The EPA Snake Pit

By Alan Caruba

Under President Obama, two women have been the director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Carol Browner, who served in the Clinton administration and was one of the "czars" Obama appointed; her acolyte Lisa Jackson, and up for the post is Gina McCarthy. Browner and Jackson went out of their way to conceal their internal communications from Congress and McCarthy lied to the committee considering her nomination.

How bad is the EPA? The Society of Environmental Journalists, on the occasion of the April 11 hearing on McCarthy’s nomination, released a statement that said, “The Obama administration has been anything but transparent in its dealings with reporters seeking information, interviews and clarification on a host of environmental, health and public lands issues.” The SEJ accused the EPA of being “one of the most closed, opaque agencies to the press.”

Apparently, the primary consideration for the job of EPA Director is an intense desire to destroy the use of hydrocarbons, oil, coal and natural gas, for transportation and all other forms of energy on which our economy depends. Obama, when campaigning in 2008, made it clear he wanted end the use of coal to generate electricity. At the time, fifty percent of all electricity was produced by coal and now that figure is in decline as coal-fired plants are being forced to close thanks to EPA regulations.

If Ms. McCarthy has her way, the cost of driving cars and trucks will go up in the name of protecting the health of Americans. As Paul Driessen, a senior policy advisor for the Committee For a Constructive Tomorrow, recently noted, “Since 1970, America’s cars have eliminated 99% of pollutants that once came out of tailpipes.” Joel Schwartz, co-author of “Air Quality in America”, points out, “Today’s cars are essentially zero-emission vehicles, compared to 1970 models.” The EPA’s latest attack on drivers is the implementation of “Tier 3 rules” intended to reduce sulfur levels to achieve zero air quality or health benefits.

Suffice to say that the air and water in America is clean, very clean. Whatever health hazards existed in the 1970s no longer exist. Like all bureaucracies, the EPA now exists to expand its budget and its control over our lives. The Heritage Foundation has calculated that Obama’s EPA’s twenty “major” regulations—those that cost $100 million or more annually—could cost the U.S. more than $36 billion per year. Obama’s EPA has generated 1,920 new regulations.

Don’t think of the EPA as a government agency. It is a weapon of economic destruction.

This has not gone unnoticed. A recent Wall Street Journal opinion by John Barrasso, a Republican Senator from Wyoming, noted that “During President Obama’s first term, EPA policies discouraged energy exploration, buried job creators under red tape, and deliberately hid information from the public.”

“Many EPA regulations,” said Sen. Barrasso, “chased microscopic benefits at maximum cost,” noting for example that “The EPA has proposed dropping the acceptable amount of ozone in the air from the 75 parts per billion allowed today to 60 or 70 parts per billion. The agency concedes that the rule would have a minimal effect on American’s health, but says it would cost as much as $90 billion a year. A study by the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation estimated it would eliminate up to 7.3 million jobs in a wide variety of industries, including refining.”

The other sector in the EPA’s bull’s eye is agriculture. Not content with laying siege to auto manufacturers, oil refineries, coal-fired plants, and all other energy users that might generate carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases, Barrasso noted that the EPA “has gathered personal information about tens of thousands of livestock farmers and the locations of their operations” which it then shared with environmental groups.

Writing in The Daily Caller, Henry Miller, a physician and molecular biologist and currently the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, characterized the EPA as “a miasma populated by the most radical, disaffected and anti-industry discards from other agencies,” adding that there was “entrenched institutional paranoia and an oppositional world view.”

“Unscientific policies and regulatory grandiosity and excess,” wrote Dr. Miller, “are not EPA’s only failings; neglecting to weigh costs and benefits is shockingly common, noting that “The EPA’s repeated failures should not come as a surprise because the agency has long been a haven for scientifically insupportable policies perpetrated by anti-technology ideologues.”

Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, writing in Forbes magazine, pointed out Gina McCarthy, the nominee to direct the EPA, “has a history of misleading Congress and the public about her agency’s greenhouse gas regulations. “At a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in October 2011, McCarthy denied motor vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards are “related to” fuel economy standards. In doing so,” said Lewis, “she denied plain facts she must know to be true. She did so under oath.”

“The EPA has no statutory authority to regulate fuel economy. More importantly, the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act prohibits states from adopting laws or regulations ‘related to’ fuel economy.”

The point of this exercise is demonstrate that the EPA is the very definition of a “rogue agency” for which neither laws, nor science, are of any consequence as it pursues policies that do incalculable harm at a time when the nation is deep in debt and in need of economic growth, not regulatory strangulation.

SOURCE





Understanding the Political and Economic Realities of a Carbon Tax

New Report to be Released:  On May 3, the George C. Marshall Institute will release a new study considering efforts to create a national carbon tax.

Authored by James DeLong of the Convergence Law Institute, the study summarizes the political and economic forces that undermine the case for a carbon tax.  DeLong presents five reasons to reject carbon taxes:

*    Lack of Effect on Temperature - A carbon tax is assumed to have the effect of reducing temperature, but DeLong argues the evidence shows the impact "would be tiny" at the tax levels being advanced.

*    Lack of Specificity About Future Energy Sources - Tax advocates fail to show what energy sources will emerge to replace current sources of supply or how this transformation of a capital-intensive energy sector would be accomplished.

*    Neglect of Benefits from Fossil Fuels and CO2 Emissions - The carbon tax debate is solely focused on the "damages" wrought by CO2 emissions, but a fair evaluation must account for the benefits associated with production of CO2.

*   Problems with Models - The carbon tax relies on the veracity of two rounds of complex computer models - one modeling the environment and humanity's purported impact on it and the other modeling the economy and the impact of imposing a carbon tax.  Both sets of models have significant limitations.

*    Political Pressures and Practical Problems - DeLong summarizes the regressive nature of a carbon tax, the negative impact on GDP and jobs, the effects on manufacturing in highlighting some of the consequences of a tax.  Further, he points to managing the interactions with other taxes and regulations, as well as international issues as practical obstacles to the construction of an efficient carbon tax.  Added to these are the inevitable tensions that will arise from the uneasy alliance of "Bootleggers" and "Baptists" (i.e., crony capitalists and environmentalists) that must unite to pass a carbon tax.

"The tax will not be implemented in the politically aseptic world of academic modelers, but in the real world of intense political pressures," DeLong argues.  "Its assumed purity will not survive the onslaught."

On May 3, DeLong will discuss his findings.  A panel discussion will follow.

Via email




Get ready for shale in Britain

The prospects for hydrocarbon production on the British mainland seem stronger than ever. On 10 April, Professor Richard Davies of Durham University's Energy Institute published a paper stating that fracking is not a significant source of detectible seismic events. Meanwhile, over the last year, there has been a series of leaks of the forthcoming report by the British Geological Survey which is to raise the UK’s estimated reserves of shale gas by some 300 times.

This is welcome news as it paves the way for a secure, domestic, low-cost solution to the thorny problem of replacing the UK’s obsolescent capacity to generate electricity, with a low-carbon footprint feedstock. Many of the deposits are in the North, which would benefit from the investment; but they are also present in the south. In order to make the most of the opportunity, new policy is in order.

HMG is trailing plans to share revenues to incentivise local authorities to welcome oil development. This is very much on the right track, though I would go further: let programs be configured to encourage local authorities to compete for funding, so that they share (say) ten percent of incremental tax receipts; and bid against each other for a further ten percent for development or remediation.

The Petroleum Act (1934) appropriated subterranean hydrocarbon rights from the land-owner to the Crown, at odds with other mineral rights. This anomaly was theoretical until now, as no substantial deposits had been discovered. In light of new technologies we need to reverse this policy which was recapitulated in the Petroleum Act (1998). The clauses concerned should be repealed so that the interests of land-owners are aligned with the public interest in low-cost energy.

