Junkscience.com -- Archives, April 2010

Small businesses will bear a significant burden under Obamacare. New regulations, mandates, taxes and numerous costs will impact how companies operate.

The National Federation of Independent Business counted all of these new requirements and came up with 25 ways the new health care law changes life for business owners over the next 10 years. Its video puts some perspective on what’s to come in the years ahead.

Earlier this week Heritage’s John Ligon revealed four ways Obamacare penalizes small businesses: higher health care costs, an ineffective small business tax credit, higher regulation compliance costs, and Medicare taxes on “flow-through” and investment income.

Medium-sized businesses between 50 and 199 employees don’t escape Obamacare’s taxes either. Ligon estimates that employees will ultimately pay the biggest price with lower wages, discontinued hiring or even loss of employment. (The Foundry)

According to Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve and a senior economic advisor to President Obama, an European-style Value Added Tax (VAT) would be a good idea for the United States but is too unpopular to be under consideration “now or for the indefinite future.”

On the one hand, Mr. Volcker’s public acknowledgment of the VAT’s unpopularity shows he is a MOTO – a master of the obvious. Even this early in the debate, 85 United States Senators stood up on April 15 to oppose a VAT.

On the other hand, Volcker’s recognition of the VAT’s enduring unpopularity throws cold water on the big-government crowd who hope to fund their massive spending dreams with VAT revenues. For example, David Ignatius writes in The Washington Post today that the sensible response to “our ballooning federal deficit” is a VAT.

Ignatius goes on to write that “by ruling out a VAT when it could keep the federal deficit in check, politicians have all but guaranteed that the debt crisis, when it comes, will be more damaging.” Not really. According to the President’s own projections revenues will soon recover to normal levels, and so the deficit problem is clearly and solely a spending problem. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

The President’s deficit commission met yesterday to begin its task to address the mounting fiscal crisis facing the nation. As we show in our 2010 Budget Chart Book, the estimated federal deficit in 2010 will be $1.54 trillion, and spending on entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) and interest on the federal debt is slowly squeezing out other programs. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) outlined a way forward for the commission yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, and while we agree with Leader Hoyer on the gravity of the nation’s financial situation, his analysis was lacking in the following ways:

File this one away for 2012, or perhaps simply this fall, as Democrats are preparing to run on their record (such as it is) on the economy. Ed Morrissey, and in the video above, Mark Levin, catches the president saying, “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

But what exactly is that “certain point?” I think we can safely assume that it’s at least one dollar over $5.5 million, which the president earned last year.

I wonder if he will pass on his advice to the city of San Francisco, where according to the Chronicle, “More than 1 in 3 of San Francisco’s nearly 27,000 city workers earned $100,000 or more last year — a number that has been growing steadily for the past decade.”

WASHINGTON - More Americans got vaccinated against influenza in the past season than ever before, but too few people are seeking vaccines, U.S. health experts reported on Thursday.

Publicity surrounding the pandemic of H1N1 swine flu probably drove people to clinics, the team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

Separately, Quest Diagnostics reported that H1N1 has almost completely displaced seasonal flu strains this year and still continues to be active in the U.S. south.

U.S. health experts are trying to get more Americans to seek flu vaccines every year. In an average year, influenza kills about 36,000 and puts 200,000 or so into the hospital. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - Despite some concerns that growth hormone therapy in children could present a cancer risk, a new study finds no clear evidence that it does -- at least in the shorter term.

The findings, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, come from an international database set up in 1987 by pharmaceutical company Pfizer, Inc., to monitor the long-term safety of growth hormone therapy for children with impaired growth. (Reuters Health)

WASHINGTON - Fish oil, exercise and doing puzzles may all be good for the brain but there is no strong evidence that any of these can prevent Alzheimer's disease, an expert panel concluded on Wednesday.

Nor can any other supplements, drugs or social interaction, the independent panel meeting at the National Institutes of Health outside Washington concluded.

The group of experts looked at the dozens of studies that have suggested ways to prevent Alzheimer's - a devastating and incurable breakdown of the brain - and found none were strong enough to constitute proof. (Reuters)

The Liberals want to have a $40-million food program to support existing food programs

The new Liberal national food policy is not so much a policy as a lovely five-page brochure—four if you don’t count the full-page photo of bright-red tomatoes—listing several no doubt focus-grouped talking points. My favourite line is where it says a Liberal government will spend “$40-million over four years to implement a new federal Healthy Start program to support existing programs helping 250,000 children from low-income families access healthy, homegrown foods.”

That last bit is peculiar. Do we want healthy foods for poor kids only if they’re home-grown? Or is it that only homegrown food is healthy (a view we hope foreigners don’t take of our own multi-billion food exports)?

The Supreme Court announced this week that it will consider the constitutionality of a California law that prohibits selling grotesquely violent video games to minors. Given the court's' surprise ruling this month that kitten-crushing videos and the like are a protected form of free speech, one might expect CGI cruelty to get a First Amendment nod, too. But savvy court-watchers suspect that since the question is one of exposing youth to cartoon violence, California just may be allowed to treat M-rated video games like cigarettes.

Then again, if California really wants to rein in kids' consumption of electronic entertainment, the state should simply note that screen time (whether on video games, the Internet or plain old TV) contributes mightily to the sedentary state of our children. Officials could then simply climb on a regulatory bandwagon—the fad for fighting fat—that makes the feds' effort to spank financiers look timid and half-hearted.

This week's innovation in gastronomic regulation comes from California, where the commissars, sorry, commissioners, of Santa Clara County passed an ordinance banning restaurants from giving out toys with meals of more than 485 calories. This no doubt came as a relief to Marc Ambinder, who complains in the May issue of the Atlantic that restaurant chains have (gasp!) turned food into entertainment: "We barely blink at fast-food commercials that lure kids by offering free toys with their meals." Well, Santa Clara is blinking up a storm. (Eric Felten, WSJ)

Are we becoming a nation too fat to defend ourselves?

It seems incredible, but these are the facts: As of 2005, at least 9 million young adults -- 27 percent of all Americans ages 17 to 24 -- were too overweight to serve in the military, according to the Army's analysis of national data. And since then, these high numbers have remained largely unchanged.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show obesity rates among young adults increasing dramatically nationwide. From 1998 to 2008, the number of states reporting that 40 percent or more of young adults are overweight or obese has risen from one to 39.

While other significant factors can keep our youth from joining the military -- such as lacking a high school diploma or having a serious criminal record -- being overweight or obese has become the leading medical reason recruits are rejected for military service. Since 1995, the proportion of potential recruits who failed their physical exams because of weight issues has increased nearly 70 percent, according to data reported by the Division of Preventive Medicine at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

We consider this problem so serious from a national security perspective that we have joined more than 130 other retired generals, admirals and senior military leaders in calling on Congress to pass new child nutrition legislation. (Washington Post)

Since ancient times, one of the world’s most terrifying ailments has been caused by what the Bible calls “the fiery serpent,” now known as Guinea worm.

Guinea worms grow up to a yard long inside the body and finally poke out through the skin. They cause excruciating pain and must be pulled out slowly, an inch or two a day. In endemic areas like this district in Lakes State of southern Sudan, people can have a dozen Guinea worms dangling from their bodies.

Yet this is a good news column.

This district is, in fact, one of the last places on earth with Guinea worms. If all goes well, Guinea worms will be eradicated worldwide in the next couple of years — only the second disease ever to be eliminated, after smallpox.

For the last 24 years, former President Jimmy Carter has led the global struggle against the disease. When he started, there were 3.5 million cases annually in 20 countries. Last year, there were fewer than 3,200 cases in four countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali and Sudan. The great majority of the remaining cases are here in southern Sudan. (Nicholas D. Kristof, NYT)

Flood victims have condemned the Environment Agency for spending £324,000 on a 'fish ladder' rather than improving flood defences.

Villagers have been campaigning for flood barriers to protect their homes but their pleas have so far fallen on deaf ears.

Some of the residents have only just moved back into their homes after the floods of 2007 in the village of Darfield, near Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

Now hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent to create a herringbone fish ladder out of huge boulders on the River Dearne.

Fish ladders are used to help migrating fish pass around barriers such as dams or locks by swimming and leaping up a series of relatively low steps

John Bannister, a Darfield flood committee member, said: "A massive crane has to lift these boulders some of which are the size of a family saloon car.

"The project has gone on for months with hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on the scheme. I can't believe this mass of boulders in the river won't affect the water level.

"Everyone here feels defeated. Do the powers that be care more for fish than people? That's what it seems to come down to. (TDT)

Springfield hears both sides of the GMO debate

Your favorite fruits and vegetables could be hazardous to your health, says Jeffrey Smith, executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology.

Smith, a leading spokesperson on the health dangers of genetically modified foods, brought his message to Springfield last weekend, as the keynote speaker for the Earth Day celebration. Smith also visited the Capitol April 23, urging legislators to enact statewide laws banning products containing genetically modified ingredients.

Genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, are engineered by scientists, who take genes from one species and insert them into another, in order to achieve desired traits, like herbicide resistance or the ability for a plant to produce its own pesticides.

Many commercial crops are genetically modified, such as corn, soy and zucchini, according to the Institute for Responsible Technology. Meat, dairy and eggs may also contain GMOs, if they’re from animals that have eaten feed containing genetically modified corn and soy.

Consumers need to be aware of the dangers of genetically modified foods, Smith says. He believes the industry is on the verge of a “tipping point,” which will push genetically modified foods out of the market. It’s simply a matter of education, he says. (Illinois Times)

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has ordered that a million abandoned barrels of Soviet-era fuel be removed from the Arctic because they are polluting the environment.

Putin visited the Russian archipelago of Franz Josef Land, 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole, as part of Russia's drive to reassert its presence in the resource-rich region, now opening up to commercial exploration because of melting ice.

Putin told state-run Rossiya 24 television in the Arctic he was shocked to see stocks of "abandoned barrels of fuel scattered all the way to the horizon." It was not immediately clear when Putin made the trip.

"The decrease in military activity after the collapse of the USSR has left this dump which we see now. The pollution level is six times higher than normal. What we need to do now is to organize a sweeping cleanup of the Arctic," he said.

He said fuel may leak into the Arctic Ocean from the rusty barrels as temperatures slowly rise.

An increase of up to 4 degrees Celsius has been felt across the Arctic in the past 30 years. While some scientists put it down to fluctuating weather patterns, environmentalist groups say it is caused by global warming due to human activity. (Reuters)

World leaders have failed to prevent the extinction of species despite pumping millions of pounds into nature conservation, according to a new study. (Louise Gray, TDT)

In April 2010, a sea-fisherman gave testimony about ocean “acidification” before the US Senate. The list of supposed effects of ocean “acidification” included in the fisherman’s testimony seems to have been written for him by climate-extremist lobbyists.

In terms of PR, advocates of open carry are one of the more tone-deaf groups in the country.
April 29, 2010
- by Bob Owens

In shooting circles, a “negligent discharge” is the unintentional firing of a weapon, almost always as the result of careless behavior. For those of us who subscribe to this point of view, there are no such thing as gun accidents, just incidents of gun negligence.

One of the more common kind of negligent discharges occurs when a shooter attempts to holster a pistol with his or her trigger finger still inside the trigger guard. As the shooter pushes the gun into the holster, the side of the holster comes in contact with the finger, driving it back into the trigger. The resulting sharp report is stunning, and is soon followed by the pain that comes from the bullet carving a crease down the outside of the shooter’s leg on its way to the ground. In somewhat rarer instances, shooters with their finger in the trigger guard sometimes manage to shoot themselves in the buttocks … and you have every right to read that with your best Forrest Gump accent.

Open carry advocates, as a gun rights subgroup, are the continuing negligent political discharge of the shooting community. Their disastrous nationwide campaign to normalize the open carrying of firearms alienates Americans from coast to coast, even among those who champion the concealed carry of weapons. (PJM)

If you try to sweep your problems under the rug, they'll go away, right? Michael Mann, a Penn State professor and a central figure in the Climategate scandal and best known for his "hockey stick graph" hopes so. (Jeff Poor, NewsBusters)

No one can accuse Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli of shying from controversy. In his first four months in office, Cuccinelli directed public universities to remove sexual orientation from their anti-discrimination policies, attacked the Environmental Protection Agency, and filed a lawsuit challenging federal health care reform. Now, it appears, he may be preparing a legal assault on an embattled proponent of global warming theory who used to teach at the University of Virginia, Michael Mann.

In papers sent to UVA April 23, Cuccinelli’s office commands the university to produce a sweeping swath of documents relating to Mann’s receipt of nearly half a million dollars in state grant-funded climate research conducted while Mann— now director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State— was at UVA between 1999 and 2005.

If Cuccinelli succeeds in finding a smoking gun like the purloined emails that led to the international scandal dubbed Climategate, Cuccinelli could seek the return of all the research money, legal fees, and trebled damages.

“Since it’s public money, there’s enough controversy to look in to the possible manipulation of data,” says Dr. Charles Battig, president of the nonprofit Piedmont Chapter Virginia Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment, a group that doubts the underpinnings of climate change theory. (Courteney Stuart, The Hook)

The U.S. Energy Information Administration will take up to eight weeks to analyze the stalled Senate climate bill after receiving most of its details from the office of Senator John Kerry, a spokesman said on Thursday.

Elements of the bill that is aimed at reducing greenhouse gases were delivered to the EIA both verbally and by hard copy.

"We received details. It's not a copy of legislation, but it was specific enough to allow us to go forward with our modeling efforts," said Jonathan Cogan spokesman for the EIA, the independent statistics arm of the Department of Energy.

Because of the way of it was delivered some stakeholders such as environmentalists and utility lobbyists are openly wondering if the bill is complete, despite six months of work on it by Kerry, a Democrat, and Senators Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, an independent.

Kerry also has been careful not to commit any of the bill's details to paper but some of its key features have been leaked by sources. (Reuters)

Give early detection a bigger sliver of what we spend on trying to prove climate change and we might be safer. (Mark Mills, Forbes)

Costly cap-and-trade system isn't the political winner it once was.

It was always going to be an uphill battle for the U.S. Congress to pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation in an election year. But with Senator Lindsey Graham's likely decision to withdraw his support from the landmark bill, the prospects are now virtually zero.

That is not just because Mr. Graham had been the only Republican senator to endorse a broad approach to tackling global warming. It's because the climate, politically speaking, has changed dramatically since June when the House of Representatives narrowly passed a climate cap-and-tax bill. President Obama's decision to make immigration reform a higher priority in the Senate legislative calendar is a recognition of this reality: Cap-and-tax is dead. And not just in Washington either.

All over the globe, politicians of different ideological stripes are reconsidering the costs of slashing greenhouse gases to combat the speculative problem of global warming. In France, the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy has shelved its carbon-tax plans. In Canada, cap-and-trade is stalled in legislative limbo. In Japan, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is struggling to pass an emissions trading scheme. In China and India, leaders insist they won't sign a global agreement to cap emissions, which they see as an economic suicide pact. Even in New Zealand, pressure is building on the conservative government of John Key to delay the implementation of a cap-and-trade plan.

The changing climate is most evident in Australia. This week, the Labor government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd decided to shelve its own proposed cap-and-trade for three years. Mr. Rudd had discovered that after the Senate had twice rejected his centerpiece policy of cutting carbon emissions by 5% to 15% from 2000 levels by 2020, it would defeat the bills in a third vote in several weeks. It is believed that Labor's retreat from climate change will save Canberra about 4 billion Australian dollars ($3.7 billion) in the federal budget on May 11. (Tom Switzer, WSJ)

ONLY a few months ago Kevin Rudd, Australia’s prime minister, was painting a dark picture about looming storm surges, rising sea-levels, a fall of over 90% in irrigated farming and a drop of nearly 2.5% in GNP over this century unless Australia took action against climate change. “Action now,” he declared. “Not action delayed.” But this week Mr Rudd climbed down from what seemed a defining pledge of his leadership. Instead of using this year to get parliament to adopt an emissions-trading scheme that would put a price on carbon pollution, action will now be delayed until 2013 at least. Some wonder if it will ever happen at all. (The Economist)

Leading journalists also have egg on their faces, argues James Paterson — but conservative Liberal sceptics led by Nick Minchin are vindicated

Kevin Rudd’s unceremonious burial of his no-longer-beloved emissions trading scheme this week marks one of the most dramatic policy turnarounds in modern Australian political history. And his promise not to resurrect it until 2013 demonstrates how fundamentally the politics of this issue have changed. From languishing in political oblivion, the Liberal party’s decision to oppose the ETS and change its leader has rehabilitated its electoral fortunes. But it nearly didn’t happen. (Spectator)

KEVIN Rudd's principal answer to climate change, an emissions trading scheme, was doomed to failure because Labor's approach put symbolism before substance and politics before policy. (Dennis Shanahan, The Australian)

Penny Wong’s estimate of the impact on power prices of Labor’s revamped Renewable Energy Target is vastly at odds with industry and her own chief bureaucrat.

Minister Wong says the impact will be $4 a year for households.

The Aluminium industry, in its submission to the Minister’s Discussion Paper on the second Rudd Government revamp of the RET in a year, says prices will rise significantly under the scheme, and by almost as much as if the CPRS had proceeded.

Origin Energy Chief Executive Grant King recently said that the reliance on wind energy to achieve the RET will require major new transmission and distribution networks, as well as construction of back-up baseload power to deal with the unreliability of wind, that will be major factors in a 200% to 300% increase in power costs by 2020.

NSW’s IPART says power prices will rise by between 20% and 42% as a result of the RET – down from an impact of 42% to 60% with the RET and the CPRS. (Senator Ron Boswell)

UNITED NATIONS -- At least $35 billion to $40 billion of annual investments will be required to link all people in the world with modern forms of energy by 2030, a goal that must be reached while reducing heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, a U.N. advisory group recommended yesterday.

Fifteen billion dollars of this should be in the form of annual grants donated by rich nations to expand electricity access to the poor. And the world should not only achieve universal access to energy by 2030, but it should do so while increasing efficiency by 40 percent overall, or 2.5 percent per year. Such steps will be necessary to not only reduce extreme poverty but also combat climate change. (ClimateWire)

by William Yeatman

April 28, 2010 @ 11:10 am

On April 16^th, the Cooler Heads Coalition and the Heritage Foundation hosted a briefing on Climategate by Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies, Cato Institute and Joseph D’Aleo, Executive Director, ICECAP, and Consulting Meteorologist.

The scientific case for catastrophic global warming was already showing signs of weakening when the Climategate scientific fraud scandal broke in November 2009. This release of thousands of computer files and emails between leading global warming scientists showed evidence of data manipulation, flouting of freedom of information laws, and attempts to suppress publication of research that disagreed with the alarmist “consensus.”

Climategate has raised many questions about the reliability of key temperature records as well as the objectivity of the researchers and institutions involved, but it is far from the only global warming-related controversy. It has been followed by revelations that some of the most attention-grabbing claims in the 2007 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report - the supposed gold standard of climate science - were simply made up. Before laws regulating energy use are enacted that could well cost trillions of dollars, it is crucial to understand the extent to which the alleged scientific consensus supporting global warming alarmism has been discredited by these scandals. Join us for a discussion featuring two scientists who have closely studied Climategate.

Last month, while the American media were distracted by the health care vote in Congress, the British Parliament published the results of its investigation into East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit (CRU) that has been at the center of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) controversy. It seems that many were hoping that no one would read this report, at least not beyond the milquetoast executive summary. (Dexter Wright, American Thinker)

There has been considerable discussion of the 2007 IPCC reports and its errors and exclusion of peer reviewed scientific perspectives that differ from those of the IPCC lead authors (e.g. see Judy Curry’s perceptive discussion of this topic). In 2007, I documented this clear bias in the IPCC reports in two posts (the second one will appear tomorrow).

I have reproduced this demonstration of bias below, as it is directly relevant to the current well-justified concerns on the accuracy, balance and value of the 2007 IPCC WG1 report.

Al Gore has a modest new home in California, because every eco-cult leader needs a mansion on each coast. Australia’s government dropped emissions trading like a hot rock because the ‘climate crisis’ can wait until after the pesky election, and CNN emulates ancient cultures and is fearful of a vengeful planet. (Daily Bayonet)

In September last year, the World Meteorological Organisation hosted some 1,500 climate scientists at the much unheralded and poorly reported World Climate Conference 3 in Geneva, Switzerland. WCC3, an important precursor to “Copenhagen”, was called primarily to discuss, and advise on, the relative importance of shorter term climate cycles versus longer term trends. It succeeded in showing both the true depth of the divergence of views among the world’s top climate scientists, and how uncertain are predictions about global warming. Read more... (SPPI)

The poles control much of our global climate. Giant ice sheets in Antarctica behave like mirrors, reflecting the sun's energy and moderating the world's temperatures. The waxing and waning of these ice sheets contribute to changes in sea level and affect ocean circulation, which regulates our climate by transporting heat around the planet.

Despite their present-day cold temperatures, the poles were not always covered with ice. New climate records recovered from Antarctica during the recent Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) "Wilkes Land Glacial History" Expedition show that approximately 53 million years ago, Antarctica was a warm, sub-tropical environment. During this same period, known as the "greenhouse" or "hothouse" world, atmospheric CO2 levels exceeded those of today by ten times.

Then suddenly, Antarctica's lush environment transitioned into its modern icy realm. In only 400,000 years – a mere blink of an eye in geologic time – concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreased. Global temperatures dropped. Ice sheets developed. Antarctica became ice-bound.

How did this change happen so abruptly and how stable can we expect ice sheets to be in the future? (Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Management International)

Plants remain an effective way of tackling global warming despite emitting small amounts of an important greenhouse gas, a study has shown.

Research led by the University of Edinburgh suggests that plant leaves account for less than one per cent of the Earth's emissions of methane –which is considered to be about 25 times more effective than carbon dioxide at global warming.

The results contrast with a previous scientific study which had suggested that plants were responsible for producing large amounts of the greenhouse gas.

The findings confirm that trees are a useful way of offsetting greenhouse gas emissions, as their output of small amounts of methane is far outweighed by their capacity to store carbon from the atmosphere in their leaves, wood and bark.

To reach their conclusions, scientists created artificial leaves made from plant pectin and measured the methane produced when the leaves were exposed to sunlight.

They combined their results with satellite data on the leaf coverage of the Earth's surface, ozone in the atmosphere, cloud cover, temperature, and information on sunshine levels to help work out the amount of methane produced by all plants on Earth.

Their results refine previous studies that had indicated that the quantity of methane produced by plants might have been much higher. Future research will examine methane production from parts of plants other than leaves, and the amount of methane given off by different species of plants in different regions of the Earth.

Dr Andy McLeod, of the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences, said: "Our results show that plant leaves do give rise to some methane, but only a very small amount – this is a welcome result as it allays fears that forestry and agriculture were contributing unduly to global warming. (University of Edinburgh)

Yesterday's column in the NYT by Thomas Friedman illustrates why efforts to put a price on carbon are not going to do much at all to stimulate energy technology innovation. Friedman writes:

April 28 -- German prosecutors searched Deutsche Bank AG and RWE AG in a raid on 230 offices and homes nationwide to investigate 180 million euros ($238 million) of tax evasion linked to emissions trading.

The Frankfurt Chief Prosecutor’s Office said it targeted 150 suspects at 50 companies and has frozen assets. Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest bank, and RWE, the country’s second- biggest utility, said they are cooperating with the probe and aren’t the focus of the investigations.

The U.K., France, Netherlands are among nations that started investigations last year of “carousel fraud,” where carbon traders collect tax and disappear before turning it in to authorities. Today’s raid was the biggest related to a fraud that may have tainted an estimated 7 percent of carbon trades in last year’s $125 billion market.

“We are glad to see that German authorities are taking the necessary steps to deal with a fraud that has affected, however unfairly, foreign perceptions of the EU emission trading system,” Henry Derwent, chief executive officer of the Geneva- based International Emissions Trading Association, said in a phone interview. The lobby group speaks for CO2 trading firms.

Europe lost about 5 billion euros in revenue for the 18 months ending in 2009 because of value-added tax fraud in the CO2 market, according to Europol, the law enforcement agency. (Bloomberg)

The spreading oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico could force the White House to rethink plans to increase offshore oil drilling, an essential component of a climate change bill it is working to push through Congress.

President Barack Obama could change his support for the plan, administration officials said on Thursday, depending on what was found to have caused the rig blast last week off Louisiana that left 11 workers missing, presumed dead, and led to the huge slick.

"Could that possibly change his viewpoint? Well, of course," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

"I think our focus right now is: one, the area, the spill; and two, also to ultimately determine the cause of it and see the impact that that ultimately may or may not have."

The White House sharply stepped up its response to the slick, which cast a shadow on the plan Obama proposed a month ago to encourage more offshore drilling in hopes of wooing Republicans to support a bill to tackle climate change.

Obama said on Thursday the administration would use every resource at its disposal, including the military, to stop the spill and help alleviate its impact.

The rig, owned by Transocean Ltd, was finishing a well for BP Plc about 40 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River when it exploded.

The spill fueled the anger of environmentalists who had criticized his administration's plan unveiled on March 31 to expand drilling after a decades-long moratorium on oil exploration in most of areas of the U.S. coast outside the Gulf of Mexico. (Reuters)

Royal Dutch Shell Plc has no plans to quickly expand its oil sands operations, focusing instead on tweaking output from its existing investments, the head of Shell's U.S. arm told a Canadian newspaper.

In an interview with the Globe and Mail's editorial board, Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil Co, said the company was unlikely to launch a major expansion of its 60 percent-owned Athabasca oil sands project because new projects in the region, which contains the largest crude reserves outside the Middle East, are too expensive.

Shell's chief executive, Peter Voser, has also said the company has no near-term plans to expand its oil sands project. (Reuters)

CHURCHVILLE, VA— The shale gas industry’s boom is creating 100,000 jobs in Pennsylvania during 2010, according to Penn State University. Only a few of these new jobs are on drill rigs; many of those jobs go to highly-skilled oil patch veterans from out of state. But the gas industry’s expansion has created jobs by the tens of thousands in steel production, construction, and services.

More important, the clean, low-cost energy from the shale gas will go on creating additional jobs in every Northeast regional industry that needs energy—meaning all of them. The shale gas boom is creating similar huge job gains throughout Appalachia, Texas, and Louisiana, with the new shale drilling system also about to expand in the huge Bakken oil shale deposits under the Dakotas and Montana.

Meanwhile, the giant state of California has created only 48,000 “green jobs” over the 13 years from 1995 to 2008. Green jobs still make up only 1 percent of California’s economy. Worse, says State Senator Bob Dutton, the high energy taxes needed to create those few green jobs are at the same time killing millions of jobs in all sorts of industries across the state. California’s unemployment has soared from less than 5 percent to more than 12 percent since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the California Global Warming Solutions Act three years ago.

The governor promised that the global warming tax would “create a whole new industry to pump up our economy, a clean-tech industry that creates jobs, sparks new cutting-edge technology and will be a model for the rest of the nation and the rest of the world.” Instead, the global warming taxes will drive up the prices of all non-renewable energy—as they were intended to do.

California taxpayers will now pay for wind turbines and solar panels made in China, while California has lost more than 600,000 manufacturing jobs. Business relocation specialist Joseph Vranich says he’s working full time to help companies flee California’s rising costs and restrictions. He warns that no one is calling about moving into the Golden State. (CGFI)

The 1980 NEP transferred nationalized oil industry money to consumers. The new version transfers money from consumers to the energy sector

Enbridge CEO Pat Daniel brought his oil sands energy crusade to Toronto yesterday, visiting newspaper editorial boards to outline his vision of a National Energy Strategy (NAS) that would unleash the global power of Canada’s oil sands to save the world’s poor from energy shortages and fossil-fuel deprivation. Saving the Third World from energy shortages may not be the first thing that comes to mind in connection with the oil sands, but that’s the latest element in Mr. Daniel’s ongoing campaign for a comprehensive national oil sands development strategy.

To meet his objective, Mr. Daniel told National Post editors that Canada will need to bring in carbon taxes, cap-and-trade regimes, subsidies for renewable energy and major conservation efforts. The number one objective, he said, would be to develop Canada’s oil sands, a plan that includes Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat, B.C., from where oil would flow to the energy-starved regions of the Asia-Pacific.

Whether this crusade for a national oil sands strategy is one environmental activists will embrace seems doubtful. Even more in doubt may be support from Canadians who already support the oil sands as a market-based development in a free trade economy.

That support could fade fast once they get a handle on Mr. Daniel’s multi-faceted plan to tax the hell out of consumers to get his plan up and running. If that’s what it takes to develop the oil sands, many Canadians may well say forget it.

[Editor note: Bradley is currently working on the second volume of his political capitalism trilogy. Book 1, Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy, came out last year. Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies (Scrivener Press/John Wiley & Sons) will examine the rise and fall of the father of the modern electricity industry, Samuel Insull. Publication of Book 2 is scheduled for year-end.]

The Edison Electric Institute has controversially thrown its support behind cap-and-trade legislation sponsored by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), aka the KGL Bill.

The question may be asked: why would a major business lobby advocate legislation that increases costs and thus electric rates?

The answer is easy: the companies get to pass on the costs to their customers under public-utility regulation. So higher costs from CO2 rationing can be judged ‘reasonable’ by state authorities, and the new federal law can give the utilities a lot of sweeteners to make sure they profit, at least in the short term.

Jim Rogers of Duke Energy, who more than any other person in his industry has championed CO2 pricing, sees advantage. The Ken Lay protégé will go down in history as one of the major rent-seekers of our era–despite the troubled case for climate alarmism, the political problems of any global “solution,” and the negative effects on electricity users.

Where did the drive for automatic pass-through of “reasonable” costs begin? For the electric industry, it began in Chicago in June 1898 in a then-controversial speech by Samuel Insull, the head of Chicago Edison Company and the president of the major trade association of the industry, the National Electric Light Association.

Insull did not want regulation for its own sake. He believed that franchise protection was worth giving authorities control over rates. Insull believed that this quid-pro-quo — exclusive franchises for cost-based rate maximums — would lower interest costs (a huge cost item for public utilities) and thus lower rates. Insull also saw statewide public utility regulation as a better alternative to local politics and to municipalization.

Insull’s political program was ahead of its time. Most of his fellow electric utility heads were opposed when Insull first gave his speech. But he would win them over in the next years, and state-after-state would implement formal cost-of-service regulation for electricity. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

WASHINGTON - Americans are steadily losing confidence in their ability to get healthcare and pay for it, despite the passage of healthcare reform legislation, according to a survey published on Wednesday.

The Thomson Reuters Consumer Healthcare Sentiment Index found that confidence lost three percentage points from a baseline of 100 in December to 97 in March.

"Strikingly, Americans expect the situation to worsen significantly in the next three months," said Gary Pickens, chief research officer at Thomson Reuters.

"The thing I thought was interesting was ... the level of sentiment about future expectations worsened more. The future outlook seems to be causing the people we interviewed angst." (Reuters)

Flaws of health-care overhaul grow more apparent every day
Wednesday, April 28, 2010 2:53 AM

Almost daily, the ill effects of the health-care overhaul passed by Congress last month are becoming apparent. As employers and government bureaucrats analyze the law's effect on bottom lines for the private sector and for government, the alarm bells are ringing.

The tragedy is that these ill effects could have been and should have been calculated before the law was passed, not after.

In fact, many of them were prophesied before passage of the bill, but the prophets were ignored by President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress. That's because their uppermost goal was not to pass the best health-care bill possible but merely to pass anything that could be called "health-care reform" and could be claimed as a political victory by a president desperate for one.

The latest analysis of the bill's likely effects comes from the Office of the Actuary in the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The report by Chief Actuary Richard S. Foster says that, far from reducing the cost of health care, the overhaul will add $311 billion to the nation's health-care costs over the first decade the law is in effect.

That's just for starters. The report also warns that the $575 billion in Medicare reductions that are supposed to help pay for the overhaul are unrealistic. If the cuts are not implemented by Congress, then hundreds of billions of dollars will be added to the national debt. (Columbus Dispatch)

In the midst of the recent health care debates, opinion polls showed surprisingly strong majorities of Americans who agreed with the proposition that health care amounted to a basic human right.

But all those who affirm this entitlement—and, by implication, support the government’s role in protecting it — face an uncomfortable but inevitable challenge to their position: if citizens possess a fundamental right to health insurance, why should society stop there?

What about other basic needs that constitute pre-requisites for human dignity – like the right to food, shelter, education, jobs… and even cars? If the uninsured need and deserve medical protection, then surely the hungry should receive nourishment, the homeless ought to get housing, the unemployed require jobs and, ultimately, a compassionate nation must provide automotive transport for all who might otherwise feel trapped, immobile, hopeless and helpless with no access to the transportation they need to better their circumstances. (Michael Medved, Townhall)

The poorly named tax will add unlimited complexity and government intrusion into commerce.
April 28, 2010
- by William M. Briggs

Surety

A VAT is coming. This prediction is wrapped in as much certainty as possible.

When?

Not before the 2010 elections. No Democrat standing for reelection whose seat is within 20 points will utter word one about a VAT. Their situation is already too desperate to suggest increased taxes.

It’s even money whether we’ll see active congressional committee work before Mr. Obama begins his reelection campaign: look for that in theaters near you, opening on January 2, 2011.

It’s a sure bet that the VAT comes by 2014, which is one year after Obama’s second term, or during the first year of whoever his opponent is. The more likely it looks like Obama keeps his seat, the sooner we’ll have the VAT.

Orwellian Spin

VAT, of course, stands for “value added tax.” It is as badly misnamed as the “earned income credit,” which really means unearned money gift.

A VAT doesn’t add anything: it removes value. There is no way a tax levied on a product or service can directly increase the value of that product or service. (PJM)

There’s no causal link between sunbed-use and cancer, so why are politicians clamping down on teens tannning?

Ever since the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded, last summer, that ultraviolet (UV) radiation exposure from sunbeds is ‘carcinogenic to humans’, the British medical and health promotion establishment, along with the government, has been ramping up efforts to ban the use of sunbeds. Now, Gillian Merron, Britain’s public health minister, has said that the government intends to ban under-18s from using tanning salons after a study in the British Medical Journal reported that at least 250,000 children aged 11 to 17 use sunbeds.

The basis for the IARC decision and the government’s intervention is twofold: first, that there is a melanoma epidemic in the UK, and, second, that there is a causal connection between sunbed-use and melanoma. Both of these claims are scientifically suspect.

In a recent study about the reported incidence of melanoma in the UK, a group of scientists at the dermatology department of Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital found that the increase in melanoma in East Anglia between 1991 and 2004 was ‘almost entirely due to minimal, stage 1 disease. There was no change in the combined incidence of the other stages of the disease, and the overall mortality only increased from 2.16 to 2.54 cases per 100,000 per year.’ According to the report authors, the claims of a melanoma epidemic are based not on a real increase in cases but rather on a ‘diagnostic drift which classifies benign lesions as stage 1 melanoma’. In the past these cases would have been diagnosed as benign melanocytic nevi, not melanoma.

Further weakening the claim that these early stage melanomas were the result of excessive sun exposure is the fact that most of the cases were in areas of the body not exposed to the sun. One of the report authors, Dr Nick J Levell, told Reuters, ‘The main message is to be cautious about overstating messages about a melanoma epidemic to the public and media. Such behaviour will tend to induce unnecessary anxiety and behaviour that may cause distress and harm.’

Yet the IARC claim about sunbeds and cancer risk does precisely what Levell warns against. In its press release announcing that it had concluded that radiation from sunbeds is carcinogenic, IARC implied that this finding was based on new scientific evidence. This was not the case. The basis for IARC’s conclusion is the agency’s 2006 report Exposure to Artificial UV Radiation and Skin Cancer. But this report provides no compelling evidence that sunbed-use is associated with an increased risk for skin cancer. (Basham and Luik, spiked)

NEW YORK - Sticking to a strict diet of mom's milk during the first 4 months of life may reduce a child's risk of developing asthma by their eighth birthday, according to a new study.

"Breast milk is the optimal food for infants during the first months of life," lead researcher Dr. Inger Kull of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, told Reuters Health in an email. "But whether or not breastfeeding reduces the risk of asthma has been debated."

Through her milk, a mother transfers "good" bacteria, antibodies and proteins that can help thwart infection. But the evidence for how breastfeeding might influence the later development of asthma remains confusing, with various studies suggesting protective, neutral and even detrimental effects. (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK - Fish oil may be good for your heart, but it doesn't seem to help preserve your smarts, a new two-year study shows.

"This is an important finding because a lot of people are taking fish oil in the hopes that it will be good for their cognitive function," Dr. Alan D. Dangour of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK, one of the study's authors, told Reuters Health. But he didn't rule out the possibility that taking fish oil for a longer period of time might have beneficial effects.

Numerous studies have shown that people who eat more fish have better mental function, and are less likely to develop dementia. "The problem with a lot of these studies of course is there are lots of reasons why people eat more fish," Dangour pointed out. (Reuters Health)

LONDON - Cervical cancer screening intervals could be extended for women aged 30 and over if doctors used human papillomavirus (HPV) testing rather than smear tests, British scientists said on Wednesday.

Experts said research into different screening methods found that HPV tests were very accurate in picking up early signs of cervical cancer and detected more serious abnormalities than conventional smear tests in women aged 30 and over.

"Using HPV testing as the primary screening method for cervical cancer would not only mean women could be screened less often but it would also mean efficiency savings," said Jack Cuzick, a professor of epidemiology at Queen Mary, University of London, who worked on the study.

HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the world. There are more than 100 types of the virus, some of which cause only genital warts but others cervical cancer. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - The more obese a woman is when she becomes pregnant, the greater the likelihood that her baby will be born with a heart defect, a U.S. government study finds.

Using a database of births in New York State over a decade, researchers found that obese women were 11 percent more likely than normal-weight women to have a baby with a congenital heart defect.

Meanwhile, women who were morbidly obese -- or about 100 pounds over their ideal weight -- had a 33 percent higher risk than normal-weight women did. (Reuters Health)

County officials vote to ban toys and other promotions that restaurants offer with high-calorie children’s meals. (Sharon Bernstein, Los Angeles Times)

Those following the saga of tainted Chinese drywall can't possibly miss all the fanfare given to Judge Fallon's latest awards...

However, this is all quite meaningless as the judgment will never be perfected (that is, collected). This court can't enforce a judgment on a foreign nation, least of all on China—a country that holds our own government's markers for trillions.

This is one time that the plaintiff's lawyers are hurting themselves, since many of them actually believe that our courts will seize assets such as ships, to enforce the judgment.

If you buy that, I've got 5,000 tainted drywall houses in Cape Coral, FL I'd love to sell you. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)

COALINGA, Calif. — Would France rip out its storied vineyards? Would Juan Valdez scorch Colombia's coffee crop? Sri Lanka its black pepper harvest? China its tea?

With global markets won by nations specializing in doing what they do best, and with regional reputations important enough to drive some nations to protectionism, it's almost unthinkable.

But then there's California.

On a springtime drive through the Central Valley, it's hard not to notice how federal and state governments are hell-bent on destroying the state's top export — almonds — and everything else in the nation's most productive farmland.

Instead of pink blossoms and green shoots along Highway 5 in April, vast spans from Bakersfield to Fresno sit bone-dry. Brown grass, dead orchards and lifeless grapevine skeletons stretch for miles for lack of water. For every fallow field, there's a sign that farmers have placed alongside the highway: "No Water = No Food," "No Water = No Jobs," "Congress Created Dust Bowl."

Locals say it's been like this for two years now, as Congress and bureaucrats cite "drought," "global warming" and "endangered species" to deny water to this $37 billion breadbasket through arbitrary "environmental" quotas.

It started with a 2008 federal court order that stopped water flowing from northern tributaries on a supposed need to protect a small fish — the delta smelt — that was getting ground up in the turbines of pump stations that divert the water south. The court knew it was bad law, but Congress refused to exempt the fish from the Endangered Species Act and the diversion didn't help the fish.

After that, the water cutoff was blamed on "drought," though northern reservoirs are currently full. Now the cry is "save the salmon," a reference to water needs of the state's northern fisheries.

Whatever the excuse, 75% of the fresh water that has historically irrigated California is now being washed to the open sea. For farmers in the southwest part of the valley, last year's cutoff amounted to 90%. (Monica Showalter, IBD)

John Stossel argues executives should tell Congress their profits are not the government's business.

Trade is win-win. Two people trade only because each values what he gets more than what he gives up. That's why in a store both customer and clerk say, "Thank you."

At the international level, trade is also win-win because it allows countries to specialize in what they do well and trade the extra for things they don't make as well. When free trade is unmolested, the world is richer and has more choices.

But I keep hearing about unfair trade. I'm told that trade allows American companies to exploit people in poor countries and makes Americans jobless.

Tom Palmer of the Atlas Economic Research Institute says those are myths. (John Stossel)

The U.N. is telling countries how to save the planet, but its own environmental housekeeping is a 'scattered' mess, according to a report by a special group of internal investigators.

When it comes to telling the rest of the world how it must behave in order to save the planet from environmental calamity, and lobbying for trillion-dollar solutions to those problems, no organization in the world makes greater claims to being the leading authority — and global arbiter — than the United Nations.

Except, it seems, when it comes to its own behavior as an environmentally friendly global citizen. There the U.N. system is, according to members of a special group of internal U.N. inspectors, in chaos. (George Russell, FOXNews.com)

Chemists with the United States military have developed a set of ultra-strength cleaners that could be used in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. The new formulas are tough enough to get rid of nerve gas, mustard gas, radioactive isotopes, and anthrax. But they are also non-toxic, based on ingredients found in foods, cosmetics, and other consumer products. A detailed evaluation of the cleansers appears in ACS' Industrial Engineering and Chemistry Research, a bi-monthly journal. (American Chemical Society)

A new disease killing native oak trees could alter the British landscape even more than Dutch elm disease, woodland groups warned today as they called for more funding to tackle the problem.

Acute oak decline (AOD) is hitting both species of native oak, which show black bleeding on the trunk and stems and can suffer rapid dieback and death within three to five years, experts said.

The disease hitting the country's "iconic" tree has been found on 55 sites in the East of England, southern England and the Midlands, and experts warn other suspect cases have yet to be confirmed. (The Independent)

Cap-And-Trade: While senators froth over Goldman Sachs and derivatives, a climate trading scheme being run out of the Chicago Climate Exchange would make Bernie Madoff blush. Its trail leads to the White House.

Lost in the recent headlines was Al Gore's appearance Monday in Denver at the annual meeting of the Council of Foundations, an association of the nation's philanthropic leaders.

"Time's running out (on climate change)," Gore told them. "We have to get our act together. You have a unique role in getting our act together."

Gore was right that foundations will play a key role in keeping the climate scam alive as evidence of outright climate fraud grows, just as they were critical in the beginning when the Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the seed money to start the Chicago Climate Exchange. It started trading in 2003, and what it trades is, essentially, air. More specifically perhaps, hot air.

The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) advertises itself as "North America's only cap-and-trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide." Barack Obama served on the board of the Joyce Foundation from 1994 to 2002 when the CCX startup grants were issued. As president, pushing cap-and-trade is one of his highest priorities. Now isn't that special?

Few Americans have heard of either entity. The Joyce Foundation was originally the financial nest egg of a widow whose family had made millions in the now out-of-favor lumber industry.

After her death, the foundation was run by philanthropists who increasingly dedicated their giving to liberal causes, including gun control, environmentalism and school changes.

Currently, CCX members agree to a voluntary but legally binding agreement to regulate greenhouse gases.

The CCX provides the mechanism in trading the very pollution permits and carbon offsets the administration's cap-and-trade proposals would impose by government mandate. (IBD)

Public perception is everything in today’s fast-paced media world and purveyors of the manmade climate change theory have been taking a beating on that front over the past year. Former Vice President Al Gore lamented the state of affairs in a blog posting yesterday saying the media had done a ‘bad job’. (Tony Hake, Examiner)

The Italian-style home has an ocean view, fountains, six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms.

Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, have added a Montecito-area property to their real estate holdings, reports the Montecito Journal.

The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms. (Lauren Beale, Los Angeles Times)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on Wednesday he would work to pass energy legislation before tackling immigration reform, a strategy that might restore the bipartisan coalition behind the climate change bill push.

"I am going to move forward on energy first," the Democratic senator told reporters at a news conference. "The bill's ready. I don't see why we can't do that."

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham pulled out of the effort to craft legislation addressing global warming with Democrat John Kerry and Independent Joseph Lieberman on Saturday, leaving the future of the climate bill unclear. (Reuters)

Well, it’s not really so old. I’m referring to a March 10, 2009 letter by atmospheric scientist John Christy to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. I post it on Open Market and GlobalWarming.Org because it is hard to find on the Internet, and Dr. Christy makes a key point that will need to be made again and again in the upcoming Senate battle over the Murkowski resolution of disapproval to veto EPA’s endangerment finding.

The endangerment finding is the statutory prerequisite for the joint greenhouse gas/fuel economy standards rule that EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) finalized on April 1, 2010. Veto the endangerment finding, Murkowski foes warn, and NHTSA will have to ”de-couple” its portion of the joint GHG/fuel economy rule, which could delay by a year implementation…

Campaigners call for urgent effort to save US climate bill, while some insist proposed legislation remains fundamentally flawed (Danny Bradbury for BusinessGreen, part of the Guardian Environment Network)

Delay to a draft of a U.S. climate change bill this week has frustrated some investors in the voluntary carbon market, who were tipping it to become the template of a federal climate change bill.

Many investors are looking for any positive steps toward a U.S. climate bill before committing themselves to the voluntary market.

The so-called Kerry, Graham and Lieberman (KGL) draft was scheduled to be unveiled on Monday but a breakdown in bipartisan talks delayed it.

The bill was expected to indicate how many offsets could be imported under a U.S. emissions trading scheme.

"Factors such as sector, size, start date, auctioning limits and fungible credits were expected by many to be revealed with explicit information possibly jump-starting the moribund U.S. carbon market," said Grattan MacGiffin, head of voluntary carbon markets at brokers MF Global.

The KGL bill could be unveiled at a later date if Senator Graham rejoins talks or Kerry gets more support from climate moderates, but time is short to pass it before November elections. (Reuters)

Can the Environmental Protection Agency really base an endangerment finding on the discredited IPCC reports?
April 28, 2010
- by Jeffrey Bossert Clark

When did America risk coming to be ruled by foreign scientists and apparatchiks at the United Nations? The answer, it would seem, is ever since Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under President Obama, chose to issue a rule determining that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger the public health and welfare.

Administrator Jackson acted to make her so-called “endangerment finding” on December 7, 2009, and befitting the historically tone-deaf selection of Pearl Harbor day for her announcement, the precipitous action embodied in the endangerment rule will also unleash immense negative consequences for the American economy entirely unexpected by most of the citizenry.

What would come as an even greater surprise to the public is that the endangerment rule is inextricably rooted in science performed by UN-designated scientists and reports written by UN bureaucrats. “I cannot think of any instance where the EPA depended so heavily on non-EPA synthesis reports to justify proposed regulatory action in [its] almost 39 years of existence,” noted Dr. Alan Carlin alarmingly.

Economist Dr. Carlin has been an employee of the EPA for 38 of those 39 years, performing complex risk assessments for EPA regulations. So his qualifications to look back with a keen eye across EPA’s history are tough to match. And yes, this would be the same Dr. Carlin that the EPA attempted to muzzle last spring and summer for arguing, within the halls of the agency, that the endangerment rule was unsupported. In an administration that congratulates itself for being the most transparent in history, Dr. Carlin was directly told to stop his work on the endangerment rule. (PJM)

Potsdam, Germany - German scientists called Tuesday for the world to accept per-person quotas for carbon dioxide emissions to kick-start a global trading scheme where poor nations will benefit.

The Potsdam Institute for Research on Climate Effects said everyone on the globe should be allowed 5 tons of carbon per year. That is just one quarter of the average per-person emissions for a US citizen, but still far above emissions in poor nations. (DPA)

Despite all the denials, we now see in black and white how the defunct - or in Kevin Rudd's language "extended" - emissions trading scheme already has an impact on electricity prices.

No sooner had the Prime Minister announced he was scrapping - sorry, "extending" - the scheme, all the energy companies came out to say the extra cost factored in for a scheme that hadn't even passed the Senate was, miraculously, no longer necessary. So now they'll only increase our already inflated bills by 36 per cent instead of 60 per cent, in EnergyAustralia's case.

There you have it - a glimpse at the tip of the iceberg that was Rudd's dearest folly, that had him prancing around the world stage and which he pitched as the defining achievement of his first term.

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Rudd's mission to rush out in front of the rest of the world with an ETS because climate change was "the greatest moral challenge of our time" has finally been exposed as flimflam. "It's very plain that the correct course is to extend the implementation date and to assess the action by other states at the end of 2012'' was Rudd's way of announcing his backflip this week.

It vindicates the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, and his backer, Senator Nick Minchin, in their refusal last year to be coerced by their former leader Malcolm Turnbull into supporting the ETS.

In hindsight, it is even more extraordinary Turnbull was so obstinate. From the moment he rolled his hapless predecessor Brendan Nelson for articulating the exact wait-and-see position Rudd has now adopted, Turnbull and his supporters claimed the Coalition had no choice but to back Rudd.

They were supposedly terrified of handing Rudd a trigger for a double dissolution election on climate change. But even before Climategate, before the flop at Copenhagen, it was obvious that wasn't the case. As I wrote last August, Turnbull should have called Rudd's bluff, and embraced an election on a new energy tax.

Well, sure enough, Rudd blinked. He never wanted to go to voters with a new tax. He wanted to walk to the polls hand in hand with Turnbull, as a great statesman with his patsy, having pulled a fast one on an electorate soon to be burdened with the costs.

Yet one of the ABC's political sages, Alison Carabine, was claiming yesterday Turnbull was the only politician to emerge from the ETS with any "credibility". Hello?

Now all the ETS boosters in the business community, the rent-seekers whom Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg has dubbed the "climate-industrial complex", who stood to profit the most from carbon regulations, are right behind Rudd's backflip. It's business as usual, with a reported $2.5 billion saved to the economy. (Miranda Devine, SMH)

THE Rudd government has conceded its emissions trading scheme could be delayed beyond the 2013 election, and that the politically inspired decision to leave the country in policy limbo for at least three years will make it much more expensive for Australia to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets.

Electricity generators have warned ''untenable'' and uncertain climate policies from both main parties will have ''dire consequences'' for investment decisions and possibly even electricity supply.

The Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, told the Herald the government would not try to legislate the ETS even by its new delayed start year of 2013 unless there is ''credible action'' by the end of 2012 from countries such as China, India and the US. It would also require a resolution of the Copenhagen deadlock over how national efforts are checked.

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''We will only [legislate] if there is sufficient international action,'' Senator Wong said, declining to explain exactly what that meant. She admitted the delay would ''make meeting our [emission reduction] targets more expensive'' and that without a carbon price Australia would not meet the targets at all. (SMH)

Sigh. Time to party right? Heigh Ho and ra ha ha and all that. Yes, forgive me for not cracking open the champagne. Rudd (Australia’s PM) has finally admitted what skeptics have known for two months, that he doesn’t have the courage of his “convictions” and that all the pious rhetoric was a bluff.

A week before the National Budget comes out, he’s announced he’s shelving the Emissions Trading Scheme that was a defining part of his election campaign for Kevin ‘07. It shocked some of the pundits.

Naturally, it’s not bad news, but let’s face it, a green tax is still on the agenda, literally billions of dollars is still being wasted in government programs, we’re still “signed up” for UN agreements worth gadzillions, and to top that off, we have a Prime Minister who’s so unprincipled that in his own words he’s a donothing delayer, an inactivist, a man who gambles recklessly with our childrens future. He’s a political coward, and a failure as a leader, and he’s acting against what he believes is Australia’s best economic interests. He said all that, and all the quotes of his faux anger (see below) come from just one speech. More » (Jo Nova)

The plush new headquarters of the Department of Climate Change Building in Canberra / The Daily Telegraph

TAXPAYERS will fork out $90 million a year to keep more than 400 public servants employed within the Federal Climate Change Department - despite most of them now having nothing to do until 2013.

More than 60 of them are classified as senior executive staff on salaries between $168,000 and $298,000 a year. Their salary bill alone will cost an estimated $12 million every year.

A further $8 million will also be paid in rent for plush offices at Canberra's Constitution Place until 2012, where it is believed 500 new computers will be delivered this week.

It can be revealed that despite Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's decision on Tuesday to suspend the failed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme until at least 2013, the department has ruled out plans to cut back staff.

A formal response by department secretary Martin Parkinson to a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday - the same day as the scheme's suspension - claimed the department would not offer redundancies.

The formal response, obtained by The Daily Telegraph, said there were no plans for "the immediate future" of any scaling back of staff, despite the agency losing its core function.

According to official figures, the number of top-paid bureaucrats being paid up to $298,000 a year has almost doubled since January this year from 39 to 61. That was to gear up for establishment of the Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority, which will also now have no function.

Overall agency staff has also been ramped up since last year with total climate change employees having risen from an initial 246 to 408.

Of the 61 senior agency officials, only nine have been inherited from the scrapped home insulation scheme. The majority, 38, were employed on the CPRS and a further 19 were employed on the renewable energy scheme which has also been axed.

But none of the 408 staff within the department will be shed even though the department's key function, the CPRS, has been axed.

Its own tender documents reveal a lease contract of $16 million for its offices which expires in 2012.

"The hundreds of public servants who have been beavering away on this policy, the 114 public servants who they took to Copenhagen for that matter in support of this policy . . . none of that's changed," Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said yesterday.

"Which is why I think that Mr Rudd for political reasons doesn't want to talk about his great big new tax on everything but as sure as night follows day, if he gets re-elected, we'll be stuck with it." (Simon Benson, The Daily Telegraph)

Pressure mounts for a rethink after Australia puts scheme off till 2013

The Government said yesterday it would probably ditch the rest of the emissions trading scheme as scheduled beyond 2013 if its major trading partners did not have schemes as well.

The scheme, already passed into law, is supposed to be a comprehensive "all sectors, all gases" scheme with a phased-in entry for different sectors.

But the confirmation by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Tuesday that he would shelve his proposed scheme until at least 2013 has forced the New Zealand Government to hedge its commitment to a full scheme.

The Act Party, business groups and the farming lobby have pointedly reminded National that it promised not to be a leader in the ETS but a fast-follower.

They argue that the scheme would impose costs on New Zealand businesses that its competitors did not have.

The New Zealand scheme has a built-in review of the ETS in 2011 - no details of when - and in 2014. (New Zealand Herald)

When he wasn't busy helping create a $127 billion mess for taxpayers to clean up, former Fannie Mae Chief Executive Officer Franklin Raines, two of his top underlings and select individuals in the "green" movement were inventing a patented system to trade residential carbon credits.

Patent No. 6904336 was approved by the U.S. Patent and Trade Office on Nov. 7, 2006 -- the day after Democrats took control of Congress. Former Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., criticized the award at the time, pointing out that it had "nothing to do with Fannie Mae's charter, nothing to do with making mortgages more affordable."

It wasn't about mortgages. It was about greenbacks. The patent, which Fannie Mae confirmed it still owns with Cantor Fitzgerald subsidiary CO2e.com, gives the mortgage giant a lock on the fledgling carbon trading market, thus also giving it a major financial stake in the success of cap-and-trade legislation. (Washington Examiner)

A new government report says global warming could lead to an increase in both cancer and mental illness worldwide, and it calls for more federally funded research to determine how that might happen.

The report, A Human Health Perspective on Climate Change, was published by the Interagency Working Group on Climate Change and Health – a combination of scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NIH, State Department, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Agriculture, the EPA, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The report's overall thrust is for more federally funded research to investigate the alleged links between global warming and public health, including the potentially negative effects from warming and the potentially negative side-effect of green technologies.

While the report touches on, for example, the health effects of unclean water and respiratory ailments, it also deals with two other types of health issues not normally associated with global warming: cancer and mental illness. (CNSNews.com)

To show what kind of incredible mess my dear American readers allowed to thrive in their very own formerly exceptional country, I offer you the following link:

Just when you thought it was safe to have a barbecue or put the bike away until 2013 (when Carbon Kevin promises to review the state of the planet), along comes the Los Angles Times’ environment reporter Eli Kintisch with a breath-taking new concept for all of us to contemplate and worry about — “clean air might actually intensify global warming”.

Kintisch’s article, which got extensive coverage on America’s National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, tells us:

You’re likely to hear a chorus of dire warnings as we approach Earth Day, but there’s a serious shortage few pundits are talking about: air pollution.

That’s right, the world is running short on air pollution, and if we continue to cut back on smoke pouring forth from industry smokestacks, the increase in global warming could be profound.

The concern that Kintisch raises follows the announcement that the U.S. Clean Air Act has apparently cut major air pollutants, such as sulphur aerosols, for example, by 30% to 50% since the 1980’s. Kintisch goes on to say that “as industrialised and development nations alike steadily reduce aerosol pollution — caused by primarily burning coal — climate scientists are beginning to understand just how much these tiny particles help keep the planet cool.”

No, I’m not making this up, nor is it a piece from Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson’s Media Department. Nor is it someone doing a spoof on Jonathon Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels — this is a piece from one of America’s leading newspapers. (Quadrant)

You might recall an earlier false claim in the AR4 about tourism, about Canada and wildfires. There is another mistake in the AR4 regarding tourism, this time it is in WGII, Chapter 9.4.7 Tourism. (ClimateQuotes)

A leading global warming skeptic recruited a group of concerned citizens to fact-check the sources referenced in the U.N.'s latest climate-change bible -- and gave the report an "F." Now she's planning the nail in the coffin: a comprehensive audit of the entire report. (Gene J. Koprowski, FOXNews.com)

I respond to criticisms by Joanne Nova (JN) as in her article “No, Dr Glikson” (Quadrant Online, 21.4.2010) of my article “The origin and consequences of climate change” (Quadrant Online, 21.4.2010), basing my comments on recent climate change reports, including among other the Copenhagen Synthesis Report, 2009; Four Degrees and Beyond conference, 2009; Steffen, 2010 and CSIRO-BOM. I point to statements inconsistent with instrumental measurements and direct observations and to misunderstanding of atmosphere/ocean climate processes. (Quadrant)

Dr Andrew Glikson still misses the point, and backs his arguments with weak evidence and logical errors. Instead of empirical evidence, often he quotes authoritative reports written by glorified committees. He sidesteps around the central issue—where is the evidence for the positive feedback assumed in the models? This feedback creates the disaster. If the “hot spot” is missing and feedback is negative, almost everything else is irrelevant. Glikson serves the Australian taxpayer, yet gives us only half the story. (Quadrant)

The American public remains quite uninformed regarding the shabby “science” behind the man-made global warming scare. While many foreign news outlets, (Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.) are providing reams of the new insights discovered last November, the US media seem satisfied carrying water for the false global warming hypothesis. The record of the last 20 years of the terminally gullible media has been recently published by the Media Research Center, people who track the media ( http://tinyurl.com/27tuxm6 ).

Worse, many states and the Obama Administration are preparing to implement horrifically costly energy policy calling for limits of CO2 emissions, now known to be needless. Huge increases in energy costs will be a policy consequence, as well as major energy rationing. These policies will threaten jobs, reduced our standard of living, and, if we let it happen, will directly threaten the economy of the United States.

While many of the flaws of the man-made global warming hypothesis have been known for many years, the November release of thousands of email, documents, and computer codes have demonstrated an appalling lack of scientific integrity. The loss of integrity extends from the Climate Research Institute at the Univ. of East Anglia (CRU), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to leaders in NASA, NOAA, and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). (Michael R. Fox, Hawaii Reporter)

An array of weapons dating as far back as 2,400 years is found as ice patches melt away in Canada's Mackenzie Mountains.

A treasure trove of ancient weapons has emerged from melting ice patches in the Canadian Arctic, revealing hunting strategies thousands of years old.

The weapons, which include a 2,400-year-old spear throwing tools, a 1000-year-old ground squirrel snare, and bows and arrows dating back 850 years, have been found high in the remote Mackenzie Mountains, a region where Mountain Boreal caribou abound in the summer months. (Discovery News)

Scientists have discovered that changes in the amount of ice floating in the polar oceans are causing sea levels to rise.

The research, published this week in Geophysical Research Letters, is the first assessment of how quickly floating ice is being lost today.

According to Archimedes' principle, any floating object displaces its own weight of fluid. For example, an ice cube in a glass of water does not cause the glass to overflow as it melts.

But because sea water is warmer and more salty than floating ice, changes in the amount of this ice are having an effect on global sea levels.

The loss of floating ice is equivalent to 1.5 million Titanic-sized icebergs each year. However, the study shows that spread across the global oceans, recent losses of floating ice amount to a sea level rise of just 49 micrometers per year – about a hair's breadth. (University of Leeds)

Melting sea ice has been shown to be a major cause of warming in the Arctic according to a University of Melbourne, Australia study.

Findings published in Nature today reveal the rapid melting of sea ice has dramatically increased the levels of warming in the region in the last two decades.

Lead author Dr James Screen of the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne says the increased Arctic warming was due to a positive feedback between sea ice melting and atmospheric warming.

"The sea ice acts like a shiny lid on the Arctic Ocean. When it is heated, it reflects most of the incoming sunlight back into space. When the sea ice melts, more heat is absorbed by the water. The warmer water then heats the atmosphere above it. " (University of Melbourne)

Warming in the Arctic is likely to turn into cold and further records of the minimum amount of drift ice in the area will not be set, the head of a Russian Arctic expedition said on Tuesday.

"I think the repetition of this event is next to impossible...There are hints that the trend has changed its direction," Vladimir Sokolov said, referring to the recent forecast of global Arctic warming.

The scientist said the outlook from drifting stations showed that ice coverage had grown; the temperatures had become colder in winter while precipitation in summer had decreased.

In 2007, scientists observed the unique situation when drift ice in the area of the Arctic Ocean reached a record-breaking minimum.

Sokolov said the forecasts predicting the future reduction of Arctic drift ice are "incorrect."

"The statement over the melting of drift ice in the Arctic is incorrect as there is a polar day and a polar night. As long as polar nights exist, there will be ice because of negative temperatures and the lack of solar heat," Sokolov said.

The Arctic territories, believed to hold vast untapped oil and gas reserves, have increasingly been at the center of disputes between Russia and Norway, as well as the United States, Canada and Denmark as rising temperatures lead to a reduction in sea ice, making the extraction of natural resources easier.

Under international law, the five Arctic Circle countries each have a 322-kilometer (200-mile) economic zone in the Arctic Ocean.

ST. PETERSBURG, April 27 (RIA Novosti)

Imagine if the global annual average temperature were about 5°F colder than it is presently.

Not quite sure how to? OK, consider this: During the Little Ice Age—a period extending from about the 1500s to the mid-1800s and thought to be one of the coldest periods during the past 10,000 years or so—the earth’s average temperature may have been 2-3°F colder than present. Associated with the Little Ice Age are all sorts of human calamities—widespread crop failures, plagues, famines, population declines, glacial encroachments, etc. For a collection of descriptions of all the fun times that a colder climate brings, take a gander at the Wikipedia page on the Little Ice Age. After spending a few minutes there, you’ll see that these were not high times for humans.

Now, consider a temperature decline twice that much. That can’t be good.

Yet that’s apparently where we would be had human ingenuity not come along.

According to a new study just published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the global climate would be about 5°F colder than present were it not for human carbon dioxide and methane emissions.

Brrr. (WCR)

Dick Lindzen has presented a summary of how climate science has changed over the last decade or so (see). In his article he writes [h/t to David L. for posting on Climate Audit]

There is an article in the March 2010 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society which exemplifies the first of the issues that have been raised by Dick Lindzen. The article is

A. Navarra, J. L. Kinter III, J. Tribbia, 2010: Crucial Experiments in Climate Science. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Volume 91 Issue 3. 343–352.

I have provided excerpts from this article and will provide comments after each indicating points of agreement and disagreement.

This summary is a much-needed ,belated recognition of the accuracy of the 2005 NRC report [uncited in the Navarra et al 2010 BAMS article]

Figure 1-1 in the NRC report [reproduced below] schematically illustrates what is written in the Navarra et al paper.

This text seeks to equate climate modeling with the development of fundamental concepts in basic physics. However, these are not the same. Whereas fundamental physical constants such as the speed of light were the focus of the Michelson and Morley study, climate modeling relies on tunable parameters and functions in their parameterizations of clouds, precipitation, vegetation dynamics, etc in the construction of the models. Climate models are engineering code not basic physics. Only advection, the pressure gradient force and gravity provide the fundamental physics in climate model. The combination of a fundamental component of the model with an engineering component (in which the physics is tuned) results in engineering code, not basic physics.

There are three basic classes: process studies; diagnosis; and prediction. As I discuss in that post, the IPCC assessment models are actually process studies, although they have been marketed by the IPCC as predictions. With respect to the Navarra et al paper, their proposed modeling framework, in reality, is to develop a more comprehensive climate process assessment tool. The models hypotheses.

This is an accurate summary. An interesting and important oversight, however, is any discussion on improvements in the predictive skill of the models on different time scales (i.e. seasonal; annual, multi-year; decadal). Of course, the absence of this discussion reflects the general lack of a demonstration of predictive skill beyond a few months at most by the IPCC or anyone else.

There is an interesting oversight here. There is no mention of observational verification of the model skill.

This is an accurate summary of the challenges in climate prediction. The admission that climate prediction is an initial value problem was ignored by the 2007 IPCC assessments. See, for example, my recent post

This is a remarkable proposal for a new approach in climate modeling as it removes the climate modeller from working with the real world data. This exemplifies what Dick Lindzen stated

The proposal put forth in Navarra et al 2010, if adopted, would concentrate climate modeling into a few well-funded institutions, as well as focus the use models for multi-decadal predictions of the real climate system (in which we do not, of course have observational validation data), rather than as a tool to test scientific hypotheses against real world observations. Policy decisions will be made from these unvalidated model predictions (has they have already been made based on the global-average and regional scale from the IPCC multi-decadal model forecasts).

This is a path that will likely lead to the eventual discrediting of the climate science community who participates in this activity if, as I expect, the regional multi-decadal regional (and even global average forecasts) generally fail to show skill in the coming years.

Even more importantly, they are unlikely to be useful to most of the actual needs of resource stakeholders in their plans to reduce the vulnerability to climate and other environmental and social threats; e.g. see Table E.7 in

Pielke, R.A. Sr., and L. Bravo de Guenni, 2004: Conclusions. Chapter E.7 In: Vegetation, Water, Humans and the Climate: A New Perspective on an Interactive System. Global Change – The IGBP Series, P. Kabat et al., Eds., Springer, 537-538.

While I support the use of climate models to examine climate processes, they must be solidly based on observational validation. It also must not be forgotten that climate models (and indeed all models) are hypotheses. Real world observations must be the standard to test the climate models.

is not how climate science should proceed. The “central pillar” must be the real-world observations.

The American Meteorological Society, as represented by the Editor-in-Chief of the Bulletin of the AMS, Jeff Rosenfeld, agrees with the view with models as the central pillar of the quantitative scientific approach to climate science. He writes in his “Letter From The Editor” [which, unfortunately is not online at the BAMS website]

Dick Lindzen’s perceptive statement that ”simulation and programs have replaced theory and observation” accurately (and unfortunately) represents the current position of the leadership of the American Meteorological Society. (Climate Science)

The plot that is included in Kevin Trenberth’s most recent post on Roger Pielke, Sr.’s blog actually proves the point I have been making: The trend in the imbalance in the Earth’s radiation budget as measured by the CERES instrument of NASA’s Terra satellite that has been building since about 2000 is primarily in the reflected solar (shortwave, or SW, or RSW) component, not the emitted infrared (longwave, or LW) component.

To demonstrate that, the following is the chart from Trenberth’s most recent post, upon which I have overlaid the 2000-2008 trend lines from MY plots of CERES data, and which we have computed from the official NASA-blessed ES-4 Edition 2 global gridpoint dataset.

The plots I provided in my previous post have greater resolution in the vertical axis.

For those who are following this mini-debate, please see that post, not Roger’s version of my post, which was a draft version of my post and was incomplete.

And, again I point out, the most recent dip in the LW curve (above) is consistent with cooling of the global average troposphere seen in our plot of AMSU5 data. UPDATE, 1:45 p.m. CDT: small correction to above figure. (Roy W. Spencer)

UTRECHT, the Netherlands -- The Dutch used to discover new worlds across unexplored seas. Now, they are beginning to trace the edges of a new undiscovered country, and it is right beneath their shores.

The Netherlands, a country that chose to build many of its cities below sea level, is famous for its pragmatic, long-term planning. So it should be no surprise that, when it comes to efforts to store carbon dioxide underground for a millennium or more, Holland has been leading the way, planning for years to turn declining natural gas fields off their shores into storage sites.

Initial estimates of the fields were promising. It seemed 40 years of emissions from eight large coal-fired power plants could be stored. Then scientists looked closer, probing each site's geology, to disturbing results.

Some fields were too small or perforated by drills to store CO2, they found. Others were stubborn, their rocks likely to resist the injection of the gas.

Soon enough, the Dutch had to cut their storage estimate in half.

It is a disappointing result that should be kept in mind as estimates of CO2 storage potential, which mostly exist on countrywide or regional levels, are refined and localized, said Filip Neele, a research geologist here at the geosciences branch of TNO, the Dutch national lab of applied sciences.

In some cases, Neele would not be surprised to see storage estimates fall by up to 95 percent compared with the original projection. Though even then, he added, the capacity would be still large thanks to the vast size of the available storage formations. (Greenwire)

Crews Aim to Mop Up Gulf Spill With Fire, a Technique Experts Laud But Which Has Never Been Applied So Widely

VENICE, La.—Crews in the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday set fire to a portion of the oil spreading from the site of a sunken rig, a technique experts said was the safest, cheapest way to limit environmental damage but had never been tried on this scale.

"Burning oil on the water is the most environmentally friendly technique that one can think of," said combustion expert Anil Kulkarni at Pennsylvania State University, who has studied the technique for the National Institutes of Standards and Technology.

The controlled oil fire at sea started Wednesday evening in a small area of the gulf spill and lasted for a little over an hour, said Coast Guard spokesman David Mosley. (WSJ)

Petroleum News: Research shows in-situ burning, dispersant especially effective

The April 25 edition of Petroleum News carried the results of a joint industry program that looked at the feasibility or otherwise of responding effectively to an oil spill in ice-infested waters.

Concerns about the ability of industry to clean up oil spills is one of the core questions in the debate about whether or not oil and gas development should take place in the Arctic offshore, Petroleum News senior staff writer Alan Bailey noted at the beginning of the article.

Working on the basis that knowledge and data are the keys to addressing Arctic oil spill concerns, the results of a joint industry program begun in early 2006 and coordinated by Norwegian research company SINTEF, was the basis for the article. Bailey said the program had completed a series of research projects, establishing facts about the properties of spilled oil in icy water and the effectiveness of potential response techniques.

The researchers were able to obtain permission from the Norwegian government to put actual crude oil into the sea in carefully controlled conditions, thus enabling the testing of oil behavior and cleanup effectiveness in ice conditions closely similar to those that might be encountered in an Arctic oil spill emergency. So, in addition to carrying out a variety of laboratory tests, the researchers were able to run some experiments in fjord ice at SINTEF’s research facility at Svea in Svalbard, as well as carry out larger scale tests in sea ice in the Barents Sea.

The end results of the research include a dataset for the development of oil spill contingency plans; a web-based oil spill response guide for Arctic and ice-covered waters; and some new technologies for offshore Arctic cleanup. (GoO)

The German government wants to promote the development of electric vehicles on a grand scale. But many industry observers point out that the perceived benefits of e-cars are massively overrated. In some cases, their carbon footprint is even worse than that of conventional autos. (Spiegel)

IT’S been 25 years since the New York City Board of Estimate, under Mayor Edward Koch’s leadership, approved a plan to reduce the need for putting municipal garbage in landfills by developing facilities to burn it to create energy. At the same time, the city took the first steps toward creating a recycling program. Since then, disposal costs have risen faster than inflation, and the need to find better methods of getting rid of wastes is even greater. (NYT)

ON several quiet streets in Sheffield, a northern English city an hour from here, are street lamps that look like ordinary gas lamps, but do not burn ordinary gas. Instead, their light comes from gas released from the sewers that run beneath them. Thus, they are both relics of the past, when gas lamps lighted our streets, and of the future, when excrement and wastewater will again be seen as a resource, not a waste. (NYT)

The first U.S. offshore wind farm, a giant project 5 miles/8 km off the Massachusetts coast, was approved on Wednesday after years of opposition involving everyone from local Indian tribes to the Kennedy family.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar gave the green light for the historic 130-turbine, 420-megawatt Cape Wind project in Horseshoe Shoal, Nantucket Sound, in what supporters considered a huge step forward for renewable energy in the United States. (Reuters)

HYANNIS, Mass. — The federal government may have described the Cape Wind project as a fait accompli, but Ian Parent does not expect to see turbines in the water or run the panini maker at his restaurant with electricity generated in Nantucket Sound any time soon.

“I bet this goes on for another five years,” said Mr. Parent, the owner of La Petite France Café, as he unwrapped cheese behind the counter on Wednesday afternoon.

Word that the federal government had approved a permit on Wednesday for Cape Wind Associates to build a 130-turbine wind farm off the coast here barely caused a ripple in Hyannis, where the installation will be visible from parts of the town, including a popular beach and many houses.

After a nine-year battle over the proposal, most here thought the decision would lead to even more years of litigation and waiting. (NYT)

Germany's energy supply is on the verge of an important turning point. Over the coming months and years, German utility giants plan to build massive offshore wind farms that are expected to produce huge amounts of green energy. The first such wind farm went online this week.

It is wet, cold and somewhat unreal on this morning in Emden, a small city on the North Sea coast in northwestern Germany. Patches of fog are slowly beginning to dissipate, but the worst thing of all is that it's dead calm. (Spiegel)

All of Europe and North Africa could be powered by renewable electricity by 2050 with the North Sea at the heart of a European “supersmartgrid”, according to a reort by the accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The report, compiled with a range of research institutes, says that the North and Baltic seas could sustain a large amount of offshore windpower with the North Sea also contributing big quantities of electricity from wave and tidal power.

This could be connected to a European “supersmartgrid” with more electricity supplies being generated by solar power in North Africa and more hydro development in Scandinavia and the Swiss Alps.

Kevin Reynard, a partner at PWC in Aberdeen, said that the report had cleared up some of the conventional criticisms of large scale renewables.

By connecting wind farms over a wide area using smart technology, the report argues that wind could produce reliable amounts of electricity.

“Opportunities to use clean, affordable natural sources of energy have been talked about for over 150 years and now is the time for positive action,” he said. (The Times)

Corruption: A review of the Democrats' health care bill, showing that the plan would increase costs, was available before Congress voted on the measure. The health secretary reportedly sat on it. This is transparency?

The report was compiled by Medicare's Office of the Actuary, an objective player in the health care debate. Its findings did not back up what the administration and Democratic leadership had been telling us about the health care overhaul.

Chief Actuary Richard Foster estimated that the program would add $311 billion over 10 years in costs beyond what would have been the case if the legislation hadn't become law.

The Health and Human Services Department reportedly had the report more than a week before the vote but refused to review it until after the Senate bill passed the House on March 21.

"The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote," said an unidentified HHS source in a Monday report in the Washington Prowler blog of the American Spectator. Pardon us, but wouldn't it have been better if this information had been made public or given to lawmakers before the House voted?

The outcome might have been different. If only four "yes" votes had been changed to "no," the bill wouldn't have passed and the country wouldn't be facing a future plagued by costly, substandard health care run by a cold and incompetent federal bureaucracy. (IBD)

Health Reform: It turns out that House energy panel Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., was wrong in calling American businesses liars. He and some of his colleagues should look in the mirror — if they can stand it.

Whether it's Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., repeatedly using four-letter words as he did Tuesday while bullying executives of Goldman Sachs, or oilmen getting dragged to Capitol Hill to be groundlessly accused of price-gouging, the liberal politicians now running Washington would have no agenda if it weren't for evil corporations.

A few weeks ago, Waxman, D-Calif., and Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of Energy's oversight subcommittee, were arranging a Watergatesque investigation against AT&T, Caterpillar, John Deere and Verizon because they had the audacity to file reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission stating that ObamaCare's scrapping of a tax credit would reduce their earnings.

A hearing was scheduled to show the world what greedy liars these fat cats are. And Waxman and Stupak demanded that within two weeks the firms provide "any analyses related to the projected impact of health care reform ... any documents, including e-mail messages, sent to or prepared or reviewed by senior company officials related to the projected impact of health care reform" and "an explanation of the accounting methods used ... since 2003 to estimate the financial impact" of the new monster health law.

Well, guess what. The Democratic staff of Waxman's committee checked the documents and found that the evil corporations were right and Waxman and Stupak were wrong. "The companies acted properly and in accordance with accounting standards in submitting filings to the SEC in March and April," a staff memo admitted. (IBD)

That's the title of a recent HND piece, which focuses on an issue that you almost never hear about: How doctors—especially hospital residents—are being screwed by the system. Of course, this will only get worse under Obamacare.

Yes indeed, only liberal morons could come up with a "reform" of health care that spends untold billions, adds not a single doctor or nurse, but provides for upwards of 17,000 new bureaucrats.

The current piece, though, looks more at how these residents—the heart of the hospital—don't even make $50,000 per year, and this for working more than 100 hours a week. In addition, they are saddled with a huge student loan debt (averaging $200,000 or more). Note that these conditions have been in place for a long time.

You will also find out how the med school grads can't even pick their specialty or their location to practice, as this is all set up by the "Match." No wonder most docs are less than thrilled with their lives, but have invested so much time and money, few of them can just bail.

Read the complete article. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)

There is a war between ranchers and environmentalists in the West — and the environmentalists are funded by the taxpayers.
April 27, 2010
- by Callie Gnatkowski

There is a war going on in the West. It has nothing to do with guns and bullets. It’s an environmental war, declared by eco-activists against farmers and ranchers who work the land.

It’s not covered by the mainstream media. But environmental groups boast that their aim is to run ranchers off their land, put them out of business, and bar beef and other food from our tables. And the environmentalists get taxpayers to pay them for their attempts at destruction.

The tools they use are the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and other acts, along with a small army of lawyers who find bureaucratic loopholes to bankrupt farmers and ranchers.

While ranchers struggle to pay attorneys to represent their interests in these lawsuits, environmental groups are getting paid by taxpayers. Even though the activists don’t win all of these cases, they are reimbursed for their attorneys’ fees through the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA). The abuse of EAJA, where environmental groups collect up to $650 per hour for frivolous lawsuits, was covered recently by Pajamas Media.

“Essentially, these environmental groups are being paid to sue the federal government,” said Wyoming attorney Karen Budd-Falen. “They file hundreds of lawsuits, and rather than fight the suits, the government often settles the case, agreeing to pay attorneys fees in the settlement.” (PJM)

Liberals, and especially unions, frequently claim that raising the minimum wage helps workers and the economy. They contend that if people earn more money through a higher minimum wage, then they will be able to spend more as well, creating more jobs, and making everybody better off as a consequence. Now two U.S. territories are putting these theories to the test.

The Federal minimum wage increase passed in 2007 also applied to American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). The law incrementally raises the minimum wage in these two territories by $.50 per hour per year, until the minimum wage reach the level of the U.S. minimum wage. Both these territories have lower cost of livings than in the continental United States so the Federal minimum wage hike affected a substantial portion of their workforces: 74 percent of workers in American Samoa and 33 percent of workers in the CNMI. The Government Accountability Office recently issued a report examining the effects that this enormous increase in wages has had on the local island economies. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

Forget peak oil. What about peak lithium, peak neodymium, and peak phosphorus?

When you really need something, it's natural to worry about running out of it. Peak oil has been a global preoccupation since the 1970s, and the warnings get louder with each passing year. Environmentalists emphasize the importance of placing limits on consumption of fossil fuels, but haven't been successful in encouraging people to consume less energy—even with the force of law at their backs.

But maybe they're going about it all wrong, looking for solutions in the wrong places. Economists Lucas Bretschger and Sjak Smulders argue that the decisive question isn't to focus directly on preserving the resources we already have. Instead, they ask: “Is it realistic to predict that knowledge accumulation is so powerful as to outweigh the physical limits of physical capital services and the limited substitution possibilities for natural resources?” In other words, can increasing scientific knowledge and technological innovation overcome any limitations to economic growth posed by the depletion of non-renewable resources?

The debate over peak oil is heavily politicized, so let's set it aside and test the idea of imminent resource peaks and their consequences for economic growth on three other non-renewable resources: lithium, neodymium, and phosphorus. (Ronald Bailey, Reason)

Much of today’s anti-nuclear hysteria is based on a misunderstanding of what happened in Ukraine. (Rob Lyons, spiked)

Having a vegetarian run a company known for shilling sugary soda and salty snacks might not seem like the most obvious match. But under Indra Nooyi's leadership, PepsiCo's growth has skyrocketed -- from the acquisition of Tropicana in 1998 and the Quaker Oats merger in 2000, to the much more recent purchase of Pepsi Americas and Pepsi Bottling, for $7.7 billion last year. (Fortune)

SAN FRANCISCO — It was not a happy day for the Happy Meal.

In what it described as a blow against the fattening temptations of fast food, the board of supervisors in Santa Clara County, south of San Francisco, voted Tuesday to ban the promotional toys that often accompany child-size portions of cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets if those meals don’t meet certain nutritional standards.

The criteria, which are based on federal standards and recommendations from the nonprofit Institute of Medicine, would apply to all fast-food restaurants giving away toys in meals in-tended for children. Ken Yeager, the board president, said the new law would level “the playing field by taking away the incentive to choose fatty, sugary foods over healthier options.” (NYT)

The harshest winter for 30 years has caused populations of rare black grouse to fall to their lowest recorded level in northern England, according to conservationists.

Black grouse had increased from 773 males in 1998 to a peak of 1,200 in 2007, but cold and rainy summers in 2007 and 2008 led to poor breeding seasons, with just 730 males recorded in spring 2009.

Scientists from the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust were hopeful that a spell of good weather last spring had allowed the bird to bounce back with a more successful breeding season.

But the "appalling conditions" this winter, with long periods of freezing conditions and deep snow, have badly damaged the birds in their North Pennines stronghold. (TDT)

Prince Charles, once mocked for talking to plants, will have his Al Gore moment, when his views on the environment make their US television debut later this year in a televised special on NBC.

“Just as mankind has the power to push the world to the brink, so too does he have the power to restore it,” he says in a short clip of the upcoming film Harmony.

The heir to the British throne is staging a multi-media assault on big business’s destructive impact on the environment that includes a book, feature film and television special.

The TV special will be aired in November as part of NBC Universal’s “Green is Universal” initiative, which includes a mandate from corporate bosses to weave environmental themes across much of its 69 global properties. (Financial Times)

Ocean Acidification: A National Strategy to Meet the Challenges of a Changing Ocean asserts that, unless man-made carbon dioxide emissions are substantially curbed or atmospheric carbon dioxide is controlled by some other means, the oceans will continue to become more acidic. Although the long-term consequences are unknown, a federal program under development is a positive move toward understanding and responding to the problem. (NAP)

26 April 2010 by Michael Le Page

The United Nations has made 2010 its Year of Biodiversity. While there could be as many as 30 million species on this teeming planet, so far fewer than 2 million have been identified. That includes a staggering 114,000 catalogued in the past three years alone. Our exploration of life is just beginning. No wonder the UN is keen that this year should be one of celebration.

It is also time to take stock, though. Human activities are causing a mass extinction, but the right action now could pull life back from the brink. At last we are beginning to understand what generates biodiversity (Why the tropics are hotbeds of evolution) and what makes a good conservation programme (How to save an island). We can also predict how our activities today will shape biodiversity in the future (this article, below). It is a sobering vision – but one that is still in our power to change. (New Scientist)

Some of Germany's leading food companies have indicated that they won't be using genetically modified potatoes any time soon, according to a recent survey. Several fear use of the GM crops in their products could damage their public images.

Public pressure has led several of the largest potato chip and french fry manufacturers within Germany to say they would shy away from using genetically modified (GM) potatoes -- even if they get approved for human consumption.

According to the results of a survey released this month by the German branch of the environmental organization Greenpeace, a number of snacks and fast food giants including Burger King, McDonald's, German seafood chain Nordsee and chipmaker Lorenz Snack-World have all said they would not use GM potatoes -- at least for the time being. A number said they feared their companies' public images would be damaged, and some said use of GM potatoes would drive up quality control costs.

Often referred to disparagingly as "Frankenstein foods," genetically modified crops have often been the subject of public concern and the targets of environmental groups in Europe. Fears have been voiced about GM crops contaminating and harming local ecosystems. In particular, German chemical giant BASF's GM potato brand Amflora has been criticized for its resistance to antibiotics. (Spiegel)

Right now, Washington is scheming and scamming to erode and then erase the Second Amendment from our Constitution. And it will accomplish it through the signing of international treaties on gun control, bypassing the normal legislative process in Congress, tightening regulations upon firearm and ammunition manufacturers, using the anti-gun financing of tycoons and ultimately confiscating all firearms under the guise of terrorism patrol and enforcement. Without public debate and cloaked in secrecy, gun control covertly will come upon us like a thief in the night. One day, we will wake up to discover that the U.S. has signed a global treaty that will prohibit any transfer of firearm ownership, force reductions in the number of firearms privately owned and eventually eradicate the planet of guns for law-abiding citizens. Of course, the criminals still will have their guns illegally. And on that day, if you do not comply with that global treaty, you will be fined and face imprisonment. This is not a fictitious story or false warning. As sure as government health care has been shoved down our throats, so will the barrels of our guns. And left with little defense, we will go as lambs to the slaughter. (Chuck Norris, Townhall)

In case you missed it, expressing dissent about an issue that has become more and more politicized could warrant a lawsuit - even if it's just satire.

Michael Mann, a Penn State professor and a central figure in the Climategate scandal, but is best known for his "hockey stick graph" doesn't like being criticized. He has threatened to sue the creators of a video that has gone viral on YouTube mocking him. The creators of the video are a group called Minnesotans for Global Warming.

The possibility of a suit was the topic on Fox News April 27 "America Live," hosted by Megyn Kelly. Kelly asked ClimateDepot.com executive editor Marc Morano if Mann would be able to prove that this so-called YouTube spoof wasn't true and therefore win his lawsuit. (NewsBusters)

Michael Mann, the Penn State meteorology professor and global warming true believer, best known for his invention of the “hockey stick” temperature graph, is mad as hell and not going to take it any more. The globe may not be warming, but things are evidently getting too hot for Dr. Mann. After enduring university investigations, hostile questioning, legislative probes and attacks by colleagues he has had enough and is threatening to sue the makers of a satirical video that's a hit on You Tube. Look out—like mobsters on The Sopranos, the Climategate Mafia is lawyering up.

The parody video, titled “Hide the Decline,” received national attention when Rush Limbaugh played it on his radio show. Featuring a cat with a guitar, a talking tree, and a dancing figure sporting the image of Professor Mann, the catchy video has had more than 500,000 viewers on YouTube. It's the use of his image that Mann is complaining about, arguing that the video supports “efforts to sell various products and merchandise.” Is it just a funny parody or an illegal defamation? Decide for your selves. (The Resilient Earth)

I have know for a long time that green activists will say and do anything to advance their twisted cause, but the Sierra Club hit yet another new low this week.

Executive director Michael Brune tried to rescue the sinking Kerry-Graham-Lieberman climate bill by blaming the recent coal mining and oil drilling tragedies on our “dirty, dangerous and deadly energy resources.” If only we had a “clean energy economy”—whatever that is—we wouldn’t now be “mourning workers lost in a coal mine in West Virginia and an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana,” Brune said in an April 26 statement.

Yes, the deaths (like all deaths) are tragic and coal and oil producers should do everything reasonable to promote safety and to prevent such tragedies from occurring. That said, the deaths are not reasons to abandon or curtail fossil fuel use—in fact, we need to accelerate their production and use to increase global prosperity and freedom.

Let’s keep in mind, that no occupation is without risk to life and limb and that coal mining and oil drilling are not even close to the most dangerous occupations. (Steve Milloy, Daily Caller)

The climate change bill isn’t even officially dead (in fact, it was never officially resurrected), but that hasn’t stopped a lot of finger-pointing over who is responsible. Democrats and their allies are pointing their fingers at Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of the co-authors of the bill, because he walked away late Friday. But is that fair? Not really; the fix appeared to be in well before that. Graham, it seems, was just acknowledging that it was already a goner. (Capital Hill)

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on Tuesday he is committed to passing both climate-change and immigration-reform legislation this year.

While the two efforts are widely seen as election-year long-shots, Reid, a Democrat, said, "I am committed to doing both this session of Congress. (Reuters)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will begin analyzing a compromise climate change bill Senator John Kerry hopes to move through the Senate this year, despite a significant setback his effort has suffered, Kerry said on Tuesday.

The EPA will examine the economic impact the bill would have from provisions aimed at reducing pollution blamed for global warming.

"We are sending the bill to be modeled now with Lindsey Graham's consent," the Democratic senator told reporters. (Reuters)

Unchecked Power: Having nothing to lose as they tumble toward November's electoral cliff, Democrats have gone into legislative overdrive. With the hangman ready, the condemned are ordering the whole menu.

The way things look right now, 2010 could go down in history as one of the biggest reversals of political power ever — with even "safe" seats in big trouble.

Take Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the powerful pork-wielding House Appropriations Committee, who has held his seat since before man walked on the moon. He looks like a dead duck against a Republican challenge from a current county district attorney and MTV "Real World" alumnus named Sean Duffy — who wasn't even born when Obey took office.

"It's not a lifetime appointment," Duffy told the New York Times for a story on the numerous vulnerable Democrats who were once unbeatable.

But like Thelma and Louise when they knew the jig was up, the Democratic Congress has decided it might as well put the pedal to the metal and go over the precipice with a crash and a bang. Unfortunately, they've got an already pummeled economy in the back seat with them.

No one should misinterpret the rearranging of the cap-and-trade and immigration deck chairs on the Democrats' Titanic. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid want both — bullying industry in the name of saving the planet and buying Hispanic votes with amnesty for illegal aliens. (IBD)

Polls show that tackling climate change is a low priority for the American public. Indeed, a Yale poll found that only 12 percent of Americans were “very worried” about global warming.

In the last few days, the Environmental Protection Agency seems to have initiated a public campaign to make clear where it, and the science, stand, stating that the rise in greenhouse gases is a serious problem to be confronted.

On Monday night, the E.P.A. administrator, Lisa Jackson, made the point as a guest on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.” And on Tuesday, the agency released an 80-page glossy report called “Climate Change Indicators in the United States” to help Americans make sense of climate change data. (NYT Green)

WASHINGTON – Heat waves, storms, sea levels, glaciers, and wildlife migrations are just a few of the environmental indicators that show measurable signs of climate change. A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report, Climate Change Indicators in the United States, looks at 24 key indicators that show how climate change impacts the health and environment of the nation’s citizens. (Press Release)

My silence since mid-February has not meant that I have taken my eye off the climate-change scene. Far from it, although I have to confess that I have become increasingly wearied and bored by the fatuous lack of reality exhibited on this topic by many UK politicians. It is so glaringly obvious that, since the debacle in Copenhagen, ‘global warming’ is dying as a major political trope that I find it less and less exercising as an issue. Indeed, I do not want to waste too much energy in flogging a fundamentally dead corpse.

This last week, however, the nails in the global warming coffin have been driven in so thick and so fast that I thought it might be worth bringing attention once again to what is happening around the world - “You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Global Warming is as dead as a door-nail,” although I suspect that the Global Warming Ghost will hang around moaning and wailing for quite a while yet. (Emeritus Professor Philip Stott, The Clamour of the Times)

THE great fraud has been found out, and his country saved - for now - from the greatest of his follies.

Here’s the worst lie that Kevin Rudd, perhaps our most deceitful Prime Minister, once told about global warming and his Emissions Trading Scheme: “The biggest challenge the world faces in the decades ahead is climate change.

But on Tuesday Rudd decided “the great moral challenge” of our time wasn’t, after all.

It was just “a” challenge, he said. And with public trust falling in his ETS “solution” - a great green tax on gases - he cut and ran.

His ETS would be shelved until at least 2013. Two elections away. Yet only last year this same Government claimed “delay was denial”, and we could not wait to save “our jobs, our houses, our farms, our reefs, our economy and our future”. To stop “700,000 homes and businesses” on our coast from drowning. (Another lie.)

Rudd had his excuses, of course. The naughty Opposition now opposed the ETS in the Senate, and other countries were “slower to act” on global warming themselves.

For years he’s mocked warnings from sceptics and some Liberals that it was reckless for small Australia to make cuts that almost no other country would make.

AFTER months of avoiding even mentioning an emissions trading scheme Kevin Rudd has formally dumped Labor's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme until at least after the next election, and possibly the one after that.

After months of refusing to defend or promote the answer to the greatest moral and economic challenge “of our time” or to propose an alternative the Prime Minister has simply put it off as an inconvenient political truth and tried to blame the Coalition and the Greens for obstruction in the Senate.

The simple fact of the matter is that Rudd over-politicised and over-dramatised the importance of an ETS, put all his political capital into one policy that would split the Coalition and provide a campaign platform and had no answer when it failed.

Rudd's insistence the Senate pass the CPRS legislation before the Copenhagen climate change meeting in December now looks completely hollow and Australia's stance friendless and isolated internationally.

An ETS is no longer in the “lexicon” of the Obama administration and China and India are not budging on binding agreements after the expiration of the 2012 Kyoto agreement.

The demands for “business certainty” that drove Rudd's insistence are now empty rhetoric and the threats of a double-dissolution or an early election meaningless. (Dennis Shanahan, The Australian)

CORPORATE Australia has broadly welcomed the Rudd government's deferral of a carbon pollution reduction scheme, saying it presents an opportunity for renewed bipartisan agreement and consideration of other measures to cut emissions.

Some companies heavily exposed to a CPRS, like Origin Energy, made the point that continuing uncertainty risked delaying investment, including the need to meet base-load electricity demands.

But Macarthur Coal chairman Keith De Lacy said the announcement came as no surprise.

"I think business would generally welcome the decision," Mr De Lacy said. "There is no point proceeding with an emissions trading scheme in Australia until there is a unified approach globally, and that seems like it's a long way off." (Richard Gluyas, The Australian)

AS retreats go, they come no bigger than Kevin Rudd's delaying of his once cherished emissions trading scheme - one of the most spectacular backdowns by a prime minister in decades. (Paul Kelly, The Australian)

by Des Moore

April 27, 2010

The fightback by defenders of the dangerous (sic) warming science

The Rudd government has decided not to proceed with the legislation to establish an emissions trading scheme until after the next election. While this will be a disappointment for the believers in the dangerous global warming thesis promulgated by some scientists, it may encourage them to step-up the kind of fight-back exemplified by the Victorian Government’s sponsorship of a series of lectures in June on a Brave New World? The Climate Change Challenge. In what seems the normal exclusionist policy adopted by such groups, the lectures all appear to be by warmists and there are no sceptics.

This is but one of many fightbacks around the world. Here we have recently seen the obviously hurried production last month of a joint CSIRO-Bureau of Meteorology pamphlet that concludes that ‘Australia will be hotter in coming decades’; ‘Much of Australia will be drier in coming decades’; ‘Carbon dioxide generated by humans makes the ocean become more acidic’; ‘It is very likely that human activities have caused most of the global warming observed since 1950’; and ‘Climate change is real’. With the imprimatur of “experts”, the media has ignored the many analytical (and conclusive) defects in this pamphlet but they will be exposed soon in a response by the Fair Farming Group. (Quadrant)

Global Warming: Another shoe has dropped from the IPCC centipede as scientists in Bangladesh say their country will not disappear below the waves. As usual, the U.N.'s climate charlatans forgot one tiny detail. (IBD)

We now know that the UN's Nobel-winning, allegedly gold-standard climate bible bases factual assertions on dodgy source material like press releases. (No Consensus)

The counter-consensus to quasi-scientific hype and induced panic on climate change is at last assembling. The argument is not in the first place as to whether or not climate change has been taking place, but whether any recent warming of the planet is appreciably due to human activity and how harmful it will prove. Tom Stacey, in his eloquent and provocative introduction, investigates our tendency to ascribe this and other perceived planetary crises to some inherent fault in ourselves, be it original sin or a basic moral failing. Climate: the Counter Consensus goes on to examine, with thoroughness and impartial expertise, the so-called facts of global warming that are churned out and unquestioningly accepted, while the scientific and media establishments stifle or deride any legitimate expression of an opposing view. In doing so, the book typifies the mission of Independent Minds to replace political correctness and received wisdom with common sense and rational analysis.

