The Climate Tort Goes Down

Even liberal Justices can't abide this theory

How unconvincing is the green legal doctrine of the climate tort? So much so that not a single Justice seemed persuaded when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments last Tuesday-even some of the liberals questioned the theory with Scalia-like vigor.

In American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, a group of state attorneys general are suing five utilities, claiming their carbon emissions are a "nuisance" under common law. Boiled down, they're asking the Court to give judges the power to create climate policies-and weigh their costs and benefits-that would ordinarily be fashioned by the politically accountable branches.

But don't take our word for it. "I mean, even just reading that part of your complaint, it sounds like the paradigmatic thing that administrative agencies do rather than courts," Justice Elena Kagan told New York Solicitor General Barbara Underwood. "Now what," chimed in Ruth Bader Ginsburg, "the relief you're seeking seems to me to set up a district judge, who does not have the resources, the expertise, as a kind of super-EPA."

Later, Justice Kagan, President Obama's second nominee to the High Court, asked, "General, do you think that you have a federal common law cause of action against anybody in the world?" After all, everyone contributes to global warming. "Obviously the greatest benefit to reduce global warming would be, of course, to shut down the power plants, right?" as Chief Justice John Roberts put it. Should the courts have that power too-but extended over the entire economy?

Or "can the courts set a tax?" wondered Stephen Breyer. Ms. Underwood claimed that such a policy wouldn't "abate the nuisance," to which Justice Breyer acidly replied, "Oh, this will. This is addressed to that. It says abate the nuisance, here's how you're going to do it. You're going to put a $20 a tax ton on carbon, and lo and behold, you will discover that nuisance will be abated."

It's heartening to see the Justices reaffirm their faith in the democratic process, especially after a 2006 case that the Obama Administration has used to justify its autocratic choice to impose carbon regulation via the Environmental Protection Agency. But even the proponents of the climate tort have been open about their bad faith. The point of this and other lawsuits has merely been to harass industry and coerce business into supporting a carbon crackdown, no matter what elected representatives decide.

While the Court could dismiss the judicial encroachment of the climate tort in a number of ways, the good news for the economy is that it appears to be toast.

SOURCE






CO2 gets a reprieve: Ozone hole dominates shifting S. Hemisphere climate

Maybe it does but it fluctuates wildly from year to year -- like the natural phenomenon it is -- so making any predictions from it would be ambitious.

The sudden emergence of an ARCTIC hole mentioned below is amusing. Stick that in your chlorofluorocarbons

Climate policymakers and scientists need to look beyond global warming emissions of carbon dioxide and take the loss of stratospheric ozone into account, researchers said on Thursday.

The stratospheric ozone layer, which shields Earth from solar ultra-violet radiation, has thinned over the South Pole over the last half-century.

This depletion of ozone has shifted the Southern Hemisphere's climate so that dry areas in the subtropics now see about 10 percent more precipitation in summer than they used to, scientists reported in the journal Science.

"Ozone is now widely believed to be the dominant agent of climate change in the Southern Hemisphere, so this actually means that the international agreements regulating climate change cannot be confined to dealing with carbon dioxide," said the study's lead author, Sarah Kang of Columbia University. "They also need to consider ozone," Kang said by telephone.

Carbon dioxide emissions from natural and human-made sources, notably the burning of fossil fuels, is the most frequently cited target of policymakers aiming to curb climate change caused by humans.

However, the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere due largely to commercial and industrial use of chemicals containing chlorofluorocarbons has a powerful impact on large swaths of the Southern Hemisphere, the researchers found.

WINDS SHIFT TOWARD SOUTH POLE

The stratospheric ozone layer typically absorbs ultra-violet radiation, warming the air below. With the opening of the ozone hole over the South Pole due to chlorofluorocarbon pollution, there was severe cooling instead of warming, which eventually caused a southern shift in the winds that whip from west to east around Antarctica.

As this band of winds moved toward the pole, a corresponding dry belt in the subtropics also moved southward, the researchers showed. This left room nearer the equator for a band of increased summer precipitation.

Most of this change is driven by the ozone hole, with a smaller contribution from increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the study found.

Earlier this month, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization reported record loss of the protective ozone layer over the Arctic, which unlike that in the Antarctic, is not an annual occurrence.

The 40 percent loss of ozone over the Arctic came despite the "very successful" 1987 Montreal Protocol aimed at cutting production and consumption of ozone-destroying chemicals including chlorofluorocarbons and halons, WMO said on April 5.

The substances were once present in refrigerators, spray cans and fire extinguishers, but have been phased out. However, they can linger for decades in the atmosphere, so it will take several decades more before their concentrations drop to pre-1980 levels, WMO said.

SOURCE





Remember the scary "single most-important finding in climate science last year": "a sharp decline" in phytoplankton? Never mind

The MSM was awash with alarmist reports last year that global warming had caused "a sharp drop" in ocean phytoplankton since the 1950's, with one newspaper stating "the single most-important finding in climate science last year was a 40 percent decline in the ocean's phytoplankton caused by global warming." A new paper published in Nature finds that multiple data sets instead show an increase in ocean phytoplankton over the past eight decades. Don't hold your breath for any retractions of the alarmist claims in the MSM, nor any stories reporting the good news.

Is there a decline in marine phytoplankton?

By Abigail McQuatters-Gollop et al.

Arising from D. G. Boyce, M. R. Lewis & B. Worm Nature 466, 591-596 (2010); Boyce et al. reply

Phytoplankton account for approximately 50% of global primary production, form the trophic base of nearly all marine ecosystems, are fundamental in trophic energy transfer and have key roles in climate regulation, carbon sequestration and oxygen production.

Boyce et al. compiled a chlorophyll index by combining in situ chlorophyll and Secchi disk depth measurements that spanned a more than 100-year time period and showed a decrease in marine phytoplankton biomass of approximately 1% of the global median per year over the past century.

Eight decades of data on phytoplankton biomass collected in the North Atlantic by the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey, however, show an increase in an index of chlorophyll (Phytoplankton Colour Index) in both the Northeast and Northwest Atlantic basins, and other long-term time series, including the Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT)8, the Bermuda Atlantic Time Series (BATS)8 and the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) also indicate increased phytoplankton biomass over the last 20-50 years.

These findings, which were not discussed by Boyce et al., are not in accordance with their conclusions and illustrate the importance of using consistent observations when estimating long-term trends

SOURCE. (See the original for links)





Models all wrong: East Antarctic Ice Sheet is getting thicker from the bottom up

Inclusion of these newly found processes is essential to produce robust predictions of future ice sheet change

Scientists have always thought that the vast majority of ice contained in the Antarctic ice cap was formed from frozen precipitation. Recent research has revealed that this is not totally correct. Over a large fraction of East Antarctica, the deepest part of the ice sheet contains ice that did not originate as surface snow but developed when subglacial meltwater was frozen onto the underside of the ice sheet. The amount of ice involved is much larger than the estimated volume of Antarctic subglacial lakes and may even exceed the volume of all glaciers on Earth outside of the two polar ice sheets. Current computer models predict that subglacial water escapes toward the ocean. These new findings indicate that water from areas of basal melting actually migrate to areas of basal freezing, something not accounted for by current ice sheet models. To scientists' surprise, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is getting thicker from the bottom up.

In a Science report published online March 3, 2011, Robin E. Bell et al. little is known about processes at the base of the ice sheets. In "Widespread Persistent Thickening of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet by Freezing from the Base," researchers report that, although the surface accumulation of snow remains the primary mechanism for ice sheet growth, beneath the research site known as Dome A, 24% of the base by area is frozen-on ice. In some places, up to half of the ice thickness has been added from below. The unexpected thickness of these bottom layers of ice was detected using radar imaging during the International Polar Year 2007-2009.

The exact mechanisms for the formation of this refrozen ice depends on the location. According to Bell et al., the freeze-on at valley heads is primarily the result of conductive cooling over static bodies of water. Along the valley walls, ice is primarily the result of the hydrologic potential forcing water up steep valley slopes. But these processes are not mutually exclusive: individual packages of frozen-on ice could well have been produced by a combination of the two mechanisms. The authors speculate that the creation of bottom ice is widespread and has been going on since the beginning of persistent glaciation more than 30 million years ago.

In East Antarctica, basal freeze-on has continued in the same locations through the last glacial-interglacial transition and has probably been a persistent process since East Antarctica became encased in a large ice sheet 32 million years ago. The simple geometry of the subglacial topography and the stable ice flow in the Dome A region have enabled us to image this process for the first time. Although the surface accumulation, surface slope, and bed morphology vary distinctly on the northern and southern sides of Dome A, throughout the area almost a quarter of the ice sheet base consists of ice freeze-on from the bottom. Widespread freeze-on can change the rheology and modify the flow of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Inclusion of these basal processes is essential to produce robust predictions of future ice sheet change.

The addition of hundreds of meters of ice to the base of an ice sheet deforms the overlying ice, causing uplifted sections on the glacier's surface. This changes ice sheet stratigraphy and may affect the surface accumulation by changing the slope of the surface. The thickest package of frozen-on ice the researchers found was 1110 m, located at the downflow end of a 20-km-long valley. The internal layers in the covering ice are deformed upward over 410 m at the valley head. The shape of the surface actually reflects the shape of the accreted ice body and not the underlying bedrock.

Aside from changing accumulation rates and ice-flow dynamics, this discovery has implications for those trying to extend the ice core record farther back into time.

"the widespread melt required to support the freeze-on process may have destroyed the ice containing the ancient paleoclimate records," Bell et al. state. "Without the inclusion of basal processes, simple models of ice sheet temperatures cannot accurately predict the location of the oldest ice." Knowledge gathered from the deepest ice cores may need revision.

The implications of the research are clear. Bell and colleagues summed the situation up this way: "Widespread freeze-on can change the rheology and modify the flow of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Inclusion of these basal processes is essential to produce robust predictions of future ice sheet change." Tulaczyk and Hossainzadeh are even more to the point:

The discovery of thick, widespread accreted ice layers changes in fundamental ways our understanding of the Antarctic ice sheet. Further mapping and modeling of these ice bodies is necessary to aid the ongoing search for the oldest ice on Earth. New models of subglacial water generation, flow, and freezing will have to be developed to account for this large internal mass and heat redistribution within the ice sheet

These scientists are saying that the new findings fundamentally change our understanding of ice sheets and their inclusion in new models is essential. Basically, this means all of the model predictions of how fast ice is melting and moving to the sea, in both Antarctica and Greenland, need to be revised. It turns out that all those model based predictions of an icy Armageddon, with glacial ice racing to the ocean at ever increasing rates, were not based on reality.