This takes us to taxation. Oil prospecting is beset by a complex of penal taxes, compensating exemptions plus a history of opportunistic impositions. All of this adds to investment uncertainty. HMG should set itself to remove fiscal risk from the investment equation, by introducing a regime of simplified tax treatment for newly-lifted deposits of land-based hydrocarbons, to which it commits itself for at least the next ten years.

SOURCE






The real deniers of climate change:  Foolish doom-criers stand fast despite a chill

By David Deming

The Northern Hemisphere is experiencing unusually cold weather. Snow cover last December was the greatest since satellite monitoring began in 1966. The United Kingdom had the coldest March weather in 50 years, and there were more than a thousand record low temperatures in the United States. The Irish meteorological office reported that March “temperatures were the lowest on record nearly everywhere.” Spring snowfall in Europe was also high. In Moscow, the snow depth was the highest in 134 years of observation. In Kiev, authorities had to bring in military vehicles to clear snow from the streets.

Cold-weather extremes are a natural climatic variation, and this is exactly the point. If the world were experiencing a climate crisis owing to global warming, there shouldn’t be a single record low temperature anywhere in the world. The Associated Press has assured us, though, that this cold spell is not only consistent with a warming globe, it is actually caused by global warming. The proffered explanation is that cold weather in Europe is a result of melting sea ice in the Arctic. If this special pleading strikes you as unusually tendentious, it is all in the best tradition of explaining away ex post facto any weather event that appears to contradict the ruling paradigm.

In 2000, British climate researcher and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change contributor David Viner told the Independent that “within a few years, winter snowfall will become a very rare and exciting event.” Sadly, he predicted, “children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” In 2008, environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in the Los Angeles Times that “snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don’t own a sled.”

On Feb. 6, 2010, the eastern United States was hit by a blizzard (“Snowmageddon”) that produced from 20 to 35 inches of snow. Three days later, a second blizzard added 10 to 20 more inches of snow. In Washington, D.C., it was the highest seasonal snowfall since record-keeping began in 1888. According to the National Climatic Data Center, there were “hundreds of record snowfall accumulations” across the United States during the 2009-10 winter season. Within a few days, the blizzards in the eastern U.S. were dismissed as the natural consequence of global warming. On Feb. 12, National Geographic News informed us that “global warming is the main culprit behind this month’s eastern U.S. snowstorms.”

On Feb. 8-10 of this year, the eastern United States was again struck by a blizzard that produced record snowfall, hurricane-strength gusts of wind, and left 700,000 people without electric power. On Feb. 18, the Associated Press provided the oxymoronic excuse that global warming produces “less snow and more blizzards.” You can’t make this stuff up.

Portraying cold weather as the result of global warming is only one aspect of the circus. Gems that stand out include claims that earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes are caused or will be made worse by global warming. Last year, we were told that global warming could “turn us all into hobbits,” the mythical creatures from J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels.

Confronted by an endless avalanche of such nonsensical drivel, it seems almost foolhardy to argue facts. There has been no increase in mean global temperature for 15 years. Drought is not increasing, nor are wildfires. Tornadoes are not increasing in frequency or intensity. Routine hurricanes such as Sandy and Katrina have been offered as evidence of climate change, but worldwide hurricane activity is near a 40-year low. Over the past 20 years, sea level has risen by about 5 centimeters an ominous trend unless you’re aware that since the end of the last Ice Age, global sea level has risen 120 meters.

At the end of March, the areal extent of sea ice in the Arctic was 3 percent below the 30-year average. Sea ice in the Antarctic, however, was elevated 24 percent. Global sea ice was above the 30-year mean and higher than it was in March 1980. Only the naive can be so logical as to reason that “global” warming, or lack thereof, should be evaluated in terms of “global” conditions rather than local. A study published in Nature Geoscience on March 31 concluded that the increase of Antarctic sea ice is caused by you guessed it global warming.

With each passing year, it is becoming increasingly clear that global warming is not a scientific theory subject to empirical falsification, but a political ideology that has to be fiercely defended against any challenge. It is ironic that skeptics are called “deniers” when every fact that would tend to falsify global warming is immediately explained away by an industry of denial.

SOURCE





Senators highlight climate change on Earth Day; Inhofe not impressed

Democratic senators marked Earth Day yesterday by taking to the floor to discuss the threat of climate change and lament Congress' inability to curb it through legislation.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said his state is particularly affected by sea-level rise because its low average elevation puts more of its land at risk of disappearing.

"The water is rising, Mr. President, and for those of us from coastal states, and in particular for those of us in Delaware, it's rising fast," he said.

The amount of sea-level rise Delaware will have to grapple with this century varies from estimate to estimate, but most predict the Atlantic Ocean will rise by at least half a meter, which Coons said would be enough to submerge Dover Air Force Base. If higher estimates prevail, whole towns could be underwater, he said.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) decried congressional inaction on climate change, especially in light of storms like last year's Superstorm Sandy, which required more than $50 billion in aid to affected states.

"A number of my colleagues in Congress don't believe that human activities contribute to climate change," he said. "Many others, I suspect, don't talk about climate change because addressing it requires making some difficult choices. But let's be clear about this: Climate change is already costing us."

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said he had spent part of the weekend attending Earth Day events in his home state.

"It is very clear that the planet is getting warmer," Wyden said. "The fires are getting more serious and catastrophic, the storms increasingly brutal, and it's very clear that now Democrats and Republicans have to come together around this issue."

Not everyone was fired up about the Earth Day messages.

"They just don't give up, do they?" said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) when asked about the floor speeches. The chamber's most vocal skeptic of the science of climate change, Inhofe said again that he believed man-made global warming had been discredited by events like the so-called Climategate incident of 2009. Furthermore, he said, history had shown that climate change legislation was and would remain a no-go in the Senate.

"I think all these people who are going crazy on Earth Day need to take a deep breath and say, 'Wait a minute, there must be some reason that not even a third of the U.S. Senate would support this thing, because they don't think that it's true,'" Inhofe said.

SOURCE






Hold Fast, South Dakota – keep facile and destructive climate alarmism out of your schools!‏

An informative article in South Dakota's Argus Leader presents the dilemma facing education administrators in that State as they prepare to debate and decide on whether to adopt 'The Nest Generation Science Standards' as released earlier this month..

The Argus Leader article notes

"A core idea in the standards is that “human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (global warming).”

“That idea is not controversial among the 41 scientists and educators who wrote the standards. But many politicians consider man’s influence on global climate change to be unresolved.”

And goes on to note:

“Three years ago, the South Dakota Legislature passed a nonbinding resolution that urged public schools to take a “balanced approach” when teaching climate change. It asserted the science on the subject is unsettled, open to interpretation and prejudiced by politics.”

There is wisdom here.  But it is under threat from the new curriculum being offered to all States.  It may or may not be adopted in South Dakota:

"Mary Stadick Smith, deputy secretary for the Department of Education, said there is no timeline for the agency’s review of the standards.“We need to review them carefully and we’re going to move forward cautiously to make sure these are the right things for our students,” she said."

 She is being reasonable.

The simple-minded view that human contributions in particular, and rising CO2 levels in general, are major drivers of ‘global warming’ has received criticism for decades from scientists, and Mother Nature has helped them along by refusing to cooperate with the dramatically rising temperature plots produced, after a great deal of pampering, by global climate models (GCMs), and widely promoted by such as the IPCC.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL  and EYE ON BRITAIN.   My Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

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Lewandowsky has finally got his journal article published

Not in print yet but listed as "Early" by a reputable journal.  Abstract below.  It's the same old hokum with no approach to random sampling or any other kind of representative sampling. As such, his findings are not generalizable to any known population  -- and certainly not to climate skeptics.  Comments on the first pre-print also noted sampling problems, with an apparently very biased "sample" underlying the findings.

Sadly, unscholarly work such as that by Lewandowski is common in the academic literature, particularly so in Psychology. Psychologists normally study either white rats or their own students.  Results from such studies permit no valid generalizations to people at large but psychologists generalize anyway.