Follow this link to see a T.V. interview with Professor Carter, with the kind permission of the Rhema Broadcasting Group.

In March, two Tyndall researchers gave a special breakfast briefing to members of the House of Commons. All Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Survival. Andrew Jordan (TYN-UEA) spoke about the policy and political implications of preparing for high emissions scenarios ('mitigate for 2 degrees and adapt for 4 degrees'). Lorraine Whitmarsh (TYN fellow, Cardiff)) spoke about changing public perceptions of climate change mitigation and adaptation. The ESRC organised meeting was attended by around 30 MPS, senior civil servants, academics and opinion formers and was chaired by the Rt Hon. John Gummer MP. (Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Propaganda)

Need more proof that Global Warming is the problem to environmentalists’ solutions? Take a whiff of this.

Researchers from the Australian Antarctic Division have announced that increased whale excrement in our oceans could help fight global warming by encouraging the growth of carbon dioxide-consuming algae. It seems the iron-rich droppings help spark blooms of phytoplankton, which in turn help regulate the oceans’ carbon sink capabilities.

Researcher Steve Nicol claimed that a larger population of baleen whales in the Southern Ocean would do the trick, but admitted that just how much excrement it would take to have any significant impact remains unknown. I suspect you’re way ahead of my response to that line, so I’ll save some typing.

But all manure is not created equal by greenie standards. In fact, up until now, animal waste has been right up there with that of internal-combustion engines and coal-fired power plants on the environmentalists’ Feces List. (Marc Sheppard, American Thinker)

Whale droppings could help fight global warming by 'fertilising' the oceans, according to a new study. (Louise Gray, TDT)

Climate change is showing no signs of slowing despite a severe winter in Germany that helped reduce public concerns about the threat of global warming, Germany's leading meteorologist said on Tuesday.

Wolfgang Kusch, president of the German Meteorological Service (DWD), said it was a mistake to interpret the harsh winter of 2009/10 as a sign climate change is abating. A German opinion poll recently found fears of climate change falling sharply.

"Despite fluctuations, temperatures are still moving in one direction -- higher," he said. "Climate researchers have to look at least 30-year periods when talking about trends...At the same time the last decade was the warmest in Germany in 130 years."

Skepticism about climate change has been growing in Germany, one of the world's four largest industrial countries, after an unusually long and cold winter in northern Europe.

An opinion poll by the Infratest institute in Der Spiegel magazine found 42 percent of Germans are concerned about climate change, down from 62 percent in 2006. A third do not think the climate change research is reliable and a quarter believe Germany will actually profit from climate change. (Reuters)

Back on March 21st I made a comment at Realclimate about the first of my series of posts concerning Vermeer’s and Rahmstorf’s 2009 attempt (referred to as VR2009 for the rest of this post) at predicting sea level rise for the 21st century. Not surprisingly, they did not allow the comment to go beyond the “moderation” phase. That’s OK I suppose – it’s their blog. But it has come to my attention that there have been several comments by “EFS_Junior” and Phillip Machanick about my series over at Realclimate to which I should respond. And since RealClimate likes to delete my comments, I will respond here for the record.

When I entered my comment back in March I had the foresight to make a screen print of how it appeared while awaiting moderation (otherwise known as deletion at RealClimate). (Tom Moriarty, Climate Sanity)

There's an interesting article over at El Reg, which discusses a new paper in Nature Geosciences on the subject of the reaction of soil bacteria to increases in temperature. The theory is that as temperatures rise, all the microbes in the soil will emit even more carbon dioxide than they do already, exacerbating warming still further.

That's the theory. Unfortunately, an ecologist from California has now rather thrown a spanner in the works by doing some good old-fashioned experiments. Steve Allison has discovered that although small increases in warmth do increase carbon dioxide emissions, as temperatures rise further, the effect tails off quickly and emissions plunge.

4th International Conference on Climate Change:
The Fourth International Conference on Climate Change will be held in Chicago, Illinois on May 16-18, 2010 at the Chicago Marriott Magnificent Mile Hotel, 540 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago. It will call attention to new scientific research on the causes and consequences of climate change, and to economic analysis of the cost and effectiveness of proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To register for the event, or for information about the program, speakers, co-sponsors, and more, click here.

Journal Reviews:
Windstorms of Europe: How have they varied over the past four decades of supposedly unprecedented global warming?

Global Warming-Induced Hybridization in Flying Squirrels: It represents perhaps the first real-world demonstration of an oft-hypothesized -- and now-proven -- method of successfully coping with a major climate-change challenge.

Plant Growth Database:
Our latest results of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature are: Red Ironbark (Ghannoum et al., 2010), Soybean (Oikawa et al., 2010), Sydney Blue Gum Tree (Ghannoum et al., 2010), and White Birch (Ambebe and Dang, 2010).

Medieval Warm Period Project:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 821 individual scientists from 488 separate research institutions in 43 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Egelsee Bog, Central Switzerland. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here. (co2science.org)

Europe's greenest modes of transport are falling behind the biggest polluters, which is contributing to a steep rise in climate-warming emissions, the European Environment Agency said on Tuesday.

Road and air freight, which both have a large carbon footprint, grew slightly faster than the economy, at around 43 percent and 35 percent respectively between 1997 and 2007, the European Union agency added in its annual review of transport's environmental impact.

The market share of the cleanest freight modes -- rail and inland waterways -- declined over the same period, it said. (Reuters)

In his brand new book Power Hungry, energy journalist and Austin apiarist Robert Bryce marshals many numbers to plainly show how modern culture exacts power from energy to save time, increase wealth, and raise standards of living. Bryce also dispenses common sense to citizens and policy makers for an improved environment, a more productive economy, and a more enlightened civil society.

Inspired by energy writings of Rockefeller University’s Jesse Ausubel, and the University of Manitoba’s prolific Vaclav Smil, he makes the case for continuing down the path of de-carbonizing our machine fuels—a process begun two hundred years ago when we turned from wood to fossil fuels and huge reservoirs of impounded water. As the world’s population continues to urbanize, people will inevitably demand cleaner, healthier, environmentally sensitive energy choices.

Today, the world uses fossil fuels (oil, gas, and coal) for approximately 86 percent of its energy, getting a lot of bang for its buck. Bryce offers convincing evidence that, over the next several generations, particularly since broad energy transformations require much time and financial investment, relatively cleaner burning natural gas will provide a bridge to pervasive use of nuclear power—“ the only always-on, no-carbon source that can replace significant amounts of coal in our electricity generation portfolio.” And if nuclear ultimately becomes the centerpiece for the electricity sector, which constitutes about 40 percent of our total energy use, this development would accelerate the de-carbonization of the transportation and heating sectors as well.

His narrative transcends the current climate change debate. He thinks the evidence on either side is equivocal, at best provisional, and, even if it could be proven conclusively that humans were responsible for precipitously warming the earth by producing a surfeit of carbon dioxide, there is little that could be done about the situation now that would be consequential or practical, except embrace imaginative adaptation approaches.

Bryce organizes his ideas around four interrelated “Imperatives” that serve as a prime motif for human history and explain much contemporary circumstance: power density, energy density, scale and cost. He shows that, although energy is the ability to do work, what people really crave is the ability to control the rate at which work gets done—power. Performing work faster means more time to do something else. This begets an appetitive feedback loop, where more power unleashes more time to produce more power. As the scale of this process increases, costs are reduced, making what power creates more affordable.

In terms of economic efficiency and improved ecosystems, producing the most power in the smallest space at a scale affordable by all is what present and future enterprise should ensure. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

WASHINGTON — The loss of life and the looming ecological catastrophe from the oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico have piled political complications onto the push for energy and climate change legislation here, officials and interest groups say.

Expanded offshore oil and gas drilling is a central component to the compromise plan being written in the Senate to address the nation’s energy needs and the emissions of the gases that contribute to global warming. The plan, which still does not exist in legislative form, would also include multibillion-dollar incentives for nuclear power and so-called clean-coal research.

The energy initiative is already in trouble because a crucial sponsor, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, has walked away from negotiations as a result of a dispute with the White House and Senate Democratic leaders over immigration policy.

The oil spill may have added to its distress. Several senators said they were troubled by the accident and might not support broad climate and energy legislation if it contains expanding drilling without adequate safeguards.

Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, said he had many concerns about the energy bill that appears to be taking shape, chief among them the aggressive pursuit of offshore oil. (NYT)

TransAlta Corp is preparing for regulations forcing drastic emission cuts from coal-fired power by studying switching away from the fuel at some plants and using technology to deal with the carbon at others, its chief executive said on Tuesday.

TransAlta, Canada's largest publicly traded electricity generator, is plotting its strategy as Canadian and U.S. governments lay the groundwork for tighter regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, CEO Steve Snyder said after the company reported a 60 percent jump in first-quarter profit.

The company runs 70 power stations, and its five coal-fired ones are among its largest. It has two more under development. (Reuters)

LONDON - Examining patient records to pick out those at high risk of developing heart disease is cheaper and just as effective as screening all adults aged between 40 and 74, a British study showed on Monday.

The research, published in the British Medical Journal, raises doubts about a 250-million-pound ($387 million) a year screening programme launched by the British government in 2008 and suggests funds may be better spent on high-risk patients.

Simon Griffin of the epidemiology unit of Britain's Medical Research Council, who led the study, said it showed with healthcare budgets squeezed by global recession and a growing burden of chronic disease, health authorities should think carefully about pricey heart screening plans. (Reuters)

Four common bad habits combined - smoking, drinking too much, inactivity and poor diet - can age you by 12 years, sobering new research suggests.

The findings are from a study that tracked nearly 5000 British adults for 20 years, and they highlight yet another reason to adopt a healthier lifestyle.

Overall, 314 people studied had all four unhealthy behaviours. Among them, 91 died during the study, or 29 per cent. Among the 387 healthiest people with none of the four habits, only 32 died, or about 8 per cent.

The risky behaviours were: smoking tobacco; downing more than three alcoholic drinks per day for men and more than two daily for women; getting less than two hours of physical activity per week; and eating fruits and vegetables fewer than three times daily. (AP)

Scepticism is widely denounced as a poison and a disease today, just as it was in the Dark Ages. We urgently need to rescue its reputation. (Frank Furedi, spiked)

NEW YORK - Fast food fans beware: even if you're being calorie-conscious, you are very likely getting far too much sodium with that burger and fries-or even that chicken salad.

A survey of thousands of lunchtime patrons of 11 different fast food chains found their meals contained an average of more 1,700 milligrams (mg) of sodium. US health guidelines recommend most people eat no more than 1,500 mg of sodium daily.

"Sodium was high across all of the chains that we looked at, and in particular the sodium density is high," Christine M. Johnson of the Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Control Program of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, one of the study's authors, told Reuters Health. (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK - Starbucks and Heinz were among 16 U.S. food companies who pledged on Monday to cut salt levels in their products as part of a national campaign started by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The pledges are part of Bloomberg's National Salt Reduction Initiative, a coalition of cities and health organizations that aim to reduce salt in restaurant and packaged foods by 25 percent over five years.

Starbucks will cut salt in its breakfast sandwiches, while Heinz will reduce sodium levels in its ketchup and marinades and Boar's Head will cut salt in all manner of cured meats, cold cuts and sausages.

Other companies involved are Au Bon Pain, FreshDirect, Goya, Hain Celestial Group, Kraft, LiDestri, Mars Food US, McCain Foods, Red Gold,Inc., Subway, Unilever, Uno Chicago Grill and White Rose

"By working together over the past two years, we have been able to accomplish something many said was impossible - setting concrete, achievable goals for salt reduction," Bloomberg said in a statement.

U.S. researchers found recently that cutting salt intake by nearly 10 percent could prevent hundreds of thousands of heart attacks and strokes over several decades and save the United States $32 billion in healthcare costs. (Reuters)

Here's how my June 14, 2006, column started: "Down through the years, I've attempted to warn my fellow Americans about the tyrannical precedent and template for further tyranny set by anti-tobacco zealots ... .

"In the early stages of the anti-tobacco campaign, there were calls for 'reasonable' measures such as non-smoking sections on airplanes and health warnings on cigarette packs. In the 1970s, no one would have ever believed such measures would have evolved into today's level of attack on smokers, which includes confiscatory cigarette taxes and bans on outdoor smoking. The door was opened, and the zealots took over."

Once A Tyrant

What the anti-tobacco zealots established is that government had the right to forcibly control our lives if it was done in the name of protecting our health. In the Foundation for Economic Education's Freeman publication, I wrote a column titled "Nazi Tactics" (January 2003):

"These people who want to control our lives are almost finished with smokers, but never in history has a tyrant arisen one day and decided to tyrannize no more. The nation's tyrants have now turned their attention to the vilification of fast-food chains such as McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Kentucky Fried Chicken, charging them with having created an addiction to fatty foods.

"In their campaign against fast-food chains, restaurants and soda and candy manufacturers the nation's food Nazis always refer to the anti-tobacco campaign as the model for their agenda."

America's tyrants have now turned their attention to salt, as reported in the Washington Post's article "FDA plans to limit amount of salt allowed in processed foods for health reasons" (April 19, 2010).

Why do food processors put a certain quantity of salt in their products? The answer is the people who buy their product like it, and they earn profits by pleasing customers. The FDA has taken the position that what the American buying public wants is irrelevant. They know what's best and if you disagree, they will fine, jail or put you out of business. (Walter Williams, IBD)

NEW YORK, New York, April 26, 2010 - Nearly one million people around the world died from exposure to radiation released by the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl reactor, finds a new book from the New York Academy of Sciences published today on the 24th anniversary of the meltdown at the Soviet facility. (ENS)

April 26 -- The U.S. medical-system overhaul will improve the nation’s health and cut costs only if it’s followed by initiatives to curtail the epidemic of obesity and diabetes, said Michael Milken, founder of the Milken Institute.

Milken and health industry executives speaking at a panel presentation on the health-care overhaul today called for a national “war” on obesity modeled after the public campaign against smoking that has slashed rates of cigarette use among Americans. The panel was part of the institute’s annual global conference. (Bloomberg)

CHICAGO, April 26 -- U.S. white adults have stopped getting obese but African-American young adults and children have rising obesity levels, researchers said.

Anirban Basu of the University of Chicago School of Medicine and colleagues used a simulation model based on national data from 2000-2004 and validated against 2005-2006 data.

The researchers project obesity rates across all age categories for the U.S. adult will remain stable for the next 10 years. However, the researchers project young African-American adults ages 18-39, children -- mainly boys ages 6-9 -- and African-American children age 10 and older will have rising obesity levels.

"The unprecedented rise in obesity among U.S. adults over the past two decades appears to have stabilized and will continue to remain stable over the next 10 years," Basu said in a statement. "Levels of obesity, however, remain very high and we're particularly concerned with the increase in rates of overweight among 6-9 year-old children -- especially boys."

The findings are published in the journal Medical Decision Making. (UPI)

Posted by Juan Carlos Hidalgo

Following Rahm Emmanuel’s advice of not letting a crisis go to waste, the new center-right government in Chile now wants to extend the permanent rise in tobacco taxes—supposedly adopted as a measure to finance post-earthquake reconstruction—to foods with high concentrations of salt and trans fat [in Spanish]. Jaime Malañich, the Health Minister, said that the earthquake is opening up an opportunity to implement a measure that would increase the government’s revenue and fight obesity and that has been considered for many years.

My colleague Ian Vásquez wrote a few days ago that, by announcing unnecessary tax increases as post-earthquake reconstruction measures, the recently-inaugurated administration of Sebastian Piñera was quick to disappoint those who expected a bold move toward strengthening free market policies that have made Chile a Latin American success story. If these announcements are any guide, expect more disappointments. (Cato at liberty)

IBD/TIPP: How dare you use the S word? they gasped in 2008 when we ran a series about Barack Obama titled "The Audacity Of Socialism." But now, more Americans than not think that's how our future is spelled.

Our 21-part series began in late August and continued into October, a period when then-candidate Obama was "edging to the center," as many observers put it. Moderates and Independents had already broken his way and a new term — "ObamaCons" — had surfaced to describe conservatives who were warming to this supposedly centrist Democrat.

Our series, however, focused not just on Obama's political posturing at the time, but the positions he had taken and the people he had associated with for years. And the bottom line was that the young senator from Illinois was anything but a moderate. In fact, we thought the series confirmed that Obama openly favored change based on principles that could only be called socialistic.

We know socialism comes in many forms. "People speak of socialism," Michael Harrington, movement leader and author of "The Other America," wrote in a later volume. "We should speak of socialisms."

But redistributing wealth and taking control of key industries are tenets in most definitions. And the Obama administration has seemed to be actively pursuing both over the last 15 months.

Back in 2008, however, relatively few Americans believed this was a direction their country would take.

In early August 2008, just before our series kicked off, the IBD/TIPP Poll asked Americans if they agreed or disagreed with the statement: "The U.S. is evolving into a socialist state." Only 25% agreed, while 42% disagreed (see chart). Democrats shrugged off the possibility 46% to 20% and Independents by 39% to 23%.

Even Republicans disagreed (39%) more than they agreed (35%).

By the following March, however, after the new administration had settled in and the government was taking an ownership stake in the U.S. auto industry, more Americans (39%) suddenly agreed than disagreed (36%) that socialism was on the march.

Republicans had swung 63% to 21% and Independents 47% to 29% into the "agree" column. Interestingly, Democrats disagreed more (53% to 13%) than they did when asked seven months earlier. A month later, Americans were split.

IBD/TIPP asked the question again this month, and those who agree the U.S. is evolving into a socialist state have again opened up a three-point lead (41% to 38%).

This is a statistic worth watching. Why? Because our poll also found that Americans oppose government control of key industries by a 59% to 20% margin and government redistribution of wealth and income by an even more overwhelming 61% to 19%. (IBD)

Radio host Michael Medved breaks down the big lies often told about American business. (Stossel)

The world’s 80 largest insurance groups have written to the G20 group of nations to protest at their industry’s inclusion in proposals for a global financial services tax, saying it is unfair and would have an adverse effect on consumers. (Financial Times)

The Obama Democrats' stealth strategy for increasing the size and scope of the federal government is well under way, despite huge voter backlash. Federal spending has been increased from a 30-year average of 21% of gross domestic product to 25%, and a bipartisan commission tasked with reducing the deficit may recommend tax increases.

Presidential economic adviser Paul Volcker has already called for a value-added tax, a form of national sales tax, and presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs has declined to rule it out.

The assumption in some quarters is that a tax increase is inevitable and that the public won't allow any significant decrease in public spending. But there's reason to question that assumption.

Spending cuts have proved politically sustainable in other advanced countries. Economist Tyler Cowen, writing in the New York Times, notes that in the last two decades Canada, Sweden and Finland all cut government spending 20% within a few years when faced with structural budget deficits.

It may have been painful, but no one saw starving people in the streets of Ottawa, Stockholm or Helsinki. (Michael Barone, IBD)

Jobs: Since the Obama administration took over, Washington has passed two recovery bills costing more than $800 billion. At that price, shouldn't we be experiencing an employment boom? Taxpayers are being fleeced.

Less than a month after his inauguration, President Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus bill. The promises flowed freely. In the flush of the moment, the White House said that by the end of 2010, 3.5 million jobs would be created or saved — 90% of them in the private sector — and unemployment would peak at 8%.

As he signed the legislation, Obama declared that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act "does not mark the end of our economic troubles," but that it would "mark the beginning of the end — the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs." There were "shovel-ready projects" just waiting to put Americans back to work.

A little more than a year later, with unemployment at nearly 10%, Congress passed a jobs bill that includes $17.5 billion in tax cuts, business credits and subsidies for state and local construction bonds. It also bumps $20 billion into the federal highway trust fund to be spent on highway and transit programs.

As expected, the March 18 Rose Garden signing ceremony for the jobs bill included another round of empty promises. "We may soon be adding jobs instead of losing them," Obama said. "The jobs bill I'm signing today is intended to help accelerate this process."

So how has the legislation played out in the real world? About as well as we expected, which is to say Washington is spending a lot of other people's money on initiatives that won't achieve what they were intended to. (IBD)

DAFENG, China — When asked why she and her husband do not want a second child, Shi Xiaomei smiles at her pudgy 9-year-old son and does a quick tally of the family budget.

Her salary as a cleaning lady and the income from a mahjong parlor in their spare room barely cover their son's school fees and other expenses.

"With just one, we can give him nicer things. But if you tried to split what we have between two or three, they would all end up with nothing," the 34-year-old says at her home in Dafeng, a prosperous but still-rural county 185 miles (300 kilometers) north of Shanghai.

For years, China curbed its once-explosive population growth with a widely hated one-child limit that at its peak led to forced abortions, sterilizations and even infanticide. Now the long-sacrosanct policy may be on its way out, as some demographers warn that China is facing the opposite problem: not enough babies. (AP)

Our high-tech products increasingly make use of rare metals, and mining those resources can have devastating environmental consequences. But if we block projects like the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska, are we simply forcing mining activity to other parts of the world where protections may be far weaker? (Oswald J. Schmitz And T.E. Graedel, e360)

A few years ago, Penn & Teller’s “Showtime” series “Bullshit!” ran an episode devoted to recycling and all the BS that goes along with it. They sent their camera crew and a few actors out to pester some unsuspecting homeowners, to see how many separate recycling bins people could be suckered into accepting and having to deal with. Luckily, this segment is available on YouTube. In the end, the test subject were willing to accept up to nine separate recycling bins. This was played for laughs, since it’s clearly a ridiculous idea, and shows how far people will go to be seen as “green.”

Sigh.

The nine-bin nightmare: Families forced to follow green zealots' new recycling diktats (The Unwanted Blog)

Aliens may exist but mankind should avoid contact with them as the consequences could be devastating, British scientist Stephen Hawking warned on Sunday.

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," the astrophysicist said in a new television series, according to British media reports.

The programmes depict an imagined universe featuring alien life forms in huge spaceships on the hunt for resources after draining their own planet dry.

"Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach," Hawking warned. (AFP)

A team of scientists in Spain and the UK have identified the final piece in the jigsaw of how phytate is produced in plants.

Published today by PNAS, the breakthrough discovery by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) in Madrid and the University of East Anglia (UEA) has implications for agribusiness, the environment and human health.

Phytate is a naturally-occurring phosphate deposit which accumulates in the seeds, beans and tubers of many crops. The researchers have identified for the first time how the enzyme that produces phytate works, by solving the molecular structure of the protein IP5 2-kinase.

Because many animals are unable to digest the phytate present in their feed, the phytate phosphorus is transferred to the soil as manure, leading to the harmful pollution of waterways.

As a result, the animal feedstuffs industry currently adds a special enzyme called phytase to the feedstuff which allows animals to absorb the phosphorus complexed within phytate. This is a costly process, and so the industry needs to identify low-phytate varieties of crops such as maize, rice, wheat, barley and soya bean. This new discovery completes our understanding of how phytate is made by plants.

Not only does phytate contribute to pollution, the phytate in crops is also an 'anti-nutrient' that can have a detrimental effect on human health. (University of East Anglia)

Llamas have been brought in to protect eggs and chicks of wading birds from predators such as foxes at an RSPB reserve, the wildlife charity said.

The new security comes in the form of two animals, Willy and Jack, who have been recruited to act as guards during the nesting season.

The RSPB's Marshside reserve in Merseyside is already grazed by cattle to keep the habitat in good condition for important lapwing and redshank populations.

Now the highly territorial llamas – which are aggressive if provoked and can kick, spit and neck wrestle with each other – are being introduced as an experiment to protect the birds.

It is hoped their slightly erratic behaviour, along with the groaning noises and the ''mwa'' sound they make when afraid or angry, will be a deterrent to predators such as foxes.
The llama and its relative the alpaca are already used as livestock guards to protect lambs and sheep from predators.

The Prince of Wales uses alpacas to protect his lambs from foxes during lambing season on the organic farm at Highgrove, his Gloucestershire estate. (TDT)

How water runoff and subsurface infiltration affect herbicide loss

MADISON, WI, April 26, 2010-Grass buffer strips are commonly used in crop production to reduce herbicide runoff. These practices are encouraged through incentives, regulations or laws, and are effective at lowering herbicide concentration in runoff. However, subsurface filtration (under the buffer strips) is not as well documented, and neither are the effects of trees integrated into buffer strips with grasses. Understanding these effects is crucial as agriculture producers continue to adopt these strategies.

Researchers studied the impact of grass and grass/tree buffer strips on three herbicides commonly used in agriculture. The scientists studied the transport of the herbicides in both surface runoff and subsurface infiltration during two growing seasons.

Vegetative barriers reduce herbicide concentrations in runoff, but movement of herbicides through subsurface filtration actually increased. Total export of herbicides was reduced through the use of grass and grass/tree barriers. The research was conducted by Emmanuelle Caron, Pierre Lafrance, Jean-Christian Auclair of the University of Quebec, and Marc Duchemin of the Institute of Research and Development in Agri-Environment.

The results are reported in the March/April 2010 edition of the Journal of Environmental Quality, published by the American Society of Agronomy, the Crop Soil Science Society of America, and the Soil Science Society of America. (American Society of Agronomy)

A MAJOR environmental battle is looming over plans to open Scotland's first gold mine within a national park.

Owners of the Cononish mine, near Tyndrum, expect to extract up to 73,000 tonnes of ore per year for a decade to cash in on demand for the precious metal, which has soared in price over the last two years.

But the plan has been dealt a major blow by a formal objection from Scottish Natural Heritage, the government's countryside adviser, which says that the mine will damage the surrounding landscape.

At least four other environment bodies – including the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) – have also raised concerns about the plan because of the potential risk to the protected Loch Lomond and The Trossachs Park area.

SNH is also concerned about possible harm to salmon in the River Tay, one of Scotland's prime angling rivers, from sediment leaking out of the mine workings into tributaries.

The application to open the mine has been lodged by Scotgold Resources Limited, which has carried out tests confirming the presence of gold at the Cononish site, two miles west of Tyndrum. (The Scotsman)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a legal request by Michigan aimed at keeping voracious Asian carp out of the Great Lakes where they are considered a threat to fisheries.

Two species of Asian carp -- the Bighead and Silver carp, which can grow to five feet in length and weigh 100 pounds (45 kg) -- are seen as a danger to the lakes' $7 billion fisheries.

Scientists fear they would consume plankton and other small life forms, crowding out other fish species.

The action marked Michigan's third Supreme Court setback this year. In January and in March, the justices rejected separate state requests for an order to close two Chicago-area waterway locks and for other steps that would keep the carp out of the lakes.

Asian carp were imported into the United States to eat algae in ponds but the fish escaped into the wild and have been reproducing in the Mississippi River and its tributaries since the 1970s. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON, DC, April 21, 2010 - The first genetically engineered crop case ever heard by the U.S. Supreme Court will be argued on April 27 and it has already attracted a lot of interest from food companies, farmers unions, scientists and legal scholars. (ENS)

Backers of a bipartisan climate change bill are scrambling to revive efforts to pass legislation before the November midterms — even as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sticks by plans to slow-walk the measure behind immigration reform.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s decision to pull out of the high-stakes energy negotiations Saturday dealt a major blow to prospects that the once-in-a-generation legislation will be passed before the midterms.

But as tempers cooled Sunday, the White House and Senate Democrats who back the effort worked behind the scenes to defuse tensions between the South Carolina Republican and Reid (D-Nev.) over the bill’s timing, according to people close to the talks.

“Reports of the demise of climate change legislation have been greatly exaggerated,” said a senior Democratic aide involved in the talks on condition of anonymity. (Politico)

Today, Senators Graham, Kerry, and Lieberman were expected to release their cap and trade bill. However, immigration reform put a damper on that. However, this is a bill that definitely should be on the radar screen.

When (if) the bill is introduced, there will be lots of fanfare about how oil companies and utility companies support the bill (or at least aren’t opposing it).

However, there’s a reason for this support. They are being provided all kinds of goodies as discussed in this recent Mother Jones article.

There will be government-backed loans for nuclear power plants, oil companies won’t be subjected to the same cap and trade requirements as others, there will be $10 billion in subsidies for carbon capture technology research, etc.

(April 26) -- When Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., threatened this weekend to pull back his support of a global warming bill he co-authored -- along with Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. -- it looked as though the once-dead cap-and-trade bill could be dead again. That might be just as well.

Unlike the previous cap-and-trade bills, the new bill, based on what's been reported by Mother Jones, has all kinds of new goodies for utility companies, oil companies and other corporate interests to gain their support. Indeed, if you can think of a big special interest group that would be opposed to climate change legislation, then you can safely assume that there's a benefit for it in the proposed bill.

Under this bill, for example, utilities would receive government-backed loan guarantees for 12 new nuclear power plants and $10 billion to research how to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Generally, utility companies can pass off the costs of regulatory compliance to their customers. Any additional costs aren't borne by utility companies and their shareholders, as it should be, but by the public. So it's not surprising that the Edison Electric Institute, the major trade group representing utility companies, is expected to support the bill.

While the details of the payoff to the oil companies are not clear as of this writing, they wouldn't be subjected to the same cap-and-trade requirements that other industries would have to follow. Three unnamed oil companies already are expected to support the bill, and the American Petroleum Institute allegedly isn't going to attack the bill as it had planned.

States won't be able to set tougher carbon dioxide emissions standards than the federal government. This would be appealing for many industries, including the automobile industry, which recently was thrilled when President Barack Obama set new federal vehicle emissions standards. (Daren Bakst, AOL News)

As climate and energy legislation continues to founder in Washington, Senator Maria Cantwell says it’s time for a new strategy. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Cantwell explains why her bill can avoid the pitfalls of cap-and-trade and win the support of the public. (Elizabeth Kolbert, e360)

By Fred Dardick Monday, April 26, 2010

The recent announcement of the Democrat’s switch of focus from Cap and Trade energy legislation to immigration reform is simply an administrative slight of hand.

Barack Obama and the rest of his co-conspirators in Washington including Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid know full well that a hard fought political battle in Congress over an energy bill was unnecessary. Instead they have given the EPA their blessing to unilaterally determine CO2 limits for the nation. (CFP)

SAN FRANCISCO, April 26 - California's climate change law is the most aggressive in the United States and it faces challenges this election year.

Some of the same forces that may stall federal climate legislation, including oil companies and businesses concerned by higher energy prices, are now taking aim at California's landmark 2006 law.

Known as AB 32, the law includes vehicle and fuel standards, a market for pollution trade (still in the works), as well as "green" building and planning policies.

Its future depends on three factors: the November governor's race, a ballot effort to put the law on hold, and the fate of the federal climate bill.

Following are possible outcomes of the brewing fight. (Reuters)

India, China, Brazil and South Africa Monday called for finalising a legally binding treaty on reduction of carbon emission latest by 2011 and indicated that the world could not wait indefinitely.

The third meeting of BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) ministers concluded in Cape Town April 25. The meeting was cut short by a day as Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh had to leave early.

'The ministers noted news reports that domestic legislation in the US had been postponed and indicated that the world could not wait indefinitely, as it hinders our ability to reach an internationally legally binding agreement,' said a joint statement released here Monday.

The statement said the ministers feel that a legally binding outcome should be concluded during climate change meet at Cancun, Mexico in 2010, or at the latest in South Africa by 2011. (Sify News)

Politicians pushing climate-change legislation such as cap and trade are more interested in grabbing power rather than paying attention to the complete scientific record, Dr. Roy Spencer, a respected former NASA climate scientist, tells Newsmax.TV.

Spencer currently serves as a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville and leads the advanced science team monitoring the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite, which monitors global climate fluctuations.

“The legislation train left the station over 20 years ago, and it’s going to be very difficult to stop,” Spencer says. “I think there are politicians who really do not care about the science, but are looking to expand government and gain control over our energies.”

Former Vice President Al Gore, who has made millions through his company that buys carbon credits in exchange for planting trees to absorb the carbon, stands chief among them. (John Rossomando, Newsmax)

Frustrated by the climate change conference in December, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is quietly moving away from her goal of a binding agreement on limiting climate change to 2 degrees Celsius. She has also sent out signals at the EU level that she no longer supports the idea of Europe going it alone. (Der Spiegel)

It was once a centrepiece of the Federal Government's election strategy, but now the emissions trading scheme (ETS) has been relegated to the shelf until at least 2013. (Australian Broadcasting Corp.)

Ex-Gore associate and current Obama energy official Cathy Zoi is exploiting global warming for her own mega-gain. (And see the exclusive PJTV interview with Christopher Horner.)

April 26, 2010 - by Christopher Horner

Surprising documents made available to this author reveal that Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi has a huge financial stake in companies likely to profit from the Obama administration’s “green” policies.

Zoi, who left her position as CEO of the Alliance for Climate Protection — founded by Al Gore — to serve as assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, now manages billions in “green jobs” funding. But the disclosure documents show that Zoi not only is in a position to affect the fortunes of her previous employer, ex-Vice President Al Gore, but that she herself has large holdings in two firms that could directly profit from policies proposed by the Department of Energy. (PJM)

The Penn State climate professor who has silently endured investigations, hostile questioning, legislative probes and attacks by colleagues has finally spoken out. He says he'll sue the makers of a satirical video that's a hit on You Tube.

Their response: Bring it on.

Michael Mann, one of the central figures in the recent climate-data scandal, is best known for his "hockey stick graph," which was the key visual aid in explaining how the world is warming at an alarming rate and in connecting the rise to the increase in use of carbon fuels in this century. E-mails stolen from a university in England were released online, revealing exchanges between climatologists and a reference to a "trick" that Mann had used to get the graph to portray what global warming scientists wanted to see. ( Ed Barnes, FOXNews.com)

No matter what political committees try to absolve corruption of climate science of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), they cannot hide the complete failure of the computer models to make a single accurate prediction. Leaked emails from the CRU received media attention, but the emphasis must shift to the computer models. They gave the IPCC Reports far more credibility than they deserved by producing simple graphs and crude maps of a warmer world with increasingly, expanding and threatening red (hot) areas that avoided the need for scientific understanding.

What was more dramatic than the infamous hockey stick? The combination of the flat handle achieved by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period and the upturn of the blade in the 20th century with Phil Jones’ undisclosed data was visually dramatic. The propagandists in Hollywood who produced Gore’s movie understood this.

Computer climate models give unwarranted scientific credibility for people who don’t understand them. As Pierre Gallois explained, “If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no-one dares criticize it.” Dr David Frame, climate modeler at Oxford University said, “The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful.” But climate models are not convenient fictions. They do not produce anything useful other than to deceive and scare the public. IPCC models are part of continuum of the exploitation of useless computer models to promote environmental extremism and political agendas. (CFP)

A lack of transparency over rich countries' pledges to help poor nations deal with climate change means much of the cash promised is being diverted from development aid commitments, campaigners say. (Reuters)

The Prince of Wales has called for a major environmentally-friendly refurbishment of Britain's historic buildings to "avert the climate crisis". (TDT)

Why are warmists incompetent at Arctic exploration?

Last week Tom Smitheringale became the latest global warming alarmist to need rescuing from his own foolishness. His attempt to reach the North pole was, of course, to ‘bring attention’ to the issue of ‘climate change’. (Daily Bayonet)

Key players in the carbon cycle, they multiply slowly when overheated

— Irvine, Calif., April 26, 2010 —

The physiology of microbes living underground could determine the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from soil on a warmer Earth, according to a study published online this week in Nature Geoscience.

Researchers at UC Irvine, Colorado State University and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies found that as global temperatures increase, microbes in soil become less efficient over time at converting carbon in soil into carbon dioxide, a key contributor to climate warming.

Microbes, in the form of bacteria and fungi, use carbon for energy to breathe, or respire, and to grow in size and in number. A model developed by the researchers shows microbes exhaling carbon dioxide furiously for a short period of time in a warmer environment, leaving less carbon to grow on. As warmer temperatures are maintained, the less efficient use of carbon by the microbes causes them to decrease in number, eventually resulting in less carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere.

“Microbes aren’t the destructive agents of global warming that scientists had previously believed,” said Steven Allison, assistant professor of ecology & evolutionary biology at UCI and lead author on the study. “Microbes function like humans: They take in carbon-based fuel and breathe out carbon dioxide. They are the engines that drive carbon cycling in soil. In a balanced environment, plants store carbon in the soil and microbes use that carbon to grow. The microbes then produce enzymes that convert soil carbon into atmospheric carbon dioxide.” (UC Irvine)

by Teodoro Georgiadis - slightly romanced English version by Maurizio Morabito

Wouldn’t that be a welcome novelty, in a world post-climategate, post-submerged Holland, post-quickly disappearing Himalayan glaciers, post-Amazongate…in short, in a world that has seen an intense and compact series of scientific downpours on concepts perhaps too quickly assumed as established truth.

Downstream of Copenhagen, a new journal following WIRCC’s statement of intent would surely sport a truly different outlook: new style, new peer-reviewers, new structure all with the goal of providing science with the required level of objectivity, sadly and mostly missing in contemporary climate discourse.

I proceed therefore with all enthusiasm to select an article of surefire interest to me:

That’s it then! Finally we can leave the “gates du jour” behind and improve our knowledge of climate change.

Say what? Oh yes, the Blue Planet, ever the envy of nasty aliens such as those in HG Wells’ “War of the Worlds”. But hang on…most of the network of temperature measuring stations is literally on solid ground…if you place them on a map they’ll be a bunch of dots almost exactly superimposed to cities. As for the ocean temperatures, we know very well how they are derived.

Yes, yes…ah, that refers to a 2005 J Clim paper by Peterson and Owen…isn’t that the same Peterson unceremoniously criticized for example by McIntyre on Climate Audit, regarding the peculiar classifications of urban and rural stations? There is a truly remarkable definition of “Parking Lot Effect” on that site.

How strange though, of all the past and present discussions and questions on the topic, Parker manages to mention exactly nothing. Well, at least that might explain the article’s conclusions:

The subject of Urban Heat Islands (UHI) is topical, and it is somewhat ironic that such a self-evident effect is so happily dismissed away by AGW proponents. One suspects UHI is extremely inconvenient and uncomfortable to consider to those strictly supporting only the greenhouse-gas-emission side of AGW theory.

Who them? By sheer coincidence, only the greenhouse-gas-emission side of AGW theory can be used to dictate deep societal changes. But that’s another story.

Let’s just add some considerations based on a Willis Eschenbach post on WUWT. It’s a simple but eloquent analysis of a dataset of temperatures, with measures coming from about seventy stations over Northern Europe. Interestingly, an analysis of the monthly data across the decades for the duration of the dataset, shows a warming trend to be occurring primarily in winter months.

NORDKLIM Decadal monthly temperatures, 1900-1999

And what kind of forcing is especially important in the coldest period of the year? No prize for guessing that one right. This is precisely what is expected from the UHI effect, and it is due to changes over time to the environment surrounding the measurement equipments. Roads, buildings, infrastructure are built, woods are fallen and so on. That’s “Anthropogenic” as well, of course, and it has all the potential for local and global consequences.

Data so heavily biased are simply not compatible with the currently fashionable “globalization of forcing“, the mistaken belief that temperatures overwhelmingly taken on land and in heavily urbanized areas, are representative of the thermal state of the entire Blue Planet.

Think of it for a minute. We are talking about temperature anomalies with a positive trend coming from winter months. We are talking of continental regions at high latitudes. We are talking about winters with little insolation, in areas with a high albedo (reflecting visible light!) due to large amounts of snow cover.

In the summer, with a much lower visible-light albedo in the absence of snow, the incoming solar radiation is absorbed and then re-emitted as longer waves: exactly those “captured” by greenhouse gases.

How could the positive anomalies be ascribed to a greenhouse effect, that remains a mystery to us. It definitely looks like this is enough to ring more than a few alarm bells, no matter what has been said in the past and by whom.

And the problem of telling between the greenhouse gas contribution to warming, and all other anthropogenic and natural effects, does not just apply to urban setting. It remains to be seen about who’s going to care about it, bringing forward a better understanding of the climate, rather than continuing to run like headless chicken always after the next CO2 molecule, as if it were volcanic ash… (OmniClimate)

Kevin Trenberth has a response over at Roger Pielke, Sr’s blog to my comments about his and John Fasullo’s recent Science Perspectives article about “missing energy” in the climate system.

Trenberth and Fasullo discuss in their original Science Perspectives article the observational evidence for missing energy being lost somewhere in the climate system, based upon satellite radiation budget measurements of the Earth which suggest that extra energy has been accumulating in the climate system for about the last 10 years, but with no appreciable warming of the upper ocean and atmosphere to accompany it as would be expected.

I posted some comments here about my view that the missing energy does not really exist. I also pointed out that they failed to mention that the missing energy over the period since about 2000 was in the reflected sunlight component, not the emitted infrared. This now makes two “missing energy” sources…the other one being the lack of expected warming from increasing carbon dioxide concentrations, which causes a steadily increasing global radiative imbalance in the infrared.

So, Kevin’s response on Pielke Sr’s blog begins with, “I saw Roy Spencer’s comment for the first time and it is not correct”, but I see no specific refutation of any of the points I made.

To further support my comments, here are the global-average CERES ERBE-like ES-4 Edition 2 radiative flux anomalies for reflected solar (1st graph) and outgoing longwave radiation (OLR, 2nd graph) for the period 2000 through 2008…these are daily running 91-day averages:

Clearly, the long-term “trend” during 2000 through 2008 was in the reflected solar (SW), not OLR (LW).

What is important for global warming or cooling is the sum of the global SW and LW, shown in the following graph (note I have flipped the y-axis, to correspond to the sense of the plot Kevin and John Fasullo showed in their Science Perspectives article):

But rather that address my points, Kevin instead focuses on the anomalous drop in OLR around the beginning of 2008. While he makes it sound like this event is currently inexplicable, he should recognize that there is indeed a very simple explanation for it: global-average temperatures were quite low at that time, as seen in the next graph:

After all, OLR is THERMALLY emitted radiation, and so it depends upon temperature. What would be the expected OLR response to such a drop in temperature? Well, we know that the expected change in OLR resulting from a 1 deg. C decrease in global average temperature should be a drop of about 3.2 Watts per sq. meter per degree C. The above temperature plot shows a fall of about 0.4 deg. C from early 2007 to early 2008, which should then cause a reduction in OLR by about (0.4 x 3.2 ), or about 1.3 Watts per sq. meter.

And indeed, as seen in the LW plot above, there was a fall of about 1 Watt per sq. meter in the LW (OLR) during the same time. To the extent that the drop in OLR with cooling was not quite as much as might be expected could be due to a small positive feedback in high clouds and/or water vapor. These are just rough estimates, anyway…the point is, one must take into account temperature changes when diagnosing the reasons for changes in OLR. This fact is seldom mentioned.

In our new paper accepted for publication in JGR, we show that the 2007-08 cooling event Kevin Trenberth discussed was due to a temporary increase in low cloud cover, evidence of which is clearly seen in the form of a large spike in reflected sunlight in the first plot, above. There is a lead-lag relationship between the two which clearly indicates the primary direction of causation.

And, as discussed in our JGR paper, this fact makes the diagnosis of feedback from natural climate variations much more difficult than previous researchers have been led to believe. (Roy W. Spencer)

In my new book, The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists, I show the results of experiments with a simple climate model that runs in an Excel spreadsheet. The model is meant to illustrate how natural monthly-to-yearly variability in global (a) cloud cover and (b) surface evaporation can affect our satellite observations of (1) temperature and (2) total radiative flux.

Those last two measurements are what are traditionally used to determine the temperature “sensitivity” of our climate system. By specifying that sensitivity (with a total feedback parameter) in the model, one can see how an analysis of simulated satellite data will yield observations that routinely suggest a more sensitive climate system (lower feedback parameter) than was actually specified in the model run.

And if our climate system generates the illusion that it is sensitive, climate modelers will develop models that are also sensitive, and the more sensitive the climate model, the more global warming it will predict from adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.

Here is the model to download. It is currently set up to do a 100 year simulation at monthly time resolution. Here are two example plots from the model, run with a 50 meter deep ocean and a feedback parameter of 3 Watts per sq. meter per deg. C…but the output of the model suggests a feedback of 2.08, rather than 3:

The 4 basic inputs to the model are in large blue font, all of which are adjustable. These include (in no particular order):

1) Bulk heat capacity of the system, specified as an equivalent ocean water depth (nominally 50 meters deep).
2) Net feedback parameter (controlling the model’s temperature sensitivity to energy imbalances)
3) Radiative forcing (e.g. from natural variations in cloud cover)
4) Non-radiative forcing (from fluctuations in convective heat transfer between the surface and atmosphere)

Those last 2 heat flux forcings are driven by a random number generator. The radiative forcing also has a low-pass filter applied to the monthly random numbers, which seems to mimic the satellite observations pretty well.

In addition to these 4 inputs, one can also “turn on” carbon dioxide forcing, which will lead to a long-term warming trend in the model at a rate that depends mainly upon the specified feedback parameter and ocean depth.

NOTES:
(1) After running the model many times, eventually the memory cache used by Excel gets filled up (I think), and garbage numbers start to appear. Just close out Excel and re-open it to fix this.
(2) A new model run is automatically made any time ANY entry in the spreadsheet is changed, including when you do a file “Save”. So if you want to show someone the results of a specific model run, you are going to have to copy and “special paste” the values somewhere else, and then make a new graphs from those. (Roy W. Spencer)

European Union Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger on Monday said he doubted that carbon capture technology (CCS) will take off in Germany, where Vattenfall Europe is the biggest local stakeholder.

Oettinger on a visit to Germany's capital said the country's federal structure could make it financially and politically impossible for individual states to get others to receive and store piped carbon dioxide from coal-burning power stations.

"I suspect that our (Germany's CCS) chances are considerably small," Oettinger told reporters, saying the necessary financial transfers between states might not be enforceable.

But still fledgling CCS, a technology viewed as an important tool in combating climate change, might play a vital role in other country's coal-to-power sectors such as China, he added. (Reuters)

Geologists refuted on Monday a report which in January had cast doubt on a technology to bury greenhouse gases underground, and on which some policymakers have pinned hopes to fight climate change.

British geologists and engineers rejected the doubts on Monday, pointing to pilot projects in an email to Reuters, following a report about January's article in the Guardian newspaper on Monday.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) involves trapping and storing underground carbon dioxide produced by power plants which burn fossil fuels.

Some academics say that the world's efforts to limit dangerous climate change depends on CCS, which can in theory almost eliminate carbon emissions from burning coal and so give the world time to develop cheap fossil fuel alternatives.

The trouble is that the full chain of CCS processes from trapping and piping to burying underground carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by power plants is untested at a commercial scale.

Pressure levels in underground aquifers could reach levels where projects either could not pump any more CO2 in, or force the greenhouse gas to leak into the atmosphere, rendering the process worthless, argued a paper published earlier this year. "The physics is so straightforward," said Christine Ehlig-Economides, co-author of the paper published in the Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering.

"When you try to inject something into an existing formation which is already at pressure, it (pressure) has to go up," she told Reuters on Monday. "The models that people are using more often than not do not accommodate this." (Reuters)

Editor’s note. This is the conclusion of a four part series by Indur M. Goklany, in which the Neo-Malthusian view of the adverse effects of industrialization, economic growth and technological change is contrasted with empirical data on the substantial progress in human well-being during the age of industrialization. Having established this, he appropriately warns about predicting the future. For ease of reference, links to the previous three parts are included at the end.

Neo-Malthusians believe that humanity is doomed unless it reins in population, affluence and technological change, and the associated consumption of materials, energy and chemicals. But, as shown in the previous posts and elsewhere, empirical data on virtually every objective indicator of human well-being indicates that the state of humanity has never been better, despite unprecedented levels of population, economic development, and new technologies. In fact, human beings have never been longer lived, healthier, wealthier, more educated, freer, and more equal than they are today.

The fundamental reasons why their projections fail are because they assume that population, affluence and technology — the three terms on the right hand side of the IPAT equation — are independent of each other. Equally importantly, they have misunderstood the nature of each of these terms, and the nature of the misunderstanding is essentially the same, namely, that contrary to their claims, each of these factors instead of making matters progressively worse is, in the long run, necessary for solving whatever problems plague humanity. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Impressive landmarks hidden for 40,000 years rise from sea-floor

About 10 miles off the Santa Barbara coast, at the bottom of the Santa Barbara Channel, a series of impressive landmarks rise from the sea floor.

They've been there for 40,000 years, but have remained hidden in the murky depths of the Pacific Ocean--until now.

They're called asphalt volcanoes.

Scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and affiliated with the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), University of California at Davis, University of Sydney and University of Rhode Island, have identified the series of unusual volcanoes.

The largest of these undersea Ice Age domes lies at a depth of 700 feet (220 meters), too deep for scuba diving, which explains why the volcanoes have never before been spotted by humans, says Don Rice, director of NSF's Chemical Oceanography Program, which funded the research.

"They're larger than a football-field-long and as tall as a six-story building," says David Valentine, a geoscientist at UCSB and the lead author of a paper published on-line this week in the journal Nature Geoscience. "They're massive features, and are made completely out of asphalt. (National Science Foundation)

Engineers are crafting a giant underwater dome to help to contain an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico after attempts to shut off the leak using robotic submarines failed.

BP, which leased the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded 50 miles (80km) from the Louisiana coast last Tuesday, killing 11 workers, said yesterday that it was pursuing new tactics after failing to prevent its spread by closing a valve in the pipe.

While the robots continued their efforts one mile down and a new rig arrived to drill into the leaking well and plug it in an operation that could take months, BP said that its dome should trap the escaping oil and funnel it to tanks on the surface.

Such devices were tried when Hurricane Katrina swept through the Gulf in 2005 but have never been used in water this deep. Tony Odone, a spokesman for BP, said: “They have been used in shallow water before. They contain the oil in that dome and then suck it up. “The ROVs [remotely operated vehicles] will continue trying but we are trying to get these other things activated as quickly as possible, too.” (The Times)

Oil, and foreign oil in particular, has been a favorite whipping boy for American politicians since the 1970s. They say that we are addicted to oil, that oil fosters terrorism and that we can win the oil endgame. While those claims are effective at rousing the masses, here's the reality: The world isn't using too much oil. It’s not using enough. [Read More] (Robert Bryce, Energy Tribune)

Wants to get rid of wet tailings ponds; remains flexible with projects

The Alberta government wants to put an end to wet tailings ponds at the oil sands, now symbolized globally after 1,600 ducks died in the sludge at Syncrude Canada’s plant last year.

The ponds, which cover about 35 square miles in northern Alberta, comprise a toxic brew of water, silt, sand, clay and chemical residues left over from the separation of heavy oil from bitumen.

Premier Ed Stelmach declared that oil sands producers will be forced to eliminate the ponds within a “few years” because they are damaging Alberta’s international reputation.

“It means we are going to have to force—when I say force, we’re going to get more aggressive—and work with companies presently in open pit mining to move to either dry tailings or develop their resource without wet tailings ponds,” he told reporters.

“It’s going to take an investment. There’s no doubt about it. But we just can’t talk about it. We want to show progress.”

However, Stelmach declined to set a fixed deadline, beyond saying “I know within a matter of a few years we should be able to get there.” (GoO)

European countries will be able to use money from a key EU scheme for reducing climate-changing carbon emissions to build new coal-fired power stations, documents leaked to The Independent suggest.

Billions of pounds in revenues from the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) – under which power plants have to buy "permits to pollute" so they have an incentive to drive their emissions down – may find their way into state aid for new coal-fired power station construction across the continent. (The Independent)

Seven coal activists arrested after chaining themselves to railway track leading to Ffos-y-Fran mine

Seven protesters have been arrested by police after chaining themselves to the train line connecting an open cast coal mine with a power station in South Wales. Police are currently dealing with a second group of activists who have now locked on further up the line. (The Guardian)

Shell's activities in the West African country are under scrutiny

There is an ominous new arrival in the tropical forest outside Yenagoa in the southern Nigerian state of Bayelsa. It travels on black metal stilts above the green canopy before sinking into a concrete bunker where, when the bulldozers and cranes have finished work, millions of cubic feet of natural gas will be pumped before going up in smoke.

Shell's Opolo-Epie facility is the newest gas flare in the Niger Delta. And it gives the lie to claims from oil multinationals and the Nigerian government that they are close to bringing an end to the destructive and wasteful practice of gas flaring. (The Independent)

Wind and solar power are often criticised for being too intermittent, but Cambridge researchers could change that

Newly designed giant gravel batteries could be the solution to the on-off nature of wind turbines and solar panels. By storing energy when the wind stops blowing or the sun stops shining, it is hoped the new technology will boost to renewable energy and blunt a persistent criticism of the technology - that the power from it is intermittent.

Electricity cannot be stored easily, but a new technique may hold the answer, so that energy from renewables doesn't switch off when nature stops playing ball. A team of engineers from Cambridge think they have a potential solution: a giant battery that can store energy using gravel.

"If you bolt this to a wind farm, you could store the intermittent and relatively erratic energy and give it back in a reliable and controlled manner," says Jonathan Howe, founder of Isentropic and previously an engineer at the Civil Aviation Authority.

The Labour government committed to cutting the country's carbon emissions by 34% by 2020 and 80% by 2050, both relative to 1990 levels. To achieve this, ministers outlined plans to build thousands of wind turbines by 2020. The only economically viable way of storing large amounts of energy is through pumped hydro – where excess electricity is used to pump water up a hill. The water is held back by a dam until the energy is needed, when it is released down the hill, turning turbines and generating electricity on the way.

Isentopic claims its gravel-based battery would be able to store equivalent amounts of energy but use less space and be cheaper to set up. Its system consists of two silos filled with a pulverised rock such as gravel. Electricity would be used to heat and pressurise argon gas that is then fed into one of the silos. By the time the gas leaves the chamber, it has cooled to ambient temperature but the gravel itself is heated to 500C. (The Guardian)

Regulation: Rep. James Oberstar wants to rewrite the Clean Water Act. If the Minnesota Democrat gets his way, the federal government will have even greater authority to take private property.

This isn't Oberstar's first attempt. In 2007 he also tried to rewrite the water bill. He and others weren't happy with Supreme Court rulings that defined the limits Washington has over bodies of water that have no nexus to navigable waters.

They want full federal control over all waters.

Consequently, changing the law has become an obsession for Oberstar, and not a harmless one. Should his rewrite become law, property owners will pay.

Oberstar, who represents the 8th District in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, wants to strike from the Clean Water Act the word "navigable," a restriction in the original bill based on constitutional principles that limit Washington's regulatory reach.

Without that check, the federal apparatus will have dominion over all waters in America. Rainstorm puddles, mud holes, drainage and irrigation ditches, ponds, intermittent streams and prairie potholes on private lands. These have nothing to do with interstate commerce, but would suddenly be subject to federal rules — as would adjacent property — if the word is removed from the law.

This would be a historic expansion of federal authority and has the potential to be a gross violation of Americans' liberty.

Farmers should be particularly concerned. The Oberstar bill gives federal regulators the power to police farming practices and to take their land through regulatory restrictions if those practices are deemed to be in violation of the law.

With the federal government already hobbling California farmers by denying them water, in large part due to the Endangered Species Act, Oberstar's ambition is an existential threat to farms.

When Oberstar tried to enlarge Washington's reach in 2007, Richard Baker, then a Republican congressman from Louisiana, a state filled with waterways, called the bill "the largest-ever expansion of federal powers over private property."

There's no reason to believe his current bill would be any kinder to farmers, ranchers, developers, average homeowners or the Constitution, which forbids the government from taking private property by whim.

Like almost everyone else in his party in Washington, Oberstar has gone too far. This assault on the private sector has left Americans in need of protection until they can get to the ballot box in November. We hope the minority party is up to the task. (IBD)

Apparently the EPA’s current regulatory rampage is inadequate for the astonishingly big government taste of Jim Oberstar of Minnesota. The EPA is already limiting airplane de-icing fluid, launching a public propaganda campaign on the benefits of regulation, and readying a dizzying onslaught of global warming regulations. But the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee envisions something even more extreme: dramatically expand the Clean Water Act to give the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers control over all the water—and all the land—in the United States (Phil Kerpen, Daily Caller)

WASHINGTON (April 21, 2010) – The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) and the Public Lands Council (PLC) are strongly opposing the so-called “America’s Commitment to Clean Water Act,” introduced earlier today by Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.). The Act would remove the word “navigable” from the definition of “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act, granting the federal government unprecedented regulatory authority over all waters regardless of whether or not they have any environmental significance. (The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association)

Measure would reverse high court decisions that sponsor says hampers 1972 act.

Two Utah Republicans are leading a Western Congressional Caucus charge against a clean-water bill they say would give the federal government unprecedented power over water on private land, even mud puddles.

Utah's 1st District Rep. Rob Bishop, who heads the caucus, ripped into the America's Commitment to Clean Water Act, which was introduced Wednesday.

"Most Westerners are extremely concerned about the massive accumulation of federal power. In the past year, the federal government has taken control over our banks, cars and health care," Bishop said in a statement from nine GOP representatives of Western states. "Now, they are seeking to gain control over every drop of water, from backyard puddles to the arid playas of the West."

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, of Utah's 3rd District, said "this is a bad bill, and I will work tirelessly to defeat it." (Patty Henetz The Salt Lake Tribune)

Forty years in, we're losing.

This weekend, when speakers at Earth Day gatherings across the country hearken back to the first celebration in 1970, they'll recall great victories: above all, cleaner air and cleaner water for Americans.

But for 20 years now, global warming has been the most important environmental issue -- arguably the most important issue the planet has ever faced. And there we can boast an unblemished bipartisan record of accomplishing absolutely nothing. ( Bill McKibben, Washington Post)

Ecologist and campaigner claims that because humans have changed the Earth so fundamentally, it's time to call it something different (Juliette Jowit, The Guardian)

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

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

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

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

Earth Day is over, so you don’t have to worry about the special interest eco-lobby for another 364 days, right? Wrong. If you’ve recently paid a five-cent tax on a plastic bag while living in or visiting your nation’s capital, then you’ve been punitively taxed by the eco-left for a behavior they don’t approve of, and you should be concerned. In fact, the $9.5 million DC bag tax is just another step of the eco-left’s plan to nickel and dime you into living an “approved” lifestyle, complete with high unemployment, “skyrocketing” energy prices, stifled innovation and a sour economy.

The DC eco-tax was instituted in 2009 by the City Council at the behest of the Anacostia Watershed Society, who conveniently enough also collects and spends that money…your money. The purpose is reportedly to clean the Anacostia River, but according to DC Councilman Jack Evans, it really should be viewed as a “first step toward the long-term goal of severely limiting plastic bags and bottles nationwide.” Continue reading...

The contrast between PBS’s celebration of the huge public events of the first Earth Day in 1970 with the sleepy affair it is today tells you what’s wrong with today’s environmentalism: it is stuck in the past. (Steven F. Hayward, The American)

This Earth Day we heard various commentators bemoan the growth in population, consumption, and carbon emissions driven by fossil fueled technologies. Once again we are told that this is unsustainable, that we are running out of resources, prices are inevitably headed up, and, worse, such consumption reduces both environmental and human well-being. In this worldview, industrialization and economic development were fashioned in the Devil’s crucible, and that de-industrialization and de-development will be our saviour. (Indur Goklany, Cato at liberty)

Elsewhere, I have shown data that, notwithstanding the Neo-Malthusian worldview, human well-being has advanced globally since the start of industrialization more than two centuries ago, despite massive increases in population, consumption, affluence, and carbon dioxide emissions. Here I will focus on long-term trends in U.S. well-being, as measured by the average life expectancy at birth, in the age of fossil fuels. ( Indur Goklany, Cato at liberty)

It’s called “bait-and-switch”–the sales tactic of conning customers into believing they’re getting a good product, but then delivering shoddy goods instead.

Government actuaries—the official bean counters for national health care—just released the bad news from analyzing how President Obama’s new law affects medical costs and insurance. Their verdict? “More Americans will be covered, but costs are also going up,” is how the Associated Press summarized it.

The minimum increase from Obamacare is one per cent higher, they report, but the maximum is likelier to be far greater, the analysts warned, because the legislation’s projected Medicare savings are probably “unrealistic and unsustainable,” just as The Heritage Foundation and many others have been saying.

So who are these guys who are sounding the latest alarm? They’re the professional actuaries at the Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), who typically operate with far greater independence than others who make official government projections. The Congressional Budget Office, for example, must follow rules handed down by Congress. The Office of Management and Budget is an extension of the White House and therefore governed by the President. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

Yesterday, the actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency that runs the giant entitlement programs, released their analysis of the new health care law. The AP reports that “White House officials have repeatedly complained that such analyses have been too pessimistic and lowball the law’s potential to achieve savings,” but the official CMS analysis reinforces several of Heritage’s predictions regarding Obamacare.

The recently signed health-care legislation will have lasting consequences on health care in America. The massive two-piece package includes federal control of benefits, increased taxes, mandates on employers and individuals, and an expansion of costly and inefficient entitlements.

This represents a federal takeover of the U.S. health care system on the pretext to meeting the needs of the millions of Americans who are currently uninsured. However, in a recent paper, Heritage’s Kathryn Nix writes:

When President Obama was a candidate, he pledged over and over to voters: If you make less than $250,000 a year, your taxes will not go up. Voters read his lips. They hoped for change.

Yesterday, the President said that the Value Added Tax is “on the table.” That means it will be the main course served up after the November elections. After ramming through his ObamaCare bill on the narrowest of partisan margins last month, the President is finding that it’s going to be impossible to deliver on that massive new entitlement without hefty additional taxes. That’s why he’s enlisted “go along to get along” types like Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson--men who will never have to face the voters’ wrath--to stitch a fig leaf for an after-November major tax hike.

Margaret Thatcher used to say the problem with socialism is that soon you run out of other people’s money. The European socialism that is the President’s program will require a substantial increase in the already worrisome tax burden. (Ken Blackwell, Townhall)

When conservatives like Neal Boortz proposed the "fair tax" (a levy on consumption, not on income), we should have known that the Barack Obama left would seize on the proposal not as Boortz intended it to be -- a replacement for the income tax -- but as an addition to it. Now Obama has let it be known that the value-added tax, or VAT, is "on the table" as he casts about for taxes to lock in his gigantic levels of federal spending. (Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, Townhall)

Finance Minister Flaherty has done the whole world a service with his opposition to a global bank tax, but America’s leftward drift is worrisome

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty seems to have killed the IMF’s threatened global bank tax, at least for the moment. Good for him. Also, kudos to the Big Six Canadian Banks for being bold enough to criticize other regulatory horrors being discussed at this weekend’s G20 meetings in Washington.

Mr. Flaherty had spoken out strongly against a global levy to create a bailout fund. “I’m not going to impose a tax on our banks that performed well during the financial crisis,” he said earlier this week. “It seems to me a very odd thing to do — to punish our banks that got the job done adequately.”

Apparently unfulfilled with the current level of intrusion, government regulators have now set their sights on your diet. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported: Continue reading... (The Foundry)

Five years ago this week, my former boss William F. Buckley started a column thusly:

"Every ten years I quote the same adage from the late Austrian analyst Willi Schlamm, and I hope that ten years from now someone will remember to quote it in my memory. It goes, 'The trouble with socialism is socialism. The trouble with capitalism is capitalists.'"

Well, Bill is gone now, but his memory lives, and I'm sure he'd forgive me for taking up his request five years early.

Schlamm's point is still relevant, even though the kind of socialism we're dealing with is less doctrinaire. But it also distorts the issue somewhat. One might just as easily say that the problem with socialism is capitalists, too. (Jonah Goldberg, Townhall)

The Mail on Sunday can today reveal the full extent of the shambles behind the great airspace shutdown that cost the airlines £1.3 billion and left 150,000 Britons stranded - all for a supposed volcanic ash cloud that for most of the five-day flights ban was so thin it was invisible. (Mail on Sunday)

The closure of our airspace casts a highly disturbing light on the way we are governed, says Christopher Booker.

Last week, for the second time in a decade, a major crisis erupted out of the blue that cast a highly disturbing light on the peculiarly contorted way in which we are now governed. The Icelandic volcano shambles had striking parallels with the foot-and-mouth crisis of 2001.

Both episodes involved a massive system failure in a complex new structure of supranational governance which was being put to the test for the first time, Both were made much worse by over-reliance on an inadequate computer model, which ended up causing unnecessary chaos and misery for hundreds of thousands of people and costing not millions but billions of pounds. (Christopher Booker)

In her own words she condemned herself. Writing in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday (online), Deirdre Hutton, chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) sought to defend her authority's decisions and claims that, "it led the way in getting airlines flying again."

But, in the very text to which she lent her name, she set out the procedures needed before aircraft could resume flying. "First," she wrote, "we had to understand the extent of ash contamination, by sending up planes bearing instruments that could measure its density (complementing the data provided by ground-based lasers)."

There is the endorsement of the very point which we have been making – that specialist aircraft were needed to investigate the ash cloud extent and bring back physical data to update and refine the Met Office's computer model. And, as we have already ascertained, there were only two such aircraft available in the whole of the UK.

The first and most suitable aircraft, the BAE-146 operated by the Facility of Airborne Atmospheric Measurement (FAAM), was in its hanger in Cranfield, stripped-down preparatory for repainting. When the balloon when up, it must have taken superhuman effort to get it reassembled and in flying condition, and every short-cut in the book must have been taken.

That left the very much smaller, German registered turbo-prop Dornier 228, operated by the Airborne Research and Survey Facility (ARSF), out of Gloucester airport. With limited range and performance, it is also unpressurised which gives it an effective ceiling of 20,000 feet, too low for it to reach the higher levels of the ash cloud, much less get above them to make vital measurements.

Nevertheless, something is better than nothing – although not much better – and evidently conscious of the need to get something into the air, we were told in a press release by the funding agency, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) that the aircraft was being readied for a flight on the evening of Thursday 15 April, the day the no-fly zone had been imposed.

Therein lies a mystery which, when the details of the events come fully to be explored – if they ever are – may give a clue to the disarray within the authorities which were charged with managing the situation. The mystery intensifies because the Met Office in its most recent briefing affirms that the Dornier flew on the Thursday evening, claiming that the flight "provided inconclusive evidence on the extent of the ash cloud."

It also claims that the aircraft flew on 16 April, when it is said to have detected three distinct layers of ash, thus claiming that its models were "also evaluated with observations, including the Met Office and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) aircraft".

Why this is a mystery is simply to explain, borne out by a second press release from NERC, which states that the first flight was from Cranfield airfield at 14:00 UK time on Sunday 18 April. After take off, the Dornier flew south via London, Southampton and Cardiff, and then north to Prestwick before returning to Cranfield. (EU Referendum)

WASHINGTON - People who got immunized against the 1976 "swine flu" epidemic that never happened may have benefited from the shots after all -- they may have been protected from the 2009 H1N1 swine flu strain.

Tests of blood from medical staff and their spouses showed those who had been vaccinated in 1976 had evidence of extra immune protection against both the 2009 H1N1 swine flu and the seasonal strain of H1N1 that circulated the year before.

"We gave this vaccine to 45 million people and it was declared one of the greatest public health blunders of all time, and now we are finding out that it actually did some good," said Dr. Jonathan McCullers of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, who led the study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The study, published on Friday, supports a theory that different strains of flu virus cycle in and out of circulation and that getting a flu vaccine every year may protect people from as-yet unseen flu strains in the future.

"Our research shows that while immunity among those vaccinated in 1976 has waned somewhat, they mounted a much stronger immune response against the current pandemic H1N1 strain than others who did not receive the 1976 vaccine," McCullers said. (Reuters)

Ignore the conventional wisdom. There is no evidence that salt, something we need to survive, is bad for us

Take all those health warnings about table salt with a pinch of salt. The evidence that our current levels of salt consumption do more harm than good for human health has little weight, any which way you look at it.

The Japanese have one of the world’s highest levels of salt consumption and are also the most long-lived people on Earth, with the possible exception of Jews, whose kosher salt-laced foods rival those of the Japanese. In fact, the societies that consume the most salt tend to enjoy the longest life spans, and societal well-being throughout history has been tied to the availability of salt.

Salt is no mere food additive.

Every Earth Day brings out new scaremongering from silly people.

This year, one scare is that BPA, a chemical in plastic, causes "obesity, breast cancer, to prostate cancer, diabetes, brain disorders, such as attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, liver disease, ovarian disease, disease of the uterus, low sperm count in men." That's according to a new documentary called "Tapped." So you better not drink bottled water! (John Stossel)

NEW YORK - The calming effects of swaddling might make it more difficult for some infants to rouse from sleep -- raising the possibility that the practice could increase the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), a small study suggests.

The study, reported in the Journal of Pediatrics, found that in 3-month-old infants new to swaddling, the practice seemed to reduce the brain response to an external stimulus -- a puff of air delivered to the babies' nostrils.

An infant's ability to rouse from sleep in response to such conditions is believed to play a role in SIDS. The findings, therefore, raise the question of whether swaddling could, for infants new to the practice, increase the likelihood of SIDS, according to the researchers.

The potential role of swaddling in SIDS is controversial, with the few studies that have been done so far coming to conflicting conclusions. (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Two studies released this week reach contradictory conclusions on the value of B vitamins and folic acid (or folate in its naturally occurring form) in reducing the risks of heart disease. What are doctors and their patients to make of this?

"Not much," says Dr. Steven Woloshin of Dartmouth University's Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.

"One study is very weak and the conclusions can't be believed and the other's results don't add much for practitioners or their patients," Woloshin told Reuters Health.

NEW YORK - American college students are hooked on cell phones, social media and the Internet and showing symptoms similar to drug and alcohol addictions, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of Maryland who asked 200 students to give up all media for one full day found that after 24 hours many showed signs of withdrawal, craving and anxiety along with an inability to function well without their media and social links. (Reuters Life!)

NEW research suggests smokers who find it hard to cut down or quit may be at the mercy of their genes.

Scientists have identified three genetic mutations that increase the number of cigarettes people smoke a day.

Several also appear to be associated with taking up smoking and one with smoking cessation.

Some of the findings will now be incorporated into risk factor DNA tests developed by the Icelandic company deCODE, which took part in the research.

A previous study two years ago found a common change in the genetic code linked to nicotine addiction and lung cancer risk.

The new research, which combined data on more than 140 thousand individuals, confirmed this discovery, and pinpointed two more genetic variants that seem to increase cigarette consumption among smokers.

Results from the three studies have been published today in the journal Nature Genetics. (AFP)

Early this month, the International Maritime Organization — the United Nations agency that oversees maritime law — announced that large cruise ships will no longer be allowed to burn heavy fuel in Antarctic waters. This is a welcome step in protecting the harsh but delicate polar environment.

It is also part of a global effort to end the use of heavy, high-sulfur fuel in oceangoing ships. Burning heavy fuel throws highly polluting emissions into the atmosphere, and it poses a serious risk to marine life if spilled.

Gasoline and diesel, used in cars and trucks, are relatively light refined fuels, with strict limits on their sulfur content. The heavy fuel used in ships, including cruise ships, is called bunker fuel. It is basically the crude residue of refining — closer to asphalt than gasoline — mixed with diesel fuel. (NYT)

BRITAIN’S “water rats” — the giant utility companies — have been given permission to carry on polluting beaches just as families start digging out buckets and spades for the summer holidays.

The government’s Planning Inspectorate has rejected an attempt by the Environment Agency to impose regulations on 4,200 outlets that pump raw sewage into the sea and rivers.

It means the water companies — which together recorded profits of £1.8 billion in 2008-09 — have again escaped attempts to make them clean themselves up — 21 years after The Sunday Times first exposed what they were doing in a series of articles called the Water Rats.

Instead, Britain now faces the ignominy of being fined and ordered to purify its water by the European Court of Justice over deaths of fish in the River Thames.

The water companies say Britain’s increased population and erratic weather has put pressure on an underground system dating from Victorian times that routes both excess sewage and flood water through combined sewer overflows (CSOs).

However, campaigners claim that, rather than just being kept for emergencies, some CSOs are used hundreds of times a year.

The Environment Agency wanted better controls on the outlets, especially on their use during dry weather when it suspects the water companies find it cheaper to dump sewage rather than send it to treatment plants. Six water companies appealed against the move, however, and the Planning Inspectorate has ruled largely in their favour. The firms argue that if they did not discharge the sewage, it would back up into homes or flood streets. (Sunday Times)

AFTER Silent Spring, Britain now faces the silent summer. Fifty years after Rachel Carson’s seminal book about humanity’s impact on nature, Sir David Attenborough has warned that Britain’s wildlife could be on the edge of the next great environmental disaster.

He has written the foreword to a new book, Silent Summer, in which 40 leading British ecologists detail how factors such as pesticides, population growth and intensive farming are destroying the plants, insects and animals on which the rest of the country’s wildlife depends. (The Times)

Nightingale numbers have fallen by almost two-thirds in England in the past 15 years

Nightingales are disappearing from Britain because deer are eating the woodland undergrowth the birds need for nesting, a new study has shown. It is a significant breakthrough in understanding why numbers of the renowned songbird are rapidly falling.

Between 1994 and 2007, nightingale numbers in England – the bird is absent from Scotland and Wales – dropped by 60 per cent, and its range shrank towards the South-east, with concentrations limited to Kent, Sussex, Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk. The bird has vanished from many places where it was formerly loved for its remarkable song, which is sung in the dark and which has been celebrated in literature for thousands of years.

Researchers have suspected that one cause of the decline of the nightingale might be the destruction of woodland undergrowth – the nightingale's key habitat – by browsing deer whose numbers in Britain have increased in recent years. The prime culprit may be the muntjac – or barking – deer, a recently introduced species which is capable of breeding all the year round and which has no natural enemies. The animals' browsing is causing major changes in the structure of woodland vegetation, especially of the "understorey" of shrubs and bushes, which is, in effect, being eaten to bits. (The Independent)

Families are being forced to separate their rubbish into nine different bins in order to meet tough recycling targets. (TDT)

Politico recently reported that President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are set to replicate the health care bill’s cram-down, a by-whatever-means-necessary approach that circumvented the Senate’s regular committee process. This time, they will use it to quickly pass the “cap-and-trade” energy tax. Carbon cap-and-trade of course is modeled on Europe’s disastrous scheme, and this latest iteration, with a gas tax or “carbon-linked fee”, will begin its march next week.

The bill will be contained in something being styled, as is de rigueur and every three years or so, as “comprehensive energy legislation.” A parallel argument will be made that it is actually a “green jobs” bill. Democrat pollster Stanley Greenberg has discovered that these “work” better than the more candid “cap-and-trade.”

As you consider this prospect, also look to Europe, as President Obama instructed us to do on at least eight occasions for the model of his “green economy.” Helpfully, earlier this week the think tank Open Europe noted, in its daily press summary, the following:

Indeed. Cap-and-trade doesn’t reduce CO2 emissions, if only because it isn’t designed to, larded as it must be with “offset” schemes ensuring that only inefficient wealth transfers occur. But that’s not quite the tale that elites are selling, for example The New York Times’ Tom Friedman, a man enamored with the high-cost energy policies of Denmark, where until recently Hedegaard was the “climate” minister. (Christopher C. Horner, Energy Tribune)

WASHINGTON — In a move that may derail a comprehensive climate change and energy bill in the Senate, one of the measure’s central architects, Senator Lindsey Graham, has issued an angry protest over what he says are Democratic plans to give priority to a debate over immigration policy.

Mr. Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said in a sharply worded letter on Saturday that he would no longer participate in negotiations on the energy bill, throwing its already cloudy prospects deeper into doubt. He had been working for months with Senators John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, on the a legislation, which they were scheduled to announce with considerable fanfare on Monday morning. That announcement has been indefinitely postponed.

In his letter to his two colleagues, Mr. Graham said that he was troubled by reports that the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and the White House were planning to take up an immigration measure before the energy bill. Mr. Graham has worked with Democrats in the past on immigration matters and was expected to be an important bridge to Republicans on that issue, as well as on energy.

Mr. Graham said that any Senate debate on the highly charged subject of illegal immigration would make it impossible to deal with the difficult issues involved in national energy and global warming policy.

He said in his letter that energy must come first and that Democrats appeared to be rushing to take up immigration because of rising anti-immigrant sentiment, including a harsh new measure signed into law in Arizona on Friday.

“Moving forward on immigration — in this hurried, panicked manner — is nothing more than a cynical political ploy,” Mr. Graham said. “I know from my own personal experience the tremendous amounts of time, energy and effort that must be devoted to this issue to make even limited progress.”

Hours after Mr. Graham released his letter, Mr. Kerry said in a statement that Mr. Graham’s actions had scuttled plans for an elaborate announcement of the proposal, whose passage is a major priority for the Obama administration. (NYT)

In a stunning move that could throw a major roadblock in front of two of President Obama's biggest legislative initiatives, Sen. Lindsey Graham abruptly declared Saturday he's abandoning talks on climate change legislation because he believes Democratic efforts to bring up a separate immigration reform package is undermining the legislative process. (CNN)

The bipartisan climate bill to be unveiled Monday isn't dead on arrival but it's not likely to be taken up this year — and not before an immigration bill comes to the Senate floor, according to Democratic aides. (Politico)

Prospects for an early international agreement to tackle climate change have suffered a major setback, as a US plan to cut carbon emissions descended into partisan bickering.

Senior American political figures had promised to introduce a "cap and trade" energy bill today, paving the way for the kind of substantial international talks that failed to materialise at last year's Copenhagen summit, but the launch has been called off at the last minute.

Green groups expressed disappointment at the development, which supporters of the bill described as a "postponement", but the Republican Senator who had previously been on board stormed out on Saturday after what he called a betrayal by the White House. (The Independent)

Experts warn that Tory plans to fund attempts to tackle global warming in poorer countries from the aid budget could hamper efforts to promote poverty reduction

A historic climate change deal would be put at risk by a Conservative government because of the "injustice" of the way they would fund the battle against global warming in developing nations, David Cameron is warned today.

The Tory leader has promised to safeguard the international aid budget in an attempt to soften his party's image. However, unlike the other parties, he has refused to put a cap on the amount of money set aside for aid that could be raided to pay for helping poorer nations deal with climate change.

Writing in The Independent today, Nicholas Stern, the climate change economist, Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, and the Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wangari Maathai, warn that using the aid budget would be "unacceptable" and that all money designed to fight climate change in poor areas should be additional. (The Independent)

he world of renewable energy, as with so many new initiatives in the past, is currently characterized by a lot of government money being eagerly sought by many sources--some of them not very clean.

When the University of East Anglia decided to investigate itself, they could have chosen from a wide variety of scientific or legal figures. They decided on Lord Oxburgh, despite questions about his independence. As chairman of a windfarm manufacturer, could he really impartially decide on fundamental questions of the probity of climate science?

Would Lord Oxburgh have been appointed to his position as head of the panel investigating Climategate if it had been known that his employer was a subsidiary controlled by an Italian company enmeshed in scandals involving Sicilian waste? Let me hasten to add that I am not making any accusations of either Lord Oxburgh or Falck Renewables, the company he chairs. But was he really the best choice for this inquiry? (Thomas Fuller, Examiner)

Last week, a single blog comment by Judith Curry, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, outraged the proprietors and readers of Real Climate. Curry had mentioned the IPCC and the term “corruption” in the same sentence. I then discussed the brewing firestorm here, and that triggered a spirited exchange in the comment thread, of which Curry was an active participant.

As this exchange was playing out, I sensed that Curry was expanding on her recent controversial critique of climate scientists, while also putting forth a contrary view of the two recent probes that have exonerated scientists of wrongdoing in the affair known as Climategate. So I asked her if I could follow up with a few questions to clarify some of her recent statements. She immediately accepted and what follows is a short Q & A, conducted via email, and reproduced in its entirety. (collide-a-scape)

Donna Laframboise has discovered that the IPCC cited the Stern report no less than 26 times, even though the report had missed the cut off date for inclusion by some distance. In fact pretty much every rule in the book seems to have been trampled in the IPCC's haste to get Lord Stern's parvum opus included.

The IPCC might have been breathing easy after the lack of any new 'gates for them to be criticised over. Looks like there may be a whole new wave of criticism coming. (Bishop Hill)

SINGAPORE - Murderer, liar, fraud, traitor.

Climate scientists, used to dealing with sceptics, are under siege like never before, targeted by hate emails brimming with abuse and accusations of fabricating global warming data. Some emails contain thinly veiled death threats.

Across the Internet, climate blogs are no less venomous, underscoring the surge in abuse over the past six months triggered by purported evidence that global warming is either a hoax or the threat from a warmer world is grossly overstated.

A major source of the anger is from companies with a vested interest in fighting green legislation that might curtail their activities or make their operations more costly.

"The attacks against climate science represent the most highly coordinated, heavily financed, attack against science that we have ever witnessed," said climate scientist Michael Mann, from Pennsylvania State University in the United States. (Reuters)

IN November last year a file appeared on the internet containing thousands of emails and other documents from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain.

How this file got into the public domain is still uncertain, but the emails, whose authenticity is no longer in question, provided a startling view into the world of climate research.

In what has become known as Climategate, one could see unambiguous evidence of the unethical suppression of information and opposing viewpoints, and even data manipulation.

Moreover, the emails showed collusion with other prominent researchers in the US and elsewhere. The CRU supplies many of the authors for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

One might have thought the revelations would discredit the science underlying proposed global warming policy. Indeed, the revelations may have played some role in the failure of last December's Copenhagen climate conference to agree on new carbon emissions limits.

But with the political momentum behind policy proposals and billions in research funding at stake, the effect of the emails appears to have been small. (Richard S. Lindzen, The Australian)

To: Department of State

Date: 23 April 2010

Re: U.S. Climate Action Report 2010. 5th ed.

Many states around the nation are trying to enact laws to restrict carbon emissions, and industries too numerous to mention have begun making changes hoping to be fully prepared to comply with laws they haven’t seen yet. Congress is considering laws in hopes that they can avoid having EPA impose its own version of CO₂ restrictions.

Before jumping on this bandwagon, we should be certain that we understand the science. U.S. Climate Action Report 2010, 5th ed. might be understood by some Americans to be the definitive word; however nary a word in the report even pretends to

The media has forged a consensus around climate change.

From the Media Research Center

For more than two decades, the so-called mainstream media have preached the dangers of manmade global warming, insisting American businesses and consumers must make massive economic sacrifices to ward off a global climate catastrophe. Not even last November's exposure of e-mails from leading scientists on the alarmist side of the debate — showing them conniving to fudge or suppress data, discredit critics and distort the peer review process — has caused journalists to finally take a skeptical approach to radical environmentalists' doomsaying.

A new study from the MRC's Business & Media Institute documents how ABC, CBS and NBC have been just as strident in their advocacy in the months following "ClimateGate" as they were in the 20 years that preceded the scandal. At the same time, a review of the Media Research Center's archives going back to the late 1980s shows just how strongly reporters have pushed the liberal line on global warming. Here are just some of the many examples: (WSJ)

Bombarded by the incessant fear-mongering of the global warming industry, many people now see carbon dioxide (CO2) as evil incarnate – the bane of civilization and source of an ever-growing list of planetary problems – from erupting volcanoes and tectonic earthquakes to shrinking sheep and reduced circumcision rates.

The climate experts, joined by their lazy and interminably gullible allies in the mainstream media, have managed through guile and deception to orchestrate a successful fear campaign against a trace atmospheric gas that is essential to all life on earth. (Kirk Myers, Examiner)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that human emission of CO2 causes catastrophic global warming. When such extraordinary claim is made, every one with background in science has to look at the data and verify whether the claim is justified or not. In this article, a mathematical model was developed that agrees with observed Global Mean Temperature Anomaly (GMTA), and its prediction shows global cooling by about 0.42 deg C until 2030. Also, comparison of observed increase in human emission of CO2 with increase in GMTA during the 20^th century shows no relationship between the two. As a result, the claim by the IPCC of climate catastrophe is not supported by the data.

Fossil fuels allowed man to live his life as a proud human, but the IPCC asserts its use causes catastrophic global warming. Fortunately, the global warming claim by the IPCC that “For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenario” [1] is not supported by observations as shown in Figure 1, which shows a plateau for the global mean temperature trend for the last decade.

Figure 1. Observed temperatures are less than all IPCC projections. The observed temperatures are from the Climate Research Unit of the Hadley Center [2 .]

Figure 1 also shows that the observed temperatures are even less than the IPCC projections for emission held constant at the 2000 level.

As a result, the statement we often hear from authorities like UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that “climate change is accelerating at a much faster pace than was previously thought by scientists” [3] is incorrect. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

The US National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) executed a U-turn at the end of last month by voting to water down plans that insurers should be required to respond publicly to a survey on the risks they face from climate change. (Financial Times)

I asked for substantive feedback from you to my post(s) and instead got a sarcastic, emotional response. You are clearly annoyed, but open debate about contentious public public policy issues should not be compromised by personal relationships or ‘favors’. And there is nothing wrong about a ‘challenge culture’ and mid-course corrections, either. We are talking about climate science, after all.

I am going to elaborate as best I can and bring in some more of your own quotations for the record.

Jerry: you are a very interesting and important figure in the climate-change debate–and one whose views future historians of science should note.

Back in 1998, I picked you out of many candidates as a corporate consultant because you seemed to be more open to finding the middle than many of your colleagues. Thinking that Enron was progressive on the climate issue (and they unfortunately were–Ken Lay saw many rent-seeking opportunities with CO2 pricing), you said yes.

My Major Point: You Have ‘Gone Political’ and ‘Gone Left’ Post-Climategate Despite Your Skepticism About Climate Alarmism–and Climategate Itself

I have a treasure trove of emails from you that are fair and insightful, in retrospect. (And you have stated that you write your emails as if they would be made public–nothing to fear from your own views.) Some of them are very critical of scientists–skeptics and alarmists. Your criticisms of the skeptics are public (I can provide citations); your more ‘private’ views against alarmism should be made public too. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Dr. Martin Hertzberg of Copper Mountain, a retired research scientist and consultant in the causes and prevention of accidental fires and explosions, will present the above titled talk at this month’s meeting of the Café Scientifique. The meeting will be held at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, April 27th at the Summit County Senior and Community Center, 151 Peak One Blvd, Frisco, Colorado. Dr. Hertzberg also served as a forecasting and research meteorologist while on active duty with the U. S. Navy. He has been studying the “global warming/climate change” issue for over twenty years and has published papers and articles on the subject. (Climate Realists)

At last we know what’s wrong with the BBC’s reporting on Climate Change. It gives too much space to sceptics, according to a woman called Fiona Fox who directs something called the Science Media Centre. (James Delingpole)

An increasing number of British farmers say they are unaffected by climate change, a survey found on Friday.

British public belief in climate change in general has sagged in the aftermath of disclosure of errors made by a U.N. climate panel report.

Some 62 percent of a poll of 414 farmers said they were unaffected by climate change, up from nearly 50 percent who said last year that they had not felt its effects.

"For farming there's been a very tough winter, a lot of snow, that may be part of it, and generally people seem bit more cynical and apathetic," said Madeleine Lewis, strategic adviser to the UK advisory group Forum for the Future.

Overall, farmers were much more likely to disagree than agree that climate change had become more relevant to them in the past year. Some said that the economic crisis had forced climate change down their priorities.

In addition, the number of respondents who expected climate change to impact them in the next 10 years was down, at 57 percent versus 63 percent last year.

Britain may be spared the more extreme consequences of climate change, as a rather cool, wet country where crop yields may benefit from slightly higher temperatures. (Reuters)

…is to provide them with a university education, adequate living quarters in urban settings, and $100,000 in “investable asset”:

(well, obviously under those conditions it should make it easier to have a little fewer of other concerns such as paying the mortgage, getting dinner organized, staying ahead of the bills)

Can’t wait to see thousands of self-styled environmentalists worldwide lobby their democratic representatives to defend the planet from climate change through a “Global Get Well Schooled, Urbanite And Rich Initiative“!

Now, that’s a Climate Campaign I would like to see started…just let me know where I can cash my $100,000, please? (Maurizio Morabito, OmniClimate)

Today's question is this:

Would you buy a used carbon market from the following self-proclaimed "masters of the universe"?

That is, the same giant investment houses that just finished helping to crash the global economy by recklessly trading in risky subprime mortgage loans and other bizarre investment vehicles few people understood?

Would a glowing endorsement of a mandatory, North American cap-and-trade market in carbon dioxide emissions by, say, American International Group (AIG), recipients of $173 billion in bailout money from U.S. taxpayers, make you more or less well disposed to the idea?

How about praise for carbon trading from the folks at JP Morgan Chase & Co. ($25 billion in bailout money), Morgan Stanley ($10 billion) or Merrill Lynch ($10 billion)?

How about from Goldman Sachs, Wall Street's mightiest bank, recently accused of civil fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over the sale of subprime mortgage securities? (The company denies the charges.)

How about a big cheer for carbon trading from its earliest corporate boosters -- the fraudsters at Enron -- who giddily predicted it would "do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries" and would be "good for Enron stock?"

Save for the now-defunct Enron, all the other big investment houses, some of which have paid back their bailout loans but not the unimaginable amounts of cash they cost the global economy, are enthusiastically gearing up for mandatory carbon trading.

Many are spending big money lobbying U.S. politicians to deliver it, complete with all the exotic investment opportunities it will provide.

That's because carbon trading -- cap-and-trade -- amounts to creating a new stock market out of, pardon the pun, thin air. (Lorrie Goldstein, Toronto Sun)

Document from Houston University claims governments overestimated CCS value

A proposed carbon capture and storage cluster at Kingsnorth in Kent. Photograph: EON

A new research paper from American academics is threatening to blow a hole in growing political support for carbon capture and storage as a weapon in the fight against global warming.

The document from Houston University claims that governments wanting to use CCS have overestimated its value and says it would take a reservoir the size of a small US state to hold the CO2 produced by one power station. (The Guardian)

Next spring, James G. Anderson will embark on a “hunting expedition” to study greenhouse gas emissions in the Arctic, using instruments developed in his lab to measure methane and carbon dioxide emissions of the melting ice cap.

Unlike past research aimed at discovering the effects of climate change on the Arctic ice cap, this project will turn the tables and study the effects the Arctic has on climate change.

Anderson, a professor of atmospheric chemistry, said his project will focus primarily on the amount of carbon that is emitted, the “hotspots” of emission, and the sources of this carbon.

He added that he will examine permafrost—permanently frozen ground—which has large amounts of greenhouse gases trapped inside. These gases, Anderson explained, have been frozen for millions of years within the ice cap, but are starting to escape due to climate change.

“If even a small fraction is released each year, it would surpass the amount of carbon released by humans,” wrote David S. Sayres, a research associate involved with the project, in an emailed statement.

This release could then affect the ability to reduce carbon emissions and climate change, according to Sayres. (Harvard Crimson)

MOSCOW, April 23 -- A Russian scientist says the Arctic may be getting colder, not warmer, which would hamper the international race to discover new mineral fields.

An Arctic cold snap that began in 1998 could last for years, freezing the northern marine passage and making it impassable without icebreaking ships, said Oleg Pokrovsky of the Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory. (UPI)

A deep-sea current moves millions of cubic metres of water northward every second.

Work in Japan and Australia has revealed that a deep-ocean current is carrying frigid water rapidly northward from Antarctica along the edge of a giant underwater plateau.

Other research teams had previously identified a deep current along the eastern edge of the Kerguelen Plateau, a more than 2,200-kilometre-long rise some 3,000 kilometres south-west of Australia. But estimates of its speed, taken as "snapshots" by instruments deployed from research vessels, had been "all over the place", says Steve Rintoul, a physical oceanographer at the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystem Cooperative Research Centre in Hobart, Australia, and a co-author of the new study. (Nature News)

Nearly a dozen people are missing and presumed dead after the huge explosion aboard a deep-water oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The accident provides further evidence that despite advances in technology, oil drilling poses big environmental and human risks.

The explosion occurred just weeks after President Obama decided to open parts of America’s coastal waters to exploratory drilling. This tragedy is not reason enough to reverse that decision. A balanced energy strategy will have to include the search for conventional fuels even as the country moves quickly to alternative energy sources. (NYT)

Offshore drilling, particularly in deep water, makes the action available at Las Vegas casinos look almost tame. [Read more...] (Robert Bryce, Energy Tribune)

A moorland peatbog is to be dug up wholesale and put into storage for more than 30 years in an unprecedented measure to protect it from destruction. The peatbog on Shetland is in the way of a gas processing facility which is to be built as an extension to the Sullom Voe oil terminal on the island.

The oil company Total has agreed, as part of the deal to be allowed to build the £500m gas facility, to store the peat so that it can be returned at the end of the plant's operational life.

It's estimated that more than 260,000 cubic metres of peat – enough to fill 100 Olympic swimming pools – will have to be cut out and moved away to be piled up in "peat terraces" and covered with a layer of vegetation to protect them from drying out. (The Independent)

Nuclear energy is a hot topic in Washington these days. An important question that has stirred debate is whether the federal government should back up loans to build new nuclear power plants. On Wednesday, the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing on the topic. Heritage Research Fellow for Nuclear Energy Policy, Jack Spencer along with three other panelists testified.

One member of the panel, Leslie Kass of the Nuclear Energy Institute, argued that loan guarantees were good for ratepayers, taxpayers, and the nuclear industry and should be pursued. She argued that the federal government already provides loan guarantees for all sorts of industries and gave shipbuilding, steelmaking, rural electrification, affordable housing, and critical transportation infrastructure construction as examples. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

The wind is notably capricious, varying in strength and direction in seemingly random ways. The output of wind turbines, which capture the energy of the wind and turn it into electrical power, also varies unpredictably. Leveling out these fluctuations is the biggest obstacle to wind power serving as an effective alternative to conventional power sources. A study, just published in PNAS Online, claims that wiring together offshore wind farms, from along the entire length of the US East Coast, could provide a steady power source for the area. This has led to proclamations by a number of green power advocates that America's energy problems can be solved by wind power. Unfortunately, steady to a scientist is not the same as steady to a power grid engineer, or consumers. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

Enacting Reform: Are the Democrats who want to place price controls on premiums trying to destroy the health insurance business? If we didn't know better, we'd say yes. And we do know better — don't we?

It was just a month ago that the Democrats passed and signed a radical overhaul of the country's health care sector. But 3,000 pages of new law apparently are not enough for lawmakers who don't read the bills they vote on.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat, says there's "an enormous loophole" in her party's reform effort that must be closed. So she's introduced a bill that would give the secretary of health and human services the authority to review health plan premiums and block "any rate increase found to be unreasonable."

This, after the public was told many times over that the Democrats' health care legislation would bring down costs and rein in those troublesome health insurance companies that are making so much money.

It doesn't take a Ph.D. in economics to see where the Democrats are going with this. Their regulators will establish price controls, which will drive health plan providers out of business as the restrictions make it impossible or unreasonable for them to make profits.

To deal with the shortage of health plans, Democrats will then complete the government takeover of medicine by placing Washington in the position of being the sole provider of health care. (IBD)

Taxes: Candidate Obama repeatedly vowed that those earning under $250,000 "will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime." Will he veto the $3,700 tax hike Congress is considering for 30 million Americans?

'I can make a firm pledge," candidate Barack Obama told a New Hampshire audience about a year and a half ago. "Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes." (IBD)

President Obama has consistently ducked the question on whether he is considering a massive tax hike in the form of a value added tax (VAT) – until now. Yesterday in an interview with CNBC, the president made clear that he is open to a VAT – once he has seen the recommendations his Debt Commission makes.

The president’s comments spell out what has been obvious for months: the debt commission is a stalking horse for the VAT as the solution to close massive deficits today and in the future.

