to dive sharply (in the decadal sense). He took the forgotten correlation that as solar cycles lengthen and weaken, the world gets cooler. He refined it into a predictive tool, tested it and published in 2007. His paper has been expanded on recently by Prof Solheim in Norway, who predicts a 1.5°C drop in Central Norway over the next ten years.

Our knowledge of they solar dynamo is improving, and David adds the predicted solar activity ’til 2040 to the analysis. Normal solar cycles are 11 years long, but the current one (cycle 24) is shaping up to be 17 years (unusually long), and using historical data from the US, David predicts a 2.1°C decline over Solar Cycle 24 followed by a further 2.8°C over Solar Cycle 25. That adds up to a whopping 4.9°C fall in temperate latitudes over the next 20 years. We can only hope he’s wrong. As David says ” The center of the Corn Belt, now in Iowa, will move south to Kansas.”

He also predicts continuing drought in Africa for another 14 years, with droughts likely in South America too.

If he’s right, it’s awful and excellent at the same time. Cold hurts, but wouldn’t it be something if we understood our climate well enough to plan ahead?

Much more HERE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)

Unhappy windmill owners in Shetland

Serious and widespread breakdowns -- and the maker has gone broke

A solution may be on the horizon for owners of Proven P35-2 wind turbines in Shetland nearly four months after they were ordered to shut down their machines following catastrophic weld failures elsewhere in Scotland.

The Microgeneration Certification Scheme, the body that decides which small renewable devices qualify for government power generation subsidies, said this week a way forward had been identified for the flawed £60,000 machines and agreement on the solution should be reached within weeks.

The MCS said: “Once the agreed solution has been finalised MCS will instruct the installation companies to advise their customers of the remedial work that will be required to restart the turbines.”

The long-awaited breakthrough for P35-2 owners, including the handful in Shetland, follows a meeting last week between the MCS’ certification body and the various parties involved with the turbines.

However with hundreds of the machines in existence in Scotland and elsewhere it remains to be seen when a turbine installer will be in a position to attend to the out-of-action machines in Shetland.

The 12.1 kiloWatt P35-2 was suspended from MCS certification on 23rd September after three spectacular main shaft failures. The drastic technical problem brought down Proven Energy itself followed by two of its main installers, Icon Energy and Shetland Wind Power. Proven was later bought by the large Irish firm Kingspan but it washed its hands of the old company’s turbine customers.

Shetland Wind Power’s customer base and some other assets were bought by VG Energy, an Ayrshire-based turbine installer which has been working on a solution to the P35-2 shaft problem.

A new company, still called Shetland Wind Power, has been set up. VG Energy’s founders, farmers Jim Paterson and Stephen Hamilton, also formed two other new companies called Shetland Turbines and Shetland Renewables. VG has ignored several approaches from The Shetland Times for information to provide to its readers.

Until the P35-2 solution is agreed and applied to the turbines the MCS has advised that the brake should be kept on to keep them out of action, although some have been running from time to time since the shutdown was ordered last year.

The news of movement on the P35-2 problem was welcomed by SNP Highlands and Islands MSP Jean Urquhart this week. She said: “I am delighted that progress is now being made and that these machines should soon be working again. “There are many of these turbines in Shetland and a number of owners have contacted me regarding the difficulties they are facing.”

Each owner has been losing potentially thousands of pounds a month from not being able to claim subsidy, enjoy free electricity or sell excess power into the Shetland grid.

As well as problems with the rotor heads there now seems to be question marks over the towers that the P35-2 turbines are built on. A machine owned by Norman and Evelyn Leask at Snarness, near West Burrafirth, suffered a catastrophic failure of its tower during a north-westerly storm at the end of last year. The steel tower broke in two, causing the turbine to crash to the ground.

Another leading turbine company, Evoco, is having to beef-up its 10kW turbine designs after suffering machine failures during gales in Yorkshire. There has been a problem with a rotational bearing which causes blades to snap off. Owners were told to shut them down and Evoco pledged to compensate them for lost feed-in tariff subsidy.

SOURCE

Map-makers admit Greenland gaffe

That poisonous Greenie influence is pervasive. Truth is the least of their concerns

The 2011 version of the map, left, incorrectly showed ice-loss

IT APPEARED to provide incontrovertible proof that global warming was accelerating faster than even the most doom-laden scientists had predicted.

There was considerable alarm when the word’s most authoritative atlas printed a map which showed that Greenland was rapidly turning green.

However, experts from around the globe pointed out that the cataclysmic chart had no scientific support and was contradicted by all of the most recent satellite images.

Now the Scottish map-makers responsible for the disappearance of 115,830 square miles of polar ice have admitted publicly they were wrong. As an act of contrition, The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World cartographers have produced a new map which restores Greenland’s ice cover.

Jethro Lennox, senior publishing editor of the £150 tome, insisted lessons would be learned from the episode, which generated headlines around the globe. The Glasgow-based map-maker said: “We’re very disappointed at the way it happened. “But we are now looking to draw a line under the Greenland controversy and move on.”

The latest atlas, which was published in September, showed a reduction in ice cover compared with the previous edition from four years ago.

Accompanying publicity material declared the change represented “concrete evidence” of the effects of global warming, stating: “For the first time the new edition has had to erase 15 per cent of Greenland’s permanent ice cover – turning an area the size of the UK and Ireland ‘green’ and ice-free.”

Publishers HarperCollins originally stood by the accuracy of the map but have since admitted to the mistake after the blunder was exposed by scientists.

Mr Lennox said: “After publication of the 13th edition of The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World it became apparent that we had not represented the permanent ice cover in Greenland fully and clearly. “In failing to do that, this section of the map did not meet the usual high standards of accuracy and reliability that the atlas strives to uphold. “To correct this, we decided to produce a new, more detailed map using the latest information available.” A new, corrected map of Greenland will be inserted into all remaining copies.

The updated chart was put together after the cartographers consulted experts from the University of Arizona, the University of Bristol, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland and the Byrd Polar Research Centre.

The editor claimed the newly established links would prevent errors in future. He said: “We have made some valuable contacts and will be keen to work with them again in the future.”

SOURCE

Global warming down but not out

Campuses teem with “post-docs” – college bums with PhDs for whom there are no jobs. Given adequate finances, marshalling a choir of these sad creatures to chant whatever hymn is not difficult.

What is difficult is forecasting the fortunes of the Climate Change campaign. International climate negotiations gridlocked years ago. There is clear evidence of an orderly standing down by enviro-activists and their media allies. The number of climate alarmist stories appearing in the media is diminishing. Climate Change no longer appears high on the list of ruses deployed by the enviro-activists challenging energy projects. Climate Change suddenly seems so passé; so pre-Copenhagen. Have skeptical nerds been left holding the global warming bag?

One must distinguish enviro-sound from enviro-fury; pretexts from goals. The Climate Change campaign is an effort to impose energy, land-use, and political policies. Regarding energy, it is a war on coal and petroleum. Regarding land-use, it seeks restrictions on the amount of utilized land. Politically, it is an effort to disenfranchise the masses. While Climate Change is placed on the back burner, the underlying effort to impose these policies is heating up.

The EPA’s recent salvo in its war on coal, the December 2011-issued MATS (Mercury and Air Toxic Standards) regulations, hardly mentions Climate Change. Le cause de celebre is mercury poisoning. Mercury is a natural aerosol with a trace presence in our every breath. Less than 0.5% of the mercury floating over America comes from coal-fired power plants. Coal-burning’s alleged thousands of mercury-poisoned fatalities are “virtual people” buried in computers owned by health activist orgs funded by the EPA. MATS forces owners of non-compliant coal-fired power plants to spend billions on retrofits or face plant closure. Non-compliant plants produce a quarter of America’s electricity.

In North America, the war on petroleum’s most active front is the siege of Alberta’s oil sands. In the blocking of the Keystone XL pipeline, the focal canards were property rights, water pollution, and ecosystem destruction. Broadsides against the oil sands’ alleged climate damage, hitherto prominent in the “Tar Sands” campaign, were shelved.

Another proposed oil sands pipeline, Northern Gateway, was recently stuffed by a Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency decision to entertain testimony from 4,500 witnesses at the pipeline’s approval hearings, which consequently will drag on for two years. A miniscule fraction of these witnesses possess expertise on petroleum transport. Pipeline opponents have threatened protracted litigation if authorities do not sufficiently prostrate themselves before the manifest malarkey of “aboriginal knowledge.” Climate Change is not a marquis concern at these hearings, nor is what commercial engineers think is safe petroleum transport. Both are trumped by worries about the emotional well-being of racially-obsessed shamans with wooden boxes on their heads.

Climate Change is not dead nor was it a dud. The campaign is in abeyance and might roar back – depending on AR2014’s reception, depending on the weather. Let no one say the campaign failed. When this campaign was hatched in the mid-1970s, wind power, solar power, and biofuels were novelties. These are now multi-billion-dollar industrial complexes on both sides of the Atlantic. Having their own social momentum and lobbying clout, these industrial complexes, according to plan, make Climate Change too big to suddenly fail.

Much more HERE (See the original for links)

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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, 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

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2012-01-26T18:17:00.001+11:30

One of the great cathedrals of Global Warming -- Britain's Met Office -- pooh poohs the effect of falling solar output

They appear to be considering total irradiance only. Despite their great reliance on "multipliers" in CO2 theory, they overlook multipliers of solar changes -- such as Svensmark's demonstration of the effect on clouds. And their whole edifice is built on the demonstrably wrong claim that increasing atmospheric CO2 increases terrestrial temperatures.

The Met office is such a failure at prediction that they have given up trying to forecsast seasons ahead. Piers Corbyn, by contrast is a successful long-range weather forecaster so his scathing dismissal of the Met Office assessment is clearly from someone who really does understand what is going on. I append it at the bottom of the article below

New research has found that solar output is likely to reduce over the next 90 years but that will not substantially delay expected increases in global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases.

Carried out by the Met Office and the University of Reading, the study establishes the most likely changes in the Sun's activity and looks at how this could affect near-surface temperatures on Earth.

It found that the most likely outcome was that the Sun's output would decrease up to 2100, but this would only cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08 °C. This compares to an expected warming of about 2.5 °C over the same period due to greenhouse gases (according to the IPCC's B2 scenario for greenhouse gas emissions that does not involve efforts to mitigate emissions).

Gareth Jones, a climate change detection scientist with the Met Office, said: "This research shows that the most likely change in the Sun's output will not have a big impact on global temperatures or do much to slow the warming we expect from greenhouse gases.

"It's important to note this study is based on a single climate model, rather than multiple models which would capture more of the uncertainties in the climate system."

The study also showed that if solar output reduced below that seen in the Maunder Minimum - a period between 1645 and 1715 when solar activity was at its lowest observed level - the global temperature reduction would be 0.13C.

Peter Stott, who also worked on the research for the Met Office, said: "Our findings suggest that a reduction of solar activity to levels not seen in hundreds of years would be insufficient to offset the dominant influence of greenhouse gases on global temperatures in the 21st Century."

During the 20th Century solar activity increased to a 'grand maximum' and recent studies have suggested this level of activity is at or nearing its end.

Mike Lockwood, an expert in solar studies at the University of Reading, used this as a starting point for looking at the most probable changes in the Sun's activity over the 21st Century.

Met Office scientists then placed the projections into one climate model to see how they may impact temperatures.

Professor Lockwood said: "The 11-year solar cycle of waxing and waning sunspot numbers is perhaps the best known way the Sun changes, but longer term changes in its brightness are more important for possible influences on climate.

"The most likely scenario is that we'll see an overall reduction of the Sun's activity compared to the 20th Century, such that solar outputs drop to the values of the Dalton Minimum (around 1820). The probability of activity dropping as low as the Maunder Minimum - or indeed returning to the high activity of the 20th Century - is about 8%. The findings rely on the assumption that the Sun's past behaviour is a reasonable guide for future solar activity changes."

SOURCE

Corbyn replies

The UK Met Office and BBC promoted statement is extremely delusional and dishonest and a cover-up of reality. Full article: Decline in solar output unlikely to offset global warming

Their 'expectation' that the world will warm by 2C this century 'due to increased greenhouse gas emissions' is proven drivel based on their own failed self-serving fraudulent models.

They deliberately choose to know almost nothing about solar influences on earth's weather and climate and create 'information' designed to deceive.

It is the largely predictable vast changes in solar charged particle flux and sun-earth magnetic connectivity which control weather and climate.

That is why we at WeatherAction.com long range forecasters

1. Confidently predict that the world will continue general cooling to 2035 - see presentation in submission to UK parliament enquiry into Dec 2010 supercold which we predicted -

2. Systematically predict and will continue to predict extreme weather events and situations many months ahead around the world:

The CO2 driver theory of weather and climate is delusional nonsense propagated by a self-serving failed sect. Their 'theory' fails to explain past weather and climate; all its predictions over the last ten years have failed and it cannot and never will predict anything.

The dangerous delusional CO2 sect must be destroyed before it's diktats destroy the world economy and thousands more lives are lost from the chosen refusal of governments across the world to allow the application of scientific advanced forecasting of extreme weather which can help reduce disruption and destruction and save money and lives.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

Obama has an epiphany on the road to ~~Damascus~~ this year's election

Backs fracking and more drilling for oil. Whether his rhetoric will translate into action is the big doubt

President Barack Obama pushed drilling for gas in shale rock and support for cleaner energy sources to boost the economy in his final State of the Union address before facing U.S. voters in November. He also pledged more oil drilling.

Hydraulic fracturing, the process of injecting water, sand and chemicals underground to free gas trapped in rock, could create more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade, Obama said yesterday. The process, called fracking, is among a list of energy policies Obama said would fuel economic growth.

“We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,” Obama said.

Obama reiterated support for conservation and cleaner sources of power and pledged more oil drilling as part of an ‘all-out, all-of-the-above’’ policy “that’s cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs.” He said domestic energy production is at an eight-year high and imports of foreign oil were declining, prompting criticism from Republicans.

“It’s just a blind accident, if in fact we are producing more oil or natural gas than in previous years, it’s not because of any of his efforts,” Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican and head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said after the speech.

Republicans also sought to contrast Obama’s pledge to use energy policy to create jobs with his denial of a permit to TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline to connect Canada’s oil sands to refineries on the Gulf coast.

SOURCE

GM in damage control as Volt loses spark

The Volt plug-in hybrid was supposed to signal a new dawn for the world’s biggest car maker, but demand is slumping under the weight of controversy over a post-crash fire.

General Motors has been forced to mount a multi-front defence of its battery-powered Chevrolet Volt amid signs demand for the vehicle is slumping.

GM Chief Executive Dan Akerson told a House of Representatives panel that the Volt had become a “political punching bag” and that a US safety probe of the vehicle in part was politically motivated. The car maker launched national television and print ads defending the car's safety and fielded Volt questions online while the hearing was underway.

"We did not engineer the Volt to be a political punching bag," Mr. Akerson said at a House panel looking into whether US regulators delayed releasing information on a probe of the vehicle. "And that, sadly, is what the Volt has become."

The Detroit car maker reacted strongly to counteract the impact of the probe and the hearing on perceptions of the Volt. Dealer orders for the car are down, the company said, and GM is considering slowing production due to less-than-expected demand.

Congressional critics accused the agency of purposely failing to disclose the investigation for months, arguing that any perception of Volt as dangerous would hurt the White House after President Barack Obama and members of his administration touted the car in efforts to promote electric vehicles.

The Volt "is a halo car not so much for GM but for this administration," said Republican Mike Kelly.

The vehicle has become a polarising issue amid Republican criticism of the Obama administration's financial support of electric and other alternative vehicles.

"For the sake of the Volt and electric vehicles in general it is important we close the door on this issue," said GM spokesman Rob Peterson. The company, he said, launched the ad campaign amid worries that attention the Volt has received because of the safety investigation could deter customers or give them the impression the car is dangerous despite being declared safe by NHTSA.

NHTSA closed its safety investigation last week, saying the car poses no unusual risk of fire. GM from the start maintained the car is safe but took unprecedented steps to reassure Volt owners and the public that it was taking the matter seriously, including repurchasing some vehicles.

The company is adding steel reinforcements around the battery to prevent damage in the case of a crash. It also will add a sensor to monitor coolant levels and a bracket to the top of the coolant reservoir to prevent an overflow.

The Volt was failing to meet demand expectations before safety questions arose. GM fell about 2300 vehicles short of its goal to sell 10,000 in 2011. The company also has backed off its target of selling 45,000 Volts in the US this year.

Several dealers have said they are struggling to sell Volts and some are declining to take all the vehicles offered to them. Earlier this month, Vice Chairman Steve Girsky said the company was unsure how much demand exists for the vehicle and will decide by June if the vehicle "has legs."

Before the probe, the car was hamstrung by supply issues, its high cost and slow sales in California, where the vehicle didn't qualify for a tax credit and unrestricted use in car-pool lanes. GM will soon release a version of the Volt in California that meets those standards.

The car maker has not yet restarted production of the Volt following the holiday shutdown of its factories. Mr. Akerson said he expected production to resume in a few weeks. On Wednesday, he said demand for the car is improving.

GM, in the print ads, touted the car's safety and called the car, "the most significant step ever in GM's history to give customers a choice beyond oil."

Much of Wednesday's hearing focused on NHTSA Administrator David Strickland, who defended the agency's move to wait six months to disclose concerns about a potential fire risk in the Volt amid criticism from lawmakers that the decision was politically motivated.

Mr. Strickland took heat from members who accused the agency of waiting to publicize its investigation into Volt batteries for fear of hurting Obama administration efforts to advance electric vehicles.

"We pulled no punches," in the Volt investigation, Mr. Strickland said. If the Volt was unsafe, he said, “we would have clearly disclosed it”.

NHTSA disclosed in November it was investigating potential fire risk in the Volt because one of the vehicles caught fire weeks after a severe crash test. The announcement came months after the fire incident and immediately following a Bloomberg News report on the incident.

Mr. Strickland said the agency waited to announce the investigation because it took months to determine whether the Volt battery was the cause of the fire -it occurred in a facility with other vehicles - and whether a fire could occur again.

He said the car never posed an imminent threat to drivers as the fire occurred weeks after the crash. In subsequent testing, three batteries sparked or caught fire but only after they were removed from the vehicles and intentionally damaged.

"Not only would I drive one, I would drive one with my wife, mother and baby sister on board," he said.

SOURCE

New Book Looks at Global Warming and Climate Change from a Geological Perspective

Written from a unique geological perspective, Dr. G Dedrick Robinson's new book, Global Warming-Alarmists, Skeptics & Deniers: A Geoscientist looks at the Science of Climate Change, is a 69,000-word book aimed at non-specialist readers interested in learning the latest scientific findings concerning climate change and how great a danger it actually represents.

Written from a geological perspective, Dr. Robinson's book emphasizes key findings and conclusions from peer-reviewed science journals rather than attempting to smear the politics and motives of those with differing views. Its fourteen chapters use an easy-to-understand question and answer format to cover the entire climate-change-global-warming spectrum including the physics of the greenhouse effect, the carbon cycle and why the science of geology is key to understanding global warming.

References and a short summary are provided at the end of each chapter and many graphs and charts are included. The book is about the science of global warming, not the politics or various policy directions the U.S. government might choose. It is not intended to lambaste any political party, branch of government, way of thinking or person.

It presents the science in a straightforward manner in everyday language without uncalled for political bias. It is the authoritative, concise guide to the global warming controversy that has long been needed.

Dr. Craig D. Idso, founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, says the book “...is a refreshing read on a topic of great societal importance...because the authors evaluate key predictions and controversies of the global warming debate using logic and science.”

Professor Robert M. Carter, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia, says “Writing in an easily accessible style for all readers, and using Socratic dialogue, Robinson leads us systematically through the simple science information that is needed to answer the question, 'Are human carbon dioxide emissions causing dangerous global warming?'

And the more surprised you are that the answer to this question is 'no,' then the more you need to read this excellent book.”

G Dedrick Robinson Ph.D., author of nearly fifty science journal articles, is based in the Appalachian foothills region of South Carolina. He has closely followed the climate change debate during the course of his thirty-year career as a geology professor at James Madison University in Virginia.

SOURCE

NASA's Research Substantiates Trend Towards Global Cooling - Human "Global Warming" From CO2 Has Disappeared

Latest data from NASA / GISS confirms the robust deceleration of global warming, revealing the non-significant impact on global temperatures by CO2

The AGW alarmist claim of "accelerating" global warming requires, at minimum, an increasing rate of temperature change as denoted by an increasing slope of a linear trend line. The two above charts plot the rolling 10-year trend (slope) of the annual GISS temperature data - the left axis of both charts represents slope in terms of temperature change per hundred years (century).

The leftmost chart reveals a large variation in speed and level of temperature change since the 1800s. The right chart takes the same data but only plots the last 15 years of GISS "acceleration" and "deceleration."

From the 2001 peak of a +3.48°C/century temperature rate, it has now fallen at the end of 2011 to an almost flat rate of +0.04°C/century temperature increase. Per the actual evidence, the increasing atmospheric levels of CO2 (grey arrow and grey area of charts) has zero influence on whether global temperatures are accelerating or decelerating.

These two charts do not represent predictions of future temperatures, but both clearly indicate that the IPCC and major climate research agencies have been substantially wrong in predicting "accelerating" warming.

Likewise, they have been substantially wrong in their assumption that the climate sensitivity to increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 is positive, growing and nearing a runaway tipping point. The empirical evidence proves all of these assertions to be essentially false.

Conclusions:

* Global temperatures are decelerating, not accelerating

* Rising CO2 levels do not cause global temperatures to continuously increase

* Climate sensitivity to CO2 levels is not robust

* IPCC predictions of "runaway" temps and climate "tipping points" are without empirical merit.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

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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, 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

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2012-01-25T14:07:00.001+11:30

Climate change causing erections in Cambodia

But only among Greenies -- since the climate has in fact been stable since 1998

Cambodia, an exotic land filled with bright colors, city lights and ancient temples is a popular vacation spot. A remarkable country with exquisite culture holds one of the darkest secrets alive today. Very much a real and disturbing reality; we come to unfold this problem and discuss the problems of the sex trade in this area. In fact, children as young as 5 are being sold as slaves in exchange for sex. A problem that has been around for a while is being made worse by the problems caused by climate change.

The sex trade in Cambodia has been around since 1999. The sex trade is happening due to thousands of victims in need of natural resources like food, water and trees. Human trafficking affects 2-3 thousand children and young teens each year. Families are deceived by con artists telling them that their daughters will work for hotels, restaurants, hair salons or complete clerical work in order for them to bring money for their families. Truth is, con artists actually take their daughters into sex industries and force them to have intercourse with older men.

The livelihoods of most families that live in rural villages are affected by the changes brought on by climate change in that area. According to the United Nations, women feel these affects the most. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reports that, “Lifestyle and well being of women is put in greater danger by climate change, associated with a high rate of human trafficking.”

UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner declared, "Women often play a stronger role than men in the management of ecosystem services and food security. Hence, sustainable adaptation must focus on gender and the role of women if it is to become successful." Climate change will take a toll on environmental living especially women development.

Most of women development effects from climate change can result from: increased temperatures, severe weather, rise of sea level and droughts. Three main issues of climate change that can be linked to the sex trade are:

Water: As climate change causes droughts, it would be more difficult to attain water. As women are forced to travel greater distances to find and capture potable water they are at a higher risk of kidnapping and con-artists who are linked to the sex trade industry.

Agriculture: Climate change causes severe weather patterns that could make temperature rise and fall more drastically making seasons shift. As these seasons shift crops will be affected the most. It would be difficult for people to grow food. To offset the decrease in crop output women would be forced to look for better paying jobs to pay for food they otherwise might be able to grow themselves. The need for higher economic stimulation would make these jobs offered by sex trade con artists seem more valuable than they might have before.

Trees: Climate change and the resulting droughts would put a strain on the forests that supply the paper industry in Cambodia with their trees. As paper mill production drops workers may lose their jobs and would in turn be forced to look elsewhere for employment.

The lack of economic growth in Cambodia has made women’s lives even more difficult than before. The lack of education in this area for women makes them think that human trafficking is one of their only ways out. Researchers from the UN have concluded that women in developing countries are likely to be victims when being exposed to exterior threats. In a recent study by United Nations, trafficking has gone up by 30% in Cambodia since 2009 which may be linked to the increase in climate change during that time.

SOURCE

China too had a Medieval Warm Period comparable to temperatures today

Discussing: Zhou, XJ. 2011. "The characteristics and regularities of the climate change over the past millennium in China". Chinese Science Bulletin 56: 2985.

The author, Zhou (2011), - who is with the State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather of the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences in Beijing - writes in an introductory editorial in a special issue of the Chinese Science Bulletin (October 2011) that "research on global climate change has been at the frontier of the contemporary sciences," and within this context he further states that "debate has focused on whether the greenhouse effect produced by human activities is a major factor responsible for modern climate warming."

Against this backdrop, Zhou reports that "in 2009, the major project 'Research on tree-ring and millennium climate change in China' was implemented under the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China." Noting that eight articles published in this special issue of the Bulletin "present partly preliminary results obtained by the project over the past two years," he then goes on to summarize, in the broadest possible sense, their findings.

In the words of Zhou, the eight articles "reveal some characteristics and regularities of changes in temperature and precipitation in China and in East Asian monsoons over the past 1000 years," and he says that "notable conclusions," of which he lists only two, are that (1) "temperatures in the Medieval Warm Period are comparable to those in the current warm period over China," and (2) "the effect of solar activity on climate cannot be neglected in any period of the millennium."

These two findings stand in stark contrast to what is generally claimed by the world's climate alarmists, which is no small matter, as they apply to a significant portion of the planet. Hence, they should give everyone reason to reconsider the climate-alarmist claim that modern warming has been unprecedented over the past millennium or more, which claim is also refuted by many additional scientific studies we have reviewed in our Topical Archive under the heading Medieval Warm Period.

SOURCE

Even the most expansive assumptions about the data refute IPCC modelling conclusions

Discussing: Norman G. Loeb et al. "Observed changes in top-of-the-atmosphere radiation and upper-ocean heating consistent within uncertainty". Nature Geoscience (2012)

An interesting conclusion of that paper is that

We combine satellite data with ocean measurements to depths of 1,800 m, and show that between January 2001 and December 2010, Earth has been steadily accumulating energy at a rate of 0. 50 +/ 0.43 Watts per meter squared (uncertainties at the 90% confidence level). We conclude that energy storage is continuing to increase in the sub-surface ocean.

This is larger than is justified based on the upper ocean heat changes, as has been discussed by myself and others (e.g. Knox and Douglas 2010). The heat accumulation they refer to also has hardly been “steady”. However, lets just use these values.

Jim Hansen concluded in 2005 that the decadal mean planetary energy imbalance at the end of the 1990s was

,…..0.85 Watts per meter squared is the imbalance at the end of the decade.”

This value falls within the uncertainty range of the Leob et al 2012 study. However, we are 13 years since the end of the 20th century, so Jim Hansen’s value for the imbalance must be larger (~0.95 Watts per meter squared from GISS?).

This question about whether or not the IPCC model predictions (as represented by the GISS models) are still consistent even with the large Loeb et al estimate should have been a major part of their article. The Loeb et al 2012 even cited the Hansen paper but did not take the next step and complete model and observational comparisons. That the IPCC models are close to being refuted with respect to the magnitude of global warming even with the large Loeb et al values is an unspoken result of their findings. They missed a major implication from their results.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

William Briggs points out that the statistical critieria in the paper mentioned above have been stretched way beyond what is normally done. Using conventional statistical procedures the result would be even more refutational of the IPCC conclusions

Greenie gag campaign being outed

Much to the chagrin of the Warmist writing below

The network of climate deniers who pollute America’s local newscasts with anti-science propaganda includes Neil Barton, the news director of NBC affiliate KETK-TV in Dallas, Texas. On Monday’s evening newscast, Barton responded with outrage to the Forecast The Facts campaign that challenges the American Meteorological Society to oppose science denial by television meteorologists. Barton complained that Forecast The Facts and ThinkProgress Green are “outing” those who say “pish-posh to the whole idea of global warming”:

Now, a new progressive website is outing weather people who don’t agree with far-left thinking. ThinkProgress.org is outing TV weather folks who have gone on record saying pish-posh to the whole idea of global warming. They put the weather person’s statements about why they won’t get on board under the heading “zombie quotes.”

KETK’s chief meteorologist, Scott Chesner, is a global warming denier as well. “Predicting the weather in the long range is an impossible feat the farther out in time you go, its just another reason why especially in terms of trying to predict man’s influence on the climate — totally preposterous!” Chesner said last December.

SOURCE (See the original for links and video)

UN attempts to re-brand climate change

The usual Leftist faith in verbal magic. See: political correctness

Following abject failures at its previous climate change summits, which always seem to take place in beautiful, faraway locales, the UN is now giving climate change a new name: sustainable development:

Representatives from around the world gather in Rio in June to try to hammer out goals for sustainable development at a U.N. conference designed to avoid being tripped up by the intractable issue of climate change.

But there is concern in the lead-up to the conference, known as Rio+20 or the Earth Summit, that it risks ending up as all talk and little action.

In an attempt to avoid too much confrontation, the conference will focus not on climate change but on sustainable development - making sure economies can grow now without endangering resources and the environment for future generations.

U.N. conferences over the past decade have begun with high hopes for agreements to compel nations to cut climate-warming emissions and help adapt to a hotter world, but they often ended with disappointingly modest results. That was the case last year in the global climate change summit in Durban, South Africa. Participants at that meeting agreed to forge a new deal by 2015 that would go into force by 2020.

The “sustainable” branding for this year’s summit, rather than climate, is by design, said Ambassador Andre Correa do Lago, who headed Brazil’s delegation to the U.N. climate talks in Durban and will be a chief negotiator for Brazil in Rio.

Sustainable development is an easier sell globally than climate change, even though sustainable development is a way of tackling global warming and other environmental issues, he said.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

UN Abuse of Precautionary Principle Lets Them Ignore Corrupt Climate Science

Politicians and lawyers want rules, but include catch-all words or phrases that allow them to do anything. These are necessarily undefined. It’s a good idea to cover unusual circumstances, but assumes it is applied with facts and logic. More frequently, it’s become an excuse to defy facts and logic for an agenda.

Environmentalists quickly faced the problem as they distorted facts and logic for their political agenda. They needed something to deny the need for facts and logic required by science and adopted the Precautionary Principle. Wikipedia says,

This principle allows policy makers to make discretionary decisions in situations where there is the possibility of harm from taking a particular course or making a certain decision when extensive scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking.

What is “extensive scientific knowledge” and how much can be “lacking”?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are 90 percent certain, but they examine only human causes of climate change and produce consistently incorrect climate model predictions. Physics Nobel winner Richard Feynman said,

It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.

A few scientists at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), who effectively controlled the IPCC, corrupted science to prove human-produced CO2 was the cause. Although their malfeasance was exposed, it won’t stop the political juggernaut, because the Principle is part of the UN mandate on environment and climate.

In June the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Rio Conference with RIO+20. They say,

The Conference will focus on two themes:
a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication; and
the institutional framework for sustainable development.

