Paris, Berlin Join Climate Revolt Over Unilateral Climate Targets

France and Germany yesterday joined the growing ranks of European countries opposed to making further unilateral moves on climate change, as the European Commission today plans to make the case for raising the EU’s greenhouse gas reduction goal from -20% to -30% by 2020.

Speaking at a joint press conference in Brussels on Tuesday (25 May), French industry minister Christian Estrosi and his German colleague Rainer Brüderle said other nations would have to make similar commitments before Europe makes the move.

"We have taken an ambitious commitment to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020," Estrosi explained, adding that Paris and Berlin would back a move to -30% only if other nations made "comparable commitments".

"The conditional offer [to -30%] remains" but "we do not know the offers of other countries," he said, without citing China or the United States.

The common declaration by France and Germany signals a hardening of Europe’s policy on climate change, six months after the failure of UN climate talks in Copenhagen.

It also deals a blow to Connie Hedegaard, the EU’s climate action Commissioner, who is expected to recommend today (26 May) that Europe raises its greenhouse gas reduction target from -20% to -30% by 2020.

Estrosi said industries would move their factories and jobs abroad if Europe made the move unilaterally. "The climate will lose out, industries will lose out and employment policies will lose out," he warned.

Ultimately, he stressed that such a decision would rest on EU heads of states and governments, not on the European Commission.

More HERE






Climate Fears Turn To Doubts Among Britons

Last month hundreds of environmental activists crammed into an auditorium here to ponder an anguished question: If the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea that human activity is warming the planet?

Nowhere has this shift in public opinion been more striking than in Britain, where climate change was until this year such a popular priority that in 2008 Parliament enshrined targets for emissions cuts as national law. But since then, the country has evolved into a home base for a thriving group of climate skeptics who have dominated news reports in recent months, apparently convincing many that the threat of warming is vastly exaggerated.

A survey in February by the BBC found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that “climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,” down from 41 percent in November 2009. A poll conducted for the German magazine Der Spiegel found that 42 percent of Germans feared global warming, down from 62 percent four years earlier.

And London’s Science Museum recently announced that a permanent exhibit scheduled to open later this year would be called the Climate Science Gallery — not the Climate Change Gallery as had previously been planned.

“Before, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this climate change problem is just dreadful,’ ” said Jillian Leddra, 50, a musician who was shopping in London on a recent lunch hour. “But now I have my doubts, and I’m wondering if it’s been overhyped.”

Perhaps sensing that climate is now a political nonstarter, David Cameron, Britain’s new Conservative prime minister, was “strangely muted” on the issue in a recent pre-election debate, as The Daily Telegraph put it, though it had previously been one of his passions.

And a poll in January of the personal priorities of 141 Conservative Party candidates deemed capable of victory in the recent election found that “reducing Britain’s carbon footprint” was the least important of the 19 issues presented to them.

Politicians and activists say such attitudes will make it harder to pass legislation like a fuel tax increase and to persuade people to make sacrifices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Legitimacy has shifted to the side of the climate skeptics, and that is a big, big problem,” Ben Stewart, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said at the meeting of environmentalists here. “This is happening in the context of overwhelming scientific agreement that climate change is real and a threat. But the poll figures are going through the floor.”

The lack of fervor about climate change is also true of the United States, where action on climate and emissions reduction is still very much a work in progress, and concern about global warming was never as strong as in Europe. A March Gallup poll found that 48 percent of Americans believed that the seriousness of global warming was “generally exaggerated,” up from 41 percent a year ago.

Here in Britain, the change has been driven by the news media’s intensive coverage of a series of climate science controversies unearthed and highlighted by skeptics since November. These include the unauthorized release of e-mail messages from prominent British climate scientists at the University of East Anglia that skeptics cited as evidence that researchers were overstating the evidence for global warming and the discovery of errors in a United Nations climate report.

More HERE





Apollo Mission: a Giant Leap Discrediting Greenhouse Gas Theory

By John O'Sullivan

Climate sceptic scientists trash the greenhouse gas theory of Earth's climate by applying long-overlooked data collected during the Apollo Moon landings

The paper, ‘A Greenhouse Effect on the Moon’ is a cogently-argued scientific refutation of the basic equations used by global warming theorists. Apparently, climate scientists may have falsely assumed Earth’s "average" temperature all along.

The study refutes the numeric bedrock of the greenhouse gas theory (GHG) by applying data collected by NASA decades ago. It seems during the Apollo Moon landings era NASA devised a whole new set of hitherto unreported equations, more reliable than those relied upon by supporters of the GHG theory, to get Neil Armstrong's carbon boot prints safely planted on that airless Sea of Tranquility.

The paper is co-authored by Martin Hertzberg, PhD, Consultant in Science and Technology, Alan Siddons, a former radiochemist and Hans Schreuder, a retired analytical chemist. The researchers had the bright idea of delving back into NASA’s archives to test the so-called Stefan-Boltzmann equations in fine detail. The three men stumbled on the embarrassing flaws during an online debate on the science behind global warming.

Published online on May 24, 2010, the study argues that the fatal flaw has always lain in Stefan-Boltzmann's equations. The long-trusted formula has been used by climatologists without question-until now. The researchers reveal that the guessed at numbers used in those equations are the“first assumption that climate science makes when predicting the Earth's temperature.”

NASA Abandoned Flawed Climate Calculations in 1960’s

Siddons, Hertzberg and Schreuder were astonished to find that “the principal method for predicting a planet's temperature is surprisingly arbitrary and simplistic.” That was, they believe, why NASA needed to scorn the blackbody equations when doing their own calculations for the Moon landings.

To climate sceptic scientists it seems self-evident that the Earth’s surface should not be treated like a flat, two-dimensional blackbody. It is more properly a complex spinning sphere with large variability in reflectivity and absorption of the Sun’s light and energy. But, despite the U.S. government knowing since the 1960's that the blackbody equations were of no use to real-world science, these facts don't appear to have been passed on to climatologists.

‘A Greenhouse Effect on the Moon’ is a fillip to global warming sceptics because it proves that super-power scientists can and do get their numbers right when it's a matter of life and death.

Lunar Temperatures Disprove Climate Theory

NASA had found that daytime temperatures on the lunar surface were lower than expected because planetary bodies also conduct heat to their inside rather than radiating it all into space -an embarrassing empirical fact for believers of the GHG theory. Their computer models erroneously predicted that such heat energy would be ‘blanketed’ above a planet's surface.

In fact, the Apollo data proves the Moon’s surface temperatures throughout its two-week night were higher than predicted by the blackbody equations because the moon "feeds on" the heat it had previously absorbed-contrary to the accepted GHG theory.

Thus the success of NASA’s moon landings becomes the proof of the unreliability of the Stefan- Boltzmann equations in real world science.

Stefan-Boltzmann Calculations Way Out

The paper tells us how far out Stefan-Boltzmann’s crude equations really are, “the surface of the real moon is roughly 20° cooler than predicted by day and 60° warmer by night, the net result being a surface that is 40° warmer than predicted.”

But it isn’t just Earth’s Moon that refuses to comply with the GHG theory. Other planets don’t conform either. As the paper tells us, “The atmosphere of every planet in our solar system is also 'warmer than predicted.’”

The three scientists pointedly ask GHG believers, “Is it any surprise, then, that even a relatively simple body like the moon would refuse to conform to such a method?”

Other scientists have also come out to refute the greenhouse gas theory. Some even go as far as to say the theory actually contravenes the established laws of physics.

The Earth is not “Unusually” Warm

The paper concludes that the Earth is not “unusually” warm. It is the application of the predictive blackbody equation that is faulty and overly simplistic and should not be applied in a real-world context. The proven ability of common substances (e.g. the Earth’s Moon) to store heat makes a mockery of all such blackbody estimates.

Along with the Climategate revelations these new findings will come as a blow to the beleaguered Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that has placed enormous reliance on catastrophic predictions based on discredited research around greenhouse gas theory. Even some IPCC scientists have denounced the theory.

Are Climate Equations Mere Junk Science?

It appears so, if this analysis of NASA’s Apollo numbers is correct. The Stefan-Boltzmann blackbody equations failed to give NASA the crucial information it required on the Moon’s day and night temperatures. Thus, NASA scientists had to create their own blackbody sun-angle model to chart the lunar surface temperatures astronauts might encounter.

Pointedly, NASA no longer shows any supposed greenhouse gas "backradiation" in its relevant graphic representation of the energy budget of the Earth. In simple terms, GHG theory may have applied an “average temperature” method of no more use than a rule of thumb calculation on the back of a cigarette packet.

The moral of the story is: if guesstimates were not good enough for NASA concerned for the safefy of its astronauts, then why are they good enough for the IPCC or world governments proposing billion-dollar cap and trade taxes on western nations?


SOURCE





Skepticism at the EPA! Their analysis shows that cap 'n trade will have no effect on climate

But the eccentric Steven Chu disagrees, without saying why (but we can guess why, given his record of climate activism. He even wants the world to run on glucose rather than oil. Like a lot of things, it could theoretically be made to happen but the idea is way outside of ANY mainstream)

During a hearing today in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, EPA Administrator Jackson confirmed an EPA analysis showing that unilateral U.S. action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would have no effect on climate. Moreover, when presented with an EPA chart depicting that outcome, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said he disagreed with EPA’s analysis.

