Cap and Trade Returns From the Grave Source: WSJ
Sen. Inhofe Shapes Major GOP Bills to Fight EPA's Greenhouse Gas Regs The Senate's most vocal climate change skeptic has taken a key role in crafting two bills to be introduced next week that would both permanently stop U.S.
EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.
Skinning the Cap-and-Trade Cat with Clean Energy Standards Speaking before a new Congress in his State of the Union address, President Obama gave an alternative suggestion for Congress now that cap and trade is out of the picture. He pitched an aggressive clean energy standard, saying he wants 80 percent of our electricity to come from carbon-free sources of energy by 2035. For reference, the Energy Information Administration shows that carbon-free sources generated 31 percent of our total electricity in 2009 (20 percent nuclear, 7 percent hydroelectric, and 4 percent other renewables). As Kim Strassel points out in today’s Wall Street Journal, a clean energy standard is cap and trade without the carbon revenue: Continue reading... (The Foundry)
More propaganda needed: White House official cites ‘education problem’ on climate By"I think we have to educate [Capitol Hill],” said the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Read more... (E2 Wire)
and in progress: CDC Funding Fictional Warming Propaganda On TV The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, an American government agency, is funding attempts to persuade people of global warming through fictional TV shows. Climate Pravda reports that a organization called Hollywood Health and Society (HHS) which is funded by the CDC “and several other government sources” as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will work with writers to introduce ideas into TV shows and movies to help push the line that global warming is man-made and catastrophic. It explains that this will not be acknowledged in the credits, as it will be entirely “behind the scenes”: (htl)
Squeezing in a few more exotic holidays before the nonsense finally dies: Extra U.N. climate talks set for April in Bangkok Climate negotiators from almost 200 nations will hold an extra session in Bangkok in April to try to unblock work on a successor to the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol
for slowing global warming, officials said on Friday.
GOP sees looming 2012 elections as key to blocking climate rules ByWhile a bill blocking EPA’s climate authority is likely to pass the House, an uphill battle waits in the Senate. Read more... (E2 Wire)
Goodbye, Hurricane Carol (1.28.11) Climate czar Carol Browner resigned this week.
The UN IPCC – Influence Without Accountability by Dennis Ambler Donna La Framboise has an excellent piece on Dr Rajendra Pachauri and highlights the emergence of a new UN body similar to the IPCC, but in respect of Bio-Diversity. This is of course another objective that was decided at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, and is now being brought of the cupboard. Mr. Chairman, Your Carriage Awaits January 28, 2011, Donna La Framboise “According to some people the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a marvelous organization – so marvelous it should be regarded as a prototype. A month ago, therefore, the UN General Assembly formally created the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. As the press release explains, this body will be an “IPCC for Nature” which will: …in many ways mirror the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which has assisted in catalyzing worldwide understanding and governmental action on global warming. There’s just one problem. The IPCC model is utterly dysfunctional. It is a screeching, flashing, billboard-sized example of influence without accountability. For proof of this statement, one need look no further than the IPCC’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri.” Read the rest of this entry » (SPPI)
I was going to slice & dice this one but Haunting the Library beat me to it: Reuters: Republican Party “Actively Caused Climate Collapse” Reuters News Agency is carrying an extraordinary article claiming that the Republican Party “actively caused climate collapse” and that it is “in the pay of the fossil energy industry”. The highly unusual story is ostensibly on the subject of the tax that the Australian government plans to levy to cover the costs of the floods in Queensland, but soon veers off into what can most charitably be described as a rambling diatribe on global warming and how the Republicans caused it. (htl)
Updated 31 Jan 2011 -- Normalized Disaster Losses in Australia Courtesy Ryan Crompton, the figure above shows the most recent insured loss estimates from the recent Queensland flooding based on an update from the Insurance Council of Australia (here in PDF). The estimated costs of the flood have increased from A$1.2 billion to A$1.51 billion (and shown as the bright blue bar on the far right of the figure above -- and is not normalized (the normalized values would be lower) -- the other data shows the normalized losses from Crompton and McAneney 2008 updated through 2010, more details here).Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Ross Gittins offers a valuable perspective on the economic magnitude of the losses from the Queensland floods. I'll skip over the issues of domestic politics that he discusses to focus on the comments that he makes about the magnitude of the losses. He provides a useful bit of advice, which is exactly the advice that I give to my students (emphasis added): (Roger Pielke Jr.)
The Westerlies Explain The Recent Extreme Winter Weather, Not “Global Warming” There have been a number of news articles that claim that a global average surface temperature trend (i.e. “global warming) explains the extreme cold weather and snow that has occurred recently; e.g. see Comment On The CBS News Article “Is Extreme Weather a Result of Global Warming?” In this post I want to illustrate why it is the location of the westerlies that determine areas that have extreme cold weather and snowstorms. (Roger Pielke Sr.)
Climate Change Claims Melt Away Environment: In 2007, the U.N. said the Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035 due to man-made global warming. Yet four years later, some are advancing. What's retreating is the global warming narrative. (IBD)
How global warming became political poison The chic World Economic Forum at Davos once considered global warming the greatest of threats to the planet:
reassured that the global economy is recovering solidly from the financial crisis but struck by how the social networking revolution will force them to hand more power to both their employees and customers. But now it considers global warming so yesterday:
How can an existential threat to humanity suddenly become too boring for words? Impossible, unless it never was really a big threat to start with. (Andrew Bolt)
Czech climate change boss: it's nonsense to dramatically reduce emissions Long-time Czech IPCC boss: adaptation to 11 °F of warming wouldn't be a problem Climatologist Jan Pretel: It's nonsense to drastically reduce emissions (automatic translation from Czech)First, he is asked what he imagines under the term "climate change". He says that it's a fallacy to attribute e.g. traffic accidents to the climate change - the weather is the culprit - and it's nonsense to talk about catastrophes e.g. in the Czech context where they can't occur. The tropical zone requires a closer scrutiny. » Don't Stop Reading » (TRF)
How BBC warmists abuse the science Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, is an expert in genetics, not climatology, writes Christopher Booker.
Both climate alarmists and so-called sceptics seem to agree that the recent devastating floods can be attributable, at least in part, to the La Nina conditions in the Pacific Ocean. Where the two groups differ is that alarmists are claiming or implying that human activity has also had a significant influence. (John McLean, Quadrant)
Scientist: Climate changes are not caused by greenhouse gases Dr. Noor van Andel, former head of research at Akzo Nobel, has a new paper out showing the available data to date contradicts the notion of greenhouse gas induced global warming or 'climate change.' He notes that while there have been extensive efforts to 'prove' the 'greenhouse' warming theory by bringing computer models and observations into agreement, this has been done "strangely only by adjusting the measurements instead of adjusting the models," in other words, via unscientific means. Dr. van Andel instead finds that ocean oscillations and the cosmic ray theory of Svensmark et al best explain climate changes. (Hockey Schtick)
Is It Really The Warmest Ever? Both NOAA and NASA this month announced that 2010 was tied for the warmest year. The UK Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University proclaimed 2010 the
second warmest year since 1850.
Wild extrapolation from trivial data series, again: More Frequent Drought Likely in Eastern Africa The increased frequency of drought observed in eastern Africa over the last 20 years is likely to continue as long as global temperatures continue to rise,
according to new research published in Climate Dynamics.
UPDATE: Further Evidence of Low Climate Sensitivity from NASA’s Aqua Satellite After yesterday’s post, I decided to run the simple forcing-feedback model we developed to mimic the Aqua satellite observations of global oceanic temperature and radiative flux variations. I’ve also perused the comments people have made there, and will try to clarify what I’ve done and why it’s important. (Roy W. Spencer)
Can scientists REALLY make it rain (or are they a useless shower?) At the height of the Vietnam War, soldiers who heard U.S. aircraft flying high over the Ho Chi Minh trail might have feared bombs were about to fall from the
sky, or at least that reconnaissance pilots were taking pictures of the Viet Cong's supply lines.
A little rational thinking - and in the WaPo too! Cold truths about electric cars' cold-weather shortcomings By Charles Lane
The fix was in, most obviously from what the CBC’s oil sands documentary left out Ottawa announced before Christmas that it would beef up monitoring of the oil sands and make the facts about its environmental impact more transparent. This is much to be desired. Just why was evident after watching last night’s CBC production Tipping Point: The Age of the Oil Sands. It would be hard to conceive of a more biased presentation. Its original title was Tipping Point: The End of Oil, but perhaps that label was ditched because it betrayed too much wishful thinking. Although the two-hour documentary trotted out interviews with industry representatives and Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner, the fix was clearly in, most obviously from what the film left out. Tipping Point revolved around the alleged cancerous poisoning of the little community of Fort Chipewyan. It followed a veteran native activist, Francois Paulette, on his overseas campaign to establish that the oil sands were destroying his community and his culture. Mr. Paulette’s coup was a meeting with film director James Cameron that led to the Avatar creator going on a fact-finding tour of the oil sands last year. Read More (Financial Post)
No Hot Air started talking up US gas exports last year, when the conventional wisdom was that it was to put it politely, insane. Yesterday's crazy story, today's front page of the New York Times: If Cheniere can obtain the necessary regulatory approval and financing, Mr. Souki says he can start exporting gas as early as 2015. He predicts he will eventually be able to export two billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas a day from his facility, or about 3 percent of current domestic gas production. As other companies like Freeport LNG join Cheniere in exporting liquefied natural gas, Mr. Souki says the United States has the potential to become a premier global provider, capable of exporting 10 billion cubic feet a day, roughly the amount that Britain consumes. That's 283 million cubic metres, which is actually equal on an annualised basis to 103 BCM. How big a number is that: sit down if you're an LNG trader. The entire European (including Turkey) imports of LNG in 2009 was just under 70 BCM. Cheniere of course is just ONE US terminal. There are others such as Cameron and Freeport also asking for export licenses. Kitimat in British Columbia is exporting to Asia from 2014. 10 BCF sounds too high, but based on his initial plans for 2.5 BCF from last year and throwing in other terminals, it's not completely out of the window either. (No Hot Air)
Ethanol trade groups bash draft EPA report ByThe ethanol industry is quickly attacking a draft EPA study that details a slew of
ecological harms that could accompany increased biofuels production.
On energy policy, Obama talks down to Americans By Chris Horner
Green Jobs Cronyism and Cannibalism To rephrase President Obama’s State of the Union theme: “This is our generation’s apparatchik moment.” Yes, he said “Sputnik” instead, but his actual agenda is about the apparatchik—government by party leaders, bureaucrats and the well-connected. His agenda is symbolized by his push for “green jobs” as the path to a better future. Simply put, the green jobs agenda spends billions of taxpayer dollars to destroy existing jobs and replace them with jobs in politically-favored businesses, raising the costs of energy along the way. The politically-connected win. Existing job-holders and companies lose. Home electric bills go up. Power also costs more for companies, making it more expensive to go into business or to stay in business. It’s cronyism that is building a political power structure based on false claims about clean green jobs. It’s cannibalism because creating the green jobs requires killing off existing jobs. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
How to Get to 80% "Clean Energy" by 2035 Motivated by Michael Levi at the CFR, I have put together a quick spreadsheet to allow me to do a bit of sensitivity analysis of what it would take for the US to get to 80% "clean energy" in its electricity supply by 2035, as proposed by President Obama in his State of the Union Speech earlier this week. (Roger Pielke Jr.)
Austerity pulling plug on Europe's green subsidies The Spanish and Germans are doing it. So are the French. The British might have to do it. Austerity-whacked Europe is rolling back subsidies for renewable energy as economic sanity makes a tentative comeback. Green energy is becoming unaffordable and may cost as many jobs as it creates. But the real victims are the investors who bought into the dream of endless, clean energy financed by the taxpayer. They forgot that governments often change their minds. (Globe and Mail)
German Ministries Debate Further Solar Power Cuts Germany's Economy Ministry wants to see a further tightening of the Environment Ministry's plans to cut solar power incentives, sources in the government
told Reuters on Friday.
Obama Administration Sues to Stop China’s Renewable Energy Policy Whilst President Obama focussed on the need for renewable energy in his State of the Union speech, behind the scenes his administration is suing China in the World Trade Organization (WTO) over its support for its renewable energy strategy. (htl)
This toxic lake poisons Chinese farmers, their children and their land. It is what's left behind after making the magnets for Britain's latest wind turbines... and, as a special Live investigation reveals, is merely one of a multitude of environmental sins committed in the name of our new green Jerusalem (Daily Mail)
UN Sec. Gen. – Capitalism is “Environmental Suicide” Says “We Need a Revolution” UN Secretary General, Ban-Ki Moon has launched an astonishing attack on the current economic system of Western-style capitalsim, saying that it was dangerous and outdated in the light of global warming, and calling for a new economic paradigm. (htl)
How Well Does a U.N. Agency Do Its Pricey 'Green Job'? Not That Well, Study Says EXCLUSIVE: How much money did the United Nations Development Program, the U.N.'s flagship anti-poverty agency, spend to create 5,280 "green" jobs
around the world?
Robert Redford is an eco-hypocrite, film claims Hollywood A-listers love to trumpet their green credentials. Guy Adams reports on a film-maker who's out to expose them
Shoppers' green fatigue hits refill revolution Environmentalists' hopes dashed as latest trial to encourage supermarket customers to keep containers ends in failure
SciTech committee to investigate peer review This could be interesting: (Bishop Hill)
Excessive Amounts of Lead Found in Reusable Grocery Bags Supplied by Major Retailers Today, the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) released new lab results showing that a number of major retailers’ reusable shopping bags contained
excessive levels of lead. Of the 44 organizations whose bags were tested, 16 are selling or distributing reusable bags containing lead in amounts greater than
100 ppm (parts per million), which is where many states set the limit for heavy metals in packaging.
Packard’s push against B.C. salmon U.S. foundation pours millions into campaign against fish farming, to the benefit of Alaska’s ‘ranched’ salmon By Vivian Krause Since 2002, the ex-vessel value of Alaskan salmon more than tripled from $125-million to $409-million in 2008. After prices for Alaskan salmon began to improve, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations wrote, “A lot of folks can take credit for the improved market for wild salmon, from the California Salmon Council and the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, to the chefs that revolted at serving farmed salmon, but the programs Packard [the David and Lucille Packard Foundation] helped fund played a big part in boosting our markets and no one in our industry should ever forget that.” Based in San Francisco, the Packard foundation is a charity created by a co-founder of tech giant Hewlett-Packard. With $5.6-billion in assets, it is the ninth-largest foundation in the U.S. and grants about $300-million per year. Since 1999, Packard has been implementing a Market Intervention strategy as part of its program for Marine Fisheries. This program has a focus on “the U.S. Arctic,” which presumably is Alaska. Read More (Financial Post)
Not feeling the love - check out the greenie misanthropy in this series: Green Writer for BBC, Guardian, Demands: End Farming, Dismantle Civilization. Dr John Feeney is a prominent green campaigner who has written for the Guardian newspaper, the BBC, and many other Green journals and websites. He was the winner of the 2007 ECO award. In 2009 he received the Global Media award from the Population Institute for his work. Now this award-winning Greenie has joined the growing list of ecologists and activists who are saying that the root of the problem is agriculture, which enables humans to “circumvent” nature’s sacred limits and build earth-destroying civilizations. Like many others, he accuses us of being in “denial” over the need to return to a hunter-gatherer way of life: (Haunting the Library)
Thank You For Not Breeding: Green Hypocrisy Gro Harlem Brundtland, the UN Chair for the World Commission on Environment and Development, worries that population growth is a “ticking time bomb” and that “we may soon be facing a new famine on a scale dwarfing even Malthus’s most pessimistic predictions. (Haunting the Library)
James Cameron’s Avatar Wiki Asks – Overpopulation: Should We Take Extreme Measures? The popular Green blog inspired by James Cameron’s Avatar movie has posted an article asking if it’s time to take “extreme measures” to reduce the world’s population. The article begins by saying that there are too many people, but that simply killing off unnecessary people can “seem elitist” and perhaps even cruel to some, even though in theory at least, this is an efficient approach: (Haunting the Library)
Uber-Warmist Mark Lynas on Why Humanity is a “Global Catastrophe” In a recent interview with The Browser magazine, uber-Warmist Mark Lynas discusses his favourite books and the importance of their message for the green movement. And his choice offers a fascinating insight into the warmist psyche. (Haunting the Library)
Grist Asks: Is Communist Dictatorship the Way to Go? Alarmist website, Grist.org has criticized American democracy for it’s inability to enact legislation on global warming, and asks if the Chinese are better placed in the 21st century because of what it calls their “quasi-dictatorship”. Citing a BBC news story, the article comments that China’s Communist rulers were able to shut down an electricity power station during the recent bitterly cold winter, something that free democracies were good at preventing. (Haunting the Library)
Why do greens keep mentioning the war? We should all welcome The New Home Front: it reveals how nutty and mean-spirited environmentalists really are.
CEZ Loses 700,000 CO2 Permits In Cyber Attack Czech power group CEZ said on Thursday it had detected two unauthorized transfers of its emissions permits, totaling 700,000, in a cyber attack on the Czech
registry last week.
European commission extends carbon market freeze indefinitely Countries must prove their systems are protected against theft of credits by hackers
Dutch Science Journalist Marcel Crok’s New Book Rips IPCC – “Influence Of Weblogs Is Growing” Marcel Crok is a Dutch chemist and scientific journalist who in 2005 made waves by publishing a slapdown of Michael Mann’s hockey stick chart, which he based on McIntyre’s and McKitrick’s analysis and results. Crok concluded in 2005:
M&M’s analysis was later confirmed by Hans von Storch and Ed Zorita. (No Tricks Zone)
Ban Ki-moon gives up fight against climate change In November 2009, the ClimateGate erupted and many of us were convinced that the establishment of climate fear would quickly collapse. I was imagining that
it would be as fast as the Velvet Revolution that began exactly 20 years earlier. Ban Ki-moon ends hands-on involvement in climate change talksThe boss of the United Nations will stop his personal involvement in the battle to regulate the world climate. Instead, he will try to achieve "immediate gains" in the field of clean energy and sustainable development. Even his U.N. colleagues have apparently understood that there can't be any "deal". » Don't Stop Reading » (TRF)
Uh-huh... Ban Ki-moon's green growth agenda can bring climate to the heart of the UN Ban Ki-moon must shift the UN's focus to take climate into the mainstream debate on sustainable development (Yvo de Boer, Guardian)
Japan Says To Work On New Global Climate Framework Japan said it aims to propose an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol in coming months, after criticizing the international climate framework as neither using
effective technology nor including major emitters.
New Mexico Governor Loses Bid to Overturn Greenhouse Gas Cap SANTA FE, New Mexico, January 26, 2011 - The New Mexico Supreme Court handed environmental groups a victory today in their unanimous ruling that Governor Susana Martinez violated the state Constitution when she prevented a rule establishing a statewide cap on greenhouse gas emissions from being published as codified state law. (ENS)
Question of the day: Why do you continue to use the term 'Climate Science'? Just because a fragmented industry employs a substantial number of scientists, no matter how well qualified they are as individuals or how brilliant they are
in their own specialty, does not make that industry per se a 'science'.
Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up, Jan 27th 2011 The Round-Up has a whole new look to Part One, GE’s boss will help Americans get back to work although the commute to China may deter some, and Apple has exciting innovations in iPolluting and iPoisoning. (Daily Bayonet)
Was 2010 the Hottest Year Ever? According to the world’s best-known climate change mouthpiece, 2010 was the hottest year on record.
With massive floods in Australia and Brazil, and bitter winter weather across the Northern Hemisphere, climate change alarmists have been quick to blame the severe weather on global warming. The fact that such weather is well within normal variation has not stopped the catastrophists from claiming vindication. No matter that those who study the Pacific and Atlantic decadal scale oscillations predicted a cold and snowy winter for Europe and North America, the recent blizzards are being offered up as “proof” that Earth's climate is changing for the worse. And what of the reports of widespread natural disaster from Rio, Brisbane and elsewhere? Even more global warming, of course. When it comes to wicked weather, the climate change cabal's misinformation machine is running at full tilt. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)
Himalayan glaciers spell trouble for climate scientists The abject admission by the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) a year ago that it made a mistake, in its latest report, in predicting their disappearance by 2035 marked the lowest point in their reputation - and they have still far from recovered. (Geoffrey Lean, TDT)
Himalayan glaciers not melting because of climate change, report finds Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing rather than retreating, claims the first major study since a controversial UN report said they would be melted within quarter of a century. (TDT)
Color me dubious: Warming North Atlantic water tied to heating Arctic, according to new study The temperatures of North Atlantic Ocean water flowing north into the Arctic Ocean adjacent to Greenland -- the warmest water in at least 2,000 years -- are
likely related to the amplification of global warming in the Arctic, says a new international study involving the University of Colorado Boulder.
Trenberth at AMS defends himself against deniers Post by Dr. Ryan N. Maue Dr. Trenberth delivered his highly-anticipated presentation at the American Meteorological Society 91st Annual Meeting in Seattle on Wednesday. The talk was titled “Promoting climate information and communication of climate change“, and an overflowing crowd of several hundred listened for about 20-minutes, then scattered. Those that read the preprint online (version 3 now) and expected Trenberth to back off on his rhetoric were sorely disappointed. Dr. Trenberth
All in all, it was the stemwinder that everyone expected from the preprint preview/fiasco. Details from the talk follow… Continue reading (WUWT)
Hiding the decline? Australian Bureau of Meteorology report conceals details of high rainfall in February 1893 On 25 January 2011 the BoM published an amended SPECIAL CLIMATE STATEMENT 24 (SCS24)
originally published on 7 Jan on the subject “An extremely wet end to 2010 leads to widespread flooding across eastern Australia.” The revised SCS24 downplays the huge rain events in Feb 1893 – on page 7 of 28 the BoM says – “Insufficient rainfall data exist for a comprehensive
assessment of the 1893 event. However, the available station data indicate that peak rainfalls in the region during the 1893 event were much heavier than those
during either the 1974 or 2011 events.”