This discovery shows the danger of basing estimates of future conditions on model output, be it ice flow or climate change. As fodder for research models are fine, but as a foundation to base public policy on they are horrid. The public, media and politicians need to understand that models are not fact, they are at best imperfect representations of a poorly understood reality.

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





Lobbyists who cleared 'Climategate' academics funded by British taxpayers and the BBC

A shadowy lobby group which pushes the case that global warming is a real threat is being funded by the taxpayer and assisted by the BBC. The little-known not-for-profit company works behind the scenes at international conferences to further its aims.

One of its key supporters headed the official investigation into the so-called "Climategate emails", producing a report which cleared experts of deliberately attempting to skew scientific results to confirm that global warming was a real threat.

Another scientific expert linked to the group came forward to praise a second independent investigation into the Climategate affair which also exonerated researchers.

Set up with the backing of Tony Blair, then the Prime Minister, and run by a group of British MPs and peers the organisation, Globe International, started life as an All Party Group based in the House of Commons.

It is now run as an international climate change lobbying group flying its supporters and experts club class to international summits to push its agenda. Last year, it said, it spent around £500,000 flying its supporters to these meetings.

It has also paid out at least £75,000 on travel for prominent UK politicians, including for its former presidents Elliot Morley [corr], the ex-Labour environment minister now facing jail for expenses fraud, and Stephen Byers, the former Labour cabinet minister who was suspended from the Commons after he was filmed describing himself a "cab for hire" when offering to lobby his parliamentary contacts for cash.

Now Globe is planning a mass lobby of the United Nations Rio 2012 summit in Brazil, where world leaders will discuss climate change, by holding a World Summit of Legislators in the city to coincided with the event.

Next week the group's current President Lord Deben, the former Tory Cabinet Minister John Gummer, is due to launch a major report on climate change policy alongside Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary.

Globe has also recently held behind-closed-doors meetings with William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, and other senior Coalition ministers.

Last year two prominent experts linked to Globe were drawn into the controversy over emails leaked from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit.

Lord Oxburgh, the organisation's director, was called in to head an internal inquiry into the leaked emails which included one infamous message referring to a "trick" to "hide the decline" in global temperatures.

The peer's investigation cleared the scientists of malpractice. But critics claimed the report was a whitewash and Lord Oxburgh also failed to declare his involvement with Globe before he began his investigation.

Meanwhile Bob Ward, from the Grantham Institute, which works alongside Globe, praised a second inquiry by former civil servant Muir Russell, which also cleared the climate researchers. He said it had "lifted the cloud of suspicion" and demonstrated that "the integrity of climate science is intact."

Globe International's work is paid for with donations from multi-millionaire backers and through partnerships with other environmental groups.

Globe also confirmed last night that it received direct funding from the Department of Energy and the Department of International Development (DfID). including a grant of £91,240 provided by DfID since the Coalition came to power last year.

More cash from DfID is filtered through the Complus Alliance - a "sustainable development communications alliance" of broadcasters based in Costa Rica which is also supported by the BBC World Service Trust, the Corporation's independent charity. Complus, which was awarded DfID cash last year and in 2006, says it has an "ongoing relationship with Globe" helping it run "shadow negotiation" teams at international summits of world leaders.

A spokeswoman for Complus said: "The BBC is a founding member not a funding member. They can make in-kind contributions, like organising events, supporting logistics, sharing content." She added that Complus did not fund Globe but work with them on "convergent objectives".

Last night a DfID spokesman confirmed the department had given Complus £250,000 in total to provide research, advocacy and communications work on the impact of climate change.

Last night Globe's general secretary Adam Matthews said: "Globe is not a lobbying organisation. It is an international group of legislators. It was set up by the legislators themselves. "We facilitate them coming together to discuss environmental issues. Our members have multiple views - some quite sceptical on some aspects of the climate change debate." "We are funded by the World Bank, the EU, international parliaments and Governments, including the UK Government. The coalition Government contributes to our work through DFID."

Globe International, registered as a not-for-profit firm under the name The Global Legislators Organisation Ltd, makes minimal disclosures about its finances to Companies House. Last year it declared a £500,000 loss, but still managed to fly a number of key supporters to summits and international conferences.

More HERE




Retired Anchorman Apologizes for Presenting Both Sides of Global Warming Debate

“For those of you who are confused [about global warming], you’re forgiven. It’s my fault.” So hysterically said retired Minneapolis anchorman Don Shelby during a speech at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, Tuesday:

After spending 32 years in front of the camera as an anchorman and investigative reporter for WCCO-TV in Minneapolis, Don Shelby wanted to apologize to people about climate change....

Shelby was speaking at the University of Minnesota Duluth on Tuesday on what he called “The most important story since journalism began — global climate change.” His speech served as the kick-off for a two-day sustainability fair sponsored by UMD’s Office of Sustainability.

The TV newsman’s mea culpa about having misreported climate change came after of years of treating the story the same as he would any other, requiring the views of two opposing parties, Shelby told the packed lecture hall of the chemistry building.

But, he said, climate change is not a pro or con issue; it’s a scientific fact. And journalists who work to “balance” a story present an inaccurate picture when they give equal weight to sources promulgating inaccurate facts.

“If I report a story on abuse of children, I don’t go out and interview an abuser on the up-side of child abuse,” he said as an example of how an effort to balance can go too far.

Yes, global temperatures rising by about one degree Celsius in the past 160 years as we came out of a solar minimum, radically increased the population, and replaced grasslands and forests with cities, skyscrapers, concrete and asphalt is akin to abusing a child.

There's therefore only one side to the story as to why the planet got hotter, and reporting the other far more logical one is like letting a child-abuser explain why beating kids is okay.

This is what passes as critical thinking in journalism today. And this man was speaking to a group of college students filling their minds with the same lack of objectivity.

Scarier still, for 32 years Shelby reported to the citizens of Minneapolis and St. Paul on television and radio. Makes you wonder what other biases the Emmy Award-winning "newsman" has been sharing all those years if he's willing to stand up in front of an audience and claim he was misrepresenting this issue.

Having never lived in Minnesota and therefore not the slightest bit familiar with Shelby, I have no idea what his political leanings are beyond this bizarre mea culpa concerning global warming.

For a clue, at his My Space page, Shelby lists one of his heroes as the perilously liberal Charles Kuralt, and claims the person he'd most like to interview is Osama bin Laden.

SOURCE

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Vicious persecution of environmental realist and his children

Confused visitors will be forgiven for thinking Oregon State University is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Congressman Pete DeFazio and the “progressive-socialist” wing of the Democratic Party. Or for likening what’s going on there to political retribution as practiced in Third World thugocracies.

The idea that three outstanding students – PhD candidates at OSU – could face dismissal, and worse, shortly before receiving their degrees, is simply shocking. That this could be happening because their father had the temerity to challenge an entrenched 12-term Democratic congressman (and OSU earmark purveyor) could make people think the university is in Zimbabwe, not America. Dr. Art Robinson is president of the nonprofit Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, located on the family farm in southwestern Oregon, 180 miles from Corvallis. OISM focuses on biochemistry, diagnostic medicine, nutrition, preventive medicine and aging – and improving emergency preparedness and basic education.

After his wife died in 1988, Robinson raised and home-schooled his six children – all of whom became remarkable scholars, collaborating on research and a popular DVD series on math and science for home-schooled students and their parents. Five of the children have BS degrees in chemistry; one a degree in mathematics. Two earned doctorates in veterinary medicine; one a PhD in chemistry.

The three youngest are all at OSU, working on PhDs in nuclear engineering. They entered the field at a young age, helping their father write and publish the “pro-science, pro-technology, pro-free enterprise” newsletter, Access to Energy, which explains and advocates nuclear energy. Dr. Robinson is perhaps best known for the Oregon Petition Project, which states that “there is no convincing scientific evidence” that humans are causing “catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere” or disruption of its climate. It urges Congress to reject the 1997 Kyoto global warming agreement – and has been signed by more than 32,000 Americans with university degrees in physical sciences (including yours truly and over 9,000 PhDs).

The petition, and Robinson’s support for DDT in combating the malaria pandemic, drew anger and outrage from the political Left, climate chaos industry and “mainstream media,” giving him his first brush with the politics of personal destruction. But it did not prepare him for the lengths and depths his opponents would go to “discourage” his political activities.

With our nation drowning in debt, energy prices skyrocketing, and unaccountable pseudo-scientific agencies like EPA and Interior hobbling business and economic growth in endless delays and red tape, Dr. Robinson decided to run for Congress. He was a scientist, with proven math and budgetary skills, a thoughtful, conservative, Christian family man – who could bring much needed skills and perspectives to the House of Representatives.

He challenged DeFazio, who initially figured he would have a cakewalk against this political neophyte. But Robinson raised $1.3 million from over 5,000 individual donors (against DeFazio’s $1.5 million from special interests, MoveOn.org and other contributors), gave numerous speeches and ran a highly effective campaign. With polls showing his lead narrowing, an increasingly desperate DeFazio struck back.

Bristling with a sense of entitlement, the congressman ran print, television and radio ads, painting Robinson as a nutcase who would promote racism, put radioactive wastes in drinking water, end Social Security and Medicare, close schools, repeal taxation of oil companies and destroy Oregon jobs. With help from Rachel Madow and MSNBC, DeFazio claimed Robinson lived off Social Security in a survivalist compound and was funding his campaign with cash from money launderers and drug dealers.

Despite the libelous attacks, Robinson garnered a very respectable 44% of the vote – and promptly announced that he would run for DeFazio’s seat again in 2012. If the soft-spoken family man thought DeFazio’s campaign had been in the sewers, what happened next beggared belief. Now the targets became Robinson’s three youngest children.

During the election campaign, OSU President Edward Ray and other faculty and administrators illegally used the campus to campaign for DeFazio and against Robinson. Almost immediately after the 2010 election, they launched a series of despicable and unprincipled actions designed to ensure that Joshua, Bethany, and Matthew never receive their degrees – regardless of their outstanding academics, examinations and research, or the thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars they had invested.

Even though they have been working on their PhDs for almost five years at OSU, and have about a year to go, Joshua has been forbidden access to the equipment he built for his PhD work, and Bethany has been told she will be dismissed from school. Matthew, who turned down a nearly “full ride” from MIT to go to OSU, has been there for two years – but now is waiting for the ax to fall on his work and his thesis professor, Dr. Jack Higginbotham, who came to the students’ defense.

Nuclear engineering professor Higginbotham has been at OSU 24 years and is president of the OSU Faculty Senate and director of a large NASA program on the campus. His inside knowledge of what the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics deans and certain faculty were doing to railroad the Robinson children made him Public Enemy Number One to the department Torquemadas who are trying to destroy his career and get him fired for his impertinence. Right now, Higginbotham’s salary and career hang by a thread, preserved only by attorneys he has hired to protect himself from OSU attacks. The Robinsons’ studies have been severely disrupted. Meanwhile, however, public outcry in favor of Higginbotham and the students has grown in intensity, especially in Oregon, and a group of prominent alumni donors has offered to pay for the student’s remaining PhD work and legal costs to settle the dispute.