A VAT would be a massive tax hike that would transfer trillions of dollars each year from the wallets of every American to Washington. It would permanently slow economic growth and lower the standard of living for generations of Americans to come. It would also be a bottomless well for Congress to go back to each time it wants more of our money to pay for new spending programs. Once a VAT is in place turning back the growth of government will be next to impossible and the efforts of President Obama and his congressional allies to recast the nation into a full state of dependency on Washington will be complete. The stakes are that high.

LONDON - A new decades-long study examining the link between the use of mobile phones and long-term health problems such as cancer and neurological diseases launched on Thursday across five European countries.

Organisers said the Cohort Study on Mobile Communications (COSMOS) would be the largest of its kind, examining more than 250,000 people aged 18 to 69 in Britain, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark.

Professor Paul Elliott, the Principal Investigator at the Imperial College London on the British study, said previous research examining the health link had so far been reassuring but pointed out these had often only lasted around 10 years.

With many cancers taking longer to develop and mobile phones still being relatively new, Elliott said there was a need for a longer-term study.

"For the sake of current users and future generations this is the sensible thing to do," he told a press conference in London. "Research to date has necessarily mainly focussed on (mobile phone) use on the short term, less than 10 years.

"The COSMOS study will be looking at long-term use, 10, 20 or 30 years. And with long-term monitoring there will be time for diseases to develop." (Reuters)

NEW YORK - As daily levels of ozone and pollutants from vehicle exhaust climb, so do children's emergency-room visits for asthma attacks, a new study shows.

It's well established that air pollution may worsen symptoms in people with asthma or other lung diseases, and children are thought to be particularly susceptible, due to their smaller airways, less developed immune systems and other factors.

For the new study, researchers at Emory University in Atlanta used detailed air-quality data from a larger project called the Study of Particles and Health in Atlanta, which has measured daily concentrations of various air pollutants around the metropolitan area since 1994.

Dr. Matthew J. Strickland and his colleagues looked at the relationship between those daily air-pollution fluctuations and the number of children seen at city ERs for asthma attacks.

Overall, the researchers documented 91,386 such visits among 5- to 17-year-olds between 1993 and 2006. On average, there were 20 visits per day during warmer months (May to October) and 23 per day during the rest of the year. (Reuters Health)

Lead poisoning among young children, which can cause learning and behavior problems, has decreased so sharply in recent decades that it is tempting to consider it a problem of the past. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was so confident about the decline in childhood lead poisoning that it set a goal of 2010 for eliminating it.

But federal health officials now say eradication may still be years away because hazards remain in often poor urban pockets — mostly from old, badly maintained housing with lead-based paint. (NYT)

WASHINGTON - Children born extremely early -- at 25 weeks or before -- may risk a lifetime of lung problems, including asthma, British researchers reported on Thursday.

They found that extremely pre-term babies who lived to age 11 often had abnormal lung function and were twice as likely as children born at a full 39 or 40 weeks to be diagnosed with asthma. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - Women who were heavy as girls are at lower risk of developing breast cancer, new research confirms.

The role of body size in breast cancer risk changes throughout life, Dr. Jingmei Li of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, who helped conduct the study, told Reuters Health by email. High birthweight ups breast cancer risk, while being heavy in childhood and during puberty reduces risk; after menopause, a woman's risk rises with her body mass index or BMI -- a measure of weight in relation to height used to gauge whether person is overweight or obese. (Reuters Health)

So strong was the antibusiness sentiment for the first Earth Day in 1970 that organizers took no money from corporations and held teach-ins “to challenge corporate and government leaders.”

Forty years later, the day has turned into a premier marketing platform for selling a variety of goods and services, like office products, Greek yogurt and eco-dentistry. (NYT)

What would it mean if every power plant burning coal, oil or natural gas shut down today and remained idle? The short answer is chaos and social collapse, but let's take a quick look at why. [Read More] (Geoffrey Styles, Energy Tribune)

Editor’s note: As the United States commemorates the 40^th anniversary of Earth Day we can expect to hear various commentators bemoan the growth in population, consumption, and carbon emissions driven by fossil-fueled technologies. We will be told that this is unsustainable, that we are running out of resources, that prices are inevitably headed up, and, worse, that such consumption reduces both environmental and human well-being. In this worldview, industrialization and economic development are the inventions of the Devil; de-industrialization and de-development will be our savior.

In this series of posts, Indur M. Goklany will compare the above Neo-Malthusian view of industrialization, economic growth, and technological change against empirical data on human well-being from the age of industrialization. First, he will revisit the bet made in 1980 by Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich on the direction of commodity prices, and examine long-term trends in the prices and affordability of various commodities, specifically, metals and food, going back to at least 1900. Parts II and III will compare long-term trends in population, consumption, economic development, and carbon emissions against trends in human well-being for the world and the United States, respectively. Part IV will provide an explanation as to why the empirical data is at odds with the Neo-Malthusian worldview.

Based on the run-up in global commodity prices over the last decade, some observers speculate that Julian Simon lucked out in winning his famous bet with Paul Ehrlich. Paul Kedrosky, for instance, notes that had the bet been made in subsequent years, Simon would, more likely than not, have lost. And, indeed, there is an element of truth to that, but that would not vitiate Simon’s larger point, namely, that human ingenuity left to itself would probably reduce the the price of goods and, more importantly, advance the state of humanity.

In my opinion, the direction of commodity prices in the bet itself served as a surrogate for the fundamental difference between the worldviews of the two protagonists, namely, whether human well-being would advance over time considering increases in population, and economic and technological development. In fact, some Neo-Malthusians opine that present day populations are already too large, while others of the same ilk believe that continued economic and technological development is unsustainable (see, e.g., here).

But before getting into the larger and more important issues, let me first address the bet itself. Recall that the bet was made in 1980, and the late 1970s and 1980 had seen a spectacular increase in commodity price following the second oil shock. But what goes up is also likely to come down. Statisticians call this the regression to the mean. And Simon, being an economist and an entrepreneur at heart, took a calculated risk and “gambled” on that.

And, indeed, commodity prices reverted to trend and prices turned down during the 1980s. So fortune favors the prepared, and Simon was the better prepared and, perhaps, the wiser of the two protagonists. But he was also lucky, because 10 years is but a brief moment in the context of history. The appropriate period to determine whether Simon or Ehrlich’s worldview is better aligned with historical reality is to look at the matter over many decades, if not generations. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

In recent weeks while addressing Tea Party rallies here on the left coast, I ask the assembled patriots what appears to be an odd question: "Would all those from the former Soviet Union please raise your hands?"

A notable number of hands are always raised -- the San Francisco Bay Area is home to a diverse population.

I then ask another curious question: "What does April 22 signify to you?"

Without exception, someone will shout with great displeasure, "Lenin's birth date!"

The crowd clearly sees that I'm on to something. I next ask the former Soviets, "And as a young child in school, who were you told is your grandfather?"

At this point several painfully respond, "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin!"

"And in the United States, do you know what we celebrate on April 22?" I ask. "Earth Day. Grandfather Lenin has been conjoined with Mother Earth -- and it's no coincidence."

In my new book Climategate (released today), I detail the doings of Earth Day's devious founders. It seems that this crafty crew were cut from cloth that resembles Marx and Lenin, as opposed to Madison and Jefferson.

In 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WS) was Congress's leading environmentalist activist. Nelson was the mastermind behind those ridiculous teach-ins, which were in vogue in the late sixties and early seventies. During the teach-ins, mutinous school instructors would scrap the day's assigned curriculum, pressure their students to sit cross-legged on the floor, "rap" about how America is an imperialist nation, and discuss why communism really isn't such a bad form of government -- it just needs to be implemented properly.

Nelson's teach-in efforts were aided by a young man named Denis Hayes. Hayes was student body president while an undergrad at Stanford, and well known for organizing anti-Vietnam war protests. Later, while pursuing a masters degree in public policy at Harvard, Hayes heard about Senator Nelson's teach-in concept and eventually helped Nelson institute the practice nationwide. Denis Hayes would also conspire with the senator to found Earth Day.

Rounding out the troika was Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford. In 1968 Ehrlich authored the Malthusian missive, The Population Bomb, in which he infamously spouted wild allegations which included equating the earth's supposed surplus of people with a cancer that needs to be eradicated: "A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. ... We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions." (Brian Sussman, American Thinker)

The New York City sightseeing company Gray Line is promoting an “Earth Week” package of day trips that includes visits to “green spots” like the botanical gardens and flower shopping at Chelsea Market. The fact that these tours will be taken on buses running on fossil fuels does not sit well with the first Earth Day national coordinator Denis Hayes who tells The New York Times what he thinks of such green consumerism: “This ridiculous perverted marketing has cheapened the concept of what is really green. It is tragic.”

But this begs the question: what are the best policies that promote economic growth? Economic freedom. New research from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows — over the last 40 years — a strong connection between the worldwide march toward greater economic freedom and the massive reduction in poverty. And our own Index of Economic Freedom demonstrates empirically that today’s successful economies are not necessarily geographically large or richly blessed with natural resources. Instead, the proven path to stimulating economic growth is to advance economic freedom by promoting policies that generate a virtuous cycle of innovation, vibrant economic expansion, and more opportunities for people.

Scientists have used the no-flying period caused by the ash cloud to show for the first time that airports are themselves significant causes of pollution. Although long suspected, the fact that mass take-offs and landings are large pollution sources could never be proved before, because aircraft pollution could not be measured as separate from the pollution caused by vehicles operating near by.

But an analysis of the first three days of the unprecedented closure of UK airspace, at Heathrow and Gatwick, shows that there is a definite air pollution caused by air traffic in the vicinity of airport hubs.

Pollution near both airports dropped significantly during the first three days of the shutdown. During last Thursday, Friday and Saturday, levels of two major pollutants, NO2 (nitrogen dioxide) and NOx (the generic term for oxides of nitrogen, taken together) fell virtually to zero. (The Independent)

WASHINGTON -- The changing chemistry of the world's oceans is a growing global problem, says the summary of a congressionally requested study by the National Research Council, which adds that unless man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are substantially curbed, or atmospheric CO2 is controlled by some other means, the ocean will continue to become more acidic. The long-term consequences of ocean acidification on marine life are unknown, but many ecosystem changes are expected to result. The federal government's National Ocean Acidification Program, currently in development, is a positive move toward coordinating efforts to understand and respond to the problem, said the study committee.

The ocean absorbs approximately a third of man-made CO2 emissions, including those from fossil-fuel use, cement production, and deforestation, the summary says. The CO2 taken up by the ocean decreases the pH of the water and leads to a combination of chemical changes collectively known as ocean acidification. (National Academy of Sciences)

WASHINGTON — Proponents of climate change legislation usually invoke the need to reduce global warming, but actress Sigourney Weaver is coming to the defense of something that's often out of sight — oceans.

"One secret the oceans have kept very well is their sensitivity to carbon dioxide pollution," Weaver said at a Senate hearing Thursday, as she urged lawmakers to pass climate legislation that would limit carbon emissions. (AP)

When he first began his career as a crusading consumer journalist in the 1970s, John Stossel believed fervently that higher taxes and greater government involvement in the marketplace were integral checks against corporate greed and malfeasance. With an irreverent, intelligent and skeptical tone that riled corporations – but resonated with viewers – Stossel’s career flourished, leading him to the pinnacle of his profession at ABC News.

But then Stossel experienced a metamorphosis in his thinking. After observing the chronic, costly failure of so many of the numerous big government solutions that he and his media colleagues repeatedly prescribed for society’s ills, Stossel reexamined his fundamental beliefs.

“I started out by viewing the marketplace as a cruel place, where you need intervention by government and lawyers to protect people,” Stossel explained shortly after undergoing his transformation. “But after watching the regulators work, I have come to believe that markets are magical and the best protectors of the consumer.” (Howard Rich, Townhall)

Greg Clark, Ed Miliband, Simon Hughes could all have been fronting a Friends of the Earth campaign from a few years ago (George Monbiot, The Guardian)

JOHANNESBURG - Africa is making dramatic progress in tackling malaria, a mosquito-borne disease that has killed a million people a year on the continent and stunted economic growth, a top expert said on Thursday.

Infection rates in Zambia, for instance, more than halved from 2001 to 2008 due to widespread distribution of mosquito nets, targeted spraying of insecticides and better and cheaper diagnosis and treatment, said Rob Newman, director of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Global Malaria Programme.

Zambia's success augurs well for similar programmes in their relative infancy in much larger countries such as Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and the one with the heaviest malaria case-load, he said.

"Where we are in Africa today compared to even a few years ago is dramatic," Newman told Reuters from WHO headquarters in Geneva. "The steepness of the decline surprises even me, and I've been doing this for a very long time. (Reuters)

African farmers risk being forced from their lands by investors or government projects as global demand for biofuels encourages changes in crop cultivation.

Research from the University of Edinburgh has found that livelihoods may be put at risk if African farmland is turned over to growing crops for biofuel.

With growing pressure to find alternatives to oil, global biofuel production trebled between 2003 and 2007 and is forecast to double again by next year. In Africa, countries including Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe have enacted pro-biofuel national strategies.

Dr Tom Molony, who contributed to the research, said that the allocation of land for biofuel production by government projects or wealthy investors could mean that the rural poor would be forced off their land. (University of Edinburgh)

Earth Day is a good time to recognize the vital role the herbicide atrazine places in protecting the environment and promoting responsible land stewardship, according to Syngenta.

As people around the world recognize Earth Day, Syngenta notes that it’s also a good time to recognize the vital role the herbicide atrazine plays in protecting the environment and promoting responsible land stewardship. Besides helping to effectively and affordably control a broad spectrum of weeds, atrazine is essential to conservation tillage and no-till systems in agriculture that can reduce soil erosion by up to 90 percent, when compared to intensive tillage.

When using atrazine products, farmers in the United States are turning more to conservation tillage and no-till systems. In 2008, atrazine was applied to more than 60 percent of conservation tillage and no-till corn acres, according to the Conservation Tillage Information Center. (PRWEB)

Team led by Mark Hoddle measured the impact of biocontrol on the cottony cushion scale

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – The Galapagos Islands, made famous by Charles Darwin, have a unique biota now highly threatened by invasive species because of increased tourism and population growth. Indeed, alien or exotic insects today constitute 23 percent of the Galapagos insect fauna. One of these insect invaders is the cottony cushion scale, a sap sucking bug native to Australia.

Capable of infesting many woody ornamentals and crops, the cottony cushion scale decreases the vitality of its host by sucking phloem sap from the leaves, twigs, branches, and trunk. But natural enemies, such as the lady bug beetle, Rodolia cardinalis, can bring the cottony cushion scale under control in a short time – a form of pest suppression called biocontrol.

In fall 2009, entomologist Mark Hoddle, the director of the Center for Invasive Species at the University of California, Riverside, and colleagues visited the Galapagos Islands to assess the impact and safety of the lady bug beetle that had been released in 2002 to suppress the cottony cushion scale.

"Populations of cottony cushion scale in 2002 were so high and spread across so many islands that several endemic and native plant populations were thought to be going into decline because of heavy infestations," said Hoddle, also a biocontrol specialist in the Department of Entomology.

Combating the cottony cushion scale was a joint effort between the Charles Darwin Research Foundation and the Galapagos Islands National Park Service, which neighbors the foundation on the island of Santa Cruz in the Galapagos. (University of California - Riverside)

Climate modeller Andrew Weaver launches libel action in Canada for publishing 'grossly irresponsible falsehoods'

One of the world's leading climate scientists has launched a libel lawsuit against a Canadian newspaper for publishing articles that he says "poison" the debate on global warming.

In a case with potentially huge consequences for online publishers, lawyers acting for Andrew Weaver, a climate modeller at the University of Victoria, Canada, have demanded the National Post removes the articles not only from its own websites, but also from the numerous blogs and sites where they were reposted.

Weaver says the articles, published at the height of several recent controversies over the reliability of climate science in recent months, contain "grossly irresponsible falsehoods". He said he filed the suit after the newspaper refused to retract the articles.

Weaver said: "If I sit back and do nothing to clear my name, these libels will stay on the internet forever. They'll poison the factual record, misleading people who are looking for reliable scientific information about global warming."

The four articles, published from December to February, claimed that Weaver cherrypicked data to support his climate research, and that he tried to blame the "evil fossil fuel" industry for break-ins at his office in 2008 to divert attention from reported mistakes in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on which he was lead author.

The lawsuit also highlights several claims in the articles that attempt to question or undermine the scientific consensus on climate change, including that annual global mean temperatures have stopped increasing in the last decade and that climate models are "falling apart". (The Guardian)

Fred has just circulated this email of a shortly to be released Science Editorial

SCIENCE EDITORIAL #13-2010 (April 24, 2010)
By S. Fred Singer, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Let’s keep our eyes on the ball.

We need to trace the path taken by Phil Jones (and by Jim Hansen of NASA-GISS and by NOAA-NCDC) in distilling the raw thermometer readings from thousands of stations into a single number — the magical “global mean surface temperature” We need to document the process of how they selected stations. And we need to understand the kinds of corrections and adjustments they made.

The crucial period is 1979 to 1997 – the era of weather satellite data, which can provide an independent cross check. It is also the period during which the surface temperatures seemed to show a sustained rise – the “blade” of the infamous “hockeystick” graph.

In parallel, we need to examine the available proxy data for the same period. I predict they will not duplicate the claimed temperature rise of the surface

Doing all this is not a small job – it will take two teams of skilled and dedicated people. But it must be done to achieve closure — and we will learn what’s behind “hiding the decline” and “Mike [Mann]’s Nature trick.”

This will be done — if necessary, at the direction of the US Congress, provided the Nov 2010 elections produce a change in control. It’s probably the best investment the government can make in climate research. Trillions of dollars are at stake here.

I agree Fred. I have been trying to get attention on these critical issues. A great start for people is to read the Dr Fred Wood 1988 critique of Jones et al 1986 – it was a pity he concentrated on the USA and not the USSR.
People must not confuse the Jones and GISS data. Anybody serious about tracing ing “..the path taken by Phil Jones..” should be familiar with the two DoE documentation books – TR022 and TR027, linked at my pages.

Thanks to those who have emailed wondering at the lack of posts for over six weeks. I have just been very busy on other projects – and hey – ClimateGate has rolled on so well. (Warwick Hughes)

DHAKA — Scientists in Bangladesh posed a fresh challenge to the UN's top climate change panel Thursday, saying its doomsday forecasts for the country in the body's landmark 2007 report were overblown.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), already under fire for errors in the 2007 report, had said a one-metre (three-foot) rise in sea levels would flood 17 percent of Bangladesh and create 20 million refugees by 2050.

The claim helped create a widespread consensus that the low-lying country was on the "front line" of climate change, but a new study argues the IPCC ignored the role sediment plays in countering sea level rises.

IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri defended his organisation's Bangladesh predictions Thursday, warning that "on the basis of one study one cannot jump to conclusions."

"The IPCC looks at a range of publications before we take a balanced view on what's likely to happen," he told AFP by telephone.

But IPCC's prediction did not take into account the one billion tonnes of sediment carried by Himalayan rivers into Bangladesh every year, which are crucial in countering rises in sea levels, the study funded by the Asian Development Bank said.

"Sediments have been shaping Bangladesh's coast for thousands of years," said Maminul Haque Sarker, director of the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS), who led research for the study.

Previous "studies on the effects of climate change in Bangladesh, including those quoted by the IPCC, did not consider the role of sediment in the growth and adjustment process of the country's coast and rivers to the sea level rise," he told AFP.

Even if sea levels rise a maximum one metre in line with the IPCC's 2007 predictions, the new study indicates most of Bangladesh's coastline will remain intact, said Sarker.

"Based on the findings of the study, it appears that most of Bangladesh's coastline, notably the Meghna estuary, which is one of the largest in the world, would rise at the same pace as the sea level growth," he said.

"The study shows that the inundation and flooding pattern of Bangladesh will change due to the sea level rise, but it will be less than what has been predicted," by the IPCC and others, he said. (AFP)

A week ago, I announced the results of a citizen's audit of the climate bible - the 2007 report written by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

While the chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, has insisted for years that the climate bible is based solely on source material published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, our audit found this not to be the case.

Of the 18,531 references cited by the report, a full 30 percent (5,587) were not peer-reviewed. Almost one third. Among the documents on which this supposedly gold standard report bases its arguments are press releases, discussion papers, student theses, news clippings, and advocacy material produced by green groups.

I issued a media release regarding our findings on April 14th and, within hours, our results were disseminated via some of the largest and most influential websites in the climate change blogosphere.

On April 17th, our audit was mentioned by a columnist in Britain's Telegraph newspaper. On April 19th, US-based FOX News posted an article about our audit on its website. It contained this paragraph:

Richard Tol writes of the IPCC being captured by political activists and how that colored the IPCC report AR4 in 2007. He also characterises the Oxburgh report on Climategate as 'harsh criticism', saying the report faulted their performance on their mission critical duties. As Professor Tol participated in the IPCC process since 1995, his criticism of the IPCC's internal processes and procedures should be take seriously. He has worked within the system he is criticizing. (Thomas Fuller, Examiner)

If the University of East Anglia report set up to investigate the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) was meant to put the Climategate controversy to rest in time for Earth Day, it failed spectacularly.

The panel was led by Ernest Oxburg, who happens to be the honorary president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association. Carbon capture and storage is an industry that definitely wouldn’t suffer should CO2 limits be imposed. Also, Oxburg’s involvement with the wind-energy industry raises further conflict of interest questions. With this in mind, the lack of depth into which the investigation went and the complete acquittal the panel gave the CRU, is not at all surprising. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

By Rich Noyes (Bio | Archive)

For more than two decades, the so-called mainstream media have preached the dangers of manmade global warming, insisting American businesses and consumers must make massive economic sacrifices to ward off a global climate catastrophe. Not even last November’s exposure of e-mails from leading scientists on the alarmist side of the debate — showing them conniving to fudge or suppress data, discredit critics and distort the peer review process — has caused journalists to finally take a skeptical approach to radical environmentalists’ doomsaying. (NewsBusters)

Academy Award-winning Director James Cameron said that climate change is “as great as the threat” the United States faced in World War II. His comments were made during a panel discussion about environmental policy on Capitol Hill with columnist Tom Friedman of the New York Times, actress Sigourney Weaver, and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough.

“I spoke to leaders today that said we can’t use the term climate change,” Cameron said on Apr. 15. “It’s death. It’ll kill the bill. It’ll be still-born, strangle it in its crib by calling it, associating it with climate change. I say, ‘We have to wake up. We have to wake up and call it what it is.’”

He continued: “We’re facing a threat that is as great as the threat that we as a nation faced in World War II. But that was a very, very defined evil and there was a starting gun with Pearl Harbor, and there was no argument but what did we do? Like the Apollo program, we mobilized on a national scale, and we need that greatest generation again. We need a greater generation.” (CNSNews.com)

The national pledges on cutting emissions made under the Copenhagen Accord are so weak that they have left the world “in dire peril” from rising temperatures, according to a leading scientific research institute.

Political leaders, including Gordon Brown, exaggerated the significance of the accord by claiming that it would limit the increase in temperature to 2C, the study found.

The “unambitious” emissions cuts by 2020 agreed under the accord meant that the actual increase would exceed 3C, which would trigger regular heatwaves across Europe similar to the one in 2003 that killed 30,000 people.

In an analysis published by the journal Nature, researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said that the 76 countries that had made pledges under the accord had put off making difficult decisions and were “betting on extreme reduction rates” in emissions after 2020. (The Times)

SAN FRANCISCO -- The chief economist behind a recent state-sponsored report that found California's climate law would do little to upset the state economy is on the board of directors of a nonprofit group that has transferred money to a political campaign to defend the measure from those who want it suspended.

Larry Goulder, a professor at Stanford University, was the lead economist in an analysis released last month by the California Air Resources Board that said the law, A.B. 32, would barely affect employment once implemented in 2012. The updated report was the second stab at an impartial economic analysis by state advisers after a previous study was dismissed by critics as too optimistic (ClimateWire, March 25).

Goulder is also on the board of directors at the Energy Foundation, a group based here that funds clean energy projects in the United States and China with big-money donations from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, among others. (ClimateWire)

The SEC civil charges against Goldman Sachs challenge a firm with ties to many Democrats, including Al Gore and the entire carbon trading establishment.

April 22, 2010 - by Richard Pollock

Whether Wall Street colossus Goldman Sachs has committed a crime remains to be seen, but the investigation may well uncover the environmental lobby and its public figurehead. For nearly a decade, Goldman Sachs has been a quiet but major investor in cap and trade. And Goldman’s main investment partner has been Al Gore.

About a decade ago, Goldman executives recognized that personal fortunes could be made with the invention of a carbon trading system through the passage of a U.S. cap-and-trade bill. This area was well suited to Goldman Sachs, the architects behind the complex world of futures trading and exotic derivatives.

Goldman joined Al Gore in 2004 and capitalized his investment company, Generation Investment Management. Strangely for a man who was a heartbeat away from the presidency, Gore decided to register his company in London — not the United States.

In November 2004, Gore unveiled GIM. Standing at his side was David Blood, the CEO of Goldman Asset Management. Blood was to become his co-founder (the new company was quickly nicknamed “Blood & Gore”). It was established with the initial capital of $206 million, much of it from Blood clients at Goldman Sachs.

Gore also turned to Goldman Sachs guru (and later Bush Treasury Secretary) Henry Paulson to help him establish GIM. At the time, Paulson himself was an eco-warrior of sorts, serving as chairman of the board of the Nature Conservancy.

Today, seven of Gore’s GIM chief partners are from Goldman Sachs. The company is now valued at $2.2 billion. (PJM)

A tough new proposal to regulate U.S. markets calls for top regulators and government officials to conduct a study on transparency in emerging U.S. carbon markets as part of the financial reform package.

The heads of the Treasury Department, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and other U.S. agencies would be required to study oversight of existing and prospective carbon markets, according to the proposal, part of a bill passed by the Senate Agriculture Committee this week.

The goal of the study is "to ensure an efficient, secure, and transparent carbon market, including oversight of spot markets and derivative markets," the bill said. (Reuters)

From Texas lawmakers to top coal mining executives, a wide array of business and political interests would like to stop the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ambitious and solo plan to tackle climate change.

But standing in the way is an energetic former chemical engineer who has vowed to press ahead with a raft of changes that only Congress or the courts can block.

The first African-American to head EPA, Lisa Jackson is now the poster woman for 21st century environmentalism and standing firm against critics who say her agenda is too radical for an economy emerging from a steep recession.

"I'm sick of the same old tired arguments," Jackson said in an interview with Reuters at her Washington office. "I don't buy into this idea that we can't have economic progress...and we can't have a strong environment. I believe it's a false choice." (Reuters)

Washington, D.C. -- On the eve of Earth Day, Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) is proposing an amendment that, if incorporated into the Senate's forthcoming climate and energy bill, will halt attempts -- be it by cities, states, or federal agencies -- to address and curb climate change. (Media-Newswire.com)

Architects of the Senate climate bill yesterday confirmed plans to limit state and federal climate change programs but signaled that a sweeping measure from Sen. George Voinovich goes further than they plan to.

"The regulatory system set up in our bill would pre-empt the state governments and the federal government, including the power that EPA has certified by the court on greenhouse gases," said Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who will roll out draft climate legislation Monday with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

"We are definitely looking at saying that if our bill passes, it would be the law of the land to provide predictability," Lieberman added. ( ClimateWire)

Democratic leaders in the Congress may try to win passage of contentious immigration reform legislation this year in a move that could further harm prospects for a climate-change bill, congressional aides said on Wednesday. (Reuters)

U.S. senators writing a massive climate-change bill struggled on Thursday over how to reduce carbon dioxide pollution in the transportation sector, Senator Lindsey Graham said, adding that he did not yet know whether a measure would be ready by Monday.

"The transportation sector is a problem," Graham told reporters. "We're just dealing with that."

Graham, a Republican, has been collaborating with Democratic Senator John Kerry and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman on a bill they hope to sketch out on Monday, but which will face an uphill fight this year.

Asked whether the trio will be able to meet that deadline, Graham responded, "I don't know yet." (Reuters)

Greenpeace considers the climate change bill being drafted in the U.S. Senate a "baby step" that will not deliver needed change, but it will not campaign against it, the group's top executive said on Thursday. (Reuters)

The head of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) maintained a global climate treaty was better than a range of small-scale agreements, but said it was unlikely a deal to combat global warming would be reached this year. (Reuters)

The European Union's carbon emissions trading regulations must not have a negative impact on steelmakers who are already facing higher prices for raw materials, the European steel lobby said on Thursday.

"The Commission must ensure that implementation of the EU emissions trading directive does not increase costs for the most CO2 efficient steelmakers," the European steelmakers association Eurofer said in a statement.

It said best performing steelmakers should receive 100 percent free emissions allocations to stay competitive. (Reuters)

There are many clear examples of climate paternalism valuing “being green” over human life. Senators John Kerry, Patrick Leahy and Rep Barney Frank wanted the World Bank to turn down a loan for a coal-fired plant in South Africa, telling World Bank President Robert Zoellick, “We cannot ignore the reality that our planet is hurtling toward potentially catastrophic climate change.” South Africa’s Finance Minister points out the new plant is “necessary to sustain the growth rates [the country needs] to create jobs.” The Obama Administration ultimately abstained on the vote.

The Kerry-Leahy-Frank approach is just one of many clear examples of climate paternalism valuing “being green” over human life. Environmental activists lobby for government policies and fail to take into account the unintended consequences that lead to economic and environmentally destructive outcomes and worse, the loss of human life. One of the worst examples is the DDT ban.

It’s Earth Day. What better time to gather around the snark and sing koombaya as we throw hippie dreams of global domination and a future free of personal hygiene onto the bonfire of the realities. (Daily Bayonet)

Politicians have been asked to consider whether New Zealand's students are protected from political indoctrination in schools after the showing of Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth prompted a petition to Parliament.

The petition of former ACT MP Muriel Newman asked that New Zealand school children be protected from political indoctrination by inserting into the Education Act provisions similar to those in the British act. (NZPA)

The following papers support skepticism of "man-made" global warming or the environmental or economic effects of. Addendums, comments, corrections, erratum, replies, responses and submitted papers are not included in the peer-reviewed paper count. There are many more listings than just the 700 papers. The inclusion of a paper in this list does not imply a specific position to any of the authors. This list will be updated and corrected as necessary. (Popular Technology)

TAU says lightning can show how pollution alters thunderstorm intensity

Native Americans used smoke signals to indicate danger, and a white plume is sent up by the Vatican when a new Pope is chosen. Now, a new research project by Tel Aviv University researchers and their colleagues shows that where there's "smoke" there may be significant consequences for local weather patterns, rainfall and thunderstorms.

In a new study, Prof. Colin Price, head of Tel Aviv University's Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science, researched data on lightning patterns in the Amazon to show how clouds are affected by particulate matter emitted by the fires used for slash-and-burn foresting practices. His findings, recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, could be used by climate change researchers trying to understand the impact of pollution on global weather patterns.

Along with colleagues at the Weizmann Institute and the Open University in Israel, Prof. Price demonstrated how pollution's effects on cloud development could negatively impact our environment. While low levels of particulate matter actually help the development of thunderstorms, the reverse is true once a certain concentration is reached — the particles then inhibit the formation of clouds and thunderstorms.

"The clouds just dry up," he says. (AFTAU)

On Friday of last week, and Monday and Tuesday of this week, I presented the following posts:

I want to summarize today what are the main conclusions from this exchange of perspectives:

This second finding does not mean continued analyses of surface temperatures and their anomalies are not needed [they certainly are for length of growing season, heating degree days, etc], but for the specific metric of global warming (and cooling), it is an inadequate metric compared with ocean heat content changes.

We need near-real time plots of the ocean heat content changes over time, such as given in the figure in

Four-year rate of the global upper 700 m of ocean heat changes in Joules at monthly time intervals. One standard error value is also shown. (Figure courtesy of Josh Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory).

It will be illuminating and informative to see how NCDC (Tom Karl), GISS (Jim Hansen), and CRU (Phil Jones) respond to this recognition that it is time to move past the surface temperature trend as the “gold standard” of global warming. (Climate Science)

A conversation with documentarian Robert Stone regarding Earth Day is featured today in The New York Times’s “Dot Earth” online column. In the course of his conversation with the Times’s Andrew Revkin, Mr. Stone — who is quite alarmed about our reliance on foreign oil — asks: “How many Americans know that we send about $800 billion to the Middle East every year for oil?”

Hopefully, not many. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. spent $95.4 billion on crude oil imports from OPEC sources in 2009. But not all OPEC members are from the Middle East. That $95.4 billion includes dollars spent on oil originating from Algeria ($6.3 billion), Angola ($9 billion), Ecuador ($3.4 billion), Nigeria ($17.7 billion), and Venezuela ($23.4 billion) – none of which are in the Middle East. Subtract out that oil and we arrive at $35.6 billion spent on Middle Eastern crude oil (a figure rounded from the original nominal counts. I have used the customs value – that is, the estimated value — of the oil being imported rather than the figures that include additional costs for insurance and transportation because money being spent on insurance and shipping goes to third parties that are not for the most part located in the Middle East. But if one wants to use those slightly higher figures, it won’t change the numbers very much at all).

For what it’s worth, the total amount of dollars Americans sent abroad for crude oil from all sources was $188.5 billion last year.

Even if the figure were $800 billion, so what? No one is forcing refineries to buy crude oil from foreign suppliers. They presumably believe that the oil at issue is more valuable than the money that must be offered to secure said oil and that oil from other sources is more expensive than oil from the Middle East. Hence, they buy. This is by definition a wealth creating transaction for American business enterprises. Foreign trade, Mr. Stone, is a good thing.

The implicit claim, of course, is that there are negative externalities associated with foreign oil consumption. This, however, is faith masquerading as fact (an argument also well made by Cato adjunct scholar Richard Gordon).

Regardless, Mr. Stone overstates the alleged problem by orders of magnitude. (Cato at liberty)

What about the benefits of oil? (And check out PJTV: Earth Day at 40: Has it Become a Pro-Nature Movement or an Anti-Industrial Religion?)
April 22, 2010
- by Alex Epstein

This Earth Day, take a moment to thank the Greens’ biggest punching bag: Big Oil.

Most of us think of oil simply as the stuff that puts gasoline in our car. But oil, thanks to the ingenuity of the oil industry, does so much more. For one, it’s the building block for thousands of petroleum products — everything from Blu-Ray discs to asphalt to stitches to lipstick. And it provides the safest, most powerful, most convenient fuel, not only for automobiles but for the freighters, jets, trucks, and industrial machinery that power our global economy. (PJM)

The future of one of north-east England's largest industrial plants, on which thousands of jobs depend, was thrown into uncertainty yesterday following a European court of justice decision.

The court, sitting in Luxembourg, ruled that the UK government has failed to fulfil its obligations to enforce the large combustion plants directive on the Lynemouth power plant at the Alcan smelter site in Northumberland. The ruling, against which there is no right of appeal, means adaptations costing at least £200m will have to be made to the coal-fired plant.

The Alcan complex in south-east Northumberland, an area hard hit by the loss of traditional heavy industry, employs 650 people directly and indirectly supports 3,500 jobs. Since its owner, Rio Tinto Alcan, operates globally, the Northumberland plant will have to fight its case for investment against other locations worldwide.

Yesterday Rio Tinto Alcan insisted it had demonstrated "to everyone's satisfaction" that local air quality meets UK and European standards. Expressing disappointment with the verdict, which follows nearly a decade of talks, it said it would examine with the UK government the judgment's details and options for further improvement. Ministers said they accepted the court's ruling. (Financial Times)

According to Earth Day founder, the late-Senator Gaylord Nelson, the commemoration rose out of “concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes and air.” These are important concerns, indeed. In fact, conserving the nation’s environmental beauty and natural resources is something that most America’s can agree on. Perhaps that is why there is growing public and political support for nuclear power.

More than any other source of energy, nuclear technology makes the production of massive amounts of reliable, affordable, and environmentally friendly power possible. Of course the notion of “environmentally friendly” can be subjective. But based on Senator Nelson’s concerns, nuclear seems to fit the bill better than anything.

Conserving land. A traditional nuclear power plant takes up a few hundred acres. And the power produced there is often enough to keep the lights on for millions of people. Wind and solar on the other hand can take thousands or tens of thousands of acres to produce the same amounts of energy. New reactor technologies could be even less land intensive.

Earth Day is a great day for politicians to push their clean energy agenda and President Barack Obama made this clear when he reiterated in his Earth Day video message that we need to transition to a clean energy economy. Politicians say that we should use the earth’s renewable resources, most notably the wind and the sun, to power our country. Some Members of Congress are even pushing for a federal mandate that requires a predetermined percentage of our nation’s electricity come from certain energy sources. The champion of ideas, as always, is Al Gore, who believes we can supply all our energy with renewable energy. But the reality is if we pursued Al Gore’s renewable energy dream, it would be American electricity consumers’ worst nightmare.

Former vice president Al Gore has a man-on-the-moon type mission for America’s energy future. In July of 2008 he called for the United States to commit to having 100 percent renewable energy power our nation – in just 10 years. That means all of the country’s electricity would be supplied by renewable energy by 2018. (Excluding hydro, renewables generated 3 percent in 2008) In his speech Gore said: Continue reading... (The Foundry)

Wind farms are much easier to build in Britain than in most of the rest of Europe, according to a study that contradicts claims by the turbine industry that the planning system is too slow and needs to be reformed. (The Times)

Spain's renewable energy industry joined forces on Thursday to ask the government to clarify whether it plans to retroactively cut subsidies, as market-moving media reports have suggested. (Reuters)

Germany's ruling coalition will only make slight changes to planned reductions in solar power incentives, sources told Reuters late Thursday, with the brunt of the cuts to remain unchanged.

The sources said parliamentary experts in Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right administration agreed that so-called feed-in tariffs for new rooftop solar installations will be cut by 16 percent from July as planned.

Most open-field installations will be cut by 15 percent, with support for farmland solar systems to be scrapped completely, the sources said. (Reuters)

For visiting watermelons on dearth day, here's Father Earth, the Marxist Bolshevik Socialist honored this day:

Today, on April 22nd, the posthumous children of Vladimir Lenin celebrate their great holiday, the so-called Earth Day.

Vladimir Lenin was born in Simbirsk (later Ulyanovsk) on April 22nd, 1870 - or April 10th, according to the Old System. The first Earth Day was celebrated exactly on Lenin's 100th birthday, on April 22nd, 1970.

Lenin's mother, Maria Blank, was a schoolmistress. If you think that this is already pretty close to physics, you should notice that Lenin's father, Ilya Ulyanov, was actually a physics instructor!

Much like his posthumous children, the environmentalists, he was obsessed with the writings of Marx. And he promoted them to a pragmatic realistic version, Marxism-Leninism. It was so realistic that it managed to cripple Russia, surrounding nations, and most of Central and Eastern Europe for much of the 20th century.

So congratulations to all the people who celebrate on April 22nd. And please, notice that you have already vastly exceeded the tolerable level of murders and economic and moral devastation that can be forgiven to one such a movement. So if you want to keep the whole planet red or green or whatever color you choose, you will really have to look for a different planet, Planet B, where you may try to realize your pathological desires.

On this planet, there's no longer any room for you, environmentalists and communists. Go away.

And that's the memo. (The Reference Frame)

On April 22, 1970, participants at the first National Environmental Teach-in listened to sermons about the dangers of increasing human numbers, nuclear Armageddon, pesticides, garbage and various other alleged perils. Although many of these fears had been brewing for years, it was the genius of the organizers of Earth Day to bring them all together under one apocalyptic umbrella. (Providence Journal)

There is a tendency in the environmental movement to present the actions of human beings as fundamentally alien to nature and thus harmful to it. A radical fringe among ecologists holds that the very existence of humans, which happen to be a species resulting from natural evolution, is about as beneficial to Mother Nature as a cancer.

This view of nature, a deep background feature behind the creation of Earth Day, is not new. The idea that Nature is in fragile balance and under constant threat from human greed goes back much further than is generally believed.

For Earth Day’s 40th anniversary, President Obama and the White House released a video praising Americans for our environmental awareness, and urging us to get personally involved with improving our local environments. The president’s message of individual responsibility is commendable but his message that we’ll spend and regulate our way to a clean energy economy is troubling.

“It’s clear change won’t come from Washington alone,” the president said in his message. The reality is that most productive change comes from outside Washington. The government is good at obstructing that progress or creating regulations that lag behind the improvements made organically. For instance, President Obama praised the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act but air and water quality were improving before the passage of these bills. While the right government regulations certainly play a role, often they are prohibitively expensive and even counterproductive. Take the Endangered Species Act, for instance, which creates perverse incentives for landowners to destroy their land if endangered species become an economic liability. Jonathan Adler, law professor at Case Western, explains,

Commentary by Dr. Patrick J. Michaels

Isn’t it fitting that Earth Day, April 22, comes a mere week after the government rakes in all your money? That’s especially true this year, as Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is readying a bipartisan effort to pick your pocket with a new energy tax to fight dreaded global warming.

In the last year we have seen Climategate, Copenhagen, EPA’s finding that carbon dioxide endangers human health and welfare, and the improbably large number of errors and gaffs found in the latest report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Climategate clearly shows a pervasive attempt to paint, in the words of one of its tree ring experts, Keith Briffa, a “nice, tidy story” about global warming. In the same emails, Phil Jones, Briffa’s boss, wishes for global warming to resume so that he can be proven right. Some objectivity.

But, for all the claims of bias, no one has quantitatively analyzed recent news. In particular, this applies to the errors and misstatements recently uncovered in the last compendium of the IPCC. Is there indeed a pervasive pattern of bias in the organization that claims to represent “the consensus of scientists”? This is certainly comprised of a much larger set of individuals than were found in Climategate. (WCR)

I won 19 Emmy Awards by reporting a myth: that business constantly rips us off -- that capitalism is mostly cruel and unfair.

I know that's a myth now. So I was glad to see the publication of "The 5 Big Lies About American Business" by Michael Medved.

I invite him on [today]'s Fox Business Network show to talk about that.

"You can only make a profit in this country by giving people a product or a service that they want," he says. "It's the golden rule in action." (John Stossel, Townhall)

Taxation: Ask almost anyone — economists, politicians, entrepreneurs, average Americans — and they'll tell you a value-added tax is a bad idea. So why does the White House continue to consider it?

After hearing VAT opponents smeared as anti-government radicals and worse, we decided to poll Americans on the issue. What our IBD/TIPP poll found was surprising: Not only is the VAT unpopular, but it's unpopular across the board, regardless of political affiliation. (IBD)

DDT was the most important life-saving chemical of the past century and, until a better chemical comes along, it will be one of the most important of the first few decades of this century too.

Winston Churchill was the first national leader to applaud the insecticide DDT. Sixty-six years ago, when prime minister of Britain, he praised the “excellent powder,” which was preventing thousands of allied troops, refugees, and other victims of war from dying of typhus, yellow fever, and malaria. For the next 20 years, DDT became seen as the world’s most successful public health insecticide, saving millions of lives from insect‐borne diseases. It helped eradicate lethal diseases from dozens of countries, including the United States and, by the 1970s, all of Europe.

But one book, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, changed DDT from global savior to global pariah. Published in 1962, its influence was gradual but irrevocable. Carson made emotional claims of great harm to wildlife and human health, but these were easy to test, and most proved false. The persistence of DDT, which made it so valuable as a long-lasting insecticide, meant that it did bio-accumulate up the food chain; as a precaution, it was banned for widespread agricultural use in most countries. Yet despite decades of use in disease prevention, with hundreds of millions being exposed to moderate levels of the chemical, no one has been able to show human harm from it. Claims of DDT’s harm to human health fail the most basic epidemiological criteria required to prove cause-and-effect relationships. Indeed, after thousands of studies on its effects, DDT remains the world’s most misunderstood chemical.

Despite decades of DDT use in disease prevention, with hundreds of millions being exposed to moderate levels of the chemical, no one has been able to show human harm from it.

As the recent revelations about climate science attest, once the preferred political decision has been reached, the science supporting this conclusion is funded and promoted, leading to a reinforced policy position. But eventually truth will win out and when people understand how policy decisions have become corrupted, uncertainty and outrage remain. In many respects the misuse of scientific evidence on DDT is far worse than the recent revelations of Climategate. (Roger Bate, American Magazine)

In The Excellent Powder: DDT's Political and Scientific History, Richard Tren and Donald Roberts argue that the infamous insecticide is the world's greatest public-health success stories, saving millions of lives by preventing insect-borne disease. Unfortunately for those in areas still infested with mosquitoes and other flying bugs, DDT is also the world's most-misunderstood substance, the target of a decades-long scientifically ignorant and ideologically motivated campaign that has vastly limited its use and applications.

From Rachel Carson in the 1960s to contemporary critics, DDT has been the object of what Roberts, a professor of tropical public health at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, calls "scare campaigns" that link DDT to "theoretical harms to wildlife and human life that simply don't exist."

Dubbed "the excellent powder" by Winston Churchill for its life-saving qualities, DDT has the potential to transform the developing world from a malarial hell into something else again. Yet as Tren, the winner of the 2009 Julian L. Simon Award, warns, under current international conventions, global DDT production is scheduled to be halted in 2017, thereby consigning much of the world to less-effective and more-expensive alternatives that will consign millions of poor people to living hell.

Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie sat down with Tren and Roberts, who are part of Africa Fighting Malaria, to talk about how DDT got such a bad rap and what can be done to set the record straight.

Approximately 9.15 minutes. Shot by Meredith Bragg and Dan Hayes; edited by Hayes and Josh Swain.

Go to Reason.tv for downloadable iPod, HD, and audio versions of all our videos. And subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.

Edited by Philip Stevens
Order a copy from Transaction publishers

Click here for the full text pdf (1,613 kb)

Introduction (pdf: 73 kb)
Philip Stevens

Chapter 1: Wealth, health and the cycle of progress (pdf: 216 kb)
Indur Goklany
Human beings are currently healthier and living longer than any other point in history. This is due to the "mutually reinforcing, co-evolving forces of economic growth, technological change and free trade."

Chapter 2: South Africa's healthcare under threat (pdf: 107 kb)
Johan Biermann
South Africa is part of a global trend to centralise and increase the role of government in healthcare provision. Recent reforms in the country have failed to take into account the many shortcomings of 'socialised' systems like Britain's NHS, and will emasculate the world-class private sector while failing to improve provision for the poor.

Chapter 3: Corruption in public health (pdf: 373 kb)
Maureen Lewis
Donors and recipient governments have historically responded to healthcare funding needs without properly considering effectiveness and outcomes. As a result, corruption in health bureaucracies in less developed countries has largely gone addressed, severely blunting the effectiveness of donor funding. Health-related MDGs will be very difficult to meet unless the institutional factors that incentivise corruption are addressed.

Chapter 4: Diseases of Poverty and the 10/90 gap (pdf: 85 kb)
Philip Stevens
Activists claim that global pharmaceutical R&D is more concerned with developing lifestyle drugs for western markets than it is for developing drugs for the diseases of poverty. They therefore claim that market driven R&D is contributing to a health crisis in less developed countries. An analysis of WHO/UN data shows this presumption to be highly misleading, in large part because the disease burden of less developed countries increasingly resembles that of their wealthier peers. The real problem in these countries is distributing basic, cheap off-patent medicines to those in need.

Chapter 5: Increasing access to medicines (pdf: 144 kb)
Prof Khalil Ahmed, Franklin Cudjoe, Eustace Davie, Dr John Kilama, Prof Marín Krause, Andrés Mejia, Barun Mitra, Nonoy Oplas, Martín Simonetta, Philip Stevens, Jose Luis Tapia, Margaret Tse, Jasson Urbach
Access to medicines in less developed countries is hindered by a series of self-generated policy failures including: weak healthcare infrastructure, regulatory environments that are hostile to health insurance markets and other risk-pooling mechanisms, taxes, tariffs and price controls on medicines. Intellectual property is rarely a barrier to access to medicines. Rather, it a vital incentive for the development of new drugs for the diseases of poverty.

Chapter 6: Cost effective means of fighting the diseases of poverty (pdf: 83 kb)
Prof Khalil Ahmed, Franklin Cudjoe, Eustace Davie, Dr John Kilama, Prof Marín Krause, Andrés Mejia, Barun Mitra, Nonoy Oplas, Martín Simonetta, Philip Stevens, Jose Luis Tapia, Margaret Tse, Jasson Urbach
Many UN sponsored global disease programmes, including those for malaria and HIV/AIDS, have been expensive failures. This is frequently because planners in Geneva often have little idea of the reality faced by people on the ground, and are sometimes pressured into making questionable strategic decisions by outside political and NGO pressure. With HIV/AIDS, expensive and difficult treatment programmes have been prioritised over prevention, despite the lack of workable health infrastructure. With malaria, political pressures lead to the neglect of DDT for vector control, despite its demonstrable success in reducing prevalence. As a result, expensive and grandiose UN programmes have failed. Meanwhile, political activism is hindering the uptake of genetically-modified crops which could address many of the health problems associated with malnutrition.

Chapter 7: Counterfeit medicines in Less Developed Countries: problems and solutions (pdf: 76 kb)
Julian Morris & Philip Stevens
Counterfeit medicines are an increasing health problem in less developed countries, where the majority of the global supply is manufactured. These manufacturers thrive in countries in which there is a weak rule of law, the legal system is corrupt, and trade marks and other forms of intellectual property are not respected or enforced. Reform of these areas is imperative.

Chapter 8: The value of vaccination (pdf: 99 kb)
David Bloom, David Canning and Mark Weston
Vaccination programmes have led to the virtual eradication of preventable childhood diseases in wealthy countries. However, 3 million people die from vaccine-preventable diseases every year in less developed countries. Donors have not given sufficient resources to these programmes because they have looked at the narrow benefits of averted medical costs, instead of looking at the broader economic benefits of a healthier and therefore more productive population. As a result, donor support for vaccination has stalled since the 1970s and 1980s as other health problems have become more politically pressing.

Chapter 9: The World Health Organisation: a time for reconstitution (pdf: 101 kb)
Richard Wagner
An examination of the WHO's budget for 2006-7 reveals less than half is allocated to communicable diseases, and the majority is spent on issues that are of little concern to the poor such as road safety and obesity. These 'politically correct' activities are seemingly intended to satisfy the political demands of the WHO's funders - predominantly wealthy countries - and to ensure a steady flow of funds to sustain its own bureaucracy. Meanwhile, far too much of its budget is spent on public relations and bureaucratic self-promotion.

Notes (pdf: 57 kb)

Sources (pdf: 95 kb) (Campaign for Fighting Diseases)

HANOI - The task of preparing for flu pandemics remains urgent, and the world must guard against complacency in the wake of the H1N1 outbreak, which appears less deadly than a potential bird flu pandemic, a U.S. health official said.

Participants in a ministerial conference on influenza in Hanoi, "felt the need to re-commit" to the effort, Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs Kerri-Ann Jones said on Wednesday. (Reuters)

The so-called "pandemic" didn't quite match up to the "best-case scenarios" of "global excess deaths in the range of 2 million to 7.4 million.

Having spread H1N1 swine flu hysteria for nearly a year, the World Health Organization’s "swine flu czar," Keiji Fukuda, last week finally "fessed up" to agency wrongdoing. But it’s like listening to Enron admitting to a tabulation error. "I think we did not convey the uncertainty" about the risks of the flu strain, he said.

Sorry, but this was no poor communications problem. Indeed, earlier this year Wolfgang Wodarg, an epidemiologist with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, accused the WHO of creating a "false pandemic" that’s "one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century."

At the least, by portraying as a raging razorback what proved to be more of a pathetic piglet, the WHO needlessly scared the public, wasted vast billions of dollars, destroyed the value of the term "flu pandemic" and perhaps left the organization’s reputation "tarnished" and "irreparably damaged," as one authority put it. ( Michael Fumento, AOL News)

AMSTERDAM — Airlines toted up losses topping $2 billion and struggled to get hundreds of thousands of travelers back home Wednesday after a week of crippled air travel, as questions and recriminations erupted over Europe's chaotic response to the volcanic ash cloud.

Civil aviation authorities defended their decisions to ground fleets and close the skies — and later to reopen them — against heated charges by airline chiefs that the decisions were based on flawed data or unsubstantiated fears. (AP)

WASHINGTON - Sugar and salt are damaging the health of Americans by raising blood pressure and cholesterol -- and regulation may be the only way to help, researchers agree.

Two reports published on Tuesday take aim at the much-loved ingredients and add to a growing body of scientific opinion that Americans won't be able to eat more healthily without help from the food industry.

Americans have been eating more and more sugar and salt in recent decades and most of it is not sprinkled on food. It is in the burgers, sodas and processed foods that are hastily gobbled by adults and children alike, the reports show.

Education efforts to help Americans cut down on salt have not worked and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should start regulating the industry to help remove it from food, a panel at the Institute of Medicine said.

Regulators and the food industry agree that Americans cannot give up salt cold-turkey and will have to be gradually weaned off it. Sodium adds flavor and texture to food to make it palatable and can extend its shelf life. (Reuters)

The current National Institutes of Health body mass index cutoff values for obesity are too high for many reproductive-age women in the U.S. and should be adjusted to account for ethnic differences in body composition to produce proper diagnosis of obesity, according to new research from the University of Texas Medical Branch.

What happens when you put a picture of a Sesame Street character on vegetables? Something like this:

A new study identifies cattle feed as a possible culprit in the long-standing mystery of why California's San Joaquin Valley — a moderately-populated agricultural region — has higher levels of ozone (one of the main ingredients in smog) than many densely-populated cities. The report, which explains how fermented cattle feed works with automotive exhausts in forming ozone, is in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal.

Michael Kleeman and colleagues note that high ozone levels in the San Joaquin Valley, which produces 10 percent of America's food, have puzzled scientists for years. Motor vehicles are the major source of smog elsewhere, but the Valley has fewer motor vehicles compared to big urban areas with similar levels of ozone. Suspicion thus fell on farming activities, and the new study investigated the role of fermented livestock feed.

The paper documents emissions of reactive organic gases, which react with combustion emissions and sunlight to form smog, from seven different animal feeds. It shows how fermented feed like silage appears to be the largest man-made source of these organic gases that contribute to ozone formation in the Valley even more than automobiles. The until-now-unrecognized animal-feed factor may account for the failure of traditional vehicle smog control regulations in the Valley, they note. (American Chemical Society)

It may seem logical to swerve out of the way when faced with a wild boar on the road, but the Teutonic equivalent of the RAC, Germany's ADAC automobile club, thinks otherwise.

The motoring group has advised German drivers to plough straight into the animal, if necessary, when confronted by one on the road. It also produced graphic pictures to show the outcome.

Crashing into boars was infinitely better than trying to swerve out of their way because of the risk of running into an oncoming vehicle, the ADAC said yesterday.

"If a wild animal appears suddenly, apply the brakes as hard as possible, keep a tight grip on the steering wheel and stay in lane. In the worst case scenario a collision with the animal has to be accepted."

Photographs taken during a 50mph ADAC "test" collision, involving a life-sized dummy model boar and two piglets, showed that the entire front of the VW car used was wrecked.

"A collision with wild boar need not be life-threatening. The front of the vehicle was damaged but the passenger cell remained stable," the ADAC said.

The controlled test was the organisation's latest response to the growing number of accidents involving wild animals on Germany's roads. A total of 27 peopled were killed and more than 3,000 injured last year, not counting the tens of thousands of animals killed.

The rise in animal-related accidents has been blamed in particular on an explosion in Germany's wild boar population which is estimated to have increased at least six-fold over the past three years to reach a population of 2.5 million (one for every 32 Germans). (The Independent)

Tel Aviv University demonstrates that UV light can zap unwanted "life" in drinking water and save taxpayer dollars

Does your drinking water smell foul, or are you worried that chemicals might be damaging your family's health? Water treatment facilities currently use chlorine that produces carcinogenic by-products to keep your tapwater clean, but Tel Aviv University scientists have determined that ultra-violet (UV) light might be a better solution.

Dr. Hadas Mamane of Tel Aviv University's Porter School of Environmental Science and Faculty of Engineering, Prof. Eliora Ron of TAU's George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and their doctoral student Anat Lakretz of TAU's School of Mechanical Engineering have recently determined the optimal UV wavelength for keeping water clean of microorganisms. Their approach could be used by water treatment plants as well as large-scale desalination facilities to destroy health-threatening microorganisms and make these facilities more efficient. (American Friends of Tel Aviv University)

Brazil has given the go-ahead for one of the world's largest hydroelectric dams to be built in the Amazon rainforest, sparking immediate protests and threats of violence. (TDT)

PRESS RELEASE
Wednesday, April 21^st 2010
CONTACT
Jeff Davis
No Cap and Trade Coalition
612-605-3303 Ext. 702
Jeff.davis@mnmajority.org

St. Paul — At a Washington DC press conference yesterday, the No Cap and Trade Coalition announced a new video spoofing prominent ‘climategate’ scientist, Dr. Michael Mann and his infamous ‘hockey stick chart’ showing rapidly increasing global temperatures in recent decades. The video was posted on YouTube until Wednesday afternoon, when the Google-owned video site removed the video, citing non-existent copyright claims by Jib Jab as the reason. The video was produced in response to a cease and desist demand from Michael Mann’s attorney over an older video produced by Minnesotans for Global Warming. The original Hide the Decline video they created used some Jib Jab-provided animation, under their general license and with their expressed written consent, but the new video, recently removed by YouTube contains no such content. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

Experts on opposing sides of the global-warming debate are now squaring off against each other over a satirical Internet video.

On one side is Dr. Michael Mann, professor of Meteorology at Penn State University, who has been ensnared in the Climategate scandal. He is threatening to sue Minnesotans for Global Warming (M4GW) after the group produced a satirical video called “Hide the Decline,” which features Mann’s face and makes fun of his scientific findings, and accuses him of covering up evidence of an apparent decline in temperatures over the past decade.

On the other side is Dr. Patrick Michaels, a contributing author and reviewer on the U.N.’s 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and a well-known skeptic of global-warming alarmism. At a National Press Club press conference Tuesday, Michaels criticized Mann for having “very, very, very thin skin.”

The notion that a professor would file a lawsuit over a satirical video “is just quite shocking,” said Dr. Michaels. (Matt Hadro, Human Events)

Michael Mann’s contribution to modern science may one day be remembered as the guy who made it statistically possible to get a thousand year temperature graph using any local telephone directory as a data source. (Who needs tree-rings?)

If you were a guy who’d been caught producing scientific work so inept that people could pour in random data and get the same “curve”, then you might take a satirical video on the chin (or crawl into a hole). But if you’re Michael Mann, and you also used the wrong proxy, you hid your data, used graphs upside down, and invented deceptive “tricks” to hide declines, then you might call your lawyers.

The Minnestoans for Global Warming (M4GW) made the hilariously popular Hide The Decline video, which has now been removed from YouTube. Mann claims they defamed him “by leaving viewers with the incorrect impression that he falsified data to generate desired results in connection with his research activities”. The Minnesotans said “please do”, and responded undaunted by producing a new version (see below). More » (Jo Nova)

Global warming alarmists have been discredited, but you wouldn’t know it from the rhetoric this Earth Day.

In mid-November of 2009 there appeared a file on the Internet containing thousands of emails and other documents from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain. How this file got into the public domain is still uncertain, but the emails, whose authenticity is no longer in question, provided a view into the world of climate research that was revealing and even startling.

In what has come to be known as “climategate,” one could see unambiguous evidence of the unethical suppression of information and opposing viewpoints, and even data manipulation. The Climatic Research Unit is hardly an obscure outpost; it supplies many of the authors for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Moreover, the emails showed ample collusion with other prominent researchers in the United States and elsewhere.

One might have thought the revelations would discredit the allegedly settled science underlying currently proposed global warming policy, and, indeed, the revelations may have played some role in the failure of last December’s Copenhagen climate conference to agree on new carbon emissions limits. But with the political momentum behind policy proposals and billions in research funding at stake, the impact of the emails appears to have been small.

The general approach of the official scientific community (at least in the United States and the United Kingdom) has been to see whether people will bother to look at the files in detail (for the most part they have not), and to wait until time diffuses the initial impressions in order to reassert the original message of a climate catastrophe that must be fought with a huge measure of carbon control.

This reassertion, however, continues to be suffused by illogic, nastiness and outright dishonesty. There were, of course, the inevitable investigations of individuals like Penn State University’s Michael Mann (who manipulated data to create the famous “hockey stick” climate graph) and Phil Jones (director of the CRU). The investigations were brief, thoroughly lacking in depth, and conducted, for the most part, by individuals already publicly committed to the popular view of climate alarm. The results were whitewashes that are quite incredible given the actual data.

In addition, numerous professional societies, including the American Society of Agronomy, the American Society of Plant Biologists and the Natural Science Collections Alliance, most of which have no expertise whatever in climate, endorse essentially the following opinion: That the climate is warming, the warming is due to man’s emissions of carbon dioxide, and continued emissions will lead to catastrophe.

We may reasonably wonder why they feel compelled to endorse this view. The IPCC’s position in its Summary for Policymakers from their Fourth Assessment (2007) is weaker, and simply points out that most warming of the past 50 years or so is due to man’s emissions. It is sometimes claimed that the IPCC is 90% confident of this claim, but there is no known statistical basis for this claim—it’s purely subjective. The IPCC also claims that observations of globally averaged temperature anomaly are also consistent with computer model predictions of warming.

There are, however, some things left unmentioned about the IPCC claims. For example, the observations are consistent with models only if emissions include arbitrary amounts of reflecting aerosols particles (arising, for example, from industrial sulfates) which are used to cancel much of the warming predicted by the models. The observations themselves, without such adjustments, are consistent with there being sufficiently little warming as to not constitute a problem worth worrying very much about.

In addition, the IPCC assumed that computer models accurately included any alternative sources of warming—most notably, the natural, unforced variability associated with phenomena like El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, etc. Yet the relative absence of statistically significant warming for over a decade shows clearly that this assumption was wrong. Of course, none of this matters any longer to those replacing reason with assertions of authority.

Consider a letter of April 9 to the Financial Times by the presidents of the U.S. National Academy of Science and the Royal Society (Ralph Cicerone and Martin Rees, respectively). It acknowledges that climategate has contributed to a reduced concern among the public, as has unusually cold weather. But Messrs. Cicerone and Rees insist that nothing has happened to alter the rather extreme statement that climate is changing and it is due to human action. They then throw in a very peculiar statement (referring to warming), almost in passing: “Uncertainties in the future rate of this rise, stemming largely from the ‘feedback’ effects on water vapour and clouds, are topics of current research.”

Who would guess, from this statement, that the feedback effects are the crucial question? Without these positive feedbacks assumed by computer modelers, there would be no significant problem, and the various catastrophes that depend on numerous factors would no longer be related to anthropogenic global warming.

That is to say, the issue relevant to policy is far from settled. Nonetheless, the letter concludes: “Our academies will provide the scientific backdrop for the political and business leaders who must create effective policies to steer the world toward a low-carbon economy.” In other words, the answer is settled even if the science is not.

In France, several distinguished scientists have recently published books criticizing the alarmist focus on carbon emissions. The gist of all the books was the scientific standards for establishing the alarmist concern were low, and the language, in some instances, was intemperate. In response, a letter signed by 489 French climate scientists was addressed to “the highest French scientific bodies: the Ministry of Research, National Center for Scientific Research, and Academy of Sciences” appealing to them to defend climate science against the attacks. There appeared to be no recognition that calling on the funding agencies to take sides in a scientific argument is hardly conducive to free exchange.

The controversy was, and continues to be, covered extensively by the French press. In many respects, the French situation is better than in the U.S., insofar as the “highest scientific bodies” have not officially taken public stances—yet.

Despite all this, it does appear that the public at large is becoming increasingly aware that something other than science is going on with regard to climate change, and that the proposed policies are likely to cause severe problems for the world economy. Climategate may thus have had an effect after all.

But it is unwise to assume that those who have carved out agendas to exploit the issue will simply let go without a battle. One can only hope that the climate alarmists will lose so that we can go back to dealing with real science and real environmental problems such as assuring clean air and water. The latter should be an appropriate goal for Earth Day. (Wall Street Journal)

Douglas Keenan has finally succeeded in his quest via the FOI Act for Irish Oak tree ring data collected by Mike Baillie of Queen’s University, Belfast. (Details on Keenan’s website here.)

Responses to the decision from Baillie, Rob Wilson and Phil Willis are as interesting as the decision. Baillie and Wilson argued that oak chronologies were “virtually useless” as temperature proxies and “dangerous” in a temperature reconstruction. Nonetheless, as I report below, no fewer than 119 oak chronologies (including 3 Baillie chronologies) were used in Mann et al 2008 without any complaint by Wilson or other specialists. CA readers will also be interested in Baillie’s 2005 response to a Climate Audit post urging climate scientists to update the proxies.

Oak as a Temperature Proxy
The scientist who had been withholding the data, Michael Baillie, ridiculed the idea that his Irish oak data was relevant to temperature reconstructions, saying that it would be “dangerous” to use this data for reconstructing temperature. Hannah Devlin of The Times:

However, the lead scientist involved, Michael Bailee, said that the oak ring data requested was not relevant to temperature reconstruction records.

Although ancient oaks could give an indication of one-off dramatic climatic events, such as droughts, they were not useful as a temperature proxy because they were highly sensitive to water availability as well as past temperatures, he added.

“It’s been dressed up as though we are suppressing climate data, but we have never produced climate records from our tree rings,” Professor Bailee said.

“In my view it would be dangerous to try and make interpretations about the temperature from this data.”

“Keenan is the only person in the world claiming that our oak-ring patterns are temperature records,” Baillie told the Guardian.

Rob Wilson agreed with Baillie on this point, telling the Times that “oaks were virtually useless as a temperature proxy”.

Mann et al 2008
Notwithstanding the considered opinion of Baillie and Wilson that oaks are “virtually useless as a temperature proxy” and “dangerous” to use in a temperature reconstruction, no fewer than 119 oak chronologies were used in Mann et al 2008.

Among Mann’s oak chronologies were three Baillie chronologies: brit008 – Lockwood; brit042 – Shanes Castle, Northern Ireland; brit044 – Castle Coole, Northern Ireland. (Climate Research News)

ABC, CBS and NBC ignore ClimateGate scandal and still advance left-wing global warming agenda.

By Julia A. Seymour
Business & Media Institute
4/21/2010 7:21:27 PM

It’s been a rough five months for the credibility of many of the “leading” climate scientists.

First, the ClimateGate e-mails appeared to show unethical or illegal behavior of high profile scientists and a potential conspiracy to distort science for political gain. These weren’t just a few renegade scientists; in the following months, damning information came to light about the world’s leading climate alarmists and their work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Stern Report, the U.S. National Climate Data Center and even NASA.

Even with the 40^th anniversary of Earth Day coming up on April 22, Americans are skeptical about the threat of climate change. A March 2010 Gallup poll found that 48 percent of Americans think the threat of global warming is “generally exaggerated.” That’s the highest in 13 years, according to Gallup.

The public’s receding fear of climate change may be related to the series of scandals and admissions that have been uncovered since Nov. 20 when e-mails from University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were leaked. Those e-mails provided “ammunition” to climate skeptics about the authenticity and ethics surrounding the CRU’s work on global warming science.

The networks news media were unshaken by the apparent bad behavior on the part of the very climate scientists and organizations whose claims they had pushed for years. Less than 10 percent of stories mentioning global warming or climate change since Nov. 20, 2009, referenced any of the climate science scandals. (Business & Media Institute)

Al Gore's insistence that global warming is "settled science" has been used to defend claims humanity is on the edge of destroying the world. Now author Brian Sussman, whose book "Climategate" is being released Thursday – Earth Day – agrees it's "settled," as a scam.

Sussman unveils in his book evidence that the move to restrict carbon-dioxide emissions, tax a multitude of energy programs and create a "Big Brother" that would limit household energy use, among other programs, is a move to give government unlimited control over people.

National Public Radio reported in 2007 how Gore took his "climate-change crusade" to Congress and said the science on the issue was "settled." Then in 2009 the Environmental Protection Agency declared carbon dioxide and other emissions are endangering the future of the world.

Sussman's book, the newest title by WND Books, has been charting for several weeks already among Amazon's top 10 preordered titles. It warns that believing global warming is "settled science" is a danger itself.

He writes that the now-notorious intercepted e-mails that reveal leading global-warming supporters exchanging plans to squelch critics and falsify data are just the tip of the iceberg. (WND)

The White House is reviewing an Environmental Protection Agency rule on which factories and power plants will be subject to greenhouse gas regulations, according to the Office of Management and Budget website.

The measure, known as the "tailoring rule," would set emissions thresholds for big emitters of gases blamed for warming the planet. Regulated polluters could include coal-fired power plants and heavy energy users such as cement, glass and steel makers.

The fact that the White House is reviewing the rule means it could be sent back to the EPA and finalized soon. In an interview with Reuters last week, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the agency may not issue the rules until May. (Reuters)

California and other states with aggressive environmental agendas said on Wednesday they fear a federal climate bill may unacceptably weaken their power, in a new sign of uncertainty over compromise legislation being crafted by U.S. Senator John Kerry and his allies. (Reuters)

Speaking to Politico, John Kerry told them it was up to Harry Reid to pass Cap-and-Trade

In other words, the Senate plans to force sweeping, expensive, job-destroying changes to America’s energy policy in much the same way they forced ObamaCare upon unwilling Americans. Next week, Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) plan to unveil their plan aimed at combating global warming, an issue that Americans rank as the country’s least pressing priority. With gas prices already surpassing $3 per gallon in some locations, Americans will have little appetite for another energy tax proposal. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

A top White House adviser confirmed today that President Obama is open to helping energy-intensive industries cope with the costs of climate legislation, including use of controversial border tariffs he had previously warned could spark a global trade war.

Energy and climate adviser Carol Browner said the administration recognizes Congress' interest in using trade language as it works on climate legislation that addresses concerns from some of the country's industries that are most vulnerable to cheap foreign imports, including steel, cement, glass, pulp and paper.

"There's going to have to be mechanisms that recognize they compete in a global market," Browner said during an event hosted by National Journal. "I think it's fair to say a final bill will be very mindful of the needs of these particular sectors of the economy." (Greenwire)

U.S. senators crafting a compromise climate change bill have held months of meetings with oil, coal and manufacturing interests, but so far have failed to gain the ironclad words of support many think will be necessary for passing legislation. (Reuters)

I’ve blogged before on the LA Times’s one sided coverage of AB 32, California’s first-in-the-nation climate change mitigation law. In a nutshell, the LA Times is a big cheerleader for the legislation, with a record of publishing favorable stories and ignoring negative ones.

Case in point: Today, the Times ran an opinion piece, “A Green Jobs Generator,” by two economists who claim that their economic analysis of AB 32 is being distorted by opponents of the legislation. The LA Times allowed them the space to set the record straight, and thus its editorial page again reassured readers that “doing something” about climate change will be easy because it will reduce energy costs and create “green jobs.” Of course, this is baloney-in fact,…

The 111th Congress hit a new low last week—one that should make us all wonder exactly where the federal government is headed.

Four coal industry CEOs voluntarily showed up to testify before Rep. Ed Markey’s House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. They graciously accepted Chairman Markey’s invitation despite the fact that the eponymous Waxman-Markey bill, which passed the House last June, is aimed at putting the coal industry out of business. You might think that this civil gesture on the part of the CEOs would have earned some level of respect from Chairman Markey. But you’d be wrong.

As one CEO testified from his seat at the witness table, several protesters wearing masks suddenly appeared at the table. They placed chunks of coal on the table where the CEOs sat and then stood in the area between the CEOs and Chairman Markey chanting “Coal is dirty.”

You might think that Chairman Markey moved quickly and forcibly to protect the witnesses and reassert control over the hearing. But again you’d be wrong. This scene went on for 9 minutes. (Steven Milloy, Human Events)

The parliamentary committee meeting called to discuss errors in the UN climate report has left climate change sceptics feeling vindicated, writes the Financieele Dagblad on Tuesday.

‘The panel on climate change is irrelevant’. ‘This organisation has put us on the wrong track.’ Scientists Arthur Rörsch (formerly at TNO) and Bas van Geel (University of Amsterdam) could not help but look slightly smug on hearing these words.

Experts on either side of the climate change debate answered the committee’s questions yesterday about their experiences with the UN climate panel (IPCC) and its modus operandus. (Dutch News)

A bloc of the world's fastest growing carbon emitters, seen as key to a global deal on climate change, appears for the first time willing to discuss the future of the Kyoto Protocol to get the United States on board.

Kyoto binds about 40 rich nations to cut emissions by 2008-12 and developing countries want a tougher second commitment period. That demand is opposed by many developed nations that want to jettison Kyoto to include emerging markets like India and China.

Next week's meeting of the environment ministers of Brazil, South Africa, India and China - the so-called BASIC nations - will look at ways to bridge a trust deficit with rich nations, according to its agenda, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.

A report released today by a federal working group highlights 11 key categories of diseases and other health consequences that are occurring or will occur due to climate change. The report, A Human Health Perspective on Climate Change, provides a starting point for coordination of federal research to better understand climate's impact on human health. The recommendations of the working group include research to identify who will be most vulnerable, and what efforts will be most beneficial. (NIH/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences)

Mark Twain once said, “Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.” Whether he would like it or not, sounds like he could be a poster boy for the climate alarmists who state that ‘weather is not the same as climate change and single events are not the same as trends.

Yet those who preach this gospel are quite selective in choosing when and how to use it. Earlier this year two climate alarmist journalists reminded the British public that their cold snap does not prove climate science wrong by using the above highlighted homily. Yet as Frank Furedi points out, “A few years ago when the temperature was relatively high and there was little rainfall across southeast England, weather forecasters and campaigning journalists ignored the distinction between climate and weather and insisted it was all a symptom of global warming. Indeed, an unexpected rise in temperature is presented as yet more evidence of the disaster to come.” (Jack Dini, Hawaii Reporter)

Bolivian President Evo Morales opened a "people's conference" on climate change on Tuesday with an attack on capitalism's debt to global warming, before participants booed a UN envoy.

Environmental activists, indigenous leaders and Hollywood celebrities were scheduled to take part in the three-day summit focusing on the world's poorest, which they say were largely ignored at official United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen last December.

"Either capitalism dies, or it will be Mother Earth," leftist Morales said to a crowd of some 20,000 people.

"We're here because industrialized countries have not honored their promises." (Jakarta Globe)

A worker who was preparing to sue his employer for discriminating against his environmental views has agreed a settlement of almost £100,000. Tim Nicholson, 42, was made redundant in July 2008 from his £77,000-a-year post as head of sustainability with Grainger, the UK's biggest residential landlord.

He alleged that his redundancy was a direct result of his opinions about the dangers of climate change, which put him at odds with other senior executives within the firm, and was preparing to sue. Last year, a judge, in a landmark decision, ruled that his belief in climate change was legally akin to a religious belief and should be protected from discrimination.

Mr Nicholson, who worked in the firm's office in Putney, south-west London, demanded £756,615 in compensation, primarily for loss of earnings and pension rights. He said executives had failed to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Mr Nicholson's solicitor, Shah Qureshi, issued an agreed statement from the parties that said: "Grainger plc and Tim Nicholson are pleased to confirm that the tribunal proceedings between the two parties have been resolved amicably. Grainger denied that Mr Nicholson's views were the reason why he was made redundant and cited 'operational needs'." (The Independent)

Connection to Solvay chemicals suggests opposition to action on global warming is spreading from 'big oil' to 'big chemical'

A secretive group linked to a leading European chemical company has joined the campaign to defeat Barack Obama's green agenda, taking the fight beyond the traditional players – the big oil and coal firms – the Guardian has learned.

The previously unknown Coalition for Responsible Regulation Inc (CRR) is at the forefront of a strategy to strip the Obama administration of its powers to regulate greenhouse gas emissions should Congress fail to act on climate change.

The group, which refuses to disclose its complete membership and which does not have a website, has joined more than a dozen states and a host of industry groups in 17 legal challenges to the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The connection to the chemical firm Solvay suggests opposition to action on global warming, once spearheaded by big oil, is spreading to other industries that will also be affected by proposals to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases. (The Guardian)

There is a war going on between those who believe that human activities are responsible for global warming and those who don’t. Contrary to the way the debate is often framed by the media, those who believe in anthropogenic global warming (AGW) do not hold the high ground, scientifically. Their critics do.

Understanding how the climate has changed in the past is essential if we are to put today’s warm climate into its proper perspective. There is a key question in the post-hockey stick era, and that is how warm was the Medieval Warm Period of a thousand years ago and how warm was the Roman Warm Period of a thousand years before that.

Some scientists have looked at the data for the MWP and whilst conceding that it was warm they have doubted its extent, suggesting that it was confined to Europe. This was despite the fact that there are very few temperature proxies outside Europe for the period. (David Whitehouse, GWPF)

The European Geophysical Union is going to be discussing paleoclimate at its annual meeting at the start of next month. The papers to be presented look pretty interesting.

Do have a look through and let us know if there is anything exciting in there. I just peeked at Ljungqvist et al which looks at the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age to see if they were really localised, as is argued by those on the other side of this debate. While the paper only looks at Northern Hemisphere proxies, the authors seem to have reached a rather different conclusion.

Contrary to recent press reports that the oceans hold the still-undetected global atmospheric warming predicted by climate models, ocean warming occurs in 100-year cycles, independent of both radiative and human influences.

A recent short article by Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo discussed the fact that our satellites that monitor (1) the total amount of sunlight absorbed by the Earth, and (2) the total infrared (IR) energy given off by the Earth, have suggested that these flows of energy in and out of the Earth’s climate system have been increasingly out of balance in the last 10 years, with an increase in absorbed energy by as much as 1 Watt per sq. meter.

Even though this 1 Watt per sq. meter is small compared to the average flows of energy — which are estimated to be somewhere around 235 to 240 Watts per sq. meter — it represents a substantial heating effect.

The problem is that the oceans have not been warming in response to this imbalance. Trenberth and Fasullo seem to lean toward the possibility that this heat is “missing” somewhere, maybe temporarily trapped in the deep ocean. Roger Pielke, Sr., has voiced his opinion that the heat could not have magically avoided the ocean temperature sensors, both in space and floating around the world’s oceans, which monitor ocean surface and upper layer temperatures.

Since I’ve received a number of requests to give my opinion, I decided I would weigh in on the subject. While I agree that there is a mystery here, there are a few points and opinions I’d like to share.

1) THE MISSING ENERGY IS IN THE SOLAR, NOT THE INFRARED
Trenberth and Fasullo don’t highlight the fact that the “missing” energy is not in the infrared, which is where manmade global warming allegedly originates, but in the reflected solar component. The infrared component has essentially no trend between March 2000 and December 2007 (the last CERES Earth radiation budget data I have analyzed).

This suggests a small decrease in low or mid-level cloud cover, letting more sunlight in. The fact that the extra energy is not showing up as a temperature increase in the ocean makes me suspect the measurements themselves. If there is a problem with the Earth radiation budget measurements, then obviously there is no missing energy.

2) MAYBE THE DISCREPANCY WAS ACTUALLY BEFORE 2000
Trenberth and Fasullo correctly point out that the absolute accuracy of these radiation budget instruments is not good enough to measure very small radiation imbalances…just the CHANGE in that imbalance over time. Well then maybe it was the period BEFORE 2000 where there was an imbalance, with extra energy being lost by the Earth, but no cooling, and NOW the solar and infrared flows are once again in balance. Just a thought.

3) OCEAN TEMPERATURES ARE MUCH EASIER TO MEASURE THAN THE EARTH’S RADIATION BUDGET
Trenberth and Fasullo briefly acknowledge that there might be measurement errors involved here, and I would argue that this is much more likely in the Earth radiation budget measurements than in the ocean temperature measurements. The amount of solar energy the Earth absorbs is particularly difficult to measure because a monitoring satellite is only a single point in space, whereas the total amount of sunlight being reflected off clouds goes in all different directions.

Because of this complication, many detailed calculations must be made by the dataset developers to estimate the energy flows at all angles, based upon years of accumulated statistics with radiation budget instruments that measure some of the clouds at different angles. I think the dataset developers are doing the best they can with the available information, but what we are asking the data to reveal to us is a very small signal.

4) “YOU’VE LOST ANOTHER SUBMARINE”?
We have already been dealing with some missing global warming in the last 10 to 30 years, since 95% of the climate models suggest our carbon dioxide emissions should have caused more global warming than what has been observed — and that is due to an infrared effect. Now, we are told that there is missing SOLAR energy, too?

This reminds me of the 1990 movie, The Hunt for Red October. After an entire movie dealing with a missing experimental Soviet submarine, the end of the movie shows the Soviet Ambassador asking the U.S. to help find…what!?…ANOTHER missing submarine? It was a funny line.

I’m sorry, but at some point we need to ask whether all of this missing warming and energy are missing because they really do not exist. This is Roger Pielke, Sr.’s opinion, and at this point it is mine as well. Only time will tell. (Roy W. Spencer)

Industrialized nations' greenhouse gas emissions fell by 2.2 percent in 2008, the steepest decline since the break-up of the Soviet Union as economies slowed, a Reuters compilation showed Wednesday.

Emissions are likely to have fallen more sharply in 2009 due to recession that analysts said was a bigger brake than government policies meant to shift from use of fossil fuels toward cleaner energies such as wind or solar power. (Reuters)

Canada's natural resources ministry on Monday launched the first mobile carbon dioxide capture and compressor unit to measure and analyze power plants' emissions.

The CanCO2's tangled metal pipes and gauges tucked inside a semi-trailer can remove pollutants from a sampling of fossil fuel-fired plants' emissions while purifying and compressing carbon dioxide for transport, storage or use.

The data generated in field tests may then be used to scale up the technology.

"The science is ready to roll out but we have to demonstrate it to bolster confidence in it before industry invests heavily in it," Kourosh Zanganeh, leader of the ministry's Zero-Emission Technologies Group, told AFP.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study concludes that the future effects of global warming could be significantly changed over very small distances by local air movements in complex or mountainous terrain - perhaps doubling or even tripling the temperature increases in some situations.

In an article to be published in the International Journal of Climatology, researchers from Oregon State University used the unique historical data provided by Oregon's H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest to study potential variations in temperature caused by steep hills and valleys.

Based on a regional temperature increase of about 5 degrees projected for western Oregon by 2100, the study concluded that some locations, such as mountain ridge tops, could actually increase as much as 14 degrees at some times, while cold air pools in the valleys below them with temperature increases similar to the regional average.

"Even if the predictions for average temperature changes are accurate, there's been very little work done on what that may mean in specific locations and situations," said Chris Daly, an OSU professor of geosciences, director of OSU's PRISM Climate Group and expert on the effects of elevation and topography on localized climatic effects.

"We are finding that there's a potential here for tremendous disparities in local effects that we need to learn more about," Daly said. "Some locations may get much warmer than the average while others nearby are affected less, with associated impacts on their ecology, the plant and animals species that live there." (Oregon State University)

THE FLAT EARTH

All of the computer models of the climate have adopted the flat earth theory of the earth's energy, as portrayed in Kiehl J. T. and K. E. Trenberth 1997. Earth’s Annual Global Mean Energy Budget. Bull. Am. Met. Soc. 78 197-208.

Analysis: Most fuel subsidies are complete waste of money, or worse

A comprehensive assessment of global fossil-fuel subsidies has found that governments are spending $500 billion annually on policies that undermine energy security and worsen the environment.

The study, titled "The Politics of Fossil-Fuel Subsidies" by David Victor, a professor of political science with UC San Diego's School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS), was one of five released April 22 by the Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI) of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

GSI's goal is to reform, reduce and ultimately eliminate fossil-fuel subsidies, which are highest in Iran, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, India and Venezuela. The reform effort received a boost September 2009 when President Obama and other world leaders met in Pittsburgh, Pa., for the Group of 20 Summit. They agreed in a non-binding resolution to phase out fossil-fuel subsidies, but the measure didn't attempt to resolve difficult political issues such as how governments would actually achieve a phaseout. Victor's study addresses the political challenges. (University of California - San Diego)

Here is a thought experiment:

Can you imagine any discoveries or conclusions in climate science would indicate that accelerated decarbonization of the global economy does not make sense?

Answer: No

Accelerating decarbonization of the global economy makes good sense independent of the conclusions reached in climate science. That said, the fact that humans influence the climate system in ways that are understood and not understood gives us another reason to consider whether accelerated decarbonization of the global economy might be a good idea. And for some people the science may indeed be a sufficient justification. But there is no reason why it has to be for everyone.

But just for fun, lets imagine that we learn that all of climate science is a hoax or a fraud (it is not), would that mean that we would no longer need to discuss a need to diversify energy supply, reduce energy costs and expand energy access? No.

The insensitivity of the importance of climate science to decarbonization is the main reason why waging a political war over climate science is wrongheaded. Whether you win or lose that debate it really doesn't ever touch the main policy issues. Sure it generates lots of heat, and may serve other aims, but in the end, it doesn't matter much for the implementation of policies focused on accelerating decarbonization of the economy. (Roger Pielke Jr)

Facing North American Free Trade Agreement challenge and tighter use limits

What they belch into the atmosphere by way of greenhouse gases is certainly a flashpoint for Alberta oil sands operations.

Just as critical is what they allegedly leak into water sources and how much access they have to fresh water supplies.

It is estimated the industry uses 12 barrels of water to extract one barrel of bitumen, of which about 70 percent is recycled at the plants, but about one-third ends up in the toxic tailings ponds at some of the largest sites.

Just as important in a drought-prone province is whether the largest oil sands mining operations, run by Syncrude Canada, Suncor Energy, Shell Canada and Canadian Natural Resources, should be forced to reduce their licensed take from the Athabasca River, the major waterway in northeastern Alberta.

Both the Canadian and Alberta governments are coming under pressure to ensure there is no contamination of water supplies by oil sands operators and to lower the operators’ water consumption. (GoO)

It is unrealistic to expect South Africa, a nation rich in coal, to turn to more costly fuels

Your report about Britain's indecision in the runup to last week's World Bank vote over a loan for a cleaner coal plant in South Africa did not highlight the vital importance of coal for developing nations, many of whom enjoy vast reserves (UK dilemma over massive coal-fired power station, 2 April).

Britain should have supported the loan to South Africa of £2.4bn to build the Medupi plant, one of the largest and most efficient coal-fired power stations in the world. Instead it abstained, although the vote was carried.

Your report stated: "A coalition of more than 100 grassroots organisations, including churches, community groups and conservationists condemned the loan." But it is not realistic to encourage South Africa, a fast-developing nation rich in low-sulphur coal reserves, to turn to more expensive non-indigenous fuels for future power generation. Abandoning fossil fuels could mean the diversion of funds for basic infrastructure development and delay the urgent construction of more energy-generating capacity.

You quoted the Department for International Development, which was then dithering over the vote: "We haven't made the decision yet. It's very difficult." This hardly reflects the claim on the DfID website that "economic growth is the single most powerful way of pulling people out of poverty". Indeed it is, and economic growth needs abundant and cheap energy at the point of delivery. (Tony Lodge, The Guardian)

Part-nationalized Royal Bank of Scotland is to be the target of a mass protest by thousands of environmentalists over its involvement in financing fossil fuel companies, a campaign group said Thursday. (Reuters)

Biofuels such as biodiesel from soy beans can create up to four times more climate-warming emissions than standard diesel or petrol, according to an EU document released under freedom of information laws.

The European Union has set itself a goal of obtaining 10 percent of its road fuels from renewable sources, mostly biofuels, by the end of this decade, but it is now worrying about the unintended environmental impacts.

Four major studies are under way.

Chief among those fears is that biofuel production soaks up grain from global commodity markets, forcing up food prices and encouraging farmers to clear tropical forests in the quest for new land.

Burning forests releases vast quantities of carbon dioxide and often cancels out many of the climate benefits sought from biofuels.

Biodiesel from North American soybeans has an indirect carbon footprint of 339.9 kilograms of CO2 per gigajoule -- four times higher than standard diesel -- said the EU document, an annex that was controversially stripped from a report published in December.

Editing the report caused one of the consultancies, Fraunhofer of Germany, to disown it partly in a disclaimer.

But it has now been made public after Reuters used freedom of information laws to gain a copy. (Reuters)

Nevada’s attorney general Catherine Cortez Masto penned an op-ed in the Las Vegas Sun over the weekend, calling the geologic repository Yucca Mountain “unworkable” as a long-term solution to store our nation’s nuclear waste. She claims the administration has scientific and technological reasons to permanently shut down Yucca. But instead supporting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s responsibility to determine if that’s the case, she focuses on questionable arguments to instill fear in Nevadans.

The first claim is that Yucca is unstable, a hotbed for seismic activity that could disrupt the safe storage of spent nuclear fuel. But the Department of Energy’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) concludes upon careful study that “Experience with earthquakes throughout the world has shown that underground structures can withstand the ground motion generated by earthquakes. And, in actual tests at the Nevada Test Site, mine tunnels have withstood ground motion from underground nuclear explosions that are greater than any ground motion anticipated at or near Yucca Mountain. Repository facilities at the surface also can be designed to safely withstand earthquake effects. Information from historical and contemporary earthquake catalogues from the Southern Great Basin Seismic Network was used to analyze the potential for earthquakes at Yucca Mountain. It also appears that the potential for earthquake damage to an underground repository is very slight.”

Many of her other arguments are not specific to Yucca Mountain but questions about the containers and drip shields used to further bolster safety. Such man-made devices will likely be necessary for any geologic repository and are not a result of what Mastro calls Yucca’s “fundamental inadequacies.”

Conceived in counter-culture hysteria, Earth Day has evolved as a focal point for ideological opposition to industrialized society

By Peter Foster

If one believed in cosmic irony, then the ongoing 40th of that unpronounceable Icelandic volcano might be taken as a message from Earth to those who will tomorrow celebrate the fortieth “Earth Day.” Although humans may stand in awe of the home planet, the home planet has absolutely zero concern for them. Meanwhile the disruptions in travel and trade caused by the vast cloud of volcanic ash give a tiny glimpse of the kind of world that environmental radicals praise: clear, blue, air traffic-free skies above, frustrated and deprived people below.

Earth Day, while masquerading as all about positive ecological values, was conceived in hysteria and has evolved as a focal point for ideological opposition to industrial society and the benefits it brings to ordinary people. (National Post)

A second volcano in Iceland could erupt with 10 times the force of Eyjafyoll if history repeats itself, scientists have warned.

Katla erupts approximately every 60 years but has not done so since 1918, when it was 10 times as powerful greater than the ongoing activity in Eyjafyoll.

Assistant professors Andy Hooper and Joris Melkert, from the University of Delft in the Netherlands, said the ongoing activity could cause trouble for months.

“If Katla were to erupt, the potential for travel chaos and economic damage would be much greater than has occurred in the last few days,” they said.

“A new volcanic dust cloud potentially heading towards the United Kingdom underlines the very real danger that Eyjafyoll could potentially sputter on for months or even more than a year.

“Even in the scenario that Katla doesn’t erupt, disruption could be continuous for many months to come from Eyjafyoll.” (TDT)

When I started writing this piece, just after 9pm yesterday, it was in the knowledge that 22 British Airways long-haul jets were converging on the UK, an air fleet which the airline's chief executive, Willie Walsh, had virtually made clear were going to land, come what may.

Faced with such pressure, the CAA chairwoman Dame Deirdre Hutton, buckled. Alongside transport minister Lord Adonis, they stood in front of the TV cameras, admitting that the rule book had been rewritten and that, despite the lingering presence of the ash cloud, unrestricted operations were to recommence at ten that evening.

For the first time with any clarity, we then heard from the mouths of the officials the words "risk assessment" and "dust concentrations", plus news that the engine manufacturers had backed off from their stance of "zero tolerance" for ash ingestion and redefined acceptable limits.

Yet it was on Sunday last, the words written on the Saturday, that I was pointing out that the then current safety guidelines for dealing with volcano eruptions made no distinction at all between major or relatively modest eruptions.

Nor, I wrote, did they take into account the dilution effect as the cloud spreads from the original point. The only reference was to generic dust clouds, without any attempt to carry out a risk assessment. Furthermore, it was evident from those very guidelines that the model used was the largest and most dangerous of Icelandic volcanoes, the Katla volcano – way more serious than the relatively modest eruption we are currently experiencing. (EU Referendum)

One of the truly frustrating things about writing this blog is to spend the time and effort carefully researching a story, only then to have the MSM doing the same story and getting it egregiously wrong – but getting all the attention and comment.

So it is with The Daily Telegraph this morning, with its print edition splashing the headline pictured, the story replicated on-line, completely falling for the commission spin on the failings of the Met Office in triggering the no-fly restrictions in response to the Icelandic volcano eruption.

Part of me – the unrealistic, hopeless optimist – says, surely people will read my blog and see that their story is crap. But the weary realist tells me that the MSM will prevail, crap and all. The error is already multiplying and soon will become a fixed part of the narrative. That is the way the world works.

And this is not just a rant – if there is to be any accountability, getting it right is important. Pointing the finger at the Met Office for its role in the closure of British and European airspace is completely to miss the point. Far be it for me to defend the Met Office, but the use of models in this context is entirely appropriate.

Where the fault lies is in developing a contingency plan which uses the forecast model to define the exclusion zone, without a requirement for refining a limited projection with real world data acquired from other sources, including and especially sampling from suitably equipped aircraft. (EU Referendum)

The news that the United States has become a two-class society — i.e., half of Americans pay federal income taxes and half don't — has bounced around the media and shocked Americans. Most people had no knowledge of this appalling economic fact.

Even worse is the reality that 40% of Americans receive federal government handouts of cash and valuable benefits. Those handouts are financed by the people who do pay federal income taxes.

Those handouts create a tremendous bloc of people who depend on the government for their living expenses. The Tax Foundation reports that 20% of Americans now get 75% of their income from the federal government and another 20% get 45% of their income from the government.

President Obama's stimulus law will add nearly $800 billion in new means-tested welfare spending over the next decade. That means about $22,500 for every poor person in the United States, which will cost over $10,000 for each family that pays federal income taxes. (Phyllis Schlafly, IBD)

According to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington, D.C., research organization, nearly half of U.S. households will pay no federal income taxes for 2009. That's up from the Tax Foundation's 2006 estimate that 41% of the American population, or 121 million Americans, were completely outside the federal income tax system.

These Americans pay no federal income tax either because their incomes are too low or they have higher income but credits, deductions and exemptions that relieve them of tax liability.

This lack of income tax liability stands in stark contrast to the top 10% of earners, those households earning an average of $366,400 in 2006, who paid about 73% of federal income taxes. The top 25% paid 86%. The bottom 50% of taxpayers paid less than 4% of federal income taxes collected.

Let's not dwell on the fairness of such an arrangement for financing the activities of the federal government. Instead, let's ask what kind of incentives and results such an arrangement produces and ask ourselves whether these results are good for our country. That's a question to be asked whether or not one has federal income tax liabilities. (Walter Williams, IBD)

When I first began to study the history of slavery around the world, many years ago, one of the oddities that puzzled me was the practice of paying certain slaves, which existed in ancient Rome and in America's antebellum South, among other places.

In both places, slave owners or their overseers whipped slaves to force them to work, and in neither place was whipping a slave literally to death likely to bring any serious consequences.

There could hardly be a greater power of one human being over another than the arbitrary power of life and death. Why then was it necessary to pay certain slaves? At the very least, it suggested that there were limits to what could be accomplished by power. (Thomas Sowell, IBD)

Financial Overhaul: As the Senate prepares to act on reform, Democrats are inviting Republicans to make the effort "bipartisan." But this bill is so bad, the GOP would be wise to say "no thanks" and filibuster instead.

GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky suggested last weekend that, given the financial reform bill's obvious drawbacks, it might be good to start over to win bipartisan support.

But Democrats are no more willing to compromise than they were on health reform. They think they can jam Sen. Chris Dodd's "finance reform" down Americans' throats and are counting on their fear of crisis and disillusionment with the financial system to get the measure passed.

