Welcome to the Real World: Grim Prospects for Young Adults under Obamacare As the Obama Administration’s allies are gearing up to spend $125 million over the next five years to sell the health overhaul law to the public, including seniors, there has been a noticeable vacuum in the discussion over the impact on younger adults. This topic was in the spotlight at a recent event sponsored by the CATO Institute: “How Will Obamacare Affect Young Adults?” While the President received one of the largest margins of support from 18-29 year old voters during the 2008 election, there is growing skepticism over the President’s handling of health care and the final version of the bill signed into law. Under the overhaul, Michael Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, says that flawed policies are used to fix other flawed policies. For example, for price controls to work, an individual mandate is required; but for a mandate to work, more taxpayer subsidies are necessary. But what happens when the central planners’ calibrations are off? Younger and poorer adults who stay in the health insurance market will be cross-subsidizing the premiums of older and wealthier Americans not yet eligible for Medicare. From the “have nots” to the “haves”—a new social policy. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Hmm... FDA seeks less use of antibiotics in animals to keep them effective for humans Network News The Food and Drug Administration urged farmers on Monday to stop giving antibiotics to cattle, poultry, hogs and other animals to spur their growth, citing concern that drug
overuse is helping to create dangerous bacteria that do not respond to medical treatment and endanger human lives.
Study finds body's potential universal flu defense WASHINGTON - The human body makes rare antibodies effective against all flu viruses and these might be boosted to design a better universal flu treatment, researchers
reported on Monday.
I hate bans but this has merit: Ban homeopathy from NHS, say doctors Members of the British Medical Association call for homeopathic remedies to be taken off pharmacy shelves designated for medicines (The Guardian)
Oh boy... Summer silliness in full swing: Junk food and obesity: Taking a cue from tobacco control That means strict measures to reduce consumption of what's bad for us, and aggressive public education campaigns.
Reality Check: Food Isn’t Tobacco Given the success of the anti-smoking movement in establishing government control over tobacco, it’s no surprise that trial lawyers and other self-anointed “food cops” consistently cite the movement as the blueprint for their attacks. That’s because the agenda of these anti-food activists requires wide-ranging and invasive government controls on a completely private matter: what we eat and drink. Today the latest salvo comes from Los Angeles Times business columnist David Lazarus, who muses: “What to do about the obesity epidemic? Here's a thought: Substitute ‘tobacco’ for ‘junk food.’” Lazarus is surprisingly honest about what this could mean down the road, writing that eventually our nation’s food zealots will seek a ban on “junk food” in all workplaces. Hold on to your candy bowls. What Lazarus fails to note about his approach is that the parallels between “junk food” and tobacco are pretty much limited to the Big Brother goals of activists. For one, there’s no such thing as “second-hand obesity.” You can quit smoking, but you can't quit food. And there’s no convincing evidence that food is addictive—unless tasting good is the determinant. And just about any kind of food can be part of a healthy diet, including the occasional “sinful” indulgence. Moderation is the key. That’s why the American Dietetic Association, which represents 70,000 nutrition professionals, rejects the whole idea of a “good” food, “bad” food dichotomy. The ADA writes that “total diet or overall pattern of food eaten is the most important focus of a healthful eating style. All foods can fit within this pattern, if consumed in moderation.” It’s curious to see one UCLA health sciences professor remark that the privacy-invading anti-obesity strategy “doesn't seem at all draconian” when, in fact, it calls for the government to try to make personal decisions for all of us. Considering the ultimate goal of the movement is “to make healthy eating unavoidable,” that necessarily means that the government will be taking choices away from consumers. Are cookies and chips so hazardous to the public that you should have to show proof of ID to buy them? Let’s put the food-is-tobacco theory where it belongs: in the ash heap. (Center for Consumer Freedom)
Think of a number Banner headline on the front page of the Daily Telegraph: 40,000 deaths a year due to junk food, says health watchdog Nice So hamburgers kill twenty times as many people as road vehicles. Ordinary people with no scientific expertise are openly laughing at the extravagance of the latest claim, but they do not matter: it is aimed at the ruling class of Oxford PPE graduates, who are much more credulous. At least the old-fashioned, scare-mongering, control-freakish zealots, such as the CDC and the EPA, paid us the respect of going to the trouble of developing elaborate statistical frauds to justify their assertions. This lot, arrogant on their lofty perch way above the seething masses they seek to hold inescapably in their grasp, just think up a number double it (several times) then publish it as the scary truth. NICE is a socialist construct – a committee that is given power of life and death (and pain) over its fellow citizens. It exercises arbitrary and haphazard control over the work of skilled clinicians. Two years ago it banned drugs for certain sufferers from rheumatoid arthritis, only to reverse its decision recently. Two years of pain to no purpose. Some think that their growing intrusions into private lives constitute mission drift or simply extending their remit, but there is also an element of displacement activity to distract attention from the general opinion that they are doing a lousy job. They are part of that insidious socialist framework of controllers, who aim to achieve command over every aspect of the citizen’s private life: and they have made great strides in this direction over the past decade. Imagine the outcry there would have been twenty years ago if snoopers were to demand control over children’s school lunch boxes. Now it is officially accepted as quite normal, though not by some parents who still hold onto the delusion that they live in a free country. There is no such thing as junk food. Diets are either varied and balanced or they are poor. There is, however, plenty of junk statistics, especially in the world of epidemiology. Most of the food health scares come from small observational studies without controls and randomisation. The worst of them come from data dredges and a leading source for quack dietetics is the Harvard Nurses Health study. With their debased standards (particularly levels of significance) epidemiologists can produce results to order. Remember how saturated fats were the deadly enemy? Now they are almost forgotten as the diet fashionistas move on to trans-fats. The diet industry maintains momentum by creating an atmosphere of hysteria. A huge army of officials, journalists, advisors etc live off the ever changing fads and fashions. Something is arbitrarily designated a wonder food or a deadly poison by some "expert" and immediately there is an outpouring of almost identical articles across the media. Naturally, the salt fanatics are to the fore. Despite the existence of a mass of contrary evidence compared with their own paltry efforts, they have hawked their arbitrary and totally unjustifiable “recommended limit” with such zest that the political and media establishment accepts it without demurral. Now here’s a funny thing. All those 2,000 odd victims of road crashes had names, addresses and post-mortem reports, yet none of the putative 40,000 victims of politically incorrect diets have any of those things. Epidemiology is strikingly successful and consistent in maintaining the anonymity of its victims. The recent decline of the Telegraph has been dispiriting. The turgid wittering of Geoffrey Lean is given great prominence and space, while Louise Gray constantly digs up scares of past and present. There are still a couple of fine writers of the sceptical persuasion, but Christopher Booker tends to get downplayed and James Delingpole is largely confined to the blog section. Time was when scientists and journalists shared a commitment to scepticism, but both have largely abandoned this in conformity with the norms of the new establishment. Nevertheless it is astonishing that a once respected newspaper can make a front page banner feature of such self-evident twaddle, allying itself to the fascistic would-be controllers of the minutiae of everyday life of the citizenry. A child who has an innocent bag of potato crisps in its lunch box is now likely to have it confiscated. The makers of these crisps are marketing an illusion. They sell what are basically sealed bags of air with a small amount of potato cut into very thin plates, fried and hence randomly shaped in such a way as to make the pack look full. A typical small pack contains about 35 grams of edible material. A potato tuber about the size of a tennis ball weighs of the order of 250 grams, though water content varies greatly between varieties. The second most important ingredient is sunflower oil, once a favourite of the dietary zealots, which represents about a third of the total weight. The remainder is seasoning, which comprises things like milk lactose, citric acid from sugar beet molasses, yeast extract and various (often unconvincing) flavourings. All pretty harmless, indeed beneficial, though the salt zealots will rear up in horror at the half gram of salt, which is a vital nutrient and a major contributor to pleasantness of taste (evolution’s way of ensuring that we get enough and homeostasis takes care of any surplus). A hamburger with onions is a highly nutritional food item as part of a varied diet. Of course, if you ate nothing but hamburgers or crisps you would become ill, but the same would happen if you ate only apples or cabbage. The snoopers into children’s lunch boxes and other dietary matters are simply looking for symbolic deviations from the latest dietary fads and fancies. They are among the storm troopers of authoritarian socialism. Children, bless their hearts, simply save their eating for pleasure for after school hours, while the majority of adults, being perversely untrendy, ignore the peremptory command “You vill obey orders at all times!” and make up their own minds. Long live the human spirit! (Number Watch)
Americans getting fatter, especially in the South CHICAGO - Obesity rates climbed again last year with 28 U.S. states reporting adults are fatter now than a year ago, two advocacy groups said on Tuesday.
Paying President's 'Price On Carbon' Energy Policy: The administration plans to use sleight-of-hand politics to sneak through an economy-killing tax on energy as necessary to save the Earth. Make no mistake: Cap-and-trade is a tax every American will pay in every aspect of his or her life. (IBD)
Barack Obama fails to rally support for energy bill Standoff suggests Senate would give up on climate change law that would result in far more limited proposals
How cap-and-trade revenues went to fix state budgets (Source: Stateline.org) WASHINGTON _ A few weeks ago, 10 Northeastern states held an unusual sort of auction. What the states were selling was credits for carbon emissions.
The buyers were electric utilities, who purchased the credits either to allow themselves to send carbon dioxide out the smokestacks of their own power plants, or to re-sell
those credits to other utilities.
UK will miss carbon emissions targets 'unless government takes urgent action' Committee on Climate Change says policies required within next year to reform electricity market and home efficiency (The Guardian)
Quangos should be burnt to fuel a green revolution, Tory report recommends The new Government should conduct a bonfire of nine low-carbon quangos and instead hand them to a planned green investment bank if Britain is to fulfill its commitments to
create a low-carbon economy and catch up with its European partners, a report yesterday urged.
AGW tipping point: end of world moved to 2200 The Independent has published some optimistic
news yesterday: Scientists 'expect climate tipping point' by 2200They asked 14 climate scientists what is the length of the Chinese emperor's nose and when will the tipping point destroy the Earth. None of them had any clue but the person who asked those questions apparently thought that he gets a very accurate, scientific answer if he computes the average of the 14 answers. » Don't Stop Reading » (The Reference Frame)
Sigh... Arctic climate may be more sensitive to warming than thought, says new study A new study shows the Arctic climate system may be more sensitive to greenhouse warming than previously thought, and that current levels of Earth's atmospheric carbon
dioxide may be high enough to bring about significant, irreversible shifts in Arctic ecosystems.
Emissions scheme could cost NZ up to $5b New Zealand's failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions has left taxpayers staring down the barrel of a Kyoto Protocol liability of at least $1 billion and possibly more than
$5 billion, according to a book analysing National's emissions trading system.
By Steven Goddard, The headline reads “NASA Satellites Detect Unexpected Ice Loss in East Antarctica“ ScienceDaily (Nov. 26, 2009) — Using gravity measurement data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, a team of scientists from the University of Texas at Austin has found that the East Antarctic ice sheet-home to about 90 percent of Earth’s solid fresh water and previously considered stable-may have begun to lose ice. Better move to higher ground! NASA also reported :
“Antarctica has been losing more than a hundred cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice each year since 2002” and that “if all of this ice melted, it would raise
global sea level by about 60 meter (197 feet).“
Continue reading (WUWT)
After nearly 50 years of acceptance, the theory that a great ocean “conveyor belt” continuously circulates water around the globe in an orderly fashion has been dismissed by a leading oceanographer. According to a review article in the journal Science, a number of studies conducted over the past few years have challenged this paradigm. Oceanographers have discovered the vital role of ocean eddy currents and the wind in establishing the structure and variability of the ocean’s overturning. In light of these new discoveries, the demise of the conveyor belt model has been become the new majority opinion among the world's oceanographers. According to M. Susan Losier, of Duke University, “the conveyor-belt model no longer serves the community well.” The idea that the ocean conveyor belt transports cold, dense water from the subpolar North Atlantic along the “lower limb” of the conveyor belt to the rest of the global ocean, where the waters are upwelled and then transported along the “upper limb” back to deepwater formation sites, has been supported by the majority of oceanographers for decades. This circulating flow was assumed to operate along western boundary currents in the deep ocean and provide a continuous supply of relatively warm surface waters to deepwater formation sites. While it was thought to be vulnerable to changes in deepwater production at high latitudes, with significant injections of fresh water capable of disrupting the smooth operation of the system, under normal conditions the conveyor belt was thought to function constantly and consistently. Now it seems that opinions within the oceanographic community have shifted, and the great ocean conveyor belt model has fallen from grace. As detailed in an eye opening article by Dr. Losier, the conveyor belt has been found wanting and dismissed as the dominant ocean overturning paradigm. Losier is Professor of Physical Oceanography and Chair of the Earth and Ocean Sciences Division at Duke, and is an expert in large-scale ocean circulation, water mass distribution and variability. The article, “Deconstructing the Conveyor Belt,” begins with a short history of the conveyor belt theory's development. According to Losier, our modern idea of the ocean’s overturning, and our understanding of its importance to Earth's climate, developed as a result of the work of two prominent oceanographers:
The abyssal flow field, as theorized by Stommel in 1958. The second important oceanographer was the eminent Wallace S. “Wally” Broecker, Newberry Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and a scientist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Arguably one of the world’s greatest living geoscientists, for more than half a century, Broecker has investigated the ocean’s role in climate change. He was among the pioneers in using radiocarbon and isotope dating to track historical climate change, and the influence of climate change on polar ice and ocean sediments. It was Broecker who coined the term “ocean conveyor belt.” According to Losier, work by Broecker and colleagues suggested that the ocean’s overturning was responsible for the rapid climate fluctuations experienced during Earth’s last glacial period. “Though the importance of the ocean’s overturning to Earth’s climate had previously been understood, Broecker’s work essentially cemented the role of the conveyor belt as an agent of climate change,” states her review. “Thus, just as Stommel’s work gave spatial structure to the overturning, Broecker’s provided a temporal context.” So what has changed oceanography's mindset enough to proclaim the conveyor belt—arguably the most important discovery in the history of oceanography—an idea whose time has past? Since its proposal, oceanographers have understood that the conveyor model is an oversimplification of the way ocean overturning actually takes place. But it was believed to be a useful simplification, capable of providing an overall model of the ocean's transportation of heat energy, if not the exact details. But now it seems that some major features of the conveyor belt have been called into question. Here is a list of recent discoveries that have shaken the foundation of the conveyor belt theory.
When all of these observations are combined, they indicate that the conventional conceptual model of ocean overturning needs revamping. As Dr. Losier put it: “In sum, the impact of eddies on our concept of a continuous lower limb for the ocean’s overturning has evolved from an understanding that eddies can detrain and entrain fluid along the DWBC to the recognition that the DWBC can, at certain locales and perhaps certain times, be a series of migrating eddies, to the realization that eddy-driven flow provides an alternate pathway for deep waters to spread globally.” In other words, it doesn't work as simply as we thought. Losier is in a good position to make such a judgment, since it is partly due to her work that scientists are revisiting the conveyor belt model. As noted on this blog in “Conveyor Belt Model Broken,” work by Losier and Amy Bower of Wood’s Hole, using RAFOS float data, showed that there was something fundamentally wrong with how the ocean's overturning flow was being modeled. By analyzing the divagating float paths, it was discovered that ocean currents did not behave as expected. Reported back in May of 2009, their discovery had the potential to affect both short term and long term climate change. This is because ocean currents not only redistribute surface warmth, the oceans themselves are a vast reservoir for heat and carbon dioxide. I concluded that this finding invalidated the IPCC's GCM climate model predictions, because the models were based on incorrect behavior of the ocean overturning currents. At the time, Dr. Losier took exception to my supposition, stating in an email, “the climate models care first and foremost about the return of the surface waters and our research has no bearing in the slightest on those waters.” I disagreed, saying that the discovery of significant eddies changed the assumptions on how the deep sea currents flow, which must change the boundary conditions between different masses of water. This cannot help but alter the long term reaction of the ocean to the energy flowing through it. More recently, variations in continuous data measurements from cable-moored instrument arrays identified large and unexpected yearly fluctuations in conveyor flow. As additional discoveries have unfolded, it was also found that there are large reservoirs of CO2 stashed away in the deep ocean, again previously unexpected. As the evidence has piled up, Dr. Losier has been forced to admit that there are implications for climate change and the way the Earth system is modeled. In her own words:
This reinforces the claim that previous climate models—which are highly dependent on the coupling between ocean and atmosphere and, hence, the ocean circulation models they contain—cannot be considered accurate reconstructions of Earth's climate system. I repeat my earlier assertion: if the conveyor belt model is wrong then none of the IPCC's model results can be taken seriously. This point is underscored by recent work that found small changes in high latitude insolation, driven by Earth's orbital cycles, can trigger significant changes in lower latitude ocean and atmospheric circulation. The circulation of Earth's oceans is now known to be much more complex and nuanced than even a decade ago, which has significant implications for climate modeling. This spate of recent discoveries serves to underline a fundamental tenet of science—that no theory, no matter how elegant or widely believed, is sacrosanct. As the great philosopher of science, Karl Popper, stated, science progresses by moving from one false theory to another, still false theory that is nonetheless closer to the truth. There is nothing wrong with dismissing the conveyor belt model for another, more correct model. In fact, a scientist incapable of realizing that a cherished, comfortable old theory is false and must be discarded is not capable of doing good science at all. Keeping that in mind, here is Losier's summary of the case against the conveyor belt:
So, after very logically and methodically making the case for dismissing the conveyor belt model, Dr. Losier claims we should not discard it because it is a gross oversimplification, but because it “no longer serves the community well.” I would call any theory that ignores the intricate mechanics and crucial structures of the thing is is attempting to describe as worse than a gross oversimplification—I would call it wrong. It seems that Dr. Losier just cannot bring herself to say the words, “this theory is false.” Regardless, oceanography is in the process of moving on to new, hopefully less false theories. Some period of grief and denial is probably to be expected from those who literally grew up with the conveyor belt theory. Now, if climate science would only face up to the falseness of the gross oversimplification they have promoted over the past few decades—anthropogenic global warming. The failure of anthropogenic global warming is not only tied to the recent discoveries in oceanography, but to scores of other scientific advances in biology, geology, atmospheric physics and Earth sciences. The fiction that human generated CO2 is responsible for climate change, and that our continued emission of that greenhouse gas will damage this planet's ecosystem is as gross an oversimplification as has ever been postulated. While simplicity is generally considered a good thing, and it is no sin for a scientist to invent a theory which proves to be false, it is a great sin to refuse to recognize a theory's falseness. Only by dismissing old false theories can science move on to new, more correct ones. Climate science has damaged its credibility, and the reputation of all science, by clinging to this outdated, failed theory. It is time for the climate science community to prove that they are real scientists by openly pronouncing anthropogenic global warming a false theory. Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)
Moonbat + Amazongate = Prize Pillock There’s only one thing more satisfying than being right. That’s when a shrill buffoon you utterly despise dedicates an entire column in a newspaper you loathe to
accusing you of being wrong, working himself up into an almost masturbatory lather of slobbering indignation, macheting himself to ever greater heights of ecstatic fervour like
some Shi’ite penitent during Ashura, giggling at his jokes, crowing at his own cleverness, earning all sorts of smarmy plaudits from his coterie of sorry eco-fascist brown-nosers
– and it turns out, after all that, you’re still entirely right and the buffoon – let’s call him Moonbat – has emerged looking an even bigger prat than ever.
From CO2 Science Volume 13 Number 26: 30 June 2010 Editorial: Subject Index Summary: Journal Reviews: Elevated CO2 Boosts Iron's Positive Impact on Phytoplanktonic Productivity: ... and it appears to do so by "acidifying" the ocean. CO2- and Climate-Induced Effects on Terrestrial Plant Production: What does one of the most detailed mechanistic models project for the next ninety years? A Seven-Decade History of the Water-Use Efficiency of a Swiss Alpine Grassland: How was it obtained? ... and what did it show? The Long-Term Response of Plant Photosynthesis to Elevated CO2: Does it decline over time? Plant Growth Database: Medieval
Warm Period Project:
BP’s ‘Beyond Petroleum’: Climate Alarmism as the Great Environmental Distraction (Part II) by Robert Bradley Jr. [Editor note: Part I in this series examined praise for BP and Enron from the Worldwatch Institute. Part III on Thursday will examine a Harvard Business Review article linking BP's 'beyond petroleum' strategy to special government favor, including drilling on government domain.]
For more than a decade, Left environmentalists and trendy business ethicists have touted BP’s “beyond petroleum” mantra as an example of public-interested corporate progressivism. For example, Joe Romm in Cool Companies: How the Best Businesses Boost Profits and Productivity by Cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Island Press: 1999) devotes several pages near the end of the book to “climate leadership at British Petroleum.” Romm refers to John Browne’s “remarkable May 1997 speech at Stanford University” (p. 206) before describing this episode:
Romm continues: “One of the primary messages of this book [is what] Browne has learned… ‘It is clear how frequently environmental logic and commercial logic coincide” (p. 207). BP’s Misdirection But now we know what happens when a corporation gets distracted and tries to be all things to all people. It happened to Ken Lay and Enron, and it happened to BP. Tony Hayward cut back BP’s renewables push, which put pressure on the company’s ‘beyond petroleum’ greenwash. But evidently Hayward did not or could not do enough to reverse the unfocused corporate culture toward safety and true environmentalism. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Jon Stewart Vivisects “Energy Independence” We live in the age of video. As a writer, particularly one who writes books, that fact is rather painful. But the reality is that television, and increasingly, video on the Internet – think YouTube, Hulu, etc. – is the dominant medium of our time. [Read More] (Robert Bryce, Energy Tribune)
North Sea oil find cheers three UK explorers While BP continues to struggle, three British oil explorers saw their shares soar after one of the biggest North Sea finds in years. (TDT)
Obama’s promise to bankrupt coal industry to cost 1,000 jobs in upper Midwest During the campaign, Barack Obama promised to bankrupt any new coal-burning plants in the US through his global-warming policies. Congress has followed suit with a cap-and-trade bill that Harry Reid keeps promising to revive. One firm in Wisconsin shows exactly what happens when politicians intervene to attempt to conduct social engineering in the energy sector. Bucyrus just lost a $600 million project for a new coal-burning electricity plant in India, thanks to a decision by the Congressionally-funded US Export-Import Bank to deny the Wisconsin firm credit, based in part on Barack Obama’s policies:
This decision won’t stop one carbon molecule from hitting the air. In fact, it will likely make carbon emissions worse. India will look for other vendors to supply the equipment, probably from neighboring Russia or China, as they will continue to build and operate the plant. Both nations compete in the same marketplace as Bucyrus, but they don’t work as cleanly as the American company does, which means the end result will be lower efficiency and more pollution. (Hot Air)
Reject All Energy Subsidies, Not Just the Ones for Fossil Fuels For a country that is still heavily dependent on coal power, news of a more efficient (read: lower-carbon-emitting) coal plant should be greeted with roaring applause from the environmental community. Unfortunately, under the Obama Administration, the U.S. Export-Import bank can’t see past the black and white idea that coal and other fossil fuels are the enemies of the environment, and only renewables can save it. This mentality creates double standards, as when White House denied a $250 million Ex-Imp Bank loan to a coal power plant in India equipped with exceptional carbon-cutting technology. President Obama was right to reject the subsidy but he did so for the wrong reasons. The Obama administration should get out of the loan guarantee business altogether. These credit subsidies are little more than financing mechanisms that allow Washington to pick energy winners and losers. Instead, energy projects should compete for capital on their own merit. If the plant cannot be built without the subsidy, it should not be built. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
'£80 cost' of hidden taxes to combat climate change Households are typically being charged more than £80 a year in hidden taxes to help combat the impact of climate change, research suggested today.
The Isle of Eigg off the west coast of Scotland was hailed as the green future, when islanders installed a solar, wind and hydroelectric power solution to power their homes. All renewables, all the time. The green energy wet dream in action. When Eigg won a share in a £1 million prize in January for its devotion to green, the judges declared:
So how’s that working out, exactly? Not so well: Power rationed on ‘green island’ Eigg:
Green energy is great, as long as you don’t mind going without power when the weather doesn’t cooperate. If Eigg was touted as the ideal place for renewable power and it doesn’t work, what hope is there for the rest of the world’s renewables efforts? UPDATE: The UK mainland has the same reality to deal with as energy from renewables dropped 7.5%. Try selling more bird shredder farms on the back of that performance. (Daily Bayonet)
Study shows stability and utility of floating wind turbines College Park, MD (June 29, 2010) -- Wind turbines may be one of the best renewable energy solutions, but as turbines get larger they also get noisier, become more of an
eyesore, and require increasingly larger expanses of land. One solution: ocean-based wind turbines. While offshore turbines already have been constructed, they've traditionally
been situated in shallow waters, where the tower extends directly into the seabed. That restricts the turbines to near-shore waters with depths no greater than 50 meters -- and
precludes their use in deeper waters, where winds generally gust at higher speeds.
The New Math Of Hillary Clintonomics With job creation in the U.S. basically at a standstill aside from some government hiring of temporary census workers, even after a trillion-plus in stimulus spending, Hillary Clinton's answer for more growth and more jobs is to remove even more money from the people who earned it and hand it over to the federal government. (Ralph R. Reiland, IBD)
Study raises questions over wider use of statins LONDON - There is no evidence that prescribing cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins to patients at risk of heart disease reduces their chances of premature death in
the short term, scientists said on Monday.
Study finds childhood obesity may be declining Tantalizing evidence that America's epidemic of childhood obesity might be starting to subside was presented Sunday by researchers who also found that the trend could be
speeded up through school programs.
?!! We've got too much on our plates says UK obesity expert DINNER plates are growing at the same rate as Australians' bulging waistlines, according to a UK obesity expert.
Take a model that purports to predict the future and just run it back to the past. The result are sometimes salutary. Ross McKitrick of Guelph (celebrated for his role in
trashing the warmist’s Hockey Stick) has done that with a model from the Canadian Medical Association.
MAKING GOOD SCIENCE DECISIONS, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY CHURCHVILLE, VA—I can’t help but praise Michael Specter’s new book: Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our
Lives. Specter warns that we live in a world where the leaders of African nations prefer to let their citizens starve to death rather than import genetically-modified food
grains. Childhood vaccines have proven to be the most effective public health measure in history, yet people march on Washington to protest their use. Fifty years ago
pharmaceutical companies were regarded as vital supports for our good health and lengthening life spans; now they are seen as callous corporate enemies of health and the
environment.
Researchers predict larger-than-average Gulf "dead zone"; impact of oil spill unclear ANN ARBOR, Mich.—University of Michigan aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia and his colleagues say this year's Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" is expected to be larger
than average, continuing a decades-long trend that threatens the health of a $659 million fishery.
A Bull's-Eye For The Supreme Court Second Amendment: In the "living Constitution" era, the Supreme Court rediscovers original intent and rightly rules that the right to bear arms applies to all
Americans just as the rest of the Bill of Rights does.
McDonald v. Chicago: An Exclusive Interview
After helping to strike down the Chicago handgun ban, the winners in today’s Supreme Court decision promised, in an exclusive interview with the Heritage Foundation, that more such cases would be coming in the next few weeks. Alan Gura, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, promised, “There will be future cases, I will be bringing cases in the days and weeks to come.” When asked about the decisions impact, he said, “We will see laws that serve no useful purpose other than to annoy gun owners struck down and others that are actually critically necessary for public safety upheld.” This morning, the Court sided with Gura and his client, 76 year old Otis McDonald. Otis had pursued the lawsuit after feeling that the city’s ban left him defenseless. In our interview, Gura, McDonald and Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb shared their thoughts on the freshly minted decision and explained the impact it will have on Chicago and the rest of the country. Earlier this year, after the case was argued before the Court, Gura and Gottlieb sat down for an interview describing their strategy and hopes for the Court’s decision. Much of their prediction came true in today’s victory. Elsewhere on the Foundry, Heritage scholars have provided their analysis of the Court’s decision and the ramifications it should have on Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court. (The Foundry)
Protecting the Second Amendment (But Just Barely) In what is probably the most important Second Amendment case in Supreme Court history, the Court today held that the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” cannot be infringed by the states. In 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Court for the first time held that the right to bear arms was an individual right. But that decision, which struck down a virtual ban on handguns and a requirement that rifles and shotguns had to be kept “unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock” in the District of Columbia, applied only to the federal government because the District is a federal enclave. What had never been decided before today’s decision in McDonald v. Chicago was whether the protection of the Second Amendment is incorporated through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause to apply to state and local governments. In a long-awaited decision on the final day of the Supreme Court’s term, a 5-4 majority of the Court in an opinion written by Justice Alito overturned the City of Chicago’s regulations on firearms. These regulations included a ban on handguns, a requirement that other guns be registered prior to their acquisition (which is impractical in many cases), a burdensome annual reregistration requirement and annual fee, and a punitive provision that would bar the reregistration of a gun once its registration expired. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Despise Guns? Change Begins At Ballot Box Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that the Second Amendment to the Constitution means that individual Americans have a right to bear arms, what can
we expect?
The Next Chicago Gun Rights Case . . . And Why It Is Important to the Kagan Confirmation Moments ago, the Supreme Court announced that, Yes Virginia, the Second Amendment does in fact apply to the states, and thereby struck down Chicago’s complete ban on handgun possession. But this decision (and the Court’s prior decision in Heller) raises still other questions which will likely have a substantial impact on what that Second Amendment right functionally means. For example, what constitutes a reasonable regulation on firearms under the Second Amendment? Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is wasting no time. Before the Supreme Court even issued its opinion, he said that he was poised to immediately pass legislation to regulate guns if Chicago’s ban is struck down. If anyone doubts how reasonable his regulations will be, it is apparent that he is seeking to limit guns as severely as possible, based upon his judgment that “guns don’t solve problems in homes [or] on streets. They kill people.” Continue reading... (The Foundry)
The Court Restores a Fundamental Right Posted by Ilya Shapiro
G20 summit drops clean-energy pledge Toronto - The leaders of the world's 20 most powerful developed and developing states (G20) on Sunday dropped a pledge to invest in climate-friendly energy generation from
their final summit statement.
U.S. Law Key Ahead Of Climate Talks: EU Have your say and help us to improve the World Environment News for your chance to win a $100 Amazon Voucher. Just click here to complete a quick survey and enter the draw.
Whaddya know? Moonbat really is that stupid! It's war! - by Richard... Monday, June 28, 2010 The Moonbat
responds to this - and I don't think he's consulted his lawyers - they would not allow
him to be so stupid: I cannot say "with pleasure" ... life is too short and I have better things to do with it. But, if you insist ... and I do hope you remember that you were offered the easy way! Everything you do now, everything you say, will make it harder for yourself.Having gone through the tedium of having to respond to PCC complaints, and likewise having dealt with more than a few libel cases (from both sides of the fence - some may recall that I was an expert witness in the MacLibel case), I know they are extremely hard work. I would not wish that on anyone, even Monbiot. But, as I have warned him, each stage up the chain that he forces the issue, the harder it gets to deal with and the more work involved. This is not a threat ... it is a simple statement of fact. Thus, I am still minded to resolve this issue informally and to that effect am preparing a letter to send to the newspaper. This is clear enough from my posting on Monbiot's site, but to my latest post he responds: "Woohoo! I'm quivering with fear." This really needs little comment - it largely speaks for itself. This is the calibre of person we are dealing with. Nevertheless, the plan remains as stated. I will make a formal complaint in writing to the newspaper (I will post that up when it is ready). If I don't get satisfaction from that, I will go to the PCC and from there I have to option to go to law. I am keeping that open but no one should under-estimate my determination to see this through to the bitter end. Interestingly, Daniel Nepstad has joined the fray on the Monbiot comments section, once again demonstrating how important the Amazon is to the warmists. Needless to say, his "contribution" confuses rather than clarifies the issues. And someone should teach him about paragraphs - it is amazing how many "scientists" do not seem to understand their value, or how to use them. Then, presentation is about thinking of the reader, and seeking to communicate ideas as clearly as possible. By their poor use of English and their lazy presentation shall we know them. (EU Referendum)
Lawrence Solomon: Newsweek’s retractable article June 28, 2010 – 4:46 pm “Newspapers Retract ‘Climategate’ Claims, but Damage Still Done,” reads the headline in Newsweek this weekend, in a column over the latest controversy in the global warming debate. The headline, and the article beneath it, are so inaccurate that Newsweek should retract them. For starters, no newspaper that the column describes retracted any claims about Climategate, the scandal that hit the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last November when private emails showed, among other things, that all of the IPCC’s temperature data was suspect. The newspaper retractions – all two of them, by the UK’s Sunday Times and a much earlier change of heart by a small German daily — dealt with Amazongate, one of the many scandals that followed Climategate. Next, the Newsweek column states that “In perhaps the biggest backpedaling, The Sunday Times of London, which led the media pack in charging that IPCC reports were full of egregious (and probably intentional) errors, retracted its central claim—namely, that the IPCC statement that up to 40% of the Amazonian rainforest could be vulnerable to climate change was ‘unsubstantiated.’ … The Times‘s criticism of the IPCC—look, its reports are full of mistakes and shoddy scholarship!—was widely picked up at the time it ran, and has been an important factor in turning British public opinion sharply against the established science of climate change.” The Times article was hardly pivotal in turning British public opinion against the climate alarmists. For one thing, public opinion had turned against climate alarmism months earlier, even well before Climategate, so much so that the British government took out paid TV ads in 2009 in an explicit attempt to win back public opinion. For another, the retracted Times article did little to publicize Amazongate – by the time the Sunday Times article appeared, Amazongate was old news, having been covered by hundreds if not thousands of media outlets around the world. Here’s the timeline. On January 25, the British blog site, EUReferendum broke the Amazongate story. The press coverage began the same day, with a London Telegraph headline announcing “After Climategate, Pachaurigate and Glaciergate: Amazongate.” Between then and January 31, when the Sunday Times article appeared in print, Amazongate became firmly established as an another example among many of shoddy, error-filled scientific work by the IPCC. None of the other articles published in that week have seen a need to retract. Even the Sunday Times’ retraction came only after months of litigation, indicating that some felt there was no need to retract. The basic thrust of the Amazongate stories remains valid, even if one of the many media outlets that covered Amazongate decided it had stepped over the line in its presentation of the story. One thing the Newsweek column got right. The damage to the reputation of the IPCC has been done. Financial Post
Credo in unum tipping point - by Richard... Tuesday, June 29, 2010 Here
they go again, a bevy of the
so-called experts, making predictions about the climate which they cannot possibly justify.
by Robert Bradley Jr. [Editor note: Part II tomorrow will examine why BP made its ill-fated “Beyond Petroleum” push. Part III on Wednesday will examine a Harvard Business Review article linking BP's climate alarmism/energy transformation strategy to special government favor, including drilling on government land.]
Just imagine if John Browne had used the time and resources BP spent on climate alarmism and ‘beyond petroleum’ on real safety and environmental issues. BP might still have a capitalization of $150 billion and not face a potential worst-case scenario of bankruptcy and ruin. And more importantly, the U.S. Gulf would not be in an environmental crisis. Just imagine if Enron’s Ken Lay had used the time and resources spent on climate alarmism and forced energy transformation on accounting, risk control, and the real things that promote business sustainability. (Lay was a big Christopher Flavin/Worldwatch fan too.) Enron might still be with us today. Diverted management attention has an opportunity cost. Left environmentalists lobbied and praised BP and Enron for putting form over substance. A few shouted ‘greenwashing’, but most applauded their coveted split within the fossil-fuel industry on climate and energy. Enron is no longer around. Instead it has become the poster child of political capitalism run amuck. And the Deepwater Horizon accident–for which, in an effort to save about $5 million, BP will pay tens of billions of dollars–may sink BP as an independent company. What an irony: fake environmentalism driving out real environmentalism. Climate and energy reality, anyone? A sampling of quotations from the mainstream Left Worldwatch Institute praising BP, Enron, or both follows. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Whiter clouds could mean wetter land Palo Alto, CA— One proposed emergency fix to halt global warming is to seed clouds over the ocean to make them more reflective, reducing the solar radiation absorbed by
the Earth. But the scheme could also change global rainfall patterns, raising concerns of water shortages on land. A new study by the Carnegie Institution, in collaboration
with the Indian Institute of Science, suggests that altered atmospheric circulation under the scheme in fact could increase monsoonal rains and cause the continents to become
wetter, not drier, on average.
In 2007, Ross McKitrick wrote a paper on the Fourth Assessment Report which included a short section on the IPCC's use of Judith Lean's paper:
Click to read more ... (Bishop Hill)
Giant Cleanup Ship Met with Puny Response from Bureaucrats
After our government claimed that we did not need or could not obtain larger ships to skim the Gulf oil spill, a giant-capacity skimming ship has arrived in U.S. waters. Yet our government has us wondering whether it will permit the ship to join the cleanup effort. The problem is not simply the Jones Act; it’s also that our Environmental Protection Agency may squelch the ability to use this giant ship. The S. S. A-Whale is not like the mere 4,000-barrel-a-day vessels we’ve been using. Its owners say this ship, a converted oil tanker, can gather 500,000 barrels a day. By comparison, say the owners, the entire fleet our government has authorized for BP has only gathered 600,000 barrels—TOTAL—in the 70 days since the Deepwater Horizon explosion. (NOTE: 500,000 barrels equals 21-million gallons.) The A-Whale is the essence of an international ship—built in South Korea, modified in Portugal, owned by Taiwanese and flagged in Liberia. And that is part of the problem. Even if it stays farther offshore than the 3-mile limit of America’s Jones Act, it still requires approval by the U.S. Coast Guard and Environmental Protection Agency before BP can hire the A-Whale and put it to work. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
BP And Obama Benefit From Oil Leak Continuing When is President Obama going to deal with the real pollution? How much longer can he essentially ignore the oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico? How many times can he
repeat the scientific falsehood about carbon pollution causing global warming? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says CO2 is the cause not carbon. An
increase in atmosphere carbon would result in cooling. Carbon from incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons is called soot and that blocks sunlight. CO2 is not a pollutant but a
natural gas essential to life. In a speech to Congress Obama linked the falsehood with his goal. He asked them “to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on
carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America.”
Enbridge To Expand In Oil Sands, Join CO2 Project Have your say and help us to improve the World Environment News for your chance to win a $100 Amazon Voucher. Just click here to complete a quick survey and enter the draw.
From the department of wishful thinking: Natural Gas as Panacea: Dubious Path to a Green Future Many energy experts contend natural gas is the ideal fuel as the world makes the transition to renewable energy. But since much of that gas will come from underground shale, potentially at high environmental cost, it would be far better to skip the natural gas phase and move straight to massive deployment of solar and wind power. (Daniel B. Botkin, e360)
Bio Jet Fuel — the Real $600 Toilet Seat? by Marlo Lewis The custom-designed $600 toilet seat for P-3C Orion antisubmarine aircraft — often depicted as the epitome of government waste — is an urban legend. The “seat” was actually a plastic molding that fitted over the entire seat, tank, and toilet assembly, for which the contractor charged the Navy $100 apiece. However, in the subsidy-driven world of biofuels, government can flush lots of your tax dollars down the gurgler. DOD’s Quadrenniel Defense Review Report (QDR) crows that in 2009, the Navy “tested an F/A-18 engine on camelina-based biofuel” (pp. 87-88). Camelina is a non-edible plant in the mustard family. On Earth Day 2010, an F/A-18 taking off from the Warfare Center in Patuxent River, Maryland, became the first aircraft to ”demonstrate the performance of a 50-50 blend of camelina-based biojet fuel and traditional petroleum-based jet fuel at supersonic speeds,” enthuses Renewable Energy World.Com. At the event, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus said: “It’s important to emphasize, especially on Earth Day, the Navy’s commitment to reducing dependence on foreign oil as well as safeguarding our environment. Our Navy, alongside industry, the other services and federal agency partners, will continue to be an early adopter of alternative energy sources.” Renewable Energy World also reports that the Navy ordered 200,000 gallons of camelina-based jet fuel for 2009-2010 and has an option to purchase another 200,000 gallons during 2010-2012. Sounds impressive, but let’s put those numbers in perspective. In just three months in peacetime, the flight crew of a single vessel — the USS NASSAU, a multi-purpose amphibious assault ship – flew more than 2,800 hours and burned over 1 million gallons of jet fuel. Neither Renewable Energy World nor the QDR mentions how much camelina-based jet fuel costs. Hold on to your (toilet) seat! According to today’s ClimateWire (subscription required), the price is $65.00 per gallon. That’s about 30 times more expensive than commercial jet fuel. Those who wonder why government can’t just mandate a transition to a ”beyond petroleum” future should contemplate those numbers. (Cooler Heads)
The EU’s Solar Science Fiction European officials are either using science fiction to divert attention away from the block’s institutional disarray or they’ve simply lost touch with reality in their Brussels bunker. [Read More] (Andres Cala, Energy Tribune)
Sen. Hatch Calls for Repeal of Obamacare Mandates “I’ve been working to dismantle Obamacare,” declared Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). “We have to fight this terrible law that’s a threat to liberty itself.” These comments came during a June 21st blogger conference call held by Sen. Hatch in which he sought to rally support for two bills aimed at representing “a strategic attack on the central tenants of Obamacare.” The American Liberty Restoration Act (S. 3502) would strike forthcoming individual mandates from the current law, while the American Job Protection Act (S.3501) would repeal what Hatch calls, a “job-killing employer mandate.” Individual and employer mandates represent two of the most focused-upon issues on which Americans are challenging both the effectiveness and constitutionality of the health care law, signed by President Barack Obama in March. Indeed, Hatch cited that “there are now 20 states, including Utah, challenging this which the President signed into law.” Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Fifth Anniversary of Kelo v. New London Posted by Ilya Shapiro With all the property rights news coming out of the Supreme Court and New York Court of Appeals in the last week, I almost missed Wednesday’s fifth anniversary of the dreadful Kelo v. New London decision. Justice Stevens’s opinion in Kelo sanctioned a transfer of private property from homeowners to a big company in the name of (promised but, as we’ve seen, never realized) job creation and increased tax revenue. This was a Pyrrhic victory for eminent domain abusers, however, given:
To learn about these and other fascinating developments that turned a property rights lemon into at least some type of lemonade, see the Institute for Justice’s new report and video.
(Cato at liberty)
Say what? Mobiles 'too dangerous' for children CHILDREN have been warned to text, rather than talk, on their mobile phones by the federal Government's radiation safety watchdog.
Early exposure to cow's milk has benefits: study NEW YORK - A taste of cow's milk during the first two weeks of life may protect a child from later developing an allergy to the milk's protein, a new study suggests.
EU regulators probe risks of blood pressure drugs LONDON - European drugs regulators have launched an investigation into the possible increased risk of cancer in patients taking common blood pressure medicines known as
angiotensin-receptor blockers or ARBs.
Teens who snack may weigh less NEW YORK - Teenagers who have snacks throughout the day are less likely to be overweight or obese than their peers who limit themselves to larger meals, a new study
suggests.
Could breathing car exhaust trigger a stroke? NEW YORK - A Danish study hints that air pollution from car exhaust might trigger strokes, although much more study is needed to confirm this, the study team notes.