New Results on Climate Sensitivity: Models vs. Observations Partly as a result of my recent e-mail debate with Andy Dessler on cloud feedbacks (the variable mostly likely to determine whether we need to worry about manmade global warming), I have once again returned to an analysis of the climate models and the satellite observations. (Roy W. Spencer)
Caltech geobiologists uncover links between ancient climate change and mass extinction PASADENA, Calif.—About 450 million years ago, Earth suffered the second-largest mass extinction in its history—the Late Ordovician mass extinction, during which more than 75 percent of marine species died. Exactly what caused this tremendous loss in biodiversity remains a mystery, but now a team led by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has discovered new details supporting the idea that the mass extinction was linked to a cooling climate. (California Institute of Technology)
From CO2 Science Volume 14 Number 4: 26 January 2011 Editorial Journal Reviews Temperatures of the Past Six Millennia in Alaska: What do they reveal about earth's thermal health? Is the planet running a fever? Moose on the Loose in a Warming Canadian Environment: Do they move about in ways that would reduce the heat stress they encounter at the southern edge of their range during periods of critically-high temperature? Another Analysis of Biofuel Pros and Cons: Which perspective comes out on top? The Effect of Climate Change on Malaria in Western Africa: What is it? Interactive Effects of Elevated CO2 , Excessive Warmth and Water Stress on Photosynthesis and Growth of Canola: The ability of atmospheric CO2 enrichment to combat the deleterious effects of severe water and heat stress on plant growth and development is truly amazing. Ocean Acidification Database Plant Growth Database Medieval Warm Period Project
By Geoffrey Styles
Ed. note: This piece first appeared on Energy Outlook, Geoffrey Styles’ blog. Energy didn't feature as prominently in last night's State of the Union Address as it has in some years, including last year's speech. Rather than making it a primary focus area, the President seemed to mention it more as an example of his broader innovation and competitiveness agenda. That's probably a good thing, because the administration's persistence in pitting conventional energy against renewables reflects the muddle in which US energy policy remains. We're desperately worried that China is getting ahead of us in renewable energy, yet we don't seem to notice that China is hardly treating oil and gas as yesterday's energy. I suspect that from China's perspective, their focus is not especially on renewable energy or clean energy but on cheap energy, which is what their economy needs to grow. I wouldn't think we're so different in that regard. I won't waste time dissecting the President's suggestion to strip the oil & gas industry of its tax benefits in order to fund a new or expanded clean energy innovation effort. If the administration couldn't make that happen when its party dominated both houses of Congress by large majorities, then this idea is simply dead on arrival in an era of divided government. The best way to address those subsidies, along with the much larger per-barrel subsidy for ethanol, is through the kind of tax reform that would make all US industries more competitive globally. So I was pleased to hear the President suggest simplifying the tax code and reducing the corporate income tax. (ET)
Crank of the Week – January 24, 2011 - Sergio Marchionne & Lisa Jackson This week we have a crank duet, provided by Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne and US EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. The shakiest of America's three domestic
car companies, Chrysler, and the US Government are teaming up to bring the world something nobody asked for—a non-electric hybrid mini-van. The company
announced that it would partner with the US Environmental Protection Agency to build and test prototypes of a hybrid vehicle that accumulates energy not in a
battery pack but by compressing a gas hydraulically. This could be final proof that both Chrysler and the EPA should be disbanded.
Rep. Upton of Commerce and Energy: Is This the Real Deal? Some very rational words on energy policy–long needed–have come from Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. But will Congress act on them? It will take a lot of heretofore undemonstrated courage for members of Congress to take the actions needed to:
[Read more →] (MasterResource)
Industry ramps up oil-sands campaign ahead of key decision ByThe oil industry is ramping up its campaign to pressure the Obama administration to approve a massive oil-sands pipeline project, arguing that approval of
the project would aid the country’s economic recovery.
SMOKESTACKS dot the horizon; a whiff of oil hangs in the air; gargantuan vehicles clog the highway. There is a din of heavy machinery, punctuated by blasts
from cannons scaring birds away from toxic lakes. But golf courses and suburban housing make the place liveable, and some locals have grown attached to
Alberta’s tar sands and Fort McMurray, the town at the centre of them. “I’d like my son and grandson to work here,” says a worker at one of Shell’s
mines.
Coal-country lawmakers ramp up push against EPA permit veto ByA bipartisan group of House lawmakers is launching fresh attacks against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its recent decision to block a large
mountaintop-removal mining project in West Virginia.
Natural Gas To Power Growing Energy Demands -Exxon Mobil Exxon Mobil Corp. projected global demand for oil, natural gas and other fuels to be about 35% higher in 2030 compared to 2005, as emerging markets drive the
bulk of global demand.
Great Green Fleet Neither Great Nor Green? In my recent interview with Tom Hicks, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary to the Navy (Energy), he explained some of the Navy’s energy initiatives. One of those is to sail the “Great Green Fleet.” [Read More] (Robert Rapier, ET)
Two-thirds of UK biofuel fails green standard, figures show Just 31% of the biofuel supplied under the government's initiative to tackle climate change met its own green standards, the Renewable Fuels Agency reports (Guardian)
German FOCUS Magazine: Facts Show Planet Much Better Today By P Gosselin How many times has the demise of the planet or humanity been predicted? How many charlatans have passed through the revolving doors of history? You’d need the resources of the Census Bureau to tally that up. A couple of days ago I presented yet another such prediction from a scientist at the Potsdam Institute For Climate Impact Research (PIK). The planet is going to hell in a hand-basket they keep telling us. But when you boil it down, they all have one thing in common: They’ve been wrong every time. The charlatans of the past have been replaced by a new generation of charlatans – government-funded climate scientists who are paid to get the masses to stampede in panic into the arms of government programs, all aided and abetted by the chatterbox media. It turns out that life as a whole on the planet has never been better. (No Tricks Zone)
How Many Hazmat Suits Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb? Lest anyone tell you that the phase-out of (non-toxic) incandescent light bulbs will be hassle-free (other than hugely expensive), herewith is the directive from the Environmental Protection Agency for ridding your home of toxic vapor in the event you or a loved one (or relative) breaks the mercury-laden compact fluorescent (CFL) pushed by the government as superior:
Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Bad idea: Gingrich calls for replacing the EPA ByFormer House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R) called for replacing the EPA with what he called the Environmental Solutions Agency (ESA). Read more... (E2 Wire)
Gibbs demurs on replacement for White House climate adviser ByWhite House press secretary Robert Gibbs declined to say Wednesday whether Carol Browner, the departing White House energy and climate adviser,
will be replaced.
Carol Browner Goes, Draconian Policies Stay White House: With cap-and-trade seemingly dead and EPA's regulatory authority under attack, the administration's climate czar is abandoning ship. Too bad
she's not taking the administration's energy policies with her.
Gasp! Climate change: Barack Obama less interested than Bush, analysis reveals Obama made no mention of climate change in his state of the union speech, appearing to signal a shift by White House
Absence of climate change in Obama address a sign of the times ByPresident Obama’s State of the Union speech Tuesday
includes repeated calls for expanding green energy, but the lack of explicit mentions of climate change and greenhouse gases reflects the sagging fortunes of
emissions-capping bills on Capitol Hill.
Obama Recycles Waxman-Markey Utility Sector Target - Neglects to Inform Congress, Public by Marlo Lewis Last night’s State of the Union Address shows that President Obama learned only one lesson from the failure that was Copenhagen, the farce that was Cancun, the death of cap-and-trade, and the “slaughter” of House Democrats who voted for Waxman-Markey. Namely, dissemble, repackage Kyotoism in new verbiage, and press on with an agenda that voters rejected in November. Anyone paying attention to Obama EPA’s campaign to ‘legislate’ climate policy through the regulatory backdoor would expect as much. But — true confession — I was surprised when Obama proposed to restructure the U.S. electric power sector along the lines contemplated by H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACESA), the infamous Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. In his SOTU speech, President Obama said:
Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
TIME Magazine: It’s Carbon Rations or “Relentless March Into a Furnace” TIME magazine has an admiring piece on the UK government’s plans to impose carbon rationing on all citizens, comparing global warming with the Nazis and their gas chambers. It says the choice now for America as well as the UK is between carbon rationing and the furnace:
Imposing carbon rationing in America as well. Good luck with that one. (Haunting the Library)
Senate Republicans lay down markers in bid to block EPA climate rules ByThe scores of Senate bills introduced Tuesday include a measure to block Environmental Protection climate change rules, and there’s more to come.
Minister rejects national cap-trade system OTTAWA - Canada's new environment minister, Peter Kent, is rejecting the advice of a government advisory panel that has urged him to moved ahead with made-in-Canada climate change policies, despite uncertainty about United States measures and regulations. (Montreal Gazette)
Energy, enviro reactions to Obama's address ByWell, President Obama’s State of the Union address is over and the reactions are pouring in.
Bingaman ‘anxious’ to work with Obama on clean energy standard despite skepticism BySenate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said Wednesday that he’s planning talks with the White House on President
Obama’s State of the Union call for a “clean energy” standard.
White House fact sheet details Obama's SOTU energy plan ByA fact sheet released by the White House gives more detail on the energy items in President Obama's State of the Union address. Obama's speech, according to the fact sheet, lays out a five-part plan "to win the future." The five parts are can be broken down into the following categories: innovate, educate, build, reform, responsibility. (E2 Wire)
Alternative Fuels Don’t Benefit the Military, a RAND Report Says The United States would derive no meaningful military benefit from increased use of alternative fuels to power its jets, ships and other weapons systems,
according to a government-commissioned study by the RAND Corporation scheduled for release Tuesday.
Sissons on BBC climate change coverage The Mail has a devastating extract from the new book by ex-BBC newsreader Peter Sissons, showing just how corrupt the corporation has become, particularly on the subject of climate change.
Read the whole thing. (Bishop Hill)
WTF? Scientists Claim “Slow Wind” May Make Trees Extinct. Here’s a new one I bet you haven’t heard before: global warming is slowing the wind down, and could lead to certain species of trees becoming extinct. Just when you thought that the predictions couldn’t possibly get any more bizarre (remember “Global warming will cause killer cornflakes“?), scientists in Jerusalem have released a study, based on computer modelling (natch) that predicts global warming may well lead to certain species of trees becoming extinct soon by slowing down the wind. (Haunting the Library)
Climate research by PETA? Climate tax on meat and milk results in less greenhouse gases A climate tax corresponding to €60/ton CO2eq on meat and milk could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from European agriculture by around seven per cent. If
the land made available is used for bioenergy production, the decrease in emissions can be six times greater. This is shown by the researchers Kristina Mohlin,
Stefan Wirsenius and Fredrik Hedenus, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, in an article published in the scientific journal Climatic Change.
Oh No! Global Warming Giving Oysters Herpes! The alarmist headlines just keep getting whackier and whackier . . . (Haunting the Library)
Rogue storm system caused Pakistan floods that left millions homeless Last summer's disastrous Pakistan floods that killed more than 2,000 people and left more than 20 million injured or homeless were caused by a rogue weather
system that wandered hundreds of miles farther west than is normal for such systems, new research shows.
Rainfall dwarfed by 1974 figures BRISBANE had more rainfall in the 1974 floods than it did in the latest episode, preliminary figures show.
Lawrence Solomon: Has the IPCC discovered the Sun? The IPCC is investigating the Sun as a driver of global warming The IPCC for the first time will investigate “in depth” the role of global cosmic rays in climate change, according to a report last week in the Hindustan Times. Many solar and space scientists believe that cosmic rays, whose ability to enter Earth’s atmosphere is regulated by the Sun, are a dominant factor in global warming. The turnaround in the IPCC position was announced by the chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, in a communication with India’s Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh. The announcement followed the release of a paper by U R Rao, the former chairman of Indian Space Research Organization, that showed cosmic rays alone were responsible for 40% of global warming. These findings by one of Pachauri’s most distinguished countrymen, rebutted IPCC claims that carbon dioxide and other man-made causes were responsible for more than 90% of global warming. Ramesh, who commissioned Rao’s paper, in 2009 had also released a report rebutting the IPCC’s claims that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. The IPCC subsequently retracted its claims in an embarrassment now known as “Glaciergate.” Until now, the IPCC has argued that the Sun is all-but-irrelevant to global warming, consistent with the IPCC’s very mandate, which dismisses the Sun as a major factor worthy of investigation. Ramesh is hopeful that Pauchari and the IPCC will now open their minds to dissenting scientists. ““There is a groupthink in climate science today,” the minister explained. “Anyone who raises alternative climate theories is immediately branded as a climate atheist in an atmosphere of climate evangelists.” The Danish National Space Center has pioneered the theory that cosmic rays, by seeding clouds, regulate Earth’s climate – the Danes astounded the scientific world when they actually created clouds in a chamber on Earth. A photo of the path-breaking Danish cloud chamber, and a brief explanation of the science, can be found here. LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
New study affirms natural climate change CHURCHVILLE, VA—It’s nice when people validate your work. Fred Singer and I—co-authors of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years—are currently
basking in the glow of a new paper that affirms the earth’s long, moderate, natural climate cycle. The study is by Dr. U.R. Rao, former chair of India’s
Space Research Organization. He says solar variations and cosmic rays account for 40 percent of the world’s recent global warming.
Experts Seek Arctic Climate Early warning System Scientists sought on Wednesday to pin down triggers for abrupt climate shifts in the Arctic, such as a feared runaway melt of Greenland's ice sheet, to
create an early warning system for governments.
“Hotter summers may not be as catastrophic for the Greenland ice sheet” ‘Hidden plumbing’ helps slow Greenland ice flow Hotter summers may not be as catastrophic for the Greenland ice sheet as previously feared and may actually slow down the flow of glaciers, according to new research. A letter published in Nature on 27 January explains how increased melting in warmer years causes the internal drainage system of the ice sheet to ‘adapt’ and accommodate more melt-water, without speeding up the flow of ice toward the oceans. The findings have important implications for future assessments of global sea level rise. The Greenland ice sheet covers roughly 80% of the surface of the island and contains enough water to raise sea levels by 7 metres if it were to melt completely. Rising temperatures in the Arctic in recent years have caused the ice sheet to shrink, prompting fears that it may be close to a ‘tipping point’ of no return. Continue reading (WUWT)
Mid-Atlantic Ocean temperatures peaked in 1998 The water temperature in the subtropical Atlantic Ocean has cooled down since 1998, oceanographers report. Measurements since 1957 had shown a rise of more
than ¼ of a degree up to that point, but between 1998 and 2006 the ocean stopped warming and cooled by 0.15°C in the same area.
Data availability and consequences in cancer and climate science Last time, I examined the issue of data availability in climate science in the context of Phil Jones’ paper on the urban heat island in Nature. The case of
the Jones paper is simple — data supporting conclusions of this important paper are not available and there are serious doubts whether such data was present
at the time the paper was written. As first author, Jones has however categorically stated he does not intend to correct the situation or address it in any
fashion.
Comment On The CBS News Article “Is Extreme Weather a Result of Global Warming?” There is a news article by CBS titled (h/t to Marc Morano) Is Extreme Weather a Result of Global Warming? (Roger Pielke Sr.)
House Democrats introduce oil spill legislation ByKey House Democrats introduced legislation Wednesday to implement a series of recommendations outlined by the national oil spill commission. But the legislation could face opposition from senior House Republicans, who have responded coolly to the spill commission’s report. (E2 Wire)
The Exorbitant Dream of Arctic Oil International oil companies are racing to develop new oilfields in the Arctic. But developing the vast reserves could be far more expensive than first thought, according to new calculations by US geologists obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE.
U.K. Energy Policy Risks Prompting Renewed `Dash for Gas,' Lawmakers Say Changes to U.K. energy policy may lead to a renewed “dash for gas” as utilities choose cheap gas-fired plants over renewable projects, Parliament’s
Energy and Climate Change Select Committee said in a report today.
Watermelons not pleased: The Labour Party calls for shale gas drilling halt The Labour Party has called for a temporary halt to drilling for shale gas while its safety is checked.
Asia's first shale gas pool found near Durgapur DURGAPUR: The potential answer to the world's energy woes, lying buried under 1770 metres of hard rock in the Damodar basin, has finally been unearthed.
Ross Clark: How To Warm Your Mansion With Other People's Money Let no one say this is not a redistributive government. It is taking benefits away from the poor and giving them instead to people with large houses and a bit of spare capital. How? Through a great green energy scam, originally devised by Labour, which could not be better designed to penalise the poor and reward the rich. In fact, the government might just as well have come up with Spat Credits or a Top Hat Top-Up Allowance. Here is a brief guide to benefits for the better-off. (The Spectator via GWPF)
Windpower Emissions: The Kleekamp Critique (Part II – Capacity Considerations) by Kent Hawkins Part I of this series critiquing an article by Chuck Kleekamp dealt with the more general issues of examples used, one of the major references and electricity markets. There is a lot found to question his analysis. This post focuses on capacity considerations and other miscellaneous issues raised by Kleekamp. Finally, Part III addresses his remarkably inappropriate warning, “If you think wind power is expensive, wait till you have to pay for electricity from a new nuclear plant.” (MasterResource)
Europe's Green Energy Faces Subsidy Shake-Up The European Union looks set to overhaul the way renewable energy projects and power grids are financed, launching a new type of infrastructure bond and
converging the EU's tangle of overlapping subsidies.
Global food system must be transformed 'on industrial revolution scale' The existing food system fails half the people on the planet, and needs radical change if world is to feed itself, report warns (Guardian)
Terence Corcoran: How to feed a food crisis Members of the G20, the UN, the FAO, the EU, and other bastions of state planning and intervention – having misread the causes of the global financial meltdown and the associated U.S. mortgage crisis—now seem set to mastermind another misdirected venture. A global move is underway that would have the great meddlers tackle what they see as the next crisis: food. The immediate focus is food prices, which are rising around the world. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) — itself a leading think-tank for bad policy — talked of a “food price shock” in a recent report. It noted that commodity prices were approaching 2008 levels again and that food price inflation appeared to be escalating within many nations. There is no sign of crisis yet, but the FAO and others seem ready to give it a try. One of the surest ways to precipitate a crisis would be to unleash a batch of global initiatives to try to manage, regulate and control the supply and price of food. Many nations, from Canada to France to India and Malaysia, already have policies that maintain prices and manipulate agricultural production, disrupting markets and often limiting output. The objective now, in many places, is to do more of the same, except on a grander scale. Read More (Financial Post)
Michael Pento: Easy money behind food prices From all accounts, it appears the world is in the early stages of a major leg up in food prices. The major macroeconomic trend will likely drive economic policy and the investment outlook for years to come. Although mainstream pundits like to focus on such cyclical drivers as the weather, the real force behind the move is secular. The U.S. is leading the world in a pandemic of monetary inflation that is helping to cause commodity prices, food in particular, to skyrocket across the globe. The U.S. Federal Reserve’s monetary excess is currently being magnified by China’s misguided currency peg policy. As the United States debases its currency through excess printing, China must follow suit. In order to maintain a consistent relative valuation, China must adopt the monetary policy of the United States. Read More (Financial Post)
Regulatory Costs Are Boiling Over The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been ordered to issue job-killing regulations that the agency and industry both agree are faulty and unfeasible. The EPA’s blunder is an object lesson on the costly consequences of reckless rulemaking and regulatory excess. The impending regulations address emissions from industrial boilers and incinerators. Agency officials have projected that the new standards will kill (yes, kill!) between 5,000 and 10,000 jobs—and cost nearly $10 billion to implement. In contrast, an independent study by IHS Global Insight, an economic forecasting firm, determined that 16,000 jobs would be at risk for every $1 billion spent on compliance. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Blue day for reds as Browner leaves White House Obama energy and environment czar Carol Browner reportedly is leaving the White House. She can now rejoin her comrades at Socialist International. Dasvidania, Carol. Drop us a line from the scrap heap of history — let us know how Al Gore is doing. (Green Hell Blog)
Director of Policy on Climate Will Leave, Her Goal Unmet WASHINGTON — Carol M. Browner, the White House coordinator for energy and climate change policy, will leave the administration shortly, officials confirmed
Monday night. Her departure signals at least a temporary slowing of the ambitious environmental goals of President Obama’s first two years in the face of new
Republican strength in Congress.
Global Warming: After the 1998 tobacco deal, many wondered where the next battleground for the shakedown lawyers would be. Few wonder now. The legal war over
climate change is heating up — and it'll be costly.
Climate litigation: hundreds of billions of dollars
Climate change: Dogs of law are off the leashWhile no court has awarded anyone a single cent for climate-related damages yet, some people are getting ready for the possible explosion of such lawsuits in the future. At hundreds of billions of dollars, the damages could humiliate all the cancer-related tobacco and asbestos lawsuits. So it makes sense for many people to dream about these "opportunities" and to get ready. » Don't Stop Reading » (TRF)
Accountability: The new GOP Congress is preparing to cut U.S. funding of the United Nations and the latter is hollering. But with the U.N. doing all it can
to undercut its top donor, we fail to see why Congress shouldn't cut.
“Kiss goodbye” to Cancun CO2 goals, says IEA chief economist It is “virtually impossible” for the world to keep CO2 emissions within the “safe” limits agreed by world governments just weeks ago in Cancun. Speaking what for climate alarmists is ‘the unspeakable’, Dr Fatih Birol, Chief Economist at the International Energy Agency, was addressing an audience at London’s Imperial College on January 19. [Read More] (Peter C Glover, ET)
Rep. Waxman wants GOP chairman to probe climate skeptic’s industry funding ByRep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, is urging committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) to probe whether a high-profile climate skeptic misled the panel about how much the petroleum industry funds his work. In a letter to Upton
Monday, Waxman urges Upton to help him explore how much the petroleum industry backs Dr. Patrick Michaels, a scholar with the conservative Cato Institute who testified
before the committee about climate change in 2009.
Hansen Savages Democrats In Shock Statement. Turns on Clinton Administration. James Hansen, the controversial scientist at the centre of the global warming movement has turned on America’s Democrat party in a shock announcement, savaging past Democrat administrations for “huge mistakes” that denied America the possibility of producing zero carbon emissions energy by now. (Haunting the Library)
Flawed ‘Climategate’ Inquiries Failed To Restore Confidence In UK Climate Science The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) remains deeply concerned about the failure by academic and parliamentary inquires to fully and independently investigate the 'Climategate' affair. The latest follow-up report by the Science and Technology Committee on the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) confirms that the Climategate inquiries had serious flaws, lacked balance and transparency and failed to achieve their objective to restore trust and confidence in British climate science. The report by the Science and Technology Committee shows that the inquiries into the conduct and integrity of scientists at the Climatic Research Unit were deficient and biased. (GWPF)
Five Reasons the Planet May Not Be Its Hottest Ever The predicted temperature changes (darker red indicating greater change) due to global warming, based on data that scientists, policymakers and the public
are now questioning.
Contrary to claims of many modern Holocene denying climate hysterics, the 1970s did have a number of writers who believed that the world was going to cool
down. Among these were Stephen Schneider, the founder of the Climate Project at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He wrote:
Really silly: Cuts in emissions are at a premium Liam Phelan
Precipitation, Convection & Climate Change An increase in tropical storm activity has long been predicted as a harmful side-effect of human induced global warming. Hurricanes are to become more frequent and more deadly. All of this is predicated on the notion that a hotter climate will result in more moisture in the atmosphere and more frequent tropical storms. As it turns out, this is only half true. There may be more precipitation in the temperate zone, but an increase in tropical storms is not predicted—even by the IPCC models. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)
Confessions In The News On The “Predictability” Of The Climate System I was alerted to a post on Climate Progress (h/t to Dan Hughes) titled Another terrific ABC News story — on the role global warming is playing in extreme winter weather where it is written
This statement encapsulates where we are in being able to predict the climate in the coming years and decades. Climate, as affected by both natural and human forcings and feedback, is unpredictable on these time scales! (Roger Pielke Sr.)
Victorian floods Jan 2011 may not be caused by La Nina I am amazed at the way the “authorities” have seized on the current La Nina phase of the SOI as the reason for the Victorian floods –
the media
repeat this as gospel truth.