"Every day we don't act, the same system that led to bailouts remains in place, with the exact same loopholes and the exact same liabilities," President Obama says. "And if we don't change what led to the crisis, we'll doom ourselves to repeat it."

He's right — which is why the Dodd bill, which keeps the status quo, should be filibustered or killed outright. (IBD)

Politics: Financier George Soros is at it again, issuing dire warnings for markets and raising doubts about capitalism itself. A closer look at what he's really up to tells a different story.

The self-described "stateless statesman" last week opined that markets could be derailed again over "bubbles" if governments don't tighten the noose of regulation even more. "Unless we learn the lessons that markets are inherently unstable and that stability needs to (be) the objective of public policy, we are facing a yet larger bubble," the billionaire speculator told an Economist conference in London, according to Reuters.

In other words, moral hazard arising from bailouts is bad, but it's markets, not governments, that can't quit writing checks, that are to blame. If all this really were the case, the solution would be to get rid of markets.

Soros gets a lot of attention from these doom-and-gloom statements largely because of his reputation as a successful investor. If he wasn't the 34th richest man on earth, with a $14 billion fortune, according to Forbes, his views would probably draw little attention.

Yet few in his rarified league draw the kind of attention he does, possibly because no one else seems so diametrically opposed to the very markets that fuel his fortune. Examples abound.

Last fall, Soros ostentatiously announced a $1 billion fund for alternative energy investments, plus a separate project to finance a think tank called the Global Climate Initiative. Supposedly, this was a signal to the rest of us that alternative energy was here. But to date, the fund has made few such investments. Instead, Soros has done what serious-minded investors do — invest in companies that drill for oil.

His top holdings include Petrobras of Brazil, Hess, Suncor and some coal companies.

Soros is free to invest as he pleases, of course. But there seems to be a disconnect with what he says and what he knows will make money. We await the day he talks up the importance of drilling the same way he touts pie-in-the-sky alternative energy. (IBD)

WASHINGTON - Doctors and minorities still have a dangerous mistrust of vaccines that became painfully clear during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Monday.

But she said the United States had "unprecedented" levels of flu vaccination for the past season and pointed to nearly $500 million in government funding to improve decades-old influenza vaccine technology.

"We shouldn't have to convince health providers that vaccines are safe and that they work. But, despite the fact that we had more health providers than ever getting vaccinated last year, there was still a sizable number who did not," Sebelius told a meeting of vaccine experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

In an average year, fewer than 40 percent of doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers get flu vaccines. "Tell them to get vaccinated," Sebelius urged her audience.

Even though 90 million doses of influenza vaccine had been administered of the 162 million doses shipped across the country, minorities often got left out, Sebelius said. "Too many people in these communities still don't believe that vaccines are safe, or even that they work," she said.

"But with so many African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, and others experiencing rising rates of chronic disease, not getting vaccinated is many times more dangerous than even the perceived threat of the vaccine."

The CDC estimates that H1N1 has killed 12,000 Americans and put more than 265,000 in hospital. People with chronic diseases such as asthma or diabetes, pregnant women and children were at highest risk. (Reuters)

MILAN - Lead present in food can pose a risk to brain development for children, while risks for most adults are low to negligible, the European Union food safety watchdog said on Tuesday.

An expert panel on contaminants, which assessed current levels of exposure to lead through food and other sources at the request of the European Commission, could not set a firm level above which lead in food could trigger health problems, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) said in a report.

Human exposure to lead, an environmental contaminant which occurs naturally and through human activities such as mining, smelting and battery manufacturing, can occur through food, air, water, soil and dust, EFSA said.

"There is considerable evidence demonstrating that the developing brain is more vulnerable to the neurotoxicity of lead than the mature brain," EFSA's scientific opinion said, referring to lead in food.

"In children, an elevated blood lead level is inversely associated with a reduced intelligence quotient (IQ) score and reduced cognitive functions up to at least seven years of age," EFSA said.

Based on a review of the available data, EFSA's panel considered the existing Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake (PTWI) was no longer appropriate.

But a new guidance level could not be established because there was no clear threshold below which the panel was confident that adverse effects would not occur, EFSA said.

"This firm level is not possible to set at the moment ... It is based on very conservative calculations," an EFSA spokesman said. (Reuters)

CHICAGO - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration should regulate the amount of salt added to foods to help Americans cut their high sodium intake, which can lead to high blood pressure, kidney failure and strokes, an influential federal panel said on Tuesday.

The Institute of Medicine said this was needed because Americans get most of their salt from processed and restaurant food, and merely telling them to eat less salt has not worked.

Meghan Scott, a spokeswoman for the FDA, which sponsored the IOM report, said the agency has not yet decided whether to regulate salt in U.S. foods. "We are not right now working on regulations," she said, but the agency is considering the panel's recommendations. (Reuters)

Two members of Congress urged the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday to move quickly to limit the amount of salt in processed foods, calling the matter a "public health crisis" that demanded a swift response from government.

"I understand they want to do in a phased kind of a deal, but I don't want it to be too long," said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee, who plans to hold hearings on the matter. "This is crying out for change that's long overdue."

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) agreed, saying in a conference call with Harkin and reporters: "I don't want this to take 10 years. I don't want this to go on and on and on. . . . This is a public health crisis." (Washington Post)

CHICAGO - Making simple changes like getting people to take their medicines exactly as directed or to refill their prescriptions on time could save employers and their workers as much as $163 billion a year in healthcare costs, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

Pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts Inc identified various behaviors including brand loyalty, procrastinating on refills and occasional forgetfulness, that increase treatment costs.

"This is the first time we've looked at the behavioral factors that are driving spending," chief scientist Bob Nease commented about Express Scripts' annual drug trends report.

The cost of these behaviors is a staggering $1 out of every $5 spent on prescription drugs, which account for 10 percent of the $2.3 trillion Americans spend on healthcare each year.

"When you slice it that way, you get this eye-popping figure of $163 billion," Nease said in a telephone interview. (Reuters)

ATLANTA – Added sugars in processed foods and beverages may increase cardiovascular disease risk factors, according to a study by Emory University researchers.

The study, published in the April 20, 2010, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), analyzed U.S. government nutritional data and blood lipid levels in more than 6,000 adult men and women between 1999 and 2006. The study subjects were divided into five groups according to the amount of added sugar and caloric sweeteners they consumed daily.

Researchers found that people who consumed more added sugar were more likely to have higher cardiovascular disease risk factors, including higher triglyceride levels and higher ratios of triglycerides to HDL-C, or good cholesterol.

"Just like eating a high-fat diet can increase your levels of triglycerides and high cholesterol, eating sugar can also affect those same lipids," says study co-author Miriam Vos, MD, MSPH, assistant professor of pediatrics, Emory School of Medicine. (Emory University)

NEW YORK - Having two obese parents may substantially raise a child's risk of becoming obese, with mom's weight playing a particularly important role, a new study suggests.

UK researchers found that among more than 7,000 2- to 15-year-olds in a national study, those who had two obese parents were 12 times more likely to be obese than children with two normal-weight parents. That was with factors such as socioeconomics -- gauged by parents' jobs -- and ethnicity taken into account.

Mothers' weight showed a particularly strong association with children's weight, the study found. (Reuters Health)

A group of retired military officers is placing a new label on school cafeteria lunches, saying the food is a serious threat to national security.

The reference is not geared toward what’s in that mystery meat either.

The officers are saying that school lunches have contributed to the overweight issues in America’s youth and most kids become so obese that they cannot meet physical fitness standards for the military, which puts recruitment in jeopardy.

The report released on Tuesday states that 27 percent -- more than 9 million -- of all young adults aged 17 to 24 are too overweight to join the military. The retired personnel are now advocating for the passage of a nutrition bill that would force the nation’s schools to offer healthier lunches.

The officers group, Mission: Readiness, appeared on Capitol Hill on Tuesday with Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. (redOrbit) | Report says school food making kids unfit to serve (AP)

NEW YORK - Women who eat a lot of processed meats, such as salami and hot dogs, are at a higher risk of ovarian cancer, according to a new Australian study.

At the same time, those who eat a lot of fish have a lower risk of the deadly tumors, Dr. Penny M. Webb of Gynaecological Cancers Group at Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia, and colleagues found.

In their report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the team also found no link between red meat and the cancer, and just a slightly lower risk among women who consumed large amounts of poultry.

"This suggests that by following common dietary guidelines to reduce the intake of processed meats and increase the intake of poultry and fish, women may also reduce their risk of ovarian cancer," Webb and colleagues write. (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK - In developing countries, taller moms tend to give birth to healthier kids who are less likely to die in infancy, be underweight or have stunted growth, a new study finds. At the same time, good nutrition in adolescence and delaying marriage and childbirth appear to lead to taller adults.

"This is the first time we're seeing an effect of the mother's health -- as captured through her attained height -- being transferred well into the childhood of her offspring," study author Dr. S. V. Subramanian of the Harvard School of Public Health told Reuters Health. (Reuters Health)

Cold, dry weather has been linked to an increased incidence of prostate cancer. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access International Journal of Health Geographics suggest that meteorological effects on persistent organic pollutants, such as some pesticides and industrial by-products, may be to blame.

Sophie St-Hilaire worked with a team of researchers from Idaho State University, USA, to study the correlation between various weather parameters and the incidence of prostate cancer at the County-level across the US. She said, "We found that colder weather, and low rainfall, were strongly correlated with prostate cancer. Although we can't say exactly why this correlation exists, the trends are consistent with what we would expect given the effects of climate on the deposition, absorption, and degradation of persistent organic pollutants including pesticides". (BioMed Central)

NEW YORK - A single dose of aspirin can bring at least temporary pain relief to about half of people with migraines, a new research review suggests.

Research shows that about half of people with migraines opt to use over-the-counter pain relievers only, with aspirin being a common choice. But it has not been clear exactly how well aspirin performs, or where it fits into the migraine treatment arsenal.

In the new review, UK researchers analyzed 13 clinical trials in which patients were randomly assigned to treat their migraine attacks with either a single dose of 900 to 1,000 milligrams (mg) of aspirin or a comparison treatment -- either a placebo or an active drug, usually the prescription migraine drug sumatriptan.

Overall, the review found, 52 percent of aspirin users got at least some pain relief within two hours -- meaning their pain was reduced from moderate to severe to "no worse than mild." That compared with 32 percent of those using a placebo.

Similarly, one-quarter of aspirin users were pain-free within two hours, versus 11 percent of placebo users.

Aspirin also appeared to reduce some of the other symptoms that can come with migraine attacks, including nausea and sensitivity to light and sound. But a combination of aspirin and the anti-nausea medication metoclopramide - marketed as Reglan - worked even better, the researchers report in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. (Reuters Health)

GENEVA - Ash particles from Iceland's still-erupting volcano remain high in the atmosphere and do not pose a health risk so far to people in Europe, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

Toning down its guidance from Friday, when it said the ash cloud that has grounded flights could be "very dangerous" for those with asthma and respiratory problems, the WHO said there was no cause for public health alarm so far.

"There are no effects on health at the moment, except in the vicinity of the volcano in Iceland," Carlos Dora of the public health and environment division told a news briefing.

Icelanders living near the volcano should stay indoors or wear face masks and goggles to protect themselves against coarse particles that can irritate the lungs and eyes, Dora said. (Reuters)

Add another chapter to the long and voluminous history of government’s failed “Vice Wars.” Just like Prohibition and the so-called “War on Drugs,” the ongoing cigarette crackdown in both the United States and Canada has not only failed to achieve its objective, but it is creating bureaucracies that threaten liberty and prosperity as well as spawning a violent subculture that puts lives at risk on both sides of the border.

And the more this “sin” tax is raised, the more lucrative profits from contraband cigarettes become – adding fuel to an already-volatile conflagration.

Did we really expect government to do anything differently, though? After all, we’re dealing with a government culture that continues to operate under the fatally-flawed assumption that anything can be solved simply by borrowing and spending more tax dollars. In fact, in today’s world unsustainable borrowing and spending itself can be solved by – you guessed it – additional borrowing and spending, all in the name of “economic development.” Is it at all surprising, then, to discover that our politicians are resorting to the same failed “solutions” of the past in prosecuting their war on cigarette smoking? (William Wilson, Townhall)

Among the legacies of Richard M. Nixon, famed for the Watergate scandal that forced his resignation, it should be noted that he created the Environmental Protection Agency. There was no vote in Congress. He did it with an executive order. Today the EPA has an annual budget of $9 billion and some 18,000 employees.

Not satisfied with the authorized powers given it to ensure clean air and water, the EPA has never ceased to seek expanded powers, culminating soon with a battle over whether it can regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) as a “pollutant.” Labeled a “greenhouse gas”, in the eyes of the EPA it is an “endangerment” to the health of humanity in general and Americans in particular. (Alan Caruba, Warning Signs)

An Agricultural Research Service (ARS ) scientist may have found a way to cut the amount of ammonia produced by cattle. To do it, he's using a key ingredient of the brewer's art: hops.

Cattle, deer, sheep, goats and other ruminant animals depend on a slew of naturally occurring bacteria to aid digestion of grass and other fibrous plants in the first of their four stomach chambers, known as the rumen.

The problem, according to ARS microbiologist Michael Flythe, comes from one group of bacteria, known as hyper-ammonia-producing bacteria, or HABs. While other bacteria are helping their bovine hosts convert plant fibers to cud, HABs are breaking down amino acids, a chemical process that produces ammonia and robs the animals of the amino acids they need to build muscle tissue, according to Flythe, who works at the ARS Forage Animal Production Research Unit (FAPRU) in Lexington, Ky.

To make up for lost amino acids, cattle growers have to add expensive and inefficient high-protein supplements to their animals' feed.

According to Flythe, hops can reduce HAB populations. Hops, a natural preservative, were originally added to beer to limit bacterial growth. (USDA)

NAIROBI, Kenya — When Kenneth Maundu, general manager for Sunripe produce exporters, first heard about a volcano erupting in Iceland, he was excited. “I thought, ‘Oh, wow, a volcano,’ ” he said.

And then reality hit him in the face like a hurled tomato.

Because Kenya’s gourmet vegetable and cut-flower industry exports mainly to Europe, and because the cloud of volcanic ash has grounded flights to much of northern Europe since Thursday, its horticultural business has been waylaid as never before.

On Monday, Mr. Maundu stared at the towering wreckage: eight-feet-tall heaps of perfectly good carrots, onions, baby sweet corn and deliciously green sugar snap peas being dumped into the back of a pickup truck.

“Cow food,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s about all we can do with it now.”

If farmers in Africa’s Great Rift Valley ever doubted that they were intricately tied into the global economy, they know now that they are. Because of a volcanic eruption more than 5,000 miles away, Kenyan horticulture, which as the top foreign exchange earner is a critical piece of the national economy, is losing $3 million a day and shedding jobs.

The pickers are not picking. The washers are not washing. Temporary workers have been told to go home because refrigerated warehouses at the airport are stuffed with ripening fruit, vegetables and flowers, and there is no room for more until planes can take away the produce. Already, millions of roses, lilies and carnations have wilted.

“Volcano, volcano, volcano,” grumbled Ronald Osotsi, whose $90-a-month job scrubbing baby courgettes, which are zucchinis, and French beans is now endangered. “That’s all anyone is talking about.” He sat on a log outside a vegetable processing plant in Nairobi, next to other glum-faced workers eating a cheap lunch of fried bread and beans.

Election-driven riots, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and stunningly bad harvests have all left their mark on Kenya’s agriculture industry, which is based in the Rift Valley, Kenya’s breadbasket and the cradle of mankind.

But industry insiders say they have never suffered like this.

“It’s a terrible nightmare,” said Stephen Mbithi, the chief executive officer of the Fresh Produce Exporters Association of Kenya. He rattled off some figures: Two million pounds of fresh produce is normally shipped out of Kenya every night. Eighty-two percent of that goes to Europe, and more than a third goes solely to Britain, whose airports have been among those shut down by the volcano’s eruption. Five thousand Kenyan field hands have been laid off in the past few days, and others may be jobless soon. The only way to alleviate this would be to restore the air bridge to Europe, which would necessitate the equivalent of 10 Boeing 747s of cargo space — per night. (NYT)

Churchville, VA—I lost a debate on organic food last week—to the city of New York

Intelligence Squared, a philanthropic foundation, which brings Oxford-style debating to American issues, invited me to be part of a debate on whether the organic food movement is a scam. The invitation was a big deal, with the audio carried nationwide by National Public Radio and the TV shown repeatedly on Bloomberg TV.

Each of us six debaters got seven minutes to present our best arguments. ( Dennis Avery, CFP)

Opposition is building to the proposed D.C. Voting Rights Act because it also restricts D.C.’s draconian gun-control laws. Mary G. Wilson, president of the League of Women Voters of the United States, and Billie Day, president of the League of Women Voters of the District of Columbia, said today that “asking citizens to sacrifice their safety in order to have representation in Congress is unacceptable.”

And on NPR’s Morning Edition today, we heard the thoughts of D.C. councilwoman Mary Cheh, my con law professor: “I would rather wait to eternity before I bow down to the gun lobby and say ‘The only way I’m gonna get this is if we give up the right to protect ourselves.’”

The District’s gun laws protect us? By keeping guns out of the hands of criminals? (Cato at liberty)

WASHINGTON, April 20 -- Penn State University's Michael Mann, one of the central figures in the Climategate scandal, has threatened legal action against Minnesotans for Global Warming (M4GW) over the group's popular satirical YouTube video "Hide the Decline." The No Cap-and-Trade Coalition, a group that includes M4GW, responded today at an event at the National Press Club, releasing Mann's threatening letter and an updated version of the "Hide the Decline" video.

"We understand why Michael Mann is eager to silence public discussion of the hockey stick scandal," said Jeff Davis of No Cap-and-Trade, "but truth is an absolute defense." (PRNewswire-USNewswire)

The No Cap and Trade Coalition is now hosting a new version of the 'Hide the Decline' video. (M4GW)

I'm no lawyer, but believe that for a libel or slander lawsuit to be successful, the plaintiff must prove that the defendants knew what they said was false, and that truth is an absolute defense. Thus, if Michael Mann is foolish enough to proceed in his threatened lawsuit against Minnesotans 4 Global Warming for their Hide the Decline parody video, he will:

Dr. Robert Bullard, often called the “Father of Environmental Justice,” Ware Distinguished Professor of Sociology and director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University; and Dr. Michael Mann, climate change expert and a lead author of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient (along with former Vice President Al Gore and other IPCC scientists) are featured speakers at PennFuture’s upcoming conference on global warming set for Pittsburgh on May 2, 2010. The conference, “Creating a Climate for Justice” will be held at the August Wilson Center for African American Culture in Downtown Pittsburgh on Sunday, May 2, 2010 from 1:30 to 6:15 p.m.

Other speakers include Jan Jarrett, president and CEO of Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future (PennFuture); John Hanger, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection; local green business leaders; and experts on proposed federal and state legislation on global warming. Local sustainable businesses and organizations will provide information on sustainable foods; renewable energy including solar, wind, geothermal, energy efficiency, and biodiesel; green building materials; and more. (BUSINESS WIRE)

If Congress fails, America wins. CFACT's response to Connie Hedegaard the European Union’s Commissioner for Climate Action.

Commisioner Hedegaard posed this question: "While some argue that the U.S. cannot afford climate and energy legislation, my question is: Can the U.S. afford not to have ambitious legislation that paves the way for a more energy-efficient future? We all know that we are in for a future where energy and resources will be still more expensive, and the companies and nations that are the most energy-efficient will prosper the most."

CFACT Executive Director, Craig Rucker responded to her question. (CFACT)

Republican senators introduced legislation today that would block White House efforts to require federal agencies to consider climate change in environmental analyses of proposed projects.

The bill says the National Environmental Policy Act should not be used to document, predict or mitigate the climate effects of specific federal actions. Under the measure, NEPA reviews could not consider the greenhouse gas emissions of a proposed federal project nor climate change effects as related to the proposal's design, environmental impacts, or mitigation or adaptation measures. (Greenwire)

Word on the political street is that a 15 cent increase in the federal gasoline tax may well be included in the final draft of a bill being prepared by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and John Kerry (D-MA) to address global warming. Shell, British Petroleum, and ConocoPhillips – are said to support the tax because it’s a less costly intervention in the transportation fuel market (for them anyway) than alternative interventions that might otherwise find their way into this prospective legislation. Shell et al. may be right about that, but be that as it may, this would still constitute lousy public policy. A gasoline tax hike ought to be resisted.

The proposed gasoline tax increase will have no significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions. That’s because the demand curve for gasoline is rather inelastic. Hence, a 15 cent increase in gasoline prices – presuming that the entirety of the tax is passed on to consumers, which may not prove to be the case – would not discourage very much fuel consumption at all.

While I don’t have any calculations at hand to translate the likely amount of reduced oil consumption into a percentage reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions (although that would be a fine project to undertake if this idea ever finds its way into the bill), the figure is certainly below 1 percent. How much cooler would the planet be given that emissions decline over the next 50, 100, and 150 years? That figure would certainly be too small to even measure.

Regardless, the uninternalized “negative externality” associated with the impact of gasoline consumption on the climate is likely to be rather small in monetary terms. After a review of the pertinent economic literature by economist Ian Parrry, Mr. Parry concluded that a gallon of gasoline likely does about 5 cents worth of damage to the environment via its impact on the global climate, assuming that the conventional narrative about anthropogenic climate change is correct. Accordingly, a 15 cent increase in the gasoline tax to address climate impacts would likely do more economic harm than good even if you believe the scientific arguments forwarded by the IPCC. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

WASHINGTON--Emissions mandates on US industry before carbon capture and storage (CCS) is broadly available would force dismantling of much of the nation’s power, refining and chemicals production capacity, a Senate witness said on Tuesday.

Kurt House, a research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that it would be mathematically impossible for the US to make significant cuts in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and continue to use its abundant coal and natural gas resources without wide-scale commercial deployment of carbon capture and sequestration systems.

House, who holds a doctorate in geoscience from Harvard University and specialises in carbon dioxide (CO2) and chemical processes, noted that existing US industrial infrastructure most responsible for CO2 emissions - power stations, refiners and chemical plants - represented an installed capital investment of more than $1,000bn (€740bn).

“It is arithmetically impossible to make stated cuts in our CO2 emissions without either dismantling the majority of that installed capital or by doing CCS,” House said.

House was testifying about legislation before the Senate Energy Committee designed to clarify ownership, liabilities and other issues confronting the goal of making massive underground injections of carbon dioxide captured from various industrial processes.

Separately, the US Senate is expected to begin consideration next week of a new climate bill that reportedly calls for a reduction of US emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases to a level 17% below the nation’s 2005 output by 2020.

“But without the large-scale deployment of CCS,” said House, “it is arithmetically impossible for us to use those reserves [of coal and natural gas] for productive purposes, while simultaneously making significant cuts in our greenhouse gas emissions.” (ICIS news)

by Marlo Lewis, Jr.
April 20, 2010

The Pentagon is perhaps the most influential lobby on Capitol Hill and has the respect of many on the center-right who hold the likes of Greenpeace, Al Gore, and the United Nations in low regard. What’s more, if “even the generals are worried” and climate change is officially deemed a national security threat, then proponents of cap-and-trade get to wave the flag and depict their opponents as venal, partisan, or unpatriotic. So it’s not surprising that global warming activists for years have sought to institutionalize climate change concerns in Department of Defense (DOD) intelligence assessments, program planning, and budgeting.

They have made some headway, though the Department is still far from a hotbed of climate alarm. DOD’s Quadrennial Defense Review Report (QDR) calls climate change a “key issue” that will play a “significant role in shaping the future security environment.” On the other hand, at a recent briefing on the QDR at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a top-ranking DOD official pointedly declined to define climate change as a “national security threat,” calling it instead an “instability accelerant”—a factor that could exacerbate conditions conducive to conflict within and among nations. Angst, hyperbole, and cheerleading for cap-and-trade were conspicuously absent. Nonetheless, the Wilson Center briefing lacked balance. Panelists discussed the security risks associated with climate change while seeming completely oblivious to the potential of various climate change policies to damage U.S. security interests. Similarly, the QDR says nothing about the security risks of climate policies.

This paper aims to inject some badly needed balance into discussions of climate change and national security. First, it takes a skeptical look at the claim that climate is an important “threat multiplier” or, as the QDR puts it, an “accelerant of instability and conflict.” Second, it outlines several ways in which climate policies can adversely affect U.S. national security. (CEI) | Marlo Lewis - Security Risks of Climate Change Policies.pdf

This page is part of the multimedia Global Governance Monitor from the International Institutions and Global Governance program.

If Congress and the president fail to tackle global warming, can courts step in? Can federal judges allow people struggling with the losses of global warming to sue polluters directly?

The idea may at first seem crazy. In a legal world obsessed with claims of judicial activism, the image of a judge taking on a global problem like climate change seems like the punch line to a bad joke at an Exxon board meeting.

But, it turns out there is a long and proud history of judges addressing pollution in the absence of environmental regulation. For much of the last century — long before Congress acted — federal courts allowed plaintiffs to seek injunctions to stop all kinds of pollution. Successful suits prevented an ore smelter from releasing deadly atmospheric arsenic over the homes and families of Utah, the City of Chicago from draining its sewage into St. Louis drinking supply and New York City from dumping its garbage into the Atlantic, where it washed up on the beaches of the New Jersey Shore. Today, states and environmentalists are turning to these and other historic precedents to make the case that climate change, too, belongs in the courts — when the other branches of government refuse to act.

The current battle began in 2004, the midpoint of the Bush presidency. A coalition of states and private land trusts, led by the State of Connecticut, that were frustrated with Washington’s failure to introduce legislation or regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions sued several of the nation’s largest electric utilities in Connecticut v. American Electric Power. The coalition alleged that the companies’ greenhouse-gas emissions amounted to a “public nuisance” in the form of global warming. (Wired Science)

Representatives from the world's biggest polluters sought to make progress on short-term financing to help developing countries adapt to global warming at a meeting hosted by the United States, U.S. President Barack Obama's top climate negotiator said.

The Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate included presentations by the United States and other developed countries on what they would do to make good on financing outlined in the Copenhagen Accord resulting from last year's U.N. climate meeting in Denmark.

"There is an appreciation by everybody in the room it is important to make good on that commitment," U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern said of the two-day meeting that ended Monday. (Reuters)

The Prunerov power station is the Czech Republic’s biggest polluter: Its Its 900-foot-high smokestack pushes a plume of white smoke high above the flat, featureless fields of northern Bohemia. Prunerov reliably wins a place on lists of Europe’s dirtiest power plants, emitting 11.1 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. So when CEZ Group, the state-controlled utility, proposed an overhaul to extend the facility’s life for another quarter of a century, protests flared — including one from a place about as far from the sooty industrial region as you can get, a place of tropical temperatures and turquoise seas with not a smokestack in sight. This January, the Federated States of Micronesia, some 8,000 miles away in the Pacific Ocean, lodged a legal challenge to the Prunerov plant on the grounds that its chronic pollution threatens the island nation’s existence. (Wired Science)

For environmentalists, the story of Tuvalu is well known. A tiny smattering of islands somewhere between Australia and Hawaii, Tuvalu totals ten square miles and has about 12 thousand people. Because Tuvalu's low-lying islands are so susceptible to the slightest change in sea level, the gradual rise of the oceans caused by global warming has become an existential threat. As a result, Tuvalu has been championed by environmentalists as a symbol of climate change's threat.

That threat, of course, is caused by the emission of greenhouse gases. While oil companies like ExxonMobil may only be directly responsible for a small fraction of those emissions, such companies have become to some activists a symbol of climate change's causes. This all leads Mother Jones' Rachel Morris to ask, could Tuvalu sue ExxonMobil? (Atlantic Wire)

So it turns out that the devastating grounding of air traffic was all based on the output of a computer model; not any old computer model, but one from the now notorious Met Office. It is eight years since we listed some of the factors that make computer models dangerous tools, yet reckless reliance on them has since increased dramatically. Politicians and bureaucrats addicted to the precautionary principle would do well to apply it to this costly field of activity. It is reasonably safe to assume that all large computer models are wrong and that very large models are very wrong. It would be purging for there to be a few court cases about the staggering losses that occurred in this case, even though they are dwarfed by the costs incurred through the unthinking reliance on climate models.

Incidentally, on a personal note, this year your bending author “celebrates” 50 years of involvement in digital computer modelling (preceded by an abortive flirtation with analogue computers) having started on the first computer delivered in the UK for research purposes (a Ferranti Pegasus). Enough’s enough! (Number Watch)

About one-half of Blunder is a non-technical description of our new peer reviewed and soon-to-be-published research which supports the opinion that a majority of Americans already hold: that warming in recent decades is mostly due to a natural cycle in the climate system — not to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning.

Believe it or not, this potential natural explanation for recent warming has never been seriously researched by climate scientists. The main reason they have ignored this possibility is that they cannot think of what might have caused it.

You see, climate researchers are rather myopic. They think that the only way for global-average temperatures to change is for the climate system to be forced ‘externally’…by a change in the output of the sun, or by a large volcanic eruption. These are events which occur external to the normal, internal operation of the climate system.

But what they have ignored is the potential for the climate system to cause its own climate change. Climate change is simply what the system does, owing to its complex, dynamic, chaotic internal behavior.

As I travel around the country, I find that the public instinctively understands the possibility that there are natural climate cycles. Unfortunately, it is the climate “experts” who have difficulty grasping the concept. This is why I am taking my case to the public in this book. The climate research community long ago took the wrong fork in the road, and I am afraid that it might be too late for them to turn back.

NATURE’S SUNSHADE: CLOUDS
The most obvious way for warming to be caused naturally is for small, natural fluctuations in the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and ocean to result in a 1% or 2% decrease in global cloud cover. Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling.

How could the experts have missed such a simple explanation? Because they have convinced themselves that only a temperature change can cause a cloud cover change, and not the other way around. The issue is one of causation. They have not accounted for cloud changes causing temperature changes.

The experts have simply mixed up cause and effect when observing how clouds and temperature vary. The book reveals a simple way to determine the direction of causation from satellite observations of global average temperature and cloud variations. And that new tool should fundamentally change how we view the climate system.

Blunder also addresses a second major mistake that results from ignoring the effect of natural cloud variations on temperature: it results in the illusion that the climate system is very sensitive. The experts claim that, since our climate system is very sensitive, then our carbon dioxide emissions are all that is needed to explain global warming. There is no need to look for alternative explanations.

But I show that the experts have merely reasoned themselves in a circle on this subject. When properly interpreted, our satellite observations actually reveal that the system is quite IN-sensitive. And an insensitive climate system means that nature does not really care whether you travel by jet, or how many hamburgers or steaks you eat.

CARBON DIOXIDE: FRIEND OR FOE?
The supposed explanation that global warming is due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide from our burning of fossil fuels turns out to be based upon little more than circumstantial evidence. It is partly a symptom of our rather primitive understanding of how the climate system works.

And I predict that the proposed cure for global warming – reducing greenhouse gas emissions – will someday seem as outdated as using leeches to cure human illnesses.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that scientific knowledge is continually changing, it is increasingly apparent that the politicians are not going to let little things like facts get in their way. For instance, a new draft climate change report was released by the U.S. yesterday (April 19) which, in part, says: “Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced … Global temperature has increased over the past 50 years. This observed increase is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases.”

You see, the legislative train left the station many years ago, and no amount of new science will slow it down as it accelerates toward its final destination: forcibly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

But in Blunder I address what other scientists should have the courage to admit: that maybe putting more CO2 in the atmosphere is a good thing. Given that it is necessary for life on Earth, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is surprisingly small. We already know that nature is gobbling up 50% of what humanity produces, no matter how fast we produce it. So, it is only logical to address the possibility that nature — that life on Earth — has actually been starved for carbon dioxide.

This should give you some idea of the major themes of my new book. I am under no illusion that the book will settle the scientific debate over global warming.

The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledges it has been a rough few months for his organization. But, he argues, no amount of obfuscation and attacks by conspiracy theorists will alter the basic facts — global warming is real and intensifying. (Rajendra K. Pachauri, e360)

A group of 40 auditors from across the globe have released a shocking report card that flunks the U.N.'s landmark climate-change research report.

It may be time for the United Nations' climate-studies scientists to go back to school.

A group of 40 auditors -- including scientists and public policy experts from across the globe -- have released a shocking report card on the U.N.'s landmark climate-change research report.

And they gave 21 of the report's 44 chapters a grade of "F."

The team, recruited by the climate-change skeptics behind the website NoConsensus.org, found that 5,600 of the 18,500 sources in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Nobel Prize-winning 2007 report were not peer reviewed.

"We've been told this report is the gold standard," said Canadian global-warming skeptic Donna Laframboise, who runs the NoConsensus.org site and who organized the online effort to examine the U.N.'s references in the report, commonly known as the AR4.

The cover of the IPCC's fourth assessment report to the U.N., "Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report," more frequently referred to as AR4.

"We've been told it's 100 percent peer-reviewed science. But thousands of sources cited by this report have been nowhere near a scientific journal."

Based on the grading system used in American schools, 21 chapters in the IPCC report received an F for citing peer-reviewed sources less than 60 percent of the time. Four chapters received a D, and six received a C.

The report also got eight A's and five B's from the auditors, who included Bob Ashworth, a member of the American Geophysical Union, and Dr. Darko Butina, a director of Chemomine Consultancy Ltd.

According to Lafromboise, much of the scientific research published by the U.N. cited press releases, newspaper and magazine clippings, student theses, newsletters, discussion papers, and literature published by green advocacy groups. Such material is often called "gray literature," she said, and it stands in stark contrast to the U.N.'s claims about the study's sources.

In June 2008, Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC's chairman, said: "People can have confidence in the IPCC's conclusions, given that it is all on the basis of peer-reviewed literature.

"We don't pick up a newspaper article and, based on that, come up with our findings," he told a group at the Commonwealth Club. ( Gene J. Koprowski, FOXNews.com)

To absolutely no one’s surprise, global warmists keep insisting Climategate isn’t a scandal

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May complained on her blog last week that the Canadian media have not been reporting that two inquiries in the U.K. into Climategate have exonerated the academic institution and scientists at the centre of the storm.

This is too funny, because the only reason most Canadian media haven’t reported on this supposed ending of what May derisively refers to as the “so-called” Climategate scandal, is most of them never reported on Climategate to begin with.

Even if they did, having drunk deeply of the Kyoto Kool-Aid long ago, it was to haughtily pronounce from the very start that Climategate was a mere tempest in a teapot.

In other words: “Nothing to see here folks, let’s all just move along.” (Lorrie Goldstein, Toronto Sun)

Academy Award-winning Director James Cameron said the "climate deniers" who have the "public ear" are engaging in “fear mongering” and will have to answer to the next generation for the “very bleak world” they are “essentially creating.”

In an exclusive interview, CNSNews.com asked Cameron about his remarks concerning conservative critics of his popular movie “Avatar” and whether he could provide some more perspective.

Cameron said those critics were “people ranting away, lost in their bubbles of reality, steeped in their own hatred, their own fear and hatred.”

Cameron told CNSNews.com last week, “I stand by that” and further said: “I think there’s a lot of demagoguery in this country. I think there’s a lot of fear mongering, and I think it’s done us a huge disservice over the last few years, and I think it’s really starting to hurt us right now. (CNSNews.com)

Spring comes about 10 days earlier in the United States than it did two decades ago, a consequence of climate change that favors invasive species over indigenous ones, scientists said on Tuesday.

The phenomenon known as "spring creep" has put various species of U.S. wildlife out of balance with their traditional habitats, from the rabbit-like American pika in the West to the roses and lilies in New England, the environmental experts said in a telephone news briefing. (Reuters)

The dairy sector accounts for 4 percent of global man-made greenhouse gas emissions, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report.

The dairy sector emitted 1.969 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent in 2007, of which 1.328 billion tonnes were due to dairy production and 151 million tonnes to meat from culled dairy animals, the FAO said.

Global milk production, processing and transportation accounted for 2.7 percent of the world man made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the FAO said. (Reuters)

Kevin Trenberth (and Josh Willis) should be commended for providing us an open discussion of the issue of the energy budget of the climate system, as I posted yesterday with their permission;

Since Kevin Trenberth is an internationally respected climate scientist, his views on this issue are worth discussing further.

First, in terms of agreement, his goal of attempting to quantify the individual contributions to the climate system energy budget in terms of fluxes (watts per meter squared) is very much-needed. I support Kevin on this effort. His various versions of Figure 2 in Trenberth (2009) have been one of the most cited in global climate science.

The results of these complexities is that a global average, long-term mean of the fluxes (while valuable as a starting schematic) can obscure how the climate actually works.

Figure 4 in his 2009 paper continues to focus on a global average, long-term mean perspective. While here the uncertainty is included, the temporal variation with a year (even in the long-term multi-year average) in the radiative forcings and feedbacks is not included.

As a result of these uncertainties, I recommend we start from the bottom row in Kevin’s figure 4. This is the total net imbalance which is given as about 0.9 Watts per meter squared (0.4 to 1.4 Watts per meter squared). This is where Trenberth and Fasullo conclude in their 2010 paper that there is missing heat

We have a way to estimate this imbalance independent of summing the climate forcings and feedbacks in figure 4. Despite Kevin’s 2009 conclusion that

as is discussed in yesterday’s post, all of the ocean analyses are in close agreement since 2005 and are concluded to be robust. The net radiative imbalance (the bottom row in Kevin’s figure 4) is actually very close to zero over this time period.

In Table 1 of the 2009 paper, Kevin lists the column in the extreme right as the “Residual”. This is the “missing heat” that he reports on in his Science Perspective. However, the analysis of the change in ocean heat content by Josh Willis and others shows that these is little if any unsampled heat in the climate system, at least since 2005 to last summer.

Finally, I am pleased that the Trenberth and Fasullo (2010) paper presented their figure with the “missing heat”. It is this heat that I presented as a test of the IPCC models in my post

Apparently, unless the “missing heat” can be found, the conclusion would be that, at least for this relatively short time period, the models are not accurately replicating changes over time in the energy budget of the real world climate system. Also, in order for the IPCC models to come back into conformity with the real world, they must have a substantially above average radiative imbalance in the next few years. (Climate Science)

Editorial:
Will Global Warming Reduce Crop Yields?: Climate alarmists keep inventing ever worsening scenarios, as corrupted "peer review" and unwarranted publication run rampant in journals sympathetic to their cause.

Journal Reviews:
A New Analysis of the Urban Heat Island Effect: A different way of defining the phenomenon makes it more amenable to assessment via remote sensing and comparative analysis among cities located within different biomes.

Plant Growth Database:
Our latest results of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature are: Salt Marsh Sedge (Li et al., 2010), Saltmeadow Cordgrass (Li et al., 2010), Sydney Blue Gum Tree (Ghannoum et al., 2010), and White Birch (Ambebe and Dang, 2010).

Medieval Warm Period Project:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 820 individual scientists from 487 separate research institutions in 43 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Lake WB02, Northern Victoria Island, Nanavut, Canada. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here. (co2science.org)

If you really want to hit a home run with a global warming story, manage to link climate change to the beloved rainforest of the Amazon. The rainforest there is considered by many to be the “lungs of the planet,” the rainforest surely contains a cure for any ailment imaginable, all species in the place are critical to the existence of life on the Earth, and the people of the Amazon are surely the most knowledgeable group on the planet regarding how to care for Mother Earth.

The global warming alarmists have taken full advantage of the Amazon and they are very quick to suggest that the Amazon ecosystem is extremely sensitive to climate change. Furthermore, not only can climate change impact the Amazon, but global climate itself is strongly linked to the state of the Amazon rainforest.

But, as usual, there is more to this story than meets to eye (or, rather, the press). (WCR)

Celebrities like Dave Matthews have used carbon offset provider NativeEnergy to help them be carbon neutral. But there's great debate about whether the company's method of selling offsets that have yet to happen. (CSM)

The Inter-American Development Bank, IDB, announced Friday its intention to increase its financing for renewable energy and climate-related projects to 3 billion US dollars a year by 2012. (MercoPress)

When Vladimir Putin calls for international dialogue and personally attends the resulting conference, you know Russia means business. Whether the intention is that the international cards are dealt fairly or the flim flam of talking shop PR diplomacy, is hard to say. But, the whimsically titled “The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue” conference on the future of the Arctic’s oil and gas riches represents new Cold War intrigue writ large. [Read More] (Peter C. Glover, Energy Tribune)

Wow, the outlook for the U.S. coal industry is getting dimmer by the day. If greater government scrutiny on coal mining safety wasn’t enough, now an effort to force utilities to switch their coal-fired power plants to natural gas is gaining momentum.

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter yesterday signed a new clean-air bill that will require Xcel Energy to cut nitrous oxide emissions by up to 80 percent from several aging coal-fired plants by the end of 2017. And the utility has to give natural gas first consideration when it looks at how to reduce emissions from those plants.

The bill is a win for Xcel because the utility will be allowed to enter into long-term contracts to lock in lower natural gas prices and protect it from volatility in the market. Of course, that means if natural gas prices suddenly drop, customers will still be paying that “locked in” amount. Environmentalists are happy since coal-fired power plants produce more greenhouse gas emissions than ones that use natural gas. And of course, the natural gas industry is pleased.

Which leaves coal the odd man out. Not to mention a little poorer. The coal industry spent an estimated $2 million lobbying against the bill. And then there’s the loss of coal mining, railroad and utility jobs expected from the bill’s passage. Less demand for coal, less demand for coal miners or the rails that transport the fuel source. And natural gas power plants are more efficient and are less labor intensive than coal plants. (bnet)

Councillors in East Lothian have voted to oppose controversial plans to upgrade Cockenzie power station in principle.

The council's environment director Pete Collins had recommended that councillors should approve the plans.

Scottish Power wants to convert Cockenzie from a coal to a gas fired power station.

A motion to oppose the plans was passed by 12 votes to six at Tuesday evening's meeting in Port Seton.

The councillors' findings will now be passed onto Scottish ministers, who will make the final decision on whether the plans get the go-ahead. (BBC)

New techniques under development could provide better tracking of volcanic plumes

BUFFALO, N.Y. – A University at Buffalo volcanologist, an expert in volcanic ash cloud transport, published a paper recently showing how the jet stream – the area in the atmosphere that pilots prefer to fly in – also seems to be the area most likely to be impacted by plumes from volcanic ash.

"That's a problem," says Marcus I. Bursik, PhD, one of the foremost experts on volcanic plumes and their effect on aviation safety, "because modern transcontinental and transoceanic air routes are configured to take advantage of the jet stream's power, saving both time and fuel.

"The interaction of the jet stream and the plume is likely a factor here," says Bursik, professor of geology in the UB College of Arts and Sciences. "Basically, planes have to fly around the plume or just stop flying, as they have, as the result of this eruption in Iceland."

In some cases, if the plume can be tracked well enough with satellites, pilots can steer around the plume, he notes, but that didn't work in this case because the ash drifted right over Britain. (University at Buffalo)

LATEST: The eruption of a volcano in Iceland strengthened on Monday, sending a new ash cloud towards Britain, the country’s air authorities said.

‘‘The volcano eruption in Iceland has strengthened and a new ash cloud is spreading south and east towards the UK,’’ said the National Air Traffic Services (NATS), which manages British airspace.

‘‘Latest information from the Met Office (weather forecasting service) shows that the situation is worsening in some areas,’’ said NATS in a statement.

It added that Scottish airports should still be open from 7am on Tuesday (1600 AEST), as had been announced earlier in the day, but the situation for Northern Irish airports was uncertain.

More airspace over England may become available from 1pm on Tuesday (2200 AEST) although not as far south as the main London airports, said NATS.

But it added that ‘‘the situation is likely to change overnight.’’

News of the latest cloud comes as European governments started opening the continent’s airspace to new flights, giving hope to hundreds of thousands of passengers around the world trapped as volcanic ash in the atmosphere grounded airlines.

The huge cloud of ash that has blanketed Europe forced the cancellation of another 20,000 flights on Monday and Britain and other governments sent navy ships and deployed other measures to rescue stranded passengers.

But under relentless pressure from airlines facing a new billion dollar-plus bill, EU transport ministers agreed to ease restrictions from Tuesday. (AFP)

The flight ban is a product of officialdom’s apocalyptic thinking, where they always imagine that the worst-case scenario will come true. (Frank Furedi, sp!ked)

The health-and-safety Armageddon I long expected has arrived, writes Simon Jenkins. It is another "swine flu", he says.

It was bad enough to have an idiot with a shoe bomb stirring equally idiot regulators to enforce billions of pounds of cost and inconvenience on air travellers in the cause of "it might happen again". Now we have a volcano and a bit of dust. It is another swine flu.

The truth is that putting large, heavy bits of metal into the air is just too much for the psyche of modern regulators. They panic. The slightest risk cannot be taken or someone might blame the regulators, whose job is not to assess risk but avert it.

Even an airline company, with everything to lose, is not allowed to assess its own risk. Many more will die on roads and elsewhere because of the anarchy the air controllers have unleashed on Europe, but that is not their business. They don't care.

Sterling stuff ... the nannies are taking a beating! (EU Referendum)

Flawed computer models may have exaggerated the effects of an Icelandic volcano eruption that has grounded tens of thousands of flights, stranded hundreds of thousands of passengers and cost businesses hundreds of millions of euros.

The computer models that guided decisions to impose a no-fly zone across most of Europe in recent days are based on incomplete science and limited data, according to European officials. As a result, they may have over-stated the risks to the public, needlessly grounding flights and damaging businesses.

“It is a black box in certain areas,” Matthias Ruete, the EU’s director-general for mobility and transport, said on Monday, noting that many of the assumptions in the computer models were not backed by scientific evidence.

European authorities were not sure about scientific questions, such as what concentration of ash was hazardous for jet engines, or at what rate ash fell from the sky, Mr Ruete said. “It’s one of the elements where, as far as I know, we’re not quite clear about it,” he admitted.

He also noted that early results of the 40-odd test flights conducted over the weekend by European airlines, such as KLM and Air France, suggested that the risk was less than the computer models had indicated.

The acknowledgement that the computer models were flawed is likely to provide ammunition for critics who believe that authorities have shown excessive caution. The closure of much of the airspace over Europe over the past five days is estimated to have cost airlines a total of $200m a day in lost revenue.

Mr Ruete’s comments highlight the lack of technical expertise that has hamstrung European policymakers as they try to manage the consequences from a rare act of nature. Mr Ruete compared the scenario with his work in the 1980s trying to assess health risks after the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

He also urged European officials to consider adopting US aviation standards.

“If you take the situation across the Atlantic, there the advice would probably be: don’t fly over the volcano. Otherwise, it is up to you to take the precautions necessary,” Mr Ruete said.

While the US system leaves air carriers with the responsibility to determine whether or not it is safe to fly “the American model is not a model of less safety”, he said. “You just need to look at the statistics to see that.” (Financial Times)

The cracks have started to show in the official edifice, with a senior EU commission apparatichik declaring that the flight restrictions in response to the Icelandic volcano were "excessive".

Thus, Bruno Waterfield told us, Matthias Ruete, the commission's director general of transport, thought that the no-fly zone should be restricted to "several dozen kilometres" around Iceland, and the Met Office science should be re-evaluated.

"The science behind the model we are running at the moment is based on certain assumptions where we do not have clear scientific evidence," said Ruete. "We don't even know what density the cloud should be in order to affect jet engines. We have a model that runs on mathematical projections. It is probability rather than actual things happening."

We also learn from Mr Ruete that the commission was "forced" yesterday to intervene with national authorities to "unblock the mess" and to allow airlines to fly test flights to check the Met Office data.

"In a case where, we do not have the data it is a tremendous and terrible responsibility for the authorities to say, 'oh well go on up'. That is why test flights are so important to have some kind of empirical evidence to help us move on from the mathematical model," he said.

However, as Bruno notes, the very fact that the flight restrictions exist is because of the European system, where national and European authorities are compelled to act on Met Office's advice, even if it is limited to mathematical modelling. This is the effect of the EU's Single European Sky which turns ICAO "guidelines" into mandatory requirements, through a multilateral agreement on co-operation of air traffic management.

The problems arises through the guidelines which, during a volcano eruption, effectively turn "the forecast furthest extent of the ash cloud" into the exclusion zone, without reference to particle density or character.

By this means, we end up with a technician in the Met Office running a computer model, the output of which closes down UK civil aviation and much of Europe. But the system exists only because the EU has agreed it, and imposes it on the national operators – with the agreement of their national governments.

Faced with the consequences of this, though, the commission is now telling us, rather late in the day, that it will "support" an option restricting the flight ban to the immediate vicinity of Iceland. With that, we get the news that EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas (pictured) will allow the UK progressively to remove no-fly restrictions from tomorrow morning, allowing air traffic to resume.

This also allows the EU quietly to slide out of its responsibility for the shambles and, with the focus firmly on the national authorities, the media allows the "elephant in the room" to slumber on undisturbed.

All is then left is for the British government to make the "meaningless gesture" of calling in the Royal Navy to help clear the backlog, while the political parties compete to gain such advantage as they can from the misery suffered by so many people. (EU Referendum)

The Met Office has been blamed for triggering the “unnecessary” six-day closure of British airspace which has cost airlines, passengers and the economy more than £1.5 billion.

The government agency was accused of using a scientific model based on “probability” rather than fact to forecast the spread of the volcanic ash cloud that made Europe a no-fly zone and ruined the plans of more than 2.5 million travellers in and out of Britain.

A senior European official said there was no clear scientific evidence behind the model, which air traffic control services used to justify the unprecedented shutdown.

Eleven major British airlines joined forces last night to publicly criticise Nats, the air traffic control centre, over the way it interpreted the Met Office’s “very limited empirical data”.

Legal experts suggested passengers and airlines may be able to sue the Government for more than £1?billion in compensation. Flights in and out of Britain are scheduled to resume today for the first time in almost a week after Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, said there had been a “dramatic decrease” in the volcano’s activity. (TDT)

Can’t reveal much now but well-respected international air measurement organizations have been busy measuring up the volcanic material above the European skies, on Monday (finally). This means that we can expect for early Tuesday major news about where there are actual problems for flying.

This may or may not have anything to do with the newly-found courage by UE Transport Ministers, finally seeing the light in managing the volcanic ash risk, instead of cowering in panic. (Maurizio Morabito, OmniClimate)

The Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption (I want to make you sure that your humble correspondent can copy-and-paste the word, too!) has led to a flight ban over much of Europe that has been obeyed for several days. Some countries such as Czechia re-opened their airspaces today.

The weather and the visibility during the weekend were just great and it looked kind of absurd that the flights were banned. But was it really absurd?

The airlines have been losing approximately $200 million per day. That's a lot but it's not an infinite amount of money. A part of this loss was happily earned and therefore "compensated" by the railways that have seen a visible increase in the demand for their services. ;-) After all, Czech President Klaus (and the prime minister and Prague's Catholic Archbishop) had to take a train to Lech Kaczynski's funeral, too.

Nevertheless, this financial loss of the airlines - which has already exceeded the impact of flight bans after the 2001 terrorist attacks - is by far the most significant consequence of the recent average volcano eruption. I can assure you that the changes of CO2 or the temperature are negligible in comparison. By the way, the E-word volcano started to produce less ash and more lava which is good. As soon as all the debt of Iceland is forgiven, the Icelanders will turn the volcano off.

The airlines such as Air France, British Airways, KLM, and Lufthansa have performed their own tests - they have sent several aircraft directly through the ash clouds - and they have found no measurable impact on the aircrafts and engines whatsoever. It is not shocking that they're urging everyone to lift the ban and the EU officials could actually agree.

However, it's also true that NATO claims that the ash clouds recently damaged the motors of several F-16 fighters, a statement I can't independently confirm and that can be specific to F-16 whose speed can reach 1.6 Mach (multiples of speed of sound) i.e. 2,000 km/h.

Sounds like anthropogenic global warming, doesn’t it? The danger exists, but it is being senselessly exaggerated.

What if behind the decision to stop flights on a continental scale were the failure of a whole way of thinking public policy in Europe, with an asinine fixation on using computer models?

What if the aftermath of weeks of anthropogenic fear about millions dying of swine flu or maybe not, and the aftermath of weeks of anthropogenic fear about volcanic cloud making airplanes drop from the sky like flies or maybe not…what if people finally opened their eyes about the extreme limitations of computer modeling?

Who knows. Meanwhile, let me state clearly that I am fully aware of the potential risks for an airplane flying in the wrong conditions and at the wrong time through a cloud of volcanic origin. But there are enough indications to doubt the necessity of a reaction even remotely like the irrational panic that is causing the closure of European air spaces. (Maurizio Morabito, OmniClimate)

Failed warnings of doom do not deter new ones

THURSDAY is Lenin's Birthday. It will be celebrated around the world as Earth Day, a holiday begun by Democratic Sen. Gaylord Nelson in 1970 to keep anti-capitalist sentiment going after the Vietnam War ended.

Ten years ago, on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day, Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine recycled some quotes from that first Earth Day.

"I'm scared," Paul Ehrlich wrote in the 1970 Earth Day issue of Look. "I have a 14-year-old daughter whom I love very much. I know a lot of young people, and their world is being destroyed.

"My world is being destroyed. I'm 37 and I'd kind of like to live to be 67 in a reasonably pleasant world, and not die in some kind of holocaust in the next decade."

Lord willing and the creek doesn't rise, Ehrlich will turn 78 next month.

"We have about five more years at the outside to do something," ecologist Kenneth Watt said at Swarthmore College in 1970.

Well, we must have done something right. We're still here.

Maybe it was the leisure suits that saved us. That makes about as much sense as anything else.

"We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation," wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner for a 1970 Earth Day issue of "Environment," a scientific journal.

He did not put an end date to his prediction. But Ehrlich did.

"Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make," Ehrlich said in 1970.

"The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years."

Ehrlich was an optimist compared to Denis Hayes, an aide to Nelson, the chief organizer for the first Earth Day.

"It is already too late to avoid mass starvation," Hayes said. (Don Surber, Daily Mail)

In “Treme,” HBO’s new series about New Orleans, a college professor played by John Goodman railed against the needless tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. The storm was a natural disaster, he says, but the flooding that followed was a man-made catastrophe, decades in the making. Many people knew about the threat, but no one did anything about it.

Mr. Goodman’s blustery tirade about warnings not heeded channeled a national anger that extends well beyond Katrina. We are living in an age of Cassandra, in which experts and ordinary people are regularly grabbing the appropriate authorities by the lapels and warning them of impending disasters — almost invariably to no avail. (Adam Cohen, NYT)

Doctors are becoming increasingly demoralized. And no wonder! They are losing control over their professional independence and the Washington lobbyists they hire to represent them are collaborators with an increasingly hostile Washington political establishment. While the President repeatedly told Americans that his health agenda would not interfere with their relationship with their doctors, the reality of Obamacare is that government will have an enormous impact on the way physicians practice medicine. There is the very real prospect of many doctors simply giving up or refusing to practice under the government’s avalanche of new rules and regulations.

Suddenly, the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders seem to want health-care news stories to fall off of the front page.

This week, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman abruptly cancelled a high-profile hearing he had called just days earlier to berate corporate CEOs who dared to tell their investors that the health-care bill would raise their costs. It seems to have dawned on Congressman Waxman and his staff that his transparent effort to intimidate anyone who tells the truth about the legislation could actually backfire on him and turn into a PR disaster.

The Democratic contention that the bill actually lowers costs for American business is not supported by any rigorous analysis that would justify use in auditable corporate accounting methods. The Business Roundtable study that many Obamacare advocates like to cite as proof of the bill’s savings provides no such proof at all. The prediction of cost savings in the study, from the mostly minor provisions in the legislation aimed at “delivery system reform,” are highly speculative at best. Indeed, the study itself notes the potential for much higher costs and cites many cost-cutting provisions that are not in the new health law. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

Earlier this year, after Congress passed an increase in the debt ceiling, was deliberating over a trillion plus health care package, and the President’s Budget promised new record deficits, the American people started to see a worrisome trend that pushed fiscal responsibility to the forefront of the public’s priorities. President Obama responded by creating the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a bipartisan commission tasked with submitting a solution to the nation’s fiscal woes by the end of the year. Problem solved, right? Continue reading... (The Foundry)

President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency is encouraging the public to create video advertisements that explain why federal regulations are "important to everyone."

The contest, which ends May 17, will award $2,500 to the makers of the video that best explains why federal regulations are good and how ordinary citizens can become more involved in making regulations. The videos must be posted on YouTube and can be no more than 60-90 seconds in length.

In the current contest, each video must include the slogan “Let your voice be heard,” and it must direct viewers to the government’s regulatory website www.Regulations.gov. The winning video will then be used by the entire federal government to promote the regulatory process and enhance the public’s participation in it.

The EPA is managing the contest, part of the government’s eRulemaking program, on behalf of the entire government.

As explained in the EPA press release announcing the contest, the purpose of the videos will be to remind the public that federal regulation touches “almost every aspect” of their lives and to promote how important those regulations are. (CNSNews.com)

Environmentalists condemn former vice-president for letting controversial company fund Life Earth

Al Gore, the self-styled squeakiest-clean and deepest-green politician in American history, has some explaining to do this weekend. His environmental organisation has taken money to raise awareness about the need for clean water from a controversial chemicals company. (The Independent)

WASHINGTON, DC, April 15, 2010 - Legislation to require safety testing of all industrial chemicals, which puts the burden on industry to prove that chemicals are safe in order stay on the market, was introduced in both houses of Congress today.

Introducing his new bill, U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, called the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 now in force, "an antiquated law that in its current state, leaves Americans at risk of exposure to toxic chemicals." (ENS)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Imaging tests used to screen symptom-free people for lung cancer often find suspicious growths that turn out to not be cancer, according to a U.S. government study published Monday.

Researchers say the findings point to a significant downside of using the tests -- chest X-rays or spiral CT scans -- to try to detect lung cancer early.

In recent years, CT scans, in particular, have been promoted by some hospitals and advocacy groups for lung cancer screening, even though studies have not yet shown whether such screening saves lives.

"The most important thing right now is to try to figure out if this lowers death rates," Dr. Jennifer M. Croswell, the lead researcher on the new study, told Reuters Health.

NEW YORK - If you're someone who lies in a tanning bed too much, you may be likely to suffer from addictive behavior often seen with substance abuse, as well as anxiety, according to a new study. (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK - Child care centers are too prone to send toddlers home for mild illnesses, doctors say.

In a new survey of centers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, directors said they would exclude kids more than half the time for minor ailments such as pink eye, ringworm or mild fever.

This is medically unnecessary and runs counter to long-standing professional guidelines, the researchers say.

By the time kids have symptoms, they've already been contagious, and "they've already done the damage," Dr. Andrew N. Hashikawa of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee told Reuters Health. "It doesn't do any good to send these kids home." (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK - Thousands of young children are accidentally poisoned by tobacco products each year in the U.S., and new dissolvable tobacco products that resemble candy might pose an additional risk, according to researchers.

In a study of reports to U.S. poison control centers between 2006 and 2008, investigators found that 13,705 children younger than 6 were accidentally poisoned by tobacco products. Cigarettes were the most common culprit, followed by smokeless tobacco products, and more than 70 percent of the victims were infants younger than one year.

The findings are published in the journal Pediatrics.

In a baby or small child, even a small amount of nicotine, as little as 1 milligram, can cause nausea and vomiting. Larger doses could lead to weakness, convulsions or potentially fatal respiratory arrest. (Reuters Health)

CHICAGO - A variant of an obesity gene carried by more than a third of the U.S. population also reduces brain volume, raising carriers' risk of Alzheimer's disease, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

People with a specific variant of the fat mass and obesity gene, or FTO gene, have brain deficits that could make them more vulnerable to the mind-robbing disease.

"The basic result is that this very prevalent gene not only adds an inch to your waistline, but makes your brain look 16 years older," said Paul Thompson, a professor of neurology at the University of California Los Angeles, who worked on the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Brains generally shrink with age. (Reuters)

COMMERCIAL whaling is set to return after almost 25 years as Japan moves to overturn a worldwide ban.

Conservationists say that lifting the current moratorium will threaten the long-term survival of whale populations and would be a highly symbolic defeat for preservation.

They warn it could “open the floodgates” to far bigger slaughter in the future.

At present whaling is carried out mainly by Japan, Iceland and Norway.

The three nations have killed 35,000 whales since the ban was introduced in 1986. In Japan’s case, the killings have been justified as being for “scientific research.”

Under the deal being considered by the International Whaling Commission (IWC), hunting would be legally recognised and there are fears that other countries could take part.

Britain’s opposition to whaling may count for nothing because Denmark is likely to back the change. This failure to reach a European Union consensus will rule out any veto by the remaining 24 member states. (The Times)

American officials are counting on Britain to end its opposition to a controversial plan to save thousands of whales over the next ten years by allowing commercial whaling but with tighter international controls.

The plan aims to cut the number of whales killed by Japan, Norway and Iceland by 5,000 over the course of a decade, but it would shelve the goal of an outright ban on commercial whaling – a compromise that none of the three major British parties has so far been willing to endorse.

Negotiators working on the plan at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) have told The Times that British support is vital if the rest of the 25-member EU bloc on the commission is to be persuaded to back it. The idea of explicitly allowing whaling nations to continue to hunt has led to a bitter dispute on the fate of the IWC and the whales themselves, with the US and Britain so far on opposing sides.

The draft plan already has the support of some but not all anti-whaling nations, including the US. “We believe that the current system is not working,” Monica Medina, the US commissioner to the IWC, said in an interview. “We want to conserve whales, and we hope that other governments feel the same way.” (The Times)

Soon after the Climategate scandal broke in November 2009, Minnesotans for Global Warming (M4GW) produced and posted on YouTube a video satire, entitled “Hide the decline.” The video parodies an excerpt from the Climategate e-mails in which the University of East Anglia’s Phil Jones states,

The “Mike” referred to by Phil Jones is Penn State University’s Michael Mann who is credited with developing the so-called “hockey stick” graph which purports to represent mean global temperature changes over the past one millennium. The hockey stick graph has been both central to the debate over manmade global warming and controversial. While the hockey stick was featured prominently in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Third Assessment Report (TAR, 2001), it was largely omitted from the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4, 2007).

Sung to the tune of “Draggin’ the line” (by Tommy James and the Shondells), the lyrics to “Hide the decline” are as follows:

In a letter to M4GW from an attorney, Mann claims that “Hide the decline” defames him. This analysis considers whether Mann’s assertion is true. (Compiled by JunkScience.com)

Spinmeister Michael Mann is quoted in this article from the Telegraph yesterday as follows:

The United States released a new draft report on climate change on Monday, one week before the expected unveiling of a compromise U.S. Senate bill that aims to curb heat-trapping greenhouse emissions.

The report, a draft of the Fifth U.S. Climate Action Report that will be sent to the United Nations, says bluntly: "Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced ... Global temperature has increased over the past 50 years. This observed increase is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases." (Reuters)

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the Senate’s leading climate skeptic, said Thursday that upcoming climate change legislation has so little political traction that it would only garner 26 Senate votes.

“I know we can beat it,” Inhofe said on the Fox Business Network, later adding, “I can assure you, I don't think they have more than 25 votes on the Democrats' side, and if you throw Lindsey Graham [R] in there, that would be 26 votes.”

South Carolina’s Graham — along with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) — intend to roll out broad climate and energy legislation on April 26. (E² Wire)

Economist Richard Tol has prepared a statement for a committee of the Dutch parliament examining climate-related controversies this week. I discovered it on the Dutch website Climategate.nl and Tol has kindly provided an English translation. (No Consensus)

Experts say suggestions that climate change could trigger more volcanoes and earthquakes are speculative, but there is enough evidence to take the threat seriously (The Guardian)

Frogs could be decimated by climate change as they are unable to adapt quickly enough, according to a study.

Scientists looked at records of frogspawn over the last decade recorded by thousands of people in Britain, including viewers of BBC's Springwatch.

The record of 50,000 sightings of frogspawn showed that the amphibians lay their eggs earlier as the temperature warms. Frogs in the south often spawn more than a week earlier to make sure their young have the best chance.

But this sensitivity to the local environment makes frogs particularly vulnerable to climate change. Even modest predictions for Britain, that will see temperatures rise by around 2C (3.6F) over the next 50 years, will be too much for the frogs to cope with. (Louise gray, TDT)

Climate scientists have decided that as much as half of the heat energy, believed to have built up on Earth in recent years, is hiding somewhere it can not be found. By measuring the radiative energy input at the top of Earth's atmosphere, scientists have a pretty good idea of how much energy is entering the planetary environment—the problem is figuring out where it goes. The most likely place is in the deep ocean, whose waters form a huge potential storage place for heat. Because energy is exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean, this heat can resurface at a later time to affect weather and climate on a global scale. It has been suggest that last year’s rapidly occurring El Niño may be one way the “missing” solar energy has reappeared—the implication being more sudden El Niño events may be on the way.

Oceans contain around 80% of the climate system's total energy, so ocean heat is a good measure of what is happening with Earth's climate. According to a Perspectives article in the April 16, 2010, issue of Science, “Tracking Earth's Energy,” science has been unable to to properly track energy within Earth's environmental system. Kevin E. Trenberth and John T. Fasullo , both scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), warn in the new study that satellite sensors, ocean floats, and other instruments are inadequate to track this “missing” heat. They fear that it may be building up in the deep oceans or elsewhere in the climate system. “The heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later,” says Trenberth, the lead author. “The reprieve we’ve had from warming temperatures in the last few years will not continue. It is critical to track the build-up of energy in our climate system so we can understand what is happening and predict our future climate.”

As noted on the NCAR site, a Science Perspectives piece is not formally peer-reviewed, but is reviewed by editors of the journal. Science reportedly invited Trenberth to submit the article after an editor heard him discuss the research at a scientific conference. Trenberth and his co-author, Fasullo, focused on what they call a central mystery of climate change. Why, since 2003, have scientists been unable to determine where much heat energy Earth receives from the Sun is going. According to the NCAR site:

Either the satellite observations are incorrect, says Trenberth, or large amounts of heat are penetrating to regions on Earth that are not adequately measured. One such place is the deepest parts of the oceans. Compounding the problem, Earth’s surface temperatures have largely leveled off in recent years. This inability to properly track energy has implications for understanding the way climate works and most definitely on predicting future climate. Obviously, if scientists are at a loss to identify the hiding place of the missing heat climate modelers are unable to include its possible future effects in their programs. With as much as half of the suspected heat energy buildup gone missing, it must be asked how well science understands Earth's climate.

El Niño, periodic events in which the upper ocean waters across much of the tropical Pacific Ocean become significantly warmer, are seen by many as a mechanism for dumping heat, stored in the ocean, back into space. Trenberth and Fasullo explain the relationship between the ENSO, the El Niño Southern Oscillation, and delayed release of ocean stored energy this way:

A strong La Niña event in 2007–2008 extended into the 2008–2009 northern winter, causing cooler than normal weather across much of the Northern Hemisphere. By June 2009, the situation had reversed as the next, comparatively moderate El Niño emerged. Multiple storms barreled into Southern California in January 2010, consistent with expectations from the El Niño. These storms also caused significant snowfall and precipitation across the American Southwest, South and up the Eastern Seaboard.

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding ocean temperatures these days. Recently, new estimates of the past temperatures have been published. On in particular, that shows a sudden jump in the 2002-2003 time, prompted Real Climate to post a plot of ocean heat content. This is a contradiction of a 2009 paper by Craig Loehle in Energy & Environment that found global ocean cooling since 2003. The linear component of the model used showed a trend of -0.35 (±0.2) x 10²² Joules per year, shown in the plot below.

“The model, fit to the smoothed data, gave an excellent fit (r = 0.922, R2 = 0.85) and showed clearly that there is an annual periodicity in the data, probably due to the north-south asymmetry in ocean area and the effect of orbital variations over the year,” the study states. The Loehle study was based on ocean heat content anomaly (OHCA) data compiled by Josh Willis et al. Indeed, it was the 2008 paper “Assessing the Globally Averaged Sea Level Budget on Seasonal and Interannual Time Scales,” by Willis, Chambers and Nerem, that prompted this comment by Roger Pielke Sr.:

Since then, the debate over ocean heat and ocean levels has raged. Claims and counter claims, studies finding warming and studies finding cooling. Now it looks like the warming proponents are throwing in the towel on surface temperature increase (this is the temperature trend, not normal, cyclic variability). In a reply to questions from Dr. Pielke, Dr. Willis said:

So, despite the confusion caused by changing from XBT (Expendable Bathythermograph) measurements to measurements by the Argos satellite-based location and data collection system, it still looks like the upper portions of the ocean are cooling. Such data discontinuities when changing sensor types or measurement methods is not new, the same type of flap erupted over radiosonde data a decade ago. Even so, the debate about the missing ocean heat is far from over.

The new claim is the missing heat, that climate change supporters so desperately want to find, has gone deep. Dr Pielke has exchanged a series of comments with Dr. Trenberth over his recent paper on the Climate Science website:

“I do not agree with your comments. We are well aware that there are well over a dozen estimates of ocean heat content and they are all different yet based on the same data,” said Dr. Trenberth in reply. “There are clearly problems in the analysis phase and I don’t believe any are correct.” Clear admission that climate scientists are groping in the dark here.

“I do not see how such large amounts of heat could have transited to depths below 700m since 2005 without being detected.,” responded Pielke, adding in a conciliatory way: “I am very supportive, however, of your recognition that it is heat in Joules that we should be monitoring as a primary metric to monitor global warming. Our research has shown significant biases in the use of the global average surface temperature for this purpose.”

Research done over the last several years has found that the return currents of the meridional overturning current (MOC) do not behave as previously thought (see “Conveyor Belt Model Broken”). More recently, it has been shown that the great ocean conveyor belt varies in ways unpredicted and previously unsuspected (see “Ocean Conveyor Belt Confounds Climate Science”). During the first 1-year period since new deep sea sensors became operational (measurements from March 2004 through March 2005) the strength of the MOC varied by more than a factor of 8. It still remains unclear how much the meridional overturning circulation varies from year to year, but the old model was clearly wrong.

Now, the ocean is suspected of harboring hidden heat that scientists claim has gone missing. Some claim the heat is not there, while others, like Trenberth and Fasullo, fear that the missing heat will “come back to haunt us.” One thing is certain—those old claims of “settled science” and a “consensus among the world's scientists” seem to have come back to haunt their originators. The overstatements made by the IPCC and its supporters in the past stand revealed for the empty lies they always were.

Trenberth and Fasullo state that it is imperative to get better measurements of the energy flowing through Earth’s climate system. Improved analysis of energy in the atmosphere and oceans might help researchers better understand and possibly even predict unusual weather patterns, such as the unexpectedly cold weather across much of the United States, Europe, and Asia over the past winter. But for now, no scientist can claim that we truly understand what is going on in Earth's oceans—and that means climate science cannot claim to understand what is going to happen to Earth's climate.

Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

The global warming enthusiasts are convinced that as humans inject more and more carbon dioxide into the air we will warm the atmosphere beyond recognition. But nature may be set to crush all of that talk. [Read More] (Art Horn, Energy Tribune)

Iceland's Eyjafjoell volcano is emitting between 150,000 and 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per day, a figure placing it in the same emissions league as a small-to-medium European economy, experts said on Monday.

Assuming the composition of gas to be the same as in an earlier eruption on an adjacent volcano, "the CO2 flux of Eyjafjoell would be 150,000 tonnes per day," Colin Macpherson, an Earth scientist at Britain's University of Durham, said in an email.

Patrick Allard of the Paris Institute for Global Physics (IPGP) gave what he described as a "top-range" estimate of 300,000 tonnes per day.

Extrapolated over a year, the emissions would place the volcano 47th to 75th in the world table of emitters on a country-by-country basis, according to a database at the World Resources Institute (WRI), which tracks environment and sustainable development.

A 47th ranking would place it above Austria, Belarus, Portugal, Ireland, Finland, Bulgaria, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland, according to this list, which relates to 2005.

Experts stressed that the volcano contributed just a tiny amount -- less than a third of one percentage point -- of global emissions of greenhouse gases.

Total emissions by six heat-trapping gases in 2005 were more than 36 thousand million tonnes (36 gigatonnes) as measured in CO2, according to the WRI index.

"It's not of any significance compared to the anthropogenic [manmade] budget," said Kjetil Toerseth, director of regional and global pollution at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research.

Specialists cautioned those who believe the eruption is good for climate change as carbon-emitting jetliners are unable to take to the skies.

According to the European Environment Agency (EAA), daily emissions from the aviation sector in the 27 nations of the European Union are around 440,000 tonnes per day.

In addition, carbon is emitted when passengers stranded by air travel use the train, bus, car or ferry as an alternative.

And many flights in, to and from Europe are merely being deferred until the crisis is over.

"Whether the emissions occur now or three weeks from now does not change things fundamentally," said Herve Le Treut, a French climatologist.

"Another point is that these emissions are of long duration. CO2 is dangerous because it stays in the atmosphere for about a hundred years. Its short-term effect is not the big problem." (AFP)

This is a copy. It begs the question. Dr Glikson, is an Earth and paleo-climate scientist at the Australian National University. He’s paid to give us both sides of the story.

Dr Andrew Glikson says the right motherhood lines [see: Case for Climate Change]: he talks about empirical evidence, and wants evidence based policies. All this is good, yet he sidesteps the main point — what exactly is the evidence for the theory of man-made global warming? It’s the only point that matters, yet when he presents evidence it’s either not empirical, not up to date, or not relevant. Why?

By hitting all the right key phrases a reader might accidentally think that Glikson is presenting key evidence and good reasoning. Take this for example: Glikson fears we’re turning away from evidence-based policies. (Me too!) But to complete the sentence he lists all the committees who predict bad weather 90 years from now. It makes for good PR, but is not scientific evidence.

Committee reports count as “evidence” in a court of law, but in science, certificates, declarations, contracts, commission hearings, or 3000 page reports don’t mean anything. Clouds don’t give a toss about what committees predict.

Arctic ice and sea levels are at least empirical evidence, but in this case, they’re irrelevant.

They don’t tell us anything about what caused the warming. Almost any cause of warming would melt sea ice. Then there’s the problem that global sea ice is looking fairly robust. The Arctic has shrunk some, but the Antarctic has grown. Each year millions of square kilometres of ice melt on each half of the globe, and each year they also refreeze. Peak global sea ice is roughly the same now as it was in 1979.[i] And far from being “worse than expected,” Arctic sea ice in 2010 is breaking records—still growing until the end of March.[ii]

Rising sea-levels are similar—they’re evidence of warming, but not evidence that carbon caused the warming. And as far as the “it’s worse than we thought” theme goes: where is the scary surprising uptick? If anything, instead of an upcurve, the graph has slightly flattened off. The trend is utterly predictable, except that it might be rising less fast than the predictions.

Any careful scientist ought to be very qualified in using statements implying “accelerating trends”. Unfounded claims about the need to rush in and sign the dotted line are like a sales pitch: Hurry, last chance! Don’t wait for more evidence…

along with several e-mail exchanges with Kevin Trenberth. I have repeated this set of exchanges here, as well as new ones from an invitation to Josh Willis for his comments. The e-mails (presented with their permissions) are ordered from first to most recent [with spelling typos corrected]. I want to thank both Kevin and Josh for a constructive discussion which I look forward to continuing. This discussion can only further inform us of the issues associated with accurately monitoring the climate system. (Climate Science)

A French government report on Monday urged tighter regulation of the fast-growing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions trading market, which has suffered from exploitation of legal loopholes and illegal sales practices.

France's finance ministry commissioned Michel Prada, former head of the country's AMF stock market watchdog, to publish a report on the CO2 emissions market.

Prada's report said there should be stricter fines against those who abuse the CO2 market or commit fraud in the sector. His report also advocated harmonizing laws across Europe for the carbon industry. (Reuters)

Spanish government plans to force utilities to burn domestic coal further slash coal imports in what has been a key European market and help cap coal prices, utilities, producers and analysts said.

Spain imported over 18 million tonnes of steam coal in 2009 but imports could fall to only a few million tonnes this year due to strong hydro availability and the forced use of domestic fuel, utilities said.

"I think the decree is the final blow (for imports)," said Amrita Sen, an analyst for Barclays Capital in London, noting that coal faced increasing competition from wind and hydropower.

"We expect Spanish coal imports to fall by as much as 3.7 million tonnes in 2010, especially given the healthy domestic stockpiles."

Spain has been one of the strongest markets for coal exports from South Africa, Colombia, the U.S. and Russia for many years. The fall in demand across Europe has forced exporters to divert substantial tonnage to Asia and led to an unprecedented price distortion.

The delivered cost of coal shipped to Europe should reflect the price at the port of loading plus the freight cost but at present the delivered Europe price of around $77.00 a tonne is $10.00 lower than the price at South Africa's Richards Bay port.

"This decree will make the situation even worse. You could see zero imports for some time," one utility source said.

Spanish coal cannot compete with imports and has a low energy content, but the government says it is the only fuel the country can produce domestically in significant quantities and needs support to guarantee energy supplies. (Reuters)

THE federal government has ruled out offering incentives for electric cars, preferring to support existing oil-based technology.

Consumer subsidies such as those offered by overseas governments are crucial to ensuring Australian buyers can access the limited supply of electric cars, car companies say.

The first production electric car, Mitsubishi's i-MiEV, which will arrive at the end of the year, is understood to cost about $70,000.

The federal government instead believes the future of the car industry lies in the development of existing technology across petrol, diesel and LPG engines.

''It's not our intention to run programs to support any particular form of technology,'' Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Kim Carr said.

''Over the next decade, the most rapid and cost-effective way of improving fuel economy and building more environmentally effective cars is to adapt technologies that are being deployed now.''

The government will spend $1.3 billion over the next 10 years to increase production of cleaner, more efficient vehicles. But the money is going to manufacturers, such as Toyota, for the development of the hybrid Camry, rather than consumers in the form of rebates or tax incentives. (SMH)

Editor note: In Part I and Part II, Jon Boone set the stage for a final analysis of the Sierra Club’s current position in support of wind power. This conclusion to the series provides a discussion on the science, realities, and the unintended consequences that may be the result of current environmental movement thinking, which it typifies.

MBA types who wouldn’t know a bat from a bowtie now run the national Sierra Club. Their interest is in gaining membership and revenue. In a critique aptly entitled, Torquemada in Birkenstocks, Jeff St. Clair said this about Carl Pope: “[He] has never had much of a reputation as an environmental activist. He’s a wheeler-dealer, who keeps the Club’s policies in lockstep with its big funders and political patrons. Where Dave Brower scaled mountains, nearly all of Pope’s climbing has been up organizational ladders.”

Environmental organizations that support wind technology by pretending that the ends justify the means, by falsely assuming that wind can do anything meaningful to alter our existing energy profile, are largely responsible for the depredations unloosed by the wind industry. Their imprimatur gives the industry a legitimacy it does not deserve. This “legitimacy” welcomes the industry’s trade association to a place at the government table, which then compels politicians to bestow upon the wind lobby political favors, given the political penchant for compromise. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

The drill, baby, drill crowd was quick to discover that the President’s offshore drilling announcement does very little to increase access to domestic supplies and in fact puts 13 billion barrels of oil and 49 trillion cubic feet of natural gas off limits, respectively. Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has been much more supportive of offshore wind energy, but should he be? A new Institute for Energy Research video compares a natural gas platform to an offshore wind platform and in terms of surface area and cost, natural gas wins out.

That’s not to say the government should favor offshore drilling of oil and natural gas at the expense of offshore wind projects or any other energy source. Instead of completely closing the books or causing unnecessary delays, the government should allow industry to pursue these opportunities.

A rural Republican is targeted by the environmental left.

To accurately gauge the level of desperation in the environmental community at any given moment, simply murmur the words "Richard Pombo." Then step back and watch the slurs roll.

Ground zero in the nation's environmental fight has already been established in California's 19th district, where Mr. Pombo—a Republican who narrowly lost his House seat in 2006—is again running in the Central Valley. It's only April, but the green shock troops are again waging an all-out smear campaign to defeat him, this time with an assist from one of his Republican primary competitors. It's a vivid example of the stakes for the green agenda in this year's midterm elections.

Regulatory wins aside, it's been a bleak 15 months for the environmental left. President Obama's election was supposed to bring a climate-control regime that would finally give greens the tools to dismantle our industrial society. Instead, scandal has left climate science in tatters. The recession has sent the majority scurrying away from a comprehensive cap-and-tax bill. Some Democrats are embracing legislation to curtail the EPA's planned carbon regulations.

Their campaign in the balance, enviros shudder at Mr. Pombo back in Washington. For 14 years—four heading the House Resources committee—the rancher was the GOP's sturdiest voice on private property rights, energy exploration and environmental reform. Even as the Bush administration ducked the fight, Mr. Pombo pushed for drilling and for the modernization of failed laws like the Endangered Species Act. Greens decreed him Public Enemy No. 1.

In 2006 they launched the most coordinated, expensive attack in their political history. The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, the Sierra Club, the League for Conservation Voters, and CREW (a George-Soros-funded front that masquerades as a public "watchdog") spent $2 million-plus on vicious ads, mailers and door-to-door campaigning. Helped by a Democratic gerrymander that pushed Mr. Pombo's 11th district into liberal San Francisco suburbs, Democrat Jerry McNerney won. The effort was a warning to other Republicans—and it worked. Aside from oil drilling, the GOP has largely skirted green issues, for fear—as members put it—of being "Pombo-ed."

Now Mr. Pombo is back, running in retiring Rep. George Radanovich's neighboring 19th district, nearly overlapping his original seat. Should Republicans regain the majority, Mr. Pombo could be right back at Resources, the fate of greens' climate agenda in his hands. (Kimberley A. Strassel, WSJ)

It has been called the "Domesday book of British wildlife" - a new publication, compiled by 40 of Britain's leading scientists, provides a complete picture of the state of the country's wild animals and plants.

...

Sir David Attenborough says in the book's foreword: "This book... gives us a benchmark. It is invaluable now and in the future it will be irreplaceable."

The book highlights the importance of field sports to the wellbeing of wildlife. Robin Sharp, Chair Emeritus of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, says that "field sports ... have been almost universally good for the hunted species and the non-hunted, non-predators that thrive in the same habitat".

Prof Sharp praises foxhunting and reveals that 86 per cent of woodland managed for hunting had vegetation cover – important for other species – compared with just 64 per cent in unmanaged woodland.

Managed areas also had an average of four more plant species, greater plant diversity and more butterfly species than unmanaged areas.

Prof Sharp also reports on a study of three areas in central England which found that all owners of land used for hunting and shooting had planted new woodland, compared with only 30 per cent of landowners who did not host hunts or shoots.

"This suggests that those who hunt and / or shoot provide significant conservation benefits," he said.

Prof Sharp calls on hunters and shooters to make more effort to explain the benefits of their activities to conservationists, policy-makers and the public.

"Overwhelmingly the target species for field sports have fared well over the last century ... More game-keeping, game crops and habitat management would undoubtedly achieve even more." (TDT)

The campaign to make ‘ecocide’ a crime sums up the opportunism and censoriousness of the green lobby.

Under normal circumstances, someone who started a campaign called Trees Have Rights Too in order to convince the United Nations to adopt a Universal Declaration of Planetary Rights, based on the idea that ‘we are all one, life is sacred and love is all’, might reasonably be suspected of being an LSD-tripping hippy.

But it seems that we don’t live in normal times. Because Polly Higgins, an environmentalist barrister and the initiator of the Planetary Rights campaign, was not only included in The Ecologist’s 2009 list of Top 10 Visionaries, but in 2008 she was even invited to address the United Nations. When Higgins launched a campaign last Friday to have ‘ecocide’, the destruction of the natural world, recognised as an international crime, some commentators argued that this confirmed her brilliance and heroism. (Nathalie Rothschild, spiked)

ERADICATING smallpox was one of mankind's greatest accomplishments but a New Zealand researcher says trying to wipe out diseases for good is a waste of money.

Dr Michael Gavin, a biologist at Victoria University, Wellington, says reducing the prevalence of diseases in the countries and regions most affected by them is a far more effective than trying to eradicate them altogether, which is extremely difficult and costs billions of dollars.

And new research shows the number of disease-causing pathogens in a region can be predicted just by knowing its climate, the diversity of birds and mammals found there, and whether it has a large human population and ineffective disease control efforts.

Climate played a role in determining how many different kinds of diseases there were, but not how many people would suffer from them.

Because disease was not restricted by political boundaries and local epidemics could rapidly transform into global pandemics, reducing prevalence in one part of the world also benefited people everywhere, according to Dr Gavin, who has studied geographic patterns of human infectious disease. (AAP)

Tuesday’s Panorama used highly dubious science to accuse working-class parents of making their kids sick.

‘These children should not be suffering from these problems and they should not be here at this hospital. People are starting to say maybe this is a generation where children will be dying before their parents.’ Dr Steve Ryan’s soundbite, advertising Tuesday’s edition of the BBC current affairs programme Panorama, was trailed so heavily that it was hard for British TV viewers to avoid it.

The message of the programme was clear: people in Britain - and especially working-class families in Liverpool - are causing pain and suffering to their children, and may even be signing their death warrants. In truth, it is this endless diet of bullshit programmes about our children’s health that is really bad news. (Rob Lyons, spiked)

NEW YORK - The more people eat "diet" versions of richer foods, the less they may actually like what they are tasting, a small study suggests.

The findings, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggest that familiarity can breed dislike when it comes to reduced-calorie foods. They may also offer some insight into the common dilemma of "yo-yo" dieting, the researchers say. (Reuters Health)

NOW that Congress has pushed through its complicated legislation to reform the health insurance system, it could take one more simple step to protect the health of all Americans. This one wouldn’t raise any taxes or make any further changes to our health insurance system, so it could be quickly passed by Congress with an outpouring of bipartisan support. Or could it?

More than 30 years ago, when I was commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration, we proposed eliminating the use of penicillin and two other antibiotics to promote growth in animals raised for food. When agribusiness interests persuaded Congress not to approve that regulation, we saw firsthand how strong politics can trump wise policy and good science.

Even back then, this nontherapeutic use of antibiotics was being linked to the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria that infect humans. To the leading microbiologists on the F.D.A.’s advisory committee, it was clearly a very bad idea to fatten animals with the same antibiotics used to treat people. But the American Meat Institute and its lobbyists in Washington blocked the F.D.A. proposal. (NYT)

The dead hand of the EU has struck again, this time affecting Anglian Willow Services, based in King Street, High Ongar.

It has been producing wood for cricket bats since the late 1700s, but now faces closure following the introduction of a Directive enforced on the UK in March, which bans use of the insecticide, methyl bromide.

The chemical, which has been banned "because of its effect on the environment", is necessary for the treatment of willow before it can be exported to India and made into cricket bats.

The ban threatens the £3m-a-year Essex-based world cricket bat industry, as well as putting the future of the Watling family business in jeopardy. Val Watling, company secretary for Anglian Willow Services, says: "I am horrified by the whole thing. It's not just going to affect us, it will mean closure for any of the businesses that are involved in the exportation of willow for cricket bats."

Both Anglian Willow Services and JS Wright, of Great Leighs, were lulled by promises that an alternative to methyl bromide treatment would precede the ban - but it did not.

Val's son Geoff Watling, who is a director of the family business, said: "They say a form of heat treatment can be used but that actually splits willow so we are basically left with nothing.

"The Indian Government cannot allow our willow to be imported without a treatment certificate. On that basis I give our industry 12 weeks to survive. We alone have 1,400 prepared trees ready to go and Wrights, who are responsible for up to 80 per cent of the UK supply, have 20 times that amount," he says.

"The current rules of cricket demand bats are made of willow. Without quality East Anglian willow the worldwide game supply of test standard and 20-20 bats could dry up within two years."

Perhaps though, they could use hockey sticks ... of which East Anglia University seems to have a plentiful supply. But what will poor Rajendra do? (EU Referendum)

The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday proposed rules to cut mercury air emissions from U.S. gold ore processing and production facilities.

The proposal would affect about 20 facilities in the United States that extract gold ore, the EPA said. Mercury can damage children's developing brains and nervous systems.

The agency's proposal would slash annual mercury emissions to about 1,390 pounds a year - a 73 percent reduction from 2007 levels. The federal policy will build on reductions from Nevada's program for controlling mercury emissions from precious metal mining.

Gold ore processing and production are the sixth largest source of U.S. mercury air emissions.

The EPA will take public comment on the proposal for 30 days. (Reuters)

Unafraid, questioning minds are central to the pursuit of truth and democracy

AT Easter, the official Greenpeace website carried a blog written by Gene Hashmi, communications director of its affiliate in India. Hashmi pointed his finger at sceptics who fuelled "spurious debates around false solutions" and concluded with the not too subtle threat: "We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work. And we be many but you be few."

Welcome to a world where the term sceptic has acquired the meaning usually associated with a Dark Age heresy.

Fearing a backlash to a statement that most normal readers would interpret as an incitement to violence, Greenpeace pulled the blog from its site.

It defensively justified its act of self-censorship on the ground that it was very "easy to misconstrue" the statement.

However, the usage of a highly charged, intemperate rhetoric has become the hallmark of the present crusade against scepticism. Some contend that the arguments of climate change sceptics bear an uncanny resemblance to the statements made by pro-slavery reactionaries in the 19th century and by Holocaust deniers. More imaginative environmental activists have proposed the establishment of Nuremberg-style trials for climate change sceptics.

It is truly astonishing that in an era that claims to uphold the pursuit of knowledge, freedom of speech and scientific inquiry, the term sceptic often conveys connotations of immoral and corrupt behaviour. Yet today the practice of stigmatising scepticism is not confined to a small minority of dogmatic true believers. It is quite common for scientists, policy-makers and campaigners to denounce those who do not share their beliefs as vile and contemptible sceptics.

Self-help guru Deepak Chopra writes of the "perils of scepticism". John Houghton, former head of the British Meteorological Office, warns of a "dangerous mood of scepticism". Economist Jeffrey Sachs has condemned climate sceptics as "recycled critics of controls on tobacco and acid rain".

So typically in the debate on climate change, sceptics are characterised as dishonest, malevolent, greedy and corrupt.

"Environmental scepticism is a blunt weapon wielded by desperate and self-interested apologists to perpetuate an archaic system predicated on the destruction of the Earth and her communities," New Zealand academic William Hipwell wrote. (Frank Furedi, The Australian)

Practitioners in informal science settings--museums, after-school programs, science and technology centers, media enterprises, libraries, aquariums, zoos, and botanical gardens--are interested in finding out what learning looks like, how to measure it, and what they can do to ensure that people of all ages, from different backgrounds and cultures, have a positive learning experience.

Surrounded by Science: Learning Science in Informal Environments, is designed to make that task easier. Based on the National Research Council study, Learning Science in Informal Environments: People, Places, and Pursuits, this book is a tool that provides case studies, illustrative examples, and probing questions for practitioners. In short, this book makes valuable research accessible to those working in informal science: educators, museum professionals, university faculty, youth leaders, media specialists, publishers, broadcast journalists, and many others. (NAP)

WASHINGTON -- When liberals advocate a value-added tax, conservatives should respond: Taxing consumption has merits, so we will consider it -- after the 16th Amendment is repealed.

A VAT will be rationalized as necessary to restore fiscal equilibrium. But without ending the income tax, a VAT would be just a gargantuan instrument for further subjugating Americans to government. (George Will, Townhall)

The folks over at Reason.tv have produced a great video explaining how public sector unions are stifling economic recovery. It notes that unionized workers already made more than their private sector counterparts before the recession and that the pay gap has only grown since then.

Government jobs don’t create wealth because all the money they spend comes from tax dollars that are taken from another part of the economy. Government union jobs are not a net gain like a private sector jobs are.

With the Obama Administration hiring more and more government workers and making it more and more difficult for private sector companies to survive, it could be a long time before our nation’s unemployment rate returns to normal

California is an example of what not to do. Unions (because of the laws they worked to pass) have put California on the edge of bankruptcy and turned their bonds into junk bonds. The LA Times reported: Continue reading... (The Foundry)

GENEVA - The Icelandic volcanic eruption that has paralysed air traffic in much of Europe could also harm people with breathing problems, the World Health Organisation said on Friday.

The United Nations health agency has not yet ascertained the heath risks from this specific eruption, but once the clouds settle they could be dangerous, spokesman Daniel Epstein said.

"Any particulate matter that is deposited, breathed into the lungs is dangerous to people so we are concerned about that but we don't have details yet," he told a briefing.

The WHO drew up health guidelines in 2005 on particles emitted from eruptions, Epstein said. (Reuters)

My article in the Mail on Sunday seems to have evoked a substantial number of hostile and some abusive comments.

Right now, though, my view that the complete closure of UK (and European) airspace might have been an over-reaction seems to be gaining some support, with reports such as this in the Los Angeles Times and Flight International, the latter talking of a "backlash".

It seems also that UK airline pilots are questioning the ban, with their union BALPA seeking clarification on whether the UK air navigation service NATS and the country's meteorological office have consulted with other authorities experienced in ash-cloud analysis.

"Pilots will want to know on what basis the decision to re-open is being taken," says BALPA general secretary Jim McAuslan, adding that the union needs to understand the specific criteria involved and whether the safety assessment is founded on computer models or flight-testing.

This is something of a loaded statement, as all the indications are that assessments are made primarily on the basis of computer models. They are run by the London Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre, part of the Met Office – the very same that brought us computer modelled global warming. (EU Referendum)

THERE was some hope for stranded passengers today after British Airways completed a 'perfect' test flight.

Several other European carriers have also launched test flights to challenge warnings that the ash cloud spreading from Iceland's Eyjafjoell volcano would destroy jet engines. Air France and KLM reported no problems so far.

The tests come after a group of the continent's 36 major carriers called on governments for an "immediate reassessment" of the flight restrictions, saying they were having a "devastating impact" on the industry, and questioning whether they were proportionate.

"Airlines must be able to fly where it is safe to fly and make decisions accordingly. It is what our passengers demand of us," the Association of European Airlines said. (news.com.au)

EUROPEAN airlines last night conducted test flights without encountering problems through the volcanic ash that has paralysed air travel, as they pressed for airspace to reopen and criticised the grounding of jets.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Lufthansa and Air Berlin of Germany staged test flights and Air France planned to send a jet up last night over the country's southeast.

But authorities extended airspace restrictions in 30 countries across Europe, and said there was no end in sight to the plume spewing out of a volcano in Iceland, which they insist is dangerous. (The Australian)

Microbial mat the size of Greece found on oxygen-starved South American seafloor

Ocean explorers are puzzling out Nature's purpose behind an astonishing variety of tiny ocean creatures like microbes and zooplankton animals - each perhaps a ticket-holder in life's lottery, awaiting conditions that will allow it to prosper and dominate.

The inventory and study of the hardest-to-see sea species -- tiny microbes, zooplankton, larvae and burrowers in the sea bed, which together underpin almost all other life on Earth -- is the focus of four of 14 field projects of the Census of Marine Life.

Israel hopes to fill the Sea of Galilee with a great multitude of fishes.

Responding to a decline in the number of fish in the Biblical lake -- where the Gospels say Jesus miraculously produced huge catches for his disciples' nets -- Israel has banned fishermen from trawling the waters for two years.

"This stems from a desire to maintain an ecological balance, preserve water quality and revive fishing which has nearly died out in the Kinneret," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, using the Hebrew name for the Sea of Galilee, said on Sunday.

Announcing details of the moratorium, Netanyahu told his cabinet that fishermen would receive government compensation and the Sea of Galilee would be restocked with fish brought from the outside.

"It's a matter of concern for me because I used to fish there: the fish was excellent and it's important to us to continue to enjoy excellent fish and water from the Kinneret," he said, in broadcast remarks, about Israel's biggest reservoir. (Reuters)

Cravenness and horse trading are too often the political reality in Washington, but a deal now in the works is particularly cruel.

Congress is poised, finally, to give the tax-paying citizens of the District of Columbia what they have been so long and so unfairly denied: a representative with the power to vote. But the gun lobby has extracted too high a price: the scuttling of vital local gun controls intended to keep the capital city’s residents safe.