Rather than being chastened, though, President Ray and his staff have refused even to speak with the alumni group. University administrators have become incensed that their actions are now public knowledge, and that alumni and other donors are vocally supporting Higginbotham and the children.

Ray and his entourage have circled the academic wagons and stonewalled public inquiries. They appear to think they “own” the university, and “academic freedom” means they are entitled to deny academic degrees to children of parents whose politics differ from their own. As more alumni join this effort, however, and the university’s reputation becomes increasingly radioactive, OSU appears to be wavering. Perhaps a dose of sanity may yet take center stage. Oregon State is a prime example of what happens when educational institutions fall under progressive-socialist control, and dependency on taxpayer handouts from political overseers in Washington. DeFazio and his fellow congressional Democrats gave OSU a reported $27 million in earmark funding during the last legislative cycle alone. That’s $9 million per Robinson student denied a PhD.

No wonder President Ray and the Nuclear Engineering deans have given new meaning to “payback,” while DeFazio smirks in silence in the congressional office that he seems convinced should be his for life.

In depressing testimony to how far America has strayed from its Constitution and founding principles, we have reached the point where congressmen can lavish key supporters with tax dollars – and in return get votes, campaign contributions, rallies and volunteers on our campuses … and be assured of vicious retribution against the families of anyone rash enough to run against them.

SOURCE




Soot Emerging As Main Driver Of Arctic Warming

Pierre and I have both written about the effects of soot on arctic and sub-arctic ice and glaciers, read here "Glaciers - The Dark Side and Half Of Arctic Warming Caused By Soot". Scientists are recognising that CO2 is becoming less of a factor and that black carbon soot instead is being recognised increasingly as the a driver of warming in the Arctic. Time to go back and revamp the models – again.

Researchers from the Arctic Council, representing the eight countries that border the Arctic, are now seriously studying the subject. See the Associated Press article here. The photo and caption from the article reads:

"This undated handout photo provided by NOAA-STAD, Soot Transport and Deposition Study, shows Trish Quinn of NOAA in a first snow pit. An international research team is in the land of snow and ice in search of soot. Though the Arctic is often pictured as a vast white wasteland, that can be deceiving. And carbon deposited there as a result of activities elsewhere can have a long-term impact on climate.

’The Arctic serves as the air conditioner of the planet,’ explained Patricia Quinn of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the research participants. Heat from other parts of the Earth moves to the Arctic in the circulating air and ocean water, and at least some of that warmth can radiate into space.”

At the same time, some of the incoming heat from the sun that tends to be absorbed in other locations is reflected by the ice and snow, allowing the polar regions to serve as cooling agents for the planet.”

Of course they need to insert the obligatory nod to CO2.

Cutting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is the backbone of any effort to combat warming, both globally and within the Arctic, Quinn said.”

The group has not published yet, as the research will not end until the end of May, and to have any hope of getting their paper or papers past “peer review” they need to get CO2 into the mix. But this study is a few steps in the right direction.

SOURCE. (See the original for links)




Another Green/Left misanthrope

This guy was a bit player. He only murdered one person. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot murdered millions. But the lack of respect for other people is the common theme

Ira Einhorn was on stage hosting the first Earth Day event at the Fairmount Park in Philadelphia on April 22, 1970. Seven years later, police raided his closet and found the "composted" body of his ex-girlfriend inside a trunk.

A self-proclaimed environmental activist, Einhorn made a name for himself among ecological groups during the 1960s and '70s by taking on the role of a tie-dye-wearing ecological guru and Philadelphia’s head hippie. With his long beard and gap-toothed smile, Einhorn — who nicknamed himself "Unicorn" because his German-Jewish last name translates to "one horn" —advocated flower power, peace and free love to his fellow students at the University of Pennsylvania. He also claimed to have helped found Earth Day.

But the charismatic spokesman who helped bring awareness to environmental issues and preached against the Vietnam War — and any violence — had a secret dark side. When his girlfriend of five years, Helen "Holly" Maddux, moved to New York and broke up with him, Einhorn threatened that he would throw her left-behind personal belongings onto the street if she didn't come back to pick them up.

And so on Sept. 9, 1977, Maddux went back to the apartment that she and Einhorn had shared in Philadelphia to collect her things, and was never seen again. When Philadelphia police questioned Einhorn about her mysterious disappearance several weeks later, he claimed that she had gone out to the neighborhood co-op to buy some tofu and sprouts and never returned.

It wasn't until 18 months later that investigators searched Einhorn's apartment after one of his neighbors complained that a reddish-brown, foul-smelling liquid was leaking from the ceiling directly below Einhorn's bedroom closet. Inside the closet, police found Maddux's beaten and partially mummified body stuffed into a trunk that had also been packed with Styrofoam, air fresheners and newspapers.

After his arrest, Einhorn jumped bail and spent decades evading authorities by hiding out in Ireland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and France. After 23 years, he was finally extradited to the United States from France and put on trial. Taking the stand in his own defense, Einhorn claimed that his ex-girlfriend had been killed by CIA agents who framed him for the crime because he knew too much about the agency's paranormal military research. He was convicted of murdering Maddux and is currently serving a life sentence.

Although Einhorn was only the master of ceremonies at the first Earth Day event, he maintains that Earth Day was his idea and that he's responsible for launching it. Understandably, Earth Day's organizers have distanced themselves from his name, citing Gaylord Nelson, an environmental activist and former Wisconsin governor and U.S. senator who died in 2005, as Earth Day's official founder and organizer.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Sen. Gaylord Nelson created Earth Day in the spring of 1970 as a way to bring national awareness to the fact that, at the time, there were no legal or regulatory mechanisms in place to protect the environment. About 20 million participants at various Earth Day events across the U.S. made Earth Day a success, and in December of 1970, Congress authorized the creation of a new federal agency to tackle environmental issues — the EPA.

SOURCE





Sterilizing Those Pesky Humans: Earth Day with Paul Ehrlich

Every April 22 is Earth Day. As one who studies Soviet Russia, I can’t help but notice that the day coincides with the birthday of Vladimir Lenin. The inaugural Earth Day occurred April 22, 1970, no less than Lenin’s birth centennial.

This is most ironic. Lenin is a decaying symbol of central planning, which, regrettably, is the ideological preference of many of those filling the streets on Earth Day. Although Lenin was a collectivist, not an environmentalist, he is frequently recycled, as mortuary specialists from Russia’s health ministry regularly re-embalm him in his tomb.

Lenin had no respect for life. He declared certain people “harmful insects.” In Lenin’s deadly worldview, pesky humans were not precious, special, unrepeatable; they were disposable.

That brings me to a living symbol of Earth Day: Paul Ehrlich. Dr. Ehrlich’s explosive bestseller, The Population Bomb, inspired the freshman class that first Earth Day, embodying the wildest fears of apocalypse mongers. The great Johnny Carson was, sadly, one of Ehrlich’s dupes, giving him a platform on “The Tonight Show” dozens of times.

Much has been said about Ehrlich’s book. But as author John Berlau reports, one item has been conveniently sunk into a land-fill. “He [Ehrlich] flirted with a proposal to require adding contraceptive material to all food items in the United States,” writes Berlau in Eco-Freaks. “But Ehrlich’s most drastic—and contemptuous—measures were reserved for the third world. Ehrlich advocated that all men in India who had three or more children be forcibly sterilized.”

Really? That was something I needed to see for myself, certainly never learning this in my public education. So, I tracked down a September 1971 edition of The Population Bomb.

What Ehrlich wrote is jaw-dropping. Dealing first with pesky Americans, he wrote (pages 130-31):

"[T]he first task is population control at home. How do we go about it? Many of my colleagues feel that some sort of compulsory birth regulation would be necessary to achieve such control. One plan often mentioned involves the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired population size. Those of you who are appalled at such a suggestion can rest easy. The option isn’t even open to us, since no such substance exists. If the choice now is either such additives or catastrophe, we shall have catastrophe. It might be possible to develop such population control tools, although the task would not be simple. Either the additive would have to operate equally well and with minimum side effects against both sexes, or some way would have to be found to direct it only to one sex and shield the other."

As for pesky (non-white) folks in places like India, Ehrlich was less patient. On pages 151-52, he favored “sterilizing all Indian males with three or more children,” and with the direct help of the U.S. government. “We should have volunteered logistic support in the form of helicopters, vehicles, and surgical instruments,” advised Ehrlich. “We should have sent doctors to aid in the program by setting up centers for training para-medical personnel to do vasectomies.”

Was this “coercion?” asked Ehrlich. Of course, but it was “coercion in a good cause.”

Immediate action was imperative, assessed the professor. It was, after all, 1970, and the human race had precious little time. Ehrlich warned of humans metastasizing all over Mother Earth. He said stoically:

"I wish I could offer you some sugarcoated solutions, but I’m afraid the time for them is long gone. A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells…. Treating only the symptoms of cancer may make the victim more comfortable at first, but eventually he dies—often horribly…. We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense."

To borrow from other scaremonger imagery of the era, such as the hysterical propaganda film Soylent Green, it was only a matter of time before the helpless masses started consuming one another. Only government action by anointed elites could save us from Armageddon.

Today, Ehrlich remains an icon, holding a plum spot at Stanford as the Bing Professor of Population Studies. Because he’s a liberal, a “progressive,” the 78-year-old has gotten away with this, much like Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood matron, who ran a “Negro Project,” spoke at a KKK rally, labeled certain pesky people “human weeds” and “imbeciles” and “morons,” and preached “race improvement.”

For icons of the left, there’s no need to say “I’m sorry.” The sins of the fathers and mothers of the progressive left are buried with the trash, never to be recycled, especially at Earth Day.

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On Earth Day, Thank a Hunter

‘In 1970, a Senator from Wisconsin named Gaylord Nelson raised his voice and called on every American to take action on behalf of the environment,” read President Obama’s Earth Day proclamation last year. “In the four decades since, millions of Americans have heeded that call and joined together to protect the planet we share.”

Well, I’ve got news for our President. Millions of Americans who had never heard of Gaylord Nelson “took action on behalf of the environment,” decades before the good Senator “raised his voice.” More newsworthy still, most of these belonged to those insufferable rustics who “cling to guns and bibles.” To wit:

The Pittman-Robertson Act (1937) imposed an excise tax of 10 per cent on all hunting gear. Then the Dingell-Johnson act (1950) did the same for fishing gear. The Wallop-Breaux amendment (1984) extended the tax to the fuel for boats. All of this lucre goes to “protect the environment” in the form of buying and maintaining National Wildlife Refuges, along with state programs for buying and maintaining various forms of wildlife habitat.