These are the ojectives pursued from the start, but green economies have failed everywhere. Sustainable development is a political creation that means everything to everyone and nothing to anyone.

Rio 1992 was the political manifestation of the Club of Rome objectives. Scientific evidence, required to ‘prove’ humans were destroying the planet with capitalism and its fossil fuel driven technology, was already underway through the IPCC. The political roadmap was formalized in Rio as Agenda 21. Annex 1 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development lists the basic Principles. Most are specific, but the catch-all is Principle 15:

In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

It’s a naked, incorrrect, application of the Precautionary Principle. As one person said,

Proponents of the Precautionary Principle are trying to smuggle in a default position: The environment trumps all other values.

The vague phrase, “lack of full scientific certainty” easily pushes science aside; then you steal the moral high ground by claiming to protect the environment. It allows the challenge, “shouldn’t we act anyway just in case?” The correct answer is no, as I explained before the Canadian Parliamentary Committee investigating the Ozone question. Scientists can extrapolate a multitude of potential threats from a few facts. Political leaders must determine the most pressing and what they can afford. Lack of scientific understanding makes that infinitely more difficult.

Principle 15 effectively allows action with no scientific evidence. They don’t care if the climate science is falsified as with global warming. What is the purpose of applying the precautionary principle? Wildavsky provides the answer.

In a free society the individual is presumed to be free to act unless the state can prove harm or the potential to do harm. The precautionary principle says that no individual person is free to act unless that individual can prove to the state that the action can do no harm.

This is a perceptive academic analysis. Green and Armstrong put it more bluntly.

In practice, the precautionary principle is invoked when an interest group identifies an issue that can help it to achieve its objectives. If the interest group is successful in its efforts to raise fears about the issue, the application of the scientific method is rejected and a new orthodoxy is imposed. Government dictates follow. People who dissent from the orthodox view are vilified, ostracized, and may have their livelihoods taken away from them. Consider the case of “climate change”.

It’s another of the many circular arguments. Catch-all words or phrases provide for unusual circumstances, but assume it’s confirmed with facts and logic. Climate change is usual, but IPCC climate science falsely ‘proves’ it isn’t, which allows them to misuse a sound principle.

Related articles:

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, 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

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2012-01-24T15:47:00.001+11:30

A campaigning "ethicist"

Prof. Brown is at it again. He claims to be doing an ethical analysis of climate skepticism but as you will see from the excerpt below what he writes is all just Green/Left boilerplate, with the usual heavy reliance on "ad hominem" accusations and dubious assertions.

And as is also common on the Green/Left, the one thing he avoids like the plague is discussing the scientific facts. You will find no mention from him of the fact that the climate has warmed by less than one degree Celsius over the last 150 years. The only references he cites are fellow Warmists.

He sounds a bit of a nut to me, displaying the sort of calm but unfounded certitude one often finds among paranoid schizophrenics

Yet the emergence of global warming as an issue in the 1980s with its potential for large-scale social change needed to ameliorate its threat was seen as more threatening to conservatives in regard to industry, prosperity, life-style, and the entire American-way of life, than were traditional pollution problems. (McCright and Dunlap, 2000: 503) In other words, climate change directly threatened the central values of the US conservative movement even more than other environmental problems. (McCright and Dunlap, 2000: 505) As a result climate change denial has become a key environmental focus of the US conservative movement. In subsequent years the disinformation campaign would be taken up in other countries including the United Kingdom and Australia.

The climate change disinformation movement can be understood to be comprised of many organizations and participants including conservative think tanks, front groups, Astroturf groups, conservative media, and individuals. This disinformation campaign, as we shall see, frequently uses the tactics discussed in this series to convince people and politicians that the science supporting climate change policies is flawed. The central claims of the climate change disinformation movement have been:

• There is no warming.

• Its not caused by humans.

• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will cause more harm than good. (McCright and Dunlap, 2010: 111)

To support these basic counter-claims, as we shall see, the climate denial machine frequently has made claims that mainstream climate scientists are corrupt or liars, descriptions of adverse climate change impacts are made by "alarmists," scientific journals that publish climate related research are biased against skeptics, and mainstream climate science is "junk" science. As we shall also see, the climate change disinformation machine also has made frequent ad hominem attacks on those who produce climate change science and sometimes has cyber-bullied both climate scientists and journalists.

The climate change disinformation campaign began in the 1980s when some of the same scientists and organizations that fought government regulation of tobacco began to apply the tactics perfected in their war on the regulation of tobacco to climate change. (Oreskes and Conway, 2010:169-215). According to Pooley the disinformation campaign began "spinning around 1988 in response to the increasingly outspoken scientific community..." (Pooley, 2010: 39) For almost 25 years this campaign has been waged to undermine support for regulation of greenhouse gases.

To say that the campaign has been "waged" is not to claim that it has been a tightly organized, completely coordinated effort by a few groups or individuals or that all participants have the same motives. In fact different participants may have radically different motives including the fact that some may be sincere, some appear to be motivated by protecting free markets without government intervention, and many appear to believe that no restriction on fossil fuel use can be justified without very high levels of proof of harms.

Yet, the different participants, according to Newsweek, since the 1990s for the most part have acted in a well-coordinated campaign among contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks, and industry to create a fog of doubt around climate change. (Begley, 2007) They have accomplished this through the production of advertisements, op-eds, lobbying, books, media attention, and quotations from skeptical scientists often associated with conservative think tanks. They have argued first that the world is not warming, measurements that indicate otherwise are flawed, any warming is natural, that is not caused by human activities, and if warming does occur it will be miniscule and harmless. (Begley, 2007) Different groups created this counter-movement often acting independently of each other, yet connected through the internet to create a denial machine that has effectively responded to any public pronouncement by scientist or journalists that asserted that human-induced climate change is a serious problem. (Begley, 2007) Conservative activists wrote hundreds of documents (including policy briefs, books, press releases, and op-eds), held numerous policy forums and press conferences, appeared regularly on television and radio programs, and testified at congressional hearings on global warming. (Dunlap and McCright, 2008)

SOURCE

Political Activists trying to Gag TV Meteorologists on Climate Issues

Anthony Watts is a former TV meteorologist so has dug deep on this one. He shows that a Soros-funded Green/Left front organization is behind the censorship attempt. An excerpt below

According to WCTV-TV’s story Urging American Meteorological Society to Get Tougher on Climate Change, a program called Forecast the Facts is attempting to lobby the AMS to change their 5-year policy on climate change to a new policy “drafted by a panel of [unidentified] experts”

A new campaign, Forecast the Facts (www.forecastthefacts.org), launches Sunday to pressure TV meteorologists to inform their viewers about climate change. The launch coincides with the kick-off of the American Meteorological Society’s (AMS) annual meeting in New Orleans, LA.

“This is an important moment in the history of the AMS,” said Daniel Souweine, the campaign’s director. “It’s well known that large numbers of meteorologists are climate change deniers. It’s essential that the AMS Council resist pressure from these deniers and pass the strong statement currently under consideration.”

The “Campaign Director” is identified as Daniel Souweine. The Forecast the Facts web site turns out to be a product of “Citizen Engagement Laboratory (CEL).” And who is the Chief of Staff of CEL? You guessed it: Daniel Souweine.

The web site describes CEL as: ”a non-profit, non-partisan organization that uses digital media and technology to amplify the voices of underrepresented constituencies. We seek to empower individuals to take collective action on the issues that concern them, promoting a world of greater equality and justice in the process.”

But as we see elsewhere, in the green incubator building description of CEL at the David Brower Center at 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, that “non-partisan” claim doesn’t match this description. So much for the “truth in advertising”.

And then there’s the usual suspects friends of forecastthefacts.org. The CEL web site lists 350.org as a “Partner,” which describes itself as: “building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. Our online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public actions are led from the bottom up by thousands of volunteer organizers in over 188 countries.”

Sounds like birds of a feather, even though they are both attempting to lobby a major national organization to change a policy that affects all of its members… from the top down. Hardly grass-roots organization. And hardly on behalf of “underrepresented constituencies.”

Evidently, grassroots meteorologists are insufficiently toeing the line when it comes to laying weather patterns at the feet of “global warming.” Someone unnamed wants them to publicly join the global warming bandwagon in blaming human CO2 emissions for observed climate change, ignoring the uncertainty of climate science, ignoring all evidence to the contrary, insisting on one single simplistic explanation for climate change.

More HERE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)

Even the Washington Post finds the censorship attempt distasteful

(It endorsed Barack Obama for President and the writer below is a Warmist)

If you present the weather on TV and you reject that global warming is the result of human activities, the spotlight on you is hotter than ever. But the attention is a colossal waste of energy.

Coinciding with this week’s American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting in New Orleans, the groups 350.org, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Citizen Engagement Lab have launched a campaign that exposes television weathercasters who take a contrarian stance on climate change science.

The campaign, called Forecast the Facts, launched a website that identifies 47 TV weathercasters by name who have publicly expressed climate change views considered outside of the mainstream. (It is also pressuring the American Meteorological Society to strengthen its position statement on the science.)

This confrontational approach is the wrong approach and promises to only further divide TV weathercasters whose views on the issue of climate change are already polarized.

The rationale for the campaign are results from a survey conducted by George Mason University in 2010* that found 63% of weathercasters believe global warming is due mainly to natural causes compared to just 31% who think it’s mostly a result of human causes. Some 27 percent of weathercasters referred to global warming as “a scam.” Whereas, the prevailing view among publishing climate scientists is that the Earth is warming primarily as a result of human activities.

Studies have shown some weathercasters don’t have the most reliable understanding of climate science and uneven levels of education. A 2002 study by Emory researcher Kris Wilson found many weathercasters held misconceptions on a range of climate science issues and their “politics” had the greatest bearing on that knowledge. Furthermore, some weathercasters are not scientists but broadcast journalists. And even for those with meteorology degrees, many of the degree programs do not require coursework in climate change. A 2011 survey of weathercasters at George Mason found only 42 percent of respondents had participated in climate change continuing education courses.

But the “Forecast the Facts”campaign makes no initiative to engage with weathercasters and enhance their education.

The campaign website asserts “viewers turning into their weather report deserve to be told the truth about climate change.” It’s hard to disagree that weathercasters should stay up to speed on climate change and pass along that knowledge to viewers. Maybe “Forecast the Facts” should be providing resources to make this happen rather than conducting a smear campaign.

This is not to say weathercasters shouldn’t bear some responsibility in becoming educated about climate change science. Nor does it absolve them from impartially communicating it.

In an editorial published in the Bulletin of American Meteorological Society several years ago, WJLA meteorologist Bob Ryan and NBC Telemundo meteorologist John Toohey-Morales took some of their peers to task for failing to set aside personal opinions in discussing climate change, writing:

"If we “experts” communicate conflicting information, conveying personal opinions with no scientific basis, the public can become confused and often collectively “tune out” of the issue just when it requires the most attention. The same would happen if we gave conflicting personal opinions during dangerous weather events. When we stray from objectivity in communicating the latest scientific findings, we do the public a disservice."

Ryan and Toohey-Morales took a constructive approach - making a passionate but respectful appeal to their peers when they felt they had gone astray. But when an outside activist group flies onto the scene outing individuals and calling them “deniers,” it’s not going make their targets more open-minded nor motivate them to seek out the latest journals online. Instead, it may alienate them and further entrench a narrow perspective

In my experience talking to weathercasters and other individuals whose views about climate change don’t seem grounded in science, I’ve found it’s most effective to dispassionately approach the subject and simply discuss the evidence. Just as important: treat the person with respect and show you understand their perspective.

For example, I’ve seen some weathercasters fall into the skeptics camp as a result of overstatements by activists, politicians and journalists, who have made predictions of certain catastrophe and blamed global warming for every conceivable natural disaster.

Such hyperbole might be overcome by demonstrating that, in reality, global warming forecasts include a range of possibilities, and, while many are concerning, they are not all dire. And by being clear that, while scientists have found global warming may intensify some types of extreme weather (i.e. heat waves and heavy precipitation events), few if any claim global warming is the root cause.

More HERE

Pew Poll: Global warming finishes 22nd of 22 "top policy priorities of 2012"

The Pew poll also found that some issues – especially illegal immigration and climate change – did not resonate nearly as much with Americans as they did before Obama took office.

A quarter of Americans now find climate change a top concern, down from almost four in 10 in 2007.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

From Canada, Ezra Levant offers a concise summary of the Keystone calamity

Australia: Bats win park war because of Greenie laws

They are not remotely "endangered" so local authorities should be allowed to shoot them if necessary

FLYING foxes [large fruit bats] have officially won the war in Charters Towers, claiming the town's historic park as their own.

Charters Towers Mayor Ben Callcott has conceded defeat against the thousands of bats that invaded Lissner Park about 11 years ago and have since refused to leave.

He said unless state legislation was changed, which prevented the council from interfering with the colony, the council had simply run out of options. Locals claim the bats are a major health hazard, fearing they may spread disease, and are fed up with living with the stench and noise from the colony, which now numbers about 15,000.

Charters Towers Regional Council has been granted 15 damage mitigation permits by the Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) over the years, to disperse the bats using noise, fogging and lighting.

An attempt to muster the bats using a helicopter was scuttled late last year by the Civil Aviation and Safety Authority over safety concerns. The council has applied for a 16th permit to move the bats, but Cr Callcott said their best efforts had simply shifted the animals to other parts of the town, where they had become even more of a problem.

"Charters Towers City Council spent $250,000 harassing them and it didn't do anything other than distributing them into suburbia," Cr Callcott said. "I'm not prepared to spend that kind of money to achieve the same ending.

"We may never get permission to muster them, so in that case, let them lodge in Lissner Park, where at least people can choose whether they get underneath them.

LNP leader Campbell Newman, who visited Charters Towers last year, promised the town "the bats in Lissner Park will go".

Cr Callcott said a law change was the only solution. "The bats under the present legislation have defeated us," he said.

Charters Towers Action Group Against Flying Foxes spokesman Jim Henderson, who lives near the park, said the bats were creating a health hazard and preventing locals and visitors from enjoying public facilities. "Nobody wants to come into the park and sit under those tables," he said.

Mr Henderson said residents' pleas to the State Government for help moving the flying foxes on had fallen upon deaf ears. "They've ignored us and ignored us since I've been fighting it," he said.

Vikki King, who lives opposite the colony, said she wanted the right to remove the bats from her own backyard. "Three or four weeks ago, every tree was chock-a-block in my yard here," she said. "The bat shit is everywhere and it just eats everything."

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, 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

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2012-01-23T14:42:00.001+11:30

Keystone Kops halt US-Canada pipeline, and target another

White House, environmentalists and U.S foundations seek to block all oil sands development. Some little known information about the huge financial investment that US anti-hydrocarbon environmentalist foundations have in this battle

Oilfield workers in Alberta, refinery workers in Texas and countless factory workers just learned that the White House will not allow construction of an oil pipeline that would bring over half a million barrels of oil a day from Canada’s Alberta Province and North Dakota’s Bakken Field to refineries in Texas and Louisiana. The job-killing decision was a victory for radical environmentalists and well-heeled U.S. foundations that have long battled Canadian oil sands companies and the U.S. oil and gas industry.

President Obama says Congress gave him insufficient time to examine environmental issues. TransCanada Keystone Pipeline LP can reapply, he added, if it reroutes the pipeline around Nebraska’s Oglala Aquifer and Sand Hills area and addresses other concerns. In the meantime, the Administration insists, the project “would not serve the national interest.”

Project supporters called the President’s decision “preposterous,” and urged Congress to craft a way to gain approval without White House involvement.

“The rationales for rejecting the project are nothing but dissembling, red herrings and hot air,” CFACT policy advisor Paul Driessen commented. “They are as credible as a Keystone Kops movie.”

The application for this project and pipeline route was submitted in 2008, Driessen noted. The Administration has had ample time to review every aspect. “This is the same White House that demanded passage of a healthcare bill that no one in Congress had a chance to read, much less study and understand, before it was presented for final vote. To claim that two months was not enough time to study a proposal that had already been studied three years is absurd,” he said.

The Keystone XL project would ensure jobs, affordable energy and national security, which Mr. Obama insists he supports. His rejection demonstrates that his real goal is to reduce energy supplies, raise energy prices, and destroy jobs that are not part of the Administration’s government-subsidized and directed “green jobs” agenda, Driessen and others say. Moreover, dozens of pipelines already cross the Oglala region; another well-designed pipeline would hardly pose an unacceptable threat.

Even the Washington Post editorial board says “Obama’s Keystone pipeline rejection is hard to accept” – especially coming one day after the President said the United States still needs inexpensive hydrocarbon energy, pipelines and a strong energy infrastructure. Quoting from government reports, the Post noted that the pipeline would have “limited adverse environmental impacts.”

Few Americans or Canadians were surprised by the announcement. TransCanada spokesman Jim Prescott had previously told a Houston newspaper, “It has become a political piñata ... that the activist community and environmental community have used to drive a larger … anti-oil agenda.”

Killing Keystone is just one part of a grand strategy that includes closing off Asian and U.S. markets from the oil; banning exploration and production across Canada and the United States; and even shutting down existing operations that radical greens call “blood oil,” in an insulting comparison to diamond mining in African regions torn by conflict and brutality.

Indeed, the same coalition fighting the Keystone project has spent hundreds of millions of dollars from U.S. foundations to shut down Canada’s entire vital and profitable oil sands oil operation – even though it increasingly uses less water and energy, emits less pollution and carbon dioxide, and relies more on in situ steam injection than surface mining. Radical environmentalists also oppose Canada’s Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific coast, to facilitate shipment by tanker to Asia.

Canada’s government recently began public hearings on the Northern Gateway proposal. Opponents won a major victory when Chief Hearing Officer Sheila Leggett, Vice Chair of Canada’s National Energy Board, decided to let foreign citizens, foreign lobbyists and even foreign governments take part in what will now likely be a protracted and rancorous public hearing circus.

“The world’s Canada-bashers laughed [at Leggett’s decision], then signed up to testify,” Ezra Levant observed in the Calgary Sun. “Almost 5,000 of them have signed up, including Hugo Chavez’s state-owned oil company CITGO, foreigners from Uruguay to Louisiana to Italy to Austria, Captain Jack Sparrow,” and somebody called “Cave Man.”

“But the biggest threat isn’t the clowns,” Levant added. “It’s the well-paid foreign professional lobbyists who used Leggett’s weakness to take over the process – pros like the New York-based Rockefeller Foundation,” which Levant says spent $200,000 to hire the West Coast Environmental Law Foundation to try to block development of the pipeline and tanker port. But that is just the tip of the iceberg!

Vivian Krause, writing in Canada’s Financial Post, says the thinking behind U.S. funding against Canadian oil was explained in a 2007 strategy paper, “Design to win: Philanthropy’s role in the fight against global warming,” funded largely by the Hewlett Foundation. Even earlier, Hewlett had paid Tides Canada to develop a strategic plan to fight oil and gas development in British Columbia.

Overall, Krause reports, U.S. foundations alone granted at least $300 million over the last decade to various environmental organizations and campaigns in Canada; half went to three campaigns. The Pew Foundation (heirs to Sun Oil!) gave $57 million to the Boreal Forest Initiative, which seeks to place fully one-third of Canada into protected areas and parks – off limits to logging, mining, hydroelectric, new roads, and oil and gas production, while accommodating traditional hunting, fishing and gathering.

Through the George & Betty Moore Foundation, Intel founder George Moore worked with Tides Canada to give $30 million to First Nations to create a Pacific North Coast Integrated Management Area, which targets only that small part of the north coast of B.C. that includes the proposed oil tanker port site. The Great Bear Rainforest Initiative seeks to set aside 21 million hectares (52 million acres – the equivalent of Kansas) from Vancouver Island to Alaska, supposedly to protect the Kermode bear (aka Great Spirit Bear) but really to serve as the Great Trade Barrier against oil exports to Asia.

First Nation groups have received at least $50 million from U.S. foundations, Krause reports, ostensibly to lead the fight against oil pipelines. A newly emerging big player is the Sea Change Foundation, funded by Jim and Nathaniel Simons of Renaissance Technologies LLC, a $15 billion hedge fund.

Terence Corcoran of Canada’s National Post added that jet-setting, oil-consuming movie celebrities like Robert Redford, James Cameron, Darryl Hannah and Leonardo DeCaprio have also lent their personas to movements “aimed at shutting down large portions of the Canadian economy.” One wonders if they, too, are being paid with “blood money” from U.S. foundations created through wealth accumulated from fossil fuels, mining and other industries now in environmentalist cross-hairs.

Canada Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Cabinet have taken a far different tack with the Northern Gateway hearings than the White House did with Keystone. While President Obama hemmed and hawed on the central question of whether Keystone XL would be in America’s best interest, Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver made it clear that his government supports both Gateway and Keystone.

In an unprecedented open letter, Oliver asserted, “For our government, the choice is clear: we need to diversify our markets, to create jobs and economic growth for Canadians.... We must expand our trade with the fast growing Asian economies … to help ensure the financial security of Canadians and their families.”

Oliver went on to denounce “environmental and radical groups” whose goal is “to stop any major project, no matter the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth. No forestry. No mining. No oil. No gas. No more hydroelectric dams. These groups ... seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects. “

Oliver lambasted foreign special interest groups for trying to undermine Canada’s economy, and ridiculed “jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world” for daring to “lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources” and using lawsuits as a last resort to obstruct industrial progress.

The opposition has done its research, invested wisely and heavily, and expects to win. The Harper government has pledged to fight for a prosperous future against the eco-imperialists of Deep Ecology, who use industry-based fortunes to control and hamstring the lives and livelihoods of current and future generations. The stakes are high; our very futures depend on the outcome of these twin battles.

President Obama must face the very real likelihood that the radicals he is placating over Keystone XL will be unable to block oil shipment to China or elsewhere in Asia. The net result will be no American jobs and no environmental gains – not even questionable or imaginary gains.

The oil will be extracted, transported overseas and burned under less rigorous pollution rules and controls, to create better jobs and lives for people across the Pacific Ocean. That will leave Americans with none of the energy or employment benefits that Mr. Obama insists he is committed to creating – and the global environment with none of the land use, air and water quality or climate benefits that the White House proclaims will be its lasting legacy.

SOURCE

Fred Singer replies to a critique of the Durban climate festival

His comment published in Nature in response to a Nature editorial‏ of Dec 15; "The Mask Slips"

"The Nature editorial talks about science and policy in parallel universes. Quite correct – if you mean ‘separate’ and ‘disconnected.’ COP 17 in Durban was never about climate, let alone science. It was all about money: (1) How to assure continuing government careers for 200 delegations, with annual vacations paid by taxpayers. (2) How to transfer $100 billion a year from industrialized nations to LDCs (or more precisely, to their kleptocratic rulers), using “climate justice” or “climate guilt” (depending on who is doing the talking). (3) How to gain a national advantage by setting differential emission limits.

By now it should be obvious that (1) the enshrined temperature limit of +2 degC is based on fiction and has no scientific basis. As an annual global average, climate models tell us, it will mean warmer winter nights in Siberia and Canada; perhaps -35degC instead of -40; and little warming in the tropics. (2) It should also be obvious that even strenuous and economy-killing efforts at mitigation, will have little effect on atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, let alone on climate. If a demonstration is needed, just look at the lack of warming since 1998, in spite of rapidly rising levels of greenhouse gases.

So, yes, I would agree with the editorial, if properly expanded."

SOURCE

Scare: Unprecedented, man-made trends in ocean’s acidity

Just another modelling exercise and one based on admittedly poor data. Amusingly, it makes a mockery of its own warnings. Its authors say that "anthropogenic CO2 emissions over the last 100 to 200 years have already raised ocean acidity far beyond the range of natural variations". So where is the evidence of harm from that? There is none

Nearly one-third of CO2 emissions due to human activities enters the world’s oceans. By reacting with seawater, CO2 increases the water’s acidity, which may significantly reduce the calcification rate of such marine organisms as corals and mollusks. The extent to which human activities have raised the surface level of acidity, however, has been difficult to detect on regional scales because it varies naturally from one season and one year to the next, and between regions, and direct observations go back only 30 years.

Combining computer modeling with observations, an international team of scientists concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions over the last 100 to 200 years have already raised ocean acidity far beyond the range of natural variations. The study is published in the January 22 online issue of Nature Climate Change.

The team of climate modelers, marine conservationists, ocean chemists, biologists and ecologists, led by Tobias Friedrich and Axel Timmermann at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, came to their conclusions by using Earth system models that simulate climate and ocean conditions 21,000 years back in time, to the Last Glacial Maximum, and forward in time to the end of the 21st century. They studied in their models changes in the saturation level of aragonite (a form of calcium carbonate) typically used to measure of ocean acidification. As acidity of seawater rises, the saturation level of aragonite drops. Their models captured well the current observed seasonal and annual variations in this quantity in several key coral reef regions.

Today’s levels of aragonite saturation in these locations have already dropped five times below the pre-industrial range of natural variability. For example, if the yearly cycle in aragonite saturation varied between 4.7 and 4.8, it varies now between 4.2 and 4.3, which – based on another recent study – may translate into a decrease in overall calcification rates of corals and other aragonite shell-forming organisms by 15%. Given the continued human use of fossil fuels, the saturation levels will drop further, potentially reducing calcification rates of some marine organisms by more than 40% of their pre-industrial values within the next 90 years.

“Any significant drop below the minimum level of aragonite to which the organisms have been exposed to for thousands of years and have successfully adapted will very likely stress them and their associated ecosystems,” says lead author Postdoctoral Fellow Tobias Friedrich.

“In some regions, the man-made rate of change in ocean acidity since the Industrial Revolution is hundred times greater than the natural rate of change between the Last Glacial Maximum and pre-industrial times,” emphasizes Friedrich. “When Earth started to warm 17,000 years ago, terminating the last glacial period, atmospheric CO2 levels rose from 190 parts per million (ppm) to 280 ppm over 6,000 years. Marine ecosystems had ample time to adjust. Now, for a similar rise in CO2 concentration to the present level of 392 ppm, the adjustment time is reduced to only 100 – 200 years.”

On a global scale, coral reefs are currently found in places where open-ocean aragonite saturation reaches levels of 3.5 or higher. Such conditions exist today in about 50% of the ocean – mostly in the tropics. By end of the 21st century this fraction is projected to be less than 5%. The Hawaiian Islands, which sit just on the northern edge of the tropics, will be one of the first to feel the impact.

The study suggests that some regions, such as the eastern tropical Pacific, will be less stressed than others because greater underlying natural variability of seawater acidity helps to buffer anthropogenic changes. The aragonite saturation in the Caribbean and the western Equatorial Pacific, both biodiversity hotspots, shows very little natural variability, making these regions particularly vulnerable to human-induced ocean acidification.

“Our results suggest that severe reductions are likely to occur in coral reef diversity, structural complexity and resilience by the middle of this century,” says co-author Professor Axel Timmermann.”

SOURCE

The Frackin' Democrats

For every reasonable and responsible solution America comes up with to solve a problem, the frackin' Democrats have to come up with a hysterical response to stop it. Take hydraulic fracturing...

CatFish John wrote: 50 years from now water is going to be more precious than both oil and gas but you know who cares about our children and our children's children. - in response to Scientists Discover Gassy Liberal Pseudo-Science

Dear Comrade CatFish,

Water is always more precious than oil and gas. But we’ve been using oil and gas for over a century and we still have clean water here in the US. It wasn’t oil and gas that killed the Chesapeake Bay.

Liberals always have to act like the sky is falling, because they can’t rely on facts to back them up.

I don’t think we’ll run out of water, any more than the world will deflate from drilling for oil and gas or Guam will tip over from too many people.

Mark Twain once said that he felt about one of his books probably the same way that the Almighty felt about the world: “The fact is, there is a trifle too much water in both.”

Sons of Liberty wrote: The only poll I trust is the one that will be conducted on Nov. 6, 2012. And from past experience working the elections I'm not too optimistic that this President will be voted out of office. I've worked the elections for 6 years now and since then I have wondered if this republic can ever be saved. Example: out of more than 700 registered voters in my district only 100 to 150 voters show up to vote EVERY election cycle, from local to national elections. - in response to With Keystone XL, Obama Mask Slips on Jobs, Energy

Dear Liberty,

Six years isn’t that many election cycles.

I would say that it’s about the normal amount of time it takes the average voter to get completely disgusted with the party in power.

In this case that means disgust with the Democrats.

In 2008, voter turnout was the highest it’s been since 1968 at 56.8 percent of the population.

The good news is that if you want voter turnout to increase in your district, you only have to contact those 700 voters once during the preceding 30 days prior to the election. If you break it down by households, it probably comes out closer to 400-500 households. That means that you only have to make 17 phone calls per day to voters in your district to positively affect the outcome.

Call your local party for the resources to contact your neighbors.

Ibuh wrote: Here we go again: spreading misinformation about the Keystone pipeline. Preserving the lies that cancelling that pipeline will result in decreased supply of Canadian oil to the US and increased oil prices. - in response to With Keystone XL, Obama Mask Slips on Jobs, Energy

Dear Comrade Ibuh,

If that’s not true than why is the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper threatening to sell the oil to China?

I would think that maybe he knows something- actually many things- about this that you don’t. In fact, I would guarantee that he knows more about most things than you do.

“Prime Minister Harper expressed his profound disappointment with the news,” that Obama scuttled the Keystone pipeline. “He indicated to President Obama that he hoped that this project would continue given the significant contribution it would make to jobs and economic growth both in Canada and the United States of America.”

He went on to say that since the US didn’t want the oil, Canada was looking to sell the oil to someone else.

Here goes that whacky Canadian Prime Minister “telling lies again” about Canadian oil.

Beachgoer wrote: I find it very hypocritical that the president can visit Disney and call for more tourism to boost the economy but slams the door on the pipeline. My business runs on gasoline. I will not be voting to re-elect!! - in response to Expecting the Worst from President Hypocrite

Dear Beachgoer,

That’s because Obama knows as much about economics as Ibuh does.

Lon wrote: Yeah why did he make this divisive decision now? I mean besides because Republicans insisted on his making it now before they agreed to a two month extension of the payroll tax cut. - in response to Expecting the Worst from President Hypocrite

Dear Comrade Lon,

Actually this is the second time that Obama punted on making a decision. His first error was completely unforced by the GOP. In fact, it was probably Democrat-on-Democrat crime that put Obama in this mess to begin with.

He has had the opportunity to make the decision since the State Department, run by Hillary Clinton, first gave the seal of approval to the pipeline back at the end of the summer.

From HuffPo:

On Friday, the State Department issued its final Environmental Impact Statement, concluding that the proposed 1,700-mile pipeline would have "no significant impact" on the environment and recommending that the project move forward, despite warnings from environmental groups that, among other things, the project would help accelerate the warming of the planet.

Just goes to show you that Hillary has a pair, and Obama does not.

Kilgore Trout wrote: I was curious where your figure of 200,000 jobs comes from. The only place I could find that figure was from the U.S Chamber of Commerce which is a conservative lobbying group. TransCanada itself stated that figure would be more like 20,000 temporary US Jobs with permanent jobs ranging in the hundreds. - in response to Expecting the Worst from President Hypocrite

Dear Comrade Kilgore,

The US Chamber, according to CBS News, says 250,000 permanent jobs. Congress has cited 20,000 construction jobs plus another 130,000 ancillary jobs. Meanwhile, Cornell University, in a flight of fancy, has said that Keystone construction “may actually destroy more jobs than it generates.” But that says more about liberal economists than it does about how many jobs the pipeline would create.