U.S. scientists create artificial lungs, of sorts CHICAGO - Two U.S. teams have taken major strides in developing lab-engineered lung tissue that could be used for future transplants or testing the effects of new drugs.
"Jumping genes" make each person unique: study WASHINGTON - Stretches of DNA known as "jumping" genes are far more common than anyone thought, and almost everyone has a unique pattern of them, U.S. researchers
reported on Thursday.
Yesterday, the House passed the DISCLOSE Act, making good on the President's promise to ignore the Supreme Court's ruling and pass laws that abridge the freedom of speech. In Citizens United, the Supremes ruled that laws banning any group of citizens from engaging in political speech is unconstitutional. That includes unions, corporations, and interest groups both big and small. (Stossel)
In truth, misanthropists shafting honest working people: Losing the Owl, Saving the Forest MET in person, the northern spotted owl seems an unlikely casus belli. Last Friday, the Woodland Park Zoo here allowed me a private audience with its three captive owls, a
mating pair and a lone elderly female, each of whom resembled a miniature, flecked-brown overcoat of Harris tweed. Their eyes — unlike the eyes of most owls, which are bright
yellow — were the color of dark chocolate. Blinking slowly, rooted to their perches, they looked more wistful than wise, dreaming, perhaps, of flying squirrels, on which they
like to dine in the wild, or of extinction, which still appears their likeliest fate.
Genetically Altered Salmon Get Closer to the Table The Food and Drug Administration is seriously considering whether to approve the first genetically engineered animal that people would eat — salmon that can grow at twice
the normal rate.
Otis McDonald, a lead plaintiff in a Supreme Court gun case, on why he's fighting to legally own a gun in Chicago. (Stossel)
Well, the "no regrets" part is right, at least: Researchers Call for 'No-Regrets' Approach to Climate Warming The strategy, detailed in the journal Science, prepares people for a hotter and drier Southwestern U.S. through water conservation and the continued development of ways to
harness energy from the sun, wind and Earth.
Politics, scientific credibility and environmental policymaking Over the past year, the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut of climate change mitigation policy has been pretty much halted in its tracks, at least for the time being. There
are two primary causes, both rooted in the complexities (or perhaps better seen as simplicities) of human behaviour. One is the failure of some governments to agree to
disadvantage their own citizens for what is presented as the sake of future generations across the world. The other may best be described as scientific hubris.
Those expecting Gillard to sweep Australia into ETS are destined for disappointment: How Abbott found an unexpected ally over climate change in the Gang of Four IN THE inner sanctum, Julia Gillard had urged that the Rudd government not honour its election commitment for an emissions trading scheme unless the opposition's Tony Abbott
agreed to one.
Greenies left wondering if the window has been shut Just as Rudd wanted to consult, the axe suddenly fell, writes Tom Arup.
In December, delegates from 193 countries took part in the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen in an attempt to form an agreement on how to
combat global warming beyond 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires.
Changing The Climate In California Regulation: An initiative to suspend California's draconian climate law has qualified for the November ballot. The people can now choose between jobs and junk science and
fight hot air at the ballot box.
Amazongate: the missing evidence The story of the IPCC's claims about threats to the Amazon rainforest takes another bizarre turn, says Christopher Booker
The Amazongate story looks as though it may run for a considerable time. We have had, in rapid succession, a crowing article from George Monbiot, a fighting response from Delingpole and now articles from Booker in the Telegraph and North on EU Referendum. It seems clear that the Sunday Times withdrew its article without a adjudication being made - it's not on the PCC's list of cases adjudicated and Monbiot says that the ST withdrew the article in order to avoid an adverse ruling. Strangely though, the case doesn't appear in the list of cases resolved - i.e. negotiated settlements - either. (Bishop Hill)
Judithgate: IPCC relied on one solar physicist That's her. She's cute, isn't she?
But that's not the point here. Judithgate: IPCC relied on one solar physicist (autom. transl. to EN, klimaskeptik.cz, Thursday)and it went viral. Judithgate has joined the dozens of similar scandals revealing the true character of the IPCC activities. By the way, Sean Carroll has hid his head in the sand and he decided that the ClimateGate has evaporated. Congratulations to your solution to the problem, Sean, but don't get suffocated! The situation is even more awkward because the IPCC really relied on a single paper - and Ms Lean is a co-author Lean J., Roltmann G., Harder J., Kopp G.: Source contributions to new understanding of global change and solar variability, Sol. Phys., 230, 27-53, 2005- to claim that the solar activity didn't rise when the global climate was heating up a little bit in the recent decades. There were no other solar physicists or astrophysicists in the IPCC. » Don't Stop Reading » (The Reference Frame)
Still running the tired old "it's worse than we thought" line: Dire climate change warning to Australia AN international conference on the Gold Coast this week will hear Australia will be one of the hardest hit developed countries when climate change starts to bite.
Climate change brings back endangered butterfly A globally endangered butterfly is making a comeback in Britain thanks to climate change.
Climate change scientists turn up the heat in Alaska OAK RIDGE, Tenn., June 25, 2010 — Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are planning a large-scale, long-term ecosystem experiment to test
the effects of global warming on the icy layers of arctic permafrost.
Aggressive action to reduce soot emissions needed to meet climate change goals Without aggressive action to reduce soot emissions, the time table for carbon dioxide emission reductions may need to be significantly accelerated in order to achieve
international climate policy goals such as those set forth in last December's Copenhagen Accord, according to "Assessing the climatic benefits of black carbon
mitigation," a study published online June 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Answer to what ended the last ice age may be blowing in the winds, paper says A chain of past natural events may hold lessons for the future
The Forecasting Potential of Complex Models by Antonis Christofides We are glad to have another guest post by Antonis Christofides (see his earlier post here) Guest Weblog Post By Antonis Christofides If you gave me the following paper after replacing the author’s examples of econometric and energy models with climate models, I could not have told it had been written in 1981. Ascher, W. (1981). The forecasting potential of complex models. Policy Sciences, 13(3), 247-267. doi:10.1007/BF00138485 Here are some extracts. On the contrast between bad performance record and large volume of research: Unless forecasters are completely ignorant of the performance record, or are attracted solely by the promotional advantages of the scientific aura of modeling, they can only be attracted to its potential benefits not yet realized. On the difficulty of retrospective evaluation of model performance when there are competing scenarios: When no scenario is designated as most likely, the scenarios must be regarded as exogenous factors, whose likelihoods are not at issue in the modeling exercise. The model produces a set of projections, each posited as correct if the corresponding condition or scenario were to hold, but without implying that any particular one will hold or that some are more likely than others. In this case, the retrospective evaluation of forecast accuracy must proceed by first establishing which condition actually prevailed, and then measure the discrepancy between the projection tied to that condition and the actual level of the predicted trend. If it is still too early to evaluate a set of conditional forecasts retrospectively, the spread of conditional forecasts of the same trend for the same year can be used as one indication of uncertainty or minimum error, but only if the conditional is the same for every forecast of the set. On using model consensus to judge model validity: [E]ven the agreement across models need not be an indication of validity; they could all be wrong. For example, all energy models predicting the 1975 levels of U.S. electricity, petroleum, and total energy consumption projected these levels higher than they actually turned out to be. This confident consensus was no guarantee that the models were correct then; any consensus among models’ predictions in the future may be equally misleading. … [S]imilar models undergoing similar judgmental censorship by modelers holding similar outlooks on the future can so easily reassure all parties that the future is seen with certainty. On using the fact that models are physically based as an argument for model correctness: Complex models are formulated by specifying assumptions and hypothesized relationships as explicit, usually mathematical propositions. While this procedure is often very helpful in uncovering inconsistency and vagueness in the initial ideas or verbal formulations, it cannot establish the correctness of the model’s propositions. Models express assumptions, but do not validate them. If the modeler tries to ensure the validity of the model’s propositions by focusing on disaggregated behavior of presumably greater regularity, the problem of reaggregating these behaviors to model overall patterns becomes another potential source of error. If the modeler only includes relationships proven by past experience, there is no guarantee they will hold in the future. There is no procedure or format of model specification that guarantees the validity of this specification. On the effort required: Since rigorous, elaborate analysis [of models and their outputs] is time consuming and expensive, there has been a natural tendency for forecasters to pour their efforts into grand, once-and-for-all projects, carried out only infrequently and yet used long after they are produced because the immense effort makes them seem definitive. On the likelihood of modelers to reconsider: [A]fter the modeler has spent years developing optimization routines, apparent violations of … assumptions are more likely to be accommodated by patchwork modifications, or disregarded altogether as short-term aberrations, than they are to trigger the abandonment of the model altogether. … [M]odel revision, which seems to the cynic to be an ad hoc effort to keep a fundamentally misspecified model more-or-less in line with reality, is often regarded by the model builder as the normal routine of science. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)
Oh... Carbon sequestration: Boon or burden The idea to sequester carbon is gaining support as a way to avoid global warming. For example, the European Union plans to invest billions of Euros within the next ten years
to develop carbon capture and storage whereby CO2 will be extracted at power plants and other combustion sites and stored underground. But how effective is this procedure and
what are the long-term consequences of leakage for the oceans and climate? A Niels Bohr Institute researcher has now cast light upon these issues. This research has just been
published in the scientific journal, Nature Geoscience.
BP, Greenpeace & the Big Oil Jackpot In what passes for debate about climate change one of the most tiresome allegations is that skeptics are lavishly funded by big oil. As a result of this funding, so the
argument goes, the public has been confused by those who'll say anything in exchange for a paycheck.
Judge Won’t Stay Drilling Decision The Obama administration’s efforts to suspend deepwater oil drilling were dealt another setback in court on Thursday when the federal judge who struck down the
administration’s six-month moratorium refused to delay the decision’s effects. .
Lawrence Solomon: Avertible catastrophe
U.S. Coast Guard
The BP oil-rig explosion. The U.S. turned down an offer of Dutch technology that might have reduced the spill’s impact. June 25, 2010 - 9:06 pm How U.S. labour and environmental rules blocked Dutch spill-cleanup technology Some are attuned to the possibility of looming catastrophe and know how to head it off. Others are unprepared for risk and even unable to get their priorities straight when risk turns to reality. The Dutch fall into the first group. Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. “Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour,” Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill. To protect against the possibility that its equipment wouldn’t capture all the oil gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch also offered to prepare for the U.S. a contingency plan to protect Louisiana’s marshlands with sand barriers. One Dutch research institute specializing in deltas, coastal areas and rivers, in fact, developed a strategy to begin building 60-mile-long sand dikes within three weeks. Read More (Financial Post)
Peter Foster: Oil statism, Obama style June 25, 2010 – 9:05 pm Liberals look at capitalist enterprise as a carcass to be hacked up A “soft-spoken” American BP executive, Bob Dudley, is to take over the political ducking stool from CEO Tony Hayward, while also attempting to deal with the Gulf oil spill. Mr. Dudley knows something about political risk. One of his previous jobs was as head of BP’s Russian joint venture, TNKBP. Mr. Dudley was forced to leave Russia under physical threat during a dispute with BP’s state-backed oligarch partners. Another example of oil politics, Russian style, is in the news. Former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is already serving eight years for alleged tax evasion, is on trial in a glass cage in Moscow, charged — somewhat improbably — with stealing 350 million barrels of oil. His real offence was to challenge the authority of then Russian president — now Prime Minister — Vladimir Putin. Yet another reminder of the dangerous world of multinational oil came this week from Venezuela. There the government of Hugo Chavez, whose hero is dictator Fidel Castro, announced the nationalization of 11 oil rigs belonging to a U.S. company, Helmerich & Payne. It seems that Helmerich was part of a plot to undermine the government by making extraordinary demands — such as that Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA might pay its bills. BP too has had experience with Mr. Chavez, who three years ago nationalized the company’s operations in the Orinoco region, then “persuaded” them to be a minority partner. Read More (Financial Post)
What will Gulf of Mexico spill mean for Canada’s oil sands? From finger-pointing at the Copenhagen climate summit to a flurry of new project approvals, 2010 started with a bang for the Canadian oil sands industry.
Syncrude Guilty In 1,600 Duck Deaths In Toxic Pond A judge found Syncrude Canada Ltd, Canada's largest oil sands producer, guilty on Friday in the deaths of 1,600 ducks that landed on a toxic Northern Alberta tailings pond
in 2008, ruling the company should have had deterrents in place.
I’ve been looking through the International Energy Agency's new forecast for medium term oil and natural gas markets, issued yesterday. In contrast to the IEA’s warnings of last summer concerning an imminent oil supply crunch, the agency now sees ample supplies to accommodate the level of demand growth it anticipates for the next five years. Yet while this scenario does not envision a peak in global oil supplies before 2015, its components offer ample cause for concern about the growing market power of OPEC and the risk of geopolitical disruptions. [Read More] (Geoffrey Styles, Energy Tribune)
Robert Bryce on Natural Gas Vehicles by Robert Bryce (Guest Blogger)
Making fun of T. Boone Pickens is easy. But give him his due: he’s right about using more natural gas in the transportation sector. That concept makes economic sense for many fleet operators. But – and it’s a big but – Pickens has grossly exaggerated the ability of the U.S. to make a quick transition to natural gas fueled vehicles. On the Pickens Plan website (PickensPlan.com), the billionaire claims that using more wind power and “increasing the use of our natural gas resources can replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports in 10 years.” That’s an easy claim to make. But Pickens can’t do it. And he can’t do it even if he were somehow able to manage a 100-fold increase in the number of natural gas-fueled vehicles in the U.S. and do so in just ten years. Building a large fleet of natural gas vehicles – and more importantly, the refueling infrastructure to support them – will take decades, not years. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Study Says Natural Gas Use Likely to Double WASHINGTON — Natural gas will provide an increasing share of America’s energy needs over the next several decades, doubling its share of the energy market to 40 percent,
from 20 percent, according to a report to be released Friday by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Smart Meter Chaos: Maryland PSC Gets Real (consumerism, anyone?) by Robert Bradley Jr.
The smartest guys in the electricity room believe that a path to energy efficiency and environmental goodness is to hook up so-called smart meters for us little users. The smart machines would signal (jolt?) us to use less power in peak times when the price is high and to use power more when the price is low. But the very concept has problems aplenty. First, time-of-use pricing for residentials (versus commercial and industrial customers) is a nice ‘green’ theory, not fact. Some states like California do not want or allow such residential pricing because of equity concerns. Second, so-called smart meters are all about government (taxpayer) and class ratepayer subsidies, not stand-alone economics between willing buyers and sellers. Third, there is the hassle factor (called transaction costs) of setting up appliances with time-of-day usage. Relatedly, (in)flexibility costs are incurred. And last but not least, smart meters are intrusive. Big Environmental Brother lurks behind each smart meter to tell you what to do and when to do it. Civil libertarians take note of this government-dependent machine. Smart meters as ENERGY POLICY appear to be penny-wise and pound foolish. But members of an eco-energy elite want to individually pay by the pound to impress the neighbors and save the world, let them be ‘early adopters’. And perhaps these special users should also pay the costs of utility manpower in setting up time-of-day pricing to leave nonusers whole. Such is life under public utility regulation. Make no mistake: smart meters are not a ‘let-the-market decide’ proposition. If they were, utility customers could decide individually and on a stand-alone basis whether or not to buy and install the meters. This should be an individual demander-to-provider proposition without other ratepayers or taxpayers involvement. One final point: the federal budget is in horrendous deficit. Smart-meter money earmarked for Maryland should not be redistributed by the Department of Energy to other states as planned. The monies should be axed from the budget, reducing the deficit on a dollar-for-dollar basis. And by removing this component of the program, the broader Smart Grid investment concept, which has all the earmarks of a rate base perversity as explained by Robert Michaels, can be given a reality check as well. From the PSCM Decision [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Wind Power is More Dangerous than Coal or Oil The recent explosions in Massey’s Upper Big Branch coal mine and on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig highlight the tragedy of workplace fatalities. Though improvement in statistical averages do little to lessen the loss of those whose loved ones have died, the American workplace has gotten safer which means fewer will be grieving. The Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries reached a record low in 2008: 3.6 per 100,000 full-time workers. Yet with the recent noted losses in the oil and coal industries, some might think that workplace fatalities could be reduced even more by moving away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. The facts suggest the opposite. The largest source of new renewable energy is wind power, which accounts for 62 percent of renewable electricity generation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t publish accident data specifically for the wind-power industry, but the Caithness Windfarms Information Forum (CWIF) has created a list of fatalities for the wind industry worldwide. The list is compiled from news reports and is unlikely to be comprehensive. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Bogus Report Card Strikes Again The Commonwealth Fund released yet another misleading study yesterday pretending to show that America has a worse healthcare system than six other countries, including Britain and Canada…which just happen to be the poster children of national healthcare.
The sycophantic media have already churned out more than 250 articles on the “study.” Time headlined it: "US spends more, but gets less”.
Democracy: It's an awful thing in a country when its people no longer believe the government protects them and their rights. Yet, a new poll shows that's exactly where
Americans are headed right now.
Oh... Nine in 10 Americans eat too much salt: CDC CHICAGO - Nine out of 10 Americans eat too much salt with most of them getting more than twice the recommended amount, according to a survey by U.S. government researchers.
They won't like this then: More than a pinch of salt to breathe easier NEW YORK, - When Svetlana Dushin's mother told her to take her six-year-old daughter who was suffering coughing spells to a salt room she had no hesitations.
Survey suggests half of EU citizens believe scientists are 'dangerous' According to a Eurobarometer survey, a majority of people don't trust scientists. The only way to reverse this trend is for academics to step up their efforts to communicate with the public, writes Eoin Lettice (The Guardian)
Is obesity a factor in rising stroke rates in women? NEW YORK - Stroke rates among women in their late 30s to early 50s have tripled over the past two decades and researchers suspect a parallel rise in obesity may be playing a
role.
Skin condition linked to cancer risk: study NEW YORK - People with the skin condition atopic dermatitis may be at greater risk of getting cancer than those without it, new research hints.
The EPA has gone mad cow disease EPA classifies milk as oil, forcing costly rules on farmers Monica Scott The Grand Rapids Press Update: State Senate calls for EPA to change rule classifying cow’s milk as oil GRAND RAPIDS — Having watched the oil gushing in the Gulf of Mexico, dairy farmer Frank Konkel has a hard time seeing how spilled milk can be labeled the same kind of environmental hazard. But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is classifying milk as oil because it contains a percentage of animal fat, which is a non-petroleum oil.
The former VP is all over the news today. Not just because a masseuse accused him of "unwanted sexual contact," but because he has vague plans for
“sustainable capitalism.”
Ten years on, genomic revolution only just starting LONDON - The 10-year-old Human Genome Project has only just begun to bring to fruition its promise to transform medicine, its founders said on Thursday.
Oh... In the Battle to Save Forests, Activists Target Corporations Large corporations, not small-scale farmers, are now the major forces behind the destruction of the world’s tropical forests. From the Amazon to Madagascar, activists have been directing their actions at these companies — so far with limited success. (Rhett Butler, e360)
New battle of Britain as plans for factory farm revolution looms A battle is under way in the British countryside to fight off plans for massive factory farms that would house thousands of animals in industrialised units without access to
traditional grazing or foraging.
A restaurant in Mesa, Arizona is selling lion meat burgers. Enter the animal rights activists:
But why? Lions are listed as “threatened.” The best way to save threatened and endangered species is to…eat them.
The Bait-And-Switch On Cap-And-Trade President Obama's speech to the nation last week about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico followed a predictable script. Whenever a problem confronts this administration,
the president's answer is sure to include one of a trio of his 2008 campaign initiatives: health care reform, action to address climate change or education reform.
Gloves Off In California Over Greenhouse Gas Law California environmentalists opened fire on Wednesday on a measure approved for the state's November ballot that would roll back a landmark law regulating greenhouse gas
emissions.
(Bastards!) Mass Manslaughter By AGW (CO2) Obsession The EU policy on CO2 emissions has turned into a mindless, obsessed monster that cares not about climate, people or the planet. And it is getting its hands dirty with the lives of those it refuses to save. In fact: the EU Commission has just let everybody know that the wholly preventable, daily killing of more than 4,000 people by black carbon (soot) is not a “top priority” and “should not divert attention away from carbon dioxide“. It gets worse. The reason for dismissing any attempt at limiting black carbon? It’s because “more research must be carried out to ascertain its impact more accurately“. Impact on what? On global warming. Yes: because, according to Frank Raes, head of the climate change unit at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), black carbon is “‘likely’ to contribute to climate change” but “the regional impacts of black carbon may be even more significant than its global warming effect” (my emphasis). Also, “the existence of both black and white aerosols, with warming and cooling impacts, makes it less straightforward to make a case for political action on black carbon“. Talk about choosing the wrongest path. Reduction of black carbon emissions is by far the easiest, clearest, fastest way to solve a lot of issues, in a win-win scenario that would include Himalayan glaciers and the rescuing of little children from certain death via easily-approved legislation: 1. Black carbon has profound health effects, contributing to around 1.6M deaths every year. According to the WHO, for under-5s it is a bigger killer than malaria. Even the “EU policymakers speaking in Brussels” on 22 June say as much. According to EurActiv.com, “the health implications of particulate pollution make a compelling case for tackling black carbon, speakers agreed. Like other small particulates, it causes premature death and respiratory disease, they claimed“. 2. Mainstream science agrees: black carbon contributes to warming. The IPCC AR4 reported the radiative forcing of black carbon as a total of +0.3 W/m2, not far from methane’s. And “given black carbon’s relatively short lifespan, reducing black carbon emissions would reduce warming within weeks“. Why, “tackling black carbon [may] have a beneficial impact on the climate only 5-10 years after its emissions are cut“. 3. Black carbon is also an issue that could be tackled immediately. Seventy percent of it comes from “Open biomass burning (forest and savanna burning)“, “Residential biofuel burned with traditional technologies” and “Residential coal burned with traditional technologies“. In South-East Asia, “the majority of soot emissions [...] are due to biofuel cooking“. There isn’t anything particularly difficult preventing drastic reductions, and in fact “developed nations have reduced their black carbon emissions from fossil fuel sources by a factor of 5 or more since 1950“. Sometimes, all it takes is a new stove, and access to better fuel than dessicated cow dung. 4. By dealing with black carbon, an example of future emission-related interventions could be set. Policy-wise, the reduction of black carbon emissions is extremely easy: there is no “black carbon skeptic”, no “black carbon is natural” blog, no “alternative consensus on black carbon” international conference. No fossil-fuel-industry lobbyst has ever pushed against limiting black carbon emissions, and anybody and everybody can be easily convinced that there is something wrong in freeing up in the atmosphere notoriously unhealthy particulates. Black carbon should be the “motherhood and apple pie” of environmental policy, and legislation and aid organization and distribution regarding the reduction in black carbon emissions could be in place in weeks.. Have a look at this video (from here):
===================== And still…since black carbon may contribute to regional instead of global warming (as if anybody cared about the difference), plus it might or might not have cooling impacts in the form of “white aerosols”, then the cabinet of the EU Climate Action Commissioner simply does not want “the black carbon discussion to distract from the EU’s focus on cutting CO2 emissions“. In other words: current EU policy is to cut CO2 emissions, rather than to do anything to the climate, or the well-being of anybody on this planet. The monster of AGW/CO2 obsession is now fully in action. ps What if the EU ”is already dealing with the problem under its air quality legislation“? Well, so much for the global focus of climate action…also, somebody should be made aware of how far black carbon can travel from where it has been emitted… pps Is any AGWer suggesting that black carbon emissions could be a good thing, regarding their cooling impacts, and who cares about dying children? ppps Bastards! (Maurizio Morabito, OmniClimate)
Talk of consensus, but little change JULIA Gillard has made no concrete commitment on when to put a price on carbon emissions, despite former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd urging his party to try passing an
emissions trading scheme after the election.
Lawrence Solomon: Australia may wait forever on climate change June 24, 2010 – 11:35 am In her first speech as Australia’s new prime minister, Julia Gillard assured her nation that she will not be rushing in any climate change policies, and certainly not carbon taxes, because there is no consensus on the need for carbon taxes. Gillard is known for her strong support of unions and tepid support of action on climate change. Gillard replaces Kevin Rudd, a fellow Labour party member and sitting prime minister who was unceremoniously bounced by his party, in part for his global warming position. The ruling Labour Party is staring at defeat against the opposition Liberal Party under Tony Abbott, who last year led a revolt against his own pro-global warming leader. As has the Australian public, the Liberal Party has turned against the conventional wisdom on global warming. While affirming her support for renewable energy and other emerging technologies, and her belief that man contributes to climate change, Gillard shelved any notion that Australia would be seeing carbon taxes any time soon. Instead, she implied that Australia wouldn’t even argue for carbon taxes until the global economy recovered and until Australia’s economy could afford them. At that point, she implied, her advocacy of carbon taxes would be global in scope, implying that Australia wouldn’t go it alone by adopting its own carbon scheme: “If elected as Prime Minister, I will re-prosecute the case for a carbon price at home and abroad. I will do that as global economic conditions improve and as our economy continues to strengthen,” she explained. How long is she prepared to wait before implementing carbon taxes? Maybe forever. “First, we will need to establish a community consensus for action,” Gillard told reporters after her election as Labor leader. Then, she explained, she would take “as long as I need to” to win over the community. Financial Post
Frank Fenner: humans extinct by 2110 Frank Fenner
is an 95-year-old Australian scientist who helped to eradicate smallpox. He wrote a 3.5-kilogram book on it, too. He also believed that humanity's impact on earth is much worse than the ice age and even a comet's hitting on the planet. Without science and carbon dioxide, ancient people could live for 40 to 50 thousands of years, but current human being cannot make it any more.You could have guessed one culprit: it's global warming (and carbon dioxide), of course, However, the other villain is science itself. Good job, Mr Fenner. However, this conclusion indicates that there exist two things that are worse than global warming and science, namely senility and gullibility. » Don't Stop Reading » (The Reference Frame)
Defense Experts Want More Explicit Climate Models SAN DIEGO -- Tell us what you don't know.
Climate Change: The IPCC In The Age of Speculation By Dr. Tim Ball Thursday, June 24, 2010Judge Lance Ito lost control of the O. J. Simpson trial when he allowed speculation without a shred of evidence. Defense counsel Johnny Cochrane was able to sow seeds of doubt by his speculations and it found fertile ground in the jury’s mind. The entire Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) structure and work was designed to convince the public either with no facts or falsely created ones. Once these were established the speculation of impending doom could begin. Structure of the IPCC begins with Working Group I outlining an unproven speculation that academics call a hypothesis, which is defined as, “a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.” In this case they proposed that CO2 is a gas that causes global temperature to rise and it will continue to increase in volume in the atmosphere because human activity, particularly energy production, will continue to expand. As evidence accumulated it showed the hypothesis was not proven. Indeed, nobody has produced a record that shows a CO2 increase preceding a temperature increase. Despite this, Working Group II assumes global warming is occurring and speculates on the impact it will have. It is a meaningless exercise and the area where much of the incorrect information was used and many of the non peer-reviewed articles are cited. Working Group III take the speculations of Group II and propose strategies for offsetting them to achieve the goals of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This is stated in the introduction of the 2007 Report as, “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” So they come full circle as they claim to have proved scientifically what was necessary to achieve their original goal. The hypothesis was not proved, nonetheless, the speculation of impact ensued and totally inappropriate recommendations presented. Policy based on speculation that is a product of speculation is frighteningly normal in this Age of Speculation. (CFP)
Poor ol' moonbat, screwed the pooch, again: A Moonbat too far
Now that the IPCC has been vindicated, its accusers, North first among them, are exposed for peddling inaccuracy, misrepresentation and falsehood. Ashes to ashes, toast to toast.And while I am very much in favour of open debate, even I tend to draw a line at being accused on the website of a national paper of "peddling inaccuracy, misrepresentation and falsehood." This is not debate. It is libel. Booker's advice on these things tends to be to avoid getting into a fight with a chimney sweep – for obvious reasons – but this is also a case of Moonbat going too far. And, since he is so keen on the PCC, I thought that this would be a good place to start. (Richard North, EU Referendum)
What's the carbon footprint of … a bushfire? One season of Australian bushfires can cause as much CO2 as the annual emissions of 5 million Australians or 50 million Chinese people (The Guardian)
IPCC "Consensus" on Solar Influence was Only One Solar Physicist who Agreed with Her Own Paper Klimaskeptik.cz, a Czech climate skeptic blog, has posted today an interesting article "Judithgate: The IPCC was only one Solar Physicist" (google rough translation). Her name is Judith Lean (photo at right). On the basis of this "consensus of one" solar physicist, the IPCC proclaimed solar influences upon the climate to be minimal. Objection to this was raised by the Norwegian government as shown in the AR4 second draft comments below (and essentially dismissed by the IPCC): "I would encourage the IPCC to [re-]consider having only one solar physicist on the lead author team of such an important chapter. In particular since the conclusion of this section about solar forcing hangs on one single paper in which J. Lean is a coauthor. I find that this paper, which certainly can be correct, is given too much weight"...:Klimaskeptic.cz continues [google translation + editing]: "As I wrote elsewhere (article on pmode ACRIM), Judith Lean, along with Claus Frohlich, are responsible for the scandalous rewriting of graphs of solar activity. Satellites showed that the TSI (measured in watts) between 1986 and 96 increased by about one third. Judith Lean and Claus Frohlich (authors of the single study noted above) "manipulated" the data. People who were in charge of the satellites and created the original graphs (the world's best astrophysics: Doug Hoyt, Richard C. Willson), protested in vain against such manipulation. Wilson: "Fröhlich has made changes that are wrong ... He did not have sufficient knowledge of (satellite) Nimbus7 ... pmode composites are useful for those who argue that global warming may be primarily due to anthropogenic causes." [cautionary note English->Czech->English translation of Wilson] ...Since the appropriate questions were not asked, the IPCC knows little about the sun. While the rest of the IPCC AR4 is rich in graphics, there is not a single graph of cosmic radiation, solar cycle lengths, or geomagnetism - which is very strange because they are important indicators of solar activity. The IPCC reports should be a comprehensive, complete summary of current scientific knowledge. It's due to the fact that these indicators say what alarmists don't want to hear. These indicators of rising solar activity 1970-1990s show global warming (in whole or in substantial part) can be explained naturally and is not the fault of humans. The IPCC deliberately hid these graphs from readers under the principle of hide the decline." The graphs the IPCC didn't want you to see:
Earth temperature correlated to solar activity. The blue line is a reconstruction of solar activity. (Jones 1993).
Black is the Northern hemisphere temperature (Jones 1993).
Graph from IPCC AR4 showing global temperatures in black and modeled temperatures in blue assuming no
anthropogenic forcing. The graph allegedly proves that anthropogenic greenhouse emissions must be the cause of global warming, but since the increase in solar
activity 1970-1990 seen in the graph above is not taken into account, the blue model is inadequate and proves nothing. (added: The models also fail to account for the
huge influences of ocean oscillations.)
Conclusion:
The IPCC conclusion about human influence on climate - and plans for reworking the entire energy economy on the basis of the carbon footprint - stands and falls with the
question of how significant is the influence of solar activity. Yet the IPCC devoted only a few paragraphs to this essential topic, and based the "consensus" on a
single astronomer, who agreed with herself. (The Hockey Schtick)
Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up, Jun. 25th 2010 (The Daily Bayonet)
But it could get bad, honest! Sea ice in the Arctic does not recover Researchers from German Alfred Wegener Institute and KlimaCampus present forecasts on September minimum
Scientists Question EPA Estimates of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Anaerobic manure treatment lagoons may release more methane that current rules allow
Another "tipping point" scare story invalidated: Higher wetland methane emissions caused by climate warming 40,000 years ago No clathrate gun
Check Australian measurements - NOW by Des Moore
Climate change complicates plant diseases of the future Human-driven changes in the earth's atmospheric composition are likely to alter plant diseases of the future. Researchers predict carbon dioxide will reach levels double
those of the preindustrial era by the year 2050, complicating agriculture's need to produce enough food for a rapidly growing population.
Dr. Roy Spencer, One of America’s 100 Most Hated by the Left What follows is the text of the speech I gave at Townhall Magazine’s 100 Americans Most Hated by the Left awards dinner that I attended last night in Washington, DC. There were 96 recipients (95, actually) who spoke before me, and most were well worth listening to. I will briefly review a few of the highlights…. Glenn Beck went first, being Townhall’s pick for the coveted, #1 Most Hated spot. His was also the longest acceptance speech. Glenn could have left the blackboard at home, but I admit I did learn some American history. Rush Limbaugh, who took the #3 spot, could not attend due to a prior commitment. The rumor was that he was flying oil-soaked pelicans, his favorite bird, in his private jet from Louisiana to his Palm Beach mansion, where he was washing them off with Dawn in the swimming pool. And, no, Dawn is not the name of his new wife. That’s Kathryn. Everyone was snickering as Ms. Number 5, Ann Coulter, approached the podium. Before the start of the dinner, everyone in the first row of tables was secretly given a whipped cream pie to throw at her. Just as Ann approached the mic and opened her mouth, about ten people rushed the lectern with arms raised. Ann deftly ducked, weaved and, miraculously, every last pie missed her. “I’ve had lots of practice”, she quipped. After 4 hours and 92 recipients later, there were only about a dozen people left in the dining hall: Numbers 98, 99, 100, myself, and eight Townhall staff. All of the magazine staff had either passed out, or simply fell asleep…I couldn’t tell which. Those remaining perked up, though, after I announced there might be a pop quiz following my speech if they didn’t pay attention. So, here’s how it went down… (loud applause) “Wow, thank you! Thank you so much!! Thank you!..(applause subsides)…I must say, this was a total surprise to me. There are so many people who are so much more deserving of being hated by the Left in this country. But Townhall has graciously included me….and I am deeply grateful…” (more applause) “…There are many people to whom I owe thanks for making me so despised. But I am most indebted to all of those who do not want global warming to be due to Mother Nature. They want it to be our fault. In their zeal to make energy too expensive for the poorest of the world to afford, they continually criticize my research, research which has exposed the shoddy science underpinning the theory that climate change is caused by your SUV and your incandescent light bubs.” (still more applause) “Yes, it has been a long road. But for those of us who dare to utter alternative hypotheses to explain climate change, we will continue to blaze a new trail for future scientists!” (applause) “Scientists who will no longer have to twist their research results just to get funding, or to get papers published!” (more applause) “Scientists who will dare to follow where the evidence leads them! Scientists who, someday, might not be pressured to stay with the herd any longer. Who can stop thinking inside the box, and who no longer have to bow to the wishes of politicians who are heavily invested in the carbon trading market!” (still more applause) “As I stand upon the shoulders of those scientists who came before me, who dared to change the direction of science, I will continue to suffer the slings and arrows from the Deniers of Natural Climate Change!” (LOUD applause) “I ACCEPT this honor which Townhall Magazine has bestowed upon me! Thank You!” There was then a standing ovation as I smoothly and confidently strode from the podium! (OK, so I made that part up. I tripped and almost fell.) By the way, there is no truth to the rumor that I was overheard offering Chris Field a couple of signed books if he could get me into the Top 50 on next year’s list. Tapes and mp3’s of all 99 presentations can be bought wherever they are sold. (Roy W. Spencer)
Beyond Pathetic: BP’s Sorry Safety Record, A Look Back at 2005 With each passing day, as more news reports explain what happened aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the hours before the accident, it becomes ever clearer that BP’s mismanagement of the Macondo well was responsible for the disastrous blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. [Read More] (Robert Bryce, Energy Tribune)
Why Wasn’t BP Better Prepared? The Government One of the reoccurring questions surrounding the Gulf oil spill is why there wasn’t better technology in place to cap the leak and contain the slick. Although the rigs are equipped with a blowout preventer, which failed, many are wondering why other preventative mechanisms were not readily available. Technologies that typically take months or even years to develop were being tested and implemented within weeks. Part of the problem, unsurprisingly, was the government underestimating the environmental effects of a spill. The Wall Street Journal’s Keith Johnson and Neil King Jr. write:
Continue reading... (The Foundry)
BP Is Pursuing Alaska Drilling Some Call Risky The future of BP’s offshore oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico has been thrown into doubt by the recent drilling disaster and court wrangling over a moratorium.
The author of a damning study about the failure of Spain's "green jobs" program — a story broken here at PJM — received the threatening package on Tuesday from solar energy company Thermotechnic. June 24, 2010 Spain’s Dr. Gabriel Calzada — the author of a damning study concluding that Spain’s “green jobs” energy program has been a catastrophic economic failure — was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic. Says Calzada:
Dr. Calzada contacted a terrorism expert to handle the package. The expert first performed a scan of the package, then opened it in front of a journalist, Dr. Calzada, and a private security expert. The terrorism consultant said he had seen this before:
Dr. Calzada added:
The bomb threat is just the latest intimidation Dr. Calzada has faced since releasing his report and following up with articles in Expansion (a Spanish paper similar to the Financial Times). A minister from Spain’s Socialist government called the rector of King Juan Carlos University — Dr. Calzada’s employer — seeking Calzada’s ouster. Calzada was not fired, but he was stripped of half of his classes at the university. The school then dropped its accreditation of a summer university program with which Calzada’s think tank — Instituto Juan de Mariana — was associated. Additionally, the head of Spain’s renewable energy association and the head of its communist trade union wrote opinion pieces in top Spanish newspapers accusing Calzada of being “unpatriotic” — they did not charge him with being incorrect, but of undermining Spain by daring to write the report. Their reasoning? If the skepticism that Calzada’s revelations prompted were to prevail in the U.S., Spanish industry would face collapse should U.S. subsidies and mandates dry up. As I have previously reported at PJM (here and here), Spain’s “green jobs” program was repeatedly referenced by President Obama as a model for what he would like to implement in the United States. Following the release of Calzada’s report, Spain’s Socialist government has since acknowledged the debacle — both privately and publicly. This month, Spain’s government instituted massive reductions in subsidies to “renewable” energy sources. Dr. Calzada is a friend of mine, kindly writing a blurb for the jacket of my latest book: Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America. My book details the Spanish “green jobs” disaster uncovered by Dr. Calzada, plus similar “green” economic calamities occurring in Germany and Denmark — also programs Obama has praised — as well as in Italy and elsewhere. As I detail in Power Grab, they felt Spain would be in a dire position without the U.S. playing the role of sucker. With today’s revelation, now we know just how far the “green energy” lobby will go to keep the money flowing. (Click here for coverage on this incident from Spanish media.) Christopher Horner is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and author of the recently-published Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America. (PJM)
Wind Integration vs. Air Emission Reductions: A Primer for Policymakers by Mary Hutzler
Wind is not a new technology. It was one of our principal sources of energy, along with wood and water, prior to the carbon era. But the use of renewables in the pre-carbon age was very different from the current use of renewables. Today, people rely on energy being available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, regardless of whether the sun shines, the wind blows, or there are high or low water levels. We now have over 1,000 gigawatts of generating plants[1], and a large and elaborate electrical grid that requires great coordination among system operators to avoid disruptions. Also, in the pre-carbon energy era, when renewables were the sole source of energy, there were no coal-fired or natural-gas fired power plants to provide back-up power. Studies have found that the efficiency of those carbon-based plants is affected by incorporating wind energy into the system. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Oh dear... UK energy secretary pledges “radical overhaul” of homes UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne will today champion the Coalition Government’s ‘Green Deal’, pledging a “radical overhaul” of the country’s
homes.
EU Mulls 12 Years More State Aid For Coal: Draft The European Union is considering 12 more years of state aid for coal, a draft European Commission document showed, even as the Group of 20 prepared to discuss phasing out
fossil fuel subsidies this weekend.
Health Care: The White House unveiled Tuesday its patients' bill of rights. It is grossly misnamed. Though some of its provisions might help a few sick Americans, conditions
will be far worse for most.
ObamaCare’s Unlimited-Coverage Mandates Will Increase Some Premiums by 7 Percent (or More) Posted by Michael F. Cannon
Cell phone towers not linked to childhood cancer LONDON - British scientists who conducted the largest study yet into cell phone towers and childhood cancers say that living close to one does not increase the risk of a
pregnant woman's baby developing cancer.
Wow! Even The Guardian published it: No link to child cancer from phone masts, finds study Imperial College London researchers dismiss link between living near mobile phone masts while pregnant and risk of cancer among children (The Guardian)
Insufficient vitamin D tied to severe asthma attacks NEW YORK - Asthmatic children with relatively low vitamin D levels in their blood may have a greater risk of suffering severe asthma attacks than those with higher levels of
the vitamin, a new study suggests.
The Grief Lectures 2010 – Part Two In the previous post, I looked at the first of Martin Rees Reith Lectures. The President of the Royal Society believed that there is ‘a 50 percent chance of a setback to
civilisation as bad as a nuclear war, or some consequence of 21st century technology equally serious’ occurring before this century is out. On this view, the dangers we have
created for ourselves are so great that the notion of citizenship has to be rethought. Science is no longer limited to laboratories. It has transformed the human condition. It
has created previously inconceivable possibilities of liberation, but also created the possibility of our annihilation. All it would take is one bad egg…
by Bill Muehlenberg Common sense these days has been thrown out the window, so we must reaffirm and defend basic truths. One such truth is that of human exceptionalism – humans are special
and unique. But that truism is under attack today from various quarters, including the animal liberation brigade. Medical research would be materially impeded. There would be no more fishing fleets, cattle ranches, leather shoes, steak barbecues, animal parks, bomb-sniffing or Seeing Eye dogs, wool coats, fish farms, horseback riding, pet stores... Millions of people would be thrown out of work, our enjoyment of life would be substantially diminished. Our welfare and prosperity reduced. Indeed, all domestication of animals would be taboo. There goes the family pet. And there goes human uniqueness and dignity. All in the name of a fanatical ideology which will even resort to threats of murder to achieve its aims. This book carefully documents the ideology, the tactics and the fanaticism of this growing movement. (Quadrant)
Hickman gives Strong another free pass: Maurice Strong: Ignore Glenn Beck – I don't want to rule the world What I do want, says the man self-labelled 'the planet's leading environmentalist', is for nations to co-operate fully on issues they cannot deal with alone (The Guardian)
New study links 1 in 5 deaths in Bangladesh to arsenic in the drinking water Increased mortality is linked to chronic diseases with a 70 percent increased mortality risk among those with the highest level of exposure
Discovery of How Coral Reefs Adapt to Global Warming Could Aid Reef Restoration Discoveries about tropical coral reefs are expected to be invaluable in efforts to restore the corals, which are succumbing to bleaching and other diseases at an unprecedented rate as ocean temperatures rise worldwide. The research gives new insights into how the scientists can help to preserve or restore the coral reefs that protect coastlines, foster tourism, and nurture many species of fish. The research, which will be published in the journal PLoS One, was accomplished by an international team whose leaders include Iliana Baums, an assistant professor of biology at Penn State University. (ScienceDaily)
EPW POLICY BEAT: EPA, CAP-AND-TRADE AND OIL "After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that
everything in the universe is merely ideal. I observed that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the
alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it - ‘I refute it thus.'" Life of
Samuel Johnson, by James Boswell
Dills: Canada To Invest Added C$400M On International Climate Change OTTAWA--The Canadian government said Wednesday it will invest an additional C$400 million this fiscal year to help with international climate-change efforts, an announcement
that comes just days before the country hosts the G-8 and G-20 Summits.