I once critiqued a psychology article that purported to study militarism using a sample of 47 Quakers.  I kid you not.  And in the medical literature I know of a case where a researcher studied the Mediterranean diet IN SWEDEN!

NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax
An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science

Stephan Lewandowsky et al.

Although nearly all domain experts agree that carbon dioxide emissions are altering the world’s climate, segments of the public remain unconvinced by the scientific evidence. Internet blogs have become a platform for denial of climate change, and bloggers have taken a prominent role in questioning climate science. We report a survey of climate-blog visitors to identify the variables underlying acceptance and rejection of climate science. Our findings parallel those of previous work and show that endorsement of free-market economics predicted rejection of climate science. Endorsement of free markets also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer. We additionally show that, above and beyond endorsement of free markets, endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the Federal Bureau of Investigation killed Martin Luther King, Jr.) predicted rejection of climate science as well as other scientific findings. Our results provide empirical support for previous suggestions that conspiratorial thinking contributes to the rejection of science. Acceptance of science, by contrast, was strongly associated with the perception of a consensus among scientists.

SOURCE





The quite fascinatingly stupid case of the minimum carbon price

The Wall Street Journal picks up on the quite fascinatingly stupid imposition by the current government of a minimum price on carbon permits. This could only have been done by people entirely ignorant of how a cap and trade system works: not a wholly desirable attribute in those supposedly running a cap and trade system:

"The European Parliament's rejection this week of the Commision's proposed carbon-permit price-fixing scheme is good news for economies across Europe—except for the U.K.'s, which is likely to suffer from the lower carbon-emissions prices that result...........The carbon price floor, which came into effect April 1, was supposed to increase investment in "green" energy projects in the U.K. by ensuring that carbon-permit prices could not fall below a certain level—starting at £16 per ton of carbon this year and rising to £30 per ton in 2020............The European Commission's idea for shoring up the price of carbon permits—withholding the supply of permits from the market—was voted down this week by the Parliament, and the permit price only fell farther. As of Thursday is stood at €2.80 (£2.40) a ton—just 15% of the Cameron government's floor."

I know, I know, many of you are more sensible than I am when it comes to this climate change thing. I'm still under the delusion that it's a problem we should do something about. But at least I do understand the role of price in a cap and trade system. In a carbon tax system, the other viable alternative action, it is the tax, the price of carbon emissions, that reduces them. In a cap and trade system it is instead the number of permits issued which reduces emissions. The price for such a permit is simply telling you how tough it is to meet that cap. Thus, the lower the price of the permit the better for all. It shows that reducing emissions is actually quite simple and quite cheap.

In this case, we're seeing that eliminating the marginal emissions necessary to stay under the cap costs less than £2.40 a tonne. Quite why the British government insists that everyone should pay £16 a tonne for it is known only to the more frenzied minds within it. In a cap and trade system a low price for permits is a good idea, a welcome sign that it's all less of a problem than we had thought.

As I say I do indeed think that carbon emissions are a problem that we ought to do something about. But I do also think that we should not use this as an excuse to do fascinatingly stupid things: like artificially raising a price that we are gloriously grateful about being low. The cost of reducing emissions that is.

SOURCE




Consensus And Controversy: New Report On The Global Warming “Battlefield”

By SINTEF,  the largest independent research organisation in Scandinavia



This report outlines the main positions and debates surrounding the literally hot topic of man-made global warming. Inspired by social studies of science and technology, the goal of the report is to document, describe and take stock of this potent scientific and public “battlefield” that plays out arguably some of the more pressing issues of our time.

Presenting two broad “ideal type” of positions involved in the science of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), the “consensus” and the “contrarian” perspectives, the report analyses both their cultural premises and places them in relation to the philosophy of science.

The report positively concludes that an alleged near unanimous scientific consensus on AGW, that “the science is settled”, is overstated. The report finds a robust, critical scientific discourse in climate related research, yet it highlights that a “consensus-building” approach to science might represent a politicised and unscientific belief in science – a belief in tension with the ethos of “normal science”.

The report calls for a continuing questioning, critical, and undogmatic public debate over man-made global warming, and a clearer separation between science and policy.

Introduction

The debate about man-made global warming is literally a hot topic. In fact it’s a discourse, and an empirical prospect, as some would argue, with quite a deadly intensity. This is a report about that debate. The title of the latest book by one of the central scientists in this field is telling: ”The hockey stick and the climate wars” (Mann 2012). This alleged ”climate war” is a scientific, political, economic, social and moral public field that is co-constructed and intersects in numerous ways, and which, to some extent at least, is characterized by the rhetoric of apocalypse, war and the communicative logic of the military trenches. Several other popular titles illustrate this: “The Suicidal Planet: How to prevent global climate catastrophe (Hillman 2007); “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity” (Hansen 2009); ”Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming” (Hoggan and Littlemore 2009); “The Climate Crisis” (Archer and Rahmstorf 2010); “Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence” (Parenti 2011).

The language of fear and constructions of “catastrophe” regarding global warming has been firmly established during the last two decades, and professor of climate change Mike Hulme argues that this language has been embellished in the post 9/11 era (2009: 66). A report by the Institute of Public Policy Research in London commented on a comprehensive study of climate change discourses in the British media from 2006/2007 the following way: “The alarmist repertoire uses an inflated language, with terms such as “catastrophe”, “chaos” and “havoc”, and its tone is often urgent. It employs a quasi-religious register of doom, death, judgement, heaven and hell” (2007: 55). Likewise, the widely popular “tipping point” metaphor signifies the possible coming of sudden apocalypse.

The goal of this report is to enter this more or less inhospitable battlefield and take stock of the debate about anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. This will be done by both describing and counting the particular actors, activities and technologies (of both enchantment and production) performing on the scenes of this “theatre of war”, and also by bringing to the table a more distanced and analytical perspective of the field as such, using as a guiding metaphor the (hopefully) neutral UN-observers’ approach to zones of conflict and tension. The zone we are entering here and its particular mix of morality, science, politics, and polemics can certainly be explosive, confusing, and condescending.

There are several reasons for writing such a report. Needless to say, the debate on anthropogenic global warming is of high significance and consequence to people and society. More specifically, because of all that is publicly written and said about the dangers of global warming, one could easily get the impression that the major scientific issues on the subject is settled, and that the debate is, or is being, closed and “black boxed” (Latour 1987). On the other hand, there seems to be vocal and persistent scientists and advocates that on various grounds resist the alleged consensus. These voices sometimes claim that their legitimate dissent is silenced and marginalised in both scientific and public discourse. Thus, an explicit goal of this report has been to give the dissenting or “contrarian” perspectives a serious treatment. Has the science of anthropogenic global warming reached such a level of consensus saturation and cohesion that the debate is, legitimately or not, closed and “black boxed”? To be able to answer this question the contrarian perspectives receives relatively more space in this report. This choice is also justified by the wide attention and institutional support and promotion the consensus perspective(s) have received, not least through the IPCC.

In a 2007 speech before the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, Gro Harlem Brundtland, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy on Climate Change (and also former Prime Minister of Norway, and former Director-General of the World Health Organization) conveyed the mixture of politics, polemics, science and morality when she, in relation to global warming, famously stated that: “So what is it that is new today? What is new is that doubt has been eliminated. The report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear. And so is the Stern report. It is irresponsible, reckless and deeply immoral to question the seriousness of the situation. The time for diagnosis is over. Now it is time to act.”

This statement has several significant and problematic aspects that will be discussed in this report. Has doubt been eliminated in the case of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming? Is it possible to eliminate doubt, and are efforts to do so pursuits pertinent to science and democracy in open societies? Is it immoral and reckless to question and doubt? The Brundtland statement displays both explicitly and implicitly key premises upon which the debate on global warming is being played out, and this report seeks to unfold some of the most important of these premises.