For the last couple of decades hunters and fishermen have contributed over $1.5 billion per year towards Senator Gaylord Nelson’s lofty goal. To date, hunters and fisherpersons have shelled out over $20 billion “on behalf of the environment.” A study by the National Shooting Sports Foundation found that for every taxpayer dollar invested in wildlife conservation, hunters and fishermen contribute nine.

So please note: to "preserve nature," they don’t tax Birkenstock hiking boots and Ying-Yang pendants – but do tax my shotgun. They don’t tax Yoga manuals and Tofu tid-bits wrapped in recycled paper – but do tax my 30.06 deer rifle. They don’t tax binoculars or birding Field Guides with cutesy photos of the red-cockaded woodpecker and spotted Owl – but do tax the shotgun shells I blast at Mallards before arraying on my grill as Duck-K-Bobs (cooked rare and lovingly basted with plenty of butter, Cajun seasoning and teriyaki sauce).

Going further, they don’t tax Kayaks and rock climbing picks and ropes – but do tax my compound bow and rifle scope. They don’t tax the plastic water bottles on Mountain bikes (or the mountain bike itself, come to think of it) or the cutesy spandex shorts these yo-yos wear – but do tax my duck decoys and camo pants. They don’t tax Yanni and Enya CDs – but do tax the arrows I fling at Bambi before he sizzles on my grill as Bambi-burger (lovingly draped with thick bacon slices that dribble their appetizing fat into the meat while cooking. Then a chunk of cheddar cheese melted on top.)

You talk about a "Cheeseburger in Paradise," Jimmy Buffet! Try one from Bambi!

Ten cents of every dollar I spent on my hunting and fishing toys (I'd cite the total but my wife might read this) funds Federal and State "conservation" programs. From my guns and ammo to my duck calls and decoys, from my rods and reels to my lures and gaffs, from my trolling motor to the very fuel for my outboard – ten cents of every dollar in this ghastly expenditure funds habitat for Spotted Owls, Red Cockaded Woodpeckers, Bald Eagles, Ospreys, Manatees, Snail darters, Black-Footed Ferrets, California Condors, Florida Panthers and Sea Otters.

None of these creatures (from what I hear) make a decent Gumbo or even a passable Chili. I must be crazy. But I have no choice. And this avalanche of tax dollars comes on top of those I fork over for the stacks of licenses, and permits, and stamps I'm required to have before I set a foot afield or set my boat afloat. Last season these totaled $500. (But sweetie! There are huge fines for hunting and fishing without them!)

And all the above is on top of my voluntary dues and assorted donations to such as Ducks Unlimited. (But snookums! I thought you loved the duck print I brought home at 2: 45 AM from the DU Banquet/auction? And especially the picture of me with the nice Hooters girl who worked the keg in her camo bikini?) According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation these donations to such as DU, Pheasants Forever, etc. total $300 million a year.

As mentioned, just last year, hunters and fishermen (not birdwatchers, not rock-climbers, not kayakers, not nature-hikers) "contributed" $1.5 billion "big ones" “dollarinies,” “donuts” (to quote Steve Martin as The Jerk) to purchase and maintain places for greenie-weenies to frolic and nature-watch.

You'd think some thanks might be in order from these freeloaders – from the smarmy crowd not forced to buy any "Bird-Watching stamp" or "Hiking stamp," or "Kayaking stamp", or "Rock Climbing Stamp," or Yanni-Listening Stamp," or "Quartz-Crystal-Gazing-Stamp." You'd think Tofu-munchers might appreciate us hunters' funding habitat for their spotted owls, kangaroo rats, snail darters and louseworts, and bankrolling the scenery on their "nature trails" as they self-righteously plod along in their "earth-friendly" Birkenstocks and granola-flecked frocks., quartz crystals rattling in their pockets en route to a hillside Sunrise worship, crystal-gaze and Enya-listen.

We pay our way – in fact, we pay the hikers and bird-watchers way too. But rather than going afield as passive voyeurs, rather than regarding nature as a Disney cartoon, we accept nature's diktats. We revel in our role as full-fledged participants in her cycle of fang and claw (but add bullets, buckshot, broadheads, treble hooks and gaffs to the primal drama).

You'd think the voyeurs might throw us a bone every now and then? Well, think again. Here's the Sierra Club's official position: "Wild animals should not be valued principally in terms of whether they can serve as targets. As members of the family of life, we should respect the moral right of all creatures to exist, to be free of unnecessary predation, persecution, and cruel and unduly confining captivity."

Anyway, you’re quite welcome, Greenies!

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EPA's Train Wreck Could Leave Many in the Dark

During a recent speech at Cleveland State University focused on small business in Ohio, President Obama described a goal of “knocking down barriers that stand in the way of your growth.” Unfortunately, his EPA couldn’t be more in the dark about how to translate that message into practice – with the agency poised to adopt more than 30 new, major regulations and over 170 major policy rules in the next several months.
Even with 14 million Americans out of work and an economy still searching for light at the end of the tunnel, the EPA is poised to enact a series of back-door mandates that will stifle economic growth. And with the speed that this runaway train is traveling, people in states like Ohio should be scared of the “Train Wreck” headed towards a town near you.

Unfortunately, everyday Americans may not realize the impact of the EPA’s “Train Wreck” of new regulations on jobs, the economy and price of essential energy until it’s too late. The truth is, even the EPA itself doesn’t quite know what these regulations might cost to implement – although various outside analysts seem to agree that, at minimum, the 10 major rules that the EPA issued in 2010 could cost the economy at least $23 billion and nearly one million jobs.

No one can say for sure how my home state,Ohio,will be impacted; we do know that Ohioans will not fare well. That’s because coal generates close to 90 percent of net electricity in Ohio and energy consumption in the state’s industrial sector ranks among the highest in the nation. Put another way, the EPA’s “Train Wreck” will destroy Ohio’s main electricity source.

According to analysts, this assault on Ohio’s coal-burning power plants transfers directly into at least 10 plant shutdowns and over 1,000 job losses. According to a report from the United Mine Workers of America, national job losses associated with the closure of EPA-targeted coal units could be significant, amounting to more than 50,000 jobs in the coal, utility and rail industries. With Ohio’s unemployment rate still above 9 percent, the EPA “Train Wreck” would clearly be a major blow to my state.

But the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. and the environmental groups’ intent on stopping the use of coal in America aren’t worried about these good-paying, blue collar jobs in Ohio. Unfortunately for us, they consider the EPA’s “Train Wreck” to be an effective means to an end. An end to coal for sure.

But with America being known as the Saudi Arabia of coal, it’s clear that our nation – and especially Ohio – will need to continue relying on our extraordinary, domestic reserves of coal as a source of low-cost electricity capable of stimulating and sustaining long-term recovery. So with industry analysts estimating that 22 percent of existing U.S. coal-fired power plants could be shut down, with about 75 gigawatts lost (read: enough electricity to power 56.3 million homes), it is understandable why there is a mounting fear about when this wreck will be coming around the bend.

Unfortunately for the Buckeye state, the EPA has shown that it will blindly push ahead its agenda without regard for potential job losses, electric reliability issues or increased costs for everyday Americans. While there is still time for Congress to limit EPA authority and to thwart this imminent wreck, the bad news is that the train has already left the station and has shown no sign of stopping since this rulemaking process began years ago.

Ohioans can only hope that their state and federal government officials can help spread the word nationally about the repercussions of the EPA “Train Wreck” in time to successfully stop this runaway train. If not, there will be a price to pay, it will be significant, and it will be borne by the working families of Ohio and other impacted states.

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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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Another Greenie reveals his dislike of people

His arguments are as hollow as they are old. We have hardly begun on the amount of food we could grow. An example: Sugar is a major nutrient and yet sugar supplies are almost continuously in glut (oversupply). Australia's sugar lands could double their production at the drop of a hat if it were profitable.

And consider this: China -- yes China -- is now a major food exporter. Capitalism works its wonders even in crowded China. Where do you think your supermarket gets its garlic these days? And, sacrilege of sacrileges, there are even Chinese truffles on the market now. And the list goes on....

And if Sir David likes less crowded places, let him move to the stunningly beautiful South Island of New Zealand. Instead he lives in crowded London. What does that tell you?

And if you then consider that it is only in poor countries where the birthrate is above replacement, you might arrive at yet another even more telling conclusion. Wouldn't it be simpler and more honest of him to say: "Keep Third World immigrants out of Britain"?

Sir David Attenborough has warned that population growth must be stopped in order to offer a ‘decent life’ for all. The wildlife broadcaster said people were shying away from accepting that the world’s resources cannot sustain current levels of population growth. ‘There cannot be more people on this Earth than can be fed,’ he writes in the New Statesman.

‘The sooner we stabilise our numbers, the sooner we stop running up the down escalator – and we have some chance of reaching the top; that is to say, a decent life for all.’

Sir David, 84, said the global population is over six billion and will hit nine billion in 30 years, but ‘there seems to be some bizarre taboo around the subject’. He warned of a ‘perfect storm of population growth, climate change and peak oil production’, leading to ‘insecurity in the supply of food, water and energy’.

‘We now realise that the disasters that continue increasingly to afflict the natural world have one element that connects them all – the unprecedented increase in the number of human beings on the planet,' he added.

‘All these people, in this country and worldwide, rich or poor, need and deserve food, water, energy and space. Will they be able to get it? I don’t know.’

Sir David said there was a 'taboo' tackling the subject and that people shied away from stating the fact that a world’s resources cannot sustain current levels of population growth.

He said: ‘There seems to be some bizarre taboo around the subject. This taboo doesn’t just inhibit politicians and civil servants who attend the big conferences.

‘It even affects the environmental and developmental non-governmental organisations, the people who claim to care most passionately about a sustainable and prosperous future for our children.’

The 84-year-old praised controversial 18th century demographer Thomas Malthus, who argued that populations increase until they are halted by 'misery and vice'.

He added: ‘The population of the world is now growing by 80 million a year. One and a half million a week. A quarter of a million a day.

‘The government’s chief scientist and the last president of the Royal Society have both referred to the 'perfect storm' of population growth, climate change, and peak oil production, leading inexorably to more and more insecurity in the supply of food, water and energy.’

The global population is now in excess of six billion and is predicted to hit nine billion within 30 years.

Experts have predicted that the British population – which is currently around 62million – will increase to 70million by 2029.

A report by the sustainable development group Forum For The Future said Britain would struggle to handle such growth. The increase in population would be ‘catastrophic’ and put unsustainable pressure on housing, schools and hospitals as well as natural resources.