Terence Corcoran: Cap and no trade June 23, 2010 – 11:14 pm Prentice’s coal plan another reason to think cap and trade is dead Scrubbing Canada clean of dirty coal-powered electricity generation was Environment Minister Jim Prentice’s announced objective yesterday — all part of the Conservative government’s attempt to turn Canada into a “clean energy superpower.” To that end, Ottawa is going to use the blunt instrument of regulation. In early 2011, Environment Canada said it will issue directives to force reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation. For coal, that means shutting down 33 coal-fired generating units from Alberta to Nova Scotia. “Our regulation will be very clear,” said Mr. Prentice. “When each coal-burning unit reaches the end of its economic life, it will have to meet the new standards or close down.” Coal industry people say this is mostly old news, and may be more related to putting a green face on Canada in the run-up to the G8/G20 summits and to appease activists who portray Canada as a climate change policy laggard.
Oh good grief! UK emission cuts 'not radical enough', airport protest trial told Climate scientist giving evidence for the Plane Stupid defence says 80% target will not prevent 'dangerous' climate change
A shameful day in the history of science. The once esteemed National Academy of Science is reduced to pagan witchcraft: point the bone at the blacklist, count the tea-leaf-citations, put on your funny hat and make a prophesy about the weather. Some critics are saying the survey is flawed because it uses artificial groupings. Artificial be damned — the survey is flawed because it’s a waste-of-time work of anti-science for even existing. Science is not a democracy. Natural laws don’t form because anyone says so, and the only way to find out the answer is to … look at the evidence. Doh. This adulation of individuals and tests of character, “success”, or popularity is the anti-thesis of what the great brains-trust of science ought to do. In science all minds test their theories against the universe, and only the real world matters. The petty world of human reputations is steeped in bias and conflicts of interest with personality defects and political power grabs, not to mention the corrupting influence of money. Science achieved vast success for civilization by freeing us from exactly this cess-pool of complexity, to rise above the posturing and consider only impartial observations. Which Doctor or Witchdoctors? Since the dawn of time tribal witchdoctors have been forecasting storms and asking us to pay tribute to their idols. The NAS has descended into abject farce. Argument by authority is the disguise of the witchdoctor — Trust me, I am the chosen one. More » (Jo Nova)
Why Does Consensus Matter In Climate Science? A new study published in the Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences has compared the qualifications and publication histories of climate change skeptics to
those of Anthropogenic global warming proponents.
Searching for Climate Patents? A recent peer-reviewed paper "Expert credibility in climate change" was published in the PNAS, apparently demonstrating the computer illiteracy of it's authors and PNAS reviewers. Their "results" were obtained by searching Google Scholar using the search terms: "author:fi-lastname climate". By default Google Scholar is set to search both "articles and patents" yet no mention of searching only for articles is in the paper. So why were they searching for climate patents and how is a patent that contains the search word "climate" a relevant "climate publication"? (Popular Technology)
Oh boy... UN climate panel names new authors after criticism GENEVA — The U.N. science body on climate change, accused of ignoring its critics and allowing glaring errors to creep into its work, announced Wednesday that a broader
range of experts will write its next report on global warming.
Drawing conclusions from really short term trends is not very smart: Climate Change May Favor Couch-Potato Elk Heading for the hills every spring appears worse than staying put
Researchers discover source of essential nutrients for mid-ocean algae For almost three decades, oceanographers have been puzzled by the ability of microscopic algae to grow in mid-ocean areas where there is very little nitrate, an essential algal nutrient. In this week's issue of Nature, MBARI chemical oceanographer Ken Johnson, along with coauthors Stephen Riser at the University of Washington and David Karl at the University of Hawaii, show that mid-ocean algae obtain nitrate from deep water, as much as 250 meters below the surface. This finding will help scientists predict how open-ocean ecosystems could respond to global warming. (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)
PIG’s Complexity And The Misspelled Swede What do glaciers indicate? Much more than the local (or maybe even global!) temperature trends. In fact, read what The Register reports about the Pine Island Glacier (PIG) in Antarctica:
As luck has it, around three years ago I did myself some research about the Upsala glacier in Patagonia, used by The New York Review of Books to illustrate an article by Bill McKibben. The juxtaposition of photographs of Upsale taken respectively in 1928 and 2004 was captioned along the lines of “most of the glacier [has] melted“. As usual, it didn’t take much to find out how wrong the caption was – most of the Upsala glacier has not melted at all (a correction was published by the NYRB a few weeks later). More interestingly though, what I did find were scholarly references attributing the glacier’s retreat to mechanical rather than climatic stresses, just as now for Pine Island’s. In other words, an understanding of glaciers like of everything else can’t be confined to quick glances at photographic “evidence”. Without a proper field study, and without a complete analysis of the situation, “global warming” has becoming the ultimate refuge for the climate (scientific) scoundrels. Let’s hope the one thing that will come out of all these years of blacklists, tricks, and less-than-sincere “peer” review is a meme about the true complexity of the planet, to be studied with care and maybe even awe instead than in order to support one’s pet political project. Indeed: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (Maurizio Morabito, OmniClimate)
While there has been considerable discussion of errors in other working group reports of the 2007 IPCC assessment, there has been little discussion of errors in the WG1 report. I have documented obvious errors of omission (i.e. see) but in this post, I want to highlight a specific error in Figure caption [an e-mail exchange with Marcel Crok encouraged me to report on this]. I have identified this error in the past (e.g. see), but it is worth repeating here. The erroneous IPCC text is in the caption to Figure SPM.2 (see); IPCC, 2007: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M.Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. The figure caption reads [where I have highlighted the error in bold font]
While the footnote corrects this error; i.e.
the WG1 report leaves an erroneous impression in terms of how they present the radiative forcing estimates in figure SPM.2. Indeed, since some of the radiative forcing since 1750 presumably has equilibrated with an increase in global heat content, the actual 2005 radiative forcing must be less than the 1.6 Watts per meter squared that is presented in their figure. I have reproduced below comments by James Annan and Gavin Schmidt on this subject that appeared in my January 4 2008 post.
A challenge for the next IPCC assessment, and for climate research in general, is what is the current (now 2010) global average radiative forcing? While there has been considerable discussion of the radiative imbalance (e.g. see) this imbalance includes both the radiative forcing and the radiative feedbacks. This subject needs discussion in the next IPCC WG1 assessment, as well as a figure like SPM.2 but with the best estimate of the current radiative forcing. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)
Revisiting the Pinatubo Eruption as a Test of Climate Sensitivity
In perusing some of these papers, I find that the issue has been made unnecessarily complicated and obscure. I think part of the problem is that too many investigators have tried to approach the problem from the paradigm most of us have been misled by: believing that sensitivity can be estimated from the difference between two equilibrium climate states, say before the Pinatubo eruption, and then as the climate system responds to the Pinatubo aerosols. The trouble is that this is not possible unless the forcing remains constant, which clearly is not the case since most of the Pinatubo aerosols are gone after about 2 years. Here I will briefly address the pertinent issues, and show what I believe to be the simplest explanation of what can — and cannot — be gleaned from the post-eruption response of the climate system. And, in the process, we will find that the climate system’s response to Pinatubo might not support the relatively high climate sensitivity that many investigators claim. Radiative Forcing Versus Feedback The simple model can be expressed in words as: [system heat capacity] x[temperature change with time] = [Radiative Forcing] – [Radiative Feedback], or with mathematical symbols as: Cp*[dT/dt] = F – lambda*T . Basically, this equation says that the temperature change with time [dT/dt] of a climate system with a certain heat capacity [Cp, dominated by the ocean depth over which heat is mixed] is equal to the radiative forcing [F] imposed upon the system minus any radiative feedback [lambda*T] upon the resulting temperature change. (The left side is also equivalent to the change in the heat content of the system with time.) The feedback parameter (lambda, always a positive number if the above equation is expressed with a negative sign) is what we are interested in determining, because its reciprocal is the climate sensitivity. The net radiative feedback is what “tries” to restore the system temperature back to an equilibrium state. Lambda represents the combined effect of all feedbacks PLUS the dominating, direct infrared (Planck) response to increasing temperature. This Planck response is estimated to be 3.3 Watts per sq. meter per degree C for the average effective radiating temperature of the Earth, 255K. Clouds, water vapor, and other feedbacks either reduce the total “restoring force” to below 3.3 (positive feedbacks dominate), or increase it above 3.3 (negative feedbacks dominate). Note that even though the Planck effect behaves like a strong negative feedback, and is even included in the net feedback parameter, for some reason it is not included in the list of climate feedbacks. This is probably just to further confuse us. If positive feedbacks were strong enough to cause the net feedback parameter to go negative, the climate system would potentially be unstable to temperature changes forced upon it. For reference, all 21 IPCC climate models exhibit modest positive feedbacks, with lambda ranging from 0.8 to 1.8 Watts per sq. meter per degree C, so none of them are inherently unstable. This simple model captures the two most important processes in global-average temperature variability: (1) through energy conservation, it translates a global, top-of-atmosphere radiative energy imbalance into a temperature change of a uniformly mixed layer of water; and (2) a radiative feedback restoring forcing in response to that temperature change, the value of which depends upon the sum of all feedbacks in the climate system.
1) ERBE (Earth Radiation Budget Experiment) measurements of the variations in the Earth’s radiative energy balance, and 2) the change in global average temperature with time [dT/dt] of the lower troposphere from the satellite MSU (Microwave Sounding Unit) instruments. Importantly — and contrary to common beliefs – the ERBE measurements of radiative imbalance do NOT represent radiative forcing. They instead represent the entire right hand side of the above equation: a sum of radiative forcing AND radiative feedback, in unknown proportions. In fact, this net radiative imbalance (forcing + feedback) is all we need to know to estimate one of the unknowns: the system net heat capacity, Cp. The following two plots
show for the pre- and post-Pinatubo period (a) the ERBE radiative balance variations; and (b) the MSU tropospheric temperature variations, along with 3 model simulations using
the above equation. [The ERBE radiative flux measurements are necessarily 72-day averages to match the satellite's orbit precession rate, so I have also computed 72-day
temperature averages from the MSU, and run the model with a 72-day time step]. As can be seen in panel b, the MSU-observed temperature variations are consistent with a heat capacity equivalent to an ocean mixed layer depth of about 40 meters. So, What is the Climate Model’s Sensitivity, Roy? Again, I will emphasize: Modeling the observed temperature response of the climate system based only upon ERBE-measured radiative imbalances does not require any assumption regarding climate sensitivity. All we need to know was how much extra radiant energy the Earth was losing [or gaining], which is what the ERBE measurements represent. Conceptually, the global-average ERBE-measured radiative imbalances measured after the Pinatubo eruption are some combination of (1) radiative forcing from the Pinatubo aerosols, and (2) net radiative feedback upon the resulting temperature changes opposing the temperature changes resulting from that forcing– but we do not know how much of each. There are an infinite number of combinations of forcing and feedback that would be able to explain the satellite observations. Nevertheless, we do know ONE difference in how forcing and feedback are expressed over time: Temperature changes lag the radiative forcing, but radiative feedback is simultaneous with temperature change. What we need to separate the two is another source of information to sort out how much forcing versus feedback is involved, for instance something related to the time history of the radiative forcing from the volcanic aerosols. Otherwise, we can not use satellite measurements to determine net feedback in response to radiative forcing. Fortunately, there is a totally independent satellite estimate of the radiative forcing from Pinatubo. SAGE Estimates of the Pinatubo Aerosols There are monthly stratospheric aerosol optical depth (tau) estimates archived at GISS, which during
the Pinatubo period of time come from the SAGE (Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment). The following plot shows these monthly optical depth estimates for the same period of
time we have been examining. Note in the upper panel that the aerosols dissipated to about 50% of their peak concentration by the end of 1992, which is 18 months after the eruption. But look at the ERBE radiative imbalances in the bottom panel – the radiative imbalances at the end of 1992 are close to zero. But how could the radiative imbalance of the Earth be close to zero at the end of 1992, when the aerosol optical depth is still at 50% of its peak? The answer is that net radiative feedback is approximately canceling out the radiative forcing by the end of 1992. Persistent forcing of the climate system leads to a lagged – and growing – temperature response. Then, the larger the temperature response, the greater the radiative feedback which is opposing the radiative forcing as the system tries to restore equilibrium. (The climate system never actually reaches equilibrium, because it is always being perturbed by internal and external forcings…but, through feedback, it is always trying). A Simple and Direct Feedback Estimate Now we have sufficient information to estimate the net feedback. We simply subtract the SAGE-based estimates of Pinatubo radiative forcings from the ERBE net radiation
variations (which are a sum of forcing and feedback), which should then yield radiative feedback estimates. We then compare those to the MSU lower tropospheric temperature
variations to get an estimate of the feedback parameter, lambda. The data (after I have converted the SAGE monthly data to 72 day averages), looks like this: The slope of 3.66 Watts per sq. meter per degree corresponds to weakly negative net feedback. If this corresponded to the feedback operating in response to increasing carbon dioxide concentrations, then doubling of atmosphere CO2 (2XCO2) would cause only 1 deg. C of warming. This is below the 1.5 deg. C lower limit the IPCC is 90% sure the climate sensitivity will not be below. The Time History of Forcing and Feedback from Pinatubo Note that at the end of 1992, the Pinatubo aerosol forcing, which has decreased to about 50% of its peak value, almost exactly offsets the feedback, which has grown in proportion to the temperature anomaly. This is why the ERBE-measured radiative imbalance is close to zero…radiative feedback is canceling out the radiative forcing. The reason why the ‘indirect’ forcing estimate looks different from the more direct SAGE-deduced forcing in the above figure is because there are other, internally-generated radiative “forcings” in the climate system measured by ERBE, probably due to natural cloud variations. In contrast, SAGE is a limb occultation instrument, which measures the aerosol loading of the cloud-free stratosphere when the instrument looks at the sun just above the Earth’s limb. Discussion Unfortunately, even though this hypothetical case has formed the basis for many investigations of climate sensitivity, this exception never happens in the real climate system In the real world, some additional information is required regarding the time history of the forcing — preferably the forcing history itself. Otherwise, there are an infinite number of combinations of forcing and feedback which can explain a given set of satellite measurements of radiative flux variations and global temperature variations. I currently believe the above methodology, or something similar, is the most direct way to estimate net feedback from satellite measurements of the climate system as it responds to a radiative forcing event like the Pinatubo eruption. The method is not new, as it is basically the same one used by Forster and Taylor (2006 J. of Climate) to estimate feedbacks in the IPCC AR4 climate models. Forster and Taylor took the global radiative imbalances the models produced over time (analogous to our ERBE measurements of the Earth), subtracted the radiative forcings that were imposed upon the models (usually increasing CO2), and then compared the resulting radiative feedback estimates to the corresponding temperature variations, just as I did in the scatter diagram above. All I have done is apply the same methodology to the Pinatubo event. In fact, Forster and Gregory (also 2006 J. Climate) performed a similar analysis of the Pinatubo period, but for some reason got a feedback estimate closer to the IPCC climate models. I am using tropospheric temperatures, rather than surface temperatures as they did, but the 30+ year satellite record shows that year-to-year variations in tropospheric temperatures are larger than the surface temperatures variations. This means the feedback parameter estimated here (3.66) would be even larger if scaled to surface temperature. So, other than the fact that the ERBE data have relatively recently been recalibrated, I do not know why their results should differ so much from my results. (Roy W. Spencer)
Obama’s BP Time (“We’re from the government and here to help you”) by Michael Lynch The current oil spill, like the financial crisis before it, has given ammunition to those who believe that the free market is dangerous and that deregulation leads to crises. President Obama, in his June 15, 2010, address to the nation, specifically blamed the lax oversight of BP’s operations on a “failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility — a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves.” This gets to a core debate between Left and Right[1] but overlooks the real nature of the problem. For many on the Right, government is the problem, while many on the Left see government as the solution. (This holds true in many different policy areas, from health care to industrial policy, among others.) But a major part of the problem is not government bias or objectivity, but rather government competence, which is not being addressed by most commentators. Without a doubt, the ‘anti-government’ ideology that has been trumpeted by many on the Right is flawed. There are many things that government should not do, some of which are promoted by those on the Left. The failure of the Mineral Management Service to oversee the safe operation of the Deepwater Horizon (and other operations presumably) in an appropriate manner certainly highlights the fallacy of the belief that industry can regulate itself. No doubt, this attitude amongst political appointees in the agency put in place by the Bush Administration played a role in creating this shortcoming, and the recent revelations about cozy relations with industry (including sex and drugs, even better than money!) have been repeatedly cited to confirm this. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
A Few Questions for President Obama America needs decisive leaders who understand what government can (and cannot) do to stop the Gulf gusher, clean up the mess, and get business, jobs and prosperity back on track. Instead, President Obama sounds like an anti-business Community Organizer in Chief – pointing fingers, making baseless claims about ending our “addiction to oil,” and leaving no crisis unexploited to promote job-killing cap-tax-and-trade and renewable energy policies. His June 15 “vision” raised more questions than it answered. (Paul Driessen, Townhall)
Government: After President Obama's dramatic BP address to the nation, there was reason to think federal red tape would be cut to save the Gulf Coast. Silly us. Bureaucrats
are back at it, halting Louisiana's sand berms.
AP Gripes at Lack of Freebies in Oil Cleanup We need all the international help we can get to clean-up the Gulf of Mexico, but an Associated Press account seems to gripe that the help is not free. After almost two months of delay, the U.S. last week agreed that foreign oil spill response vessels (but not other foreign ships) can join the effort. Our official government finding says, “there are an insufficient number of specialized oil skimming vessels in the U.S. to keep pace with the unprecedented levels of oil discharges in the Gulf of Mexico.” Rather than analyzing why we took so long to allow foreign help, the AP issued a story that it headlined, “Cleanup Aid from Overseas Comes with a Price Tag,” bemoaning that the helpers expect to be paid. Of course they do. So do the army of American workers, boat owners, and relief vessels working in the Gulf. And, as President Obama loves to remind us, “BP will pay.” Continue reading... (The Foundry)
US administration appeals decision blocking drill ban June 23 - The Obama administration on Wednesday appealed a court ruling that blocked its six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling after a judge said it was not
adequately justified despite the crude oil spill from BP Plc's leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico.
Salazar's Ban Is Soros' Bonanza While the U.S. seeks to ban drilling in 500 feet of water, Brazil's Petrobras plans to go much deeper to tap oil and gas in a large area off the... View Enlarged Image
Energy Myths Can't Replace Fossil Fuels "For decades, we've talked and talked about the need to end America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels. ... Time and time again, the path forward has been
blocked — not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor." -- President Obama, June 15 address on the BP oil spill
Oh... Coal plan needs a lot more work New gas rules needed to stimulate investment By Steve G. Snyder TransAlta supports the need to lower emissions from Canada’s power sector. The aggressive plan for older coal plants proposed by the federal government accomplishes that goal. It’s a bold plan and as such it means there is also a lot of work yet to be done to ensure the proposal is effective and fair to consumers and investors. A critical requirement will be to maintain the reliability and affordability of our electricity infrastructure to ensure Canada — and Alberta — remain economically competitive. Under Ottawa’s proposal, power companies would have to close their coal-fired facilities at 45 years of age, or the end of their power purchase arrangement, if that were later. Companies would be prohibited, under the “cap and close” regulation, from making investments to extend the lives of those plants unless greenhouse gas emission levels can be reduced to the equivalent of those of natural gas combined cycle plants. The opportunity exists to replace older coal plants with natural gas generation as well as through investments in renewable and clean coal technologies. Our goal is to physically cut CO2 emissions while continuing to provide our customers with long-term reliable supply without price shocks. Read More (Financial Post)
Green energy plant 'not carbon neutral for 40 years' THE new "green energy" biomass plant proposed for Leith would take at least 40 years to become carbon neutral, according to a new study.
Experts Demand European Action On Plastics Chemical Scientists and international health organizations from around the world called on Europe's food safety watchdog on Wednesday to regulate against exposure to a potentially
harmful chemical found in plastic containers.
New Website Offers News and Information on Atrazine by the Farmers Who Have Used it for Generations Farmers launch AGSense.org to fight false claims and shoddy science against atrazine use
Obesity and diabetes: The link is not as clear as you might think We keep hearing about the epidemics of type 2 diabetes and obesity. There is also a tendency to link the two. Certainly, obesity is a risk factor for type 2, but the link is nowhere near as straightforward as you might think. My latest HND piece takes a hard look at this, and reports a few interesting things...
There is also a big glitch in the classical "thrifty gene" explanation of how the Pima Indians became diabetic, once they moved from Mexico to Arizona. In short, beware of simple explanations, when applied to something as incredibly complex as human metabolism. Read the complete article. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)
Software cuts CT radiation dose in half: study CHICAGO - A new software program that enhances the quality of CT images allowed doctors to cut in half the radiation dose needed for a colon scan and still produce clear
images, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
B vitamins make no difference in heart disease, cancer NEW YORK - Despite a lot of initial excitement, B vitamins turn out not to lower the risk of a second heart attack in people who've already survived one, according to a
large study that experts say closes the issue.
Pretty silly data dredge: Coffee may cut risk of head and neck cancers NEW YORK - Coffee might stave off more than just sleep, according to research showing that those who chug a lot of java have a lower rate of head and neck cancers.
Study: Older people are driving more, having fewer accidents Here is the stereotype: White-haired senior driver poking nervously along the highway, frustrating younger drivers in a rush to get past.
This nonsense again: Ban trans fats and cut salt, demands UK health body LONDON - Britain's influential health cost watchdog called on Tuesday for major changes in food production and marketing and said drastic cuts in fat and salt levels were
needed to halt the scourge of heart disease.
More evidence that secondhand smoke can kill NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who breathe in a lot of other people's tobacco smoke are twice as likely to die from heart disease as those exposed to lower levels of
"secondhand" smoke, a new study suggests.
Twaddle: Consumer group targets McDonald's Happy Meal toys LOS ANGELES - A consumer group wants McDonald's Corp to stop using Happy Meal toys to lure children into its restaurants and has threatened to sue if the world's biggest
hamburger chain does not comply within 30 days.
Organic pesticides not always 'greener' choice, study finds Consumers shouldn't assume that, because a product is organic, it's also environmentally friendly.
Lots of room for activist mischief: Toxicity Pathway-Based Risk Assessment: Preparing for Paradigm Change: A Symposium Summary In 2007, the National Research Council envisioned a new paradigm in which biologically important perturbations in key toxicity pathways would be evaluated with new methods
in molecular biology, bioinformatics, computational toxicology, and a comprehensive array of in vitro tests based primarily on human biology. Although some considered the
vision too optimistic with respect to the promise of the new science, no one can deny that a revolution in toxicity testing is under way. New approaches are being developed,
and data are being generated. As a result, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) expects a large influx of data that will need to be evaluated. EPA also is faced with
tens of thousands of chemicals on which toxicity information is incomplete and emerging chemicals and substances that will need risk assessment and possible regulation.
Therefore, the agency asked the National Research Council to convene a symposium to stimulate discussion on the application of the new approaches and data in risk assessment.
Another "problem" that never was: Acid rain: An environmental crisis that disappeared off the radar You can tell an environmental problem has gone off the radar screen when Friends of the Earth don't have anybody tracking it, and that's the case with acid rain. There is currently no acid rain campaigner at FoE in London (although they will cheerfully point you in the direction of an expert). (The Independent)
That's not stopping the misanthropic enviroratbags having another go though: Car fumes raise spectre of 1980s revival nobody wants...acid rain Thirty years ago it was one of the great environmental issues, along with the hole in the ozone layer and CFC chemicals. Now acid rain may be making a comeback – but this
time, there's a change in the chemicals responsible.
Animal activists boycott Prince of Wales biscuits in protest at squirrel cull Animal activists are boycotting Duchy Originals in protest at the Prince of Wales's calls to kill grey squirrels.
Bees fitted with tiny ID tags for study Bees are being fitted with tiny radio ID tags to monitor their movements as part of research into whether pesticides could be giving the insects brain disorders, scientists
said today.
This would be excellent, if only The Guardian didn't confuse faith with science: Science: Beyond reason Tomorrow's problems will not be solved by abandoning science, but by embracing it, and applying it for the good of all (Editorial, The Guardian)
Groan... In elevated carbon dioxide, soybeans stumble but cheatgrass keeps on truckin' Study raises concerns for agriculture
Right to Carry Arms Reduces Crime? FBN's John Stossel argues the right to carry a concealed gun would reduce crime.
Colleagues cool to Kerry on energy John Kerry has been the most aggressive advocate of climate change legislation in the Senate this year — so aggressive that it’s rubbed some of his colleagues the wrong
way.
Obama to renew push for climate change action from Senate Barack Obama will today make a renewed push to spur the US Senate into action on climate change, saying the BP oil spill underlines the urgency for the country to lessen its
dependence on fossil fuels.
Influential Senator Works To Suspend Greenhouse Gas Rule WASHINGTON--As U.S. Senate lawmakers attempt to determine the fate of energy legislation, an influential Democrat is boosting efforts to suspend a controversial
greenhouse-gas rule passed earlier this year by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Bid to suspend California's global warming law qualifies for November ballot The battle over the initiative, launched by Texas oil giants Valero and Tesoro, will pit that industry against environmentalists and the state's clean-tech businesses.
The U.K. situation has improved slightly: Osborne shuns low-carbon agenda in non-green Budget Climate change and green economy barely mentioned as chancellor delays reform to aviation tax and skates over plans for green bank
Climate science after the ‘hockey stick’ affair The use and abuse of a single graph to justify action on climate change shows the need for healthy scepticism.
Judge stays Cuccinelli's U-Va. climate change subpoena, sets Aug. 20 court date An Albermarle County judge has stayed Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's civil investigative demand to the University of Virginia for documents related to a former university
climate scientist, pending the outcome of a legal challenge to the request.
Sigh... Scientists 'Convinced' of Climate Consensus More Prominent Than Opponents, Says Paper A new analysis of 1372 climate scientists who have participated in major climate science reviews or have signed statements in support or opposition to their main conclusions confirms what many researchers have said for years: Those who believe in anthropogenic climate change rank much higher on the scientific pecking order than do those who take issue with the idea. (Science Insider)
The Global Warming Inquisition Has Begun A new “study” has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) which has examined the credentials and publication records of climate scientists who are global warming skeptics versus those who accept the “tenets of anthropogenic climate change”. Not surprisingly, the study finds that the skeptical scientists have fewer publications or are less credentialed than the marching army of scientists who have been paid hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 20 years to find every potential connection between fossil fuel use and changes in nature. After all, nature does not cause change by itself, you know. </SARCASM> The study lends a pseudo-scientific air of respectability to what amounts to a black list of the minority of scientists who do not accept the premise that global warming is mostly the result of you driving your SUV and using incandescent light bulbs. There is no question that there are very many more scientific papers which accept the mainstream view of global warming being caused by humans. And that might account for something if those papers actually independently investigated alternative, natural mechanisms that might explain most global warming in the last 30 to 50 years, and found that those natural mechanisms could not. As just one of many alternative explanations, most of the warming we have measured in the last 30 years could have been caused by a natural, 2% decrease in cloud cover. Unfortunately, our measurements of global cloud cover over that time are nowhere near accurate enough to document such a change. But those scientific studies did not address all of the alternative explanations. They couldn’t, because we do not have the data to investigate them. The vast majority of them simply assumed global warming was manmade. I’m sorry, but in science a presupposition is not “evidence”. Instead, anthropogenic climate change has become a scientific faith. The fact that the very first sentence in the PNAS article uses the phrase “tenets of anthropogenic climate change” hints at this, since the term “tenet” is most often used when referring to religious doctrine, or beliefs which cannot be proved to be true. So, since we have no other evidence to go on, let’s pin the rap on humanity. It just so happens that’s the position politicians want, which is why politics played such a key role in the formation of the IPCC two decades ago. The growing backlash against us skeptics makes me think of the Roman Catholic Inquisition, which started in the 12th Century. Of course, no one (I hope no one) will be tried and executed for not believing in anthropogenic climate change. But the fact that one of the five keywords or phrases attached to the new PNAS study is “climate denier” means that such divisive rhetoric is now considered to be part of our mainstream scientific lexicon by our country’s premier scientific organization, the National Academy of Sciences. Surely, equating a belief in natural climate change to the belief that the Holocaust slaughter of millions of Jews and others by the Nazis never occurred is a new low for science as a discipline. The new paper also implicitly adds most of the public to the black list, since surveys have shown dwindling public belief in the consensus view of climate change. At least I have lots of company. (Roy W. Spencer)
Black list study: heretics are successfully suppressed by the AGW cult William R. L. Anderegg - a Stanford
ecology grad student ;-) -, James W. Prall, Jacob Harold, and Stephen H. Schneider (an AGW and new ice
age prophet) published a bizarre paper in PNAS, Expert credibility in climate change (full text PDF, abstract)The authors have reached an incredibly surprising conclusion: the climate heretics are less enthusiastically worshiped by the AGW cult than the AGW cultists! What a surprise. For example, the average number of papers accepted for publication that were written by the AGW cultists exceeds the analogous number for the "climate deniers", which is the #2 keyword of the article, by a factor of two. (Naomi Oreskes has claimed that the ratio was infinity rather than two.) » Don't Stop Reading » (The Reference Frame)
Do Climate Black Lists Matter? Do
climate black lists matter? Or are they just tribalism at worst and fun and games on the internet at
best? Surely, such lists couldn't be used to affect someone's career, could they? Dear Colleagues,What I understand this to mean is that a search committee for a new faculty hire could be required to ask about the candidates' views on "environment, energy and global warming" as a matter of obtaining their political views, which presumably would be factored into a hiring decision to achieve some sort of "political and intellectual balance." Now I can't speak for anyone else, but I find this to be stepping on a slippery slope. I will strongly object to any such "oaths of allegiance" as a condition of or factor in hiring faculty on our campus. Let me also relate a related personal story (one of several that I could share). Several years ago I was invited by Republican staff to testify before a congressional committee. My general policy on such requests is that when I am invited by government to present my views I will do so regardless of those doing the asking, so long as I can present my views unaltered and directly. After all, my salary and research funds are from the public and I see it as my responsibility to participate in the political process whenever asked. I have in the past testified at the request of both Democrats and Republicans. At the time I was invited a few liberal bloggers made a big deal about me having been invited by Republicans and posted on it on their blogs. Subsequently, a number of climate scientists contacted my Chancellor's office to complain that my association with the Republicans was unhelpful (because I am perceived to be credible) and asked if anything could be done about it. A high-up university official (who will go unnamed but who sat in the direct chain of command between my chair and the Chancellor) asked me to lunch, told me about the messages that had been received by the Chancellor's office and warned me in no uncertain terms that I should think carefully about testifying for the Republicans because my career could suffer. The message that I heard was that I had better not testify or else my career might suffer. I took this as a direct threat from an official with influence on my career at the university and I said so on the spot. I was shocked to be in such a conversation. I immediately protested via email to my chair and institute director, invoking academic freedom and tenure. At that point the university official backed down and apologized, claiming a misunderstanding. Did I actually feel threatened? Not really. I have tenure and a strong academic record. I was more angry with and disappointed in my university. Was the experience a window into how politicized the climate issue is in academia? You bet. Had I not had tenure, been earlier in my career with more decisions to come before higher-ups in my future or been a bit more sensitive to such things I can see how it would be enormously chilling to an academic to have such an experience. So do black lists of people espousing certain views on climate science trouble me? Yes. It is easy to connect the dots between a university considering "loyalty oaths" -- black lists -- and a hyper-politicized academic environment to see what can result. Such lists are particularly troubling when they are advanced and endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences, which is a quasi-government entity receiving considerable public funds, while my own university is debating an oath of allegiance on climate change as a possible condition of employment. So, is invoking the specter of McCarthyism going too far? For me it is not. (Roger Pielke Jr.)
PNAS Climate Change Expert Credibility Farce A new, purportedly scientific report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) is claiming that more “top” environmental scientists believe in global warming. Moreover, the report also claims that the scientists who do believe in global warming—now re-labeled anthropogenic climate change (ACC)—have higher credibility than those who do not. All of this is based on an “extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data.” Citing such data is like saying “most of the people who write for conservative magazines are conservatives.” In other words, the study is devoid of factual significance and possibly purposely misleading. More propaganda from the sinking global warming ship. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)
Are there really no depths to which ManBearPig-worshippers will not stoop in order to shore up their intellectually, morally and scientifically bankrupt cause?
Lawrence Solomon: Google Scholar at the Academy June 22, 2010 – 3:20 pm The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has utilized a non-expert to write an analysis entitled “Expert credibility in climate change.” This analysis judges the climate science credentials of scientists who have taken a position in the climate change debate, and disqualifies those who are not expert enough in climate science for its choosing. The non-expert writer of this analysis of credibility, James W. Prall at Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, is not only not an expert in the field of climate change, he is also not an expert in electrical and computer engineering, at least not in the sense that some might assume from his University of Toronto affiliation. Mr. Prall is an administrator who looks after computers at the university, not a scientist or even a lowly researcher in the field. If it strikes you as odd that an editor at the National Academy of Sciences would accept someone with a life-long service and programming career in the computer field to judge the academic credentials of scientists, it gets odder.
WSI Ups 2010 Hurricane Forecast To 20 Named Storms Private forecaster Weather Services International (WSI) said on Tuesday its latest forecast called for a more active 2010 Atlantic hurricane season.
Jones; Mann; Schmidt and; Trenberth, inter alia... all still trying to downplay natural variation: El Niño explanation for global warming flawed About every 4 years, faltering easterly trade winds over the tropical Pacific Ocean cause warm waters to linger, generating an anomalously warm wet period in the eastern
Pacific for about 6 months. During these times the western Pacific becomes cooler and drier. A few years later, a reversal of these conditions occurs when trade winds amplify,
pushing warm waters even farther west, leading to unusually cool waters across a broad expanse of the equatorial Pacific.
Swiss Alps: Glacier Surface Mass Balance Linked to AMO Thirty new 100-year records of glacier surface mass balance, accumulation and melt in the Swiss Alps are presented. The time series are based on a comprehensive set of field
data and distributed modeling and provide insights into the glacier-climate linkage. Considerable mass loss over the 20th century is evident for all glaciers, but rates differ
strongly. Glacier mass loss shows multidecadal variations and was particularly rapid in the 1940s and since the 1980s. Mass balance is significantly anticorrelated to the
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index assumed to be linked to thermohaline ocean circulation. We show that North Atlantic variability had a recognizable impact on
glacier changes in the Swiss Alps for at least 250 years.
Less warming risk from permafrost thaw? Soil found in the Arctic stores half of the world's soil organic carbon (SOC) and twice as much carbon as is in the atmosphere. Rising temperatures in the Arctic are thawing
the permafrost; some of the soil carbon then degrades into greenhouse gases that are remobilized into the carbon cycle, exerting positive feedback on global warming.
Aerosols strongly influence cloud properties The interaction of aerosol and clouds is one significant uncertainty in studies of anthropogenic forcing of climate. To learn more about the effects of fine aerosols on
cloud microphysics, Constantino and Bréon perform a multisensor analysis of the atmosphere off the coast of Namibia and Angola. The authors chose this particular area because
it is often affected by smoke from burning biomass. The aerosol particles from this smoke are transported by trade winds into the atmosphere, where they come in contact with
low-level stratocumulus clouds.
From CO2 Science Volume 13 Number 25: 23 June 2010 Editorial: Subject Index Summary: Journal Reviews: British Coastal Temperature Anomalies of the Last Millennium: What do they suggest about the nature of late 20th-century warming? Ischemic Heart Disease and Recent Climate Change in Canada: How has the former responded to the latter? Tropospheric Ozone Trends Around the World: Are they positive or negative? ... and what are the implications for the CO2-induced greening of the earth phenomenon? Woody Plant Encroachment and Groundwater Recharge: How does the former affect the latter? ... and what does the answer have to do with CO2? Plant Growth Database: Medieval
Warm Period Project:
Who Told Obama Offshore Drilling is 'Absolutely Safe'? There was one particularly striking moment in President Obama's widely panned June 15 speech on the gulf oil disaster. About midway through his talk, Obama acknowledged that
he had approved new offshore drilling a few weeks before the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion on April 20. But Obama said he had done so only "under the assurance that it
would be absolutely safe."
Our Government Slowed Down the Gulf Cleanup Our own government has quietly admitted that America needs foreign help to handle the oil spill — almost two months after pushing that help away. Far more oil could have been intercepted before it fouled the Gulf Coast. So why hasn’t our government apologized? By refusing foreign assistance, we banned both the latest technology and cleanup vessels that far exceed the capacity of America’s oil spill response vessels (OSRV’s). We rejected ships with ten times the capability of the vessels we used instead. In a quiet announcement on June 18, the Federal On-Scene Coordinator (FOSC) finally agreed that we need help, describing a conclusion reached two days before:
Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Trend toward deep-water drilling likely to continue Willie Sutton robbed banks because that's where the money is. And oil companies venture into deep waters for exploration because that's where the oil is.
The White House choices seem to have made up their minds.
Energy: Citing serious flaws, a federal judge overturned President Obama's six-month moratorium on new deep-water drilling projects. It's a good decision, one that puts
reason and the law before populist politics.
Moratorium One of Many Obama Oil Spill Mistakes The order by a federal district court in Louisiana overturning President Obama’s six-month general moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico illustrates many of the mistakes the administration has made in handling this environmental disaster. From the unjustified 24-hour ban imposed by the Coast Guard on the barges that were pumping oil out of the water to check on whether they had fire extinguishers and life vests on board to the Army Corps of Engineers’ delays in allowing Louisiana to build berms and sand barriers to protect its wetlands, the administration has acted more like the Keystone Cops than a competent and effective government. The order by Judge Martin Feldman paints quite a stark picture of both political over-reaction and a lack of sound judgment and expertise. The plaintiffs include several companies that provide services and equipment for deepwater explorations, everything from ships to shipyards, and they employ over 10,000 people. They sued Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar under the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which authorizes a federal court to overturn the actions of a federal agency when they are “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or not otherwise in accordance with the law.” The court concluded that, in fact, the plaintiffs established a likelihood of successfully showing that “the Administration acted arbitrarily and capriciously in issuing the moratorium.” Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Legal drilling battle looms as Gulf spill spreads SAN FRANCISCO/CHANDELEUR ISLANDS, La., June 23 - The White House stepped up its legal battle on Wednesday over a key part of its response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill
after a U.S. judge blocked its six-month ban on offshore drilling.
Say it's not so, Joe -- that you're actually sorry for mussing up the Obama administration over its treatment of BP.
Alaska Wary Of Sending Too Much Spill Gear To Gulf Alaska, a significant contributor of oil spill-fighting gear to the U.S. Gulf cleanup, could be left vulnerable to its own environmental crisis if it ships away much more
equipment, officials warn.
Well duh! Poll Finds Deep Concern About Energy and Economy Overwhelmingly, Americans think the nation needs a fundamental overhaul of its energy policies, and most expect alternative forms to replace oil as a major source within 25
years. Yet a majority are unwilling to pay higher gasoline prices to help develop new fuel sources.
Expand the Presidential Commission on Deepwater Horizon Amid the other news this week, including the President's address to the nation on the Gulf Coast oil disaster and his meeting with BP officials yesterday, the announcement on Monday of the five remaining members of the Presidential Commission to assess the ''environmental and safety precautions...to ensure an accident like this never happens again'' seems to have sunk without a trace. [Read More] (Geoffrey Styles, Energy Tribune)
America’s Gift: High Technology and Lower Prices (peak gas not!) by Donald Hertzmark In a raft of articles on this blog and elsewhere, the surge in U.S. gas production–due mostly to rapidly increasing output from shale formations–has been touted as a key savior of domestic drillers and consumers. At the same time shale gas has been more than a headache for LNG exporters and pipeline monopolists, for some it threatens to become a nightmare – softening prices, competing with pipeline supplies, driving LNG demand to spot markets – generally making a pain of itself, from the viewpoint of the gas industry’s would-be GOPEC. By providing a plentiful alternative source of supply for the world’s largest gas market, the U.S., shale gas has reduced wellhead netbacks throughout the Atlantic Basin. International reverberations have been dramatic. Even the Russian Bear, feeling the hot breath of the market, is softening its pricing terms for international gas sales. “A Republic, if You Can Keep It” At the close of the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787 a woman asked Benjamin Franklin, as he was leaving what we know as Constitutional Hall: “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” Franklin replied: “A Republic, if you can keep it.” For natural gas, we can paraphrase Mr. Franklin – a market, if you can live with it. In the U.S. and throughout the world the bounty of shale gas has created significant opportunities for consumers to save money on energy, and clean energy at that. Most of these benefits are available only to countries where the market determines gas prices. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Shoddy Parts Trip Up Major North Sea Wind Farm Germany's first offshore wind park was dealt a blow with the failure of two turbines due to inferior materials. The rough patch has energy executives scurrying to reassure
Berlin and banks scrutinizing their billions in offshore wind energy investments.
Surge in hydropower schemes since 2000 The growing popularity for converting old water mills and weirs back to producing electricity has led to a six fold increase in hydropower in England and Wales over the last decade. (TDT)
Supreme Court Ducks Question on Taking Property The legal world has been focused on a constitutional property-rights case before the Supreme Court. Last week the Court handed down its decision, and disappointed those waiting for this decision by deferring the big question to a future case. So it remains unclear whether courts can take your property without compensating you. (Ken Klukowski, Townhall)
Wastewater upgrade filters gender-bending chemicals WASHINGTON - Upgrades to a wastewater treatment plant in Colorado helped filter out gender-bending chemicals that were affecting fish, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
NY Times Reporter Honored for Activism Disguised as Journalism Charles Duhigg's 'Toxic Waters' series went no deeper than an environmentalist press release.
Holy molar, those sugar-free treats can damage children's teeth, too POPULAR sugar-free foods and drinks can be so acidic they are as likely to damage teeth as sugar-filled products, a consumer group warns.
Compost Filter Socks Improve Runoff from Croplands Grassed waterways including compost filter socks reduce soil erosion and herbicide concentrations from fields
Greens: Apologize to High-Yield Farmers! Studies show that modern farming techniques — reviled by environmentalists — not only saved billions from starvation, but are tremendously more eco-friendly than "organic" farming practices. (Dennis T. Avery, PJM)
Plan to pump water into Dead Sea makes environmentalists see red Activists unite with industrialists to oppose World Bank study into project to transport water from Red Sea (The Guardian)
Obama Carbon Plans May Be Scaled Back to Power Plants President Barack Obama, who meets with lawmakers at the White House this week to discuss energy legislation, may have to abandon a pollution-reduction program for the whole
U.S. economy and push instead for new laws that target the electricity-producing companies.
Climate trial balloon proves explosive The latest trial balloon for passing climate change legislation appears to be just as explosive as the others.