Six percent ($533 billion in payroll) of all labor income in the United States and 5.3 percent of all jobs are either directly tied to or support the oil and gas business. Some of the supporting industries include Services, Wholesale and Retail Trade, Finance, Insurance, Real Estate, Rental and Leasing, Manufacturing, Transportation and Warehousing, Information, Construction, Agriculture, Utilities and Mining. The jobs are good paying, technical positions too.

When you figure in that Keystone will supply another million barrels of oil of the 19 million barrels the US uses- or more than a 5 percent increase- you are looking at a substantial boost to the economy. That’s $350 billion in oil. Certainly the number of jobs created by processing half-a-trillion dollars in oil in the US every year will be in the hundreds of thousands of jobs. I think 250,000 jobs is too conservative an estimate.

But the bigger issue, comrade, is that once the Keystone pipeline is operating, the US will begin to exploit is own reserves of oil, which will make it a net exporter of oil and refined product.

That’s what the Keystone issue is about.

As I have pointed out all along, the Keystone issue isn’t about the safety of a pipeline. Obama and enviro-whacko friends know that if they allow Canadian tar sands oil to be developed via the Keystone pipeline, that the US will also start to develop their own tar-sands and shale oil. The US contains well over 600 years of known reserves and that would allow the US to be a net exporter of oil. If that happens, the green economy ruse that the left has sponsored, already reeling from bankruptcies and cronyism, would collapse. It would show that there is no shortage of oil and “green” energy can not compete with fossil fuels.

Mac287 wrote: Our country is America which has purposely been broken into opposing "camps" and never the twain shall meet...how about coming together for the betterment of the country we love? Parties winning only signifies country losing as we never seem to work toward solutions...now everything is a big campaign...whoever wins, we lose as a country. Any politicians out there with character & integrity and the welfare of our country at heart?- in response to UAW, Occupy and Obama Hang Themselves Together

Dear Comrade 287,

Here’s the dead giveaway that liberals are toast the next election.

Whenever they get in trouble they start singing the Rodney King anthem of “Can’t We All Just Get Along?”

When they had Obama and both houses of Congress, it was: “We won” as they shoved Obamacare down our throats.

But, yes, there are politicians with character and integrity who have the welfare of country at heart. But very few of them now reside in the Democrat party.

SOURCE

DDT myths live on

Times-Picayune celebrates DDT myth as history

In celebrating the recovery of the brown pelican population, the New Orleans Times-Picayune writes,

The brown pelican survived a brush with extinction, and the bird was declared healthy in 2009, 39 years after it was placed on the endangered species list. In the 1960s, the pelican had largely disappeared from the Gulf Coast, primarily because of decades of heavy use of the pesticide DDT in agriculture and mosquito control.

But a ban on DDT and efforts to protect pelican nesting sites led to a dramatic comeback for the Louisiana state bird.

Research in the late 1960s proved that DDT, ingested from the fish pelicans ate, caused eggshells to crack prematurely. The chemical was banned in 1972. In its absence, the osprey, the bald eagle and other fish-eating birds also made comebacks.

By November, 2009, the brown pelican population was estimated at about 650,000 in the Gulf Coast, Florida and California…

But the brown pelican had almost disappeared way before DDT came on the scene and then DDT had no effect on the pelican populations.

Check out the following from JunkScience.com’s “100 Things You Should Know About DDT“:

92. Brown pelicans declined in Texas from a high of 5,000 birds in 1918 to a low of 200 in 1941, three years before the presence of DDT. [Pearson TG. 1919. Review of reviews. Pp. 509-511 (May 1919); Pearson TG. 1934. Adventures in Bird Protection, Appleton- Century Co., p. 332; Pearson TG. 1934 (Discussion of 1918 survey) National Geographic pp. 299-302 (March 1934); Allen RG. 1935. Auk 52: p.199;]

93. Disappearance of the brown pelicans from Texas was attributed to fisherman and hunters. Gustafson AF. 1939. Conservation in the United States, Comstock Publ. Co., Ithaca, NY. (Repeated in U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Report No. 1, 1970)]

94. Brown pelicans experienced no difficulty in reproducing during the DDT years. [See Banks, RC. 1966. Trans San Diego Soc Nat Hist 14:173-188; and Schreiber RW and RL DeLong. 1969. Audubon Field Notes 23:57-59]

95. Brown pelicans did suffer reproductive problems following the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. Oil on eggs is a known cause of embryo death. [See e.g., National Wildlife Federation . 1979. Embryonic mortality from oil on feathers of adult birds. Conservation News, pp. 6-10 (October 15, 1979); Hartung, R. 1965. (Oil on eggs reduces hatch ability by 68 percent). J Wildlife Management 29: 872-874; King, KA 1979. (Oil a probable cause of pelican mortality for six weeks after spill). Bull Environ Contam. Toxicol 23:800-805; and Dieter, MP. 1977. (5 micro liters of oil on fertile egg kills 76 percent to 98 percent of embryos within. Interagency Energy-Environment Research and Development Program Report, pp 35-42]

96. Among brown pelican egg shells examined (72 percent), there was no correlation between DDT residue and shell thickness. [Switzer, B. 1972. Consolidated EPA hearings, Transcript pp. 8212-8336; and Hazeltine, WE. 1972. Why pelican eggshells are thin. Nature 239: 410-412]

97. An epidemic of Newcastle disease resulted in millions of birds put to death to eradicate the disease. [United Press International. "Newcastle disease epidemic in California (April 1972)] The epidemic among U.S. birds was caused by the migration of sick pelicans along the Mexican coast. [Hofstad MC. 1972. Diseases of Poultry. Iowa State Univ. Press]

SOURCE

Australia: "Green" gasoline switch to leave 750,000 NSW motorists out of pocket

UP TO 750,000 drivers in NSW will be forced to pay at least $150 more for petrol each year when the government bans regular unleaded petrol in July.

NSW is the only government in Australia to ban regular unleaded petrol and replace it with fuel blended with 10 per cent ethanol.

But modelling by the University of Queensland and the Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce obtained by the Herald shows 25 per cent of NSW cars cannot use ethanol fuel and will be forced to use premium fuel instead.

With support from the Liberal and National parties, the former Labor government passed legislation in 2007 banning unleaded fuel, arguing that ethanol-blended fuel was better for the environment.

The Coalition supported the laws despite the fact that among those bearing the extra cost would be nearly 100,000 NSW motorists who drive cars made before 1986, many of whom live in rural Australia.

Almost all motorcyclists in NSW and drivers of several popular makes and models, such as all Ford Lasers and many Mazdas made before 2005, will also have to pay more as their vehicles cannot run on ethanol-blended petrol.

Anton le Rutte, of the Boat Owners Association of NSW, said most boats would also be unable to use ethanol fuel because it absorbed moisture and disintegrated and had a risk of starting fires in older boats.

At an average extra of 10¢ a litre for premium fuel, the average motorist will be paying $150 more a year. For a car with a 60-litre fuel tank, filling up once a week, it will cost an extra $300 a year.

The study was prepared for the ethanol industry. It used data from 2009 to project that, as of last year, only 75 per cent of 3 million passenger vehicles and motorbikes in NSW would be able to run on ethanol-blended fuel.

The extra cost to be borne by motorists was scarcely mentioned in the parliamentary debate on the legislation.

Tony Kelly, then the minister for rural affairs, said motorists who had to switch to premium unleaded would "enjoy a higher-octane, cleaner-burning fuel".

Andrew Stoner, the Deputy Premier, supported the legislation, despite airing industry concerns that some motorists would have to pay 12¢ a litre more for "nothing other than government policy".

The Energy Minister, Chris Hartcher, did not respond to questions about whether he was concerned about the extra costs motorists would face or whether he had considered policies to offset them.

Kathleen Cash, a graphic designer from Rosebery, was totally unaware that regular unleaded petrol was being phased out and that she would have to pay more for premium fuel.

Ms Cash is thinking about trading in her 1998 Daewoo, which cannot run on ethanol-blended fuel, but her son looks likely to inherit it. "I don't really understand why it's going to cost more for older cars," she said. "I think it's really unfair that people who have older cars have to pay more".

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, 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

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2012-01-22T13:49:00.000+11:30

Obama’s Misleading Green-Jobs Ad: Taking Credit for Imaginary Jobs

There are only 140,000 jobs in the whole renewable-energy sector, but in a new ad, Obama is taking credit for a “clean energy industry” that has “2.7 million jobs.” Obama inflated the number of “clean-energy” jobs by adding people who have nothing to do with clean-energy, like “trash collectors” and bureaucrats. By inflating the total, Obama was able to paper over his complete failure to live up to his utterly unrealistic campaign promise “to create 5 million new green jobs.” Most of America’s existing green jobs predate the Obama Administration, which did not create them: “from 2003-2010, the rate of growth for clean jobs was 3.4 percent.”

Indeed, the Obama Administration used federal green-jobs money to outsource American jobs to countries like China: “Despite all the talk of green jobs, the overwhelming majority of stimulus money spent on wind power has gone to foreign companies, according to a new report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop” at American University. “79 percent” of all green-jobs funding “went to companies based overseas,” with the largest payment going to a bankrupt Australian company. “Most of the jobs are going overseas,” said Russ Choma at the Investigative Reporting Workshop.

Meanwhile, America actually lost jobs in wind-manufacturing: “Even with the infusion of so much stimulus money, a recent report by American Wind Energy Association showed a drop in U.S. wind manufacturing jobs last year.” (CBS News recently reported that there are 11 more companies, in addition to Solyndra, that are embroiled in financial trouble after receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer money; five have already filed for bankruptcy).

Obama’s mythical green-jobs are like other imaginary jobs he claimed to have created with the $800 billion stimulus package. The Obama Administration took credit for jobs created in 440 non-existent Congressional districts, such as Arizona’s 15th and 86th districts (Arizona only had 8 Congressional districts, as ABC News noted with amusement). The Washington Examiner noted that at least “75,000 jobs” Obama has claimed credit for are “clearly imaginary” or “highly doubtful.” Readers can view its interactive map of “Inflated Jobs by State.”

The Obama Administration claimed that the stimulus package would keep unemployment from ever rising above 8 percent, but it peaked at over 10 percent. Obama claimed the stimulus was needed to prevent an “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office admits that the stimulus package will shrink the economy “in the long run.”

Obama’s green-jobs pledge isn’t his only broken promise. Obama campaigned in 2008 on a promise of a “net spending cut,” but soon after taking office, he proposed budgets that would add $4.8 trillion to the national debt.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

Destroying America by Denying Access to Energy

By Alan Caruba

It is the crime of the century that America, home to some of the world’s greatest reserves of coal, natural gas and oil, is being deliberately destroyed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior as they do everything in their power to restrict access and drive energy producers out of business.

It is common sense that a nation that cannot produce sufficient electricity to turn on its lights and power its manufacturing sector will be destroyed if current Obama administration regulations and actions continue. Our vital transportation sector and all others that utilize petroleum-based products will suffer, too.

While President Obama babbles about millionaires and billionaires, everyone will be impoverished by the loss of jobs and revenue our energy sector produces now and can produce in the future.

This isn’t an “energy policy.” It’s a “no-energy policy” and it is a guarantee of economic disaster.

Obama’s decision to reject a permit for Canada’s XL Keystone pipeline is just one example. It is a job-killer and a revenue-killer. There are thousands of pipelines serving America’s energy needs and the XL Keystone pipeline would ensure that Canada’s own vast energy reserves would flow to America. It is one of our key trade partners and Obama has slapped it in the face.

In early January, Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the Interior, announced a new 20-year, million-acre ban on uranium mining for federal lands in Arizona, despite the fact that these lands hold the highest-grade of known uranium deposits in the United States. It is an outrage that a new GOP-Congress will have to overturn if the nation is to be assured of sufficient uranium to power its nuclear plants and for weapons development. If the ban remains, these uranium resources would be inaccessible until 2023!

Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research said that Salazar’s announcement “further compounds a man-made energy crisis that has been planned and executed in Washington, D.C.”

At the same time we are learning of enormous natural gas discoveries that can reduce our energy bills and turn sleeping little towns into boomtowns, environmental organizations have launched a vast propaganda campaign against “fracking”, a technology that has been safely used for more than fifty years. Their claims about dangers to the nation’s supply of fresh water are baseless. Their claims that fracking has caused earthquakes in Ohio are absurd.

Need it be said that the Environmental Protection Agency has turned its eyes on fracking and is working on a report due later this year that will likely call for harsh crackdowns on its use and more regulations to throttle the expansion of natural gas extraction?

The EPA has just released a report of those power plants that top the list of its regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. There is no basis in science to justify the reduction of CO2. Indeed, since it is a gas on which all vegetation depends, much as oxygen is vital to all animal life, reducing it would impair great crop yields and healthier forests.

These regulations are based on the global warming hoax that blamed CO2 for warming the earth. That is utterly false. The Earth is currently in a perfectly natural cooling cycle and the climate of the Earth is almost entirely based on the Sun—solar radiation—along with the actions of oceans, clouds, and even volcanic activity that spews tons of particulates into the atmosphere.

Coal-fired power plants account for fifty percent of all the electricity generated in the United States. Fifty percent! And yet the EPA is determined to shut down dozens of them providing that vital factor in the lives of all Americans and the economy, nor does this take into account the billions that energy producers have spent to upgrade their technology to reduce emissions.

The Obama administration fuel economy agenda, a call for 54.5 miles per gallon ignores simple physics. There is a finite amount of energy a gallon of gas can generate. If you dilute it with ethanol as is currently required, you get even less mileage. The administration is trying to circumvent Congress by issuing standards based on regulating “greenhouse gas emissions”, but there is no need for this. It is a false argument. The Center for Automotive Research says that the proposed new standards would cause the retail price of average motor vehicles to increase by more than $11,000.

Americans and the nation’s future are being victimized by Obama administration policies. The 18th annual Index of Economic Freedom, was released on January 12th by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, measures the many factors that contribute to the economic health of a nation—things like property rights, regulatory efficiency, open markets, free trade and labor policies.

Economic freedom is declining worldwide as governments try to spend their way out of the global recession. The United States fell to 10th place. In 2009 it ranked 6th, in 2010 it was 8th, and in 2011, it was 9th.

We are witnessing the deliberate murder of a superpower.

SOURCE

Computer Climate Models — A Masochist’s Best Friend

Harold Ambler

A new paper out of Duke, Stanford, and the Environmental Defense Fund, promises that California will have a hard time fulfilling its carbon sequestration targets if climate keeps changing at the terrifying pace it has of late. Using computer models to prove its claims, if not its logic (since it has none), the paper had the usual effect that such glorified press releases do on your correspondent.

Leaving aside the fact that carbon sequestration is a bad idea, in response to questionable science, the idea that newspaper space is occupied by model-driven climate analyses day in and day out is, I admit, hard to take. Why, you ask? Well, I happen to have addressed that very question in my spiffy new book. And, if you’re very, very nice, or even if you just keep reading, you’ll see why.

Let’s start with a picture!

Computer models have come to replace reality in the public debate about climate. NASA’s “Columbia” supercomputer, Mountain View, California, 2006

That’s a big boy! Must have something interesting to say about climate change! You bet he does! And now, just a tantalizing bit of Chapter 5 (Rise of the Machines) from Don’t Sell Your Coat:

So the ice caps aren’t melting. That doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of other ammunition with which to scare otherwise sane people badly. Put yourself in the shoes of the global warming doomsayers. If you’re going to scare the pants off a whole bunch of folks, you’re going to need some powerful tools. Arguably the most powerful tool available for such a purpose is the supercomputer. That is why a single phrase appears in nearly every article and book dealing with climate change. Although the phrase is used in other disciplines to signify divergence from reality, in the case of climate science it has come to be equated with reality, or even to replace reality. Its proponents are passionate, tireless. Its detractors don’t really know where to start.

That phrase? Computer models.

The full formal name is general circulation models. Using gridded cells the size of Connecticut, these computer models are humanity’s effort to lasso, intellectually, what may be the most mentally uncontrollable being ever created: Earth’s climate system. There are many, many issues with models.

Using the most powerful supercomputers in existence, modelers strain to generate even faintly accurate climate forecasts, simply for lack of computing power. The ocean-atmosphere system is that complicated. Among the items that the models must attempt to compute: highly complex, poorly understood deep-sea currents; the effects of aerosols (fine pollution particles) on cloud formation; the effect of black carbon pollution on the melt rate of snow and ice, especially in the Arctic; solar radiation (via an effect known as solar dimming); volcanic eruptions; the effect of air masses of different pressure on either side of mountains (a process known as mountain torque); variations in wind patterns, particularly of trade winds that lead to El Niños and La Niñas; variations in albedo, which is the extent to which the Earth’s surface and atmosphere (ice sheets, clouds, oceans, forests, deserts, cities, farms, rivers, and lakes) reflect radiation back to space; and, finally, solar variation, including a controversial secondary effect of the Sun’s shifting phases on cloud formation in our atmosphere.

Every one of these variable quantities is being debated in the scientific literature. And in the blogosphere the debate is red hot, as exemplified by the tongue-in-cheek suggestion by more than one blogger that global warming skeptics be murdered in their sleep. Controversy aside, just measuring any one of the factors to be included in computer model simulations, at any given moment in time, is nearly impossible. Among the reasons: The planet is a lot bigger than the average person gives it credit for being. The ability to fly from one continent to another in less than half a day gives a false impression of scale, it turns out.

The state of Texas can help convey the size of the planet. Texas, at 268,581 square miles constitutes 13.2 percent of the land area of the United States (which comes in at 3,537,441 square miles). The surface area of Earth, though, is 196,935,000 square miles. The percent of the world’s surface occupied by Texas, then, is 0.5. And yet within this one-half of one percent of Earth’s surface area are several vastly different climates. From the high mountain desert of El Paso in the west, where accumulating snowstorms are typical most winters, to the southernmost coast on South Padre Island where the warm Gulf of Mexico water acts as a powerful buffer against temperature extremes (especially those of winter), to oppressively hot and humid Houston, to Amarillo in the Panhandle with its four distinct seasons, to the state’s myriad river systems (each with its own micro-climate), Texas (as those who have labored to drive across any portion of it know) is enormous. Likewise, every other half-percent of the globe’s land mass is, too.

- end of excerpt -

As the models continue to foresee worse and worse scenarios, demanding more and more extreme measures from politicians and the public alike, including and specifically a darker and darker future for my native state, I have to say that California, outside of its political present, continues to be a healthy, vibrant land that I am fortunate to have known intimately, and to know still.

SOURCE

From Rescuing The Climate To Rescuing The Economy – Germany’s Energy Transition Goes Into Reverse

Imagine if the government forced supermarkets to buy bread from plain white bread bakeries, ordered them to pay these bakeries a fixed price that’s 5 times higher than normal for 20 years, and forced them to buy up all the white bread these bakeries could produce, whether needed or not.

And imagine if the government also forced the supermarkets to buy bread that was never baked to begin with! All of this of course justified by bogus science claiming plain white bread is healthy and whole grain bread is a killer.

You can imagine the consequences.

Well, that’s exactly what Germany is doing with electricity. It requires power utilities to buy up “green” electricity from every producer at exorbitant rates, and to do so for 20 years. And if the grid gets overloaded on windy days, the wind-farm operator is told to stop producing, but still gets paid by the power utilities.

Unfortunately, Germany’s green politicians here were too dim-witted to foresee the obvious consequences. Now reality has since caught up. The German electricity market is on the verge of collapse. The scale of the EEG Renewable Energy Feed-in Act is of unprecedented stupidity, a folly that will certainly go down in German history textbooks.

The backpedaling away from solar subsidies in Germany is now happening so fast that it’s making people’s heads spin. Call it the reverse energy supply transition – one from fantasy back to reality.

Germany pulls the emergency brake on solar energy

Today a growing number of German officials, who were once huge proponents of renewable energies and the EEG Feed-In Act, are now realizing that solar energy in gray and rainy Germany is a folly after all. Electricity rates in Germany are skyrocketing and the risks of uncontrolled energy supply interruptions are mounting. Officials are now screaming for a drastic scale-back of solar subsidies. Economics Minister Philip Rösler is now calling for an end to the fixed and guaranteed (for 20 years) renewable energy feed-in rates paid to green producers.

Even Germany’s super green Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen has seemingly woken up and now plans to drastically scale back new installations of solar systems in Germany, according to CO2 Handel here. In the new plan, subsidies will be scaled back on a monthly basis and accelerated. Subsidies for solar systems under the new plan would end by 2017.

Energy intensive industries are bolting, or are planning to do so

Power utilities have been finding it increasingly difficult to juggle the constantly and widely varying energy sources of wind and solar power, and are warning that power outages and grid collapses are just a question of time.

The mandatory feed-in of the vastly more expensive solar energy has caused electricity rates to surge and have been driving energy-intensive industries out of Germany. Solar energy was until recently seen as a way of filling in as a power supply in place of the shut down nuclear reactors, and rescuing the climate from coal plants. Now the focus of politics has reversed and shifted to rescuing the economy.

Recent surveys have shown that companies are becoming increasingly wary of conducting operations in Germany due to what they view as a potentially unreliable energy supply. The European Institute for Climate and Energy EIKE) here reports that:

"One fifth of every industrial company has moved activities to foreign countries, or plans to do so, because of the uncertain energy and raw material supply. This is the result of a survey conducted by the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHK), in which 1520 companies participated. DIHK-President Hans Heinrich Driftmann finds this alarming: Here, fears that Germany is losing its appeal for foreign investors in the wake of it’s energy supply transformation.”

No wonder Environment Minister Röttgen plans to take drastic measures in curbing solar energy. Germany’s industrial economy is eroding rapidly. Prof. Dr. Dieter Ameling, a former steel industry leader and spokesman, recently said the (green) energy supply transition in Germany meant the downfall of energy intensive industry in Germany.

Unfortunately greens don’t understand that transferring clean, high-standard German industry to foreign, low-standard countries means more CO2 emissions and pollution, and not less. And they certainly do not understand even the most basic laws of economics. Germany’s Renewable Energy Feed-In Act is proof.

Kook greens in Canada think solar power is for free!

Finally here’s hippie David Suzuki (3 min. mark) saying “It’s free, man, it’s free!”

With idiots like that advising governments, we’re not surprised everything is going bankrupt.

SOURCE

Solar Stocks Plunge as Germany Vows to Quicken Subsidy Cuts

Solar stocks plunged around the world after Germany, the largest market for panels, said it will make quicker cuts to subsidized rates and phase out support for the industry by 2017.

Chinese manufacturers listed in New York fell for a second day, with Trina Solar Ltd. and JA Solar Holdings Co. skidding 17 percent over the two-day period. GCL-Poly Energy Holdings Ltd., which makes the raw material for most panels, fell the most since November in Hong Kong. In Europe, Meyer Burger Technology AG, Solarworld AG and SMA Solar Technology AG dropped at least 5.3 percent each today.

German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said last night that he planned to reduce feed-in tariffs providing above- market prices for solar power every month instead of twice a year as he does now. He said he's working to curb an “unacceptable” surge in installations last year.

“It was clear that Roettgen would accelerate feed-in tariff digressions which would remove the bloom from the rose,” Jesse Pichel, an analyst for Jefferies Group Inc., said today. “This will remove the ability for the German market to materially upside estimates.”

Yesterday's decision indicated ministers are speeding up efforts to restrain the boom in installations after developers added 7.5 gigawatts of panels last year, surpassing the 3 gigawatts that Roettgen said would be acceptable.

Government Concern

Economy Minister Philipp Roesler has said spiraling costs linked to solar subsidies are a threat to the economy. Roettgen on Jan. 18 indicated concern that the funds are benefiting Chinese companies.

“The increase in installations in the past few years has gone far beyond what we had targeted in our legislation,” Roettgen said yesterday. He said the subsidy overhaul would be handled “quickly.”

Gordon Johnson, the Axiom Capital Management Inc. analyst who last week removed his “sell” recommendation on First Solar Inc. for the first time since 2008, cut his guidance again, giving five other solar companies a “sell” rating too.

“That was short,” he said in a note to clients. “We believe a severe cut in global demand is near.”

The higher frequency in cuts will do away with the year-end rushes of the past and may help bring installation “closer toward” the government's target, Solarworld Chief Executive Officer Frank Asbeck said by phone yesterday.

A slowdown in the German and Italian markets, which accounted for about half of worldwide installations last year, is bound to hurt the industry. Germany targets 2.5 to 3.5 gigawatts a year and seeks to phase out subsidies by 2017, Roettgen said.

The minister will propose aggressive cuts to fend off the “very real possibility” of a cap on installations, Pichel said.

The country was expected to cut tariffs by 15 percent in July, following a 15 percent reduction that took effect Jan. 1. Under the current law, lower rates are imposed automatically by above-target installations.

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, 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

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2012-01-21T12:40:00.005+11:30

Sea Level Rise During The Hottest Year Ever

According to NASA’s Dr. Hansen, 2010 was the hottest year ever, and Greenland temperatures were also the hottest ever. We are told this led to record melt in Greenland, which caused massive amounts of water to pour into the ocean. Additionally, thermal expansion from the record heat caused the oceans to get much deeper.

Satellite data shows us that sea level has been falling steadily since the start of 2010, which tells us that the missing water and the missing heat must be hiding at the bottom of the ocean – along with the missing intelligence and integrity of government scientists.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

You Cannot Have This EPA and a Constitution

Mark Levin says America cannot at the same time have a Constitution and an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that is doing what the EPA is doing today.

Levin made the observation in an interview with CNSNews.com about his new book, “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America.”

Modern American liberals, who are Utopias, Levin said, aim to erode the separation of powers built into the U.S. Constitution so that a “relative handful of masterminds” can tell everybody else what to do.

“This erosion has been going on for about a hundred years,” said Levin. “It’s at a much faster pace right now and there’s a reason for this--because you can’t have constitutionalism and utopianism.”

“The purpose of the Constitution is to have a limited central government where the sovereignty remains with the individual and the people and the states,” said Levin. “The purpose of utopianism is the opposite of all that. It’s a relative handful of masterminds and their massive army of bureaucrats and their experts advising them from the colleges and so forth on how to run society.

“You cannot have an EPA and a Constitution at the same time doing what this EPA is doing,” Levin told CNSNews.com.

“You cannot have an NLRB deciding who gets to work where, how, and when, and at the same time follow the Constitution,” he said.

“You cannot have a tax code that serves basically the purpose of redistributing wealth, which is one of the things that Marx was pushing for so strongly, and at the same time be arguing about limited government and constitutionalism,” he said.

“The utopians reject history. Everything begins today,” said Levin. “The models they want to put in place begin today. So why anybody thinks they’re going to respect the Constitution when they don’t respect the rest of history is beyond me.”

In “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America,” released Monday, Levin compares the Utopian political philosophy behind modern American liberalism with the vision of natural law, God-given rights and limited government that inspired the Founding Fathers to write the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The Supreme Court last week heard arguments in the case of Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency. The case was brought by an Idaho couple, Mike and Chantell Sackett, who were told by the EPA that they could not build a home on their own lot because the EPA said it might be a wetland—and that they could face a fine of $37,000 per day for defying the EPA’s order.

SOURCE

Greenie versus Greenie: The Condor

Drive out of California’s smoggy San Joaquin Valley, past the oil rigs planted helter-skelter in citrus groves, climb into the Tehachapi Mountains, and the future suddenly comes into view. Hundreds of gleaming white wind turbines generating carbon-free electricity carpet chaparral-covered ridges and march down into the valleys of Joshua trees that lead to the Mojave Desert.

Here in Kern County, a bastion of Big Oil and Big Agriculture, green energy has become big business. In the past 36 months the wind industry has attracted $3.2 billion in investment to a region with an unemployment rate 64% higher than the U.S. average. A multibillion-dollar transmission line under construction in the Tehachapi will carry as much as 4,500 megawatts of renewable energy, most of it from wind farms, to coastal cities. At peak output that’s the equivalent of four or five big nuclear power plants and a linchpin of California’s mandate to obtain a third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. With a crucial federal tax credit set to expire at the end of 2012, developers are racing to put steel into the ground and secure a spot on the wire.

“The hotels are now full, the people who work in the restaurants now have someone to wait on,” says Lorelei Oviatt, Kern County’s planning director in Bakersfield, the honky-tonk hometown of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. “If you were laying concrete for a house, now you’re laying concrete for a turbine.”

A shadow, however, is falling on the Tehachapi, cast by the nine-and-a-half-foot wingspan of a Pleistocene-born bird of uncommon intelligence and longevity. With the investment of tens of millions of dollars and extraordinary effort by scientists, North America’s largest bird, the California condor, is staging a spectacular comeback after verging on extinction 25 years ago. The 200 birds in the wild today (out of 400 total) are rapidly reinhabiting their historic range in one of the nation’s great achievements of conservation biology. Naturalists can once again marvel at a bird that manipulates hot winds to soar hundreds of miles without flapping its wings.

It’s a flight path that is taking the condor perilously closer to the spinning blades of Tehachapi wind turbines that depend on those same thermal currents to generate power; biologists fear it’s only a matter of time before the condor begins hitting the 500-foot-high machines. A single death could be catastrophic for the wind industry, the regional economy and, not least, the condor. The loss of an alpha bird could disrupt breeding patterns and an intricate avian hierarchy, according to biologists. “It would be a major disaster,” says Mark Tholke, an executive with wind developer enXco, which is building several projects in the Tehachapi.

Under the federal and California endangered species acts, it’s illegal for anyone to kill a condor without first securing a permit to do so. Given that the government has not issued such an “incidental take” permit and has no intention of doing so, if a turbine kills a condor, the operator could be charged criminally. Environmentalists could also ask a judge to shut down a wind farm where a condor died. “If we as an industry don’t come up with a plan that is clear and reliable,” says Tholke, “the uncertainty is going to drive some investors away and drive up the cost of renewable energy.”

Already, state regulators have scuttled a huge Pacific Gas & Electric wind project in part because of the financial risks of a potential condor-caused cut to electricity production. Last June the Tehachapi’s biggest developer, Terra-Gen Power, abruptly pulled a planned 411-megawatt farm after Oviatt says she told executives that condor concerns and opposition from local residents would likely doom the project. Then in October the Sierra Club and two other environmental groups sued Kern County over its approval of a 300-megawatt NextEra Energy Resources wind farm that state and federal officials warn poses a high risk to condors.

More HERE

“Disbelieving is hard work”

Theory-induced blindness and Vermeer’s and Rahmstorf’s “Global sea level linked to global temperature.”

In one of the many interesting chapters of Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, Princeton University Emeritus Professor of Psychology and winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics discussed Daniel Bernoulli’s 250-year-old mathematical theory of risk aversion.