Current trends will see a city the size of Bristol added to the population of the UK every year for the next two decades.

Sir David’s comments follow a similar warning from BBC wildlife expert Chris Packham. The Springwatch presenter suggested offering Britons tax breaks to encourage them to have smaller families. He effectively endorsed China’s controversial one-child policy, which sees couples who adhere to the rule given a lump sum on retirement.

But he stopped short of suggesting people should be penalised for having too many children.

Packham, 49, who has no children of his own, told Radio Times: ‘By 2020, there are going to be 70million people in Britain. Let’s face it, that’s too many.’

He added: ‘There’s no point bleating about the future of pandas, polar bears and tigers when we’re not addressing the one single factor that’s putting more pressure on the ecosystem than any other – namely the ever-increasing size of the world’s population.’

Packham suggested offering couples a financial incentive as ‘a carrot’ to persuade them to have fewer – or no – children.

He said: ‘I would offer them tax breaks for having small families: say, 10 per cent off your tax bill if you decide to stick with just one child. And an even bigger financial incentive if you choose not to have a family at all.’

‘I question the way, for example, people have two children with one partner, then split up and have two with their next partner, just to even up the score.

‘Fact is, we all eat food, breathe air and require space, and the more of us there are, the less of those commodities there are for other people and, of course, for the animals.’

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Earth Day retrospective

Remember when the Gaia worship got under way when we were young? The first Earth Day in 1970 came at a time the green radicals were feeling their oats, which hadn’t yet been considered as subsidized crops for ethanol.

There’s a snarky book on the shelves these days that we don’t necessarily endorse. (We don’t care for snarky comments much, unless we’re making them.) This book, 365 Ways to Drive a Liberal Crazy, actually has a delightful entry for Earth Day.

Today is a day to remind the left-minded and green-obsessed that back in 1970, well, we’ll summarize:

* Newsweek predicted we were on the verge of a new Ice Age

* A world “eleven degrees colder by the year 2000″ was predicted by Kenneth Watt

* Life Magazine said that by 1985 air pollution to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half

* By 1995 75 to 85 percent of all species would be extinct, according to Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson

* There would be mass starvation, according to Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes

We’re sure there are plenty more in the archives that have been mercifully forgotten. (You know how we feel about false prophets.) But not to learn from history is to be condemned to repeat it, as they say.

Anyone up for dangerously rising sea levels?

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Is Earth Day Passé?

I just checked the Web sites of eight leading eco-activist groups, curious as to how prominently the organizations are featuring Earth Day messages and activities.

Surprisingly, seven of the groups — Center for Biological Diversity, EarthJustice, Environmental Defense Fund, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council — say nary a word about Earth Day.

Sierra Club is the sole partial exception — they’re offering a $15 gift if you join the organization on Earth Day. It’s almost as if green pressure groups are as sheepish about Earth Day as their congressional allies are about the policy that dare not speak its name – cap-and-trade.

So if they’re not advertising Earth Day, what are they talking about? Six of the eight groups’ Web sites feature strikingly similar photos and messages about the April 2010 BP oil spill:

* Center for Biological Diversity – “Gulf Disaster One Year Later”

* EarthJustice – “One Year After the Gulf Oil Spill”

* Environmental Defense Fund – “One Year After BP Disaster, Congress Lags Its Response”

* Greenpeace – “Deep Water Horizon One Year On”

* National Wildlife Federation – “Status of the Gulf: Wildlife and

* Wetlands One Year after the Gulf Oil Disaster”

* Natural Resources Defense Council – “Disaster in Gulf Lives On”

Groupthink (“We are Borg . . .”) can afflict partisans of any agenda, but it is endemic to ideologies demanding ever-greater political control over economic decisions.

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Confession means you can keep on doing it -- it seems

Though I'm not too clear on the rules of Warmism. The catechism seems to change a lot

Hey, look, I’m Catholic — so I know a few things about confessions. The nice thing about Catholic confessions is that we celebrate that sacrament in private. The religious practice of Mother Gaia apparently dictates public shaming as a way to appease the deity for Earth Day, which is at least a little more entertaining than sacrificing a goat, and more economical than sacrificing T.J. Holmes’ SUV. This CNN clip posted by Newbusters reminds me more of the background programming in the film 1984 with John Hurt, which had people on television confessing to thoughtcrime on a 24/7 basis, but then again, I’m not exactly up on the Gaia magisterium these days anyway:

T.J. HOLMES, CNN anchor: Well, in today’s “XYZ,” I’d like confess my sins. I drive a Chevy Tahoe. It gets 15 miles to the gallon in the city. While some people have SUVs to haul their large families around, it’s just me driving by myself to work every day. I have a number of TVs in my high house and leave them on just about all day, every day. I often turn the water on in the shower, then I walk downstairs to maybe grab breakfast, leave the water running, then I go back upstairs to take a shower.

I buy 24 packs of bottled water at a time. Then I throw those bottles away without recycling. In the winter I crank the heat up to 75 or 76. All the light bulbs in my house are still the old school, less efficient incandescent bulbs.

Those are my eco-sins. I’m confessing them to you because tomorrow is Earth Day. It often goes ignored by many of us, including me. Not going to ignore this year. Why? Well, maybe it was an awakening. Maybe I was scolded recently by an environmentalist. Maybe I’m tired of wasting my own money. Whatever my reasons, whatever yours, happy Earth Day.

Er … say five Rachel Carsons and sing three Bob Dylan songs, my fellow planetary traveler, and go thee out and sin no more.

Let’s not pretend that religion has left the public square. Let’s just recognize that it has changed denominations. And in that vein, allow me to wish my fellow Christians a happy Good Friday and blessed upcoming Easter, and my Jewish friends belated greetings for Passover.

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Crazy Greenie logic in Britain

Major energy companies have been given free carbon allowances worth more than £100m this year for closed or mothballed power stations – despite the fact that the plants are producing little or no emissions.

Centrica, GDF Suez/International Power and Scottish & Southern Energy are among the UK companies to have reduced or switched off capacity at older plants.

And despite ceasing to produce electricity, the energy companies still receive the carbon credits which they can trade on international markets – giving substantial windfalls.

All the named companies announced temporary or permanent shut-downs in recent weeks – just after this year's carbon allowances were handed out by February 28.

Centrica has put four plants – Barry, Brigg, Peterborough and Kings Lynn – into "preservation mode", which means they are not producing but ready to be switched on.

Meanwhile, GDF Suez has reduced output at its Teesside plant to almost nothing – with the station expected to produce just 45 megawatts out of its 1875 megawatt capacity.

A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: "If an installation permanently closes then it will retain the full allocation for the year in which it closed down. "It will receive no further allowances for future years of the European Union emissions trading scheme.

For temporary and partial closure the installation carries on as normal. "There are no adjustments to its allocation. It will be the decision of the regulator to decide if a closure is temporary or partial. However, installations can appeal a regulator decision."

A spokesman for the Environment Agency said if there is operating activity during the year, companies are entitled to retain their allocation of free allowances. "The rules do not allow us to take allocations away," he said.

It is understood that officials at the Department of Energy and Climate Change are not happy about the situation and are trying to work out a way for them to be reclaimed.

Centrica declined to comment, while Scottish & Southern and International Power confirmed they had received its allowances for their non-producing stations. A source close to one of the companies said: "We don't yet know the answer to [whether we'll be able to keep allowances]. The arbiter of this decision will be the European Union emissions trading group at the Environment Agency and we have been told that they will issue guidance on this later in the year."

It is not the first time that partial closure of plants has caused controversy in relation to unused carbon credits.

Last year, Ian Swales, now the Lib Dem MP for Redcar, called for clarification over what would happen to the 7m carbon allowances awarded for the year to Corus, before the plant was mothballed.

A Corus spokesman at the time insisted: "Any allegation that Corus has been motivated by the desire to profit from the mothballing via the emissions trading scheme is totally without foundation and insults the efforts of all those who have spent the past eight months desperately searching for a long-term viable future for the plant."

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Earth Has Rights!

John Henry Briggs goes to the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at CUNY Graduate Center, where he witnessed the event “Nature Has Rights”, in which a panel asks questions like, “Does a river have a right to flow?” Happy Earth Day!

I arrived at the CUNY Graduate Center in midtown Manhattan five minutes early. I found my way to the auditorium where about 200 people were already sitting, idly chatting. In one conversation from the group in front of me, I caught the words “Republican”, “recount” and “election.”

The white-bearded David Harvey, a professor at CUNY, and this evening’s moderator begins introductions. First up, Shannon Biggs, a chipper looking lady with glasses and red-black hair. She works with an NGO called Global Exchange, their motto is “Building people-to-people ties”.

Second, a man in a garish shirt named Cormic Cullinan, a South African Environmental lawyer who just published his book “Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice” which is available on the table outside for just $5.

Thirdly, Vandana Shiva, a self-described ecofeminist and environmental activist dressed in traditional Indian garb.

Next up, a very nondescript Maude Barlow, who holds the position of Chairperson to the Council of Canadians and is the Senior Advisor to the President of the 63rd UN General Assembly.

Last, but not least is Pablo Solón, the Bolivian ambassador to the UN.

Mr. Harvey puts the first question to his panelists: “What do we mean by rights of Nature? And why is it significant?” Each member ignored this and instead said what they came there to say. Biggs gets the ball started and complains that, “Nature can be owned, nature is property—like a slave.” Not missing a beat, she turns to the BP spill, complaining that only people could sue BP, but Nature could not. If Nature had rights, then Nature herself could get her cut from BP as well.

Continuing along the same vein, Cullinan stresses that, “We’ve become autistic to the natural world.” He insists in three different ways that there is an order to nature we must adhere to.

Shiva is the audience favorite. She is passionate and she ignores all questions. She begins ranting about the agriculture company Monstano and their genetic modification of plants. The audience bursts into applause when she said corporations should be punished for putting “toxic” in their plants. She then goes on to recount proudly the many things she’s protested against and ends saying that to be disconnected from nature is a psychiatric disease.

In contrast, Maude Barlow is dull, and only mentions some scary statistics that predict that demand for water is going to be 40% more than the supply in some-thirty years time. She recommends Al Gore’s idea of a “green economy”, the her idea that nature is worth $72 trillion is met with warm chuckles. She reiterates that she’s not saying bugs will should have the same rights as humans, but we can’t push them to extinction.

Ambassador Solón said that on the 28th of July there will be an event at the UN named, “From the human right to water to the rights of water.” Which we gather will be exactly what it sounds like (i.e., water has “rights”). He said that human growth should be limited “Only to satisfy our basic needs.” He signs off with a bombshell that brings down the house, “To fight for nature we have to fight against capitalism.”