“I believe the central parts of the [EPA] chart are that U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels,” Administrator Jackson said.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) presented the chart to both Jackson and Secretary Chu, which shows that meaningful emissions reductions cannot occur without aggressive action by China, India, and other developing countries.

“I am encouraged that Administrator Jackson agrees that unilateral action by the U.S. will be all cost for no climate gain,” Sen. Inhofe said. “With China and India recently issuing statements of defiant opposition to mandatory emissions controls, acting alone through the job-killing Waxman-Markey bill would impose severe economic burdens on American consumers, businesses, and families, all without any impact on climate.”

Along with Administrator Jackson’s statement, Energy Secretary Chu responded with an unequivocal “no” when asked whether he agrees with the analysis depicted in the EPA chart. “No, I don’t’ agree with that [EPA] chart,” Chu asserted.

“I was somewhat surprised that Secretary Chu disagreed with EPA’s analysis of what would happen if the U.S. acts alone to address climate change, which cap-and-trade supporters claim is a global problem,” Sen. Inhofe said. “EPA’s analysis that global greenhouse gas emission levels can only be stabilized with meaningful, mandatory action by China and India is widely accepted. I extend an invitation to the Secretary to see whether he wants to clarify his remarks.”

SOURCE




Reasons Not To Be Fearful

Dominic Lawson reviews a book:

What can the publishers of this book have been thinking? Surely everyone knows that the surest path into the bestseller charts for popular-science writers has always been to prophesy imminent doom for humanity.

Fifty years ago bookshops couldn’t sell enough hysterical potboilers about how we would all starve as a result of overpopulation; then, in the 1970s, the fad was for tomes on how we would run out of energy resources; in the 1980s “acid rain” was the overhyped danger, complete with artists’ impressions of annihilated forests. In the last decade of the 20th century, the “millennium bug” was the publishers’ bogey du jour. Now global warming is the latest apparently existential threat to every man, woman and child on earth, born or unborn.

Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist, in glorious contrast, tells us what we really should want to hear: that the human species, through our unique ability to exchange ideas and thus innovate at the speed of thought, has overcome all the challenges that have ever confronted us, and will do so in future. Ridley’s particular contribution is to combine the insights of Adam Smith (how all benefit through trade and the specialisation of functions) with those of Darwin (how species evolve through breeding). Ridley calls this “ideas having sex” and the characteristic of the modern interconnected world is that ideas are having it away with each other with ever-increasing frequency: “The telephone had sex with the computer and spawned the internet.”

There are many important people who don’t want to hear the good news, who see globalisation and uncontrolled trade as a threat to everything they hold dear. They include our national Eeyore, Prince Charles, and his landowner chums of the Soil Association, who say that what they call “sustainability” can only be achieved through self-sufficiency and a rejection of agricultural science. As Ridley observes, based on a whirlwind tour of every sort of society at every point in history, self-sufficiency is just a posh word for poverty: the two are inseparable. It is, of course, those furthest from starvation who find this fact hardest to appreciate.

More HERE





We must stop saying ‘The science demands...’

Top climate-change expert Mike Hulme (of the UEA!) tells spiked it is a scandal that scientific claims are increasingly usurping politics and morality. Hulme has long seemed uncomfortable about global warming and he here goes as near as he dares to dissing it. His job would be on the line if he rubbished it altogether

‘To say that the science demands a certain policy response to climate change is just a wrong reading of the relationship between science and policy.’

Mike Hulme, professor of climate change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, is a passionate advocate of science. Yet, as he tells spiked, when it comes to climate change, too many people expect too much of science. Physics and ethics seem to have become conflated in the climate change debate. We see politicians expecting science to determine policy; we see environmental campaigners, armed with peer-reviewed papers, expecting it to win all the arguments; and, in turn, we see so-called sceptics expecting their science to refute the green vision of society. But for Hulme, author of Why We Disagree About Climate Change, science cannot, and should not, be expected to do these things. It is no substitute, he argues, for politics or for moral judgements.

‘The phraseology that I object to – because it’s inappropriate – is “the science demands this” and “the science demands that”, as though the making of climate policy, or policy in general in fact, is a simple process of translating scientific evidence or scientific knowledge claims directly into policy. In no area of policy is that the case – least of all in climate change, where the making of policy has to bring in a much wider range of pieces of evidence and also political and ethical considerations.’

So how should we grasp the relationship between science and policymaking? ‘I do think that scientific knowledge about climate change is very important’, says Hulme. ‘Science is a unique and very powerful way of bringing understanding to bear on how the physical world works. Scientists have been able to reveal the fact that humans are an influence on the climate system and are likely to continue to be so. And that evidence, that knowledge, should be brought into public and policy deliberations. But it then has to be interpreted alongside these other considerations – political, ethical, moral and so on.’

Hulme is keen to point out the limits to what climate science can tell us about the future: ‘Scientific knowledge around climate change can only speak with large uncertainty margins about what may or may not happen. Yes, climates will continue to change in the future because of human emissions. But putting exact numbers on changes, and therefore predicting what risks lie ahead, is extremely difficult for science to do. So it’s important for scientific knowledge to be adequately hedged in public debate and policy discussion with appropriate caveats and caution about uncertainty.

‘That is not the same as saying that this knowledge is not useful or that it should be ignored. Most scientific knowledge is uncertain. Most scientific insights are hedged with caution or uncertainty. But that’s exactly why judgement – political, ethical, moral judgement – has to be used for making policy.’

He goes further still: just as science cannot make decisions for us, he says, so the arguments about climate change today ought not to be grasped as being scientific in origin: ‘I certainly think politics and ethics explain why people have so many different positions on climate change. I think that deeper-seated issues [inform the arguments]: different cultural perspectives on the relationship between humanity and the natural world; different attitudes to, for example, the responsibilities that humans have as opposed to those of the divinities that people believe in – the role of religion becomes important here.

‘Even in a secular setting, people have very different attitudes that inform their relationship to climate change. For instance, some see nature, and therefore the planet, as something that is fragile and easily dislocated. Others see that nature is actually quite robust and resilient. And then there are different attitudes – secular or religious – to technology. People have very different views on the ability of technology to mitigate against risk and danger. Some people see technology as inherently loaded with further problems and complications and unintended side effects.’

Given evident disagreements about climate change, and climate change-driven policy, how should we understand the meaning of a scientific ‘consensus’? ‘In science’, Hulme says, ‘phrases such as “the scientific consensus” or “the IPCC consensus” are frequently used. I do think it’s important to understand what this process of consensus-making in science is all about. There are criticisms from both sides of the debate around this thing called scientific consensus. Some people criticise it by saying, “Well, science doesn’t work by consensus, science works by testing, by experimentation, by falsification. It’s not a democracy. Ninety-nine per cent of scientists can be wrong and one per cent might be right.” So actually, some people criticise the IPCC process because it’s using an inappropriate method for producing knowledge claims. Other people, meanwhile, actually interpret consensus as meaning certainty. I think it’s important to unpack what is meant by consensus in science.’

Ironically, he says, the search for a consensus on the science of climate change is evidence of deep divisions on this issue. ‘Consensus in science only makes sense if there is disagreement amongst experts’, he says. ‘If all the experts agreed, you wouldn’t need to go through this process of consensus-making. Hence we don’t need to go through a process of consensus-making around the laws of gravity. But a process of consensus-making around climate change is important because there is disagreement. So actually consensus assumes disagreement amongst scientists.

‘But what the process of forming a consensus does do is establish where the centre of opinion lies, given the spectrum of views and judgements. So it’s not just about consensus knowledge, it’s about the spectrum of beliefs. And those two things actually work together: there’s a wide spectrum of beliefs about aspects of climate change, but nevertheless this is where the centre of gravity lies. And that’s a slightly more subtle position than simply saying “the IPCC consensus is this or that”.’

Yet if consensus is predicated upon disagreement, why, politically, is there so much anxiety about anyone appearing to challenge the consensus, with people branded as ‘deniers’ and modern-day heretics if they dare to question what some greens mistakenly consider to be concrete agreement amongst leading experts? ‘One of the reasons for that’, says Hulme, ‘is because of this belief that there is a specific relationship between scientific knowledge and policy. As a result, it is argued that you have to have clear and certain scientific knowledge that will translate into clear and certain policy. And if the science is presented as being not clear and not certain, then the whole argument, or the whole policy, breaks down.

‘And that’s why so many of the battles, so many of the ideological battles, are fought through the proxies of science and scientists – because people think that if you win that battle, then you’ve won the policy battle. This again is an inappropriate understanding. Actually, the ideological battles, the policy battles, have to be held on the territory of politics, ethics, worldviews and beliefs. That’s where the legitimate battle should be held.’

Hulme cites the 2007 Stern Review as an example of the worrying effacement of political and ethical debate in favour of apparent scientific facts: ‘It offered a very powerful economic case for early and urgent action on climate change. But actually what didn’t get debated in the Stern Review – and it should have been – was the ethical dimension that underpinned the economic analysis. There was just so much focus on the numbers. But the argument should have been held around the ethical decisions that Lord Stern’s team made about discounting the future at very low discount rates or using inequality of risk parameters that seemed to give very little weight to the contemporary poor in favour of the unborn poor. Those are not matters of science, they are matters of ethical judgement. And you can get a radically different set of policy pronouncements depending on where you fall on that ethical spectrum.