Kahneman points out that “Bernoulli’s essay is a marvel of concise brilliance…

Most impressive, his analysis… has stood the test of time: it is still current in economic analysis almost 300 years later. The longevity of the theory is all the more remarkable because it is seriously flawed. The errors of a theory are rarely found in what it asserts explicitly; they hide in what it ignores or tacitly assumes”

Kahneman then goes on to demolish of Bernoulli’s theory. This demolition is simple and incontrovertible, takes about one page, and is easily understood by anybody of average intelligence. Kahneman says this about the demolition…

“All this is rather obvious, isn’t it? One could easily imagine Bernoulli himself constructing similar examples and developing a more complex theory to accommodate them; for some reason, he did not. One could imagine colleagues of his time disagreeing with him, or later scholars objecting as they read his essay; for some reason, they did not either.

The mystery is how a conception … that is vulnerable to such obvious counterexamples survived for so long. I can explain it only by a weakness of the scholarly mind that I have often observed in myself. I call it theory-induced blindness: once you have accepted a theory and used it as a tool in your thinking, it is extraordinarily difficult to notice its flaws. If you come upon an observation that does not seem to fit the model, you assume that there must be a perfectly good explanation that you are somehow missing. You give the theory the benefit of the doubt, trusting the community of experts who have accepted it. Many scholars have surely thought at one time or another of stories such as [the examples that Kahneman gives] and casually noted that these stories did not jibe…But they did not pursue the idea to the point of saying ‘this theory is seriously wrong because it ignores the fact[s]‘…As the psychologist Daniel Gilbert observed, disbelieving is hard work…”

What does all this have to do with ClimateSanity? Simple – it sounds like Vermeer’s and Rahmstorf’s model linking global sea level to global temperature (“Global sea level linked to global temperature,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, December 22, 2009 vol. 106 no. 51 21527-21532 ). It has been incontrovertibly demolished, but the believer’s just can’t let it go. They must suffer theory-induced blindness. They seem to have endless capacity to simply overlook the plethora of bizarre, improbable or impossible consequences of the Vermeer and Rahmstorf model.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

Britain's Green Subsidy Farms Harvest £25 Million For Sweet F.A.

Wind farms are receiving millions of pounds to shut down when the weather is too windy, The Times has learnt.

Dozens of onshore facilities shared £25 million last year, a 13,733 per cent increase on 2010, after a particularly blustery year, according to the figures released by National Grid.

The payments to stop operating are made by National Grid because it cannot cope with the amount of power being fed on to the system when it is very windy. But experts and consumer groups have accused wind-farm operators of abusing the system by demanding excessive payments.

Ultimately, the cost of being shut down is passed on to households because National Grid charges energy suppliers, who add the levy to bills.

Wind farms already receive large subsidies from consumers because they cost more to operate than coal and gas plants but produce no carbon emissions.

In total last year National Grid paid operators to stop generating for 149,983 megawatt-hours, equivalent to 1.49 per cent of the total electricity generated by Britain’s wind farms. This is equivalent to one large onshore farm being paid to be switched off all year.

It is the first time that National Grid, a FTSE-100 company, has revealed how much it paid wind farms not to operate. Many of the payments are made to onshore wind farms in remote places, like the Scottish Highlands, where the grid has not been properly upgraded.

National Grid argues that it is usually cheaper to pay off wind farms on the occasions when they would be operating at full capacity than spending billions of pounds to strengthen these isolated parts of the grid.

On one of the windiest days in October last year, National Grid paid wind farms £1.6 million, or £361 per MW/h on average, about four times the price that operators would expect to sell their electricity, according to ENDS, the specialist environmental information provider.

Consumer Focus said that wind-farm operators should not be able to hold National Grid to ransom by demanding huge payments in return for not generating electricity.

Richard Hall, head of energy regulation, said: “If wind-farm generators are asked to cut production they will clearly expect some compensation. But to keep costs down for customers we believe this should be at a level which reflects the realistic value of the loss to the company, not an arbitrary level that the firms set themselves.”

Ofgem, the energy regulator, said that it had “long-standing concerns” about the level of payments.

Since 2007 the amount of these “constraint payments” to all power generators has doubled as the amount of renewables being built has risen. Wind farms receive a disproportionately high amount of these payments compared with coal and gas plants.

The size of payments will soar further as Britain tries to meet its target of generating a third of its electricity from renewables, mostly wind farms, by 2020.

Phil Hare, vice-president for northwest Europe for Pöyry Management Consulting, the energy consultant, said: “If wind farms are receiving much more in constraint payments than they would if they sold the electricity, they are making a turn they shouldn’t be.

“By 2020, because of all the wind farms which will be on the system, the ups and downs of power generation will be staggering and very hard to deal with.”

SOURCE

Global Warming: The Evidence is Endless

If I believed the Earth was slowly turning into cheddar cheese, I could invoke this theory to explain a lot of things. Why is the rat population in our major cities growing so quickly? Earth cheesification is providing more rat food. Why have there been so many earthquakes lately? The cheesification of the tectonic plates has made them less resistant to sudden shifts. Why are glaciers melting? The freezing point of cheddar cheese is lower than that of water; as the Earth at the poles undergoes cheesification, the unfrozen cheese is causing a slight warming of the ice sheets from below, resulting in unusual levels of melting.

I could go on like this for a long time, I suppose. At some point, however, you would confront me with some natural fact that I could not logically account for by means of my cheese theory. In other words, even the greatest faith in this underlying assumption could never withstand all possible evidence.

If, however, we could devise a theory that might literally be able to repel absolutely any possible counter-evidence, then we would have accomplished something truly diabolical: an unfalsifiable theory. If we could indeed devise such a theory, then we could run wild explaining anything and everything, and absorb absolutely any eventuality, without ever needing to question our faith in the underlying hypothesis.

Then we would be at liberty to publish headlines such as this: “Research suggests warmer summers could be causing colder winters.” This conjecture, brought to you via the magical theory of global climate change, is reported as though it is the most plausible explanation of the peculiar fact that Canadian winters do not appear to be getting any warmer.

Question you aren’t supposed to ask: Why is the non-warming of recent winters a peculiar fact in need of an explanation? After all, did anyone in the past harbor any presumption that winters ought to be getting warmer? Why should they? The difference, of course, is that in the age of global warming, everyone is supposed to know, beyond any doubt, that the Earth is indeed getting significantly warmer. Thus, every time someone casually observes that the weather is pretty chilly, or that there has been a lot of snow, all hearers in the room look at their hands awkwardly, smirk bemusedly, or display some other symptom of that feeling familiar to anyone who has had to face doubts about a deeply held religious belief: “But this just can’t be true, because if it is, then my world is about to crumble.”

The world of anthropogenic global climate change crumbled a long time ago

The world of anthropogenic global climate change crumbled a long time ago. That, in fact, is why we have a theory called “anthropogenic global climate change” in the first place. Thirty-five years ago, it was called global cooling. When the temperature records made minced meat of that “theory,” it was put on ice for a few years, as it were. Finally, on the principle that if you can’t beat Mother Nature, you must join her, the wizards who brought us global cooling conveniently revised their models to prove beyond any doubt that the newly discovered global warming trend was a man-made phenomenon. Then, around 1998, the temperature records began to flat-line. Carbon dioxide, the Enemy, was reaching ever-higher levels in the atmosphere; and yet it was no longer having the desired – er, I mean “anticipated” – effect of warming the planet as it should (oops, I mean “as the models predicted”).

For several years, the global crusaders against carbon dioxide mocked, ridiculed, and/or ignored anyone who dared to ask why, if rising CO2 levels cause global warming, temperatures were not rising at accelerating rates, as CO2 levels continued to rise exponentially. Oh, but temperatures are indeed rising, the faithful said. In fact, each year, they produced annual temperature record analyses, garnered through the official scientific records center, the UN, showing that that year had been the warmest ever recorded. Then, a little later, some fine print would appear somewhere explaining how the report had slightly overestimated the warming for the year in question.

Hedging their bets, the global warmers began offering arguments to account for the stalled warming trend, even while they continued to deny that the trend had stalled – a method equivalent to saying, “I didn’t kill my wife, but if I did, it was in self-defense.” Their main argument was a condescending appeal to the big picture that the skeptics were allegedly too narrow-minded to see: Global temperature change, they said, is a process that develops over a very long period of time. Therefore, they harrumphed, claiming that a broader trend has ceased because temperatures have not changed for a few years shows an unscientific short-sightedness.

Of course, if one were to accept this bet-hedging argument, one could turn it back on the global warmers: Eighty years can hardly be called a “big picture,” in planetary terms. The Earth is believed to be more than four billion years old. If five years without warming is too short a period to call a trend, then why is eighty years of net warming a long enough period to call a trend? From the point of view of four billion years, eighty looks an awful lot like five, does it not? (To be precise, as a percentage of four billion, 5 is 0.000000125%, while 80 is 0.000002%.) So how sure can we be that the period during which this unnatural warming is alleged to have happened is a long enough period to indicate a “long-term trend”? Will they be forced back to frightening us about global cooling again in twenty years?

Perhaps dimly recognizing this little problem, the global warming advocates – um, I mean “researchers” – finally hit upon the perfect modification of their theory, namely to say that it doesn’t matter what happens to the temperature; the cause, in any case, is man. Thus, along about the middle of this century’s first decade, we suddenly had John Kerry and Hillary Clinton exiting a Senate hearing and taking to the microphones to discuss “global climate change.” No one officially announced this name change, of course. It just sort of happened. And with it came the lovely new premise that what our CO2 emissions are causing is neither warming nor cooling, per se, but rather “change.” “What kind of change?” you ask. Invalid question. Just “change.” Change from what? From some previous year’s “climate”? From some objective standard of what would have happened “naturally,” had we icky humans not spewed the by-product of so much life-sustaining productivity into Gaia’s aura? It makes little difference; no need to fuss about what exactly the “changers” are claiming is changing, since the particular changes that might occur from here on out are of no consequence to the theory. Any change will do – including no change at all, which can also be interpreted as a change, if you tilt your head a bit to one side.

The unanimous, settled scientists and their masters, the unanimous, settled proponents of global governance, have continued to act as though they still want you to accept that temperatures are rising every year, ice caps are shrinking, polar bears are drowning, and so on. “Global climate change” is, for most practical purposes, still “global warming.” This is necessary, since global regulation requires global panic, and it would be much more difficult to stir panic over the idea – which is, officially, the theory of the moment – that “temperatures, and their effects, may or may not change in one way or another over any given period of time.”

Global warming is indispensable as a political tool, even if it can only be preserved through a fuzzy bait-and-switch operation with global climate change

Global warming is indispensable as a political tool, even if it can only be preserved through a fuzzy bait-and-switch operation with global climate change. Nevertheless, the name change provided good backside protection. “Global climate change” takes a perfectly good bit of crackpot neo-religiosity and elevates it to the level of unfalsifiable pseudo-theory – unfalsifiable, as in nothing you could possibly present to the nutters by way of facts can ever be evidence to the contrary. Why not? Because there is no contrary.

If cooling, warming, and stasis are all evidence of anthropogenic global climate change, then science has finally followed the rest of the modern world into that realm of inescapable self-incrimination dubbed the Kafkaesque. We are guilty of global climate change. There is no proof. There is not even anyone to talk to by way of defending ourselves. Having been inexplicably accused, we will simply be sent on a dreamlike quest through a never-ending maze of inhuman obfuscation until, gradually, we come to accept that the accusation against us must be true, or else it would not have been made. At this point, we must desire our own demise, as the only “just” resolution, given the undefined crimes of which we have convicted ourselves.

At last, as the fight to defend global warming reached fever pitch over some e-mails seeming to discuss evidence-alteration – remember, this defense of warming took place years after the official line was that it didn’t matter whether the temperature was rising or not – one of the main players in the scandal, and one of the most prominent and respected defenders of the cause-without-any-definable-effect, stepped forward to concede that there has been no warming since 1995. When asked whether he thought natural causes could account for the warming from 1975-1998, and if so, to what extent, he answered, “This area is slightly outside my area of expertise. When considering changes over this period we need to consider all possible factors (so human and natural influences as well as natural internal variability of the climate system).”

So let’s get this straight: Dr. Phil Jones, one of the world’s foremost authorities on global climate change, says that the question of the possibility and degree of natural climate influences is outside of his area of expertise. Translation: I don’t do climate change; I do man-made climate change. His expertise is in trying to show the existence of an influence on climate that no one prior to 1970 thought was possible, and he thinks that looking at other influences which everyone has always known were real is outside of his area. In other words, looking at known facts of nature would get in the way of his career-advancing conjectures, so, as a matter of professional policy, he doesn’t look at them.

Notice that when Jones lists “all possible factors” of warming from 1975-1998, he lists “human influences” first, as though this were the obvious first place to look for an explanation of a variation in global temperatures over a 23-year period – as though no 23-year period has ever shown a variation in temperatures before. His default assumption is the furthest one from common sense, namely that humans did it.

Likewise, in our latest contribution to unfalsifiability, in which cold winters have been interpreted as a symptom of global warming – in spite of the fact that until recently, the party line was to deny that winters are still cold at all – the research project undertaken to reach this conclusion is described this way: “Cohen and his co-authors began by asking themselves why winter temperatures in the northern hemisphere aren’t going up as quickly as in the spring, summer and fall.” Once again, the default assumption is anthropogenic global warming. The task the researchers set for themselves was to explain away falsifying evidence. For example, why were they not trying to explain how the cold winters might be causing warmer summers? Because the paradigm they are working in demands that all apparent exceptions to global warming be explained away. Thirty-five years ago, they would indeed have been making the opposite argument, in order to salvage global cooling.

Recently, a former Korean student of mine made a typical unquestioning reference to global warming. Constitutionally averse to letting smart people say stupid things, I briefly offered some of the usual arguments against anthropogenic climate change. My student answered, diplomatically, that the issue seemed to be a “mystery,” but that as she was unable to verify my facts in her first language, and as so many intelligent people were working on this issue at the UN, she was obliged to stick to her position. In other words, she was assuming, as we are all meant to do, that the burden of proof is on the “denier.”

I asked her this question: If I went to the police and told them you were a murderer, should they arrest you? Why not? Because we put the burden of proof on the accuser, which is to say, on the person proposing something that falls outside of normal assumptions. Why do we do the opposite with man-made global climate change?

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, 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

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2012-01-20T14:47:00.000+11:30

Charles Manson energy

It’s time to apply endangered species, wildlife and economic laws fairly and equitably

Paul Driessen

“… gleaming white wind turbines generating carbon-free electricity carpet chaparral-covered ridges and march down into valleys of Joshua trees.” This is “the future” of American energy – not “the oil rigs planted helter-skelter in [nearby] citrus groves,” nor the “smoggy San Joaquin Valley” a few miles away."

The Forbes article’s poetic paean to Aeolian energy nevertheless voiced consternation that a 300-megawatt “green” turbine project might kill some of the magnificent California condors that are just coming back from the edge of extinction – and the project might be cancelled as a result.

Indeed, the US Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) has asked Kern County to “exercise extreme caution” in approving projects in the Tehapachi area, because of potential threats to condors. The “conundrum will force some hard choices about the balance we are willing to strike between obtaining clean energy and preserving wild things,” the article suggested. Hopefully, it concluded, new “avian radar units” will be able to detect condors and automatically shut down turbines when one approaches.

All Americans hope condors will not be sliced and diced by giant Cuisinarts. But most of us are puzzled that so few “environmentalists” and FWS “caretakers” express concern about the countless bald and golden eagles, hawks, falcons, vultures, ducks, geese, bats and other rare, threatened, endangered and common flying creatures imperiled by turbine blades.

And many of us get downright angry at the selective, indeed hypocritical ways in which endangered species and other wildlife laws are applied – leaving wind turbine operators free to exact their carnage, while harassing and punishing oil companies and citizens.

In 2011, following an intensive million-dollar, 45-day helicopter search for dead birds in North Dakota oil fields by FWS officials, US Attorney Timothy Purdon prosecuted seven oil and gas companies for inadvertently killing 28 mallard ducks, flycatchers and other common birds that were found dead in or near uncovered waste pits. Under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the companies and their executive officers faced fines of up to $15,000 per bird, plus six months in prison. (They eventually agreed to plead guilty and pay $1,000 per bird.)

Also in 2011, an FWS agent charged an 11-year-old Virginia girl with illegally “taking” a baby woodpecker that the girl had rescued from a housecat, even though she intended to release the bird after ensuring it was OK. The threatened $535 fine was finally dropped, after the FWS was deservedly ridiculed in the media.

The mere possession of an eagle feather by a non-Indian can result in fines and imprisonment, even if the feather came from a bird butchered by a wind turbine: up to $100,000, a year in prison or both for a first offense. Poisoning or otherwise killing common bats that have nested in one’s attic can cost homeowners thousands of dollars in fines.

Wind turbine companies, officers and employees, however, are immune from prosecution, fines or imprisonment, regardless of how many rare, threatened, endangered or migratory birds and bats they kill. In fact, FWS data show that wind turbines slaughter some 400,000 birds every year. If “helter-skelter” applies to any energy source, it is wind turbines, reflecting their Charles Manson effect on birds.

The hypocritical Obama-Purdon-FWS policy certainly protects, promotes and advances an anti-hydrocarbon, catastrophic global warming agenda that is increasingly at odds with environmental, scientific, economic, job-creation and public opinion reality. It also safeguards wind turbines that survive solely because of government mandates, taxpayer subsidies … and exemptions from laws that penalize and terrorize the rest of us.

It may be true that housecats and reflective windows kill more songbirds than turbines do. However, that oft-cited defense of wind energy Cuisinarts is irrelevant to the birds and bats discussed here.

Even if avian radar and turbine shutdown systems do eventually work, and can actually and abruptly stop turbine blades before they butcher an approaching bird, should they be limited to condors? Shouldn’t they be required for eagles and falcons – and for hawks, ducks, flycatchers, bats and other protected species? Geese, for example, to prevent a repeat of the December 7, 2011 massacre of numerous snow geese by wind turbines along upstate New York Route 190, as reported by a motorist?

Why aren’t wind developers and permitting authorities required to consider the lost economic benefits of butchered birds and bats, which do so much to control rats and insects that carry diseases and destroy crops? Shouldn’t that analysis be made mandatory, as more wind projects are proposed, thereby posing an ever-increasing threat to numerous species – and even to the survival of some?

Of course, even condor protection alone could reduce affected turbine electricity output to 20 or even 10% of rated capacity, instead of their current 30% average. Adding other protected species would drive nearly all actual wind turbine electricity output down below 5% – making the turbines virtually worthless, and driving the exorbitant cost of wind energy even higher.

But why should wind turbines be above the law? In fact, why should we even worry about reducing their electricity output?

America’s environmentalists, legislators, judges and bureaucrats have already made hundreds of millions of acres of resource-rich land off limits – and rendered centuries of oil, gas, coal, uranium, geothermal and other energy unavailable. The Environmental Protection Agency’s anti-coal zero-pollution rules, intense opposition to the Keystone pipeline, and looming restrictions on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas are already further impairing electricity and other energy availability and reliability.

This government-imposed energy deprivation is already driving families into energy poverty and sending more jobs overseas.

Put bluntly, wind energy is unsustainable. It kills unconscionable numbers of bats, raptors and other birds. It requires billions in perpetual subsidies – and billions more for (mostly) gas-fired backup generators. It impacts millions of acres of scenic, wildlife and agricultural land – and depends on vast amounts of raw materials, whose extraction and processing further impairs global land, air and water quality. Its expensive, unreliable electricity kills two jobs for every one supposedly created.

A far more rational public policy would cut out the costly, unreliable middleman. It would forget about wind turbines, simply build more gas, coal and nuclear generators, to generate reliable, affordable, sustainable electricity – and apply the same laws fairly and equitably to all energy sources.

SOURCE

Plastic Bag Bans Hurt Shoppers, Retailers and Workers

A small but increasing number of cities are in a frenzy to ban plastic shopping bags. More than two dozen cities nationwide have either banned plastic grocery bags (and in some cases, paper bags) entirely, or have imposed a fee for using them in order to encourage the use of reusable bags. However, such policies have hidden costs few seem to recognize.

Anecdotal evidence indicates that cities with bag bans have lost commerce, while surrounding cities and neighborhoods benefit as shoppers choose to go elsewhere.

This is consumer choice – most people prefer the plastic bag option for their convenience, flexibility, strength and other obvious reasons.

Many consumers use plastic bags at home. They can be used to line bathroom trash bins, collect Fido’s waste and Kitty’s cat litter, to securely seal the baby’s soiled diapers, and more. I use them to carry donation items, transport dry cleaning and for storage in my garage and attic. Without them, we will likely buy more trash bags and baggies to compensate.
As to recycling, it is increasing. Bag bans will reduce the motivation for those recycling efforts.

The reusable bags that are being pushed as an alternative to paper or plastic in locales across the nation have other, rarely considered, drawbacks. On the economic front, China is the leading manufacturer of reusable bags, while plastic bags are made in the U.S. with the industry employing thousands of workers. Thus, cities banning plastic bags are helping China take over one more industry while putting American workers in the unemployment line.

There are also health concerns associated with reusable bags and these problems are already making people sick. When used to carry meats, poultry or fish, blood and other fluids can soak into the reusable bags. If not cleaned regularly and stored properly, bacteria – including e-coli — can take up residence and mold can form. Continued use can contaminate the users own food and even the food of others as the contaminated reusable bags come into contact with the grocery conveyor belt. It’s true that reusable bags can be washed, but doing so shortens their useful life considerably.

Sadly, much of the push to ban plastic retail bags is based on false or misreported data.

Ban proponents claim that plastic bags are rarely used more than once and that they make up a large portion of landfill content litter on roadways. In Austin, the city council seems to be particularly influenced by a presentation from Bob Gedert, director of city department Austin Resource Recovery, in which he stated that plastic bags comprise 2.2 percent of the city’s litter. Gedert cited a study whose lead author was Steven Stein as the source for his claim.

However, Stein’s study never said that. In fact Gedert exaggerates the percentage of plastic bag litter by 366 percent. What Stein’s actually found was that plastic bag litter comprised only 0.6 percent of litter volume, not the 2.2 percent claimed by Gedert. Stein asked Gedert to make a correction. Even the 0.6 percent figure is high since it includes other types of plastic waste, such as industrial wrapping, dry cleaner and trash bags. Indeed, the national 2009 Keep America Beautiful study does not even include plastic bags in its top ten sources of litter.

Bad data makes policy. In this case, the evidence shows that plastic bags are a miniscule waste problem and that every city that bans plastic bags costs its shoppers, businesses, the city government and workers across the nation with little or no benefit for the environment or economy.

SOURCE

Climate Change Doubts Heat Up the Classroom

Teachers reportedly are getting push-back on middle and high school curricula that fuel the speculation that man is warming the planet. Their frustration is almost worthy of a celebration.

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times recounted teachers' experiences with global warming instruction. The Washington bureau noted that "scientists and educators report mounting resistance to the study of man-made climate change in middle and high schools" and declared that "a flash point has emerged in American science education."

Frank Niepold, identified as "climate education coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who meets with hundreds of teachers annually," described for the Times what he has seen in these exchanges.

"Any time we have a meeting of 100 teachers, if you ask whether they're running into push-back on teaching climate change, 50 will raise their hands," Niepold said. "We ask questions about how sizable it is, and they tell us it is (sizable) and pretty persistent, from many places: your administration, parents, students, even your own family."

Apparently, teachers expected to be free to indoctrinate their students. But they have run into dissent. And this is encouraging: If Niepold's observation is representative of the nation as a whole, then roughly half of Americans are apparently skeptical of the global warming claim.

Considering how the public has been bombarded by a press that believes in and is wedded to the man-made global warming tale, this actually borders on the remarkable.

With the science as unsettled and divided as the public, teachers should cover both sides of the debate if they insist on teaching about greenhouse gases and climate. Man-made global warming isn't the law of gravity, the boiling point of water or any other indisputable scientific fact. It's a hunch that hasn't panned out, a possibility but not a foregone conclusion.

Students, whose minds are impressionable, deserve to know that there is no scientific accord on the question, that skeptics indeed exist and, no, they're not subhuman monsters on Big Oil's payroll. Millions of parents, who too often have to deprogram heads that have been filled with left-wing nonsense in the schools, would be grateful if the facts were given a full airing.

SOURCE

Would a warmer world lead to more warfare?

Colder periods have certainly led to population movements and conflict as people try to escape food shortages caused by failed crops -- so if we take history as a guide, a warmer world would lead to LESS war. But in their airy disregard for the facts, the Greens have been saying the opposite. Climatewire reports:

Two years ago, the Defense Department made headlines when it deemed climate change a “threat multiplier” for the nation’s armed forces — an X factor that could exacerbate existing tensions and threats in unpredictable ways.

That unpredictability has been challenging for physical and political scientists trying to understand how shifting weather patterns, rising seas and more extreme weather will affect conflict in coming decades, experts said yesterday at a conference sponsored by the National Center for Science Education.

What appears to be an intuitive link between climate change, resource scarcity and conflict may be illusory, said Kaitlin Shilling, who recently completed a Ph.D. at Stanford University, where she studied the relationship between climate, agriculture and conflict in sub-Saharan Africa.

“We’re already committed to a certain amount of climate change in coming decades,” she said. “But we need to move beyond the idea that conflict is the inevitable result of climate-driven resource scarcity” to investigate the mechanisms by which shifting climatic conditions may influence human behavior…

Some of the strongest evidence linking climate and conflict concerns so-called communal conflicts, tensions on a smaller scale than civil wars or wars between nations, said Cullen Hendrix, a professor of international relations at the College of William and Mary.

That category includes studies that have concluded climatic conditions are “highly influential” on the frequency of cattle raids in Africa’s Sahel and played a role in post-election rioting in Kenya in 2007 and 2008. Other research suggests that, in some agriculture-dependent areas, “better” climatic conditions can actually increase violence.

“Climate variability can have impacts that are not in any obvious way resource wars,” Hendrix said.

SOURCE

Why Everybody Seeing Climate Changes Now Is Uninformed Or A Liar

Lots of Warmists are shrieking about disasters already taking place as a result of climate change and making dire predictions for the near future -- but even the IPCC models now predict nothing of the sort. They predict temperature stasis for at least the next 20 years

In its latest “Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX)”, whose “Summary for Policymakers” is dated November 18, 2011, the IPCC writes:

(p9) “Projected changes in climate extremes under different emissions scenarios generally do not strongly diverge in the coming two to three decades, but these signals are relatively small compared to natural climate variability over this time frame. Even the sign of projected changes in some climate extremes over this time frame is uncertain”

Therefore people trying right now to discern/portray climate change of the extreme variety, (“disasters [that] produce widespread damage and cause severe alterations in the normal functioning of communities or societies“, according to the IPCC – in other words the only changes of actual practical interest), are placing themselves outside mainstream science, perhaps out of naivety, perhaps due to personal gain.

In any case, not one of the usual suspects will lament such a manipulation of the best evidence we have. Who needs skeptics when believers are so determined to sustain each other through long-distance charades?

SOURCE

Obama's jobs council report says 'drill, baby, drill'

President Obama’s jobs council called Tuesday for an “all-in approach” to energy policy that includes expanded oil-and-gas drilling as well as expediting energy projects like pipelines.

“[W]e should allow more access to oil, natural gas and coal opportunities on federal lands,” states the year-end report released Tuesday by the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

The report does not specifically mention the Keystone XL oil pipeline, but it endorses moving forward quickly with projects that “deliver electricity and fuel,” including pipelines.

“The Council recognizes the important safety and environmental concerns surrounding these types of projects, but now more than ever, the jobs and economic and energy security benefits of these energy projects require us to tackle the issues head-on and to expeditiously, though cautiously, move forward on projects that can support hundreds of thousands of jobs,” the report says.

The report retreats slightly from an interim report released in October that addressed the Keystone XL pipeline directly. The interim report appeared to offer cautious support for Keystone, calling on officials to “balance” environmental protections while realizing what it called the benefits of the pipeline.

But Keystone supporters will point out that the year-end report released Tuesday argues that energy projects like pipelines will result in economic and security benefits. It even echoes a common refrain from Republicans and the oil industry: that such energy projects "can support hundreds of thousands of jobs."

White House press secretary Jay Carney insisted Tuesday that the jobs council report does not endorse the Keystone pipeline.

"Well, first of all, the Jobs Council wasn't talking about Keystone specifically," Carney said at his daily briefing. "The Jobs Council was talking about the importance of expanding domestic oil and gas production, a goal this president shares and has expounded upon at length, and has taken action as a policy matter to demonstrate his commitment to."

The Keystone XL pipeline would carry oil sands crude from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

“The Council recognizes that providing access to more areas for drilling, mining and renewable energy development is controversial, but, given the current economic situation, we believe it’s necessary to tap America’s assets in a safe and responsible manner,” the report says.

“Additionally, policies that facilitate the safe, thoughtful and timely development of pipeline, transmission and distribution projects are necessary to facilitate the delivery of America’s fuel and electricity and maintain the reliability of our nation’s energy system.”

Stakeholders should work together to develop “best practices” aimed at ensuring safety, while also expediting energy projects, according to the report.

“[R]egulatory and permitting obstacles that could threaten the development of some energy projects negatively impact jobs and weaken our energy infrastructure need to be addressed,” the report says. “Speedy adoption of best practice standards would allow government officials to reduce regulatory and permitting obstacles to important energy projects.”

Under a payroll tax cut packaged signed into law in December, the president must make a decision on the pipeline by Feb. 21. White House and administration officials have said they will have little choice but to reject the pipeline under the deadline, arguing they will not have enough time to adequately review the project.

The looming deadline has set off an aggressive lobbying campaign. Republicans and industry officials argue that the project has been subject to sufficient review and is essential for boosting the ailing economy and creating jobs.

But environmental groups and other opponents of the pipeline have raised concerns about greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands production, as well as potential oil spills.

House Republicans quickly pounced on the jobs council report Tuesday, noting that the recommendations echo their "all-of-the-above" energy strategy.

"The President’s Jobs Council today confirmed what House Republicans have known all along, that American energy production will spur job creation and strengthen our national security," House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) said in a statement. "Unfortunately, it appears President Obama is ignoring his Council’s recommendations, much as he has ignored the views of House Republicans on energy production, economic growth and job creation."

More broadly, the jobs report calls for expanded oil-and-gas drilling, as well as “safe and responsible” natural-gas extraction from shale formations.

The report notes that the Obama administration has called for new lease sales and said it will consider opening up new areas to drilling. But it says “further expanding and expediting the domestic production of fossil fuels both offshore and onshore (in conjunction with more electric and natural gas vehicles) will reduce America’s reliance on foreign oil and the huge outflow of U.S. dollars this reliance entails.”

Beyond oil and gas, the report calls for policies that improve energy efficiency, encourage private investment in energy research and development and expand renewable energy.

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, 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

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2012-01-19T14:51:00.003+11:30

British plans for green energy drive 'will cost families £400 a year by 2020'

Plans for a massive expansion of renewable energy will cost families an average of £400 a year each, a report warned last night.

It accuses Energy Secretary Chris Huhne of ‘misleading’ the public by suggesting energy costs could be lower as a result of the Government’s drive for green power.

It said official estimates had grossly underestimated the impact on families by leaving out much of the huge taxpayer subsidy for wind farms and other costly forms of renewable energy.

Mr Huhne told MPs in November that the Government’s green energy policies would reduce average household bills by 7 per cent – equal to about £94 a year.

Businesses will see average bills rise by 19 per cent. Government officials last night said ministers stood by the estimate.