The moderator then began his monologue, in which he mentions how silly the idea is of giving rights to something “fictional” like corporations similar to humans. But giving rights to Nature isn’t. He anticipates critics and said that the idea of giving rights to nature “Isn’t that weird.” He went on to mock his colleagues who consult for corporations, insinuating corporations “Willfully want to destroy the environment.” Somewhere in his rambling speech, he blamed world poverty on corporations and on capitalism.

At this point, Shiva comes to the happy realization, “There’s no debate here, everyone agrees with one another!” All smiled.

Cullinan, agreed and stated that the environmental movement is the, “Largest social movement ever.” He likened to the debate over the environment to the Galileo and Copernicus affair, repeating the myth that before these scientists humanity held the view that the universe revolves around humans. He said that, “If we don’t do something now, sometime in the future we may become extinct.” He claimed that, “Our offspring our less likely to survive” than us.

Shiva came back to the microphone and offered this conclusion: “We’ve been made to believe for humanity to succeed we need to destroy nature.” She also blamed India’s problem on capitalism and especially corporations.

As the panelists reiterated themselves for the dozenth time, they finally ended and then invited questions, which prompted the people with the strongest opinions to jump up to the mics and me to leave.

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Australia's proposed carbon tax is between a rock and a hard place

Are these the signs that Labor's climate change policy is heading for a second disaster? Big unions and big business are in revolt as the mining boom's strong dollar squeezes the rest of the trade-exposed economy. Households are up in arms over surging power bills.

And since the shambles of the late 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, Labor hasn't doused worries that its carbon tax would put Australia in front of the world, a critical risk for a carbon-intensive economy.

This treble of jobs, cost of living and international competitiveness engulfs Julia Gillard and Greg Combet as they attempt to reverse Kevin Rudd's humiliating 2010 retreat on his emissions trading scheme. It is replete with political and policy failures, some of which are only now becoming evident.

Facing a revolt among steel industry members, Australian Workers Union secretary Paul Howes last week vowed to oppose Labor's carbon tax if it cost just "a single job", even with unemployment below 5 per cent. Remember this is Wayne Swan's union, which was mostly responsible for replacing Rudd with Gillard. Helped by a $US1.07 Aussie dollar, Tony Abbott has hammered a wedge between the blue-collar AWU and Labor's Green alliance, echoing what John Howard did to Mark Latham over Tasmanian forests.

Big business this week joined the rebellion, including a terse return fire of letters with Gillard. Business Council of Australia president Graham Bradley objected to Combet's April 13 National Press Club promise to quarantine more than half the carbon tax money to overcompensate mostly low-income households.

Business fears that Combet's vow to "put households first" will leave a cash-strapped minority government with less to protect industries threatened by the carbon tax, particularly compared with Rudd's 2009 emissions trading scheme deal with Malcolm Turnbull.

Yet the Labor-Greens carbon tax design looks costlier and more uncertain for business than the Rudd-Turnbull plan, for instance by ruling out industry access to international emissions permits that would eat into Canberra's carbon tax revenue.

And the Greens rejected the Rudd-Turnbull deal in part because they reckoned it was too generous to big carbon "polluters".

As well, Gillard needs to hand over more to households because electricity price cost-of-living pressures have worsened. Since late 2006, capital city average household power bills have jumped 52 per cent, or 35 per cent more than the consumer price index. While still a small share of family income, the power bill hikes send out a jolt of sticker shock.

This is before any general carbon price. And it is not happening in other developed economies. Labor's climate change adviser Ross Garnaut figures that real electricity prices in the seven big advanced nations rose only 5 per cent between 2006 and 2009.

This Australian peculiarity is a material change since 2007, when Howard proposed his own emissions trading scheme for an economy that generates 80 per cent of its electricity by burning coal.

Already since then, the power bill shock helped force Rudd's February 2010 backdown and was embodied in Abbott's August 2010 election campaign slogan against a great big new tax on everything. And it is ongoing, bewildering for voters and largely self-inflicted.

NSW households will be slugged with a further 17.6 per cent hike in electricity bills from July 1 following last week's ruling by the state's Independent Pricing and Regulatory Authority. In the coming financial year, NSW households on average will pay between $228 and $316 more for power.

Of this 18 per cent jump, 10 percentage points will come from higher "network" costs and six percentage points from recent changes to the federal government's own renewable energy target, says IPART chairman and adviser to Labor's multiparty climate change committee, Rod Sims.

Sims and Garnaut suggest this reflects two critical policy failures.

The first is the $39 billion five-year electricity network investment surge by mostly state government-owned transmission and distribution monopolies such as Ausgrid (NSW), Energex and Ergon (Queensland) and Aurora (Tasmania).

The high-voltage metal towers that connect generators to substations and the lower-voltage wires and poles that send the power from substations to customers account for about half of retail electricity bills.

As some point out, the electricity network infrastructure boom is almost as big as Labor's contentious National Broadband Network.

Yet Sims and Garnaut suggest that the national energy market regime that regulates these network monopolies encourages excess investment and even "gold plating" under the cover of replacing ageing assets, insuring against a repeat of storm damage blackouts in NSW and Queensland and coping with the sharper peaks in demand.

Under these rules, the regulator can't reject the network monopolies' investment plans unless it can prove they are not "reasonable". The monopolies can cherry-pick specific points to appeal. These rules are more monopoly-friendly than in Britain, where appeals are rare.

The implication is that state treasuries ensured that the Australian Energy Regulator rules protected strong dividend flows from their network monopolies. That is, the rules support generous risk-free regulated rates of return on excess capital spending. These regulated network costs then flow to separately regulated retail prices. As a policy issue, it has slipped under the radar until now.

The second failure is Labor's Renewable Energy Target, which requires 20 per cent of energy to be generated from renewables such as wind and solar by 2020.

Garnaut notes that Labor's RET originally was estimated to add 4 per cent to electricity prices between 2010 and 2015, or less than 1 per cent a year. Yet Sims's IPART ruling says the splitting of the RET into large-scale and small-scale renewable energy early this year alone will increase NSW electricity bills by 6 per cent.

"Green schemes have emerged as a new driver of price increases," warns IPART.

It's the result of federal and NSW incentives for households to install solar panels on their roofs. The bigger than expected take-up has overtones of Labor's disastrous home insulation program. It serves the yearning by higher-income environmentally aware consumers to save the planet by acting locally while getting other consumers to subsidise their power bills.

Sims slams the combination of federal and NSW solar panel incentives as "an expensive, cost-ineffective way of reducing carbon emissions". "Its cost will be borne either by consumers or taxpayers for many years to come," the IPART ruling says. Of course, the whole point of a carbon tax is to eliminate the need for such high-cost abatement. Yet the power price increases fuelled by high-cost green schemes are inflaming the catch-22 backlash against a lower-cost carbon price.

The pre-carbon tax power price surge also is aggravating the cost and hence jobs squeeze on carbon-intensive industries - including steel, aluminium and motor vehicles - exposed to the strengthening exchange rate. Imposing a carbon tax on top of a mining boom means a double hit for manufacturing and processing industries.

Swan this week made the business case by blaming the strong dollar for reducing non-mining company profits in 2010 and, in turn, hitting his budget tax revenues. The dollar averaged US78c in the mining boom mark I before the financial crisis hit. The day after Swan's pre-budget speech, it broke up through $US1.07.

This two-speed economy tension also is provoking claims that Labor is putting Australia in front of global climate change efforts. The notion that Australia should act in tandem with the rest of the world remains central to the nation's climate change policy. While Australia is a heavy per capita emitter, it accounts for only 1.5 per cent of global emissions. Getting out in front may only shift carbon-intensive industries and their pollution offshore.

This risk has been brewing since Rudd's self-inflated hopes of helping to broker a post-Kyoto global climate change deal collapsed at Copenhagen. Recall his private remarks about being "rat f . . ked" by the Chinese.

Combet's suggestion that countries such as China, the US and India are in front of Australia is not yet convincing and is undercut by Productivity Commission analysis. Labor is setting expectations of an initial $20 to $26 per tonne carbon tax before the Productivity Commission has reported on the effective carbon price in other key countries, as required by the country independents' deal with Labor.

In one of his two letters to Gillard, Bradley said Australia "must recognise this reality" that a meaningful cut to global greenhouse gas levels required "international action led by major emitting nations".

He warned that a unilateral carbon price penalty on trade-exposed manufacturing. agricultural and resource sectors would "damage Australian businesses with no net benefit to the world environment". And a carbon price that hit the asset values of coal-fired power generators would require higher rates of return for future generation investment and so lead to higher electricity prices that would undermine productivity across the economy.

In quick reply, Gillard demanded to know whether the Business Council still supported Australia's bipartisan target for reducing emissions by 5 per cent by 2020 and whether it still preferred "using a market mechanism by putting a price on carbon".

Gillard appears to have figured that Rudd's big mistake was to have abandoned his emissions trading scheme, even if it was at her own urging. With the Greens due to get the power balance in the Senate, reviving a carbon price became a political key to her 2011 year of minority government decisiveness.

Yet doing this with the Greens also required her to break her election promise not to introduce a carbon tax.

Labor's disaster scenario now is that the political climate for a carbon price has deteriorated, rather than brightened, since the 2010 federal election. Last month's NSW election wipeout included big Labor losses in its Illawarra and Hunter Valley industrial heartlands and setbacks for the Greens. And the mood may darken further after Swan's budget belt-tightening in two weeks.

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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If the environmental movement has a high holiday, Earth Day is it

Earth day today and the above heading appeared on the Reuters article below. Carefully unmentioned is the fact that Apr. 22 is also Lenin's birthday. There is no reason to believe that we are looking at a coincidence there. Note the following:

"When I planned the first Earth Day, only one major corporation contributed to our national effort and that one corporation was Arm and Hammer," stated Senator Gaylord Nelson. Armand Hammer (1898 - 1990) owned stock in Arm and Hammer and served on its board of directors. Armand Hammer remains a controversial person because of his close ties to the former Soviet Union and because he won the Order of Lenin once! The Arm and Hammer is also the symbol of the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP).

And the ideology of a small elite controlling all the "fools" is both Communist and Green. So the judgment that Earth say is THE Greenie high holiday is both telling and welcome

I might note how one Leftist deals with that "coincidence". Comedian and "infiltrator" Harmon Leon seems quite serious when he starts out describing the mass-murdering Lenin as "the man who developed the pragmatic Russian application of Marxism". No mention of Lenin's murderous rise to power and his scorn for democracy, of course. Harmon Leon is apparently one of the "San Francisco brights" but his history is obviously very clouded by ideology.