‘So really, what the Stern Review should have catalysed is a major public debate on how we value the future, how we value the present, how we value the contemporary poor versus the unborn poor. And Stern took a very particular ethical line. And you can agree with it or you can disagree with it, but it should have been centre-stage. Instead, the final arguments were drawn from economics again, as though that provides the one single route for policy development.

‘The battle, the argument, the public debate’, Hulme argues, ‘should be around these matters – values, beliefs and ethics – rather than continually reverting back to the science to try to provide the certainty and the clarity. Because science, particularly in this area of complex systems, like the Earth system, is never going to provide that kind of certainty.’

All of which raises the question: why isn’t the battle, the argument and the public debate about the Good Life, about how we should organise society, being had in its own terms? Why is it being had through the prism of climate science?

‘This question opens up a much bigger set of issues which don’t just pertain to climate change’, he answers. ‘People have been thinking and writing about this in the much wider context of the political, cultural and ideological mood at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. It involves the erasure of ideological difference in political life and the accompanying trivialisation of politics. It involves the unwillingness of Western liberal democracies to engage in debates and arguments about fundamental questions of value, purpose and meaning, because, to an extent, we’ve all bought into the liberal capitalist model which delivers very comfortable lives for most of us.

‘So I think that it’s the wider cultural phenomenon in which climate change sits that helps to explain why we’d rather argue about whether this is good science or bad science or whether a scientist is being influenced by oil companies or by environmental alarmists. We’d rather have those sorts of arguments because they seem more comforting and less challenging than arguments about the scandal of global poverty in a world of affluence, or the question of whether we can really secure unfettered capitalist growth at three per cent of GDP per annum for the next 300 years. Those much more challenging and unsettling arguments we’d rather not have. And so the convenient arguments, the much more narrowly bounded ones about good and bad science, take their place.’

SOURCE

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Another group of scientists send themselves up

"Small mammals at risk as world warms". Yet they also concede that during the last big warming, small animals were particularly resilient, without the big die-offs observed in other species. All the species the researchers found in their fossils are still around. The big moan is simply that some particular small animals are now thriving more than they used to!

That species become more or less plentiful all the time in response to varying environmental conditions seems not to be considered. Apparently the distribution of 12,000 years ago has somehow been proclaimed as "ideal". That sounds to me more like a Papal Bull (in more ways than one) than science

The biodiversity of small mammals in North America may already be close to a "tipping point" causing impacts "up and down the food chain" according to a new study by U.S. scientists.

Examining fossils excavated from a cave in Northern California, biologists from Stanford University, California uncovered evidence that small mammal populations were severely depleted during the last episode of global warming around 12,000 years ago.

Many species, say researchers, have never recovered their populations leaving them vulnerable to future rises in temperature.....

Unlike some larger animals -- mammoths, mastodons and dire wolves -- small mammals never became extinct during the Pleistocene epoch.

But despite their resilience, Blois says small animal species face an uncertain future. "Even though all of the species survived, small mammal communities as a whole lost a substantial amount of diversity, which may make them less resilient to future change," she said in a statement.

More HERE




Tax dollars perpetuate global-warming fiction: $6 million study is used to lobby for cap-and-tax

With public faith in the global-warming myth on the wane, leftist zealots are desperate to spin a new tale - and they're spending your tax money to do it. Three years ago, Congress appropriated $5,856,600 for the National Academy of Sciences to complete a climate-change study. This bureaucratic attempt to cook the books, which was completed last week, may be too late to save this dying religion.

The academy now offers the taxpayer-funded research for download in three separate sections for $44 each. The first volume presents the case that human activities are warming the planet and that this "poses significant risks." A second report urges that a cap-and-trade taxing system be implemented to reduce so-called greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The final section of the study explores strategies on adapting to the "reality" of climate change, meaning purported "extreme weather events like heavy precipitation and heat waves."

None of the big-government recommendations are worth the 1,089 pages of presumably recycled paper on which they are to be printed if planetary warming is actually a phenomenon beyond human control, so the first volume is of primary interest. "Advancing the Science of Climate Change" asserts that the Earth's temperature has risen over the past 100 years and that human activities have resulted in sharp increases in carbon dioxide. The coincidence of these facts on their own, of course, proves nothing. The Earth has been as warm or warmer in past periods, such as the medieval and Roman warm periods, long before the internal combustion engine and coal plants were around to take the heat for a particularly sweltering summer day.

"Both the basic physics of the greenhouse effect and more detailed calculations dictate that increases in atmospheric GHGs should lead to warming of Earth's surface and lower atmosphere," the National Academy report goes on to assert. That is to say, the theory that mankind's increased carbon-dioxide output is responsible for warming is true because the theory's calculations say so. "Detailed simulations" of climate provide verification in the eyes of these left-leaning scientists. The same climate models that can't predict tomorrow's weather accurately are supposed to forecast decades into the future.

That this logic is entirely circular is not lost on the public, only a third of whom believe mankind's collective exhalations are about to destroy the planet. A recent Rasmussen survey found that a majority (59 percent) think it's more likely that scientists are falsifying research data to support their own personal theories about global warming.

The overall message of climate alarmists is "Trust us," but the Climategate e-mails exposed these hacks' lack of credibility, as they are willing to manipulate and suppress data to try to prove their point. Science should not be abused to push a political agenda - and here the National Academy is doing the work of Democrats by taking tax dollars to pimp for higher taxes on gasoline, electricity and other essential elements of modern life. In return, these ideological leftists are rewarded with even more of your money to conduct additional "research."

It's time to pull the plug on public funding for these science-fiction writers.

SOURCE




Nonpartisan Proof: Cap-and-Trade Is an Economy-Killer

Last week, in what the National Academy of Sciences declared "the most comprehensive report ever on climate change," three studies requested by Congress were unfurled, providing sweeping proposals for an aggressive federally based strategy to deal with climate change.

Bold actions are necessary because "climate change is occurring, the Earth is warming ... concentrations of carbon dioxide are increasing, and there are very clear fingerprints that link [those effects] to humans," said Pamela A. Matson of Stanford University, co-chair of the studies and the subsequent report to Congress.

The report was ordered by congressional Democrats who want climate change legislation passed and signed into law this year. Both the House climate bill (passed last year) and the pending Senate version call for the trading of carbon credits, as well as heavy taxes on businesses that emit greenhouse gases in order to supposedly cool the planet. The Senate is expected to renew debate on the issue later this summer.

However, a just-released report assembled by the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics confirms my long-held contention: The pending climate change bill will be an economic bust for America by killing jobs and raising prices for virtually everything.

The Peterson Institute's report focuses on Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman's (I-CT) bill, The American Power Act. Overall, Peterson's eighteen-page synopsis of the bill definitely leans green. For example, the reports states, "Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for -- and in many cases is already affecting -- a broad range of human and natural systems."

Those of you who have read my book Climategate, as well as my multiple missives on American Thinker, know I wholeheartedly disagree with the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis.

Besides believing that humans are altering the climate, the Peterson report recommends that a single federal entity or program be given the authority and resources to coordinate a national, multidisciplinary research effort aimed at improving both understanding and responding to climate change.

In other words, the nonpartisan report contends that government is the solution to the problem.

Nonetheless -- and surprisingly -- the report states that if the Kerry-Lieberman bill should become law, there will be net job losses and higher energy and product prices.

The Peterson analysis neatly buries those findings after stating that 203,000 new green jobs will be created each year for a decade. Specifically, the report states the net employment losses will be due to "the jobs lost in fossil fuel production and as a result of higher energy prices between 2011 and 2020. In the second decade of the program [2020-2030], higher energy and product prices offset the employment gains from new investment."

Translation: Yes, there will be new so-called "green" jobs that will include government bureaucrats hired to shuffle papers and enforce new green building codes, construction jobs to retrofit buildings, installers for solar panels, etc. However, there will be more jobs lost than gained should the bill become law.

To review: Both the House and Senate climate change bills plan on scaling back CO2 emissions 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. According to United States Census figures, the population of the U.S. will increase by thirty million by 2020 and by 100 million by 2050. So where will the cuts come from? From America's coal industry, which will be shuttered; from our manufacturing sector, which will be moved offshore; and from our livestock industry, which will also be sent abroad.

Do you see what's about to occur? Good jobs will be lost. That's why in the House version of the bill, a provision ensures that if your job is shipped overseas, you are eligible for three years of unemployment compensation at 70% of your pay, plus retraining and relocation expenses. The intent is to pacify your anger with a three-year paid vacation. In the Senate version of the bill, the unemployment benefits are cleverly tied into an Internal Revenue Code entitled the "empowerment zone employment credit."

The Peterson reports also notes that by forcing the price of energy upward (which is what both the House and Senate bills will do), Americans will be forced to use less energy:

By placing a price on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, providing incentives for low-carbon sources of energy supply and improving the efficiency of energy use through a range of mechanisms, the American Power Act would substantially alter the way energy is produced and consumed in the United States.