As noted above, in the American vernacular the particular geo-political arenas of war is often labelled a “theatre of war”. Even though the subject matter of this report is both deserving of, and demands to be taken highly seriously, the theatre metaphor is in itself also quite appropriate. The debate on global warming has a theatrical ambience to it on several levels. It abounds with stories of tragedy, untergang and apocalypse, of crisis, saviours and salvation, and in several of these also (unintended) genres of melodrama and comedy is not difficult to detect. It borrows several of its communicative scripts from classical narratives, often including plots of good and evil, of culprits and heroes, and of nature’s ultimate revenge upon the unlimited folly of a humanity of myopic fools and malfeasants.

The theatrical tropes of the debate is also squarely pinpointed by the fact that the play’s definitive number one villain and enfant terrible is the agent and actor (or rather “actant” in the vocabulary of actor-network-theory) that goes by the name of CO2. Carbon dioxide.

This gas is quite literally the “smoking gun” (Archer and Rahmstorf 2010: 11) of the play, metaphorically represented as something like the (Lord of The Rings’) Sauron in the saga of global warming, and believed to play the major role in causing anthropogenic global warming – with all its possible detrimental consequences. Yet CO2 is also a major actant in photosynthesis and the life-giving production of oxygen. With CO2 at the centrepiece of the play, inhabiting this radically doubleedged position of being both the gas of life and death, global warming as eschatological tales of humanity’s end-times, and its embedded counter narrative of secular (or rather quasi-religious) earthly resurrection and salvation through heroic deeds and technological measures, the drama of global warming attains the level of meaning that myths are made of.

1.1 The’four’myths’of’climate’change

To further explicate the cultural premises for understanding the debate about global warming, this section outlines the four core narratives, or myths, that arguably frame the discourse on climate change. [...]

More HERE



Belgian Scientists: Double Standards In Climate Change

The authors of this paper recently presented their views on climate science at the Royal Academy of Belgium. No French or Belgian newspaper was willing to publish their assessment. Questioning the impact of mankind on climate change is evidently still a taboo in the French-speaking world.

The conference on climate change held in Doha (Qatar) last December ended in failure once again. However, the news reported in the media about this 18th conference on climate change were fully in line with the well-rehearsed mantra: the Earth is warming up, human emissions of greenhouse gases are mainly to blame for this warming up, and we are approaching disaster. We have only one climate, but communication about it seems to be plagued by double standards.

For a few years now British, American, Italian or German media have given sceptical scientists the opportunity to express their opinions on the validity of the statements released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the organisation responsible for the official line of thought on climate matters. Nothing like that has been seen in the French or Belgian media which persist in portraying scientific sceptics, at best as sold out to the oil lobbies, at worst as troubled individuals, greedy for public recognition and fame and as such not worthy to be proponents in a serious debate.

The authors of this contribution were recently been granted the honour of presenting their point of view as climate sceptics at the Royal Academy of Belgium. During a series of six well-attended lectures we showed, among other things, that:

    The climate has always changed. This was true during ancient times and it has also been true since the beginning of the modern era. These climate changes have always been, and still are, independent of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere;

    During Roman times and the Middle Ages temperatures were observed well in excess of those currently experienced. From the 16th till the 19th century a cold period referred to as the “Little Ice Age” predominated. All these changes took place without mankind being held responsible. We believe that the increase in temperatures that occurred during a certain part of the 20th century is the result of a recovery from this cold period. These various events can be explained by a combination of warm and cold cycles of different magnitudes and duration. Why and how this happens is not yet fully understood, but some plausible explanations can be put forward;

    The so-called “abnormally rapid” increase in global temperatures between 1980 and 2000 is not unusual at all. There have in fact been several such periods in the past, during which temperatures rose in a similar manner and at comparable rates, even though fossil fuels were not yet in use;

    Temperature measurements do not necessarily correlate with a building up or a decrease in heat since heat variations are energy changes subject to thermal inertia. Apart from heat many other parameters have an influence on temperature. Moreover the measurement of temperatures is subject to numerous large errors. When the magnitude and plurality of these measurement errors are taken into account, the reported increase in temperatures is no longer statistically significant;

    The famous “Hockey-stick” curve, known as the Mann’s curve and presented six times by the IPCC in its penultimate report, is the result among other things of a mistake in the statistical calculations and an incorrect choice of temperature indicators, i.e. proxies. This lack of scientific rigour has totally discredited the curve and it was withdrawn, without any explanation, from subsequent IPCC reports;

    Even though they look formidably complex, the theoretical models employed by the climate modellers are simplified to the extreme. In fact there are far too many (known and unknown) parameters that influence climate change. At the moment it is impossible to take them all into account. The climate system is extremely complex, containing not only chaotic components but also numerous positive and negative feedback loops operating according to various different time scales. Which is why the IPCC wrote in its reports that: “…long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible” (page 774, Third report). This is very true. To this day all the climate predictions based upon these models have turned out to be totally incorrect. Strangely, nobody seems to care;

    The relationship between CO2 and temperature, obtained from the Vostok ice cores, shows that a building up of CO2 occurs 800 to 1000 years after an increase in temperature is observed. Hence the increase in the concentration of CO2 is a consequence of the warming of the climate, not its cause;

    But the coup de grâce to the “warmists’ theory” – certainly not yet visible in the French and Belgian media – comes from the observation that for the past fifteen years or so the global temperature of the Earth has remained constant. During the same period CO2 emissions have increased by far more than in the past, reaching an unparalleled record this year. Honest climate scientists admit that this observation is an embarrassing inconvenience for their theory. However, attempts to make us believe that the Earth is continuing to warm up persist. Will we have to wait for another twenty, twenty-five or thirty years for the global warming advocates to finally admit that there is no unambiguous correlation between the global temperature of the Earth and human-generated CO2 emissions?

    The claim that Hurricane Sandy is due to human CO2 emissions is totally unfounded and has been vigorously contested by numerous meteorologists. This regrettable distortion of the facts has been denounced in an open letter, addressed to the General Secretary of the UN and signed by more than 130 world-renowned scientists, including one of the present authors;

    Finally the “abnormal” melting of the Arctic Sea ice, that made the headlines of numerous journals during this summer, was also observed during previous decades. Amazingly the record high increase in Antarctic Sea ice that occurred at exactly the same time has been completely ignored by the very same media. Moreover, no mention has been made of the current, particularly rapid, regeneration of the Arctic Sea ice.

These ten statements are facts. We would be ready to accept that they could be wrong, if evidence were presented to scientifically disprove them. In the meantime, and in view of the lack of coherence and unreliability associated with the numerous predictions made by the IPCC, it is time to set the record straight. The public and politicians must be informed about the hypothetical character of the predominant ‘consensus’ on climate change, which has been uncritically disseminated in the media for more than ten years. If it ever existed, this so-called “climate change consensus” has now been totally undermined by the facts.

Despite the opportunity that we were given by the Royal Academy to raise this issue, we were unable to find any French or Belgian newspaper willing to publish this text. Questioning the impact of mankind on climate change is evidently still a taboo over here.

SOURCE





Met Office Now Admits Arctic Sea Ice Didn’t Cause Cold Winter

In a new report entitled “Why was the start to spring 2013 so cold?,” the chief of the UK MET Office now admits that decreased Arctic sea ice or “Arctic amplification” was not responsible for the unusually cold spring 2013 in Europe, finding “little evidence from the comparison between the cold spring of 1962 and this year that the Arctic has been a contributory factor in terms of the hypothesis” of “an increased probability of extreme weather events that result from prolonged conditions, such as drought, flooding, cold spells, and heat waves.”

According to the report, “Figure 13 shows the midtroposphere temperature anomalies for 1962 and 2013; over the Arctic they are almost identical and reflect the negative NAO pattern. It is hard to argue that Arctic amplification had changed the equator to pole temperature in a systematic way to affect the circulation this spring.”

