Saturday, June 25, 2005

IPCC HONCHO DISMISSES MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING

It looks like a consensus IS emerging -- but not the one the Greenies claim. The IPCC is of course Mecca for the global warming religion -- if not the Kaaba itself. The article below is by Yury Izrael, Director, Global Climate and Ecology Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences and IPCC Vice President

One issue on the table at the G8 summit at Gleneagles in early July is global climate change. As I see it, this problem is overshadowed by many fallacies and misconceptions that often form the basis for important political decisions. G8 leaders should pay attention to them. There is no proven link between human activity and global warming.

According to 10,000 meteorological stations, average temperatures have increased by just 0.6 degrees in the last 100 years. But there is no scientifically sound evidence of the negative processes that allegedly begin to take place at such temperatures. Global temperatures increased throughout the 1940s, declined in the 1970s and subsequently began to rise again. Present-day global warming resembles the 1940s, when ships could easily navigate Arctic passages. However, man's impact was much smaller at that time. A Russian expedition that recently returned from the central Antarctic says that temperatures are now starting to decrease. These sensational findings are one of Mother Nature's surprises.

Experts compiling climate-change reports every five years mention the possible influence of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, freons, etc. Atmospheric carbon dioxide was 280 PPM (parts per million air mollecules) in 1880, and now stands at 378 PPM. It has increased by 31% since the pre-industrial era. This is quite a lot, but temperatures have increased by only 0.6 degrees. Paradoxically, temperatures tended to rise by one to 12 degrees at peak intervals, with carbon-dioxide fluctuations totaling not more than 300 PPM. This contradiction is rather baffling. Therefore I believe that the link between man's activities and rising temperatures has not been proved completely. Natural factors and the impact of man seem to be interlinked.

The European Union has established by fiat that a two-degree rise in global temperatures would be quite dangerous. However, this data is not scientifically sound. Many specialists estimate the peak atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration at 400 PPM. Our calculations show that carbon-dioxide concentrations would increase by just 800 PPM if all known and produced fuel were incinerated in the space of a few hours. But we will never reach this ceiling. In ancient times the Earth had periods when maximum CO2 concentrations were 6,000 PPM (in Carboniferous period). But life still goes on.

In other words, we must comprehend what will happen while the carbon-dioxide levels will grow from the current 378 PPM to 800 PPM, that will hypothetically occur when all the fuel on earth is burned. Global temperatures will likely rise by 1.4-5.8 degrees during the next 100 years. The average increase will be three degrees. I do not think that this threatens mankind. Sea levels, due to rise by 47 cm in the 21st century, will not threaten port cities.

It is said that the sea may rise significantly because of additional carbon dioxide and higher temperatures. The sea has risen by 10-20 cm in the last 100 years. The port of London, not the entire city, would face a disaster if this trend persists. However, the situation can be rectified by building new piers. The Far Eastern city of Magadan has multi-level piers for coping with eight-meter high tides.

The people of Bangladesh, who live at sea level, may face problems if the Indian Ocean rises. Still, their resettlement would be much cheaper than projected Kyoto Protocol expenses.

Some academics claim that the slowly melting Greenland ice cap threatens the entire world because it will melt in 3,000 years, if annual global temperatures rise by three degrees. Still, we should understand that sea level will rise by just 1-2 cm in the first several hundred years.

The G8 can adopt some effective climate-related decisions. In my opinion, academics, politicians and governments should assess maximum permissible temperatures and carbon-dioxide levels. Quite possibly, the world would have to sacrifice something in the face of a common threat. Scientists should comprehend the needs of politicians, and vice versa. I think this concept is quite effective. Unfortunately, some political decisions disregard the opinion of science. G8 summits would prove effective if the G8 maintained close-knit ties with academics.





PEAK OIL "CRISIS" POSTPONED YET AGAIN

("Curses!" say the sugarcane farmers and ethanol producers)

According to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas, the end is near - when the earth's oil reserves start to run dry and scarce petroleum will go to the highest bidder. Seers have written books detailing that time, and websites such as EnergyShortage.com forecast a steady rise in prices - such as Tuesday's oil price of more than $59 a barrel.

Not so fast, maintains a new report issued Tuesday by the widely respected group Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA). Instead of the wells running dry, CERA says petroleum supplies will be expanding faster than demand over the next five years, according to an analysis oil field by oil field. In good news for the SUV set, the new oil will be light, sweet crude - ideal for making gasoline. And since supply will grow, CERA forecasts prices will fall, possibly below $40 a barrel "We expect supply to outpace demand growth in the next few years, which would take the pressure off prices around 2007-2008 or thereafter and even lead to a period of price weakness," says Peter Jackson, a coauthor of the report.