By pricing carbon, the American Power Act raises the cost of fossil fuels, prompting firms and consumers to improve the efficiency with which they use energy or switch to low-carbon sources of energy supply.

Households will also face higher prices for non-energy goods as the firms producing them face higher energy costs.

To compensate for this additional cost of living, both the House and Senate versions of the bill present consumer handouts in the form of direct deposits from Uncle Sam into the bank account of lower wage-earners. In the case of the Senate bill, a family of four making $55,000 a year will receive a monthly cash deposit into their bank account to offset their increased cost of living.

Sounds like socialism to me, but then again, I've never believed this bill was about the environment. It's an attempt to spread the wealth around, allow a few investors to make huge amounts off of money off cap-and-trade, and -- more importantly-- take away the liberty of the American people. When the government is able to control how much energy we consume, they have an additional tool with which to control our lives.

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It’s The Sun, Stupid

Solar scientists are finally overcoming their fears and going public about the Sun-climate connection

Four years ago, when I first started profiling scientists who were global warming skeptics, I soon learned two things: Solar scientists were overwhelmingly skeptical that humans caused climate change and, overwhelmingly, they were reluctant to go public with their views. Often, they refused to be quoted at all, saying they feared for their funding, or they feared other recriminations from climate scientists in the doomsayer camp. When the skeptics agreed to be quoted at all, they often hedged their statements, to give themselves wiggle room if accused of being a global warming denier. Scant few were outspoken about their skepticism.

No longer.

Scientists, and especially solar scientists, are becoming assertive. Maybe their newfound confidence stems from the Climategate emails, which cast doomsayer-scientists as frauds and diminished their standing within academia. Maybe their confidence stems from the avalanche of errors recently found in the reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, destroying its reputation as a gold standard in climate science. Maybe the solar scientists are becoming assertive because the public no longer buys the doomsayer thesis, as seen in public opinion polls throughout the developed world. Whatever it was, solar scientists are increasingly conveying a clear message on the chief cause of climate change: It’s the Sun, Stupid.

Jeff Kuhn, a rising star at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy, is one of the most recent scientists to go public, revealing in press releases this month that solar scientists worldwide are on a mission to show that the Sun drives Earth’s climate. “As a scientist who knows the data, I simply can’t accept [the claim that man plays a dominant role in Earth’s climate],” he states.

Kuhn’s team, which includes solar scientists from Stanford University and Brazil as well as from his own institute, last week announced a startling breakthrough — evidence that the Sun does not change much in size, as had previously been believed. This week, in announcing the award of a ¤60,000 Humboldt Prize for Kuhn’s solar excellence, his institute issued a release stating that its research into sunspots “may ultimately help us predict how and when a changing sun affects Earth’s climate.”

Earlier this month, the link between solar activity and climate made headlines throughout Europe after space scientists from the U.K., Germany and South Korea linked the recent paucity of sunspots to the cold weather that Europe has been experiencing. This period of spotlessness, the scientists predicted in a study published in Environmental Research Letters, could augur a repeat of winters comparable to those of the Little Ice Age in the 1600s, during which the Sun was often free of sunspots. By comparing temperatures in Europe since 1659 to highs and lows in solar activity in the same years, the scientists discovered that low solar activity generally corresponded to cold winters. Could this centuries-long link between the Sun and Earth’s climate have been a matter of chance? “There is less than a 1% probability that the result was obtained by chance,” asserts Mike Lockwood of the University of Reading in the U.K., the study’s lead author.

Solar scientists widely consider the link between the Sun and Earth’s climate incontrovertible. When bodies such the IPCC dismiss solar science’s contribution to understanding Earth’s climate out of hand, solar scientists no longer sit on their hands. Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Institute stated that the IPCC was “probably totally wrong” to dismiss the significance of the sun, which in 2009 would likely have the most spotless days in a century. As for claims from the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers who argue that periods of extreme heat or cold were regional in scope, not global, Svensmark cites the Medieval Warm Period, a prosperous period of very high solar activity around the year 1000: “It was a time when frosts in May were almost unknown — a matter of great importance for a good harvest. Vikings settled in Greenland and explored the coast of North America. On the whole it was a good time. For example, China’s population doubled in this period.”

The Medieval Warm Period, many solar scientists believe, was warmer than today, and the Roman Warm Period, around the time of Christ, was warmer still. Compelling new evidence to support his view came just in March from the Saskatchewan Isotope Laboratory at the University of Saskatchewan and Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, the authors for the first time document seasonal temperature variations in the North Atlantic over a 2,000-year period, from 360 BC to about 1660 AD. Their technique — involving measurements of oxygen and carbon isotopes captured in mollusk shells — confirmed that the Roman Period was the warmest in the past two millennia.

Among solar scientists, there are a great many theories about how the Sun influences climate. Some will especially point to sunspots, others to the Sun’s magnetic field, others still to the Sun’s influence on cosmic rays which, in turn, affect cloud cover. There is as yet no answer to how the Sun affects Earth’s climate. All that now seems sure is that the Sun does play an outsized role and that the Big Chill on freedom of expression that scientists once faced when discussing global warming is becoming a Big Thaw.

SOURCE





90 Scientists say biofuels no answer to CO2 emissions

Ninety of America's leading scientists today urged U.S. House and Senate leaders to make sure that any climate/energy bill or regulation accurately accounts for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions when it comes to bioenergy, including biofuels such as ethanol.

In the letter to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, U.S. Majority Leader Harry Reid, and key Obama Administration officials, the scientists caution that ignoring the carbon impact of bioenergy can actually lead to increases in greenhouse gas emissions because not all forms of bioenergy produce less carbon dioxide pollution than fossil fuels.

They write: "Replacement of fossil fuels with bioenergy does not directly stop carbon dioxide emissions from tailpipes or smokestacks. Although fossil fuel emissions are reduced or eliminated, the combustion of biomass replaces fossil emissions with its own emissions (which may even be higher per unit of energy because of the lower energy to carbon ratio of biomass)."

"There may be a public perception that all biofuels and bioenergy are equally good for the environment and are all lower in carbon emissions than fossil fuels, but that's not true," said Dr. William Schlesinger, president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, one of the scientists who signed the letter. "Many produce just as much or more carbon pollution than oil, gas, and coal. If our laws and regulations treat high-carbon-impact bioenergy sources, like today's corn ethanol, as if they are low-carbon, we're fooling ourselves and undercutting the purpose of those same laws and regulations."

According to the scientists, what the United States decides to do in terms of accounting for bioenergy will have major repercussions around the globe. "U.S. laws will also influence world treatment of bioenergy. A number of studies in distinguished journals have estimated that globally improper accounting of bioenergy could lead to large-scale clearing of the world's forests."

Failure to properly account for bioenergy CO2 emissions could seriously undermine other efforts to address climate change, the scientists warn. "Many international treaties and domestic laws and bills account for bioenergy incorrectly by treating all bioenergy as causing a 100% reduction in emissions regardless of the source of the biomass. ? Under some scenarios, this approach could eliminate most of the expected greenhouse gas reductions during the next several decades ?"

The letter from the scientists cautions decision makers about the basic mistake that biomass is "carbon neutral," explaining: "Clearing or cutting forests for energy, either to burn trees directly in power plants or to replace forests with bioenergy crops, has the net effect of releasing otherwise sequestered carbon into the atmosphere, just like the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. That creates a carbon debt, may reduce ongoing carbon uptake by the forest, and as a result may increase net greenhouse gas emissions for an extended time period and thereby undercut greenhouse gas reductions needed over the next several decades."

SOURCE





Caution urged on biofuel due to health risks from toxicity

This is based on the discredited "free radical" theory but the general point of unexpected side-effects is worth making

BIOFUEL might help reduce carbon emissions, but Queensland scientists warn the health risks should be examined to prevent another lead petrol disaster.

Queensland University of Technology Associate Professor Zoran Ristovski told AAP health risks of biofuels should not be overlooked in the haste to tackle global warming. "It's not only important to look at the environmental impact but we also have to look at the toxicity, if we don't want another lead petrol disaster," he said.

Professor Zoran Ristovski and two PhD students have studied the toxicity of biofuel particles, using special monitoring equipment. "Once the diesel fuel is substituted with more than 20 per cent ethanol, the particles seem to be more toxic," he said.

"We have found that diesel substituted with ethanol levels greater than 20 per cent contain high levels of free radicals and other reactive oxygen species which can be harmful to health."

Professor Zoran Ristovski said excessive exposure to free radicals in the air have been linked to respiratory diseases including asthma. "Australia is the largest producer of ethanol," he said.

"What we're pointing out is that those substitutions should not be large. "Keep it at a smaller percentage... up to 20 per cent seems like the particles are similar to that of pure diesel."

SOURCE

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

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Greenhouse effect on the moon?

Neither the earth nor the moon is a "black body". Both the moon and the earth are warmer than they "should be" -- even though one has no CO2 at all

Yes, that’s right, there is a “greenhouse effect” on our moon and it’s even greater than here on earth. The idea of an atmospheric “greenhouse effect” was invented to justify why earth is supposedly “warmer than it should be” if there was no atmosphere.

As we now know from NASA’s research, even our moon is “warmer than it should be”, by a whopping 40 degrees C where earth is a mere 33 degrees “warmer”.