Guest Post “Global Floods – Why Were They Not Predicted?” By Will Alexander Will Alexander has provided us with another excellent guest post which is presented below. WJR (Will) Alexander is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Civil Engineering of the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and Honorary Fellow of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering. See also his previous posts Climate Change: The West vs The Rest by Will Alexander A Guest Weblog By Will Alexander “Climategate Chaos” (Roger Pielke Sr.)
Oh boy... Man has been provoking climate change for thousands of years! The Roman Conquest, the Black Death and the discovery of America – by modifying the nature of the forests – have had a significant impact on the environment. These are the findings of EPFL scientists who have researched our long history of emitting carbon into the environment. (EPFL)
No longer pining for organic molecules to make particles in the air New work will help researchers refine atmospheric weather, climate models
Easterbrook on the magnitude of Greenland GISP2 ice core data MAGNITUDE AND RATE OF CLIMATE CHANGES Guest post by Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, The GISP2 Greenland ice core has proven to be a great source of climatic data from the geologic past. Ancient temperatures can be measured using oxygen isotopes in the ice and ages can be determined from annual dust accumulation layers in the ice. The oxygen isotope ratios of thousands of ice core samples were measured by Minze Stuiver and Peter Grootes at the University of Washington (1993, 1999) and these data have become a world standard. (WUWT)
Could Dimming the Sun Change Teleconnections in Weather Patterns as we Know Them? Solar radiation management projects, also known as sun dimming, seek to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth to counteract the effects of climate change. Global dimming can occur as a side-effect of fossil fuels or as a result of volcanic eruptions, but the consequences of deliberate sun dimming as a geoengineering tool are unknown. (Atmospheric Science Letters)
Barrasso slams spill commission, says members weren't experts on drilling ByA member of the Senate GOP leadership team is bashing the presidential oil spill commission’s final report, a sign that the panel’s ideas will have trouble gaining bipartisan support.
U.S. wind power drops off despite falling prices by Martin LaMonica
Missouri Senate to reconsider renewable-energy mandate JEFFERSON CITY | Depending on whom you believe, state lawmakers are about to slap Missouri voters in the face — or rob them blind.
Windpower Emissions: Kleekamp Critique (Part I – Introduction) by Kent Hawkins This post is the first in a three part series that critiques the recently published article “Wind Power Always Replaces Fossil Fuels” by Chuck Kleekamp, which provides material for another in the series of my critiques of wind proponents’ claims. Previously analyzed were papers by Milligan, Komanoff and Gross. My understanding is that this author has previously made notable contributions to environmental matters. Let’s see how he does with respect to wind. To begin, I cannot help commenting on the inclusion of “Always” in the title. The apparent certainty in this term immediately alerts me to a questionable analysis. Perhaps the author meant to be provocative, and was not serious in the use of this word. If so, this does not give due consideration to the importance of the matter. This leads to another general comment. In a circulation of a draft of these posts to a panel of reviewers, one commented on the nature of Kleekamp’s article as that of not having sufficient knowledge of the subject, but attempting to appear so. He provides descriptions, but makes errors in the process. Cases in point are his (1) example of the Mirant Canal oil-fired plants and (2) description of electricity system markets and activities of the System Operator of New England (ISO NE). [Read more →] (MasterResource)
New study of environmental contaminants in breast milk The levels of environmental contaminants in a mother's body decrease during breast-feeding. After a year of lactation, the levels of a number of
environmental contaminants in breast milk drop by 15 – 94 per cent, according to a recent study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. There has been
little study into this topic previously.
Regular readers of this blog know that I am no fan of the cholesterol theory of heart disease. Despite the mountain of evidence against this so-called
causation, (cholesterol-lowering) statins are the best-selling class of drugs in the world.
My goodness! Montrealers are feeding fish Prozac Research shows influence on brain activity while long-term consequences are unclear
Genetically modified crops are the key to human survival, says UK's chief scientist Sir John Beddington argues that moves to block GM crops on moral grounds are no longer sustainable
Example to accompany previous comment: EPA Sued Over Pesticides, Endangered Species Environmental conservation groups sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday to force it to tighten regulation of pesticide use, arguing that
the agency was not consulting wildlife officials.
Reality check for moonbat: Flashback 2002: Monbiot Quotes Director of “Hate Group”, Claims End of Meat, Dairy & Eggs by 2012 In a recent article George Monbiot lambasted his opponents (and to be fair, they are legion) for claiming that many of his fellow greenies were anti-human and spouted hate-filled rhetoric. “The great majority of greens are powerfully motivated by a concern for social justice, and recognise that if we don’t defend our life-support systems, humanity will suffer grievously” he wrote sententiously. Really? Let’s examine that claim. In fairness to Monbiot, rather than picking someone from the green movement at random we’ll restrict ourselves to people whom Monbiot himself relies on when writing his articles telling us how we must live. (Haunting the Library)
Eye-roller brought to you by htl: UNEP: Is This Their Dumbest Claim Yet? Take a look at the following graphic from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP): (looks like a hockey stick standing on its end, doesn’t it?) It shows a huge rise in natural disasters since 1900, from zero to around 450 per year, and asks us to consider what percentage of these are caused by global warming. (Haunting the Library)
With climate bill dead, Obama faces pressure from greens on address ByWhite House officials are crafting this year’s State of the Union amid pleas from environmentalists to play climate defense. Read more... (E2 Wire)
UK Government Goes MAD: Plans to Airlift Fish to “Cope With Global Warming”. The British Government appears to have been poisoned with LSD or a similar hallucinogen, and has announced that it will be releasing more than ONE HUNDRED reports on how it intends to cope with global warming. The first of the reports, due to be released later this week, will lay out plans – apparently in all seriousness – to airlift fish from areas like the lake district hundreds of miles north to Scotland. (Haunting the Library)
Exxon forecast: 25% more CO2 emissions It’s good news for green plants but bad news for green people: carbon dioxide emissions will increase by 25 percent in the next 20 years, according to ExxonMobil. The UK newspaper, The Guardian, expressed the lament of the green people, observing that the forecast:
Speaking on behalf of green plants, we observe that greater CO2 emissions represents more life for plants and, subsequently, better lives for people (even the green ones, though they’ll never admit it!) (Green Hell Blog)
This is what they want the US to sign on to: Traders condemn EU's 'Mickey Mouse' carbon market after botched trading statement A city trader accused the European commission tonight of running a "Mickey Mouse" carbon-trading scheme after some traders lost heavily on the
market owing to a botched trading statement.
Cry 'havoc!' and let slip the dogs of climate lore: Climate change: Dogs of law are off the leash PARIS — From being a marginal and even mocked issue, climate-change litigation is fast emerging as a new frontier of law where some believe hundreds of
billions of dollars are at stake.
Commentary: Hansen Draft Paper: Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change January 24th, 2011 by Dr. Martin Hertzberg As the saying goes: “If all you have in your hand is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail”. It is hopeless to expect that Hansen could possibly analyze data objectively – all he has in his head is “CO2 climate forcing” and everything else has to be “forced” into that ridiculous paradigm. It makes no difference to him that the predictions of his past half-baked computer models based on “CO2 climate forcing” were completely wrong. It is not worth my time (or anyone else’s in my opinion) to try to critique the entire paper, but the final paragraph on his p. 11 stands our like a sore thumb. In it he states: ” Earth orbital (Milankovic) parameters have favored a cooling trend for the past several thousand years, which should be expected to start in the Northern Hemisphere (NH). For example, Earth is now closest to the sun in January, which favors warm winters and cool summers in the Northern Hemisphere.” Read the rest of this entry » (SPPI)
Sigh... Wartime posters to fight climate change Wartime-style posters are to be used in a new campaign against climate change following a hard-hitting report that compares the current environmental crisis to World War II. (TDT)
Junior gets carried away with advocacy, again: FT Column on Disasters and Climate Change Writing in today's FT, Simon Kuper has a great essay on disasters and climate change that draws on some of my work. Here is the bottom line:
Read the whole thing. (Roger Pielke Jr.)
Erroneous Lessons from Earth's Past Climate alarmists have been slow to learn that their over-reliance on computer models and unproven theories has harmed their public credibility. In an attempt to counter the richly deserved bad press that climate science has been garnering these days, a number of global warming true believers are trying a different, more fact based approach to scaring the public. One such attempt recently appeared in the journal Science—not as a paper describing original research but as a perspective article. In it, a Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado, attempts to “weave together” some carefully selected “threads in the discussion of climate” to arrive at a very familiar and unconvincing conclusion. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)
New melt record for Greenland ice sheet CCNY's Marco Tedesco says 'exceptional' season stretched up to 50 days longer than average
New paper: Cosmic rays contribute 40% to global warming From the Hindu Physicist U.R. Rao says carbon emission impact is lower than IPCC claim A key belief of climate science theology — that a reduction in carbon emissions will take care of the bulk of global warming — has been questioned in a scientific paper released by the Environment Ministry on Monday. Physicist and the former ISRO chairman, U.R. Rao, has calculated that cosmic rays — which, unlike carbon emissions, cannot be controlled by human activity — have a much larger impact on climate change than The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims. In fact, the contribution of decreasing cosmic ray activity to climate change is almost 40 per cent, argues Dr. Rao in a paper which has been accepted for publication in Current Science, the preeminent Indian science journal. The IPCC model, on the other hand, says that the contribution of carbon emissions is over 90 per cent. ‘Cosmic ray impact ignored’ Releasing Dr. Rao’s findings as a discussion paper on Thursday, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh noted that “the impact of cosmic ray intensity on climate change has thus far been largely ignored by the mainstream scientific consensus.” He added that the “unidimensional focus” on carbon emissions by most Western countries put additional pressure on countries like India in international climate negotiations. Continue reading (WUWT)
Why include the nonsense? Researchers find smoking gun of world's biggest extinction Massive volcanic eruption, burning coal and accelerated greenhouse gas choked out life
EPA to allow higher ethanol blends in newer vehicles ByAs expected, the Environmental Protection Agency granted a waiver Friday allowing model year 2001-2006 vehicles to fuel with gasoline blended with up to 15
percent ethanol.
Inhofe to target EPA's ethanol waiver BySen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) is calling for oversight hearings on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) decision Friday to allow higher blends of
ethanol in newer vehicles’ gasoline. By Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) sees an easy target in the drive to cut spending while leaving no "sacred cow" untouched. Read more... (E2 Wire)
More scams falling apart: Biofuel Jatropha Falls From Wonder-Crop Pedestal Jatropha, a biofuel-producing plant once touted as a wonder-crop, is turning out to be much less dependable than first thought, both environmentalists and
industry players say.
Senior Republican rejects call for higher offshore drilling fees ByHouse Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) is rebuffing the presidential oil spill commission’s call. Read more... (E2 Wire)
Citing gas prices, oil industry calls for expanded U.S. oil drilling ByCiting rising gas prices, the oil industry called on the Obama administration Friday to expand domestic oil-and-gas production.
The Love Affair With the Fireplace Cools WINSOME BROWN, an actress and writer, and her husband, Claude Arpels, own an enviable apartment in TriBeCa worthy of a spread in an interior design magazine.
The apartment — which is, in fact, being considered for an issue of Elle Décor — has maple floors, casement windows and all the character one would expect
to find in a building that was once a factory.
Germany to cut solar subsidies to households BERLIN — Germany plans to slash subsidies paid to households generating electricity with their own solar panels by up to 15 percent, and six months earlier
than planned, the government said Thursday.
House backs repeal of Obama healthcare law The Republican-led House of Representatives passed legislation that would repeal President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare reform law on Wednesday in a mostly symbolic move likely to be scuttled in the Senate. (Reuters)
House Republicans launch healthcare law push Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday launched a plan to replace President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul "branch by
branch" with measures they say would bring down soaring costs.
In an article that makes you roll your eyes and wonder “where do they find these people?” the BBC interviews Dr Spencer Wells, explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society and in charge of their Genographic project, about his new book Pandora’s Seed (Haunting the Library)
Yes, Virginia, A Climate Cover-Up Junk Science: Democrats in Virginia are trying to stop their attorney general from probing climate fraud carried out by university researchers at taxpayer
expense. Are they afraid of finding the inconvenient truth?
Enviros call on Obama to defend climate rules in State of the Union ByAhead of President Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday, various interest groups are putting pressure on the president to save a few words for their
policy priorities. And environmentalists got in on the action Thursday by calling on the president to underscore his intention to block any attempt to overturn
Environmental Protection Agency regulations.
Warmists Step Up Attacks on Democracy – Chomsky: Election of Republicans “Death Knell for Humans” In an interview broadcast on The Nation’s website Professor Chomsky has stated that democratic elections and the election of sceptical representative posed “a danger to the survival of the species”. The latest democratic elections were a disaster, according to Chomsky, because the stupid, irresponsible masses had elected Republicans who were sceptical of global warming. For this, the media had to share some of the blame, as they sometimes allowed dissenting voices to be heard, which the professor obviously thinks is a terrible crime. It only confuses people when they hear two sides to a story. (Haunting the Library)
“EPA Expands Climate Agenda to the Current Fleet of Power Plants and Refineries” — VanNess Feldman by Marlo Lewis On December 23, 2010, one day before the Yuletide season when Members of Congress, the media, and Tea Party activists are least likely to watchdog the federal bureaucracy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced rulemakings to establish New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from power plants and refineries. Or maybe “whispered” would be more accurate. If you didn’t read the text of EPA’s press release and just skimmed the headline, you would not know the agency had just launched the next phase of its greenhouse gas regulatory program. The release carried this bland and uninformative title: ”EPA to Set Modest Pace for Greenhouse Gas Standards/Agency stresses flexibility and public input in developing cost-effective and protective GHG standards for largest emitters.” Then on Dec. 30, with… (Cooler Heads)
EPA Changing the Rules as They Go Congress isn’t the only entity that knows how to pick winners and losers for energy sources and technologies. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is doing its best to follow suit by imposing new rules on the natural gas industry and providing exemptions to the biomass industry. For natural gas, the EPA evasively posted a new rule on hydraulic fracturing, requiring a company to obtain permits if the company uses diesel when fracking. Hydraulic fracturing, a long-proven process by which pressurized water and other substances are injected into wells to extract natural gas, has been the subject of much debate between environmentalists and industry because of those “other substances.” An exemption in the 2005 Safe Drinking Water Act protects natural gas companies from disclosing proprietary information regarding the chemicals they use to when fracking. Environmentalists are pushing for full disclosure because of the concern that hydraulic fracturing is a threat to America’s drinking water. But in this instance, with the EPA’s new rule on diesel disclosure, perhaps more unsettling than the new rule is the way in which the EPA issued the rule. Mike Soraghan of Greenwire reports: (The Foundry)
Support the Stockholm Initiative The Stockholm Initiative is a politically and economically independent non-profit organization with the ambition to examine the basis of current and planned climate policies and their political and economical consequences. (Warwick Hughes)
Alarmists Caught Off-Guard(ian) It’s a Guardian headline that might cause you to think its journalists were taking a good look at themselves,
But Suzanne Goldenberg is pointing her fingers elsewhere. (Ben Pile, Climate Resistance)
Hmm... this again: Institute to investigate CO2 leak claims at Sask carbon-capture site A Regina-based research institute is launching an investigation into alleged environmental contamination at a Weyburn-area farm from the world's largest
carbon capture and storage (CCS) project operated by Cenovus Energy of Calgary.
Saskatchewan researchers deny claim of carbon dioxide leak World-leading carbon capture and storage plant draws international scrutiny after complaint from farmers
They don't say... Man, volcanoes and the sun have influenced Europe's climate over recent centuries An International research team has discovered that seasonal temperatures in Europe, above all in winter, have been affected over the past 500 years by
natural factors such as volcanic eruptions and solar activity, and by human activities such as the emission of greenhouse gases. The study, with Spanish
involvement, could help us to better understand the dynamics of climate change.
UC Davis study shows plants moved downhill, not up, in warming world Increased precipitation is the key, authors say
Sounds interesting... until you find it's just a PlayStation® exercise: War, plague no match for deforestation in driving CO2 buildup Stanford, CA— Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes had an impact on the global carbon cycle as big as today's annual demand for gasoline. The Black Death, on
the other hand, came and went too quickly for it to cause much of a blip in the global carbon budget. Dwarfing both of these events, however, has been the
historical trend towards increasing deforestation, which over centuries has released vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as crop and pasture
lands expanded to feed growing human populations. Even Genghis Kahn couldn't stop it for long.
Dessler-Spencer Cloud Feedback Debate Update The e-mail debate I have been having with Andy Dessler over his recent paper purporting to show positive cloud feedback in 10 years of satellite data appears to have reached an impasse. Dick Lindzen has chimed in on my side in recent days, but Andy continues to claim that – at least during the 2000-2010 period in question — I have provided no evidence that clouds cause climate variations. This is remarkably similar to how Kevin Trenberth rebutted my last congressional testimony…”clouds don’t cause climate change”, is approximately what I recall Kevin saying. (Roy W. Spencer)
CMP to regulators: No 'smart' alternative In a switch to new technology, CMP tells regulators it can't allow opt-outs for those worried about meter health risks.
Delaware delays socialization of electric market The Delaware Public Service Commission delayed Delmarva Power’s bid to decouple electricity sales from revenue pending greater “consumer education.” Since 2006, Delmarva has been trying to work out a deal with regulators whereby its revenues would no longer depend on how much electricity it sells. The utility in effect would get to sell less electricity for higher prices, while consumers are forced into energy efficiency and smart meter schemes. A Delmarva spokesman told Smart Grid Today that,
Decoupling should be rejected, however, because:
You can also judge an idea by its advocates. Obama energy and environment czar Carol Browner, a former muckety-muck with Socialist International, promotes decoupling as means of forcing consumers to use less electricity. (Green Hell Blog)
National Commission Spill Report: Too Anti-Drilling Instead of Anti-Spilling by Ben Lieberman The BP Deepwater Horizon Spill Commission report is out and its recommendations would spell bad news both for energy industry jobs and the future price at the pump. The administration-selected panel, dominated by anti-drilling activists but devoid of anyone with actual experience producing energy, proposes to pile new layers of red tape onto a process that already leaves much domestic energy off-limits and creates years of delays for rest. It even includes measures that would virtually shut down new oil drilling in Alaska, though the spill occurred thousands of miles away and under very different conditions in the Gulf of Mexico. But buried in the report is an important truth - the spill occurred because of a series of blunders by BP and… Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
Burton, Bachmann want House on record for drilling ByA dozen members led by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) and including Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) introduced the resolution below on Wednesday. H. Res. 44. A resolution expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that an effective moratorium by the Executive Branch on offshore oil and gas exploration and drilling should be terminated; to the Committee on Natural Resources. The resolution comes as Republicans and some Democrats are bashing the Interior Department for failing to resume issuing deepwater drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico, even though the formal moratorium was lifted in October. Read more... (E2 Wire)
Manchin seeks backing for curbing EPA’s mining permit powers BySen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is urging his Senate colleagues to back his forthcoming legislation to curtail the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to
nix mountaintop-removal coal-mining projects.
Iraqi Oil Not Flooding Market Any Time Soon For better or worse, Iraq’s promise that stability and foreign investment would lead to a flood of oil within years is looking more like a hyped up salesman pitch. [Read More] (Andres Cala, ET)
IEA lauds unconventional gas reserves PARIS, Jan. 19 -- Supplies of natural gas could last more than 250 years if Asian and European economies follow the U.S. unconventional reserves, the IEA
said.
Peter Foster: Solar fades as shale gas flares Shale gas supplies may last 250 years and make renewables uneconomic The Chinese subsidize their manufacturers to take advantage of the ultra-expensive alternative energy forced on western consumers via feed-in tariffs. Smart for them, dumb for us, but since everybody is subsidizing renewables, it’s hard to condemn the Chinese. Indeed, the terms “solar panels” and “free trade” don’t belong in the same conceptual time zone, even if they are reportedly an issue at this week’s meetings in Washington between U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao. There are far bigger issues here than policy hypocrisy. What happens to renewable energy when alarmist climate science collapses? And even if the ideological rearguard action drags on for years, what about the fact that shale gas is about to make renewables look even more ridiculous in terms of both economics and emissions? Read More (Financial Post)
Enron as a Political Company (Part III: Robert L. Bradley Jr. Interview) by Roger Donway
Kaizen: Enron operated in a highly mixed political and economic environment. In the decades that Enron was operating—the 1980s through the early 2000s—to what extent was the U.S. energy market a free market, and to what extent was it regulated economy? Bradley: The energy industries—oil, natural gas, and electricity—have all been politicized. And Ken Lay, the big-picture economics Ph.D., had a skill set that was attracted to the mixed economy and thus to energy, particularly to natural gas. Kaizen: When was Enron created? Bradley: Lay joined Houston Natural Gas Corporation as CEO in May 1984. The next year, HNG became HNG/InterNorth after a merger with InterNorth, a major Midwest supplier. A year later, in 1986, the company was renamed Enron. Kaizen: Did it begin as a regulated company? Bradley: Not really, interestingly. What Lay did in his first six months was to take a company that was selling gas in the largely unregulated Texas market through a vast intrastate pipeline and transform it into a company of interstate gas transmission companies regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) out of Washington, D.C. FERC was the old Federal Power Commission (FPC), where Lay worked while in Washington, D.C. So in addition to its unregulated core, Enron obtained three major interstate pipelines that are public-utility-regulated. And Lay starts staffing up with some very innovative folks who understood the ins and outs of public utility regulation. James E. “Jim” Rogers One was James E. “Jim” Rogers, who had a background with FERC. He was a master at figuring out ways for the regulated pipeline to “beat” its rate case, or how to exceed your authorized regulated rate of return. Kaizen: So Rogers is a ‘gamer’ of regulation. Bradley. Yes, but in a good way since in this case regulatory entrepreneurship was to a large extent pro-consumer—doing what your customers want to transport or sell gas in new ways. Rogers left Enron in 1988 for the electricity industry and is now CEO of Duke Energy, a major electric utility company. He became the leading political entrepreneur of the electricity business. Over the years, he sold his industry on cap-and-trade as a global warming policy strategy—a real blow for the free market and those of us who are against climate alarmism and related policy activism. Kaizen: So Rogers has continued the political capitalism strategy of the late Ken Lay? Bradley: Yes–Ken Lay lives in Jim Rogers! The master of the regulation game for natural gas transmission brought Lay’s get-out-in-front political strategy from Enron to a company called Public Service Company of Indiana, which became Cinergy, which was bought by Duke Energy. Rogers positioned his coal-laden company as very concerned about climate change and wanting cap-and-trade regulation. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Green Energy’s Big Challenge: The Daunting Task of Scaling Up To shift the global economy from fossil fuels to renewable energy will require the construction of wind, solar, nuclear, and other installations on a vast scale, significantly altering the face of the planet. Can these new forms of energy approach the scale needed to meet the world’s energy demands? (David Biello, e360)
China Ups Ante On Rare-Earth Metals High-stake issues such as defense problems regarding China's relationship with North Korea and trade concerns over the yuan's contested value dominated media
commentary during Chinese President Hu Jintao's U.S. this week.