But the study by the respected think-tank Policy Exchange says the Government’s figures are based on huge assumptions that households will cut their energy use. It suggests the overall impact of subsidies for green energy will cost the average family £400 a year by 2020 – the equivalent of adding 2.5p to the VAT rate.

The huge cost will raise fresh questions about the Government’s strategy of focusing resources on an expensive network of offshore wind farms in an effort to meet tough EU carbon emission targets.

Simon Less, of Policy Exchange, called on ministers to be ‘more transparent’.

The think-tank, which has close links to the Conservative Party, believes the Government’s green targets should be ‘renegotiated’ with Brussels, and that the private sector should be given incentives to come up with cheaper ways of cutting carbon emissions.

A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said £400 was ‘not a credible figure, and appears to be based on flawed analysis’.

SOURCE

Dangerous religious fanatic masquerading as a scientist

Islamic fundamentalism is not the only religion threatening the wellbeing of the West

The Alberta Tar Sands are believed to contain the planet’s second-largest deposit of oil, after Saudi Arabia, and extracting it takes a lot more energy than traditional drilling. If we start down that path, warns James Hansen, a climate activist and scientist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, it will be “game over for the planet.”

For most of the last 600 million years, atmospheric CO2 was much higher than at present. The planet survived just fine. The planet flourished. Live evolved on land and in the sea. Corals evolved with CO2 more than 10X current levels. Shellfish evolved. Mammals evolved. Reptiles evolved.

Our country needs the energy – he should be fired immediately. This country was not founded by idiots, and will not survive them for long.

SOURCE

Another junk science scare

The Greens want to stop Brazil from developing its jungle — oh, excuse us — “rainforest.” In a new study in Nature, Woods Hole researchers continue laying the junk science foundation for keeping Brazil poor. The Woods Hole release is below.

North America was also once largely tree covered until European settlers came along and converted much of it for agriculture and pasturage. No disaster ensued. Why should it be different in South America? They do not say. They prefer their crystal ball to the historical facts

New study evaluates impact of land use activity in the Amazon basin. Highlights signs of transition to a disturbance-dominated regime

A new paper published today in Nature reveals that human land use activity has begun to change the regional water and energy cycles – the interplay of air coming in from the Atlantic Ocean, water transpiration by the forest, and solar radiation – of parts of the Amazon basin. In addition, it shows that ongoing interactions between deforestation, fire, and climate change have the potential to alter carbon storage, rainfall patterns and river discharge on an even larger basin-wide scale.

The research was led by the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC). Lead scientist Eric Davidson (WHRC) and 13 Brazilian and US colleagues from universities, government and the NGOs, all of whom participated in the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in the Amazon (LBA), produced a framework by which the connections among climate change, agricultural expansion, logging, and fire risk can be evaluated. The framework considers changes in greenhouse-gas emissions, and energy and water cycles. Using it they found signs of transition to a disturbance-dominated regime in the southern and eastern portions of the Amazon basin. Co-author Jennifer K. Balch adds: “One strong sign of a new disturbance regime is the high number of recent large-scale wildfires, which are a by-product of intentional fires in Brazil’s ‘arc of deforestation.’” She emphasizes that these fires “are extremely frequent, occurring every few years, compared with every couple centuries in the past.”

Why is this important? Humans have been part of the Amazon basin forest-river system for thousands of years, but the expansion and intensification of agriculture, logging and urban development, and their synergistic impacts are beginning to stress the natural integrity of the ecosystem. Since the Amazon River produces about 20% of the world’s fresh water discharge and the Amazon forest holds about 100 billion tones of carbon (10 years’ worth of global fossil fuel emissions), it is important that economic development in the region proceed along sustainable paths that do not degrade the ecosystem services provided to local, regional and global communities by the forests and rivers of the region. “The studies in this review, document changes in river flow, sedimentation in rivers, and lengthening of the dry season in the southern and eastern flanks of the Amazon Basin,” notes Dr. Davidson. “Whether similar changes are likely to occur in other parts of the basin will depend on the interplay of management decisions and the impacts of climate change during the next few years and decades.”

The project showed that the Amazon forest is resilient to considerable climatic variation from year to year, but that this resilience can be exceeded by severe or prolonged drought. The evidence points to a system in biophysical transition, highlighting the need for improved understanding of the trade-offs among land cover, carbon stocks, water resources, habitat conservation, human health, and economic development in future scenarios of climate change and land-use change.

Efforts in Brazil to curb deforestation have led to a significant decline in the clearing of forests in the Amazon basin, from nearly 28,000 km2 per year in 2004 to less than 7,000 km2 in 2010, but at the same time, the incidence of fire has not decreased, indicating continued risks for forest degradation through climate-fire interactions.

With Brazil poised to become a major economic power, the study emphasizes that improvements in scientific and technological capacity, and human resources will be required to guide and manage future sustainable development in the region.

SOURCE

Climate Skepticism is not the new Creationism. Warmism is

Those who thought that the war was won and the forces of junk science—who prop up the climate change alarmists—were sent packing need to think again. With the new year, a new assault on climate skepticism is being waged on multiple fronts. Editorials in Nature and Science herald the resurgence of the climate catastrophists and their attempt to bamboozle the public, mislead government officials and brainwash our children. Wake up and smell the steer manure, the battle against the bogus boffins of climate hysteria is far from over.

With the the Arab Spring, recession and national default looming in Europe, and America being distracted by its quadrennial presidential circus there has been precious little mention of that old bugaboo, global warming, in recent days. So little news that the casual observer might think that the mater is settled and rationality has put paid to the alarmist rabble. Not so! To start off 2012, the editorial section of the British journal Nature has sounded a clarion call for a climate change resurgence.

In an editorial titled “Reach out about climate,” scientists of the world are urged to put 2011 behind them and rejoin the fight in 2012:

With US politics in gridlock, Europe in financial turmoil and minimal progress at the climate conference in South Africa in December, 2011 was a bad year for political progress in tackling climate change. In addition, surveys of public opinion show a declining belief that climate change is an urgent problem. Clearly, the need to make the public aware of the threat has never been greater. In the face of climate-change contrarians and denialists, some of them with political clout and voices amplified by the media, climate scientists must be even more energetic in taking their message to citizens.

By their own admission, 2011 was a very bad year for the purveyors of alarmist tripe. On most fronts they have been stymied, governments have turned a deaf ear to their ever shriller protestations. Worst of all, the public has grown tired of the climate Cassandras and their constant droning on about doom and destruction. But the true believers are using the distractions of the current news cycle as cover while they lick their wounds, marshal their forces and plan a new offensive. Again quoting from the Nature editorial:

Two challenges face those who communicate the science of climate change to the public. The first is to make the messages from models and observations as vivid as possible while maintaining scientific probity — avoiding the blurring of dispassionate discussions of the science and the equally important individual right of advocacy. The second is to find the right ways of conveying uncertainties without losing grip on the central, generally agreed, conclusions.

Bemoaning government difficulties in achieving “clarity of national action on climate change,” they nonetheless urge the climate faithful forward. “[S]cientists and their organizations need to do more to help citizens engage with the issues and not be misled by travesties of the evidence.” Travesties of evidence? As in there is no convincing evidence backing the climate cabal's claims? This ongoing guerrilla war on rationality is the only travesty here.

The view from Europe is echoed by the even shriller climate activists at American journal Science. In a January 17th online article, under the title “Education Advocates Enter the Climate Tempest,” the question is posed: “Is climate change education the new evolution, threatened in U.S. school districts and state education standards by well-organized interest groups?”

This is not the first attempt to place climate skeptics on the same disreputable level as creationist. The inference is that doubting climate change dogma is the same as denying Evolution—the province of religious fanatics and fringe science loonies. Sorry, science doesn't work that way. Disbelief in a poorly formed theory supported by scanty evidence in no way implies belief or disbelief in any other unconnected theory. Real scientists would know better.

Yet the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) in Oakland, California, which fights the teaching of creationism, announced that it's going to take on climate change denial as well. In the article from Science, NCSE environmental education expert Mark McCaffrey states “There's a climate of confusion in this country around climate science.” Amazing! Wasn't this supposed to be settled science? How can something so supposedly well accepted by science meet with such resistance? Surely the climate change alarmists have incontrovertible proof of their assertions. Oops.

NCSE expects opposing climate skepticism to be much harder than fighting creationism. “The forces arrayed against climate science are more numerous and much better funded,” says NCSE Director Eugenie Scott. Armed with contradicting facts and rational arguments those cheeky skeptics are better able to get their message across in the mainstream media. I've got news for you, Eugenie, it's not the funding. The fight against climate skepticism is so hard because the warmists' evidence is so unconvincing.

This is supposed to be a scientific debate, yet the warmists are putting their efforts into propaganda, particularly propaganda aimed at the young. Better to teach our children the scientific method, at the heart of which is the principle of hypothesis rejection by contrary empirical evidence. As one poster on Slashdot recently said, “neither the IPCC, nor NOAA, nor the Royal Meteorological society have made any clearly falsifiable hypothesis statement about Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.” In short, global warming doesn't even qualify as a scientific theory.

So gird your intellectual loins and man the ramparts, the forces of crap science are mounting a counter attack. Their evidence has not improved, their models have not miraculously become a stand-in for the real world, the validity of their weak, ad hoc theory has, if anything, diminished. But yet they yammer on, after all there are buckets of grant money at stake. We skeptics must remain strong and objective, for the cost of freedom from crackpot science is eternal vigilance.

SOURCE

Re-Evaluating Germany's Blind Faith in the Sun

The costs of subsidizing solar electricity have exceeded the 100-billion-euro mark in Germany, but poor results are jeopardizing the country's transition to renewable energy. The government is struggling to come up with a new concept to promote the inefficient technology in the future.

The Baedeker travel guide is now available in an environmentally-friendly version. The 200-page book, entitled "Germany - Discover Renewable Energy," lists the sights of the solar age: the solar café in Kirchzarten, the solar golf course in Bad Saulgau, the light tower in Solingen and the "Alster Sun" in Hamburg, possibly the largest solar boat in the world.

The only thing that's missing at the moment is sunshine. For weeks now, the 1.1 million solar power systems in Germany have generated almost no electricity. The days are short, the weather is bad and the sky is overcast.

As is so often the case in winter, all solar panels more or less stopped generating electricity at the same time. To avert power shortages, Germany currently has to import large amounts of electricity generated at nuclear power plants in France and the Czech Republic. To offset the temporary loss of solar power, grid operator Tennet resorted to an emergency backup plan, powering up an old oil-fired plant in the Austrian city of Graz.

Solar energy has gone from being the great white hope, to an impediment, to a reliable energy supply. Solar farm operators and homeowners with solar panels on their roofs collected more than €8 billion ($10.2 billion) in subsidies in 2011, but the electricity they generated made up only about 3 percent of the total power supply, and that at unpredictable times.

The distribution networks are not designed to allow tens of thousands of solar panel owners to switch at will between drawing electricity from the grid and feeding power into it. Because there are almost no storage options, the excess energy has to be destroyed at substantial cost. German consumers already complain about having to pay the second-highest electricity prices in Europe.

Solar Industry Facing Tough Economic Times

In the coming weeks, the German government intends to decide how it will treat solar energy in the future. The parliamentary leaders of the ruling center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) have written Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen a letter asking him to present a new subsidy concept by Jan. 25. Economy Minister Philipp Rösler (FDP) would prefer to abandon the current subsidization system altogether, as would the business wing of the CDU.

The FDP leader, who long ignored the subject of the energy transition, hopes to boost his profile by opposing solar subsidies. Rösler sees an opportunity to demonstrate that he, unlike his fellow cabinet minister Röttgen, has an understanding of economics, especially as he knows that many in the CDU, and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), agree with him.

Until now, Merkel had consistently touted the environmental sector's "opportunities for exports, development, technology and jobs." But now even members of her own staff are calling it a massive money pit.

New numbers issued by the pro-industry Rhine-Westphalia Institute for Economic Research (RWI) will only add fuel to the fire. The experts calculated the additional costs to consumers after more solar systems were connected to the grid than in any other previous month in December. Under Germany's Renewable Energy Law, each new system qualifies for 20 years of subsidies. A mountain of future payment obligations is beginning to take shape in front of consumers' eyes.

According to the RWI, the solar energy systems connected to the grid in 2011 alone will cost electricity customers about €18 billion in subsidy costs over the next 20 years. "The demand for subsidies is growing and growing," says RWI expert Manuel Frondel. If all commitments to pay subsidies so far are added together, Frondel adds, "we have already exceeded the €100 billion level."

The RWI also expects the green energy surcharge on electricity bills to go up again soon. It is currently 3.59 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity, a number the German government had actually pledged to cap at 3.5 cents. But because of the most recent developments, RWI expert Frondel predicts that the surcharge will soon increase to 4.7 cents per kilowatt hour. For the average family, this would amount to an additional charge of about €200 a year, in addition to the actual cost of electricity. Solar energy has the potential to become the most expensive mistake in German environmental policy.

More HERE

Collapse in European carbon price leaves Australia's Leftist government out on a limb

Australian carbon price to be much higher than in Europe

THE gulf between Australia's incoming fixed carbon price and the floating international price is set to widen as Europe's economic troubles and regulatory uncertainty undermine carbon markets.

The value of European Union Emission Allowances (EUAs) has halved since June and touched a record low of €6.38 ($7.85) a tonne of carbon dioxide on January 4.

The value of Certified Emission Reductions units, mandated under the United Nation's Clean Development Mechanism - tradeable internationally but mostly sold as offsets to liable parties in Europe - fell to a record €3.28 a tonne on Monday.

On Tuesday, French bank Societe Generale cut its forecast for European Union permit prices in 2012 by 28 per cent to €8.90 a tonne, on lower emissions because of worsening economic conditions and faster than expected deployment of renewable energy.

SocGen's Paris analyst, Emmanuel Fages, said if European regulators failed to set tight limits in the carbon market after 2020, when the continent's emissions trading scheme enters its fourth phase, "prices in an oversupplied market could rapidly fall further from present levels to values close to zero".

From July 1, Australia's biggest emitters will be liable to pay a carbon price of $23 a tonne, rising by 2.5 per cent a year until 2015, when it will float subject to a floor price of $15 a tonne, itself rising for another three years until it is reviewed.

Deutsche Bank analyst Tim Jordan said "clearly there's parts of business that would like access to a carbon price of €6 a tonne, but that would defer the decarbonisation of the Australian economy".

"There'll be pressure on the government to consider a lower price but I think the Parliament has passed the legislation and parties would be unlikely to reopen debate by 1 July," he said.

In November, Deutsche downgraded its forecasts for the price of European permits in 2012 to between €5 and €7 a tonne and predicted "if there is a repeat of the distress in interbank lending markets that we saw in 2009 … we think prices could break below €5 a tonne for a time".

Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst Seb Henbest said there was "not a lot of price support on the horizon" for international carbon prices. A mooted increase to Europe's 2020 emissions reduction target from 20 to 30 per cent was the only thing that could boost the price.

But Mr Henbest said Europe would not be the main driver of international carbon prices indefinitely. At some point, Europe would exceed its so-called "supplementarity" limits, which allow it to buy permits from overseas, mainly via CERs.

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, 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

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2012-01-18T15:28:00.001+11:30

Another Green Stalin: Green Environmentalist Wants Eco-Gulags For Climate Change Deniers

Finnish Environmentalist - "the state should enact draconian measures of discipline, prohibition, enforcement and oppression in order to make people comply with environmental dictates."

Before the apologists start and say that this eco-facist is a lone voice in the wilderness, not representative of the Green environmental movement and all the usual platitudes used to explain away these people; Google “Climate Skeptics should be punished” and consider the 7.4 million hits Google returns.

The demands of the Church of Climatology and its supporters for the punishment of sacrilege does not just come from Finland, the calls are global, from people such as the British Royal Family’s Green simpleton Prince Charles, Obama Science Czar John Holdren and NASA junk scientist James Hansen, who took time off from making up climate data, to demand jail for Climate Change Deniers.

In Australia Green Socialists have sought to control the media, in July 2011 the Green party leader Christine Milne demanded political censorship and punishment for dissent for the media to the enthusiastic applause from an audience of party faithful.

The Green campaigner in question is Finnish environmentalist guru Pentti Linkola who makes a combination of Hitler, Stalin and Mao all rolled into a complete entity, look an attractive proposition:

A Finnish environmentalist guru has gone further than any other global warming alarmist in openly calling for fascism as a necessary step to save the planet from ecological destruction, demanding that climate change deniers be "re-educated" in eco-gulags and that the vast majority of humans be killed with the rest enslaved and controlled by a green police state, with people forcibly sterilized, cars confiscated and travel restricted to members of the elite.

No doubt about it, the science is settled and the Green Stasi are going to keep it that way.

Linkola's barbaric and dictatorial philosophy has remained relatively obscure but is now gaining traction as the mask of environmentalism is lifted to unveil its true nature - a justification for 21st century tyranny on a grand scale, characterized by eugenics, sterilization, gulags, police states, and total government control over every aspect of our existence.

Now before proceeding further this article was published in September 2010, Google returns 11,200 results for Greens “greens denounce linkola” the results are only returned because they contain “denounce” or “linkola”. No statements from Greenpeace, WWF, FoE or another Green environmental movement distancing themselves from Linkola. Given the extreme views of this eco-facist and the time elapsed you could be forgiven for thinking someone, somewhere in the environmental movement would have said something like “this man is a nutter and not representative of the Green agenda”.

The silence is both deafening and also speaks volumes for the real agenda of Greens and environmentalists, there is no other way, and certainly no highway for anyone but the Green elite.

Under Linkola's proposal to save earth from man-made climate change, "only a few million people would work as farmers and fishermen, without modern conveniences such as the automobile." This system would be enforced by the creation of a "Green Police" who would abandon "the syrup of ethics" that governs human behavior to completely dominate the population.
The environmentalist believes that only jackbooted tyranny can help to save mother earth from "the worst ideologies in the world" which he defines as "growth and freedom".

“Growth and Freedom“, sounds all to familiar, though normally cloaked in much friendlier terms by warming alarmist outlets like the BBC and The Guardian who make the same case for no growth and actively support the idea of Green laws to punish people who don’t follow the Greens party line.

Those who refuse to be enslaved by Linkola's new eco-tyranny would be abducted and sent to the mountains for "re-education" in eco-gulags, according to the environmentalist, who says that the only solution "lies in a centralised government and the tireless control of citizens."

As part of his eco-fascist hell, Linkola calls for `killing defectives' by means of sterilization, licenses for births, tight regulation of electricity, forcing humans to eat rats, the confiscation of private cars, travel to be restricted to members of the elite only, and businesses to be terminated as the economy is entirely handed over to the control of the state.

The Hitler/Stalin/Mao being would be so proud of Linkola, but as previously stated Linkola is not alone:

Another prominent figure in the climate change debate who exemplifies the violent and death-obsessed belief system of the movement is Dr. Eric R. Pianka, an American biologist based at the University of Texas in Austin. During a speech to the Texas Academy of Science in March 2006, Pianka advocated the need to exterminate 90% of the world's population through the airborne ebola virus. The reaction from scores of top scientists and professors in attendance was not one of shock or revulsion - they stood and applauded Pianka's call for mass genocide.

The current White House science czar John P. Holdren also advocates the most obscenely dictatorial, eco-fascist, and inhumane practices in the name of environmentalism. In his 1977 Ecoscience textbook, Holdren calls for a "planetary regime" to carry out forced abortions and mandatory sterilization procedures, as well as drugging the water supply, in an effort to cull the human surplus.

Linkola has outstripped even notorious murder mastermind Charles Manson in his hatred for the human race. During prison interviews, Manson routinely spoke of his belief that around 50 million humans should be slaughtered for the good of the planet, whereas Linkola and his fans simply believe that humanity should cease to exist in its entirety. A fan site dedicated to Linkola includes links to his articles which have headlines like "Extinguish Humans, Save the World".

Like Manson, Linkola has become a respected environmentalist guru for a new cult of believers who feel that governments and global institutions are not being ruthless enough in enforcing overdue measures to save the Earth from ecological destruction.

Then there are those who consider and actively push that the idea that Climate Change Denial is a mental disorder though judging from the content and comments the mental disorder would seem to belong to the very same people who set up the page in the first place.

SOURCE

Obama Discovers Natural Gas

Another election-year transformation

A re-election campaign is a terrible thing to waste, and this year's race is already producing miraculous changes at the Obama White House: The latest example of a bear walking on its hind legs is the President's new embrace of . . . natural gas from shale.

Last week the White House issued its latest report on jobs and it includes a section on "America's Natural Resource Boom." The report avers that a few years ago there were widespread "fears of a looming natural gas shortage," but that "the discovery of new natural gas reserves, such as the Marcellus Shale, and the development of hydraulic fracturing techniques to extract natural gas from these reserves has led to rapidly growing domestic production and relatively low domestic prices for households and downstream industrial users."

Please pass the smelling salts to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Lisa Jackson at the Environmental Protection Agency.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the White House has favorably mentioned the Marcellus Shale, the natural gas reservoir below Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other Northeastern states. And now he's taking credit for this soaring production.

As the White House report puts it: "Of the major fossil fuels, natural gas is the cleanest and least carbon?intensive for electric power generation. By keeping domestic energy costs relatively low, this resource also supports energy intensive manufacturing in the United States. In fact, companies like Dow Chemical and Westlake Chemical have announced intentions to make major investments in new facilities over the next several years."

And that's not all: "In addition, firms that provide equipment for shale gas production have announced major investments in the U.S., including Vallourec's $650 million plant for steel pipes in Ohio. An abundant local supply will translate into relatively low costs for the industries that use natural gas as an input. Expansion in these industries, including industrial chemicals and fertilizers, will boost investment and exports in the coming years, generating new jobs."

We checked to see if someone slipped a press release from the Natural Gas Council into the White House report by mistake, but apparently not.

The report does add the obligatory disclaimer about hydraulic fracturing that "appropriate care must to be taken to ensure that America's natural resources are extracted in a safe and environmentally responsible manner" with safeguards "to protect public health and safety." But no one disagrees with that.

The catch is that this endorsement runs against every energy policy pursued by the Obama Administration for three years. The Institute for Energy Research reports that royalties from oil and gas drilling have fallen more than 90% since 2008 because of Interior Department permitting delays and rejections.

The EPA recently issued a flawed report on groundwater contamination that could shut down the fracking process the President is now touting as a jobs producer. EPA's political goal is to grab power to supercede state drilling regulation. The industry regards new EPA authority as a real threat to its future.

Each year Mr. Obama has also supported a $40 billion tax hike on the oil and gas industry because, as he put it in 2009, the tax code "encourages overproduction of oil and gas" and "is detrimental to long-term energy security." Even the Securities and Exchange Commission has imposed extensive new reporting requirements on oil and gas fracking companies.

It's certainly smart politics for Mr. Obama to distance himself from the anti-fossil fuels obsessives, and no doubt his political advisers are hoping it helps this fall in the likes of Ohio and Pennsylvania. On the other hand, this could be a one-year wonder, and if he wins Mr. Obama might revert to form in 2013. A good test of his sincerity would be to replace Ms. Jackson and Mr. Salazar.

SOURCE

Wholesale electricity price declines 50% as Shale Spurs Natural Gas Glut

A shale-driven glut of natural gas has cut electricity prices for the U.S. power industry by 50 percent and reduced investment in costlier sources of energy.

With abundant new supplies of gas making it the cheapest option for new power generation, the largest U.S. wind-energy producer, NextEra Energy Inc. (NEE), has shelved plans for new U.S. wind projects next year and Exelon Corp. (EXC) called off plans to expand two nuclear plants. Michigan utility CMS Energy Corp. (CMS) canceled a $2 billion coal plant after deciding it wasn't financially viable in a time of "low natural-gas prices linked to expanded shale-gas supplies," according to a company statement.

Mirroring the gas market, wholesale electricity prices have dropped more than 50 percent on average since 2008, and about 10 percent during the fourth quarter of 2011, according to a Jan. 11 research report by Aneesh Prabhu, a New York-based credit analyst with Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC. Prices in the west hub of PJM Interconnection LLC, the largest wholesale market in the U.S., declined to about $39 per megawatt hour by December 2011 from $87 in the first quarter of 2008.

Power producers' profits are deflated by cheap gas because electricity pricing historically has been linked to the gas market. As profit margins shrink from falling prices, more generators are expected to postpone or abandon coal, nuclear and wind projects, decisions that may slow the shift to cleaner forms of energy and shape the industry for decades to come, Mark Pruitt, a Chicago-based independent industry consultant, said in a telephone interview.

Power Earnings Impact

Natural gas fell today on investor concerns that mild winter weather in the U.S. will damp demand. Natural gas for February delivery fell 18.2 cents, or 6.8 percent, to $2.488 per million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest settlement price since March 2002.

"You're lowering the earnings ceiling every time natural- gas prices drop," said Pruitt, former director of the Illinois Power Agency, which negotiates power-purchase agreements for the state's utilities.

Price declines are expected to hurt fourth-quarter 2011 earnings and continue to depress profits through 2012, Angie Storozynski, a New York City-based utilities analyst with Macquarie Capital USA Inc., said in a Jan. 11 research note.

Hardest hit will be independent power producers in unregulated states such as Texas and Illinois, which don't have the protections given regulated utilities where states allow a certain level of profits.

60 Percent Decline

The Standard & Poor's independent power producer index, which groups Constellation Energy Group Inc. (CEG), NRG Energy Inc. (NRG) and AES Corp. (AES), has fallen 60 percent since the beginning of 2008, compared with a 14 percent drop for the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Low gas prices drained the momentum from a resurging nuclear industry long before last year's meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plants in Japan, said Paul Patterson, a New York City-based utility analyst with Glenrock Associates LLC. No applications to build new reactors have been filed with federal regulators since June 2009.

Exelon, the largest U.S. nuclear operator, canceled plans last summer to boost capacity at two nuclear plants in Illinois and Pennsylvania after analyzing economic factors, Marshall Murphy, a spokesman for Chicago-based Exelon, said in an e-mail.

CMS Energy's canceled coal plant, planned for Bay City, Michigan, would have showcased the newest pollution-control technology for capturing and storing carbon-dioxide emissions.

Wind Expansion Slows

Investors also are cooling on wind investment because of falling power prices, a lack of transmission infrastructure and the possibility that federal subsidies may expire next year. T. Boone Pickens, one of wind power's biggest boosters, decided to focus on promoting gas-fueled trucking fleets after canceling plans for a Texas wind farm in 2010.

"Boone still sees wind being a key part of America's energy future," Jay Rosser, a spokesman for Pickens, said in an e-mail. "Natural-gas prices will ultimately rise and make wind energy more competitive in the process."

NextEra didn't include new U.S. wind projects in its financial forecast for 2013, Lew Hay, chief executive officer of the Juno Beach, Florida-based company, said in a November conference call with investors. NextEra's wind expansion after 2012, when a federal tax credit for wind generators is expected to expire, is contingent upon "public policy support," said Steve Stengel, a spokesman for NextEra, in a telephone interview.

"Wind on its own without incentives is far from economic unless gas is north of $6.50," said Travis Miller, a Chicago- based utility analyst at Morningstar Inc. (MORN)

Shale Gas Boom

U.S. gas supplies have been growing since producers learned how to use hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling to tap deposits locked in dense shale rock formations. Gas prices have been falling since mid-2008, when a global recession sapped demand just as drilling accelerated in the gas-rich Marcellus shale in the eastern U.S., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Gas prices collapsed further in late 2011 on concerns mild winter weather in the U.S. will curb demand for the heating fuel. Gas is expected to stay below 2011's average price of $4.026 for the next two years, priced at around $3.10 per million British thermal units for 2012 and $4 for 2013, according to Robert W. Baird (BADC) & Co., an investment bank based in Milwaukee.
New Gas Generation

Declining power prices may also make it unprofitable for utilities to install pollution controls on older coal-fired plants, adding to the wave of plant closures that are expected to result from new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules over the next two to three years, Pruitt said.

As much as 90 gigawatts of new generation, enough capacity to light 72 million homes and businesses, will be needed by 2015 to replace retiring coal plants and meet electricity demand, according to a Nov. 30 research report by Hugh Wynne, an analyst at investment bank Sanford C. Bernstein.

Cheap gas makes it difficult for rival forms of fuel to compete, said Sam Brothwell, a senior utility analyst with Bloomberg Industries, in a telephone interview. Historically, gas-fired generators have been the least expensive to build, offset by a higher fuel cost, Brothwell said. With gas falling below $3, "it makes all other forms of producing electricity look less competitive by comparison," he said.

Gas Power Costs

The cost, including construction, to produce one megawatt hour of gas-fueled electricity was $62.37 an hour in the third quarter of 2011, which was less expensive than coal, wind and solar generators, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Power companies are leery of becoming too dependent on gas, which historically has had the biggest price swings of all the power fuels. In 2005, gas prices climbed to nearly $14 after hurricanes disrupted production in the Gulf of Mexico.

Project cancellations, along with a broader switch from coal to gas, will leave the industry with fewer alternatives and thus more exposed to rising gas prices, Pruitt said.

"The way to make $4 gas $8 gas is for everyone to go out and build combined-cycle natural-gas plants," Michael Morris, non-executive chairman of American Electric Power (AEP) Inc., said at an industry conference in November. "We need to be cautious about how we go about this."

SOURCE

The United States Possesses the Largest Energy Resources on Earth

We live in an age of abundance, so the misanthropic Greenies want to turn it into an age of artificial scarcity

A new report from the Congressional Research Service points out that in terms of total hydrocarbon resource, the US possesses the largest inventory of any nation on Earth. But under the Obama regime, an unstated but unrelenting program of "energy starvation" is being carried out -- from the DOE to the Department of Interior to the EPA, even including the NRC. It is one thing to be energy-poor because you lack the resources. It is quite another to intentionally cripple your own economy using half-baked policies of carbon hysteria, nuclear fear, and faux environmental crisis fabrication.

America's combined energy resources are, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service (CSR), the largest on earth. They eclipse Saudi Arabia (3rd), China (4th) and Canada (6th) combined - and that's without including America's shale oil deposits and, in the future, the potentially astronomic impact of methane hydrates.

...if the White House is in any way serious about impacting the economic Black Hole that is the burgeoning national debt, reinvigorating business big-time, creating real jobs and restoring ebbing national wealth, the best shot by a distance if you're American ... well, you're standing on it, or rather above it.

...While the US is often depicted as having only a tiny minority of the world's oil reserves at around 28 billion barrels (based on the somewhat misleading figure of `proven reserves') according to the CRS in reality it has around 163 billion barrels. As Inhofe's EPW press release comments, "That's enough oil to maintain America's current rates of production and replace imports from the Persian Gulf for more than 50 years". Next up, there's coal. The CRS report reveals America's reserves of coal are unsurpassed, accounting for over 28 percent of the world's coal. Much of it is high quality too. The CRS estimates US recoverable coal reserves at around 262 billion tons (not including further massive, difficult to access, Alaskan reserves). Given the US consumes around 1.2 billion tons a year, that's a couple of centuries of coal use, at least.