“We’ve been told that the earth’s surface is quite a bit warmer than calculations predict. Theory has it that heat-trapping “greenhouse gases” account for a 33° Celsius disparity. But it turns out that our airless moon is also quite a bit warmer than predicted. Might something be wrong with the prediction method itself, then? It’s a natural question to ask, so let’s look into it.”

“The Earth is not “unusually” warm. It is the application of the predictive equation that is faulty. The ability of common substances to store heat makes a mockery of blackbody estimates. The belief that radiating trace gases explain why earth’s surface temperature deviates from a simple mathematical formula is based on deeply erroneous assumptions about theoretical vs. real bodies.”

The justification for calculating the temperature that earth “should be at” is shown to be incorrect. It’s based on a formula that is used to convert irradiation levels to temperature and vice versa, based on a blackbody. Earth nor any planet that we know of behaves like a blackbody. All planets literally absorb some of the solar heat during daytime and emit some of that during nighttime. Our moon is the perfect example of that: it has no atmosphere and receives as good as the same level of irradiation as earth does.

Our atmosphere is shown to act as a coolant during the day and a retarder of cooling during the nighttime; the amount of retardation depending on the relative humidity of the atmosphere, which in turn determines the total heat content of a given volume of the atmosphere.

But at all times our atmosphere acts as a conveyor of heat, never a creator of heat. This essay puts it into perspective.

It does not matter what our atmosphere is made of, it is the surface, including the oceans, that makes it “warmer than it should be”.

And yes, seeing that carbon dioxide is actually a good radiator, the only possible effect it can have on the atmosphere is to increase its cooling efficiency; it can’t possibly make the atmosphere warmer. Adding a coolant gas to a coolant atmosphere, what else could you expect?

Please spread this paper far and wide, as it clearly proves by means of direct observations that no atmosphere is needed to be “warmer than calculated”. Nothing to do with CO2 after all.

More HERE. (See associated PDF)





Hit Job: ABC News Attempts to Align Climate Change Skeptics with White Supremacists

At first, Michael Mann, a Penn State professor and a central figure in the Climategate scandal, but best known for his discredited "hockey stick graph" didn't like being mocked in a YouTube video. Now Mann is alleging he's a victim of hate groups.

On ABC's May 23 "World News Sunday," a segment from anchor Dan Harris alleged that threatening e-mails Mann received were part of a "spike" in violence aimed at the global warming alarmist community.

"The ongoing oil spill crisis in the Gulf is keeping the debate over climate and energy very much in the headlines and that debate is becoming increasingly venomous with many prominent scientists now saying that they are being severely harassed," Harris said.

Curiously Harris makes no mention of the real violence in the form of eco-terrorism that has come from the environmental left or Greenpeace repeatedly targeting the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Chris Horner, by stealing his garbage on a weekly basis, as his Web site points out. Instead, this "severe harassment" ABC warned about were e-mails from fringe Internet elements sent to Mann.

"The FBI tells ABC News it's looking into a spike in threatening e-mails to climate scientists like Penn State's Michael Mann," Harris said.

And Mann, who has a lawsuit against Minnesotans for Climate Change, a group that publicly mocked him for his discredited hockey stick graph, where he allegedly intentionally hid data to accentuate the argument of global warming alarmism, complained that the e-mailers are trying to trample his free speech rights. "It's an attempt to chill the discourse and I think that's what most disconcerting," Mann said.

But despite overwhelming evidence that Mann's science has some flaws and that there are some bad characters among the global warming alarmists, Harris attempted to link radical fringe elements on the Internet to outspoken climate change alarmism skeptic Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.

"A white supremacist Web site recently posted Mann's picture alongside several other climate scientists, with the word ‘Jew' next to each image," Harris said. "To many scientists, however, the most disturbing recent development was a report released by Republican Sen. James Inhofe, naming 17 climate scientists, some of whom Inhofe says have engaged in potentially illegal behavior."

According to Harris and NASA's Dr. Gavin Schmidt, Inhofe's efforts to highlight the evidence that scientists deliberately manipulated data to mislead the public is "McCarthy-ite."

Harris cited internal investigations at these scientists' respective institutions to assure viewers there was nothing wrong.

"Sen. Inhofe's report was referring to an incident late last year known as ClimateGate, where stolen e-mails gave the impression that climate scientists may have been trying to hide flaws in their research, although several subsequent investigations have exonerated the scientists," Harris said.

ABC News did air a few sentences from Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com (A news aggregator site Harris called "aggressive.)

"Sen. Inhofe's former spokesman, Marc Morano, who now runs one of the most aggressive climate skeptic Web sites in the country, did agree to an interview, arguing that skeptics have been getting threats for years."

Morano explained that no one was promoting violence, but when so much on the line from a government policy perspective, the public should be engaged.

"No one is advocating violence," Morano said, "but it is refreshing to see these scientists hear from the public. When you go to a used-car salesman and you get conned ... you don't go back to the used-car dealer all happy and pleasant. You have a lot of anger, and that's what these scientists are appropriately feeling."

Nonetheless, at the end of Harris' segment, Schmidt dismissed any challenges on the theory of anthropogenic global warming and said scientists were too "hyper-competitive" to allow that to happen.

SOURCE

(See here for a record of the "McCarthyite" attacks on skeptics. If Mann had attacks like that on him, he would really have something to complain about)




U.N. downgrades global warming

UN says case for saving species 'more powerful than climate change'

The economic case for global action to stop the destruction of the natural world is even more powerful than the argument for tackling climate change, a major report for the United Nations will declare this summer.

The Stern report on climate change, which was prepared for the UK Treasury and published in 2007, famously claimed that the cost of limiting climate change would be around 1%-2% of annual global wealth, but the longer-term economic benefits would be 5-20 times that figure.

The UN's biodiversity report – dubbed the Stern for Nature – is expected to say that the value of saving "natural goods and services", such as pollination, medicines, fertile soils, clean air and water, will be even higher – between 10 and 100 times the cost of saving the habitats and species which provide them.

To mark the UN's International Day for Biological Diversity tomorrow, hundreds of British companies, charities and other organisations have backed an open letter from the Natural History Museum's director Michael Dixon warning that "the diversity of life, so crucial to our security, health, wealth and wellbeing is being eroded".

The UN report's authors go further with their warning on biodiversity, by saying if the goods and services provided by the natural world are not valued and factored into the global economic system, the environment will become more fragile and less resilient to shocks, risking human lives, livelihoods and the global economy.

"We need a sea-change in human thinking and attitudes towards nature: not as something to be vanquished, conquered, but rather something to be cherished and lived within," said the report's author, the economist Pavan Sukhdev.

The changes will involve a wholesale revolution in the way humans do business, consume, and think about their lives, Sukhdev, told The Guardian. He referred to the damage currently being inflicted on the natural world as "a landscape of market failures".

The report will advocate massive changes to the way the global economy is run so that it factors in the value of the natural world. In future, it says, communities should be paid for conserving nature rather than using it; companies given stricter limits on what they can take from the environment and fined or taxed more to limit over-exploitation; subsidies worth more than US$1tn (£696.5bn) a year for industries like agriculture, fisheries, energy and transport reformed; and businesses and national governments asked to publish accounts for their use of natural and human capital alongside their financial results.

And the potential economic benefits are huge. Setting up and running a comprehensive network of protected areas would cost $45bn a year globally, according to one estimate, but the benefits of preserving the species richness within these zones would be worth $4-5tn a year.

The report follows a series of recent studies showing that the world is in the grip of a mass extinction event as pollution, climate change, development and hunting destroys habitats of all types, from rainforests and wetlands to coastal mangroves and open heathland. However, only two of the world's 100 biggest companies believe reducing biodiversity is a strategic threat to their business, according to another report released tomorrow by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is advising the team compiling the UN report.

"Sometimes people describe Earth's economy as a spaceship economy because we are basically isolated, we do have limits to how much we can extract, and why and where," said Sukhdev, who visited the UK WHEN as a guest of science research and education charity, the Earthwatch Institute..

The TEEB report shows that on average one third of Earth's habitats have been damaged by humans – but the problem ranges from zero percent of ice, rock and polar lands to 85% of seas and oceans and more than 70% of Mediterranean shrubland. It also warns that in spite of growing awareness of the dangers, destruction of nature will "still continue on a large scale". The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has previously estimated that species are becoming extinct at a rate 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than it would naturally be without humans.

SOURCE






Wind power does NOT reduce fossil fuel consumption

There is no convincing proof that utility-scale wind plants reduce fossil fuel consumption or CO2 emissions. Although there are are a number of reports claiming gains can be made that will combat climate change, free us from fossil fuel “addiction,” provide energy independence and needed 21st century industrial development, such reports are not substantiated by definitive and comprehensive analyses.

To determine the actual effects will require long-term time series, at intervals significantly less than one hour, of wind production and fuel consumption due to fast ramping of fossil fuel plants to compensate for wind’s volatility in an electricity system where wind represents approximately at least 1-2% of production.