Secrets of the MMR scare, part 3: The Lancet's two days to bury bad news In the third part of a special BMJ series, Brian Deer reveals what happened when he reported misconduct in Andrew Wakefield's MMR research to the medical journal that published it. An accompanying editorial by researchers in Seattle says Deer's articles reveal the urgent need "to fix a system that failed to protect human subjects and the public from the consequences of fraudulent science." And Fiona Godlee, in her editor's choice, says that we urgently need proper mechanisms in the UK for ensuring research integrity. More on MMR:
(BMJ)
Dominic Lawson: The population timebomb is a myth The doom-sayers are becoming more fashionable just as experts are coming to the view it has all been one giant false alarm.
Chemicals lobbying group presses White House on reg review ByIndustry trade groups are quickly using the new White House regulatory review initiative to attack Environmental
Protection Agency rules they allege will create burdens.
Watch out, New York: The Environmental Protection Agency is moving its protection racket into the classroom.
EU having trouble footing greenie bill: EU Delays Tackling Air Pollution To 2012 Or Later The European Union's executive has agreed to delay new laws forcing industry to take costly steps to tackle air pollutants that are blamed for respiratory
problems and premature deaths in cities.
Good: House Energy panel to take aim at Obama climate change regulations ByChairman Fred Upton will target EPA’s regulatory “chokehold,” according to a document laying out the committee's agenda. Read more... (E2 Wire)
Stupid: Obama: U.S., China have ‘responsibility’ to fight global warming ByPresident Obama used a joint appearance with Chinese President Hu Jintao Wednesday to call for cooperation among the two nations – the world’s largest
greenhouse gas polluters – in tackling climate change.
Electric utilities looking for emissions deal The ever-unscrupulous electric utility industry is once again working to bring about climate legislation. (Green Hell Blog)
European carbon market suspended The Telegraph (among others) is reporting that the European carbon market has been suspended for a week following the theft of emissions permits from the Czech registry.
I'm not sure I understand why they feel it necessary to suspend the market this time. According to the same article,
Industrial-scale fraud - environmentalism's legacy to the world. (Bishop Hill)
Greenies hate you having any standard of living: MPs urged to ration fuel or miss carbon emissions targets Report calls for system of Tradable Energy Quotas for businesses and individuals
Democrats try to curb Cuccinelli's powers By Rosalind S. Helderman RICHMOND - Democrats in the General Assembly are trying to curb the power of the state's attorney general to subpoena public universities in an effort intended to limit inquiries like the one Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II is conducting at the University of Virginia. Under a 2002 statute designed to catch government employees defrauding the public of tax dollars, Cuccinelli (R) has demanded that the university turn over documents and e-mails related to the work of Michael Mann, a former university climate scientist whose research showed that the Earth has been warming. Cuccinelli has said he wants the documents, including grant applications and e-mails exchanged between Mann and 39 other scientists and university staffers, to help determine whether Mann committed fraud by knowingly skewing data as he sought publicly funded grants for his research. Cuccinelli's demand has pleased conservatives, who say that global warming is a hoax, but has outraged many academics, who say he is smearing an honest researcher because he does not approve of his findings. (WaPo)
California utility PG&E Corp. has just learned something about CFLs — they don’t work as well as touted. According to a report in today’s Wall Street Journal, PG&E’s $92 million rebate program for CFL usage during 2006-2008 saved 73% less energy than originally projected by PG&E:
Combined with their inherent mercurial hypocrisy, this new information should add urgency to the House effort to repeal the ban on incandescents. (Green Hell Blog)
I call "Bullshit!" Climate Change Growing Risk For Insurers: Industry Insurers are struggling to assess the risks from climate change, industry officials say, with the floods in Australia and Brazil highlighting the potential losses from greater extremes of weather. (Reuters)
Oh dear... Harrabin's Notes: Mission impossible? In his regular column, BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin examines the claims by the chief economist at a major energy think-tank that it is virtually impossible to keep CO2 within "safe" limits. (BBC)
Dr. Wolgang Thüne Slams Climate Policy: Efforts To Steer Climate Are “Utopian Pipe Dreams” 19. Januar 2011 The concept of “climate catastrophe” in Germany was born 25 years ago writes German meteorologist Dr. Wolfgang Thüne here at his blogsite and, as of today, except for the media bluster, there are still no signs of it. Thüne writes:
Later that year in August, Der Spiegel came out with its infamous Climate Catastrophe issue whose front cover showed Germany’s beloved Cologne Cathedral landmark half-submerged in sea water. The warning on the cover read: “Ozone Hole – Ice Cap Melt – Greenhouse Effect: Scientists warn of THE CLIMATE CATASTROPHE”. (No Tricks Zone)
Even The Guardian figured out it was crap: Online news service promotes false climate change study EurekAlert! carried a study with unfounded global warming claims that the planet would warm by 2.4C by 2020 (Guardian)
Hurricane Damage Risk and Predictions Karen Clark and Co. have released an updated report (here in PDF, the table shown above comes from the report) evaluating the performance of short-term predictions of US hurricane damage from catastrophe modeling firms (h/t ClimateWire). Clark, one of the founders of the cat modeling industry, finds that the near-term cat model predictions have come up shortWe have now completed the first five-year near term hurricane model projected period, and actual insured loss experience has been well below the level of the model predictions. Four of the past five years have had minimal insured property loss from Atlantic tropical cyclones, well below both the long term average and the (much higher) near term projections. To date, the catastrophe models have not demonstrated any skill in projecting near term hurricane losses.These conclusions reinforce the results of my analysis of short-term landfall and damage projections (PDF). The figure below comes from that paper and shows the historical record of US hurricane landfalls from 1851-2008. There has been no upward trend in hurricane landfalls or damage over the period of available data. Looking globally at all hurricanes and tropical cyclones, there are no upwards trends in frequency (top graph below, from R. Maue) or intensity (bottom graph below, from R. Maue) over the period of record. To some degree the issue of short-term hurricane risk has become tangled in the debate over human-caused climate change and its long-term effects on hurricane behavior. These issues should not be conflated for the simple reason that even taking predictions of a significant human influence on hurricane behavior as a given, it will be many, many decades before that signal can be seen in the damage record. It is simply logical that a signal that cannot be seen for decades is not immediately relevant to judgments of near-term risk. (Roger Pielke Jr.)
by Marlo Lewis During the past two millennia and more, Europe suffered during cooler, drier periods and flourished during warmer, wetter periods. That’s what any attentive reader will infer from “2500 Years of European Climate Variability and Human Susceptibility,” a study published in ScienceExpress by Swiss researcher Ulf Büntgen and 11 U.S. and European colleagues. The study, based on the most extensive collection of proxy data from European tree ring samples ever assembled, confirms what Thomas Gale Moore of the Hoover Institution concluded in his 1998 book, Climate of Fear, namely, “happiness is a warm planet.” However, the Büntgen team leave that at the level of implication. Indeed, the study includes politically-correct statements that are either gratuitous or intended to placate the Gorethodox. The study’s Abstract, for example, states that “Recent warming is unprecedented.” There’s no discussion of this point in… Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
EDITORIAL: NASA extremist advocates U.S. decline Radical green James Hansen pushes Chinese war on American economy
Randall Hoven
Shriek! Dr. Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC: Fifth Assessment Report well underway Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, visited Finland on 14 January. He stated that the long-range activities
of the IPCC have markedly increased people's knowledge of climate change.
NASA Sun Spot Number predictions revised again UPDATE: see my animation of NASA solar forecasts since 2004 below. WUWT Commenter J Gary Fox writes: The solar cycle 24 predicted sunspot maximum has been reduced again – predicted peak down to 59 Max. (1/3/11) http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. Philosopher Y. Berra This will be at the level of the Maunder Minimum of 1675 -1715.
Interior official declines to offer specific timeline for Gulf drilling ByThe Interior Department’s top drilling official declined to give details on when the department will begin issuing new deepwater drilling permits for the
Gulf of Mexico.
The Assault on Drilling Is Onshore, Too Gas prices are nearly 40 cents per gallon higher than what they were last year and show no sign of falling any time soon. Although there are plenty of ideas that could help lower prices, the Obama Administration is doing much more harm than good. We’ve written in great detail about the Obama Administration’s attack on offshore drilling. They announced that the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts will not be part of the government’s 2012–2017 Outer Continental Shelf program, effectively banning drilling in those areas for the next seven years. Permits in the areas we can drill are down considerably, and the President’s oil spill commission report recommends new fees and tighter regulations moving forward. As a result, our financially strapped government is unable to collect billions in potential oil revenue. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
No shortage of energy resources, or of people willing to exploit them: Discoveries fuel China's resource security BEIJING - Chinese geologists have detected "super-thick" oil and gas-bearing stratums in the northern part of the South China Sea and identified 38
offshore oil and gas-bearing basins, a senior official said on Saturday.
Bill Gates Jumps Into Oil Exploration; Brazil's Reserves to Double? Bill Gates has read the tea leaves, and thinks that there is money in advanced oil exploration technologies. (Al Fin Energy - ht GWPF)
How it Works: Drive up Food Prices By Demanding Biofuel, Then Blame Global Warming. <<another long post – but again, it’s worth it: this is important. It reveals how global warming alarmists are responsible for the rising food prices they blame on global warming>> Sometimes you don’t know who’s worse: the global warming alarmists, banging the pan with their latest prediction of impending doom, or the mainstream media who seem to not only let them, but positively help them. (Haunting the Library)
Sino-American renewable energy trade war Benny Peiser has sent us - subscribers of his GWPF mailing list - some articles about a newly emerging trade war between China and America. This civil war
inside the de facto Sino-American currency union is kind of incredible.
They have paid something between $43 and $58 billion [?! should read millions - Ed.] in subsidies - cash that was stolen from the sensible Massachusetts
taxpayers and/or wittingly donated by the brainwashed ones. The idea has always been that it's great to waste money for this stuff because it will be making a
better world in the distant future. » Don't Stop Reading » (TRF)
It is no secret that I have been a critic of Range Fuels — not necessarily of their technology but of their approach. [Read More] (Robert Rapier, ET)
Oxymoronic Windpower (Part II: Windspeak) by Jon Boone Windspeak: Language used by those who profit financially, politically, or ideologically from wind technology that disguises, distorts, or reverses the meanings of words in order to promote the technology. Oxymorons, which combine incongruous or contradictory terms, abound in windspeak—viz, windpower, wind capacity, responsible windpower (double oxymoron), windfarms, windparks, wind jobs, wind reliability workshops, and wind as alternate energy. Generally any claim made for the technology in windspeak produces the virtually opposite effect in reality. With the right story and no accountability, Madison Avenue can sell fantasy wholesale. Rock Hudson’s ad executive did just this 50 years ago in the charming send-up to our commercial culture, Lover Come Back, when he successfully marketed a non-existent product, VIP. Nothing illustrates this idea better than the au courant fantasia about wind technology, where public relations legerdemain has deployed the power of windspeak to give wind a complete makeover, transforming a klutzy pretender into a seemingly benevolent superhero unbound by the laws of physics and even its own history. This is due in no small part because of the way wind has been entwined in stories deeply embedded within our cultural consciousness. Giving the Middle Ages a contemporary look, J. K. Rowling borrowed much from fictional works by J. R. R.Tolkien, a medieval history and literature scholar who thought Shakespeare too modern and vulgar. Her Harry Potter books invite comparison to the current wind propaganda narrative. Like these stories, wind is presented as a coming of age chronicle, complete with the use of magical powers and the idea of transforming ancient technologies into modern elixirs. Although wind in its latest incarnation has been at the public trough for nearly 40 years, windspeak portrays its hero as an infant wizard preparing to save the world; it simply needs more time at Hogwarts-like institutions such as Stanford and MIT. What is even more striking is how wind has franchised itself, much like the Harry Potter phenomenon, through self promotion, using product placement and embedded, leveraged marketing techniques a la GE/NBC/CNBC. A quick Internet search revealed the following items, under “Wind Marketing:” mugs, t-shirts, boxer shorts, thongs, back packs, lunch boxes, posters, tote bags, hats, aprons, yoga mats, license plate frames, wall clocks, keepsake boxes, greeting cards, buttons, decals, gym bags, desktop wind turbine, Lego’s wind turbines, a Lionel wind turbine cargo car and O gauge wind turbines. And, from our good friends at Greenpeace, there’s the Wind Farm Game. In fact, for nearly every product used to leverage the Potter Syndrome, there is a counterpart with wind. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Europe's Debt Crisis Slows Push For Green Power The economic crisis has eroded the ambitions of the European Union's first energy summit next month to discuss a 1 trillion euro ($1.3 trillion) strategy for
green power and high-tech power grids, a draft document shows.
Medicine: As the House moves to repeal the nationalization of health care, Britain plans to take a scalpel to its National Health Service, opening it up to
competition and letting doctors and patients call the shots.
Opinion: "Raw feelings over health care law have eased, poll suggests," shouts an Associated Press headline that ran last weekend, just days before
Congress was set to vote. Really? Our poll suggests just the opposite.
How Chemophobia Threatens Public
Health
Analysis cautions against wider use of statins There is not enough evidence to recommend the widespread use of statins like Pfizer's Lipitor or AstraZeneca's Crestor in people with no previous history of
heart disease, scientists said on Wednesday.
Still with the cholesterol obsession: Spread the word: medicinal margarine not worth the money IF YOU struggle with high cholesterol, you are better off visiting your GP for a prescription than looking for a solution in the supermarket aisles, says a medical paper that casts doubt on the effectiveness of food products claiming to reduce cholesterol reabsorption. (SMH)
Senate Democrat calls for vanquishing 'Frankenfish' ByAn Alaska Democrat said Tuesday that one of his top legislative priorities in 2011 is vanquishing a little-known creature he calls “Frankenfish.”
Food Chain Not Stretched to Limit—yet BY DENNIS T. AVERYCHURCHVILLE, VA—The cable network MSNBC is warning that the world food chain “has been stretched to the limit” by rising world demand and a series of crop failures in several countries. The TV network’s warning is premature. The U.S., in fact, could ease the current global food price spike with one administrative action—limiting the amount of U.S. corn that gets turned into corn ethanol. Recently, about one-third of America’s huge corn crop has been diverted from food and feed into an ultra-costly auto fuel that gives consumers poorer mileage even as it drives up their food costs. The corn ethanol diversion creates an artificial scarcity of farmland, as it attracts more land into corn instead of wheat or other crops—and the price effects are felt globally. In 2008, the ethanol mandate drove food prices up by more than 50 percent worldwide, and triggered food riots in Mexico and several other countries. Read the rest of this entry » (SPPI)
Manufacturing lobby to Obama: Halt climate rules in new regulatory review ByThe National Association of Manufacturers said Tuesday that greenhouse gas regulations should fall victim to the new White House regulatory review policy, a sign that business groups
may use the initiative as a tool for battling climate rules.
Gibbs on regulations plan: Don’t call it a rollback ByWhite House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs sought to provide reassurance Tuesday that new plans to ensure regulations don’t hinder the economy will not be used to gut environmental and public health protections. “Look, go back 20, go back 30 years, go back to the late 1960s when rivers were on fire, when there were very few rules that didn't allow the emittance of the types of pollution that caused asthma or threatened the health of the American people,” Gibbs said at a press briefing. “We're not going to go back to that. There's a reason why those are in place.” He added: “But let's go review and ensure that as we're protecting that health, that we're not sacrificing unnecessarily economic growth. But at the same time, let's not forget the important reason why a number of those . . . regulations are likely in place, and that is to protect the well-being of the American people.” Read more... (E2 Wire)
Might as well disband the EPA then... White House signals tougher scrutiny of climate rules ByUnder a new regulatory framework unveiled Tuesday, the Obama administration will subject upcoming climate change rules to additional analysis to ensure they
are not overly burdensome to the business community, a senior administration official said.
Energy: Keeping a campaign vow to bankrupt the industry, the administration revokes the permit for an approved, working coal mine in West Virginia. Guess
those electric cars will have to get their energy elsewhere.
Cuccinelli-Mann probe takes a bizarre twist Wow. In the middle of the battle, the warmists erroneously send up a flare from their position, drawing undue attention to the target. I rather expected a moribund outcome from this investigation, maybe a couple of embarrassing quotes, maybe a hotheaded Santeresque comment by Dr. Michael Mann about Dr. Pat Michaels, but that was about it. Now, with them trying to retroactively change the law as a way to head off the investigation, it makes me wonder if maybe there’s really something profound there in those communications after all. Bad move fellas, you just made the Q Score for this story triple. From the Daily Progress: By Bryan McKenzie Two Democratic state senators are proposing to change state law to thwart Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s efforts to investigate a former University of Virginia professor’s research on global warming. Continue reading (WUWT)
ATI Denounces Efforts to Block Taxpayer Access to Public Information If you are unable to read this press release, please click here: Source: http://www.atinstitute.org/blog_post/show/63 This move is transparently designed to substitute for the University’s faltering legal defense against Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli in his pre-investigation of possible fraud involving millions of dollars. It also heightens the importance of ATI’s recent, pending request <http://www.atinstitute.org/blog_post/show/58> for the same records sought by Mr. Cuccinelli, which thanks to his inquiry, the University no longer denies possessing, but only refuses to produce. Read the rest of this entry » (SPPI)
MICHAELS: China-style dictatorship of climatologists NASA's Hansen prefers rule by decree to fight 'global warming'
US Agencies Still Fiddling Temperature Record, Reports SPPI NASA and NOAA, which each receive close to half a billion dollars a year in taxpayer funding, have been systematically fiddling the worldwide temperature
record for years, making “global warming” look worse than it is, according to a new paper by the Science and Public Policy Institute. The findings are
reported by Joe D’Aleo, a leading meteorologist.
Al Gore highlights link between floods, global warming in 'climate crisis' ByThe former vice president held up floods in Australia and Brazil as signs of climate change, urging immediate action. Read more... (E2 Wire)
If warming caused these floods, why didn’t warmists predict them? A word to the global warming extremists who now claim that these floods in south-eastern Queensland are proof of man-made warming. (Andrew Bolt)
Oh this is just sad... How much can we really trust climate models to tell us about the future? Better scientific research and powerful computers mean climate models are getting ever more reliable (Michael D. Lemonick for Yale Environment 360)
A tedious dollop of eco-propaganda Unlike its earlier exhibits, the Science Museum’s new climate-change exhibition neither inspires nor educates.
Global warming is dead, let's move on WE did it. For once, we acted collectively, as humans, huddled together on a fragile planet, rather than as selfish individuals. And we did it: we beat
global warming.
Worse than we thought: Loss of reflectivity in the Arctic doubles estimate of climate models CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new analysis of the Northern Hemisphere's "albedo feedback" over a 30-year period concludes that the region's loss of
reflectivity due to snow and sea ice decline is more than double what state-of-the-art climate models estimate.
From CO2 Science Volume 14 Number 3: 19 January 2011 Editorial: Journal Reviews: The Megadroughts of Monsoon Asia: When did they occur? ... and just how bad were they? Fertilization in Coastal Marine Invertebrates in a CO2 -Enriched and Warmer World: Will ocean acidification and global warming raise havoc with the process? Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment of a C4 Halophyte: How does it respond to a near-doubling of the air's CO2 content? Acclimation Responses of Fruit Flies to Environmental Warming: How significant are they? ... and are they shared by any other insects? Enchytraeid Worm Responses to CO2 , Warming and Drought: What are the individual responses? ... and which of them predominates? Ocean Acidification Database: Plant Growth Database: Medieval Warm Period Project:
Venezuela's Oil Reserves Surpass Those of Saudi Arabia Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez announced that his country's oil reserves total 217 barrels, topping Saudi Arabia's and making them the largest in the world. (MercoPress)
Oxymoronic Windpower (Part I: Howlers) by Jon Boone Definitions: Howler: A ridiculous idea or proposition, one that elicits howling laughter; also, a type of magic spell from the Harry Potter series. Bellyfeel: A blind, enthusiastic acceptance of an idea, taken from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, where any good Oceanian internalizes Party doctrine such that it becomes gut instinct—a feeling in the belly. Blackwhite: In Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, a word that has two contradictory meanings, used to convey how people have been propagandized to believe that black is white while never realizing that the reverse might be true. It is the ultimate achievement of newspeak that requires a continuous alteration of the past made possible by a system of controlled thought. Every major claim made by those who would profit, either financially or ideologically, from wind technology is replete with Owellian doublespeak. Despite the promise of many jobs in the USA, for example, wind provides almost no permanent employment, with most wind manufacturing migrating to China. Despite the bellyfeel assertion that wind is an environmental savior, it is in fact an environmental wrecking ball. Contrary to the proposition wind can back down the coal industry, in most areas of the country it may actually increase coal consumption. However, nothing about wind is more Orwellian than the very term windpower. Despite its pervasive use and casual acceptance, windpower as a contemporary expression of reality is quite at odds with itself, particularly in technologically advanced societies. It’s a howler. Widespread misunderstanding about the difference between energy and power has given cover to the charlatan-like wind lobby which pretends their wares provide something they do not. We are all familiar with blackwhite PR jargon that characterizes wind projects as mills, farms, and parks, despite the looming industrial presence of 450-foot tall turbines propelling rotors at tip speeds of nearly 200-mph for many miles along terrain or seabed. But for sheer oxymoronic audacity, nothing beats the trickeration of the term windpower, since the technology is the very antithesis of modern power performance. In fact, wind provides no modern power. Rather, it throws out spasmodic, highly skittering energy that cannot by itself be converted to modern power. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
EPA’s desperate new smog scare A new study reports that people can suffer lung damage from ground-level ozone (smog) even at the strict new standards proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But this is yet another example of how science can be manufactured by EPA to fit its regulatory agenda. (Green Hell Blog)
Autistic boy wins round in vaccine case Less than a week after another scathing report dismissing the theory that vaccines and autism are linked made international headlines, an en banc state
Superior Court panel remanded the products liability case of an 11-year-old autistic boy, directing a Philadelphia trial court to determine whether the design
defect claim arose from unavoidable vaccine side effects.
Jabs, autism, viruses and panic The link between autism and vaccines is dead, and should be buried.
Salon talks to "Panic Virus" author Seth Mnookin about America's problem with autism conspiracies -- and our own (Salon)
We could wish... Report: Issa ‘passionate’ about climate probe ByWill incoming House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) investigate climate change science or not? The New Yorker magazine’s big new profile of Issa published Monday includes this tidbit: “Issa seems unconvinced about the science behind climate change, and the investigation that he seemed most passionate about when we spoke involved U.S.
government funding for the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. This is the organization behind the so-called Climategate controversy, in which
a batch of e-mails were published, showing, Issa claimed, that there had been fraud involving ‘the base numbers’ underlying our understanding of climate
change.” Issa spokesman Kurt Bardella on Monday pushed back against the depiction of Issa’s climate plans in The New Yorker piece, claiming that Issa had
been asked about the issue rather than raising it as a priority. Read more... (E2 Wire)
How Much of Your Money Wasted on ‘Climate Change’? Try $10.6 Million a Day Seems everyone is talking about the massive United States federal deficit and how it has now reached an unfathomable $14 trillion. Is there any way to
comprehend such a bloated number? Try this: the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. At that speed a photon of light starts at the surface of the Sun and
reaches the Earth in 8 minutes. On Star Trek, the speed of light is warp one — at that speed the Enterprise would travel about 6 trillion miles in one year.