Excerpt:

    There have been some suggestions that the rapid decline of Arctic sea ice, especially during summer, is responsible for this year’s cold spring. It is argued [8] that amplification of global warming over the Arctic is reducing the equator to pole temperature gradient, thereby weakening the strength of the mid-latitude jet streams. In turn this may lead to slower progression of upper-level waves and would cause associated weather patterns in midlatitudes to be more persistent, potentially leading to an increased probability of extreme weather events that result from prolonged conditions, such as drought, flooding, cold spells, and heat waves.

    This hypothesis remains contentious [9], however, and there is little evidence from the comparison between the cold spring of 1962 and this year that the Arctic has been a contributory factor in terms of the hypothesis proposed above. Figure 13 shows the midtroposphere temperature anomalies for 1962 and 2013; over the Arctic they are almost identical and reflect the negative NAO pattern. It is hard to argue that Arctic amplification had changed the equator to pole temperature in a systematic way to affect the circulation this spring.

SOURCE





Nicene Creed for Environmentalism

Every religion needs a creed. A set of beliefs that its followers can adhere to. A flag they can rally around in good times and bad.

An early example is the Nicene Creed, drafted in the fourth century to explain exactly what Christians believed.

With the coming of Earth Day, Americans are reminded once again that modern environmentalism has morphed into a religion. For example, we can expect to be reminded that today’s cold weather and floods are caused by “climate change,” the exact same phenomenon that supposedly caused last year’s hot weather and droughts.

So to help environmentalist believers focus, it’s time for them to have their own Nicene Creed. Feel free to read it at Earth Day celebrations, or any appropriate worship services:


"We believe in one Planet, Mother of us all: the Earth, fragile and endangered by pollution,  both seen and unseen.

We believe in one agency, the EPA,  the only thing standing between us and oblivion,  created by Washington to protect us, its god-like rulings must never be questioned, we understand its decisions are begotten, not made.

EPA is of one with the Father, the federal government. Through it all things were made, for us and for our salvation.

EPA hands down judgments as if from heaven: It was given power by Richard Nixon, has grown inexorably, and now has the ability to make men bend to its will.

EPA was crucified under George W. Bush; it suffered greatly but soldiered on.  And now has arisen again to write new regulations which must be treated as Scripture;

Under Barack Obama, EPA has ascended to new heights and is seated at the right hand of the Father, the federal government.

It will never cease attempting to judge people and companies, whether living or dead, and its kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Planet, the Earth, the giver of life, which may soon be completely destroyed by man-caused global warming.

Through the Father, the federal government, and the Son, the EPA, Earth is worshiped and glorified.

It has spoken through the Prophet, Rachel Carson.

We believe in climate change, regardless of what the evidence may show.

We acknowledge that humans are the source of all environmental sins.

We look for redemption thorough recycling,

And look forward to a completely regulated life to come.

Amen."


SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL  and EYE ON BRITAIN.   My Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here and here

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New Scafetta sea level paper separates and recognizes the natural oscillations behind background acceleration in tide gauge records

The result is that the real sea level accelerations are very small.  Some of the major papers claiming catastrophic sea level rise for the 21 century are strongly rebutted

Multi-scale dynamical analysis (MSDA) of sea level records versus PDO, AMO, and NAO indexes

N. Scafetta

Abstract

Herein I propose a multi-scale dynamical analysis to facilitate the physical interpretation of tide gauge records. The technique uses graphical diagrams. It is applied to six secular-long tide gauge records representative of the world oceans: Sydney, Pacific coast of Australia; Fremantle, Indian Ocean coast of Australia; New York City, Atlantic coast of USA; Honolulu, US state of Hawaii; San Diego, US state of California; and Venice, Mediterranean Sea, Italy. For comparison, an equivalent analysis is applied to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) index and to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index. Finally, a global reconstruction of sea level (Jevrejeva et al. in Geophys Res Lett 35:L08715, 2008) and a reconstruction of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index (Luterbacher et al. in Geophys Res Lett 26:2745–2748, 1999) are analyzed and compared: both sequences cover about three centuries from 1700 to 2000. The proposed methodology quickly highlights oscillations and teleconnections among the records at the decadal and multidecadal scales. At the secular time scales tide gauge records present relatively small (positive or negative) accelerations, as found in other studies (Houston and Dean in J Coast Res 27:409–417, 2011). On the contrary, from the decadal to the secular scales (up to 110-year intervals) the tide gauge accelerations oscillate significantly from positive to negative values mostly following the PDO, AMO and NAO oscillations. In particular, the influence of a large quasi 60–70 year natural oscillation is clearly demonstrated in these records. The multiscale dynamical evolutions of the rate and of the amplitude of the annual seasonal cycle of the chosen six tide gauge records are also studied.

Climate Dynamics, April 2013.





Glorious Lenin's birthday Earth Day, comrades

From Oleg the Armenian



A day of action to save the earth from farmers, ranchers, mining, timber, oil, chemical companies, and anyone else who seeks to utilize the planet's resources to enhance, enrich, and extend the lives of people worldwide.

Characterized by the media's massive awareness drive to (a) remind the world that U.S. capitalists are raping the earth, stealing its riches, and causing environmental problems; (b) advocate a greater government control of land, resources, and industries; and (c) increase the ever growing white male guilt levels. A great way to hijack spring cleaning and politicize the rebirth of nature.



SOURCE




The hate is never far beneath the surface with the Green/Left

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE





Stop Me Before I Buy Food

There is no problem too flimsy for California's nanny lawmakers, as witnessed by the many laws that state solons have proposed to keep constituents from getting free plastic bags at the grocery. Those teensy plastic bags are cheap. They're lightweight. They're energy-efficient. People use them a lot, which means that they can end up as litter. That can be ugly. So Sacramento Democrats keep concocting bills to outlaw their idea of blight -- not the homeless and not unemployment but bags. When Sacramento lawmakers see an opportunity to stick it to employed people who buy things, nothing can stop them.
State Sen. Alex Padilla has a bill similar to a bill by Assemblyman Marc Levine that would ban grocers and big retailers from giving away single-use plastic bags but would allow them to charge for recycled paper bags.

"The goal and purpose behind the legislation is to wean us off of single-use bags period," Padilla told me. Single-use bags, he explained, create litter and drive up recycling costs for local governments.

As if to prove that the law is aimed at working stiffs who pay taxes, Padilla's SB 405 even exempts participants in California's Women, Infants and Children supplemental food program by requiring stores to provide reusable grocery bags or recycled paper bags to WIC participants.

Can't WIC participants recycle? I asked Padilla. "That's done out of a concern, which some have raised, on the impact on low-income families," he explained.

When making laws, California's lawmakers often ignore the most abiding of all laws, the law of unintended consequences.

The American Progressive Bag Alliance, which represents makers of plastic bags, held a conference call Tuesday to warn of adverse consequences to the state's effort to combat global warming. (I like how the group calls itself "progressive" as if they were a bunch of San Francisco supervisors.) Paper bags require more water to make than plastic bags, Chairman Mark Daniels argued. Reusable bags save energy only if people wash and reuse them. Then there's the California jobs issue.

Padilla is confident that Californians will use reusable bags. Hence, his bill would help the environment.

A California Senate Environmental Quality Committee analysis of Padilla's SB 405 discusses the possible "public health implications," as reusable bags "can harbor bacteria such as coliform bacteria." Washing bags can help, the analysis noted; alas, a study found that 97 percent of Californians and Arizonans said they never wash their bags.

No worries. SB 405 would require reusable bags to include cleaning care instructions. Because people always read the many warnings and instructions mandated by state law -- yes, that was sarcasm -- the Padilla warning just might reduce the number of consumers who don't wash their bags so that -- what? -- maybe only 96 percent of consumers will be at risk of getting sick from their unwashed reused bags.

That's why the Romans cooked up the term "caveat emptor" (let the buyer beware).

It may well be that in another 10 years, Sacramento will have to come up with a new law to deal with a glut of unused reusable bags.

I look around California and see serious problems -- undereducated children, one of the country's highest unemployment rates, homeless people and violent crime. In San Francisco, the sidewalks often smell, and it's not because of single-use plastic bags.