Lawrence Solomon: Global warming strategist scores New York Times coup June 21, 2010 – 1:10 pm Stanford University’s Jon A Krosnick, a communications guru and advisor to the global warming camp, scored a coup in a New York Times oped last week that discredits polls by firms such as Gallup and Pew Research Center. The highly cited oped, entitled “The Climate Majority,” claims that these pollsters and others have it backwards and that “huge majorities of Americans still believe the earth has been gradually warming as the result of human activity and want the government to institute regulations to stop it.” For example, Krosnick’s own poll shows, “When respondents were asked if they thought that the earth’s temperature probably had been heating up over the last 100 years, 74% answered affirmatively. And 75% of respondents said that human behaviour was substantially responsible for any warming that has occurred.” Krosnick, an expert in questionnaire design, produces studies geared to explaining why people answer the way they do, and how to get them to answer differently. One recent paper dealt entirely with one of the biggest embarrassments to the global warming camp, Gallup’s classic “Most Important Problem” question: “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?” Read More (Financial Post)
Poor Leo: Why don't we trust climate scientists? New study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals huge disparities in the 'relative scientific credibility' of the opposing sides of the climate change debate. (Leo Hickman, The Guardian)
Little did I know it, but I am intimately associated with the world's most accomplished "climate skeptic." But he is not actually a skeptic, because he believes that humans have a profound influence on the climate system and policy action is warranted. More on that in a second. (Roger Pielke Jr.)
Poor Freddy: A Grim Outlook for Emissions As Climate Talks Limp Forward In the wake of the failed Copenhagen summit, prospects for cutting global CO2 emissions are worse than they’ve been in years. With talk of mandated cuts now fading and with countries exploiting loopholes, the world appears headed toward a flawed agreement based not on science but on politics. (Fred Pearce, e360)
Our CSIRO is supposed to serve the people of Australia to impartially help advise them of the risks and benefits of different actions with the latest science but oopsie, the team who picked the new Chairman clean forgot. Instead of someone who speaks in sage tones about uncertainties, they pick a former banking Mergers and Acquisitions Chief who’s an avowed advocate and activist, and happy to admit he’s got a predetermined agenda science-wise. Should the CSIRO ever (accidentally) discover that the climate models were all based on an error cascade and a guess that went wrong, Mr McKeon will jump up and down to see that those results are pursued, funded, promoted issued in press releases and put into education campaigns for kids and journalists, err… right? I mean, he’s our man isn’t he — making sure the Australian citizens he serves are not ripped off by trickster scientists who “can’t account for the lack of warming” and who “hide declines”. What were they thinking? More » (Jo Nova)
Hans
von Storch files a report from an IPCC meeting on seal level rise in Malaysia, indicating that not much really has changed at the intersection of climate science and
climate politics (emphasis added): Among the interesting details were introductory talks by political officials – who welcomed the presence of the conference in the capital of Malaysia, and demonstrated the importance of the topic by pointing to the evidence of climate change, which would become obvious by all kind of extreme weather, mostly related to typhoons and flooding. It seems that also in this part of the world the view has firmly be established among politicians that all extreme weather is due to anthropogenic climate change – which would imply that "stopping" Global Warming would go along with the end of weather extremes.How scientists, politicians and the media treat the issue of disasters and climate change provides an interesting bellwether, simply because the science of the issue is so straightforward and misrepresentations easy to identify. All indications are that the IPCC has not learned much and is returning to business as usual. (Roger Pielke Jr.)
Tim Flannery walks away from his claims Tim Flannery is a top Australian
AGW activist. Andrew Bolt, a professional and bright journalist, has interviewed him: How to Expose a Warmist: Andrew Bolt Interviews Australia's Al GoreBolt was amazingly prepared. He has read lots of articles by Flannery and stored many of the most catchy quotes. So he could present all the original sources. Throughout the years, Flannery has said and written many things about the insanely rising sea level, disappearance of ice sheets within two years, Australian cities without any water, and lots of other things. Of course, they didn't come true. It's interesting - although expected - to observe Flannery how he denies most of his previous big claims. These people are deliberately spreading lies and extremely unlikely speculations, hoping that people would absorb them by osmosis. And some people have done so, indeed. Whenever these people are confronted, however, they pretend that they have never said any of these things. They have either forgotten everything they said, or they're sure it had to be a collection of typos, or they must have been misunderstood, or they have other ways to argue that they were not quite serious. Except that they're always trying to pretend that they're damn serious whenever they want others to believe all these catastrophic insanities. This is the kind of flagrant intellectual dishonesty we know from other double-faced people, such as Lee Smolin, too. (The Reference Frame)
Vegetative Response to Climate Change: Celebrate, Don’t Fret by Chip Knappenberger A new study has concluded that shifting climate is leading to shifting vegetation patterns across the globe. My response to this announcement was “Terrific! The biosphere was responding the way it should to changing conditions.” To my surprise, this enthusiasm wasn’t shared by the study’s authors. In fact, lead author Patrick Gonzalez seemed downright glum:
A very negative spin on what should be cause for celebration. Despite how much we, humans, have sliced and diced the landscape, natural systems are still doing their best to respond to climate changes—just like they always have. The only way to see this in a negative light would to hold the belief that everything that humans do to the world is bad. This seems like an odd philosophy, for more than likely the holder of such a philosophy wouldn’t exist today had it not been for everything that humans have done to make the world a better place and vastly improve our health and welfare. Just 150 years ago, as the industrial revolution was set to take off, the population of the world was about 5 times less than now and the average human lifespan was about 30 years. I am not saying that there aren’t some negatives for some species when the climate changes. Of course there are. But what I am saying is that there are plenty of positives as well. And it takes no more imagination to come up with positives than it does for negatives. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Comments On The PNAS Article “Expert Credibility In Climate Change” By Anderegg Et Al 2010 An article has appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: William R. L. Anderegg, James W. Prall, Jacob Harold, and Stephen H. Schneider:, 2010: Expert credibility in climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. June 21, 2010, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1003187107. The abstract of the paper reads
This paper is yet another example of the attempt to marginalize and “bin” scientists who differ from the IPCC perspective (except for those such as Jim Hansen who are more alarmist in their viewpoint) as my son has posted on in A New Black List. There is an insightful well-balanced news article on the Anderegg et al PNAS paper by Eli Kintisch titled Scientists ‘Convinced’ of Climate Consensus More Prominent Than Opponents, Says Paper I recommend readers of my weblog read Eli’s article. His news article includes an interesting statement by one of the authors of the PNAS article. It reads
I have served as Editors of several professional journals (e.g. Chief of the Monthly Weather Review; Co-Chief Editor of the Journal of Atmospheric Science) and can categorically state that any Editors who have “formed a resistance to outside points of view” should not serve in the capacity of an Editor. This is a clear example of the type of prejudice that needs to be avoided in order to preserve the integrity of the scientific process. John Christy is correct in his statement in the news article that there is “black listing” and my son’s post effectively summarizes this issue. The blacklisting occurs in the review process of papers as John and Pat Michaels describe, in proposals for funding (e.g. see) and in the IPCC and CCSP assessment process (e.g. see). This “black listing has even occurred in surveys as we found out when Fergus Brown, James Annan and I sought to publish a survey of climate scientists in the American Geophysical Union publication EOS; see An Obvious Double Standard Adopted By The AGU Publication EOS Weblogs By My Coauthors Of Our Rejected EOS Forum Article My e-mail to Eli with respect to the PNAS article reads
The Anderegg et al paper is another in a set of advocacy articles in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (see and see). This paper illustrates more generally how far we have gone from the appropriate scientific process. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)
Uh, no: Manufacturers appeal for simplified carbon tax EEF says a single levy based on energy use would encourage businesses to move towards cleaner energy
The gulf oil spill is bad but it could become much, much worse and soon. The threat is a hurricane moving over the spill. If a hurricane’s violent winds track over the spill, we could witness a natural and economic calamity that history has never recorded anywhere or anytime. We will literally be in oil-soaked waters. We will have witnessed the first oilicane. [Read More] (Art Horn, Energy Tribune)
Why BP is not very slick in an emergency When companies adhere to the rituals of risk-aversion, they lose sight of how to deal with real emergencies. Now we can see the consequences.
Jindal vs. Obama: Time to End the Drilling Moratorium First there was Hurricane Katrina, then there was the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal now says that the newest threat to the economy of his state is President Barack Obama’s moratorium on deepwater drilling. Jindal today joined in support of oil service companies who are suing to halt the six-month ban on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, issued by the Minerals Management Service on May 30. A federal district court judge is hearing arguments on the lawsuit today and will rule no later than Wednesday. In an amicus brief filed with the court, Jindal argues that the moratorium is disastrous to his state’s economy:
Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Stiffer Costs, Rules in Gulf Will Squeeze Smaller Players The troubles of behemoth BP PLC now threaten the small oil and gas companies that helped unlock the Gulf of Mexico's deepwater business.
"For decades, we've talked and talked about the need to end America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels. . . . Time and time again, the path forward has been
blocked -- not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor."
Obama Is Wrong; Alternative Energy is Not an Alternative Obama is using the oil spill in the Gulf as an emotional lever to push his cap and trade policy. The spill is a disaster, but exploiting it is truly despicable. It is made far worse when the alternative energies solutions don’t work. Increased costs will damage the economy and negatively impact the people he claims to represent. We’re in this predicament because of exploitation by politicians and environmental groups who deliberately ignore scientific evidence and corruption in climate science. Options were dramatically reduced by campaigns of fear against nuclear power creating legislation so that it now takes up to 14 years to construct a nuclear power plant. (Tim Ball, CFP)
Addicted to oil? What a dumb idea The oil-addiction theorists are really disgusted by the desires of stupid, greedy, uppity consumers.
American politicians are falling over themselves to enact new energy legislation before the Gulf oil leak gets plugged. The sad fact is, the US is dragging its feet on the one proven source of reliable, emissions free power: nuclear energy. With some environmentalists likening the oil disaster to Three Mile Island—the nuclear accident that destroyed the US atomic energy industry—the Obama administration has given nuclear power little more than lip service in recent months. Now comes news that a New Mexico-based company that is doing pioneering work in miniature atomic power plants has signed a deal to manufacture small, modular nuclear reactors in China. Political indecision and agitation by green activists is once again conspiring to turn the US into a second rate technological nation. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)
Junk Science Week: The Rubber Duckies FP Comment’s 12th annual Junk Science Week comes to a triumphant close with today’s 2nd annual Rubber Duck Awards to recognize the scientists, NGOs, activists, politicians, journalists, media outlets, cranks and quacks who each year advance the principles of junk science. Junk Science occurs when scientific facts are distorted, when risk is exaggerated or discounted, when science is adapted and warped by politics and ideology to serve another agenda. The Rubber Duckies are named in honour of Rick Smith, president of Environmental Defence Canada and co-author of a remarkable piece of junk science literature, the 2009 Slow Death by Rubber Duck. In the book, Mr. Smith perpetrated a science scam over the Bisphenol A and established himself as Canada’s leading scaremonger and distorter of science. Let this year’s awards begin! The award winners (Financial Post)
The Rubber Duckies: Toxic terrorism — the atrazine war June 18, 2010 – 8:18 pm This year’s media Rubber Duckie goes to a swath of the American media that is in the grip of chemophobia, the unfounded fear of chemicals. CNN recently served up specials entitled Toxic America and Toxic Childhood. The New Yorker had a piece fretting about the “Plastic Panic.” The President’s Cancer Panel anguished about all the untested environmental chemicals — many designated by them as carcinogens — in our air, water and food. And there are more frightening (but scientifically baseless) chemical health scares to come. For example, radical environmental activists now have the widely used herbicide atrazine on their radar screens. For them, new regulatory controls — or an outright ban on the herbicide — would be their dream come true. Why? Because as a May Wall Street Journal editorial put it, “if [they] can take down atrazine [they] can get the EPA to prohibit anything.” Read More (Financial Post)
EPA Exposes Tyrone Hayes—Again! The press can’t get enough of Tyrone Hayes, the Berkeley researcher who claims that his studies show that the common herbicide atrazine causes abnormalities in frogs (and
by implication, in people as well). Hayes is all over the press while he tours the state legislatures of the Midwest, selling his scare stories.
Yawn: More dioxins found in Taiwan free-range eggs HONG KONG - A study has found that eggs from free-range chickens in industrialized Taiwan contain almost six times more cancer-causing dioxins than eggs from caged chickens.
The Rubber Duckies: Rejecting the good news The Rubber Duckie for bias and missing the point of one’s own research goes to the massive Interphone cellphone study. Released earlier this year, it dismissed its own work because it failed to prove what researchers were looking for, namely, evidence of adverse effects of cellphones. Also rejected was evidence in their research that showed cellphones may reduce brain-tumour risk. As Lawrence Solomon reports below, the Interphone researchers may well have missed the real story in their work because they didn’t want to see it. Cellphones can cause cancer and other medical problems, one whack of studies says. Cellphones are safe, says another batch. Which is it? Both sets of studies can’t be right. The definitive study that many expected would settle the controversy, a multi-year, 13-country effort organized by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, came out last month. To its researchers’ surprise, the data indicated that cellphones can be both safe and dangerous, and that cellphone use can even reduce the risk of cancer. It all depends on how much cellphones are used.
Untreated prostate cancer no death sentence NEW YORK - Even without treatment, only a small minority of men diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer die from the disease, Swedish researchers reported Friday.
The Rubber Duckies: Killjoy at the barbecue June 18, 2010 – 8:25 pm The Junk Science Week Rubber Duckie Killjoy award goes to a radio commentary broadcast on Toronto’s 680News by restauranteur extraordinaire Rose Reisman. Based on the dubious science from the long-standing food war against fun foods such as beef — and especially barbecued steaks — Ms. Reisman issue a warning. Just as the summer grilling season is about to hit its peak, she proposed adopting cooking techniques that, if adopted, could somewhat compromise the season:
B vitamins linked to depression risk in older adults NEW YORK - Older adults with relatively low intakes of vitamins B6 and B12 may have a higher risk of developing depression than those who get more of the nutrients, a new
study suggests.
The assault on soda - and choice - continues: US obesity rates could fall if soda pop prices rise CHICAGO - Raising the price of sugary soft drinks will likely prompt thirsty consumers to seek out cheaper, healthier beverages, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
Demonstrating once again that advertising only influences children between different brands of things they like anyway and no amount of promotion will make brussel sprouts taste better than candy: Shrek lures kids to sugary snacks, not carrots Children can be influenced to eat sugary snacks that carry stickers of cartoon characters such as Shrek, Scooby-Doo or Dora the Explorer, but not healthier foods like carrots with similar stickers, according to a new Yale University study. (Chicago Tribune)
Cops Debate Government's War on Drugs Law Enforcement Against Prohibition's Neill Franklin and Fmr. Bush Drug Czar Paul Chabot argue whether drug prohibition does more harm than good. (John Stossel)
Number Watch has frequently made scathing remarks about the application of elaborate mathematical equations to economic data that are too diffuse to justify them and has often been lambasted for it: see here, for example. But our adverse comments do not apply to the Laffer curve, which is highly relevant at the moment. The Laffer curve is not just a hypothesis that can be, as some left wing commentators suggest, debunked: it is a mathematical necessity. (Number Watch)
World wakes to African hunger - late again? DAKAR - In a slow-motion disaster predicted months ago by aid agencies, Africa's Sahel region is lurching towards a food crisis which the world has only weeks left to avert.
ABC Catalyst TV show warped view of SW West Australian rainfall Quote from Catalyst: Mark Horstman: “Since the 1970s, the south-western corner of Western Australia has
suffered a dramatic decline in their winter rainfall, so rapid and so extreme that it’s like, somewhere, a giant tap is being turned off.”
Stunning ignorance and lies surround Perth water supply policies This ABC online news item from Perth caught my eye, “Water prices up 40 per cent: Labor”. With Eric Ripper the Labor opposition leader saying, “Of course in a dry
climate there is pressure on water prices..”
The folly of O's oil-spill 'fix' President Obama has a solution to the Gulf oil spill: $7-a-gallon gas.
EPA report on a nearly certain catastrophe ignored by the media The climate is always
changing. Fortunately, the climate of the climate reporting is changing, too. News that would fill the front pages of all the newspapers just a year ago are ignored by the
media today. EPA analysis of the APA in the 111th Congress (PDF)The file reminds me of some of the crackpots' documents that want to revolutionize physics. They easily "prove" that the rise of temperatures by 2 °C is equivalent to the Armageddon - composed out of floods, drought, and sea level rise (you know, that's apparently how planets behave at 16.5 °C) - while any rise below 2 °C is safe. And they "calculate" that the probability of the Armageddon is 99 percent if the APA is rejected and only 25 percent if it is approved. It's a great conclusion because it effectively identifies APA with non-Armageddon :-) and it was published by a "powerful" institution whose administrator has the right gender as well as the right race ;-) so it would surely be promoted by the media during the peak days of the AGW era. » Don't Stop Reading » (The Reference Frame)
John Christy Presentation On The IPCC Assessment Process The InterAcademy Council (IAC) committee conducted an independent review of the procedures and processes of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on June 15 at McGill University in Montreal. John R. Christy, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Director, Earth System Science Center and Alabama State Climatologist at University of Alabama in Huntsville gave a presentation on his experience with the IPCC process. His presentation starts with
The entire presentation including John’s appendices can be read here. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)
The Rubber Duckies: For services to the climate coverup The Rubber Duck award in the climate category goes to Lord Oxburgh, who gave “peer review” a whole new meaning in rushing out the first whitewash of the Climategate scandal. He headed an inquiry into the scientific integrity of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, from which the emails emerged, and concluded in record time that there was nothing to see here. Move along please. Lord Oxburgh’s skimpy survey — which was carried out by a group distinctly free of skeptics — found in the CRU little more than a “small group of dedicated if slightly disorganized researchers.” His Lordship found the CRU’s “loss” of data infinitely excusable, as also was its lack of statistical sophistication, even though its field was “fundamentally statistical.”
Millard Public Schools will stop using a children's book about global warming -- but only until the district can obtain copies with a factual error corrected.
Oh dear! Media makes major blunder because: British Newspaper Apologizes to Climate Scientist In 2007, the top United Nations climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the Amazon was vulnerable to drought as a result of trends linked to
climate change.
David Archibald: The Past and Future of Climate I became the owner of a visually
appealing book written by David Archibald that is endorsed by "four professors and one head of state" :-). DavidArchibald.INFOThe 142-page colorful book printed on a nice, resilient paper is stuffed with the hard data. There is a graph, a big table, or a relevant photograph on nearly every page. They're concerned with the climate reconstructions, the influence of CO2 and its absorption spectrum, the Sun and solar cycles, ocean cycles, production and effects of CO2, role of CO2 in the biosphere, and lots of other topics. Recommended. (The Reference Frame)
What utter nonsense: Changing clocks 'would reduce carbon emissions' Changing the clocks to give another hour of daylight throughout the year would save the same amount of energy as taking 200,000 cars off the road, according to a new survey. (TDT)
EU banned heated family houses built from 2020
The European Union has adopted a regulation that will ban the construction of ordinary family houses, starting from 2020. Only the so-called passive
houses will be allowed: iDNES.CZ (autom. transl. into EN), EU Business, EU Parliament, Euractiv, Panda.ORG, The Energy Collective; » Don't Stop Reading » (The Reference Frame)
SUNSPOTS come and go, but recently they have mostly gone. For centuries, astronomers have recorded when these dark blemishes on the solar surface emerge, only for them to
fade away again after a few days, weeks or months. Thanks to their efforts, we know that sunspot numbers ebb and flow in cycles lasting about 11 years.
Save the world — whitewash the Andes
Painting rocks on Chalon Sombrero (Image:
BBC)
File this in unrealized parody. The BBC beats the Onion. The World Bank has awarded a Peruvian inventor $200,000 to paint rocks white. They hope if they make them the right colour the glacier will come back… Can painting a mountain restore a glacier?
If you had $200,000 to gift to Peru, a place where the GDP per capita is less than $5,000, would you spend it on a program to paint black rocks white in the hope of storing water and changing the local weather? Reader John P points out that if you check the World Glacier Monitoring Service you will see that the equilibrium line altitude (ELA) of glaciers in the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca is above 4900 m, that means that snow falling below that altitude does not remain over the whole year and melts. Even if it falls on the glacier ice, much less on whitewashed rocks. Besides, the impact of a few hectares of rock is minimal when compared with the atmospheric circulation or the impact of surrounding terrain. More » (Jo Nova)
Here's Ove off with the ocean sprites again: Ocean changes may have dire impact on people The first comprehensive synthesis on the effects of climate change on the world's oceans has found they are now changing at a rate not seen for several million years.
Scientist links increase in greenhouse gases to changes in ocean currents Findings released during the annual Goldschmidt Conference at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Give us more money: Oceanographers Call for More Ocean-Observing in Antarctica Rutgers’ Oscar Schofield and five colleagues from other institutions have published in Science, calling for expanded ocean-observing in the Antarctic, particularly in the
Western Antarctic Peninsula, or WAP.
Gorebull warblers will not be happy: New research sheds light on Antarctica's melting Pine Island Glacier New results from an investigation into Antarctica's potential contribution to sea level rise are reported this week by scientists from the British Antarctic Survey in the
journal Nature Geoscience
Antarctica 4 °C warmer 130,000 years ago
The deuterium excess records of EPICA Dome C and Dronning Maud Land ice cores (East Antarctica) (click for full text PDF)by B. Stenni and 14 European co-authors - which was published in Quaternary Science Reviews 29 (2010) -, new high-resolution ice core data from two sites in eastern Antarctica show temperature proxies more than 4 °C higher during the last interglacial (~130,000 years ago) than the present interglacial. The high resolution data provides more accurate determination of the temperature proxies, shown at lower left of each graph above. » Don't Stop Reading » (The Reference Frame)
The threat from ocean acidification is greatly exaggerated As part of an `interview’ with me, New Scientist published a critique by five scientists of two pages of my book The Rational Optimist. Despite its tone, this critique only confirms the accuracy of each of the statements in this section of the book. After reading their critiques, I stand even more firmly behind my conclusion that the threats to coral reefs from both man-made warming and ocean acidification are unlikely to be severe, rapid or urgent. In the case of acidification, this is underlined by a recent paper, published since my book was written, summarising the results of 372 papers and concluding that ocean acidification `may not be the widespread problem conjured into the 21st century’. The burden of proof is on those who see an urgent threat to corals from warming and acidification. Here is what I wrote (in bold), interspersed with summaries of the scientists’ comments and my replies. (Rational Optimist)
Retooling the ocean conveyor belt DURHAM, N.C. – For decades, oceanographers have embraced the idea that Earth's ocean currents operate like a giant conveyor belt, overturning to continuously transport
deep, cold polar waters toward the equator and warm equatorial surface waters back toward the poles along narrow boundary currents. The model held that the conveyor belt was
driven by changes in the temperature and salinity of the surface waters at high latitudes.
Global Average Sea Surface Temperatures Continue their Plunge Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) measured by the AMSR-E instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite continue their plunge as a predicted La Nina approaches. The following plot,
updated through yesterday (June 17, 2010) shows that the cooling in the Nino34 region in the tropical east Pacific is well ahead of the cooling in the global average SST,
something we did not see during the 2007-08 La Nina event (click on it for the large, undistorted version): The rate at which the Nino34 SSTs are falling is particularly striking, as seen in this plot of the SST change rate for that region: To give some idea of what is causing the global-average SST to fall so rapidly, I came up with an estimate of the change in reflected sunlight (shortwave, or SW flux) using
our AMSR-E total integrated cloud water amounts. This was done with a 7+ year comparison of those cloud water estimates to daily global-ocean SW anomalies computed from the
CERES radiation budget instrument, also on Aqua: At this pace of cooling, I suspect that the second half of 2010 could ruin the chances of getting a record high global temperature for this year. Oh, darn. (Roy W. Spencer)
Some of the questions I receive from the public tend to show up repeatedly. One of those more common questions I receive arrived once again yesterday, from a airplane pilot, who asked “If greenhouse gases are such a small proportion of the atmosphere,” (only 39 out of every 100,000 molecules are CO2), “how can they heat or cool all the rest of the air?” The answer comes from the “kinetic theory of gases”. In effect, each CO2 molecule is a tiny heater (or air conditioner) depending on whether it is absorbing more infrared photons than it is emitting, or vice versa. When the radiatively active molecules in the atmosphere — mainly water vapor, CO2, and methane — are heated by infrared radiation, even though they are a very small fraction of the total, they are moving very fast and do not have to travel very far before they collide with other molecules of air…that’s when they transfer part of their thermal energy to another molecule. That transfer is in the form of momentum from the molecule’s mass and its speed. That molecule then bumps into others, those bump into still more, and on and on ad infinitum. 1) there are 26,900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules in 1 cubic meter of air at sea level. 2) at room temperature, each molecule is traveling at a very high speed, averaging 1,000 mph for heavier molecules like nitrogen, over 3,000 mph for the lightest molecule, hydrogen, etc. 3) the average distance a molecule travels before hitting another molecule (called the “mean free path”) is only 0.000067 of a millimeter So, there are so many molecules traveling so fast, and so close to one another, that the radiatively active molecules almost instantly transfer any extra thermal energy (their velocity is proportional to the square root of their temperature) to other molecules. Or, if they happen to be cooling the air, the absorb extra momentum from the other air molecules. From the above numbers we can compute that a single nitrogen molecule (air is mostly nitrogen) undergoes over 7 billion collisions every second. All of this happens on extremely small scales, with gazillions of the radiatively active molecules scattered through a very small volume of air. It is rather amazing that these relatively few “greenhouse” gases are largely responsible for the temperature structure of the atmosphere. Without them, the atmosphere would have no way of losing the heat energy that it gains from the Earth’s surface in response to solar heating. Such an atmosphere would eventually become the same temperature throughout its depth, called an “isothermal” atmosphere. All vertical air motions would stop in such an atmosphere, which means there would be no weather either. Now, I will have to endure the rash of e-mails I always get from those who do not believe that greenhouse gases do all of this. But that issue will have to be the subject of a later FAQ. (Roy W. Spencer)
There is an excellent summary of NOAA CPC forecast of an pending La Niña and its interrelationship with other regional atmospheric-ocean circulation features on the website of the National Weather Service Office in Grand Forks North Dakota. It is
As I have emphasized many time on my weblog and in research papers, it is the regional atmospheric-ocean circulations that are a dominate influence on climate variability and change. Until the IPCC multi-decadal global climate models can skillfully predict the variations and change in these circulations on a multi-decadal time scale, policymakers and others should be very skeptical in their use as definitive skillful forecasts. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)
Update on the Role of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation in Global Warming UPDATE: more edits & enhancements for clarity made at 3:35 CDT, June 17, 2010. Here I use a simple forcing-feedback model, combined with satellite estimates of cloud changes caused by the PDO, to demonstrate the ability of the model to explain the temperature variations. This time, though, I am going to use Jim Hansen’s (GISS) record of yearly radiative forcings of the global climate system since 1900 to demonstrate more convincingly the importance of the PDO…not only for explaining the global temperature record of the past, but for the estimation of the sensitivity of the climate system and thus project the amount of future global warming (er, I mean climate change). What follows is not meant to be publishable in a peer-reviewed paper. It is to keep the public informed, to stimulate discussion, to provide additional support for the claims in my latest book, and to help me better understand what I know at this point in my research, what I don’t know, and what direction I should go next. The Simple Climate Model For forcing, I am assuming the GISS record of yearly-average forcing, the values of which I have plotted for the period since 1900 in the following graph: I will simply assume these forcings are correct, and will show what happens in the model when I use: (1) all the GISS forcings together; (2) all GISS forcings except tropospheric aerosols, and (3) all the GISS forcings, but replacing the tropospheric aerosols with the satellite-derived PDO forcings. Internal Radiative Forcing from the PDO We have estimated the radiative forcing associated with the PDO by comparing yearly global averages of them to similar averages of CERES radiative flux variations over the Terra CERES period of record, 2000-2009. But since the CERES-measured radiative imbalances are a combination of forcing and feedback, we must remove an estimate of the feedback to get at the PDO forcing. [This step is completely consistent with, and analogous to, previous investigators removing known radiative forcings from climate model output in order to estimate feedbacks in those models]. Our new JGR paper (still awaiting publication) shows evidence that, for year-to-year climate variability at least, net feedback is about 6 Watts per sq. meter per degree C.
After removal of the feedback component with our AMSU-based tropospheric temperature anomalies, the resulting relationship between yearly-running 3-year average PDO index
versus radiative forcing looks like this: This internally-generated radiative forcing is most likely due to changes in global average cloud cover associated with the PDO. If we apply this relationship to yearly
estimates of the PDO index, we get the following estimate of “internal radiative forcing” from the PDO since 1900: Model Simulations The model has 7 free parameters that must be estimated to not only make a model run, but to then meaningfully compare that model run’s temperature “predictions” to the observed record of surface temperature variations. We are especially interested in what feedback parameter, when inserted in the model, best explains past temperature variations, since this determines the climate system’s sensitivity to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Given some assumed history of radiative forcings like those shown above, these 7 model free parameters include: While the net feedback in the real climate system is likely dominated by changes in the atmosphere (clouds, water vapor, temperature profile), the model does not have an atmospheric layer per se. On the time scales we are considering here (1 to 5 years an longer), atmospheric temperature variations can be assumed to vary in virtual lock-step with the upper ocean temperature variations. So, the atmosphere can simply be considered to be a small (2 meter) part of the first ocean layer, which is the amount of water that has the same heat capacity as the entire atmosphere. The last parameter, a temperature offset for the observed temperature record, is necessary because the model assumes some equilibrium temperature state of the climate system, a “preferred” temperature state that the model “tries” to relax to through the temperature feedback term in the model equations. This zero-point might be different from the zero-point chosen for display of observed global temperature anomalies, which the thermometer data analysts have chosen somewhat arbitrarily when compiling the HadCRUT3 dataset. In order to sweep at least 10 values for every parameter, and run the model for all possible combinations of those parameters, there must be millions of computer simulations performed. Each simulation’s reconstructed history of temperatures can then be automatically compared to the observed temperature record to see how closely it matches. So far, I have only run the model manually in an Excel spreadsheet, one run at a time, and have found what I believe to be the ranges over which the model free parameters provide the best match to global temperature variations since 1900. I expect that the following model fits to the observed temperature record will improve only slightly when we do full “Monte Carlo” set of millions of simulations. All of the following simulation results use yearly running 5-year averages for the forcings for the period 1902 through 2007, with a model time step of 1 year. CASE #1: All GISS Forcings The above “best” model simulation preferred a total ocean depth of 550 meters, 10% of which (55 meters) was contained in the upper layer. (Note that since the Earth is 70% ocean, and land has negligible heat capacity, this corresponds to a real-Earth ocean depth of 550/0.7 = 786 meters). The offset added to the HadCRUT3 temperature anomalies was very small, only -0.01 deg. C. The heat diffusion coefficient was 7 Watts per sq. meter per deg. C difference between the upper and lower ocean layers. The best initial temperatures of the first and second ocean layers at the start of the model integration were the same as the temperature observations for the first layer (0.41 deg. C below normal), and 0.48 deg. C below normal for the deeper layer. What we are REALLY interested in, though, is the optimum net feedback parameter for the model run. In this case, it was 1.25 Watts per sq. meter per deg. C. This corresponds to about 3 deg. C of warming for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (2XCO2, based upon an assumed radiative forcing of 3.7 Watts per sq. meter for 2XCO2). This is in approximate agreement with the IPCC’s best estimate for warming from 2XCO2, and supports the realism of the simple forcing-feedback model for determining climate sensitivity. But note that the above simulation has 2 shortcomings: 1) it does not do a very good job of mimicking the warming up to 1940 and subsequent slight cooling to the 1970s; and (2) other than the major volcanic eruptions (e.g. Pinatubo in 1991), it does not mimic the sub-decadal temperature variations. CASE #2: All GISS Forcings except Tropospheric Aerosols In that case an extremely similar fit to Case #1 is obtained, which has only a slightly degraded RMS error of 0.0788 deg. C. This reveals that the addition of the tropospheric aerosols in the first run improved the model fit by only 3.2% compared to the run without tropospheric aerosols. Yet, what is particularly important is that the best fit feedback has now increased from 1.25 to 3.5 Watts per sq. meter per deg. C, which then reduces the 2XCO2 climate sensitivity from 3.0 deg. C to about 1.1 deg. C! This is below the 1.5 deg. C lower limit the IPCC has ‘very confidently” placed on that warming. This illustrates the importance of assumed tropospheric aerosol pollution to the IPCC’s global warming arguments. Since the warming during the 20th Century was not as strong as would some expected from increasing greenhouse gases, an offsetting source of cooling had to be found – which, of course, was also manmade. But even with those aerosols, the model fit to the observations was not very good. That’s where the PDO comes in. CASE #3: PDO plus all GISS Forcings except Tropospheric Aerosols The following plot shows that more of the previously unresolved temperature variability during the 20th Century is now captured; I have also included the “all GISS
forcings” model fit for comparison: Using the satellite observed PDO forcing of 0.6 Watts per sq. meter per unit change in the PDO index, the RMS error of the model fit improves by 25.4%, to 0.0588 deg. C; this can be compared to the much smaller 3.2% improvement from adding the GISS tropospheric aerosols. If we ask what PDO-related forcing the model “prefers” to get a best fit, the satellite-inferred value of 0.6 is bumped up to around 1 Watt per sq. meter per unit change in the PDO index, with an RMS fit improvement of over 30% (not shown). In this last model simulation, note the smaller temperature fluctuations in the HadCRUT3 surface temperature record are now better captured during the 20th Century. This is evidence that the PDO causes its own radiative forcing of the climate system. And of particular interest, the substitution of the PDO forcing for the tropospheric aerosols restores the low climate sensitivity, with a preferred feedback parameter of 3.6, which corresponds to a 2XCO2 climate sensitivity of only 1.0 deg. C. If you are wondering, including BOTH the GISS tropospheric aerosols and the PDO forcing made it difficult to get the model to come close to the observed temperature record. The best fit for this combination of forcings will have to wait till the full set of Monte Carlo computer simulations are made. Conclusions It is clear (to me, at least) that the IPCC’s claim that the sensitivity of the climate is quite high is critically dependent upon (1) the inclusion of very uncertain aerosol cooling effects in the last half of the 20th Century, and (2) the neglect of any sources of internal radiative forcing on long time scales, such as the 30-60 year time scale of the PDO. Since we now have satellite measurements that such natural forcings do indeed exist, it would be advisable for the IPCC to revisit the issue of climate sensitivity, taking into account these uncertainties. It would be difficult for the IPCC to fault this model because of its simplicity. For global average temperature changes on these time scales, the surface temperature variations are controlled by (1) radiative forcings, (2) net feedbacks, and (3) heat diffusion to the deeper ocean. In addition, the simple model’s assumption of a preferred average temperature is exactly what the IPCC implicitly claims! After all, they are the ones who say climate change did not occur until humans started polluting. Think hockey stick. Remember, in the big picture, a given amount of global warming can be explained with either (1) weak forcing of a sensitive climate system, or (2) strong forcing of an insensitive climate system. By ignoring natural sources of warming – which are understandably less well known than anthropogenic sources — the IPCC biases its conclusions toward high climate sensitivity. I have addressed only ONE potential natural source of radiative forcing — the PDO. Of course, there could be others as well. But the 3rd Case presented above is already getting pretty close to the observed temperature record, which has its own uncertainties anyway. This source of uncertainty — and bias — regarding the role of past, natural climate variations to the magnitude of future anthropogenic global warming (arghh! I mean climate change) is something that most climate scientists (let alone policymakers) do not yet understand. (Roy W. Spencer)
Agriculture Reduces Greenhouse Gases Often a target for environmentalists and global warming alarmists alike, intensive modern agriculture has been demonized as the cause of many types of pollution, including those dreaded greenhouse gases. A study, soon to appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), reveals that highly productive modern agriculture actually reduces net greenhouse gas emissions when compared with using croplands less intensively. Furthermore, expansion of agriculture, needed to feed mankind's ever growing numbers, can help reduce future increases in CO2 emissions. Looks like the doomsayers got it backwards again, more intensive agricultural is a good thing for the environment. In fact, agriculture reduced total human carbon emissions from 1850 to 2005 by 34%. Agriculture is generally considered a source of greenhouse gas emissions, not a possible tool for GHG mitigation. In recent years, fears over the impact of increasing agricultural production have centered on accelerated release of methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx), as well as CO2. Even the pesky weed kudzu has been pointed to as contributing to global warming. Fortunately, kudzu is no longer planted for erosion prevention or as fodder for animals, at least in the US. Just a year ago, the EU issued a press release that proclaimed “global greenhouse emissions are currently increasing, and agriculture accounts for between 5 and 26 per cent of EU Member States’ total emissions.” The ministers stressed the importance of reducing the impact of agriculture on the climate, both globally and at EU level. Combine feeding humanity with growing concerns about future shortages of freshwater and public concern over climate change has greatly receded. Even so, the impact of global farm activity remains a concern. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)
What Obama Could Learn from FDR If President Obama intends to use President Roosevelt’s leadership during World War II as his model for handling the BP oil spill, he has it exactly backward.
The Obama Oval Office speech – BP oil spill I have been watching our TV news from the US reporting on the BP oil spill – and have been surprised that so often the US seems to be whining about what BP has done
without seeming to understand that oil exploration is a partnership.
Drill Ban Means Hard Times for Rig Workers In addition to the fishermen and hoteliers whose livelihoods have been devastated by BP’s hemorrhaging undersea oil well, another group of Gulf Coast residents is
beginning to suffer: the tens of thousands of workers like Ronald Brown who run the equipment or serve in support roles on deepwater oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
An Apology To Be Truly Sorry About Politics: Rep. Joe Barton says what everyone knows is true and his own party threatens to kick him out of his committee seat. We expected cynical political opportunism from
Democrats, but not from Republican leaders.
Back in 2006, George W. Bush declared that the US is “addicted to oil.” Since then, that phrase has been repeated ad nauseum by politicos on both the Left and the Right. But on Tuesday night, President Obama took the addiction meme to an entirely new level of inanity by saying “For decades, we’ve talked and talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels.” [Read More] (Robert Bryce, Energy Tribune)
The real villain of the Gulf oil-spill disaster: not BP but PC Hands up who thinks BP’s public image has been improved as a result of pumping upwards of half a million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, ravaging eco-systems,
depriving fishermen of their livelihoods, incurring the pantomime wrath of President Obama and the undying hatred of half America?
by Robert Bradley Jr.
Then BP CEO John Browne’s speech at Stanford University in May 1997 marked the beginning of the company’s “green” (or to critics, greenwashing) approach to product differentiation and corporate governance. Left environmentalists applauded heartily–and would continue to do so until the Deepwater Horizon accident of April 2010. Browne’s speech began by begging the question and proceeded to a non sequitur. It begged the question by assuming that anthropogenic global warming was bad and it leapt to the conclusion that corporations and for governments must fight it. In Browne’s make-believe world, there was no such thing as analytic failure or government failure–just market failure. Today, we know what John Browne did not want to know 13 years ago. We know that the climate is far too complex to pretend to ‘stabilize’ through marginal changes in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. We know that government mitigation policies are all pain and no gain. We know that oil, gas, and coal are the real deal–and wind and solar are pretend, press-release energies that might even be CO2 positive. We also know that the global warming issue resulted in incalculable intellectual fraud, grotesque corporate rent-seeking, and the waste of the environmental dollar (there are real, here-and-now ecological issues that deserve the global warming buck). We also know, painfully, that BP put form over substance and took their eye off the ball. Beyond Petroleum was a failed corporate strategy that resulted in heedless, dumb cost-cutting that put profits losses ahead of people and the environment. Reality can be a harsh mistress. BP went after an environmental fad, basked in the glow of the Left environmental movement, and now may have destoyed itself in the process. As with Enron, another ‘progressive’ ‘green’ company, the Left environmentalists got what they deserved. If only John Browne had given a Lee Raymond-type speech and had conducted BP’s business in the manner of its more reality-grounded brethren. The blame for the fatal attraction goes deep, and it lands at the doorstep of the mainstream environmental movement that got BP into greenwashing. John Browne’s speech follows verbatim. ———————————————————————————— The world in which we live is no longer defined by ideology. The old spectrums of left to right and radical to conservative are still with us, but ideology is no longer the ultimate arbiter of analysis and action. Governments, corporations, and individual citizens have all had to redefine their roles in a society no longer divided by an Iron Curtain. A new age demands a fresh perspective on the nature of society and responsibility. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Deepwater Oil Exploration Realities The FT reminds us that there is a lot of ocean out there beyond the Gulf of Mexico:
(Roger Pielke Jr.)
Bill Gates: Energy Visionary? (energy Manhattan project, yet again) by Robert Michaels
Just as as the polls start finding that nobody thinks global warming matters much, and just as hockey stick predictions of catastrophe fall apart in a scientific scandal, guess who turns up at the White House? Bill Gates! And the billionaire wants your money to federally fund research on “breakthrough” energy technologies to cope with carbon, an increase between $3 billion and $16 billion a year, possibly forever. The Wall Street Journal apparently lost its secret decoder ring and quotes him: “It’s the only way you’re going to get to the goal of not driving extreme climate change without extreme pain.” In a video clip he says that ten years of research would mean that by 2030 “we’d be in a position to change the transportation infrastructure to zero carbon,” and likewise for electricity. Red ink in Washington a problem? No problem with “a modest energy tax,” or “cutting subsidies to fossil fuels.” Subsidies? The U.S. Energy Information Administration defines them and finds that in 2007 coal got $932 million and gas and petroleum liquids got $2.1 billion. Even if your Congressman votes to kill them totally, that’s still only $3 billion. But before even hoping for any of this recall that your Congressman is the person who put the subsidies in place. Since $3 billion is rock bottom in Bill’s wish book, we are probably talking taxes or bonds for the rest. Meet the New Energy Experts Bill Gates didn’t go to Washington alone. He is a member of the American Energy Innovation Council (AEIC), made up of: [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Exclusive: Tests delay U.S. Ruling On Ethanol Blends U.S. environmental regulators said testing on higher ethanol blends in motor fuels will not be finished until September, a delay ethanol groups said would hurt jobs and
worsen a supply glut.
Being green will not get us out of the red Cuts announced last week to finance castings needed for nuclear reactors were deeply revealing of the Coalition’s priorities, writes Christopher Booker.
Firms paid to shut down wind farms when the wind is blowing Britain's biggest wind farm companies are to be paid not to produce electricity when the wind is blowing.
EU Sees Solar Power Imported From Sahara In 5 Years Europe will import its first solar-generated electricity from North Africa within the next five years, European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said in an interview
on Sunday.
Pandemic virus enters pigs in HK, swaps genes HONG KONG - The H1N1 swine flu virus has been spreading quietly in pigs in Hong Kong and swapping genes with other viruses, and researchers said the findings support calls
for tighter disease surveillance in pigs before new bugs can emerge and infect people.