If each dollar of the deficit is represented by one mile, it would take the Enterprise more than two years traveling the speed of light to go 14 trillion miles.
Richard Lindzen: A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. 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. For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The 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. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007), suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century. (GWPF)
Stiglitz Calls For Trade Sanctions in Climate Change Clamp-Down. Former World Bank boss Joseph Stiglitz has called for international trade sanctions against those nations not toeing the line on global warming, saying that sanctions would form part of any future agreement. (Haunting the Library)
Arnie reckons you should cut CO2 emissions: Schwarzenegger says being governor cost him $200 million Arnold Schwarzenegger told a newspaper in his native Austria that his seven years as governor cost him more than $200 million in expenses and lost income
from acting. "But I'm not sorry. It was more than worth it," he said.
Global Warming: Selling Austerity to the Masses. It’s one of the wonders of the global warming alarmists and the Malthusians that they’ve somehow managed to sell the idea of austerity as a step forward for people. As George Monbiot enthusiastically characterized the global warming movement:
Isn’t that simply incredible? They’ve managed to come up with an ideology, in modern times, that actually bases itself on lowering living standards under the pretense that if we don’t do it, nature will. To campaign for less freedom for people because otherwise “Gaia” will curtail it at some future date. To ultimately, as Monbiot puts it, have people campaign against people themselves. (Haunting the Library)
Europe must ban flawed carbon credits Millions of pollution permits in Europe's emissions trading scheme do very little for the environment. A vote on Friday could change that
Lawrence Solomon: Cash-strapped UK to sell its forests to stop climate change “a tree is just a very aged plant that, like any other plant, comes to the end of its life” To raise revenue and stop global warming, the cash-starved UK government plans to privatize England’s crown forests. Environmental groups, unable to explain why climate change shouldn’t trump the preservation of forests, have to date been largely muted. (Financial Post)
Example of how the Australian media propagates misinformation Last night after 10pm I saw some of the ABC 24hr TV News show and the segment was The Drum – a presenter with
a few people (mostly with greenleft views) to discuss current affairs. The subject turned to the Greens
Senator Brown’s call for coal companies to pay bigtime for the Queensland flood cleanup, “because the coal they mine causes global warming and of course
the floods”. Somebody mentioned the statement by Senator Barnaby Joyce in above article “…it was absurd for Senator Brown to blame the coal industry for
floods, which had been a reality in Queensland throughout its history. “In 1893, the flood gauge on the Brisbane River reached 8.35m, so was the coal industry
responsible for that as well?” he (Joyce) asked.
Queensland Flooding Exploited – But Part of Normal Pattern Just two years ago the headlines were bewailing the severe drought in Queensland. Environmentalists exploited the situation with threatening headlines like, “Queensland’s Drought-Parched to drink Purified Sewage.” The stupidity of this is many people drink purified sewage water. (Tim Ball, CFP)
Herod to investigate deaths of first-born - by Richard... A report on the flood disaster and climate change will be undertaken by an expert on the federal government's multi-party committee which is investigating
ways to price carbon. Professor Will Steffen, a member of the climate change committee set up by the Gillard government in September last year, told AAP he was working on a report
covering the floods.
Apparently not a joke: Sunrise arrives two days early in Greenland Global warming blamed for melting the horizon as sun comes up 48 hours too soon
Scientists believe that carbon released from the ocean floor played a key role in past episodes of climate change. Around 55 million years ago, the break-up of the northeast Atlantic continents was associated with the injection of large amounts of molten magma into seafloor sediments. Formation of the North Atlantic basalts heated the carbon-rich sediments, triggering the release of large quantities of methane and carbon dioxide into the ocean and atmosphere. It has been suggested that this release of previously sequestered carbon was responsible for a 100,000 year period of rapid temperature rise known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM. Three letters published in Nature Geoscience suggest that carbon trapped beneath the seabed continues to influence carbon dynamics, at least in the deep ocean. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)
Greens organizing to pressure Congress to pass oil spill bill BySenior House Republicans have criticized the commission's report, setting up a fight with Democrats. Read more... (E2 Wire)
The Report by the Commission on the BP Accident The federal government released last week its long-awaited report on last April’s BP Deepwater Horizon accident. [Read More] (Michael Economides and Phil Rae, ET)
What’s a Business to Do? (In search of heroic capitalism) by MR Administrator
We live in an era when many people–including policymakers and media celebrities–view businesses and corporations with disdain or intense suspicion. Their way of thinking begs a simple question: What is the primary role of business? (MasterResource)
Anger at Fuel Price Hikes: German Minister Urges Supermarkets To Start Selling Gasoline German motorists may soon be able to fill up their cars with cheap gas while doing the grocery shopping. Economy Minister Rainer Brüderle is encouraging the
country's biggest discount supermarket chains to start selling gasoline in a bid to cut prices through increased competition.
Co-op calls for shale gas extraction ban The Manchester-based Co-operative group today called for the banning of a shale gas extraction operation scheduled to begin off the coast of Blackpool,
citing environmental and health concerns.
From the Tyndall Centre for Climate Claptrap: Shale gas moratorium in UK urged by Tyndall Centre The UK government should put a moratorium on shale gas operations until the environmental implications are fully understood, a report says.
Lancashire shale gas drilling being done 'by the book' The chief executive of a firm which is drilling for shale gas in Lancashire has sought to reassure residents and environmentalists that it is safe.
Shale ignorance! Lords blast gov for ignoring cool new fuels Is it time to decouple "Climate Change" from the Department of Energy and Climate Change? If it was the plain old "Department of Energy"
again, it might spend more time researching new fuel sources. Two peers last week took aim at the department because its latest energy blueprints are ignoring
the potential impact of shale gas.
Really stupid ambition: Analysis: Refiners Threaten Anti-Pollution Efforts In Shipping Global efforts to drastically reduce toxic sulfur emissions in the shipping industry will likely be delayed for years due to the reluctance of refiners to
invest billions of dollars to produce cleaner burning fuel.
Are they serious? How to move to 100 percent renewables by 2030 ByWhat would it take to switch the country’s entire energy infrastructure to renewables like wind and solar by 2030?
Are they ever happy? Conservation Group Sues To Stop California Solar Plant A U.S. conversation group has sued the federal government over its approval of a major solar power plant in the California desert, the latest in a string of
challenges to the nation's renewable energy goals from the environmental community.
The No Subsidies Energy Policy Global Environment Fund founder and chief executive Jeffrey Leonard (not 1987 National League Championship Series MVP Jeffrey Leonard) wrote in The Washington Post last week:
This is a fabulous idea which we genuinely hope President Obama adopts. Subsidies distort market signals creating complacency and reducing the incentive to innovate. Despite decades of subsidies, alternative energies such as wind and solar power contribute only 1% of our nation’s energy needs. Subsidies for clean coal, oil, nuclear, and natural gas are no different. Energy industries should be freed from all government subsidies. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Benny Peiser: Climate Change & Civilisation Collapse Like most things, collapse explanations are subject to fashion, and the one most in the limelight today is climatic change … Right now mega-drought is the ‘hot’ explanation for the Classic [Maya] collapse, and the usual bandwagon effect is in full career among many of my colleagues, although others remain properly suspicious of drought as the triggering mechanism. --David Webster, The Fall of the Ancient Maya, London 2002 Introduction One of the most powerful drivers of environmental gloominess and cultural pessimism is the spectre of ecological apocalypse. The mutation of age-old, religious end-time prophecies into secular predictions of natural cataclysms and societal collapse – in short, the emergence of environmental apocalypticism – is perhaps the most significant ideological development in the western world since the demise of Marxism. Marxist doctrine, let us never forget, crumbled because its predicted, and eagerly anticipated, disintegration of free market economies never transpired, but communist economies and totalitarian dictatorships have mostly come to sticky ends. Deeply infuriated by the failure of their predictions and the unremitting vibrancy of capitalism, many disillusioned believers turned to ecological pessimism and environmental determinism. Not for the first time in the long history of apocalyptic movements, new wine was poured into old bottles. (GWPF)
“Gore Effect” Strikes Yet Again – Global Warming Gods Strike Down Beetle Population Continuing his unbroken record of having his pronouncements on global warming royally mocked by events, Al Gore’s up-coming speech linking the explosion in the tree-munching pine beetle to global warming has been upset by reports of the pine beetle population “crashing”. (Haunting the Library)
Misanthropy I: Inside the Mind of Paul Ehrlich Paul Ehrlich has lots of advice on how to make the world a better place. But what might a world run by Ehrlich look like? (Haunting the Library)
Misanthropy II: 2011: Newspaper Calls For Sterilization of “Man-Swarm” to Tackle Global Warming In an astonishing editorial the left-leaning West Virginia Gazette (part of the Charleston Gazette) has called for widespread sterilizations to cull “the global manswarm” driving global warming. (Haunting the Library)
Misanthropy III: Guardian Columnist Tells BBC She Hopes People Will Die To Help Stop Global Warming In what is yet another example of how violent and misanthropic sentiment in the mainstream media is perfectly acceptable in the name of saving the earth, Dr Susan Blackmore has told the BBC that there are “too many people” and that she hopes most of them will die soon for the sake of the planet. (Haunting the Library)
IV... Greens lie, Africans die By Paul Driessen and Robert Novak Friday, January 14, 2011
Editorial: The Only Way To Go Green Feed The World: Warnings of a global food shortage are cropping up in the news. This should not be happening in 2011. But while our technologies have
advanced, our politics are still prehistoric.
By News on the Net Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. and Niger Innis Friday, January 14, 2011
I'd support this: A Bright Idea: Bring Back Incandescents Why is Paris known as the City of Lights ? Is it because the U.S. Congress banned Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulbs, so he had to take his invention
offshore?
This'll upset the nannies: Using your phone on the road could make you a safer driver: study New research suggests mobile phones may make some road-users pay more attention.
Why? Are they foreign-paid saboteurs or something? Justice Dept Makes Defense Of CO2 Rules Top Priority Defending new regulations on the emission of greenhouse gases will be a top priority for the Obama administration this year as challenges emerge, a senior
U.S. Justice Department official said on Thursday.
Did the Chinese politely refrain from laughing? Clinton says ‘no time to delay’ climate work with China BySecretary of State Hillary Clinton used a wide-ranging speech on U.S.-China relations Friday to call for expanded cooperation on curbing greenhouse gas
emissions. "Our cooperation at the U.N. climate conference in Mexico was critical to the conclusion of the Cancún agreement. Now, we must build on that progress by implementing the agreements on transparency, funding and clean energy technology," Clinton said in remarks at the State Department. Read more... (E2 Wire)
Idiot of the week award goes to a Green, naturally: Coal miners to blame for Queensland floods, says Australian Greens leader Bob Brown GREENS leader Bob Brown says the coal mining industry should foot the bill for the Queensland floods because it helped cause them.
As time passes, the issues relating to the Queensland flooding
begin to become clearer. But, as always, the blogs (and Booker) take the lead with the MSM trailing far behind. Posted on the Booker column is a comment from another blog, originally posted by an Australian who lives about 140 miles north east of the Brisbane River
catchment, on the coast.
Is the Brazilian flooding catastrophe evidence of another global warming era extreme ? Guest post by Alexandre Aguiar, METSUL Communications Director, Brazil (note there’s much more here at METSUL’s blog) Corpses are still under tons of rocks and mud in the hills of Rio de Janeiro, but some experts are already rushing to the microphones here in Brazil and abroad to declare the worst natural disaster in the Brazilian history as a clear and unequivocal evidence of global warming (a.k.a. global climate disruption). (WUWT)
In what is sure to be yet further embarrassment for advocates of the theory of man-made global warming it has emerged that climate scientists pinning the blame for the Queensland floods on global warming have been contradicting a report published by other climate scientists just weeks earlier. (Haunting the Library)
Did Australia's obsession with global warming contribute to the Brisbane floods? Who, if anyone, is to blame for the terrible flooding in Brisbane? Commentators are pointing their collective finger at the usual suspects. For the extreme green magazine Grist, the floods expose mankind’s arrogance in believing that he can build settlements anywhere he likes, even on floodplains. Nature is “taking a perverse pleasure in pointing out just where the shiny, might city is weakest”, gloats Grist. Others are blaming Aussie property developers, for thoughtlessly throwing up flood-prone buildings, and yet others think Queensland politicians should have done more to improve flood defences. (Brendan O'Neill, TDT)
Do We Really Know Earth’s Temperature? Guest article by Pat Frank
Why The NOAA and NASA Proclamations Should Be Ignored Written by Joseph D'Aleo The pressure has been mounting. The public doubt about global warming has been increasing in recent years given Climategate, and how promises of warm snowless winters failed. After cold and snowy winters in 2007/08 and 2008/09, the winter of 2009/10 was the coldest ever in parts of the southeast, and in parts of Siberia and the coldest since 1977/78 or 1962/63 in many parts of the United States, Europe and Asia. This past December was the second coldest in the entire Central England Temperature record extending back to 1659. It was the coldest ever December in diverse locations like Ireland, Sweden, and Florida. Reluctantly, alarmists changed their tune and the promise of warm and snowless winters as recent as 4 years ago morphed into global warming means cold and snowy winters. (SPPI)
“Stick With The Facts – Look At The Data” 14. Januar 2011 That’s Joe Bastardi’s advice. But some out there are sure the warming is going to continue no matter what. “Just look at the models!”, they keep saying. Problem is, models are not data from observation, instead they are scenarios of data that might be measured in the future. The start of this decade certainly isn’t paying attention to the models, as Joe Bastardi explains in his latest video here. (No Tricks Zone)
What do you say when the Big PR bell is rung? You know the litany: “2010 was the warmest since measuring began, and the previous decade was also the warmest decade on record.” (eg The AGE)
Nothing about the “hottest year ever” is meaningful or significant on a big scale. Nor is anything even certain about it on the 150 year scale. After all, most of the original raw data records are missing aren’t they? (Jo Nova)
The PAST is Not What it Used to Be (GW Tiger Tale) Guest Post by Ira Glickstein. Time machines are a staple of sci-fi. Someone travels back to the past and changes some momentous historical event, expecting his or her heroic action will improve the present and future, usually with disastrous results! Well, NASA GISS has a different type of time machine that does not actually go back to the past, but simply changes the historical temperature data to make the present Global Warming situation appear worse than it really is, and, by implication, lend credence to their CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Warming) theories. (WUWT)
The problem with short-termism: Thaw Of Earth's Icy Sunshade May Stoke Warming Shrinking ice and snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere is reflecting ever less sunshine back into space in a previously underestimated mechanism that could
add to global warming, a study showed.
Superbly done ... one to savour. (EU Referendum)
The Trenberth article contains so many glaring errors and biased assumptions, it’s hard to know where to start. First of all, the difference between theory and hypothesis: The problem is not with dueling hypotheses, it is with dueling theories regarding the processes resulting in observed global warming. One theory states: Observed global warming is the result of human greenhouse gas emissions. Another theory states: Observed global warming is not caused by human greenhouse gas emissions, but is a result of natural geophysical processes. The statement, “Global warming is the result of human greenhouse gas emissions” is not an hypothesis, it is a proposition, or at best, a simple theory. A theory is an explanation of process based on a body of observation.
Unequivocal Equivocation – an open letter to Dr. Trenberth This essay from Willis appeared on WUWT overnight Saturday while I slept. After reading it this morning, I decided to make it a sticky at the top of WUWT (I also added the open letter reference) because it says everything that needs to be said about the current state of affairs in climate science and the skeptic position. I ask readers not only to read it, but to disseminate it widely at other websites and forums. Hopefully, the right people will read this. Thanks for your consideration, and thank you, Willis. UPDATE: I’ve made this essay available as a PDF here: Willis_Trenberth_WUWT_Essay suitable for printing and emailing.- Anthony (WUWT)
14. Januar 2011 This newest tree ring study completely refutes Mann’s bogus hockey stick. That question is now forever resolved. There were warm and cold periods – with plenty of extremes. But that’s nothing new for many of us. Der Spiegel reports on a new study put out by Science where scientists gathered data from a large set of tree rings from the Alps and used them to reconstruct 2500 years of climate in fine detail. The scientists were able to reconstruct past climate with unprecedented precision and found some significant results. The press here is acting like these results are new. But to skeptics, it only confirms what they’ve been saying all along. (No Tricks Zone)
Improved measurements of sun to advance understanding of climate change WASHINGTON—Scientists have taken a major step toward accurately determining the amount of energy that the sun provides to Earth, and how variations in that
energy may contribute to climate change.
Energy Density: Robert Bryce’s Powerful Energy Message by MR Administrator
“One of the reasons I wrote Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future (Public Affairs: 2010) is that our discussions are fundamentally wrong-headed,” author and journalist Robert Bryce told the Permian Basin Petroleum Association. “Politicians generally do not understand the issues of energy and power, and in particular, the issues of scale.” Bryce expounded on a number of key themes, including density, the distinction between energy and power, and the future of natural gas and nuclear generation. He also pointed to signals that suggested ordinary citizens were losing patience with green energy sources. Green Backlash Bryce’s comments touched on topics covered in both Power Hungry and an earlier book, Gusher of Lies. The writer riffed on a number of subjects pertinent to oil and gas producers:
[Read more →] (MasterResource)
Anti-Drilling Policies Costing Federal Government Billions in Lost Revenue Billions of dollars in potential oil revenue that could help close the federal deficit is being lost as a result of President Obama’s anti-drilling agenda. Production in the Gulf of Mexico — which normally accounts for about 30 percent of all U.S. production — is expected to drop this year by 220,000 barrels per day, according to projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. With oil currently at $90 a barrel and the royalty rate at 18.75 percent, that equals $3.7 million in lost revenue each day. If the agency projections hold over the course of the year, the federal government would lose more than $1.35 billion from Gulf royalty payments this year. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
2010 Crude Oil: 50 Billion Barrels Discovered, 30 Billion Barrels Used With the price of oil hovering above $70 a barrel for over a year -- and around $90 a barrel for several weeks -- oil exploration companies can get to work discovering rich new oil fields. In 2010, more new oil was discovered than was consumed -- and we can expect that trend to continue as long as oil stays high -- above fundamentals. (GWPF)
Australia grants exploration permits to BP, Woodside Australia granted offshore petroleum exploration permits to BP on Monday in a vote of confidence after last year's catastrophic Deep Water Horizon oil spill, but with strict safety and environmental safeguards attached to the deal. (Reuters)
Envirocranks fret: BP targets one of the world's last unspoilt wildernesses after deal Environmentalists are angry at the energy giant's plans to drill for oil in a remote region of the Arctic
Putin offers sweeteners: Putin offers tax breaks for BP deal Russia's Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, has promised to give BP "the most favourable tax treatment" in the Arctic as its £10bn deal with the Kremlin was greeted with cautious optimism by investors yesterday. (TDT)
and Obama attempts assassination: Will rolling back tax breaks for US oil and gas companies necessarily affect output? Energy Intelligence said in a report on Wednesday U.S. domestic oil output could fall as much as 10 percent over the next ten years if Obama
administration’s proposals to roll back tax breaks for oil and gas companies get through.
Salazar vows to ‘fully consider’ Capitol Hill input on gas ‘fracking’ rule ByInterior Secretary Ken Salazar is seeking to reassure a senior Republican that he’ll weigh congressional input if Interior crafts rules to toughen
oversight of natural-gas drilling on public lands.
U.S. Ingenuity Recasts Energy Landscape Foreign Policy magazine reports on the "The Coming Natural Gas Cartel." Leading the efforts? Russia, with strong backing from Iran, Venezuela and
others. That was March 28, 2006. However, that headline — and those efforts — are now a chapter in history.
EPA Accused of ‘Assault on Mining Industry’ After Revoking Permit for Mountaintop Mine Morgantown, W. Va. (AP) - The Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it's revoking a crucial water permit for West Virginia's largest mountaintop
removal mine because it would irreparably damage the environment and threaten the health of nearby communities.
Britain’s Wind Farms are ‘No Spin Zones’ When Cold Hits Some media groups like to refer to themselves as ‘no spin zones’. But among energy insiders the phrase has been applied to wind farms, given that turbines mostly operate at well below 30 percent of installed capacity. [Read More] (Peter C Glover, ET)
Britain is becoming less windy, raising doubts over Government's wind farm strategy According to Britain's politicians, covering the landscape with wind farms is still the future. Last month Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, promised a
"seismic shift" to wind and other non-carbon forms of generating electricity.
Electricity pricing policies may make or break plug-in hybrid buys WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - California policies aimed at reducing electricity use and curbing greenhouse gas emissions have the unintended consequence of making
new plug-in hybrid vehicles uneconomical, according to a Purdue University economist.
London to Edinburgh by electric car: it was quicker by stagecoach The BBC's stunt of taking an electric Mini to Edinburgh reveals just how impractical rechargeable cars are, writes Christopher Booker. (TDT)
Half of All States Now Suing to Stop Obamacare If it is allowed to be implemented, Obamacare will eventually do deep and irreparable harm to our nation’s budget deficit. But while Obamacare is more of a long-term threat to fiscal health at the federal level, it is a clear and present danger to the states. Of the 34 million Americans who gain health insurance through Obamacare, over half (18 million) will receive it through Medicaid. While Obamacare will pay for all of the benefit expansion for the first three years of the law, and 90% of it after that, Obamacare never pays for any of the state administrative costs for adding those 18 million Americans to their welfare rolls. That amounts to billions in unfunded federal mandates for states to absorb. That is why 33 Republican governors signed a letter to the White House and Congress making an emphatic appeal that Obamacare’s Medicaid provisions be repealed. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Anti-Repeal Movement Ignores Fiscal Realities Lost amid the partisan posturing over the proposed repeal of Obamacare is a stark, unavoidable fiscal reality. Put simply: Our leaders have no choice but to
scrap this socialized medicine monstrosity and start from scratch with a free-market approach.
For entirely too long I have seen far too much misinformation from the media and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about bed bugs and what should be done about them. This series is to help dispel all the wrong headedness, junk science and flawed green philosophy that we are fed daily. If there ever was an issue that clearly outlines how the EPA is a political animal versus the scientific agency they claim to be; this is it! (Rich Kozlovich)
Oh... Six months of breastfeeding alone could harm babies, scientists now say Fresh review of evidence contradicts WHO guidance leaving campaigners outraged and mothers baffled
Hmm... suggests, could, might: Evidence suggests role for chemicals in diabetes Evidence strongly suggests that some chemicals, especially chemicals in cigarette smoke, might cause some cases of diabetes and obesity, U.S. government
researchers said on Thursday.
Scientists make chickens that don't spread bird flu British scientists have developed genetically modified (GM) chickens that cannot transmit bird flu infections -- a step that in future could reduce the risk
of avian flu spreading and causing deadly epidemics in humans.