As opposed to wind proponents’ claims, studies based on actual experience with wind integration are emerging that demonstrate the fossil fuel and CO2 emissions gains are not valid. The two reviewed here are examples but are limited by the lack of availability of complete information on operational performance, especially of wind plants. Fortunately, enough information can be gleaned that provides a strong indication of what those who have studied this objectively have long suspected.

Why is more complete information about wind performance and integration not available? Is it because wind proponents, including some policy makers and wind industries, do not want the realities disclosed, or, in the case of many environmentalist organizations, because they would interrupt established agendas? Or is it that these groups believe it unnecessary because they do not understand the realities of utility-scale wind power?

Two New Studies: le Pair/de Groot (Netherlands) and Bentek (Colorado, Texas)

The two studies reviewed were released this year and show increases in fossil fuel or CO2 emissions with the introduction of wind plants. The first is based on the Netherlands experience by C. le Pair and K. de Groot, and the second for Colorado and Texas by Bentek Energy. Their findings will be compared to each other, as well as to results from my fossil fuel and CO2 emissions calculator. The analytical approaches taken by le Pair and de Groot, Bentek and the calculator are different, but the results are very similar. This is therefore a very revealing and instructive exercise.

Le Pair and de Groot take a very analytical path and apply the formulas they derived to published information on the Netherlands system, for which some actual information on fossil fuel inputs for electricity production is available. Bentek uses detailed information on increases in coal-plant cycling since the introduction of wind plants, along with the impact of wind “events” on reported emissions. Because the Public Service Company of Colorado (PSCO) does not publish hourly wind production, Bentek is restricted to a few such events, from which they draw general conclusions for Colorado.

To validate the Colorado findings, Bentek uses the same analysis approach for Texas with information from the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which reports wind production at 15 minute intervals. This not only provides validation of the PSCO analysis, but also conveniently adds experience from a third jurisdiction. The calculator is a general model of the interaction between an amount of wind generation in an electricity system and the fossil fuel plants (coal and gas) involved in balancing wind’s volatility.

Summary of Results

This is the first in a four part series that analyzes and compares the findings of these studies with each other and to the calcualtor. Briefly, the results are:

The Netherlands

Le Pair and de Groot show that when the entire fossil fuel fleet efficiency is reduced by about 2% due to the presence of wind, the fossil fuel consumption saving is zero. This is the calculated efficiency reduction in the fossil fuel fleet for the Netherlands for a wind penetration of about 3% based on the published fossil fuel input and electricity production information. Their conclusions include the following:

The use of wind energy for electricity generation in combination with the requirement for fossil fuel powered stations to compensate for wind fluctuations can easily lead to loss of the expected saving in fuel use and CO2 emission. In addition, the conventional stations will be subject to accelerated wear and tear.

It is recommended to get an accurate and quantitative insight into these extra effects before society sets out to apply wind energy on a large scale. All producers must be required to publish data on the efficiency effects and fuel use when wind energy is added on.

Colorado and Texas

The study by Bentek Energy, aptly named “How Less Became More: Wind, Power and Unintended Consequences in the Colorado Energy Market,” is a ground-breaking analysis of the effects of the introduction of wind power into electricity systems. The study is based on actual results for the PSCO system in Colorado and ERCOT in Texas and their overarching conclusion is that there are unintended consequences to the implementation of Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS). One of the key findings is:

Contrary to their stated goals, implementation of RPS in Colorado and Texas appear to be adding to the air pollution problem, especially in areas where older plants are cycled more frequently.

Calculator

The fossil fuel and CO2 emissions calculator was applied to each of the jurisdictions studied and shows similar results. In each case an explanation of the calculator input parameters is provided.

Comparison of Results

The congruence of results from these three different approaches is a convincing confirmation of the questionable value of new alternative energy sources, especially wind, in an electricity system. RPS programs, and similar initiatives to encourage new renewables, should be withheld until such time as objective and comprehensive evaluations can be made in a completely transparent manner about the real benefits.

SOURCE






Misleading Greenie palm oil/Orangutan propaganda Exacts High Environmental & Economic Costs

New report shows misleading anti-Palm Oil campaigns by Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Rainforest Action Network will further endanger Orang-utan and increase poverty, the major threat to the environment

As the International Palm Oil Sustainability Conference (IPOSC) gets underway this week in Malaysia, the NGO World Growth released a new report today revealing the recent campaigns by Western environmental groups against palm oil produced in developing countries are not only bogus but also potentially devastating for the very causes they claim to defend.

The findings of "Caught Red Handed: The Myths, Exaggerations and Distortions of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Rainforest Action Network" offer a false claim / fact analysis that sheds light on the allegations against palm oil made by Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the Rainforest Action Network. The report concludes that activist pressure to boycott palm oil will not only fail to save the Orang-utan; it will deny millions of people the opportunity to get out of poverty and relieve the threat it represents to the environment.

"Eradicating poverty is the key to protecting forests," said World Growth Chairman Alan Oxley. "Strategies to cripple palm oil, an industry which has lifted millions out of poverty in Southeast Asia, work against the ostensible goal of environmental groups.

"The only ‘unsustainable’ feature of the palm oil debate is the falsehoods, misrepresentations, and factual errors propagated by the Greenpeace, FoE, and RAN campaigns. World Growth's new report examines the basis for each of the claim made against palm and finds that, at best, they reflect misunderstandings of facts and, at worst, intentional distortion of the them."

Key Claims and the Facts about Palm Oil:

• Claim: A single palm oil plantation can leave forest communities to face poverty, many for the first time. (Rainforest Action Network)

• Fact: RAN misrepresented independent research which found that the palm oil has rescued at least 6 million people from poverty.

• Claim: 85 percent of palm oil in Southeast Asia is grown on industrial plantations. (Rainforest Action Network)

• Fact: 40 per cent of palm oil is produced by small landholders in both Malaysia and Indonesia, not large scale plantations.

• Claim: Up to 50 Orangutans are killed every week by the palm oil industry. (Friends of the Earth)

• Fact: Studies by reputable international bodies, such as the FAO, have found repeatedly that poverty and illegal forest clearance by the poor are the main threat to forest habitat and thereby the Orang-utan, not the palm oil industry which actively supports conservation programs.

• Claim: A 2007 UNEP report identified palm oil as the leading cause of rainforest destruction in Malaysia and Indonesia. (Greenpeace)

• Fact: The report was not endorsed by UNEP, ignores production methods in Malaysia (no land is allowed to be cleared for palm oil) and Indonesia (only land designated for development can be used) and ignores FAO data that poverty drives clearance of forest.

• Claim: In Southeast Asia alone 300 football fields are deforested every hour for palm oil. (Greenpeace)

• Fact: Most forest clearance is not for palm oil. FAO reports global rates of forest clearance are falling globally (now less one percent of forest land per year), as well as in Southeast Asia and in Asia at large, forest areas are expanding not reducing. It is more relevant that nearly 40 million Indonesians live below the poverty line.

SOURCE





Prominent Princeton Scientist testfies: 'Warming and increased CO2 will be good for mankind'

Selected Highlights of Dr. Happer's May 20, 2010 Congressional Testimony:

The CO2 absorption band is nearly “saturated” at current CO2 levels. Adding more CO2 is like putting an additional ski hat on your head when you already have a nice warm one below it, but you are only wearing a windbreaker. The extra hat makes you a little bit warmer but to really get warm, you need to add a jacket. The IPCC thinks that this jacket is water vapor and clouds. [...]

The climate-change establishment has tried to eliminate any who dare question the science establishment climate scientists and by like-thinking policy-makers – you are either with us or you are a traitor.

Orwellian: I keep hearing about the “pollutant CO2,” or about “poisoning the atmosphere” with CO2, or about minimizing our “carbon footprint.” This brings to mind a comment by George Orwell: “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

CO2 is not a pollutant and it is not a poison and we should not corrupt the English language by depriving “pollutant” and “poison” of their original meaning. Our exhaled breath contains about 4% CO2. That is 40,000 parts per million, or about 100 times the current atmospheric concentration. CO2 is absolutely essential for life on earth.

Commercial greenhouse operators often use CO2 as a fertilizer to improve the health and growth rate of their plants. Plants, and our own primate ancestors evolved when the levels of atmospheric CO2 were at least 1000 ppm, a level that we will probably not reach by burning fossil fuels, and far above our current level of about 380 ppm. We try to keep CO2 levels in our US Navy submarines no higher than 8,000 parts per million, about 20 time current atmospheric levels. Few adverse effects are observed at even higher levels. [...]

That we are (or were) living at the best of all CO2 concentrations seems to be an article of faith for the climate-change establishment. Enormous effort and imagination have gone into showing that increasing concentrations of CO2 will be catastrophic: cities will be flooded by sea-level rises that are ten or more times bigger than even IPCC predicts, there will be mass extinctions of species, billions of people will die, tipping points will render the planet a desert. Any flimsy claim of harm from global warming brings instant fame and many rewards.

Sea Level: The sea level is indeed rising, just as it has for the past 20,000 years since the end of the last ice age. Fairly accurate measurements of sea level have been available since about 1800. These measurements show no sign of any acceleration. The rising sea level can be a serious local problem for heavily-populated, low-lying areas like New Orleans, where land subsidence compounds the problem. But to think that limiting CO2 emissions will stop sea level rise is a dangerous illusion. It is also possible that the warming seas around Antarctica will cause more snowfall over the continent and will counteract the sea-level rise.