Leon then notes two conservative comments on Earth day:

It's appropriate that the two are celebrated on the same day, because there is no relevant difference between the socialist and environmentalist agendas in this country. Saving the environment is simply a euphemism for eviscerating the rights of property owners and creating a dictatorship.

and

For many political Leftists, environmentalism is merely a pretext through which private property and capitalism can be regulated, strangled, and finally replaced with totalitarian government ownership of everything. How could they criticize Marxist dictatorships, since their prescription for "healing the world" is socialist dictatorship?

Leon proceeds to ridicule both comments without managing to give a single fact or line of reasoning about why they are wrong. His is thus a very good example of Green/Left reasoning -- i.e. no reasoning at all, just emotional spasms. In conveying conservative critiques to a wider audience, however, he probably does us all a good service.

Reuters:

The annual effort to raise public awareness about the environment and inspire actions to clean it up marks its 41st anniversary on Friday, coinciding with the Christian Good Friday and Judaism's celebration of Passover.

In an effort dubbed "A Billion Acts of Green," organizers are encouraging people to observe Earth Day 2011 by pledging online at act.earthday.org/ to do something small but sustainable in their own lives to improve the planet's health -- from switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs to reducing the use of pesticides and other toxic chemicals.

"Millions of people doing small, individual acts can add up to real change," said Chad Chitwood, a spokesman for the umbrella group coordinating efforts.

There will be hundreds of rallies, workshops and other events around the United States, where Earth Day was born, and hundreds more overseas, where it is now celebrated in 192 countries.

In the United States the activities range from the premiere of the new film from the director of "Who Killed the Electric Car?" (it's called "Revenge of the Electric Car") at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York to a discussion about creating a green economy in 12 cities along the Gulf Coast, where this time last year residents were reeling from the effects of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In the years since the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970 the environmentalist movement made great strides with passage of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and other groundbreaking laws.

But the bipartisanship that marked the birth of Earth Day -- it was sponsored in Congress by a Wisconsin Democrat named Gaylord Nelson and a California Republican named Pete McCloskey -- is often missing in discussions about environmental policy today.

Efforts to fight climate change by regulating greenhouse gases, for instance, face fierce resistance from many Republicans and members of the business community, who dispute the science supporting global warming and warn new rules to regulate emissions will kill jobs and raise energy costs.

SOURCE

An Australian clergyman who should stick to themes he knows something about

"God's vision is threatened by climate change"? Is this guy a Christian at all? He doesn't seem to have much faith in his God. But the "Uniters" are very wishy washy these days. They had real faith when they were Methodists but their gospel these days appears to be a purely social and political one.

My old Presbyterian church stayed out of the "Uniters" and when Anne and I attended there this morning it was the Gospel of salvation only that I heard. To preach anything else on Good Friday is very peculiar Christianity indeed. And it was the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Queensland that we had preaching

THE crippling of Japan, the devastation of Christchurch and the floods that ravaged Queensland were not the work of God, church leaders said. But the leader of one of Sydney's three main Christian denominations blamed man for some disasters that caused human suffering.

The Moderator of the Uniting Church Synod of NSW and ACT, the Reverend Niall Reid, said in his Easter message that climate change was the result of "unsustainable, unfettered and unthinking addiction to economic growth", and those who could not entertain a less destructive path were like those who sent Jesus to the Cross for expediency's sake.

Rising sea levels and more ferocious storms, floods and fires caused by climate change had the potential to threaten food security, exacerbate poverty and create an environment ripe for war, he said.

"God is found in the lives of those who seek remedies and work towards God's vision of a reconciled and renewed creation," he said. "Surely in our time [God's] vision is most threatened by climate change, which the science seems to be telling us is caused by human activity."

SOURCE




Three More Attacks on Civilization

Thank goodness we've got a global marketplace where banned and nearly banned products can be purchased with a click. This is how I obtained a box of Savogran Trisodium Phosphate, which sounds like an explosive but is really just a cleanser that was in every dish-washing soap until last year. It is made of phosphorous, an element from bone ash or urine that was discovered in Germany in the 17th century. It is also the reason that dishwashers once cleaned dishes perfectly, leaving no residue or spots.

Remember the old Calgon commercial that showed food falling off plates and glasses left gleaming at the end of a wash? That was phosphorous at work.

It is still a must in commercial establishments like restaurants and hotels. But 17 states have already banned the product for consumers, causing most all makers of the detergent to remove it from their products, which vastly degraded their value. The detergent makers saw the writing on the wall and this time decided to get out in front of the regulatory machine, anticipating a federal ban before it actually takes place.

Most consumers are clueless as to how sometime in the last year, their dishwashers stopped working properly. They call in the repairman, who fiddles with things and announces a fix. But it is not fixed. The glasses are gritty and the plates often need to be rinsed again after washing. Many households have bought new machines or resorted to just running the dishes through twice.

The creation of phosphorous-free detergent is the real reason. As Jonathan Last explains in the Weekly Standard, the antiphosphate frenzy began in Washington State, which was attempting to comply with a Clean Air Act mandate that a certain river be swimmable and fishable. This was a problem because tests found inordinate amounts of phosphate in the river. As part of the effort to comply, the state banned phosphates from detergents. That was in 2008, but the way politics works these days, the banning spread to state after state - again with the backing of federal law.

Now, it is clear that the law's proponents knew exactly what the results would be. It would increase dishwasher use and even end up leading people to abandon dishwashers altogether, and either solution leads to much more water and energy use. In other words, even by the goofy environmentalists' own standards, this is no savings. It might end up in the reverse.

Studies since the ban have even shown that phosphorous reduction in the Washington State river is entirely due to a new filtering system and, further, that it turns out that the phosphorous in the river was not even a problem in the first place!

Of course the facts don't matter. Our conveniences, like clean plates and the machines that make them so, must be sacrificed to the false gods of environmentalism. One of the great innovations in human history must be reverted because governments are enthralled by the witch doctors of Mother Earth. Thus must mankind take yet another step back on the path of social progress. And to heck with your fetish for clean things!

A similar impulse is driving the new attack on ice makers. Jeffrey Kluger writes in Time Magazine a typically hectoring piece that claims that one way to save the earth is to

buy a couple of ice trays. To the long list of human inventions that are wrecking global climate - the internal combustion engine, the industrial era factory - add the automatic ice maker.
Of course we don't use ice makers for completely arbitrary reasons. It is because it is a pain in the neck to carry a full tray across the room, spill a bit here and there, and then balance it carefully in the freezer. And then when you take it out, your fingers stick to the trays and you have to break the tray and dump the cubes into something and refreeze what you do not use, and then the cubes stick together and so on. That's why we use ice makers.

"Puritans and paranoids work with bureaucrats to unravel all the gains that markets have made for civilization."
But, still, the Department of Energy hates them. And so it has warned all makers of freezers that it will lower the energy-compliance rating of any freezer that keeps them. Or, another way to make a freezer with an ice maker is to degrade the refrigerator and freezer itself, leaving most of the energy use for the ice maker.

This whole model forgets a perfectly obvious point: having an ice maker often means that you have an ice dispenser on the outside of the fridge, meaning that you do not have to open the door to get your ice. This is surely an energy saver. Having to open the freezer far more often only ends up wasting energy, which is another reason for the ice maker in the first place (saves on electrical bills).

Here again, facts don't matter. If there is something you like, something that makes your life better, you can bet that some bureaucrat somewhere has targeted it for destruction. Saving the planet is the most convenient excuse around. Time Magazine would contribute more to "saving the planet" by putting an end to its print publication.

We can see where this is headed. Just as people hoard old toilet tanks and old washing machines that actually use water to wash clothes, so too people will now have to hoard their old refrigerators because they work. We are becoming like the Cubans with their 1950s-model cars, holding on to them for dear life if only to preserve some elements of civilization in the face of government attacks.

Now let's talk drain openers. Everyone knows that the best chemical drain opener is lye, or sodium hydroxide. It is wicked stuff that cuts through grease, hair, or just about anything else. It will burn right through human flesh and leave terrible scarring. But for drains, nothing else compares.

Now that less and less water is flowing through our homes (thanks to regulatory attacks on water use), and the water we use is ever more tepid (thanks to regulatory attacks on hot-water heaters), it is no surprise that clogged drains are ever more common, thus making lye an essential household chemical.

If you can get it. The mainstream hardware stores have stopped carrying the stuff. So have the grocery stores. When I asked around, I thought I would hear stories involving liability for injuries, but no: instead, the excuse is the drug war. It turns out that this stuff is an ingredient in the making of methamphetamine, and hence it too is on the regulatory hit list.

Fortunately you can still buy it through Amazon, but how many people know this? How many people are buying liquid drain openers only to discover that they don't actually work? Surely millions are doing this. So far as I can tell, there is nothing but hush-hush about the strange disappearance of lye-based crystal drain openers from our shelves.

So there we go: we must also live with clogged drains, so that not even the pathetic drizzles of tepid water that come out of our faucets can flow down the drain, and we must stand in pools of bacteria-breeding water as we take our short, cold showers. It's back to the 19th century for all of us!

In these three examples, we can see the model at work: Puritans and paranoids work with bureaucrats to unravel all the gains that markets have made for civilization. And they do this not with persuasion or an attempt to convert us to their primitive faith. Instead, they do it by force, driving us back to the compost pile, the river for cleaning, and, eventually, having to hunt and gather for food that we take back to our caves, which serve as domestic environs for those lucky enough to survive their regime of coerced poverty.

SOURCE





Health and Human Services and that evil Styrene

In late 2009, recently inaugurated President Obama stayed in campaign mode, making trips across the country to promote his $800 billion plus economic stimulus package. The president made one town in particular his ground zero for the economic recovery: Elkhart, Indiana. At the time, Elkhart had the nation's highest unemployment rate, in the neighborhood of 15 percent. Obama visited the town to make a major speech on the stimulus bill and continued to reference the dire situation the town faced as the debate over the stimulus raged, speaking of how the infusion of federal spending would save the town from the brink.

Now, over a year and a half later, Elkhart faces a new crisis driven by the policies of the Obama administration that could wipe out any progress made in the town.
Elkhart is a city that is essentially fueled by a single industry and that industry is the recreational vehicle or RV manufacturing industry. Naturally, this particular area of the commodity market took a beating during the economic down-turn, causing massive layoffs in the town that is home the "RV Hall of Fame" and some of the largest motor home manufacturers in the world.

The newest challenge facing this recovering industry now stems not from rising fuel prices and a flagging economy, but from a regulation proposed by the National Toxicology Program, a program of the Department of Health and Human Services. The issue centers around the chemical called styrene being listed as a candidate for the 12th ROC, or Report on Carcinogens issued by the department. So what does this have to do with RVs?