The district’s — nonvoting — representative, Eleanor Holmes Norton, has reluctantly accepted this extortion. “The strength of gun forces in Congress has grown, not diminished,” she declared in explaining why she felt forced to abandon her long fight for a measure free of gun lobby abuses. She estimates that her cause and the Democratic majority may only be weakened in the next election. And she feels the gun lobby is powerful enough to oppress the district with a stand-alone measure. (NYT)

Six weeks ago, it looked as if there was no chance that Congress would approve climate change legislation this year.

The bill that had passed the House was so long, so complicated, so punitive to the coal-dependent Midwest economy, involved so many political compromises and so much money to be redistributed by the federal government, that it became the whipping boy of choice for conservative politicians and commentators.

Passage of health-care legislation, however, may have changed all that. (Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post)

Point Carbon, a market analysis firm, estimated on Thursday U.S. gasoline prices would rise an average of 27 cents per gallon from 2013 to 2020 if expected U.S. climate legislation led by Senator John Kerry becomes law.

U.S. carbon prices should average about $31 a tonne from 2013 to 2020, said Point Carbon, which projected it would take a couple of years to set up a system should a law be passed. The 27-cent per gallon rise would have been an 11 percent rise on the average 2009 gasoline price of $2.35 per gallon.

A compromise climate bill being drafted by Kerry, a Democrat, and Senators Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Joe Lieberman, an independent, will be unveiled on April 26, according to a source.

Point Carbon said the expected bill has a slim chance of passing Congress amid opposition from lawmakers in coal and oil states. (Reuters)

Canada will not act this year on a cap-and-trade system to control climate change because the government does not expect the U.S. to pass emissions-control legislation this year, Canada's environment minister said Thursday.

Jim Prentice said Canada is committed to harmonizing its climate change initiatives with the United States so that it can reduce greenhouse gas emissions without damaging its trade relations with its southern neighbor. (Associated Press)

Global warming policy is no longer driving comprehensive climate legislation as it did last year with the House's Waxman-Markey bill. The new message, considered to resonate better with the public and be more agreeable among legislators, has this three-pronged goal: energy independence, job creation, and cleaner air.

The Senate's version is expected to be released later this month, several days after April 22, so as not to coincide with Earth Day. A major reason is "we don't want to send a mixed message," according to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) yesterday in the National Journal. (JoAnn Blake, Examiner)

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday the country will pull out of the Kyoto environmental agreement if a compromise cannot be found concerning the reduction of carbon emissions.

"All countries, including developed and developing economies, should reach an agreement, or, if we do not agree on this [the common terms of carbon emissions reduction], Russia will not prolong its participation in the Kyoto agreement - you cannot have it both ways," the president said. (Climate Realists)

The Italian Senate stands for climate realism. A motion passed on last Wednesday commits the Italian government to promote a sound discussion on climate policies with the European Union and the United Nations, with particular regard to the major changes that have occurred after the economic recession, the Climategate scandal, and the failure to reach a global deal in Copenhagen. In fact, the Senate asks both that the current commitments under the EU climate and energy package are re-negotiated, and that an independent investigation is started on the IPCC process. (Carlo Stagnaro, Istituto Bruno Leoni, via GWPF)

The project that worked best is focused on stimulating innovation in renewable energy technology using public funds. The ones that performed the worst were focused on efficiency gains and energy consumption reduction (which some people call conservation). The programs focused on conservation probably could not be justified except for their co-benefits, such as related to water savings.

The annual report referred to in the article above can be downloaded here in PDF.

There are important lessons here about the effectiveness of public investments in innovation and the limits of efforts to promote efficiencies. (Roger Pielke Jr)

From Macbeth to Watergate, it’s not the act that leads to nemesis, but the attempts to 'trammel up the consequence’ , writes Christopher Booker.

If you were faced with by far the biggest bill of your life, would you not want to be confident that there was a very good reason why you should pay it? That is why we need to know just how far we can trust the science behind the official view that the world is threatened with catastrophe by global warming – because the measures proposed by our politicians to avert this supposed disaster threaten to transform our way of life out of recognition and to land us with easily the biggest bill in history. (The Climate Change Act alone, says the Government, will cost us all £18 billion every year until 2050.)

Yet in recent months, as we know, the official science on which all this rests has taken quite a hammering. Confronted with all those scandals surrounding the “Climategate” emails and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the political and academic establishments have responded with a series of inquiries and statements designed to show that the methods used to construct the official scientific case are wholly sound. But as was illustrated last week by two very different reports, these efforts to hold the line are themselves so demonstrably flawed that they are in danger of backfiring, leaving the science more questionable than ever. (Christopher Booker, TDT)

The UK’s information watchdog has told a university it has to release the tree ring data at the centre of a long running freedom of information fight.

Douglas Keenan, an independent researcher, has been attempting to get Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) to give him data including the width of rings and the location of trees used by its climate researchers (see: Keenan’s website). The university refused and Keenan appealed to the Information Commissioner (see: Climate researcher vs FOI, part two, Nature).

Now the Commissioner has ruled that all the grounds cited by the university for withholding the data are not valid. “The Commissioner requires QUB to disclose the withheld information ... within 35 calendar days of the date of this Notice.” it says in a ruling dated 29 March (pdf).

The ruling also states that there were “a number of procedural breaches” in the handling of Keenan’s request.

“This has taken three years, but it is worth it,” said Keenan in an email. “It is an important victory for FoI [Freedom of Information] on research data. Also, for global warming studies, the data is extremely valuable for reconstructing temperatures over past millennia

“The University has received the Information Commissioner’s Decision Notice on this matter and is considering its position,” QUB said in a statement.

Image: photo by Steve & Jemma Copley via Flickr under creative commons. (Nature Blog)

Police investigating the alleged theft of e-mails behind the recent “Climategate” uproar have been telephoning climate change sceptics to question them about their political and scientific beliefs.

The Norfolk Constabulary was called in by the University of East Anglia after thousands of its climate scientists’ confidential e-mails were published online last November. The documents appeared to show the scientists concealing information and manipulating data to fit their theories, although two independent inquiries have cleared the university of wrongdoing.

The Financial Times has learnt that everybody who made a request to the university’s climate research unit under Freedom of Information rules ahead of the alleged hacking is being approached by officers searching for the culprits.

In a letter to the FT, Sebastian Nokes, a businessman and climate change sceptic, said he was interviewed at length by a detective, who “wanted to know what computer I used, my internet service provider, and also to which political parties I have belonged, what I feel about climate change and what my qualifications in climate science are. He questioned me at length about my political and scientific opinions”.

Mr Nokes said he had sent an FOI request to the university’s climate unit asking whether scientists had received training in the disclosure rules and asking for copies of any e-mails in which they suggested ducking their obligations to disclose data. (James Boxell and Fiona Harvey, Financial Times)

After months of controversy, the University of East Anglia climate unit was exonerated last week over the leaked emails affair. Science Editor Robin McKie says there are lessons to be learned – but those who call themselves sceptics must address their own intellectual dishonesty ( Robin McKie, The Observer)

Honorary president George Monbiot and his equally green colleagues at CampaignCC.ORG, Campaign against Climate Change, are already tired of the denialist propaganda. So they ask you to register your e-mail at the following page,

THE GROUNDING of 63,000 flights over the past four days has saved 1.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, more than the annual emissions of many developing countries. ( Ben Webster, The Times)

OSLO – A thaw of Iceland's ice caps in coming decades caused by climate change may trigger more volcanic eruptions by removing a vast weight and freeing magma from deep below ground, scientists said on Friday.

They said there was no sign that the current eruption from below the Eyjafjallajokull glacier that has paralysed flights over northern Europe was linked to global warming. The glacier is too small and light to affect local geology.

"Our work suggests that eventually there will be either somewhat larger eruptions or more frequent eruptions in Iceland in coming decades," said Freysteinn Sigmundsson, a vulcanologist at the University of Iceland. (Reuters)

This article is mainly a thread to discuss various aspects of the volcano that erupted beneath the Eyjafjallajökull glacier in Iceland - which I will call the E-word glacier for obvious reasons.

Global warming has evaporated the glacier ;-) so thousands of tons of ash are flying above Europe. Yes, of course: volcano eruptions are caused by climate change, much like everything else.

Even if global warming were causing eruptions ;-), it's irrelevant now because there's been no warming in Iceland since 1941.

You should ignore the data from 1947 (incorrectly lowered average) and 1948 (completely absent) - the downward peak - because the daily data from April 1947 through December 1948 are unavailable.

Mathematica command used to produce the graph above:

Smoke from a subglacial volcanic eruption rises above the Vatnajökull ice cap (photo by Oddur Sigurdsson) Image via Ben Orlove, UC Davis, click for his page.

This caught my attention because I used to work as a volcano researcher and igneous petrologist.

Interesting theory, but does it work quantitatively? Magmas, as with most solids, do show a direct relationship between the melting point and pressure. As the pressure increases, so does the melting point. (Ice is a noticeable exception to this, and shows an inverse relationship. The reason that people can ice skate is because the pressure under the blade creates a thin later of melted ice which lubricates the surface.

Below is a phase diagram of a basaltic magma similar to that found in Iceland, showing the relationship between temperature and pressure. The melting temperature does decrease at lower pressures. From 100 km depth to 0 km the melting point drops about 300°C. That is about 3°C / km. Ice is about one third as dense as basaltic magma, so the loss of 1 km of ice lowers the melting point by about 1C, or less than 0.1%. Read the rest of this entry »

In 1883, Krakatoa produced massive amounts of ash during an eruption estimated to the equivalent of 200 megatons – or 13 times larger than the Hydrogen Bomb detonated at Bikini Island. Average global temperatures dropped by about 1.2°C during the following year as a result of ash blocking the sun.

Aerosol pollution, which is now on the downswing, has helped keep the planet cool by blocking sunlight. Tackling another pollutant, soot, might buy Earth some time.

You're likely to hear a chorus of dire warnings as we approach Earth Day, but there's a serious shortage few pundits are talking about: air pollution. That's right, the world is running short on air pollution, and if we continue to cut back on smoke pouring forth from industrial smokestacks, the increase in global warming could be profound.

Cleaner air, one of the signature achievements of the U.S. environmental movement, is certainly worth celebrating. Scientists estimate that the U.S. Clean Air Act has cut a major air pollutant called sulfate aerosols, for example, by 30% to 50% since the 1980s, helping greatly reduce cases of asthma and other respiratory problems. ( Eli Kintisch, LA Times)

In 2009, environmentalists were sure global warming was the reason California’s Bay Area fog was increasing. Now they’re saying global warming is making the fog go away—indicating that the science may not be as “settled” as some seem to think.

Gateway Pundit noted that in 2009, The San Francisco Chronicle claimed that “The Bay Area just had its foggiest May in 50 years. And thanks to global warming, it’s about to get even foggier.” Yet, in 2010, The Telegraph has asserted that “the sight of Golden Gate Bridge towering above the fog will become increasing [sic] rare as climate change warms San Francisco bay.”

The first article was written in May of 2009; the second, February of 2010. When scientists start trying to explain how global warming is affecting our everyday life, their findings conflict drastically. Both papers and claims are under a year old. Which one do we trust? Continue reading... (The Foundry)

The authoritative Monthly CO2 Report for February 2010 reports on the attempts of the US Administration to legislate – via Congress, via the EPA, and via the UN – to stifle and destroy forever the freedom for which the Founding Fathers so valiantly strove. Editorial Comment: Page 3.

FEATURED: The Himalayan glaciers are doing just fine. Professor Cliff Ollier sends us a special report. Pages 4-9.

IPCC assumes CO2 concentration will reach 836 ppmv by 2100, but, for nine years, CO2 concentration has headed straight for only 570 ppmv by 2100. This factor alone almost halves all of the IPCC’s temperature projections. Pages 10-12.

Since 1980 global temperature has risen at only 2.5 °F (1.4 °C)/century, not 7 F° (3.9 C°) as IPCC predicts. Pages 13-15.

Sea level rose just 8 inches in the 20th century, and has been rising since 1993 at a very modest 1 ft/century. Page 16.

Arctic sea-ice extent is at a 10-year record for the time of year. In the Antarctic, sea ice extent reached a record high in 2007. Global sea ice extent shows little trend for 30 years. Pages 17-21.

Hurricane and tropical-cyclone activity is almost at its lowest since satellite measurement began. Pages 22-24.

Sunspot activity is back to normal: but, looking back it was a long – and cool – solar minimum. Pages 25-26.

The (very few) benefits and the (very large) costs of the Waxman/Markey Bill are illustrated at Pages 27-30.

Aswan damnation: This month’s Science Focus looks at how the Aswan High Dam is causing Sahelian drought. Page 31.

As always, there’s our “global warming” ready reckoner, and our monthly selection of scientific papers. Pages 32-37.

The medieval warm period was real, global, and warmer than the present, as our global map shows. Page 38.

And finally ... our very own Climate Codswallopometer: a Very Important Graph. Page 39.

Here’s a story about how one missing letter, an M, can wreck a whole month’s worth of climate data. It is one of the longest posts ever made on WUWT, I spent almost my entire Saturday on it. I think it might also be one of the most important because it demonstrates a serious weakness in surface data reporting.

The anomaly over Finland has an interesting signature to it, and the correction that GISS posted on their website confirms something I’ve been looking at for a few months.

With some work I started back in late December and through January, and with GISS putting stamp of approval on “missing minus signs” I can now demonstrate that missing minus signs aren’t just an odd event, they happen with regularity, and the effect is quite pronounced when it does happen. This goes to the very heart of data gathering integrity and is rooted in simple human error. The fault lies not with GISS (though now they need a new quality control feature) but mostly with NOAA/NCDC who manages the GHCN and who also needs better quality control. The error originates at the airport, likely with a guy sitting in the control tower. Readers who are pilots will understand this when they see what I’m talking about.

I’ve seen this error happen all over the world. Please read on and be patient, there is a lot of minutiae that must be discussed to properly frame the issue. I have to start at the very bottom of the climate data food-chain and work upwards. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

Evidence that the world's water cycle has already intensified is contained in new research to be published in the American Journal of Climate.

The stronger water cycle means arid regions have become drier and high rainfall regions wetter as atmospheric temperature increases.

The study, co-authored by CSIRO scientists Paul Durack and Dr Susan Wijffels, shows the surface ocean beneath rainfall-dominated regions has freshened, whereas ocean regions dominated by evaporation are saltier. The paper also confirms that surface warming of the world’s oceans over the past 50 years has penetrated into the oceans’ interior changing deep-ocean salinity patterns.

"This is further confirmation from the global ocean that the Earth’s water cycle has accelerated," says Mr Durack – a PhD student at the joint CSIRO/University of Tasmania, Quantitative Marine Science program. (Press Release)

One of the claimed dangers of a few degrees warming of the Earth is increasing drought. Drought is a very difficult thing to fight, because it is hard to manufacture water. So this is a frightening possibility.

I have long claimed that “a warmer world is a wetter world”. I have said this without any actual data, based solely on the following logic.:

Increased temperature —> increased evaporation —> increased precipitation.

Today I graphed the numbers for the US precipitation. I used the USHCN state-by-state precipitation database, which also includes area-averaged values for regions of the US, and for the US itself.

Since the both the US and the globe have warmed since 1895 it seems that a warmer US is a wetter US. However, precipitation is spotty and unevenly distributed. One area can be very wet while a nearby area is dry, so what about the precipitation in each of the states?

PowerPoint slides from Dr. Willie Soon’s Congressional staff briefing held in DC on April 13, 2010.

The paper upon which the briefing was based can be found here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/carbon_myopia.html

Abstract:

In 2007 the Supreme Court commented that “greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act’s capacious definition of air pollutant.” In this presentation, Dr. Soon will discuss why atmospheric CO2 is not an “air pollutant”. Three points of discussion will be:

(1) CO2 is not an air pollutant,

(2) Ocean acidification claims are exaggerated,

(3) The magical CO2 control knob idea “to save the world” is essentially dead.

UPDATE (April 16 2010) WITH RESPONSE BY KEVIN TRENBERTH PRESENTED WITH HIS PERMISSION

There was a remarkable press release 0n April 15 from the NCAR/UCAR Media Relations titled

Trenberth’s [and co-author, NCAR scientist John Fasullo], however, are grasping for an explanation other than the actual real world implication of the absence of this heat.

Thus, a large amount heat (measured as Joules) does not appear to be stored anywhere; it just is not there.

There is no “heat in the pipeline” [or "unrealized heat"] as I have discussed most recently in my post

Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo are not recognizing that the diagnosis of upper ocean heat content changes (with it large mass) makes in an effective integrator of long term radiative imbalances of the climate system as I discussed in my papers

Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-334.pdf

The assessment of ocean heat storage changes in Joules is a much more robust methodology to assess global warming than the use of small changes in the satellite diagnosis of radiative forcing from the satellites which have uncertainties of at least the same order. Trenberth and Fasullo need to look more critically at the satellite data as well as propose how heat in Joules could be transported deep into the ocean without being seen.

I am contacting Kevin to see if he would respond to my comments on this news article (and his Science perspective) in a guest post on my weblog. (Climate Science)

The grid-based monthly anomaly satellite temperature files mounted on our server prior to 14 April 2010 were affected by an error in our recent merging of NOAA-18 into the data stream. This was corrected on 13 April and uploaded on 14 April.

We are sorry for this problem and thank alert users around the world for spotting the error (which showed up as a step-jump in the difference between land and ocean temperature anomalies) with NOAA-18 in 2005 so quickly (e.g. Alessandro Patrignani and Javier Arroyo) (Roy W. Spencer)

Norway on Friday slashed about a third off its oil and gas resource estimate for the waters off the Lofoten and Vesteraalen islands, bolstering those who oppose opening up the pristine Arctic region for drilling.

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, a government agency tasked with developing the country's offshore oil and gas riches, said the Arctic island waters could hold around 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

This estimate comes after seismic studies of the waters and compares to a previous one of about 2 billion barrels. Norway's government is due to decide on Lofoten drilling in late 2010. (Reuters)

China’s biggest corporation snapping up global oil and gas assets [Read More] (Xina Xie and Michael Economides, Energy Tribune)

European oil, gas and electricity production is unlikely to suffer under the volcanic ash cloud looming over much of northern Europe, industry sources said on Friday.

A huge ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano caused air travel chaos across Europe early on Friday, grounding commercial passenger jets and preventing staff-change helicopters from reaching oil and gas fields in the North Sea for a second day.

Helicopter flights to and from rigs in the Norwegian Sea, which lies to the north of the North Sea and largely above the area worst affected by the ash cloud, resumed on Friday, Norwegian oil and gas giant Statoil said, adding that flights might be possible to fields further south on Saturday, depending on the weather.

Oil and gas field representatives said flight bans would not have any impact on operations, other than to force workers offshore to stay at work for longer until the cloud passes and relief workers can replace them, unless the volcanic ash cloud were to clog European airspace for a long time.

"The impact on North Sea operations is minimal," a spokeswoman for Oil & Gas UK, the representative body for Britain's offshore oil and gas industry said. (Reuters)

Under the shadow of the West Virginia coal mine disaster earlier this month, a congressional hearing Wednesday on the future of coal in a “new energy age” seemed at times like a dialogue of the deaf.

Four representatives of the coal industry appeared Wednesday before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming in an atmosphere frosty enough to lower global temperatures itself.

Committee chairman Edward Markey (D-Mass) castigated the industry representatives for resisting measures to reduce carbon emissions and compared them to auto executives who ignored the need for change until it was too late.

Markey, who is co-author of a bill passed by the House to limit greenhouse gas emissions, urged the coal industry to get on board with the efforts to fight global warming.

“Today, with the future of the coal industry in your hands, I challenge you to join us in charting a new path forward to prevent a perilous outcome for your industry and for the planet,” Markey said in his opening remarks. “I ask that you cease efforts to deny the science of global warming and stop spending millions of dollars in misleading the public as to the true science behind climate change.”

Markey noted that the House bill offers billions of dollars in aid to help the industry develop clean coal technology.

Despite his pleas, Mike Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association, accused Congress and regulators of conducting a “war on coal” by imposing tougher limits on carbon emissions. He criticized the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding” about carbon dioxide emissions, which enable the regulator to take action without legislation. (Oil Price)

Families and small businesses across the nation face soaring costs of living, a struggling economy, and, as expected, rising gasoline prices as we head into the summer months. What is the Obama Administration’s solution? Make matters worse by putting the vast majority of America's offshore oil and natural gas resources off limits and doubling down on its “cap-and-trade” national energy tax that will destroy jobs and increase energy prices further. (John Boehner, Townhall)

ELECTRICITY prices across Australia were likely to triple over the next 10 years, Origin Energy chief executive Grant King warned yesterday.

Mr King told the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia in Sydney that a combination of the federal government's mandatory renewable-energy targets, energy policy uncertainty, higher electricity transmission and distribution costs, and higher fuel costs would drive the increase. (Glenda Korporaal, The Australian)

Editor note: In this three part series, Jon Boone traces the history of the Sierra Club from its inception in 1892 to today and comments on its evolution as an environmental body. Given this organization’s prominence in environmental thinking today, this is an important and informative essay on the merits, possible motivations and effects of such movements. Part II will focus on the realities of today’s “Gush for wind” initiatives and its influence on Sierra Club beliefs. Part III concludes with a discussion on the science being used to promote its policies and the unintended consequences that may result.

“A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he’s talking about.”
~ Miguel de Unamuno

By the dawn of the twentieth century, European sensibilities and burgeoning technologies, filtered through the American experience, had brought a close to the vast North American frontier. A centuries-long march to the beat of seemingly inexhaustible abundance was replaced by a dawning recognition of limitation, of natural resources ravaged and lost. Passenger pigeons, once the most common bird in colonial America with numbers in the billions, had become extinct, along with several other species. Many more were on the edge of extinction. The bodies of millions of native songbirds dangled around fashionable ladies’ millinery. Miners even used birds to assess air quality in coal shafts.

Habitat for much of our native flora and fauna had also been transformed or eliminated. Most of the Eastern hardwood forests had been timbered while millions of acres of wetlands had been built over, such as the sweeping Klamath marshes in Oregon. Industrial development, including incipient factory farming practices, had already altered much of the natural agricultural landscape. Coal, steel and railroads combined to forge giant cities like Chicago out of virtual wilderness in only a few decades. Electricity, refrigeration technology, and the internal combustion engine would soon conspire to bring new settlement in places so environmentally sensitive that most wildlife could not survive the intrusion.

John Muir’s new Sierra Club, founded in 1892 “to make the mountains glad,” was, from its beginning, caught between the growing power and expansive ambitions of the United States and its ongoing paradoxical relationship with nature, torn as it continues to be between celebrating the natural world and ruthlessly subduing it. Muir, the Club’s first president, understood the concern that drives much of contemporary environmentalism: Wherever human beings are, there’s much less of everything else. And he vowed to protect the remaining wilderness. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Editor note: In Part I, Jon Boone traced the history of the Sierra Club from its inception in 1892 to today and commented on its evolution as an environmental body. Part II focuses on the realities of today’s wind power initiatives and its influence on Sierra Club beliefs. Part III concludes with a discussion on the science being used to promote its policies and the unintended consequences that may result.

The physical nature and enormous size of industrial wind projects has caused a lot of blowback. Between Maryland and West Virginia, for example, there is potential for around 2000 wind turbines, each nearly 500-feet tall; they would be placed atop 400 miles of the Allegheny Mountain ridges. About 20 acres of forest must be cut to support each turbine—4-6 acres to accommodate the free flow of the wind per turbine; one or more large staging areas for each wind project; access road construction; and a variety of substations and transmission lines. Cumulatively, about 40,000 acres of woodlands would be transformed into an industrial energy plant far larger than any conventional facility. Most of this montane terrain contains rare habitat and many vulnerable wildlife species.

How can such a looming industrial presence be reconciled with the goals of maintaining choice natural habitat while reducing the impact of human activity? For the Sierra Club, the answer is: The use of siting guidelines and wildlife assessment studies that would restrict limited liability wind companies from placing their huge machinery in the most sensitive places and away from rare and threatened species of plants and animals. If the war on carbon is to be won, and if skyscraper-sized wind turbines are part of the price for winning that war, then accommodation must be made. In the words of one wind developer, “some will have to sacrifice if we’re to have the clean, green energy from the wind” replacing coal and putting a stop to mountaintop removal coal extraction practices.

More than a few Sierra Club members and local chapters have resisted the national organization’s encyclicals on wind precisely because such hulking intrusion seems inimical to environmental common sense. The chair of the Maryland Chapter’s Conservation Committee, one of the nation’s leading naturalists, resigned in large part because of this concern. In response to such dissidents, the Club’s national leadership insists that it, and not its member chapters, be the final arbiter of what wind projects meet its standards: “It is important for the Club to speak with a unified, clear voice in its reaction to wind energy projects. It will not be good for the Club if one chapter is focusing totally on concerns about impacts on birds while the chapter in the next state is urging the public to support wind projects as a crucial element in reversing the impacts of global warming.” The organization enforces its authority under threat of expulsion, as was the case when its executive chairman, Carl Pope, in the wake of another controversy, excommunicated the entire Florida 35,000-memmber chapter for four years.

To “manage the negative environmental impacts of wind,” the Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy, the American Bird Conservancy, Greenpeace, and the Audubon Society all recommend guidelines that, if followed, provide wind projects with their environmental seal of approval. Even on public lands. And with no evident sense of irony for the Sierra Club—since this is a policy taken from Gifford Pinchot’s playbook. John Muir is likely turning in his grave. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Lack of investment in the vessels used to build offshore wind farms could hinder Britain's ambitions to shift to renewable energy, the head of E.ON UK's Robin Rigg wind project told Reuters at the operations center in Workington, northwest England.

Britain aims to install 32 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2020, enough to meet a quarter of the country's electricity needs, and although there has been investment in turbines factories and ports, a lack of vessels could curtail targets. (Reuters)

The Carbon Sense Coalition has produced a submission to the Australian Government Enquiry into “The Enhanced Renewable Energy Target Scheme”, April 2010.

From the submission:

“The total justification for this massive upheaval of Australia’s industry and economy is the contention that man’s production of the colourless harmless gas, carbon dioxide, is likely to cause dangerous global warming. But never has the government conducted an open public enquiry to test the truth of this statement. Instead they have relied on an increasingly discredited political body, the UN’s IPCC, or on their own paid employees (who have learned the dangers of contradicting the message of powerful politicians.)”

Read the full submission: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/renewable-energy-targets.pdf [PDF, 83KB] (Carbon Sense Coalition)

"I'm not exaggerating," said President Obama. "Leaders of the Republican Party ... called the passage of (the health care reform bill) 'Armageddon.' Armageddon! 'End of freedom as we know it.'

"So after I signed the bill, I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling or some cracks opening up in the earth. Turned out it was a nice day. Birds were chirping. Folks were strolling down the Mall."

Post-ObamaCare the sun indeed rose in the east and Denny's stayed open. Therefore, ObamaCare opponents engaged in baseless fear-mongering. This is an interesting definition of success: Government tax-spend-spread-the-wealth works — if, come morning, our cars start.

The corrosion caused by the relentless expansion of the welfare state doesn't work that way. The costs are harder to see, the damage more difficult to discern — especially by a commentariat that doesn't know Milton Friedman from Milton Berle. (Larry Elder, IBD)

Patience will be more than a virtue, under Obamacare. It’ll be a necessity. A recent article from ABC News outlines why Americans can expect longer and longer waits before they see a doctor.

One reason is that there just won’t be enough doctors to get the job done. ABC reports that 10 years from now, the United States will short 85,000 primary care and high-demand specialty physicians. Says Dr. Kevin Pho, an internal medicine physician in New Hampshire, “I don’t think we have the primary care capacity to meet the influx of 35 million newly insured.”

Expansion of health insurance coverage does not automatically translate into immediate access to care. When Massachusetts enacted its comprehensive statewide health reform in 2006, it dramatically reduced the number of uninsured and uncompensated care in Massachusetts hospitals, but the state was not ready to absorb the pent-up demand for primary care physicians. The result: Since 2006, wait times have increased greatly. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

The capstone of President Obama’s the “Glut the Beast” strategy is to maneuver the country into accepting a massive new Value-Added Tax (VAT). This as yet unannounced policy has been lurking in dark policy corners for months, with no word from the President. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has decided not to wait on Obama’s pleasure, and so has offered an amendment in the form of a Sense of the Senate Resolution to the bill pending on the floor of the Senate to extend Unemployment Insurance benefits. The McCain resolution reads simply:

When they called the roll on the McCain amendment, 84 Senators stood with America’s families and Senator McCain against the VAT, while 13 made clear their intentions to soak the American taxpayer with a devastating new tax. This vote was strikingly reminiscent of the 1995 Senate vote that sent the Kyoto Protocol on global warming to its well-deserved grave. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

The United States is on an unsustainable financial course, and everyone seems to know it. As Heritage highlighted in our recently published 2010 Budget Chart Book, if nothing is done, federal obligations will reach heights that even enormous tax increases will be unable to reverse. In 2010, the federal budget deficit will be 11 percent of GDP, and the federal debt is on course to continue to skyrocket. Interest payments on the debt in one month alone in 2009 exceeded yearly expenditures on several federal departments, including the Department of Labor and the Department of Agriculture. And President Obama’s deficit will only magnify the impending crisis, creating an estimated budget deficit at the unprecedented level of 7.8 percent.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke echoed these concerns in a testimony yesterday before the Joint Economic Committee. Bernanke predicted that under current law, excluding improbable assumptions it makes about federal activity in years to come, the federal debt would reach 100 percent of GDP by the end of 2020.

Reining in the federal government’s irresponsible spending is imperative not only to the stability and success of the United States, but also to the future of its economic prosperity. Said Bernanke, “maintaining the confidence of the public and financial markets requires that policymakers move decisively to set the federal budget on a trajectory toward sustainable fiscal balance. A credible plan for fiscal sustainability could yield substantial near-term benefits in terms of lower long-term interest rates and increased consumer and business confidence.” Continue reading... (The Foundry)

WASHINGTON - H1N1 swine flu continues to cause epidemics, especially in the southeast of the United States, U.S. federal researchers reported on Thursday.

Americans who have not been vaccinated should still try to get the shot or nasal spray, the team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The CDC's weekly surveillance report on influenza mirrors the World Health Organization's warning that the pandemic continues, although at low levels.

As long as the virus is being passed among people, it could change and re-emerge at any time, infectious disease specialists say. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON - Patients who became severely ill with H1N1 swine flu last year often developed kidney failure, which worsened their illness and raised costs, Canadian researchers reported on Wednesday.

Doctors should be on the lookout for kidney damage in patients who are hospitalized with the virus, they told a meeting of the National Kidney Foundation.

"It's concerning that so many people got some form of kidney injury, although it was reversible in the majority of them," Dr. Manish Sood of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg said in a statement. (Reuters)

CHICAGO - The system for conducting cancer clinical trials in the United States is "at a breaking point" and needs a major overhaul, a panel of experts said on Thursday.

The Institute of Medicine panel said inefficient management, complicated government oversight and inadequate funding hamper the ability of the National Cancer Institute's Clinical Trials Cooperative Group Program to design and run studies that answer important questions about new therapies.

"Cooperative group studies have steadily improved the care of cancer patients for more than 50 years, but the program is at a breaking point," John Mendelsohn, president of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who chaired the panel, said in a statement. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - Although studies have found a link between infection with the Epstein-Barr virus and a heightened risk of multiple sclerosis, new findings cast doubt on the theory that the virus helps cause the disease.

In an analysis of spinal fluid and autopsied brain tissue from people with MS, researchers found little evidence of Epstein-Barr genetic material in the samples.

That absence, the researchers say, indicates that the virus is not directly involved in the MS disease process, as a number of other investigators propose. (Reuters Health)

Cocoa-rich dark chocolate could be prescribed for people with liver cirrhosis in future, following the latest research to show potential health benefits of chocolate.

Spanish researchers said Thursday that eating dark chocolate capped the usual after-meal rise in abdominal blood pressure, which can reach dangerous levels in cirrhotic patients and, in severe cases, lead to blood vessel rupture.

Antioxidants called flavanols found in cocoa are believed to be the reason why chocolate is good for blood pressure because the chemicals help the smooth muscle cells of the blood vessels to relax and widen. (Reuters)

Federal Research Public Access Act introduced in the House of Representatives

Washington, DC – Fueling the growing momentum toward openness, transparency, and accessibility to publicly funded information, the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2010 (FRPAA) has been introduced today in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) and a bi-partisan host of co-sponsors. The proposed bill would build on the success of the first U.S. mandate for public access to the published results of publicly funded research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and require federal agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to research manuscripts stemming from funded research no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

"Free and open access to scientific literature and data are the underpinnings of discovery in the digital age," said Stephen Friend MD PhD, President and Co-Founder of Sage Bionetworks. "Full collaboration among researchers is essential, and we have the power now to communicate, collaborate, and innovate in ways that were previously unimaginable. I applaud the sponsors of the Federal Research Public Access Act for their commitment to ensuring the kind of access scientists need to make progress on improved disease treatments and diagnostics in the digital world." (SPARC)

Seismologists claim attention has been drawn to quakes recently because of their 'unusual severity and unfortunate geography'

In Haiti, 230,000 people were estimated to have died in January's earthquake. Nearly 90,000 were killed in Sichuan in 2008. And now at least 400 people are feared lost in China's Qinghai province. It might appear quakes are happening more frequently, but media attention, rather than a surge in seismic activity, could be the reason.

Richard Luckett, a seismologist with the British Geological Survey, said earthquakes as large as the one that struck Qinghai happen somewhere in the world every few weeks. "This is definitely not a spike," Luckett says. Attention has instead been drawn to quakes recently by their "unusual severity and unfortunate geography".

The earthquake that hit Chile in February was the fifth biggest ever recorded, with a magnitude of 8.8, and the biggest since the quake that triggered the 2004 tsunami. The Haiti earthquake occurred a few miles from the capital, Port-au-Prince. "Both of those were very unusual, because of the size of the one in Chile, and the closeness to the capital city in Haiti," Luckett said. "I think the press has tuned in as a result. But statistically there is nothing unusual going on." (The Guardian)

A $6.50 RISE in the tobacco tax being considered by the Rudd Government could drive smokers to the blackmarket and deprive the Government of tax revenue, convenience stores warned.

The Australian Association of Convenience Stores said the market for illegal cigarettes had already doubled to 12 per cent of cigarettes sold, bleeding the Government of $600 million a year in tax revenue.

That would only increase if the tobacco tax rose to help pay for the Rudd Government's $14 billion health reforms, the association said.

Association director Sheryle Moon said the $6.50 rise would lift the price of a pack of 30 cigarettes to $20, making blackmarket cigarettes even more attractive.

"A pack of counterfeit cigarettes can be bought for $7 or less," she said. "When cigarettes become more expensive consumers simply look for cheaper alternatives."

A PricewaterhouseCoopers report put illegal sales at 12 per cent of the market with a huge growth in branded counterfeit cigarettes coming into Australia from Asia.

Ms Moon said these counterfeit cigarettes carried none of the mandatory health warnings required on Australian cigarettes.

While she said tax and price rises were an effective means of getting many people to quit their tobacco habit "there comes a point where you get dysfunctional returns".

"Because if you've gone too far there are incentives for people to go to an area that is unregulated." (Daily Telegraph)

WASHINGTON - Cases of six common food poisoning agents have dropped sharply since the U.S. government started to monitor them closely in the 1990s, officials reported on Thursday.

While incidence of the most feared infections are down, notably Salmonella and E. coli 0157, infections from raw shellfish have become more common, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The CDC estimates 76 million people in the United States get sick every year from foodborne illnesses and 5,000 people die from them. It set up the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, or Foodnet, to track specific cases. (Reuters)

With nearly $800 billion in drugs sold worldwide, pharmaceuticals are increasingly being released into the environment. The “green pharmacy” movement seeks to reduce the ecological impact of these drugs, which have caused mass bird die-offs and spawned antibiotic-resistant pathogens. (Sonia Shah, e360)

Monsoon rains in south Asia are expected to be normal this year, helped by weakening El Nino weather phenomenon, a senior Indian weather official said on Thursday.

"El Nino conditions have started weakening and we expect the south Asia summer monsoon to be within the normal range," A.K. Srivastava, director of the Indian Meteorological Department, told reporters on the sidelines of South Asia Climate Outlook Forum.

Last month, the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said the El Nino had peaked, but was expected to influence climate patterns up to mid-year before dying out.

India's annual June-September monsoon rains, which delivers 75-90 percent of total rainfall, were the weakest in 37 years in 2009, ravaging rice and oilseed crops.

Lower output hit food supplies in the domestic market and triggered a sharp rise in prices. The food price index rose an annual 17.22 percent in the 12 months to early April. (Reuters)

South Africa will increasingly use desalinated seawater to meet growing demand for drinking water in coastal towns facing the worst drought in 150 years, the country's water minister said Thursday.

South Africa is a water-scarce country with an average rainfall of 450 millimeters -- compared to a world average of 860 mm -- and conditions are expected to worsen as a result of global climate warming. (Reuters)

Brazil's plan to build the world's third-largest hydroelectric dam in the Amazon is drawing scathing criticism from a rare combination of investors and environmentalists, creating a potential political headache for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Lula vigorously insists the Belo Monte dam, which may cost as much as $17 billion, will bring jobs to poor communities in the Amazon rain forest and ensure electricity supplies for one of the world's fastest-growing economies.

But activists and indigenous groups, including Hollywood director James Cameron, say the dam will destroy parts of the Amazon and displace up to 20,000 people, while financial analysts call the project a politically driven money-loser. (Reuters)

Model based on solar radiation accurately predicts yields

KAGAWA, JAPAN—Growing tomatoes is not always easy. In many parts of the world summers are too hot to grow tomatoes in greenhouses, even those with intricate cooling systems. In cooler climates where tomatoes are grown year-round in production greenhouses, yield fluctuations are still challenging for producers who need to fulfill orders and predict labor costs. Finding accurate methods for predicting greenhouse tomato yields is at the forefront of growers' concerns.

A new research study may take the speculation out of yield predictions and offer help for tomato producers. Tadahisa Higashide, a scientist at Japan's National Agricultural and Food Research Organization, published the study in a recent issue of HortScience. The research indicated that fluctuations in fruit number and yield under greenhouse conditions could be predicted on the basis of fluctuations in solar radiation. (American Society for Horticultural Science)

A long-awaited compromise bill to reduce U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming will be unveiled by a group of senators on April 26, sources said on Thursday.

The legislative language to be sketched out in 11 days, according to government and environmental sources, is being drafted by Democratic Senator John Kerry, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman.

Backers of the environmental bill hope the unveiling will pave the way for the full Senate to debate and pass a measure in June or July if the compromise attracts enough support from a group of moderate Republicans and Democrats. (Reuters)

Three weeks after empaneling a distinguished committee to look into issues related to the release of the CRU emails at the request of the University of East Anglia, Lord Oxburgh has issued a final statement reporting their conclusions. According to the LA Times, on the BBC he summarized what they found as follows:

To allay public concern over Climategate — the unauthorized release of some 3000 documents from the computers of the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University — the university established two independent inquiries to attend to the widespread view that science had been corrupted through the distortion and destruction of data, through cover-ups, and through the perversion of the peer review process.

The first of these inquiries has neatly dismissed all concerns of impropriety through the oversight of its chair, Lord Oxburgh of Liverpool, a man of impeccable credentials in the climate change field. Lord Oxburgh is chair of the multinational Falck Renewables, a European leader with major windfarms in the U.K., France, Spain and Italy, and he’s chair of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, a lobby group which argues that carbon capture could become a $-trillion industry by 2050.

Hard on the heels of the report of the one-day British Parliamentary inquiry into the Climategate scandal comes the report of the grandly-named International Science Assessment Panel set up by the University of East Anglia (UEA). Surprise, surprise, it finds nothing wrong except a few lapses in concentration caused by all the hard work climate scientists are doing to save the planet. Unfortunately for the alarmist cheerleaders who will treat these reports as complete exoneration, they suffer from exactly the same problems as the scientific reports Climategate centered around. They are sloppy and incomplete while pretending to be the comprehensive answer. As such, they damage the authority of science just as much as Climategate itself. (Iain Murray, Daily Caller)

Forget Phil Jones and the CRU…for all intents and purposes, Lord Oxburgh’s “International Panel” has hit the IPCC itself with quite a broadside.

Clearly, it has now been established beyond all doubt that the IPCC has been a failure regarding the provision of “a clear scientific view” on the “peer-reviewed papers” by CRU researchers. Those papers said one thing, the IPCC another.

With Climate Change too serious an issue to be left in oversimplifying hands, the Fifth Assessment Report is unlikely to be any good unless substantial organizational changes are implemented in the IPCC. (Maurizio Morabito, OmniClimate)

CRU scientists who removed caveats from IPCC reports are praised for warning of uncertainties in their published work

Climategate scientists cleared of wrongdoing” read the headline in yesterday’s Post. Who expected anything else? The two self-inquiries launched by the University of East Anglia into its Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were always destined to produce whitewashes, as did a recent UK parliamentary inquiry, and as will an “independent” review by the UN.

The first of the UEA reports, from a committee headed by ardent warmist and anti-carbon profiteer Lord Oxburgh, appeared this week. As Lawrence Solomon points out elsewhere on this page, the choice of Lord Oxburgh indicated that the fix was always in for an inquiry which fails to address, let alone probe, most of the major issues. And yet there is a mountain of condemnation-by-faint-exoneration between the lines of the report’s ridiculously slim five pages.

Global Warming: The first probe into the integrity of the science being conducted at the Climatic Research Unit is in and nothing's changed. Those who created and perpetuated this sham are not called into account.

It was quite obvious, judging by the communications between climate researchers, that there was something wrong with the scientific process at the University of East Anglia's CRU. (IBD)

A key piece of evidence in climate change science was slammed as “exaggerated” on Wednesday by the UK’s leading statistician, in a vindication of claims that global warming sceptics have been making for years.

Professor David Hand, president of the Royal Statistical Society, said that a graph shaped like an ice hockey stick that has been used to represent the recent rise in global temperatures had been compiled using “inappropriate” methods. (Fiona Harvey, Financial Ties)

Doug Keenan has won his long battle to force Queen's University Belfast to release their tree ring data to him. Another long story of university academics blocking legitimate requests and flouting the law, apparently with impunity.

The rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere means far more energy is coming into Earth's climate system than is going out, but half of that energy is missing and could eventually reappear as another sign of climate change, scientists said on Thursday.

In stable climate times, the amount of heat coming into Earth's system is equal to the amount leaving it, but these are not stable times, said John Fasullo of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, a co-author of the report in the journal Science.

The gap between what's entering the climate system and what's leaving is about 37 times the heat energy produced by all human activities, from driving cars and running power plants to burning wood.

Half of that gap is unaccounted for, Fasullo and his co-author Kevin Trenberth reported. It hasn't left the climate system but it hasn't been detected with satellites, ocean sensors or other technology.

It might lurk in deep ocean waters in areas sensors don't reach. Some of it could be the result of imprecise measurement or processing of satellite or sensor data. But the greenhouse-caused heat gap is definitely there, the authors said.

"The heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later," Trenberth said. "It is critical to track the build-up of energy in our climate system so we can understand what is happening and predict our future climate."

By pumping climate-warming greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, humans have caused this imbalance, and "it is this imbalance that produces 'global warming,'" the authors wrote. (Reuters) | 'Missing' heat may affect future climate change (NSF) | 'Missing' heat may affect future climate change (NCAR/UCAR)

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman wrote a lengthy article, “Building a Green Economy,” in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. Krugman is an able writer. He laid out the textbook arguments on climate change from the problem-and-act perspective, and his fact-of-the-matter tone and apparent expertise no doubt misled many readers.

Although he technically said nothing demonstrably false, Krugman gives the impression that there is widespread consensus that drastic action is needed to avert catastrophic climate change. This is simply not true, and all we have to do is actually read the consensus reports to see that Krugman is misleading his readers.

After giving a good summary of the standard issues in the economics of climate change, Krugman pauses to comment on what the natural scientists (as opposed to the economists) have to say on the subject:

Now Krugman’s summary above is either accurate or not, depending on how much error we will tolerate in the predictions. But fair enough, we’ll agree with Krugman that climate models 20 years ago predicted higher average global temperatures, and that’s indeed what we’ve experienced. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Last week in the Huffington Post, climatologist Dr. James Hansen made an impassioned plea to President Obama to ditch cap-and-trade and instead advocate a plan to tax carbon-based fuels with 100% of the revenues returned to households. This was not the first time. Hansen made the same pitch back in December 2008 in a letter to President-elect Obama. President Obama did not heed Hansen’s advice, keeping his wagon hitched to cap-and-trade, the policy darling of Big Green, U.S. CAP, and congressional leaders. But with cap-and-trade bogged down on Capitol Hill, Hansen argues, his plan gives Obama “a second chance on the predominant moral issue of this century.”

Hansen made the case for “tax-and-dividend” in testimony before the House Ways & Means Committee on February 25, 2009. I commented on Hansen’s testimony a week later on MasterResource. Substantively, there’s nothing new in Hansen’s Huff Post column, but rhetorically there is one modification. He now calls his proposal a “fee” rather than a tax. Despite Hansen’s earlier criticism of cap-and-trade as a hidden and thus dishonest tax, and his call for a “transparent” approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, he now avoids the “T” word as assiduously as any shifty cap-and-trader.

Today’s column offers a running commentary on Hansen’s Huff Post piece. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

In the February 2010 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, there is an informative well-written article by

The inappropriate experience with the publication process that Ross McKitrick has informed us about – see [and which I have also experienced] makes reading this article by David Schultz very informative.

Among his findings is the unique role of the magazines Nature and Science in terms of their rejection rate. Nature’s rejection rate is listed as 91%. While this is inevitable given the limited number of paper that they can publish, but it also means they are a narrow gatekeeper with an enormous opportunity to control what is considered (by them) to be of importance in science. (Climate Science)

Study finds new evidence of pre-colonial land use patterns

ATHENS, Ohio (April 15, 2010) – A new study led by Ohio University scientists suggests that early Native Americans left a bigger carbon footprint than previously thought, providing more evidence that humans impacted global climate long before the modern industrial era.

Chemical analysis of a stalagmite found in the mountainous Buckeye Creek basin of West Virginia suggests that native people contributed a significant level of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere through land use practices. The early Native Americans burned trees to actively manage the forests to yield the nuts and fruit that were a large part of their diets.

“They had achieved a pretty sophisticated level of living that I don’t think people have fully appreciated,” said Gregory Springer, an associate professor of geological sciences at Ohio University and lead author of the study, which was published a recent issue of the journal The Holocene. “They were very advanced, and they knew how to get the most out of the forests and landscapes they lived in. This was all across North America, not just a few locations.” (Ohio University)

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released the15th annual U.S. greenhouse gas inventory report, which shows a drop in overall emissions of 2.9 percent from 2007 to 2008. The downward trend is attributed to a decrease in carbon dioxide emissions associated with fuel and electricity consumption.

Total emissions of the six main greenhouse gases in 2008 were equivalent to 6,957 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. The gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride. Though overall emissions dropped in 2008, emissions are still 13.5 percent higher than they were in 1990. (EPA)

The global carbon market will still have enough momentum to survive even if the international community fails to come up with a new deal to combat greenhouse gas emissions, a European policy coordinator said on Thursday.

Jurgen Lefevere told a conference in Beijing the European Union was pushing forward with plans for an international carbon trading platform that could exist independently of any new global climate accord.

"Even after the failure of Copenhagen, the EU is moving ahead in building an international carbon market," said Lefevere, the European Commission's policy coordinator for international climate change negotiations. (Reuters)

Indonesia will rewrite rules on how developers of forest preservation projects that earn valuable carbon credits must share their profits with the government and local communities, a finance ministry official said on Thursday.

Under a U.N.-backed scheme called reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD), developing countries can be paid not to chop down trees, which absorb planet-warming carbon dioxide as they grow.

Large-scale efforts to curb or halt deforestation have the potential to slow the pace of climate change. (Reuters)

The following article is from a leading Finnish Newspaper and was sent to me via the contact area. I had to use the Google Translate process as my Finnish is not that good. To show this to you I have had to put the article through as an image, rather then type it. Will this story break to the world press, we will have to see. (Climate Realists)

RISING oil prices pose a grave threat to global economic recovery, according to some economists.

Thus it was sobering this week to read that the US military has warned the world faces a "severe energy crunch" and looming oil shortages.

According to a Joint Operating Environment report from the US Joint Forces Command, "a severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity".

The report says the central problem for the coming decade "will not be a lack of petroleum reserves, but rather a shortage of drilling platforms, engineers and refining capacity".

And it warns: "Even were a concerted effort begun today to repair that shortage, it would be 10 years before production could catch up with expected demand." ( Courier-Mail)

Climate chief Jonathan Pershing defends abstention on World Bank loan for controversial power station while holding country to account for carbon emissions (Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian)

Last summer I noted that the Obama Administration gave the go-ahead for the building of a new pipeline to bring petroleum from Canadian oil sands to the United States. I am sure that I wasn't alone in wondering why they would do this at the same time that they were pushing to create a cap-and-trade program to put a price on carbon. I got the answer in today's FT in an article on investors who are seeking to increase disclosure from BP on tar sand development.

It turns out that development of Canadian oil sands in insensitive to the price ceiling that was being discussed under the Waxman-Markey bill. From the FT (emphasis added):

The proposed project assumes a carbon price much higher than the ceiling that Waxman-Markey would have established. The then leads to a question: If cap and trade, as proposed, would not halt oil sands development due to simple economics then how exactly would it compel innovation in the renewable energy sector?

Anyone looking for BP's presentation on the oil sands project can find it here in PDF. Kate Mackenzie at the FT Energy Source has more here. (Roger Pielke Jr)

AN Australian invention that allows nuclear waste to be stored within a synthetic rock-like substance could be on the verge of hitting paydirt after more than 30 years in the making.

The breakthrough came recently with the decision by America's powerful Department of Energy to use a technology known as hot isostatic pressing (HIP) for the multibillion-dollar clean-up of a nuclear re-processing facility in Idaho.

The department plans to use the technology to treat and remove about 4400 cubic metres of high-level waste calcine.

The move puts the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, ANSTO, in a position to win a big slice of the clean-up dollars with its HIP technology.

Described as a ''game-changer'' by ANSTO's chief executive, Adi Paterson, the development dovetails with this week's Nuclear Security Summit in Washington where 47 nations agreed to work together to better secure nuclear materials worldwide.

Their collaboration includes plans to lock down plutonium and highly enriched uranium, and reduce waste where possible.

ANSTO's technology, which can be used for a range of nuclear waste types, is branded Synroc, because its synthetic qualities mimic the geology of rocks that have existed for millions of years. (SMH)

It's April 15th, that dreaded day when it comes time to pay the tax man.

As nagging as the pinch may feel this year, the sad reality is that it's bound to grow far worse in the future — that is, of course, unless Washington moves to repair the deteriorating fiscal health of our country by reining in its out-of-control spending habits.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, debt held by the public under the Obama administration would grow from $5.8 trillion at the end of 2008 to a stratospheric $20.3 trillion in 2020, or from 40% of the economy to 90%, respectively.

Also, annual interest on the debt would more than quadruple over the next 10 years, rising from $187 billion last year to $916 billion in 2020. By 2018, interest will eat up $2 billion per day.

With our debt ballooning to unsustainable levels, it's time for Washington to stop pretending there won't be severe consequences for our expansion of government spending programs.

Such a weighty debt load over time makes huge, growth-killing tax increases inevitable. The majority party has already made clear that it will raise taxes on income, capital gains and dividends. (Rep Eric Cantor, IBD)

Taxation: Candidate Barack Obama said that President Obama wouldn't raise taxes by a "single dime" on families earning less than $250,000 a year. Unless he meant $250 a year, he was being less than candid.

By February, the president had backed off his claim, saying he was "agnostic" about hiking taxes on households with less than $250,000 in yearly income. But it's a good bet he was a believer all along. The evidence is all over Washington on Tax Day 2010.

Let's start with Dave Camp, ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee. His staff compiled a list of Democratic tax hikes that now totals "$670 billion and counting." Of that sum, $316 billion will come from 14 tax hikes on families who earn less than Obama's $250,000 threshold.

The largest increases will be used to fund the national health care program that the public has been told will cut the federal deficit. Nearly $66 billion will go toward another medical care scheme, the Children's Health Insurance Program, which was reauthorized last year. (IBD)

It's that joyous time of year: income tax time. So I spend time with my accountant. I don't want to see him, but I must. I could not do what he's doing. The tax code has grown so complex that today most Americans hire someone to do their taxes. (John Stossel, Townhall)

We were disturbed to learn that health care workers shunned the swine flu vaccine in droves. Their training and skills will be essential if there is a dangerous flu outbreak. They, of all people, should know how important it is for them to get vaccinated — and that the risk of serious side effects is negligible.

The good news from a survey of health care workers conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the RAND Corporation is that 62 percent of them had received a vaccine to protect themselves against the standard seasonal flu by mid-January, a much higher percentage than in any previous season. By contrast, only 37 percent of the health care workers had received a vaccine against swine flu.

Although they were designated a high-priority group to get swine flu vaccine, many health workers remained indifferent or hostile. Luckily, the swine flu outbreak turned out to be comparatively mild — but there are no guarantees for the next time.

Medical personnel need to get vaccinated for two reasons beyond protecting themselves and their families. If they become ill, they will be unable to work at a time when their institutions most need them. And those who have direct contact with patients especially need immunization lest they spread illness and death among already vulnerable sick people. The reasons most frequently cited for ducking either vaccine were “I don’t need it” and “I may experience side effects.” Only 17 percent blamed difficulties in getting the late-arriving swine flu vaccine. (NYT)

GENEVA - The H1N1 flu pandemic is as severe as influenza pandemics in 1957 and 1968 and remains a threat, especially to healthy young adults, a leading health expert said on Wednesday.

John Mackenzie, the Australian who heads the World Health Organisation's independent but secretive Emergency Committee, also said he was not aware of any of its 15 members being approached by drug companies seeking to influence their decision-making.

"This is just as severe as we saw in 1957 and 1968, with one major difference. We are not seeing deaths in the elderly but we are seeing them in a more important group of the population, healthy young adults," Mackenzie said in a rare presentation.

"It is much more severe than people tend to talk about," he told a three-day meeting called to review the way the WHO handled the pandemic. (Reuters)

For the first time in decades, researchers are reporting a significant drop worldwide in the number of women dying each year from pregnancy and childbirth, to about 342,900 in 2008 from 526,300 in 1980.

The findings, published in the medical journal The Lancet, challenge the prevailing view of maternal mortality as an intractable problem that has defied every effort to solve it.

“The overall message, for the first time in a generation, is one of persistent and welcome progress,” the journal’s editor, Dr. Richard Horton, wrote in a comment accompanying the article, published online on Monday.

The study cited a number of reasons for the improvement: lower pregnancy rates in some countries; higher income, which improves nutrition and access to health care; more education for women; and the increasing availability of “skilled attendants” — people with some medical training — to help women give birth. Improvements in large countries like India and China helped to drive down the overall death rates.

But some advocates for women’s health tried to pressure The Lancet into delaying publication of the new findings, fearing that good news would detract from the urgency of their cause, Dr. Horton said in a telephone interview.

“I think this is one of those instances when science and advocacy can conflict,” he said. (NYT)

NEW YORK - For a woman eating a healthy diet, multivitamin supplements during late pregnancy could do more harm than good, a new study suggests.

British researchers found that a woman's risk of delivering prematurely tripled if she continued taking the prenatal pills into her third trimester.

"These supplements are available over-the-counter in the United Kingdom and frequently promoted as being beneficial for mums-to-be," Dr. Nigel Simpson of the University of Leeds in the U.K., and one of the authors of the study, told Reuters Health by email.

However, some weaknesses in the study may stand in the way of translating the finding into practice, Dr. James Mills, of the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development told Reuters Health.

While some studies in developing countries have found prenatal supplements to be beneficial, whether or not it also is in developed countries-where most women are presumably already well-nourished-has not been thoroughly studied. (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK - Perhaps not surprisingly, children whose mothers gained too much weight during pregnancy tend to have more body fat than those whose moms stayed within the recommended weight-gain range, a new study finds.

The findings support the latest pregnancy weight-gain recommendations from the U.S. Institute of Medicine (IOM), according to senior researcher Dr. Sian Robinson, a nutritionist with the MRC Epidemiology Research Centre in Southampton: 25-35 pounds for normal-weight women, 15-25 pounds for overweight women, and 28-40 pounds for underweight women.

UK researchers found that among 948 children followed to age 6, those whose mothers gained more than the recommended amount of weight during pregnancy had a greater amount of body fat, on average. (Reuters Health)

NEW DELHI: India's economic boom is changing the way its people die. Diseases linked to affluence, especially heart problems, are overtaking poverty-related illnesses such as tuberculosis and diarrhoea as the biggest killers.

As these middle-class ''lifestyle'' diseases grab public attention, aid workers and child health advocates fear they could distract from efforts to eradicate easily preventable diseases that mostly affect the poor. (SMH)

U.S. corporations looking to slash costs during the recession found some savings in environmentally conscious business practices, but a higher price tag on green products is a barrier to many consumers. (Reuters)

Robert Kremer, a U.S. government microbiologist who studies Midwestern farm soil, has spent two decades analyzing the rich dirt that yields billions of bushels of food each year and helps the United States retain its title as breadbasket of the world.

Kremer's lab is housed at the University of Missouri and is literally in the shadow of Monsanto Auditorium, named after the $11.8 billion-a-year agricultural giant Monsanto Co.. Based in Creve Coeur, Missouri, the company has accumulated vast wealth and power creating chemicals and genetically altered seeds for farmers worldwide.

But recent findings by Kremer and other agricultural scientists are raising fresh concerns about Monsanto's products and the Washington agencies that oversee them. The same seeds and chemicals spread across millions of acres of U.S. farmland could be creating unforeseen problems in the plants and soil, this body of research shows.

Kremer, who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS), is among a group of scientists who are turning up potential problems with glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup and the most widely used weed-killer in the world.

"This could be something quite big. We might be setting up a huge problem," said Kremer, who expressed alarm that regulators were not paying enough attention to the potential risks from biotechnology on the farm, including his own research.

Concerns range from worries about how nontraditional genetic traits in crops could affect human and animal health to the spread of herbicide-resistant weeds. (Reuters)

Genetically engineered crops are profitable for farmers and may help protect people and the environment from an overload of pesticides, a panel of experts reported on Tuesday.

But there is a risk that weeds are developing resistance to Roundup, a weedkiller that is used to treat fields planted with certain genetically modified crops, the researchers said.

And genetic engineering is not being exploited enough, given its potential benefits, the National Research Council panel concluded.

"We do see good, hard evidence that weed resistance is growing to glyphosate. That needs serious attention," said David Ervin of Portland State University in Oregon, who chaired the panel.

Glyphosate is the main ingredient in Monsanto's widely used Roundup herbicide. The weedkiller is considered safer for people than other pesticides. "It in general replaces more toxic chemicals," Ervin, a professor of environmental studies, said in a telephone interview.

Monsanto also has genetically engineered a range of crops to resist its effects.

That means farmers can use more Roundup without fear of damaging their crops. But the practice may have allowed weeds to develop their own natural resistance, the expert committee found.

Nine weed species in the United States have developed resistance to glyphosate since the introduction of genetically engineered crops, compared with seven in areas where genetically modified crops are not used, the report found.

But in general the use of gene-engineered crops is beneficial, the experts found. (Reuters)

Top advisor says it is "imperative" for the US to tackle climate change and address reliance on foreign oil. From BusinessGreen, part of the Guardian Environment Network

Darren Samuelsohn, E&E reporter

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is about to take over as stage manager in the uphill push to pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation.

Next week, Reid will be handed the reins of the bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions while expanding domestic oil, gas and nuclear power production. His challenge could not be tougher. Along with the climate measure, he must juggle a packed Senate agenda that includes Wall Street reform, a Supreme Court nomination and more economic recovery plans. Reid is also facing perhaps the toughest re-election campaign of his career this fall.

"I'm going to do everything I can," Reid said yesterday.

In an effort to keep the bill in Reid's hands, the sponsors -- Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) won't officially introduce the bill in the Senate when they unveil it to the public next week.

"If we introduce it, it'll get referred to committees," Lieberman said. "We want him to be able to work with it and bring it out onto the floor as a leader whenever he's ready." (E&E News)

Looming just behind the climate change negotiators laboring in Senate conference rooms is "Plan B" -- an "energy only" bill that is smaller in scope and enjoys bipartisan support.

There is a committee-passed bill (S. 1462 (pdf)) waiting in the wings that has more offshore drilling for Republicans and more renewable energy requirements for Democrats.

But the bipartisan support enjoyed by the energy-only bill is countered by its bipartisan opposition, and it is hard to add up the needed 60 votes to move controversial legislation in the Senate. So, the balancing act for the scaled-down bill could be every bit as tricky as finding a "grand bargain" to pass a climate bill.

One leading industry analyst says without a strict limit on greenhouse gas emissions, the bill collapses.

"You won't get a bill without a carbon cap. You can't buy off enough liberals to pass it," said Kevin Book managing director of Washington-based consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners. (Greenwire)

U.S. Energy Protection Agency may not issue rules determining which factories and power plants are subject to carbon regulations until May, the head of the agency said on Wednesday.

The agency had hoped to release its so-called tailoring rule by the end of April, but EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said the regulations could easily slip to May.

"We don't have a court deadline so my attitude is always we want to get it right," Jackson told Reuters in an interview. "April or May is still our target." (Reuters)

If you think that the Czech Republic is protected against all the AGW insanities - and they're not allowed to enter our territory - you're unfortunately wrong.

Two weeks ago, the Czech Parliament has copied an EU bill that wants to define the rules how to trade with the carbon indulgences, especially when it comes to the airlines.

Well, we still have a president who can veto such things.

That's why the airlines don't have to buy the carbon indulgences so far. However, the veto is pretty likely to be overruled by an "enhanced majority" of deputies in the Parliament who are afraid that they will be spanked by their EU masters and mistresses.

In many similar situations, the Czech constitution only allows Klaus to be a "delayer".

President has vetoed an amendment to a bill about the conditions of trading with greenhouse gas permits

Translated from Czech: LM

On April 14th, 2010, the president of the republic, Václav Klaus, sent a letter to the chairman of the lower chamber of the Czech Parliament, Mr Miloslav Vlček, in which he clarifies the reasons why he returned the bill about the conditions of trading with the greenhouse gas permits:

The European Union’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters banked over 11 percent of the carbon dioxide credits they got for free in 2009 under the world’s biggest cap and trade market, which compounded with other failings, is giving ammunition to critics of the block’s climate change strategy. [Read More] (Andres Cala, Energy Tribune)

There is now a desperate effort afoot by assorted climate alarmists to explain away the revelations of the incriminating e-mails leaked last year from the University of East Anglia (UEA). A concerted whitewash campaign is in full swing to save the IPCC and its questionable conclusion that the warming of the last thirty years is anthropogenic. But ongoing investigations so far have avoided the real issue, namely whether the reported warming is genuine or a manufactured result by scientists in England and the United States who manipulated temperature data.

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) has repeatedly characterized anthropogenic global warming (AGW) as a "hoax" -- and he may soon be vindicated. Certainly, the remedies invoked to "fight" AGW are a cruel hoax -- mainly a tax burden on low-income households who will pay more for electricity, food, transportation, and other necessities of life. (S. Fred Singer, American Thinker)

The Global Warming Policy Foundation regrets that the Oxburgh Panel has been rushed and therefore extremely superficial. The body of the report is hardly five pages long. The Panel should have taken more time to arrive at more balanced and more trustworthy conclusions as there was no need to rush the inquiry.

The Panel worked by interviewing and questioning staff members of CRU, but failed to interview critical researchers who have been working in the same field for many years. The Panel even ignored, as it admits, to properly review their written evidence.

We welcome the acknowledgement by the Panel that the Urban Heat Island effect on surface temperature records in and around large cities is important but poorly understood. We also welcome the admission that the IPCC ignored the expressions of uncertainty in CRU papers.

We also note, in the context of the long-term temperature record, its comment that "the potential for misleading results arising from selection bias is very great in this area. It is regrettable that so few professional statisticians have been involved in this work."

In general, the report is being politely kind to CRU, but in essence rather critical of the disorganised and amateurish use of statistics. It is hardly an endorsement of the quality of the research being carried out at what is supposed to be the world's leading unit which has received so much government funding.

Given the huge economic and social implications, one would expect that an independent audit would be more rigorous and more even-handed than the Oxburgh panel. (GWPF)

Presumably, since that's in WEDT, that would be 10:00 am US Eastern Daylight Saving Time (14:00 GMT) on April 15 (The Times)

The international panel charged with looking into the East Anglia email controversy has issued a report that fails the smell test at every level.

The University of East Anglia’s carefully selected “International Panel” released their report on the ClimateGate scientific fraud scandal today. At eight pages, it’s not even a thorough whitewash. They don’t even make a minimal effort to rebut the obvious appearance of widespread data manipulation, suppression of dissenting research through improper means, and intentional avoidance of complying with Freedom of Information requests. (Myron Ebell, PJM)

“We found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention,” concludes the report, confirming what many of us have long suspected: if only Professor St Phil Jones had had proper media training in how to lie properly, lose data, and delete emails after FOI requests without being caught, none of this unspeakableness would have happened. (James Delingpole)

Well, we all knew it would be a second whitewash of CRU and its climate alarmist pseudo-data; but even the most hard-headed sceptics among us probably thought that Lord Oxburgh’s inquiry would be a tad more sophisticated in its brushwork, that it would make some effort to persuade rather than patronise, that its bland conclusions would be a little less blatant and in-your-face.

Not so. If you want incontrovertible evidence that it is business as usual for the arrogant academic establishment, today has provided it. In the popular jargon, they still don’t get it. They imagine the AGW scam will go on forever, along with all the other lies with which the political class deluges the public. This effort is too sloppy really to merit the term whitewash: the sceptical graffiti are still clearly visible through the transparent white coating. (Gerald Warner, TDT)

Climate change scientists at the centre of an ongoing row over man-made global warming have been criticised for being "naive" and "disorganised". (Louise Gray, TDT)

The 'hockey stick' that became emblematic of the threat posed by climate change exaggerated the rise in temperature because it was created using 'inappropriate' methods, according to the head of the Royal Statistical Society. (Louise Gray, TDT)

They did not interview me (nor, to my knowledge, any other CRU critics or targets). The committee was announced on March 22 and their “report” is dated April 12 – three weeks end to end – less time than even the Parliamentary Committee. They took no evidence. Their list of references is 11 CRU papers, five on tree rings, six on CRUTEM. Notably missing from the “sample” are their 1000-year reconstructions: Jones et al 1998, Mann and Jones 2003, Jones and Mann 2004, etc.)

They did not discuss specifically discuss or report on any of the incidents of arbitrary adjustment (“bodging”), cherry picking and deletion of adverse data, mentioned in my submissions to the Science and Technology Committee and the Muir Russell Committee. I’ll report on these issues later in the day as they’ll take a little time to review. First, let’s observe Oxburgh’s trick to hide the “trick”.

Long before Climategate, Climate Audit readers knew that you had to watch the pea under the thimble whenever you’re dealing with the Team. This is true with Oxburgh of Globe International as well.

Oxburgh of Globe International alludes to the “trick ... to hide the decline” in veiled terms as follows:

Without specifically mentioning the famous “trick …to hide the decline”, Oxburgh subsumes the “trick” as “regrettable” “neglect” by “IPCC and others”.

The Oxburgh Report regrettably neglected to highlight the fact that CRU scientists Briffa and Jones, together with Michael Mann, were the IPCC authors responsible for this “regrettable neglect” in the Third Assessment Report. They also regrettably neglected to report that CRU scientist Briffa was the IPCC author responsible for the corresponding section in AR4.

Oxburgh pretends that the fault lay with “IPCC and others”, but this pretence is itself a trick. CRU was up to its elbows in the relevant IPCC presentations that “regrettably” “neglected” to show the divergent data in their graphics.

It is also untrue that CRU authors, in their capacity as IPCC authors, “regrettably” “neglected” to show the divergent data in the IPCC graphics. The Climategate emails show that they did so intentionally – see for example IPCC and the Trick, which show awareness on the part of CRU scientists that showing the decline would “dilute the message” that IPCC wanted to send. The eventual IPCC figure, as reported here on a number of cases, gave a false rhetorical message of the veracity of the proxy reconstructions.

CA readers are also well aware that IPCC and Briffa were categorically asked by one AR4 reviewer (me) to disclose the divergent data. CRU’s Briffa refused, saying only that it would be “inappropriate” to show the data in the graphic. They didn’t “neglect” to show the divergent data from the Briffa reconstruction. This was a considered decision, carried out in AR4 despite pointed criticism. (Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit)

Climate scientists at the centre of the row over stolen e-mails acted with integrity and made no attempt to manipulate their research on global temperatures, an external inquiry has found.

Their research was, however, misrepresented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which failed to reflect uncertainties the scientists had reported concerning the raw temperature data. (Ben Webster, The Times)

Researchers 'dedicated if slightly disorganised', but basic science was fair, finds inquiry commissioned by university (The Guardian)

Panel finds no evidence of impropriety in East Anglia unit after integrity of researchers was questioned ( Steve Connor, The Independent)

Telling the truth does not offer sufficient protection from the limelight's unforgiving glare (Editorial, The Guardian)

Phil Jones says that he contemplated suicide after the leaking of his e-mails resulted in accusations that he had faked the evidence for man-made climate change.

He and his fellow scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) will draw great comfort from today’s report by an external panel.

It is the second report in two weeks to exonerate them and conclude that their research was conducted with integrity. The Commons Science and Technology Committee had said that Professor Jones had “no case to answer”.

But both reports have already been dismissed as whitewashes by climate sceptics, who have spent years picking holes in the conclusion reached by the overwhelming majority of climate scientists that the temperature increase in recent decades is man-made and dangerous.

The sceptics’ suspicions have been fuelled by the praise heaped on Professor Jones and the CRU in the latest report. (Ben Webster, The Times)

So, not only did the Royal Society pick the members of the panel, but they also picked the papers that were to be examined.

I wonder who it was within the Royal Society that might have done this work. I mean, one would need a pretty in-depth understanding of climatology to be able to pick a representative sample of papers from the CRU oeuvre would one not? That sort of understanding isn't found on every street corner. So who might they have turned to?

It’s a case of Big-Spin and Bluster. It’s what they do: aggressively push a simple message, a theme, a piece of marketing, and like all the rest of their audacious PR, it’s at best a half-truth, and in this case a lie.

As usual, it’s honest volunteers who have conscientiously tested the IPCC by going through 18,500 references. And the final total? Fully 5,600, or 30%, of their references are not peer reviewed.

Donna LaFramboise at NoConsensus has coordinated the dedicated team (that is a lot of references to go through).

How many times do we need to show the IPCC are incompetent and dishonest? More » (Jo Nova)

21 of 44 chapters in the United Nations' Nobel-winning climate bible earned an F on a report card we are releasing today. Forty citizen auditors from 12 countries examined 18,531 sources cited in the report – finding 5,587 to be not peer-reviewed.

Contrary to statements by the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the celebrated 2007 report does not rely solely on research published in reputable scientific journals. It also cites press releases, newspaper and magazine clippings, working papers, student theses, discussion papers, and literature published by green advocacy groups. Such material is often called "grey literature."

We've been told this report is the gold standard. We've been told it's 100 percent peer-reviewed science. But thousands of sources cited by this report have not come within a mile of a scientific journal.

Based on the grading system used in US schools, 21 chapters in the IPCC report receive an F (they cite peer-reviewed sources less than 60% of the time), 4 chapters get a D, and 6 get a C. There are also 5 Bs and 8 As.

In November, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri disparaged non-peer-reviewed research in an interview with the Times of India (see the end of the article):

WASHINGTON - Climate change could push the cost of U.S. allergies and asthma beyond the current $32 billion annual price tag, conservation and health groups reported on Wednesday.

A warming planet makes for longer growing seasons that would produce more allergy-provoking pollen in much of the heavily populated eastern two-thirds of the United States, the National Wildlife Federation and the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America said in their report.

The cost of coping with allergies and allergen-driven asthma in the United States is at $32 billion in direct medical costs, lost work days and lower productivity, the report said. (Reuters)

When the Sun’s magnetic output is low, winters in Europe tend to be cooler than average – whereas higher output corresponds to warmer winters. That is the conclusion of a new study by physicists in the UK and Germany that looked at the relationship between winter temperatures in England and the strength of the Sun's magnetic emissions over the last 350 years. The group predicts that, global warming notwithstanding, Europe is likely to continue to experience cold winters for many years to come.

The possibility of a link between European winter temperatures and solar activity can be seen in historical records from the second half of the seventeenth century. For about 50 years the Sun remained free of sunspots (in contrast to its normal 11-year cycle of sunspot highs and lows) and at this time Europe experienced a number of harsh winters. Motivated by the fact that the relatively cold winters of the past few years have come at a time when solar activity fell to the lowest values for 100 years, Mike Lockwood of the University of Reading and colleagues set out to establish whether or not there is a strong connection. (Physics World)

Another post on Vermeer’s and Rahmstorf’s 2009 PNAS paper, “Global sea level linked to global temperature.” This time we consider the variation of gamma (γ) in equation 4 of part two. The curious result will be that for γ>1 the temperature will continuously increase, while the sea level rise rate will continuously drop.

In Part 1, I laid out the basic problem.
In Part 2, I went into a little more detail on the math.
In Part 3, I gave a few examples that show some bizarre consequences that would result if equation were correct.
In Part 4, improbable parallel universes. (Climate Sanity)

The University of Alabama at Huntsville has released the March 2010 spatial plot of the lower troposphere temperature anomalies as monitored by satellite (thanks for John Christy, Roy Spencer, and Phillip Gentry for providing this to us!)

As the UAH group reports, March 2010 was third warmest month in the 31-year temperature record with the global anomaly since Nov. 16, 1978 of +0.13 C per decade. The processed temperature data is available on-line at: vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt

The spatial map of the anomalies is given below which shows the continued large variations between regions, with the higher latitudes of North America particularly warm.

The substantial spatial variations illustrates yet again why we need a regional focus to climate change, and why a global average surface temperature anomaly is an inadequate metric to monitor climate variability and change. (Climate Science)

which illustrates yet again how regional climate effects can have global climate consequences.

On my weblog, I have frequently emphasized that the focus on the global average surface temperature trend is a grossly inadequate metric to monitor and describe climate change (e.g. see). This new paper further illustrates why a regional climate focus is essential. (Climate Science)

The voluntary carbon credit market could experience another quiet quarter if corporate spending on social responsibility does not pick up.

Traditionally, the second quarter is stronger than the first but the voluntary market has suffered in the past year from the economic downturn as corporates cut spending on social responsibility.

The market relies on businesses to self-regulate their carbon emissions in the absence of a legally-binding climate pact and individual consumers wanting to offset their carbon footprints from, say, international air travel. (Reuters)

Environmental groups launched a complaint against Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement Wednesday, saying the country has failed to enforce anti-pollution rules governing its vast oil sands.

In the latest move in a long-running campaign to highlight the impact of oil sands development, the submission by Environmental Defense Canada, Natural Resources Defense Council and three citizens charges that toxic tailings ponds are being allowed to leak and contaminate ground water.

The ponds store residual oil, heavy metals and other byproducts of oil sands processing in the western province of Alberta. They are subject to environmental provisions under the federal Fisheries Act, the groups said. (Reuters)

A classic battle pitting the oil industry against environmentalists and fishermen in Norway's Arctic seas is set to intensify on Thursday when the most thorough environmental study of the project to date is released.

Extracting oil from the chilly waters off the Lofoten and Vesteraalen islands is so divisive it could wreck the ruling Labour Party's coalition in this Nordic state that is the world's fifth largest oil and third largest gas exporter but also sees itself as a leader in environmental policies.

"If I were to point to one conflict that could spell the end of the present government, it would be this issue," said Frank Aarebrot, professor of comparative politics at the University of Bergen. (Reuters)

Hearing reveals continuing differences between the coal industry and federal attempts to tackle climate change

The big three of American coal were called on to the carpet by Congress today - nine days after one of the deadliest mine accidents in history - for trying to block climate change legislation.

Big coal is leading the campaign to defeat a climate and energy bill in Congress and to block the Obama administration from using its regulatory powers in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to put curbs on emissions.

Ed Markey, the coal companies' host today, co-wrote the climate and energy bill they are trying to destroy.

So the welcome from the chair of the house select committee on energy and global warming to the chief executives of Peabody Energy Corporation, Arch Coal Inc, Rio Tinto and the Ohio Coal Association, was a tad - shall we say - frosty.

Today's hearing was also momentarily disrupted by protesters in surgical masks who dumped handfuls of coal on the table in front of the execs.

Here's Markey in his opening remarks: "I ask you that you cease efforts to deny the science of global warming and stop spending millions of dollars misleading the public on the true science behind climate change." (Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian)

Meanwhile, somewhat spoiling the anti-carbon cranks' parade: A market re-emerges

In early 1994, the International Energy Agency released a statistic that attracted little attention but years later would transform oil markets and the global economy. China, the west's energy watchdog said at the time, had just become "a net importer of oil on an annual basis for the first time since the 1960s".

The consequences became obvious as China's voracious energy needs propelled the country towards its current ranking as the world's second-largest oil importer, behind only the US - in the process pushing crude prices to a record high of nearly $150 a barrel in 2008. Beijing, which in 1993 imported a mere 30,000 barrels a day, about as much as Ireland does now, is these days buying 5m barrels a day - or the combined production of Kuwait and Venezuela.

Commodities analysts and executives say the shift in 1993 was an example of a "China moment" - what happens when the world's most populous country moves from being an exporter to a net importer of a particular resource (or vice versa in the case of finished goods).

The impact on prices is often not immediately clear. But over time, as the country's import needs grow larger and larger, prices generally rocket. It happened with oil and other commodities including soyabeans, as demand in China proved too much for its own geological or agricultural endowments.

Now it is the turn of coal. Last year, China became a net importer of coal on an annual basis for the first time since reliable records have existed. Including both thermal coal, used to fire power plants, and coking coal, used for steelmaking, Beijing bought 104m tonnes of the commodity, compared with net exports of as much as 80m tonnes in 2003.

The shift is helping to revive the coal industry. After decades of being marginalised in the developed world, coal is being buoyed by the requirements of China and India on top of already huge imports elsewhere in Asia, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The speed of the upturn in demand has surprised many and the industry is not best placed to cope. Bottlenecks in exporting countries will hamper its ability to deliver. But while those may be resolved over time, the fundamental change wrought by China and others will be with us for longer.

The mining industry has being awaiting this new "China moment" to profit from a rise in prices. In interviews, mining executives, consultants, analysts and traders say China will need to buy significant amounts of coking coal from overseas from now on and probably also thermal coal. (Financial Times)

Comment: The folly of so-called 'green' gasoline

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to release a draft rule as early as this week that measures carbon dioxide emissions from biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel
Photograph by: Herald Archive, Getty Images

Want to make $100? It's easy. You send me $550. Cash or cheque. In exchange, I will send you a cool $100. Cash or cheque. Or a money order, if you prefer.

Is that a deal or what? No? Only a fool would fall for this? Well, then, the government of Canada is run by fools -- because it is about to implement a new environmental regulation which delivers $1 in benefit for every $5.50 it costs.

By September, if the new law comes into force, an average of five per cent of the fuel content of gasoline will have to come from renewable fuels made from corn or wheat. Long discussed, the government formally announced at the beginning of April that it would go ahead with the regulation.

Why wouldn't they? Environmentalists love it because it will reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. In combination with other regulatory changes, the reductions will be "up to about four megatonnes per year," a government press release says, which is "the equivalent of taking one million vehicles off the road."

Farmers and agri-business love the regulation, too. Mandatory biofuel content means a huge volume of guaranteed sales. That's big money.

So the Conservative government wins praise from across the political spectrum. And, just as importantly, the Tories get to say they've done something big to fight climate change. What's not to love? Group hug!

But then reality barges in and spoils the moment. (Dan Gardner, Canwest News Service)

European investors and consumers take note: plans by power companies to cut carbon emissions with a new range of nuclear power stations are a big gamble for companies and joe public will have to foot the bill.

Britain, Italy and Finland plan to decide this year on strategies to rebuild their collection of nuclear reactors, while Sweden will decide after its general election whether to allow new nuclear power plants.

But claims such as the British government's that companies alone will shoulder the cost for the multi-billion euro projects will turn out to be misleading, past experience and today's evidence show.

Plans from utilities such as Enel, EDF, E.ON and Fortum will only prove feasible if the public takes the risks.

"Nobody has ever built a nuclear power station in a deregulated market, and there are good reasons for it," said Citigroup analyst Peter Atherton, noting nuclear requires strategies which "take the risk from the companies and transfer it to the consumer."

In nuclear consultations in 2008 the British government promised a fixed price for waste disposal and decommissioning. As the real price is unknown for dealing with high-level waste which has to be stored and supervised for centuries, the risk for any cost overruns, which could run into billions of pounds, is carried by the taxpayer.

Utilities who have lined up to build new power plants in Britain say London needs to consider either guaranteeing a minimum price for carbon emission permits -- making other power plants more expensive -- or subsidizing low-carbon power generation directly. (Reuters)

My post the other day on nuclear power prompted a number of comments – most of them hostile. Because the comments offered were fairly standard-issue arguments that one often hears in the debate about nuclear energy, it’s worth surveying them seriously.

One argument often heard is that market actions are not indicative of economic merit. Rod Adams, for instance, writes:

Well, the desire to make money is what makes markets work in the first place. Rather than walk through an Econ 101 text to flesh out that point, let me ask a question: If profit-hungry investors aren’t the best people to make decisions about whether to invest in this or that, then who are – vote-maximizing politicians? Who has the better incentive to make efficient investment decisions?

Rod seems to be suggesting that nuclear power prices are high because plant operators make more money that way. Given that those operators have to compete with coal and gas-fired electricity, how exactly do cost overruns and high construction costs help nuclear power plant operators?

Regardless, if you really believe that market actors maximize revenues by restraining supply to the detriment of consumers, then you should be in favor of a total government take-over of the energy industry. Nothing else will solve that problem were it to exist. But what makes us think that a government-run energy sector will perform any better than a government-run health care sector, a government-run agricultural sector, or what have you? When politicians elbow aside market actors and call the shots, we get decisions that are designed to help politicians, not the economy. See, for instance, the utterly insane ethanol preferences that make absolutely zero sense from an economic or environmental perspective but wonderful sense from a political perspective.

Jon Boone seconds Rod Adams’ contention that markets are worthless in this context:

That’s not quite what Adam Smith wrote, but never mind. Jon’s indictment of the market could be made in every sector of the economy because there is no instance that I am aware of when all of these alleged preexisting conditions for effective market operation exist. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Health Overhaul: Many thought Nancy Pelosi was joking when she said, "We have to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it." But the more we learn about her 2,400-page horror, the more we realize the joke's on us.

Barely a day goes by without some new revelation of what the health care bill contains — and how its provisions are already starting to hurt millions of people. The overhaul has already begun tearing down our old health care system — the best in the world — and replacing it with something mediocre, bureaucratic, costly and even dangerous. (IBD)

Income tax day, April 15, now divides Americans into two almost equal classes: those who pay for the services provided by government and the freeloaders. The percentage of Americans who will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009 has risen to 47%.

That isn't the worst of it. The bottom 40% not only pay no income tax, but also the government sends them cash or benefits financed by the taxes dutifully paid by those who do pay income tax.

The outright cash handouts include the earned income tax credit (EITC), which can amount to $5,657 a year to low-income families. Other financial benefits can include child tax credits, welfare, food stamps, WIC (women, infants, children), housing subsidies, unemployment benefits, Medicaid, S-CHIP and other programs.

This is a massive transfer of wealth and a soak-the-rich racket. The top 10% pay 73% of the income taxes collected by the federal government.

Rep. Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, has become the congressional leader in explaining details of the recently passed Health Control Law. He says that, based on the Congressional Budget Office's figures, taxes to pay for ObamaCare will have to skyrocket to an 88% income tax rate within 30 years. (Phyllis Schafly, IBD)

Even Marxism recognizes that saving boosts living standards. Why not our tax code?

Every April, we all endure the misery of the tax code. It is hopelessly complicated and nerve-wracking since the taxman has such immense powers to destroy people’s lives. It is time to implement a simple and fair flat tax.

The flat tax uses two simple postcards. Families use the household postcard, and all they need to know is their labour income. They then subtract an allowance based on family size. The remaining amount is taxable income, and the tax bill is based on the flat rate.

The business postcard is equally simple. All businesses, from Microsoft to a hot dog stand, start with total revenues, and then calculate taxable income by subtracting wage costs, input costs, and investment costs. The taxman then gets a flat percentage of that remaining amount.

MIAMI - Georgia is joining a Florida-led group of states in a lawsuit challenging President Barack Obama's overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system, Florida's attorney general said on Tuesday.

Bill McCollum, who is seeking the Republican nomination to run for Florida governor, said a total of six U.S. states had now committed to join the original 13 that filed the lawsuit on March 23.

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida. It claims the reform of the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system, pushed through by congressional Democrats after months of bitter partisan fighting, violates state government rights in the U.S. Constitution and will force massive new spending on hard-pressed states. (Reuters)

Which allows an American Samoan worker to have a higher standard of living: being employed at $3.26 per hour or unemployed at a wage scheduled to annually increase by 50 cents until it reaches federally mandated wages at $7.25?

You say, "Williams, that's a stupid question. Who would support people being unemployed at $7.25 an hour over being employed at $3.26 an hour?" That's precisely the outcome of Congress' 2007 increases in the minimum wage.

Chicken of the Sea International moved its operation from Samoa to a highly automated cannery plant in Lyon, Ga. That resulted in roughly 2,000 jobs lost in Samoa and a gain of 200 jobs in Georgia.

Given Samoa's low cost of living, $3.26 provided Samoan workers a higher standard of living than some of their neighbors on other islands. Now these workers are unemployed.

What's worse is that Starkist, Chicken of the Sea's competitor, might leave the island as well. If that happens, increases in the minimum wage will have cost more than 8,000 jobs in Samoa's canneries and related industries; that's nearly half of its labor force. (Walter Williams, IBD)

ONE year ago today, a government worker in Oaxaca, Mexico, became the first person to die of swine flu. At the bedsides of other men and women struggling to stay alive in Mexican critical care units, we clinicians noticed early on that this novel H1N1 flu virus diverged from influenza’s usual pattern of activity in striking ways. It began in the Northern Hemisphere, not in Asia, and in mid-spring, not late fall or winter. It also had a worrying predilection for children and young adults, not the elderly and newborns.

In the months after those first deaths, the virus ignited a global pandemic. While the epidemic never became as deadly as we initially feared, it was not as mild as some experts now believe. What’s more, it exposed some serious shortcomings in the world’s public health response.

Those who now describe the pandemic as mild base their conclusion primarily on what, at first, seems like a mortality rate in the United States similar to those seen after seasonal influenza. But my colleagues in developing countries would strongly object.

Though we lack reliable death rates from country to country, certainly no one who helped care for the large number of critically ill patients in Mexico could conclude that the flu in the United States was as severe as in developing countries that lacked our resources.

Here, the vaccine arrived later than estimated, and only about 80 million Americans received it — not nearly enough, but a far higher proportion of the population than in many developing countries. In fact, only 26 of 94 poor countries in need of the protective H1N1 vaccine have even received it so far.

We also cannot count as mild any virus that was so devastating for young adults, along with pregnant women, obese patients and minorities.

Worse yet, this virus made itself particularly hard for clinicians to identify. Whereas doctors associate fever and cough with outbreaks of influenza, one-third of patients admitted to hospitals and up to half of infected outpatients in this pandemic had no fever, yet they were infectious.

And because it is likely that only patients with fever were tested for the presence of the virus, we greatly underestimated the number of people infected. A telling report from Britain showed that when children were tested in cross sectional surveys after the first wave of infection, one in three had antibodies to the virus, meaning that they had been infected — this was 10 times more people than estimated from clinical surveillance. (Richard P. Wenzel, NYT)

WASHINGTON - Wild ducks that are immune to the effects of H5N1 avian influenza could be spreading the virus far and wide, U.S. government researchers said on Monday.

Satellite tracking of migrating northern pintail ducks showed they flew from a bird flu-infected marsh in Japan to nesting areas in Russia, said the scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Tokyo said.

The study does not prove the pintails carried the virus, but the species can be infected with H5N1 with no ill effects.

H5N1 bird flu has been circulating in Asia and the Middle East, with occasional outbreaks in Europe, since 2003. It rarely infects people but when it does it is deadly: the World Health Organization has documented 493 cases and 292 deaths.

It wipes out chickens, who have no immunity, and some other bird species and can seriously damage poultry farms. Experts fear it has the potential to cause a human flu pandemic that would be much worse than the H1N1 swine flu pandemic. (Reuters)

Health officials are testing her body for the illness that sparked a global scare in the 1990s.

North Sydney Central Coast Area Health confirmed yesterday that the remains of the woman, who died at Gosford Hospital last week, had been sent to Sydney University to test for CJD.

There are two main types of the untreatable disease - classic CJD and variant CJD, commonly referred to as the human equivalent of the mad cow disease.

Because the woman had not travelled overseas in recent years, health officials believe it is more likely she died from classic CJD. ( Daily Telegraph)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who cut out saturated fatty acids while upping their intake of white bread, pasta and other refined carbohydrates that can cause blood sugar to spike aren't doing their heart any favors, new research from Denmark shows.

But reducing saturated fatty acid intake while eating more whole grain bread, vegetables (aside from potatoes), and other carbohydrates with a less dramatic effect on blood sugar may improve heart health, Dr. Marianne U. Jakobsen of Aarhus University Hospital and her colleagues found. "The type of carbohydrate matters," Jakobsen told Reuters Health.

We certainly hear a lot about this. The trouble is that what looked great in case-control studies seems to get disproved when the more comprehensive prospective studies are done. Or, maybe not.

My latest HND piece takes a critical look at a big study just published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Many are touting the results of this work, indicating that fruits and vegetables have little if any effect.

One of the obvious problems with the study is that "cancer" is used as the endpoint, with no further breakdown as to the type of cancer. Inasmuch as lung cancer is a major form of cancer, and it is caused in 90 percent of cases by smoking, don't you think that this might skew the results a little bit?

What would the results have been if smokers who got lung cancer were left off the study? After all, no one is suggesting that eating fruits and vegetables will make up for the negative effects of smoking.

Moreover, it is well known that certain fruits and vegetables and protective against certain cancers. While it is easier to get data on "cancer" and "fruits and vegetables," my take is that such broad categories prove very little.

It's almost as if these sorts of studies, which inevitably show no (or very little) effect for healthier diets or supplementation, are purposely designed to come out this way. As it is, a bravura review article done by Christian Roberts and James Barnard (J Appl Physiol 98: 3-40, 2005) examined 424 references and found that there was a major effect of exercise and diet on chronic disease. Cancer is one of the conditions covered in that work.

I would quibble with him a bit on that "hazardous chemicals" item, since it has been over-hyped, but I would have to agree with the rest of his statement. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)

SMOKERS may pay an extra $6.50 for a packet of 30 cigarettes to help foot the bill for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's $18 billion health reforms.

The Government's National Preventative Health Taskforce has called for the tax rise in next month's Budget and the soon-to-be-released Henry tax review also examines the option.

A tobacco tax rise could raise two-thirds of the $3 billion Mr Rudd needs to fund the sweeteners he has offered the states to endorse his healthcare reforms.

Up to three million smokers would be hit if the price of a pack of 30 cigarettes rose from about $13.50 to $20 over a three-year period under the preventative health taskforce model.

The taskforce believes such a hefty rise would reduce the number of smokers by one million within a decade, helping the Government save some of the $31 billion which smoking costs the community each year. ( Daily Telegraph)

While on the topic of smoking, which I'm not very often, I've been asked to link this:

Scientists Examine ASH Smoking Claims

On its website, Action on Smoking and Health makes a number of claims regarding smoking, including that the very breath and smell of smokers, even when they are not smoking, can be extremely hazardous to people's health.

E Cigarette Direct asked three respected Professors of Medicine to examine these claims. (E Cigarette Direct)

JOHANNESBURG — A decade after the world’s original deadline for eradicating polio, the most tenacious bastions of the crippling virus — Nigeria and India — have recently shown remarkable progress in halting its spread, giving even some of the antipolio campaign’s severest doubters hope that it may yet largely achieve its goal.

In Nigeria, Muslim leaders in the north — who had allowed the disease to spread by halting polio vaccinations in 2003-4, based on rumors that the drops were part of a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls or spread the AIDS virus — now embrace the cause as their own. So far this year, only two children have been paralyzed by wild polio virus in Nigeria, compared with 123 during the same period last year, according to Nigerian and international health officials.

And in India, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar — states that seemed unable to vanquish polio no matter how many times they vaccinated children — for the first time have not had a single case caused by the most virulent polio viral type for four months straight, World Health Organization officials said.

Globally, the number of new polio cases registered so far this year is down to 56 — a 75 percent drop from the same period last year, the W.H.O. said.

“We’ve never had so many things looking so positive across so many areas,” said Dr. Bruce Aylward, director of the polio eradication drive for the World Health Organization.

Stephen L. Cochi, of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said, “A 75 percent decline in a year is pretty remarkable and suggests we may be turning the corner.”

Both men were quick to caution that the hopeful developments could come undone, as they have before, and neither thinks polio can be wiped out before 2012. (NYT)

The UN’s World Food Program claims that allegations of a scandal in Somalia are overblown and isolated. But such problems may be far more widespread than reported, and more transparency is needed.

How pervasive are the problems at the World Food Program, the largest hunger relief agency in the world and the United Nations agency responsible for food aid? It’s a $2.9 billion question—the amount of direct aid disbursed by the WFP. A significant part of its budget comes from U.S. contributors, and USAID coordinates some of its work through the WFP.

It’s been a month since the leaking of a scathing evaluation of WFP’s Somalian relief program written by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia. The body, created by the UN Security Council, alleges that three Somali businessmen who held about $160 million in WFP transport contracts were involved in arms trading while diverting the agency’s food aid away from the hungry. A New York Times report also claimed food was being siphoned off by radical Islamic militants and local UN workers.

Allegations had been simmering for months. The WFP suspended the contracts of the three businessmen but continues to deny there were serious problems. It has tried to frame the findings as unfounded or exaggerated. Speaking from WFP headquarters in Geneva, Executive Director Josette Sheeran said there was “zero evidence” for the allegations of a large-scale diversion of aid. “These estimates of diversion are not apparently based on any documentation, but rather on hearsay and commonly held perception,” the UN's aid chief in Somalia, Mark Bowden, wrote in the letter to the monitoring body. Bowden didn't provide his own estimate. The WFP said it would welcome an investigation. (Till Bruckner and Jon Entine, The American)

The world will have so much wheat this year that the US farmers could leave every acre unplanted and still have a surplus, a sign of more losses after futures had their worst first quarter in 15 years.

A 34% jump in the combined harvests of Australia and Russia over two years is creating the biggest wheat glut since 2002, even as US growers sow the fewest acres in 39 years and the US Department of Agriculture raises its estimate of world output each month since June. Analysts surveyed expect an 8.6% price drop by July

Two years after prices doubled, sparking food riots from Haiti to Indonesia, the US, Canada and Russia are battling for export markets.

“It’s a mammoth surplus and we have to get rid of it before prices have any hope of rallying,” said Bill Gary, the president of Commodity Information Systems in Oklahoma City. (MercoPress)

Increased success in second crops is behind the continued strength in Brazil's corn production despite a decline in plantings, the US Department of Agriculture has said.