Hockey Stick: I was very surprised when I first saw the celebrated “hockey stick curve,” in the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC. Both the little ice age and the medieval warm period were gone, and the newly revised temperature of the world since the year 1000 had suddenly become absolutely flat until the last hundred years when it shot up like the blade on a hockey stick. This was far from an obscure detail, and the hockey stick was trumpeted around the world as evidence that the end was near.

We now know that the hockey stick has nothing to do with reality but was the result of incorrect handling of proxy temperature records and incorrect statistical analysis. There really was a little ice age and there really was a medieval warm period that was as warm or warmer than today. I bring up the hockey stick as a particularly clear example that the IPCC summaries for policy makers are not dispassionate statements of the facts of climate change.

Conclusion: I regret that the climate-change issue has become confused with serious problems like secure energy supplies, protecting our environment, and figuring out where future generations will get energy supplies after we have burned all the fossil fuel we can find. We should not confuse these laudable goals with hysterics about carbon footprints. For example, when weighing pluses and minuses of the continued or increased use of coal, the negative issue should not be increased atmospheric CO2, which is probably good for mankind. We should focus on real issues like damage to the land and waterways by strip mining, inadequate remediation, hazards to miners, the release of real pollutants and poisons like mercury, other heavy metals, organic carcinogens, etc.

Life is about making decisions and decisions are about trade-offs. The Congress can choose to promote investment in technology that addresses real problems and scientific research that will let us cope with real problems more efficiently.

Or they can act on unreasonable fears and suppress energy use, economic growth and the benefits that come from the creation of national wealth.

More HERE (See the original for links)

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

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CO2 as a radiation valve contravenes the laws of thermodynamics

I want to emphasize a point Bob Ashworth has raised, that it's not only the Second Law (heat always flows to a cooler zone) which invalidates trace gas heating theory but the First Law as well (energy can neither be created nor destroyed).

"Heat-trapping gases," you hear, and "Radiation goes in but can’t get out." Well then, what is every explanation of the greenhouse effect pointing at but a radiation valve? Since heat rays are prevented from exiting to space, it is claimed, they have nowhere else to go but back to the earth which, by absorbing them, becomes warmer.

The notion of a radiation valve snaps these concepts into focus: Without such a valve, it is imagined, infrared rays from the earth's solar-heated surface will pass freely into space. For every unit of sunlight going in, therefore, one unit of infrared goes out. Ergo, 1 - 1 = 0, zero referring to the heat gain. But with a proper valve in place no infrared is lost and the trapped rays are absorbed by the emitting surface, so the process goes thusly:



As you see, if the tenets of this theory are valid there can be no outcome other than a doubling of surface energy (a doubling at minimum, that is, since there's no reason to suppose that radiation from the now-warmer surface would not continue to be back-radiated, absorbed, and amplified in a "runaway" heating cascade).

As a real world application, such a valve could be approximated by common window glass or a dichroic filter. The irradiated surface could be anything similar to a blackbody, an ideal absorber-emitter, and a radiative heat gain of something above 0 would be observed. A working model of the greenhouse effect couldn't be made any simpler.

Simple as it is, though, no scientist in the world is able to construct a model that exhibits any radiative gain because the theory's tenets (called "the basic science") are not valid. On a theoretical basis alone, conservation of energy (the First Law) forbids a model like this from working. You can't obtain more energy than you put in. On an empirical basis too, however, as demonstrated by laboratory blackbodies, confined radiation only induces temperatures close to a theoretical blackbody limit, not a degree hotter. (The premise of greenhouse theory, remember, is that radiative confinement raises the earth's temperature above a blackbody limit, yet a laboratory blackbody --which is little more than a light trap -- exemplifies radiative confinement! The premise is self-contradictory.)

I urge you to notice that the valve's efficiency doesn't actually matter, either, because physical laws are violated even in a modest case. In some sense, in fact, the crimes get worse. For instance, let's install a 20% valve, so that 80% of the infrared escapes and 20% back-radiates.



In this case, 0.8 exits while 0.2 is "retained" by the surface. But 0.2 also radiates back to the surface, so it gains 0.4 in total (again, as a minimum: further back-radiation effects must arbitrarily be halted). In other words, even when the oft-mentioned "net flow" favors the outward movement of thermal energy (a modeling effort to satisfy the Second Law), the alleged heating effect still contradicts the First Law because you're getting more energy than you put in. Any furnace manufacturer would eagerly exploit such a loophole in the law if it existed.

But the problems don't stop there. Since the valve allows 80 percent of the infrared to escape, the same applies to the 40 percent that's been gained. So sum up the amount of radiation getting past the valve: 1.12 units -- more energy than is going in!

The whole model is nonsense. Here are two corollaries I can think of.

• Just like temperature, radiant energy flows do not add. Lumping two 70° balls of clay together doesn't result in a single ball that's 140°, nor do 70 watts per square meter beaming back onto a body that's radiating 70 raise it to 140. Frankly, it is stupid to think otherwise.

• Back-radiation cannot be absorbed by the emitter or else the conservation of energy law is meaningless. As I've noted before, the output of a weak battery can't be used as an input to recharge it.

Email from Alan Siddons [alan618034@earthlink.net], a former radiochemist





The Week That Was 2010-05-22 (May 22, 2010)

By Ken Haapala, Executive Vice President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

The Fourth International Conference on Climate Change held by the Heartland Institute ended Tuesday. The conference featured 74 speakers on a diversity of topics relating to climate change. Perhaps Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT summed up the results of the conference best. He said we should no longer be called skeptics. Skepticism implies an existence of a plausible scientific position. Global warming alarmism is no longer plausible.

Not everyone agrees as to the causes of the recent warming, which is as developing science should be. However, over the four conferences there seems to be a direction of convergence in ideas. One, the IPCC’s assumptions that increasing water vapor will amplify carbon dioxide-caused warming is wrong. The temperature change from a doubling of carbon dioxide is likely to be no more than 1 degree Celsius. Two, the IPCC models likely have causation as related to clouds backwards – lack of clouds causes warming not the other way around. Three, natural variations of the climate system that are ignored by the IPCC are important to climate change. An example is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Also, natural variations may be influenced by changes external to the earth, such as solar activity and cosmic radiation. Not everyone agrees as to the extent of external influences.

Also coming from different directions, the work of Lindzen, Spencer, and others indicates that the climate system has a negative feedback mechanism -- a dampening effect on carbon dioxide-caused warming rather than suggest are suggesting that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide will produce a warming of no more than 0.5 degrees Celsius, well within natural variation.

The work of a number of scientists, such as Don Easterbrook, suggests we are entering into a cold period. If so, there is significant reason to be concerned. The work of climate pioneer HH Lamb demonstrated that cold periods are harmful to mankind and warm periods are generally beneficial.

There is much to be learned, such as what causes El Niños similar to the one that now appears to be ending? The El Niño caused the global temperatures of the first part of the year, as measured from satellites, to be significantly warmer than normal. Of course, alarmists will claim that this warming is “proof” of human-caused global warming. However, the IPCC rejects the idea that El Niños cause warming; thus such claims by alarmists contradict the IPCC. Ian Plimer speculates that El Niños may be caused by undersea volcanoes, which certainly is intriguing.

If governments would only get away from the egocentric view that humans are the cause of climate change, we may begin to understand the actual causes and be able to adapt to changes as Lamb so hoped.

The proceedings of the full conference are being posted on the web site of the Heartland Institute, http://www.heartland.org/. It is well worth a visit or several visits to listen to illuminating lectures on issues relating to climate change.

More HERE






MalariaGate now infects More Global Warming Conspirators

by John O'Sullivan

Controversial climate scientist, Michael ‘hockey stick’ Mann is still up to his old tricks; he’s now alleged to have assisted a university colleague in obtaining a cool two million dollars for discredited research into malaria.

Ace skeptic investigator, Barry Woods has unearthed another useful lead in the corrupt and immoral world of climate science-this time linking the breaking Malaria-gate scandal with Penn. State University bad boys, Michael Mann and Matthew Thomas.

We all know the stink of Michael Mann but who is Thomas? He’s Penn. State's Professor of Entomology and like Mann has been doing overtime trying to salvage the remnants of the discredited man-made global warming theory.

No Link Whatsoever between Malaria and Climate

Thomas is under the spotlight because he's just been discredited as an expert in the field due to the recent publication of ground-breaking research on malaria in Nature (Gething et al. (2010)). The new study proves there is no link whatsoever between malaria and climate. In fact, Gething’s data shows the mortality rates from malaria are actually in decline-a body blow to the hype of doomsaying establishment junk scientists.

The Nature study is a gamechanger on climate issues involving malaria so that politicized alarmist advocates like Thomas will soon be classed as ‘sub-prime’ experts in this field. Thomas had steadily built a lucrative business for himself as Professor of Entomology, at Penn State's Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics. He boasts a published exploration of the ecology and evolution of "enemy-victim" interactions (malaria).

IPCC Had Blown Up Worry about Malaria

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ,in Chapter 8 of their 2007 Report, displayed a prominent graphic on malaria (Table 8.1) that makes worrisome reading, especially for the peoples of India, Australia, Portugal and Bolivia. The UN organization had boldly foretold that the worldwide geographical range of malaria “will expand” with a level of confidence that it proclaimed to be “very high.”