To sum up, the Padilla bill probably would reduce litter, but it could increase greenhouse gases and could make people sick. And it most definitely would inconvenience consumers.

But in this state, if there's one group Sacramento can push around, it's not people who make the streets unseemly, and it's not the menaces to society; it's hardworking taxpayers who buy things. They are the softest target.

SOURCE




Electric car sales lose their spark: Just 3,600 are sold in Britain under scheme to give motorists £5,000 subsidy if they buy one

Electric car sales are set to slump below expectations despite efforts to support them with taxpayer subsidies, a report concludes today.

The report says motorists still find 'zero-emission' vehicles too expensive, less efficient and less practical than conventional petrol and diesel vehicles.

Only 3,600 electric vehicles have so far been sold under a scheme that gives buyers a £5,000 taxpayer subsidy. The Government has also allocated £300million to boost public charging points.

The report was commissioned jointly by the RAC Foundation and the UK Petroleum Industry Association.

It says: 'Sales of electric cars are set to fall far short of official expectations. Electric vehicles remain a controversial subject.'

Predictions for the future are also dismal despite official encouragement by Prime Minster David Cameron, Labour opposition and environmental groups.

The 154-page report called 'Powering Ahead - the future of low-carbon cars and fuels', added: 'Battery electric vehicles face major challenges in gaining market share because of their high prices and limited range.

'Breakthroughs in technology, particularly in the cost and performance of batteries are required before plug-in hybrid and battery electric vehicles can achieve significant market share.'

The report concedes 'Advocates will say that their market share has increased by hundreds of percentage points over the last years, and that this trend will continue.

'Critics will reply that this still only represents a small fraction of the market.'

But the RAC report highlights how the Goverment's advisory Committee on Climate Change has said it would be 'feasible and desirable' to have up to 1.7million fully electric and plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2020.

'But most industry analysts predict the number will be significantly lower', it notes.

'Even the more positive assessments foresee only 200,000 plug-in hybrid and pure battery powered cars being sold each year in the UK by 2020.

'Some experts think sales of these types of vehicle will actually be as low as 40,000,' it says citing a review for them by consultants Ricardo-AEA of authoritative market forecasts .

'To put these numbers in perspective, just over 2 million new cars were sold in the UK in 2012. In total there are about 29million cars on the road in the UK. '

Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said: 'It is more than two years since the Government introduced the plug-in car grant.

'Yet even with subsidies of £5,000 per vehicle available only 3,600 cars have been purchased through the scheme.

'This report concludes that the key to making electric cars a commercial success is a major advance in battery technology.

'Until then these vehicles are likely to remain too expensive and too impractical to penetrate the mass market.'

The subsidy scheme rises to more than £8,000 for vans. The 11 vehicles eligible for the subsidy include the Nissan Leaf and Vauxhall Ampera.

SOURCE




Australia:  Controversy over gas exploration

A FAILURE to embrace coal seam gas has prompted the Federal Opposition to accuse the New South Wales Government of destroying its major economic hope.

Speaking to an energy conference in Sydney on Thursday, Opposition spokesman for resources Ian Macfarlane said the state had to follow Queensland's lead in building up the industry.

Mr Macfarlane also criticised NSW for imposing too many restrictions on the gas sector.

He reportedly told the conference how NSW had dithered while Queensland had thrived.

"Instead of drilling 1000 wells each year, (NSW) built just one well in two years," he said.

Mr Macfarlane said the NSW government needed to spruik the industry and warn the public of potential job losses.

NSW has imposed stringent restrictions on the emerging CSG sector in the state after fierce opposition, particularly along its northern coastline.

CSG opponents claimed victory after two major gas companies Metgasco and Dart Energy stalled plans to develop in the region.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL  and EYE ON BRITAIN.   My Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here and here

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A new hockeystick!

I reproduce below a Warmist take on some recent research, followed by the journal abstract. It's interesting to note their finding that there was great variation in different regions of the earth.  Not much of what was observed of climate was global.

Their claim that there was no such thing as a Medieval warm period has been exhausively debated previously with worldwide evidence confirming the phenomenon so is unlikely to hold up.  One suspects that as with the last hockeystick (Marcott et al.) the authors will eventually admit that the finding is "not robust".

The point that the authors fail to stress, however, is that the warming of the last c.150 years is very slight  -- less than 1 degree Celsius -- and hence no basis for any alarm even if it continues, which it is not doing

UPDATE: Note also that thermometer records (much more accurate than the proxies used below) show that the warming took place over the last c.150 years, not just from 1971, as claimed below. The 1971 date complies with Warmist theory but not the facts

Warming over the 20th century produced the hottest global average temperatures in 1400 years, a major scientific research project has found.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Monday, an international team of scientists reconstructed temperatures over the past 2000 years using proxy records such as tree-ring measurements, pollen sampling, coral reefs, ice cores and historical records.

The study found that the global warming that began in the late-19th century reversed a long cooling trend across the planet that lasted well over 1000 years.

One of the authors of the paper, Dr Steven Phipps from the University of NSW's ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, said: "The striking feature about the sudden rise in 20th century global average temperature is that it comes after an overall cooling trend that lasted more than a millennium.
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"This research shows that in just a century the Earth has reversed 1400 years of cooling."

When the reconstructed temperatures are averaged across the planet, the best estimate of past temperatures finds 1971–2000 was warmer than any other time in nearly 1400 years.

But some of the seven different regions studied may have experienced similar or warmer temperatures at other times.

The paper says the findings do not consider uncertainty associated with the temperature estimates, and the reconstruction for each area covered different periods within the 2000 years, depending on the availability of data.

In Australia and Asia, the reconstructed temperature was highest during 1971–2000 than at any other period over the studied timelines.

The paper says the millennium-long cooling trend – and earlier warmer temperatures – were primarily driven by natural cycles in the Earth's orbit and some volcano and solar activity. But natural influences do not account for the dramatic global temperature rises of the 20th century, the report says.

Rising greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to human activity, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels and, while the recent warming is a global trend, other temperature anomaly periods – such as the Mediaeval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age – occurred only regionally.

Professor Jonathan Overpeck, visiting fellow of the Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research, said it confirmed that recent global and continental-scale warming was "very unusual" in recent Earth history and was driven mostly by human emissions of greenhouse gases.

SOURCE

Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia

By Moinuddin Ahmed et al.

Abstract

Past global climate changes had strong regional expression. To elucidate their spatio-temporal pattern, we reconstructed past temperatures for seven continental-scale regions during the past one to two millennia. The most coherent feature in nearly all of the regional temperature reconstructions is a long-term cooling trend, which ended late in the nineteenth century.

At multi-decadal to centennial scales, temperature variability shows distinctly different regional patterns, with more similarity within each hemisphere than between them.

There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age, but all reconstructions show generally cold conditions between AD 1580 and 1880, punctuated in some regions by warm decades during the eighteenth century.

The transition to these colder conditions occurred earlier in the Arctic, Europe and Asia than in North America or the Southern Hemisphere regions.

Recent warming reversed the long-term cooling; during the period AD 1971–2000, the area-weighted average reconstructed temperature was higher than any other time in nearly 1,400 years.

SOURCE

Bummer: According to Al Gore, we now have only three years "to avert a major [CO2-induced] catastrophe that could send our entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction"

No sign of it yet but that's prophecy for you

    [2006] "Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction . . ."

    This quote, spoken by Al Gore in his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” embodies the fear that is driving the modern environmental movement.

SOURCE




Celebrate Earth Day by Expanding Our Carbon Footprint

Every year I celebrate Earth Day with tips and ideas on how readers can expand their carbon footprint.  Below you’ll find the newest, top ten ways I recommend to expand your carbon footprint on May 22nd, 2013 Anno Domini.

10) Take unnecessary trips in your electric car.

Run that battery down to nothing. Electric cars need fuel and that fuel comes from power plants run mostly on coal. There’s no quicker way to expand your carbon footprint than using that “green” car and powering it up nightly.