...In 2009 the CRS upped its 2006 estimate of America's enormous natural gas deposits by 25 percent to around 2,047 trillion cubic feet, a conservative figure given the expanding shale gas revolution. At current rates of use that's enough for around 100 years. Then there is still the, as yet largely publicly untold, story of methane hydrates to consider, a resource which the CRS reports alludes to as "immense...possibly exceeding the combined energy content of all other known fossil fuels." According to the Inhofe's EPW, "For perspective, if just 3 percent of this resource can be commercialized ... at current rates of consumption, that level of supply would be enough to provide America's natural gas for more than 400 years."

...With 85 percent of global energy set to come from fossil fuels till at least 2035 no matter what wishful thinkers may prefer, current US energy policy - much like European - is pure political pantomime.

SOURCE

A Misleading article in "Nature Geosciences"

In Nature Geosciences January 2012, Volume 5 No 1 on page -9, there is an article titled

Climate change confirmed. again

The article is written by Alexandra Witze

who covers the Earth and other sciences for the US biweekly magazine Science News

as reported in the Nature article.

My Comment: The first error in this article is that climate change (i.e. the title “[c]limate change confirmed…” ) is not just the global average surface temperature trend! Climate (and changes in climate statistics) is very much more than that limited metric, as discussed, for example, in

National Research Council, 2005: Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Committee on Radiative Forcing Effects on Climate Change, Climate Research Committee, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 208 pp.

The article starts with the text [highlight added]

Year after year, three top climate science groups analyse global surface temperature data and reach the same conclusion: the planet is warming at unprecedented rates. So why would a fourth team be needed to also scrutinize the data? The answer lies in the sociopolitical morass of how climate science is received today by much of the public. Sceptics have done their best to sow confusion by questioning, among other things, the integrity of the global temperature record. The criticisms are manifold. Weather monitoring stations have been cherrypicked, data sloppily extrapolated, and spurious effects not properly accounted for - or so say the detractors. Such arguments have gained traction among many audiences.

My Comment: The reporter’s statement that “the planet is warming at unprecedented rates” shows a failure by this journalist at examining actual data which conflicts with this statement. She is accepting the global average surface temperature as the definitive metric to diagnose global warming when other data sets (e.g. lower tropospheric temperature trends - see Figure 7; upper ocean heat trends) show no such unprecedented warming. Even the global average surface temperature trends have been muted in recent years with respect to what the multi-decadal global models are predicting (e.g. see).

The statement that “[s]ceptics have done their best to sow confusion” completely misrepresents the scientific method where scientists are obligated (if they are using the accepted scientific method) to seek to falsify hypotheses! Richard Muller’s BEST work is an example of hypothesis testing (and he should be credited for this), but, as discussed in my weblog posts on his work that are listed below, the hypothesis remains incompletely tested using his approach.

The text continues with

This explains the intense media response to the first papers published from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project, led by iconoclastic physicist Richard Muller of the University of California, Berkeley. The BEST scientists set out to reassess records from weather stations by compiling an independent, bigger data set from scratch and developing their own statistical techniques to analyse it.

My Comment: The reporter repeats the erroneous statement that the BEST data set is independent of the NCDC, CRU and GISS data sets, as discussed in the posts

Comments On The Testimony Of Richard Muller At the United States House Of Representatives Committee On Science, Space And Technology

Is There A Sampling Bias In The BEST Analysis Reported By Richard Muller?

Richard Muller On NPR On April 11 2011 - My Comments

Comment On The Article in the Economist On Rich Muller's Data Analysis

Comments And Questions On The BEST Analyses

The Nature Geosciences article also failed to report that there is a siting problem with the surface temperature trend data as was reported in detail in

Fall, S., A. Watts, J. Nielsen-Gammon, E. Jones, D. Niyogi, J. Christy, and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2011: Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 116, D14120, doi:10.1029/2010JD015146.Copyright (2011) American Geophysical Union.

Below this article on the same page, is a separate write-up titled “The journalist's take” [a subscription is needed to read]

which starts with the paragraph

For climate scientists, the question of whether Earth's surface is warming was settled in the affirmative long ago. But for journalists, other considerations come into play when deciding whether to run such a well-trodden story.

My Comment: The journalist who wrote this text fails to recognize that the question as to whether the Earth surface is warming needs to be continually monitored each year, as the climate is much more dynamic than represented by a monotonically increasing annual average global surface temperature. Perhaps, in the coming years, the surface temperature will warm but it is not a “settled” question but one that needs to be continually reassessed.

In this case, the very fact of who was releasing the study, and why they actually did it, was newsworthy. Nearly every public discussion of the surface-temperature record now comes with at least one sceptic raising the issue of station quality and data integrity. Richard Muller, head of the BEST team, is a self-proclaimed climate sceptic to a certain degree.

My Comment: The identification of Richard Muller as a “skeptic” who has had an epiphany seems to be the main reason that the news media are so focused on his views. In reality, he is a newcomer to the climate issue, and, from my perspective, is still very much on a learning curve.

SOURCE

Increase in temperatures will cut short lives, says "expert"

What a lot of rubbish. It's cold that is bad for you. Deaths are much higher in winter. Another "modelling" exercise, no doubt. New Nostradamus also has a laugh at this "study"

A GLOBAL temperature rise of 2C by 2050 would result in increased loss of life, a new Queensland study has found. Scientists from the Queensland University of Technology and the CSIRO examined the "years of life lost" due to climate change, focusing on Brisbane.

"A two-degree increase in temperature in Brisbane between now and 2050 would result in an extra 381 years of life lost per year in Brisbane," lead researcher Associate Professor Adrian Barnett, from the university's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, said.

"A two-degree increase in temperature is the figure in the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says is dangerous, but could be reached unless more aggressive measures are undertaken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

Prof Barnett said the "years of life lost" measurement gives greater weight to deaths at younger ages instead of focusing only on elderly people. "We suspected that many temperature-related deaths were in the elderly, which would reduce the public health importance of temperature compared with other issues," he said. "In fact, we found the opposite, with a surprisingly high years of life lost figure."

Prof Barnett said that an increase of more than two degrees would be catastrophic. "A four-degree increase in temperature would result in an extra 3242 years of life lost per year in Brisbane."

Interestingly, the study found that a one-degree increase would result in a decrease in the number of lives lost. This is believed to be because the increase in heat-related years of life lost are offset by the decrease in cold-related years of life lost. The researchers said cold-related deaths were significant, even in a city with Brisbane's warm climate.

And many deaths could be avoided if people had better insulation in their houses. "Many houses in Brisbane are built of thin planks of wood and are poorly insulated, which means the occupants are exposed to whatever the temperature is outside," Prof Barnett said.

The researchers believed that while their work was focused on Brisbane, it contained helpful information to decision-makers in other areas as well.

The study has been published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

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, 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

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2012-01-17T14:09:00.001+11:30

Huge new energy source

A discovery by scientists may have more than doubled the world’s energy reserves. They have found vast amounts of natural gas frozen into the sea bed, potentially containing more energy than all the world’s known coal, oil and gas reserves combined. The methane gas is mixed with water, and frozen solid by the high pressure and low temperatures in the deep sea.

Methane hydrate, as the substance is known, has long been regarded by oil and gas companies as a nuisance, because it can block marine drilling rigs. Now a study by Statoil, Norway’s state oil firm and a leading global gas producer, suggests it should be reclassified as a significant fuel resource, with enough buried in the oceans to power the world for decades or even centuries.

“The energy content of methane occurring in hydrate form is immense, possibly exceeding the combined energy content of all other known fossil fuels,” said Espen Andersen, Statoil’s exploration manager in unconventional hydrocarbons, who will present his study at an energy conference next week.

Such claims will anger environmentalists, who fear that global exploitation of the deep sea bed would put marine life at risk, especially whales and dolphins, which are sensitive to noise. It would also mean an increase in the burning of fossil fuel — so worsening climate change.

The research follows the growing excitement generated by Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (Jogmec), which has been drilling test wells into methane hydrate reserves in the Nankai trough, off Japan’s southwest coast.

It predicts the first gas will be extracted this year, and suggests there could be enough methane hydrate in the trough to supply all Japan’s energy for 300 years.

Such discoveries have sparked a global search to find other areas with high concentrations of methane hydrate, with Statoil one of the leading companies involved. Huge reserves are already believed to lie off China, South Korea and India, countries that are all currently reliant on imports.

SOURCE

Unreal: CBS News Identifies Eleven 'New Solyndras'

As regular readers are well aware, Solyndra was a troubled "green energy" firm into which the Obama administration poured half-a-billion taxpayer dollars as part of their "stimulus" program. They did so over multiple red flag warnings from both their own and Bush-era accountants. Despite the generous infusion of cash, the company went bankrupt last year, destroying 1,000 jobs and flushing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars down the toilet.

Luckily for the firm's top investors -- who happened to be major Obama campaign donors -- the administration generously refinanced the loan to ensure that said investors would recoup the first $75 million in losses when the company went under. And as the ship was sinking, Obama officials and Solyndra executives (who are now lining up for bonuses) assured the public and Congress that everything was fine and dandy. It was a disgrace. Now CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson, who is already in hot water with the Obamites for daring to report accurately about Fast & Furious, has filed a new report detailing eleven "new Solyndras." These companies were given billions in taxpayer subsidies, despite serious financial problems, and have subsequently (and predictably) gone bust. Hey, remember this? Behold, President Obama's economic handiwork:

Ed Morrissey has more on this mess. American taxpayers have seen this movie before, and we're bracing to see it over and over again. As Democrats gear up to wage a class envy-laden attack campaign against GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney, these cases will be very instructive. Romney was a successful private sector investor, who used private money to back upstart and struggling companies. The vast majority of his decisions were sound, resulting in growing companies, more jobs, and yes, profits. If his track record had proven lackluster, he would have been forced to answer to his board, his shareholders, and his investors. Obama's 'green' ordeal is venture socialism. He and his team pushed billions of public dollars out the door in order to temporarily delay ideological allies' inevitable demise. As CBS explains, they did so knowing full well that their bets were foolish at best. To whom is Obama responsible? Voters, that's who. November is coming.

UPDATE - Americans for Prosperity has unveiled a new multimillion dollar ad buy, hitting Obama on Solyndra. Today's CBS report will give them a lot of fresh material for future spots. Well done:

SOURCE

Revealed: There are more charging points than electric cars in UK as sales slump

Sales of electric cars have slumped so badly that there are now more charging points than vehicles on the road. Just 2,149 electric cars have been sold since 2006, despite a government scheme last year offering customers up to £5,000 towards the cost of a vehicle.

The Department for Transport says that around 2,500 charging points have been installed, although their precise location is not known.

The government grant has boosted sales - from 138 in 2010 to 1,1082 last year - but only £3.9million of the £300million set aside has been paid out. A spokesman for the DFT told The Sunday Times: 'It's fair to say that there hasn't been a huge take-up over the past year.'

The high cost of electric cars has put many off. The Nissan Leaf still costs £25,990 even after the £5,000 grant has been deducted.

Electric cars are also only suitable for short journeys, with a maximum range of around 100 miles on a full charge.

Mark Goodier, former Radio 1 DJ who owns a Nissan Leaf, told the newspaper: 'Nissan needs to work on range. If you travel more than 100 miles, this is not for you. 'You have to think about usage and plan what you are going to do. You can't wake up and decide to drive to Scotland.'

The government is spending £30million on publicly-funded charging points and those in private companies. These range from points which take between six and eight hours, to those which provide an 80 per cent charge in half an hour.

Drivers can pay an annual fee to use the majority of the points, with authorities charging a membership fee for the year but no extra charge for electricity.

It's a similar story in the U.S., with Nissan selling 10,000 Leaf cars last year - compared to almost 13million new vehicles every year, The Sunday Times reported.

A spokesman for Nissan said: 'The Leaf is meeting its business plans but it's a car that's going to take a while to be accepted in the market.'

More fuel-efficient petrol engines are also affecting electric car sales.

Norman Baker, transport minister, said the availability of electric cars was the main challenge to the market.

SOURCE

Moisturizing the EPA

Property rights advocates had reason to be optimistic this week, as the Supreme Court heard arguments in Sackett v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. At stake is landowners' right to challenge bureaucratic control of their lands without redress or any meaningful right to appeal. The Justices seemed receptive to arguments on behalf of the plaintiffs, Mike and Chantell Sackett. A ruling in their favor would help restore some of the property rights protections that have been eroded over the past century.

The Sacketts had purchased a small lot in Priest Lake, Idaho, to build their home. The lot was in a residential area and they obtained all the necessary permits, graded the lot, and dumped gravel for the foundation. Then the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suddenly declared their lot a federally protected wetland under the Clean Water Act, and told the Sacketts they must restore it to pristine condition or face a fine of $37,500 per day.

They were told they could not appeal until they had exhausted all administrative remedies. Therefore, they must restore the land at considerable cost and then appeal for a permit, a process which could take years and cost tens of thousands of dollars -- and likely result in a denial of their appeal. Only then would they be able to go to court -- by which time they might be facing bankruptcy.

The Sackett case provides the Court an opportunity to revive the orphan child of the Bill of Rights -- the Fifth Amendment, specifically due process and the takings clause. For much of the past century, various advocates of big government have run roughshod over property rights. Green activists have consistently used environmental legislation not to protect the environment but rather to impose land-use control at no cost to the government. For property owners, the costs can be staggering -- complete loss of the use of their property.

From the day the Clean Water Act was passed, giving the federal government the authority to protect navigable waters, the bureaucrats at EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers have stretched the definition of navigable water beyond all rational bounds to include almost any surface that is ever wet -- no matter how seldom, for how short a time, or to what degree or depth. As one attorney has put it, the government is now trying to regulate the "moistures of the United States."

Rather than work to reduce fill and pollution in the nation's genuine navigable waters, agency regulators have spent ever-increasing amounts of time harassing small landowners, functionally "taking" their lands by preventing their use, entangling them in costly permit battles that often stretch out over several years, and even imprisoning some of them.

Consider the case of Gaston Roberge, a retiree in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. He owned a commercial lot where he had allowed the town to dump clean fill. Attempting to sell the lot for his retirement, the Army Corps charged him with illegally filling a wetland. After six years and tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees fighting to get a permit, it turned out he didn't need the permit after all, as his lot was finally designated as not a wetland. He then sued for a temporary taking of his property. During the proceedings, a Corps memo was discovered, saying, "Roberge would be a good one to squash and set an example."

That is how the Clean Water Act is being used -- to set an example in order to prevent citizens from using their own land. The EPA may well be trying to set another example at Priest Lake to slow development. Mike Sackett is in the construction business -- who better to make an example of?

At Monday's hearing, the Sacketts' attorney seemed to make a strong argument. Most of the justices seemed somewhat angered by the government's actions, some strongly so. Justice Alito asked: "[D]on't you think most ordinary homeowners would say this kind of thing can't happen in the United States?" Justice Scalia said, "It shows the high-handedness of the agency." Even Justices Sotomayor and Breyer appeared irritated at times.

Rather than wasting taxpayer money to regulate farmers' stock ponds, the federal government should concentrate on the original goals of the Clean Water Act. Those who believe in a free society and a healthy environment can only hope for a wise decision from the Court -- one that will protect landowners' rights to challenge arbitrary agency designations of dry land as navigable waters. Perhaps we are on the verge of seeing a return to the protection of people's inalienable rights, as the Constitution was intended to do.

SOURCE

Take or Pay at the EPA

A story by Matthew Wald in the New York Times on January 9th demonstrates the poverty of governmental attempts to pick “winners” in the realm of green technologies, the wasteful subsidy programs supporting that policy goal and the huge costs for the private sector of being unable to march to Washington’s tune.

Among its other provisions, the Orwellian Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 required the refiners of gasoline and diesel fuel to mix 6.6 million gallons of cellulosic biofuel into petrol products shipped to market in 2011; the quota for this year is 8.65 million gallons.

Cellulosic biofuel is derived from plant materials such as wood chips and corn cobs and, hence, represents a “renewable” alternative to the fossil fuels that are anathema to environmentalists and to those wanting to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil.

The problem, though, is that processes for producing cellulosic biofuels exist only in laboratories and in small-scale workshops. None is yet commercially available. Of the technologies being worked on to produce such energy sources, “there are some that are closer to the beaker and some that are closer to the barrel,” according to the executive director of the Advanced Biofuels Association.

Yes, Virginia, there is a special-interest group to promote the manufacture and sale of a make-believe product.

The Environmental Protection Agency nevertheless is poised to slap refiners with $6.8 billion in penalties for failing to meet last year’s cellulosic biofuel quota; the penalty for 2012 will be even larger.

Meanwhile, companies are lining up for taxpayer handouts to ramp up production although a scalable technology for cellulosic biofuels is still a pipe dream. Mascoma, partly owned by General Motors, plans to build a plant in Kinross, Mich., to make fuel from wood waste. It will receive up to $80 million from the Energy Department, an unknown amount from the State of Michigan and additional funds from Valero Energy Corp. to start construction.

KiOR, a Texas-based company, hopes to begin producing gasoline and diesel fuel components from yellow pine chips late this year at a plant in Columbus, Miss., where ground has been broken. Perhaps it will be more successful than Range Fuels, which received more than $150 million in government grants for a factory in Soperton, Ga., that was to turn pine chips into fuel. The facility closed more than a year ago after encountering insurmountable technological problems.

Even if congressional dreams would have come true – the 2007 law actually set goals of 250 million gallons of cellulosic biofuels for 2011 and 500 million gallons for 2012 – the program’s contribution to energy “security and independence” would have been miniscule. This year the EPA expects Americans to buy 135 billion gallons of gasoline and 51 billion gallons of diesel.

Despite evidence to the contrary, the EPA continues to believe that the 8.65 million gallon quota for 2012 is “realistically attainable.” In justifying the imposition of production quotas on refiners, EPA spokeswoman Cathy Milbourn was at least honest in saying that quotas “avoid a situation where real cellulosic biofuel production exceeds the mandated volume”, a scenario that in the tortured economic logic of the New York Times, “would weaken demand”!

One of the two, perhaps both, needs to retake Econ 101. What the statements taken together imply is that if refiners actually could produce more cellulosic biofuels than the EPA wants them to produce, the product’s price would fall too far and too fast, too many gallons of it would be purchased and producers’ economic profits (rents) would be in jeopardy.

It could just as well be that the profitability of cellulosic biofuels already has been undermined by the anticipated billions of dollars in penalties the refiners will pay to the EPA, and the agency therefore wants to keep the price of cellulosic biofuels jacked up high enough so that the refiners can recover the penalty payments if and when the product enters the market.

Try as it might, Washington cannot pass a law that makes a new technology commercially viable. The policy effort to promote cellulosic biofuels is another example, if one were needed, that the private sector and taxpayers sometimes will have to double-down, financing investments in an unproven technology and paying penalties for not using the product of that technology even if it is available only in beaker-sized quantities.

Unless or until the process of turning plant materials into fuels usable in gasoline and diesel engines, the only “green” from this ill-conceived governmental program will be flowing into the coffers of the EPA.

SOURCE

Tacky environmental journalism

In the fall of 2006, honey bees began dying in strange and unsettling ways. Entire colonies flew off en masse and simply vanished. More than a third of America's commercially managed hives collapsed in 36 states. In Europe, India, and Brazil, many beekeepers saw up to 90 percent of their colonies fail. Scientists named the phenomenon "Colony Collapse Disorder," or CCD, and the news of the honey bee's alarming decline was reported in media outlets everywhere. With one-third of the nation's crops pollinated by bees, concerns grew about what the honey bee's decline might portend for us. How would we feed ourselves if all the bees disappeared?

Speculation about the causes of the disorder ran from genetically-modified corn, to a sinister Chinese fungus, to cell phone transmissions that led foragers astray ("They get distracted talking and never get any work done," someone quipped in a beekeeper chat room). But very quickly, many journalists settled on neonicotinoids -- pesticides that are applied to more than 140 different crops -- as the likely culprit. It seemed a familiar story of human greed and shortsightedness. With their callous disregard for nature, big chemical companies and big agriculture were killing the bees -- and threatening our own survival.

With the benefit of time, it has become clear that the story was a lot more complicated than that. But the rush to judgment and the end-of-days narratives it spawned should serve as a cautionary tale for environmental journalists eager to write the next blockbuster story of environmental decline. I should know. I almost wrote that story myself.

1. As fate would have it, I was preparing to publish a feature about a colorful commercial beekeeper named John Miller in High Country News, a Colorado-based environmental magazine, when the colony collapse story broke. Miller keeps around 10,000 hives, trucking them around the country to pollinate crops and struggling mightily to keep his charges alive. With bees in the headlines, I did a quick rewrite and the story garnered more views on the magazine's website than any article in its history.

It was just the kind of break every journalist hopes for, and soon I was fielding inquiries from publishers interested in producing a book on the subject. They envisioned a hard-hitting investigation into big beekeeping, big agriculture-, and the looming pollination crisis -- with heroes, villains, and impending-- ecological apocalypse. It would, like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring -- the 1962 bestseller that linked DDT to plummeting bird populations and human cancer and launched the modern environmental movement -- chronicle the crimes of industry against nature. Substitute bees for birds and neonicotinoids-- for DDT, add a dollop of outrage, and voil…: Silent Spring II.

This sounded appealing. I had more to say about John Miller, his bees, and his daft and unrequited passion for these difficult creatures, and I had always-- wanted to write a book. But there was a problem: I had just had my first child, who brought me great joy but also considerable delays in putting together-- a book proposal. As I swaddled and dandled, other environmental journalists got to work. In 2008, a number of bee books hit the bookshelves.

These books had a lot in common with the original idea I had bandied about with publishers: they expounded on CCD and America's pollination crisis--; they chronicled the crimes of the pesticide industry against bees; they evoked Silent Spring. Some also prominently employed a quotation attributed to Albert Einstein, one that had appeared in numerous articles since the crisis began: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live." This was an eye-opening quote, impressing upon readers the gravity of the situation: if the smartest guy ever was alarmed about the disappearing honey bee, we too should be afraid, right? Right -- except there's no evidence that Einstein ever said it. Einstein died in 1955; the first known mention of the quote appeared in 1994, in a pamphlet distributed during a political protest staged by French beekeepers objecting to the high cost of sugar for feeding bees and a proposed reduction of tariffs on imported honey.

And there's also this: it simply isn't true. Honey bees are a crucial link in our agricultural system. They pollinate over 90 fruits and vegetables, including-- blueberries, canola, cherries, watermelon, lettuce, and almond trees. Bees are industrious, they are prolific, and they are mobile; there is no pollinator better suited to plying the landscape of modern agriculture. Without them, many crops would sputter or fail and our diet would be a far more lackluster affair.

But the honey bee's disappearance wouldn't necessarily mean the end of humanity. It wouldn't even mean the end of industrial agriculture. Much of our agricultural production does not require the pollination services of bees, and people have lived in lots of places where honey bees haven't. Humans dwelled for millennia in North America, for instance, before the European honey bee (the species found in most of the world's apiaries) arrived from England around 1620, on the same boats that brought the nation's first colonists and their crops. Honey bees have traveled the paths of human migration from Africa to Europe and Asia, then to North America, and they have flourished in most places. If they weren't so useful, you might even be tempted to call them an invasive-- species.

Honey bees have also disappeared before. In 1853, Lorenzo Langstroth, the 19th century beekeeper who invented the modern hive, described colonies that were "found, on being examined one morning, to be utterly deserted. The comb was empty, and the only symptom of life was the poor queen herself." In 1891 and 1896, large clusters of bees vanished in a case known as "May Disease." In the 1960s, bees vanished mysteriously in Texas, Louisiana, and California. In 1975, a similar epidemic cropped up in Australia, Mexico, and 27 US states. There were heavy losses in France from 1998 to 2000 and also in California in 2005, just two years before CCD was first diagnosed.

In fact, honey bees have been on human-assisted life support for a long time now. Much recent coverage of CCD has implied that America's recent honey bee apocalypse began in 2006, but it really began 20 years ago, when a vicious little mite arrived from Asia and wreaked havoc on American apiaries. Thanks to a relentless onslaught of global pests and pathogens since then, "wild" bees (which were never in fact wild, but feral -- the offspring of swarms that had escaped from managed hives) have been wiped out across much of the United States. The bees that have survived are, with very, very few exceptions, commercially managed ones, kept aloft only by the efforts of determined beekeepers like John Miller.

Indeed, there's nothing at all "natural" about the presence of honey bees in most places in the world. They're not native. Most of the plants they pollinate aren't native either. The modern honey bee is largely a human creation. You wouldn't know it from the media coverage, but for all the carnage in recent years, the actual number of honey bee colonies in the US has held steady, thanks to a robust queen-rearing industry that churns out hundreds of thousands of new queens each year. While honey bees are now experiencing worldwide die-offs, their populations are still much higher than in the past, thanks almost entirely to the commercial beekeeping industry.

So maybe the fictitious French Einstein had it backwards: if man disappeared off the face of the earth today, most European honey bee colonies would certainly have no more than four years to live.

2. Covering the fate of the bees, and all the symbiotic relationships in which they are enmeshed -- with flowering plants, with their keepers, with the farmers who need commercial beekeepers to pollinate crops -- has called my attention to another troubled symbiotic connection: the one between journalists and environmental disaster.

Take last summer's BP oil spill in Louisiana. Covering the spill was the Super Bowl of environmental journalism. You couldn't have asked for a better disaster: the never-ending gusher, the oiled birds and tar balls, the callous foreign corporation-- and corrupt government agency. Everyone wanted in on the story, and many of my journalist friends sent delighted updates on Facebook about being sent to the Gulf Coast to cover the environmental story of the decade. I viewed their messages with envy -- because after having another baby, I was in no position to go off chasing oil slicks -- but also with a certain discomfort I couldn't put my finger on until recently, when New Yorker staff writer Raffi Khatchadourian published an exhaustive investigation into the spill.

Khatchadourian disputed the notion that the BP-funded response to the spill was mismanaged and willfully negligent, as much of the contemporary coverage implied. He described an enormous effort that, while necessarily improvised-- and Byzantine, was mostly effective in cleaning up and dispersing the oil.

More of a disaster, he argued, was the media coverage of and political response to the spill. In the early days after the Deepwater Horizon sank, says Khatchadourian, there were lots of tight-focus shots of oily marshes, with "suffocating swirls of shimmery crude and sickly pelicans. The scenes were riveting and heartbreaking," he wrote, "but they fundamentally misrepresented the situation." There was, in fact, very little oil to be found in Louisiana's marshland. With just 25 miles of "heavy oiling" on the entire 1,600-mile Gulf coastline, "One had to travel, sometimes an hour or more, to see the oil -- one had to hunt for it."

But of course, hunt we did, and those images -- sensationalized depictions that exaggerated the spill's damage -- often spurred responders and politicians to insist on measures that were costly, ineffectual, and perhaps even harmful. It will be years before we fully understand the long-term effects of the oil and dispersants on the Gulf ecosystem and human health, but the Gulf of Mexico is thought to absorb more than 50 million gallons of oil a year from natural seeps in the ocean floor, and its biology is remarkably well-adapted to absorbing oil. It's less well-adapted to the dredging and building of artificial berms, and the placing of booms that Gulf Coast lawmakers insisted BP install in many ecologically sensitive areas as public outcry-- mounted. In his story, Khatchadourian asked the question that lingered in the back of my head all summer: is it possible that the breathless coverage of and knee-jerk responses to the disaster actually made the ecological damage worse?

The honey bee's recent problems have occasioned a similar rush to judgment. Before any studies had been conducted on the causes of CCD, three books and countless articles came out touting pesticides as the malady's cause. Had I been able to turn a book around quickly, I might have leapt to the same conclusions. But I was late to the party, and as more studies came out and I came to better understand the science, I became less and less convinced that pesticides provided a convincing explanation for beekeepers' losses.

In June 2009, a comprehensive USDA report reached the same conclusion: "It now seems clear that no single factor alone is responsible for the malady." Instead, a combination of factors is probably to blame -- some sort of interaction between pathogens and variables such as nutrition, weather, parasites, pesticides, and the insults of long-distance beekeeping. "I go back to the death by a thousand paper cuts theory," John Miller told me. "That it's some combination of stress, accumulated pathogens, chemical materials, overstimulation, near-starvation -- an accumulation of what we do."

3. With the luxury of time, I was freed from the obligation to write the next Silent Spring. The Beekeeper's Lament, in bookstores in June, does, of course, explore the reasons bees are dying. But it also tells a complicated story about a man named John Miller, who really, inexplicably, loves bees. He loves them so much that he doesn't mind all the insults and indignities of modern beekeeping: pests and plagues and poor honey prices; droughts and deluges and the daunting logistics required to transport 10,000 hives from the northern Plains to the Central Valley and back each year. He loves them despite all the practices he has to engage in that hurt them -- stacking them on semi-trucks, feeding them miticides and fungicides and antibiotics, waking them up early from their winter slumber to make him money pollinating almonds.

There are no neatly presented demons in the story. Miller is a big beekeeper who pollinates crops for big agriculture, but he's not in it to make big money; if he were, he would have gone into software sales, or real estate, or something that actually makes a lot of money. Still, he does manage to earn a living and keep people employed in rural economies that offer few other opportunities. That isn't as sexy or easy a story to tell as the one about the evil chemical companies and the innocent wild creatures. But I hope it's one that can illuminate the complex relationships between the food on our tables, the people who grow it, the bees that pollinate all those millions of acres of crops, and the bee guys, like John Miller, who care for those bees.

By contrast, reflexively blaming pesticides for all of the honey bee's problems may in fact slow the search for solutions. Honey bees have enough to do without having to serve as our exoskeletal canaries in a coalmine. Dying bees have become symbols of environmental sin, of faceless corporations out to ransack nature. Such is the story environmental journalism tells all too often. But it's not always the story that best helps us understand how we live in this world of nearly seven billion hungry people, or how we might square our ecological concerns and commitments with that reality. By engaging in simplistic and sometimes misleading environmental narratives -- by exaggerating the stakes and brushing over the inconvenient facts that stand in the way of foregone conclusions-- -- we do our field, and our subjects, a disservice.

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, 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

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2012-01-16T14:58:00.000+11:30

Time-lapse video shows how a glacier disappears in just FOUR YEARS

This proves only that photographers are not big on history. See the article following the one immediately below

This shocking time lapse video shows how a glacier has receded thousands of feet in just four years. The footage of Alaska's Columbia glacier was taken by expert and photographer James Balog and his team between May 2007 and September 2011.

Balog used to a climate change skeptic himself but eventually went on to start the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), the most comprehensive photographic study of glaciers ever conducted.

His new documentary Chasing Ice will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, on January 21, the Huffington Post reports.

The EIS team currently has 27 time lapse cameras in 15 places in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska and in the Rocky Mountains. Their next venture will be a comprehensive study in British Colombia, Canada.

Balog told the Idaho Press: 'Shrinking glaciers are the canary in the global coal mine. 'They are the most visible, tangible manifestations of climate change on the planet today.'

SOURCE

The Glacier Climate Scam

One of the more popular climate scams employed by the EPA, Katherine Hayhoe and many others – is to show photographs of glaciers from the 1940s (or later) next to recent photos. The implication being that these glaciers started to retreat sometime recently, and that it is due to global warming.

This is blatant fraud. These glaciers have been retreating for hundreds of years, and it has nothing to do with CO2. The glacier in the EPA photograph above retreated eight feet per day between 1794 and 1879.