Junk Science Week: The devil you know June 16, 2010 – 8:01 pm
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Alternatives for polycarbonate bottles are available, but have not been tested as extensively as bisphenol A. Replacing products with low levels of bisphenol A with less-studied materials will have unknown effects By Julie E. Goodman There has been much concern recently that bisphenol A (BPA) in plastic bottles and metal can linings may leach into food, leading to increased health risks to pregnant women, fetuses, infants and children. This concern is not supported by the science. Levels of BPA that leach into food are far below levels that are widely considered safe, and eliminating BPA from these products will not likely lead to any health improvements. To the contrary, this action may actually lead to unintended health effects from other chemicals used in its place. Whenever a material comes in contact with food, some level of it will migrate into the food. Be it BPA or another chemical, a few questions must be addressed to determine whether the migration will cause health risks. How much leaches into food? Is this amount sufficient to cause harm? If replaced with another chemical, will this likely result in harm? In the case of BPA, these questions have been studied extensively. Scientists have determined the amount of BPA to which people are exposed in two ways: by estimating levels based on the amount measured in food, and by back-calculating exposures based on BPA measured in urine. Results from both types of analyses have produced similar results. Even assuming worst-case scenarios, including infants drinking from polycarbonate baby bottles, human exposures are exceedingly low, about a million-fold lower than levels shown to be without health effects in comprehensive studies in laboratory animals. These levels are also well below the safety levels set by government bodies around the world.
Peering Into Peer Review on Atrazine – industry studies are often better and more transparent In a recent blog, I outlined some of the big money behind the activist assault on modern agricultural technology, particularly the safe and effective herbicide, atrazine.
Much of that money probably flows directly from trial lawyers through activist “laundering” operations such as the Tides Foundation (specifically set up so that the
billions they distribute to activists can’t be traced to its source).
We can only hope: Homeopathy Awareness Week: Is this the homeopaths' last stand? It's Homeopathy Awareness Week, but the alternative medicine may be about to face a final deadly assault from critics, writes Edzard Ernst (The Guardian)
Column - Our deadly culture of unreason PETER Dingle had a choice when his wife, Pen, finally learned she had rectal cancer. Would the professor push her to have the operation that would most probably cure her? Or would he keep pushing the mad faith in alternative medicine that has since made him, as he modestly advertises, a “renowned author, juggler, media personality and Murdoch University academic”? Ah. Tough choice. You see, Dingle, an “environmental toxicologist” at this Perth university’s school of Health and Environment, has spent the past 20 years getting rich and kinda famous by demonising the very kind of medicine that could spare a woman like Pen from what a surgeon told a Perth coroner this week was “one of the most painful diseases you could possibly get”. Indeed, even last month, after all that he - or rather, his wife (below) - had gone through, Dingle was still spruiking his wares that have made him a minor celebrity in this new age of unreason. “Perhaps the most dreaded of all diseases is cancer,” he wrote in his newsletter. “There is no miracle cure for cancer, nor will there ever be ... Only a few minor cancers are treated effectively with modern techniques yet we still keep doing it.” In fact, he’s protested, “modern medicine cannot be given credit for increasing life expectancy at birth”. Yes, I think you suspect already how this story plays out, and how ugly it gets. Continue reading 'Column - Our deadly culture of unreason' (Andrew Bolt)
Junk Science Week: This science is fishy June 17, 2010 – 7:09 pm How activists, money and manipulated science hijacked the B.C. fish farm industry There’s a national science battle underway over salmon. It is a battle over the fate of one part of the salmon industry, salmon farms, and the work of activists who claim to have scientific evidence that fish farms are killing wild salmon and are a threat to the very existence of wild salmon, ocean fisheries and ecosystems. The science conflict, steeped in politics and green activism, has been raging for the better part of a decade. It has many facets, but it reached a climax of sorts in December, 2007, when researchers at the Centre for Mathematical Biology (CMB) at the University of Alberta published a paper that claimed sea lice from fish farms in British Columbia were contaminating wild pink salmon. In a sensational press release at the time, the University of Alberta’s public relations crew declared the coming collapse of wild salmon: “Fish Farms Drive Wild Salmon Populations Toward Extinction.” The release claimed the study — headed by fisheries ecologist Martin Krkosek and including eco-activist Alexandra Morton — proved that pink salmon populations have been rapidly declining for four years. “The scientists expect a 99% collapse in another four years or two salmon generations, if the infestations continue.”
Hmm... Nasa warns solar flares from 'huge space storm' will cause devastation Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation “space storm”, Nasa has warned. (TDT)
Democrats Divided on Energy Bill Senators Wrestle With Competing Proposals After President Renews Call to Reduce Nation's Reliance on Fossil Fuels
LISTEN: Inhofe Exposes Dems New Game Plan on Cap-and-Tax Inhofe a Guest on the Steve Malzberg Show
President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Washington have a new plan to try and pass their global warming cap-and-trade agenda, Senator Inhofe warned today
on the Steve Malzberg show.
The White House's lame-duck climate strategy UPDATED at 6:55 p.m. with comment from White House spokesman Ben LaBolt.
Former GE CEO opposes climate-energy bill Former GE CEO Jack Welch said today on CNBC that: 1. Obama should be focusing on the gulf oil spill “not new energy plans”; and 2. Our “pretty good economy” should not be “damaged” with “carbon taxes.” “Let’s get [the economy] going,” he said. Ironically, GE CEO Jeff Immelt and other USCAP CEOs will be pushing the climate bill on Capitol Hill tomorrow at a luncheon prior to the Democratic caucus meeting. Welch built GE into the largest and most valuable company in the world. Immelt, in contrast, brought GE to the verge of bankruptcy, requiring a $140 billion federal bailout. Click to watch the three-minute CNBC clip. (Green Hell)
EPA’s New Analysis of Cap and Trade Same Old Faulty Logic The Environmental Protection Agency released its economic analysis of the Kerry-Lieberman cap and trade legislation, the latest cap and trade bill to be released in the Senate. The result was nearly the same as the EPA’s analysis of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill passed in the House of Representatives last year: postage stamp per day costs. Instead of $176 per household for Waxman-Markey, Kerry-Lieberman would cost households $146 by 2050. Unfortunately for Americans, nothing substantial in the EPA analysis has changed; it is still unreasonable, faulty, and fragile. The reality remains that cap and trade is a substantial energy tax that will cause trillions of dollars in economic damage and kill jobs. Inappropriate Use of Discounting Most misleading in the EPA analyses of cap and trade is the use of discounting. A discount rate is an interest rate used to find present value of an amount to be paid or received in the future. In other words, present value analysis answers the question: How much would I have to have today in order to meet my financial obligations or pay certain costs in the future? Discounting is a legitimate tool in finance and for cost-benefit calculations. But discounting can give a much distorted view of costs, as is done by those misrepresenting the EPA analysis. Here’s an example to help clarify: Continue reading... (The Foundry)
China advances while the West is paralyzed by weather superstition: Security Tops the Environment in China’s Energy Plan BEIJING — When President Obama called this week for a “national mission” to expand the use of clean energy and increase American energy independence, Chinese officials
might have nodded knowingly.
Partly right: Cutting greenhouse gases will be no quick fix for our weather, scientists say UK study predicts increased floods and droughts will continue for decades after global temperatures are stabilised (The Guardian)
Lawrence Solomon: IPCC insider explains embarrassing disclosure that went viral June 16, 2010 – 6:07 pm On Sunday, I wrote a blog about an IPCC insider who stated that the IPCC had been disingenuous in claiming that 2500 scientists had endorsed the view that humans are responsible for global warming. By Monday, my blog had gone viral, appearing in thousands of locations in the blogosphere and garnering perhaps hundreds of thousands of hits. Earlier today, Hulme provided a convoluted response on his own blog site, in an attempt to counter my blog. He should instead take his own advice, which he had given to the IPCC in his paper: Don’t be disingenuous, because it makes you vulnerable to criticism. Let me dissect Hulme’s rebuttal (which you can see in full, here). Hulme says: Various newspaper and internet blogs are reporting me as saying that the IPCC has ‘misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming’ whereas in fact only ‘a few dozen experts’ did so. … I did not say the ‘IPCC misleads’ anyone. Solomon responds: Hulme stated in his paper that the IPCC had been “disingenuous” in making claims “such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’” when the correct number was “only a few dozen experts.” Seems clear to me that misleading has been going on. You can read Hulme’s paper here (pages 10 and 11 have the quotes in question) and decide for yourself. Hulme says: it is claims that are made by other commentators, such as the caricatured claim I offer in the paper, that have the potential to mislead. Solomon responds: Hulme is correct in noting that the caricatured claims that “2500 scientists” endorsed the man-made global warming potential have the potential to mislead. Indeed, that caricature has arguably misled more people than any other claim in human history. However, the source of that caricature, which for so long so thoroughly fooled the majority of the press and public, was the IPCC itself – in the IPCC`s own public relations documents. Hulme’s paper correctly identifies the IPCC as the source of this misinformation at the top of page 11, when he identifies it and other misleading claims as coming from “IPCC reports.” To see the IPCC touting its 2500 scientists, look here. Judging from the reactions on the blogosphere, Hulme has embarrassed himself and his climate change colleagues, leaving him with two broad choices. To minimize further embarrassment for his colleagues, he can simply do what other scientists have done when they’ve felt the pressure of the climate change establishment: Recant. Alternatively, to minimize further embarrassment for himself, he can stop digging himself deeper into the hole in which he finds himself. Financial Post
The
slide above comes from the presentation of Hans von Storch to the InterAcademy Review of the IPCC,
presented earlier this week in Montreal. The slide references the
misrepresentation of the issue of disasters and climate change by the IPCC. von Storch is very clear in his views: IPCC authors have decided to violate the mission of the IPCC, by presenting disinformation.Not only did the IPCC misrepresent the science of disasters and climate change, but went so far as to issue a highly misleading press release to try to spin the issue and put an unprepared IPCC WG2 chair on the BBC to try to defend the undefensible. I was promised a response from the IPCC to my concerns, a response that has never been provided. A former head of the IPCC, Robert Watson, says the following in the context of the 2035 glacier issue, but could be equally applied to the disaster issue: To me the fundamental problem was that when the error was found it was handled in a totally and utterly atrocious manner.The IAC Review of the IPCC is fully aware of this issue, and it will be interesting to see what their report says on the topic. Meantime, the IPCC is continuing its preparations for its next assessment in business-as-usual fashion. (Roger Pielke Jr.)
Cuccinelli fights UVa request to end fraud case Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is fighting back against the University of Virginia’s request that a judge “set aside” the attorney general’s subpoena for documents
related to the research activities of a former climate scientist.
Code of conduct and rapid communication are key, scientists tell review panel.
There's still money and baubles for climate loons: UK government's environment adviser wins major international green award Professor Bob Watson, science adviser to the environment ministry, chosen alongside Nasa's James Hansen
Institute Responds to Merchants of Doubt Today, the George C. Marshall Institute published a reply to the book, Merchants of Doubt, which attacks the integrity of the Institute and its founders. The reply is available here (.pdf, 85Kb, 9pp).
Column - The boring end of the world WE humans are about to be wiped out in a few decades. The grandchildren of many of us will not live to old age. Hear it from Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University and the man who helped eradicate smallpox. “Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years,” he told The Australian this week. “It’s an irreversible situation.” Blame global warming. But here’s the odd thing. Just three paragraphs into this report announcing the - Oh My God! - end of the world, the reporter and Fenner were off talking about rabbits, Fenner’s writing habits, his bookshelves, his student days, his war service and the weight of the book he wrote on smallpox - 3.5kg, actually. Oh, and did he ever tell how he used to study skulls with Norman Tindale? Now, you’d think when a reporter had just been told that thousands of years of human history were about to come to a screaming halt - with their own loved ones among the dead - that rabbits and recollections of Norm would be the last thing they’d want to discuss. Back up a bit, they’d cry. Run that by me again: you mean, all human life on this planet is going to be exterminated? My grandchildren are doomed? But, no. So used are we to sandwich-board doom-mongering from global warmists that we hurry them on to cheerier topics, like tales of old Norm and his skulls. It’s not that Fenner is a joke. He may now be 95, but he’s a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Royal Society. And his views on the end of the world, however boring, were still deemed serious enough to publish in The Australian’s prestigious Higher Education supplement. This curious disconnect between prediction and reception happens relatively often now. Four years ago another warmist, Prof James Lovelock, creator of the influential Gaia theory of an interconnected Earth, was every bit as apocalyptic as Fenner. Continue reading 'Column - The boring end of the world' (Andrew Bolt)
Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up, Jun. 17th 2010 Lindsay Graham changes his mind about global warming science, wind farms increase CO2 emissions, hippies unwitting unleashed a molepocalypse and electric cars cannot save the planet. It’s another busy week, handily rounded-up for you. (Daily Bayonet)
Why “Denier!”-Obsessed AGW Believers Are At Risk Of Ruining Science I have always been amazed at how easy it is to find AGW believers ready to casually toss the accusation of “denier!” to everybody and anybody not following their “party line” of impending human-cause planetary doom to be avoided via some unprecedented social and economic revolution (“denier” meaning of course all sorts of nasty insults). The more the term is spread around, the less meaningful it becomes. Still, what are the effects of such a silly behavior? (Maurizio Morabito, OmniClimate)
The Grief Lectures 2010 – Part One While we were busy, the Royal Society’s diktats on climate change got the world’s oldest scientific academy into the news, again. Back when we started this blog in 2007, we found the language used by those in and around the RS to be perhaps the most peculiar expression of the confusion of science and politics in the climate debate. The RS’s erstwhile president, Robert May had declared that the society’s motto was best translated as ‘respect the facts’ – a revision of ‘on the word of no one’ that looked like a desperate inversion of its ethic. May wasn’t beyond making up his own facts, as we revealed after he accused Great Global Warming Swindle director, Martin Durkin of having produced a three-part series of films denying the link between HIV and AIDS. Roger Harrabin has recently decided to remember that May had once told him that “I am the President of the Royal Society, and I am telling you the debate on climate change is over”. (Harrabin has only now decided to recall the incident, but it would surely have been more interesting to publicly challenge his arrogance while he was president, back then.) And it wasn’t just May using the authority that science itself had bestowed on him. The RS’s then communications director, Bob Ward busied himself by speaking on behalf of science, writing open letters to anyone seemingly daring to challenge any aspect of climate change politics, and any editor of a publication that dared to host unorthodox opinion. The Royal Society is now feeling the effect of certain of its members’ aggression and contempt, and challenges to its authority now come from within. (Climate Resistance)
Sigh... Carbon dioxide is the missing link to past global climate changes PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Increasingly, the Earth's climate appears to be more connected than anyone would have imagined. El Nino, the weather pattern that
originates in a patch of the equatorial Pacific, can spawn heat waves and droughts as far away as Africa.
Update on the Role of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation in Global Warming UPDATE: more edits & enhancements for clarity made at 3:35 CDT, June 17, 2010. Here I use a simple forcing-feedback model, combined with satellite estimates of cloud changes caused by the PDO, to demonstrate the ability of the model to explain the temperature variations. This time, though, I am going to use Jim Hansen’s (GISS) record of yearly radiative forcings of the global climate system since 1900 to demonstrate more convincingly the importance of the PDO…not only for explaining the global temperature record of the past, but for the estimation of the sensitivity of the climate system and thus project the amount of future global warming (er, I mean climate change). What follows is not meant to be publishable in a peer-reviewed paper. It is to keep the public informed, to stimulate discussion, to provide additional support for the claims in my latest book, and to help me better understand what I know at this point in my research, what I don’t know, and what direction I should go next. (Roy W. Spencer)
New Paper That Documents The Role Of Regional Circulations In Climate There is a new paper which further documents the major role of regional circulation features on weather and climate. It is Kossin, J. P., S. J. Camargo, and M. Sitkowski, 2010: Climate modulation of North Atlantic hurricane tracks. J. Climate, 23, 3057-3076 The abstract reads
The documentation of the major role that
closely fits with the conclusions I have reported in my past posts; e.g. see What is the Importance to Climate of Heterogeneous Spatial Trends in Tropospheric Temperatures? (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)
Glacier Retreat Not All Due To Mankind Thursday, 17 June 2010 14:25 Dr. David Whitehouse Glaciers have been in the news a lot recently after the IPCC mistakenly claimed that those in the Himalayas would disappear by 2035. Despite this it has often been reported in the mainstream media that the Earth’s glaciers are retreating in response to man-made global warming. A new study shows, as is often the case with such sweeping claims, that the reality is more complicated with mankind’s influence probably not the major factor. With the possible exception of the glaciers in Scandinavia the glaciers on the Alps are the most well observed on Earth. For more than 100 years the Swiss glaciers have been observed, new topographic maps compiled, aerial photographs taken and measurements made. According to researchers at least half of the loss of the Aletch glacier in Switzerland, which has receded by 2,000 metres in the past century, is due to natural climatic variability. The researchers, from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, say that their findings are generally true for the majority of glaciers worldwide. The research has been described as the first detailed scrutiny of the many forces that affect the behavior of glaciers. It is possible to use historical data to make some judgment of the influence of natural variations on glacier size although such data are rather sparse compared to the measurements obtained in the last century or so. It is worth noting that during the Roman Warm Period Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps shows that 2,200 years ago the glaciers were much smaller than they are today. (GWPF)
Argh! Storing carbon dioxide deep underground in rock form Findings released during the annual Goldschmidt Conference at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
I watched Tuesday's hearing on offshore drilling operations and safety by the Energy and Environment Subcommittee of the House Energy & Commerce Committee and want to highlight a few things that stood out in the testimony of the assembled chiefs of the largest oil companies in the US. [Read More] (Geoffrey Styles, Energy Tribune)
Obama v BP: America’s justifiable fury with BP is degenerating into a broader attack on business FOR over a month, Barack Obama watched the oil spill spread over the Gulf of Mexico with the same powerless horror as other Americans. Finally, lampooned by his countrymen
for his impotence, he was spurred into action. He attacked the only available target—BP—and, to underline the seriousness with which he takes this problem, he gave his
first Oval Office address on the subject.
June 17, 2010 – 7:05 pm The one narrative that won’t hunt is that BP took a calculated risk President Obama’s forcing BP to cut its dividend and commit US$20-billion to an escrow fund for Gulf victims seems more like something Vladimir Putin or Hugo Chavez might have pulled off. “We will make BP pay,” said the President in his Oval office speech this week. But BP has already said very clearly that it is prepared to pay. The company’s CEO, Tony Hayward, repeated this commitment yesterday while being roasted before a House committee in Washington. BP still has a great many questions to answer about culpability for the Gulf disaster, but the company is being made to look as if it might put shareholders ahead of victims. All this fits nicely into President Obama’s anti-Big Oil/anti-corporate/pro-Big Government agenda. In his speech, President Obama used the Gulf spill in an attempt to kick start flagging energy legislation. His clean energy obsessions (which are rooted in the likely non-problem of man-made global warming) could prove extremely damaging for the U.S. economy (and that of Canada) although we might take some comfort in the fact that cap and trade didn’t get a mention in Tuesday’s speech.
Sheesh! Obama's TV speech undersells how energy policy must change FROM THE Oval Office on Tuesday, President Obama argued that the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico underscores the need for America to transition from fossil
fuels. But even as he attempted to rally Americans by invoking heroic American achievement in World War II and in space, the president didn't talk much about what could make
such a transition happen.
Of course... Film Challenges Safety Of U.S. Shale Gas Drilling A new documentary purporting to expose the hazards of onshore natural gas drilling illustrates its point with startling images of people setting fire to water flowing from
faucets in their homes.
For Gulf, Biofuels Are Worse Than Oil Spill Environment: Our growing addiction to alternative energy was killing aquatic life in the Gulf long before the Deepwater Horizon spill. Abandoning oil will kill more and also
release more carbon dioxide into the air.
Too stupid for words: Gas power stations 'should have carbon capture' Climate committee calls for measure in order to meet target to cut emissions by 80%
Dept. of Energy’s Cathy Zoi: Still Flouting the Law, Still Stonewalling the Investigation Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Cathy Zoi, ex-CEO of Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection, maintains major investments in "green" companies that benefit directly from her decisions. (Christopher Horner, PJM)
The Nuclear Power Resurgence: How Safe Are the New Reactors? As utilities seek to build new nuclear power plants in the U.S. and around the world, the latest generation of reactors feature improvements over older technologies. But even as attention focuses on nuclear as an alternative to fossil fuels, questions remain about whether the newer reactors are sufficiently foolproof to be adopted on a large scale. (Susan Q. Stranahan, e360)
Economics and Performance – The Primary Deficiencies of Wind Power by Jerry Graf [Editor’s note: Mr. Graf’s cash flow analysis of wind power projects is presented as another view of the inappropriateness of planned public policy in the electricity sector. The economics of wind power is a broad topic; previous posts at MasterResource are listed at the end of this post. For general problems of industrial wind, see here.] There are many arguments to be made against government subsidization of industrial wind power, some objective and others subjective. We hear about noise, shadow flicker, disruption of wildlife, lack of consistent energy output (intermittency), questionable performance with respect to pollution reduction, and undesirable aesthetic appearance. It occurs to me, however, with regard to subsidies for energy ventures and technology, three things must be kept in mind:
It is obvious that any good investment must be made in worthwhile ventures that can show a reasonable return; and I believe it is fairly apparent that placement of wind turbine power generation technology in my home state of Ohio, vast areas of the eastern or mid-western United States, and indeed in most places in the continental United States, is not worthwhile. Given the average annual wind speed limitations in most areas, and the relative inefficiency of wind turbines to transform wind into useful electrical power, the wind turbine technology we are subsidizing cannot produce enough electricity to be competitive with other more viable forms of generation, even when a generous allowance for future inflation of electricity costs is considered. The investment is being wasted; with no hope of a reasonable return, and without large subsidies from government entities to offset the investment losses and artificial increases in the cost of electricity, a viable business case for implementation of wind turbine power generation cannot be made. To illustrate the economic shortcomings, I can point to specific high profile wind development projects I have analyzed in the past several months, including the Great Lakes Wind Energy Pilot Project in Ohio, the Highland Wind Farm expansion in Pennsylvania, and the Glacier Hills Wind Farm in Wisconsin. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
The Great Wind Farm Disaster (ctd) Heard a great story the other day from Matt Ridley, author of the absolutely essential The Rational Optimist.
Junk Science Week: Solar junk economics June 16, 2010 – 8:54 pm The authors assume 16 indirect jobs for every solar employee Speaking of fake lakes, do you think the federal government and Ontario should build a $2.4-billion state-of-the-art photovoltaic solar cell manufacturing plant and hand over the keys, free of charge, to a national champion producer in that industry? Does that sound maybe a little implausible? Not if you believe the cost-benefit analysis presented recently in the journal Energy Policy by two researchers in Queen’s University’s Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. In fairness, the cost-benefit analysis they used is typical of lots of cost-benefit analysis in this area, i.e., a little junky. What are the benefits? They don’t actually calculate the all-in social benefits and costs, which are often hard to estimate but are what should really determine the decision. Instead, they calculate the “government return,” the cash return the government makes on its $2.4-billion investment. What form does the return take? Income taxes, corporate taxes, sales taxes and health and environmental costs saved because the solar cells the plant produces replace polluting coal-fired electrical plants. When the Queen’s researchers estimate all these future flows of income to the government it ends up their present value at plausible interest rates exceeds the $2.4-billion investment. OK, so what’s wrong here?
Spain May Cut Income 30% for Operating Solar Plants June 16 -- Spain’s government will cut the revenue of most existing solar-power plants by 30 percent, a move that may bankrupt hundreds of companies that produce
electricity using photovoltaic panels, a local trade group said.
Lawrence Solomon: Nightfall on the solar industry June 17, 2010 – 11:43 am Solar may be a renewable technology but government subsidies to it aren’t, Europe’s solar industry is learning. In Spain, under a 2007 law that guaranteed 25 years of way-above-market prices to solar power developers, industry invested $22-billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make Spain the solar showcase of the world. Now that Spain is flirting with bankruptcy, the government is planning to rescind those guarantees, the Spanish press reports. Under the government’s expected change of mind, the revenue of most existing solar-power plants would be cut by 30% and for new ground-based photovoltaic generators by 45%. The government would rescind fewer subsidies for roof-mounted panels: 25% cuts for large roofs and 5% for small roofs. The result, according to Tomas Diaz, director of external relations at the Photovoltaic Industry Association in Madrid, would be bankruptcy for most of the country’s 600 photovoltaic operators. In Italy, the government plans to scrap guaranteed prices paid to owners of so-called green certificates, which represent greenhouse-gas-free power. Without those guarantees, says the head of the Association of Foreign Banks in Italy, solar and wind companies that obtained some $6.8-billion in loans may be unable to make their loan payments, leading to widespread default. About two-thirds of Italy’s green loans come from outside the country. More loans to the sector are now in doubt. In Germany, prospects have also dimmed for the renewable industry, with the government scaling back its renewable power incentives. The UK has already announced a review of renewable subsidies, leading Denmark’s Dong Energy, which accounts for a third of UK offshore wind capacity, to say future investments may dry up. The exit of governments from the renewable subsidy field follows a collapse in public support for the theory that manmade global warming is a serious problem. Because the public no longer buys it, the politicians no longer fund it. Financial Post
ADM is the largest primary food processor in the country – it turns corn and soybeans (among other products) into a host of consumer products: corn flakes, cornstarch, corn syrup, corn meal, popcorn, and hundreds of other items. One of those other items is ethanol. Ethanol is a pure grain alcohol that, when blended with gasoline, yields gasohol – the E10 or E85 blends. Ethanol has long been touted as a path to energy independence, the way to reduce, or even eliminate, oil imports. More accurately, though, ethanol is the latest incarnation of snake oil. It is an inferior product in every facet, and the entire ethanol industry would disappear overnight if the federal government would perform its intended function – the service and protection of its people – and end ethanol subsidies once and for all. (Energy Tribune)
House GOP Announces First Vote to Repeal ObamaCare Posted by Michael F. Cannon House Republicans say they will force a vote to repeal ObamaCare’s individual mandate, which will subject nearly all Americans to fines and/or imprisonment if they do not purchase a government-designed health insurance plan. They are soliciting public feedback on their America Speaking Out website, which explains:
I’d rather see the entire law repealed — including the price controls on health insurance, the trillions of dollars in health insurance subsidies, the CLASS Act, etc.. Why not do it all at once, just so you don’t miss anything important? But this vote is unlikely to succeed, so I suppose there will be time for votes repealing the whole thing. (Cato at liberty)
Vaccine purchasing contracts: Putting the doctor and patient last In the never-ending fiasco that started in 1965 when the Feds entered health care in earnest, you can always count on a few things: 1. Each successive bit of regulation will further erode the doctor-patient relationship. 2. No money will ever be saved. On the contrary, costs will only rise. 3. Honest docs will get squeezed, crooked ones will game the system. 4. No matter what changes are made, insurance companies and big pharma will benefit more than any other players. 5. Patients will get increasingly dissatisfied with their care. My latest HND piece deals with vaccine purchasing contracts, also known as "compliance contracts." On the surface, they look like a way for struggling pediatricians to control costs, but looks can be deceiving. Instead, they reward the already federally-subsidized vaccine giants, and stifle innovation. Or, as I describe it:
Read the complete article. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)
Junk Science Week: The missing smog dead Repeated claims of thousands of victims fail basic statistical tests By Peter Shawn Taylor Air pollution cuts a deadly but invisible swath through Canada. We know this because the Canadian Medical Association says there were 21,000 deaths from exposure to air-borne pollutants in 2008. Of these, 2,682 Canadians were instantly struck down by the acute effects of pollution. By 2031, 710,000 people will have been slain by this unseen killer. The evidence on this epic death toll is chillingly precise. According to the Ontario Medical Association, exactly 348 people died from air pollution in Waterloo Region in 2008. In Hamilton, 445 lives were cut short. And Manitoulin Island tragically lost 14 residents due to pollutants that year. In Toronto, the Big Smoke of Canada, the figures are appropriately larger. Calculations by Toronto Public Health claim air pollution kills 1,700 people annually and sends 6,000 to the hospital. Ten percent of all non-trauma deaths in Toronto are directly attributed to air pollution. And the news gets worse. Consider what happens when you take Toronto’s computer model and use it to determine the death toll in previous eras, when the air was far more polluted than today. For example, average sulfur dioxide levels in downtown Toronto were more than 100 parts per billion in the mid-1960s. It’s now less than 10 ppb. No surprise then, that the death toll was much greater in the bad old days. Across the 1960s, half of all non-trauma deaths were the direct result of air pollution, according to Toronto’s model. And in February 1965, more than 100% of all deaths were due to pollution!
Hugh Taylor is a fraud, and Yale is asleep at the switch for condoning his "research" Never mind that literally thousands of studies have given the chemical BPA a clean bill of health. Yale "scientist" Hugh Taylor has a new angle, and this was covered by Reuters. The way we are exposed to the chemical is via ingestion. That is, we either eat foods that have been packaged in cans lined with BPA, or drink liquids from plastic containers containing the chemical in minute amounts. Hack scientist Fred vom Saal has made a career of studying BPA and other so-called endocrine disruptors. No one can repeat his results, but since it is apparently PC to attack chemicals, he's made this work. Let's be kind and say that vom Saal's reputation among his peers is something less than stellar. You should know that one of the biggest research frauds in modern history, in which the once-respected journal Science published supposedly revolutionary results, only to have to retract them later, also involved endocrine disruptors. But even vom Saal would not have done something as absurd as Taylor. One of the images in the slide show accompanying the article shows Taylor INJECTING pregnant mice with BPA. For those keeping score, this sort of incredible junk science grotesquely magnifies the exposure level when compared to ingestion, which of course must go through the digestive system. Think of what your blood alcohol level would be if the ethyl alcohol were directly injected into your veins, instead of you drinking it in a beverage. Do you think it would be lots higher, maybe even lethal? 30 years ago, this sort of thing would have been laughed out of any journal in the world, and now it is indicative of "research" at an Ivy League School. God help us. As an added bonus, since no article about BPA would be complete without mentioning her name, Prof. Shanna Swan, who has an even worse reputation among her peers than vom Saal, is also cited. After World War II, the public was all starry-eyed about what science would bring us. Disease would be cured, hunger would be eliminated, and energy would be cheap and plentiful. Instead, we got napalm and Hugh Taylor. Last time I checked, the public isn't so starry-eyed anymore. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)
The Big Money Behind the Environmental Scare Movement –the attack on atrazine replays the alar scare In April, the National Resources Defense Council issued an update in its all-out campaign to demonize and ban the herbicide atrazine. The scope of its attack shows that the
NRDC has learned a thing or two from the 1980s, when it ginned up a successful campaign to demonize the apple growth regulator, alar.
Swine flu shot protects against 1918 flu: study WASHINGTON - People who got vaccinated against the H1N1 swine flu virus may also be protected against the strain of influenza that killed 50 million to 100 million people in
1918, researchers reported on Tuesday.
PC claim of the moment: Cleared forests lead to rise in malaria in Brazil WASHINGTON - Clearing forests in the Amazon helps mosquitoes thrive and can send malaria rates soaring, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.
Left-coast loons: San Francisco tentatively OKs cellphone radiation law San Francisco is close to enacting a law that would require retailers to post signs stating how much radiation is emitted from cellphones.
LSU professor uses volcanic emissions to study Earth's atmospheric past BATON ROUGE – On March 20, Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano woke from its nearly 200-year slumber to change the way the world viewed volcanoes forever. Bringing almost all transatlantic air travel to a halt for the first time in modern history, this volcano reminded humanity of the powers these forces of nature contain – and of our relative inability to understand them. Associate Professor Huiming Bao of LSU's Department of Geology & Geophysics has published research in the journal Nature about massive volcanic eruptions and their atmospheric consequences in the past in North America. (Louisiana State University)
Oh... Chemicals that eased one environmental problem may worsen another Chemicals that helped solve a global environmental crisis in the 1990s — the hole in Earth's protective ozone layer — may be making another problem — acid rain —
worse, scientists are reporting. Their study on the chemicals that replaced the ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) once used in aerosol spray cans, air conditioners,
refrigerators, and other products, appears in ACS' Journal of Physical Chemistry A, a weekly publication.
More Americans exercise, but they are still obese WASHINGTON - More Americans are exercising but rates of obesity and smoking have not changed, according to the latest government data.
Study finds girls reaching puberty at age nine SCIENTISTS believe obesity, junk food and increased meat consumption could be responsible for a growing number of girls reaching puberty before the age of ten.
EU lawmakers demand stricter food-labelling rules BRUSSELS - European Union lawmakers voted on Wednesday to strengthen controversial draft rules on food labelling that aim to fight rising levels of obesity in Europe.
A big gun takes down some big myths World class nutritionist Jo-Ann Heslin takes down some food myths by bringing some logic and right reason to the notion of "processed foods." How's this for an opening paragraph?
As she notes:
She also puts a stake through the heart of the cliché of the "evil" food companies. After all, if people didn't buy various less-than-healthful products, they wouldn't be offered for sale, would they? Jo-Ann is too kind to say outright that if we want someone to blame, we should be looking in the mirror. Read the complete HND article, and check out her website. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)
Why we need a limit on drink-drive laws Reducing how much we can legally drink before driving is an imposition on our freedom that makes little difference to safety.
I'm confused. When I walk around busy midtown Manhattan, I often smell marijuana. Despite the crowds, some people smoke weed in public. Usually the police leave them alone,
and yet other times they act like a military force engaged in urban combat. This February, cops stormed a Columbia, Mo., home, killed the family dog and terrorized a 7-year-old
boy — for what? A tiny quantity of marijuana.
Econ 101: The Minimum Wage Kills Jobs
Last week, George Mason University economics professor Daniel Klein wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed summarizing an study he did for Econ Journal Watch: “Who is better informed about the policy choices facing the country—liberals, conservatives or libertarians? According to a Zogby International survey that I write about in the May issue of Econ Journal Watch, the answer is unequivocal: The left flunks Econ 101.” Some of the questions Klein et al asked included: “1) Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services (unenlightened answer: disagree). 2) Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago (unenlightened answer: disagree). 3) Rent control leads to housing shortages (unenlightened answer: disagree). 4) A company with the largest market share is a monopoly (unenlightened answer: agree). 5) Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited (unenlightened answer: agree). 6) Free trade leads to unemployment (unenlightened answer: agree). 7) Minimum wage laws raise unemployment (unenlightened answer: disagree).” Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Wild sharks, redfish harbor antibiotic-resistant bacteria CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Researchers have found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in seven species of sharks and redfish captured in waters off Belize, Florida, Louisiana and
Massachusetts. Most of these wild, free-swimming fish harbored several drug-resistant bacterial strains.
The rise and rise of the Champagne Malthusians spiked’s editor joined the population-control lobby in a posh church in London as they quaffed ‘luxury’ drinks and fretted about overbreeding.
The missing polar bears of St. Matthew Island “We landed on St. Matthew Island early on a cold gray August morning, and judge our astonishment at finding hundreds of large polar bears . . . lazily sleeping in grassy
hollows, or digging up grass and other roots, browsing like hogs.”
Rahming Through a Lame Duck Climate Bill? Ominous words are emanating again from the president on climate change and energy independence, this time as "a response" to the Gulf oil catastrophe. Somewhere
between the war rhetoric and comparisons to the moon landing, President Obama last night (vaguely) told Congress to pass the energy legislation that’s been languishing there
since last summer.
The Immutable Law Of The Potomac Climate Bill: Sen. Joe Lieberman believes American households are "willing to pay less than $1" a day to stop global warming. The Connecticut independent needs a
lesson in the history of government program costs.
Boxer Declares Climate Change as the Greatest Threat, But Opponents Slam Theory Terrorism. Nuclear weapons. Corrupt and oppressive regimes.
Pachauri loves climate skeptics Four
months ago, Rajendra Pachauri became our skin care & beauty adviser. They are people who deny the link between smoking and cancer; they are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder – I hope that they apply it to their faces every day – and people who say that the only way to deal with HIV/AIDS is to screen the population on a regular basis and isolate those who are infected.However, the InterAcademy Council's (IAC) review of the IPCC is underway. They must have told the atrocious man the self-evident fact that his job is no longer sustainable. All of us hope that such an inevitable cosmetic change won't be the only result of the IAC's investigation. » Don't Stop Reading » (The Reference Frame)
John Christy: an excellent witness in Montreal The InterAcademy Council is reviewing the work of the
IPCC. four audio streams including this one.Click the link above if you can't play the audio above, too. The Windows Media Player should be displayed on the separate page. (Download WM plugin for Firefox/Chrome if you don't have it.) John Christy John Christy (02:11:55 - 02:43:15 in the file embedded above, 31 minutes in total; questions begin on 02:24:08) has explained how the climate scientists (and especially IPCC lead authors) have become gatekeepers and their community has become a victim of groupthink, exaggerations, Hollywood movies; how his papers and opinions were deliberately ignored by the process; how good an idea it is to listen to Steve McIntyre; how unpredictable the climate is - especially the regional one; and how cruel it may be to make electricity less accessible, especially in the third world, so you should be damn certain about your assumptions (and you should better have several reasons to implement a far-reaching policy). There are many other cool things that have been said. » Don't Stop Reading » (The Reference Frame)
Reforming a Flawed Process: The IPCC and Its Clients (submission to the InterAcademy Council Review) by David Henderson
Over the past 22 years, governments everywhere and a great many outside observers have put their trust in the official expert advisory process as a whole and the IPCC process in particular. I have come to believe that this widespread trust is unwarranted. But it is not just the IPCC process that is in question here. The basic problem of unwarranted trust goes further: it extends to the chronically biased treatment of climate change issues by responsible departments and agencies which the Panel reports to, and in nationally-based organizations which they finance. Here is what I recently submitted to the InterAcademy Council. Background I am Chairman of the Academic Advisory Council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. On 26 May the InterAcademy Council invited the Foundation to submit written comments to the independent Review Committee. At the suggestion of the Director of the Foundation, Dr Benny Peiser, I am submitting herewith my own comments. While this submission is personal, it has been endorsed by the GWPF. I am an economist, not a climate scientist. I became involved with climate change issues, by accident not design, towards the end of 2002. Up to that time, I had formed no considered views on the subject, and had seen no reason to question the work and role of the IPCC. I was an uninvolved spectator. To begin with, my main involvement was limited to some economic and statistical aspects of this huge and complex array of topics. Over time, however, my interests and concerns have broadened in ways that I had neither planned nor anticipated. Increasingly, and unexpectedly, I have become critical of the way in which issues of climate change have been viewed and treated by governments across the world. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
My Comments For The InterAcademy Council Review of the IPCC Below is my response to a set of questions from the InterAcademy Council Review of the IPCC – An evaluation of the procedures and processes of the InterGovernmental Panel on Climate Change (see) What role(s), if any, have you played in any of the IPCC assessment processes? I have had a long experience with the IPCC assessment process starting in about 1992. Below I have listed some of my experiences and documentation of the IPCC process. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)
Junk Science Week: Climate junk hard to dump Why would scientists allow themselves to be recruited to essentially political objectives? The past six months has seen a series of unprecedented setbacks for the cause of catastrophic man-made climate change: the collapse of the Kyoto process; the release of incriminating Climategate emails; the discovery of the shoddy standards of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); the mounting evidence that a job-creating green industrial revolution is a fantasy; and the growing suspicion by the public that it has been sold a bill of goods. The British Royal Society recently released a statement that “Any public perception that the science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect,” thus contradicting its own former president, and true believer, Lord May. And if the science isn’t settled, there can hardly ever have been “consensus” on the issue. A forthcoming paper by Mike Hulme, Professor of Climate Change at the University of East Anglia, from which the Climategate emails emerged, admits that the actual group involved in the “consensus” that “human activities are having a significant influence on the climate” was in fact “only a few dozen,” rather than the thousands invoked by the IPCC.
Cuccinelli tells court former U-Va. professor's academic freedom not threatened Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has told a judge that his request for documents related to the work of former University of Virginia climate scientist Michael Mann
should be granted because neither academic freedom nor the First Amendment "immunizes" a person from a fraud investigation.
The Marxist roots of the global warming scare The late Natalie Grant Wraga once wrote, "Protection of the environment has become the principal tool for attack against the West and all it stands for. Protection of the environment may be used as a pretext to adopt a series of measures designed to undermine the industrial base of developed nations. It may also serve to introduce malaise by lowering their standard of living and implanting communist values." (Wes Vernon, Renew America)
EU wants to lower CO2 by 30% by 2020 unilaterally By Hynek Fajmon, a
member of the European Parliament » Don't Stop Reading » (The Reference Frame)
Australian scientists debate climate "communication charter" Leading academics discuss how to build case for action to tackle climate change (Tom Young, BusinessGreen)
To the Editor:
At
the Washington Post's Capitol Weather Gang, Andrew Freedman
grapples with how to discuss climate change in the context of flash floods over the past few weeks: . . . the question of whether to raise climate change in discussions of flash floods (and other extreme events) constitutes more than a quibble over semantics. The media has a responsibility to report what the science says, even in the context of a breaking news story, such as a flood event or heat wave. The science has become clearer, although by no means certain, that local precipitation extremes may be connected to climate change. Yet, to date, the mainstream media has shied away from raising climate change in extreme event coverage. This is unfortunate, because it constitutes a missed opportunity to make climate change relevant to people in the here and now, rather than an abstract concept in the distant future.In contrast, Andy Revkin who blogs at the New York Times suggests caution in making connections between a few events and larger climatic patterns. As the graph above shows (from data of the NWS), there is no evidence for an increase in flood disasters. In fact, there has been a marked decrease. I have also shown on numerous occasions(e.g., PDF) that there is no evidence of an increase in flood disasters in terms of economic damage either, once adjusted for growing wealth at risk. So what is the thing for journalists to say about climate change and recent flood disasters? Easy. There is presently no evidence for a signal of climate change (human-caused or otherwise) leading to an increase in flood disasters. If there is any signal, it is far too small to see and it will take many decades for such a signal to emerge. It seems like it would be easy and straightforward to simply say what the science shows, but making climate change connections with disasters seems to be like catnip for journalists and advocates alike. (Roger Pielke Jr.)
Oz report – Footy at least has rules The Tuesday night meeting in Brisbane on the WUWT Australian tour had a bit of unexpected fireworks courtesy of Aussie reef scientist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. The meeting started off with some protestors outsides holding placards with the tired old messages claiming “funding by big oil”, etc.. Ove actually incited this on his blog, saying that “The Climate Shifts crew and other scientists will be there en masse to record and debunk the lies that will be told.” The “en masse” was about 5, maybe 6 people by my count. Ove is the one at right below. I’ve never met Ove, never corresponded with him, and after watching his behavior firsthand, I’m not sure I would have wanted to. His behavior left me with the impression that he was the antithesis of a professional person. At least the lady from Oxfam and the fellow in the green shirt who came up to me afterwards had manners, even though they disagreed with me, and I thank them for that. Ove never made the effort to say hello. Andrew Bolt and his readers explain it far better than I could: Continue reading (WUWT)
Oh boy... Whale poop fights global warming Click here to watch the video. NOT Southern Ocean sperm whales are an unexpected ally in the fight against global warming, removing the equivalent carbon emissions from 40,000 cars each year in their faeces, a study shows. The cetaceans have been previously seen as climate culprits because they breathe out carbon dioxide (CO2), the most common greenhouse gas. But this is only a part of the picture, according to the paper, published in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. In a heroic calculation, Australian biologists estimated that about 12,000 sperm whales in the Southern Ocean each defecate around 50 tonnes of iron into the sea every year after digesting the fish and squid they hunt. The iron is a terrific food for phytoplankton – marine plants that live near the ocean surface and which suck up CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. As a result of faecal fertilisation, the whales remove 400,000 tonnes of carbon each year, twice as much as the 200,000 tonnes of CO2 that they contribute through respiration. Continue reading (WUWT)
Sigh... Arctic Ocean ice retreating at 30-year record pace File this under short term trends matter when we say they matter.