“Reduced are does not mean reduced output”, it means Safrinha more than compensates “Reduced are does not mean reduced output”, it means Safrinha more than compensates

Farmers in the world's third-biggest exporter of the grain are planting smaller areas, with 2009-10 sowing believed to have fallen by 800,000 hectares, a drop reflected in the lower main crop production. At 33.5 million tons, Brazil's main crop, which is currently nearing the end of harvest, will be the lowest in four years.

However in a briefing saying that “reduced area does not reduce output”, the USDA noted Brazilian farmers' increased success in second - or so-called safrinha -plantings, which will take production of this crop to a record 20 million tons.

“Second season corn production continues to increase” the USDA said, in follow-up briefing to Friday's crop numbers, which increased to 53.5 million tons the department's estimate for Brazil's corn output in 2009-10.

Safrinha corn - for which sowing was completed last month, and is focused in the states of Mato Grosso and Parana – was historically a small concern, accounting for less than 5% of corn production in the early 1990s compared with the estimated 37% this season. (MercoPress)

A keen environmentalist has been ordered to pay £4,000 after catching, cooking and eating endangered native crayfish. (TDT)

Gov. Chris Christie is taking $65 million, the entire allocation, from the state's global warming fund, and $5.9 million, from the toxic waste site cleanup program, to help close the over $10 billion deficit in his $29.3 billion 2010-11 state budget, the state environmental protection commissioner said Monday. (New Jersey Newsroom)

Watch as Al Gore refuses to take any questions regarding arctic ice, climategate or his investments that might give him a financial interest in seeing cap and trade legislation passed. Fox News Reporter Jesse Watter probably deserves a medal for being brave enough to try and stand between Al Gore and a free meal. (Climategate Country Club)

NEW YORK--The New York Chapter of the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI-NY) will hold a timely discussion on “Navigating Climate Change Disclosure” on April 14, 2010 at 6:00 pm. The program will focus on the SEC’s recently released guidance on climate change disclosure requirements, addressing what impact the regulations may have and what investor relations professionals need to consider for their companies as it relates to this legislation. (BUSINESS WIRE)

The Bonn meeting succeeded in re-igniting the negotiating process towards a climate deal, four months after Copenhagen ( Martin Khor, The Guardian)

Evo Morales says talks will give a voice to world's poorest and encourage governments to be ambitious after Copenhagen

In what is becoming the hippest environment meeting of the year, presidents, politicians, intellectuals, scientists and Hollywood stars will join more than 15,000 indigenous people and thousands of grass roots groups from more than 100 countries to debate climate change in one of the world's poorest nations.

The World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth which opens next week in the small Bolivian town of Cochabamba, will have no direct bearing on the UN climate talks being conducted by 192 governments. But Bolivian President Evo Morales says it will give a voice to the poorest people of the world and encourage governments to be far more ambitious following the failure of the Copenhagen summit.

Morales will use the meeting to announce the world's largest referendum, with up to 2 billion people being asked to vote on ways out of the climate crisis. Bolivia also wants to create a UN charter of rights and to draft an action plan to set up an international climate justice tribunal. (John Vidal, The Guardian)

Alarmism has a long history in the climate debate. As Europe descended into the Little Ice Age and more and more areas experienced crop failure, high food prices, and hunger, witches became obvious scapegoats. Bjorn Lomborg reports, “As many as half a million individuals were executed between 1500 and 1700, and there was a strong correlation between low temperatures and high numbers of witchcraft trials across the European continent. Even today, such a climate link is still prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, where extreme rainfall (both droughts and floods) is strongly linked to the killing ‘witches’—in just one district in Tanzania, more than 170 women are killed each year.” (Jack Dini, Hawaii Reporter)

New research from several international research groups, including the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen provides independent consensus that IPCC predictions of less than a half a meter rise in sea levels is around 3 times too low. The new estimates show that the sea will rise approximately 1 meter in the next 100 years in agreement with other recent studies. The results have been published in the scientific journal, Geophysical Research Letters.

Recent studies agree that sea level will rise by roughly one meter over this century for a mid- range emission scenario. This is 3 times higher than predicted by the IPCC.

Since IPCC published the predictions in 2007, that the sea would rise less than half a metre in the next 100 years, it became clear that there was a problem with the prediction models as they did not take into account the dynamic effects of the melting ice sheets. The estimates were therefore too low.
Better prediction models

However, the new model estimates, from international research groups from England, China and Denmark, give independent support for the much higher predictions from other recent studies.

”Instead of using temperature to calculate the rise in sea levels, we have used the radiation balance on Earth – taking into account both the warming effect of greenhouse gasses and the cooling effect from the sulfur clouds of large volcanic eruptions, which block radiation”, explains Aslak Grinsted, PhD in geophysics at the Centre for Ice and Climate, the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

The research is based on observations of sea levels from the 1700s to the present and estimates of the radiation balance through approximately 1000 years. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

(mysteriously, this piece of very interesting news has so far only appeared in Italian)

NASA FACTS 1998: (p.3): "The temperature record of the past hundred years does show a warming trend, by approximately 0.5°C. However, the observed warming trend is not entirely consistent with the carbon dioxide change. Most of the temperature increase occurred before 1940, after which Earth started to cool until the early seventies, when warming resumed. Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, has been increasing steadily throughout the past century."

NASA FACTS 2002: "Far from being some future fear, global warming is happening now, and scientists have evidence that humans are to blame. For decades, cars and factories have spewed billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and these gases caused temperatures to rise between 0.6°C and 0.9°C (1.08°F to 1.62°F) over the past century. The rate of warming in the last 50 years was double the rate observed over the last 100 years. Temperatures are certain to go up further."

Most of the temperature increase occurred before 1940" is mathematically incompatible with "The rate of warming in the last 50 years was double the rate observed over the last 100 years". That is...unless the temperature records changed in the four year interim. Oh wait, they did:

Last fall I alerted Spectator readers to the start-up nonprofit Alliance for Climate Education, which spreads the global warming alarmism gospel to students one school assembly at a time.

It turns out that the slick ACE lecturers are more than just preachers; they are recruiters too. After they dazzle teens with hip talk, animation and jokes, they work to sign them up for their anti-consumption (Americans are to blame) cause, often collecting cell phone numbers and email addresses without parents' knowledge. (Paul Chesser, American Spectator)

I got to thinking about how the information about temperatures is presented. Usually, we are shown a graph something like Fig. 1, which shows the change in the US temperatures over the last century.

Figure 1. Change in the US annual temperatures, 1895-2009. Data from the US Historical Climate Network (USHCN DATA) [Yes, it's in Fahrenheit, not Celsius, but hey, it's US temperature, and besides I'm doing it in solidarity with our valiant allies, all the other noble countries that are bravely fighting a desperate rear-guard action against the global metric conspiracy ... Liberia and Myanmar ...]

Whoa, this is obviously a huge and scary change, look at the slope of that trend line, this must be something that calls for immediate action. So, what’s not to like about this graph?

A Washington Post piece last week, “Scientists’ use of computer models to predict climate change is under attack,” has brought attention to the importance of climate modeling in the current debate over climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases (GHGs). And not surprisingly, few mainstream IPCC scientists want to cast doubt on the current state of the art.

Prior to Climategate, at least, North was a straight shooter on the problems of climate models. [North's Left turn to go arm-in-arm with Andrew Dessler with regard to Climategate is examined here , here, and here.]

North’s estimate of climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases is about one-third below that of the model average that make up the IPCC projection (about 3ºC). As he said:

North’s error range is 1/4th of a degree, so his warming estimate for a doubled GHG forcing is between 1.75ºC and 2.25ºC, the low end of which is outside of the IPCC range of 2ºC–4.5ºC. Yet Dr. North dare not advertise his dissent or what he believes is climate realism versus model-contrived climate and the resulting alarmism.

Climate models are only as good as what goes into them and our understanding of some of the physical processes that control key aspects of the climate (for instance, cloud behavior) and their response to human alterations of the atmospheric composition is less than ideal. Models cannot magically generate the real, operative microphysics of climate to inform us what will happen when climate forcings are altered. However, a preference for a particular outcome can quickly turn a garbage in-garbage out situation into alarmism in-alarmism out.

Models are not ready for prime time and may not be for many more years if not decades. But this inconvenient fact is downplayed by the scientists involved for two reasons. One is the massive government funding of climate modeling predicated on an assumed “climate problem.” And two, there is a widespread Malthusian virus among natural scientists–a belief that nature is optimal, man’s influence is bad. (Just the opposite might be the case.) So the happy middle of the debate has been absent.

One of the reasons I am not a climate alarmist is because of Dr. North. I believe North points us toward the elusive happy middle of the science debate between ultra-skepticism and alarmism. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Solomon serves up PONR - Where's the beef?

Steve McIntyre points out that NOAA’s Susan Solomon saw fit to exclude a statement of measurements from IPCC WG1. With such certainty then, it’s no wonder she’s certain that our current situation is “irreversible”. Well then, let’s not worry about it if one of NOAA’s lead scientists says the effects are well nigh irreversible. What she’s serving up is pure alarmism.

That got me wondering what she meant by “back to normal.” Perhaps it means sea ice at normal levels? No that can’t be it, because sea ice area has already recovered to “normal.”

Medieval Warm Period Project:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 819 individual scientists from 487 separate research institutions in 43 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Smreczynski Straw Lake, Tatra Mountains, Southern Poland. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here.

Plant Growth Data:
This week we add new results of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature for: Paper Birch (Ambebe and Dang, 2010), Red Pitaya (Weiss et al., 2010), Reed Grass (Zhao et al., 2009), and Yellow Pitya (Weiss et al., 2010).

The Future of Malaria: Would a new spate of global warming increase the incidence of the dreaded disease?

There continue to be misunderstandings of the role of global warming and the concept of “heating in the pipeline” and “unrealized “heat”. I have posted on this in the past; e.g. see

Their equation 1 is a relationship between sea level rise (the dH/dt term) and the resultant change of T from To which is dependent on the response time that is represented by “a”. If there was no mass to the system being studied, the change to T would be instantaneous. If the system has mass [as the real ocean does] and heat is added (in Joules), the temperature will continue to increase until it warms sufficiently so that the outgoing heat is equal to the incoming heat. If the heat is turned off, the temperature increase stops immediately.

The sea level response, however, is not lagged at all for heat (in Joules) that is input into the ocean at any level. This involves not just the temperatures in the ocean mixed layer, but the ocean temperature at all depths. It is the mass weighted temperatures (i.e. the heat) that matter in terms of thermal expansion which results in sea level rise.

Their use of a new ¨dual model” does recognize that part of the sea level rise (that from heating in the ocean mixed layer is instantaneous) but also, by continuing to use temperature, rather than heat, they retain a delay that does not recognize that heating causes expansion as soon as it is imposed. They indicate a delay in sea level rise from this heating.

However, heating within the ocean at ALL levels will immediately be seen in the sea level. The only lags would involve the melting of glaciers and ice fields from warming, but since they state they are only evaluating the thermal expansion of the ocean, that lag is not be part of equations (1) or (2).

Moreover, since sea level and the diagnosed surface temperatures have increased over the last century, a strong correlation is guaranteed from their equation 2. Indeed, I caution students in taking two curves which have similar shapes, but which are out of phase, and by lagging one of the curves in time, assume this provides a causal relationship.

The quantitative value of the regression they obtain and the extrapolation decades from now, therefore, has to be viewed with significant caution since they have assumed the response of sea level rise to ocean heating can be delayed ( i.e. “in the pipeline”; “unrealized”). This certainly is true with respect to the melting of glaciers and ice sheets, as well as for hydrologic responses over land, but not for heating within the ocean.

What is needed is a direct linkage between ocean heat content added in Joules and sea level rise rather than equation (1) or (2).

Leuliette, E. W., and L. Miller (2009), Closing the sea level rise budget with altimetry, Argo, and GRACE, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L04608, doi:10.1029/2008GL036010.

Willis J. K., D. P. Chambers, R. S. Nerem (2008), Assessing the globally averaged sea level budget on seasonal to interannual timescales, J. Geophys. Res., 113, C06015, doi:10.1029/2007JC004517

Cazenave et al. Sea level budget over 2003-2008: A reevaluation from GRACE space gravimetry, satellite altimetry and Argo. Global and Planetary Change, 2008; DOI:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2008.10.004

provide a more rigorous examination of the sea level issue, albeit only for very recent years. Nonetheless, we will have this data available from now forward and we should use this instead of T.

There is, thus, a fundamental error in assuming that if heat is added in the ocean but not yet communicated to the sea surface height means that heating is in the pipeline. There is no heat in the pipeline that has not been realized in sea level change.

What they are assuming is the continued input of heat to the climate system. This is what could be referred to as “heat in the pipeline” (or “unrealized heat”) since it does not yet exist. The need for a continued radiative imbalance is needed for this heat to continue to be added. This can be illustrated from equation 1-3 in

where f is radiative forcing (i.e. the radiative imbalance) at the tropopause and lamda is a temperature feedback parameter.

Since d(T)/dt is also zero if f is zero, there is no further change in d (sea level)/dt if f = zero.

If the phrase “heat in the pipeline” or “unrealized heat” are to be used, they are referring to f [radiative forcing] not to heat hidden somewhere within the climate system.

This is an important issue. If you are boiling water and the temperature is initially 25C, you do not use the term “unrealized heat” or “heat in the pipeline” with respect to reaching 100C. The heat still needs to be added by the burners.

If the ocean stopped further heating today, the radiative imbalance of the climate system would be zero (if that metric accurately represented the other (smaller) heat reservoirs). There would be no further increase in the global average mean ocean heat content(i.e. there is nothing in the “pipeline”). nor a further rise in sea level from thermal expansion.

The concept of “heating in the pipeline” and of “unrealized heat” are misleading in terms of how this concept has been presented in the climate discussion, including in the Vermeer and Rahmstorf paper. (Climate Science)

HORSHOLM, Denmark — The lawyers and engineers who dwell in an elegant enclave here are at peace with the hulking neighbor just over the back fence: a vast energy plant that burns thousands of tons of household garbage and industrial waste, round the clock.

Far cleaner than conventional incinerators, this new type of plant converts local trash into heat and electricity. Dozens of filters catch pollutants, from mercury to dioxin, that would have emerged from its smokestack only a decade ago.

In that time, such plants have become both the mainstay of garbage disposal and a crucial fuel source across Denmark, from wealthy exurbs like Horsholm to Copenhagen’s downtown area. Their use has not only reduced the country’s energy costs and reliance on oil and gas, but also benefited the environment, diminishing the use of landfills and cutting carbon dioxide emissions. The plants run so cleanly that many times more dioxin is now released from home fireplaces and backyard barbecues than from incineration.

With all these innovations, Denmark now regards garbage as a clean alternative fuel rather than a smelly, unsightly problem. And the incinerators, known as waste-to-energy plants, have acquired considerable cachet as communities like Horsholm vie to have them built.

Denmark now has 29 such plants, serving 98 municipalities in a country of 5.5 million people, and 10 more are planned or under construction. Across Europe, there are about 400 plants, with Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands leading the pack in expanding them and building new ones.

By contrast, no new waste-to-energy plants are being planned or built in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency says — even though the federal government and 24 states now classify waste that is burned this way for energy as a renewable fuel, in many cases eligible for subsidies. There are only 87 trash-burning power plants in the United States, a country of more than 300 million people, and almost all were built at least 15 years ago.

Instead, distant landfills remain the end point for most of the nation’s trash. New York City alone sends 10,500 tons of residential waste each day to landfills in places like Ohio and South Carolina. (NYT)

Regular readers may recall a short piece I posted a few weeks back in which a correspondent alerted me to the potential for fraud in the solar power industry. The prices paid for green energy were so high that it appeared to be profitable to generate that energy by shining conventionally fuelled arclights on the solar panels.

Although the exact details are slightly different there is now an intriguing report of the scam in practice. The text is based on a machine translation of the original German text:

Wind turbines around the UK are sinking into the sea because their foundations are suffering from subsidence, according to Dong Energy, a Danish wind turbine owner – relayed via Yachting News.

A wind farm off Essex and another in Liverpool Bay have been found to have the flaw and checks are to be made of turbines at Blyth, Northumberland and Robin Rigg in the Solway Firth. Up to 336 of the UK's turbines are at risk and will take £50 million to fix.

But hey! What's a mere £50 million between friends, when the bill can just be passed on to electricity consumers? Certainly, not enough to dissuade the Conservatives from reaffirming their commitment to 15 percent renewable energy by 2020, to meet the EU target agreed by Blair.

Interestingly, the Labour Manifesto puts the cost of this extravaganza at about £150 billion. That is roughly the same as our annual public spending deficit, which gives some idea of the scale of the waste involved.

And the only difference between the two parties is that the Tories complain that Labour has failed to come up with the policies to deliver on the targets. There's a difference for which it's worth going to the barricades ... Aux armes, citoyens! The Tories have found a faster way of wasting money. (EU Referendum)

Abstract: The European Union has yet to determine how exactly to reach its greenhouse gas emissions targets for the future. One potential answer involves large-scale development of concentrated solar power (CSP) in the North African region, transmitting the power to Europe. (EnviroValuation)

Desertec is an ambitious project initiated by the Club of Rome and TREC, i.e. Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Corporation of Germany. They want to spend more than half a trillion dollars and build solar power plants on area equal to that of a "130 km x 130 km" square around Sahara that would cover 15% of the energy consumption of Europe.

The two "advantages" of the project are that the solar energy will be about twice more expensive than the energy based on the fossil fuels. Also, 15% of the dependence on Russia will be replaced by the dependence on the regimes led by bashi-bazooks in Africa. What a win-win situation. ;-)

The media disagree whether this project - that is only conceivable assuming huge subsidies justified by the global warming panic - will materialize. At any rate, there's still a chance that the project will make some sense: planning will continue through 2012 and the construction could end by 2050. By that time, the solar energy may become more economical.

In Germany, Weltschmerz is the sadness one feels when comparing the way the world is to the way it ought to be. German environmentalists must be suffering a profound case of it as not-in-my-backyard protests derail industry- and government-planned alternative-energy projects. Germany’s Renewable Energy Sources Act (Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz, or EEG) was supposed to help the German Ministry for the Environment achieve its goal of renewables producing 30 percent of the country’s electricity by 2020. Instead, the EEG has met with widespread opposition. (GWPF)

The pharmaceutical firms Novartis and Roche have threatened to pull out of Britain and relocate thousands of jobs abroad, in an ongoing row over pricing for the NHS and rules surrounding safety trials.

The Swiss drug companies made their threats known in personal meetings with a government minister, according to Whitehall documents seen by the Guardian.

The documents also make clear that cabinet ministers have been conducting a vigorous charm offensive to prevent multinational drug companies leaving Britain. Novartis employs 3,500 people in Britain at nine sites while Roche has 1,500 workers in this country. (The Guardian)

EAT healthy food, nutritionists and chefs advise; not only is it better for you, it's cheaper.

However, a new study shows the prices of fruit and vegetables increasing at a much faster rate than those of junk foods.

The five-year study in Queensland, which is likely to reflect national trends, found that while snacks and confectionery increased in price by about 31 per cent, the price of fruit soared by more than 112 per cent.

Overall, fresh produce and other healthy foods increased in price by 50 per cent between 2000 and 2006, well above the 32.5 per cent inflation rate for food in general.

The research, which was published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health yesterday, follows a report in the Herald last week which revealed that obesity had overtaken tobacco as the leading cause of illness and premature death for the first time, and Australia was unprepared for the huge number of health problems this will cause. (SMH)

Shoppers have shunned organic food as they look for ways to cut back on their weekly spending, with sales slumping by 12.9 per cent in the last year.

The Soil Association's Organic Market Report 2010 showed that sales in the UK dropped from a record high of £2.1 billion in 2008 to £1.84 billion in 2009. (TDT)

Greg, that campaigner for an ecocide prosecutorial binge happens to have a particular other advocacy tie worth considering, according to an alert e-mailer to ClimateDepot’s Marc Morano which I also received.

Ah, the Club of Rome: that group of Malthusians who boasted, on page 104 of their 25th anniversary back-patting exercise The First Global Revolution (in 1991, just three years after the issue had been invented, for U.S. political purposes, in a Senate hearing) that “In searching for a new enemy to unite us we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill.”

Think about that lineage and possible development of a war-crimes-style trial: Come up with an issue that will fit the bill to terrify the public into accepting the strictures and governance that you demand out of fear of overpopulation (and a general control fetish), then follow that up with putting those who challenged you in the dock.

I’m thinking hard, and have catalogued quite an inventory already, but must admit that this might be the best manifestation of the greens’ fascistic tendencies and totalitarian bent. (Chris Horner, Planet Gore)

The first passage quoted above reveals the truth. What environmentalism objects to is human agency.

It is a twist of logic that has made equivalence of humanity’s ability to transform its own predicament and a crime against humanity.

Once again, scientists propose that planet Earth has been so altered by human activity that we are entering a new geological time period—the Anthropocene. A viewpoint article by some stratigraphic heavy hitters, just published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, has proclaimed a new age caused by anthropogenic global warming and man's savaging of the environment. According to these experts, the effects of human activity have become so pervasive that Earth has been transformed and the 11,000 year old Holocene epoch is now a “lost world.” Is this really the start of a brave new epoch, one of our own making?

The name Anthropocene is not new. Nobel Prize-winner Paul Crutzen, a co-author of the ES&T paper “The New World of the Anthropocene,” first proposed it a decade ago. It was not immediately accepted, but periodically the term seems to resurface. Crutzen's intention was to call attention to the “unprecedented” changes humans have inflicted on the planet in the +200 years since the industrial revolution began. Indeed, the term has been picked up by some practicing scientists to denote the current interval of time dominated by human activity. Here is how the authors described the quest for mankind's own epoch:

Along with Paul Crutzen, who is Professor emeritus at the Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry and was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for his work on atmospheric ozone, the other authors are prominent members of the UK geological community. Jan Zalaziewicz is Vice-Chair of the International Subcommission on Stratigraphic Classification. Mark Williams leads the palaeoclimate team of the British Geological Survey. Both Zalasiewicz and Williams are members of the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London. Will Steffen served as Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, and is now Director of the ANU Climate Change Institute. Together, they argue that the time for declaring the beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch has come:

In 2008, the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London decided, a body of independent geologists, voted in favor of considering the possible formalization of the term Anthropocene. This means that some day, Anthropocene “might eventually join the Cambrian, Jurassic, Pleistocene, and other such units on the Geological Time Scale.” But The Geological Time Scale is held dear by geologists (the authors' term), and amending it is no small matter. For now, the term Anthropocene remains an informal, imprecisely defined one.

Has mankind really made a large enough impact on Earth that our presence will be detectable in the far distant future? It is the stated purpose of the paper's authors to “outline the scale of human modification of the Earth on which the concept of the Anthropocene rests, describe the means by which geological time units are established, and discuss the particular problems and implications of discussing the Anthropocene as a formal geological time term.” So let us review the case for the Anthropocene.

(Earth Day Celebrations 2010)
22 April 2010
Coordinator: Ms Neha

About the event

Earth Day is observed all over the world on 22 April 2010. This is a special day that reminds us of our responsibility to protect our planet Earth. This year is the 40th Anniversary of the international Earth Day.

Like last year, the Environment Education and Awareness Area at TERI along with students from various schools and colleges across India is organizing a nation wide ‘Paper Bag making on 22 April 2010 between 09:00 am - 03:00 pm. This year, our target is 10,00,000 paper bags. We hope to go far beyond that. (TERI)

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined." – James Madison

Unfortunately, the ultimate discussion on global warming may require talking to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. If you thought zealots and celebrities-turned-politicians could be difficult to persuade, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Those who would remake the economy in their own image and conform your lifestyle to their vision of a globally cooler utopia are advancing their quasiholy mission with the heavy hand of the unaccountable, unelected bureaucracy at the EPA.

Call it government by, of and for the bureaucracy. Where's James Madison when we need him?

As I and many others have been saying for years, it’s about power and global governance (and Al Gore agrees).

The UK Guardian reports:

It’s crunch time for the climate bill in the Senate.

As Congress returns from recess, the Senate trio crafting a compromise global warming bill are under pressure to gain the traction needed for floor action this year.

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) plan to unveil their long-awaited energy and climate bill the week of April 19. Earth Day is April 22.

From there, they have just weeks to build momentum and show Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that it has a strong chance of surpassing 60 votes, observers say.

“Reid can make the go or no-go decision no later than mid-May in practical terms,” said Kevin Book, an analyst with the consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners.

The Senate faces other election-year priorities – such as Wall Street reform – and will be consumed with replacing retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who announced Friday that he’s stepping down. (Ben Geman, E²)

This month marks the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, an event that has attracted millions to environmental causes. But winning passage of meaningful legislation on climate change requires more than slogans and green talk — it demands intense, determined political action. (Denis Hayes, e360)

As prospects for a binding global climate treaty this year have evaporated, leaders and environmental advocates have focused their efforts on reaching agreement on a few top priorities, including preserving tropical forests and helping developing countries cope with climate change. ( Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post)

The United Nation process is in danger of collapsing unless countries are able to agree on the best way to stop global warming by the end of this year, the outgoing head of climate change negotiations has warned. (TDT)

Delegates from 175-nations agreed on two extra sessions of U.N. climate control talks this year at the end of a tortuous meeting in Bonn that presaged big battles ahead over the non-binding Copenhagen Accord. (Reuters)

Efforts to implement cap-and-trade programs at state level are faltering, just as policymakers in Washington are struggling to generate enough support to put in place a comprehensive national system.

Recent setbacks in California and Arizona point to growing headwinds against the policy. As cap-and-trade loses momentum and becomes embroiled in bigger political disputes about the size and role of government, opponents are becoming emboldened to try to block the policy completely.

Carbon market supporters have repeatedly expressed the hope that state and regional initiatives can provide at least a temporary substitute as hopes for a national program have dimmed in the wake of last year’s failed summit in Copenhagen and a string of election defeats that have thrown the progressive wing of the Democratic Party onto the defensive.

But the same factors that undermined support for a nationwide program, especially concern about the near-term costs and adverse impact on employment when the economy is only just starting to recover from deep recession, are dimming enthusiasm at state level as well. (Reuters)

Under pressure from local election defeats, the French Government has abandoned its plans to introduce a carbon tax, having suddenly discovered it would, "damage the competitiveness of French companies".

Kevin Rudd once described reducing carbon dioxide emissions as the great moral dilemma of our time. Like Barack Obama, he has now switched off this agenda and turned to health.

This reflects a global declining interest in the matter perhaps as a result of scientific advisers having been discredited following demonstrable evidence that they had, at the very least, over-egged the cake.

The battle against measures to reduce carbon emissions is however hardly over. The issue has fuelled too many careers in politics, science, public service and the media for its beneficiaries to quietly move on. Recent public relations barrages by the CSIRO and gatherings in Canberra and Melbourne of the many beneficiaries of the scare is being repeated around the world.

And the policy momentum is on-going. We are still incurring wasteful expenditures, including on intrinsically uneconomic renewables, the will-of-the-wisp of carbon capture and storage, and draconian energy saving regulations.

But any new proposals for suppressing carbon emissions will simply be the wrapping paper for new taxes. And France's experience shows that even this is a risky policy approach. (Alan Moran, Australian Broadcasting Corp.)

Let’s consider Vermeer and Rahmstorf’s equation that relates sea level rise rate to temperature again.

You can read Vermeer and Rahmstorf’s PNAS paper (referred to as VR2009 for the rest of this post), Global Sea Level Linked to Global Temperature, here.

A 2009 paper¹ plots GISP2 paleoclimate icecore data from central Greenland over the past 8000 years, finding at least 6 periods of warming exceeding that of the 20th century. In addition, the rate of warming 900-1000 AD leading up to the Medieval Warming Period exceeds the rate of warming in the 20th century. The authors find close agreement between two analysis methods of the temperature proxies for GISP2 data, stable isotope analysis² and Oxygen 18/16 variability³. The Medieval, Roman, and Minoan warming periods are all found to be hotter than the 20th century, in addition to other unnamed periods of warming over the past 8000 years.

¹Florides GA, Christodoulides P Global warming and CO2 through sciences. Environ Int. 2009 Feb;35(2):390-401.

If you look at this graph in detail, you can see that the retreat in the period 1929-1953 (24 years) was faster than in 1953-2003 (50 years).

Thus all together, the retreat of Greenland ice is the result of global warming at least since 1850, and the retreat was faster around 1930-1940 than today, when GHGs were not playing any important role.

Moreover, the summer temperatures around Greenland in recent years (still) are slightly less than in the 1935-1950 period... (The Hockey Schtick)

Conduct a web search on “Global Warming and Great Lakes” and over 700,000 websites are located with all the horrible things that will happen as the region, and the lakes, warm due to the ongoing buildup of greenhouse gases. The water levels will drop causing massive problems for shipping, every ecosystem in any way related to the lakes will be in serious trouble, less ice will expose more liquid water to the atmosphere thereby creating incredible snowfalls downwind of the lakes, and on and on. One of the common predictions at nearly every site is that the lakes will see a reduction in ice cover – it is not very difficult to sell the idea that a warmer environment will lead to less ice.

A recent article in Eos, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union caught our eye given its startling title “Severe Ice Cover on Great Lakes During Winter 2008–2009.” We knew right away this one could be good. (WCR)

A sloppily written law passed by Congress 15 years ago has cost the country several billion dollars in lost oil royalties in the Gulf of Mexico and threatens to cost the country billions more. Representative Edward Markey has been trying, without success, to fix the law. He argues that the profit-rich oil companies are absconding with money that rightly belongs to American taxpayers.

...

This is unconscionable — and unnecessary.

The oil companies, already richly subsidized in other ways, are generating plenty of money for new exploration. As Mr. Markey put it, “when the price of oil is above $80 per barrel, subsidizing oil companies to drill through royalty-free drilling is like subsidizing fish to swim — you don’t need to do it.” (NYT)

China's state-owned Sinopec plans to buy ConocoPhillips' stake in the huge Syncrude project in Canada's oil sands for $4.65 billion, marking one of the Asian country's largest investments ever in North America.

ConocoPhillips, the U.S.-based oil major, said on Monday it will sell its 9.03 percent interest in the Syncrude Canada Ltd project to China's top refiner in a deal set to close in the third quarter.

The acquisition is not the first investment by a Chinese company in Canada's oil sands but it is the largest.

It underlines a resurgence in interest in the vast but difficult-to-extract energy resource located in the province of Alberta. Investment in the oil sands has jumped since crude prices shot past $80 a barrel with the global economic recovery gaining traction. (Reuters)

China has made clear to the United States and four other world powers that it dislikes a proposed ban on new investments in Iran's energy sector as part of a new round of U.N. sanctions, diplomats said on Sunday.

After months of delay, China reluctantly agreed to join the other permanent members of the Security Council and Germany -- a group often referred to as the "P5-plus-one" -- in New York last week to begin drafting a sanctions resolution against Iran for refusing to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

But the diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Chinese U.N. Ambassador Li Baodong indicated his displeasure at the proposals affecting Iran's energy sector during the 3-hour meeting with his U.S., British, French, German and Russian counterparts on Thursday. (Reuters)

Last week while President Obama was touring a factory in Charlotte, N.C., one of the workers asked the President why he didn’t use an electric limousine. According to the LA Times , the President, who had just made his customary speech extolling renewable energy and green jobs, said there’s not much he can do to wring more fuel efficiency from the armored limousines that drive him around. He had asked the Secret Service about converting to hybrid vehicles, the president said, but was told that it’s not possible.

But he did emphasize that he ordered a tripling of the number of hybrid vehicles in the federal government’s massive fleet. That’s our proactive president where image, not the cost to taxpayers, is what matters.

The event was also, unintentionally, a microcosm of federal policy missteps driven by the lack of concern of regulators to the myriad performance demands of the auto buying public. If the President has unique needs for performance, isn’t it possible others do as well? What about considerations that go beyond fuel economy? (MasterResource)

Communities adapt with own brands of sustainability planning and conservation. From SolveClimate, part of the Guardian Environment Network

Back in 1999, Peter Huber and Mark Mills wrote a piece for Forbes titled “Dig more coal – the PCs are coming.” That article, and subsequent pieces written by Huber and Mills, made clear their belief that increased use of electronic equipment, from personal computers to cell phones, was going to mean dramatic increases in electricity demand. [Read More] (Robert Bryce)

Scientists have made a fundamental breakthrough in their attempts to replicate photosynthesis – the ability of plants to harvest the power of sunlight – in the hope of making unlimited amounts of "green" energy from water and sunlight alone.

The researchers have assembled genetically modified viruses into wire-like structures that are able to use the energy of the sun to split water molecules into their constitute parts of oxygen and hydrogen, which can then be used as a source of chemical energy.

If the process can be scaled up and made more efficient, it promises to produce unlimited quantities of hydrogen fuel, a clean source of energy that can be used to generate electricity as well as acting as a portable, carbon-free fuel for cars and other vehicles. (The Independent)

Sometimes the most insufferable rubbish turns up from allegedly responsible retailers. Take, for example, the absurd solar deal proposed by my electricity retailer in Southeast Queensland (images at right linked to larger images of the enclosed pamphlet and offer letter so you can see I'm not making this up).

And what an offer it is: a 1.5kW solar electrickery system (8 solar panels) installed for just $898.00 down and 24 monthly payments of $149.67 (net $4,490.00 + forced taxpayer subsidy).

My 7-person household (youngest aged 17) and home office currently uses an average of 42.25kWh/day for the (now exorbitant) price of $7.71/day (standard price of almost 17¢/kWh is now triple that of just a few years ago, due purely to State Government greed and incompetence).

Well, have they got a deal for me! I'm offered a taxpayer-funded 44¢/kWh "feed-in" tariff plus a bonus 6¢/kWh from Origin Energy for a total of 50¢/kWh for electricity exported to the grid from my you-beaut solar panels. Isn't that exciting?

But wait, that is not quite correct. You see, it's worked on net metering so at the end of the billing cycle I'm due to be paid for the amount of energy exported to the grid over and above the amount used. So, all my 1.5kW system has to do is deliver more than 42.25kWh electricity per day average and I'm in the money, oh... 42.25/24 = 1.76kW every hour night and day, isn't it.

Oh well, averaged over the year I'm still getting a potential 6kWh per day free electricity, aren't I? After all, in this region a nominal 1.5kW system delivers nearly 6kWh/day for a full year average.

But wait, it isn't actually free at all. For the first 2 years I'd be up for $6.15/day ($898 up front + $150/month), making my "free" electricity $1.025/kWh -- not such a bargain after all.

2 years too short a calculation, you think? Perhaps but given the amount of churning here in the Southeast an awful lot of people are unlikely to see any return, even without costing loss of earnings on their money, additional insurance costs (we get very impressive and destructive hailstorms in the monsoon season) and the cleaning and maintenance required to keep solar panels performing.

I did note the April 1 date on the "offer" but some checking determined that they are serious but apparently not that serious. The pamphlet directs offer recipients to their web site: http://www.originenergy.com.au/solarenergy where we are greeted by this (I've taken a snapshot in case it changes)

Wow! Those solar prices sure are falling fast, aren't they? Down $500 in just 12 days! At this rate if I wait just 96 days I can get the whole system installed for free! And at that price it could almost be worth looking at.

Comprehensive study concludes 100 per cent renewable energy supplies are technically feasible and economically attractive (Rachel Fielding, BusinessGreen)

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a speech in Dallas yesterday where he inadvertently discredited claims that ObamaCare would reduce health care costs and the federal deficit. According to The Washington Post:

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects the annual federal deficit will be at least $700 billion in each of the next 10 years. Deficit spending is a form of taxation without representation, because it increases the tax burden of generations who cannot yet vote (often because they are as yet unborn). Bernanke wants us to end deficit spending. Kudos to him.

But consider the timing of his speech. Why wait until April 7, 2010, to deliver that message directly to the public? Why not give that speech in January? Or February? Or any time before March 21?

If Bernanke really wanted to warn the American public about the dangers of rising budget deficits, then a congressional debate over creating two new entitlement programs would be the most important time to deliver that message. Democrats would have responded that ObamaCare would reduce the deficit. But since voters believe ObamaCare to be a budget-buster, Bernanke’s warning would have dealt ObamaCare a serious blow.

Had Bernanke delivered his populist warning before January 28, it could have jeopardized his confirmation by the Senate to a second term as Fed chairman. Had he done so between January 28 and March 21, he would have suffered a storm of criticism from Democrats (and possible retribution when his term came up for renewal in 2013) because his sensible, responsible warning would have made moderate House Democrats more skeptical about ObamaCare’s new entitlements.

So Bernanke pulled his punches. As Dick Morris would put it, anyone who doesn’t think that political concerns affected Bernanke’s timing is too naive for politics.

Bernanke’s behavior thus reveals why ObamaCare’s cost would exceed projections and would increase the deficit.

Knowledgeable leftists, notably Tom Daschle and Uwe Reinhardt, recognize that Congress is no good at eliminating wasteful health care spending because politics gets in the way. (Every dollar of wasteful health care spending is a dollar of income to somebody, and that somebody has a lobbyist.)

The Left’s central planners believe they can contain health care costs by creating an independent government bureaucracy that sets prices and otherwise rations care without interference from (read: without being accountable to) Congress. ObamaCare’s new Independent Payment Advisory Board is a precursor to what Daschle calls a “Health Fed,” so named to convey that this new bureaucracy would have the same vaunted reputation for independence as the Federal Reserve.

Yet Fed scholar Allan Meltzer reports, and Bernanke’s behavior confirms, that not even the hallowed Federal Reserve can escape politics:

Politics affects Bernanke’s behavior and the Fed’s behavior. Politics will defang the Independent Payment Advisory Board, and many of ObamaCare’s other purported cost-cutting measures. ObamaCare’s cost will outpace projections. The deficit will rise.

President Obama’s push to enact a massive tax increase in the form of a new value-added tax (VAT) is now clearly underway. Earlier this week, Obama economic adviser and former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volker said a “VAT should be on the table.”

White House claims that Volker was speaking as a private citizen simply do not pass the laugh test. A senior statesman among economists, Volker is one of the president’s closest economic advisers. No doubt Volker let the cat out of the bag prematurely from the White House’s perspective, but it is simply not credible to argue that Volker was not conveying the contents of White House thinking. There can be little doubt now that the unspoken policy of the Obama administration is to pass a massive VAT tax hike. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

Crowdsourcing cell phones to detect chemicals

Do you carry a cell phone? Today, chances are it's called a "smartphone" and it came with a three-to-five megapixel lens built-in—not to mention an MP3 player, GPS or even a bar code scanner. This 'Swiss-Army-knife' trend represents the natural progression of technology—as chips become smaller/more advanced, cell phones absorb new functions.

What if, in the future, new functions on our cell phones could also protect us from toxic chemicals?

Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate (S&T)'s Cell-All is such an initiative. Cell-All aims to equip cell phones with a sensor capable of detecting deadly chemicals. The technology is ingenious. A chip costing less than a dollar is embedded in a cell phone and programmed to either alert the cell phone carrier to the presence of toxic chemicals in the air, and/or a central station that can monitor how many alerts in an area are being received. One might be a false positive. Hundreds might indicate the need for evacuation.

"Our goal is to create a lightweight, cost-effective, power-efficient solution," says Stephen Dennis, Cell-All's program manager.

How would this wizardry work? Just as antivirus software bides its time in the background and springs to life when it spies suspicious activity, so Cell-All would regularly sniffs the surrounding air for certain volatile chemical compounds.

When a threat is sensed, an alert ensues in one of two ways. For personal safety issues such as a chlorine gas leak, a warning is sounded; the user can choose a vibration, noise, text message or phone call. For catastrophes such as a sarin gas attack, details—including time, location and the compound—are phoned home to an emergency operations center. While the first warning is beamed to individuals, the second warning works best with crowds. And that's where the genius of Cell-All lies—in crowd sourcing human safety. (US Department of Homeland Security - Science and Technology)

LONDON - Outbreaks of H5N1 flu among birds in Europe came at the edges of cold fronts that caused wild birds to change migration patterns, scientists said on Thursday, suggesting cold snaps may signal future outbreaks.

Dutch and American researchers found European outbreaks of avian influenza during the 2005-2006 winter were driven by collective movements of wild waterbirds to places where the fresh water they need to feed and survive had not frozen.

"This has important implications for surveillance, which should target areas where temperatures are close to freezing in winter, especially in poultry-dense regions close to areas where waterfowl aggregate," the researchers wrote in a study in the Public Library of Science journal PloS Pathogens.

It is difficult for people to catch H5N1 bird flu, but when they do it can be deadly. Since 2003 it has infected 492 people and killed 291 of them, according to the World Health Organisation, and experts fear the H5N1 virus could mutate at any time into a form easily passed from one person to another. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - People who are trying to stay trim may want to make sure they get plenty of sleep.

In a study, researchers found that normal-weight young men ate a Big Mac's-worth of extra calories when they'd gotten four hours of sleep the night before compared to when they slept for eight hours.

Given the findings, and the fact that people have been sleeping less and getting fatter over the past few decades, "sleep restriction could be one of the environmental factors that contribute to the obesity epidemic," they write in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

A number of studies have linked shorter sleep duration with higher body mass index (BMI) -- a measure of weight in relation to height used to gauge whether someone is overweight or obese. But no experimental studies to date have actually looked at what happens to a normal-weight person's eating patterns when he or she sleeps less. (Reuters Health)

There’s one problem with the experiments ‘confirming’ that junk food is addictive: humans aren’t the same as rats.

Ever since Caesar Barger sued McDonald’s, Wendy’s, KFC, and Burger King in 2002 on the grounds they marketed addictive food, anti-obesity crusaders have been trying to make the case that fast food, or so-called ‘junk food’, is addictive. And it’s now official. One national newspaper headline recently declared: ‘Junk food as addictive as heroin and smoking.’ (Patrick Basham and John Luik, spiked)

WASHINGTON - The U.S. food industry is willing to let the White House take the lead on making foods healthier in schools, but said on Friday it could improve what is sold on store shelves without government intervention.

"The school environment is a special environment where having a government play a role in setting the standards for what's sold makes sense," Scott Faber, a vice president at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, told reporters.

"I think the public marketplace is a different environment," he said. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - Sugar is being unfairly blamed for obesity problems in the United States at a time when per capita consumption of sweeteners has declined over the past decade, the head of an industry group complained on Wednesday.

Andrew Briscoe, the president and chief executive of the Sugar Association Inc., told Reuters linking sugar to obesity is misleading because most of the sweeteners used in the beverage industry are from high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

"There has to be a scapegoat," said Briscoe, adding elimination of physical education programs in schools shares part of the blame by keeping children inactive.

Briscoe said that according to data from the U.S. Agriculture Department and the Centers for Disease Control, U.S. per capital sugar consumption has fallen 40 percent since 1970. (Reuters)

NEW YORK - Exposure to certain common indoor air pollutants may impair older adults' lung function, a small study suggests.

Researchers say the findings raise concerns that the chemicals, known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), might exacerbate lung or heart disease symptoms in older adults.

VOCs are chemicals emitted from a range of products, including paints, varnishes, household cleaning agents, glue, inks and building materials. Because concentrations of the chemicals are up to five times higher indoors than outdoors, VOCs are generally considered indoor air pollutants.

But while studies have linked on-the-job exposure to VOCs to respiratory effects, it has been unclear what effects lower, everyday exposures might have in the general population -- particularly among elderly people, who could be particularly susceptible to any adverse effects on lung function. (Reuters Health)

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Two notorious Great Lakes invaders—the zebra mussel and the round goby—now play a central role in transferring toxic chemicals called PCBs up the food chain and into Saginaw Bay walleyes, one of that region's most popular sport fish.

The links between zebra mussels, round gobies and contaminated Saginaw Bay walleyes is a disturbing example of unanticipated problems that can occur when non-native species get loose in the Great Lakes, said University of Michigan fishery biologist David Jude, lead author of a paper on the topic published online today in the Journal of Great Lakes Research. (University of Michigan)

VOLTA GRANDE DO XINGU, Brazil — They came from the far reaches of the Amazon, traveling in small boats and canoes for up to three days to discuss their fate. James Cameron, the Hollywood titan, stood before them with orange warrior streaks painted on his face, comparing the threats on their lands to a snake eating its prey.

“The snake kills by squeezing very slowly,” Mr. Cameron said to more than 70 indigenous people, some holding spears and bows and arrows, under a tree here along the Xingu River. “This is how the civilized world slowly, slowly pushes into the forest and takes away the world that used to be,” he added.

As if to underscore the point, seconds later a poisonous green snake fell out of a tree, just feet from where Mr. Cameron’s wife sat on a log. Screams rang out. Villagers scattered. The snake was killed. Then indigenous leaders set off on a dance of appreciation, ending at the boat that took Mr. Cameron away. All the while, Mr. Cameron danced haltingly, shaking a spear, a chief’s feathery yellow and white headdress atop his head. (NYT)

Why is Africa poor?

Is it a legacy of colonial exploitation? Tropical diseases and parasites? Or is it that local mammals, like the zebra and the African elephant, were difficult to domesticate and harness in agriculture?

There’s truth in each of these explanations. But a visit to Zimbabwe highlights perhaps the main reason: bad governance. The tyrannical, incompetent and corrupt rule of Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, has turned one of Africa’s most advanced countries into a shambles. (NYT)

Proposal to declare mass destruction of ecosystems a crime on a par with genocide launched by lawyer

A campaign to declare the mass destruction of ecosystems an international crime against peace - alongside genocide and crimes against humanity - is being launched in the UK.

The proposal for the United Nations to accept "ecocide" as a fifth "crime against peace", which could be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC), is the brainchild of British lawyer-turned-campaigner Polly Higgins.

The radical idea would have a profound effect on industries blamed for widespread damage to the environment like fossil fuels, mining, agriculture, chemicals and forestry.

Supporters of a new ecocide law also believe it could be used to prosecute "climate deniers" who distort science and facts to discourage voters and politicians from taking action to tackle global warming and climate change. (The Guardian)

“Ship on the Reef”: A critical review of this season’s rerun

About once in a decade a ship runs aground somewhere on the Great Barrier Reef. Although this has never resulted in other than trivial damage to the reef, a three ring media circus always unfolds. Politicians posture in mock displays of righteous anger or feigned concern. Environmentalists emote predictions of dire consequences. Bureaucrats blather about protocols and procedures. Various “experts” exude impressive displays of ignorance. Sundry “stakeholders” slither forth declaring an interest in something they have never seen, have nothing invested and know nothing about. Although somewhat predictable, this farce remains perennially popular.

A performance cycle usually runs for several weeks ending in a satisfying finale when salvage preparations and phase of the moon mandate removal of the main stage prop. As dramatic as the high points seem at the time, the entire performance is quickly forgotten and always seems fresh when it is rerun. The current season is no exception.

Rating: 2 Stars - Predictable and mildly amusing. (Walter Starck, Quadrant)

CHURCHVILLE, VA—Vegetable growers in the Philippines are finding that no-till farming not only saves their topsoil but may even lessen the danger of landslides!

Four years of experiments in the Cordillera—the “salad bowl” of the Philippine highlands—show a 50–70 percent reduction in soil erosion because the farmers neither plow nor hand-weed. The region specializes in vegetables because its 6,000-foot elevation keeps the soil cooler and less humid than at sea level hear Manila. However, the steep slopes also mean high risks for both soil erosion and landslides.

Gil Magsino, of the University of the Philippines at Los Banos, says that even hand-weeding breaks up and loosens the soil structure. Then heavy tropic rains come to wash away the soil, its nutrients, and any fertilizer the farmers have been able to afford.

During 2009, in fact, Typhoon Pepeng caused landslides that killed some 200 people in the Cordillera region and U.S. military helicopters were sent in to help rush rescued landslide victims from the cut-off city of Baguio to regional hospitals.

A similar mudslide phenomenon hit southern Minnesota and Wisconsin in 2007, after a 12-inch rain. Four people were killed, small towns had to be evacuated, and soil sloughed off any unprotected hillsides. As it happens, that sand-hill region holds the second-largest concentration of organic farms in the U.S.—and organic farmers don’t allow no-till because it needs herbicides.

Sediment expert Stanley Trimble of UCLA had long studied the region’s Coon Creek watershed, and returned after the 2007 storm to view the impacts. “It was amazing,” Trimble reported. “I saw a narrow valley with no-till corn on one shoulder, no-till soybeans on the other shoulder, and in the valley was a sediment basin that had collected no sediment at all. The no-till had done a fabulous job.”

While U.S. no-tillers rely heavily on Roundup, Gil Magsino has been recommending that Filipino farmers spray between their crop rows with a mild solution of the herbicide paraquat. He says using strong herbicide solutions would kill the weeds and also their roots. The mild herbicide solution suppresses the weeds long enough to give the crops a head start—while keeping the weed roots intact below-ground. That helps hold the soil and its nutrients so the crops can benefit from them. (CGFI)

Six months after introducing a sweeping climate change bill that flopped in the Senate, Democrat John Kerry is preparing to offer a compromise measure that seeks to reel in reluctant senators.

Kerry, collaborating with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman, might introduce a new bill promoting clean energy early next week, just days before the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, environmental sources said.

Despite Kerry's consistently upbeat assessment of legislative prospects this year, the new bill also faces plenty of hurdles. (Reuters)

Those determined to prove the existence of man-made climate change may soon taste their own medicine

Right from the early days of the global warming controversy, they whacked any scientist who dissented from the view that CO2 was warming the planet in a dangerous way. Up popped other skeptical scientists, and WHACK!! Down they went.

Up popped skeptical journalists and WHACK! Down they went, too. Then more whacks for new scientists who surfaced, or pesky scientists who resurfaced.

Today, decades later, the climate science establishment is still whacking away, faster and more frenetically than ever, as more and more skeptical scientists, journalists and politicians surface. And now there’s a new species of skeptic in need of whacking down — the many inquiries that have sprung up in the wake of Climategate, the unauthorized release of some 3,000 documents from the computers of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University showing that data had been manipulated and destroyed. (Financial Post)

Last week I was invited by the ABC to respond to Clive Hamilton and the Parliamentary Committee report on ClimateGate. It was published a couple of hours ago on the ABC Drum.

The issue of the ClimateGate emails leaked or hacked from the East Anglia CRU is not that complicated. The emails are damning because anyone who reads them understands that they show petty, unprofessional, and probably criminal behaviour. We know the guys who wrote them are not people we’d want to buy cars from. They are hiding information. We don’t need a committee to state the obvious.

The emails show some of the leading players in climate science talking about tricks to “hide declines”, they boast about manipulating the peer review process, and “getting” rid of papers they didn’t like from the IPCC reports. It’s clear the data wasn’t going the way they hoped, yet they screwed the results every way they could to milk the “right” conclusion. Above all else, they feared freedom of information requests, and did everything they could to avoid providing their data. ClimateGate shows these people were not practicing science, but advocacy and have been doing it for decades.

The House of Commons committee was surely supposed to be protecting the citizens of the UK from being deceived and defrauded, so what did they say when faced with obvious malpractice? Did they draw their swords and declare that honest taxpayers deserve better? Not at all. They whitewashed it.

On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, the Committee considers that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community but that those practices need to change.

It’s the nice way of saying that Phil Jones really did hide the data, but everyone else in climate science fails the basic tenets of science too (so that’s alright then). Sure. Those practices need to “change”, not now, not tomorrow, but at some indeterminate time in the future. No rush boys. Yes, Jones should have his job back.

This is simple playground politics, not rocket science. Even preschoolers can come up with the Phil Jones defence: “But Mum. Everyone else does it.” The committee tries to defend Jones, and inadvertently damns the whole field of climate “science”.

From the mouth of Jones himself: no reviewer has ever asked to see the data. What exactly does the haloed peer review mean if you can just get a friend to “tick the box” without investigating the codes, data, adjustments and reasons? Remember that the next time you are unfortunate enough to read an IPCC report — they may have 2500 scientists on their books, but not one of them checked the original calculations for something as basic as global temperatures.

Indeed even today not one of them (not even Jones himself) could check them if they wanted too, because it’s been “lost”. The Met Centre says they’ll need three years to reassemble the data.

From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in Bonn

There are not many empty seats in the dismal, echoing conference chamber in the ghastly concrete box that is the Hotel Maritim here in Bonn, where the UN’s latest attempt to maneuver the 194 States Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change gets underway today.

The “international community”, as it is now called, is here in full force, in the shape of expensively-suited, shiny-shod bureaucrats with an urbane manner and absolutely no knowledge of climate science whatsoever.

However, one empty chair is a pointer of things to come. The Holy See – a tiny nation in its own right, with a billion citizens around the world – has left its chair empty. And that is significant. If “global warming” still mattered, the Vatican would make sure that its representatives were present throughout this gloomy gathering of world-government wannabes.

This emergency conference, called by the UN’s bureaucrats because they were terrified that Cancun this December might fail as spectacularly as Copenhagen did last year, is a much quieter affair than Copenhagen. Not only has the air of triumphalism gone, after the scandals of Climategate, Himalayagate, Amazongate and so forth, but the belief that “global warming” is a global crisis has largely gone too.

There are a few true-believers left among the national delegates, but more of them than before are open to discussion of the previously-forbidden question – what if the climate extremists have made the whole thing up? (SPPI)

April 10, 2010
by CFACT

Delegates to the UN climate talks in Bonn entered their plenary session today holding indulgences absolving them of their carbon sins. Gaia the earth goddess, wearing her trademark green frock and crown of leaves welcomed the delegates and bestowed her indulgences.

“Where are you from,” Gaia asked, “Indonesia? How did you arrive at the conference today?” “We flew in a plane,” the Indonesian delegate replied. “That plane emitted carbon,” Gaia explained, “you didn't breathe on board did you? More carbon!”

After learning that most of the delegates had indeed arrived by plane, Gaia asked, “Have you been washing your clothes in a machine, or do you take them down to the river to wash by hand? Do you watch television? Use a computer? You don't refrigerate your food do you? Did you bring the food home in a car? All carbon sins! You're lucky I'm selling carbon indulgences today and I've brought free samples for all delegates.”

The world's great religions long ago ended the practice of offering absolution in exchange for cash. In the global warming age, however, large emitters of carbon, such as former Vice President Al Gore (whose 20 room eight bathroom mansion in Nashville consumes as much power as twenty average Americans) claim to use “offsets.” Gore and the global warming elite have advocated purchasing carbon offsets which allow them to continue their rich lifestyles guilt free. They are also willing to sell these offsets to the rest of us.

Gaia's indulgences printed by CFACT, The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, state, “This indulgence serves as a remittance for all your carbon sins. You are hereby forgiven for: flying where you choose, machine washed clothes, driving your vehicle, your computer and electronic conveniences, taking hot showers, exhaling carbon dioxide, making things in factories, growing food with tractors, eating meat, watching your favorite TV shows, refrigerated food, Edison's light bulb, air conditioning and heating and attending international conferences.”

The disclaimer states, “Purchase of this indulgence absolves you from your guilt from living in a free, productive society. This indulgence will not meaningfully alter the weather, nor climate and is therefore the most honest carbon trading strategy you can find.”

The indulgence is signed, Mother Earth, goddess du jour.

Gaia has offered the rest of us a chance to download her carbon indulgences. They are available at www.CFACT.tv.

Developing nations say countries must meet once a month to make enough progress for a binding deal to be reached at Mexico summit (John Vidal, The Guardian)

By David Rothbard and Craig Rucker

Delegates from around the world gather in Bonn this weekend to chart the future of a new global-

warming treaty they hope to sign in Mexico this fall or in South Africa in 2011 at the latest. This treaty would lock our nation into massive new taxation, regulation, subsidies and redistribution; take unprecedented control of our economy; and radically alter our way of life. Laws and regulations that increase the power of government are seldom repealed. Treaties are tougher still. The costs and burdens of the treaty these delegates hope to sign are so extraordinary, they cannot be justified unless every link in the chain of logic supporting the treaty is beyond reproach.

A chain, we all know, is only as strong as its weakest link. We must have extraordinary confidence in the integrity of every link before we trust it. Has the process been sound? Has the globe warmed? Are we humans to blame? Will any warming continue? Would the impacts be terrible? Would the proposed solutions do any meaningful good? Will the benefits exceed the costs? Let any link in this chain of questions fail, and the treaty cannot be justified. It would be all pain, no gain and should be scrapped. (Washington Times)

Climate change negotiations remain in the mire after the first meeting since Copenhagen showed rich and poor countries are still not ready to trust each other. (TDT)

Developing nations claim they are being offered cash to sign up to climate change deal

Rich countries have threatened to cut vital aid to the developing nations if they do not back the deal agreed at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, it has emerged.

The pressure on poor countries to support the US, EU and UK-brokered Copenhagen accord came as 190 countries resumed UN climate talks in Bonn in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion.

"The pressure to back the west has been intense," said a senior African diplomat. "It was done at a very high level and nothing was written down. It was made very clear by the EU, UK, France and the US that if they did not back them then they would suffer."

According to other African climate diplomats, threats to cut aid were accompanied by promises of financial support for countries that complied. (John Vidal, The Observer)

Bolivia and Ecuador will be denied aid after both opposed the accord

The US State Department is denying climate change assistance to countries opposing the Copenhagen accord, it emerged today.

The new policy, first reported by The Washington Post, suggests the Obama administration is ready to play hardball, using aid as well as diplomacy, to bring developing countries into conformity with its efforts to reach an international deal to tackle global warming.

The Post reported today that Bolivia and Ecuador would now be denied aid after both countries opposed the accord. The accord is the short document that emerged from the chaos of the Copenhagen climate change summit and is now supported by 110 of the 192 nations that are members of the UN climate change convention. (The Guardian)

About 175 nations agreed a plan on Sunday to revive climate talks after the fractious Copenhagen summit but the U.N.'s top climate official predicted a full new treaty was out of reach for 2010.

Delegates at the April 9-11 talks, which reopened splits between rich and poor nations from Copenhagen, agreed to hold two extra meetings each at least a week long in the second half of 2010 after the December summit fell short of a binding deal.

The extra sessions, and a linked agreement to prepare new texts about fighting climate change, are meant to help pave the way to the next annual meeting of environment ministers in Cancun, Mexico, November 29-December 10.

And the U.N.'s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, said governments should focus on practical steps in 2010, such as aid to help poor nations cope with the impact of climate change or to promote clean technologies. (Reuters)

The prospect of a global climate treaty is fading as the world's top two carbon emitters, China and the United States, avoid legally binding action. Experts say a shift to a less ambitious goal might help.

Less focus on a new treaty might resolve a tangle of disputes over the legal framework and drive concrete action, for example to preserve rainforests or to help developing nations cope with droughts, heatwaves, floods or rising seas.

U.N. climate talks to try to agree a tougher, wider successor to the present Kyoto Protocol entered their third year at an April 9-11 meeting in Bonn, Germany, the first since a fractious summit in Copenhagen in December.

Copenhagen was billed as the world's best chance to agree a new treaty. Failure to achieve a treaty or the smaller goal of binding carbon cuts for rich nations has sapped momentum and is forcing a search for less ambitious solutions. (Reuters)

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chief R K Pachauri, who came in for sharp criticism after the climate change panel goofed on its prediction on melting of Himalayan glaciers, has said he will not step down even if a UN-constituted review committee finds fault with the procedures followed by it.

"Certainly not. But we will certainly implement any constructive recommendations that we get (from the UN committee). As matter of fact, I would be responsible for implementing the recommendations. How can I walk away from that?," Pachauri said.

He was asked whether he would consider stepping down if the UN-constituted Inter-Academic Council review was to come to the conclusion that proper procedures have not been followed by the IPCC.

Accepting moral responsibility for the error in the fourth assessment report which had claimed that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, Pachauri said he also accepts the responsibility placed on him by the world governments by electing him as IPCC Chairman.

"Well, I certainly accept moral responsibility. But I also accept the responsibility that all the governments of the world have placed on my shoulders, and that's by essentially electing me as chairperson by acclamation," he told Karan Thapar in CNN-IBN's Devil's Advocate programme.

Asked whether he was 'determined' to finish his term ending in 2015, he said he will not withdraw from the task assigned to him.

"I have a task, I have a mission to end the fifth assessment report and I am not certainly not going to withdraw from that," he said. (Outlook India)

HYDEBAD: Noted environmentalist and chief of UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Dr R K Pachauri on Thursday expressed deep concerns over increasing quantities of solid waste in the cities and called for urgent measures for its containment.

Speaking at a meeting in New Delhi to mark completion of first phase of Project SEARCH jointly initiated by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and Tetra Pak India Pvt. Ltd., Dr Pachauri said: “I am addressing to the students for two major reasons, (i) you are sensitive and responsive to the environment issues and (ii) you can be very effective in shaming the adults and forcing them to do the right things”. (Andhra Business Bureau)

A.K.A. Global Cooling Radio

The World's Leading Global Warming Skeptics Take Your Questions Live on The Air! (Global Cooling Radio)

Ocean acidification has been called "global warming's evil twin" which apparently admits that if global warming existed as a twin, it would be a good one. Is ocean acidification a problem?

Some of the biggest unknowns hide in biology which is not exactly my field but I have spent whole days with it, too. Concerning the figures that are normally listed and that describe the changing pH of the oceans, I have almost no doubt that they're pretty much correct. See

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), also known as the “Ocean Conveyor Belt,” has been the subject of much study since its discovery. The AMOC is primarily responsible for Europe's temperate climate and some scientists have warned that global warming could cause the ocean's flow to slow down or even stop. This rather counter intuitive result of a warming climate would result in a much colder Europe—perhaps even a new mini-ice age. A new analysis of data from satellites and drifting sensors finds no evidence that the conveyor belt is slowing. In fact, a NASA backed study indicates that the conveyor is far less susceptible to throttling by climate change than some climate change alarmists feared.

The heat transported by the AMOC makes a substantial contribution to the moderate climate of maritime and continental Europe. Scientists have long feared that any significant slowdown in the overturning circulation would have profound implications for climate change. In a 2005 Nature paper, “Slowing of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation at 25°N,” Harry L. Bryden, Hannah R. Longworth and Stuart A. Cunningham analyzed temperature and salinity measurements made during five brief ship surveys between 1957 and 2004. These data seemed to indicate that the northward flow of the Atlantic conveyor suffered a 30% decline in volume around the turn of the century. These findings led to warnings that a scenario similar to the disaster film The Day After Tomorrow could be just around the corner.

“'Mini Ice Age' May Be Coming Soon, Sea Study Warns,” was the headline on the National Geographic News site. “Chilling new evidence from the Atlantic Ocean is raising fears that western Europe could soon be gripped by a mini ice age,” reported their 2005 news article. “The study supports computer model predictions suggesting that global warming will switch off the North Atlantic current in the next 50 to 100 years.” But even in 2005, it was noted that the magnitude of these findings did not seem to match up with observed climate variation.

The changes reported were so big that they should have already cut oceanic heating of Europe by about one-fifth—enough to cool the British Isles by 1°C and Scandinavia by 2°C. Richard Wood, chief oceanographer at the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, said at the time that Bryden et al.'s findings left a lot unexplained. More recently, continuous data measurements from cable-moored instrument arrays identified large yearly fluctuations in conveyor flow even larger than those found by the old ship surveys.

Now, a new study by physical oceanographer Joshua Willis, working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has further reduced the likelihood of a faltering conveyor belt. Centimeter-accuracy satellite measurements combined with observations from free-floating subsurface Argo drifters indicate that the flow has not diminished in the past seven years. If anything, the satellite data indicate an increase in flow. Here is how Dr. Willis described the work in the abstract from “Can in situ floats and satellite altimeters detect long-term changes in Atlantic Ocean overturning?”:

For the non-oceanographer the increase of 2.6 Sv may not seem that significant but is is, in fact, a lot of water flow. The “Sv” stands for “Sverdrup,” the largest quantity commonly used to express the volume of flowing water. It is named in honor of Norwegian oceanographer Harald Sverdrup who defined it: 1 Sv represents 10⁶ cubic meters per second (~264 million US gallons per second). This is a flow equivalent to of all the rivers in the world that empty into the ocean. So, not only is the increase of 2.6 Sv over the past decade sizable, the seasonal and year to year variation of ±2.4 Sv is also impressively large. Simply put, the conveyor belt is not behaving the way scientists thought it did.

The globe spanning ocean conveyor belt, also known as the thermohaline circulation (THC), is a large-scale ocean circulation that is driven by differences in water density that occur in different parts of the ocean. Thermohaline is a combination of thermo, referring to temperature, and haline referring to salt content, both factors that help determine the density of sea water. Density differences are created by surface heat and freshwater flowing from rivers and melting ice.

Distinct boundaries exist between masses of water which form at the surface, and subsequently maintain their own identity within the ocean. These masses of water can be arranged one on top of the other, according to density. When driven by gravity, wind and Earth's rotation they form a complicated system that circulates water around the world's oceans in a complicated pattern. The term MOC, short for meridional overturning circulation, is often used for the overall circulation system since the currents are not driven by just water density. The AMOC is the Atlantic portion of the larger worldwide MOC system.

Scientists earliest vision of the MOC was of a large, orderly circulation that moved heat energy around the globe. The major currents were thought to be fairly steady, but could increase or decrease with changes in global temperature. Only a weakened MOC would flow during an ice age, and anything that could interrupt its smooth functioning could cause abrupt climate change (e.g. the Bølling-Allerød Warming (BA) and the subsequent Little Dryas cooling). Disruption of the conveyor belt's flow is often cited as a mechanism for climate change “tipping points.”

Now, as it turns out, the flow is neither steady nor does it respond to the projected effects of climate change as scientists supposed. A number of climate scientists have hypothesized that global warming would weaken the MOC. This prediction eventually made its way into the IPCC's 2007 AR4 Working Group I report (see “10.3.4 Changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation”). Here is part of what the the IPCC said about global warming and the MOC:

The IPCC based its predictions on simulations from 19 coupled models integrated from 1850 to 2100 under SRES A1B atmospheric CO₂ and aerosol scenarios up to year 2100. Some of the models continue the integration to year 2200 with the forcing held constant at the values of year 2100. The results from these simulations are shown in figure 10.15 from the report, reproduced below. Estimates of late-20th century MOC based on direct observation are shown as vertical bars on the left.

Three of the simulations show a steady or rapid slow down of the MOC that is unrelated to global warming. A few others have late-20th century simulated values that are inconsistent with observational estimates. Of the model simulations consistent late-20th century observations, no simulation predicted an increase in the MOC during the 21st century. The predicted flow reductions range from “indistinguishable within the simulated natural variability to over 50% relative to the 1960 to 1990 mean.” None of the models projects an abrupt transition to an off state of the MOC. In other words, no tipping points are predicted.

That seems all well and good, except the MOC is not following the IPCC script. As the paper by Dr. Willis shows, there has been no slowdown over the past 7 years and probably none over the past 20 years, years during which global temperatures are purported to have risen significantly. This is not the first time that the MOC has thrown scientists a curve. As was reported in “Conveyor Belt Model Broken,” when floating measurement buoys became available scientists discovered that the conveyor belt did not flow in large, smoothly predicable masses. In correspondence with Dr. Susan Lozier, lead author of the paper that article was based on, she claimed that their findings did not change the theoretical behavior of the MOC.

“The North Atlantic waters are indeed overturning, flowing equatorward at depth and returning poleward at the surface, but we are now suggesting that the flow at depth is not confined to a narrow boundary current, or 'conveyor belt',” she stated. “The climate models care first and foremost about the return of the surface waters and our research has no bearing in the slightest on those waters.” That this finding does not potentially impact the climate system as a whole is simply false modesty—any change in the behavior of ocean currents affects how they interact. The conveyor belt doesn't work as scientists thought and that has implications for global heat transfer, and hence climate, over time. Now it would appear that discrepancy was only the beginning and climate science has once again gotten the conveyor belt currents wrong.

Climate models are called GCM, general circulation models, because the two most important parts of the models are atmospheric and ocean circulation simulations. Of the two, the ocean holds the most heat energy and has the strongest impact on climate change. It is clear that climate science does not understand precisely how ocean circulation works, and that implies that all of their model simulations do not reflect reality. The upshot of this new information is that Europe's threatened ice age no longer seems imminent, at least not from a conveyor belt slowdown caused by global warming.

This shows the weakness of the science behind climate change. The predictions of future climate change are based on current understanding of how climate works—the theory. And the theory is based on observations of climate behavior in the past—the data. Except that the data regarding fluctuations in the MOC were spotty and incomplete. Now, with better data it looks like the theory is wrong. This in turn, means that all existing models are based on incorrect assumptions and may also have been calibrated using erroneous historical data. Yet predictions of future disaster generated by these models form the heart of the climate change alarmists' case for radical socioeconomic change. And those of us skeptical of climate science's prognostications are considered the foolish ones.

Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

It is now clear to most climate researchers that something has been stopping the world from warming in the past decade. During this time, according to the standard hypothesis, levels of man-made greenhouse gasses have increased in our atmosphere so the temperature should have gone up. It obviously hasn’t so what is cooling our world?

For some the answer is so-called decadal variations – influences on our climate that warm or cool and that take place over periods longer than a couple of years but are not long-term trends.

It would be fair to say that the study of such variations is still in its infancy and any use of them to predict future variations in the Earth’s climate is mired with uncertainty. (GWPF)

Whether it is the Earth’s climate system experiencing warming, or a pot of water being placed on a warm stovetop, the fundamental basis of why the temperature of something changes is the same: If energy is being absorbed faster than it is being lost, then warming will result.

This is illustrated in the following two plots, which show that imposing such an “energy imbalance” on a pot of water (or on the Earth’s climate system) causes warming which is at first rapid, but then slows as the system reaches a new state of energy equilibrium where the rate of energy loss by the system increases to match the rate of energy gain. Once these two flows of energy once again become equal, the temperature stops changing.

In the context of global warming, more CO2 added to the atmosphere from humanity’s burning of fossil fuels slightly reduces the Earth’s ability to cool to outer space through infrared energy loss, contributing to the Earth’s so-called ‘greenhouse effect’. This “heat radiation”, by the way, is also one of the energy loss mechanisms for a pot of water on the stove.

In global warming theory, this increase in the greenhouse gas content of the atmosphere causes an energy imbalance, which then causes warming. The warming then increases the rate of infrared energy loss until energy equilibrium is once again restored — but now at a higher temperature. This is the basic mechanism behind the theory of manmade global warming.

THE TEMPERATURE “SENSITIVITY” OF THE SYSTEM
Returning to the above plot, if we know (1) the amount of energy imbalance imposed upon the system — whether a pot of water or the Earth — and we know (2) how much the system then warms as a result, we then know the temperature “sensitivity” of the system to an energy imbalance.

For instance, if a small energy imbalance leads to a large temperature change, that is called high sensitivity. This is how all climate models now behave, and is the basis for Jim Hansen’s and Al Gore’s fear of a global warming Armageddon.

But alternatively, if a large energy imbalance causes only a small temperature change, then that is called low sensitivity, which is how I, MIT’s Dick Lindzen, and a minority of other climate researchers believe the climate system behaves.

THE ILLUSION OF A SENSITIVE CLIMATE SYSTEM
I believe that climate researchers have fooled themselves into believing that the climate system is very sensitive. The reason why is related to a real-world complication to the above simplified example: when we compare a warm year to a cool year in the real climate system, we are NOT looking at the equilibrium response at one of those temperatures, to an energy imbalance imposed at the other temperature. That would be a very special case indeed, and it is one that never happens in the real world.

To see what usually happens in the real climate system, let’s return to the example of a pot of water on the stove. Imagine we keep turning the stove up and down, over and over. This will result in the water warming and cooling as the temperature responds to the ever-changing energy imbalance of the system.

Now imagine we have measured both the energy imbalances and the temperatures over time so that we can compare them. If we compare all of the times when the water was warmer to all of the times that the water was cooler, what we will find is that the difference in energy balance between the warmer and cooler temperature states is very nearly the same.

And if a big temperature difference corresponds to only a small change in energy imbalance, this then ‘looks like’ a highly sensitive system…even if the system has very low sensitivity!

If we just turn the stove up once, and then let the system come to a new state of equilibrium, then we really can measure the sensitivity of the system. But if we keep turning the stove up and down, this is no longer possible.

In the real world, the climate system is almost never in a state of energy equilibrium. Chaotic changes in the average cloud cover of the Earth are like the stove being turned up and down, since the amount of sunlight being absorbed by the climate system is “turned up and down” by the ever-changing cloud cover.

As a result, satellite measurements of the Earth energy imbalance will show that there is, on average, only a small energy imbalance difference between warm years and cool years. This gives the illusion of a sensitive climate system, even if the system is very IN-sensitive.

Again, the illusion arises because we try to measure the sensitivity of the climate system based upon a false assumption: that different temperature states of the Earth correspond to a change from energy dis-equilibrium at one temperature, to energy equilibrium at the other temperature. This is almost never the case…yet it IS the only case in which the sensitivity of the system can be measured! Researchers up to this point have been trying to diagnose climate sensitivity from observations of natural climate variations based upon a false assumption.

This issue will be addressed at length, along with theoretical model demonstrations, in our new research paper which has just been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research. (Roy W. Spencer)

After about 2 years of multiple submissions and rewrites, our paper on the contaminating effect of natural, internally-forced global cloud variations on the diagnosis of climate feedbacks has finally been accepted by Journal of Geophysical Research. I do not yet have an estimated publication date, and please don’t ask for a pre-publication copy — I do not want to jeopardize its publication in any way.

The main message of the paper is that feedbacks are, in general, not observable in the real climate system because natural variations in cloud cover obscure them. This is the cause-versus-effect issue I have been harping on for years: You cannot measure cloud FEEDBACK (temperature changes causing cloud changes) unless you can quantify and remove the effect of internal radiative FORCING (cloud changes causing temperature changes). Causation in one direction must be accounted for in order to measure causation in the other direction.

We use a combination of (1) 9 years of global satellite data, (2) a simple forcing-feedback model of climate variability, and (3) output from the IPCC climate models, to demonstrate various aspects of this issue. We also show the only circumstances under which feedback CAN be measured in satellite data…and what that feedback looks like.

What I find fascinating is that, after outright rejection of the paper by reviewers, we had to go back to the very basics in order to convince reviewers of what we were saying, and take them through the whole issue of forcing-versus-feedback one step at a time. For instance, too many researchers have been misled by the simple, hypothetical example of an instantaneous doubling of atmospheric CO2, the warming that results, and the estimation of feedback from that forcing and temperature response. We show why this simple example offers NO USEFUL GUIDANCE for estimating feedbacks in the real climate system, and will seriously mislead us if we do try to use it.

The issue we address in this paper is not even new! Other published papers have included the “internal radiative forcing” term in their forcing-feedback equations…they just never explored the impact that their neglect of that term would have on the diagnosis of feedback.

My hope is that other researchers will read this paper and come to a much better understanding of why our thinking on the subject of diagnosing feedbacks in the real climate system has remained so muddled for so long. (Roy W. Spencer)

In Los Angeles's latest soap opera, city controller Wendy Greuel has declared an "urgent financial crisis." Get used to hearing those words a lot across the urban landscape.

Ms. Greuel warned that next month L.A. could run out of money if the city's Department of Water and Power doesn't make good on its promise to pay the city $73.5 million. If that happens, the city may have to start depleting its emergency reserve fund, which could hurt its credit rating and make it more difficult to borrow to pay future bills. Due to the city's bleeding finances, Moody's earlier this week downgraded the city's general obligation bond rating to Aa2 from Aa3.

What's brought the famed city to this pass? Global warming, of course. Or more precisely, the crusade against global warming.

A couple of months ago, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa proposed electricity rate hikes of 9% to 28% to wean the city off coal and pay for its aggressive renewable energy portfolio. Residents and businesses bristled at such a steep increase in their electric bills, especially during a recession. Facing irate constituents, the city council nixed the utility's proposed 5.7% three-month rate hike, the first of four increases planned.

This in turn prompted the utility to withhold $73.5 million of the $220.5 million surplus revenue it was expected to transfer to the city. Without the rate hike, the utility's interim manager S. David Freeman says it doesn't have enough money to pay its own bills and hand the city the $73.5 million. The city council complains that the utility is holding the city hostage.

What's really holding the city hostage is the state's global warming law and the mayor's green energy agenda, which includes boosting renewables to 40% of the city's energy portfolio by 2020. The state's renewable goal is 33%. The mayor says the city could face hundreds of millions of dollars in fines if it doesn't comply with the state's numerous renewable energy and carbon reduction mandates. But of course complying with these mandates means a sharp increase in energy prices, as Los Angeles residents are now discovering. (WSJ)

The World Bank has approved the $3.75 billion loan for Eskom's 4.8GW coal-fired electricity plant in South Africa, despite the abstentions of British, US and the Dutch representatives.

Some 125 environmental groups had written to the World Bank demanding rejection of the loan. Local groups also put the British government on the spot, challenging the Labour government on its "green" credentials, calling for it to vote against the loan.

When the decision was announced, there was no immediate word on how the UK did actually vote, but a later report stated that the UK abstained. Offering a bland statement, an official spokesman for DFID said, by way of explanation: "The project raises several sensitive and potentially controversial issues which it has not been possible to resolve before this period began."

The US Treasury said it abstained due to "concerns about the climate impact of the project and its incompatibility with the World Bank's commitment to be a leader in climate change mitigation and adaptation."

A Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman said it had advised its representative to abstain, citing concerns that Eskom was not doing enough to develop alternatives to coal. "The Netherlands believes Eskom is doing relatively too little to develop alternatives to coal, so we don't think this is a good proposal," a ministry spokesman said.

There is some early reaction but we will wait to see how the greenies react en masse – they are going to hate it, not least because this will be one of the biggest coal-fired plants in the world.

Costing about £11 billion for the complete development, the first of the 800 MW units (of six) is scheduled to be on-line for the first quarter of 2012. When fully operational, in 2015, it will be burning 14.6 million tons of coal per year, with an expected life of 40-50 years. And the South Africans have ruled out any prospect of carbon capture.

You can see why the greenies are so upset. The plant will add potentially 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere over term - about three times the total UK annual emissions from power stations, motor vehicles and homes. It effectively makes a nonsense of our attempts to cut our emissions, especially when India is planning six of these units, dwarfing any UK reductions.

Strangely, although The Guardian covered the loan issue on 1 April, and The Times on Tuesday, UK media response has been sluggish.

The Times was first into the fray, remarking that Britain effectively had the casting vote on the loan because of the US abstention, following with a reaction from Ruth Davis, chief policy adviser for Greenpeace.

Davis is saying: "Britain could have stopped the loan if it had wanted to but it took the easy way out. Abstaining at this late stage is effectively allowing it to go ahead. The plant will be a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, paid for partly with aid money intended for the world's poor." She added: "Hopefully Britain's abstention means this will be the last plant of this kind subsidised by the UK taxpayer."

The Guardian skirts the UK dimension, instead remarking that the vote had been widely seen as a test of the Obama administration's commitment to new guidelines put forward barely three months ago, shifting aid to the developing world away from coal and fossil fuels to less polluting energy sources.

This paper also cites environmental groups, notably Karen Ornstein of Friends of the Earth, and again the focus is on the US. Says Ornstein: "I am not going to give them points for abstaining. This was totally the easy way out ... If the US were to follow its own clean coal guidance for multilateral development banks it would have had to vote no on this loan." Michael Stulman of Africa Action adds that the entire project was misguided, and would do little to help poor South Africans.

The Financial Times has environmental campaigners claiming that they were given inadequate time to respond to the proposal, saying they "will not let the matter rest". Earthlife Africa and GroundWork, two South African campaign groups, have already complained to the bank's inspection panel asserting that its rules are being broken.

These two groups issued their own press release, calling the decision a "governance disaster", declaring:

Since it was covered poorly by the daily media in the UK, one might have thought that the $3.7 billion World Bank loan to the South Africans for 4.8 GW coal-fired power station might have been followed up in the Sunday media.

On the face of it, the granting of the loan represents a major defeat for the greens and the climate change lobby, who marshalled all their forces in an attempt to stop the project.

Yet, for all its importance, only Andrew Chambers of The Guardian picks up the story, although he does make the right noises – after a fashion.

"It is not acceptable to use climate change as an excuse to limit growth in poor countries as the west's carbon emissions rise," Chambers writes, noting that "this question of development versus environment may become one of the most contentious international issues over the next few years."

Environmental movements, he says, certainly have a role to play in highlighting ecological degradation and its impact on local people, and in some cases the interests of protecting the environment will be perfectly aligned with the needs of the local community.

However, he continues, it is unacceptable for poverty reduction in the developing world to become a staging post for ideological battles lost elsewhere. We should embrace whatever methods provide the best outcome in alleviating poverty – whether that be new roads or airports, power stations or renewables.

Then, by way of a conclusion, we get the money quote: "To do otherwise is to be guilty of the worst kind of eco-imperialism – where the poor are held back for the benefit of the rich."

If we take on board the underlying logic of this piece, though, it means a carte blanche for developing countries massively to increase their CO2 emissions. But, by the same logic, this then means that burden of reducing global emissions must fall on the developed countries, which must not only reduce their own, but offset the increases from the developing countries.

One can see the greenies' point of view, therefore - eco-imperialism is perhaps a small price to pay, otherwise the white man's burden might simply be too much to bear. (EU Referendum)

Don’t give way to petrol pump rage this weekend. If you don’t like paying 120p for a litre of road fuel, get used to it. Get used to 130p per litre. It is now policy that you should be gouged.

It is not just government policy but universal public policy. Everyone (meaning everyone who matters, and that excludes you) agrees that the cost of energy must rise and keep on rising.

I am not talking about fuel taxes but the fuel itself — the liquid that goes in your car, the electricity that powers your washer/dryer. It is required to be expensive by legislation. The fuel you pump into your motor this weekend must contain 3.25 per cent biofuel, rising this month to 3.5 per cent. Biofuels are typically more expensive than ordinary petrol or diesel. According to Argus Petroleum, the wholesale price of fatty acid methyl ester, a biofuel used widely in the UK, is 28 per cent more expensive than cargoes of diesel sold in the Rotterdam spot market.

Unfortunately, there is little opposition. White van man has no friends among the political parties, who are united in their support for more expensive energy. All the parties appear to support the drive to remove carbon from the transport fuel chain through increased use of biofuels, regardless of the evidence of mounting costs and forest destruction. (The Times)

A Gallup poll released this week found that Americans now prioritize energy production over environmental protection. The survey showed that 50% of Americans want to develop US energy resources even if doing so will lead to environmental “suffering” of some kind. [Read More] (Michael J. Economides, Energy Tribune)

Royal Dutch Shell Plc has been granted a long-awaited federal air-quality permit the oil company needs to conduct exploratory drilling this year in Alaska's Beaufort Sea, government officials said late on Friday.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued the permit to Shell to cover air pollutants emitted from the drill ship and fleet of support vessels that the company plans to mobilize to drill two exploratory wells on leases 16 to 22 miles offshore from Alaska's northern coast.

The Beaufort Sea permit -- which Shell has been seeking for nearly four years -- was granted a week after the EPA issued a similar permit for the company's planned drilling operations this year in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwestern cost.

The permit requires Shell to use technological advances, ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel and to commit to other protective measures, EPA officials said in a statement. (Reuters)

The renewable-energy industry faces new controversy after a Northamptonshire firm became the latest to win planning permission to burn tropical palm oil to make electricity.

Chelveston Renewable Energy has been told it can build a bio-oil power station on a disused RAF bomber base near Wellingborough.

Such projects have infuriated environmentalists who say the burgeoning market for such oils is accelerating the destruction of tropical rainforests as they are cleared for biofuel plantations.

Chelveston is, however, only one of several firms, mostly new entrants to the energy industry, to propose using tropical plant oils as fuel for power generation.

Others include W4B, which has planning approval for a scheme at Portland on the south coast, Vogen Energy, which wants to build a plant at Newport in South Wales, and Rocpower, which plans half a dozen such schemes.

Normally it would be uneconomic to burn vegetable oil for electricity generation but the government has ruled that such fuels qualify for green subsidies, which triple the value of the electricity produced to about £150 a megawatt hour (MWh). (Sunday Times)

UC Santa Barbara professor says American waters might be the greener bet

When Eric Smith began studying energy politics in the 1990s, he thought of global warming as an interesting idea without enough data to back it up. “By now, it’s very conclusive that global warming is real and that we ought to do something about it,” Smith, a political science professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, said in an interview with Greening of Oil on April 8.

Others have also reached that conclusion, forcing a second look at previously unpopular energy ideas, such as increasing the use of nuclear power. Smith believes environmental concerns should prompt a closer look at another taboo. “I haven’t heard anybody re-evaluating offshore oil because of climate change, but I think we really have to,” said Smith, who is also affiliated with UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. (GoO)

Editor’s note: This is the first in an intermittent series about industry and government’s efforts to produce cheaper, “greener” oil from Canada’s oil sands.

The decades-long drive to liberate more of the commercial value trapped in Alberta, Canada’s bitumen-bearing deposits without exacerbating the industry’s “dirty oil” image has given rise to a bewildering array of mostly-unproven technologies.

Some are barely beyond the concept stage, some are still in the lab phase and some are moving to field tests, demonstration projects and pilot operations as companies jostle each other to open the door to mind-boggling riches that are more than double the 172 billion barrels currently considered to be economically recoverable. (GoO)

Indian energy giant Reliance Industries will pay $1.7 billion to form a joint venture at one of the most promising natural gas deposit regions in the U.S. with Atlas Energy, becoming the latest foreign company to invest in shale plays that are expected to be very lucrative.

Reliance, controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, has been working hard to expand its presence outside India, break into new markets and broaden its various businesses including refining, oil and gas exploration and petrochemicals.

India's largest listed firm will pick up a 40 percent stake in Atlas's operations in the booming Marcellus Shale -- a gas project that spans parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York in the United States and which, according to some geologists, could hold enough natural gas to satisfy U.S. demand for a decade.

With this move it joins a number of international oil companies including BP Plc, Total, Statoil and Mitsui & Co who have bought into shales, rock formations that could hold vast amounts of natural gas. (Reuters)

The Marcellus Shale, which according to some geologists is the world’s second-largest natural-gas field, holds the potential to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs for Pennsylvanians – while reducing our dangerous dependence on foreign energy resources.

We’ve known about the Marcellus Shale for years. But advances – specifically, horizontal drilling techniques coupled with a 60-year-old technology called hydraulic fracturing, in which fluid is forced underground – have finally enabled us to reach its enormous stores of clean-burning fuel.

While Marcellus Shale production in Pennsylvania is still in its infancy, the results so far have been very good. according to Penn State, shale gas exploration in this state has already created 48,000 jobs, along with billions of dollars in economic output and millions of dollars in state and local government revenue. over the next 10 years, shale gas production is expected to create more than 200,000 jobs directly and indirectly, as well as $13 billion in economic activity.

And every cubic foot of natural gas produced here in the Keystone State represents one less cubic foot that America is forced to import from gas giants such as Russia and Iran. That’s good news, right?

Unfortunately, not everyone sees it that way. last month, Philadelphia’s City Council unanimously adopted a resolution calling for a de facto moratorium on shale-gas development on privately owned land throughout the eastern sixth of the state.

The resolution says that the fluids used in the fracturing process, which are more than 99.5 percent water and sand, “are currently not required by law” to be disclosed, and that fracturing has caused “private well contamination.” One councilwoman said that gas development “should not occur without an environmental impact statement.”

Here are the facts: Hydraulic fracturing, which has been safely employed more than 1.1 million times in America, and is used today in 9 out of 10 wells nationwide, has never been found to contaminate groundwater – not once in 60 years. The Environmental Protection Agency’s top water official confirmed this just weeks ago. and the state Department of Environmental Protection has found that hydraulic fracturing “has not impacted local wells” and “is not a threat to water supplies.” (Go Green Toolshed)

British Columbia gave environmental approval on Thursday to BC Hydro's plan to add 1,000 megawatts of generating capacity to its Mica Dam on the Columbia River.

The provincially owned utility plans to add two turbines to the dam north of Revelstoke, increasing its total production capacity to 2,805 megawatts.

The project still requires approval from the British Columbia Utilities Commission, but if approved the BC Hydro plans to have the new turbines in operation by 2016. (Reuters)

Clean-energy advocates say Ontario’s new investment is worth the extra cost. Don’t bet your solar panel on it (Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail)

Boy, that was fast. Only five years into the world's renewable energy push, many utility companies are so concerned about grid instability that they're saying they can't accept any more electricity from intermittent sources of power. Translation: Solar power only runs in the day time and can't re relied on for so called "baseload" capacity. Wind power primarily produces current at night and, likewise, can't be relied upon for baseload capacity. Geothermal, meanwhile, is perfect for providing baseload. But geothermal projects take an excruciatingly long time to build out. And then there have been the recent spate of earthquake scares around geothermal sites.

The upshot: Utilities such as Hawaiian Electric in President Obama's home state are voicing concerns about plans to integrate more solar and wind power into the grid until they develop methods to more effectively absorb intermittent sources of power without destabilizing the whole shebang. In Europe, Czech utility companies are concerned that "feed-in tariffs," which require power companies to repurchase all home- and business-generated renewable power at elevated rates, might wreak havoc on the Central European grid.

This growing push-back from utilities could prove to be shock to energy project developers, lawmakers and homeowners. In the U.S., project developers and state lawmakers have assumed that the ambitious laws mandating as much as 40% of some states' power come from renewable sources within the next few decades would ensure huge demand for green power as utilities scaled up their use of such resources from low single-digit levels. Likewise, homeowners have tended to assume that if they could put a panel on their roof (or a windmill on their property), they would be guaranteed a market for the extra power produced. (Alex Salkever, Daily Finance)

SIR John Chilcot, chairman of the Iraq war inquiry, successfully lobbied the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to drop its opposition to a lucrative £150m wind farm project of which he is a director.

Chilcot was among a group of three of the company’s directors who met MoD officials in a private home in London in January 2009. The MoD was blocking the whole scheme because it said the 410ft high turbines would interfere with military radar.

Chilcot, who is a non-executive director of the company, was appointed chairman of the Iraq inquiry on June 15, 2009. Two weeks later, on July 1, the MoD formally dropped its opposition. A public inquiry is due to reopen on Tuesday in Duns in the Scottish Borders.

The disclosure that Chilcot — who has a 1.1% shareholding in the company — has benefited from a policy U-turn by the MoD leaves him vulnerable to accusations of a potential conflict of interest. He has not declared his business links. (Sunday Times)

My argument was the same that I have offered in print: Nuclear power is a swell technology but, given the high construction costs associated with building nuclear reactors, it’s a technology that cannot compete in free markets without a massive amount of government support. If one believes in free markets, then one should look askance at such policies.

Now, it is reasonable to argue that excessive regulatory oversight has driven up the cost of nuclear power and that a “better” regulatory regime would reduce costs. Perhaps. But I have yet to see any concrete accounting of exactly which regulations are “bad” along with associated price tags for the same. If anyone out there in Internet-land has access to a good, credible accounting like that, please, send it my way. But until I see something tangible, what we have here is assertion masquerading as fact.

Most of those who consider themselves “pro-nuke” are unaware of the fact that the current federal regulatory regime was thoroughly reformed in the late 1990s to comport with the industry’s model of what a “good” federal regulatory regime would look like. As Oliver Kingsley Jr., the President of Exelon Nuclear, put it in Senate testimony back in 2001:

By Ryan Lirette Thursday, April 8, 2010

The healthcare insurance mandate is unconstitutional. But don’t expect the Supreme Court to rule it so.

At least 18 states have sued to challenge the healthcare legislation’s mandate provision, which requires each individual to purchase health insurance or pay a financial penalty. The mandate is an unprecedented form of federal regulation that, the states argue, Congress has no constitutional authority to pass. With repeal unlikely, legal challenge may be the best chance for opponents to prevent the contested changes to American healthcare. Will the individual mandate hold up in court?

The text of the Constitution and the vision of the framers suggest that the constitutional challenges have merit. However, the majority of constitutional experts are betting that the courts will uphold the mandate. Their prediction is based on a simple observation: the mandate is consistent with the past 73 years of broad constitutional interpretation, which has granted Congress the authority to regulate nearly anything.

Those who hope to overturn the bill observe that the founders had a very different vision. They divided governing authority by granting Congress only limited and specific powers. Having just fought a bloody revolution against a distant and unresponsive power, the founders reserved most authority to the states, where it would be closer to the people.

During the first 150 years of our history, the mandate’s unconstitutionality would have been apparent because the authority to decide whether individuals should purchase insurance does not fit within any of Congress’s powers. Any judge would have recognized that a federal mandate, whether structured as a tax or regulation, transgresses the constitutional line separating what is local and what is national. (The American)

Health Care: When discussing ObamaCare's costs, it's useful to note how government programs cost far more than they are projected to. State versions of our new entitlement also remind us that estimates mean nothing.

Three states have enacted grand schemes to provide health care for everyone. In 2003, Maine began its Dirigo program aimed at covering all 128,000 of the uninsured in the state within six years. Massachusetts' effort to insure those without health plans went into effect in 2006. Tennessee lawmakers believed that their 1994 TennCare program would provide coverage for the poor, uninsured and uninsurable.

All were well-intentioned. None has been able to contain costs.

To get a good sense of how government fails to accurately project program costs, go back to the mid-1960s, when Washington was estimating the cost of a new program called Medicare. It was thought that 25 years on, Medicare expenses would be only $10 billion. But by 1990, the actual outlays were $107 billion.

It took Medicaid, the federal health program for the poor, only until its fifth year to double its original spending estimates.

With Medicare and Medicaid spending hundreds of billions on medical bills for the elderly and poor, it's hard to understand why state lawmakers have felt the need to set up health care programs of their own. But they have. Maybe it was their inability, common to almost all lawmakers, to understand the world around them. (IBD)

Democrats in Washington haven't wanted to be terribly forthcoming as to how they intend to pay for the new health care entitlement program and other massive spending programs being passed. It seems our national debt ceiling is now raised every few months, and the federal deficit is higher than it’s ever been -- exponentially so.

Well, we can now see why the liberal establishment hasn't wanted to address the issue head-on with the American people. At a private event the other evening, it has been reported that one of the Obama Administration’s lead economic counselors, Paul Volcker, indicated the support for a Value-Added Tax (VAT) may be more achievable than in the past.

This statement does not surprise me in the least. You see, in order to fund the record spending of the federal government, hard-working families and small businesses are going to be required to foot more of the bill…it is that simple. After passage of a nearly $1 trillion health care bill, the Obama administration cannot longer deny this. The only question in my mind has been how much will our taxes be raised -- and when. (Michael Reagan, Townhall)

Taxes: Asked why he robbed banks, thief Willie Sutton famously replied: "That's where the money is." The same logic is now being used by the White House as it floats the idea of a broad new tax on all consumption.

White House adviser and former Fed chief Paul Volcker, one of the most respected men on Wall Street, broached the delicate topic of taxes Tuesday.

In his remarks, he said a value-added tax "was not as toxic an idea" as it had been in the past, and suggested it might be a way for the U.S. to escape its growing budget crisis.

"If at the end of the day we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes," he said.

No doubt this is a trial balloon. Based on the $10 trillion in budget deficits expected over the next 10 years, this is one crisis the White House won't want to waste, as Rahm Emanuel would say.

Already, it's waged open war on the rich — vowing to take as much from those having $200,000 in income as it can. The 10-year budget plan submitted by President Obama in fact hits that group with $636 billion in new taxes.

But that's not even close to being enough to pay for the Democrats' reckless expansion of government. (IBD)

President Obama, in the tradition of progressive Democratic leaders, believes government should ask the more economically fortunate citizens to be responsible for helping the less well off.

But the president seems to fail to acknowledge that there are plenty of actions an individual can take to avoid becoming part of that growing crowd of "less fortunate." Instead, in Obama's world, there exists a simple zero-sum melodrama of victims and oppressors.

If recent poll numbers are correct, many Americans find that life in the real world is a lot more complicated than the near-constant us vs. them rhetoric about bad-guy insurers, surgery-hungry doctors, reckless financiers, greedy bankers, heartless corporations and tight-fisted employers who con and hurt the blameless good guys now in need of Mr. Obama's all-knowing benevolent government help.