Kevin Trenberth's weird opinions about the climate Anthony Watts' blog reprints the full
text of Kevin Trenberth's preprint (PDF,
JPG)
that will be published by the American Meteorological Society (AMS). The first thing I have to say is simply: » Don't Stop Reading » (TRF)
After coming to the realization that the doom & gloom approach to fighting global warming has become counterproductive, many global warming promoters are now taking a more upbeat “we can fix it” approach. This has riled some of the old guard climate alarmists and led to a backlash. An indication of this can be found in a recent Nature Geoscience editorial that represents a new kind of skepticism—not skepticism of global warming but skepticism that it can be stopped or even blunted. Dismissing the notion that a range of available methods—such as efficiency gains, replacing fossil fuels by nuclear power or renewable energy, land-use changes, etc—can make fighting climate change more tractable, the editorial basically says that the world is going to hell and there is no way around it. If that is true, perhaps we should simply ignore the climate cranks and go on a petrochemical burning binge until the stuff runs out. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)
Bizarre: Climate A Factor In Rome's Rise And Fall: Study Climate change seems a factor in the rise and fall of the Roman empire, according to a study of ancient tree growth that urges greater awareness of the risks
of global warming in the 21st century.
Another model fantasy: Earth's hot past could be prologue to future climate BOULDER –-The magnitude of climate change during Earth's deep past suggests that future temperatures may eventually rise far more than projected if society
continues its pace of emitting greenhouse gases, a new analysis concludes. The study, by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Jeffrey Kiehl,
will appear as a "Perspectives" piece in this week's issue of the journal Science.
NASA Satellites Capture a Stronger La Nina New NASA satellite data indicate the current La Niña event in the eastern Pacific has remained strong during November and December 2010.
Half of the energy is flung out to space… (along with the model projections) This is one of those scratch-your-head moments when a skeptic just has to ask “Could the modelers really have overlooked that?” Given the $79 billion odd dollars in research and the billions of dollars bet on the models, it seems hard to believe. Then again, the same team didn’t ask any hard questions when one study overturned hundreds of other studies that showed it was warmer 1000 years ago, they are the people who think it’s ok to hide declines, hide data and dodge FOI’s. This is, after all, the Team who call fertilizer – “pollution“. Maybe a couple of extra Watts per square meter could have slipped by? When a greenhouse gas absorbs infra red, its molecules emit in a random direction — so half of its emissions are emitted up, towards space. This is kind of the key to the matter. (Jo Nova)
More Evidence On The Complex Role Of Aerosols In The Climate System The role of aerosols within the climate system is a complex subject and is becoming better recognized that it is even more so than previously thought. Two recent news items illustrate this increasing complexity. ... A bottom line message from these news reports is that, as we learn more about the climate system, including the human role within it, the more complicated it shows itself to be. This also means simplistic attempts to predict climate decades from now and claim the ability to provide skillful impact information to policyholders are misguided and misleading. (Roger Pielke Sr.)
Americans not so easily scammed: Major bank calls US 'significant outlier' on greenhouse-gas action ByThere's “positive momentum” for climate change-related investments in 2011, the bank HBSC said, with one exception: the United States. Read more... (E2 Wire)
Environmental group plans to sue Interior Dept. over polar bear habitat ByThe planned lawsuit is the latest wrinkle in a battle over oil-and-gas companies' quest to drill off Alaska's coast. (E2 Wire)
Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up, Jan.13 2011 A hippie made Israel’s forests burn, GE is taken to the cleaners for cleaning and escaping CO2 puts the cool fizz in Saskatchewan.
by Marlo Lewis The BP oil spill may well be the worst environmental disaster in history. Yet it was not the planetary catastrophe some predicted it would be. In May 2010, experts warned that the Deep Water Horizon rig blowout would cause “irreversible damage to the marine eco-systems of the Gulf of Mexico, north Atlantic Ocean, and beyond.” But a surprising thing happened on the way to the apocalypse. Bacteria gobbled up the oil so fast that by August, the underwater oil plume became “undetectable.” A study published last week in ScienceExpress reports that bacteria also made short work of the massive volumes of methane (natural gas) released when the BP well exploded. This is good news not only for Gulf Coast eco-systems. It also further undercuts the credibility of a… Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
Interior official: Deepwater permits will resume before midyear ByA top Interior Department official said Thursday that he expects to begin issuing deepwater oil-and-gas drilling permits — which were halted after the BP oil spill began — before the second half of the year, but didn’t provide a specific timeline. (E2 Wire)
Sinopec buys its way into the Americas China Petrochemical Corp., best known as Sinopec, has bought itself a yellow brick road in the American continent through a series of deals that will likely not only shuffle China’s energy sector, but also alter a broader global scramble for oil assets. [Read More] (Andres Cala, ET)
EPA vetoes major mountaintop removal mining project ByThe Environmental Protection Agency vetoed on Thursday one of the Appalachian regions' largest mountaintop removal mining projects, arguing that the project pollutes nearby streams and rivers. (E2 Wire)
Sen. Rockefeller pledges to fight mountaintop removal veto BySen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) vented his frustration to President Obama himself in a letter Thursday. (E2 Wire)
West Virginia governor to continue lawsuit over vetoed mountaintop-removal mine ByJust hours after the Environmental Protection Agency vetoed a major mountaintop removal project, West Virginia’s acting governor underscored his support for a lawsuit to overturn the agency’s decision. (E2 Wire)
Peter Foster: The coming green car pileup The only thing driving demand is the government boot on the accelerator The auto industry is showing welcome signs of life, but its future definitely does not lie with “green” vehicles, despite the hype coming from the Detroit auto show. All this week — ahead of the show’s opening to the public tomorrow — the media have been reporting breathlessly on the ever-proliferating range of hybrids and plug-in vehicles on display. However, these vehicles would not exist but for Washington’s leaden foot on the policy accelerator. The Chevy Volt might be Motor Trend’s car of the year, but even if this expensive plug-in sells, it won’t be adding anything to GM’s bottom line. Meanwhile, every Volt sale comes with a hefty subsidy from taxpayers (both north and south of the border), beyond the multi-billion costs to them of the company’s bailout. Read More (Financial Post)
Analysis: Roaring Fossil Fuels Outpace Green Energy Fossil fuel investments will continue to outstrip low-carbon alternatives this year, darkening a sector struggling to shake off the financial crisis and
sagging political momentum on climate change.
Spain’s Great Photovoltaic Bust – 30,000 Jobs Lost Since 2008 The German online TAZ here reports on Spain’s solar energy industry debacle in an article with the headline: Botched Spanish Solar Roofs Yet another example of the havoc governments can cause by excessively interfering in the free market (with the best intentions of course). The boom was great – while it lasted. Solar panels flew onto the roofs of buildings faster than you could make them, and companies couldn’t keep up with the demand. (No Tricks Zone)
Has Massachusetts Experience Put ObamaCare On A Path To Repeal? The new GOP majority plans to introduce a bill to repeal ObamaCare soon. What the Republicans are trying to prevent is what is already happening in
Massachusetts, where a similar health care bill was enacted in April 2006. It is already imploding.
Hmm... The medical establishment shielded Andrew Wakefield from fraud claims Brian Deer spent years investigating Andrew Wakefield's MMR and autism research, which he now alleges was fraudulent. Here he argues that doctors closed ranks behind one of their own (Guardian)
Study Shows That Smartmeters Don't Pose Health Risk In 2009 Assemblymember Jared Huffman and Assemblymember Bill Monning requested an independent scientific study by the California Council on Science and
Technology on the health effects of Smartmeters.
Drug-resistant malaria could spread fast, expert warns Drug-resistant malaria could spread from southeast Asia to Africa within months, putting millions of children's lives at risk, a leading expert warned on Wednesday. (Reuters)
ES&T on the politically correct nonsense trail again: 'Thirdhand smoke' may be bigger health hazard than previously believed Scientists are reporting that so-called "thirdhand smoke" — the invisible remains of cigarette smoke that deposits on carpeting, clothing, furniture and other surfaces — may be even more of a health hazard than previously believed. The study, published in ACS' journal, Environmental Science & Technology, extends the known health risks of tobacco among people who do not smoke but encounter the smoke exhaled by smokers or released by smoldering cigarette butts. (ACS)
This, on the other hand, is quite good: Virus killer gets supercharged Rice University discovery greatly improves common disinfectant
Why? Military vs. Climate Security: The 2011 Budgets Compared By Miriam Pemberton
U.S. Court Denies Texas Attempt To Delay CO2 Rules A federal court denied on Wednesday a third attempt by Texas to delay U.S. environmental regulators from imposing regulations on greenhouse gases in the
state.
Oh... Scientists See Climate Change Link To Australian Floods Climate change has likely intensified the monsoon rains that have triggered record floods in Australia's Queensland state, scientists said on Wednesday, with
several months of heavy rain and storms still to come. Rational people see a link between activist scientists and loss of life and property.
Global Warming Means More Big New York City Snowstorms? Not So Fast. by Chip Knappenberger New Yorkers are digging out from another major snowfall. The 10 inches or so they got on Wednesday came less than 3 weeks after some 20 inches fell the day after Christmas. And, odd as it may seem, some folks are linking big snows and big cold in the Big Apple to anthropogenic global warming. (MasterResource)
The NASA scientist at the heart of the global warming fiasco seems set to stir more controversy after declaring in an op ed piece for The South China Morning Post and a personally published follow-up that American democracy is not competent to deal with global warming, and communist China now represents the world’s “best hope”. (HtL)
CIA’s unit on climate change faces uncertain future The future of the CIA’s unit on climate change and U.S. national security is “in jeopardy” because of pressure for intelligence budget cuts and resistance from conservative lawmakers, a new report says. (WaPo)
Editorial: Climate Change: Junk In, Junk Out Environment: We can hardly dig out of one snowstorm before another hits, yet the believers keep telling us global warming is here. A new climate model,
however, is showing that the projections of doom have been wrong.
Still trying desperately: 2010 ties for warmest year, emissions to blame Last year tied for the warmest since data started in 1880, capping a decade of record high temperatures that shows mankind's greenhouse gas emissions are
heating the planet, two U.S. agencies said.
Claim 2010 tied with warmest year ever lacks historical perspective By Art Horn, Icecap Meteorologist
Christopher Booker, the journalist, has a sceptical, evidence-based approach whereas Barry Hunt, the scientist, assumes the CSIRO’s Global Warming model is correct and any departures from its predicted trend are merely temporary aberrations. (John Reid, Quadrant)
Scientists Challenged to Become Better Global Warming Propagandists By Norman Rogers
Tags created to help penguins could be killing them Radio tags designed to monitor endangered penguins could be killing them, say scientists. (TDT)
Editorial: BP Oil Spill Panel's Dry Hole Energy Policy: A commission appointed to investigate BP's well disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and recommend ways to drill safely has labored mightily and
produced the functional equivalent of a tar ball.
UK To Review North Sea Drilling Rules After U.S. Spill Britain said on Wednesday it would review its regulations covering offshore oil and gas drilling in the North Sea following the publication of a U.S.
investigation into BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Obama Policy Hands China Global Energy Supremacy Although there are more Republicans deemed “energy industry friendly” sitting for the 112th Congress, the Obama administration’s threat of punitive tax policy changes for America’s energy producers looms large. [Read More] (Michael J. Economides, ET)
Coal takes the strain...again. Paul Hudson | 16:44 UK time, Monday, 10 January 2011
Italy Court Approves Nuclear Energy Referendum Italy's constitutional court ruled on Wednesday a national referendum could be held against the construction of nuclear power plants, dealing a potential
blow to government plans to relaunch the sector.
Chamber backs repeal vote on healthcare reform Corporate America's biggest lobbying group on Tuesday praised a more business-friendly tone from the White House, but backed Republican efforts to dismantle the Obama administration's healthcare overhaul. (Reuters)
States Cry to Washington: Remove Obamacare’s Medicaid Handcuffs The big news out of a majority of state capitols is that Obamacare’s Medicaid mandates will exacerbate state budget problems and drive many states to the brink of insolvency. Thirty-three Republican governors and governors-elect have signed a letter to the White House and Congress making an emphatic appeal that Obamacare’s Medicaid provisions be repealed. Medicaid pays health care and long-term care expenses for certain categories of individuals. Medicaid has many problems, but the central one is that it costs taxpayers nearly $400 billion annually without providing recipients a high quality of care. National spending on Medicaid has more than quintupled over the past two decades, and about 16 percent of the population is currently enrolled. A recent study from the University of Virginia found that Medicaid patients have worse surgical outcomes than individuals without insurance. Despite these problems, Obamacare relies heavily on the Medicaid program to reduce the number of individuals without health insurance. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Now Erring Crockovich guides the EPA: EPA unveils chromium-6 testing guidelines ByThe head of the Environmental Protection Agency released guidance Tuesday outlining steps communities can take to test for unsafe levels of chromium-6, a
likely carcinogen, in public drinking water. “As we continue to learn more about the potential risks of exposure to chromium-6, we will work closely with states and local officials to ensure the safety of America’s drinking water supply,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a statement Tuesday. “This action is another step forward in understanding the problem and working towards a solution that is based on the best available science and the law.” Read more... (E2 Wire)
Junk Science and the Anti-Vaccine Fraud The campaign against the most valuable medical technologies ever invented is based on junk science (John E. Calfee, The American)
Chemical tied to hormonal syndrome Women with polycystic ovary syndrome have increased blood levels of the widely used industrial chemical bisphenol A, a small study finds -- raising the question of whether the compound plays some role in the disorder. (Reuters Health)
Forget Snow Days: Staten Island Kids Get PCB Days! For the second day in a row, some Staten Island public school students have ditched school—with the EPA's permission. Ten classrooms in two schools were closed yesterday because higher-than-acceptable levels of PCBs were detected. Notably, when a PS 36 teacher complained about fluid leaking from a lighting fixture, "more 200 times the accepted amount of 50 parts per million" of PCBs were found in two classrooms. While students in those two classrooms were pulled, other parents removed their students from the school— the attendance rate was 26% at PS 36. (Gothamist)
Loonies not winning the war on plastic then: World Plastic Pipes Market to Exceed 6.5 Billion Meters by 2015, According to New Report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc. GIA announces the release of a comprehensive global report on the Plastic Pipes market. World plastic pipes market is projected to exceed 6.5 billion meters by 2015, driven by heavy infrastructure investments and construction boom in the developing countries as well as new application areas for plastic pipes including electrical and telecommunications conduits and wastewater and drainage pipe systems. (Vocus/PRWEB)
Green backlash against House GOP begins — lamely January 11, 2011 Green groups commenced their assault on the House GOP today, accusing last week’s legislative efforts to rein in the EPA’s climate regulations as “a threat to public health.” (Green Hell Blog)
U.S. Chamber chief pushes Congress to block EPA climate regulations ByThe head of the nation’s most powerful business lobbying group made clear Tuesday that blocking the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas
regulations is a key part of his agenda.
U.S. Supreme Court Will Not Hear Bogus Global Warming Case The U.S. Supreme Court today denied the petition for mandamus filed by plaintiffs in one of the major — and preposterous — suits claiming damages against industry for causing global warming, Comer v. Murphy Oil. (Today’s order list is here.) This should be the end of the case because the plaintiffs did not file a petition for certiorari, but given how convoluted the lawsuit’s path through the courts has been, perhaps there’s a strange maneuver that could revive it. (Shopfloor)
More on the tragic Toowoomba flash flood for those following it: Now 30 believed dead The disaster is extraordinary:
THE nation confronts its worst flood disaster in living memory, with 30 people believed dead and 90
missing in southeast Queensland. The wall of water bearing down on Brisbane threatens to engulf thousands of homes and put more people at risk. What I cannot understand is this: how was the possibility of such a danger not foreseen, when climate experts and the Government claim they can predict the climate 100 years from now? How did this week’s rain come as such a surprise, when we now spend billions more on computer models predicting the future? (Andrew Bolt)
Didn't take the ratbags long: Global warming will cause further extreme weather patterns, climate change chief says ONE of Julia Gillard's top climate change advisers has warned that global warming may cause more extreme rain events.
Written by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley Four cold winters in a row ought to have raised questions in legislators’ minds about the competence of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, which they have generously but unwisely funded and trusted. The IPCC’s dire predictions of dangerous warming are not happening in observed reality. (SPPI)
So that's how it works... Global Warming Panic explained
December 2010 - A December to Remember Written by Joe D’Aleo and Art Horn December was indeed a December to Remember (or for many, to forget!) with widespread cold and snows. The Central England Temperature record is one of the longest continuous temperature records in the world extending back to the Little Ice age in 1659. December 2010 was the Second Coldest December Temperature in the entire record (352 years) with an average of -0.7C just short of the record of -0.8C recorded in December 1890. (SPPI)
Lawrence Solomon: When WWF is put in charge of the weather What happens when the inmates run the insane asylum? This experiment is being run in the UK, where the ultra-green former head of the World Wildlife Fund UK and other global warming activists were put in charge of running the country’s Meteorological Office, the country’s weather department. The Met Office is now embroiled in national scandals — and it has become the likely subject of a Parliamentary Inquiry — because the true believers at the helm appear to have been playing around with the weather. One scandal involves the UK Met’s reliance on models that predict global warming. Using this flawed research, the Met has been getting its forecasts spectacularly wrong, leading to turmoil when the government was subsequently ill-prepared to clear roads of snow. “Investment in more equipment may not be economic, given rarity of British snow,” stated one article in the Guardian, explaining a government-commissioned report that highlighted the silliness of preparing for weather conditions that won’t occur under global warming. “Are you happy to invest more in kit that may sit at the back of the depot and won’t be used?” the report’s author stated rhetorically. The UK has now had three fierce winters in a row. In 2008, the UK experienced its coldest winter in 10 years after the Met predicted “a milder than average” winter. In 2009, the UK experienced the coldest winter in 30 years after the Met predicted that “the trend to milder and wetter winters is expected to continue.” In 2010, the UK experienced the coldest winter on record, paralyzing the country’s transportation system and leading the chairman of parliament’s Transport Select committee to indicate that hearings would be occurring. The parliamentary hearings will likely also deal with politicization of the weather, designed to avoid embarrassing the UK’s pro-global warming government, prior to the UN’s global warming conference in Cancun in December. By October, the Met Office realized that the country could be in for “an exceptionally cold winter” and advised the UK cabinet – a big promoter of Cancun — of this turn of events. Yet the Met decided not to let the public in on its revised forecast. To the contrary, throughout October and November, the Met continued to claim that 2010 would likely be the hottest year on record. LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
Sceptics ask: Is the UK government’s climate propaganda machine finally falling apart? Just when you think things are as inanely silly as they can be, they raise the stakes. It’s a game of double or nothing in the race to the bottom. The close common interests of three big government agencies is fragmenting and instead of skeptics launching the FOI’s, this time, the BBC is. Just in case there is anyone who doesn’t know, the UK Met predicted a winter a couple of degrees above the usual. Then supertankers of snow turned up and dumped on the nation, surprising people, and making life difficult for everyone who hadn’t made arrangements for the return of the British Blizzard and the coldest December on record. The UK Met, having got it completely wrong, decided the best course of action was to announce post hoc that actually they did get it right, really, they predicted cold weather, but they didn’t tell the public, they just told the politicians. The politicians apparently asked them not to let on to the public, or so the story goes, and the plot thickens. One way or another someone is using tactics with all the forward thinking you’d expect from a five year old. If the Met office is not incompetent then the implication is one of implacable dishonesty from either the BOM or the UK government (or possibly — both). The BBC reported it, without asking too many hard questions, which makes them look a bit silly too. Now, instead of the Big Scare Campaign Team working together, three big formerly aligned groups are fighting for their own cred. The BBC versus the Met, versus The Government. More » (Jo Nova)
Saving Polar Bears by Killing Them? BY: DENNIS T. AVERY CHURCHVILLE, VA—A recent article in the British journal Nature warns that polar bears are increasingly mating with grizzly bears—because man-made climate change is rapidly melting the Arctic sea ice on which the polar bears love to hunt seals. Breathlessly, we’re told that a hybrid grizzly/polar bear was discovered in 2006. More recently another bear shot by a hunter also had mixed DNA. The offending hybrid bears should be “culled”—a kinder word than “killed”—according to lead author Brendan Kelly of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Hold on a minute. Let’s bless this story with some bits of reality. : First, there’s no evidence the Arctic ice cap is really shrinking. The Arctic has a warming/cooling cycle of about 70 years, and the old archives of the New York Times are filled with stories from the 1920s and 1930s about the Arctic ice disappearing. Those 1920’s stories turned out to be wrong, and the ice-expert Russians tell us they’ll be wrong this time too. Read the rest of this entry » (SPPI)
Climate Models Differ on CO2 Warming Effect by over 32°F A paper published today in the journal Climate of the Past illustrates the magnitude of confusion in climate science regarding the 'settled' 'basic physics' of the CO2 'greenhouse effect.' The climate model results of this paper are compared to 2 other recent peer-reviewed papers and show that the 3 climate models differ by over 32 degrees F (18.3°C) in explaining the 'greenhouse warming' effect of CO2 during the period of time when the entire Earth was covered by ice (the "snowball Earth"). This huge difference dwarfs the IPCC-claimed computer-modeled 0.6°C of anthropogenic global warming during the industrial age and the IPCC-claimed 3°C global warming prediction for doubled CO2 concentrations derived from the same family of computer models. As this study gingerly points out, these are "large differences" between climate models, resulting from differing "assumptions" of the "model physics," in other words, due to whatever fudge factors one chooses to plug in for the 'greenhouse effect' of CO2. All claims of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming rest upon the shaky scientific foundations and gross assumptions of these same climate models. (Hockey Schtick) The paper that I discussed here last week on the detection of a signal of human-caused climate change in the hurricane loss record has now been published in Environmental Research Letters. Here are a direct links to the PDF and the Supplementary Information (PDF). Here is the citation: Ryan P Crompton et al 2011 Environ. Res. Lett. 6 014003 doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/6/1/014003 (Roger Pielke Jr.)
The Terms “Global Warming” And “Climate Change” – What Do They Mean? There continues to be considerable misunderstanding of the terms “global warming” and “climate change”. I have posted in previous years about these terms; e.g. see these posts in 2005; Is Global Warming the Same as Climate Change? What is Climate? Why Does it Matter How
We Define Climate? but there continue to be misunderstandings. (Roger Pielke Sr.)