As you enter Glacier Bay in Southeast Alaska you will cruise along shorelines completely covered by ice just 200 years ago.

Explorer Captain George Vancouver found Icy Strait choked with ice in 1794, and Glacier Bay was barely an indented glacier. That glacier was more than 4000 ft. thick, up to 20 miles or more wide, and extended more than 100 miles to the St.Elias Range of mountains.

By 1879 naturist John Muir found that the ice had retreated 48 miles up the bay. By 1916 the Grand Pacific Glacier headed Tarr inlet 65 miles from Glacier Bay’s mouth.

Same story for glaciers in Europe.

Clarence and Richmond Examiner Tuesday 14 October 1902

SOURCE (See the original for links)

Communicating skepticism of Greenie claims

Tom Harris

Many of the crusades of the environmental movement are very easy to contest because, in general, the science is often NOT on their side.

However, most of the scientists who know this are either too poor at communicating in layman's language or don't know the ins and outs of media so that they can get covered broadly, or simply don't have the time to do the desperately needed communications job done so well by environmental movement. That is especially true in the case of the climate debate in which much of the science of alarmists is either wrong or grossly exaggerated, but they have literally hundreds of millions of dollars to make their case, misguided though it usually is.

That is why the International Climate Science Coalition was created in 2007, to help these scientists simplify their messages so that the average person can understand them and then to help these experts get heard in main stream media. While we have been successful in many areas--radio, TV, newspapers, at UN conferences, in public presentations, and most recently the senate hearing that you can read about on our Website--we face several barriers to progress if we are to move beyond being a prototype organization demonstrating the potential impact of the science-based, nonpartisan, international approach we take:

1 - the first is obvious, namely main stream media's resistance to publishing or broadcasting anything opposed to their environmentalist allies (and in many cases, they are allies, not just providers of timely, easy to use copy). This necessitates that we make many, many submissions of, say, any newspaper OpEd, to get just a few published. To do this takes manpower and to have that manpower takes money, which leads to our second obstacle.

2 - industry are afraid to fund us in case they are found out (although all donations to ICSC are confidential), so, unlike the climate campaigners who have dump truck loads of money from corporations (have a look at the David Suzuki Foundation's annual report on the Web, for example), we have none at all. This means that we rely on donations from the average person, typically in the $100 range. The only way we can compete with the heavily funded enviros then is if we get literally thousands of donations. But, we don't; we get perhaps a few hundred a year, which keeps our organization in the prototype stage forever since we can't hire contractors to help us out, buy ads, go to conferences, etc. as our opponents do all the time.

ICSC has demonstrated how to beat the extreme enviros and, in our small way, we continue to do that, but without adequate financial support we remain a relative small fry in the debate, only able to contribute what we can with the resources we have.

One of two things needs to happen for ICSC to play a more prominent role in ending the climate scare. Either the big funders in corporations and foundations need to get over their fear of funding a politically incorrect (but scientifically correct) organization, or more of the public needs to do more than send us supportive messages (which we appreciate but can only take us so far). It takes considerable money to be at UN conferences, put out news releases on major wire services (translated for different countries - for example, our 2009 Copenhagen news release cost over $6,000 to get into a dozen media markets (where it was very well reported on, BTW)) and support scientists who need help preparing testimony, articles, speeches, etc.

Suzuki knows this which is why he ends his talks (at least those that I have seen) with an appeal for financial support and the left have been very generous in supporting his cause. Strangely, those on the right and the centre are generally much less generous to support the counters to Suzuki et al and so we continue to be unable to expand our message enough to properly contest the climate alarm.

At this point, it is all about the volume of work we can do. We know our message works in bringing people--left, right and centre--over to climate realism. ICSC simply needs the resources to do a great deal more of what we are already doing.

SOURCE

Thou must not question Big Environment

Rex Murphy

The environmental movement has enjoyed smooth, mostly untroubled progress since its beginnings in the 1960s, when its activists romped around the northern sea floes off the coast of Labrador. The enviros migrated with almost the same punctuality as the seals: Every spring, you could treat yourself to the sight of them bobbing up and down on the ice-pans, high-bosomed starlets stroking the pelts of large-eyed newsmen and seals alike, whole platoons of photographers aiming for the perfect cute shot, and a kite tail of various enthusiasts and camp followers to give a sense of noise and drama. Labrador is more or less quiet these days: Those Who Care have decamped to the oil sands and other pastures.

Robert Redford, when he can tear himself away from the general dorkiness of the Sundance Festival, is big on saving the planet these days. James Cameron can generally be found rustling the vines somewhere in the Amazon rain forest. Leonardo DiCaprio is always good for a Vanity Fair cover as long as its backlit and there’s a polar bear somewhere. Mixing it up with the environmental crusaders is good PR for Hollywood one-percenters — takes the heat off their monstrous paydays, their jets and, for that matter, most of their silly movies.

Some enviro groups have grown corporate in size, techniques and attitude. Greenpeace is now to the environmental world what GM used to be to the automobile world. The various Sierra Clubs dot the world like McDonald’s. As the example of Canada’s own Northern Gateway pipeline shows, modern environmental protestors have refined a basic set of skills to near perfection: deploying legal challenges to stall a project, taking advantage of hearings to protract and delay, signing on huge numbers of groups and individuals to take part in such hearings. They are expert at singling out one activity and applying all their focus and energy toward stopping it.

The big-name environmental groups are routinely excellent communicators — faster, clearer and quicker with the message than governments or industry. I credit them for this, incidentally. Good for them that they have tuned themselves so finely, learned the game. Businesses and politicians have always been way behind in the new world of publicity and protest, and it is their own fault — half-laziness and half arrogance — that they are.

The greatest advantage the greens have had is the relative absence of scrutiny from the press. Generally speaking, it’s thought to be bad manners to question self-appointed environmentalists. Their good cause, at least in the early days, was enough of a warrant in itself. And when it was your aunt protesting the incinerator just outside town, well that was enough. But when it’s some vast congregation of 20,000 at an international conference, or thousands lining up to present briefs protesting a pipeline, well, let’s just say this is not your aunt’s protest movement anymore.

There is no such thing as investigative environmental reporting — or rather very precious little of it in the established media. Environmental reporters rarely question the big environmental outfits with anything like the fury they will bring to questioning politicians or businesspeople. Advocacy and reportage are sometimes close as twins.

And so the great thing I see about Resource Minister Joe Oliver’s little rant against Northern Gateway pipeline opponents a few days ago — asking whether some groups are receiving “outside money” or if they are proxies for other interests — is not so much the rant itself, but rather the fact that at last some scrutiny, some questions are being asked of these major players. Big environment, however feebly, is being asked to present its bona fides. And that’s a good thing: The same rigor we bring to industry and government, in looking to their motives, their swift dealing, must also apply to crusading greens.

Where does their money come from? What are their interests in such and such a hearing? What other associations do they have? Are they a cat’s paw for other interests? Do they have political affiliations that would impugn their testimony? In hearings as important as the ones over the Northern Gateway pipeline, with the jobs and industry that are potentially at stake, the call to monitor who is participating in those hearings is a sound and rational one.

No one should be excluded from those hearings — at least, no one who has a solid and honest objection to the project. But some amount of transparency from all those environmental groups that demand “transparency” from everyone else is a reasonable ambition as well. Let us have some vetting of the vetters. To that degree, I applaud the Minister.

SOURCE

O Canada Our Only Hope

James Delingpole

I love Canada. I love Canadians. I like very much what their government is doing. I have great faith in their future. And if it weren't for their winters, I'd go and live there like a shot. Weird, huh?

Well it's certainly weird enough for those of us old enough to remember Canada in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties when it was little more than an embarrassing liberal-lefty joke. Sure we still remembered the suffering and courage of those plucky Canucks from Vimy Ridge to Dieppe to the Low Countries, but that spirit appeared long since to have vanished under the noisome regime of Pierre Trudeau and his grisly communitarian successors. Canada was like a pale imitation of the US with all the worst aspects of European Socialism and political correctness tacked on to it.

But suddenly – sorry South Park – but Canada-is-cr*p jokes just aren't funny any more because they lack the key ingredient of truth.

And the truth is that right now, of all the great Western nations Canada is probably the only one left still standing up for the values that made the West great. What better evidence of this could there be than the glorious news that Stephen Harper's Conservative administration has declared war on the anti-growth, anti-energy, hair-shirt eco-loons who are trying to destroy the Canadian economy? (Mega H/T Benny Peiser at GWPF)

Terence Corcoran has the story:

It is a cliché in journalism to declare metaphorical wars at the drop of a news release. In this case, it looks like war is exactly what Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver launched Monday in an unprecedented open letter warning that Canada will not allow “environmental and other radical groups” to “hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.”

“These groups,” said Mr. Oliver, “seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects. They use funding from foreign special interests to undermine Canada’s national economic interest. They attract jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources.”

The "foreign special interests" are the ones exposed by Vancouver investigative blogger Vivian Krause in articles like this – on how America's Tides Foundation has spent at least $6 million funding a propaganda war on Alberta's oil sands production – and this blog post.

According to my preliminary calculations, since 2000 USA foundations have poured $300 million into the environmental movement in Canada. The David Suzuki Foundation alone has been paid at least $10 million by American foundations over the past decade. Why are American foundations spending so much money in Canada instead of in their own country or in other countries around the world that are far more needy than Canada?

Actually I think the sinister-foreign-interests-trying-to-destroy-Canada angle is overdone. It's not Canada these green activists specifically want to ruin: it's Western industrial civilization generally. The only reason Canada may be attracting more flak than most at the moment is because of its courageous position on Kyoto (it wants to pull out), on fossil fuels (it has lots and wants to exploit them) and on economic growth (controversially among the current crop of Western administrations it considers it to be a desirable thing).

Now let us pause for moment and weep for America where sadly rather different attitudes to the environment and economic growth now obtain:

Oil and politics are a volatile mix for President Barack Obama, as he weighs whether to approve a pipeline to bring crude oil from Canada to Texas. On the merits, Obama should greenlight construction of the Keystone Pipeline. Our economy runs on oil. Given the political volatility in some oil-rich regions of the world, it's just common sense to help maximize the oil-producing capacity of our friend to the north.

But Obama tried to put off the issue until after the election. That's because to decide is to antagonize either labor unions, who want pipeline jobs, or environmentalists, who fear pollution and climate change.

America's problem is that Canada isn't going to wait for it to make up its mind.

“I am very serious about selling our oil off this continent, selling our energy products off to China,” said Prime Minister Stephen Harper last week. “I ran into several senior Americans, who all said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get Keystone done. You can sell all of your oil to us.’ I said, ‘Yeah we’d love to but the problem is now we're on a different track.’”

So now the battle lines are drawn. On one side are China, Brazil, India, Korea and the other emerging economies whose priority is growth – and, by extension, jobs, a higher standard of living and a future for their citizens. On the other are the moribund economies of the West – weighed down by regulation, hamstrung by activist pressure groups on issues ranging from equality and diversity to environmentalism and elf and safety* – whose slow demise will meant that for the first time in two centuries the latest generation is all but guaranteed to enjoy a worse standard of living than its parents. Canada, by joining the former, has chosen well for its children.

As I outline in my expose of environmentalism Watermelons, the green movement bears a huge amount of responsibility for our economic decline. Greens are not kind, they're not fluffy, and they're definitely not caring. At least not unless you're one of those ruddy, completely un-endangered polar bears.

*UK slang for Health and Safety regulations.

SOURCE

GM's Flop in Green

by Patrick J. Michaels

At the Detroit Auto Show this week, CEO Dan Akerson admitted that General Motors may have to cut back production of the Chevrolet Volt because the 4,600-plus Volts on the market now are about three times the monthly sales. Other figures put the GM hybrid car’s inventory at an outrageous 120-plus days.

By most accounts, “Government Motors” has stuck with the Volt mainly to please the Obama administration, which still owns a third of its stock in the wake of the 2009 government “rescue” of the company. But just how badly is the effort faring? Well, consider the 1,529 sold in December.

More than a third of those were fleet sales to corporations. None of these were the traditional large-fleet purchasers, i.e. Hertz, Avis and the other big rental companies. They were more like Verizon and General Electric — with GE having committed to buying 12,000 and having already purchased unspecified “hundreds,” with continued “daily” deliveries, as The Wall Street Journal reported recently.

Then there are the direct taxpayer buys. Fifty to New York City. The city of Deland, Fla., brags about buying five with an Energy Department grant. The federal General Services Administration has bought 101 so far, but President Obama has ordered it to procure only hybrid or high-mileage vehicles by 2015. (The taxpayers buy about 60,000 cars a year for GSA.)

Anyway, until GM is transparent and forthcoming about how many (or how few) Volts are selling to private individuals, we aren’t going to know. But several ominous signs suggest that the Volt’s long-term viability may be a risky proposition.

Taxpayers are rightly grumpy about ponying up a $7,500-per-car subsidy on a car that is generally priced around $44,500 (the median for the 4,612 Volts on cars.com). People who will spend nearly $40K for a small four-passenger car don’t need a subsidy. (Nor, for that matter, do folks who buy a $100,000 Tesla.)

Worldwide, subsidies for all kinds of green energy are being cut — resulting in a true sectoral depression. Solar-energy stocks are down 90 percent. The gigantic wind company Vestas may be acquired or worse.

The Volt will meet a similar fate if the subsidy ends. The chances of that happening are about the same as those of electing a Republican Senate and president: significant.

Then there’s the competition, which starts in earnest this year. The extended-range Prius, which will be on the market in months, will go out the door for about $35,000 (minus a $2,500 subsidy) — bringing the net cost to about $5,500 less than the Volt. Nissan’s Leaf, Ford’s hybrid and Hyundai’s product (said to undercut the Prius price) will all be in this small market by the end of the year. Which, if any, will endure?

Then there’s the half-billion dollars the feds have sunk into the Fisker Karma. At $95,000, who’s really going to buy something that gets a lousy 20mpg once the battery finks out after around 30 miles?

The added cost for a plug-in rather than a conventional model varies from about $14,000 (Toyota Prius vs. Corolla) to $20,000 (Volt vs. Cruze Eco) and on up to the Fisker and Tesla. And the internal-combustion engine is being improved dramatically at far less cost. The Cruze is much cheaper to run than the Volt, once the latter is on its premium-fuel-powered gas engine. (Don’t want to use the Volt’s gas engine? Stay within 15 miles of home.)

Which is why plug-in hybrids won’t sell. Why prolong the agony? Kill the car now. It’s not cost-effective, and it’s irritating taxpayers in an election year. Much has been learned in its development, including a little economics and the folly of subsidies.

Taxpayers and corporations can’t prop up this flop forever. GM management should end the misery before being told off by the voters, the markets and its own technology.

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, 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

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2012-01-15T15:11:00.002+11:30

"We cannot rule out..."

The paper below looks into the much touted "runaway" greenhouse effect and concludes that it is not likely until billions of years into the future. But to remain safe from vengeful Warmists, the authors say "We cannot rule out" such an effect happening sooner.

I cannot rule out the possibility that some of the hardcore Warmists will one day admit to their fraud but I would be foolish to plan on it.

And the paper commits a scientific howler about Venus. The high surface temperature on Venus is predictable as an adiabatic effect. It is caused by the great weight of the huge Venusian atmosphere. Invoking a greenhouse effect is unparsimonious

The ultimate climate emergency is a "runaway greenhouse": a hot and water vapour rich atmosphere limits the emission of thermal radiation to space, causing runaway warming. Warming ceases only once the surface reaches ~1400K and emits radiation in the near-infrared, where water is not a good greenhouse gas. This would evaporate the entire ocean and exterminate all planetary life. Venus experienced a runaway greenhouse in the past, and we expect that Earth will in around 2 billion years as solar luminosity increases. But could we bring on such a catastrophe prematurely, by our current climate-altering activities? Here we review what is known about the runaway greenhouse to answer this question, describing the various limits on outgoing radiation and how climate will evolve between these. The good news is that almost all lines of evidence lead us to believe that is unlikely to be possible, even in principle, to trigger full a runaway greenhouse by addition of non-condensible greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. However, our understanding of the dynamics, thermodynamics, radiative transfer and cloud physics of hot and steamy atmospheres is weak. We cannot therefore completely rule out the possibility that human actions might cause a transition, if not to full runaway, then at least to a much warmer climate state than the present one. High climate sensitivity might provide a warning. If we, or more likely our remote descendants, are threatened with a runaway greenhouse then geoengineering to reflect sunlight might be life's only hope

SOURCE

Lubos Motl also has a laugh at this paper

An Inconsistent Truth

Phil Valentine advises:

An Inconsistent Truth Official Movie Trailer. The movie they don't want you to see:

Also, a humorous deleted scene

Tom Nelson has got a strong stomach. He is reading all of the ClimateGate 2.0 emails

He comments:

For a while, I was looking at the ClimateGate 2.0 emails by searching them for certain names and keywords.

Now, my plan is to read all 5,349 of them at this link. I didn't want to start at #1, so I started at #5000, read to the end, then went back to 4,000. I'm currently about 1,000 emails into this project. If you don't want to read a lot of ClimateGate email excerpts, you might want to avoid this blog for a while. I can't wait to see what's in the next 4,300 emails.

So far, it's been fascinating to get a look at the climate hoax from the inside. The data fudging, the demonization of doubters, the knee-jerk rejection of alternate hypotheses, the quest for funding, the travel to exotic locations, the pal review, the left-wing politics, the fear of debate, the swagger in the early days, then the panic as the skeptics closed in--it's all there.

Another thing I've learned is that Michael Mann is evidently vastly smarter than me, because while it'll take me months to finish all of these emails, he finished up his stellar analysis back on Day 1.

SOURCE

Yes, all that snow in Alaska really is due to low temperatures

Anchorage, Alaska is having record snow this year. Through the first fourteen days of January, the average dew point in Anchorage has been -17C, which corresponds to a specific humidity of 1.2 grams/m³.

Gizan, Saudi Arabia has received no precipitation this year, and has had an average dew point of 21C, which corresponds to a specific humidity of 19.8 grams/m³.

Gizan has 16 times as much water vapour in the air, but hasn’t had a single drop of rain. By contrast, Anchorage has seen almost continuous snow, despite much lower amounts of water vapour.

Those who claim that the snow in Alaska is due to excess humidity, are either grossly incompetent or grossly dishonest. The snow is due to record cold temperatures, which is causing the small amount of moisture in the air to saturate and precipitate.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

New study: People with better knowledge of science are more likely to be sceptical of global warming

A new study by the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School has produced a result that its authors want to hide:

"People with better knowledge of science and stronger reasoning skills are more likely to be skeptical of climate change than people with lower levels of comprehension".

This is without doubt the most importantant finding in the new study, but because it does not fit into the warmist authors´ agenda, they choose to bury it in a heap of sociological gobbledygook:

See: "The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change"

SOURCE (See the original for links)

US Republicans stir transatlantic tensions over climate change

Concerns are growing in Brussels that persistent denial of human-caused global warming among Republican presidential hopefuls could damage EU-US relations and even spark a trade conflict.

All the leading challengers for the White House have staked out positions on global warming that defy the international scientific consensus, causing what Thomas Legge, a climate officer for the German Marshall Fund, called “exasperation” in Brussels.

Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said in September she was “shocked that the political debate in the US is so far away from the scientific facts.” [What facts? Global warming is a prophecy, not a fact] “When you hear American presidential candidates denying climate change, it's difficult to take,” she said.

If a Republican president disrupted the EU's inclusion of aviation in the EU’s Emissions Trading System, or its default values ascribed to oil from tar sands, Jo Leinen, the chair of the European Parliament’s environment committee, called for “a reaction that would affect transatlantic trade.”

“In order to have a fair competition between our industries and theirs, we could talk about broader measures against materials from the US with high energy intensity or output of climate gases like steel, metals, and chemical products,” he told EurActiv.

This could take the form of “a CO2 levy or tax on the border to compensate for the [low carbon] investments in products made in Europe,” he said. [And what if the USA retaliated by putting a complete embargo on the importation of European wines and motor vehicles? That would not hurt the USA significantly but French winemakers and German carmakers would screech loudly enough to be heard even in Brussels! Those two industries are sacrosanct to the countries concerned so losing a major market for them would hurt so badly that a rapid backpedalling would ensue]

Rather than continue with current EU-US relations, Leinen proposed a move by the EU to “orient itself towards a coalition with China.”

But Sarah Ludford, the Liberal vice-chair of the EU’s delegation for relations with the United States, disagreed with trade sanctions, while conceding that Republican positions were “a long way from the mainstream of European thinking”.

“As a free-trader, I am always a little bit wary of trade linkages,” she said by telephone from London. “I understand where Jo Leinen is coming from but I would tread with caution as you can descend into a tit-for-tat situation that carries considerable dangers.”

“I hope that Obama wins the election and we get a more moderate and encouraging position from the US administration,” she added, speaking in a personal capacity.

Ironically, the ‘cap and trade’ idea that underwrites the global carbon market was originally the brainchild of US Republicans. But this changed because of what one senior US climate negotiator at Kyoto described as a collection of “toxic” ingredients.

“There are three issues – constraining industry, sending money abroad, and strengthening the UN – that are inflammatory on their own right,” Nigel Purvis, a State Department official under the Clinton and Bush administrations, said on the phone from Washington.

More than that, the climate change issue had become a symbol of ‘big government’ for Republicans, Purvis argued, and this had been amplified by “an enormous amount of campaign finance contributions and political advertising” paid for by the fossil fuel industry, and some trades-unions.

The UN climate chief Christiana Figueres has said leadership changes in the US and elsewhere should not undermine progress towards setting up a globally binding climate deal by 2015, as set down in the roadmap at the recent global climate summit in Durban, South Africa.

However, Republican party presidential contenders may disagree with Figueres' analysis.

Rick Santorum has described global warming as “a liberal conspiracy” for government control, based on “junk science”. Mitt Romney argues that the origins of climate change are unknown, and little should be spent on countering it.

Ron Paul has called global warming “the greatest hoax… in hundreds of years”, while Rick Perry described it as a “contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight”. Newt Gingrich has recanted past support for climate action.

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

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

2012-01-14T14:57:00.000+11:30

Ozone holers expect a cooling Arctic!

What happened to all that melting that was supposed to be going on in the Arctic? Ya gotta laugh! To explain why the Montreal ban on CFC's is not stopping ozone depeletion, they let global cooling in the door

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 38, L24814, 5 PP., 2011
doi:10.1029/2011GL049784

Arctic winter 2010/2011 at the brink of an ozone hole

B.-M. Sinnhuber et al.

Abstract

The Arctic stratospheric winter of 2010/2011 was one of the coldest on record with a large loss of stratospheric ozone.

Observations of temperature, ozone, nitric acid, water vapor, nitrous oxide, chlorine nitrate and chlorine monoxide from the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) onboard ENVISAT are compared to calculations with a chemical transport model (CTM). There is overall excellent agreement between the model calculations and MIPAS observations, indicating that the processes of denitrification, chlorine activation and catalytic ozone depletion are sufficiently well represented. Polar vortex integrated ozone loss reaches 120 Dobson Units (DU) by early April 2011. Sensitivity calculations with the CTM give an additional ozone loss of about 25 DU at the end of the winter for a further cooling of the stratosphere by 1 K, showing locally near-complete ozone depletion (remaining ozone <200 ppbv) over a large vertical extent from 16 to 19 km altitude.

In the CTM a 1 K cooling approximately counteracts a 10% reduction in stratospheric halogen loading, a halogen reduction that is expected to occur in about 13 years from now. These results indicate that severe ozone depletion like in 2010/2011 or even worse could appear for cold Arctic winters over the next decades if the observed tendency for cold Arctic winters to become colder continues into the future.

SOURCE

Soot making a comeback in reverse: -- Now a warmer and not a cooler

The soot man has been saying this for a long time but the conventional view used to be that soot had a shading effect

Der Spiegel reports today that scientists have identified soot (black carbon) as one of the major global warmers out there.

According to Science Journal here, a team of 24 experts led by NASA scientist Drew Shindell looked at 400 emission control measures and identified 14 measures targeting methane and black carbon (BC) emissions that would reduce projected global mean warming.

Recently scientists and activists have been frustrated by the slow progress and dogged reluctance by countries to cap CO2 emissions, which are thought to be causing global warming. So Shindell looked for alternative ways to avert warming. Suddenly, lo and behold, soot (BC) and methane have emerged as major global warming factors. The amount they admit soot and methane contribute to warming is in my view astonishing. The abstract states:

"We considered ~400 emission control measures to reduce these pollutants by using current technology and experience. We identified 14 measures targeting methane and BC emissions that reduce projected global mean warming ~0.5°C by 2050.”

This equals the total amount of warming we’ve seen in the last 40 years!

Now scientists are telling us that soot and methane will have the same effect that CO2 is claimed to have had over the last 40 years? Whatever happened to the assertion that man-made CO2 has caused 95% of the warming over the last decades? Obviously CO2 as a driver is seriously getting cut down to size. Throw in the emerging solar effects and there isn’t much left for poor old CO2.

The abstract continues:

"This strategy avoids 0.7 to 4.7 million annual premature deaths from outdoor air pollution and increases annual crop yields by 30 to 135 million metric tons due to ozone reductions in 2030 and beyond. Benefits of methane emissions reductions are valued at $700 to $5000 per metric ton, which is well above typical marginal abatement costs (less than $250). The selected controls target different sources and influence climate on shorter time scales than those of carbon dioxide–reduction measures. Implementing both substantially reduces the risks of crossing the 2°C threshold.”

No need to worry any longer about a doubling of CO2 concentrations. Indeed CO2 as a driver and its hypothesized positive feedbacks simply aren’t materializing. We haven’t seen any warming in 15 years. Now scientists are realizing that soot is a big league player.

Der Spiegel writes:

"About 3 billion people prepare their meals over open fires that burn wood, dung or coal, and thus emit huge amounts of soot. However attempts to get people in Africa and Asia to get interested in other cooking devices have often proven to be difficult."

Of course it has been difficult. When idiot bureaucrats attempt (and are successful) to slow down progress, people remain poor and all they have left to burn is wood. But if they promote growth, free markets and development so that poor countries can attain western standards of living, then they will be able to afford to burn cleaner fuels like gas and oil. And if someday they should get really rich, they too will be able to afford wind and solar energy.

SOURCE

Full abstract:

Simultaneously Mitigating Near-Term Climate Change and Improving Human Health and Food Security

Drew Shindell et al

Tropospheric ozone and black carbon (BC) contribute to both degraded air quality and global warming. We considered ~400 emission control measures to reduce these pollutants by using current technology and experience. We identified 14 measures targeting methane and BC emissions that reduce projected global mean warming ~0.5°C by 2050. This strategy avoids 0.7 to 4.7 million annual premature deaths from outdoor air pollution and increases annual crop yields by 30 to 135 million metric tons due to ozone reductions in 2030 and beyond. Benefits of methane emissions reductions are valued at $700 to $5000 per metric ton, which is well above typical marginal abatement costs (less than $250). The selected controls target different sources and influence climate on shorter time scales than those of carbon dioxide–reduction measures. Implementing both substantially reduces the risks of crossing the 2°C threshold.

SOURCE

New paper finds no change in Antarctic snowmelt since measurements began in 1979

Since 91% of the earth's glacial ice is held in Antarctica, this dynamites Warmist scares about rising sea levels

A paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters finds no significant change in Antarctic snowmelt over the entire 31 year period of satellite observations 1979-2010. The paper actually shows a declining trend in snowmelt over the past 31 years, although not statistically significant. Of note, the abstract states,

"other than atmospheric processes likely determine long-term ice shelf stability." Translation: increased CO2 and other 'greenhouse gases' do not threaten stability of the Antarctic ice shelf.

Meltwater volume for the Antarctic continent (top graph) shows a declining (statistically insignificant) trend since satellite observations began in 1979

SOURCE

Full abstract below:

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L01501, 5 PP., 2012

Insignificant change in Antarctic snowmelt volume since 1979
Key Points

By P. Kuipers Munneke et al.

Surface snowmelt is widespread in coastal Antarctica. Satellite-based microwave sensors have been observing melt area and duration for over three decades. However, these observations do not reveal the total volume of meltwater produced on the ice sheet. Here we present an Antarctic melt volume climatology for the period 1979–2010, obtained using a regional climate model equipped with realistic snow physics. We find that mean continent-wide meltwater volume (1979–2010) amounts to 89 Gt y−1 with large interannual variability (σ = 41 Gt y−1). Of this amount, 57 Gt y−1 (64%) is produced on the floating ice shelves extending from the grounded ice sheet, and 71 Gt y−1 in West-Antarctica, including the Antarctic Peninsula. We find no statistically significant trend in either continent-wide or regional meltwater volume for the 31-year period 1979–2010.

SOURCE

Winning A Climate Bet

Its ability to make consistently accurate predictions is the test of any scientific theory. Below we see that it was a skeptic, not a Warmist who made the accurate prediction

Dr. David Whitehouse

Predictions, Neils Bohr once said, are difficult, especially about the future. They are even more interesting however, when there is money at stake.

In December 2007 I wrote what I thought was quite a straightforward article for the New Statesman pointing out that it was curious that when so many voices were telling us that global warming was out of control, and that the global warming effect dwarfed natural fluctuations, the global annual average temperature hadn’t increased for many years. I wasn’t promoting any particular point of view just describing the data. The New Statesman jumped at it.

It caused quite a storm resulting in an Internet record number of comments that were complimentary by a large majority, although there were some less than supportive remarks. It evidently also caused quite a fuss in the offices of the New Statesman. Realclimate.com responded with, in my view, an unsatisfactory knock-down of my piece based on trend lines, which I had expected. Trend lines, especially of indeterminate length in the presence of noise, can tell you almost anything, and nothing.

The New Statesman environment correspondent Mark Lynas chipped in eventually with, “I’ll be blunt. Whitehouse got it wrong – completely wrong,” after saying he was initially reluctant to comment. He reproduced Realclimate.com’s trendlines argument and accused me of deliberately or otherwise setting out to deceive. It was a scientifically ignorant article which subsequent events, and peer-reviewed literature, emphasise. Moreover, when I asked New Statesman for redress against such an unnecessary, and in my view unprofessional insult, they declined, and stopped answering my emails. In doing so they missed out on an important, though perhaps inconvenient, scientific story.

More or Less

To my surprise interest in my article was worldwide, and eventually the BBC’s radio programme “More or Less” got in touch. The programme is about numbers and statistics and they set up a series of interviews. You can hear the programme here.

Almost at the last minute the programme-makers came up with the idea of a bet. It was for £100 that, using the HadCrut3 data set, there would be no new record set by 2011. It was made between climatologist James Annan and myself. His work involves analysing climatic data and validating climate models. He accepted enthusiastically as he has a perchant for taking on 'sceptics.' The presenter said that if the global temperature didn’t go up in the next few years, “there would be some explaining to do.”

Later today, January 13th, “More or Less” returns to the bet, which I am pleased to say I won, though I note that this bet, or its conclusion, is not yet mentioned on Annan’s Wikipedia entry despite his other climate bet being discussed.