Iceberg in the Hudson Strait off the coast of Baffin Island. Photograph by: Sergeant Kevin MacAulay, DN
BY RANDY BOSWELL, CANWEST NEWS SERVICE Arctic Ocean ice cover retreated faster last month than in any previous May since satellite monitoring began more than 30 years ago, the latest sign that the polar region could be headed for another record-setting meltdown by summer’s end. The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center had already warned earlier this spring that low ice volume — the result of repeated losses of thick, multi-year ice over the past decade — meant this past winter’s ice-extent recovery was superficial, due mainly to a fragile fringe of new ice that would be vulnerable to rapid deterioration once warmer temperatures set in. And, driven by unusually hot weather in recent weeks above the Arctic Circle, the polar ice is disappearing at an unprecedented rate, reducing overall ice extent to less than that recorded in May 2007 — the year when a record-setting retreat by mid-September alarmed climatologists and northern governments. Continue reading (WUWT)
but: Scan of Arctic ice dispels melting gloom: Researcher
Geophysicist Christian Haas, of the University of Alberta, and a colleague pose with the "bird" they towed along on a cable below the plane which
flew 100 metres above the ice. Photograph by: Christian Haas/University of Alberta, Photo Handout Read
more
An electromagnetic “bird” dispatched to the Arctic for the most detailed look yet at the thickness of the ice has turned up a reassuring picture. The meltdown has not been as dire as some would suggest, said geophysicist Christian Haas of the University of Alberta. His international team flew across the top of the planet last year for the 2,412-kilometre survey. They found large expanses of ice four to five metres thick, despite the record retreat in 2007. “This is a nice demonstration that there is still hope for the ice,” said Haas. The survey, which demonstrated that the “bird” probe tethered to a plane can measure ice thickness over large areas, uncovered plenty of resilient “old” ice from Norway to the North Pole to Alaska in April 2009. Continue reading (WUWT)
by Steven Goddard Looking at the June 14 satellite photo above, you see the view which the Sun sees of the North Pole. Well not exactly, because the elevation of the Sun at its peak (mid-June) is actually fairly low in the sky. At the Pole, it is only 23.5º above the horizon. The video below shows what the earth would look like now, viewed from perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. Note that the region north of 66.5º is in perpetual light. The image of the Sun is from the days when it used to have sunspots.
Continue reading (WUWT)
Evidence of Elevated Sea Surface Temperatures Under the BP Oil Slick (NOTE: minor edits made at 10:00 a.m. CDT, June 15, 2010) As summer approaches, sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Gulf of Mexico increase in response to increased solar insolation (intensity of sunlight). Limiting the SST increase is evaporation, which increases nonlinearly with SST and approximately linearly with increased wind speed. It is important to realize that the primary heat loss mechanism by far for water bodies is evaporation. By late summer, SSTs in the Gulf peak near 86 or 87 deg. F as these various energy gain and energy loss mechanisms approximately balance one another. But yesterday, buoy 42040, moored about 64 nautical miles south of Dauphin Island, AL, reported a peak SST of 96 deg. F during very low wind conditions. Since the SST measurement is made about 1 meter below the sea surface, it is likely that even higher temperatures existed right at the surface…possibly in excess of 100 deg. F. A nice global analysis of the day-night cycle in SSTs was published in 2003 by members of our NASA AMSR-E Science Team, which showed the normal range of this daytime warming, which increases at very low wind speed. But 96 deg. F is truly exceptional, especially for a measurement at 1 meter depth. The following graph shows the last 45 days of SST measurements from this buoy, as well as buoy 42039 which is situated about 120 nautical miles to the east of buoy 42040. The approximate locations of these buoys are shown in the following MODIS image from the Aqua satellite from 3 days ago (June 12, 2010); the oil slick areas are lighter colored patches, swirls and filaments, and can only be seen on days when the MODIS angle of view is near the point of sun glint (direct reflection of the sun’s image off the surface): The day-night cycle in SSTs can be clearly seen on most days in the SST plot above, and it becomes stronger at lower wind speeds, as can be seen by comparing those SSTs to the measured wind speeds at these two buoys seen in the next plot: Since buoy 42040 has been near the most persistent area of oil slick coverage seen by the MODIS instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites, I think it is a fair supposition that these very high water temperatures are due to reduced evaporation from the oil film coverage on the sea surface. OIL SLICK IMPACT ON GULF HURRICANES? As any hurricane approaches, higher winds will rapidly break up the oil on the surface, and mix the warmer surface layer with cooler, deeper layers. (Contrary to popular perception, the oil does not make the surface of the ocean darker and thereby absorb more sunlight…the ocean surface is already very dark and absorbs most of the sunlight that falls upon it — over 90%.) Also, in order for any extra thermal energy to be available for a hurricane to use as fuel, it must be “converted” to more water vapor. Yes, hurricanes are on average strengthened over waters with higher SST, but only to the extent that the overlying atmosphere has its humidity enhanced by those higher SSTs. Evidence of reduced evaporation at buoy 42040 is seen in the following plot which shows the atmospheric temperature and dewpoint, as well as SST, for buoys 42040 (first plot), and 42039 (second plot). Despite the elevated SSTs at buoy 42040 versus buoy 42039 in recent days, the dewpoint has not risen above what is being measured at buoy 42039 — if anything, it has remained lower. Nevertheless, I suspect the issue of enhanced sea surface temperatures will be the subject of considerable future research, probably with computer modeling of the impact of such oil slicks on tropical cyclone intensity. I predict the effect will be very small. (Roy W. Spencer)
Flower power makes tropics cooler, wetter The world is a cooler, wetter place because of flowering plants, according to new climate simulation results published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The
effect is especially pronounced in the Amazon basin, where replacing flowering plants with non–flowering varieties would result in an 80 percent decrease in the area covered
by ever–wet rainforest.
Climate changes in the Atlantic can affect drought in Africa Cyclical changes in atmospheric pressure and sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic Ocean affect drought in the Sahel region on the southern Sahara rim. This has been revealed in an international study carried out by researchers from the University of Haifa, the French National Meteorological Service, Columbia University and the University of San Diego. The study was published recently in the scientific journal Atmospheric Science Letters (Royal Meteorological Society). (University of Haifa)
There is finally movement by the National Academies to broaden out the assessment of the role of climate variability and change with respect to other significant risks from other environmental and social threats. This is seen in the Committee that has been assembled for A Workshop on Global Change and Extreme Hydrologic Events: Testing Conventional Wisdom The Workshop was held in January 2010 to discuss this broader perspective and the agenda can be read at Meeting Information. Not all of the talks represent a broader view but others do. Some of the broader topics highlighted at this meeting were
The specific breakout sessions is where the broader view becomes particularly evident. The specific question posed that has this much-needed view is
Research into the above question is very much needed as we emphasized in our article Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)
Climate change increases hazard risk in alpine regions says research led by University of Exeter New research led by University of Exeter suggests climate change increases hazard risk in alpine regions
Raining on Boreal Forest Fires No presentation on global warming is complete without images of some major wildfire – from day one, the global warming alarmists have insisted that a warmer world will generate more wildfires thereby devastating ecosystems from sea to shining sea. It is an easy sell – higher temperatures will increase potential evapotranspiration, forests dry out, and therefore become far more susceptible to fire. Recall that the entire global warming issue became front-page news back in 1988, and 1988 was the summer Yellowstone Park and much of the western United States suffered severe forest fires. Ever since, every major fire somehow gets linked to global warming. We searched the internet for “Fires and Global Warming” and found literally thousands of websites claiming that global warming will cause more fires, fires are causing global warming, and of course, global warming leaders should be fired! (WCR)
There have been arguments made for increased plant growth due to rising atmospheric CO2 levels, while others have argued against it. Now it seems that green plants and ocean algae are not the only forms of life involved. Opportunistic microorganisms are stepping in to sop up excess carbon. A new report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has identified soil fungi as a major player in accelerating CO2 absorption. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) have been identified as an intermediary between plants and other bacterial and fungal populations, acting as a buffer for other soil-borne communities. Existing organisms are not just working harder, new communities are developing to take advantage of increased CO2 levels, demonstrating that nature possesses self-regulation mechanisms science did not anticipate and has yet to discover. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)
From CO2 Science Volume 13 Number 24: 16 June 2010 Editorial: Subject Index Summary: Journal Reviews: Breeding Birds and Wind Farms: Are the two compatible? The Demise of the Monteverde Golden Toad: The story continues. The Thermal Preferences of Ecuadorian Butterflies of the Amazon: They mostly like it -- relatively speaking -- hot. Insect Herbivores, Insectivores and Detritivores in a Scrub-Oak Ecoystem: How are they all affected by atmospheric CO2 enrichment? Plant Growth Database: Medieval
Warm Period Project:
Energy Policy: President Obama says the oil disaster proves the need to get off fossil fuels. But before we save the planet, let's save the Gulf and stop exploiting crises
to deny America the energy it needs.
Russia became world’s leading oil producer in 2009 ahead of Saudi Arabia Russia overtook Saudi Arabia to become the world's leading oil producer in 2009, while global oil consumption fell the most since 1982, BP has said. According to the oil giant's latest Statistical Review of World Energy, Russia increased oil production by 1.5% in 2009, claiming a 12.9% market share. (Merco Press)
Famous CEOs plead for more energy cash from Washington.
Enemies of the Corn: The Ethanol Scammers Produce a Top Ten Enemies List
Richard Nixon had an enemies list. And now, so, too, do the corn ethanol scammers. Last week, Tom Waterman, the editor and publisher of The Ethanol Monitor, published a list of the top ten enemies of ethanol. Here’s the list: #10: Business Week/Ed Wallace (Bloomberg) #9: GRIST #8: “Big Oil” #7: Grocery Manufacturers Association #6: David Pimentel #5: Robert Rapier #4: Tim Searchinger #3: Wall Street Journal (editorial board) #2: California Air Resources Board #1: Time Magazine (Michael Grunwald) Of course, Waterman can write whatever he likes, but the fact that the ethanol boosters would produce a list of enemies is indicative of just how paranoid the ethanol scammers are getting. And their nuttiness appears to be rising along with their efforts to vacuum up yet more taxpayer subsidies in the wake of the BP blowout. (Robert Bryce, Energy Tribune)
Ethanol dream evaporates: Minneapolis hedge-fund manager Redleaf wants out CANTON, I LL . -- A mile down an unpaved road on the outskirts of Canton, Ill., population 14,500, stands a shuttered ethanol plant.
Clean Coal & Biofuels Will Cause Water Shortages With the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico emboldening all the denizens of the eco-underground, some voices are once again calling for increased production of biofuels—ethanol and biodiesel—and accelerated research into clean coal. Ignoring the fact that biofuels take as much energy to produce as they provide and that they are only competitive with heavy government subsidies, biofuel boosters are again trying to sell their snake-oil to the public. But the single most damning aspect of biofuel production is the exorbitant amount of water it takes to cook-up a gallon of the stuff. Now it appears that the other great energy scam, clean coal, will also increase water usage—by a whopping 80%. With the world facing a real water crisis in the near future, the last thing any government should be doing is wasting their citizens' money on are “green” energy scams that are really just subsidies for coal companies and big agribusiness conglomerates. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)
Eric Bibler to The Grassroots: Go for the Jugular, Windpower Simply Does Not Work by John Droz Jr. In yesterday’s post, Scientists versus Lobbyists: Looking for a Winning Strategy Against Big Wind, I promised to share with readers a citizens’ letter I received from Eric Bibler. Consider his piece, which has been condensed to meet format and space requirements, as Part II of my post. Mr. Bibler is focused on Massachusetts, but his experience and advice apply across the Northeast and across the nation where grassroots opposition to industrial wind turbines is growing apace. ——————————————- This post summarizes a group discussion about how to counter Massachusetts’s Wind Energy Siting Bill. Would it be more politically pragmatic (and therefore advisable) to avoid any argument against the fundamental viability of wind energy (which continues to be an article of faith held by many legislators), and instead to focus exclusively on the flaws specific to the bill? In other words, in order to seem “reasonable” to lawmakers, should we argue against a poor implementation of the technology, rather than to question wind energy’s fundamental value? The argument was that doing the latter may be too steep a hill to climb, plus it might lead lawmakers to reject opponents as “extremists” whose opinions were not worthy of serious consideration. Pragmatism or Purity? In my view, not focusing on the fundamental question of whether wind energy actually holds any promise as a solution to our energy and environmental problems is a terrible mistake for the simple reason that adopting such a “pragmatic” course makes us co-conspirators in the process of enabling a Big Lie. While congratulating ourselves on our political acumen, we are sacrificing our credibility and our integrity. It is one thing to forgive people who support a bad idea because they don’t know any better – and most supporters of this technology admittedly have no idea what they’re getting themselves into. But our task is to educate and persuade any of those who are willing to keep an open mind. But we typically reserve our deepest scorn for those who DO know better, or SHOULD know better, but who nonetheless promote wind energy, sometimes quite cynically, without regard for its bad consequences or for its ultimate futility. We do know better. And I, for one, do not want to be in the second category of knowing better, yet pretending not to, as one of the enablers of a big lie – even if I think it may be expedient for me over the short term. The pro-wind argument proceeds directly from a host of assumptions that are demonstrably false; all of these projects, therefore, are built upon foundations of sand. That is the truth that needs to be the basis of citizens’ responses. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
U.K. to Cut Barriers to Nuclear Power, Minister Says June 16 -- Nuclear power can play a key role in the U.K.’s future energy mix, Minister Charles Hendry told executives from Electricite de France SA, Centrica Plc and other
utilities.
Conventional wisdom is that U.S. pharmaceutical companies made out well under the Obama health plan by bargaining with the White House. That wisdom is wrong.
Friedrich von Hayek: The Road to Serfdom
It seems every day there are more calls for government intervention to relieve us from the infliction and anguish caused by our current economic woes. Those who call for more government centralization and planning reason that doing so can dispel hardship and decline. Yet rarely do they consider that central planning doesn’t work precisely because it counters the variable paramount to guide societal and economic complexities: freedom. In his indispensable 1944 classic, The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich von Hayek imparts his sage insight:
Quantifying High Cost Of Caution May Speed Drug Approval Process At the height of the AIDS crisis in the late 1980s, the Food and Drug Administration was excoriated by AIDS activists for the plodding pace at which it reviewed new drug
candidates. The sense of urgency — even panic — surrounding AIDS led to a laundry list of reforms that sped up the FDA's reviews of new drugs and helped revolutionize AIDS
treatment.
Junk Science Week: Hope mongering June 14, 2010 – 7:53 pm Media promotes the opposite of scare mongering Welcome to our 12th annual Junk Science Week event, dedicated to exposing the scientists, NGOs, activists, politicians, journalists, media outlets, cranks and quacks who use junk science to achieve their objectives. Our standard definition is that junk science occurs when scientific facts are distorted, risk is exaggerated and the science adapted and warped by politics and ideology to serve another agenda. That definition needs to be refined. It was shaped by the idea that junk science is strictly the bailiwick of scaremongers. The warped science and media coverage surrounding Bisphenol A, pesticides, smog deaths, and scores of chemicals are mostly generated by people who — for whatever reason — aim to promote political and economic interventions. The escalating focus on salt in our diets — dismissed as unsubstantiated science by Dr. David McCarron in this week’s opening contribution — fits the scare mongering definition. But science can also be warped to promote the opposite of fear. Unscientific hope mongering may be just as prevalent as scare mongering. In some ways, the role of the media in hope mongering is more important than in scare mongering. In the hands of journalists bent on doing what they think is socially beneficial work making people aware of new developments, even good science can be twisted, distorted and exaggerated for political purposes. Read More (Financial Post)
Hmm... High 'good' cholesterol tied to lower cancer risk NEW YORK - High levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol - a.k.a. "good cholesterol" -- may be linked to lower risks of cancer as well as heart attacks, new
research suggests.
Junk Science Week: Salt scare lacks solid evidence Canada should call for a trial to test the science By David McCarron Eat less salt. That’s been various governments’ directive for decades, and yet few individuals adhere to it. Currently the U.S. government seems to be on a mission to increase the pressure on this issue further. Rather than moving in lockstep, Canadians should bring some reason to this process and demonstrate that public health nutrition policy must be based upon science and not political expediency. Why the current push in the States? The view of the Obama administration’s top public health expert and the solution he proposes may provide an insight into whether the nation’s health care in the future will be based upon opinion or evidence. According to an editorial in a March issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control’s director, Dr. Thomas Frieden, says the problem is American’s food. He believes that it is laced with too much salt. Earlier as New York’s health commissioner, Dr. Frieden determined that if New Yorkers could not make the choice to lower salt intake on their own, he would make it for them. Dr. Frieden’s “low salt for all New Yorkers” legacy now threatens all Americans and by extension Canadians. Frieden is employing an approach he championed in New York where his office chose to use “public pressure …and publicity” rather than available science.
3D skin is the holy grail in burns treatment IT IS considered the holy grail in burns treatment - living, fully functioning skin grown in a lab that will transform the lives of burns victims.
Sheesh! Common blood pressure drugs may raise cancer risk CHICAGO - A widely used class of blood pressure drugs may slightly increase the risk of cancer, U.S. researchers said on Sunday, and they are calling on U.S. regulators to
take a closer look.
Sigh... Senator urges release of sunscreen chemical data NEW YORK - A senator on Sunday called on the FDA to reveal findings on a possible link between a chemical found in most sunscreens and skin cancer.
Eye-roller: Pesticides, genes combine to up risk of Parkinson's LONDON - Men with certain genetic variations who were exposed to some toxic pesticides which are now largely banned run an increased risk of developing Parkinson's disease,
French scientists said on Monday.
Russia registers first polio death in a decade MOSCOW - Russia has confirmed its first death from polio in more than a decade, the country's top public health official said on Sunday, Interfax news agency reported.
Italian Green Jobs: Where’s the Spaghetti? by Carlo Stagnaro (with Luciano Lavecchia)
Tradeoffs: if you chose this, you can’t chose that. In economics this is called opportunity cost, which is the next-best alternative to what is actually chosen. The proverb in popular culture for this is “you can’t have the cake and eat it, too.” The Italian translation is “you can’t have a full barrel and a drunk wife.” Apparently, politicians are less familiar with such a everyday-life concept. To some extent, they are right: they can get a full barrel and a drunk wife at the same time, provided that taxpayers and/or future generations will pay for it. Yet, even politicians are subject to constraints. That is particularly true in a period of crisis like now: shrinking public budgets and a slowing economy force even the politicians to make choices. EU Retrenchment This brings us to the crisis of climate politics in Europe where most EU countries are considering cuts to the green subsidies. The Socialist government in Spain dwarfed its support to solar power, causing a collapse in investments and thousands people to lose their jobs. In Germany, the conservative chancellor Angela Merkel proposed a similar reduction and is facing a huge Parliamentary opposition. Italy decided as well to pare green incentives. How is that possible? After all, virtually every official EU document claims that the “green deal” will make us not just more sustainable, but also economically better off. We will not deal with the environmental side of the issue in this post, leaving it to the wise words of Dr Gwyn Prins, for example, and perhaps a future post. Uneconomic RES But what about the claim that renewable energy sources (RES) are good for the economy? There is no spaghetti on this plate. If green sources are really cheaper than fossil fuels, there is no need to subsidize them, because households and businesses would have a built-in economic incentive to rely on RES, rather than on supposedly dirty, more expensive, energies. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
New EPA Regulations Have Dairy Farmers Crying Over Spilled Milk New EPA regulations have some Northern Michigan dairy farmers crying over spilled milk.
New UN science body to monitor biosphere 'IPCC for biodiversity' approved after long negotiation
TEEB pushes fear and new taxes The past two days I've looked at the UN's interim TEEB report and found several errors in the first chapter. I was going to write a post about how this pseudo-science spreads, but after looking at several TEEB documents I decided to write on a new topic. The TEEB isn't a scientific body, it exists to influence policymakers. This isn't a contentious claim, they say so on their webpage:
They obtain these goals by attempting to instill fear in their audience. Once the fear is instilled, they recommend new taxes to solve the problem. (Climate Quotes)
High yield crops keep carbon emissions low Palo Alto, CA— The Green Revolution of the late 20th century increased crop yields worldwide and helped feed an expanding global population. According to a new report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it also has helped keep greenhouse gas emissions at bay. The researchers estimate that since 1961 higher yields per acre have avoided the release of nearly 600 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. (Carnegie Institution)
Does pasture irrigation increase groundwater contamination? Research finds little to no transport of microbes from cow pastures into groundwater
Tracking Phosphorus Runoff from Livestock Manure Scientists develop application of rare earth elements to control phosphorus runoff from livestock manure
by Marlo Lewis Last Thursday, by a vote of 53-47, the Senate rejected S.J.Res.26, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s resolution of disapproval to overturn EPA’s endangerment rule. Although Sen. Murkowski fell four votes short of achieving a legislative victory, she nonetheless won an important political victory. During the past four-plus months, despite vicious attacks by eco-pressure groups and preemptive cringing by the subsidy dependent auto industry, Sen. Murkowksi worked patiently, calmly, and indefatigably to clarify the real issues, which are: (1) “The sweeping powers being pursued by EPA are the worst possible option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions”; (2) “politically accountable members of the House and Senate, not unelected bureaucrats, must develop our nation’s energy and climate policies”; and (3) ”those policies must be able to pass on their own merits, instead of serving as a defense against ill-considered regulations.” All… Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
Gulf fuels new energy-bill push President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies plan a major new push for a broad global warming bill, fueled in part by public outrage over the BP disaster, according to
top aides.
U.S. Democrats Split in Senate Vote on Agency’s Carbon Rules Senate Republicans failed to block the Obama administration from using existing law to regulate greenhouse gases, although they won enough votes to damage Democratic hopes of passing a bigger pollution-reduction plan this year. (Bloomberg)
Reid claims ‘resolve’ among Dems on energy but acknowledges differing views Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called his Thursday meeting with committee chairmen and other senior Democrats on energy legislation a “productive step”
toward action on a broad energy package this year.
Scammers scamming? Well, gosh! Firms abusing Kyoto carbon trading scheme: watchdog Firms participating in a Kyoto Protocol carbon scheme are abusing it by artificially inflating their greenhouse gas emissions, thereby allowing rich nations' emissions to rise significantly, a watchdog said on Saturday. (Reuters)
The Financial Times has a realistic and sobering article on the state on international climate negotiations:
The New York Times has a similarly realistic perspective on prospects for US domestic action:
The fact that the international process is going nowhere fast and the US is not going to cap emissions is not news to anyone who has been paying attention. What is news is that the FT and the NYT have adopted perspectives on the issue of climate policy that might enable alternative conceptions of climate policy to find a place in the broader discussion. (Roger Pielke Jr.)
Third Climategate report 'imminent' – expect a shortage of whitewash in stores this weekend If you were planning to do a spot of DIY over the weekend you may encounter a problem – an acute shortage of whitewash in your local store, as it may have been
appropriated for more urgent purposes. The estimable Bishop Hill is reporting he has heard on the grapevine that the publication of the review into the Climategate emails
conducted by Sir Muir Russell is “imminent”. The prospect seems to have provoked an acute absence of hysterical excitement.
False Precision in Climate Predictions Jonathan Baldry
Was Margaret Thatcher the first climate sceptic? Margaret Thatcher was the first leader to warn of global warming - but also the first to see the flaws in the climate change orthodoxy (Christopher Booker)
Climate change loses traction for greens What a difference a year makes. This time last year the environmental movement was gearing up for a major breakthrough at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit. With a combination of "doom and gloom" soothsayers — Ban ki Moon, Al Gore, Prince Charles, James Hansen, David Suzuki — and optimistic negotiators, it was clear that Copenhagen was being positioned as "the last chance" we had to save the planet. (Stephen Murgatroyd, Troy Media)
by Viv Forbes
Trying to save an outstanding fundraiser: Scientists want clear message on climate REPRESENTATIVES of scientific organisations, including the CSIRO and the Bureau Of Meteorology, will meet today to discuss better communication of the science behind
man-made climate change as the political and public consensus on global warming crumbles.
The IPCC consensus on climate change was phoney, says IPCC insider The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming, according to Mike Hulme, a prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider. The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was “only a few dozen experts,” he states in a paper for Progress in Physical Geography, co-authored with student Martin Mahony. “Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous,” the paper states unambiguously, adding that they rendered “the IPCC vulnerable to outside criticism.” Hulme, Professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia – the university of Climategate fame — is the founding Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and one of the UK’s most prominent climate scientists. Among his many roles in the climate change establishment, Hulme was the IPCC’s co-ordinating Lead Author for its chapter on ‘Climate scenario development’ for its Third Assessment Report and a contributing author of several other chapters. Hulme’s depiction of IPCC’s exaggeration of the number of scientists who backed its claim about man-made climate change can be found on pages 10 and 11 of his paper, found here. Financial Post
Rudd’s “4000” scientists turn to just “dozens” Kevin Rudd tells yet another lie to justify his global warming policies:
Mick Hulme, Professor of Climate Change at the University of East Anglia and an IPCC’s co-ordinating Lead Author, corrects the record:
Just a few dozen scientists, not Rudd’s “4000”. The man is utterly shameless. But this raises the question: how easy is it for such a small group to become slaves of group think - or, indeed, to become intoxicated with their enormous and flattering influence on geo-politics? In 2006, Professor Edward Wegman raised this very fear in his report, commissioned by the United States House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee to examine the IPCC’s discredited “hockey stick”, devised by Michael Mann, which purported to show unprecedented warming last century:
Note those names again: Michael Mann, Scott Rutherford, Phil Jones, Tim Osborn, Keith Briffa, Ray Bradley and Malcolm Hughes are all climate scientists implicates in the Climategate scandal. And Rudd not only fell for it, but lied for it. (Andrew Bolt)
As the Far North Melts, Calls Grow for Arctic Treaty The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a warning, conservationists say, of what could happen in the Arctic as melting sea ice opens the Arctic Ocean to oil and gas drilling. Many experts argue that the time has come to adopt an Arctic Treaty similar to the one that has safeguarded Antarctica for half a century. (Ed Struzic, e360)
Europe, US to see snowy, cold winters: expert Europe, North America and east Asia can expect more cold, moist and snowy winters such as the one just passed, a top scientist said Friday. (AFP)
Global warming's impact on Asia's rivers overblown Freshwater flow dominated by monsoon rains rather than glacier run-off.
Mysterious clouds produced when aircraft inadvertently cause rain or snow BOULDER—As turboprop and jet aircraft climb or descend under certain atmospheric conditions, they can inadvertently seed mid-level clouds and cause narrow bands of snow or
rain to develop and fall to the ground, new research finds. Through this seeding process, they leave behind odd-shaped holes or channels in the clouds, which have long
fascinated the public.
High-yield agriculture slows pace of global warming, say Stanford researchers Advances in high-yield agriculture over the latter part of the 20th century have prevented massive amounts of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere – the
equivalent of 590 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide – according to a new study led by two Stanford Earth scientists.
The deep oceans drive the atmosphere
There are vast cubic kilometers of cold water in the depths of the ocean. The temperature transition from warm to cold is rapid.
Ever wondered how the whole planet could suddenly “get warmer” during an El Nino, and then suddenly cool again? William Kininmonth has the answer. As I read his words I’m picturing a major pool of stored “coldness” (bear with me, I know cold is just a lack of heat) which is periodically unleashed on the surface temperatures. The vast deep ocean abyss is filled with salty and near freezing water. In years where this colder pool is kept in place we have El Ninos, and on years when the colder water rises and mixes up near the surface we have La Ninas. The satellites recording temperatures at the surface of the ocean are picking up the warmth (or lack of) on this top-most layer. That’s why it can be bitterly cold for land thermometers but at the same time the satellites are recording a higher world average temperature, due to the massive area of the Pacific. In other words, just as you’d expect, the actual temperature of the whole planetary mass is not rising and falling within months, instead, at times the oceans swallow the heat on the surface and give up some “coldness”. At other times, the cold stays buried deep down and the heat can collect and loll about on the surface. William Kininmonth was chief of Australia’s National Climate Centre at the Bureau of Meteorology from 1986 to 1998. Below, he describes how a vast pool of cold water filled the deep ocean abyss over 30 million years, and why this water and the currents that shift it have a major impact our climate. The so-called Bottom Layer is not just pockets or pools, it forms around Antarctica, then sinks and flows along the bottom all the way across the equator and into the Northern Hemisphere. Bear in mind the average depth of the ocean is around 4 kilometers, and yet almost all the water below a depth of 1000 m is around 4°C or colder. The Antarctic Bottom Water itself is close to 0°C. The equivalent heat energy of the entire atmosphere is stored in just the top few meters of water. It gives us all some perspective on the relative importance of different factors affecting the climate. His thoughts are in response to the latest debate essay from Dr Andrew Glikson, so the figures 1 and 2 come from that article. Kininmonth points out that small changes in the rate of the Thermohaline Circulation (also known as the Ocean’s Conveyor Belt) makes a huge difference to all corners of the globe, and that the climate models make large assumptions about the flow of energy. Since the cold bottom layer was created by a kind of “Antarctic Refridgerator” (set into play by the circumpolar current) this colossal cold pool of water will presumably hang around until the continents shift. That’s quite a few election cycles. Jo More » (Jo Nova)
An article has appeared in Nature on May 13 2010 titled Peter A. Stott and Peter W. Thorne, 2010: How best to log local temperatures? Nature. doi:10.1038/465158a, page 158 [thanks to Joe Daleo for alerting us to this] which perpetuates the myth that the surface temperature data sets are independent from each other. The authors know better but have decided to mislead the Editors and readers of Nature. They write
This is deliberately erroneous as one of the authors of this article (Peter Thorne) is an author of a CCSP report with a different conclusion. With just limited exceptions, the surface temperature data sets do not use different sources of data and are, therefore, not independent. As I wrote in one of my posts
Moreover, as we reported in our paper Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.
Peter Stott and Peter Thorne have deliberately misled the readership of Nature in order to give the impression that three data analyses collaborate their analyzed trends, while in reality the three surface temperature data sets are closely related. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)
Spill Response Not About Oil, But Snake Oil The big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is bad enough in itself. But politics can make anything worse.
by Hans Bader Crucial offers to help clean up BP’s oil spill “have come from Belgian, Dutch, and Norwegian firms that . . . possess some of the world’s most advanced oil skimming ships.” But the Obama administration wouldn’t accept the help, because doing so would require it to do something past presidents have routinely done: waive rules imposed by the Jones Act, a law backed by unions. “The BP clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico is hampered by the Jones Act. This is a piece of 1920s protectionist legislation, that requires all vessels working in U.S. waters to be American-built, and American-crewed. So . . . the U.S. Coast Guard . . . can’t accept, and therefore don’t ask for, the assistance of high-tech European vessels… Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
‘Bow down to Peak Oil!’ says BBC’s Cthulu-worshipping Newsnight Yesterday on the BBC’s flagship news analysis programme Newsnight Britain’s gravest, most distinguished and hard-hitting political interviewer Jeremy Paxman asked the
vital questions an eager world most wants to hear: Cthulu – Are we worshipping him enough? Will it be necessary to sacrifice our children to appease him? Or will he be
content if we just all erect a shrine to him, perhaps involving candles and teddy bears and Jo Malone scented oils?
A Falklands Gusher: UK Looks For An Oil Rich Payback Two hundred million barrels of oil is a drop in the ocean compared to the reservoir that produced the voluminous gusher of BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It is just 120 days’ worth of consumption in the UK or a mere 10 days of US consumption. But Rockhopper Exploration’s announcement in May that it had struck oil in the North Falklands region at the first drilled well threatens a bitter-sweet drama of its own for David’s Cameron new British administration. [Read More] (Peter C. Glover, Energy Tribune)
Unstoppable coal and the search for transport liquids As the new BP Statistical Review shows, coal, which last year’s report pointed out was the fastest-growing source of energy, was the only major source of fossil fuel energy that didn’t fall last year. It remained flat, while oil and natural gas consumption fell; total primary energy consumption was down 1.1 per cent. (Financial Times)
In the Bizarro world of Socialists: Green and fair economic growth with more expensive fossil fuels Why are the international climate negotiations moving so slowly? Because countries have so far been unable to define what global fairness really is, says Thomas Sterner,
Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Gothenburg. Sterner and several other prominent economists including several recipients of the Nobel Prize in
Economics spoke at the World Bank conference on development economics in Stockholm recently.
by Tom Quirk
Does money grow in wind farms? Wind turbines are a poor way to harness energy - but a very good way to generate public subsidies, says Andrew Gilligan. (TDT)
Scientists versus Lobbyists: Looking for a Winning Strategy Against Big Wind by John Droz Jr. My hope as a physicist is that our representatives make energy and environmental policy decisions based on sound science. So far that has not been the case. The main reason for this is that we are engaged in an epic battle between scientists and lobbyists for those with financial or political agendas. Right now the scientists–the group with the better case for sound public policy–are losing. I used to think that trying hard and being right was enough. Foolish me! Everything today is really about public relations. The Internet has spawned the perfect storm. Within a few minutes we can now send messages that are read by millions of people. At the other end, recipients are in overload, due to a steady bombardment of these messages. It is very hard for almost everyone to separate the wheat from the chaff. Tilting Against Big Wind What this says is that properly phrasing the message and getting it to the right people is critical. Scientists are not good at this, while this is a lobbyists forte — which is a big reason why scientists are losing. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Government Codes vs. Innovation American society is addicted to safety. For some reason the country decided that the highest and best priority as a nation is to avoid the risk associated with life.
Everywhere a person looks they are surrounded by innumerable safety devices to protect themselves from the evils of modernity.
The Paralyzing Precautionary Principle The "precautionary principle" sounds reasonable on first glance. The effect of adopting it, however, is paralysis. On March 4, 2003, the Bay Area Working Group on the Precautionary Principle (BAWG) celebrated what they termed their first victory when San Francisco passed the “San Francisco Precautionary Principle Resolution.” Just over two years later, in June of 2005, San Francisco passed the Precautionary Purchasing Ordinance. This law requires the city to consider environmentally “safer” alternatives to everything from toilet paper to computers. Literally anything the city purchases must be examined first according to the “precautionary principle” before it can be purchased. The precautionary principle basically says if an action or policy might cause harm to the environment, then even if there is no proof the action will cause harm the burden of proof is on those advocating the action to prove the action would not be harmful. BAWG, incidentally, defines itself as:
The attendant article on Wikipedia states:
In the European Union, the application of this principle has been made a statutory requirement. There are a few problems with this approach where environmental policy is concerned. First, it is impossible to prove a negative. You cannot, for example, prove that something does not exist, only that it does or that it has not been observed. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the principle is generally used to deny an action, but rarely is it used to examine the converse. That is, would more harm be caused by not taking the proposed action than would be caused by taking it? The biggest issue, of course, is that the principle is more often than not used for ideological purposes rather than actual scientific ones. (PJM)
Will STAR METRICS give us a handle on the benefits of government-sponsored R&D? Well, that's the theory, anyway.
A Soda Tax Completely, Utterly, and Totally Unrelated to Individual Choice Posted by Sallie James An interesting article in Slate today about the social psychology of “sin taxes” and how people in general resent being told what to do. They may, in fact, react by consuming even more of the sinning item than before the nannies intervened, just to prove a point. Unfortunately, the point of the article seems to be how to implement sin taxes — in this case, a soda tax – without annoying people to the point where the tax is counterproductive. Something about “refram[ing]” the tax so it doesn’t tip people off as to its real purpose. The author concludes with this gem:
To end on a positive note, many of the comments are striking a distinctly libertarian tone. (Cato at liberty)
Moms' full-time work tied to childhood obesity NEW YORK - The growing number of full-time working moms in the past few decades could be one of the factors contributing to the concurrent rise in childhood obesity, new
research hints.
So much for the "obesity bomb": U.S. heart attack rates declining: study BOSTON - Heart attack rates fell 24 percent in California between 2000 and 2008, probably because of better care, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.
Scientists find gene links to vitamin D deficiency LONDON - Scientists have found three genetic differences that affect a person's risk of being deficient in the "sunshine" vitamin D and say their work helps
explain why sunlight and a good diet aren't always enough.
Warning on a Go-Cart: ‘This Product Moves When Used’ Posted by Walter Olson For the 13th year, Bob Dorigo Jones has compiled the finalists for his annual Wacky Warning Label contest. Another, on a Bluetooth unit: “use of a headset that covers both ears will impair your ability to hear other sounds.” A few years back Jones compiled some of these into an amusing book entitled Remove Child Before Folding (from a stroller warning). For many more examples, check my blog Overlawyered, including warnings on not putting birthday candles in your ears, using your cocktail napkin for navigation, and ironing clothes while you’re wearing them. Although regulatory agencies account for some of it, the main driving force behind over-warning is the “failure to warn” branch of modern product liability law, and the uncertainty it creates through its inability to generate clear guidance on what will and will not be considered adequate warning. Rather than invite suit — with its attendant risk of encountering a paternalistic, sympathy-driven or redistributionist judge or jury — most companies would rather include a silly or overbroad warning on the product, even at the cost of numbing consumers to the occasional warnings that really do deserve their attention. (Cato at liberty)
The Sleazy Combination of Big Business and Big Government Posted by Daniel J. Mitchell There’s an article today in the Wall Street Journal showing how already-established companies and their union allies will use the coercive power of government to thwart competition. The article specifically discusses efforts by less competitive supermarkets to block new Wal-Mart stores. Not that Wal-Mart can complain too vociferously. After all, this is the company that endorsed a key provision of Obamacare in hopes its hurting lower-cost competitors. The moral of the story is that whenever big business and big government get in bed together, you can be sure the outcome almost always is bad for taxpayers and consumers. (Cato at liberty)
Tobacco Taxes Finance Terrorism Tobacco-tax-hiking politicians have created a situation in which lighting a cigarette is like igniting the fuse on a bomb.
Peter Singer, writing in the New York Times, asks whether a world without people wouldn’t be a better place. His argument is simple. If nobody is alive then nobody’s human rights can be violated. “Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? … But very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself.” The ultimate act of altruism, he argues, may be a conscious choice to be the last generation on earth. In that way there would be no one left to suffer the depredations of capitalism such as climate change. “Most thoughtful people are extremely concerned about climate change. … But the people who will be most severely harmed by climate change have not yet been conceived. If there were to be no future generations, there would be much less for us to feel to guilty about.” As a society we are terminally guilty, irrevocably condemned. And since we cannot help living, then the solution is to do away with ourselves. By far the best way to prevent anyone from feeling guilty is for no one to feel guilt. “So why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!” The only way you’re going to eat that can of beans is you agree to off yourself after dinner. (PJM)
What’s Wrong with Genetic Modification? Quite a lot, according to Friends of the Earth campaigner Kirtana Chandrasekaran in an interview on UK Radio 4’s Today programme this week. Her opportunity came when she
was asked to comment on an interview with Professor Jonathan Jones of the Sainsbury laboratory in Norwich, in which he talked about the first field trials of two genetically
modified potato varieties. Each variety contains a gene from a wild South American potato species, conferring resistance to the devastating disease late blight, caused by the
mould Phytophthora infestans).