Ocean Acidification: Chicken Little of the Sea Strikes Again Guest Post by David Middleton Introduction As global warming morphs into climate change and global climate disruption and anthropogenic CO2 emissions give way to stochastic variability, clouds, the Sun, cosmic rays and our oceans as the primary drivers of climate change, environmental extremists are raising a new CO2-driven ecological disaster scenario to hysterical levels: Ocean acidification. Claims have been made that oceanic pH levels have declined from ~8.2 to ~8.1 since the mid-1700′s. This pH decline (acidification) has been attributed to anthropogenic CO2 emissions – This should come as no surprise because the pH estimates are largely derived from atmospheric CO2 concentrations (Orr et al., 2005). It has also been postulated that anthropogenic CO2 emissions will force an additional 0.7 unit decline in oceanic pH by the year 2100 (Caldeira et al., 2003). Alarmist organizations like the National Resources Defense Council are hard at work extrapolating these oceanic pH model predictions into ecological nightmares…
From CO2 Science Volume 14 Number 2: 12 January 2011 Editorial: Journal Reviews: A 1600-Year Temperature History of Tropical South America: What does it reveal about the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age below the equator? Earth's Freshwater Resources of the Past Two Millennia: How have they varied? ... and what does the result portend for the future of mankind? Turning Up the Temperature on the Red King Crab: How much heat can it handle? Terrestrial Plant Responses to Global Warming: In terms of the totality of earth's terrestrial vegetation, does warming enhance or reduce biomass production and sequestration? Photosynthetic Responses of Seedlings of Two Eucalyptus Species to Increases in the Atmosphere's Temperature and CO2 Concentration: Just how bad was it for the young trees, when the "twin evils" of the radical-environmentalist movement were both imposed in unison upon the seedlings? Ocean Acidification Database: Plant Growth Database: Medieval Warm Period Project:
Spill commission calls for increasing offshore drilling review period ByIn a move certain to ruffle the oil industry’s feathers, the national oil-spill commission recommended Tuesday that Congress pass legislation extending by
30 days the amount of time the Interior Department has to review offshore drilling exploration applications.
Spill commission asks Obama to consider executive action on drilling ByPresident Obama has asked his staff to look into executive actions that could make offshore oil drilling safer. Read more... (E2 Wire)
Initial Response to the Oil Spill Commission Report President Obama’s seven-person Oil Spill Commission released its long-awaited final report this morning and includes details on the “before, during and after” of the Macondo well explosion that occurred on April 20 last year. The commission’s site also has a “Recommendation for Decision Makers” section that has drawn much of the media attention. This post will largely draw from that section as well. The bipartisan report predictably calls for tougher regulations and more government control with regard to offshore drilling and continually refers to systemic flaws of the oil and gas industry as a whole. But the reality is that oil and gas exploration and development operate safely for the most part; the offshore explosion was a rare and isolated incident. That’s not to say flaws do not exist in the current system or that improvements cannot be made. But tougher regulations for the sake of tougher regulations can make it unnecessarily difficult to access oil and gas off the 15 percent of America’s coasts where we’re allowed to drill. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Senior House Republicans lukewarm to spill commission report ByTwo senior Republicans declined to embrace the final report
from the presidential commission that probed the BP oil spill, underscoring political hurdles the panel faces as it prods Congress to toughen drilling rules and
boost funding for regulators.
Maybe, maybe not: Land fizzing like soda pop: farmer says CO2 injected underground is leaking A Saskatchewan farm couple whose land lies over the world's largest carbon capture and storage project says greenhouse gases seeping from the soil are
killing animals and sending groundwater foaming to the surface like shaken soda pop.
Joe Romm Finally Gets His Math Right It has taken two years, but Joe
Romm finally appreciates the true mathematical scale of the energy technology challenge implied by a goal of stabilizing carbon dioxide concentrations at a
low level. . . . to do this [one wedge] by 2050 would require adding globally, an average of 17 [nuclear] plants each year, while building an average of 9 plants a year to replace those that will be retired, for a total of one nuclear plant every two weeks for four decades — plus 10 Yucca Mountains to store the waste.If one wedge implies a need for 26 nuclear plants per year, then 14 wedges implies 26 * 14 = 364 plants per year, or the equivalent effort of one nuclear power plant per day from now until 2050. Obviously, assumptions mean that it could be a little more or a little less. And the use of nuclear plants here is simply to illustrate the scale of the challenge, not to propose or suggest that this is even remotely possible or desirable. Joe's conclusion is just about the exact same conclusion that you'll find on p. 116 of The Climate Fix. Nice work Joe! (Roger Pielke Jr.)
Chamber's top energy official: Time for 'unemotional' talk about energy costs The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s top energy official is calling on policymakers to have a “very adult and unemotional” conversation about the nation’s energy priorities in light of the country’s economic troubles. (E2 Wire)
Energy Should Be Job One for the New Congress Most people argue that getting the economy back on track should be the new Congress’s first order of business. Yet no one seems to agree on how to do so. I suggest that the 112th Congress look at energy policy as job one to secure the economy for now and the future. [Read More] (H. Sterling Burnett, ET)
Evidence Mounts: Lagging Truck Fuel Economy an Opportunity Cost of EPA Emission Rules by Marlo Lewis The end of the month (Jan. 31) is the deadline for submitting comments on EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA’s) joint proposed rule to establish first-ever greenhouse gas/fuel economy standards for diesel trucks and other heavy-duty (HD) vehicles. When finalized, the rule will substantially increase both agencies’ power over the freight goods industry. The agencies’ chief rationale for the proposal is that the fuel economy of HD vehicles, especially “combination tractors,” the semi-trucks used in long-haul freight, has not improved in recent years or even declined. This is paradoxical, because nobody has a greater incentive to demand cost-effective improvements in fuel economy than people who haul freight for a living. EPA and NHSTA offer five “potential hypotheses” to explain the… Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
by Kent Hawkins Setting aside the matter that wind turbines are not an effective means to supply utility-scale electricity, the claims of job creation and 21st century industrial development are equally illusory. A New York Times (NYT) article last month spoke volumes on this. I have frequently claimed that the recently created wind turbine manufacturing industries in Europe (Denmark, Germany and Spain) are in jeopardy from competition by the emerging giants, China, India and the U.S. The Times article reports that China now controls almost half of the global market, having absorbed billions of dollars in government assistance and consumer subsidies. The wind businesses in these European countries have existed for little more than a decade, and having saturated their domestic markets, have enjoyed a brief, and unsustainable, dominance of global markets. I may have been mistaken in including the U.S. in the emerging giants list, but one cannot realistically exclude it, at least at first glance. I now suggest it should be added to the same list as the European countries. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Beyond Petroleum Future - Still A Pipedream by Marlo Lewis In his 2006 State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush joined the chorus of environmental scolds in disparaging America’s spaciously mobile civilization as being ”addicted to oil” and called for various R&D programs to move us beyond petroleum. A key objective was to commercialize so-called cellulosic ethanol made from prairie grasses, wood waste, and other fibrous plant materials. Bush proclaimed:
Responding to this presidential initiative, Congress, in 2007, enacted a Soviet-style production quota for renewable fuels, commonly known as the ethanol mandate. It… Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
Toowoomba flash flood shambles What is wrong with our “warning systems” in this country when low lying roads in the major regional city of Toowoomba were not closed before this flooding struck. Rainfall is no secret – it falls on a network of recording stations connected by telemetry to the BoM – the BoM report a network of updated rain data on their website; Rain also falls mostly at night so considering SE Qld has been flood affected for weeks – you might expect that early every morning some “emergency services HQ” might review the nights rain and discuss flood models with the appropriate experts. Then as rain falls through the day – flash flooding potential should leap out at anybody reviewing the models. It is not rocket science – a quota of rain falls in a catchment – a hydrological model will tell you how and when that water gets to a certain river. With the constant experience of the last few weeks you might expect predictions of river flows to be honed to a new accuracy. I am amazed these scenes of cars and people being washed down Toowoomba streets are coming from a modern nation. I think the “authorities” have lost the plot bigtime. (Warwick Hughes)
Oh dear... Earth must prepare for close encounter with aliens, say scientists UN should co-ordinate plans for dealing with extraterrestrials – and we can't guarantee that aliens will be friendly
Ohio becomes 25th state to contest healthcare plan Ohio is joining a multistate lawsuit over the federal healthcare reform plan passed less than a year ago because the law "tramples on the rights of Ohio's citizens," the state's new attorney general said on Monday. (Reuters)
New medical research body urged to speed up drug trial approvals Health Research Agency will be one-stop-shop for researchers who have long complained about bureaucracy (Guardian)
Swine flu survivors developed super flu antibodies A study of antibodies from people infected with H1N1 swine flu adds proof that scientists are closing in on a "universal" flu shot that could
neutralize many types of flu strains, including H1N1 swine flu and H5N1 bird flu, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
Statins may raise stroke risk in some: study People who have had a type of stroke caused by bleeding in the brain should avoid taking cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins, U.S. researchers said
on Monday.
“Clean Energy Standard:” Bad Solution to a Non-Problem (Lindsey Graham rides again) by E. Calvin Beisner Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has found another disguise for lining the pockets of “alternative energy” producers with consumers’ dollars directed there not by rational economic choices but by government mandate. (MasterResource)
The Case For Doing Nothing About Global Warming Time after time, the public has been harangued by climate change “experts” predicting all form of devastation due to anthropogenic global warming. The Greenland and Antarctic glaciers will melt, as will the sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean. Temperatures will rise by 2-6°C, perhaps more in higher latitudes. Weather patterns will shift, there will be droughts and torrential monsoon rains, cyclones will increase in intensity—where will it all end? Here's a thought, we might find the world a nicer place after a bit of global warming. In fact, given the general cooling trend seen over the Holocene (the period since the last glacial period ended around 14,000 years ago) and the Cenozoic (the time since the dinosaurs died, around 65 million years ago) human CO2 may be, in some small way, the only thing delaying another devastating ice age. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)
Exam board accused of 'brainwashing' pupils with inaccurate climate graph Britain’s largest exam board has been accused of “brainwashing” pupils by forcing them to use an inaccurate temperature graph that exaggerates the scale of global warming. (TDT)
Climate Change Skeptics are Stooges for Big Oil As a meteorologist and climate change (what happened to global warming?) investigator I constantly hear the charge that we who do not kneel at the altar of Al Gore are simply hired hacks for “Big Oil.” [Read More] (Art Horn, ET)
You are not going to believe this, no sooner have our green friends rebranded the crisis formerly known as global warming from `climate change' to `climate disruption' than they change their minds again. The Australian has the story:
(Bishop Hill)
Carbon Clampdown: “Once the dial reaches zero, you have used up all your personal carbon allowance” “Imagine a country where carbon becomes a new currency. We carry bank cards that store both pounds and carbon points” – Environment Secretary, David Miliband. Global warming activist group Forum for the Future has issued a new video calling for a clampdown on individual’s carbon emissions. The video, entitled ‘Carbon Clampdown,’ presents the case for instituting a new hardline regime on personal carbon allowances, but does so in as friendly a way as is possible with such a repressive idea. (Haunting The Library)
Ministry of Truth: Independent Newspaper Channels Orwell. The Independent, the British newspaper that published the now infamous article in 2000 proclaiming that Snowfalls Are Now Just A Thing of the Past has entered a surreal and Orwellian world with the publication of an article that seeks to reinterpret what the article was actually claiming. (Haunting The Library)
Research Issues On “The Missing Heat” The science issues associated with the “missing heat” in Judy Curry’s post are very straightforward. They can be summarized succinctly:
The paper R. S. Knox, David H. Douglass 2010: Recent energy balance of Earth International Journal of Geosciences, 2010, vol. 1, no. 3 (November) -- In press doi:10.4236/ijg2010.00000 with the abstract
is a solid scientific study on these questions. The paper could, of course, be in error [although it is robust in my view], or the Argo data could have errors that Josh Willis (or others in that community) has not communicated to us. The blogosphere and peer reviewed papers are the venue to debate these questions. For Kevin Trenberth to call this study “rubbish” says a lot about that particular subset of the climate science community. Unfortunately, these individuals have been elevated to control much of the climate assessment process and the funding of climate science research. (Roger Pielke Sr.)
In Judy Curry’s post there is an informative set of e-mails that illustrates the current poor state of scientific discourse. The relevant e-mail exchange starts with “R. Gates | January 8, 2011 at 5:40 pm | Reply David Douglas responded to this e-mail in the following. (Roger Pielke Sr.)
From CO2 Science Volume 14 Number 1: 5 January 2011 Editorial: Journal Reviews: Autumn and Winter Storms of the Eastern Canadian Arctic: Have they been doing what the local Inuit claim they have been doing? Dengue Epidemics in Taiwan: What causes them? Relict Reefs of the Past: Substrates for Reefs of the Future?: Unlike some life forms, which are claimed to have "nowhere to run, no place to hide" in response to possible future global warming, reefs do! Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment and Tropical Seagrass Growth: How does the former affect the latter? ... and what are the larger ecological implications? The Soil Carbon Stock of Northern China's Grasslands: How has it changed over the past two decades? Ocean Acidification Database: Plant Growth Database: Medieval Warm Period Project:
Auto show: Welcome to Bizarro World (The Michigan View 1.10.11) In 2010 the American truck was resurgent.
Senators Doubt WTO Would Uphold U.S Ethanol Tariff Senators John McCain and John Barrasso said on Monday the extension of U.S. ethanol subsidies and a tariff on imports is likely illegal under international
trade rules, lending some support to Brazil's opposition to U.S. ethanol policy.
China Boasts Breakthrough In Nuclear Technology Chinese scientists have made a breakthrough in spent fuel reprocessing technology that could potentially solve China's uranium supply problem, state
television reported on Monday.
The Road To Repeal: The campaign to rid the country of ObamaCare got off to a running start Friday when a procedural hurdle was easily cleared in the House.
So far, so good for the new majority.
By Steve Milloy As if there’s not enough to be worried about already, the Ohio EPA just reported that residents in seven Ohio counties face a great[er] than acceptable risk of cancer from air pollution. Based on air monitoring data, the Ohio EPA reported that cancer risks ranged from 1.01 additional cancers per 10,000 people in Scioto County to 2.1 additional cancers per 10,000 people in Columbiana County. But these claims are specious and the scare is irresponsible. (Green Hell Blog)
Does Peter Pronovost really have a magic bullet to reduce hospital-acquired infections? Probably not, but who knows? After all, his ridiculously obvious and rudimentary checklist protocol has never actually been audited and verified by an
independent third party. In other words, the hospitals are simply reporting their own infection rates. Kind of like a kid writing out his own report card. Yet,
the protocol and its promoter have achieved cult status.
Much ado about nothing: Dioxin scare: German feed fat 'contains 77 times limit' Newly released test results have revealed much more of a toxic chemical in tainted animal feed than previously thought. (BBC)
EPA "pollution diet" starves agriculture: farm group The head of the largest U.S. farm group called on Congress to stop ruinous EPA "over-regulation" of agriculture and announced on Sunday a lawsuit
against EPA rules to reduce Chesapeake Bay pollution.
One Law for Tree, Another for Ewe This is Polly Higgins, she’s a barrister, and an eco-warrior. She wants there to be an international law to punish ‘ecocide’. (Ben Pile, Climate Resistance)
The biggest unfounded health scares of 2010 (The Daily Caller) By Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. As we begin a new year, the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) would first like to try and slay the demons and hobgoblins of the past year. We do this each New Year’s Eve by making a list of the top unfounded health scares of the outgoing year. These bouts of hysteria are prompted by many different things. But what they have in common is that there’s no scientific evidence to back up the alarms being sounded. (aCSH)
"Well duh" of the moment: Sprung: nutrient waters full of sugar NUTRIENT-ENHANCED water drinks are ''expensive lolly waters'' with exaggerated health claims, says a damning review by the consumer group Choice.
USCAP to go into self-induced coma The US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), the business-environmentalist lobby group that almost made cap-and-trade happen in the 111th Congress, is going dark at least temporarily. Jonathan Lash of the USCAP member World Resources Institute told Carbon Control News that members,
Apparently with cap-and-trade off the table and internal disagreement about whether to support or fight the EPA’s climate rules, USCAP members have reached an impasse as to what to do next. So it’s lights out for USCAP for now. (Green Hell Blog)
Conservative Legal Team from Obamacare Case Now Fighting the EPA On Dec. 30, a federal appeals court froze new EPA regulations on greenhouse gases. The team representing the State of Texas in this appeal is also the team
managing the largest Obamacare lawsuit in America, led by a lawyer from the Reagan administration. This appeal is the latest reminder that America good judges
to uphold the rule of law and stop President Obama’s ongoing power grab.
Climate Scientists Deepening Skepticism of Democracy Does a liberal democracy have sufficient resolve to stomach the economic and political sacrifices required to stabilize global warming? (William Pentland, Forbes)
Climate science needs light: Goldstein If global warming is going to change the way we live, secrecy is not an option
Germany’s New Big-Brother Energy Law- “A new law has been passed by the German government, quietly and almost unnoticed. Soon in the future, the government will tell it’s citizens how much
energy they can consume,” reports Pierre Gosselin. He adds, “It’s all in the name of ‘saving the planet from climate catastrophe.’ They are moving
quickly now, and Germany is now lost. Although climate skepticism is rising, it’s too late.”
Right venue at last: Rival plays on climate change go head to head on London stage Leading theatres to show contrasting views of global warming in major new productions (Robin McKie, The Observer)
The Met Office fries while the rest of the world freezes As the Met Office desperately tries to salvage its reputation, another of this 'warm' winter's ice disasters is unfolding in the Sea of Okhotsk, writes Christopher Booker. (TDT)
Christopher Monckton says he’s found two dozen falsehoods, exaggerations or misleading or questionable claims in a single column by The Australian’s resident warming alarmist, Mike Steketee. Take this one, for instance:
That puts a bit of a dent in the
argument that the world has been cooling since 1998. As Monckton notes:
Read on for more, and wonder why there’s this need to exaggerate, if the evidence for dangerous man-made warming is really so overwhelming. (Andrew Bolt)
Cold times means more death, war, rebellion, drought and flood in China It seems a warmer climate might be bad, but a colder one is deadly. Once upon a time, people thought that overpopulation triggered crashes, but in this study by Lee and Zhang the hard numbers suggest instead that it was climate, and of course, it’s not the warmer kind of climate that causes the problems but the colder kind. (Jo Nova)
Lawrence Solomon: Global warming camp struck out in 2010 Three strikes and you’re out. The sound of silence lately coming from the global warming camp reflects 2010 being a strike-out year for it. (Financial Post)
Stop Climate Change Waste - Man must Adapt or Die The Carbon Sense Coalition today accused Western Governments of massive waste of community savings on frivolous climate “research” and alternative energy toys while neglecting the infrastructure needed to maintain sustainable societies in the face of an unknown climate future. The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said that none of the massive government climate spending has produced anything of long term use to the people paying their bills. (more…) (Carbon Sense Coalition)
How Can They Spend So Much on “Climate Research”? Just a few US government bodies plan to spend US$2,481,000,000 on “Climate Research” in 2011. Not on roads, not on bridges, not on snow ploughs – on Climate PR supporting the world effort to tax and ration our use of energy. See: http://climatequotes.com/2011/01/08/how-can-climate-scientists-spend-so-much-money/ At least A$800,000,000 is being spent annually in Australia on “Climate Research”. Not on flood-proof roads, airports and bridges, not on water storage, not on emergency helicopters – just wasted on chasing the climate will-o-the-wisp. See: http://carbon-sense.com/2010/02/16/green-jobs-galore/ And the UK government plans to spend one thousand million pounds on carbon capture and burial. Not on reliable low cost energy; not on snow-proof airports - just wasted trying to bury natural aerial plant food. See: http://climateresearchnews.com/2010/10/uk-spending-cuts-undermined-by-1-billion-plan-to-capture-and-bury-the-beneficial-harmless-gas-co2/ (Carbon Sense Coalition)
Recycled virtual world speculation: Glacier shrinkage will hit European Alps hardest, study claims Global warming research warns of rising sea levels and threat to water supplies. (Guardian)
Good grief! Climate change to continue to year 3000 in best case scenarios New paper in Nature Geoscience examines inertia of carbon dioxide emissions
Weather in the year 3000: once again Two years ago, we discussed a report in MSNBC about a paper that was predicting the climate for the year 3000. University of Calgary: press release » Don't Stop Reading » (TRF)
Scientists find 'drastic' weather-related Atlantic shifts Scientists have found evidence of a "drastic" shift since the 1970s in north Atlantic Ocean currents that usually influence weather in the northern
hemisphere, Swiss researchers said on Tuesday.
Methane in the Atmosphere - no cause for alarm - just natural gas passing through The role of methane in the atmosphere has been emphasized by the IPCC to the point that many governments regard methane as almost as important as carbon dioxide amongst the greenhouse gases. The result is that emissions from natural gas pipelines, coal seams and agricultural livestock have been included in schemes to limit the growth of greenhouse gas concentrations. Analysis of changes to atmospheric methane within the last one hundred years suggests that the annual increases from 1930 to 1990 were due to losses from the production, transmission and distribution of natural gas that have now been reduced. Measurements over the last fifteen years show only natural variability. The data provide no justification for any attempts to reduce methane from industrial or agricultural activity. For a full report by Tom Quirk, Twentieth Century Sources of Methane in the Atmosphere, see: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/quirk-methane-in-atmosphere.pdf [PDF, 223 KB] (Carbon Sense Coalition)
New rate of stratospheric photolysis questions ozone hole
These images show its size each September over the past years, as derived from GOME, GOME-2 and SCIAMACHY satellite data. - click to enlarge
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow
Dr. Will Happer of Princeton wrote “The Montreal Protocol to ban freons was the warm-up exercise for the IPCC. Many current IPCC players gained fame then by stampeding the US Congress into supporting the Montreal Protocol. They learned to use dramatized, phony scientific claims like “ozone holes over Kennebunkport” (President Bush Sr’s seaside residence in New England). The ozone crusade also had business opportunities for firms like Dupont to market proprietary “ozone-friendly” refrigerants at much better prices than the conventional (and more easily used) freons that had long-since lost patent protection and were not a cheap commodity with little profit potential” (link). Even James Lovelock agrees. James Lovelock formulated the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the biosphere is a self-regulating entity with the capacity to keep our planet healthy by controlling the chemical and physical environment. He later became concerned that global warming would upset the balance and leave only the arctic as habitable. He began to move off this position in 2007 suggesting that the Earth itself is in “no danger” because it would stabilize in a new state. James Lovelock’s reaction to first reading about the CRU emails in late 2009 was one of a true scientist: Continue reading
Here's some really annoying nonsense: Great Barrier Reef among the Australian flood victims 'Really massive event ... has the potential to shift the food web,' expert says
Customers face huge bill for wind farms that don't work in the cold The failure of Britain’s wind farms to produce electricity in the extreme cold will cost billions of pounds, create an economic crisis and lead to
blackouts, leading industrialists have warned.
D'oh! Clean Energy Stocks Under-Perform in 2010 The WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index (ticker NEX), which currently tracks the performance of 100 clean energy stocks worldwide, fell 14.6 percent in 2010. This drop was in stark contrast to a 12.8 percent gain for the broad-market US S&P 500 index and a 16.9 percent rise for the Nasdaq Composite. (SustainableBusiness)
How brazen can you get? Autism study doctor Andrew Wakefield says he is the victim of smears by drug companies THE doctor behind a study linking of childhood autism to a vaccine that has been branded a fraud by the British Medical Journal said he was the victim of a smear campaign by drug manufacturers. (AAP)
There is, unfortunately, no vaccine against stupidity The British Medical Journal has devoted an editorial to stating that an article published in popular medical journal The Lancet in 1998 linking childhood vaccination with autism “was in fact an elaborate fraud.” (The Punch)
A Banner Day For Junk Science . . . Corruption: A study debunking vaccines by a scientist in the pay of trial lawyers was found to be "an elaborate fraud." Meanwhile, the "Great
Garbage Patch" turned out to be a sea myth. Science has some explaining to do.