Modern RVs are made extensively with styrene based composite material parts. Much of the side paneling and other parts, including the various fixtures, such as tub/showers, are made with styrene based composites like resin and fiberglass. These composite parts and materials absolutely require the use of the styrene to be cost effective in their production. Without styrene, these parts could not be made and modern, fuel efficient, RVs would be impossible to produce.

Composite parts are not exclusive to the RV industry. Many industries including the boat/watercraft, tub/shower, construction and infrastructure, and even the wind mill industry depend on styrene based composite parts. The massive wind mill blades advertised in green energy and job stimulation initiatives are almost entirely made of composites that require the use of styrene.

Despite these facts, Obama-appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sibelius is proposing to sign new regulations that would label styrene as a carcinogen, creating incredibly burdensome regulations surrounding the sale and use of the chemical itself and products containing it. This would dramatically increase the cost of U.S. based production of RVs, windmills, and all other products containing composites. These increased costs will likely drive even more windmill production overseas where most of it already exists and would certainly wipe out the only industry that keeps Elkhart alive.

Additionally, an overwhelming majority of the lab studies on the effects of styrene as a cancer causing carcinogen have come back as inconclusive or negative. In fact a lab study on lab rats and mice, found on the National Toxicology Program's own website shows tests of styrene's "Levels of Evidence of Carcinogenicity" as completely non-existent or negative in a majority of categories, and inconclusive in the rest.

Obama has staked much of his rhetoric and policy in the success of green energy initiatives like wind farms, and massive federal spending influxes designed to save single industry towns like Elkhart. Yet the administration continues its aggressive pursuit of new regulations - through HHS, the EPA, and the rest of the bureaucracy - that stifle economic growth. Styrene is essential in producing the composite products that the president has touted as the keys to economic recovery, yet his administration is ready to create a storm of burdensome regulations surrounding a chemical that has never proven to be dangerous; regulations that will surely cost thousands and thousands of American jobs across dozens of industries and all across the country. This is simply another case of bureaucrats and the president getting a little "bureaucrazy".

SOURCE





Natural Scientists and Economics

Don Boudreaux replies to someone who does not like an economically sophisticated paper by Indur Goklany that began: "Despite claims that global warming will reduce human well-being in developing countries, there is no evidence that this is actually happening"

Commenting on this post, Notalawyer writes that he (or she) is seriously concerned about global warming especially because:

"many natural scientists consider this to be a serious and existential problem. Its [sic] entirely possible that global warming could open up more space for human habitation, crop growth etc. But most scientists believe it will have large detrimental effects"

While no one has more respect for the natural sciences than I do, I am not persuaded by Notalawyer's reasoning. Meteorologists, biologists, horticulturists, zoologists, physicists, entomologists, physicians, and other natural scientists are not economists.

While there are some exceptions - Indur Goklany, for example - of natural scientists who understand economics, far too many of them see the world as posing physics or engineering problems rather than as posing economic ones. The two problems are very different from each other.

And the economic way of thinking - studying economic history; pondering the role of entrepreneurship; reflecting on creative destruction; being attuned to the fact that so many social phenomena are the results of human action but not of human design; understanding the fact that market-determined prices both signal important information about resource availabilities and give consumers and producers incentives to change their actions in accordance with changes in resource availabilities - gives economists a different perspective from that of natural scientists on the range of likely economic consequences of climate change. One manifestation of this different perspective offered by economics is that the prospect and possibilities of productive human creativity seem to be more readily grasped by the typical economist than by the typical natural scientist.

Natural-scientists' track record on predicting the economic impact of environmental changes is poor - at least, this is my off-the-cuff sense. Most famously, the scientist Paul Ehrlich has been consistently and magnificently mistaken about the effects of economic and population growth on human well-being. Likewise, Jared Diamond, for all of his undoubted brilliance, fundamentally misconstrues the most basic features of globalization. (See also here.) So, too, the great E.O. Wilson (whose 1994 autobiography Naturalist, I enthusiastically add, is among the most enjoyable of that genre that I've ever read).

Albert Einstein - no slouch when it comes to science - was a terrible economist. [He was in fact a Marxist -- JR]

I don't blame natural scientists for their frequent failures to grasp even basic economics. Each of these scientists is a specialist in his or her own field. It would be as out of place for me to criticize, say, a scientist who specializes in the study of ants for his poor grasp of economics as it would be for the ant-specialist scientist to criticize me for my poor grasp of the biology and behavior of ants. The difference is that I don't fancy that my expertise in economics equips me to speak with any authority at all on ant science or on other natural-science matters....

Here's what my colleague Jim Buchanan wrote in December 1976:

"The principle that exposure to economics should convey is that of the spontaneous coordination which the market achieves..

I recently talked with a prominent economist who mentioned that one of his colleagues had reported having several conversations with the then presidential candidate Jimmy Carter. This colleague passed along his view that Carter was a "good systems analyst," and my friend added, more or less as an afterthought, and "hence, a good economist." I very quickly and very emphatically put him straight, saying that nothing could be further from "the economic point of view," properly interpreted, than that of the systems analyst. Indeed, this is precisely my own fear about Carter, that he is, in fact, a good systems analyst without the remotest understanding of the principle of spontaneous order."

SOURCE




Trying to Avoid Greenie Regulations? The Department of Energy is Not Amused

Last month, the Department of Energy issued a "Showerhead Enforcement Guidance" related to flow standards through consumer showerheads. You see, it turns out that "efficiency standards" tend to upset people, as it usually leads to products being outlawed that people really like.

What happened was that certain showerhead manufacturers were taking a bit of creative license in interpreting the definition of a "showerhead," and selling showerheads that (by the DOE's standards) exceeded the maximum allowable 2.5 gallons per minute.



Sound familiar? The tragedy of low-flow showerheads was brought to light on Seinfeld way back in 1996 (the original regulations were put in place in 1992). Sorry, Kramer, but the Department of Energy is going to force you to keep going to the black market for your high-powered showerhead needs.



SOURCE

I am rather glad that we have no showerhead mandates in Australia but one of the comments from an American reader gave a sane response: "In many "low flow" shower heads, there is a "restrictor" that can easily be removed. If not, judicious use of a drill can be used to increase the flow. Increased flow means less waiting for hot water and subsequently a quicker shower" -- JR






If Warmists were doctors ....

"Step up on the scale, Mr. Naughton."

"Sure, Doctor. I'm looking forward to seeing this myself."

"Let's see... slide this over a bit... hmm, pretty bad. Your weight is up again."

"Uh... Doctor, you mind getting your foot off the scale?"

"Oh, okay."

"So... you want to weigh me again now?"

"Sorry, I've already recorded the results. You can step down now."

"But-"

"Just as I predicted. Man-made body enlarging. I told you to stop consuming so much animal fat."

"There's nothing wrong with eating-"

"If this keeps up, you'll weigh 650 pounds by the year 2030. It's a looming disaster."

"Doctor, excuse me, but there's no way I'm gaining weight. Look at me. I had to buy a smaller belt last month."

"That's a temporary anomaly. I'm more interested in the long-term trend."

"I've been shrinking for two years now. I've also been eating more animal fat. So it can't be making me fatter. Your theory doesn't hold up."

"Do you weigh more than you did 40 years ago?"

"Yes, I was a skinny runt 40 years ago."

"And did your fat consumption go up during the past 40 years?"

"I was 11 years old 40 years ago! Of course I eat more now."

"Aha! So you agree there's a long-term trend in your body enlargement."

"Those are natural forces at work. I'm pretty sure that's been happening forever."

"But the rate of the enlargement has accelerated. Look at your weight chart. See there? All nice and even for two decades, then it shoots up here at the end. It looks like a hockey stick."

"That chart is bull@#$%!"

"It can't be. I showed it to a bunch of doctors who are friends of mine and they agreed: it looks like a hockey stick. We even wrote a paper about it."

"Look, Doctor, I went through a period in my thirties when I was fatter than I am today, and I wasn't eating animal fat because I was a vegetarian. Now I'm experiencing a thinning trend, even though I eat a lot of fat. So obviously, fat isn't the problem, and that chart is bull."

"I see. So you're a denialist."

"What?!"

"I suppose you don't believe the Holocaust happened either?"

"No! I mean, yes, I believe it happened. There's evidence it happened. But there's no evidence that I'm gaining weight!"

"Who's paying you to say this? The dairy industry? The cattle ranchers?"

"Nobody's paying me! Just use your senses! I'm smaller!"

"This is the worst case of denial I've ever seen. I'm afraid we're going to have to institute a fat-and-trade system. Every time you consume fat, you'll need to pay me a stiff fine. Or you can buy a fat credit from another tubbo who's willing to go without butter for a week. It's the only way to stop you from getting larger."

"I AM NOT GETTING LARGER!"

"Yes, you are. It says so right here in my computer data."

"Let me see that."

"No. I will not have you second-guessing my data. I don't have to show you anything."

"Yes, you do, Doctor. And if you don't, I'll call my lawyer and have him file the papers."

"Damn! I was hoping you didn't know about that law. Now I have to destroy the data."

"What?!"

"Nothing. I didn't say anything."

"Give me that book!"

"Hey! Give that back!"

"Back off, Doctor, or I'll smack you. Let's see . Hey, what's with all the emails and notes?"

"Nothing. Just doctor's notes."

"Nothing, my @##. Look at this: `James - I figured out how to apply Mike's trick of mixing belt-ring data with actual weight measurements to hide Mr. Naughton's mid-thirties fattening period.' What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It doesn't mean anything! `Trick' is a common term in medical research. Give me that back!"

"And here's a coding comment from the guy who designed your computer program. What does he mean, he's having a hard time writing code that produces the results you want?"

"You know . just programmer lingo. That's how they talk."

"And this one: `James - Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues to boycott medical journals that publish articles by doctors who have seen people lose weight on high-fat diets. By the way, please delete this after reading.' And you printed it out? What are you, an idiot?"

"Oh, I see. Already reduced to resorting to attacks on my character, huh?"

"And what's up with this one: `James. The fact is that we cannot account for Mr. Naughton's failure to gain weight in recent years, and it's a travesty that we can't.'"

"Well, uh, you see, the theory is still correct, because uh, I mean it's not like we have anything to hide!"

"Let me get this straight... you wouldn't give me your data, you threatened to destroy your data so I wouldn't see it, your programmer was upset because he was having a hard time producing the data you wanted, you applied `tricks' to your data, and in spite of all that, your colleague thinks it's a travesty that you can't explain why I'm not actually gaining weight. I'd say you were hiding something, Doctor."

"But the theory is still correct! I'm sure of it! To hell with your annoying weight loss."

"No, to hell with you, to hell with your theory, and to hell with your fat-and-trade fines. I'm leaving."

"Don't go outside while you're angry, Mr. Naughton! You'll get heat exhaustion!"

"It's snowing, you moron."

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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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