Kjell Aleklett, a professor of physics in Sweden and president of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas, says the CERA report is overly optimistic. In addition, he says, one of his students looked at a draft of the report and concluded that CERA double-counted. "I'm not worried about this report," he said from a cellphone in Madrid. "Over the next several years, they will find new oil fields, but then it will be hard to do it."

Still, CERA maintains that higher prices are encouraging production and that technology is helping to capture oil from older fields. It foresees non-OPEC production expanding rapidly through the rest of the decade, particularly as new supplies come onstream from Russia, the Caspian, Brazil, Angola, and Canada. Much of the production increase is already starting to happen as oil-rich nations begin to dig deeper and produce faster. According to the report, there are approximately 20 to 30 new major projects (producing more than 75,000 barrels per day) coming onstream every year until 2010. These will add 3 million to 4 million barrels of oil per day each year.

Over the next five years, there will be 10 million barrels per day of new light or medium crude and 3 million barrels per day of new heavy crude. Altogether, supply will exceed demand by 6 million to 7.5 million barrels per day later in the decade, according to CERA. While many of the oil-depletion theories claim that Saudi production will falter, CERA predicts that the oil-rich nation will expand its production by as much as 2 million barrels of oil per day by 2010. In fact, the CERA analysis concludes that OPEC production will expand the fastest - to 45.6 million barrels per day, up from 36.8 million last year. But because of political uncertainty, it has shaved its estimates for oil production from Russia. Any decline of Russian crude production would also be mirrored by a continued decline in production from other non-OPEC countries, such as the United States.

CERA does not foresee an actual "peak" in oil production. Instead, with huge projects coming onstream on a regular basis, it predicts an "undulating plateau" in terms of supply and demand for decades. An "inflexion" point will come in the third or fourth decade of the century, according to CERA. "There is no indication to suggest peak oil is imminent," says Daniel Yergin, CERA chairman and author of several books on petroleum. The main risks to its forecast, says Mr. Yergin, are political and operating changes that could delay expansion. If that happens, CERA predicts that oil production will increase by only 11.5 million barrels of oil per day between 2004 and 2010.

Source





THE WAR ON FARMERS -- CONTINUED

Comment from a reader on my post of 21st:

You are right, there is a greenie war on Australian farmers, and governments have been persuaded by conservation interests to position themselves very nicely to wage it.

First, property rights are a package of rights of use that landowners have. In Australia they all come from the Crown (ie State of Federal Governments). In the past, if a landowner had a property right diminished or extinguished in the public interest, he could expect compensation. But the conservation 'public good' shopping list was too expensive for govenments to pay for.

So the broad stragegy, rignt across Australia has been as follows: First, a property right is extinguished by legislation -- ie right to clear vegetation, right to water falling on land, etc, making it necessary for a landowner to obtain permission to carry on or continue with a past right or activity.

Then a statutory obligation is placed on landowners to preserve or maintain the resources they are longer able to use. The State is not obliged to assist people to meet their statutory obligations. So no compensation. These statutory obligations are often portrayed as a 'duty of care', opening up the way for moralising at farmers to mask the legislative swindle. But under common law, a duty of care can only be owed to people or their property. It cannot be owed to 'the environment'.

The Australian system is conservation on the cheap - cost shifting the cost of 'public good' conservation onto landowners. My source for the above is the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage report into Public Good Conservation, September 2001.

As the public (or government) can exempt themselves from compensating landowners, then the shopping list is unlimited! These laws are speeding up the depopulation of the country, while at the same time increasing the statutory environmental obligations placed on those who remain.




Bans on offshore drilling split coastal-state senators: "Senators from five coastal states are working to lift state moratoriums on offshore drilling and require the states to provide an inventory of promising oil deposits along their coastlines, an issue the Senate will vote on today. Some coastal states fear that taking an inventory would be the first step toward a federal mandate to lift state bans on offshore drilling in the outer continental shelf -- the section of the ocean beyond the seabed of the continental United States. Sen. Mary L. Landrieu [D-LA] was able to get the mandatory inventory provision into the stalled energy package while it was in committee, and she is expected to push for lifting current bans on oil and gas drilling in a deal that also would allow her state to reap more revenue royalties."

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists


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