In the midst of the clamor over global warming, greenhouse gas emissions and world energy supplies another, perhaps more immediate, environmental catastrophe is gathering momentum—the world wide shortage of fresh water. Though eclipsed in America by pictures of oil-soaked pelicans and fouled coastal wetlands, this potentially more disastrous and more permanent problem has been ignored by politicians and the public for decades. Experts are warning that by 2050 fully 45% of humanity may be chronically short of water. Unlike the eventual depletion of the world's oil supplies, there is no substitute for H2O. Water is amazing stuff, made up of molecules comprising two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, H2O has been found by astronomers in the farthest reaches of the Universe. Present on Earth since early in its formation, water is essential to the formation of granite, the rock that buoys the continents atop heavier crust and magma. It also fills the world's oceans and makes possible the planet wide infestation known as Life. The human body is about 60% water and H2O is the most important greenhouse gas, helping the atmosphere to retain enough warmth to permit living things to thrive on what would otherwise be a frozen lifeless plant. Though we think of nature dominated by the green of photosynthesizing plants, when viewed from space the dominant color of our planet is blue mixed with swirls of constantly changing white clouds. Ours is a water planet, the surface area covered by water is 70% while land only takes up 30%. Most of this surface is ocean, over 97% of the total. So while our world possesses a tremendous amount of water, some 321,000,000 cubic miles (1,338,000,000 km3) of the stuff according to the USGS, most of it is salty. Relative volume of the ocean and Earth. A. Nieman. While the volume of water contained in Earth's oceans seems like a lot, and it certainly is on a human scale, both the ocean and atmosphere are merely thin shells surrounding the solid parts of our planet. If every drop of water in the world was collected in a sphere, it would be just 869 miles in diameter. The illustration above shows a comparison of the volume of water and the size of Earth. The ball of water seems shockingly small, with a volume of only 338 million cubic miles (1.41 billion km3). A special report in the Economist, “For want of a drink,” gives the total amount of salt water as 97.5%. “Of the 2½% of water that is not salty, about 70% is frozen, either at the poles, in glaciers or in permafrost,” they report. “So all living things, except those in the sea, have about 0.75% of the total to survive on.” It is on this small amount that all Earth's land life—plants, animals and people—depend. In the past this has been sufficient, but things are changing with the ever growing human population. The Economist report states the looming water crisis this way:
Most liquid freshwater is in underground aquifers or similar formations, accessed using wells. The rest falls as rain, collecting in lakes and reservoirs or in rivers where it is eventually transported to the sea. All the H2O in freshwater aquifers, lakes and rivers must constantly be replaced by precipitation—water vapor condensing in the atmosphere to fall as rain or snow. Where this water comes from and where it goes is shown in the graphic, taken from the report, on the left. The fact is, there is a hundred times more water in the ground than is in all the world's rivers and lakes. Surface-water sources, such as rivers, only constitute about 300 cubic miles (about 1/10,000 of one percent of Earth's total water). Moreover, that water is not evenly distributed—just nine countries account for 60% of all available fresh supplies. Among the water rich countries only Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Congo, Indonesia and Russia have an abundance. While America is relatively well off, China and India, with over a third of the world’s population between them, have less than 10% of its water. Worldwide, agriculture accounts for 70% of all water consumption, compared with 20% for industry and 10% for domestic use. In developed nations, however, industries consume more than half of the water available for human use. Belgium, for example, uses 80% of its water for industry. World demand for freshwater is increasing by 17 trillion US Gallons (64 trillion liters) a year. Increasingly, this demand is being met by sinking wells into underground aquifers, tapping water supplies that are hundreds or thousands of years old. Freshwater withdrawals have tripled over the past 50 years. Unfortunately, many countries are consuming underground water resources at nonrenewable rates. From the United States to India and China, the quantities being withdrawn exceed the annual recharge. In the Hai river basin in China, for example, deep-groundwater tables have dropped by up to 290 feet (90 m). In cities like Bangkok, Buenos Aires and Jakarta, aquifers are overdrawn, polluted or contaminated by salt. The 20 million inhabitants of Mexico City draw over 70% of their water from an aquifer that, at current extraction rates, will run dry in less than 200 years. In the US, parts of the Ogallala aquifer, which covers 174,000 square miles (450,000 km2) running beneath eight states, are seriously overdrawn. The water-permeated thickness of the Ogallala aquifer, also known as the High Plains aquifer, ranges from a few feet to more than 1000 feet (300 m). The depth of the water below the surface of the land ranges from almost 400 feet (122 m) in parts of the north to between 100 to 200 feet (30 to 61 m) throughout much of the south. Present-day recharge of the aquifer with fresh water occurs at a slow rate; this implies that much of the water in the aquifer is paleowater, dating back to the time of the last ice age glacial period. In parts of the area, farmers began using ground water for irrigation extensively in the 1930s and 1940s. Estimated irrigated acreage in the area overlying the High Plains aquifer increased rapidly from 1940 to 1980. Withdrawals from the Ogallala Aquifer for irrigation amounted to 21 million acre feet (26 km3) in 2000—slightly greater than the historical discharge rate of the Colorado River. As of 2005, the cumulative depletion totaled 253 million acre-feet (312 km3). Some estimates say the Ogallala will dry up in as little as 25 years. It is a similar story around the world: rising populations require greater agricultural production, which demands more freshwater. In terms of water withdrawal, the US is in third place behind India and China. Remote sensing technologies are being used to track groundwater levels worldwide at both large and small scales. NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) performs large-scale, long-term analysis using changes in gravity at the earth’s surface to examine the removal of groundwater from large aquifers worldwide. World water withdrawal. GRACE measurements show that India’s breadbasket region may be running out of water. According to NASA satellite data, reported in Nature, groundwater levels in aquifers in northwest India have declined one foot per year over the past decade. Researchers conclude the loss is due almost entirely to groundwater pumping and consumption by human activities, such as irrigating cropland. As a result, aquifers are being drained much faster than they can be replenished by rainfall or river runoff. Water is a finite resource but, fortunately, a constantly renewed one. Water evaporates from the world's salty seas, traveling withing the atmosphere to the far reaches of the planet to fall as rain or snow. For most of man's history, people have been dependent on nature for this supply of fresh water. Even today, large portions of the world's population depend on the Monsoon to bring water for drinking and agriculture—when the Monsoon fails, people can go hungry and even starve to death. Earth's water is always in movement, and the water cycle, also known as the hydrologic cycle, describes the continuous movement of water on, above, and below the surface of the Earth. Although the balance of water on Earth remains fairly constant over time, individual water molecules can come and go in a hurry. Since the water cycle is truly a “cycle,” there is no beginning or end. Water changes state among liquid, vapor, and ice at various places in the water cycle, with these processes happening sometimes quickly and sometimes over millions of years. The water cycle. Image USGS. While some have tried to tie increasing water shortages to global warming that link is weak at best. The UN's own “3rd United Nations World Water Development Report: Water in a Changing World ” (WWDR-3) puts it this way:
For all of human history, water use has risen with increasing wealth. Mankind's earliest civilizations grew up in the river valleys of the Nile, the Indus, the Yellow, and the Tigris & Euphrates. Today people tap the unseen rivers that flow beneath the surface of our planet, but even those resources are limited. Though water used in agriculture is not destroyed, as oil is when it is burned, an estimated 85% of irrigation water escapes into the atmosphere by evaporation. This water is no longer available for human use until it condenses and falls back to Earth, somewhere. Petroleum takes about 100 million years to form and a convergence of the right biological and geological circumstances. For all intents and purposes, when we have used up the current diposites of oil stored within Earth's crust it is all gone. Happily, there are other sources of energy available—nuclear, wind and solar—but this is not the case with water. True, freshwater is renewable, but that renewal takes place at nature's own pace. In essence, nature keeps the biosphere on a strict water allowance, and that means mankind must learn to live with the finite supplies we are given. The hay farms of Saudi Arabia won't outlast their oil. Photo by asgss1. Though some nations make new freshwater using desalinization this is a very expensive proposition and, with the world already facing energy shortages, not a viable large-scale option. Fortunately, there is great room for improvement in how we utilize our water resources, particularly in agriculture. Many farmers in the Texas High Plains, which rely heavily on the underground source, are now turning away from irrigated agriculture, allowing underground aquifers to recover. Drip irrigation has an efficiency of up to 95% with no runoff, no erosion and little evaporation loss. With a population approaching 10 billion by 2050, humanity will have to cooperate and conserve the world's freshwater resources. Otherwise we may find ourselves in the same position as our ancient ancestors, fighting each other for access to waterholes. Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)
Posted by Tim Lynch John Lee still has his life and four children still have a father because Mr. Lee had a handgun when three criminals tried to kill him and take his money.
When John Q. Citizen takes out a gun and the criminals flee, reporters don’t consider the incident “news” (at least when there are no injuries)–so guns are typically on the evening news when they are used by criminals. As a result of that skewed coverage, it is no wonder that many people have a negative view about firearms. On June 17, Cato will be hosting a forum about guns, crime, and self-defense. Speakers include John Lott, Jeff Snyder, and Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign. For related Cato scholarship, go here. (Cato at liberty)
Senate debates stripping EPA of authority to regulate greenhouse gases Washington -- The U.S. Senate engaged in a heated debate Thursday on an issue at the heart of the fight over energy reform: whether the Environmental Protection Agency
should have the authority to impose clear limits on the emission of greenhouse gases.
Failed EPA Votes Undermines Economy United States Senators went on record this afternoon and the result was unfortunate. 53 Senators voted against a resolution offered by Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) that would have disapproved of the Environmental Protection Agency’s backdoor global warming regulations. Today’s outcome was a victory for anti-growth environmentalists, but a devastating loss for the American people. The EPA’s regulations will marginalize any potential economic recovery by making investment and job creation more expensive. Why? Because the costs of regulation are staggering. The EPA estimates the average permit will cost applicants $125,000 and 866 hours of labor. Some businesses will simply close. The lucky ones will move overseas, cancel expansion plans and just lower wages. All of those are bad options considering the American economy has lost nearly 8 million jobs over the past 30 months. Despite the outcome of today’s vote, many liberals recognize the EPA cannot be left to its own devices, which means there will be other, more subtle efforts to limit the EPA’s regulatory dragnet. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Murkowski Amendment Fails By a 47-53 vote. Two points as we move forward: First, candidate Obama promised bankrupt American industries and skyrocketing electricity costs (let’s not forget gasoline prices!), and he
is poised to deliver. Now his administration is on the hook for the economic fallout. (Edward John Craig, Planet Gore)
Senate Defeat of Murkowski Resolution Dishonors Veterans Just a few days after honoring war veterans who fought to preserve America's Constitutional order, Senate Democrats voted down a resolution that would prevent unelected
elites from imposing costly new regulations without congressional approval. Renegade federal agencies and judicial activists now have the upper hand thanks to feckless federal
office holders who willingly surrendered their own constitutionally endowed legislative authority.
In the rubber room: Boxer: Carbon dioxide will be “leading cause of conflict” in next 20 years Let’s see how Senator Ma’am’s priorities work in this revealing clip from her speech earlier today in the Senate. We’ve had four terrorist attacks in less than a
year, two of which succeeded in killing people and another two which only failed because of the incompetence of the terrorist. Iran is a year or less away from getting a
nuclear weapon. Turkey is rapidly sliding towards Islamism. North Korea is doing their best to restart the Korean War.
Crank of the Week - June 7, 2010 - Ted Turner In a multi-part interview with CNN Newsroom anchor Fredricka Whitfield, Ted Turner spoke about his own devotion and dedication to environmental causes. “I've been cutting the lights out for a long time,” stated the CNN founder. Turner went on to claim that, if people don't chose to do the right thing, mankind will soon suffer the consequences. Known for bombastic statements during his youth, the “Mouth of the South” now says the threat to humanity has risen from cannibalism to extinction. Some people just will not slip gracefully into history and Ted Turner is one of them. The former America's Cup yachtsman and owner of the Atlanta Braves baseball team has often been in the limelight, and often for saying stupid things. Consistent to the end, he has again gone on record regarding his great concern for the environment. A couple of years back, Turner made the news when he predicted that climate change would lead to widespread cannibalism. In an interview with PBS he said this about not taking drastic action to correct global warming:
Now it seems, Captain Outrageous is at it again, this time predicting that H. sapiens faces extinction if we don't start turning out lights. In a rambling interview with CNN—perhaps the only news organization the will interview him these days—Turner said he had been turning out lights for “30 years.” “So how do you convince people, what would you say to those who say, you know what, the way I'm living right now is just fine,” said Ms. Whitfield, feeding the old boy a slow easy pitch. “Anybody that watches CNN would know pretty well,” Turner replied. “They would already be convinced, because we've run thousands of stories about it, everything from light bulbs to saving fuel and automobiles to recycling. It's everywhere.” Note that he still uses the imperial “we” when talking about CNN. Here is a segment of the interview on video: For those who had trouble following Ted's rambling, mumbled replies here is the text of his central point:
We are not exactly sure how we will be sorry after we become extinct, but the statement does show that Turner is not fully in touch with reality. Even if temperatures on Earth were to rise by 4 or 5°C, toward the upper end of the IPCC gestimations, life would not end. Humanity may be inconvenienced, but the end is definitely not nigh. What is endangered is that thankfully rare creature, the hard-drinking, self-promoting loud-mouth from the American South. So, in honor of a dying breed, this Crank of the Week is for you—Ted “The Environmentalist” Turner. (The Resilient Earth)
Senate Climate Bill's Boosters Try Smorgasbord Strategy in Bid for Votes Advocates for a comprehensive energy and climate bill are scrambling to find the Senate votes they need by stitching together ideas from a variety of existing and
fast-surfacing proposals.
China's economy booms while Westerners handicap theirs: China Fossil Fuel CO2 Jumps As Global Total Falls China could face increasing pressure in U.N. climate talks after data released on Wednesday showed the country's carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel rose by 9 percent
in 2009, bucking a global downtrend.
Well gosh, they sure are worried about carbon emissions: China’s exports soar 48.5% in May, the highest in more than six years China’s exports jumped 48.5% in May from a year earlier, the biggest gain in more than six years. However the impact of the European crisis is still to be seen following on this week’s IMF warning that global economic risks have risen significantly. (MercoPress)
Chinese exports displace Brazilian goods overseas and at home Brazil lost an estimated 12.6 billion US dollars in exports between 2004 and 2009 because of Chinese penetration in the country’s main international markets according to a report from the powerful Federation of Sao Paulo States industries, FIESP, released Wednesday. (MercoPress)
China attacks EU efforts to tackle aviation emissions China has joined the US in condemning EU plans to incorporate international airlines in its emissions trading scheme (ETS) after the Civil Aviation Industry warned that
charging airlines for the carbon emissions they produce would unfairly affect emerging economies.
Fate Of Climate Bill Uncertain As Japan Poll Nears Japan's government could run out of time to enact a climate bill before upper-house elections expected next month, fuelling worries it might drop a plan to trade carbon
emissions by setting obligatory caps on firms.
World to fail in deep climate cuts this decade - U.N. The world is set to fail to make deep enough cuts in greenhouse gases in the next decade to tackle global warming, the U.N.'s top climate official said on Monday in a bleak assessment of the prospects for a U.N. deal. (Reuters)
They're still at it: Once more, with less feeling Climate-change negotiations settle in for the long haul
Climate summits as dumb as G20 Let’s hope our media in future will apply the same healthy skepticism to the UN’s never-ending global gabfests on climate change as they are to the looming G8/G20 fiasco
scheduled for later this month in Canada.
Kyoto - Cap and Trade: Destructive Policies Like WW I Reparations In a wonderful parody two Australian satirists put the current European and world financial situation in an appropriate Alice In Wonderland perspective.
Evidence About The 1970s Global Cooling Consensus Keeps Piling Up Not just Damon and Kunen’s (already mentioned here)…by chance, I have found yet another Science paper (this time Broecker from August 1975) making it clear that, for a few years up to then, the general consensus among scientists had been that the world was cooling:
Time to repeat myself: we have a ‘widely accepted [by the scientific community]…global cooling trend’, at least judging from Mitchell’s work in 1972; doubts about that growing in the same scientific community from 1975/1976, as per Damon and Kunen’s paper; but not early enough to prevent Newsweek from publishing its 1975 article, one that even mentions a certain Dr Murray Mitchell. That means that pieces of the global cooling puzzle do suggest that cooling was a widely-held view in the 1970s. Admittedly, such an agreed view did not last the whole decade: rather, it concerned the 1972 to 1975 period. etc etc (Maurizio Morabito, OmniClimate)
Oh... Climate already helping disease spread north BRUSSELS - Rising global temperatures might already be helping infectious diseases to creep north, according to a report by European scientists.
Another virtual world problem: Melting Mountains Put Millions At Risk in Asia: Study Increased melting of glaciers and snow in the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau threatens the food security of millions of people in Asia, a study shows, with Pakistan likely to
be among the nations hardest hit.
Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up, Jun. 10th 2010 Greenpeace activists are headed to jail, a hippie invades Wattsworld and it has been a rough week for alternative energies wind and solar. (Daily Bayonet) 10/06/2010 The Carbon Dioxide Thermometer There’s an idea that keeps turning up like a bad penny, and I’ve had a part in it. But as I’ll explain, there’s a problem with it. The proposition is that the increase in the carbon dioxide concentration in the air has little to do with human emissions and a lot to do with prevailing temperatures, perhaps especially at the sea surface. If CO2 follows temperature rather than the other way around, then changes in CO2 become a measure of temperature, as in a thermometer. The latest manifestation is on the Watts Up website from Lon Hocker at [If] For some reason this link doesn’t work, after several attempts to forge it. Try the WUWT home page http://wattsupwiththat.com/ Let me mention three previous appearances of this idea: Cynthia Kuo et al., “Coherence established between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature”, Nature 343, pp. 709-14, 1990, which concluded: “Changes in carbon dioxide content lag those in temperature by five months.” Nigel Calder, “The carbon dioxide thermometer”, Energy & Environment,10, pp. 1-18, 1999 Jarl Ahlbeck, “The carbon dioxide thermometer”, 2001, see http://www.john-daly.com/co2-conc/updated.htm Since my own offering of 11 years ago, I’ve kept checking to my own satisfaction that what I suggested still works into the 21st Century. (The new story from Lon Hocker supports this.) The CO2-temperature link, with cause and effect swapped around, also looks arguable on geological timescales. Where the idea runs into difficulties is in the Holocene, since the end of the last ice age. There have been repeated ups and downs of temperature, like that between the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and the Modern Warm Period, without the strong variations in CO2 that you’d expect from this hypothesis. I’m not talking about the CO2 results from ice layers, which are suspect because CO2 is soluble in ice and variations are smoothed out. No, I mean results from leaf stomata, by Rike Wagner-Cremer and her colleagues at Utrecht, which are much more trustworthy. They’ve been a little disappointing for the hypothesis. Here for example is the abstract of one that group’s papers: T. B. van Hoof et al., “A role for atmospheric CO2 in preindustrial climate forcing,” PNAS, October 14, 2008; 105(41): pp. 15815 – 15818. http://www.pnas.org/content/105/41/15815.full.pdf+html Complementary to measurements in Antarctic ice cores, stomatal frequency analysis of leaves of land plants preserved in peat and lake deposits can provide a proxy record of preindustrial atmospheric CO2 concentration. CO2 trends based on leaf remains of Quercus robur (English oak) from the Netherlands support the presence of significant CO2 variability during the first half of the last millennium. The amplitude of the reconstructed multidecadal fluctuations, up to 34 parts per million by volume, considerably exceeds maximum shifts measured in Antarctic ice. Inferred changes in CO2 radiative forcing are of a magnitude similar to variations ascribed to other mechanisms, particularly solar irradiance and volcanic activity, and may therefore call into question the concept of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which assumes an insignificant role of CO2 as a preindustrial climate forcing factor. The stomata-based CO2 trends correlate with coeval sea-surface temperature trends in the North Atlantic Ocean, suggesting the possibility of an oceanic source/sink mechanism for the recorded CO2 changes. At first sight, these researchers are singing much the same song as the CO2 thermometer-makers. So what’s the problem? Simply that the CO2 fluctuations reported in this and other papers are small compared with those of the past century. The period of which van Hoof et al. write includes the Medieval Warm Period when temperatures were at least as high as today. But their CO2 never got above 319 ppmv, compared with 392 at Mauna Loa for May 2010. The implication is that the CO2 thermometer is not the whole story. Man-made emissions must have contributed to the increase of the past 100 years. How significant that has been as a driver of the temperature increase is another question entirely. (Nigel Calder)
BP is asking for its punishment—literally Tim Carney has a column at the Washington Examiner detailing BP’s lobbying influence, which begs the following history lesson and first-hand account for voters, generally
unaccustomed to such sleaze, to fully appreciate the game presently being played out in Washington.
The Deepwater Horizon Blowout: Losers and Winners The oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico provides a near perfect onshore platform for political demagoguery. [Read More] (Robert Bryce, Energy Tribune)
How the White House is Making Oil Recovery Harder Five weeks ago Escambia County officials requested permission from the Mobile Unified Command Center to use a sand skimmer, a device pulled behind a tractor that removes oil and tar from the top three feet of sand, to help clean up Pensacola’s beaches. County officials still haven’t heard anything back. Santa Rosa Island Authority Buck Lee told The Daily Caller why: “Escambia County sends a request to the Mobile, Ala., Unified Command Center. Then, it’s reviewed by BP, the federal government, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard. If they don’t like it, they don’t tell us anything.” Keeping local governments in the dark is just one reason why the frustration of residents in the Gulf is so palpable. State and local governments know their geography, people, economic impacts and needs far better than the federal government does. Contrary to popular belief, the federal government has actually been playing a bigger and bigger role in running natural disaster responses. And as Heritage fellow Matt Mayer has documented, the results have gotten worse, not better. And when the federal government isn’t sapping the initiative and expertise of local governments, it has been preventing foreign governments from helping. Just three days after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the Dutch government offered to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms and proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands. LA Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) supported the idea, but the Obama administration refused the help. All told, thirteen countries have offered to help us clean up the Gulf, and the Obama administration has turned them all down. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Energy Policy: The advisory board on offshore drilling says it never endorsed a moratorium, which was added later by the interior secretary. The only thing transparent about
this administration is its lies.
Well duh! Poll: Support plunges for offshore drilling; regulators blamed for Gulf spill Just a quarter of Americans back expanding offshore drilling in the wake of the BP oil spill, and most fault federal regulators for the environmental disaster in the Gulf of
Mexico, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
There’s nothing greens love more than a nice, juicy oil-spill disaster If anything is going to cause more long-term damage to the planet than the gallons of oil being spewed out by the Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster, it’s the toxic
clouds of posturing cant and alarmist drivel billowing forth daily from environmentalists. Most especially from their cheerleader in the White House, Barack Obama.
Increase in inspectors hasn't kept pace with boom in offshore U.S. oil rigs and projects Over the past quarter-century, oil companies have pushed the frontiers of offshore drilling, sharply stepping up the number of deep-water rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
BP oil spill fears hit North Sea as Norway bans drilling Norway has banned new deepwater oil drilling in the North Sea amid in a sign that panic over BP's Gulf of Mexico spill is spreading. (Reuters)
Deloitte Survey: Electricity Costs Up, Ability to Pay Down Utility regulators concerned about consumers’ pocketbooks; Nuclear power seen as more effective than renewable energy at combating climate change
Subsidizing CO2 Emissions via Windpower: The Ultimate Irony by Kent Hawkins It is the irony of ironies. Taxpayer and ratepayer-forced subsidies for utility-scale windpower also subsidizes emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). The same would be true under a national renewable portfolio standard as proposed in pending federal legislation. Such is a vivid demonstration of the perils of unintended consequences and, to borrow a phrase, “an inconvenient truth” about wind power. My recent four-part Wind Integration Realities reviewed two new studies, based on actual experience, that show fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions are increased, not reduced, with the introduction of wind. Their results were compared as well as to those of my fossil fuel and CO2 emissions calculator for the same conditions. The brief summary in Part IV of the series is expanded upon here for clarity of this game-changing argument. In general, the studies show that as wind penetration increases, the effect on fossil fuel and CO2 emissions worsens. Specifically, at wind penetrations of about 3% (as is the case in the Netherlands), the savings are zero. At 5-6% (as for Colorado and Texas) the “savings” become negative, that is, emissions actually increase due to the presence of wind power. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Biofuels From Deforested Land To Fail EU Standards Palm oil grown on recently deforested land is unlikely to be acceptable for use in European biodiesel, a draft report from the European Commission shows.
Ethanol Boom Sharply Cuts US Corn Surplus: USDA The resurgent U.S. ethanol industry will use an additional 250 million bushels of corn through the next 15 months, dramatically reducing the corn surplus despite record
crops, said the government on Thursday.
Government continues to protect us to
death.
Given that most drug research leads to no marketable product, it’s great that a few drug companies are able to shepherd their discoveries through the torturous regulatory system. However, my big brother warns that “pharamascolds” threaten that progress. Gottlieb agrees,
Gottlieb claims the future will bring even quicker development of useful medicines. However,
(John Stossel)
That's the thing about scaremongers, they keep pumping out their nonsense no matter what... Waiter, there's a potential carcinogen in my soup DOVER, N.H., June 9 - Yolande Sprague could be forgiven for feeling virtuous.
But if you really want something to worry about: U.S. regulators urged to help develop antibiotics CHICAGO - U.S. regulators need to provide a clear path for drug companies to develop new antibiotics and should consider offering financial incentives, experts told a
Congressional panel on Wednesday.
Small problem for heart health PARIS: Short people are 50 per cent more likely than tall people to die prematurely of heart disease, researchers reported in a major review of 3 million people.
Can they really not see the flaws in their "studies"? England smoking ban cut heart attacks, health cost LONDON, June 9 - A ban on smoking in public places in England led to a swift and significant drop in the number of heart attacks, saving the health service 8.4 million
pounds ($13 million) in the first year, scientists said on Wednesday.
Slightly early births linked to autism, dyslexia LONDON, June 8 - Babies born just 1 or 2 weeks before their 40-week gestation due date are more likely to develop learning difficulties such as autism or dyslexia, according
to a British study published on Tuesday.
Scientists find autism has complex genetic roots LONDON - The world's largest genetic scan of people with autism in their families has found that many patients have their own unique pattern of genetic mutations, not
necessarily inherited.
Fungus-tainted corn a factor in Africa HIV spread? NEW YORK - A new study raises the question of whether corn contaminated with a fungus-derived toxin is helping to facilitate the transmission of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.
Does light drinking in pregnancy have benefits? NEW YORK - Could a glass of wine a day early in pregnancy yield better behaved kids? Maybe, according to results of a new study.
Spencer Wells: 'At root, we're still hunters' Geneticist Spencer Wells believes that when our neolithic ancestors began farming, they set us on the road to ruin. He tells Steve Connor why agriculture is fatally at odds with our biological inheritance (The Independent)
Problem gambling likely in the genes, says study NEW YORK - Odds are good that if one of your parents is addicted to gambling, you might be too, a new study of Australian twins concludes.
So far, fish appear to be healthy after fly ash spill OAK RIDGE, Tenn., June 9, 2010 -- Fish exposed to fly ash at the site of the Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash spill are faring better than some expected, researchers have
learned.
As if we hadn't enough problems... France and Japan propose an 'IPCC for nature' Delegates from 97 countries meet in South Korea to hear plans for an international body to monitor destruction of flora and fauna (The Guardian)
Follow the Money: Wealth, Population Are Key Drivers of Invasive Species A new study of biological invasions in Europe found they were linked not so much to changes in climate or land cover, but to two dominant factors -- more money and more
people.
Hopefully EII will reign for another, oh 50 years, at least: Prince Charles blames world’s ills on ‘soulless consumerism’ and Galileo The Prince of Wales has blamed a lack of belief in the soul for the world’s environmental problems, and said that the planet cannot sustain a population expected to reach
9 billion in 40 years.
America's current struggles notwithstanding, life here is pretty good. We have a standard of living that's the envy of most of the world.
Interesting: Countryside 'blighted by road signs, pylons and masts' The countryside is increasingly blighted by man-made "clutter" such as unnecessary road signs, pylons and phone masts, rural campaigners said. (TDT)
GM trials begin in Britain amid controversy Hundreds of genetically modified potatoes have been planted behind security fences in Norfolk in a new trial of the controversial science. (TDT)
Overregulation: The Senate votes on blocking a government bureaucracy from usurping power never delegated to it by Congress. This administration may put Copenhagen above the
Constitution, but we the people have other plans.
Stopping the EPA’s CO2 Regulations When the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill passed in the House before last year’s summer recess, Members voting for its passage heard loudly from constituents. Since then the Senate has been reluctant to move forward with a counterpart. It took Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Kerry (D-MA) nearly a year to release their cap and trade bill. But what Congress has failed to do, the Environmental Protection Agency is willing and able. The agency has already begun the process of imposing costly and environmentally questionable CO2 cuts by using the Clean Air Act. Recognizing the severe problem with this approach, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) will bring legislation to the Senate floor for debate on Thursday to stop unelected government officials at the EPA from micromanaging the economy. Murkowski is using the Congressional Review Act to disapprove of the EPA Administrator’s endangerment finding that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant and harmful to human health and the environment. Murkowski and Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) agreed to bring the joint resolution, S.J. 26, to the floor June 10th, which will consist of up to six hours of debate before voting on a motion to proceed. If the motion is successful by 51-vote majority, the Senate would then allow for an hour debate before voting on its passage, which also requires 51 votes. The disapproval resolution is immensely important because as Ben Lieberman explains: Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Krosnick thinks you are wrong: The Climate Majority ON Thursday, the Senate will vote on a resolution proposed by Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, that would scuttle the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to limit
emissions of greenhouse gases by American businesses.
Lieberman attacks possibility of climate bill as amendment Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on Tuesday attacked the notion that climate legislation he authored with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) would surface as an amendment to an energy
bill on the Senate floor rather than being included from the get-go.
"So what?" of the moment: Rich nations could increase emissions under pledge loopholes, UN data shows Analysis seen at Bonn climate talks shows rich nations could use carbon accountancy tricks to increase their emissions by up to 8% (The Guardian)
by William Griesinger Ultra-clarifying moments of truth are sometimes possible when environmental groups and their so-called allies end up in “family” squabbles, disagreeing over implementation of their ill-conceived schemes. The disarray, aptly described in prior posts at MasterResource by economist Robert Murphy and others as a civil war on the Left,” has become commonplace with respect to cap-and-trade proposals. And this is part of what Ken Green calls the death spiral of climate alarmism. Just maybe the Coercion Crowd should throw up their hands and just say: give peace a chance! Gaming the Carbon Market – Say It Isn’t So! Yet another example of this discord, reported in a recent issue of E&E News PM, Climate: Enviro group outlines 10 schemes for gaming carbon markets — 05/18/2010 — www.eenews.net (access with free trial subscr.) involves Friends of the Earth (FOE), which recently released a strongly worded critique of the Kerry-Lieberman climate bill. In its guide, FOE inconveniently details how “carbon offsets are especially prone to corruption and fraud” and directly questions whether carbon markets are an appropriate mechanism to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs). The guide derisively attacks cap-and-trade schemes detailing the ten ways carbon markets can be scammed “at the expense of both our economy and our climate.” The scams enumerated carry such unflattering headings as, “Ponzi carbon,” “Carbon bribery,” and “Sell fake carbon offset credits,” among other derogatory descriptions. Ouch! [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Meet the green who doubts ‘The Science’ The author of Chill explains why he’s sceptical about manmade global warming — and why greens are so intolerant.
Top researchers fear 'radical shift' in EU policy Scientists at Europe's leading research universities have expressed concern over the growing trend towards linking EU funding with pre-defined outcomes. Researchers fear political priorities will curb their scope for creativity and free thinking. (EurActiv)
Updated on Jun 9, 2010 by Bishop Hill Fred Pearce has new book out on Climategate and will be speaking about it at the Royal Institution on Monday. Readers will remember Pearce as the author of a detailed series of postings on the Climategate emails in the Guardian at the start of the year. The book sounds pretty interesting...
(Bishop Hill)
Nasa's first ever 'field trip' to study effects of climate change on Arctic ice Nasa has switched part of its focus from space to the ocean, after its scientists announced their first ever field study to investigate how climate change is affecting the Arctic’s ice. (TDT)
Yale Law Journal: Climate Debate Killing Hundreds The climate change debate has killed hundreds if not thousands of people, according to The Dirty Climate Debate, an article published in the Yale Law Journal. The deaths, along with other health tolls and widespread environmental damage, are a consequence of a change of heart by leading environmental organizations in the U.S., as part of their strategy to win the climate change debate. “Prominent environmental groups like the Sierra Club are now opposing efforts by utilities to install environmental controls on their power plants, the same controls that these groups have fought voraciously to attain for over thirty years and that many utilities have avoided,” states author Brian H. Potts. “These environmentalists are choosing to sacrifice known short-term health and environmental benefits for their long-term climate policy goals.” As the Yale Law Journal explains, coal-burning electric utilities are only too happy to invest in pollution control equipment that will protect the environment and save hundreds of lives per year when regulators approve the investments. Captive customers of the power companies will then be bound to repay the utilities, and to provide the utilities with a secure rate of return. Perversely, Sierra Club and others are intervening in the process, convincing regulators to disallow the utilities’ requests. In one case, the Sierra Club is fighting a major pollution abatement proposal in Arkansas although, according to EPA-based estimates, these controls would annually “save 250 to 350 people from premature death, avoid 300 to 400 adults from having non-fatal heart attacks, keep thousands of children from developing upper or lower respiratory symptoms, avoid tens of thousands of work loss days, and provide general health benefits valued at over a billion dollars.” The environmentalists are willing to accept these immense human and economic costs, the Yale paper states, to discourage an investment in a coal plant that might extend its operating life, undermining the environmentalists’ greater goal of combating greenhouse gas emissions. To save lives and the environment, Congress should act to set clear rules. “There is no reason to continue to punish our environment simply because no one can decide what to do on the climate change issue,” the Yale Law Journal article, found here, concludes. Financial Post
This paper has become the zeitgeist. I’ve had countless emails, and I know it’s been mentioned on Pielke, then by Solomon then Watts Up. Every self respecting skeptic will have looked at by this weekend, if not already. (Thanks to all the people who’ve emailed in the last three days). My thoughts? For a long scientific review, it’s surprisingly well written, cuts to the core, and it’s a very unusual style of writing: No one is pushing anything, it’s not polarized or written to entertain, yet at the same time, it has compelling clarity. Johnston also exposes the rhetorical flaws in the reasoning and argument styles, which gives it a comprehensive punch. I’m not used to reading official documents about the climate that are written to actually explain something. It’s 79 pages long, and distinctly lacks any cartoons, or even graphs, but surprisingly, astonishingly, it has sentences that are readable. There are no double barreled vagarisms designed to obscure the meaning while they recite a litany of key phrases, as if the answer is really hidden in there somewhere. This document doesn’t finish off every other point with speculation that it might be worse than we thought. Even though, actually, as far as science goes, official climate science is worse than we thought. Damning with understated tones. “Global Warming Advocacy Science: A Cross Examination” More » (Jo Nova)
Obligatory gorebull warbling: A tale of two atolls: Stanford researchers study the impact of fishing on remote coral reefs Stanford marine scientists and anthropologists are developing strategies for sustainable fishing by comparing two remote coral reef ecosystems – one inhabited, the
other a "no-catch" reserve.
Eye-roller: Increased heat waves from climate change a 'public health disaster,' federal official says Global climate change will bring more heat waves, air pollution and floods, and public health systems need to prepare for those changes now, federal officials told a group of epidemiologists meeting in Portland Sunday evening. (Scott Learn, The Oregonian)
Written by David C. Archibald The first thing to be aware of is that the warming effect of carbon dioxide is strongly logarithmic. Of the 3° C. that carbon dioxide contributes to the greenhouse effect, the first 20 ppm has a greater effect than the following 400 ppm. By the time we get to the current level of 384 ppm, each 100 ppm increment will produce only about 0.1° of warming. With atmospheric carbon dioxide rising at about 2 ppm per annum, temperature will rise at 0.1° every 50 years. If that is true, you will ask, how does the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) get its icecap-melting figure of 5° for doubling of the preindustrial level to 560 ppm? Read more... (SPPI)
A tenth of one degree? A cooler Pacific may have severely affected medieval Europe, North America Combination of hi-tech models and paleo-records may hold key to unlocking reason for Anastazi people's migration and other global events
A study: The temperature rise has caused the CO2 Increase, not the other way around Guest post by Lon Hocker A commonly seen graph illustrating what is claimed to be a causal correlation between CO2 and temperature, with CO2 as the cause. (Image courtesy Zfacts.com) Abstract Differentiating the CO2 measurements over the last thirty years produces a pattern that matches the temperature anomaly measured by satellites in extreme detail. That this correlation includes El Niño years, and shows that the temperature rise is causing the rise in CO2, rather than the other way around. The simple equation that connects the satellite and Mauna Loa data is shown to have a straight forward physical explanation. Introduction The last few decades has shown a heated debate on the topic of whether the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is causing rising temperatures. Many complex models have been made that seem to confirm the idea that anthropological CO2 is responsible for the temperature increase that has been observed. The debate has long since jumped the boundary between science and politics and has produced a large amount of questionable research. Continue reading (WUWT)
Update On Two Hypotheses With Respect To Lower Tropospheric Temperature Anomalies On July 16, 2009 I posted the following Comments On The Current Record Global Average Lower TroposphereTemperatures The post reads
Since the warm anomalies persist (e.g. see and see; Fig 7), the coming months are key to determining which of the two hypotheses with respect to global warming and cooling can be rejected. If we move into a La Niña without a corresponding cooling of the lower troposphere, it would support the rejection of hypothesis #1. However, if the lower troposphere cools, in terms of anomalies, to at or below the long-term average, this would support the rejection of hypothesis #2. Of course, the two hypotheses do not cover all of the possibilities. If the warm anomalies persist, this could be due primarily to other human climate forcings besides carbon dioxide, such as black carbon. However, this would still indicate hypothesis #1 should be rejected. I will again revisit this topic in a few months. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)
by Hans Bader Columnist Tim Carney notes that BP, responsible for the massive oil spill, is “a close friend of big government whenever it serves the company’s bottom line.” It lobbied for President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, the “cap-and-trade” global-warming bills backed by Obama, and “the Wall Street bailout” that Obama voted for. “BP has more Democratic lobbyists than Republicans.” Obama is the biggest recipient of campaign cash from BP executives. Obama’s global warming legislation expands ethanol subsidies, which cause famine, starvation, and food riots in poor countries by shrinking the food supply, and also result in deforestation, soil erosion, and water pollution. Subsidies for biofuels like ethanol are a big source of corporate welfare: “BP has lobbied for and profited from subsidies for biofuels . . .… Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
Energy: Senate Democrats want a 400% tax hike on offshore oil production. Is this their way of punishing an entire industry for an isolated accident? If it is, they missed
their mark.
The new oil risk: peak regulation Peak oil could become a reality if governments restrict exploration The regulatory system totally failed. Let’s try more regulation. We’ve seen this pattern before, and we’re about to see it all again in the oil industry. In the wake of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, governments all over the world, led by U.S. President Barack Obama, are now gearing up thousand-page rule books and new bureaucracies to oversee the global oil industry. Canada and Norway have already imposed curbs on deep water and Arctic exploration. The result is certain to be declining reserves of oil around the world, reduced supply and messed-up markets. Much as many people would like to believe that fossil fuels are a filthy nuisance that can be replaced by wind, sun and other forms of green energy, the fact is that the world’s people are increasingly dependent on oil and will continue to be for decades to come. Read More (Terence Corcoran, Financial Post)
Leaking from China’s Oil and Gas Pipelines China may be leaking more oil and gas from its pipeline network than any country in the world, much of it because of criminal activity. [Read More] (Xina Xie and Michael J. Economides, Energy Tribune)
Deep-water oil drilling: banned in America, allowed here Oil companies have been given the go-ahead to press on with the hunt for oil and gas in the deep waters off the coast of Britain despite the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. (The Independent)
SOLAR PANELS LURE, KILL INSECTS Why should we care if a green energy spells doom for certain insects? It matters since the bugs are a key part of an important food chain, say scientists. (Discovery)
This is What Obamacare Looks Like The Wall Street Journal reports this week on a threatening letter sent by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to insurance companies, regarding their upcoming bids for Medicare Advantage plans. (Medicare Advantage pays private insurers a set amount and typically the patient pays an additional premium.)
So follow that chain of events: the Obama Administration makes a $136 billion cut in Medicare Advantage to help pay for Obamacare. That means they pay $136 billion
LESS to private insurers. So insurers increase premiums to cover the difference. The Obama Administration responds to this predictable course of events by ... threatening
insurance companies.
After that, many insurers stopped offering new plans. Will they soon quit the business, leaving government totally in control? We'll see.
U.S. Embraces Model That's Failed Europe The newspaper headlines say it all. On the one hand, "Crisis Imperils Liberal Benefits Long Expected by Europeans," while in this country: "Private Pay
Plummets, Government Handouts Soar."
Explaining Obama’s America to the Chinese
President Barack Obama listens to Carol Browner, assistant to the President for energy and climate change, during a meeting with senior advisors in the Oval Office, June 3, 2010. Photo by Pete Souza It is a tough thing to do, no matter how articulate I think I can be, no matter how much I have immersed myself into the Chinese culture, no matter how educated my interlocutors are: How does one explain to a Chinese intellectual, a company executive, a high government official or a military officer, America’s economic, energy and environmental policies under Barack Obama? In early June, I had a chance to do exactly that and I do not remember ever being so tongue tied. After all, it is China that is supposed to still be a communist country or one that more officially practices “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” But it is hard to find in that country many socialists. If they exist, they are eclipsed by pure capitalists. Certainly there are no government pronouncements that would mean economic hara-kiri for the country. And, energy, in short domestic supply, represents the government’s highest priority. Almost all Chinese recognize that unless they move in fast and furious ways, energy will be the country’s choke point. I have been going to China several times per year, for more than 20 years. When I arrived there for the first time, the Cold War was still in place and China had just came out from the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. Deng Xiaoping was trying to start a new China. I miss the Cold War, certainly not the anxiety that it wrought and the tension of nuclear Armageddon between the West and the Soviet Union, and the even more radical Maoist (an adjective that came to mean even more radical Communist) China. What I do miss is the ideological clarity and world balance that it brought. We were supposed to be the capitalist, free enterprise world. Economics was our paramount leader and competition and free markets were our hallmark. They, on the other hand, were supposed to be the centrally controlled, repressed societies, unable to develop, unable to absorb modernity, unable to enter the 21st Century. We won the Cold War but clearly we have not dominated thereafter. Barack Obama and his policies, from health care to cap-and-trade to government decisions by fiat, and increased spending, and the welfare state, do not represent the presumed victor of the Cold War. Ideological environmentalism has trumped economic development and has thwarted economic freedom, which was, ostensibly, the motive of the Cold War. Al Gore, before the Tipper French Kiss and before the Nobel Prize for the “Inconvenient Truth” wrote that the “internal combustion engine is the biggest threat to humankind.” Tell that to the Chinese who are buying more than 40,000 new cars per day. (Energy Tribune)
Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Self-identified liberals and Democrats do badly on questions of basic economics.
Economic Prosperity Through Limited Government FBN’s John Stossel argues we need to shift toward a more free market and free-trade will lead to economic prosperity.
Study backs heart-healthy effect of dairy fat NEW YORK - Eating dairy foods could help protect your heart, new research from Sweden suggests.
More stupid food superstitions: Crying Over Raw Milk THE buses rolling into the parking lot of Eau Claire’s Chippewa Valley Technical College came from every corner of Wisconsin, and at least from one corner of Ontario, each
packed with farm families wearing paper milking caps with “Freedom” written on them and brandishing signs that said, “I ♥ Raw Milk.” March 10 was smack in the middle
of calving time, but the heifers would have to wait — raw milk was that important.
Oh boy... Secondhand smoke may harm mental health NEW YORK - Other people's smoke is bad for your lungs and bad for your heart, and new research suggests it could be bad for your mental health, too.
Doctors work on radiation problem to ease fears CHICAGO - On a recent flight, Dr. Aaron Sodickson learned firsthand about the fallout from studies and media stories about radiation exposure from CT scans.
Hello! Where were they? Gestures reveal 'green fakers', says psychologist There are many "green fakers" who only pretend to be eco-friendly, claims a psychologist who has been studying what is revealed by body language. (BBC News)
For real environmental performance: Freer Trade is Key to a Cleaner Environment and Green Growth In remarks on World Environment Day, the Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Pascal Lamy, pointed out that, “Trade opening has much to contribute in the fight against climate change and to the protection of the environment.” Indeed, the most practical improvements in energy efficiency and protecting the environment over the past decades haven’t stemmed from government regulatory mandates. As shown in the analysis of the Index of Economic Freedom, the most progress has been driven by advances in freer trade and economic freedom. These unleash greater economic opportunity and prosperity, generating a virtuous cycle of investment, innovation, and dynamic economic growth. Echoing the same message, the WTO chief further noted: Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Tantrum because their fundraising scam might be exposed? GM public consultation has 'no credibility' - say campaigners Food campaigners are to boycott ongoing talks on GM, casting further doubt on a controversial Government review of the science. (TDT)
EU Moves On GMO Crops A "Big Step": DuPont Executive Moves by the European Union to overhaul its approval system for genetically modified crops is a "big step forward." but it is likely to be some time before the
bloc is open to wide-spread cultivation of key crops, a leading DuPont executive said on Tuesday.
Commercial GM Wheat 10 Years Away: Report Australia needs to focus on wheat breeding technologies including genetically modified wheat, Peter Reading, managing director of Australia's Grains Research and Development
Corporation (GRDC) said on Tuesday.
Murkowski seeks to rein in EPA regulation FAIRBANKS, Alaska — U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski is the leading sponsor of a resolution that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases
under the Clean Air Act.