Surely life is too complex to be such a fairy-book morality tale. (Victor Davis Hanson, IBD)

The blatant and undeniable fact that different racial, ethnic and other groups have had radically different economic and intellectual achievements for centuries, in countries around the world, has led to widely varying theories and widely varying political and other reactions.

A hundred years ago, during the Progressive era in the United States, the dominant explanation was that different genes made different races either more capable or less capable. Similar views prevailed on the other side of the Atlantic, among people on both the left and the right, many of whom urged eugenics, in order to prevent "inferior" groups from reproducing.

The problem with this explanation was that it ignored the great changes in the relative positions of races over the centuries. In medieval times, Europeans could not match the achievements of the Chinese, but in later centuries their relative positions reversed — and there was no evidence of any fundamental change in the genes of either the Chinese or the Europeans. (Thomas Sowell, IBD)

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday it was reviewing the safety of triclosan, a widely used antibacterial agent found in soap, toothpaste and a range of other consumer products.

The agency stressed there are no grounds to recommend any changes in the use of triclosan but said some recent studies merited a closer look.

One member of Congress, Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey, called for strict limits.

"Despite the fact that this chemical is found in everything from soaps to socks, there are many troubling questions about triclosan's effectiveness and potentially harmful effects, especially for children," Markey said in a statement.

"I call upon the federal government to ban the use of triclosan in consumer soaps and hand-washes, products intended for use by children, and products intended to come into contact with food. In addition, I will soon introduce legislation to speed up the government's efforts to evaluate and regulate other substances that may pose similar public health concerns." (Reuters)

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday it has received nearly 1,200 complaints in the last decade about devices that deliver radiation treatments to cancer patients and has called on manufacturers to help improve safety.

The FDA sent letters to 93 makers of radiation treatment devices, urging them to attend a workshop to address concerns about patient exposure to excess radiation from medical treatments and procedures.

Companies sent letters include Varian Medical Systems, Siemens, Philips, GE Healthcare, Hitachi Ltd and several private firms.

Radiation exposure became a major concern in October after the FDA said it was investigating 206 cases of patients being exposed to toxic doses of radiation during CT scans of the brain at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Last month, the FDA held a meeting with makers of diagnostic imaging equipment to gather ideas about how to protect patients from excess radiation exposure.

High doses of radiation can cause skin burns, cataracts and other injuries -- and, in extreme cases, cancer and death.

"Now we're taking a broader look at the other uses of radiation," FDA spokesman Dick Thompson told Reuters.

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a meatless Monday resolution on Tuesday, sponsored by Supervisor Sophie Maxwell. The measure declares every Monday as "Vegetarian Day" and urges restaurants, grocery stores and schools to offer more plant-based options.

Maxwell is a vegetarian and she believes if residents gave up meat once a week, it would improve their health. Her resolution would not require meatless Mondays, but would encourage them.

It's part of an international campaign. Last year the city of Ghent, Belgium became the first with "official" weekly veggie days.

ABC7 talked with Carter Nguyen, behind the counter at Prather Ranch in the Ferry Building. Prather is known for high quality, certified organic beef. Carter dismissed the notion of a meat-free day, telling us he eats meat every day.

"Vegetarians aren't necessarily healthy themselves. They consume a lot of tofu, soy and corn based food products that make fake meat. That doesn't make sense to me," he said. (ABC News)

OBESITY has overtaken smoking as the leading cause of premature death and illness in Australia, as experts say the federal government is woefully unprepared for a tsunami of weight-related health problems.

Fat was rapidly becoming the biggest public health challenge Australia had to face, said the president of the Public Health Association of Australia, Mike Daube, who is also the deputy chairman of the government's National Preventative Health Taskforce.

New figures from Western Australia, which are expected to be echoed across Australia, show the contribution of excessive weight to ill health has more than doubled in just six years, and by 2006 accounted for 8.7 per cent of all disease. Tobacco's role has fallen by a quarter, and now causes 6.5 per cent of illness and early death. (SMH)

No offense, but the next time I hear Michelle Obama lecture me about feeding kids locally farmed kumquats, I'll be forced to pile my family into an SUV and hit the Burger King drive-through just to snap my psyche back into proper equilibrium.

As hard as I try, there is no evading the first lady's maternal gaze -- or her magic organic vegetable garden -- these past few weeks as she zigzags the media landscape talking about her anti-childhood-obesity campaign, Let's Move.

Who better to offer guidance on lifestyle choices than politicians and their charming spouses? Washington is, after all, pooling $1 trillion to pay for the nation's health care needs. Isn't it only fair that someone started harassing kids who are too stout to pull their weight?

And if Washington can't dictate calorie counts in school vending machines or tax soda pop or force elementary schools in Topeka to stock their cupboards with USDA-approved nutritional fare, then, really, why do we have a federal government in the first place?

As we speak, legislation is wiggling through Congress that would ban candy and sugary beverages in schools -- bake sales, a la carte lunches, Halloween goodies, birthday cupcakes -- and stipulate that suitable chow be offered. It's legislation that can't be stopped. It's for the children. (David Harsanyi, Townhall)

NEW YORK - Men who carry excess pounds may also carry an excess risk of pneumonia, a new study hints.

However, researchers note that the effect appears to be indirect. "This risk is driven by the development of chronic diseases related to obesity, rather than by obesity itself," Dr. Jette Brommann Kornum of Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, who led the study, told Reuters Health in an email.

Rates of hospital admission for pneumonia have been on the rise over the last decade -- up 20 to 50 percent in Western countries. At the same time, more and more people worldwide are putting on unhealthy amounts of weight, which has fueled increased rates of chronic diseases such as diabetes and asthma. (Reuters Health)

Rescue workers exposed to thick clouds of dust after the attack on the World Trade Center had large drops in lung function lasting at least seven years, a study of nearly 13,000 workers has found.

The study is the first to document long-term harm in a large group of firefighters and emergency medical workers who worked at ground zero between Sept. 11 and Sept. 24, 2001. All had had previous tests of lung function, so there were baseline readings with which the measurements after the attack could be compared.

The dust exposure left “a substantial proportion of workers with abnormal lung function,” the researchers report in an article to be published on Thursdayin The New England Journal of Medicine. (NYT)

NEW YORK - Workers in the cotton textile industry often develop chronic coughs and other respiratory problems, but a new study suggests that their lung function typically improves after retirement.

Working with cotton exposes people to dust and endotoxin, a substance produced by bacteria that can trigger inflammation in the airways. It's known that workers in the industry have increased rates of breathing problems, including chronic cough and chronic bronchitis -- persistent inflammation in the lungs that causes symptoms like breathlessness and wheezing. However, it has been unclear whether those effects are at least partly reversible.

In the new study, reported in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, researchers followed 447 Chinese men and women working in the cotton textile industry, along with 472 workers in the silk industry -- where workers are not exposed to high levels of endotoxin.

Over 25 years, the researchers periodically measured the workers' lung function using a standard test that gauges the amount of air a person can forcibly exhale in one second. They also questioned the workers about any respiratory symptoms.

Overall, the study found, cotton workers' lung function improved after retirement, particularly within the first 10 years. (Reuters Health)

PARIS: People who have near-death experiences such as flashing lights, feelings of peace and joy and divine encounters before pulling back from the brink may simply have raised levels of carbon dioxide in their blood, a new study suggests.

Near-death experiences are reported by between 11 per cent and 23 per cent of survivors of heart attacks, previous research showed. But what causes the experiences is disputed. Some say there are physical or psychological reasons, while others see a transcendental force.

Researchers in Slovenia, reporting yesterday in the peer-reviewed journal Critical Care, investigated 52 cases of heart attacks in three large hospitals.

The patients' average age was 53, and 42 were male.

Eleven patients had near-death experiences, but there was no common link between the cases in age, sex, level of education, religious belief, fear of death, time of recovery or the drugs used to resuscitate them. Instead, a common factor was high levels of CO2 in the blood, and to a lesser degree potassium.

Further work is needed to confirm the findings with a larger patient sample, say the study authors, led by Zalika Klemenc-Ketis of the University of Maribor. (AFP)

LONDON: It is an icon of modern science, a species so important to biological research its official Latin name is better-known in laboratories than that of any organism bar Homo sapiens.

Yet Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly that has guided many of the most important genetic advances of the past century, is in the throes of an identity crisis that has divided science.

A ruling by the body that governs the official naming of animals has left the insect in danger of losing its celebrated title, just as scientists are marking the centenary of the work that brought it to prominence.

New analysis shows D. melanogaster, which means "dark-bellied dew-lover", does not belong to the genus Drosophila and should be renamed Sophophora melanogaster, or "dark-bellied bearer of wisdom".

However, a move to protect its name in light of this research has been dismissed by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.

The decision has split the scientific community. Some say renaming such a well-known species would betray its history and confuse the public. Others contend that preserving the name would require the redesignation of hundreds of other fruit fly species. (The Times)

Once upon a time, liberals didn't much like Ronald Reagan - his policies, his ideology or even just because they thought he was a lousy executive and an "amiable dunce."

"The Tower commission did not find Reagan a lousy orator; they found him a lousy president," Rep. Barney Frank said of Reagan to Time magazine in the aftermath of the Iran-Contra Affair in 1987.

And more recently, those on the left, and also some on the right, have declared the era of Reagan over for the Republican Party - a point more rational voices on the right aren't willing to concede.

So why are some supporters of liberal causes attempting to co-opt Reagan to promote their own ideals?

Asking "WWRD?" ("What would Reagan do?") is becoming a trend on myriad issues, including global warming alarmism, health care legislation, attacks on the Tea Party movement and, surprisingly, liberal pundits seeking to put the best face on President Barack Obama's leadership. (Jeff Poor, NewsBusters)

Here’s a measure of how President Robert Mugabe is destroying this once lush nation of Zimbabwe:

In a week of surreptitious reporting here (committing journalism can be a criminal offense in Zimbabwe), ordinary people said time and again that life had been better under the old, racist, white regime of what was then called Rhodesia.

“When the country changed from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, we were very excited,” one man, Kizita, told me in a village of mud-walled huts near this town in western Zimbabwe. “But we didn’t realize the ones we chased away were better and the ones we put in power would oppress us.”

“It would have been better if whites had continued to rule because the money would have continued to come,” added a neighbor, a 58-year-old farmer named Isaac. “It was better under Rhodesia. Then we could get jobs. Things were cheaper in stores. Now we have no money, no food.”

Over and over, I cringed as I heard Africans wax nostalgic about a nasty, oppressive regime run by a tiny white elite. Black Zimbabweans responded that at least that regime was more competent than today’s nasty, oppressive regime run by the tiny black elite that surrounds Mr. Mugabe. (NYT)

By Kenneth P. Green and Steven F. Hayward Friday, April 2, 2010

Whatever the new problem, environmentalists always end up back at the same old ‘solutions.’ No matter how many times green gloom is discredited, lapsing into the old eco-fundamentalism is just too irresistible.

Environmentalists have labored mightily to give up the 1970s-era millstone of being anti-growth zealots resistant to economic reasoning, as exemplified in David Brower’s famous full-page ad in the New York Times with the headline “Economics is a form of brain damage.” (Brower was actually quoting environmental activist Hazel Henderson, who told a gathering at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro that, come the eco-revolution, economists would be rounded up in re-education camps.) “We’re not against growth (or at least ‘sustainable’ growth),” environmentalists now say, usually adding that new regulatory regimes won’t hold back economic growth at all, or, better still, will create gobs of growth through “green jobs”!

But like a recovering alcoholic halfway through a 12-step program who succumbs to the warm glow of the corner tavern, environmentalists just can’t help themselves, and always go on a bender of barrel-aged, 150-proof Malthusian moonshine. The problem is that while environmentalists get the high, the rest of us get stuck with the economic hangover. (The American)

As environmentalism continues to grow in prominence, more and more of us are trying to live a “greener” lifestyle. But the more “eco-friendly” you try to become, likely the more you find yourself confused and frustrated by the green message.

Have you tried giving up your bright and cheery incandescent light bulbs to save energy–only to learn that their gloomy-but-efficient compact fluorescent replacements contain mercury? Perhaps you’ve tried to free up space in landfills by foregoing the ease and convenience of disposable diapers–only to be criticized for the huge quantities of energy and water consumed in laundering those nasty cloth diapers. Even voicing support for renewable energy no longer seems to be green enough, as angry environmentalists protest the development of “pristine lands” for wind farms and solar power plants.

Why is it that no matter what sacrifices you make to try to reduce your “environmental footprint,” it never seems to be enough?

Well, consider why it is that you have an “environmental footprint” in the first place. (SPPI)

There is an interesting article on April 4 2010 which illustrates how there are unforeseen costs when people alter their behavior in response to a change in public regulations on important resources. The very well written article by Clarke Canfield of the Associated Press is Water bills go up in down economy as usage drops (Climate Science)

Disasters: In a year full of major earthquakes and reconstruction efforts, it's striking that Mexicali, Mexico, of all places, isn't on the aid-package radar, even after a 7.2 temblor last Sunday. Free trade has a lot to do with that. (IBD)

‘You see a bird for apparently no good reason fly into the cliff and die’

Like scenes out of Gary Larson's "Far Side" comic strip, scientists have discovered a tragicomedy playing out in deaths of Arctic seabirds.

Some crash into each other in heavy fog. Others perish when heavy winds slam them into cliffs. Still others simply bleed to death after being attacked by mosquito swarms. (Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience)

Once, on both sides of the Atlantic, fish such as salmon, eels, and, shad were abundant and played an important role in society, feeding millions and providing a livelihood for tens of thousands. But as these fish have steadily dwindled, humans have lost sight of their significance, with each generation accepting a diminished environment as the new norm. (John Waldman, e360)

Gidon Eshel is a professor with the Physics department of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. He is currently researching diet's effects on the environment. The views expressed here are his own. -

First it was slow. Then local, then organic. Now it is firmly grass-fed.

As a rare geophysicist studying diet's environmental consequences, I am asked daily by my colleagues - a bit bemused by my new field yet quantitatively astute and environmentally concerned - about the latest claim made about impacts of food production on the physical environment. (Reuters)

With a value of $28B, the quota distortions are mounting as the supply system entrenches

Since the early 1970s, “supply management” has subjected Canadian dairy, poultry and egg production to government-mandated cartels. Introduced to increase producer power vis-à-vis intermediaries and consumers, and thus raise farm incomes, supply management supports higher-than-market prices by administering producer prices and restricting farm output through production quotas, while high tariffs prevent food processors and consumers getting alternative supplies from abroad.

It's a sure sign that a government agency has become overmighty when it vastly increases its budget, grabs power unconstitutionally and treats Congress with contempt. All of this applies to the Environmental Protection Agency. Unless Congress acts quickly to curb the EPA's power, it will become a huge drag on the economy. Few bodies are more deserving of cutbacks now. This year, EPA's budget (which had hovered at $7 billion to $8 billion since 1997) increased by 34 percent, to more than $10 billion for the first time ever. The budget increase does not translate into an upsurge in staffing level - which remains lower than its apex of more than 18,000 workers in 1999 - but instead represents much more patronage in the form of grants to states. (Iain Murray, Washington Times)

Fresh off his victory in health care reform, President Obama is wasting no time in moving on to one of his next goals: climate change policy.

The White House says it wants Congress to pass an energy and climate bill this year, but the debate is expected to be just as tense and drawn out as it was for health care. The president will likely once again be forced to compromise in order to secure key votes. Last summer, the House passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, which would limit greenhouse gas emissions and let companies trade permits to emit carbon, but legislation has stalled in the Senate, largely due to opposition from lawmakers representing coal and oil states.

As the 40th anniversary of Earth Day approaches on April 25th, Congress and the White House are already being bombarded with letters and calls for action by environmentalists. At the same time, recent polls show mounting public skepticism over the evidence of global warming due in part to allegations of shaky scientific research, as well as concerns about the cost of a transition to cleaner energy. (Poder Magazine)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed to effect a reduction in CO₂ releases in the U.S. by raising the required fuel economy standards for new cars in 2014 and again in 2016. The current standard, now at 30.2 mpg for passenger cars (everything here is about passenger cars, the analysis of light trucks will have to wait) will rise to 35.5 mpg in 2016.

EPA claims that they used a carbon price of $21/tonne to establish the appropriate increase in fuel economy. The EPA also claims that these standards will reduce CO₂ releases from the vehicle sector by 21%. Well, at least they are not using the number 19. This proposal will have a minute effect on CO₂ levels and is unlikely to come in at the very low or “negative” cost per tonne of CO₂ claimed by its proponents.

One of the oldest professional fights in Washington is about whether the objects of the government’s interest at a given time will simply accept what is put in front of them or react, perhaps in ways not included in the “scoring.” Decades of poor predictions on cost and performance should have taught us that assuming no response by consumers, investors or others is probably the least likely of all possible scenarios. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Climate negotiators meet in Bonn on Friday for the first time since the fractious Copenhagen summit but with scant hopes of patching together a new legally binding U.N. deal in 2010.

Delegates from 170 nations gathered on Thursday for the April 9-11 meeting that will seek to rebuild trust after the December summit disappointed many by failing to agree a binding U.N. deal at the climax of two years of talks. (Reuters)

The world is unlikely to agree a deal to stop global warming this year, the head of climate change negotiations has admitted, as nations meet for the latest round of talks. (TDT)

Today, one of the most important meetings in our history begins, though you probably wouldn't know it.

The 2010 UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany, won't make the front page of the newspaper, and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd won't attend. Since Copenhagen in December, the media, politicians and public have shifted their attention from climate change to other things. Dinner-table chatter now focuses on health reform, population growth or Tony Abbott's abs

Where has climate change gone? As Peter Costello aptly put it in an article for the National Times last week: "Can a momentous moral challenge fizzle out like this?"

I thought Costello was lamenting the lack of progress on climate policy, and I shared the sentiment. However, he was trying to tell us that the urgency over climate change was nothing more than politically-driven spin. (SMH)

Unicef's new scheme urges businesses to go beyond simply reducing their emissions and to take a lead in tackling climate change (Paddy Ashdown, The Guardian)

Written by Richard S Courtney
Wednesday, 07 April 2010

The Climategate affair originated in November 2009 when files were hacked or leaked from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (UEA) and were published on the internet at various places. These files – especially the emails they contained – provide prima facie evidence of scientific malpractice by climate scientists who call themselves the ‘Team’. Several investigations of the affair have been initiated and two of these are concluded. The concluded investigations were by Penn State University (PSU) and the UK Parliament’s House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology. Both these investigations have mostly exonerated the Team. But the findings of these investigations have been widely excoriated as being a ‘whitewash’. (SPPI)

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — EDITOR’S NOTE: The writer is addressing the question, Is climate change real?

To a significant extent, the issue of climate change revolves around the elevation of the commonplace to the ancient level of ominous omen. In a world where climate change has always been the norm, climate change is now taken as punishment for sinful levels of consumption. In a world where we experience temperature changes of tens of degrees in a single day, we treat changes of a few tenths of a degree in some statistical residue, known as the global mean temperature anomaly (GATA), as portents of disaster.

Earth has had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a 100,000-year cycle for the last 700,000 years, and there have been previous interglacials that appear to have been warmer than the present despite lower carbon-dioxide levels. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th century, these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat, and, indeed, some alpine glaciers are advancing again.

For small changes in GATA, there is no need for any external cause. Earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Examples include El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, etc. Recent work suggests that this variability is enough to account for all change in the globally averaged temperature anomaly since the 19th century. To be sure, man’s emissions of carbon dioxide must have some impact. The question of importance, however, is how much. (Gazette Extra)

DRASTIC measures to combat global warming with technology such as space-based mirrors to act as planetary sunshades could go awry, the president of Britain's Royal Society has warned.

Martin Rees says nations should be "extremely cautious" about solar radiation management geoengineering techniques, which also include the injection of sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere to cool the earth by mimicking volcanic eruptions.

"They [the techniques] may have unintended consequences," he tells the HES.

"You're buying time and storing up problems for the future because the carbon dioxide concentration will be going up and up."

Geoengineering is environmental manipulation on a planetary scale to tackle global warming without curbing greenhouse gas emissions at the smokestack. It includes mainstream methods such as reforestation, using carbon sinks to cancel out emissions.

The Royal Society, which celebrates its 350th birthday this year, is upbeat about such biosequestration methods. However, it fears the more extreme solar radiation management solutions, long dismissed as "original", could be taken more seriously amid delays in getting international agreement on deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.

In a report titled Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance and Uncertainty released last year, the society expressed concern geoengineering would divert resources from climate change mitigation and adaptation. (The Australian)

Ed. Note: This article first appeared on Geoffrey Styles' blog, Energy Outlook.

This week's Economist includes coverage of a recent meeting of scientists at Asilomar, in California, to discuss the ground rules for pursuing "geoengineering", the deliberate, large-scale modification of the earth's environment. The purpose of the geoengineering now under consideration is to limit or reverse the effects of climate change, presumably whether man-made or otherwise. This is a notion that provokes great anxiety or outright revulsion on the part of many who feel our only acceptable response to global warming is to return the planet to something approximating its pre-industrial state by eliminating the emissions and land-use changes that have accumulated over the last century or more. However, for those of us who doubt either the efficacy or achievability of such drastic changes in the economy and our lifestyles, geoengineering is at least a legitimate, complementary option along with mitigation, and potentially our last hope of averting a worst-case climate scenario, should one arise.

Anyone who is convinced of the dangers of global warming or climate change, whichever you prefer, implicitly accepts the potential of geoengineering, because anthropogenic climate change (AGW) ultimately amounts to an uncontrolled experiment in geoengineering on a global scale. The kinds of experiments proposed by researchers meeting at Asilomar--the site of other notable, long-view discussions in the past--would operate on a much smaller scale, at least initially, with the goal of either undoing or holding temporarily in abeyance the changes resulting from humanity's emissions of heat-trapping gases in excess of the capacity of the earth's massive natural GHG-recycling facilities to absorb. For that matter, geoengineering might even be useful if it turned out that AGW was only one of several factors combining to shift conditions away from the benevolent state that has supported humanity's rise as the dominant species on the planet. (Energy Tribune)

It is their doom-laden political outlook that really convinces greens the world is ending, not scientific evidence.

Despite the apparent central position of science in debates and policymaking around climate change, more often than not policy responses are tempered by politics first, and science second.

Consider, for instance, two recent reports from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Global Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which declared, respectively, that 150,000 and 300,000 deaths a year can be attributed to climate change. All of these cases were in the world’s poorer regions. In reality, these deaths were caused by poverty – and you can only really come to GHF’s and WHO’s conclusions if you presume that poverty is a ‘natural’ effect, and that is a political viewpoint not a scientific one.

At the same time, as much fun as debunking hockey sticks and exposing Climategate emails is, sceptics should be aware, too, that the debate around climate change does not rest on science. Looking for smoking guns to ‘debunk’ global warming fears merely reproduces the mistake that alarmists make: expecting science to resolve the political debate. (Ben Pile, spiked)

Pity the flat-headed cat, for it is doomed. Also, Greenpeace throws a threat down the memory hole, green groups conspire against Africa and Britain is bankrupt but just doesn’t know it, yet. (Daily Bayonet)

Original requests for information from the Climatic Research Unit appear to have been genuine, but there are later enquiries that could potentially be seen as aggravating (The Guardian)

There has been a considerable amount of speculation over the past few years about which “leading” climate scientist told David Deming that we have to “get rid of” the Medieval Warm Period, including speculation (e.g. ukweatherworld) that it was Jonathan Overpeck (recently one of two Coordinating Lead Authors of AR4 chapter 6).
While the identity of Deming’s correspondent remains uncertain, a Climategate letter from January 13. 2005, written as an instruction from Overpeck as Coordinating Lead Author to IPCC Lead Authors Briffa and Osborn (cc Jansen, Masson-Delmotte), states that Overpeck wants to “deal a mortal blow” to the MWP (and Holocene Optimum) “myths” (480. 1105670738.txt). (There has been a considerable amount of speculation over the past few years about which “leading” climate scientist told David Deming that we have to “get rid of” the Medieval Warm Period, including speculation (e.g. ukweatherworld) that it was Jonathan Overpeck (recently one of two Coordinating Lead Authors of AR4 chapter 6).

While the identity of Deming’s correspondent remains uncertain, a Climategate letter from January 13. 2005, written as an instruction from Overpeck as Coordinating Lead Author to IPCC Lead Authors Briffa and Osborn (cc Jansen, Masson-Delmotte), states that Overpeck wants to “deal a mortal blow” to the MWP (and Holocene Optimum) “myths” (480. 1105670738.txt). (Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit)

Written by Joseph D'Aleo & Anthony Watts
Thursday, 08 April 2010

Authors veteran meteorologists Joe D’Aleo and Anthony Watts analyzed temperature records from all around the world for a major SPPI paper, Surface Temperature Records – Policy-driven Deception? The startling conclusion that we cannot tell whether there was any significant “global warming” at all in the 20th century is based on numerous astonishing examples of manipulation and exaggeration of the true level and rate of “global warming”.

That is to say, leading meteorological institutions in the USA and around the world have so systematically tampered with instrumental temperature data that it cannot be safely said that there has been any significant net “global warming” in the 20th century. (SPPI)

Beef farmers in Britain are fighting back against the green lobby by producing meat with a lower carbon footprint. (TDT)

Figures from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre indicate six or seven- year low over past three decades (The Guardian)

Nature readings from 1753 until present day – including information from Springwatch viewers – show that change has been greatest in past 25 years ( Press Association)

The New York Department of Environmental Conservation is guaranteeing that New Yorkers will soon have to pay even more for electricity — when they can get it.

The department just rejected Indian Point’s request for a water-quality certificate, which the plant needs to keep operating one reactor running after 2013, and the other after 2015. (The plant also needs its license renewed by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but that’s a different battle.)

A court fight is expected, but if this holds up, New York City in particular is in trouble: Indian Point provides about a third of Gotham’s power (and nuclear plants overall generate 31 percent of electricity statewide).

Even assuming that power can be replaced, it won’t come cheap: Nuclear power is the least expensive form of electricity produced in the United States. And New Yorkers already pay more than a third above the US average for electricity (17.8 cents per killowatt-hour, six cents above average). Continue reading... (The Foundry)

New federal rules to restrict mountaintop mining are likely to hurt coal production and endanger jobs in poor Appalachian communities recovering from the recession, industry experts, politicians and analysts say.

The move by the Environmental Protection Agency has already sparked a battle pitting mining companies against the Obama administration and even split Republican senatorial ranks. It comes at a time when Big Coal is fighting another major public relations issue -- mine safety -- after a blast in West Virginia this week killed 25 miners.

While environmental groups laud the EPA's move, Wall Street analysts believe tighter rules will make it more difficult for mining companies to operate at a time of surging demand for coal from power plants and steelmakers. Legislators and unions are concerned that jobs will be lost.

Last week, as Wall Street was leaving for a long Easter weekend, the EPA set new water guidelines that Administrator Lisa Jackson said would allow "no or very few valley fills."

That refers to mining companies dumping debris in waterways after blasting into mountainsides for surface mines, which are cheaper to operate than underground mines. The EPA guidelines focus on water conductivity limitations strict enough that one miner, Massey Energy, even suggested Perrier or San Pellegrino bottled waters would fail.

"Let me be clear -- this is not about ending coal mining; this is about ending coal mining pollution," Jackson said.

Luke Popovich of the National Mining Association, an industry trade group, was not convinced. "It could mean the end of an era.

"They talk about coal being important for the future," he said of the Obama administration, "but everywhere we see their actions fall short of their words."

Tighter water controls come six months after the EPA ruled that 79 West Virginia mine permits must undergo further evaluation because of a potential hazard to water. Mining groups complained the hold-ups threaten job security in Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio that depend on coal mining. (Reuters)

Changes in land use linked to the growing of crops like soybeans and palm oil may cancel out the benefits of biofuels in terms of emissions savings, according to an official French study released on Thursday.

Biofuels may even have a worse emissions profile than traditional fossil fuels, said the authors of the study commissioned by French energy and environment agency Ademe. (Reuters)

Migrating geese in Scotland have been fitted with tags in a unique attempt to work out the risk of the birds crashing into wind farms. (TDT)

MIAMI - Five more U.S. states are to join a Florida-led group of states in a collective lawsuit challenging President Barack Obama's overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system, Florida's attorney general said on Wednesday.

The joint lawsuit led by Florida and now grouping 18 states was filed on March 23. It claims the sweeping reform of the $2.5 trillion healthcare system violates state-government rights in the U.S. Constitution and will force massive new spending on hard-pressed state governments.

South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Washington, Idaho, and South Dakota had previously joined Florida's lawsuit.

"We welcome the partnership of Indiana, North Dakota, Mississippi, Nevada and Arizona as we continue fighting to protect the constitutional rights of American citizens and the sovereignty of our states," Bill McCollum said.

The lawsuit says the health overhaul law - which expands government health plans for the poor, imposes new taxes on the wealthy and requires insurers to cover people with preexisting medical conditions - violates the Constitution's commerce clause by requiring nearly all Americans to buy health insurance.

"On behalf of the residents in Florida and the states joining our efforts, we are committed to aggressively pursuing this lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to prevent this unprecedented expansion of federal powers, impact upon state sovereignty, and encroachment on our freedom," McCollum said in a statement released by his office. (Reuters)

Dependency: The Democrats' reform bill had hardly become law before doctors and insurers began getting calls asking about free health care. The growing sense of entitlement is disheartening, to say the least.

'Where do we get the free ObamaCare, and how do I sign up for that?" That's what Carrie McLean, an agent for eHealthInsurance.com, told McClatchy newspapers she's been hearing from callers.

She said that the company's phone center has been "inundated by uninsured consumers who were hoping that the overhaul would translate into instant, affordable coverage." (IBD)

Obamacare was sold as a way to improve benefits and expand coverage. But it doesn’t seem to be panning out that way.

Almost immediately, major companies offering excellent health coverage to both active workers and retirees said the new law would cost them a bundle. AT&T alone said they’d have to set aside an extra $1 billion in the first quarter due to an Obamacare tax on their retiree drug coverage.

Now, both retirees and current employees of AT&T and other affected companies are “wondering whether the new law could mean reduced or canceled benefits for them in the future,” reports Byron York of the Washington Examiner.

Obamacare devotees have described the tax on retiree drug benefits as a move to close a “loophole.” The government, they said, was actually subsidizing the company-paid benefits, so the tax is merely a way to recoup some of the government’s money. Sounds reasonable. Until you get the back story and the details. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

Are you a giver or a taker? No, that is not a bad pickup line from an Internet dating site — it's a question every American should be asking themselves these days. "Do I take more than I give?"

I'm sure most of us want to be considered givers, not takers. After all, we grew up with the old adage that "it is better to give than receive." But we all know people who are more takers than givers.

We've all seen someone who brings a small salad to the potluck but piles lots of your casserole on his plate. Or, there is always one person in the lunch group who orders the most expensive meal on the menu because she knows you are all splitting the check.

The same thing happens with government. A growing number of Americans are contributing little but taking a lot, and a shrinking number are giving a lot but taking little.

Recent IRS data for 2008 reports that a record 52 million Americans — or 36% of all filers — filed a tax return but had no income tax liability because of the generosity of the credits and deductions that have been enacted over the past 15 years.

The tax code has always had exemptions to protect the poorest Americans from paying income taxes, but the new credits — such as the child tax credit, Making Work Pay credit, and First Time Homebuyer credit — are now exempting middle-class families from the income tax.

Remarkably, a family of four earning up to $52,000 can expect to pay no income taxes because of these various tax credits. That too is a record.

Many more of these taxpayers are now getting checks back from the IRS even though they pay no income taxes. The IRS paid out $70 billion in "refundable" checks to non-payers in 2008. In essence, lawmakers have turned the IRS into an ATM machine for welfare benefits — and ATM now stands for Another Taxpayer's Money. (Scott A. Hodge, IBD)

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), over half of President Barack Obama’s new $940 billion health care entitlement is paid for by price-fixing Medicare cuts. Never mind that the President’s own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says that these cuts would cause “roughly 20 percent” of Medicare providers to go bankrupt in Obamacare’s first ten years. The CBO has to believe these cuts will happen because they are required, by law, to believe everything Congress tells them. The American people are not. So the American people ought to know that instead of cutting doctors’ Medicare reimbursement rates by 21% as required by law on April 1, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services froze payments at current levels until Congress could come back after Easter recess and rescind those cuts. Again. As they have done every year but one since the cuts were first enacted in 1997.

This doc fix is big enough that, if it had been included as a cost of Obamacare, it would have sent the President’s bill into the red all by itself. But the half trillion dollars in Medicare cuts used to fund the rest of Obamacare are a much bigger problem. Even if we assume they all go as planned, President Obama’s budget would borrow 42 cents for each dollar spent in 2010; would run a $1.6 trillion deficit in 2010; and would leave permanent deficits that top $1 trillion as late as 2020. Add on the half trillion dollars in Medicare cuts that, given Congress’ track record, the American people would be naive to think will ever happen, and the federal government is looking at a pile of new debt. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

The United States should consider raising taxes to help bring deficits under control and may need to consider a European-style value-added tax, White House adviser Paul Volcker said on Tuesday.

Volcker, answering a question from the audience at a New York Historical Society event, said the value-added tax "was not as toxic an idea" as it has been in the past and also said a carbon or other energy-related tax may become necessary.

Though he acknowledged that both were still unpopular ideas, he said getting entitlement costs and the U.S. budget deficit under control may require such moves. "If at the end of the day we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes," he said. (Reuters)

Fiscal Policy: There are ironies, and then there are ironies. Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who 30 years ago wreaked havoc slaying inflation, now advocates the most inflationary tax ever devised.

Conquering the seemingly intractable double-digit inflation of three decades ago was a national objective of such import to Volcker that as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board he was to tighten monetary policy to an unprecedented level of pain — raising the federal funds rate to 20%.

So hated as an inflation fighter was the cigar-chomping appointee of Carter and Reagan that an army of farmers once blocked traffic in front of his majestic offices on Constitution Avenue.

Yet on Tuesday, the chairman of the president's new Economic Recovery Advisory Board proposed an idea just as unpopular as his Fed policy of the days of yore — except that this policy would explode inflation.

Speaking at the New York Historical Society, Volcker claimed that Europe's infamous value-added tax was "not as toxic an idea as it has been in the past." Volcker reportedly added that "if at the end of the day we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes." (IBD)

Regulation: Sometimes, long after their public careers are done, those once in power speak openly about the past. Like Alan Greenspan, who on Wednesday told Congress what he could never tell them while in office.

Testifying before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the former Fed chairman told some plain truths he didn't dare utter when he headed the central bank. Most notably, Greenspan implied it was Congress' meddling incompetence — not the Fed, or free markets, or greedy bankers — that created the financial meltdown.

"If the Fed as a regulator had tried to thwart what everyone perceived as a fairly broad consensus that the trend was in the right direction, homeownership was rising and that was an unmitigated good, then Congress would have clamped down on us," he said.

That, of course, is dead right. But the maestro wasn't finished.

"There's a presumption that the Federal Reserve's an independent agency, and it is up to a point, but we are a creature of Congress and if ... we had said we're running into a bubble and we need to retrench, the Congress would say 'we haven't a clue what you're talking about,'" he said.

Indeed, that's precisely what happened. (IBD)

No dogma has caused more mischief — and, in some countries, tragedies — than the notion that there is something strange and wrong when some groups are "overrepresented" or "underrepresented" in some occupations or institutions.

This dogma is so widely accepted, and so deeply entrenched, that no one asks for evidence and no speck of evidence is offered. Moreover, tons of evidence to the contrary are ignored.

Over the centuries, and in countries around the world, all sorts of groups have been disproportionately concentrated in particular occupations and at different income levels, and have had radical differences in their behavior, from rates of alcoholism to rates of crime and infant mortality. (Thomas Sowell, IBD)

SCIENTISTS may have found a way to tell which smokers are at highest risk of developing lung cancer: measuring a telltale genetic change inside their windpipes.

A test based on the research now is being developed, in hopes of detecting the deadly cancer earlier, when it is more treatable.

If the work pans out, the next big question is: Might it even be possible to reverse this genetic chain reaction before it ends in full-blown cancer? The researchers found a tantalising early hint among a handful of people given an experimental drug.

"They're heading toward lung cancer, and we can identify them with this genomic test," said Dr Avrum Spira of Boston University School of Medicine, who led the research published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Lung cancer, which killed almost 160,000 Americans last year, is the leading cancer killer, and cigarette smoke is by far its main cause. Yet only a fraction of smokers develop lung cancer, and there is no way to predict who is most likely to and who will escape it. Nor is there a good way to detect early-stage tumours. Consequently, most people are diagnosed too late for today's treatments to do much good. (AP)

CT scans carried out in Australia generate up to a third more radiation than is needed to yield a clear diagnostic image, exposing patients to an increased risk of cancer.

The finding, from a Queensland pilot program, has emerged amid growing concern about the a rise in referrals for CT scans and as radiation safety experts and radiologists prepare a national monitoring scheme aimed at keeping radiation doses to a minimum.

The program carried out at 10 Queensland hospitals found radiation doses could be reduced by up to 32 per cent in a range of common CT scans while maintaining the quality of the diagnostic image. (SMH)

WASHINGTON - So-called fat dissolving treatments offered by spas do not eliminate fat and the companies should stop saying so, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Wednesday.

The procedures, called by names such as lipodissolve, mesotherapy, lipozap, lipotherapy, or injection lipolysis all involve unproven injections of drugs, the FDA said in a statement.

"We are concerned that these companies are misleading consumers," Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement.

"It is important for anyone who is considering this voluntary procedure to understand that the products used to perform lipodissolve procedures are not approved by the FDA for fat removal." (Reuters)

WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina - Inspired by a standard office inkjet printer, U.S. researchers have rigged up a device that can spray skin cells directly onto burn victims, quickly protecting and healing their wounds as an alternative to skin grafts.

They have mounted the device, which has so far only been tested on mice, in a frame that can be wheeled over a patient in a hospital bed, they reported on Wednesday.

A laser can take a reading of the wound's size and shape so that a layer of healing skin cells can be precisely applied, said the team at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

"We literally print the cells directly onto the wound," said student Kyle Binder, who helped design the device. "We can put specific cells where they need to go."

Tests on mice showed the spray system, called bioprinting, could heal wounds quickly and safely, the researchers reported at the Translational Regenerative Medicine Forum.

"We were able to close the entire wound in two weeks," Binder said. Mice with plugs of skin removed that were not treated took five weeks to heal, he said.

The team will eventually seek U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to test the device on humans, said George Christ, a professor of regenerative medicine at the school. (Reuters)

Waterfront buildings are embracing a risky new technology to save power, writes Deborah Smith.

ON THE one hand, it's good for the environment. Pumping seawater into buildings to cool them in summer and heat them in winter can save on electricity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The question Fabiana Moreira wants to answer is whether there is any downside for the marine creatures that live nearby.

The University of Sydney researcher is studying discharge sites near buildings in the harbour that use this cooling system, to observe the impact of chemicals added to the seawater to prevent fouling of the pipes.

In particular, there has been a recent shift in the chemicals used from chlorine-based to amine-based treatments. (SMH)

New research finds 4.1 percent loss over 3 decades

After increasing during much of the 20th century, forest cover in the eastern United States in recent decades has resumed its previous decline, according to an exhaustive new analysis published in the April 2010 issue of BioScience. The work is described in an article by Mark A. Drummond and Thomas R. Loveland of the US Geological Survey (USGS).

During the 19th century and earlier, forests were cleared for agriculture on a large scale, but from around 1920 onward, the eastern United States experienced a net increase in forest cover as fields were abandoned and trees regrew. Experts have been uncertain whether this trend has continued. Drummond and Loveland examined changes in the eastern part of the country from 1973 to 2000 as part of the USGS's Land Cover Trends project, using remotely sensed imagery as well as statistical data, field notes, and ground photographs. Over this time they found a 4.1 percent decline in total forest area, a "substantial and sustained net loss" equivalent to more than 3.7 million hectares. The researchers describe considerable regional variation, with net loss being particularly marked in the southeastern plains. (American Institute of Biological Sciences)

How did life evolve on Earth? The answer to this question can help us understand our past and prepare for our future. Although evolution provides credible and reliable answers, polls show that many people turn away from science, seeking other explanations with which they are more comfortable.

In the book Science, Evolution, and Creationism, a group of experts assembled by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine explain the fundamental methods of science, document the overwhelming evidence in support of biological evolution, and evaluate the alternative perspectives offered by advocates of various kinds of creationism, including "intelligent design." The book explores the many fascinating inquiries being pursued that put the science of evolution to work in preventing and treating human disease, developing new agricultural products, and fostering industrial innovations. The book also presents the scientific and legal reasons for not teaching creationist ideas in public school science classes.

Mindful of school board battles and recent court decisions, Science, Evolution, and Creationism shows that science and religion should be viewed as different ways of understanding the world rather than as frameworks that are in conflict with each other and that the evidence for evolution can be fully compatible with religious faith. For educators, students, teachers, community leaders, legislators, policy makers, and parents who seek to understand the basis of evolutionary science, this publication will be an essential resource. (NAP)

With the publication in 1859 of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Charles Darwin established evolution by common descent as the dominant scientific explanation for nature s diversity. This was to be his gift to science and society at last, we had an explanation for how life came to be on Earth.

Scientists agree that the evolutionary origin of animals and plants is a scientific conclusion beyond reasonable doubt. They place it beside such established concepts as the roundness of the earth, its revolution around the sun, and the molecular composition of matter. That evolution has occurred, in other words, is a fact.

Yet as we approach the bicentennial celebration of Darwin s birth, the world finds itself divided over the truth of evolutionary theory. Consistently endorsed as good science by experts and overwhelmingly accepted as fact by the scientific community, it is not always accepted by the public and our schools continue to be battlegrounds for this conflict. From the Tennessee trial of a biology teacher who dared to teach Darwin s theory to his students in 1925 to Tammy Kitzmiller s 2005 battle to keep intelligent design out of the Dover district schools in Pennsylvania, it s clear that we need to cut through the propaganda to quell the cacophony of raging debate.

With the publication of Darwin s Gift, a voice at once fresh and familiar brings a rational, measured perspective to the science of evolution. An acclaimed evolutionary biologist with a background in theology, Francisco Ayala offers clear explanations of the science, reviews the history that led us to ratify Darwin s theories, and ultimately provides a clear path for a confused and conflicted public. (NAP)

Questions about the origin and nature of Earth and the life on it have long preoccupied human thought and the scientific endeavor. Deciphering the planet's history and processes could improve the ability to predict catastrophes like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, to manage Earth's resources, and to anticipate changes in climate and geologic processes. At the request of the U.S. Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, and U.S. Geological Survey, the National Research Council assembled a committee to propose and explore grand questions in geological and planetary science. This book captures, in a series of questions, the essential scientific challenges that constitute the frontier of Earth science at the start of the 21st century. (NAP)

Life on Earth arose nearly 4 billion years ago, bursting forth from air, water, and rock. Though the process obeyed all the rules of chemistry and physics, the details of that original event pose as deep a mystery as any facing science. How did non-living chemicals become alive? While the question is (deceivingly) simple, the answers are unquestionably complex. Science inevitably plays a key role in any discussion of life s origins, dealing less with the question of why life appeared on Earth than with where, when, and how it emerged on the blasted, barren face of our primitive planet. Astrobiologist Robert Hazen has spent many years dealing with the fundamental questions of life s genesis. As an active research scientist, he is down deep in all the messy details that science has to offer on the subject, tracing the inexorable sequence of events that led to the complicated interactions of carbonbased molecules. As he takes us through the astounding process of emergence, we are witness to the first tentative steps toward life from the unfathomable abundance of carbon biomolecules synthesized in the black vacuum of space to the surface of the Earth to deep within our planet s restless crust. We are privy to the breathtaking drama that rapidly unfolds as life prevails. The theory of emergence is poised to answer a multitude of questions even as it raises the possibility that natural processes exist beyond what we now know, perhaps beyond what we even comprehend. Genesis tells the tale of transforming scientific advances in our quest for life s origins. Written with grace, beauty, and authority, it goes directly to the heart of who we are and why we are here. (NAP)

The hominin fossil record documents a history of critical evolutionary events that have ultimately shaped and defined what it means to be human, including the origins of bipedalism; the emergence of our genus Homo; the first use of stone tools; increases in brain size; and the emergence of Homo sapiens, tools, and culture. The Earth's geological record suggests that some evolutionary events were coincident with substantial changes in African and Eurasian climate, raising the possibility that critical junctures in human evolution and behavioral development may have been affected by the environmental characteristics of the areas where hominins evolved. Understanding Climate's Change on Human Evolution explores the opportunities of using scientific research to improve our understanding of how climate may have helped shape our species.

Improved climate records for specific regions will be required before it is possible to evaluate how critical resources for hominins, especially water and vegetation, would have been distributed on the landscape during key intervals of hominin history. Existing records contain substantial temporal gaps. The book's initiatives are presented in two major research themes: first, determining the impacts of climate change and climate variability on human evolution and dispersal; and second, integrating climate modeling, environmental records, and biotic responses.

Understanding Climate's Change on Human Evolution suggests a new scientific program for international climate and human evolution studies that involve an exploration initiative to locate new fossil sites and to broaden the geographic and temporal sampling of the fossil and archeological record; a comprehensive and integrative scientific drilling program in lakes, lake bed outcrops, and ocean basins surrounding the regions where hominins evolved and a major investment in climate modeling experiments for key time intervals and regions that are critical to understanding human evolution. (NAP)

In December 2004, the National Academy of Sciences sponsored a colloquium on Systematics and the Origin of Species to celebrate Ernst Mayr s 100th anniversary and to explore current knowledge concerning the origin of species. In 1942, Ernst Mayr, one of the twentieth century s greatest scientists, published Systematics and the Origin of Species, a seminal book of the modern theory of evolution, where he advanced the significance of population variation in the understanding of evolutionary process and the origin of new species. Mayr formulated the transition from Linnaeus s static species concept to the dynamic species concept of the modern theory of evolution and emphasized the species as a community of populations, the role of reproductive isolation, and the ecological interactions between species.

In addition to a preceding essay by Edward O. Wilson, this book includes the 16 papers presented by distinguished evolutionists at the colloquium. The papers are organized into sections covering the origins of species barriers, the processes of species divergence, the nature of species, the meaning of species, and genomic approaches for understanding diversity and speciation. (NAP)

"The present book is intended as a progress report on [the] synthetic approach to evolution as it applies to the plant kingdom." With this simple statement, G. Ledyard Stebbins formulated the objectives of Variation and Evolution in Plants, published in 1950, setting forth for plants what became known as the "synthetic theory of evolution" or "the modern synthesis." The pervading conceit of the book was the molding of Darwin's evolution by natural selection within the framework of rapidly advancing genetic knowledge.

At the time, Variation and Evolution in Plants significantly extended the scope of the science of plants. Plants, with their unique genetic, physiological, and evolutionary features, had all but been left completely out of the synthesis until that point. Fifty years later, the National Academy of Sciences convened a colloquium to update the advances made by Stebbins.

This collection of 17 papers marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Stebbins' classic. Organized into five sections, the book covers: early evolution and the origin of cells, virus and bacterial models, protoctist models, population variation, and trends and patterns in plant evolution. (NAP)

As both individuals and societies, we are making decisions today that will have profound consequences for future generations. From preserving the earth s plants and animals to altering our use of fossil fuels none of these decisions can be made wisely without a thorough understanding of life s history on our planet through biological evolution.

Companion to the best selling title Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science, Evolution in Hawaii examines evolution and the nature of science by looking at a specific part of the world. Tracing the evolutionary pathways in Hawaii, we are able to draw powerful conclusions about evolution s occurrence, mechanisms, and courses. This practical book has been specifically designed to give teachers and their students an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of evolution using exercises with real genetic data to explore and investigate speciation and the probable order in which speciation occurred based on the ages of the Hawaiian Islands. By focusing on one set of islands, this book illuminates the general principles of evolutionary biology and demonstrate how ongoing research will continue to expand our knowledge of the natural world. (NAP)

In December 2006, the National Academy of Sciences sponsored a colloquium (featured as part of the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia series) on "Adaptation and Complex Design" to synthesize recent empirical findings and conceptual approaches towards understanding the evolutionary origins and maintenance of complex adaptations. Darwin's elucidation of natural selection as a creative natural force was a monumental achievement in the history of science, but a century and a half later some religious believers still contend that biotic complexity registers conscious supernatural design. In this book, modern scientific perspectives are presented on the evolutionary origin and maintenance of complex phenotypes including various behaviors, anatomies, and physiologies. After an introduction by the editors and an opening historical and conceptual essay by Francisco Ayala, this book includes 14 papers presented by distinguished evolutionists at the colloquium. The papers are organized into sections covering epistemological approaches to the study of biocomplexity, a hierarchy of topics on biological complexity ranging from ontogeny to symbiosis, and case studies explaining how complex phenotypes are being dissected in terms of genetics and development. (NAP)

The current extinction crisis is of human making, and any favorable resolution of that biodiversity crisis--among the most dire in the 4-billion-year history of the Earth--will have to be initiated by mankind. Little time remains for the public, corporations, and governments to awaken to the magnitude of what is at stake. This book aims to assist that critical educational mission, synthesizing recent scientific information and ideas about threats to biodiversity in the past, present, and projected future.

This is the second volume from the In the Light of Evolution series, based on a series of Arthur M. Sackler colloquia, and designed to promote the evolutionary sciences. Each installment explores evolutionary perspectives on a particular biological topic that is scientifically intriguing but also has special relevance to contemporary societal issues or challenges. Individually and collectively, the ILE series aims to interpret phenomena in various areas of biology through the lens of evolution, address some of the most intellectually engaging as well as pragmatically important societal issues of our times, and foster a greater appreciation of evolutionary biology as a consolidating foundation for the life sciences. (NAP)

Two Centuries of Darwin is the outgrowth of an Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium, sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences on January 16-17, 2009. In the chapters of this book, leading evolutionary biologists and science historians reflect upon and commemorate the Darwinian Revolution. They canvass modern research approaches and current scientific thought on each of the three main categories of selection (natural, artificial, and sexual) that Darwin addressed during his career. Although Darwin's legacy is associated primarily with the illumination of natural selection in The Origin, he also contemplated and wrote extensively about what we now term artificial selection and sexual selection. In a concluding section of this book, several science historians comment on Darwin's seminal contributions.

Two Centuries of Darwin is the third book of the In the Light of Evolution series. Each installment in the series explores evolutionary perspectives on a particular biological topic that is scientifically intriguing but also has special relevance to contemporary societal issues or challenges. The ILE series aims to interpret phenomena in various areas of biology through the lens of evolution and address some of the most intellectually engaging, as well as pragmatically important societal issues of our times. (NAP)

Something I have wondered about but never been able to find out. How much money does OPEC, OPEC nations and OPEC related interests funnel into our green organizations? Namely Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Sierra Club.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will soon issue rules that will determine which power plants and factories will face greenhouse gas regulations, an agency official said on Tuesday.

The measure, known as the "tailoring rule," will set emissions thresholds for the big emitters of gases blamed for warming the planet, such as coal-fired power plants and plants that make cement and glass.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said earlier this year that only plants that emit 75,000 tonnes per year or more of carbon dioxide are likely to be regulated under the rule in the next two years. The EPA wants to limit U.S. Clean Air Act regulations, or "tailor" them, so they apply only to larger polluters to avoid overwhelming federal and state agencies with paperwork.

"We're expecting that rule to be done very shortly, hopefully by the end of the month," said Gina McCarthy, an assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, told a conference.

Regulated plants would be required to hold permits demonstrating that they are using the latest technology to pare back emissions. They could also face other future EPA greenhouse gas regulations if Congress fails to pass a climate bill. (Reuters)

The United States will host a meeting of major economies on April 18-19 in Washington to advance talks on a global deal to fight climate change, the top U.S. climate negotiator said on Wednesday.

Todd Stern told Reuters Washington hoped U.N. climate talks in 2010 would lead to agreements on six outstanding issues, including financing for poor countries' pollution-control efforts, but he was unsure whether a legally binding deal to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases would be reached by the end of this year. (Reuters)

Science is undermined by scaremongers' abuse of peer-review process

The prophets of global warming continue to lament as their carefully crafted yarn unravels before their eyes. Ross McKitrick, an intrepid economics professor from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, has tugged apart the thin mathematical threads that once held together the story of climate change.

Recent attempts to silence Mr. McKitrick illuminate the extent to which the alarmists have abandoned proper scientific method in their pursuit of political goals.

Mr. McKitrick has spent the past two years attempting to publish a scientific paper that documents a fundamental error in the 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. This U.N. document serves as the sole authority upon which the Environmental Protection Agency based its December "endangerment finding" that will allow unelected bureaucrats to impose cap-and-trade-style regulations without a vote of Congress. The cost to the public in higher gas and energy prices will run in the billions.

One might think that the scientific community would be extra diligent in double-checking the conclusions of a report carrying such weighty real-world consequences. In fact, the opposite happened. Seven scientific journals circled the wagons to block publication of Mr. McKitrick's explosive findings. (The Washington Times)

The conservative media have mounted an all-out attack on climate science in an attempt to discredit efforts to fight man-made global warming. Media Matters for America has debunked prominent myths and falsehoods associated with this smear campaign.

MYTH: The scientific consensus on global warming has been undermined by recent events

MYTH: Erroneous Himalayan glacier statement in IPCC report undermines evidence of global warming

Yes, the post-release of An Inconvenient Truth afterglow has certainly worn off as the Climate Project presenters are no longer being greeted adoringly as saviors of the planet, but are rather greeted by prickly questions about the validity of the science of man-made global warming.

And one more thing Roz: Sustainability on a finite planet may represent common sense for a lot of folks, but it’s not reality. Better get another crisis. (Gore Lied)

U.S. climate scientist James Hansen won a $100,000 environmental prize Wednesday for decades of work trying to alert politicians to what he called an unsolved emergency of global warming.

Hansen, born in 1941, will visit Oslo in June to collect the Sophie Prize, set up in 1997 by Norwegian Jostein Gaarder, the author of the 1991 best-selling novel and teenagers' guide to philosophy "Sophie's World."

"Hansen has played a key role for the development of our understanding of human-induced climate change," the prize citation said.

Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies since 1981, testified to the U.S. Congress as long ago as 1988 about the risks of global warming from human activities led by the burning of fossil fuels.

"We really have an emergency," Hansen said in a video link with the prize panel in Oslo about feared climate changes such as a thaw of ice sheets on Greenland or Antarctica or a loss of species of animals and plants in a warming world. (Reuters)

The 2010 Atlantic hurricane season will produce an above-average eight hurricanes, four of them major, posing a heightened threat to the U.S. coastline, the Colorado State University hurricane forecasting team predicted on Wednesday.

In its second forecast in four months for the 2010 season, the leading storm research team founded by hurricane forecast pioneer William Gray said the six-month season beginning on June 1 would likely see 15 named tropical storms.

The team forecast a 69 percent chance of at least one major hurricane making landfall on the U.S. coastline in 2010, compared with a long-term average probability of 52 percent. (Reuters)

April 6 -- The extent of sea ice over the Arctic Ocean grew until the last day of March, the latest the annual melting season has begun in 31 years of satellite records, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said.

Cold weather and winds from the north over the Bering Sea and Barents Sea meant that the area of ocean covered by ice expanded through last month, the Boulder, Colorado-based center said today in a statement on its Web site. That’s two days later than in 1999, the previous latest start to a melting season since satellite monitoring began in 1979.

Scientists have highlighted declining Arctic sea ice as an indicator of global warming. The NSIDC has said the Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free during the summer by 2030. While this year’s melting season has started late, it probably won’t have an impact on the extent of ice in the summer, the group said.

“The ice that formed late in the season is thin and will melt quickly when temperatures rise,” the NSIDC said. (Bloomberg)

Scientists have questioned claims that global warming is causing sheep to change size and colour in the latest row to engulf climate change science.

The theory first emerged a year ago when scientists noticed that wild sheep on the island of St Kilda north of Scotland were getting smaller – despite the fact that according to evolutionary law larger sheep should be more successful.

It was also noticed that the Soay sheep were getting lighter as the climate warmed.

The idea captured the imagination of the public at a time when people were becoming increasingly concerned about the effects of climate change.

But scientists are now saying there is no evidence sheep shrink in a warming climate and are questioning the use of such theories to explain the impacts of global warming.

The row comes after a series of scandals rocked the world of climate science. Sceptics claim emails stolen from the University of East Anglia show scientists were willing to manipulate data in a row known as "climategate". United Nations scientists have also been criticised for wrongly claiming the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 in a scandal known as 'glaciergate".

In the latest row, which could become known as 'sheepgate', scientists in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters are questioning the theory that climate change causes sheep to change size and colour. (TDT)

Using skills passed down through generations, Inuit forecasters living in the Canadian Arctic look to the sky to tell by the way the wind scatters a cloud whether a storm is on the horizon or if it's safe to go on a hunt.

Thousands of miles away in a lab tucked in Colorado's Rocky Mountains, scientists take data measurements and use the latest computer models to predict weather. They are two practices serving the same purpose that come from disparate worlds.

But in the past 20 years, something has run amok with Inuit forecasting. Old weather signals don't seem to mean what they used to. The cloud that scatters could signal a storm that comes in an hour instead of a day.

Now researchers are combining indigenous environmental knowledge with modern science to learn new things about what's happening to the Arctic climate. (University of Colorado at Boulder)

Grazing by cows or sheep can cut emissions of nitrous oxide -- a powerful greenhouse gas -- in grasslands from China to the United States, according to a study that overturns past belief that farm animals stoke releases.

Adding to understanding of links between agriculture and global warming, the report in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature said livestock can help to limit microbes in the soil that generate the gas, also known as laughing gas.

"It's been generally assumed that if you increase livestock numbers you get a rise in emissions of nitrous oxide. This is not the case," said Klaus Butterbach-Bahl of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany who was among the authors.

Laughing gas is one of several heat-trapping gases linked to farm animals and the scientists said there was a need for more study to see how far their findings would affect agriculture's total impact on climate change. (Reuters)

Study shows how birds, bats and lizards play their roles in preserving plant species in face of global climate change

Add insect-feeding birds, bats and lizards to the front lines of the battle against global climate change.

Summarizing the results of more than 100 experiments conducted on four continents, UC Irvine ecologist Kailen A. Mooney and colleagues found that these insect-gobbling animals increase plant growth by reducing the abundance of plant-feeding insects and the damage they do to the plant life that helps mitigate global warming.

Our efforts solidify the importance of birds, bats, lizards and other similar animals to ecosystem health, and underscores the importance of conserving these species in the face of global change,” said Mooney, an assistant professor in ecology and evolutionary biology.

The results come at a time when the importance of birds and other insectivores as plant protectors has come into doubt, Mooney added. Studies on bird, bat and lizard diets show they devour both plant-feeding insects and the spiders and other insect predators that eat plant feeders. (UC Irvine)

There is an excellent informative newsletter article in The March 2010 issue of Urban Climate News by Matei Georgescu of Stanford. It is titled

Domestic deals to convert bare lands into forests and keep tree stands healthy could supply 60 percent of available offsets in any U.S. cap-and-trade plan on greenhouse gas emissions, a Barclays Capital analyst said.

The overall supply of domestic offsets could hit 250 million short tons annually by 2020, Trevor Sikorski, a London-based director of carbon markets at Barclays said in a research note.

U.S. forestry and agriculture projects could supply 150 million short tons of those offsets by 2020, the note said.

"Given the political importance of forestry and agriculture in the United States ... (such) offsets will be included in any federal cap-and-trade system," Sikorski said. Trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow. (Reuters)

Environmental lobby group International Rivers has condemned the emergence of trade in fake carbon credits and says the biggest source is hydroelectric power projects on the mainland.

Under what is known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol, industrialised countries can support projects that decrease emissions in developing countries and then use the resulting emission reduction credits towards their own reduction targets.

But International Rivers says the CDM is "failing miserably and is undermining the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol" because most of the emission reduction credits are fake and come from projects that do not reduce emissions.

It says hydropower projects constitute a quarter of all projects in the CDM pipeline, and 67 per cent of these, or about 700 projects, are on the mainland. (China Morning Post)

Reading the warmist literature on Brazil, you would find it difficult to avoid the impression that that Amazon rain forest was in the grip of perpetual drought, on the brink of collapse. But, as we remarked earlier, warmist history stops in 2005 in the year of the last great drought. Since then, though, we have seen record rainfall.

And the rain doth continue. From The Times and other sources, we learn that up to 100 people have died in Brazil after the most intense rains in half a century turned roads into rivers, triggering flooding and mudslides.

A state of emergency has been declared in the Rio de Janeiro area where most of the mudslides occurred. Officials have warned that the death toll of 95 will probably rise and Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes has made a statement saying: "The situation is chaos. All the major streets of the city are closed because of the floods. Each and every person who attempts to enter them will be at enormous risk.''

The local weather service reports that the rainfall recorded was twice the amount normally registered for the whole month of April. The head of Rio de Janeiro's civil defence department told TV Globo the amount of rain that had fallen was "more than any city is capable of supporting".

The heavy rain began during Monday's evening rush hour, catching workers heading home for the day off-guard. After a brief afternoon lull, rain on Tuesday again intensified after sunset, and officials warned that flooding could worsen today.

And although the municipality of Rio de Janeiro lies to the south of the Amazon basin, it still has great areas of tropical rainforest, comprising the Mendanha Forest (pictured above), the Pedra Branca (White Rock) Forest and the Tijuca (Swampland) Forest. From a climatic perspective, these are in robustly good health, as the 2007 photograph above indicates.

That the health of the forest has almost become a state secret in warmist circles is readily explained by the REDD agenda, which also explains the determination of the warmists not to conceded any ground whatsoever on "Amazongate".

But quite how important REDD has become is revealed in this startlingly frank piece which clearly indicates that the hopes of a new climate treaty are resting on it.

The crucial role of REDD has been dangerously underestimated by the sceptic "community", which has largely failed to realise its significance. However, as our warmist piece explains, the CDM has not been able to deliver the cash flow needed to sustain their cause. REDD is seen as the only mechanism capable of doing this, producing wholesale quantities of carbon credits to supply the demand manufactured by cap and trade. They are two halves of the same coin.

But, for this to succeed, even more important than the Polar Bears facing extinction, the rain forest must be seen to be under threat from climate change. Hence, the warmist world will forever be frozen in a time-warp in which the clocks stopped in 2005 - until another periodic drought happens along, when the clock can lurch forward again.

Meanwhile, torrential rains continue to hit Brazil. (EU Referendum)

I was raised among British coal folk. My grandfather was a coal miner who hacked at the coal seam with a pickaxe for much of his life. I went to school in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which inspired the famous phrase "coals to Newcastle." In my youth, the rivers ran black with coal dust.

Today I work mostly in the energy arena, and have grown to know the people of America's coal country. They are not very different from the people I knew growing up, with one exception:

The people who run the coal companies are not faceless government bureaucrats, as they were in the Britain of my youth. They are coal people themselves, with nothing but admiration and the deepest respect for the men and women who work for them.

Indeed, as my colleague Chris Horner has pointed out:

"Speak with any coal executive and he will in short order bring your attention to his company's work force as the lifeblood that keeps his business, industry, and nation afloat — as heroes, who deserve our respect and admiration. I have never encountered similar initiative and passion with any other industry, and my experience tells me the homage is more than deserved."

Coal mining is a difficult job, just as it was in my grandfather's time. The conditions are harsh and danger is ever present, which is why the wages for coal miners are often the best-paying jobs in many regions. Because of the remoteness of many mines, coal mining is central to most mining communities, rather than just one industry among many. Close the mines abruptly and those communities die. (Iain Murray, IBD)

The best strategy in poker involves tricking your opponent into thinking they have the upper hand, while secretly maintaining an advantage. Recent statements from the White House indicate its political strategy on energy employs a similar variety of sharking.

This political card game began last week with the announcement of a badly needed update to America’s plan for accessing the vast oil and natural gas reserves in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). Such action is a strong step in the right direction in ensuring America’s energy security, and relieving stress on global energy markets. But it’s important to recognize that this announcement is just a single move in a much larger game.

The administration’s concessions on offshore access represent a clear quid pro quo strategy designed to secure Republican support for a climate bill to pass through Congress in 2010. And taken at face value, increased OCS access appears to be a significant compromise coming from those who oppose continued use of traditional energy supplies. Like any good gambler though, opponents of this critical resource development have an ace in the hole.

These perceived concessions made on the part of the Obama administration are at the mercy of the Environmental Protection Agency. The president could later use his bureaucratic reach to delay and even negate these concessions, making his “policy shift” all smoke and mirrors. The agency has to date, demonstrated an aggressive desire to move forward with regulatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions, despite Administrator Lisa Jackson’s public statements about her preference for a legislative solution. There is nothing to suggest that we will not see a similar tactic used to delay drilling indefinitely. (Michael J. Economides, Forbes)

There is concern over China’s human rights posture, its treatment of Tibet, its monetary policy, its massive trade surplus, its burgeoning defense budget, its contribution to global warming, and its impediment of internet freedom. But, there is one aspect of Chinese policy which causes unneeded concern when it is actually beneficial to the world economy and a win win situation: China’s aggressive efforts to develop oil and gas reserves. [Read More] (R. Dobie Langenkamp, Energy Tribune)

A few weeks ago the Economist had a fascinating article about deep water oil drilling. If we can make such rapid progress in fossil fuel energy technologies, it is probably safe to conclude that should we choose to direct public resources into fossil alternatives, then we can make rapid progress there as well.

This is not to suggest anything specific about the relative roles of the public and private sectors -- they are mixed up in complex ways and both have important roles to play in processes of accelerating technological innovation. The remarkable graphic above indicates that technological change happens fast when we focus attention and other resources on challenges that once seemed impossible.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

JOHANNESBURG — The Obama administration, caught in an awkward bind between its own ambitions on climate change and Africa’s pressing energy needs, is facing the first test of its new guidelines discouraging coal-fired power projects in developing nations.

This week, the World Bank will vote on a $3.75 billion loan to South Africa, most of it to help build the world’s seventh-largest coal plant. The bank’s own experts concede that the giant plant will “produce large quantities of carbon dioxide that will contribute to global climate change.”

But the bank’s largest shareholder — the United States — has enacted guidelines to push for “no or low carbon” ways of meeting the energy needs of developing nations that rely on international financial institutions.

Construction of the plant is well under way, so it is too late for the steps advocated in the Obama administration’s guidelines to ensure that coal is a last resort. Treasury Department officials have declined to say how the United States will vote when the loan is before the bank’s board on Thursday, with one describing the decision as “challenging.”

South African officials contend that the plant is desperately needed to help the country’s economy, the largest on the continent, and those of six neighboring nations generate growth and combat poverty. The loan is the first South Africa has sought from the World Bank since apartheid ended in 1994. (NYT)

In a welcome decision, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission yesterday announced that it will not act on the Department of Energy’s motion to withdraw its application to construct the nuclear materials repository at Yucca Mountain until the court system rules on related lawsuits.

Not only will it not consider the motion but it will continue its work on the application review and expects to have a significant portion completed by November. In other words, Yucca is far from dead.

The announcement from the NRC was a pleasantly unexpected one. Just days ago Department of Energy Secretary said, “We are taking steps to end [Yucca Mountain] because… we see no point in it. It’s spending a lot of money. It’s very important that we not linger around this decision. It’s been made, and we want to go forward and move into the future.” The DOE called Yucca an unworkable option. Apparently the NRC wasn’t listening. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

Part I of this two-part post reviewed most of the considerations that must be understood in evaluating analyses of wind power.

Part II completes this analysis by focusing on one of the most important considerations in the wind utility debate, wind’s capacity value. To this end, I review a paper by Gross et al, which is relied on by Komanoff, and conveniently provides an opportunity for the review of a second paper. (MasterResource)

Earlier this week, I reacted to reports that the University of Washington couldn’t find any legal scholars willing to question Obamacare’s constitutionality by issuing a challenge: I will debate the constitutional merits of Obamacare against anyone, anytime, anywhere (as long as the sponsoring group/individual covers my travel expenses). Here’s a video version of my challenge:

In the depressing aftermath of Congress’s passage of the Democratic health-care legislation, there has been an understandable temptation among conservatives to think that all their effort over the last year to derail what was coming down the tracks may have been for naught. After all, the bill did pass. The president and his allies got their signing ceremony and their victory lap, as well as a barrage of premature but predictable pronouncements from the national media that we are now witnessing a historic moment of irreversible liberal progress.

And there’s no use sugarcoating what has happened. It’s a debacle from every possible vantage point. The Democrats have created another massive entitlement program while expanding federal power and reach in a manner not seen since the heyday of Franklin D. Roosevelt. If allowed to stand, the new health-care law will tether America’s middle class to the federal government in ways that will fundamentally alter — and not for the better — the relationship between citizens and the state. The result will be worse health care, distorted politics, less medical innovation and economic vitality, and depleted wealth.

by Randy E. Barnett

Now that the Obama health plan is law, more than a dozen states are asserting that Congress has exceeded its Commerce Clause power in imposing a mandate on individuals to purchase health insurance from private companies. No doubt, individual citizens will challenge the individual mandate on their own behalf.

States are also asserting that the threat to withhold all Medicaid payments if the states do not set up health insurance exchanges and enact other regulations amounts to coercion and unconstitutional commandeering of states by the federal government.

No one who opposes ObamaCare should put their faith in the Supreme Court to strike down an act of Congress, no matter how unprecedented and unconstitutional it may be. Nor should those who support ObamaCare be confident that the Supreme Court will uphold these provisions.

Legal challenges cannot take the place of political action. The Court hates to strike down popular legislation, but if the legislation is unpopular, one or both houses of Congress have changed parties and only a filibuster or presidential veto is preventing repeal, then the Court may feel more comfortable upholding the Constitution. (Cato at liberty)

PEOPLE vaccinated against seasonal flu appeared to have been at increased risk of the H1N1 pandemic flu that killed thousands worldwide in 2009.

However, they said in their findings published in the journal PLoS Medicine that the link between seasonal flu vaccinations and subsequent pandemic flu illness is tenuous. (AFP)

These days, it isn't enough for an inexpensive supplement to boast near miracle properties, complete with plenty of evidence. No, manufacturers also have to fend off nuisance litigation—in this case directed at supposed California Prop 65 violations.

As always, the science from the plaintiffs is suspect, but in "fiddle while Rome burns" California, all idiots are due a hearing. Still, even the starry-eyed regulators in the once-Golden State are not exactly getting too excited over this one.

I'm afraid this sort of abuse will only stop when people start ignoring direct mail appeals from spurious "environmental" groups.

Read my complete HND article. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)

Focus of research shifts to specific fruit and veg that could ward off certain tumours

It has been a shibboleth of healthy living for decades: eat more fruit and vegetables to beat cancer. Now, scientists have found that the anti-carcinogenic properties of such a diet are weak at best. (The Independent)

NEW YORK - If most new mothers could follow medical experts' recommendation to exclusively breastfeed for six months, the U.S. might save $13 billion in healthcare and other costs each year, a study published Monday suggests.

Researchers say the findings, published in the journal Pediatrics, underscore a need to make prolonged breastfeeding easier for women to manage.

For the study, the investigators calculated the current costs of 10 pediatric diseases for which there is evidence of a protective effect of breastfeeding -- including eczema, middle-ear infections, lower respiratory tract infections like pneumonia, asthma, type 1 diabetes and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

They then estimated what the cost savings would be if 90 percent of new mothers in the U.S. breastfed exclusively for six months, as is generally recommended. The researchers calculated the direct costs of medical care, as well as indirect expenses, such as parents' time away from work to care for a sick child. (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK - Women who work out while they're pregnant have slimmer babies, new research from New Zealand shows.

Because babies born to moms who didn't exercise had higher-than-average weights, the study's authors say, exercise could have helped "normalize" the weights of the exercisers' babies.

"The modest reduction in birth weight in this study may lead to a long-term reduction in the risk for obesity in offspring of women who exercised in pregnancy," Dr. Paul L. Hofman of the University of Auckland and his colleagues write.

The team randomly assigned 84 women pregnant with their first baby to up to five 40-minute sessions on an exercise bike at home each week or to a no-exercise group, beginning at 20 weeks of pregnancy through delivery.

While there were no differences in the women's body mass index (a measure of weight in relation to height used to gauge whether someone is overweight or obese) or weight, the women who exercised were fitter than those who didn't.

The babies born to the exercisers were about 140 grams (5 ounces) lighter than the control groups, although their average length was the same, leading to a lower BMI. This "modest shift" in weight was still within the normal range, and none of these babies were abnormally small for their age at birth. (Reuters Health)

The obesity epidemic is generally portrayed as a relatively recent phenomenon, but new research paints a different picture. John Komlos and Marek Brabec find (gated version here) that obesity rates actually began rising in the early 20th century, with significant upsurges after the two World Wars. The authors point out that “the ‘creeping’ nature of the epidemic, as well as its persistence, does suggest that its roots have been embedded deep in the social fabric and are nourished by a network of disparate sources…” Komlos and Brabec point to factors like the industrialization of food production, the spread of automobiles, the spread of the media, the IT revolution, and the growing culture of consumption in America to explain the trend. (Freakonomics)

NEW YORK - Traffic-related air pollution may be linked to a higher death rate among people who initially survived strokes, hint study findings from the United Kingdom.

Of 3320 men and women who lived in a specific south London region and had a first stroke between 1995 and 2005, Dr. Ravi Maheswaran, at the University of Sheffield, and colleagues found more deaths among those exposed to higher estimated traffic-related pollution over more than a decade.

Maheswaran's team used 2002 estimates of two common traffic pollutants -- nitrogen dioxide and small, inhalable particles called particulate matter -- linked to breathing difficulties and other health problems. (Reuters Health)

AS certain trees burst into bloom in spring, their pollen wafts through the air in a wanton attempt to reach receptive blossoms. Millions of people with allergies pay the price, in sneezing, wheezing, coughing, drowsiness and itchy, watery eyes. They needn’t suffer so much. Cities could reduce the misery by planting street trees that produce very little pollen or none at all.

Street trees weren’t always as allergenic as they are today. Back in the 1950s, the most popular species planted in the United States was the native American elm, which sheds little pollen. Millions of these tall, stately trees lined the streets of towns and cities from coast to coast. Sadly, in the 1960s and ’70s, Dutch elm disease killed most of the elms, and many of them were replaced with species that are highly allergenic.

This has caused trouble for Americans with allergies — as many as 30 percent of adults and 40 percent of children — most of whom are sensitive to pollen, as well as for the many millions who have allergy-induced asthma. Although some pollen can be carried great distances by the wind, most atmospheric pollen comes from plants growing nearby. In other words, the pollen that’s making you sneeze as you walk down the street probably came from the tree you just passed. So it makes sense for gardeners, especially public gardeners who plant trees by the dozens, to pay attention to the pollen their trees produce. (NYT)

NEW YORK - Exposure to certain substances on the job is a major contributor to asthma attacks, a new analysis of European data shows.

Overall, the researchers estimate that work-related exposures to gases, dust, fumes and other substances account for 15 percent of all asthma exacerbations among workers with asthma. Every year, they add, this translates to around 90,000 asthma exacerbations in 27 European countries.

Occupational asthma, which develops as a consequence of exposure to certain substances at work, has been estimated to account for 15 percent of new asthma cases among adults, according to the American Thoracic Society, Dr. P.K. Henneberger of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health/Centers for Disease Control in Morgantown, West Virginia, and colleagues point out.

However, the researchers add, the same 2003 report states that worsening of symptoms in workers with existing asthma due to work-related exposures could lead to "much more sickness and loss of productivity." (Reuters Health)

LONDON - They may be a little wrinkly, and there may not be many of them, but centenarians are the fastest growing demographic in the developed world.

Scientists believe people who live to 100 years or more hold valuable secrets in their genes that can reveal targets for medicines to tackle a wide range of age-related diseases, as well as improving longevity itself.

"If you make it to 100, you must have had good health and a good life - otherwise you wouldn't be at the tail end of the age distribution curve," Kaare Christensen of the Danish Aging Research Center told Reuters in an interview.

"So basically, we're trying to figure out how they do it."

Of course, genes are not the whole story: experts believe genetic factors account for a only fraction of longevity. Other factors like a healthy lifestyle, good diet and safe environment combine to play a role in determining when we die.

Yet so-called "longevity genes" certainly exist, and their importance grows the longer a person lives, so identifying them and finding out what they do to fight off killer diseases is a hot area of research.

With lifespans already increasing at a breathtaking rate - an average of three months is being added to life expectancy every year at the moment - scientists stress that a "magic pill" to help people live ever longer is not what anyone should be seeking.

Instead the aim is known as "compression of morbidity" - improving the health of rapidly aging populations and squeezing to a minimum the amount of time at the end of their lives when they are sick, in pain, or dependent. (Reuters)

The average British household now throws away almost half a ton of food-related waste a year, according to the latest figures.

Britons now throw away 11.9 million tons of food and food packaging annually, or 0.45 tons per household per year.

The report by the Waste and Recycling Action Programme (Wrap), found that almost half the total was "avoidable waste" and that Britain could cut the amount of food-related household waste by 5.3 tons. (TDT)

Herewith I propose a contest to invent the next panic.

So global warming is dead, nailed into its coffin one devastating disclosure, defection and re-evaluation at a time. Which means that pretty soon we're going to need another apocalyptic scare to take its place.

As recently as October, the Guardian reported that scientists at Cambridge had "concluded that the Arctic is now melting at such a rate that it will be largely ice free within ten years." This was supposedly due to global warming. It brought with it the usual lamentations for the grandchildren.

But in March came another report in the Guardian, this time based on the research of Japanese scientists, that "much of the record breaking loss of ice in the Arctic ocean in recent years is [due] to the region's swirling winds and is not a direct result of global warming." It also turns out that the extent of Arctic sea ice in March was around the recorded average, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

The difference between the two stories has little to do with science: There were plenty of reasons back in October to suspect that the Arctic ice panic—based on data that only goes back to 1979—was as implausible as the now debunked claim about disappearing Himalayan glaciers. But thanks to Climategate and the Copenhagen fiasco, the media are now picking up the kinds of stories they previously thought it easier and wiser to ignore. (Bret Stephens, WSJ)

EVER since it slammed into the Great Barrier Reef, the Shen Neng 1 has oozed a great slick of hype.

Not only has the Chinese carrier leaked up to four tonnes of oil since the weekend, but it carries coal, another symbol of wicked human development. And so we’re now deafened by the usual fearmongering.

The Shen Neng is a “ticking environmental time bomb”, howled green group WWF, claiming that not just the ship’s fuel but even its load of coal “could get into the ecosystem”.

“Oil slicks and the like have devastating effects,” wailed the Australian Conservation Foundation.

Politicians stoked the scare. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced he’d fly over the spill to, er, well, to seem like he’s doing something about it.

And inevitably this puddle of oil from the Shen Neng was likened to the ocean that leaked from the infamous Exxon Valdez, which greens in 1989 turned into a poster villain after it leaked not four tonnes but 38,000 off the Alaskan coast.

“Environmental medical specialist” Andrew Jeremijenko, for instance, told the ABC: “We’ve seen in the Exxon Valdez that there have been long-ranging effects and we shouldn’t be allowing these things to happen.”

Ah, yes, that’s the same Jeremijenko who last year used the same hype when the Pacific Adventurer leaked 270 tonnes of oil into Moreton Bay. He then claimed this “catastrophe” would produce “the same effects” here as the Exxon Valdez had in Alaska.

Solomons, Md. (April 6, 2010) – New research by a team of ecologists and hydrologists shows that water temperatures are increasing in many streams and rivers throughout the United States. The research, published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, documents that 20 major U.S. streams and rivers – including such prominent rivers as the Colorado, Potomac, Delaware, and Hudson – have shown statistically significant long-term warming.

By analyzing historical records from 40 sites located throughout the United States, the team found that annual mean water temperatures increased by 0.02-0.14°F (0.009-0.077°C) per year. Long-term increases in stream water temperatures were typically correlated with increases in air temperatures, and rates of warming were most rapid in urbanized areas. (University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science)

Threatening climate sceptics and warning Twitter followers you are armed with a knife are not smart moves from Greenpeace India's communications director, Gene Hashmi (Leo Hickman, The Guardian)

The pill, condoms and IUDs are some of the most effective – and cheap – weapons the world has to fight climate change. From Grist, part of the Guardian Environment Network

In Africa and elsewhere, burgeoning population growth threatens to overwhelm already over-stretched food supply systems. But the next agricultural revolution needs to get local — and must start to see rising populations as potentially part of the solution. (Fred Pearce, e360)

California legislators passed a statewide cap and trade bill in 2006 that is set to begin in 2012, but a growing opposition is seeking to include a ballot measure that would postpone a carbon cap until the state’s economy recovers:

Fox News is reporting some interesting details of the second investigation into Michael Mann.

I'm not sure why they refer to him as a skeptical inspector general though. (Bishop Hill)

President Obama, finally, took a get-involved get-tough approach to negotiations on health care legislation and the arms control treaty with Russia -- with success. Could this be the turn-around for what might still be a great presidency?

The predominant moral issue of the 21st century, almost surely, will be climate change, comparable to Nazism faced by Churchill in the 20th century and slavery faced by Lincoln in the 19th century. Our fossil fuel addiction, if unabated, threatens our children and grandchildren, and most species on the planet.

Yet the president, addressing climate in the State of the Union, was at his good-guy worst, leading with "I know that there are those who disagree..." with the scientific evidence. This weak entrée, almost legitimizing denialists, was predictably greeted by cheers and hoots from well-oiled coal-fired Congressmen. The president was embarrassed and his supporters cringed. (James Hansen, Puffington)

Dr James Hansen published an essay at the Huffington Post. It has a modest title,

By Richard S. Lindzen

To a significant extent, the issue of climate change revolves around the elevation of the commonplace to an ominous omen. In a world where climate change has been the norm, it's now taken as punishment for sinful levels of consumption. In a world where we experience temperature changes of tens of degrees in a single day, we treat changes of a few tenths of a degree in some statistical residue, known as the globally averaged temperature anomaly or GATA, as portents of disaster.

Earth has had ice ages and warmer periods. Ice ages have occurred in a 100,000-year cycle for the past 700,000 years, and there have been previous interglacial periods that appear to have been warmer than the present, despite lower carbon-dioxide levels. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age.

For small changes in the GATA, there is no need for any external cause. The earth never is exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans, where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface, provide variability. Examples include El Niño, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, etc. Recent work suggests that this variability is enough to account for all change in the GATA since the 19th century. To be sure, man's emissions of carbon dioxide must have some impact. The important question, however, is how much. (Richard S. Lindzen, Modesto Bee)

Climate Change: The agency that put Americans on the moon can't tell you the temperature that day. It isn't returning to the moon, but it will fix the brakes on your car. Two senators want to know what's going on. (IBD)

In December 2009, lawmakers and representatives from around the world, along with scientists, numerous journalists, and various celebrities flew to Copenhagen, Denmark. For the most part, their goal was to promote a regulatory scheme aimed at controlling human carbon emissions by declaring the element a tradable commodity and establishing laws and regulations to govern the trade.

The proposed regulations were premised on the flawed notion, articulated by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations will change climate dramatically and thereby cause major ecological and economic damage. (Willie Soon & David Legates, SPPI)

Climatologists are unanimous in the belief that human activity is causing global warming, but their warnings are going unheeded as sea levels continue to rise. Does their public-relation strategy need a makeover? (RT)

With the climate science party-line case for global warming rapidly unwinding there is growing interest by researchers from outside the climate change community in applying advanced statistical techniques to climate data. It has long been recognized that statistical acumen has been lacking among mainstream climate scientists. This dirty little secret was first publicly disclosed during Congressional hearings regarding the 2006 Wegman Report. Even newer analyses have revealed that many of the predictions made by the IPCC reports and other global warming boosters are wrong, often because inappropriate statistical techniques were applied.

The Wegman Report was the result of an ad hoc committee of independent statisticians who were asked by a congressional committee to assess the statistical information presented in the Michael Mann “Hockey Stick” papers. Dr. Edward Wegman, a prominent statistics professor at George Mason University and chairman of the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, headed the panel of experts who examined the use of statistics in climate science. They found the climate science community was far too insular and did not consult with experts in statistics outside of their own field.

This self imposed isolation led, in the opinion of the committee, to misuse of statistics and a peer review process that only included the close-knit circle of researchers at the center of the global warming controversy. Wegman stated in testimony before the energy and commerce committee: “I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn't matter because the answer is correct anyway. Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science.” More on the Wegman Report can be found in Chapter 13 of The Resilient Earth.

More recently, Tom Siegfried, editor in chief of Science News, wrote an essay entitled “Odds Are, It's Wrong.” In it he addressed the general problem of the misuse of statistics in science and medical research. While not talking speciffically about climate science, here is Siegfried's take on the problem:

Nowhere is this “dirty secret” more prevalent than in climate science. I have already reviewed two recent statistical analyses of climate change that find much different answers and draw radically different conclusions than mainstream climate science. This post is the third in the series of articles on statistical analysis and global warming. In this article I will discuss another data analysis technique that is used to deal with non-stationary data of the type often associated with Earth's climate system—empirical mode decomposition. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

One may be forgiven to think that reports about the opening up of most of the Arctic to ice-free summer navigation might have been premature.

Hasn’t this script been read to us before? Yes it has: about the disappearing snows of Kilimanjaro, the terrifying future hurricane seasons in the North Atlantic, the upcoming extinction of (often, drowning) polar bears, the slowing down to a crawl of the Gulf Stream, the warming-sea death of coral reefs.

But there is no need to be fooled any longer. Just keep yourself aware of the 32-step lifecycle of a climate alarm, especially if linked about Anthropogenic Global Warming (as they all nowadays are):

In all likelihood, the above is happening right now about ocean acidification. Somebody, please make a reality TV show out of this comedy. (Maurizio Morabito, OmniClimate)

Is there a legal right to shout “hoax” on a burning planet? It is well documented that corporate interests fund a widespread campaign of lies and misinformation about climate change. Worse, they have been enjoying considerable success just as they did with tobacco. Small wonder since they are employing the same tactics, even some of the same shills posing as climate scientists. Is it their legal right to do so? And what can be done about it? (Mike Kaulbars, NJP)

The pop in global temperatures, even the satellite lower troposphere, the last few months seems surprising to some in the Northern Hemisphere where the winter was hard. In Russia, it may have been the coldest on record, while across northern China, Europe and the southern and central United States, it was the coldest since the late 1970s or even the early 1960s. It was not unexpected. In the late fall, we showed the following upper level anomaly pattern was likely for the winter given the low solar, El Nino and developing east Quasi-Biennial Oscillation or QBO (shown in research by our own Climate Prediction Center to modulate solar and El Nino Southern Oscillation or ENSO) ( Joseph D’Aleo, Icecap)

There is a new report in the journal Nature that some climate change alarmists are saying repudiates criticisms leveled at the IPCC over the Glaciergate scandal. In the “news feature,” a reporter looks at the “clues” scientists have found regarding the fate of the Himalayan glaciers from ground- and space-based studies. Though the scientists quoted clearly state they do not have enough data to draw meaningful conclusions—only 15 of 20,000 glaciers were examined on-site—the article still misleadingly says the glaciers are in trouble. It still had to admit the Himalayan glaciers won't vanish by 2035 and that they are not receding faster than glaciers in any other part of the world, both claims made previously by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

This blog has previously report about the dust-up between Vijay Kumar Raina, formerly of the Geological Survey of India, and certain IPCC officials over a bogus claim that the glaciers of the Himalayas were rapidly melting due to climate change (see “Himalayan Glaciers Not Melting”). The false claim originated in the Asia chapter of the IPCC's 2007 Working Group II report, which claims that Himalayan glaciers “are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.” Raina called “foul” and the resulting public scandal became commonly known as Glaciergate. Now, a new article has appeared in the journal Nature that attempts to soften the blow dealt to climate science. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

Four billion years ago, our then stripling sun radiated only 70 to 75 percent as much energy as it does today. Other things on Earth being equal, with so little energy reaching the planet's surface, all water on the planet should been have frozen. But ancient rocks hold ample evidence that the early Earth was awash in liquid water – a planetary ocean of it. So something must have compensated for the reduced solar output and kept Earth's water wet.

To explain this apparent paradox, a popular theory holds there must have been higher concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, most likely carbon dioxide, which would have helped retain a greater proportion of the solar energy that arrived.

But a team of earth scientists including researchers from Stanford have analyzed the mineral content of 3.8-billion-year-old marine rocks from Greenland and concluded otherwise.

"There is no geologic evidence in these rocks for really high concentrations of a greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide," said Dennis Bird, professor of geological and environmental sciences.

Instead, the team proposes that the vast global ocean of early Earth absorbed a greater percentage of the incoming solar energy than today's oceans, enough to ward off a frozen planet. Because the first landmasses that formed on Earth were small – mere islands in the planetary sea – a far greater proportion of the surface of was covered with water than today.

The study is detailed in a paper published in the April 1 issue of Nature. Bird and Norman Sleep, a professor of geophysics, are among the four authors. The lead author is Minik Rosing, a geology professor at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, and a former Allan Cox Visiting Professor at Stanford's School of Earth Sciences.

The crux of the theory is that because oceans are darker than continents, particularly before plants and soils covered landmasses, seas absorb more sunlight.

"It's the same phenomenon you will experience if you drive to Wal-Mart on a hot day and step out of your car onto the asphalt," Bird said. "It's really hot walking across the blacktop until you get onto the white concrete sidewalk."

Another key component of the theory is in the clouds. "Not all clouds are the same," Bird said.

Clouds reflect sunlight back into space to a degree, cooling Earth, but how effective they are depends on the number of tiny particles available to serve as nuclei around which the water droplets can condense. An abundance of nuclei means more droplets of a smaller size, which makes for a denser cloud and a greater reflectivity, or albedo, on the part of the cloud.

Most nuclei today are generated by plants or algae and promote the formation of numerous small droplets. But plants and algae didn't flourish until much later in Earth's history, so their contribution of potential nuclei to the early atmosphere circa 4 billion years ago would have been minimal. The few nuclei that might have been available would likely have come from erosion of rock on the small, rare landmasses of the day and would have caused larger droplets that were essentially transparent to the solar energy that came in to Earth, according to Bird.

"We put together some models that demonstrate, with the slow continental growth and with a limited amount of clouds, you could keep water above freezing throughout geologic history," Bird said.

"What this shows is that there is no faint early sun paradox," said Sleep. (Stanford University)

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– In an analysis of the past 1.2 million years, UC Santa Barbara geologist Lorraine Lisiecki discovered a pattern that connects the regular changes of the Earth's orbital cycle to changes in the Earth's climate. The finding is reported in this week's issue of the scientific journal Nature Geoscience.

Lisiecki performed her analysis of climate by examining ocean sediment cores. These cores come from 57 locations around the world. By analyzing sediments, scientists are able to chart the Earth's climate for millions of years in the past. Lisiecki's contribution is the linking of the climate record to the history of the Earth's orbit.

It is known that the Earth's orbit around the sun changes shape every 100,000 years. The orbit becomes either more round or more elliptical at these intervals. The shape of the orbit is known as its "eccentricity." A related aspect is the 41,000-year cycle in the tilt of the Earth's axis. (University of California - Santa Barbara)

Solar activity is known to influence Earth's temperature, and it has been suggested that the current period of low solar activity will lead into a more prolonged period of low activity, a new "grand minimum" similar to the Maunder minimum that lasted from 1645 to 1715, coinciding with the Little Ice Age. Could low solar activity in the future help offset anthropogenic warming? To determine the potential effects of a prolonged period of low solar activity, Feulner and Rahmstorf run a series of simulations using a coupled climate model that reproduces the cooling during past solar minima. The authors find that a new grand minimum would produce only a minimal amount of cooling—no more than 0.3 degrees Celsius (0.54 degrees Fahrenheit) in 2100. This potential temperature decrease is much smaller than the increase expected from human-induced warming. Furthermore, any cooling effect would be temporary, since the period of low solar activity would last no more than a few decades. The authors conclude that a new grand minimum cannot offset global warming caused by human greenhouse gas emissions. (Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research)

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week:
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 817 individual scientists from 486 separate research institutions in 43 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Raffels Sø, Liverpool Land, East Greenland. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here.

Subject Index Summary:
Little Ice Age (Regional - South America: Argentina): Far away from the borders of the North Atlantic Ocean, which is the only place where climate revisionists have been willing to acknowledge the presence of this cold climatic interval, the Little Ice Age has been demonstrated to have impacted the environment in a major way.

Plant Growth Data:
This week we add new results of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature for: Dinoflagellate (Montechiaro and Giordano, 2010), Red Pitaya (Weiss et al., 2010), Sugar Beet (Manderscheid et al., 2010), and Yellow Pitya (Weiss et al., 2010).

Global Warming: A Stratospheric Surprise: A recent study demonstrates that we likely have a long way to go before we will have a climate model in which we can have sufficient faith to make major decisions with respect to regulating anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

With carbon dioxide levels rising and the planet warming, various solutions are being considered to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. One suggested geoengineering approach is to increase carbon sequestration by stirring up the oceans. Artificial upwelling would be induced by placing pipes in the ocean to bring cold, nutrient-rich deeper waters to the surface. The nutrient-rich waters would fertilize the ocean and stimulate the growth of plankton that could absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Artificial upwelling would also cool the Earth's surface by bringing up cold water from the ocean interior. Oschlies et al. run coupled carbon-climate model simulations to evaluate the efficacy of a potential artificial ocean upwelling plan. The authors find that under the most optimistic assumptions, artificial upwelling could sequester carbon dioxide at the rate of 0.9 billion metric tonnes (.99 billion tons (U.S.)) of carbon per year, a significant percentage of the carbon dioxide emitted by anthropogenic fossil fuel burning. However, the researchers find, oddly, that about 80 percent of the additional carbon would be sequestered by land ecosystems, not in the oceans. This would make it hard to monitor the effectiveness of the artificial upwelling program. Furthermore, the simulations show that if artificial upwelling were stopped, the planet's temperature would increase even more than it would in the control case in which no artificial upwelling was ever attempted, leaving fewer options in the future. (GRL)

A compulsory carbon trading scheme for 5,000 UK businesses will launch today, amid widespread confusion about its complex rules and a bonanza of extra fees for environmental consultants.

Under the Government's scheme, an array of businesses from supermarkets to office blocks that spend more than £500,000 per year on energy must conduct an audit of their carbon dioxide emissions.

They must register by September and will next year be ranked in a league according to how much energy they have saved or spent, with financial rewards and penalties dependent on their position. They will also have to buy allowances at a fixed price of £12 per tonne to cover their emissions.

Business groups have been heavily critical of the scheme, called the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme, arguing that its excessive complexity will be extremely costly.

Analysts from PricewaterhouseCoopers believe the scheme is likely to add 6pc to affected companies' energy prices next year. The worst performing may have to pay an extra 20pc on their bills by 2015, while the best may save 6pc over the next five years.

A survey by RWE npower found around half those businesses affected do not understand how to buy allowances to cover their emissions or how to forecast future targets.

Another big complaint among companies was that those who have already spent money on reducing their carbon emissions in the past may not score well, because the scheme only looks at future efficiency savings. (TDT)

The Government is under increasing pressure from business, farmers and coalition partner Act to delay or at least soften the impact of the emissions trading scheme (ETS) ahead of its introduction in July this year.

Yesterday Business New Zealand chief executive Phil O'Reilly confirmed his organisation was one of a number of signatories to a letter from business groups to the Government in March asking it to delay or alter the entry onJuly 1 of key parts of the scheme.

The Herald understands other signatories included the NZ Chambers of Commerce, the Road Transport Association, the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association, the Major Electricity Users Group and the Meat Industry Association.

Mr O'Reilly said the Government had made it clear its scheme was based on the expectation Australia would have its own ETS in effect before New Zealand and the local version would not cause a flight of capital or labour to countries that did not have carbon pricing. (NZ Herald)

Home buyers face having to pay up to £8,000 more per new property under green targets imposed by the Scottish Government, the construction industry has warned.