EPA mandates new chemical testing The Environmental Protection Agency is forcing manufacturers of 19 chemicals produced in large volumes to conduct tests on their safety and environmental
effects and provide the data to the agency.
How studded winter tires may damage public health, as well as pavement Scientists are reporting new evidence on how studded tires — wintertime fixtures in some areas but banned in others for causing damage to pavement — may also damage the health of motorists and people living near highways. Studded tires have small metal protrusions from the rubber tread that improve traction on icy or snow-covered roads. Their study appears in ACS' Chemical Research in Toxicology, a monthly journal. (American Chemical Society)
How humankind was liberated from localism The eco-worriers promoting a Mao-style return to local energy and food production overlook how destructive ‘local living’ has traditionally been. (Colin McInnes, spiked)
We should be skeptical of the new sophists In classical Athens, public life became dominated by clever and smart-sounding sophists. These mellifluous “really wise guys” made money and gained
influence by their rhetorical boasts to “prove” the most amazing “thinkery” that belied common sense.
Rightly: Republicans kill global warming committee Mother Jones: Republicans have disbanded the one committee devoted solely to climate change and energy issues. (GEN)
And a modest start: Nearly 50 House Republicans offer bill to block EPA climate rules Dozens of Republicans used the opening day of the new Congress on Wednesday to introduce legislation that would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse-gas emissions. (E2 Wire)
Boxer promises to use 'every single tool' to thwart GOP's climate rollback Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she will “use every single tool available” to thwart efforts by House Republicans to block the
Environmental Protection Agency’s climate regulations.
Yes, Virginia, you do have to produce those 'Global Warming' documents By: Christopher C. Horner, David W. Schnare And Robert Marshall
Better & better: Martinez picks former astronaut, global warming denier to head energy, natural resources department Gov. Susana Martinez announced today that former astronaut and global warming denier Harrison Schmitt is her choice to run the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department. A geologist and former senator, Schmitt would be in charge of the Mining and Minerals Division, State Parks Division, Oil Conservation Division and Energy Conservation Management Division if confirmed by the state Senate. (New Mexico Independent)
but the global scam blunders on... Global Carbon Market Value Edged Up In 2010 The value of the global market in carbon emissions permits edged up 1 percent in 2010 to 92 billion euros ($120.9 billion), said Point Carbon, a Thomson
Reuters company, on Thursday.
Rationing by any other name: Carbon swap bank to beat climate change Could swapping carbon emissions rather than trading them reduce climate change?
Wrong answer: Carbon taxes are the answer to the stalled climate negotiations London, UK (January 6, 2011) - For global warming policy, the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference (Copenhagen Summit) was a major disappointment. Designed to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, the Summit concluded without a binding agreement because of deep divisions on the distribution of emissions reductions and costs. In addition, the United States failed to take action on a carbon cap-and-trade bill in 2010. Confronting this policy vacuum, leading climate economist William Nordhaus argues in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, published today, that carbon taxes are the best approach to achieve significant emissions reductions. (SAGE Publications UK)
Idiot: The climate movement is in desperate need of renewal If a jury that received extensive education on climate change could not vindicate the Ratcliffe activists, then who will? (Guardian)
IPCC Green Doctor Prescribes End to Democracy to Solve Global Warming This is a longer post than normal – but trust me, there’s a damn good reason for that. If you don’t read a single one of my other posts, read this one.
Republican AGW crusader Kerry Emanuel The Los Angeles Times have promoted Kerry Emanuel of MIT, See also a short echo in the Washington Post. Kerry Emanuel, who has once argued that the hurricanes get stronger and more frequent because of man-made climate disruption, is presented as a new role model: Republicans are recommended to follow in his footsteps. Of course, the media won't show us left-wing scholars who are climate skeptics - e.g. Denis Rancourt or left-wing journalists such as Alexander Cockburn. These facts indicate that for many journalists, the attitudes to climate disruption have become more important than the attitudes to ordinary political questions that used to divide the people into leftists and rightwingers. » Don't Stop Reading » (TRF)
Lakes A Big Source Of Climate-Warming Gas: Study Lakes and rivers emit far more of a powerful greenhouse gas than previously thought, counteracting the overall role of nature in soaking up climate-warming
gases, a study showed on Thursday.
Bacteria gobbled methane from BP spill: scientists Bacteria ate nearly all the potentially climate-warming methane that spewed from BP's broken wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico last year, scientists reported on
Thursday.
MPs give backing to deep water drilling off UK MPs have ruled out a moratorium on deep water drilling in the North Sea, despite concerns it could lead to a disaster worse than BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year. (TDT)
Senators Snowe, Inhofe Request EPA Evaluation of E15 Waiver on Fuel Supply Source: Senator Inhofe WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senators Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) and James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, have requested the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to examine whether its recently-announced policy to allow 15 percent volume ethanol (E15) in the nation’s transportation fuel supply will adversely affect the supply of pure gasoline required for operating thousands of engines including those in snowmobiles, chainsaws, lawnmowers, boats, small airplanes and other non-road machinery. In a letter sent yesterday to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, both senators inquired as to whether the EPA considered the availability of pure gasoline in granting the waiver for the use of E15, as well as what policy recommendations the Administration would suggest to ensure sufficient supply of pure gasoline. Read the rest of this entry » (SPPI)
The combination of an energy event yesterday in Washington, DC that I was unable to attend and a comment I received on Monday''s posting got me thinking about energy policy in the context of the new year and the start of the new Congressional session today. [Read More] (Geoffrey Styles, ET)
Yeah, that "clean energy" thing... Rare Earth Metals Leave Toxic Trail to Toyota, Vestas Jan. 6 -- Rare earth metals are key to global efforts to switch to cleaner energy -- from batteries in hybrid cars to magnets in wind turbines. Mining and processing the metals causes environmental damage that China, the biggest producer, is no longer willing to bear. (Bloomberg)
A bit of a New Year's wish list: Seven ways to improve health care and the environment in 2011 My latest HND piece starts the year off with some suggestions. These are:
All seven of these precepts are obvious, but are still overlooked, mostly because there is no direct way to make money with any of them. Of course, all of them will SAVE money, but who in leadership really cares about that? If they did, they would do more than just talk about it, right? Read the complete article, where I fill in the details. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)
How disappointing for the people-haters: Oceanic “Garbage Patch” Not Nearly As Big As Portrayed In Media CORVALLIS, Ore. – There is a lot of plastic trash floating in the Pacific Ocean, but claims that the “Great Garbage Patch” between California and Japan
is twice the size of Texas are grossly exaggerated, according to an analysis by an Oregon State University scientist.
Scientific advance or lucky coincidence? Scientists Create 52 Artificial Rain Storms in Abu Dhabi Desert Hail, lightning and gales came through the state's eastern region this summer thanks to scientist-puppetmasters.
Geoff points us to a Guardian article, which he points out goes some way to demonstrating the tendency of climate-alarmists to undermine their own credibility, and to alienate themselves against the wider public. Rather like the 10:10 campaign did with the ‘splattergate’snuff video…
It should not be necessary to point it out: the Nazis systematically murdered millions of people; E.ON provides its customers — homes, schools, hospitals, churches, synagogues, mosques, factories, offices — with electricity. If any of its customers don’t want to use electricity, they are free to turn off their appliances, and go hug a tree. (Climate Resistance)
Analysis: Obama Under Pressure To Delay EPA Carbon Rules The Obama administration is facing intense pressure from all sides to delay its efforts to limit greenhouse gases, but don't expect it to call off its chief enforcer on climate -- the EPA -- without a fight. (Reuters)
Regulating Greenhouse Gases: Is EPA Following the Law or Doing an End-Run around Democracy? by Marlo Lewis The first of EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations kicked in yesterday (Sunday, Jan. 2). More are on the way. Is the agency following the law or doing an end-run around democracy? My New Year’s Day column in PajamasMedia.Com addresses this vital issue. The column restates what seems to me the common sense of the matter. When Congress enacted the Clean Air Act in 1970, it did not design or intend the Act to be a framework for global climate change policy, let alone for de-carbonizing the U.S. economy. Congress, moreover, has never, in the intervening years, given its approval for the Act to be used as such a framework, or for such purposes. Restating the obvious is important at this time because the greenhouse lobby is trying to persuade the incoming 112th… Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
Terence Corcoran: Kent perfect choice for environment portfolio It’s hard to imagine a better choice for Canada’s environment portfolio than Peter Kent, appointed Tuesday by Prime Minister Stephen Harper as the key change in a minor Cabinet shuffle. If Mr. Kent has demonstrated a special talent in his junior foreign affairs portfolio, it’s an ability to hold his cool while the media try to turn some issue into a hot conflict — as is the case now over whether Canada will be forced to follow the United States on the road to economy-jolting carbon regulation. As a former journalist and broadcaster, Mr. Kent has a knack for careful language and a reassuring voice, exactly what’s needed in the face of the ongoing media storm over climate change and carbon emissions. What the media want now from the Harper Conservatives is some kind of abject admission that Canada is just going to have to fall in line behind the extreme policy action taking shape at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Clean Air Act. Read More » (Financial Post)
They finally figured it out... Kyoto Model “Didn’t Work,” State Department Climate Negotiator Says by Marlo Lewis Jonathan Pershing, State Department deputy special envoy for climate change and top U.S. negotiator at the Copenhagen (2009) and Cancun (2010) climate conferences, says the Kyoto Protocol “didn’t work,” Politico reports. Pershing explained:
The Politico article continues:
Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
Excellent: New Mexico threatens a U-turn on environmental regulations New Mexico, the only state besides California to move forward on comprehensive global warming regulations, is reversing course under a new Republican
governor, Susana Martinez. The move threatens to cripple the Western Climate Initiative, a California-driven effort to enact a regional trading program to curb
greenhouse gas emissions.
Eleven Principles to advance us to a Third World Nation Here in Australia we’re copying techniques from tin-pot tyrannies. When the government wants a “consensus” that they know they have no way of achieving, they fake it. People in suits declare (with no hint of irony) that Business Needs Certainty (which means: certain-taxes, guaranteed imposts, global handicaps, Mmmm. Yes. Please). The Ultimate State of Business Certainty will be found when the idea of costing carbon is dumped for good, laughed into history, and is mocked on whatever version of Saturday Night Live is running at the time. Frankly the case cooked up as “Business Needs Certainty (so tax us)” is an inanity-cake with cherries on top. Can we bake it in public, chop and serve it with a smile, and all enjoy the joke together? Is anyone kidding that there is any better kind of “business certainty” than when companies know for sure they won’t be hit with unnecessary taxes based on corrupt science? How about a future where a Government guarantees to get out of the way and stay out? Gilllard has painted herself into a corner where the only escape hatch is “a consensus” (well not just any old consensus, but a fully predetermined one — hers). Rule number one of the Strategic Bluster is to win the argument by simply declaring you’ve won. But Advanced Bluster 101 is better: Don’t even acknowledge there was a competition in the first place — simply proceed as if Conclusion A is so obvious that there was never even a need to discuss it. Move along people. More » (Jo Nova)
It is an article of faith among environmentalists, conventional wisdom in the media and academia, and a massive delusion afflicting California’s voters, that the climate skeptic community receives massive backing from oil companies and other corporate “polluters.” But when you start to look at who stands to gain from climate “mitigation” policies, and really examine the money trail behind legislative lobbying and political campaigns, the notion that the money is on the side of the deniers doesn’t hold up. (CIV FI)
by Marlo Lewis “All politics is local,” former House Speaker Tip O’Neil used to say. Accordingly, climate activists often emphasize the allegedly horrible impacts of global warming on the region, state, or locale of their target audience. This is an old tactic. During the Clinton Administration, EPA and other agencies conducted a traveling road show touting model-projected “regional impacts” of climate change. Global warming would intensify hurricanes, EPA told Gulf Coast residents. It would destroy the ski and maple syrup industies, EPA told New Englanders. It would parch the southwest and intensify conflict over water resources, the agency told westerners. Showcasing the alleged “local links” of global climate change looked like a winning formula for while. Then came Climategate and the outing of cap-and-trade as a stealth energy tax. What’s surprising is not that this… Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
2010: The Year that Climate Alarmism Melted by Robert Michaels
It was the year that climate-change alarmism (aka anthropogenic global-warming alarmism) died, a passing all the more noteworthy because it seemed so unlikely 12–15 months ago. Few ideas in all of history had the salience and durability that warming alarmism used to have. Higher temperatures and accumulating carbon would bring planetary catastrophe–all our fault by using the dense energy known as oil, gas, and coal. It became a religious issue, but this time one with science on its side. A consensus of scientists would team up with a consensus of busybodies to bring us an unending stream of penitential sacrifices. For politicians, sharing the pain would be an unprecedented vote-buying opportunity. And new taxes–well, politicians always need that (if they can get away with it!). (MasterResource)
by Robert Bradley Jr.
And so we now know. “Environmentalists, scientists and lawmakers have renewed public relations efforts to put global warming plainly before Americans’ eyes and also rebut opponents who say nothing is happening.” What? Nothing is happening? Who said that? Didn’t uber-alarmist James Hansen say the first rule of climate is that it changes–always has, always will. In his words:
Things are happening–sure. A lot of nature is at work, probably more than we now know about or can really appreciate. And man’s influence on climate? We are trying to figure that out, but why does it have to be all bad? Is nature optimal? Didn’t more climate scientists than want to admit it (Steve Schneider, et al.) sound the global cooling alarm several decades back? (MasterResource)
Apocalyptic Enthusiasm And The Royal Society On the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society we reflect on how it first successfully promoted science as a sober and reasonable force serving society by dampening the prevailing apocalyptic ‘enthusiasm’ at large in Restoration England, and how the Society’s relationship to fearful prognostations was recently reversed when it came to promote apocalyptic environmentalism. This reversal is indicated by the election of the Royal Society’s current president in 2005, shortly after he had published one of the most extremely apocalyptic books ever written by a scientist. (GWPF)
Poor warmies... it's not working: Falling off the map The online journal The Daily Climate is getting upset
about the lack of media coverage of climate change. According to this source, in 2010, journalists published 23,156 climate-related stories in English last
year - a 30 percent drop from '09's tally. This brings them back to 2005 levels, after spiking in the run-up to the much-hyped climate talks in Copenhagen and
during the Climategate scandal.
Are huge northeast snow storms due to global warming? Guest post by Dr. Richard Keen The winter of 2009-2010 was a memorable one in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, with locations like Philadelphia enjoying multiple massive snow storms that led to record totals for the winter. As with all exceptional weather events of late, the usual suspects blamed the occurrence on global warming. In a NOAA press release reported in USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/2010-07-15-heat-record_N.htm), Jay Lawrimore stated that…
To which I commented on “Watts Up With That” on July 16, 2010 (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/16/a-spot-check-on-noaas-hottest-so-far-presser/) that Lawrimore’s remarks show a complete lack of understanding of weather (which makes up climate). Continue reading → (WUWT)
They actually published this... Finding the Fingerprints of Climate Change in Storm Damage -- a Very Long Detective Story Hurricanes could become more prevalent with climate change, but the economic pain they deliver might not be recognized as man-made for 260 years. (ClimateWire)
It's better as young Pielke tells it: Signals of Anthropogenic Climate Change in Disaster Data [UPDATE: Joe Romm blows a gasket on this paper.
Have a look at his post and you'll get a sense why it is that he dodged an
opportunity to debate me last year (an offer that remains open) even after a donor promised $20,000 to Doctors Without Borders if he'd participate.]
Congress May Force White House To Expand Drilling: Group Congress should pass legislation, if necessary, to force the Obama administration to open more offshore areas to oil and gas exploration, the head of the
American Petroleum Institute said on Tuesday.
Arguably the biggest story in the United States energy scene, and de facto for the rest of the world, has been the development of shale gas. Natural gas production in the United States was flat from about 1995 to 2005, standing at about 2 Tcf per month. But over the last five years, production started going up (see graph) moving to around 2.3 Tcf per month. The entire increase is because of shale gas, contributing at least 17 percent of domestic production. This is remarkable, considering that shale gas accounted for an estimated 2 percent just a few years ago. (Peter C Glover and Michael J. Economides, ET)
Lawmakers Protect Natgas From New Drilling Regulations A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers pressed the Obama administration on the first day of the new Congress not to impose regulations curtailing drilling
technique that taps hard-to-get natural gas reserves but has generated criticism about potential water pollution.
Natural Gas: Changing the Geopolitics of Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond Energy resources have always been at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict, creating alliances and clearly influencing the policies of many nations towards the adversaries. [Read More] (Michael Economides, ET)
Wind Farms DO NOT Provide Large Economic and Job Benefits (quite the opposite) by Glenn Schleede One would think that by now Obama Administration officials would admit that “wind farms” do not provide large economic and job benefits. However, recent Administration statements suggest the delusion continues and, perhaps, that officials do not understand why their expectations are unrealistic. (MasterResource)
Texas Welcomes Nuclear Discards A Texas commission Tuesday set in motion the importation of low-level radioactive-waste from 36 other states, a move long sought by the nuclear-energy
industry and long opposed by environmentalists.
Hoping everyone had a good holiday break, let's get down to it:
They're from the government - and they're not helping you: Bedbug Summit A bedbug summit has been announced for February 1st in Washington DC. Unlike the Beer summit which was called because “the police acted stupidly“, the
bedbug summit is necessary because the EPA acted stupidly.
By then it was too late for the EPA to admit it had been duped by activists and now ten years later New Yorkers are unable to get a good night’s sleep
because of critters in their beds. Just another unintended consequence of anti-science, progressive green activism. America should rest even less easily because
the mother of the bedbug problem, Carol Browner, is President Obama’s Climate Czar.
Greenies... Force the well-off to take a lodger. New year, new fascist-egalitarian proposal from the Guardian I hope you enjoyed your holiday. I’ve had about 10 days off away from the world of politics, shunning the papers and Radio 4, and my blood pressure is down, my skin has returned to normal, and my Chief Inspector Dreyfus-style twitch has gone. And then I switch on a computer and saw this:
(Ed West, TDT) In this morning’s Guardian George Monbiot advocates that the rich should have their homes forcibly opened up to solve housing shortages and those that refuse be punished. A bit spacious for a single man? (An Englishman's Castle) Hypocrite George Monbiot Condemns Large, Expensive Homes – Except His Own. (Haunting the Library)
Chromium: Where’s The Balanced Reporting? BY JACK DINI - Hinkley, California, the town made famous in the Oscar-winning Julia Roberts movie Erin Brockovich, does not show any evidence of an increased
or unusual rate of cancers.
Light therapy proves bright idea for treating depressed elderly EXPOSURE to bright light may be just as effective for depressed elderly people as taking antidepressant medication, scientists have found, and the benefits seem to last even after the treatment is discontinued. (SMH)
Rob Lyons writes: Whatever happened to the ‘obesity timebomb’? The latest figures suggest that Britain’s waistlines are no longer expanding. Why are there no celebratory headlines? (spiked)
Eight Botched Environmental Forecasts (Dec 30, 2010) A new year is around the corner, and some climate scientists and environmental activists say that means we're one step closer to a climate Armageddon. But
are we really?
Here's a go: Climate PR effort heats up Hey America! Are you ready to get wonky on global warming?
The icy grip of the politics of fear The snow crisis of December 2010: what a striking snapshot of the chasm that separates the warming-obsessed elite from the rest of us.
Hot air trade hit again: Japan postpones emission trading launch JAPAN has postponed the creation of a greenhouse gas emission trading system by a year until after April 2014 in the face of strong resistance from the
business lobby, news reports said.
Bad Science Makes Bad Predictions: Climate Change Extremism Is Doing Its Job “Stephen Dorling, of the University of East Anglia’s school of environmental sciences, said it was not surprising the cold period raised questions
over climate change - but the snowy weather should not be used as evidence against it.”
Well said, that man! Mainstream media helps to brainwash Recent Coloradoan Soapbox articles by Dave Swartz (Nov. 27) and J.K. Peterson's (Dec. 13) discuss their beliefs that human-induced climate change is a
serious problem that must be confronted.
Lawrence Solomon: 75 climate scientists think humans contribute to global warming How do we know there’s a scientific consensus on climate change? Pundits and the press tell us so. And how do the pundits and the press know? Until
recently, they typically pointed to the number 2500 – that’s the number of scientists associated with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change. Those 2500, the pundits and the press believed, had endorsed the IPCC position.
Indirect effects of global climate change threaten the health of hundreds of millions of people. The very uncertainty that shrouds this issue must serve as an organizing principle for adaptation to its ill effects. (The Scientist) [em added]
No, they're not joking: Mad cow disease causes global warming “To hold global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels deforestation must be cut to half by 2020…” — so we are told by the the U.S.-based Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests (reported here). If we believe some credible sources of information (and apply the half-and-half logic), a ’4 degree rise’ in globally averaged gridded temperatures will create hell on earth, which can only mean that a ’2 degree rise’ will create half of that hell. Why are we cutting down tropical forests at all then? In the IPCC-cited Governing the world’s forests, Daniel Nepstad tells us (p.6): In order to wind back on the lethal fallout of one social scare – mad cow disease, we are now having to rely on another scare – catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, to take its firm grip on our societies. So the fake concerns for mad cow disease led to the real problem of Amazon deforestation which causes fake concerns over catastrophic global warming and is now leading us toward the real ‘solutions’ of REDD and carbon trading. (Shub Niggurath Climate)
For a novelty, they haven't blamed "climate change": Ice collision creates floating Antarctic climate lab WHEN a 78km tongue of ice split from the Mertz Glacier in east Antarctica last January, it established a natural laboratory.
They're right in one respect: Dirty Coal, Clean Future To environmentalists, “clean coal” is an insulting oxymoron. But for now, the only way to meet the world’s energy needs, and to arrest climate change before it produces irreversible cataclysm, is to use coal—dirty, sooty, toxic coal—in more-sustainable ways. The good news is that new technologies are making this possible. China is now the leader in this area, the Google and Intel of the energy world. If we are serious about global warming, America needs to work with China to build a greener future on a foundation of coal. Otherwise, the clean-energy revolution will leave us behind, with grave costs for the world’s climate and our economy. (The Atlantic)
Wind farms becalmed just when needed the most Wind farms in Britain generated practically no electricity during the recent cold spell, raising fresh concerns about whether they could be relied upon to meet the country’s energy needs. (TDT)
Wind power could put birds at risk One of the nation's largest bird conservation groups says rapid construction of wind energy projects will endanger several avian species.
Really shiny white elephant: Solar Plant to Generate Power After Sundown Something new is headed for the Southwest desert: solar power plants that can make electricity whether or not the sun is shining.
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