9) Use a Metro Light Rail system instead of your car.

“When taken as a whole, then,” writes Cato’s Randal O’Toole, “most transit systems with light rail use more energy and emit more greenhouse gases per passenger kilometre than they did when they operated only buses. Most also use more energy and emit more carbon dioxide, per passenger kilometre, than typical automobiles.”

O’Toole says that light rail only appeals to: 1) downtown real estate interests; 2) Seimens, the light rail contractor; and 3) people who hate autos.

All aboard!

8) Move to Germany!

Yes, the model for renewable energy development in the industrial world has yielded impressive results. And they do it by subsidizing a new, technological breakthrough that’s coming to you very soon. Yes, very soon we’ll all be able to power our electric vehicles through coal-powered plants that supplement coal with the use of wood.

Mmmm. I don’t know about you, but I just love the smell of a wood fire wafting around the city.  It makes it smell like Christmas- or Winter Holi-Day for of you who are only “spiritual.” For atheists, the smell can remind you of December 25th, 2012 C.E.

7) Build a wind farm.

You too can find out what rural, depression era residents knew: The widespread adoption of wind power eventually will lead to the creation of a large, nationalized effort to electrify the country with more reliable, fossil or hydro-based electrical generation, just as they did with the Tennessee Valley Authority.  Since nuclear and hydro are impossible to permit, prepare for coal-fired and oil-fired plants to come out of mothballs.

There’s nothing like the smell of diesel wafting around a city to remind people that it’s Earth Day, C.E. Infinity or, for those of us who are heretics and apostates, May 22nd, 2013 A.D.  

6) Move into Al Gore’s house.

No house in America uses more fossil fuel than Big Al’s. According to one source Gore buys coal left over from the age of Charles Dickens, extracted by Welsh miners, who on average were paid less than a penny per day. It’s transported to America an old diesel powered bulk freighter named I’ll Always Be the Real Number 43.

Gore then uses the black, Welsh, rock to boil water that heats his 23 swimming pools, 271 waterfalls and keep his mountain streams at a constant 77 degrees for the benefit of his pet coy.

There are other ways moving in with Al can help expand our carbon footprint. Can our readers identify them all?  

5) Buy a Chevy Volt.

In addition to the massive amount of fossil-fuel generated electricity, that Volt uses the pollution from the manufacture and disposal of the $8,000 battery, there is one other ways that the Chevy Volt expands our earth’s environmental footprint.

While spontaneous engine fires so far have failed to consume an entire Volt, the winner of the 2012 European Journalist award for Car of the Year (C.E.), scientists estimate that a fully consumed GM green car would emit more carbon than another Al Gore run for the presidency.

There, I’ve done it: Gore 2016?

4) Blog about the vast right-wing conspiracy.

No new technology in the past 30 years has contributed to increasing fossil fuel emissions than the adoption of computer technology. From server farms, to high- speed networks, to computer chip enabled phones, tablets and PCs, the electronic age is consuming more and more electricity.

And since the U.S. has failed to adopt progressive, European renewable energy policies like burning wood in stoves, water heaters and furnaces, the leading sources of renewable hot air in the U.S. comes from blogging.

So plug in those IPhones, tablets and PCs. And write with indignation about Big Oil, while pretending to be green.

“Let’s Pretend,” as we know, is a very important keystone of many liberal policies.        

3) Support 420!

Quick: Does anyone know how much carbon is in a gram of weed? Does anyone who cares about weed, care about the environment? If you had to pick between smoking weed and the environment, which would you pick?

That’s right, you’d be eating brownies or drinking tea made from ganja.

Bunch of Tea Baggers.

2) Live in a tiny house.

OK, living in a tiny house will do nothing to expand your carbon footprint. But it would be really funny to see you guys blow out the fuse box of a mini house when you overload the electrical system charging you car, your tablet, your PC, your phone and your E-420 stick, while washing your clothes in a mountain stream.

Actually, I think ALL environmentalists should be forced to register as high-capacity B.S. magazines and forced to live in houses measuring only 200 square feet.

Although I think the right of free speech shouldn’t be abridged, no one should be allowed to dish out as much bull as they do and cause as much damage without some control over how quickly they re-load.    

1) Occupy Wall Street, again.  

Who can forget the day the people who Occupied Wall Street in order to save the world left behind 26 loads of garbage?

“I pick up garbage [for a living], and these were some of the worst smells I’ve ever experienced,’’ one sanitation worker told the NY Post.

Gives a whole new meaning to carbon footprint.

SOURCE





EU’s Empty Climate Policy Reflects the Impossibility of a Global Climate Treaty (which is great for humankind)

I’ve long argued that the European Union’s climate policy is full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing. During the last 20 years, EU officials have been quick to blather about their supposed leadership on climate, based on a putative “success” reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But this has always been a mirage. In fact, EU emissions reductions since its adoption of the Kyoto Protocol have been largely derivative of unintended consequences stemming from three events that have nothing today with climate mitigation policy. They are: (1) the shutdown of Soviet-bloc heavy industry; (2) the United Kingdom’s “dash to gas”; and (3) the Great Recession.

Meanwhile, EU’s actual climate policies have been ongoing failures. Take the EU’s goal of improving energy efficiency 9% by 2016 and 20% by 2020. Ex-EU bureaucrat whistleblowers recently told EUractiv that EU member states have relied on “tricks and abuses” to create the appearance that they are on track to achieve the targets. In January, the European Court of Auditors published a scathing audit of how EU member states spent almost $6.6 billion in subsidies to achieve the energy efficiency targets. From the press release:

“None of the projects we looked at had a needs assessment or even an analysis of the energy savings potential in relation to investments”, said Harald Wögerbauer, the ECA member responsible for the report, “The Member States were essentially using this money to refurbish public buildings while energy efficiency was, at best, a secondary concern.”

In order to better control the earth’s thermostat, the EU also has implemented a Soviet-style, green energy production quota of 20% by 2020. While member states have spent billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies in order to support the EU’s green energy goals, the EU Commission in late March warned that, “There are reasons for concern about future progress; the transposition of the directive [the green energy production quota] has been slower than wished, also due to the current economic crisis in Europe.”

In layman’s terms, this means that a lot of European countries spent a lot of money on expensive, green energy during the boom-time 2000s. But the boom has since gone bust, and these countries are now reducing unsustainable green energy subsidies. Because the green energy industry cannot compete without ever-more generous taxpayer give-aways, EU bureaucrats are justifiably concerned that their green energy production quota won’t be met.

But the EU’s biggest joke of a climate policy—by far—has been the Emissions Trading Scheme, a cap-and-trade. It’s actually failed twice. During its first phase, the over allocation of carbon rationing coupons led to windfall profits for utilities, but no actual emissions reductions, as the carbon price plummeted. This week, during its phase three, the Emissions Trading Scheme collapsed again, and this time, it appears to be down for good. According to an article from yesterday’s EUractiv,

"The EU’s flagship scheme for cutting carbon emissions suffered one of the most serious setbacks in its chequered history on Tuesday (16 April), when MEPs voted against a proposal to shore up the price of carbon in the Emissions Trading System (ETS)."

The proposed reform – known as “backloading” – aimed to reverse the plummeting price of carbon that has resulted from a surplus of permits in the ETS market. If successful, the reform would have resulted in the postponement of a series of auctions of carbon permits.

But MEPs in Strasbourg voted 334 against the reform, with 315 in favour, leading green campaigners to condemn the defeat as a “monumental failure” to mend the carbon trading market, which is Europe’s flagship climate policy and the biggest in the world. “They have lost all credibility on climate leadership,” said Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist."