Regulations unveiled yesterday will massively increase building costs as housing developers struggle to reduce carbon emissions, according to the UK industry body, the Home Builders Federation.

Homes for Scotland, the umbrella organisation representing Scottish builders, warned that the new rules threaten further slow-down in delivery of much needed homes.

The regulations will be phased in from October 1 on all new properties, which will have to be 30% more efficient in terms of carbon emissions than they were in 2007, and 70% greener than 1990 levels. This will require greater insulation and a higher standard of roofing, doors and windows, bumping up the cost to buyers.

Further regulations are anticipated by the housing industry, with construction firms bracing themselves for a target of 60% on 2007 levels by 2013. (UK Herald)

For the first time in 10 years Americans are more likely to say the United States should give more priority to developing oil, natural gas and coal than to protecting the environment, according to a poll on Tuesday. (Reuters)

Details of an oil industry tax are being filled in Congress as part of an upcoming U.S. climate control bill, sparking a spirited lobbying campaign this week over how the revenues from that tax would be used.

A Senate source familiar with the draft legislation told Reuters that the new fee "will be assessed at the terminal rack," -- where refined oil products await shipment to retail gasoline stations and other end points.

But the source added that no final decisions had yet been made on whether revenues from the tax would be deposited into the Highway Trust Fund and whether they would be earmarked for specific "green" projects or road and bridge repairs that the highway fund normally handles.

Currently, an 18.4 cent tax on each gallon (3.79 liters) of gasoline sold in the United States is deposited in the trust fund, which is perpetually at risk of going broke, largely because of increased fuel efficiency in cars.

The new oil industry tax, aimed at encouraging better fuel efficiency in the transportation sector, would be part of a compromise global warming bill being written in the Senate that could be unveiled by the end of April.

The centerpiece of that bill would be steps to achieve a 17 percent reduction in U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 2020, from 2005 levels. (Reuters)

President Obama should be credited—albeit cautiously—for his announcement yesterday that he will open some U.S. coastal waters to offshore oil drilling. The fact that this is an interesting political reversal on Obama’s part has been treated extensively elsewhere. But what of the substance of the president’s drilling proposal?

I and other free-market advocates have spoken for years of the potential energy benefits of allowing this drilling, so I won’t devote too much space to repeating myself. The best encapsulation of my own thinking on the subject is this piece I wrote for the LA Times in 2008.

Obama’s press conference at Andrews Air Force Base yesterday did indicate a welcome new direction for U.S. energy policy. But in an absolutely perfect world, the government would not be in the business of allocating scarce resources—in this case, the offshore oil fields—to competing user groups. The market would play that role.

Hence, the best policy would be to divest this land via auction and allow environmentalists, recreationalists and preservationists to compete with oil and gas companies for the rights to those resources.

It is not at all inconceivable to me that those opposed to drilling, whatever their reasons, might well out-bid extraction industries for rights to some of these fields. Unfortunately, there seems to be limited political support for privatization, so President Obama’s initiative is probably better than the status quo.

We need to remember, however, that if governments could intelligently allocate scarce resources across the economy without recourse to market information or institutions, then the North Korean economy would work swimmingly. (Cato at liberty)

In addition to reducing carbon-dioxide footprints, Susan Cole has her sights set on a billion barrels of once unrecoverable oil (Globe and Mail)

Fight goes online where players spray oil at leaders; producers urged to act (GoO)

THREE significant new oil and gas regions have been identified off Australia's coast, raising the potential for a wave of offshore exploration that could create booming new resources hubs around the nation. (The Australian)

With oil and gas discoveries by Australia promising to boost our coffers with untold riches, the petroleum age is far from over -- but there's also a risk we'll lose control

THE scale of Australia's gas-fired economic boom is already breathtaking. Last year alone energy companies concluded contracts worth $500 billion for the supply of gas from fields off the northwest coast of Western Australia.

These deals and the onshore minerals boom are shifting the centre of gravity of our economy markedly towards energy and resources and stretching to the limit the capacity of WA to supply services and labour.

But what if the West Australian experience is repeated across the country, off the coasts of South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania, its oil and natural gas reserves making Australia the Saudi Arabia of Asia?

This scenario is not far fetched given an aggressive drive by the federal government to uncover more resources within Australia's vast maritime empire. (The Australian)

Despite the excitement (not) over the general election, the work of government goes on, demonstrating if nothing else the irrelevance of most MPs in the process. And confronting ministers is the knotty problem of what to do with South Africa.

We are not referring to the murder of TerraBlanche, but something altogether more serious – whether to support a World Bank loan for a new coal-fired power station in South Africa.

This issue has been grumbling on for some time, but emerged last month when it was first publicly revealed that the United States and Britain were threatening to withhold support for a $3.75 billion loan, vitally needed to get the project off the ground.

Now, with the decision due this week, it has come to a head, with the UK government wilting under sustained attack from green groups, who are demanding that the loan is blocked.

South Africa desperately needs more electricity capacity. Its existing system is already under pressure and in 2008 came close to collapsing. Rolling blackouts had to be imposed, causing massive damage to the productive economy. As a major coal producer, it made sense to go for coal and it Eskom, the power utility, is planning a 4,800-megawatt coal-fired plant at Medupi in the northern Limpopo region.

But the risk of economic damage and hardship if the project is blocked is of little concern to the likes of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Christian Aid. They argue that the 25 million tons of carbon dioxide the plant would produce pose a risk to the world's climate that outweighs the benefits of the secure electricity it would supply.

They have been lobbying behind the scenes to try to persuade Britain to vote against the loan and have held meetings in recent days with Gareth Thomas, the minister for international development, Michael Jacobs, the prime minister's special adviser on climate change, and Susanna Moorhead, head of the World Bank in Britain.

This puts the government rather on the spot. It has already supported the development of the $4.14 billion 4GW Mundra power project in India's Gujarat State – another coal-fired plant - and in fact paid for the development work which would allow the owners, Tata Power, to claim carbon credits under the UN's CDM.

What is particularly problematical here is the timing of the general election, with green groups poised to make a huge fuss which could damage the government's green credentials. Having originally supported the proposal, it is now wavering, and may yet cave in when the vote is taken tomorrow.

And just for once, the UK's vote actually matters for, under the Obama administration, the US has issued new guidelines on the funding of coal plants in developing countries. These direct US representatives to encourage "no or low carbon energy" options prior to a coal-based choice, and to assist borrowers in finding additional resources to make up the costs if an alternative to coal is more expensive.

On this basis, the US is likely to abstain from the vote, leaving the UK in the hot seat, in a classic lose-lose situation. The World Bank has pointed out that there is no alternative source of power which could provide enough capacity fast enough to avoid widespread power cuts.

It is urging Britain and other contributors to vote for the loan and warns starkly of an energy crisis across southern Africa. "Without energy," it says, "countries face very limited or no economic growth: factories and businesses cannot function efficiently; hospitals and schools cannot operate fully or safely; basic services that people in rich countries take for granted cannot be offered."

Thus, if Britain blocks the loan, it will be seen to be hampering third world development, with profound humanitarian consequences. If it approves it, it will attract the wrath of the greenies. And it does not stop there. Since any alternatives would cost at least twice as much, if not considerably more, Britain would be more or less obliged to cough up a substantial amount of cash to help meet the extra costs, if it block the loan.

Meanwhile, France, with ambitions of selling its next generations nuclear power plants to South Africa, is supporting the application, putting two major EU members at odds, all in the context of official EU policy being to support "low carbon" development.

Norway, though, is in an even worse position. Its ministry of the environment is urging its government to reject the loan, while the ministry of foreign affairs and the agency for development cooperation want to support it.

But, while the various World Bank members are tying themselves in knots, none seem to be asking questions of groups such as Christian Aid, which seems to have elevated climate change above that of the humanitarian issues on which they were founded.

However, this has not stopped Pravin Gordhan, the South African finance minister, from speaking out. He is accusing green groups of trying to impose their environmental priorities on a country lacking the secure electricity that is taken for granted in the developed world.

"It is regrettable," he says, "that . . . developed countries and [a] very small group of NGOs in South Africa are putting their environmental concerns, which can't be immediately addressed, above the economic needs of South Africa and our need to grow the economy so that all the people benefit."

Offering no concessions to the greenie climate agenda, he states flatly, "For now, not only South Africa but developing countries more generally will have to rely on coal."

For decades now, the greenies have been trying to convince the world that they and developing nations have a common agenda. But now, the cracks are beginning to show, big time. When the decision comes to be made on Thursday, therefore, there will be a lot more at stake than a single coal-fired power plant. Lines have been drawn and the World Bank – not for the first time - has become the battlefield.

How interesting it is though that the South Africans are prepared to take on the greenies, when our own more "sophisticated" politicians roll over and give them everything they demand – unless we see different on Thursday. (EU Referendum)

THE state government has approved a new power station at Lithgow despite an independent report warning it would increase the state's greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 2.9 million cars.

A review of plans for a coal- or gas-fired plant by the environmental engineering firm Arup found that Delta Electricity, a state-owned generator, underestimated the potential annual emissions by 20 per cent, or 2.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

The Planning Minister, Tony Kelly, approved the concept plan for the 2000-megawatt power station at Mount Piper, and a matching plant at Bayswater, near Muswellbrook, last month.

Mr Kelly said the two projects ''could be undertaken within acceptable environmental and amenity limits'' and would have to meet 23 strict conditions.

However, climate change campaigners say the real impact of the new fossil-fuel burning power stations has been hidden by a government desperate to avoid the power blackouts predicted within this decade. (SMH)

DOZENS of ordinary families and pensioners have begged the NSW Government to spare them big power price rises which will leave them cold and hungry this winter.

The Daily Telegraph reports desperate people have taken the extraordinary step of telling the Independent Pricing and Remuneration Tribunal just what effect the price jumps will have on their lives.

Despite dozens of moving pleas - and an admission by IPART chairman Jim Cox some people unable to afford heating may die this winter - the State Government ignored their submissions and last month approved the price rise for consumers across the state.

After already being hit with a 20 per cent price rise last year, NSW residents will on July 1 pay the first installment of what will be a more than 64 per cent rise over the next three years. (Daily Telegraph)

Over the past few days, there have been two unrelated but promising developments, both in New England, in the debate over wind power. [Read More] (David G. Tuerck, Energy Tribune)

Is the introduction of industrial- or utility-scale wind power into our electricity systems good public policy?

This political economy question (wind power is government dependent, or it would only be a market question) hinges to a large degree on operations research, or engineering. And it is here that a hotly contested debate is going on, for it is an open question about how much wind power really displaces fossil fuels–the raison d’etre of wind subsidies in the first place.

This two-part series evaluates some of the latest approaches and considerations in this debate. One important paper published in 2009 by Charles Komanoff sees wind-for-fossil-fuel displacement as robust and is currently being cited by wind proponents in Maine. Another paper in my review is a study by Gross et al, which is relied on by Komanoff.

Part I critically evaluates Komanoff by extending the critique of Milligan et al; Part II focuses on the important consideration of electricity generation capacity value and analyzes some of aspects of the referenced Gross et al paper. (MasterResource)

Despite all the talk about how Obamacare would lower health care costs, it’s already becoming clear that it just won’t be the case.

The Indianapolis Star reports that companies can expect employee health insurance costs to rise even faster. “Driven by worries about the economy and possibly the effects of health-care reform, [health insurers] are raising rates this year for family coverage through employer-sponsored plans… from 8 percent to 21 percent, which is considerably higher than the 5 percent increase the Kaiser Family Foundation reported in 2009.” Continue reading... (The Foundry)

Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL) voted for Obamacare. When questioned by his constituents to identify what part of the Constitution empowers the federal government to force Americans to buy health insurance, Rep. Hare replies: “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this to be honest.” We applaud Rep. Hare for his honesty, but his vote for Obamacare already proved he does not care if the legislation he votes for is unconstitutional. As The Wall Street Journal explains this morning:

It is probably too much to hope that the more than 30 million school lunches served every day will taste absolutely fabulous. But Congress should at least make certain that whatever lands on those cafeteria trays is nutritious and safe to eat. Every day it delays doing so is another mealtime when millions of students are cheated of programs that could help relieve hunger and reduce obesity.

A reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act is now before the Senate. The bill’s main sponsors, Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat, and Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican, have written useful revisions and improvements. The measure deserves prompt approval. It is also time for the House to produce its own version. If Congress can act by late spring, next year’s school cafeteria crowd can be more confident that the food is healthier and safer to eat.

The Senate bill reauthorizes several antihunger programs for children, but its biggest impact would be felt in schools that offer free or cut-rate meals. The bill would give the Agriculture Department new powers to set nutritional standards for any food sold on school grounds, particularly junk foods that contribute to obesity. It would expand the use of local farm products, organic food and school gardens, and require the government to notify schools more quickly about tainted foods. It also provides the first real increase in funding in 40 years. (NYT)

New York State’s health commissioner would be the first to admit he has soft drinks on the brain.

The commissioner, Dr. Richard F. Daines, was recently driving down Interstate 15 in Utah, his home state, when he came across four billboards in a row that beamed a subliminal message at him, and not the one the advertisers intended.

The first billboard said, “44 Ounce Soda, 99 Cents.” (“This is a carbonated beverage, meant to be consumed in your car,” he said, marveling at the thought of such a large serving.)

The next one said, “Any Size Soda, One Dollar.” (“Who would go in and order the petite size?” he said. “It’s just a signal to consume.”)

The third billboard trumpeted Utah’s first dedicated C-section wing with a slogan that might owe an apology to Garrison Keillor: “Where No C Is Average.” (“Presumably,” Dr. Daines said, “maternal obesity and diabetes are one of the reasons women are getting C-sections.”)

The fourth billboard said, “We Suck Fat. Smart Liposuction.”

“It kind of captures the whole thing,” Dr. Daines said, getting excited as he told the story in an interview in his Manhattan office. “We underprice this commodity that we overconsume — and I mean we, we all do it — we suffer the consequences, and then we try to buy our way back out of it, liposuction or something, bariatric surgery, some kind of pill for obesity.”

Which brings him to Gov. David A. Paterson’s proposed penny-an-ounce tax on sugared sodas.

Dr. Daines fits the part of the sin-tax crusader. Standing 6-foot-1, he is as lanky and folksy-sounding as Jimmy Stewart, a Spanish-speaking former Mormon missionary in Bolivia who practiced medicine in the South Bronx for 20 years. (NYT)

It is one of the paradoxes of the Internet.

After the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Snopes dissected a letter purporting to explain why he was unfit for acclaim. It was the site's most searched subject soon after.

Along with the freest access to knowledge the world has ever seen comes a staggering amount of untruth, from imagined threats on health care to too-easy-to-be-true ways to earn money by forwarding an e-mail message to 10 friends. “A cesspool,” Google’s chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, once called it.

David and Barbara Mikkelson are among those trying to clean the cesspool. The unassuming California couple run Snopes, one of the most popular fact-checking destinations on the Web.

For well over a decade they have acted as arbiters in the Age of Misinformation by answering the central question posed by every chain letter — is this true? — complete with links to further research.

The popularity of Snopes — it attracts seven million to eight million unique visitors in an average month — puts the couple in a unique position to evaluate digital society’s attitudes toward accuracy.

After 14 years, they seem to have concluded that people are rather cavalier about the facts. (NYT)

(April 1) -- At first, people suspected it might have been an April Fools joke, but the following story is not, despite all hopes to the contrary, an April Fools' Day prank.

During a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the proposed relocation of naval personnel to the island of Guam, Rep. Hank Johnson expressed his concern for the stability of the tiny U.S. territory -- not its political stability or its economic stability, but its basic, physical stability.

Researchers at Umeå University and the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg have discovered that traces of many medicines can be found in fish that have been swimming in treated waste water. One such medicine, the hormone levonorgestrel, was found in higher concentrations in the blood of fish than in women who take the contraceptive pill. Elevated levels of this hormone can lead to infertility in fish.

The study is published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. The fish in the study were exposed to treated waste water from three sewage treatment works in Stockholm, Umeå and Gothenburg. The study shows that levonorgestrel – which is found in many contraceptive pills, including the morning-after pill – can impact on the environment and constitutes a risk factor for the ability of fish to reproduce. Levonogestrel is designed to mimic the female sex hormone progesterone and is produced synthetically. (The Sahlgrenska Academy)

A stranded Chinese coal ship leaking oil onto Australia's Great Barrier Reef is an environmental time bomb with the potential to devastate large protected areas of the reef, activists said on Monday.

The ship was a "ticking environmental time bomb," Gilly Llewellyn, director of conservation for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Australia, told Reuters.

And just how great an environmental disaster was the huge oil spill of the Exxon Valdez really? No spill has been more demonised and exploited, but here’s the findings of a study into the true damage:

That study includes a warning to activists - and to the journalists now, alas, among them:

Sidewalks in commercial districts should be privatized to retire city debt, to perk up street life and city neighbourhoods and to free city businesses from the tangle of red tape that dampens their bottom line.

At one time, our governments did not intrude much on our use of sidewalks, which have traditionally been privately managed public space. Apart from a minimum of rules, most of them involving public decency, almost anything went. In those tolerant times, entrepreneurial activity flourished. Pedestrians in popular shopping districts might wend their way past foods carts offering exotic fare, past organ grinders with monkeys, past hawkers selling trinkets. Looking up, they would see awnings and store signs swinging overhead. To their side they’d see a profusion of storefronts, their merchandise often spilling out onto the sidewalk.

China on Monday denied that its dams were reducing water levels on the Mekong River and blamed problems along the river on unusually dry weather, but it also offered to share more data with its neighbors.

Leaders of Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, badly hit by the Mekong's biggest drop in water levels in decades, met in the Thai coastal town of Hua Hin to discuss management of Southeast Asia's longest waterway. Some 65 million people depend on the river. (Reuters)

The journal publication this story is based on is available online: http://bit.ly/cCsYRs

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The Swiss needle cast epidemic in Douglas-fir forests of the coastal Pacific Northwest is continuing to intensify, appears to be unprecedented over at least the past 100 years, and is probably linked to the extensive planting of Douglas-fir along the coast and a warmer climate, new research concludes.

Scientists in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University have also found that this disease, which is affecting hundreds of thousands of acres in Oregon and Washington and costing tens of millions of dollars a year in lost growth, can affect older trees as well as young stands – in some cases causing their growth to almost grind to a halt.

The newest findings were just published in Forest Ecology and Management, a professional journal.

Swiss needle cast is a native fungal disease specific to Douglas-fir that was first described in Europe. It rarely kills trees but causes discoloration, loss of needles and growth reduction, and is common in the Pacific Northwest wherever Douglas-fir grows. However, it caused significant problems only in recent decades along the coast.

Starting in 1984, an epidemic began to develop, and it significantly worsened after 1996. (Oregon State)

Long-lived pine pollen makes it difficult to contain transgenic trees

DURHAM, North Carolina -- When forest biologist Claire Williams boards ferries bound for North Carolina's Outer Banks, the barrier islands that line the NC coast, ferry captains call her the "Pollen Lady."

Each spring from 2006 to 2009, Williams traveled back and forth from the islands to the mainland, collecting pine pollen blown far offshore. She wanted to find out if pollen from the loblolly pine — the most commonly planted tree in the southern United States — can still germinate after drifting long distances.

The answer could have profound implications if and when the USDA approves transgenic trees. "Long-distance dispersal of transgenic pine pollen is a potential problem only if that pollen is viable," said Williams, currently at the Forest History Society and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, N.C.

The loblolly pine, Pinus taeda, grows on nearly 60 million acres in the southern U.S. and provides more than 15% of the world's timber. "Roughly one billion loblolly pines are planted in the American South each year," Williams said. "But right now, none are genetically modified." (National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent))

Plagued by reports of sloppy work, falsifications and exaggerations, climate research is facing a crisis of confidence. How reliable are the predictions about global warming and its consequences? And would it really be the end of the world if temperatures rose by more than the much-quoted limit of two degrees Celsius? By Marco Evers, Olaf Stampf and Gerald Traufetter

Editorial by S. Fred Singer, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

There is now a desperate effort afoot by assorted climate alarmists to explain away the revelations of the incriminating e-mails leaked last year from the University of East Anglia (UAE). But the ongoing investigations so far have avoided the real problem, namely whether the reported warming is genuine or simply the manufactured result of manipulation of temperature data by scientists in England and the United States.

The latest report is by the British House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee, which largely absolved Philip Jones, head of UEA’s Climate Research Unit and author of most of the e-mails. How can we tell that it’s a whitewash? Here are some telltale signs:

None of the investigations have gone into any detail on how the data might have been manipulated. But this is really the most important task for any investigation, since it deals directly with the central issue: Is there an appreciable human influence on climate change in the past decades? Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph, has written an interesting and troubling essay about his misadventures in trying to correct via publication in the peer reviewed literature a statement in the IPCC AR4 WGI report that he characterizes as a "fabrication" or a "lie" (here as a PDF). Whatever you might think about Professor McKitrick or his academic work, the accuracy of his claim that the IPCC published an obvious misrepresentation of his work should be without doubt, as you can read for yourself in his essay. The misrepresentation is straightforward and obvious, and I agree that the terms "fabrication" or "lie" in this context are not too strong. If anyone reading has an argument to the contrary (such as "innocent mistake"), I'd love to hear it.

Prof. McKitrick's tale indicates that he has become effectively blacklisted in the climate science community, presumably for his views and collaborations, which if you don't know, are often associated with the nefarious and evil "global warming skeptics."

The episode that he documents in detail doesn't bother him much, as he explains that:

As Science News reported, esteemed French geologist and former science minister Claude Allègre wrote a new book, L'imposture climatique (The Climate Fraud), deconstructing a mafia-like system that propagates a baseless myth, namely the IPCC.

The book has sold more than 110,000 copies by now and it's roughly the #20 bestseller at amazon.fr.

But that's not the news that Science Magazine found to be the most important one. The magazine thinks that the most important event was something that Claude Allègre "couldn't care less" about, namely a "useless and stupid petition" by 400 people who "have wasted a lot of public money [officially for the research of AGW] and they're afraid of losing their funding and jobs," using the words of the ex-science minister.

They demand that various officials curse the inconvenient heretic.

It's kind of incredible but just in France, there are 400 activist climate scientists. Add an order of magnitude or two to get an estimate for the whole world. This community of thousands or tens of thousands of people has been receiving the money for a decade or two - the community was engineered out of this money that got out of control - but they haven't managed to improve our understanding of the climate in any significant way for more than a decade.

At the suggestion of France’s science minister, Valérie Pécresse, France’s National Academy of Sciences will hold an official debate on climate change to try to defuse this newly explosive issue..

The Academy of Sciences debate, expected to be held by October of this year, follows two months of heated debate on radio and television, during which France’s two most prominent sceptics, Claude Allegre and Vincent Courtillot, have sown great doubt in the minds of a once unskeptical French public. Allegre’s new book, L'imposture climatique (The Climate Fraud), has especially caused the French public to reconsider the conventional wisdom about global warming. In this runaway best-seller (110,000 copies sold to date), Allegre, France’s most celebrated scientist and a former Science Minister in a socialist government, calls the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a "mafia-like system" that promotes a "baseless myth" about climate change.

In an attempt to stop the erosion of their public support, some 410 establishment scientists petitioned the current science minster, asking her to rebuke the skeptics and to express confidence in the climate research community. Her response was to turn to France’s National Academy with a request for a debate on the subject. The Academy’s president, Jean Salençon, readily agreed in the hopes that an airing of the issues would calm some of the fury on the subject.

Noting that the Academy does not take sides on the issue, and that the Academy’s website already reports the views of scientists on both sides of the debate, Salençon aims to defend the scientific method and the principles of scientific inquiry, not any one scientific position. When asked if sanctions might be in the cards for Allegre, a member of the Academy, or any other climate sceptics, he replied: "Under no circumstances! There is no question of ethical sanctions. Even less of an expulsion. The nomination for the Academy of Sciences is perpetual. It cannot be reversed, not even through a resignation.”

The participants in the October debate have not yet been determined. (Financial Post)

Much excitement in France over the announcement that there is to be a national debate on climate change under the auspices of the French National Academy.

The move appears to have been prompted by the success of L'Imposture Climatique, a book by the sceptic scientist Claude Allegre, who has sold no less than 100,000 copies so far (a number which makes me extremely jealous).

The striking thing about the story though is what it reveals about the attitude of the French Academy of Sciences:

Defending the principles of scientific inquiry eh? Not an approach that would win much favour with the grubby lobbyists of the Royal Society, with their guide to Facts and Fictions About Climate Change. (Bishop Hill)

The FT changes tune slightly and admits there might be a tiny problem with climatology. The walls are not exactly tumbling down yet, but it may be that the Pink'un is struggling to hold the line.

Interestingly, they tell us that the IPCC needs to "give weight to all the evidence, not just the consensus". This appears to be an admission that the "consensus" is (a) not a consensus and (b) is based on a partial selection of the available evidence.

I think, however, that the FT should expect a campaign of criticism. (Bishop Hill)

The Washington Nationals will win 74 games this year. The Democrats will lose five Senate seats in November. The high Tuesday will be 86 degrees, but it will feel like 84.

And, depending on how much greenhouse gas emissions increase, the world's average temperature will rise between 2 and 11.5 degrees by 2100.

The computer models used to predict climate change are far more sophisticated than the ones that forecast the weather, elections or sporting results. They are multilayered programs in which scientists try to replicate the physics behind things such as rainfall, ocean currents and the melting of sea ice. Then, they try to estimate how emissions from smokestacks and auto tailpipes might alter those patterns in the future, as the effects of warmer temperatures echo through these complex and interrelated systems.

To check these programs' accuracy, scientists plug in data from previous years to see if the model's predictions match what really happened.

But these models still have the same caveat as other computer-generated futures. They are man-made, so their results are shaped by human judgment. ( David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post)

Rajendra Pachauri , chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), responded to the errors exposed in the IPCC report saying that “Scientists are demonised because of one error in 3000 pages of evidence.” Truth be told, there were several errors uncovered in the report including questionable sources in the assessment of mountain ice reduction in the Andes, Alps and Africa as well as acknowledged overstating crop loss in Africa, Amazon rain forest depletion, sea level increases in the Netherlands. But Pachauri only acknowledges that the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035 or sooner was speculative at best. The reality is the IPCC reports have significant flaws; they simply aren’t picked up by the mainstream media.

Take the hockey stick theory, for instance. The theory is best explained by a graph that shows a time-series of global temperatures with current and future temperatures increasing at such rapid rates that it resembles the blade of a hockey stick. The graph appeared six times in the IPCC’s 2001 report. Andrew Montford’s new book, The Hockey Stick Illusion, reveals that the problems with the hockey stick theory go back much further than Climategate. In a review of the book, the Prospect Magazine’s Matt Ridley writes:

As more state and other interested parties line-up to contest the EPA’s Endangerment Finding, the EPA is becoming creative in trying to come up with other strategies to justify restricting carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gas) emissions.

One new strategy is to use the Clean Water Act to justify curbing CO2 emissions because they lead to ocean acidification (an impact which itself seems to be overblown). Another is to explore seeking greenhouse gas emissions controls at a local level, under the guise that concentrated local CO2 emissions (i.e. in cities) change the local environment in such a way as to elevate human mortality there.

My colleague Pat Michaels refers to this as the EPA’s “whack-a-mole” strategy—while effort is concentrated on trying to beat down one of its pesky and ill-founded CO2-regulating proposals, the EPA pops up another and another and another. The EPA hopes that after a while, one mole sneaks through unnoticed and manages to grab the prized (CO2-enriched) carrot.

Currently most of the whacking is aimed at trying to halt EPA’s use of the Clean Air Act as a mechanism for sweeping CO2 regulation. The ocean acidification issue is just starting to get some attention. We have briefly touched on ocean acidification here at MasterResource, and found it to be an issue in which it seems that the more that is known the less of a problem it appears to be (i.e. the real world is a pretty adaptable and responsive place). Hopefully, the EPA’s recently announced solicitation of public comment “on what considerations EPA should take into account when deciding how to address listing of waters as threatened or impaired for ocean acidification” will garner some deserved response before the May 21, 2010 deadline.

In this post, I want to take a look at a novel mole that needs attention: the idea that local CO2 produces any sort of impact on local mortality that could be detectably reduced by local CO2 restrictions.

In taking questions from the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee last year, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson insisted that that EPA needed to retain certain performance based standards setting for new and existing power plants in order to address local pollution. Senator Arlen Specter was amazed, saying there is no localized impact from CO2.

But apparently Jackson knew something that Senator Specter didn’t—the EPA was funding a study that was to conclude that, indeed, local CO2 emissions do raise local mortality in the U.S.—by three one-hundredths of one percent—or by about 792 deaths out of 2,700,000 deaths annually (from these numbers it would seem that Senator Specter wasn’t that far off). [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Abandoning all loyalty to the democratic processes this nation holds dear, President Obama has made the decision that getting energy tax legislation through Congress with the approval of the American people is just too much of a pain to bother with. Instead he will have the EPA declare as early as next week that CO2 is a dangerous global warming gas and will start regulating its emissions immediately.

Obama’s promise to open up vast stretches of ocean on the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico to energy exploration is simply a ruse to soften up the public for soon to be announced draconian regulations. (Fred Dardick, CFP)

Pollution Control: From cars to coal mines, the imposition of economy-killing restrictions is under way. Are the new EPA regulations on auto emissions the precursor to regulating carbon dioxide by executive order?

In announcing the Environmental Protection Agency's first regulations on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cars, Administrator Lisa Jackson has promised they won't be the last such rules stemming from the EPA's "endangerment finding" that carbon dioxide, six pounds of which every human being exhales every day, is a dangerous pollutant.

"These are the first regulations that cover greenhouse gas emissions in the United States," Jackson told reporters in a conference call last Thursday. She underscored the fact that additional regulations would be forthcoming since "the Clean Air Act talks about additional regulation needed once greenhouse gas pollution is acknowledged to be exactly that."

Under the new regulations, which begin in 2011, automakers would be required to reduce fleetwide GHG emissions each year, beginning at 295 grams of carbon dioxide per mile and culminating in a cap of no more than 250 grams per mile by the 2016 model year.

James Inhofe, R-Okla., ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said Jackson was "imposing a backdoor energy tax on consumers created by the EPA" despite the fact that Jackson admitted to him that the regulation "won't have any meaningful climate impacts."

"This is the initial step in EPA's regulatory barrage stemming from the endangerment finding," Inhofe said. (IBD)

Says EPA Is Imposing ‘New Backdoor Energy Tax’ on Consumers

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, issued the following statement today in response to EPA’s announcement of its new global warming regulation on cars: “Achieving greater fuel efficiency and lessening dependence on foreign oil are two policy goals that I support,” Sen. Inhofe said. “We have many ways of achieving these goals without imposing a backdoor energy tax on consumers created by the EPA. As the EPA Administrator admitted to me, EPA’s regulation won’t have any meaningful climate impacts. However, it most certainly will mean higher costs for consumers and fewer jobs. In short, EPA’s backdoor tax is all pain for no climate gain.

“This is the initial step in EPA’s regulatory barrage stemming from the endangerment finding. I will continue to work with Sen. Murkowski and other senators from both parties to overturn this finding, remove EPA’s authority to regulate every corner of the American economy, and protect jobs and consumers all across the country.” (EPW Blog)

WASHINGTON — The federal government took its first formal step to regulate global warming pollution on Thursday by issuing final rules for greenhouse gas emissions for automobiles and light trucks.

The move ends a 30-year battle between regulators and automakers but sets the stage for what may be a bigger fight over climate-altering emissions from stationary sources like power plants, steel mills and refineries.

The new tailpipe rules, jointly written by the Transportation Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, set emissions and mileage standards that would translate to a combined fuel economy average for new vehicles of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. Most drivers will see lower mileage figures in actual driving.

The rules are expected to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases about 30 percent from 2012 to 2016. (NYT)

Government policies are typically sold as intuitively good ideas. We can give everyone access to health care and cut the deficit. We can inject money into the economy to create jobs and beat the recession. We’ll set up a “Consumer Protection Financial Agency” to do what? Protect the consumer, of course. Government mandates and regulations will help Americans save money on electric bills and at gas stations. The “government knows best” mentality spreads through all sectors of the economy. Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) delivered that very message when it announced new fuel efficiency standards and tailpipe emission limits that will allegedly save consumers money at the pump. This is just the beginning of a long, regulatory path to regulate carbon dioxide emissions: Continue reading... (The Foundry)

The United States finalized on Thursday its first greenhouse gas emissions rules on automobiles and boosted fuel efficiency standards, moves Canada is jointly imposing on its industry.

The rules are part of President Barack Obama's goal to cut emissions of gases blamed for warming the planet by about 17 percent by 2020, under 2005 levels.

Obama wants Congress to pass a long-delayed climate bill, but to push it along, he has also set in motion steps for the Environmental Protection Agency to begin regulating the emissions from cars and large polluters like power plants. (Reuters)

ADDIS ABABA, April 5 — Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi says the high level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing has identified various financial sources to help developing countries combat climate change and set directives for further activities. (Ethiopian Journal, via GWPF)

Ed Miliband's legislation will cost us hundreds of billions over the next 40 years, says Christopher Booker

One of the best-kept secrets of British politics – although it is there for all to see on a Government website – is the cost of what is by far the most expensive piece of legislation ever put through Parliament. Every year between now and 2050, according to Ed Miliband's Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc), the Climate Change Act is to cost us all up to £18.3 billion – £760 for every household in the country – as we reduce our carbon emissions by 80 per cent. (Christopher Booker, TDT)

It might not seem like it, but climate sceptics and climate alarmists agree on a fair bit. One of the biggest flaws with both Kevin Rudd's emissions trading scheme and Tony Abbott's direct action plan isn't that they are great big taxes or climate con jobs. It's that they are futile.

Any Australian cut in carbon dioxide emissions is worthless if not part of a global effort. And right now it looks like the chances of a global agreement on serious emissions cuts are effectively nil. You don't have to be a sceptic or alarmist to understand a policy that can't achieve its goal is a failure before it starts. (Chris Berg, SMH)

According to just released EU figures, CO2 emissions from industry sectors covered by the ETS have dropped by 11 percent over last year. This, we are told, is on top of a six percent fall the previous year, leaving industry users with a massive surplus of EU CO2 emission permits.

The effect is mainly due to the recession, although the increased use of gas rather than coal and fuel oil for electricity generation has contributed to the downturn in emissions.

Nevertheless, the power sector – the only one which actually has to pay for it permits – actually ran short, despite trimming 119 million tons of emissions, compared with the previous year, ending up having to buy 124 million tons from the market – costing electricity users about £1.5 billion.

That still left the heavy industry sectors, such as steel and cement production, with about 185 million tons of permits, or 30 percent more than they needed. These are valued at current prices at about £2.13 billion, given to them free under the EU system.

With little immediate demand for the extra, these firms can save their credits for an upturn in the economy, to offset against future emissions. That, much to the chagrin of the greenies, means that the way is clear for them to increase their emissions over current levels without incurring penalties.

This, of course, defeats the whole object of ETS which is supposed to drive industry emissions down, year on year, another brilliant "success" for our gifted Eurocrats, to add to their many others. (EU Referendum)

Billions of dollars in carbon credits are at stake in an Amazonian scheme, says Christopher Booker

Two weeks ago I reported on what is potentially the greatest global warming wheeze of all – a scheme to claim $60 billion in carbon credits for keeping intact a large chunk of the Amazon rainforest which is not under any threat, The architects of this imaginative project are the environmental campaigners of the WWF and their close ally the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts.

Last week a letter to this newspaper from Woods Hole's CEO, William Brown, averred that it was not, as I had said, an "environmental advocacy group" but a "widely respected scientific institution". This is precisely the claim which has been dismissed by, among others, the renowned atmospheric physicist Professor Richard Lindzen, who has more than once emphasised that the Woods Hole Research Center is "an environmental advocacy center, not to be confused with the far better known Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution", a genuinely respected scientific body. (Christopher Booker, TDT)

The moderator on-site is fighting a wall of disparaging, dismissive, and “dare you to” comments, but insists it’s all “non-violent”–really.

So the guys in green are turning up to my place, eh? I do hope they’ll come to chat about the empirical evidence for water-vapor feedback, but if this is supposed to be what non-violence looks like, I’m missing something. I can’t spot the line where it says, “We’re coming to your place to reason with you.” I just see stuff about breaking laws, “any means necessary,” and “we know where you live”.

It’s hard to believe, but I was a Friend of the Rainbow Warrior once. I donated (we donated) money every month for years. But hey, we all grow up sometime, and then we move on. Some of the people in Greenpeace are good people, but they don’t have any idea what forces are pushing the agenda behind the world-wide “greening”. Many in Greenpeace are just bullies who want an authorized disguise to pour scorn on other people and pretend to be heroic. Greenpeace has become a magnet for thrill-seekers looking for an excuse to pump adrenalin; the sinkhole for those with an undirected tribal yearning; the “football club” for people who want to pretend that their team sport is not a game, but life-and-death, and, of course, morally superior.

Wake up, you’re all being played for fools by big bureaucrats and global banksters. More » (Jo Nova)

Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times picks up on the news that the size of the Arctic ice cap has increased sharply to levels not seen since 2001, putting the ice extent two days ago almost at the average level for 1979-2000.

Given the enthusiasm the media have shown for reporting Armageddon claims about the retreat of the ice, it is significant that his is the only such report in today's batch of newspapers – although The Daily Mail covered it briefly yesterday. Hitherto, the only detailed report had been on Watts up with that?.

But what is especially significant about the Leake report is his interview with Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Colorado. He is said to be "surprised" by the Arctic’s recovery from the great melt of 2007 when summer ice shrank to its smallest recorded extent. "In retrospect," he says, "the reactions to the 2007 melt were overstated. The lesson is that we must be more careful in not reading too much into one event."

In making this declaration, Serreze is getting away extraordinarily lightly. It was he, after all, who was pre-eminent in stoking up the alarm over the Arctic ice melt, providing fuel for the warmists and driving much of the global warming scare as the ice extent became a poster child for the activists.

It is therefore, appropriate to revisit some if Serreze's earlier pronouncements, in the broader context of the scare as it developed, to see how this now cautious scientist treated the subject. That is the theme of this post. (EU Referendum)

“A half - truth is a whole lie.” Jewish proverb

Political whitewash of corrupted climate science of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is in full swing. It illustrates the complete political nature of the issue. Indeed, the Chairman of the British Parliament investigating Phil Jones and the CRU specifically said they were not going to look at the science. If they had they would see the extensive and outrageous scientific errors, manipulations of data and omissions of large areas of the complexity that is the weather. These problems are what created the denial of information for which Jones was absolved. In many cases there is little choice because the data is not available and the mechanisms not understood, but that’s not the story given the public. (Tim Ball, CFP)

Thawing permafrost can release nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, a contributor to climate change that has been largely overlooked in the Arctic, a study showed on Sunday.

The report in the journal Nature Geoscience indicated that emissions of the gas surged under certain conditions from melting permafrost that underlies about 25 percent of land in the Northern Hemisphere.

Emissions of the gas measured from thawing wetlands in Zackenberg in eastern Greenland leapt 20 times to levels found in tropical forests, which are among the main natural sources of the heat-trapping gas. (Reuters)

There are numerous issues discussed intensely when it comes to IPCC-illustrations of historic temperatures, here for example the illustration from IPCC Third Assessment Report:

In short we have heard of problems with 1) the Mann material, 2) the Briffa material, 3) The cherry picking done by IPCC to predominantly choose data supporting colder Medieval Warm Period, 4) Problems joining proxy data with temperature data mostly obtained from cities or airports etc, 5) Cutting proxy data of when it doesn’t fit temperatures from cities, 6) Creating and Using programs that induces global warming to the data and finally 7) reusing for example Mann and Briffa data endlessly (Moberg, Rutherford, Kaufmann, AR4 etcetcetc).

There is an article in the March-April 2010 publication The Earth Observer titled

The article has an informative discussion of the role of atmospheric circulations in weather and climate (as well as several excellent images of snow cover this winter), but also a rather remarkable statement on global warming as related to the recent cool weather.

The statement that “bouts of natural cooling that could last years are expected naturally even as the climate continues on a long-term warming trend, forced by man-made emissions” conflicts with the IPCC finding of more-or-less monotonic warming (interspersed with only periods of a few years with slight cooling or no warming). How can you have warming and cooling at the same time! A cooling and a warming trend do not “add up”.

The added CO2 is a radiative warming effect, but the failure of the IPCC modeling assessment to anticipate that societally important cold periods will still occur is a serious oversight.

I agree with John Wallace which is why we need to focus on regional climate variations and change, not on the current climate “gold standard” which is the global average surface temperature trend. We also need to recognize that climate (and the human role in the climate system) is more complex than reported in the 2007 IPCC report. (Climate Science)

YR MON GLOBE NH SH TROPICS
2009 1 0.252 0.472 0.031 -0.065
2009 2 0.247 0.569 -0.074 -0.044
2009 3 0.191 0.326 0.056 -0.158
2009 4 0.162 0.310 0.013 0.012
2009 5 0.140 0.160 0.120 -0.057
2009 6 0.044 -0.011 0.100 0.112
2009 7 0.429 0.194 0.665 0.507
2009 8 0.242 0.229 0.254 0.407
2009 9 0.504 0.590 0.417 0.592
2009 10 0.361 0.335 0.387 0.381
2009 11 0.479 0.458 0.536 0.478
2009 12 0.283 0.350 0.215 0.500
2010 1 0.649 0.861 0.437 0.684
2010 2 0.603 0.725 0.482 0.792
2010 3 0.653 0.853 0.454 0.726

The global-average lower tropospheric temperature continues to be quite warm: +0.65 deg. C for March, 2010. This is about the same as January. Global average sea surface temperatures (not shown) remain high.

As a reminder, last month we change to Version 5.3 of our dataset, which accounts for the mismatch between the average seasonal cycle produced by the older MSU and the newer AMSU instruments. This affects the value of the individual monthly departures, but does not affect the year to year variations, and thus the overall trend remains the same as in Version 5.2.

ALSO…we have now added the NOAA-18 AMSU, which provides data since June of 2005. The local observation time of NOAA-18 (now close to 2 p.m., ascending node) is similar to that of NASA’s Aqua satellite (about 1:30 p.m.). The temperature anomalies listed above have changed somewhat as a result of adding NOAA-18.

[NOTE: These satellite measurements are not calibrated to surface thermometer data in any way, but instead use on-board redundant precision platinum resistance thermometers (PRTs) carried on the satellite radiometers. The PRT's are individually calibrated in a laboratory before being installed in the instruments.] (Roy W. Spencer)

Despite the heated controversy about AGW, most skeptics share much with the warmists. They share the idea that climate changes are necessarily the result of identifiable exogenous causes, the most popular suggested causes for the current climate change being anthropogenic CO2 emissions and variation in the Sun’s output. They also share the principle that it may, in theory, be possible to determine the net effect of such forcings, although in practice it may be difficult because of the multitude of feedbacks and other uncertainties; and the disagreement is usually on whether science and technology have advanced enough to substantially reduce these uncertainties.

But what if the principle is wrong? Is it possible that, even if we knew climate dynamics in detail and accurately, or if we had abundant computing power, we would be as uncertain about the future evolution of the climate as we are today? What if climate is not something certain that is hidden behind uncertainties, but it is something uncertain in its essence? And what is the difference between the two? (Climate Science)

A new study has postulated a link between solar activity and the flowrate of one of the largest rivers in the world, and suggests that it will loose water as the current low solar activity continues.

The quantity of water flowing down a river is a good climatic indicator since it integrates rainfall over large areas. In a paper submitted to the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Pablo Mauas and Andrea Buccino of the Institute of Astrophysics, and Eduardo Flamenco of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology, Argentina, follow-up a previous study of the influence of solar activity on the flow of the Paraná River – the fourth largest river in the world by outflow – and second only to the Amazon in South America.

They find that the unusual minimum of solar activity observed in recent years has a correlation with very low water levels seen in the Paraná’s flowrate. Additionally they report historical evidence of low water levels during the Little Ice Age.

They also consider flowrates for three other rivers (Colorado, San Juan and Atuel), as well as snow levels in the Andes. They conclude, after eliminating secular trends and smoothing out the solar cycle, there is a strong positive correlation between the residuals of both the Sunspot Number and the flowrates of these rivers as well. (David Whitehouse, GWPF)

Is March In The Upper Midwest Losing It’s Freeze? The actual data doesn’t seem to support Climate Central’s recent claim.

Yesterday, WUWT discussed an article on future regional temperature modeling from Heidi Cullen et. al at Climate Central claiming that most of the upper Midwest will no longer be freezing in March by the year 2090 – as a result of increases in atmospheric CO2 content. This was based on averaging the output of 16 different climate models. Here’s the image included in their press release:

Caption: In blue: projected areas with average March temperatures below freezing in the 2010s (above) compared to the 2090s (below), under a high carbon emissions scenario extending current trends. Click image for an interactive map

As you can see below, CO₂ has been increasing rather steadily for the last few decades, particularly the last 30 years. No dispute there. Read the rest of this entry » (WUWT)

Two tenets of AGW theory are 1) tree-ring paleoclimate data reconstructs an accurate portrayal of the climate of the past [except when scientists don't like what it shows, call it a "divergence problem" and hide the decline] and 2) the poles should show the most warming of all. Unfortunately, the Scots pines in the Torneträsk area within the Arctic Circle in northern Sweden around 68.5°N have not received the memo on AGW as of 2004. A 2008 paper shows that the updated Torneträsk data "show a trend of -0.3°C over the last 1,500 years". The trees also say that the end of the Little Ice Age in the late 1800's was the lowest temperature over the past 1,500 years, and according to ice core data was the lowest temperature in the past 10,000 years. By pure chance, this exceptionally cold period is also the same time the global temperature record (HADCRU) begins in 1850. Thus, the global thermometer record showing increasing temperatures in the 20th century mostly represents the recovery from the lowest temperatures of the past 10,000 years during the Little Ice Age. The Torneträsk pines insist that the rate of temperature increase and temperature anomaly of the 20th century was not unprecedented and was less than that of the Medieval Warming Period (~850-1200AD). From the abstract:

Dear friends in the blogosphere, I received a precious gift from a Dutch friend a little while ago. Living on the Edge: Wetlands and Birds in a Changing Sahel is a massive book, comprising 564 pages in full color and countless stunning photographs (see footnote for publication details). The tragic story of the Senegal River Delta described in this book reminded me of Roger Pielke’s studies of climate change in Florida, caused by the drainage of swamps and the southward march of citrus plantations over the last century. In 1985, I saw with my own eyes how the River Jordan is drained to a trickle flow to irrigate the fertile soil at the foot of the Carmel Ridge. I know of the enormous amount of water drained from the Colorado River to irrigate California’s Central Valley, and, like many others, I worry what will happen to the western prairie states after the Ogallala Aquifer, from which 26 billion cubic meters of water is extracted annually, has been depleted. (Climate Science)

For years, the debate over offshore drilling for gas and oil has been a war of sound bites between the “drill now, drill everywhere” crowd that dominated the Bush administration and the Republican campaign in 2008, and members of the environmental community who would leave the country’s outer continental shelf untouched.

Neither provided a satisfying answer to the twin demands of reducing this country’s dependence on foreign oil and protecting precious coastal areas. On Wednesday, President Obama struck a sensible middle ground. (NYT)

WASHINGTON — In proposing a major expansion of offshore oil and gas development, President Obama set out to fashion a carefully balanced plan that would attract bipartisan support for climate and energy legislation while increasing production of domestic oil.

It is not clear that the plan announced Wednesday will do either. (NYT)

WASHINGTON —President Obama’s proposal to open vast expanses of American coastlines to oil and natural gas drilling drew criticism from both sides in the drilling debate. (NYT)

THE Obama administration’s decision to allow oil drilling off northern Alaska and the East Coast and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico is a bold political move that demonstrates a rational approach to energy policy. Yet, given the peculiarities of petroleum extraction, the public shouldn’t buy any arguments that it’s going to accomplish a lot in terms of energy independence or payback for taxpayers.

The administration is trying to deflect criticism from environmentalists by pointing out that the decision should help reduce our dependence on foreign oil, create thousands of high-paying jobs and generate much-needed tax revenue. But Mr. Obama is being careful not to offer any specifics, and for good reason: estimating undiscovered resources in areas with little previous drilling is as much art as science; even the most optimistic projections concede that the amount of petroleum we’re talking about here is relatively minor; and while some jobs may be created fairly quickly, profits (and tax revenues) are going to come slowly. (Michael Lynch, NYT)

The subtitle to Ms. Dlouhy’s piece was “Environmental groups and GOP are critical, while oil patch is wary.” Pouring over the 300 comments on this article, Chronicle readers know a bait-and-switch and Trojan Horse when they see it (energy-savvy Houston, after all). Maybe some of these same readers fear what I do: a wishy-washy editorial from the Chronicle on how Obama’s drilling plan is a ‘good beginning’ and ‘reasonable compromise’.

Now to Dr. Yergin, the industry expert and author who seemed to have come a long way from Energy Future (1979) to The Commanding Heights (1998). And to his credit, Yergin has been very good on the “peak oil” issue, bringing into play a lot more knowledge and facts than possessed by the peak-oil community (including Matthew Simmons). (Our Michael Lynch has blogged regularly on this issue at MasterResource and is still waiting for acceptance of a related bet with the slippery Joe Romm of ClimateProgress.)

Yergin, however, has always been very politically correct when it comes to the company in power (Enron) or the government in power (Obama). He is an influence- and profit-maximizer, in the final analysis, and sometimes that can interfere with the intellectual side of things.

I remember from my Enron days how CERA was making money off of its climate consulting services where alarmism and policy activism were not to be questioned. (I participated in their conference calls.) The annual CERA conference–easily the most important event of the year for the energy industry–would feature alarmists and influence peddlers (such as Eileen Claussen of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change) but nary a skeptic.

CERA, in fact, has never hosted a debate on climate science in front of an energy audience eager to know. I cannot recall a representative from a free-market think tank (Cato, CEI, IER, etc.) ever addressing the CERA throngs. This does not speak well for Yergin intellectually or as a trusted consultant. Truth bats last in public policy.

Returning to the opening quotation of this post and Obama’s drilling plan: It is possible that Dr. Yergin was quoted out of context. That can happen in interviews where a lot is said and the reporter grabs a sentence to complete the spectrum of views.

But if this is what Yergin meant, then I have another data point of the esteemed energy analyst and author being way too middling and politically correct for my taste.

The real story of Obama’s new offshore drilling has come out from the “Facts & Maps on Obama Administration’s Plan to Lock Up the OCS” released by the House Natural Resources Committee Republican Press Office. Compared to the status quo, Obama’s plan is a clear step back from a pro-resource strategy for oil and gas.

Here are the facts–and illustrative maps in that release. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Over the last several days, natural gas futures prices have slipped below $4 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf). The drop was largely due to the unexpected gas storage injection reported in late March. [Read More] (Allen Brooks, Energy Tribune)

The U.S. Energy Information Administration is revamping the way it calculates domestic natural gas production after it overestimated output from key producer states Texas and Louisiana, an agency official said on Monday.

Rapid changes to U.S. natural gas output involving a wave of new small producers of shale gas made it difficult to get an accurate picture of the market, said Gary Long, acting director of the reserves and production division of the agency's oil and gas office.

U.S. natural gas data is being watched perhaps closer than ever as a drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," has led to excitement about the potential of vast new supplies of the relatively clean burning fuel from New York to Louisiana. Fracking, which gets to natural gas deposits associated with shale, has helped boost U.S. reserves of the fuel by a third since 2006, according to the EIA.

The EIA, the statistics arm of the Department of Energy, found that some of its output numbers were inflated in the monthly release, known as the 914 report, Long said.

"Things changed but we weren't seeing that change in our methodology," Long told Reuters in an interview.

To remedy this, the EIA is moving to use more up-to-date data to help estimate U.S. natural gas output, starting with the next report due out on April 29, he said.

The report has relied on frequent surveys of the largest natural gas producers, but has only estimated output from about 13,000 smaller producers, which are harder to track.

In an effort to make the data more accurate, the EIA will estimate output from small producers using data that is six to 18 months old, rather than the previous practice that used data that was two to seven years old, the agency said. (Reuters)

The Washington Post asks: “What does it mean for a nation to be energy independent? Is it realistic and if so how should that be achieved?”

Energy Independence is a mixed bag — both good and bad energy policy ideas are promoted under its banner. The bad outweighs the good, and in any event energy independence shouldn’t supplant free markets as the overarching principle for sound energy policy.

Among the few good ideas spurred by the desire to achieve energy independence is expanding domestic energy production. As it is, the great majority of energy-rich federal lands and offshore areas have not been leased for oil exploration and drilling. The President has recently paid lip service to expanded access, but in reality his Department of the Interior spent its first year rolling out an unprecedented crackdown on energy leasing. Granted, increased domestic drilling will not end oil imports, but it would lead to greater supplies of oil and lower prices as well as thousands of new energy industry jobs. It is well worth pursuing for those reasons. Continue reading... (The Foundry)

The Environmental Protection Agency issued tough new water quality guidelines on Thursday that could curtail some of the most contentious coal mining techniques used across Appalachia.

In announcing the guidelines, Lisa P. Jackson, the agency’s administrator, cited evolving science on the effects of mountaintop removal mining, an aggressive form of coal extraction that uses explosives and vast machinery to tear off hilltops to expose coal seams, dumping the resulting rubble into streams and valleys below. The goal of the new rules, Ms. Jackson said, is to prevent “significant and irreversible damage” to Appalachian watersheds.

“Let me be clear,” Ms. Jackson said during a phone call with reporters. “This is not about ending coal mining. This is about ending coal mining pollution.” (NYT)

The energy needs of the entire human population could potentially be met by converting wind energy to electricity. While offshore wind power resources are abundant, wind turbines are currently unable to provide steady power due to natural fluctuations in wind direction and strength. Offshore wind power output can be made more consistent by choosing project development locations that take advantage of regional weather patterns and by connecting wind power generators with a shared power line, according to a paper by researchers from the University of Delaware and Stony Brook University published in the April 5 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (University of Delaware)

A federal advisory panel urged the U.S. Interior Department on Friday to block a $1 billion wind project off Cape Cod opposed by local business leaders and politicians but seen as helpful to the Obama administration's energy strategy.

Cape Wind Associates LLC has proposed building 130 wind towers that would soar 440 feet above the surface of Nantucket Sound near the popular Massachusetts tourist areas of Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island.

The proposed wind farm would provide electricity to about 400,000 homes but would be within view of the popular resorts. It would be the country's first major offshore wind farm.

The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, however, said the project would adversely affect 34 historic properties, including 16 historic districts, 12 individually significant historic properties and six properties of religious and cultural significance to local Indian tribes. (Reuters)

When it comes to power, density is the key. Energy density. The reason that solar power, wind power, and ethanol are so expensive is that they are derived from very diffuse energy sources. It takes a lot of energy collectors such as solar cells, wind turbines, or corn stalks covering many square miles of land to produce the same amount of power that traditional coal, natural gas, or nuclear plants can on just a few acres.

Each of these alternative energy sources is based on mature technology. Agriculture and fermentation have their roots in prehistory, windmills date back at least to 65 B.C., the photovoltaic effect was discovered in 1839. Yet nowhere in the world are these technologies serving as primary energy sources without significant government subsidies. While incremental improvements can be expected, what is needed for them to become viable is an order of magnitude increase in productivity. As old and as well-researched as the technologies are, such improvements are possible but unlikely. As significant future energy sources these technologies are dead ends, which is why the government, and not the private sector, is funding them.

Industry is more than willing to risk research dollars on technologies that show real promise, but it is not willing to flush shareholder money down a rat hole. Politicians, however, operate from different incentives. When a crisis, real or imagined, makes headlines, they want voters to see them doing “something” about it, and they must move quickly because election cycles and constituent attention spans are short. Funding long-term research in promising technologies is not sufficient to meet politicians’ needs. Solar panels, wind turbines, and ethanol refineries are all current technology, and can be erected quickly with fanfare and photo-ops. By the time these alternative power sources prove to be financial and, possibly, environmental busts, the politicians will have been reelected and voters’ attention will have shifted to the next crisis. [Read more →] (MasterResource)

Blogging – or, at least, writing this blog – involves a great deal of heart-searching, not least to avoid falling into the trap of pursuing personal obsessions to the detriment of objective coverage.

The question I must constantly address in selecting a topic is whether the subject matter is objectively important, or important just because I think it is.

In that context, readers may recall my post late last month where I argued that a secure supply of cheap energy underwrote the very fabric of our civilisation, and the economy, making it the most fundamental issue that any politician had to address.

Thus, it is of some comfort to see a letter to The Daily Telegraph from Miles Templeman, Director-General, Institute of Directors, who informs us of a survey of 1,800 business leaders last month.

Reflecting – and effectively vindicating – my own concern, the respondents identified "ensuring secure energy supplies" as the single most important issue facing the next government. Some 85 percent said that new nuclear power stations should be built in Britain.

Templeman goes on to say that political indecision, flaws in Britain's strategic planning system and the persistent threat of windfall taxes on the profits of energy companies have discouraged private investment in new capacity, and have left us dangerously exposed to power shortages over the next decade.

He concludes: "The next government must deal with this problem. If this results in a fast-track planning process and building lots of new nuclear power stations, so be it." (EU Referendum)

New York State has denied a water-quality certification sought by the Indian Point plant's owner.

In a major victory for environmental advocates, New York State has ruled that outmoded cooling technology at the Indian Point nuclear power plant kills so many Hudson River fish, and consumes and contaminates so much water, that it violates the federal Clean Water Act.

The decision is a blow to the plant’s owner, the Entergy Corporation, which now faces the prospect of having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build stadium-size cooling towers, or risk that Indian Point’s two operating reactors — which supply 30 percent of the electricity used by New York City and Westchester County — could be forced to shut down. (NYT)

I would like to begin this brief exposition with a fairy tale that was confected by two well-known “green” energy promoters, Amory Lovins and Joseph Romm, and published in Foreign Affairs (1992).”, which is the prestigious journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. It goes like this:

I called that statement completely wrong the first time I saw it, while in my new energy economics textbook (2007) I suggest that it and similar contributions are misleading bunkum. For example, there are a number of questions that must be answered in detail before biomass can unambiguously be classified a large-scale fuel of choice for the near or distant future. As for renewables such as solar and wind, they will undoubtedly increase in quantity, but it will not be at the expense of nuclear. (Ferdinand E. Banks, Energy Tribune)

The Government is considering blocking an aid project to provide reliable coal-fired electricity for millions of South Africans after coming under intense pressure from green groups in the run-up to the election.

On Thursday, Britain will cast the deciding vote on whether the World Bank should grant a $3.7 billion (£2.4 billion) loan to allow South Africa to build the Medupi coal plant.

It would be bigger than Drax, Britain’s largest coal plant, and pump out an estimated 25 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere.

But it would reduce the risk of power cuts, which have caused billions of pounds of damage to South Africa’s economy in the past two years. The national grid came close to collapsing in 2008 and the South African Government was forced to impose rolling blackouts. (The Times)

Electric cars are riding high, as incentives and new models make them a realistic option, but the fresh attention may highlight flaws compared with gasoline and alternatives such as biofuels.

The attention rankles with some in the biofuel industry, whose own hype was abruptly halted by a glut of production in 2007, subsequent bankruptcies and a fall from grace after a link was drawn -- which they dispute -- between biofuels and spiraling food prices and rising hunger.

Gasoline may beat off both alternatives for decades as the least-worst option, with wider adoption of more efficient conventional cars helping to curb carbon emissions and oil dependence.

The uncertainty is striking for a $5-6 trillion global auto and fuel supply market, where there is agreement only that the number of cars will keep rising, perhaps doubling to 2 billion by 2050. (Reuters)

The auditor of Solyndra Inc has questioned the survival prospects for the maker of thin film solar panels, an assessment that could threaten the company's ability to raise as much as $300 million in an initial public offering.

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said Solyndra's recurring operating losses, negative cash flows, $532.3 million stockholder deficit and other factors "raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern."

The assessment was disclosed in an amended registration statement filed by Solyndra last month with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Solyndra last year won a $535 million U.S. Department of Energy loan guarantee under a federal program for advanced clean energy, the first guarantee of its kind, and said it has raised about $970 million in equity financing through January 2. (Reuters)

Has there ever been a time when 18-term liberal Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman's nostrils weren't flaring indignantly at corporate executives and entrepreneurs? The man wields his gavel over the free market like a Damoclean sword. He throws the weight of his congressional chairmanship around like a sumo wrestler walking across hot stones. For more than 35 years, Waxman has made it his taxpayer-funded business to use the power of government to undermine private business.

No one should be surprised by his latest thuggish efforts to silence companies speaking out about the cost implications and financial burdens of Demcare -- least of all, those companies. (Michelle Malkin, Townhall)

This week President Obama signed the final piece of the ObamaCare legislative agenda and put Democrats on record favoring a future downgrading of the United States' triple-A credit rating, setting up a financial market crisis that will make 2009's burst mortgage bubble look like a tempest in a teacup by comparison.

America's sovereign credit rating works much like a consumer's credit score. If creditors trust that you can afford your debts and make payments on time, they offer low interest rates and easy terms.

But if you keep spending beyond your means — and don't look like you can afford to make future payments — eventually they'll charge higher interest rates or limit your access to new credit.

Even before ObamaCare passed, the U.S. was spending far beyond its means.

President Obama's current budget sees deficits of at least $700 billion a year for the next 10 years and $1 trillion a year after that.

With government now on the hook for trillions more in health care spending, the question isn't whether creditors will lose patience with the U.S. but when. The consequences of such a move for the U.S. economy, in the form of much higher taxes or spending cuts, would be catastrophic. (Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Paul Howard, IBD)

Health Overhaul: The people aren't waiting for Republicans in Washington to give their stamp of approval to the movement to repeal ObamaCare. Candidates who want to win this year had better take notice.

Are Republican leaders getting rubbery-legged about repealing the massive new multitrillion-dollar entitlement program the president and Congress just passed into law? Some of the signs are less than encouraging. (IBD)

The late, splendid Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once famously asserted, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." The senator was wrong. (Of course, for those of us who still believe that objectivity is objective, a fact is still a fact, though the heavens may fall.)

The key word here is "entitled." In today's entitlement-crazy Washington, not only do folks believe that about half the country is entitled to other people's money and health insurance policies, they feel they are entitled to their own facts to support their claim to their own entitlement to other people's money and health insurance policies.

Not only that, they believe they are entitled to their own facts to describe the character and conduct of their political opponents. The Democratic Party collectively smeared scores of millions of American Tea Party participants as racist, homophobic, violent terrorists in the absence of a single verified fact in support of even one such incident being attributable to a single individual. Nor did their media pals even bother with the word "alleged." (Tony Blankley, Townhall)

Over the past 14 months, our political debate has been transformed into an argument between the heirs of two fundamental schools of political thought, the Founders and the Progressives. The Founders stood for the expansion of liberty and the Progressives for the expansion of government.

It's an argument that's been going on for a century but was largely dormant over the quarter-century of low-inflation economic growth after the Ronald Reagan tax cuts. It's been raised again by the expand-government policies of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders.

Those policies, thoroughly in line with the Progressive tradition, have been advanced by liberal elites in government, media, think tanks and academia.

The opposition, roughly in line with the Founders tradition, has been led by the non-elites who spontaneously flocked to Tea Parties and town halls. Republican politicians have been scrambling to lead these protesters.

The conservative rebellions of the late 1970s and middle 1990s were focused on taxes. The Tea Partyers are focusing on the expansion of government — and its threat to the independence of citizens. (Michael Barone, IBD)

Much government interference with our peaceful pursuits is based on junk science and junk economics. Politicians know a lot of stuff that isn't so. So do reporters.

Let me count some of the ways. (I'll elaborate on [tonight's] Fox Business Network show.)

Congress now spends your money on a host of intrusive new programs designed to make America "energy independent." President Obama recently announced $8 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear power plants.

I smiled when I heard. Finally, even Democrats woke up to the benefits of nuclear power. But Cato Institute energy analyst Jerry Taylor set me straight:

"If nuclear power made economic sense, we wouldn't need to subsidize it."

Affordable nuclear power, says Taylor, is a Republican fantasy. Promoting it makes no more sense than Nancy Pelosi's promotion of wind and solar power. "Take a Republican speech about nuclear power, cross out the phrase 'nuclear,' and put in 'solar' -- you've got a Democratic speech about energy."

All these "alternative" fuels are economically impractical. Natural gas is practical. And plentiful. (John Stossel, Townhall)

With the government’s blessing, a drug giant is about to expand the market for its blockbuster cholesterol medication Crestor to a new category of customers: as a preventive measure for millions of people who do not have cholesterol problems.

Some medical experts question whether this is a healthy move.

They point to mounting concern that cholesterol medications — known as statins and already the most widely prescribed drugs in the United States — may not be as safe a preventive medicine as previously believed for people who are at low risk of heart attacks or strokes.

Statins have been credited with saving thousands of lives every year with relatively few side effects, and some medical experts endorse the drug’s broader use. But for healthy people who would take statins largely as prevention — which would be the case for the new category of Crestor patients — other experts suggest the benefits may not outweigh any side effects. (NYT)

PepsiCo has an intriguing new approach to salt. It has reportedly designed a powdery salt crystal that dissolves more efficiently on the tongue, releasing more of its saltiness before it’s swallowed. The company hopes that that will allow it to reduce by a quarter the amount of salt it puts on its Lay’s potato chips.

We’re not against applying technology to improve our nutrition. But we can’t help thinking about how skinny we were before the advent of Sweet’N Low.

When saccharin first came on the market in the late 1950s, fewer than 14 percent of American adults were obese. Today, the annual per capita consumption of low-calorie “high-intensity sweeteners” — the pink pouch now competes with, among others, NutraSweet and Equal — is up to 30 pounds a year. The obesity rate for American adults has soared to more than 30 percent.

Correlation doesn’t imply causation. But these statistics suggest that at the very least technology hasn’t helped much in our war on calories. At worst, it is leading us the wrong way — giving us license to indulge one more brownie and an extra bag of potato chips. (NYT)

BRUSSELS - Illegal levels of cancer-causing dioxins showed up in 8 percent of food and feed samples taken in Europe between 1999 and 2008, a report from Europe's food safety agency said on Wednesday.

Animal and fish liver products had the highest dioxin levels in food while fish oil showed the strongest concentrations in animal feed, the Italy-based European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) said.

"Long-term exposure to high levels of dioxins has been shown to cause a range of effects, including cancer," EFSA said. (Reuters)

As a member of the British False Memory Society, I and others like me are portrayed as giving comfort to child sex abusers. Is it worth suing our accusers?

It has arrived. Ladies and gentlemen: the compostable water bottle has arrived. Earlier this month, Green Planet Bottle launched an organic, 100% plant-based bottle which is not only petroleum- and BPA-free, but it's also carbon neutral. This is certainly a good business move: Green Planet is entering the $11 billion bottled water market that doesn't seem to go away. But can bottled water really be "green," or sustainable?

The company is targeting schools, corporate campuses, and hotels, and can be used to gain LEED certification. According to the press release that announced the launch, "Green Planet Bottling was formed to help its customers make positive and sustainable differences by making a product that is healthy for our bodies and our planet. Its vision is to become the premier bottler of waters/beverages in organic, sustainable packaging."

This upsets me. According to a study conducted by the Pacific Institute, bottled water raises serious concerns about the energy and water resources required to produce bottles and deliver them to consumers. The process of bottling water produces more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide, and it takes 3 liters of water to produce 1 liter of bottled water. Transporting bottled water also requires millions in barrels of oil. And the list goes on... (EcoLocalizer)

Organic farmers and landowners are being paid millions of pounds to adopt environmental measures many already have in place, spending watchdogs have warned. (TDT)

A surprising court ruling in America may loosen the drug industry’s grip on important genes (The Economist)

Many biotechnology stocks fell on Tuesday as investors struggled to understand the impact of a ruling that threw out parts of two gene patents and called into question thousands more.

Stock market losses were muted, with two major indexes that track the shares of the industry falling by less than 1 percent each. In part, that was because biotechnology executives hastened to reassure their investors that the ruling would not necessarily undermine their businesses, at least in the short run.

But the executives themselves were struggling on Tuesday to figure out what the long-term impact would be. Biotech companies spend billions every year trying to develop new tests and treatments based partly on genes they have isolated and patented.

In a far-reaching ruling, Judge Robert W. Sweet anticipated a negative reaction from the industry. In a footnote of his 152-page ruling, he discounted fears that invalidating such patents would decimate the industry.

Some executives and lawyers who were interviewed on Tuesday disagreed with the judge’s legal reasoning. They also said that the ruling, even in the worst case for them, would take years to have a significant effect.

Eventually, if the judge’s reasoning is upheld on appeal, the invalidation of genetic patents could hit diagnostics companies, agricultural biotechnology companies and perhaps even traditional drug makers, though drugs are often protected by patents on their own chemical composition.

But the industry is already moving to a period of somewhat less dependence on DNA patents for its sustenance. Diagnostic laboratories, for instance, are shifting from testing individual genes to testing multiple genes or even a person’s entire genome. When hundreds or thousands of genes are being tested at once, patents on each individual gene can become a hindrance to innovation rather than a spur.

On Monday, Mr. Sweet, a United States district judge in Manhattan, ruled that parts of patents held by Myriad Genetics covering two breast cancer genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, were invalid. (NYT)

Senators John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and David Vitter (R-La.) have written a letter to NASA chief Charles Bolden demanding answers to questions surrounding newly uncovered irregularities in the space agency's climate data. (Jeremy A. Kaplan, FOXNews.com)

So, the results of the first Climategate enquiry are in. And guess what? It’s a word that begins with “W” and ending with “-hitewash.”

Over at Climateaudit, the mighty Steve McIntyre is furious. Among those he holds responsible is Nigel Lawson, for having given away territory he certainly had no right to cede on the subject of that now-infamous phrase “Mike’s Nature Trick.”

Here’s how the parliamentary committee exploited Lord Lawson’s ill-judged comments.

Lord Lawson’s error under pressure before a hostile and (with the exception of dissenting Labour MP Graham Stringer) quite extraordinarily obtuse audience is understandable. But you can see why McIntyre, a man who has done more than anyone to expose the fraudulence of the AGW industry, finds it so hard to forgive.

Damn it, he has written paper after blog post after essay explaining in precise and superbly informed detail exactly why this “trick” was a bad, naughty and very wrong thing – and not, as the UEA’s appallingly disingenuous submission preferred to gloss it, a colloquial phrase meaning “the best way of doing something.”

In short, it was a very dodgy, deeply unscientific way of deleting inconvenient data. It was also, entirely typical of the lying, cheating and fraud exposed in the Climategate emails. Let us not forget, we pay for scientists like Phil Jones with our taxes. How entirely typical that a body representing the most corrupt, money-grubbing taxpayer-funded roach pit of the lot – our Houses of Parliament – should have found it so very easy to exonerate the Climategate scientists of all wrongdoing. (James Delingpole)

The climate scientist at the centre of the row over stolen e-mails has no case to answer and should be reinstated, a crossparty group of MPs says.

Phil Jones, of the University of East Anglia, was acting “in line with common practice in the climate science community” when he refused to share his raw data and computer codes with critics. (The Times)

The aim of the MPs’ investigation was not to uncover the truth, but to defend the moral authority of climate-change alarmism.

Some will celebrate the results of the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s investigation into the furore surrounding the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit as a vindication of the reputation of climate science, the work of the unit, and of all the academics involved. After all, the investigation found that the CRU academics did not ‘distort data’. Others, however, will be astounded by the complacent tone of the committee’s report and its reluctance to ask any difficult questions.

But the real question we should be asking is this: what was the point of the investigation? The House of Commons committee self-consciously refused to pose any probing questions, and its main aim seemed to be to ensure that the moral status of the current consensus on climate change remained intact.

What is most remarkable about the committee’s report is that it openly acknowledges that it is not the product of a serious investigation. It claims that the reputation of Phil Jones, director of the CRU, ‘remains intact’ – but it doesn’t make this claim with very much conviction. What it actually says is that ‘within our limited inquiry and the evidence we took, the reputation of Professor Jones and the CRU remains intact’. That’s another way of saying: we did not look very hard at the details of this scandal but here’s what we decided anyway… (Frank Furedi, spiked)

Climate inquiry has dodged key questions in its rush to clear the name of the harangued head of the Climate Research Unit (Fred Pearce, The Guardian)

Regular readers of this blog will know that we’re been trying to develop the idea that a great deal of politics exists prior to the science in the argument for a political response to climate change. This was the basis of our criticism of studies such as the GHF’s and WHO’s reports of (respectively) 300,000 and 150,000 deaths a year attributed to climate change – all of them in the world’s poorer regions. You can only make this kind of statement, we argue, if you take for granted that poverty is a ‘natural’ effect. Otherwise, logically, the cause of so many deaths is in fact poverty, not climate change. And on the other hand, we try to point out to sceptics that, as much fun as debunking hockey sticks and exposing Climategate emails is, the political debate does not rest on science. Looking for the ‘smoking gun’ to ‘debunk’ global warming fears merely reproduces the mistake that alarmists make – it expects science to answer the political debate. (Climate Resistance)

Ross McKitrick shows plainly that, despite the furore over the emails and the frantic issuing of denials, mainstream climatologists, are still determined to keep sceptic views out of the literature.

More than 110 countries have signed up to the Copenhagen Accord on fighting global warming, but the United Nations said on Wednesday their pledges for cutting greenhouse gas emissions were insufficient.

The first formal U.N. list of backers of the deal, compiled since the text was agreed at an acrimonious 194-nation summit in December, showed support from all top emitters led by China, the United States, the European Union, Russia, India and Japan.

Backers also included small emitters from Albania to Zambia.

The accord, which falls short of a binding treaty sought by many nations, sets a goal of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. But it leaves each nation to set its own targets for 2020.

Yvo de Boer, outgoing head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat which compiled the list, said pledges for cutting greenhouse gas emissions so far fell short of that goal. (Reuters)

The European Union can only sign up to a continued Kyoto Protocol after 2012 if all other ratifiers including Japan and Russia do the same, an EU official said on Wednesday.

Jos Delbeke, head of the European Commission's climate unit, questioned the value of continuing with the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol in its current form after its present commitment period expires in 2012, and said the 27-country EU was considering all its options.

His comments contrasted with Britain's energy and climate minister Ed Miliband, who said on Wednesday that he supported a continued Kyoto Protocol under a wider deal involving all countries, to break deadlock in U.N. climate talks. (Reuters)

Gordon Brown is attempting to get international climate change negotiations back on track by pushing for a multi-billion fund to help the countries worst affected by global warming. (TDT)

Country invests heavily in warning systems and infrastructure to tackle effects of extreme temperatures, typhoons, fog and storms

China will tomorrow start ramping up preparations for typhoons, dust storms and other extreme weather disasters as part of a 10-year plan to predict and prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

Improved warning systems, new emergency drills and bolstered infrastructure will form the backbone of the new regulations, which are the country's most advanced measures yet to deal with natural disaster. (The Guardian)

New Climate Central projection map shows local and national retreat of freezing temperatures in March

PRINCETON, NJ. On the last day of the month, Climate Central has just published an interactive animated map showing what we might expect in Marches to come as the climate warms. Developed by Climate Central scientists, the map uses special high-resolution projections covering the Lower 48 states to show where average March temperatures are expected to be above or below freezing each decade this century. The map also compares projections under a low, reduced carbon pollution scenario versus a high one that extends current trends. (Climate Central)

An Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist participated in a project to fine-tune computer models that can indicate when forest "carbon sinks" become net carbon generators instead. The results will help pinpoint the effectiveness of trees in offsetting carbon releases that contribute to higher atmospheric temperatures and global climate change.

ARS plant physiologist Erik Hamerlynck teamed up with Rutgers University biologist Karina Schafer and U.S. Forest Service colleagues Kenneth Clark and Nicholas Skowronski to calibrate the Canopy Conductance Constrained Carbon Assimilation (4C-A) model, a computer program that generates carbon balance estimates for tree canopies. Hamerlynck works at the ARS Southwest Watershed Research Center in Tucson, Ariz. (United States Department of Agriculture-Research, Education, and Economics)

It has come to light that a number of climate scientists have been less than truthful with regard to climate data. As shocking and embarrassing as this has been to the scientific community, it serves only to emphasize the huge blind spot that scientists have for their computer models. It is a career ending offense to knowingly falsify data, yet the entire climate science community engages in even worse deception without a second thought. This is because lies are generated for them wholesale by their faithful yet duplicitous servants: computer climate models.

In a guest post on Roger Pielke Sr.'s web site, Hiroshi L. Tanaka of the University of the University of Tsukuba in Japan, reported on the results of a new paper he published with his student, Masahiro Ohashi (see “Data Analysis of Recent Warming Pattern in the Arctic”). In it they state “it is shown that both of decadal variabilities before and after 1989 in the Arctic can be mostly explained by the natural variability of the AO not by the external response due to the human activity.” While this is an important finding in and of itself, that is not what caught my attention.

The implications of Ohashi and Tanaka's finding for climate modeling are even more dramatic, and even more damaging, for the climate alarmist cause. Why this new finding is so damaging goes to the heart of how modeling is done and how models are calibrated to reflect previously “known” conditions. Here is how Dr. Tanaka stated the implications of their research:

This mildly worded warning belies the theory shattering implications it contains for all climate modelers who have depended on a strong ice-albedo feedback to calibrate their models. As the old computer programming saying goes, “garbage in, garbage out.” Tanaka has just informed the world's climate modelers that that have been basing their models on garbage. More specifically, what the modelers and climate scientists took for a strong anthropogenically influenced feedback, albedo change due to changes in ice cover, has been shown to be mostly attributable to natural variability.

In an interview with the UK's Guardian, green guru James Lovelock took the climate science community to task for over reliance on models. As he explained, this blind belief in models, even in the face of contradictory empirical evidence, has been going on for some time now:

As I explained in “Seven Climate Models, Seven Different Answers,” computer models are touchy, cantankerous tools at best. Even the smallest changes in configuration can cause wild changes in model output. Still, we are asked to trust them implicitly.

In 1997, two researchers from Argon National Laboratory published a paper that compared 108 studies of global climate change, each projecting a quantitative impact on global surface-air temperature due to a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ levels. These predictions, documented between 1980 and 1995, were based primarily on climate modeling. Writing in Climatic Change, Kavita Kacholia & Ruth A. Reck, found: “[O]ver the past 15 years, the average (mean) temperature change projection due to doubled CO₂ is +2.62°C, with a range of 0.16–8.7°C. General circulation models tend to estimate slightly higher values (2.98°C), compared with radiative-convective models (1.98°C) and energy balance models (2.54°C).”

It has taken a public scandal—the revelations regarding data from CRU—to alert the media to the use of bad data in making climate change predictions. It should not have been surprising that some at the IPCC have played fast and loose with the data included in their reports (Himalayan glaciers melting, sea-levels rising, etc.). But more pernicious are the lies generated by climate models, models held up to be oracles of scientific truth—and nothing could be farther from the truth. The models lie because they are built on faulty assumptions, calibrated with inaccurate data and are, by their very nature, incapable of calculating “correct” answers.

If the lies being told by climate science were not threatening to cause major disruptions to environmental and economic policy world wide, most people would not care about the self delusional approach taken by climate scientists. This all comes back to the lack of professional integrity among many climate science practitioners, a sloth induced lack of ethical behavior. Letting a model do your lying for you is no excuse. Deception by proxy does not absolve those spreading the untruths anymore than saying “I didn't kill that person, the gun did!” With so much at stake, any sensible person would be skeptical of climate science's computer generated predictions.

Yet those brave enough to speak out about the incomplete theory, the questionable data, and the error prone computer models are called “climate criminals” and “sociopaths.” If the skeptics' response has seemed like denial it is because fools like James Cameron, who know little or nothing of the science yet are in the public eye, threaten to “call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads.” Rolling Stone magazine published a headline article identifying the 17 worst “Climate Killers” in the US. Fortunately, there are signs that the public has grown tired of these people, the aggressively ignorant, whose inability to explain why they believe in global warming only strengthens their conviction that they are right.

“We do need scepticism about the predictions about what will happen to the climate in 50 years, or whatever,” said Lovelock. “It's almost naive, scientifically speaking, to think we can give relatively accurate predictions for future climate. There are so many unknowns that it's wrong to do it.” Not just an error, not just a mistake, but actually morally wrong. I say morally wrong because there are consequences to these actions—real harm can be done to real people. The whole anthropogenic global warming scare is based on a foundation of computer generated lies. With apologies to NotEvilJustWrong.com, knowingly passing computer predictions off as science fact is not just wrong, it is evil.

Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)

This report includes many all-new data presentations and focuses on presenting climate data to Inform, rather than to Scare. Not a climate science reference, but a unique perspective - An engineering critique of the activist climate scientists and their process of data gathering, processing and presentation. It also has sections on climate adaptation and scientific consensus. No author approvals are required for distribution, please feel free to copy or distribute any part of this report.

Scientists say they have found the trigger of a sharp cooling 13,000 years ago that plunged Europe into a mini ice age.

Mark Bateman from the University of Sheffield in England said a catastrophic flood unleashed from a giant North American lake dumped large amounts of freshwater into the Arctic Ocean.

This led to the shutting down of the Gulf Stream ocean circulation pattern that brings warmth to Europe.

"We're talking about a lake the size of the UK emptying very quickly," Bateman told Reuters by telephone. "We don't know the exact period of time but we're talking about a catastrophic flood."

The finding has confirmed past theories about the likely cause of a sudden cooling period called the Younger Dryas when temperatures in Europe, similar to today's, quickly returned to ice age conditions. The cooling lasted for about 1,400 years.

"Our research shows that if you put a large volume of fresh water into the North Atlantic in a very short space of time, this is what happens," Bateman said. His team's work is published in the latest issue of the journal Nature. (Reuters)

Originally posted on March 29th. Put on top as the most discussed recent article.

Let me show you another simple way to see that the climate sensitivity can't really be close to the IPCC's mean value (and certainly not close to the upper end of their interval).

A black body minimizes the reflection which is why it maximizes thermal emission at the same wavelength (heat it to 6000 K first). The emissivity may only be reduced - by a light coating or by an atmosphere with a greenhouse gas - but it can't be increased.

The reason I will be able to show that the IPCC figure contradicts the basic laws of physics is that we will look how the relevant theories behave at somewhat more extreme temperatures which are nevertheless physically possible - and not too extreme. We will see that the IPCC estimates require a behavior that contradicts some universal laws of Nature - namely the fact that the emissivity can't exceed one.

First, we must begin with some definitions. Let us distinguish two concepts, the climate sensitivity and the climate sensitivity parameter. The climate sensitivity is the expected increase of near-surface air temperature from a CO2 doubling. It will be claimed to be near 1.1 °C.

Climate scientists from all over the globe are now able to test their climate models under extreme conditions thanks to Professor Minik Rosing, University of Copenhagen

In 1972, the late, world famous astronomer Carl Sagan and his colleague George Mullen formulated "The faint early sun paradox. " The paradox consisted in that the earth's climate has been fairly constant during almost four of the four and a half billion years that the planet has been in existence, and this despite the fact that radiation from the sun has increased by 25-30 percent.

The paradoxical question that arose for scientists in this connection was why the earth's surface at its fragile beginning was not covered by ice, seeing that the sun's rays were much fainter than they are today. Science found one probable answer in 1993, which was proffered by the American atmospheric scientist, Jim Kasting. He performed theoretical calculations that showed that 30% of the earth's atmosphere four billion years ago consisted of CO2. This in turn entailed that the large amount of greenhouse gases layered themselves as a protective greenhouse around the planet, thereby preventing the oceans from freezing over.

Mystery solved

Now, however, Professor Minik Rosing, from the Natural History Museum of Denmark, and Christian Bjerrum, from the Department of Geography and Geology at University of Copenhagen, together with American colleagues from Stanford University in California have discovered the reason for "the missing ice age" back then, thereby solving the sun paradox, which has haunted scientific circles for more than forty years.

Professor Minik Rosing explains, "What prevented an ice age back then was not high CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, but the fact that the cloud layer was much thinner than it is today. In addition to this, the earth's surface was covered by water. This meant that the sun's rays could warm the oceans unobstructed, which in turn could layer the heat, thereby preventing the earth's watery surface from freezing into ice. The reason for the lack of clouds back in earth's childhood can be explained by the process by which clouds form. This process requires chemical substances that are produced by algae and plants, which did not exist at the time. These chemical processes would have been able to form a dense layer of clouds, which in turn would have reflected the sun's rays, throwing them back into the cosmos and thereby preventing the warming of earth's oceans. Scientists have formerly used the relationship between the radiation from the sun and earth's surface temperature to calculate that earth ought to have been in a deep freeze during three billion of its four and a half billion years of existence. Sagan and Mullen brought attention to the paradox between these theoretical calculations and geological reality by the fact that the oceans had not frozen. This paradox of having a faint sun and ice-free oceans has now been solved."

CO2 history illuminated

Minik Rosing and his team have by analyzing samples of 3.8-billion-year-old mountain rock from the world's oldest bedrock, Isua, in western Greenland, solved the "paradox".

But more importantly, the analyses also provided a finding for a highly important issue in today's climate research - and climate debate, not least: whether the atmosphere's CO2 concentration throughout earth's history has fluctuated strongly or been fairly stable over the course of billions of years.

"The analyses of the CO2-content in the atmosphere, which can be deduced from the age-old Isua rock, show that the atmosphere at the time contained a maximum of one part per thousand of this greenhouse gas. This was three to four times more than the atmosphere's CO2-content today. However, not anywhere in the range of the of the 30 percent share in early earth history, which has hitherto been the theoretical calculation. Hence we may conclude that the atmosphere's CO2-content has not changed substantially through the billions of years of earth's geological history. However, today the graph is turning upward. Not least due to the emissions from fossil fuels used by humans. Therefore it is vital to determine the geological and atmospheric premises for the prehistoric past in order to understand the present, not to mention the future, in what pertains to the design of climate models and calculations," underscores Minik Rosing.

Professor Rosing's scientific research has made its mark internationally on several earlier occasions, including research on the point in time when the first fragile life appeared and the impact of life's presence on the formation of the earth's landmass. (University of Copenhagen)

President Obama announces today that he will "allow" oil drilling off the coast of Virginia. AFP Vice President for Policy Phil Kerpen issued the following statement:

"Obama is talking about lifting a nonexistent ban! Bush lifted the executive ban in July 2008, and Congress lifted the legislative ban in October 2008. There is no legal impediment to drilling now, except that the Obama administration refuses to offer leases. So the idea that this is a big concession in exchange for which Congress should jumpstart climate legislation is ridiculous. I'll believe they are really allowing drilling when they actually offer leases. Also, the 50-mile restriction means he is actually ADDING a NEW moratorium on waters inside of 50 miles." (Americans For Prosperity)

GOP Leader: “Keeping the Pacific Coast and Alaska, as well as the most promising resources off the Gulf of Mexico, under lock and key makes no sense at a time when gasoline prices are rising and Americans are asking ‘Where are the jobs?’”

Washington, Mar 31 -

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) today criticized the Obama Administration for refusing to listen to the American people and keeping the vast majority of America’s offshore energy resources off limits at a time when Americans want an “all of the above” strategy for promoting American energy production and creating American jobs:

“The Obama Administration continues to defy the will of the American people who strongly supported the bipartisan decision of Congress in 2008 to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling not just off the East Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, but off the Pacific Coast and Alaskan shores as well. Opening up areas off the Virginia coast to offshore production is a positive step, but keeping the Pacific Coast and Alaska, as well as the most promising resources off the Gulf of Mexico, under lock and key makes no sense at a time when gasoline prices are rising and Americans are asking ‘Where are the jobs?’

“It’s long past time for this Administration to stop delaying American energy production off all our shores and start listening to the American people who want an “all of the above” strategy to produce more American energy and create more jobs. Republicans are listening to the American people and have proposed a better solution – the American Energy Act – which will lower gas prices, increase American energy production, promote new clean and renewable sources of energy, and encourage greater efficiency and conservation.

“At the same time the White House makes today’s announcement, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is plotting a new massive job-killer that the American people can’t afford: a cascade of new EPA regulations that will punish every American who dares to flip on a light switch, drive a car, or buy an American product. Americans simply don’t want this backdoor national energy tax that will drive up energy and manufacturing costs and destroy jobs in our states and local communities.” (Press Release)

Oil companies with their sights on drilling for oil off Alaska on Wednesday said President Barack Obama's offshore oil announcement allows them to press ahead with big projects there.

Two companies -- Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips -- have spent large sums to secure drilling rights in the remote Chukchi Sea, only to see their plans put on hold by court challenges.

Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil Co, Shell's U.S. arm, said Obama's plan clears the way for the company to begin exploration drilling this year off Alaska's northwestern coast. (Reuters)

So President Obama says he's for more offshore oil drilling. Does he really mean it? Would it matter if he did?

Addressing the latter question first, consider President George W. Bush called for offshore drilling in June 2008, when gasoline prices hit $4 per gallon and Congress was less Democrat-controlled than today.

Nothing happened — well, that's not exactly true.

Offshore drilling advocates were ecstatic in July 2008 when they thought a deal had been reached with green groups to permit drilling off Santa Barbara, Calif. — the first since the January 1969 oil spill there.

New Hampshire Union Leader editor Andrew Cline gushed in a July 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed: "When an environmental group formed for the sole purpose of opposing offshore oil drilling warmly embraces a plan to drill off its own coast, you know something important has changed in our culture; Americans have recognized that offshore drilling is largely safe."

But less than a week later, the greens wrote the Journal to correct the record: "(T)o be accurate, the (op-ed's) title should have read 'Environmentalists Secure End to Oil Development' ... The agreement struck ... is remarkable because it sets a fixed date for the termination of existing offshore and onshore oil production facilities in Santa Barbara County. We see this agreement as a direct complement to our support for the federal oil moratorium. Just as we need to say 'no' to new oil development, we must put an end to existing development if we are to protect our coast from the risks of offshore oil and gas development, and protect society from climate change."

Despite the "agreement" and approval of offshore drilling by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, the greens subsequently got the California State Lands Commission to deny the offshore leases and then, in July 2009, got the California Assembly to block Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to revive offshore drilling.

Last December, the Obama administration actually granted Shell Oil leases to drill three exploratory wells in Alaska's Chukchi Sea. But claiming a shoddy approval process, the leases are being challenged by green groups in the enviro-friendly 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Without wondering whether the Obama administration set Shell up for frustration, my money is on the greens in that venue.

The lesson here is that the greens oppose, and will use every tactic possible on the local, state and federal level to prevent, offshore drilling, regardless of what emanates from the Oval Office. (Steve Milloy, IBD)

Energy: As the administration loosens restrictions on domestic energy development and offshore drilling, a reviled company develops technology to unlock America's vast shale resources. Drill, baby, drill.

We have been among President Obama's harshest critics when it comes to the administration's overly restrictive energy policy, so we were pleasantly surprised to see him announce on Wednesday some light at the end of the pipeline.

Some light, for many restrictions will remain in an energy policy best termed schizophrenic. (IBD)

HOUSTON — Oil prices have done something remarkable over the last half-year or so: they have barely budged.

Memories are still fresh of the chaotic climb to $147 a barrel only two summers ago, accompanied by gasoline costing $4.11 a gallon. The spike led to accusations from drivers and politicians that oil companies were price-gouging. Then crude prices plummeted along with the economy, to around $34 a barrel just over a year ago, only to double again in a matter of months as confidence began to recover.

And there the price has stayed, more or less, since August, reaching a rough stability in the $70 to $83 range.

Economists and government officials say that if prices remain in that band, it could benefit the world economy, the future security of energy supplies and even the environment. The price is high enough to drive investment in future oil production and in supplies of alternative energy, they note, but low enough that consumers can bear it.

“It’s a sweet spot,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a Harvard professor of international finance. “It’s not too low that it’s crushing demand for renewable energy sources or causing debt and fiscal crises in oil-exporting countries. And it’s not so high that it’s driving African countries deeper into poverty and threatening the recovery in the U.S. and Europe.” (NYT)

The Law: An international court stunned Ecuador by ordering it to pay $700 million to Chevron for failing to honor treaty obligations. It's a jolt for the banana republic, which has gamed justice for years: The bill is due.

For Ecuador's President Rafael Correa, courts are a money tree from which to shake cash from "greedy" Western corporate investors.

In the mother of all conflicts of interest, his government has cheered on a $27 billion lawsuit by jungle activists against Chevron in Ecuador's own courts, claiming Chevron polluted the country and anticipating a cut of the expected winnings.

In that case, an Ecuadorean judge was caught on tape telling an oil contractor the fix was in about his coming ruling.

Instead of dropping the case as tainted, Correa sped forward, howling about "injustice," trotting out naive movie stars like actress Daryl Hannah to boost publicity, and using the anticipated payday as a substitute for economic development.

But Tuesday, Correa got a shock of reality from the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, which ordered his government to pay $700 million to Chevron in a separate lawsuit.

In this real-world judicial ruling, Ecuador was found guilty of violating the U.S.-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty by failing to resolve seven business disputes with Chevron dating from the 1990s.

"It shows what happens when they don't control the courts," said Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson following the $700 million ruling. "It does speak to the judicial climate in Ecuador." (IBD)

Al Gore raised some alarming questions about climate change in his Oscar-winning 2006 film "An Inconvenient Truth" that a German filmmaker has now tried to provide some answers for in a new documentary.

Carl Fechner's "The Fourth Revolution - Energy Autonomy" is an attempt to show how the world could be getting all its energy from renewable sources in 30 years -- and help slow the climate change that Gore warned about in his blockbuster film.

An unabashedly provocative look at renewable energy in countries from the United States, Germany, Denmark, China, Mali and Bangladesh, Fechner's new film has attracted rave reviews and fierce criticism in Germany since it opened last week.

It has been lauded by some newspapers for spelling out a fossil fuel-free route the world could follow but denounced by others as political propaganda for suggesting powerful special interests are blocking wider use of renewable energy.

"The film takes a clear-cut position that it would be possible for the world to rely on renewable energy for 100 percent of its energy needs," Fechner told Reuters. "But it is still nevertheless a piece of solid journalism."

Fechner added: "It's a documentary. Every film takes a position. You can't achieve 100 percent objectivity in any film. Ours is especially noticeable because we offer solutions. Can a film offer solutions like this? In my mind, yes it can." (Reuters)

Natural gas obtained by the controversial technique of hydraulic fracturing may contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions and so should not be considered as a cleaner alternative to coal or oil, according to a Cornell University researcher.

Although natural gas, when burned, produces only about half of the carbon dioxide emissions of coal, that calculation omits greenhouse gas emissions from the well-drilling, water-trucking, pipeline-laying, and forest-felling that are part of the production of hydraulically fractured natural gas, Ecology Professor Robert Howarth argues in a new paper.

Combining the effects of combustion, production, distribution, and leaked methane from hydraulically fractured natural gas gives the fuel about the same greenhouse gas emissions as coal and about 30 percent more than diesel or gasoline, Howarth says in the draft paper published in mid-March.

"A complete consideration of all emissions from using natural gas seems likely to make natural gas far less attractive than other fossil fuels in terms of the consequences for global warming," Howarth writes. (Reuters)

Most analyses and reviews of utility-scale, highly intermittent new renewables, especially wind power which will be the focus here, are lacking in perspective. This makes marginal aspects appear to have significance out of proportion to the very little value they represent.

The result of these marginal, and often invalid, representations is to artificially make unfeasible new intermittent renewables, especially wind plants, somehow appear attractive.

To assist in providing a basis for the effective evaluation of these renewable sources, my recent article in the USAEE Dialogue proposes a broad framework to assess how the available electricity generation sources, both new renewables and those that are more traditional, meet public policy objectives. These objectives are suggested to be: [Read more →] (MasterResource)

A severe drought that has plagued southwest China since August 2009 has caused a painful shortage of water in the region. And that drought is crippling the region’s hydroelectric power generation sector. [Read More] (Xina Xie and Michael J. Economides, Energy Tribune)