Such regions were predicted to be blighted most by malaria; all such alarmist claims are now proven to be bogus by Gething’s findings.

In 2009 Thomas had enjoyed some success in further helping the IPCC to whip up climate concern with the questionable paper; 'Understanding the link between malaria risk and climate.' Paaijmans, KP, Read, AF & Thomas, MB(2009).Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106:13844-13849.

Junk Climate Scientist scooped Cool $2Million

Until Gething came along to spoil the party, Thomas was merrily awash with cash from a very large grant given to him last year, as records show; “2009-2013 Quantifying the influence of environmental temperature on transmission of vector-borne diseases, NSF-EF [Principal Investigator: M. Thomas; Co-Investigators: R.G. Crane, M.E. Mann, A. Read, T. Scott (Penn State Univ.)]. $1,884,991"

Thomas makes a lame defense of his position in the UK's Guardian newspaper.

Michael Mann in yet another Conspiracy to Defraud?

But as we can see, the “investigator” who helped Thomas scoop the two million bucks is none other than his Penn. State University hockey team buddy, Michael E. Mann. Mann is currently under investigation for fraud by Virginia’s Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli.

Many of us fellow critics of the climate scam will no doubt endorse Barry Woods’ point that $1,884,991 is a lot of money to investigate the influence of environmental temperature on malaria when such influence has now been shown to be of little consequence. It’s also worth noting that you could buy a lot medicine and nets with $1.8 million.

Is anyone now going to ask Thomas to give taxpayers their funding back?

Reference:

Gething, P. W. & D. L. Smith et al. ‘Climate change and the global malaria recession’ NatureVolume:, 465,Pages: 342–345Date published:, (20 May 2010)

SOURCE





Lambert the sheepish lion bleats again

by Don Easterbrook

As some of you may know, my recent paper at the Heartland global climate conference has been attacked by Gareth Renowden and posted by Tim Lambert on his blog. Although I don't normally even read this kind of garbage, I responded to an inquiry by Andy Revkin with the attached:

"When you are losing an argument on the basis of facts and evidence, the oldest trick in the world is to invent some outrageous lie, the more outrageous the better, and while people are reacting to the lie, attention is diverted from the real issue. It is a sure sign of desperation in distracting attention from facts and data. The outrageous charge of fraud made by a self professed "photographer and truffle grower" (Gareth Renowden) is not worthy of response, but because the charge is so easily refuted, I will do so......

According to Mr. Renowden (the "truffle grower), "Looking through Easterbrook's slides, it seems he has taken a graph of Holocene temperature variations prepared by Global Warming Art (used at Wikipedia), and altered it to fraudulently bolster his case. ... Easterbrook has quite deliberately altered the graph to reduce "current temperatures" by 0.75ºC and make the curve fit his storyline.

The data in my paper comes from oxygen isotope analyses of ice cores in Greenland made by Dr. Minze Stuiver and Dr. Peter Grootes, long recognized as the world standard for accurate paleotemperatures over thousands of years and used by thousands of scientists all over the world. This data is readily available for anyone to use so my graphs can be reproduced by anyone.

The charge by 'the truffle grower' that I used a graph "prepared by Global Warming Art" and that I "altered it to fraudulently bolster his case" is an outright, contemptible lie. I have the entire Greenland oxygen isotope data in my computer and use it extensively to plot data, so why would I use anything else?

The data I use has never been altered in any way. According to the 'truffle grower,' "The original suggests that current temperatures are comparable to, perhaps higher than the warmest period of the Holocene, the post-glacial climatic optimum 8000 years ago. Easterbrook's version gives the impression that for most of the last 10,000 years temperature has been warmer than today."

This is totally false--below is the Greenland data for the past 10,000 years (Holocene) from the published paper by Cuffy and Clow (1997), two distinguished US scientists. Note that temperatures for almost all of the past 10,000 years have been warmer than present. Oh, and while you're looking at the data, also note all of the temperature ups and downs that occurred thousands of years before modern increase in CO2, most of which were of greater intensity than recent warming. Perhaps the 'truffle grower' should learn to read a graph...."

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







Are Americans Addicted to Oil?

Or is it simply cheap and useful?

The American political elite tell us we are addicted to oil. Whether it’s from former President George W. Bush or the present administration, Americans for years have been admonished to break the oil habit and use alternative fuels that meet Washington’s approval.

An online dictionary defines “addiction” as “the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.”

Many commentators see oil usage in our economy in the same manner. Jim Wallis, who runs the leftist religious site Sojourners, writes:

"[O]ur oil addiction is making things not work. The list of consequences is long — from critical climate changes, to the loss of jobs, to supplying money for terrorists, to sacrificing the lives of our young people in wars over oil, to watching an oil spill that nobody seems to know how to stop pour hundreds of thousands of gallons each day into the Gulf of Mexico.

At a deep level, what’s not working in the U.S. is our lifestyle — particularly the consumerist energy habits we showcase to the rest of the world. Moving toward a “clean energy economy” will require more than just a re-wiring of the energy grid; it will also take a re-wiring of ourselves — a conversion, really, of our habits of the heart. We must adjust our expectations, demands, and values.

Are we addicted to oil, or is oil a vital resource that helps advance civilization? I believe it is the latter. Furthermore, is “addiction” an appropriate way to describe the use of petroleum-based products?

It is one thing to engage in such rhetoric, but another to examine Wallis’s message: It is immoral to use petroleum-based fuels and other products. Furthermore, his “solution” of expanded State power to force us to use alternative energy forms provides a sort of “salvation” for all of us.

Much of the harm Wallis claims results from using oil (his publication Sojourners also devotes part of the current issue to the “evils” of coal) is speculative. However, I don’t believe it is a given that oil use is “changing the climate” (and always for the worse, according to Wallis), nor does he explain just how oil use leads to a “loss of jobs.” He just makes the statement, and we are supposed to accept it at face value.

However, we do know that rising standards of living also lead to longer life spans and a higher quality of life. Wallis is forever going on about poverty in the Third World (for which he blames Americans, of course), yet we forget that before entrepreneurs harnessed the power of oil and coal, Americans and Europeans were very poor.

Entrepreneurs found ways to use these resources to create products that consumers willingly purchased. From the advent of kerosene, which allowed ordinary people to have artificial light in their homes, to the development of the internal combustion engine, which helped provide the means of large-scale transportation, oil- and coal-based fuels have changed the lives of individuals.

Unfortunately, the same people who decry poverty elsewhere want the government to make us poorer. Yes, there are some side-effects to extracting and using these fuels, but consumers have made it clear they want to continue using them and are willing to pay for their continued production, for they do not want to be forced into lifestyles they find undesirable.

Markets themselves are neither moral nor immoral. Rather, they reflect our own choices and priorities. One can claim, for example, that we are addicted to food and make the same set of arguments that critics make against oil. Moreover, alternative forms of energy also have their own problems. For example, the “food for fuels” movement drives up the cost of food, which means poor people go hungry.

The critics cannot have it both ways. If they wish to reduce poverty, then oil and coal are an important part of that equation. If they want everyone to be poorer, then they have to admit that poverty has consequences.

SOURCE





Water Sanity For Central California

A federal judge has struck a blow for California's water-deprived Central Valley, ruling that draconian federal water cutbacks violate human rights because — surprise! — people also belong in the ecosystem.

Next time a concept like, say "death panels" from the federal government seems far-fetched, consider the ordeal California's Central Valley has endured for the past two years. Based on a judicial ruling, some of the most prized and productive agricultural land in the country was turned into a wasteland after its water was shut off.

The ruling was derived from an 800-page "biological opinion" put out by regulators enforcing the National Environmental Policy Act, ostensibly to protect a finger-sized fish called the delta smelt and some other wildlife. Regulators complained that smelt were getting ground up in pumping stations that brought river water from California's north to its south, so the water had to stop.

Even the judge was appalled at being forced into the ruling but had no choice, given the law, and tried to cushion the impact. Tuesday, that same judge, District Judge Oliver Wanger declared to federal regulators that they must consider the impact of their "draconian" actions on human communities, something they've never done up until now. "Federal defendants completely abdicated their responsibility to consider alternative remedies," Wanger wrote.

He also ripped into the environmental regulators for their junk science "guesstimates," stating that their shut-off "lacked factual and scientific justification, while effectively ignoring the irreparable harm (their regulations) have inflicted on humans and the human environment," according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

It's a landmark ruling that makes a superb use of checks and balances on power, given that up until now, these bureaucrats have never been held accountable for their actions.

It also has a nice symmetry with current laws, given that businesses must examine at great cost the environmental impact of their actions on even the smallest changes to their businesses for the sake of regulators. Now environmentalists are on notice that they'd better start looking at what they do to communities next time they insist on protecting a fly or a fish.

It can't happen too soon. The water shut-off has been a nightmare for California. Huge farms growing the world's finest grapes, peaches, almonds, pistachios, plums and walnuts — as well as cotton, carrots, cantaloupe and the other lush truck crops that come out of California's temperate weather and rich soil — have gone fallow.

SOURCE

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