EU bureaucrats shouldn’t fret over their climate policy failures, which were inevitable. In a anarchic order of global states defined by self-help, no block of countries could ever sacrifice on behalf the whole, especially if these countries’ sacrifice was expensive, yet would fail to solve the problem at hand. Realism similarly dooms any chance that there could ever be a global regime to fight climate change. According to the International Energy Agency, it would cost $45 trillion through 2050 to implement the climate goals adopted by the United Nations. There is ZERO precedent for burden sharing of that magnitude among the states of the world, save for global warfare. Despite the alarmists’ best efforts, global warming will never be perceived as a clear and present danger on par with world war. The upshot is that there’s a snowball’s chance in hell for a viable climate treaty.

As I and others have argued before, this guaranteed inaction is a great thing, because climate policies are worse for human kind than climate change.

SOURCE




Late blooming cherry trees in DC prove global cooling

Using Warmist logic they do anyway

As we have previously noted, the peak bloom date of DC’s cherry blossom trees has been delayed this year. While it was originally predicted to take place during March 23-26, it wasn’t until last Tuesday—April 9th—that it actually started, checking in 20 days later than last year.

Earlier peak blooms in past years have triggered a variety of global warming-related news articles. The Huffington Post characterized the cherry blossom trees as humanity-serving “global warming canaries” and the Washington Post suggested that the trees could one day be blooming in winter. However, this year’s late peak bloom date has not received the same treatment. As a matter of fact, we can’t find any examples of GW being discussed in connection with this year’s late peak bloom. (Are we the only exception?)

Well, today we can definitively announce that peak blooming actually began to plateau in 1998, much like what happened to global warming in general. After the unusually hot year of 1998 (which has been attributed to El Niño), temperatures have actually stopped rising.....

Washington Post’s Jason Samenow wrote an alarmist piece last year called “D.C.’s cherry blossoms have shifted 5 days earlier: what about global warming and the future?” in which he claimed that “there is no reason to think the shift towards earlier bloom dates will not continue”.  Samenow has yet to comment on this year’s absence of an earlier peak bloom, even though his article surely begs for a follow-up. What is Samenow, a plateau denier? Where’s he getting his funding from, the Spring in February Foundation?

Whatever conclusions are to be drawn from various climate change indicators, one thing is rather obvious: GW alarmists say next to nothing when the conclusive, definitive, slam-dunk evidence runs counter to their claims.

More HERE





Claims and facts about climate change in Australia

by Des Moore

The attempt to portray a picture of ever-rising temperatures continues despite the absence of supporting evidence. It is typified by frequent references to purported and much-repeated "records”, such as “the hottest start to April for eight years” and the supportive claims of “experts” with Nobel Laureate awards in a science, but not necessarily ones awarded for achievements in climate climate science.

For example, The Age recently ran a letter from Professor Peter Doherty denying  a  pause in temperature increases and arguing that a sceptical Spooner cartoon was based on misinformation. Doherty argued that climate scientists are not likely to make errors because they could be subjected to claims of scientific fraud. The professor, it should be noted, won his 1996 Nobel for advancing understanding not of climate or meteorology but the human immune system. (for Spooner's response to Doherty, see the bottom of this column)    

About a month ago Quadrant Online published my analysis of published temperature data, compiled with help from physicist Dr Tom Quirk, showing that the global average recorded a fall in February. The latest data (see the chart below from John Christy, University of Alabama at Huntsville, and drawn from satellite data) shows there was no change in March and confirms there has been no substantive change in annual global average temperatures between 2002 and 2012. I also pointed out that there has been no change worth noting in the 16 years from 1998, while adding that account needs to be taken of the effects attributable to the “high” El Nino activity of that year.



For Australia, following the fall in February, there was an increase in average temperatures in March, but the increase did not fully offset the February fall, and the March level could scarcely be described as “high” (see the chart below). As I have previously pointed out, the failure in recent years to witness a coincidence of temperature and emission increases – supposedly the basis of the scientific consensus -- is nothing new, also having been evident in earlier years.



It remains the case that, while there was an increase in average temperature in the Australian summer (defined as December, January and February), whether that summer temperature was a recent “record” depends on the data source used. Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) data shows that the average temperature in the summer just passed was fractionally higher than in previous summers of the past 25 years or so, while satellite data shows the average was lower than a number of previous summers (see the chart below).



In my earlier Quadrant analysis I drew attention to the Angry Summer report of March 4 by the government’s Climate Commission and to one of the false claims by its head, the paleontologist Tim Flannery, who said: “If you look at the whole Earth system, you can see that strong warming trend”.

Earlier this month the Commission published yet another report with the following heading and introduction:

"THE CRITICAL DECADE: Extreme weather

How quickly and deeply we reduce greenhouse gas emissions will greatly influence the severity of extreme events our children and grandchildren experience. But due to additional greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the climate system now contains significantly more heat compared to 50 years ago. The severity and frequency of many extreme weather events are increasing due to climate change. Extreme weather has always occurred.

This means that all extreme weather events are influenced by climate change.”

The way in which the phrase “climate change” is used here is, of course, nonsensical: extreme or other weather events must reflect some change in climate. The question is what is causing the change? More substantially, is there evidence that extreme weather events have increased over the past 50 years? If so, does this reflects increased emissions of greenhouse gases?

The IPCC published a report in March 2012 on “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation”, but this did not advocate quick and deep reductions in greenhouse gases.  While it concluded that “climate change has led to changes in climate extremes such as heat waves, record high temperatures and, in many regions, heavy precipitation in the past half century”, it also noted that while “some extreme weather and climate events lead to disasters, others do not”. The report suggested that “policies to avoid, prepare for, respond to and recover from the risks of disaster can reduce the impact of these events and increase the resilience of people exposed to extreme events”. In short, its authors advocated policies of adaptation to climate change, rather than the urgent reduction of emissions.

“The main message from the report is that we know enough to make good decisions about managing the risks of climate-related disasters. Sometimes we take advantage of this knowledge, but many times we do not,” said Chris Field, Co-Chair of IPCC’s Working Group II, which together with Working Group I produced the report. “The challenge for the future has one dimension focused on improving the knowledge base and one on empowering good decisions, even for those situations where there is lots of uncertainty,” he said.

“The IPCC released the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the report in November, 2011. The full report ... provides the basis for the key conclusions first presented in the SPM. It offers a greater understanding of the human and economic costs of disasters and the physical and social patterns that cause them. It enables policy-makers to delve into the detailed information behind the findings to examine the material on which the IPCC based its assessments.”

In adopting an adaptation approach to extreme weather problems, the IPCC report on extreme weather is clearly not on the alarmist track being followed by the Climate Commission. Could the Commission be accused of committing scientific fraud?

It claims to have been “established to provide all Australians with an independent and reliable source of information about the science of climate change, the international action being taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the economics of a carbon price”. It also claims to be “made up of experts from a range of fields relevant to climate change and is not subject to Government direction. The Commission is also supported by a Science Advisory Panel.”

A case can clearly be made that, at the very least, the Commission is not a reliable source of information even by the low standards of the IPCC. The status of the Commission was discussed last Sunday in an interview by Andrew Bolt with Professor Bob Carter (the transcript can be found here), who pointed out that none of the Commissioners is an expert on climate science.

The best that might be said of their expertise is that they make fit correspondents for the letters page of The Age, which perhaps says even more than their lack of credentials about the degree of seriousness with which their utterances should be taken.

FOOTNOTE: In the following day's Age, Spooner took Professor Doherty to task:

"I am concerned as to why Professor Peter Doherty (Letters, 8/4) does not consult the authorities relied on by the IPCC when lecturing deniers about global warming since 1997. I refer him to an interview with Professor Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (BBC, 13/2/2010); James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in his paper of March 28, 2013; the UK Met office (Hadcrut 4) graph published 24/12/12 and acknowledged by none other than Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC (Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 22/2/2013)".

None of these sources oppose the possibility of dangerous climate change but they all confirm there has been no statistically significant increase in annual global temperatures for between 12 and 17 years. If carbon dioxide emissions have risen about 8 per cent for the last 16 years, why haven't temperatures risen in line with all the computer model projections?

John Spooner, The Age

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL  and EYE ON BRITAIN.   My Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here and here

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