Writing shortly after the wager was placed James Annan said he believed it was a fairly safe bet, though not certain, as the trend since the current warming spell began, around 1980, was upward (showing those same trendlines!) He drew a straight line from 1980 to 2007 and projected it forwards concluding that sometime over the next few years HadCrut3 would rise above its highest point which was in 1998 (a strong El Nino year.)

The problem with this approach is that it destroys all information in the dataset save the gradient of the straight line. In climate terms 30 years is usually held to be the shortest period to deduce trends (though shorter periods are used often if the trend deduced is deemed acceptable) but that is not to say there is not important information on shorter periods such as volcanic depressions, El Nino rises and La Nina dips. Then there are the so-called, poorly understood decadal variations.

My view was that the information in the dataset was important, especially if projecting it forward just a few years when natural variations were clearly dominant. Looking at HadCrut3 it is clear that there isn’t much of an increase in the 1980s, more of an increase in the 1990s, then there is the big 1998 El Nino, followed by no increase in the past decade or so. It therefore seemed far more likely that the temperature would continue what it had been doing in the recent past than revert to an upward trend, in the next few years at least.

My approach was to listen to the data. The approach taken by James Annan was flawed because he didn’t. He imposed a straight line on the data due to theoretical considerations. I always wonder about the wisdom of the approach that uses straight lines in climatic data. Why should such a complex system follow a straight line? Indeed, the rise of HadCrut3 is not a straight line, but the past ten years is, and that in my view is very curious, and highly significant.

Why, I wonder start the linear increase in 1980? Obviously the temperature starts rising then, but why not start the straight line in 1970? The answer is that the temperature is flat between 1970 and 1980. It seems illogical to take notice of flat data at the start of a dataset but totally ignore it at the end!

When a record is not a record

During the recent interview for “More or Less” James Annan said that had other temperature databases been used he would have won. This is a moot point that also strongly reaffirms my stance. In NasaGiss 2010 is the warmest year, with a temperature anomaly of 0.63 deg C, only one hundredth of a degree warmer than 2005, and within a whisker of 2007, 2006, 2002, 2001 and 1998. Given the 0.1 deg C errors even Nasa did not claim 2010 as a record. Technically speaking 2010 was slightly hotter because of a strong El Nino. Otherwise, NasaGiss shows hardly any increase in the past decade.

During the “More or Less” interview the question arose of extending the bet to “double or quits” for the next five years. I was game for it with a proviso. Betting against a record for ten years raises a higher possibility that there might be a statistical fluctuation than betting for five years. Because of this I would like to see two annual datapoints, consecutively more than one sigma above the 2001 – date mean level. After all, that is the minimum statistical evidence one should accept as being an indication of warming. James Annan did not commit to such a bet during the programme.

It just has to start getting warmer soon.

Back in 2007 many commentators, activists and scientists, such as Lynas, said the halt in global temperatures wasn’t real. It is interesting that the Climategate emails showed that the certainty some scientists expressed about this issue in public was not mirrored in private. Indeed, one intemperate activist, determined to shoot my New Statesman article down but unable to muster the simple statistics required to tackle the statistical properties of only 30 data points, asked the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and the Met Office, to provide reasons why I was wrong, which they couldn’t.

What was true in 2007 is even more so in 2012. Since 2007 the reality of the temperature standstill has been accepted and many explanations offered for it, more than can possibly be true! We have seen predictions that half of the years between 2009 and 2014 would be HadCrut3 records (a prediction that now can’t possibly come to pass) which was later modified to half of the years between 2010 and 2015 (likewise.) The Met Office predict that 2012 -16 will be on average 0.54 deg C above the HadCrut3 baseline level, and 2017 -2021 some 0.76 deg C higher. Temperatures must go up, and quickly.

So how long must this standstill go on until bigger questions are asked about the rate of global warming? When asked if he would be worried if there was no increase in the next five years James Annan would only say it would only indicate a lower rate of warming! Some say that 15 years is the period for serious questions.

We are already there

In a now famous (though even at the time obvious) interview in 2010 Prof Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia confirmed that there was no statistically significant warming since 1995. There was an upward trend, but it was statistically insignificant, which in scientific parlance equates to no trend at all. In 2011 Prof Jones told the BBC that due to the inclusion of the warmish 2010 there was now a statistically significant increase between 1995 and 2010. Since 2011 was cool it doesn’t take complicated statistics to show that the post 1995 trend by that method of calculation is now back to insignificant, though I don’t expect the BBC to update its story.

The lesson is that for the recent warming spell, the one that begins about 1980, the years of standstill now exceed those with a year-on-year increase. It is the standstill, not the increase, that is now this warm period’s defining characteristic.

The nature of the anthropogenic global warming signal is that, unlike natural fluctuations, it is always additive. Sooner or later, it is argued, it will emerge unambiguously, perhaps at different times in different parts of the world, but it must emerge. Some argue that by the time it does it will already be too late, but that is another debate.

James Annan is keen on a “money markets” approach to forecasting global warming, and bemoans the reticence of so-called climate sceptics to put their money where their mouth is! I hope that his early-stage financial loss won’t be too much of a setback and a deterrence for potential investors, not that I will be among them.

Now that I am joining the ranks of those who have made money out of global warming (or rather the lack of it) I wonder where the smart money will be placed in the future.

SOURCE

Governance of the science

A speech to the House of Lords by Lord Turnbull, on 12th January 2012

The governing narrative for our climate change framework can be summarised as follows. Our planet is not just warming—this is not in dispute—but the rate of warming is projected to accelerate sharply: rather than the increase we have witnessed of less than 1 per cent per century, by the end of this century the planet is projected to be around 3 degrees centigrade hotter, taking the centre of the range. Some time during this century we will pass a 2 degree centigrade threshold, which is portrayed as a tipping point beyond which serious harm to the planet will occur. The main driver of this is man-made CO2 and the principal response must be the almost complete decarbonisation of the economies of the industrial world less than 40 years from now.

This narrative is largely based on the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, so the competence and integrity of the IPCC are of huge importance if it is to drive the massive social and economic changes being advocated. The reliance that one can put on the report of the noble Lord, Lord Stern, is also at issue, since it adopted large parts of the IPCC framework.

Over the last two years, there have been three separate reports on the IPCC. They are: the report by the InterAcademy Council, a collective of the world’s leading scientific academies; the report written by Professor Ross McKitrick, a Canadian professor of economics who for a time served as an expert reviewer for the IPCC’s fourth assessment report; and a book, The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’ s Top Climate Expert, written by Donna Laframboise, a Canadian journalist. Although they write from three different perspectives, in different styles, the message is the same: there are serious flaws in the competence, operations and governance of the IPCC.

The reality is a long way from the way that the IPCC describes itself. The IPCC claims that it employs the top scientists in the field; it uses only peer-reviewed material; its staff are independent and impartial; its operations are transparent; its procedures for review are rigorous and free of conflicts of interest; and its role is to present objective scientific advice to policymakers, not to advocate policy responses. None of these claims is true.

There are many instances where it has not employed the top practitioners in the field, and worse, many instances where it has employed researchers who have barely completed their PhDs—and in some cases not even that. There has been substantial use of “grey”—that is, non-peer-reviewed—literature. The IPCC has been extensively infiltrated by scientists from organisations like Greenpeace and WWF. There is no transparency about how its lead authors and reviewers are selected and what their expertise is. It has been obstructive to outsiders seeking information on data sets and working methods. It is resistant to input from those who do not share the house view. It was specifically criticised by the IAC for not giving sufficient weight to alternative views.

Its review procedures are flawed, allowing too much latitude to lead authors in choosing which of its reviewers’ comments to accept or reject. It has allowed lead authors to introduce new material after the review phase has been completed. Its policies on conflict of interest are inadequate. It blatantly adopts an advocacy role rather than confining itself to scientific advice. Its Summary for Policymakers is a serious misnomer. The scientists prepare a draft but this is redrafted in a conclave of representatives from the member Governments, mostly officials from environment departments fighting to get their Ministers’ views reflected. In short, it is a Summary by Policymakers not for Policymakers.

In a pamphlet I wrote last year for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, I said:

“In my opinion, the IPCC and its current leadership no longer carry the credibility which politicians need if they are going to persuade their citizens to swallow some unpleasant medicine. It is therefore regrettable that the UK Government has taken no steps to find an alternative and more credible source of advice”.

I see no signs that serious reform of the IPCC is on the agenda for the fifth assessment. The IAC specifically recommended that the chair should serve only for one cycle. Meanwhile, Chairman Pachauri doggedly clings on.

In the field of governance, things are not a great deal better in the UK. We have seen a second instalment of the CRU “Climategate” e-mails, which tell us little new but confirm the culture of shiftiness, obstruction and the stifling of debate seen in the first instalment. We still hear from time to time the mantra of, “The science is settled, the debate is over” from politicians and even from some scientists.

Therefore, I was very heartened to hear Professor Brian Cox, the pin-up boy of British science, and his colleague Professor Jeff Forshaw on the “Today” programme recently. Professor Cox said:

“Science is an improvement in our understanding of nature ... There are no absolute truths in science. It’s the only human endeavour where that level of modesty applies”.

Professor Forshaw said:

“We are always trying to improve on the theories we have got ... And we always expect that they are going to be just temporary structures and that they are going to be replaced at some point”.

So let us have no more “the science is settled/the debate is over” nonsense, particularly in the field of climate science, which is so complex and so young.

My view on the Durban conference is that while many of the participants came away disappointed, it was a sensible conclusion—in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, to “stop the clock” on the emissions issue for a decade—while the science improves and the evidence accumulates, an approach I have heard suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Rees of Ludlow. However, there is good news to report. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has drawn the UK back from its extreme unilateralism, for which he should be congratulated rather than criticised.

Finally, I have a few personal observations. In my pamphlet I wrote that,

“if a technology exists only by virtue of subsidy we only impoverish ourselves by trying to build jobs on such shaky foundations”.

The debacle in the solar sector was, therefore, entirely predictable. My second observation is that if a debate with the same title as today’s had taken place 15 years ago when I became Permanent Secretary at the old Department of the Environment—where I had a very happy year working for the noble Lord, Lord Prescott—it would not have been so dominated by decarbonisation but would have been much more about those aspects of the environment people care deeply about: air and water quality, habitats, birds, forests and the countryside. How sad that the issues have been pushed so far down the agenda, accelerated by the misconceived transfer of climate change from Defra to DECC.

In 40 years engaged on public policy, I have come across a number of cases where there was a strong international consensus among political elites, but for which the intellectual underpinning proved to be weak, as those elites were slow to acknowledge. The first was the so-called Washington Consensus which came to be seen as promoting globalisation with the maximum liberalisation of trade and finance and the minimum of regulation, but it turned out to overestimate the efficiency of markets. I confess that I swallowed that one pretty much whole. The second is the euro, where the European political elite pressed on despite warnings about the internal contradictions of the project and even now, it has yet to acknowledge the full extent of the problem. I never bought into the euro from the start.

Climate change—or more accurately, the current decarbonisation project—is in my view the third. Originally I bought in to the IPCC narrative on the science and its impacts while remaining critical of the policy responses. However, the intellectual certainty is beginning to crumble. In the next 10 years I believe we will see the current narrative replaced by something more sophisticated—perhaps drawing extensively on the work of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, who will speak shortly—more eclectic, less alarmist and, in Professor Cox’s words, more “modest” in its claims.

SOURCE

EPA regulation of fuel economy: Congressional intent or climate coup?

In May 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a rule setting standards for motor vehicle greenhouse gas emissions. By creating these standards, EPA is implicitly regulating fuel economy. Because the rule also obligates EPA to regulate greenhouse gases from stationary sources, the agency is now determining national policy on climate change. EPA has asserted that it is simply implementing the Clean Air Act. But the Clean Air Act was neither designed nor intended to regulate greenhouse gases, and it provides no authority to regulate fuel economy.

Last year, Congress declined to give EPA explicit authority to regulate greenhouse gases when Senate leaders abandoned cap-and-trade legislation. A key selling point for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill was that it would exempt greenhouse gases from regulation under several Clean Air Act programs.2 If instead of introducing a cap-and-trade bill, Reps. Waxman and Markey had introduced legislation authorizing EPA to do exactly what it is doing now—regulate greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act as it sees fit—the bill would have been rejected. The notion that Congress gave EPA such authority in 1970, almost two decades before global warming emerged as a public concern, and five years before Congress enacted the first fuel economy statute, defies common sense.

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, 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

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2012-01-13T17:33:00.002+11:30

Evolutionary Psychology of Climate Change

Yet another attempt by the Green/Left to portray their opponents as mentally defective. That people who believe in unvalidated prophecies are the ones with a problem he does not consider

Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of “Stumbling on Happiness,” argues that the human brain is poorly equipped to respond to global warming.

Our ability to mentally time-travel between the past, present and future and act in accordance with personal and shared goals is a result of the magnificent human-prefrontal cortex. Evolution, guided by natural selection, has tinkered with this brain region for millions of years, aiding us in the unrelenting pursuit of survival and reproduction. By learning from the past and imagining alternative futures, we perform complex cognition functions that inform decision making and allow us to respond to threats that endanger our well-being.

Among the many threats on our radar, it is evident from the political discourse in the United States that global warming is unique. Though scientific studies confirm that rising global temperatures and shifting climate patterns threaten human health, biodiversity, ecosystem sustainability, food security, water and air quality, and other ecosystem services on which we depend, less than half of adults worldwide see global warming as a threat to themselves and their families. Why aren’t we more worried about this looming disaster?

Daniel Gilbert argues that human brains evolved to respond to threats that have four features, ones that global warming lack.

Firstly, global warming isn’t tied to social intention or plotting. Our brains are highly specialized for thinking about the devious schemes of others because social interaction (both in terms of cooperation and detecting defecting) crucial to the survival of our species. Unlike anthrax and terrorism, climate change lacks agency, and is instead an emergent property of more nebulous interactions.

Secondly, global warming doesn’t violate our moral intuitions. Unlike dangers that are tied to emotional aversions, such as hurting an animal or burning a book, chemicals in the atmosphere do not make us angry or repulsed.

Thirdly, humans are masters at responding to immediate threats (such as a zooming baseball or a hungry predator), but are novices at acting to resolve worries of the distant future.

Lastly, Daniel Gilbert argues that global warming occurs so gradually that it goes undetected by the brain. Though the human brain is very sensitive to chemical and psychical changes such as light, temperature, pressure, sound, size, and weight, incremental differences largely go unnoticed.

SOURCE

Newly detected molecule 'could reverse global warming' say researchers

Once again, clouds are a major key to warming or cooling

A little-understood molecule in the atmosphere could play an important role in reducing pollution and global warming, scientists believe. The 'Criegee biradicals' could lead to aerosol formation - and ultimately to clouds, with the potential to cool the planet. The compounds react far more rapidly than scientists expected.

They were isolated using a hi-tech particle accelerator at America's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Criegee biradicals were first hypothesised in the 1950s but have only now been isolated and measured.

New research shows they act as powerful ‘clean up’ agents, neutralising atmospheric pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide. A byproduct of the process is the creation of aerosol droplets that ‘seed’ planet-cooling clouds.

The molecules, known as chemical ‘intermediates’, should have a significant influence on climate. However, until now they have never been directly observed.

The new work involved watching simple Criegee intermediates react with various atmospheric molecules including nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide.

The detection of the Criegee biradical and measurement of how fast it reacts was made possible by a unique apparatus, designed by Sandia researchers, that uses light from a 'synchrotron' particle accelerator. The intense, tunable light from the synchrotron allowed researchers to discern the reactions.

The researchers found that the Criegee biradicals react more rapidly than first thought and will accelerate the formation of sulphate and nitrate in the atmosphere.

These compounds will lead to aerosol formation and ultimately to cloud formation with the potential to cool the planet.

The research is reported today in the journal Science. Study leader Dr Carl Percival, from the University of Manchester, said: ‘We have been able to quantify how fast Criegee radicals react for the first time.’ ‘Our results will have a significant impact on our understanding of the oxidising capacity of the atmosphere and have wide ranging implications for pollution and climate change.’

Co-author Professor Dudley Shallcross, from the University of Bristol, pointed out that chemicals released naturally by plants aided the production of Criegee biradicals. ‘Natural ecosystems could be playing a significant role in off-setting global warming,’ he said.

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Please, Global Warming Alarmists, Stop Denying Climate Change - And Science

Gleick sets the tone for his blog post in the very first sentence, where he begins his column by stating, “The Earth’s climate continued to change during 2011….” Here, in the first eight words of his column, Gleick unwittingly reveals one of the primary reasons why he is so wrong in his dire warnings of a human-induced global warming crisis. Gleick and his fellow global warming alarmists are the ultimate climate change deniers.

They present changing climate as unprecedented and unavoidably harmful. They act as if the climate never changed before now. In reality, however, the earth’s long-term, mid-term and short-term climate history is defined by frequent and substantial climate change. Of course, as Gleick states, “The Earth’s climate continued to change during 2011”! When was the last time the Earth’s climate was not undergoing some change? Please, global warming alarmists, stop denying climate change!

Gleick finishes his opening sentence by asserting, “a year in which unprecedented combinations of extreme weather events killed people and damaged property around the world.”

That is quite a bold, unsupported statement. Just what were those extreme weather events? Gleick doesn’t say. Perhaps we can speculate.

It certainly wasn’t hurricanes, as Ryan Maue at the Florida State University Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies documents that global and U.S. hurricane activity has been remarkably quiet for the past few years. During 2009, global accumulated tropical cyclone energy reached a record low, and has remained abnormally quiet in the two-plus years since.

It certainly wasn’t tornadoes, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports 2011 continued a long-term trend in declining frequency of strong tornadoes. Yes, there were some strong tornadoes in 2011, but there are strong tornadoes every year. The only thing climatically remarkable about the 2011 tornado season is that the relatively few strong tornadoes that did occur happened to beat the odds and touch down more often in urban areas than is usually the case. Unless Gleick is arguing that global warming somehow causes hurricanes to wickedly target disproportionately urban areas, tornadoes like hurricanes are becoming less of a threat during recent decades as the planet has modestly warmed.

It certainly wasn’t drought, as multiple peer reviewed studies report global soil moisture has consistently improved during the past century as the planet has warmed. (See, for example, this study.) Yes, some droughts are going to occur somewhere on the planet each year, as they always have, but cherry-picking one of the increasingly less frequent droughts that still do occur does not constitute evidence that global warming is causing more extreme weather events.

Perhaps Gleick can identify some alternative candidates to tornadoes, hurricanes and droughts by which global warming allegedly caused “unprecedented combinations of extreme weather events [that] killed people and damaged property around the world.” But don’t hold your breath.

Gleick, like so many of his alarmist colleagues, believes that anybody who disagrees with his scientific theories is “anti-science.” Yet it is hard to imagine objective tornado data compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to be “anti-science.” But Gleick apparently believes it so.

It is hard to imagine objective tropical cyclone data compiled by Florida State University Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies to be “anti-science,” but Gleick apparently believes it so.

It is hard to imagine objective soil moisture data compiled by several independent teams of scientists to be “anti-science,” but Gleick apparently believes it so.

The term “anti-science” most appropriately applies to those who refuse to consider competing evidence and scientific theories that raise doubts about their own theories. This term applies in spades to Gleick.

In the very same sentence that Gleick rants about people who disagree with him being anti-science, he accuses them of being financially bought off. Gleick asserts the people who disagree with him are part of a “concerted, well-funded, and aggressive anti-science campaign” [emphasis in the original] that is “focused on protecting narrow financial interests.” That is a very curious accusation, considering that environmental activist groups like Gleick’s Pacific Institute receive a great deal more funding than the free-market, sound-science groups that he claims are “well-funded” and overly concerned with the role of the federal government.

For example, Gleick twice directs his wrath at the Heartland Institute. The Heartland Institute does indeed receive approximately $7 million in annual funding (with relatively little coming from corporations and only a very small fraction coming from corporations having anything to do with the global warming debate). By contrast, the Natural Resources Defense Council receives close to $100 million in annual funding, Greenpeace receives close to $200 million in annual funding, the World Wildlife Fund receives approximately $600 million in annual funding, etc., etc., etc. Which groups, indeed, are the “well-funded” entities “focused on protecting narrow financial interests?”

Gleick continues his blog by venomously attacking by name people and groups with whom he disagrees on the science.

He begins by singling out everyone who is a candidate to lead the Republican Party. Whether one is a Republican, a Democrat or a member/sympathizer of any other political party should be irrelevant regarding scientific inquiry and truth, but prominent global warming alarmists such as Gleick seem obsessed with bringing political party affiliation into the discussion. Give us a break!

Curiously, Gleick claims some of these Republicans “intentionally distort science because it conflicts with deeply held political or religious ideology.” Yet in the very same paragraph Gleick praises a prominent global warming alarmist who “happens to be an evangelical and speaks regularly to conservative groups.” Well, which is it? Is it acceptable to view scientific issues through the prism of religious beliefs and political ideology or is it not appropriate? Gleick betrays his lack of objectivity and his agenda-driven worldview by imposing such a blatant double-standard on those who disagree with him.

Gleick follows up the imposition of his double-standard by writing about the evangelical alarmist, “She was also targeted by these activists for personal abuse – a tactic often pursued by climate deniers and contrarians.” As is the case throughout his blog post, Gleick fails to present any facts to back up his assertion. Specifically which activists targeted her for personal abuse, and specifically what personal abuse occurred? Also, specifically who, how and when was this “tactic often pursued by climate deniers and contrarians”? Furthermore, assuming any such personal abuse indeed occurred, how is it any different from the personal abuse heaped upon skeptics? Gleick, not surprisingly, provides no such examples or explanations.

Gleick then writes three predictable paragraphs targeting those few members of the national media who are not in the back pocket of global warming alarmists and environmental activist groups. Heaven forbid even a few media personalities or media outlets present anything other than Gleick’s side of the debate!

Gleick then pours his wrath out on scientists who oversee NASA satellite instruments showing little or no recent global warming. Gleick accuses the scientists, without presenting any facts or evidence to back it up, of presenting “misleading” testimony to Congress. He then says one of their papers “turned out to contain serious scientific errors according to experts working in this field.” Gleick conveniently forgets to mention that the so-called “experts” he describes consist almost entirely of Gleick and his cabal of outspoken, agenda-driven global warming alarmists. Talk about “misleading” statements!

After this, Gleick singles out several more people and groups for his wrath. To be honest, I started falling asleep at this point, as the blog post was becoming exceptionally redundant and predictable. Suffice it to say that I feel Peter’s pain and empathize with his anguish. At some point, however, one must either move on to more interesting topics or risk falling asleep in the midst of empathy.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz………………

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Those Who Claim to Speak for the Future

Some people have a high opinion of themselves. I mean, what sort of personality type do you have to be to imagine that you, self-anointed you, are the voice of future generations?

What kind of ego trip do people embark on prior to concluding that, among the billions of souls inhabiting this planet, it’s their own special calling to speak on behalf of those who haven’t yet been born?

A long list of individuals with this exalted regard for themselves can be found on the website of the World Future Council. Actually, there are four lists. The first consists of those who are the Councillors and Honorary Councillors of this body. Among these self-aggrandizing mortals we find:

the Hollywood actress Daryl Hannah
Tim Flannery, the head of Australia’s government-funded Climate Commission
Fabio Feldmann, who sits on the boards of Greenpeace International, The Nature Conservancy (Brazil), and Friends of the Earth Brazil
the president as well as the director general of another activist group called the International Union for Conservation of Nature
a Vice President of the Club of Rome (which has been issuing bogus doomsday warnings since the 1970s)
at least four people currently or formerly employed by the United Nations: Maude Barlow, Rae Kwon Chung, Ahmed Djoghlaf, and Hans-Christof von Sponeck

Then there’s the Supervisory Board of the World Future Council. This includes a gynecologist, the directors of two foundations (presumably these are bankrolling the venture), a benefactress, and what no self-respecting group of speakers-for-the-future can do without – a Middle Eastern expert.

List number three is the organization’s Board of Advisors. The bios of those folks are handily collected in this 7-page PDF (backup link here). It turns out that Cyril Ritchie, the chairman of that board, is also “serving his fourth term as Secretary of the Conference of UN NGOs (CONGO).”

I’ve never heard of this body, but evidently it spends its time “actively promoting the involvement of NGOs in the working of the United Nations.” Here are some of the other board members:

Reto Braun, whose day job involves working with the UN
Bo Ekman, a former adviser to a former UN Secretary General
Monika Griefahn, a co-founder of Greenpeace Germany
Anita Herrdum, who lives in a commune and serves as “chairwoman of a German speaking network of heiresses”
Beatrix Pfleiderer, a professor of anthropology who spent six years “involved in training with free dolphins on healing communication”

Oh, and let’s not forget Farhad Vladi. This gentleman is equipped to speak for future generations, apparently, because he’s president of three companies that “sell, develop and rent privately owned islands world-wide.” Moreover, he’s “very much involved in art and music” and is “interested in the subject of global warming and renewable energy.”

Finally we come to the last list of names. These people are responsible for the day-to-day activities of the World Future Council. Jakob von Uexkull is “a patron of Friends of the Earth International and a member of the Global Commission to Fund the United Nations.”

Alexandra Wandel used to work for Friends of the Earth before she became a spokesperson for a group of “major European environmental NGOs” that included the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace.

No doubt you’ve heard the term social justice before. Well the World Future Council is pushing future justice. It has a Director of Future Justice, a Campaign Manager for Future Justice, and two policy officers who also have that slogan in their titles.

Quelle surprise, the Director of Future Justice, Maja Göpel, has a history of working for NGOs. A link embedded in her bio takes us to an entire Future Justice page (backup link). Here one finds eyebrow-raising statements such as:

The world is warming dangerously. A quarter of our mammals face a high risk of extinction in the near future.
We need Future Justice because we need to overcome the obscene inequity between people.
Putting Future Justice into place means tackling head-on our culture, policies and laws…

In the new, improved world these people wish to substitute for our current one:

Fair treatment would be a basic human need, set out in law. Fair shares and fair burdens would be a matter of justice between all humans living, and those yet to be born.
Those who act without concern for the planet, and the human and non-human life upon it, would be pursued and prosecuted.

Notice the legalistic tone. These people imagine that fair burdens and fair shares is simply a matter of passing laws. And if you behave in ways they disapprove of – if you act without concern for the planet – you can look forward to being pursued and prosecuted.

The World Future Council, therefore, doesn’t use the term justice the way most of us do. Rather than simply advocating for certain improvements, these people would have us believe that their particular vision of the future is indistinguishable from justice itself.

In reality, the World Future Council is a collection of NGO brats, self-important rich folks, and UN bureaucrats who think everything would be just so much nicer if they were running the planet.

In my view, their analysis is both infantile and creepy. May future generations be spared their meddling.

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Big windmill maker in trouble

Danish wind turbine maker Vestas will cut 2,335 jobs in a bid to restore profitability after rising costs wiped out its 2011 earnings.

Vestas Wind Systems A/S said the cuts, about a tenth of its workforce, would help reduce costs by more than 150 million euros ($190.3 mln) by year-end. Another 1,600 jobs could go at U.S. units later this year if a tax credit for renewable energy is not extended.

The world's biggest wind turbine maker is battling fierce competition, including from Chinese rivals , as well as the threat of subsidy cuts for renewable energy by hard-pressed governments forced to tighten budgets.

Formerly a darling of investors, the wind industry has been hit in the crisis by overcapacity and sliding turbine prices.

Late in 2011, Vestas was hit by cost overruns in product development and delayed revenues which last week forced it to issue its second profit warning in just three months.

It will shut a tower factory with 350 workers in the town of Varde in Denmark, but 1,600 of the total redundancies would be salaried administrative workers and 735 hourly-paid employees.

"We have no plans to shut more plants," Engel told Reuters.

On Jan. 3, Vestas shocked the market by warning that increased product development costs and delayed revenues had wiped out its 2011 profit. It had expected an operating profit of 255 million euros.

It said 2011 earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) would be zero while revenues would be around 6 billion euros instead of an already downgraded estimate of 6.4 billion euros.

Vestas said last week that it learned in the final days of 2011 that costs related mainly to ramping up manufacturing of its V112-3.0 MW turbine grew out of control. Analysts said this has stoked fears that the problems could spread.

Vestas stands atop a record backlog of orders but solar and wind power are facing possible subsidy cuts as many of their mature markets are weighed down by swelling public deficits and weak economies which have hit energy investment.

Vestas has warned that the possible expiry in the United States of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) at the end of 2012 could lead to a very difficult 2013 in the U.S. market.

The PTC gives a 2.2-cent per kilowatt-hour benefit for the first 10 years of a renewable energy facility's operation.

Vestas has invested $1 billion in its U.S. manufacturing and research operations, mainly four plants in Colorado.

"We are now preparing Vestas for the situation where one of our largest single markets, the USA, may be facing a tough 2013," Engel said. "This will have a huge impact on our business, if we do not act now."

SOURCE

Ben Stein Sues Ad Agency & Client Claiming Political Discrimination over his climate skepticism

Economist and writer and humorist and actor Ben Stein has filed suit against Kyocera Corp and advertising agency Seiter & Miller alleging that an agreement for him to appear in TV commercials was illegally breached because of his personal and political beliefs about global warming.

Stein’s memorable jacket-and-tie deadpan persona has figured in numerous TV commercials and appearances. Not to mention his iconic turn in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. According to Stein’s suit, Grace Jao of Seiter & Miller in December 2010 contacted his agent Marcia Hurwitz of Innovative Artists about appearing in commercials for Kyocera printer products and about speaking at a company function. Over the course of about five weeks, the suit claims, the parties reached an agreement on all significant deal points including payment of Stein’s fee of $300,000 for shooting the commercials and for the speaking engagement. The circumstances led Hurwitz to believe the deal was done, the suit says, and Stein planned accordingly.

Early in February 2011 Jao contacted Hurwitz, the suit says, to inform the agent that questions had been raised over Stein’s beliefs about global warming and the environment and whether they were “sufficiently conventional and politically correct for Kyocera,” according to language in the suit. Hurwitz told Jao that as far as she was concerned the deal was done, the suit said, and Stein’s political and scientific views were not part of his contract for extolling the company’s printers. Stein told Hurwitz to inform the defendants that he was extremely concerned with environmental issues but he was no means certain that global warming was manmade. He also told her to inform the defendants that it was a matter of his religious beliefs that God and not man controlled the weather.

On February 16, 2011, Livingston Miller, president of the ad agency, informed Hurwitz via email that the agency had decided to “withdraw its offer” even though negotiations had resulted in an acceptance of the offer and other stipulations. The reason? According to the suit, because of “Ben’s official positions on various policy issues that appear on the web of which we have only lately become aware.” Kyocera and the agency Seiter & Miller then hired a Ben Stein lookalike, the suit alleges, and dressed him with a tie, sport jacket and glasses and brazenly misappropriated Stein’s public persona for commercials — thereby intentionally inflicting emotional distress on Stein.

In addition to breach of contract and breach of good faith and fair dealing, Stein’s suit charges Kyocera, Seiter & Miller and associated individuals of illegal religious discrimination and with wrongful discharge for political expression, which are illegal under California law. Stein seeks the sum of $300,000 for work he agreed to do, attorney fees and court costs and punitive damages.

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