I am writing to ask you to take two minutes to e-mail your Senators and help stop the biggest threat to America's freedom and prosperity that President Obama has attempted so far. Senate Votes on Thursday — Click Here to Take Action to Stop Obama's Power Grab Myron Ebell FreedomAction.org
Rockefeller Signals Support to Overturn Greenhouse-Gas Curbs WASHINGTON—Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D., W.Va.) on Tuesday broke ranks with Democratic party leaders and indicated that he would support an effort by Senate Republicans to
overturn new rules to curb greenhouse-gas emissions.
by Marlo Lewis On Thursday (June 10, 2010), the Senate will vote on Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s resolution of disapproval (S.J.Res.26) to overturn the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. The endangerment finding is both trigger and precedent for sweeping policy changes Congress never approved. Tomorrow, I will speak in support of S.J.Res.26 at an 11:00 a.m. Capitol Hill press conference hosted by Americans for Prosperity. My prepared statement follows. Prepared Statement of Marlo Lewis Sen. Murkowski’s resolution of disapproval would stop EPA from ‘enacting’ controversial global warming policies through the regulatory back door. The endangerment finding is a classic case of bureaucratic self dealing. EPA has positioned itself to determine the stringency of fuel economy standards, set climate policy for the nation, and even amend provisions of the Clean… Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
And from the enemy: Administrator Jackson: Keep Moving America Forward Into Energy Independence/Addresses upcoming “resolution of disapproval” vote in remarks before small business owners Release date: 06/08/2010
GOP bid to stop EPA ruling faces White House veto WASHINGTON — The White House on Tuesday raised the stakes on the Senate's first major climate change vote of the year, threatening to veto a Republican-led effort to stop
the Environmental Protection Agency from carrying out regulations controlling greenhouse gases.
by Hans Bader People across the world “are being battered by surging food prices that are dragging more people into poverty, fueling political tensions and forcing some to give up eating meat, fruit and even tomatoes,” reports the Associated Press. High food prices are partly the result of “demand for crops to use in biofuels” like ethanol, which the government subsidizes. Food prices will rise even further if the global warming legislation backed by President Obama passes, since it expands ethanol subsidies that reward big corporations for turning food into fuel. Ethanol subsidies damage the environment by wiping out forests, polluting water supplies, and eroding the soil. By converting food into fuel, they cause famines and food riots in the world’s poorest countries. That fuels Islamic extremism in Afghanistan and the Middle East. President… Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
Republicans Try Anti-Global Warming Themes Against Sen. Boxer and Other Democrats One of the Senate's top sponsors of climate change legislation is being attacked for prioritizing "the weather" over terrorism, part of Republican attempts to use
anti-global warming themes in several primary races ending with elections today.
Hmm... Poll: American opinion on climate change warms up Fairfax, VA, June 8, 2010—Public concern about global warming is once again on the rise, according to a national survey released today by researchers at Yale and George
Mason Universities. The results come as the U.S. Senate prepares to vote this week on a resolution to block the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
Chris Huhne, isn't it? Congratulations on your appointment to the Department of Energy and Climate Change with its dramatically daunting agenda, starting with the overriding electoral imperative to keep the lights on in a country with an incoherent energy strategy. The figures which stick in my mind are that during January 4-7, with high pressure stable over the country and the highest peak electricity demand in the coldest winter for 30 years, wind power contributed 0.6 per cent to the Grid. The Grid issued only its second-ever Gas Balancing Alert to divert gas to power stations and the coal stations were ramped up to 43 per cent. I witnessed at first hand the South African electricity supply crisis escalate between 2006-08 and you will know soon, if your officials haven't already briefed you, how swiftly and decisively Pretoria batted aside its anti-nuclear and green opponents, advanced its nuclear construction with Chinese help and increased its coal stockpiles. (Gwyn Prins, Standpoint)
Well duh! Developed Nations Accused Of Laundering $30b Climate Fund Developed countries have been accused of not being sincere with their climate funding commitments.
Rich nations accused over 'logging loophole' at Bonn climate talks Bid by rich countries to change forestry rules would create accounting loopholes that would hide true emissions, developing nations say (The Guardian)
California’s Economy and Global Warming: Political Morphology by Tom Tanton Californians are attempting to reclaim the prospects of a top ten world economy from the disastrous downside of Global Warming Solutions Act (California Assembly Bill 32, or AB 32). Leaders of the ballot measure campaign to amend the law filed over 800,000 signatures – well over the required 435,000 – to be able to vote on a proposition to delay the implementation of cap-and-trade, as well as 70+ other progeny regulations, until unemployment falls significantly. Signatures are currently being verified by the Secretary of State, and the measure is expected to be on the November ballot. Then versus Now At the time the bill was originally signed in 2006, California’s unemployment rate was under five percent. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, statewide unemployment in April 2010 was a record high 12.6%. The ballot measure would put AB 32 on hold until unemployment falls below 5.5% for four consecutive quarters. In other words, until the state’s devastating economic situation improves the state will not implement regulations that will increase energy costs—already among the nation’s highest—and cause additional job loss. The Initiative would not repeal the AB 32 but merely suspend it and its already adopted regulations. Old Rationale– “Leadership” for The Children! Flanked by “national and international dignitaries,” Gov. Schwarzenegger signed AB 32, California’s landmark global warming law, in September 2006. He said the law is “something we owe our children and grandchildren.” Now, with too-numerous-to-count “gates” cracking the consensus, coupled with solid analysis, such as that of Chip Knappenberger of the lack of meaningful gain from reductions of national scale, there isn’t much discussion about global climate change even being the driver behind “the global warming solutions act.” The debate has moved, and still moves. California was to lead the global parade, with other states and countries following. Didn’t happen. The death spiral of climate alarmism confirms that California’s mandatory CO2 emission cuts are costs without climate benefits. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Europe: No Additional CO2 Cuts This Decade Last week, the European Union’s energy ministers swiftly stepped in to finally put an end to growing calls to unilaterally increase the block’s emission cutting target to 30 percent, as economic concerns are overshadowing concerns about climate change. [Read More] (Andres Cala, Energy Tribune)
"Climategate" and Scientific Inquiry Café Scientifique at the Summit, Frisco, Colorado, April 27, 2010. Here are parts 1 of 7 of a talk titled "Climategate and Scientific Inquiry" delivered by Dr. Martin Hertzberg.
More guesstimates based on a warming world scenario... A mountain bird's survival guide to climate change Researchers at Yale University have found that the risk of extinction for mountain birds due to global warming is greatest for species that occupy a narrow range of
altitude. In fact, a species' vertical distribution is a better predictor of extinction risk than the extent of temperature change they experience, the researchers report in
the June 9 issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
Leadership: The president says he went to the Gulf to find out whose derriere to kick. After he gets his foot out of his own mouth, perhaps he can talk to us about that
Coast Guard memo.
Maybe: Oil Spill's Real Threat Lies Beneath the Surface The Gulf of Mexico spill is vastly larger than the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989, but where is all the oil? While efforts to protect coastlines have been making the headlines, the real ecological catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is unfolding deep beneath the water's surface. (Spiegel)
To Save the Gulf, Send the Jones Act to Davy Jones’ Locker Within days of the oil spill, several European nations and thirteen countries in total apparently offered the Obama administration ships to assist in the clean-up of the Gulf. When asked about this, a State Department press spokesman refused to identify any offers of assistance. According to one newspaper, European firms could complete the task in four months, rather than an estimated nine months if done only by the U.S. Working with the U.S., the cleanup could be accomplished in three months. The Belgian firm DEME contends it can clean up the oil with accuracy at a depth of 2,000 meters. Another European firm with capabilities is the Dutch firm Jan De Nul Group. The Dutch and Belgians are long time NATO allies and as such partners in international security cooperation. To close the door on them while they are offering a helping hand in a time of national emergency simply makes no sense. According to the article, no U.S. companies have the ships which can accomplish this task is because those ships would cost twice as much to build in the U.S. as they do outside the country. This is one adverse impact of the Jones Act, which Congress passed in 1920s. This piece of protectionism has only hampered an anemic American maritime industry. It also has prevented a quicker response to the oil spill. European firms do have the expertise to clean up the spill. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Exxon Execs Warn On Curbing On Deepwater Drilling ExxonMobil warned against quick reactive changes to deepwater drilling laws that damage long-term investment decisions and urged governments to take time to assess the
reasons for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
U.S. Rules For New Drilling Permits May Be Ready Tuesday The U.S. Interior Department may issue new safety and environmental requirements as soon as Tuesday for oil companies that want to drill in shallow waters, a department
official said.
Britain Supports Deepsea Gas, Oil, Extended Nuclear Britain will continue to allow deepsea oil activities, as well as push for more renewable energy and an extended lifespan for its existing nuclear power plants, Energy
Minister Charles Hendry said on Tuesday.
UK To Boost Safety Inspections After BP Oil Spill Britain said it would increase its inspection of North Sea drilling rigs and monitoring of offshore practices in the light of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
June 8, 2010 – 8:30 pm In which our columnist gets Lush’s Brandi Halls to admit that oil transports Lush products, despite its campaign against the oil sands A bath products company called Lush is asking its North American retail staff to take to the sidewalks (Wednesday at noon, local time) dressed only in barrels to protest the wickedness of the Alberta oil sands. That hardly places the company out on a limb when it comes to eco posturing. Still, Lush isn’t like those other companies that promote trendy causes for fear of NGO “Do Not Buy” edicts. Its orientation comes from its founder, British “bubble bath baron” Mark Constantine, who is considered the heir of the late cosmetic hypocrite-in-chief, Anita Roddick. Ms. Roddick, founder of the Body Shop, was one of the originators of hiding high margins behind even higher humbug.
Economic/Environmental Assessment of Grid-Tied Photovoltaics: Arizona Lessons for the U.S. by David Bergeron
The proponents of the Arizona Renewable Energy Standards (RES) make various claims in order to promote grid-tied solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity. Unfortunately, the use of grid-tied solar PV is unlikely to accomplish any of the objectives suggested by its proponents. Specifically,
Furthermore, there is a good chance that the RES will have outcomes that are directly opposite its intended effects. The suitability of Solar PV as a grid-tied energy source can be analyzed in a straightforward manner. In Tucson, Arizona, a 1 kW residential or commercial grid-tied PV system costs approximately $5,000 installed[1] and may offset up to $66/year[2] of fossil fuel use. This 76 year simple payback is well beyond the life of the equipment and does not include maintenance cost. Adding PV to the grid offers no other significant savings in utility generation and transmission requirements and only adds to administrative and engineering burden for the utility. Despite idealistic claims of infrastructure savings from distributed grid-tied PV, these do not exist in the real world because PV is not reliable power, so no significant reduction in generation or transmission infrastructure is possible. PV system costs must fall by at least a factor of five[3] to offer real value in reducing fossil fuel use. Additional evidence of this is the fact that current federal, state, and utility subsidies cover 65-75%[4] of the up-front cost of these systems and net metering laws provide a rich subsidy for energy produced and yet the systems are still only marginally viable. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
From the lunatic fringe: In Drastic Green Energy Proposal, U.S. Pays Most The world could generate 95 percent of electricity from renewable energies by 2050 in a drastic shift from fossil fuels, with the United States paying about a third of a
giant bill, green lobby groups said on Monday.
Consumer Reports Distorts Protein Drinks By Steve Milloy
MILLOY: Petulant children of Time magazine Inventors' lifesaving work not good enough for mag's cub reporters
Health Care: The British government has decided that it needs to cut millions of operations because the public system cannot afford them. This is coming soon to a hospital
or doctor's office near you.
Global polio fight to get needed funds: Bill Gates ABUJA - Rich nations and global donors should be able to provide the $2.6 billion in aid needed to combat polio through 2012 despite the global credit crunch,
multi-billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said on Monday.
Free latte for doctors? Not so fast CHICAGO - New limits on free gifts to doctors have hit the ubiquitous free lattes and coffee seen at major medical meetings like the one here of the American Society of
Clinical Oncology.
Rather than dismissing treatments that use placebo as hocus pocus, we should learn what we can from this powerful effect
Eric Pickles to remove powers to fine households for putting out rubbish on wrong day Powers which allow council 'bin police' to fine households who leave rubbish out on the wrong day are set to be scrapped, it has emerged. (TDT)
Smaller wheelie bins to boost recycling Councils are threatening to make wheelie bins smaller and cut down on refuse collections in response to the government's plans to scrap bin taxes.
Fishing gear bigger threat to birds than oil More seabirds have been killed by fishing gear in the past 10 years in European Union waters than by oil disasters since the Torrey Canyon in 1967, conservationists said
yesterday.
Saplings from Dutch elm disease survivor could start new family tree The English elm, painted by Constable, elegised by Thomas Gray and all but wiped out by disease a generation ago, could stage a comeback thanks to a rare survivor.
SEN. VOINOVICH TO HOLD PRESS CONFERENCE ON EPA DISAPPROVAL RESOLUTION WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Tuesday, June 8, at 12:15 p.m., U.S. Senator George V. Voinovich (R-OH) will be joined by a number of his Republican colleagues at a press conference
in the Senate Radio and TV Gallery to discuss the upcoming vote on an Environmental Protection Agency disapproval resolution.
Calls for Developed Nations to repay 'climate debt' -- Calls for an 'International Court of Climate and Environmental Justice' to prosecute developed world
Climate Intervention Schemes Could Be Undone by Geopolitics As global warming intensifies, demands for human manipulation of the climate system are likely to grow. But carrying out geoengineering plans could prove daunting, as conflicts erupt over the unintended regional consequences of climate intervention and over who is entitled to deploy climate-altering technologies. (Mike Hulme, e360)
The Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum is holding a conference in Bonn, Germany from June 21 to 23 called: Climate Change and the Media. The Deutsche Welle is publically funded by mandatory fees imposed on German citizens. It’s similar to BBC Radio. The conference will feature a number of let’s-save-the-planet workshops. Click list of workshops. One workshop that caught our attention is How to professionally deal with climate scepticism. Or simply put: Journalism for Dummkopfs. The panelists are Bob Ward and Ms Denial of Nonconsensus herself, Naomi Oreskes. The workshop’s objective:
That’s right, journalists are being encouraged to throw investigative reporting and balance overboard, i.e. to take up the role of propaganda outlet for press releases put out by the Climate Science Politburo. The panelists go on to warn:
Yes, the alarmist zealots think the very basis of life hinges on this. A few journalists in Germany have actually been practicing journalism on the issue of climate science recently, and this has infuriated the Established Climate “Science” Community. They too are threatened with the Big Cutoff. You see, although journalists have the competence to report critically on “rudimentary” issues like economics, finance, politics, law, civics and so on, climate science is far too complex with too much at stake to leave in their hands. Not only are the alarmist zealots calling for a suspension of democracy, claiming casus belli, but now they’re also demanding that journalists abandon journalism altogether. What gate-name ought I assign to this one? Dummkopf Journalism-gate? (P. Gosselin, NoTricksZone)
Dopey data dredge du jour: Climate change leading to major vegetation shifts around the world BERKELEY — Vegetation around the world is on the move, and climate change is the culprit, according to a new analysis of global vegetation shifts led by a University of
California, Berkeley, ecologist in collaboration with researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.
Silly stretch of the moment: A rainforest revelation Lemurs of Madagascar offer clues to global-warming impact
FORT
COLLINS - A lot of large particles of dust and pollen in the atmosphere may make your nose twitch, but they can lead directly to greater precipitation in clouds, Colorado State
University atmospheric scientists have discovered for the first time.
So, George really is an idiot: The oil firms' profits ignore the real costs The energy industry has long dumped its damage and, like the banks, made scant provision against disaster. Time to pay up
Like a scene out of Dallas, Big Oil and officialdom go hand in hand For followers of the fictitious oilman J.R. Ewing in the 1980s television series Dallas, the real-life relationship between the oil industry and the officials who regulate
it may seem a little like fact mirroring fiction.
Study: Wind Farms = Bird Killers Annual death toll expected to rise
ACSH Responds to misinformation in the CNN special,“Toxic America” NEW YORK — The American Council on Science and Health is appalled by the health misinformation in the CNN special “Toxic America,” the first part of which June 2.
We Are the World’s Healthiest Chemophobes There is a report published a few years ago called Making Sense of Chemical Stories, which attempts to point out some very basic concepts that most people are not grasping
about chemicals. We need to see things clearly and not through a telescope of activism which makes it impossible to see the whole picture. We live in a world where pollution
has become “the cause” for celebrities of every ilk. Movies, television and sports notables will come out and take a position on subjects of which they know little or
nothing about. We have been inundated by so many articles and television shows regarding chemicals that we in the developed world (which owes so much to chemicals) have become
chemophobic.
All to keep the men in Brussels happy Tim
Worstall has picked up the report in The
Daily Telegraph on Sir Peter North's review.
168 is the number – not 167 0r 169. The spurious precision is only there to empress the ignorant and ill-educated, such as PPE graduates from Oxford. Barely had we time to absorb one thrust by the alcohol zealots than along comes the next one. It is the result of an “independent” study commissioned by the New Labour government. As we well know such reviews were put in place to give the required answer to put a gloss on yet another retreat under pressure from the EU bureaucrats. Note that the number of lives to be saved is up to 168, a range which includes zero. Your bending author was once breathalysed for committing the offence of parking outside a country pub owned by friends but found innocent: hence the reference to “criminality” in the following comments from Sorry wrong number! (2000): (Number Watch)
Cancer research reignites calls to ban tanning beds THE health department must urgently ban tanning beds after startling new research confirms they dramatically increase the risk of skin cancer, regardless of the type of bed
and length of time they are used, experts say.
Omega-3 lesson: Not so much brain boost as fishy research One tiny brain-imaging study of fatty acids has been used to endorse fish oil as education's magic pill (Ben Goldacre, The Guardian)
NHS 'should pay people' to lose weight Paying people up to £3,000 to lose weight is more successful than traditional diets and should be rolled out across the NHS, it has been claimed.
Lawrence Solomon: Lauding low doses June 4, 2010 – 6:57 pm A revolutionary field called hormesis shows that dangerous substances can be beneficial at low levels To the greatest extent possible, remove all carcinogens from our air, food, and drinking water. Because there is no safe dose of radiation, avoid medical X-rays and CT scans whenever you have a practical alternative. Cut back on energy consumption where practical to reduce harmful emissions from smokestacks and tailpipes. These simple strictures for leading a good and responsible life in a good and responsible society are too obvious to mention. Except that they are wrong — even dangerously so — according to a fast-growing branch of science called hormesis. The conventional wisdom on health and the environment is not only ruinously expensive, hormesis exponents say, it is also killing us. Hormesis, a term coined only 70 years ago, refers to the different properties that chemicals and other substances have at high and low doses. Take radiation, a known killer at very high doses. The more you reduce the dose of radiation to which people are exposed, the fewer the number of deaths that will result. But at a certain point of exposure, the relationship changes, hormesis proponents state. At low doses — what you might get at your dentist’s office, for example — radiation becomes therapeutic, promoting health rather than risking it. Read More (Financial Post)
George “Grinch of the Guardian” Monbiot has launched a bitter assault on the most lively, uplifting and downright brilliant pop science masterpiece you are likely to
read this year. Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist (4th Estate).
For the latest in the U.N.'s creative accounting: Rescuing Ecosystems Can Save Trillions Of Dollars: U.N. A few million dollars invested by governments in restoring nature could prevent far greater losses of the free services that ecosystems provide to people around the world, a U.N. report said on Thursday. (Reuters)
Who's the greenest of them all? India Indian consumers are the greenest in the world, said a global survey of 17 countries, released on a day when the Municipal Corporation of Delhi became the nation's first
civic body to cash in on cutting down carbon emissions.
Bin taxes and planning laws to be ditched by Coalition A raft of Labour laws which have been criticised for penalising Middle England will be consigned to the scrap heap by the new Government this week. (TDT)
Caroline Spelman backs GM crops Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, has backed genetically modified (GM) crops in Britain reinforcing suggestions that the coalition Government will look more favourably on the technology than any of its predecessors. (TDT)
Murkowski Resolution Could Block EPA Power Grab Next week, the Senate will determine whether it sides with “we the people” or if our elected “representatives” support a drastic expansion of government that will
trample our liberties for no measurable environmental benefit.
Senate fight over EPA resolution to highlight first week after recess The Senate this week will return to a pivotal, long-simmering debate over the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
Legal verdict: Manmade global warming science doesn’t withstand scrutiny June 6, 2010 – 10:47 pm A cross examination of global warming science conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Law and Economics has concluded that virtually every claim advanced by global warming proponents fail to stand up to scrutiny. The cross-examination, carried out by Jason Scott Johnston, Professor and Director of the Program on Law, Environment and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, found that “on virtually every major issue in climate change science, the [reports of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and other summarizing work by leading climate establishment scientists have adopted various rhetorical strategies that seem to systematically conceal or minimize what appear to be fundamental scientific uncertainties or even disagreements.” Professor Johnson, who expressed surprise that the case for global warming was so weak, systematically examined the claims made in IPCC publications and other similar work by leading climate establishment scientists and compared them with what is found in the peer-edited climate science literature. He found that the climate establishment does not follow the scientific method. Instead, it “seems overall to comprise an effort to marshal evidence in favor of a predetermined policy preference.” The 79-page document, which effectively eviscerates the case for man-made global warming, can be found here. Financial Post
A Preliminary Response to John Abraham — the extremists join the climate debate at last! Climate: the extremists join the debate at last! by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley ONE of the numerous artifices deployed by the now-retreating climate-extremist movement has been the careful avoidance of any debate with anyone on the skeptical side of the case who happens to know anything about climate science or economics. As the extremists lose the argument and become more desperate, that is changing. John Abraham, a lecturer in fluid mechanics at a bible-college in Minnesota has recently issued – and widely disseminated – a hilariously mendacious 83-minute attempted rebuttal of a speech by me about the climate last October in St. Paul, Minn. So unusual is this attempt actually to meet us in argument, and so venomously ad-hominem are Abraham’s artful puerilities, that climate-extremist bloggers everywhere have circulated them and praised them to the warming skies. As usual, though, none of these silly bloggers makes any attempt actually to verify whether what poor Abraham is saying actually has the slightest contact with reality. Read the rest of this entry » (SPPI)
I’d rather have Monckton in a foxhole with me than Monbiot George Monbiot, plus some other libtard journalist I’d never even heard of before he mentioned me in his blog, has been having a go at Viscount Monckton.
by Hans Bader Talk about chutzpah. President Obama, the biggest recipient of campaign cash from BP, is using BP’s oil spill to push for a global warming bill that is chock full of corporate welfare and environment-destroying ethanol subsidies. And the bill is one crafted by lobbyists for big companies like BP: “For years, BP has lobbied for climate change legislation, until recently running around with the U.S. Climate Action Partnership.” The Obama Administration has done little about the oil spill, even though “BP’s oil gusher is in federal waters, on seabed leased from the federal government,” giving the government the moral responsibility to do something to stop the spill. Instead, it is adding insult to injury for suffering Gulf Coast residents by imposing a ban on oil drilling… Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
Kevin Rudd, 7.30 report May 10, 2010
Kevin Rudd let slip yesterday that he has a vision for bigger-more-malignant ETS than the one he dropped.
We missed the bullet in December. As a nation we came within a butterfly-wing-flap of sacrificing ourselves to the carbon-Goldman-Sachs-socialist-nightmare. But it could still happen, and it could be worse. The national orbit has swung again slightly, like a pendulum with an elliptical chaotic path. With Rudd destabilized, so are we all collectively far from center. Australia could be headed for an election where climate change is still a central issue, or worse, it won’t be, and the nasty surprise will spring afterwards. More » Jo Nova)
China Carbon Market Prospects Not Optimistic - Official Although China has supplied massive volumes of carbon credits to the global market, prospects for CO2 trade within the country itself are not optimistic, a senior climate official said on Sunday. (Reuters)
More Political Climate Science In today’s odd academic culture, including the world of climate science, academic freedom applies selectively. People use their positions and their email for politicking
and electioneering and have no trouble retaining their jobs. But using your email to send out some inconvenient, apolitical weather data that says something your boss or your
governor may not like can get you fired.
Lookout! Warming good for butterflies! Oh... Another reason to hope for a warm summer – it's good for Britain's rarest butterflies Some of Britain's most endangered butterflies appear to have enjoyed a comeback this year because of the recent spells of dry, warm weather which may have ended the run of
three wet summers in a row, scientists said yesterday.
Wild speculation alert: Falklands’ scientists detect North Pacific Ocean species in South Atlantic Deep sea fish species found in the North Pacific Ocean have mysteriously been caught in the southwest Atlantic in Falkland Islands waters. It is unclear how the animals, a giant rattail grenadier, pelagic eelpout and deep sea squid, travelled so far, according to a report by Matt Walker, Editor of Earth News. (MercoPress)
Oh my... UN warns climate change could trigger 'mega-disasters' SYDNEY — Weather-related catastrophes brought about by climate change are increasing, the top UN humanitarian official said Sunday as he warned of the possibility of "mega-disasters". (AFP)
Sigh... Warming threatens state's coast, scientists say Northern California's two great marine sanctuaries and nearby coastal regions will be severely threatened by the planet's changing climate over the next several decades as the sea level rises, the ocean water warms, marine animals migrate and coastal storms and erosion intensify, a panel of scientists warned Thursday. (David Perlman, SF Chronicle)
The term carbon footprint crops up a lot these days. What exactly does it actually mean?
Supposedly, human activity is responsible for the detected rise in atmospheric CO2 levels over the past century. But do we really know were gas emissions come from and how great they are? As it turns out, greenhouse gas emissions are measured using statistical data without testing the results against the actual increases of these gases in the atmosphere. Regardless, climate change alarmists insist that human emissions must be reduced. A revealing perspective article in the June 4, 2010, issue of Science states “this is like dieting without weighing oneself.” Currently, science is only guessing at where CO2 emissions come from. Scientists are coming to the realization that claims about greenhouse gas emissions can have integrity only if verified by direct atmospheric measurements. Emissions data are produced by greenhouse gas emitters of all sizes—farms, factories and entire nations. These emissions are often quoted with high precision but, as Euan Nisbet and Ray Weiss state in their article, “misreporting still occurs, whether by simple error, ignorance, or intention.” They claim that carbon-equivalent emissions are currently assessed by “bottom-up” methods, which are made up from a variety of local statistics such as fuel consumption or numbers of cows. When these measured “bottom-up” emissions are rolled up to a global scale, the amounts can disagree by factors of two or more when compared with direct atmospheric measurements. How can you control GHG emissions when you cannot accurately identify their sources? And how can you blame the rise in atmospheric CO2 solely on humanity if you cannot reconcile actual emissions with atmospheric measurements? The answer is that you cannot. To try and shore up the case for emissions control—including all those calls for “cap and trade” and a carbon tax—the authors want to establish a global network to provide a “top down” assessment of anthropogenic emission.
Such a network is much easier to envision than to actually build, and interpreting the data collected by such a network is even harder. Most emissions sources and many sinks are on or near the ground, in what scientists call the atmospheric boundary layer. While gases in the atmosphere soon become “well mixed” and fairly uniform world-wide, local conditions can vary greatly. For example, the average global CO2 level is currently about 388 parts per million. But this can be significantly reduced in some locations by the springtime growth spurt of deciduous trees or dramatically increased during rush hour in major cities. To obtain long-term local data, air must be collected from instruments that continuously record regional greenhouse gas variations. Current records are spotty and incomplete at best. The solution, claim Nisbet and Weiss, is better monitoring. Aircraft studies are important, as are satellites and terrestrial sensors. New models will have to be developed and new factors incorporated into the existing crop of wonky GCM. There is also some basic science to be done: for CO2, much needs to be done to quantify biological fluxes. The list of tools, activities and improvements goes on and on. But all of these instruments and people to staff them will cost money. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)
SPPI Update and Chris Horner’s UVA’s Defense of Michael Mann: Back Off, He’s a Scientist! By Bob Ferguson, SPPI Below are some recent papers posted at SPPI , both originals and reprints. The topics/titles of the papers can pretty much be gleaned from the urls. 1. Jim Hansen Reality Check Be sure to look over some of our postings at the SPPI blog. ----------------- UVA’s Defense of Michael Mann: Back Off, He’s a Scientist! The University of Virginia has filed a petition to set aside civil investigative demands (CIDs) issued to it by the Commonwealth’s attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli. CIDs are akin to grand jury subpoenas. Cuccinelli’s inquiry was prompted by public disclosure - via the ClimateGate leaks - of the highly questionable academic practices of former UVA assistant professor Michael Mann. The disclosure of Mann’s activities involved the apparent leaking of emails, computer code, and annotations to the code, all of which were subject to and being pursued under the United Kingdom’s Freedom of Information Act. Arguing against the request that they produce records related to Mann’s use of taxpayer-funded grant money, UVA reeled off a litany of rationales - mostly general and repetitive - regarding why they do not need to comply. UVA’s reason #8 - out of nine, its placement inherently recognizing its weakness - headlines the opening rhetoric of its petition and is being used by the school as a public relations hook: Enforcing the CIDs will interfere with recognized First Amendment principles and important public policies protecting the academic freedom of institutions of higher learning from government intrusion into research and scientific inquiry. You know, like Stanford University was immune from inquiry into misusing taxpayer funds earmarked for scientific research during the most notorious pre-ClimateGate academic scandal. Oddly, Time magazine’s coverage at the time was not concerned about “academic freedom” being imperiled: “Scandal in the Laboratories: Inquiries at Stanford turn a harsh light on how university research is funded.” Gasp! “Inquiries”? Stanford was no more exempt from laws, oversight, or conditions on how it spends taxpayer funds than are Mann or UVA. As a result, Stanford president and current Mann defender Donald Kennedy soon found himself out the door. UVA’s current tack is simply to hope for public - and possibly judicial - sympathy to result from the escalating pressure campaign from what I call Big Science. Big Science is outraged that its constituents should be subject to laws applied to the little people and is desperate to expansively rewrite the concept of “academic freedom” as license to be free from compliance with those laws. While Mann’s defenders were quick to unholster Hollywood-style shrieks of “McCarthyism,” the more appropriate analogy seems to be Tinseltown’s current victimization/canonization of Roman Polanski. He’s an artist! These laws you speak of, well, they exist, and surely have some merit, just...didn’t you see Chinatown? The “I’m a scientist!” defense is the academy at its most cartoonish. Doubling down on this unseemliness, the UVA then invokes Thomas Jefferson(!) while making the argument that laws are for others, and not preferred, protected classes of people. In its petition, UVA cites a 1950s Supreme Court opinion - Sweezy v. New Hampshire - for the following dicta: To impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our Nation… Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate… No, the ellipses do not suppress “...and to commit fraud, or otherwise disregard the laws of the land.” And no fancy Latin canon of construction - noscitur a sociis, ejusdem generis, in pari materia… take your pick, they all fail - informs a conclusion that the UVA argument is what the Sweezy Court intended. But what of the two prongs of that risible “any strait jacket” business the school hangs its hat upon? Of two plausible readings of this, the less plausible is that “any” indicates the Supreme Court deemed academics, of “any” sort no less, to be beyond prosecution - so long as the perpetrator claims a research purpose (and with nothing less than the fate of the nation at risk were things otherwise! Sigh.) Alternately, the university begs the question: where do standards applied to the rest of us end and a “strait jacket” begin? Or, where does protection of intellectual discourse - not actually at issue here, despite UVA hand-waving to the contrary - end and selective immunity from the laws of the land begin? These are now questions for the Virginia courts. Sweezy is an Eisenhower-era opinion, written shortly before Ike�s farewell address. The address is famous for warning of a “military-industrial complex,” but also for warning: Be alert to the equal and opposite danger ["opposite" of stifling academic freedom] that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. Sadly, this has come to pass, with the University of Virginia among its most zealous defenders. UVA’s invocation of the wholly inapplicable Sweezy illustrates the barrenness of its legal cupboard, and no distraction will change that the precedent it cites is wholly irrelevant to Mr. Cuccinelli’s inquiry into possible civil fraud. The university expends great effort to make the issue other than what it plainly is. “Academic freedom” has of course never meant selective sanctioning of unlawful behavior. And the attorney general is not, as the university claims to the court, “engag[ing] in scientific debate.” That the university cannot or will not see this only further makes the case that it is not capable of self-investigation. Which raises a final point. In its petition, UVA proves far too much. For example, it references two other inquiries into aspects of ClimateGate. Where, pray tell, was the outrage by Big Science or academia over these two? The answer is that the pretense of self-policing by the University of East Anglia and by Mann’s current home, Penn State, were both exercises in wagon-circling. When they were announced, Big Science remained mum because this was transparently so, as evidenced by their stacking panels with sympathetic parties highly unlikely to conclude otherwise than they did. About these, UVA rather disingenuously claims “the subsequent investigations have not found any fraudulent conduct.’ Of course they didn’t - neither inquired into fraud! Instead, both narrowly tailored their reviews to less treacherous waters. By this mischaracterization to the court, UVA stretches the truth while doing its credibility no good. Which nicely summarizes the entire Mann affair. See post and comments here. Christopher Horner is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and author of the recently-published Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America. ICECAP NOTE: “...whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right.” Thomas Jefferson (as cited in Padover, 1939, p. 88). Here Jefferson is suggesting the state allow the people to become well informed by allowing for Cuccinelli to proceed with the inquiry so as to set the matter right. (via Icecap)
BOOK REVIEW: 'Climate Cover-up' CLIMATE COVER-UP: THE CRUSADE TO DENY GLOBAL WARMING
Hmm... we wish them luck: Russia dusts off old plans to open the Northeast Passage for sea trade with Asia The plague of pirates preying on Asia's sea links to Europe and the prospects of opportunities presented by global warming have prompted Russia to dust off some old plans
that have been lying in filing cabinets since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Climatic Effects of Warming Due To Ultraviolet Chemistry Recent research by Robert Hodges and Jim Elsner of Florida State University (GRL June 2010) found the probability of three or more hurricanes hitting the United States goes
up drastically during low points of the 11-year sunspot cycle related to reduced ultraviolet radiation during the quiet sun which leads to less warming of the upper atmosphere
and thus greater instability of the atmosphere. Their work was published this month in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters (Elsner, J. B., T. H. Jagger, and R.
E. Hodges (2010), Daily tropical cyclone intensity response to solar ultraviolet radiation, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L09701, doi:10.1029/2010GL043091).
Evidence for a Celestial Origin of the Climate Oscillations and its Implications Written by Nicola Scafetta We investigate whether or not the decadal and multi-decadal climate oscillations have an astronomical origin. Several global surface temperature records since 1850 and records deduced from the orbits of the planets present very similar power spectra. Eleven frequencies with period between 5 and 100 years closely correspond in the two records. Among them, large climate oscillations with peak-to-trough amplitude of about 0.1 oC and 0.25 oC, and periods of about 20 and 60 years, respectively, are synchronized to the orbital periods of Jupiter and Saturn. Schwabe and Hale solar cycles are also visible in the temperature records. A 9.1-year cycle is synchronized to the Moon’s orbital cycles. A phenomenological model based on these astronomical cycles can be used to well reconstruct the temperature oscillations since 1850 and to make partial forecasts for the 21st century. It is found that at least 60% of the global warming observed since 1970 has been induced by the combined effect of the above natural climate oscillations. The partial forecast indicates that climate may stabilize or cool until 2030-2040. Possible physical mechanisms are qualitatively discussed with an emphasis on the phenomenon of collective synchronization of coupled oscillators. Read more... (SPPI)
Updated: Low Climate Sensitivity Estimated from the 11-Year Cycle in Total Solar Irradiance NOTE: This has been revised since finding an error in my analysis, so it replaces what was first published about an hour ago. As part of an e-mail discussion on climate sensitivity I been having with a skeptic of my skepticism, he pointed me to a paper by Tung & Camp entitled Solar-Cycle Warming at the Earth’s Surface and an Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity. The authors try to determine just how much warming has occurred as a result of changing solar irradiance over the period 1959-2004. It appears that they use both the 11 year cycle, and a small increase in TSI over the period, as signals in their analysis. The paper purports to come up with a fairly high climate sensitivity that supports the IPCC’s estimated range, which then supports forecasts of substantial global warming from increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The authors start out in their first illustration with a straight comparison between yearly averages of TSI and global surface temperatures during 1959 through 2004. But rather than do a straightforward analysis of the average solar cycle to the average temperature cycle, the authors then go through a series of statistical acrobatics, focusing on those regions of the Earth which showed the greatest relationship between TSI variations and temperature. I’m not sure, but I think this qualifies as cherry picking — only using those data that support your preconceived notion. They finally end up with a fairly high climate sensitivity, equivalent to about 3 deg. C of warming from a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Tung and Camp claim their estimate is observationally based, free of any model assumptions. But this is wrong: they DO make assumptions based upon theory. For instance, it appears that they assume the temperature change is an equilibrium response to the forcing. Just because they used a calculator rather than a computer program to get their numbers does not mean their analysis is free of modeling assumptions. But what bothers me the most is that there was a much simpler, and more defensible way to do the analysis than they presented. A Simpler, More Physically-Based Analysis The most obvious way I see to do such an analysis is to do a composite 11-year cycle in TSI (there were 4.5 solar cycles in their period of analysis, 1959 through 2004) and then compare it to a similarly composited 11-year cycle in surface temperatures. I took the TSI variations in their paper, and then used the HadCRUT3 global surface temperature anomalies. I detrended both time series first since it is the 11 year cycle which should be a robust solar signature…any long term temperature trends in the data could potentially be due to many things, and so it should not be included in such an analysis. The following plot shows in the top panel my composited 11-year cycle in global average solar flux, after applying their correction for the surface area of the Earth (divide
by 4), and correct for UV absorption by the stratosphere (multiply by 0.85). The bottom panel shows the corresponding 11-year cycle in global average surface temperatures. I
have done a 3-year smoothing of the temperature data to help smooth out El Nino and La Nina related variations, which usually occur in adjacent years. I also took out the
post-Pinatubo cooling years of 1992 and 1993, and interpolated back in values from the bounding years, 1991 and 1994. Note there is a time lag of about 1 year between the solar forcing and the temperature response, as would be expected since it takes time for the upper ocean to warm. It turns out this is a perfect opportunity to use the simple forcing-feedback model I have described before to see which value for the climate sensitivity provides the best fit to the observed temperature response to the 11-year cycle in solar forcing. The model can be expressed as: Cp[dT/dt] = TSI – lambda*T, Where Cp is the heat capacity of the climate system (dominated by the upper ocean), dT/dt is the change in temperature of the system with time, TSI represents the 11 year cycle in energy imbalance forcing of the system, and lambda*T is the net feedback upon temperature. It is the feedback parameter, lambda, that determines the climate sensitivity, so our goal is to find a value for a best value for lambda. I ran the above model for a variety of ocean depths over which the heating/cooling is assumed to occur, and a variety of feedback parameters. The best fits between the observed and model-predicted temperature cycle (an example of which is shown in the lower panel of the above figure) occur for assumed ocean mixing depths around 25 meters, and a feedback parameter (lambda) of around 2.2 Watts per sq. meter per deg. C. Note the correlation of 0.97; the standard deviation of the difference between the modeled and observed temperature cycle is 0.012 deg. C My best fit feedback (2.2 Watts per sq. meter per degree) produces a higher climate sensitivity (about 1.7 deg. C for a doubling of CO2) than what we have been finding from the satellite-derived feedback, which runs around 6 Watts per sq. meter per degree (corresponding to about 0.55 deg. C of warming). Can High Climate Sensitivity Explain the Data, Too? If I instead run the model with the lambda value Tung and Camp get (1.25), the modeled temperature exhibits too much time lag between the solar forcing and temperature response….about double that produced with a feedback of 2.2. Discussion The results of this experiment are pretty sensitive to errors in the observed temperatures, since we are talking about the response to a very small forcing — less than 0.2 Watts per sq. meter from solar max to solar min. This is an extremely small forcing to expect a robust global-average temperature response from. If someone else has published an analysis similar to what I have just presented, please let me know…I find it hard to believe someone has not done this before. I would be nice if someone else went through the same exercise and got the same answers. Similarly, let me know if you think I have made an error. I think the methodology I have presented is the most physically-based and easiest way to estimate climate sensitivity from the 11-year cycle in solar flux averaged over the Earth, and the resulting 11-year cycle in global surface temperatures. It conserves energy, and makes no assumptions about the temperature being in equilibrium with the forcing. I have ignored the possibility of any Svensmark-type mechanism of cloud modulation by the solar cycle…this will have to remain a source of uncertainty for now. The bottom line is that my analysis supports a best-estimate 2XCO2 climate sensitivity of 1.7 deg. C, which is little more than half of that obtained by Tung & Camp (3.0 deg. C), and approaches the lower limit of what the IPCC claims is likely (1.5 deg. C). (Roy W. Spencer)
Warming in Last 50 Years Predicted by Natural Climate Cycles One of the main conclusions of the 2007 IPCC report was that the warming over the last 50 years was most likely due to anthropogenic pollution, especially increasing atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuel burning. But a minority of climate researchers have maintained that some — or even most — of that warming could have been due to natural causes. For instance, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) are natural modes of climate variability which have similar time scales to warming and cooling periods during the 20th Century. Also, El Nino — which is known to cause global-average warmth — has been more frequent in the last 30 years or so; the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) is a measure of El Nino and La Nina activity. A simple way to examine the possibility that these climate cycles might be involved in the warming over the last 50 years in to do a statistical comparison of the yearly temperature variations versus the PDO, AMO, and SOI yearly values. But of course, correlation does not prove causation. So, what if we use the statistics BEFORE the last 50 years to come up with a model of temperature variability, and then see if that statistical model can “predict” the strong warming over the most recent 50 year period? That would be much more convincing because, if the relationship between temperature and these 3 climate indicies for the first half of the 20th Century just happened to be accidental, we sure wouldn’t expect it to accidentally predict the strong warming which has occurred in the second half of the 20th Century, would we? Temperature, or Temperature Change Rate? Such a relationship, shown in the plot below, would provide a causal link of these natural cycles as forcing mechanisms for temperature change, since the peak forcing then
precedes the peak temperature. Predicting Northern Hemispheric Warming Since 1960 I used the period from 1900 through 1960 for “training” to derive this statistical relationship, then applied it to the period 1961 through 2009 to see how well it predicted the yearly temperature change rates for that 50 year period. Then, to get the model-predicted temperatures, I simply added up the temperature change rates over time. The result of this exercise in shown in the following plot. What is rather amazing is that the rate of observed warming of the Northern Hemisphere since the 1970’s matches that which the PDO, AMO, and SOI together predict, based upon those natural cycles’ PREVIOUS relationships to the temperature change rate (prior to 1960). Again I want to emphasize that my use of the temperature change rate, rather than temperature, as the predicted variable is based upon the expectation that these natural modes of climate variability represent forcing mechanisms — I believe through changes in cloud cover — which then cause a lagged temperature response. This is powerful evidence that most of the warming that the IPCC has attributed to human activities over the last 50 years could simply be due to natural, internal variability in the climate system. If true, this would also mean that (1) the climate system is much less sensitive to the CO2 content of the atmosphere than the IPCC claims, and (2) future warming from greenhouse gas emissions will be small. (Roy W. Spencer)
From CO2 Science Volume 13 Number 23: 9 June 2010 Editorial: Subject Index Summary: Journal Reviews: A 35-Year History of Caribbean Coral Reefs: How has their percent coral cover varied over the past four decades? On the Fertilization of Sea Urchin Eggs: How is the process impacted by rising temperatures and CO2 concentrations? Effects of Oceanic pH Reductions on Large Benthic Foraminifers: What are they? ... and are they menacingly looming on the near-time horizon? Impacts of Elevated CO2 on Growth and Calcification of Two Species of Oyster Larvae: How do they compare with what is generally claimed by the world's climate alarmists? Plant Growth Database: Medieval
Warm Period Project:
Environmental Funds Battled BP For Years Even before BP Plc's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began in April, the company was losing its sterling reputation with fund managers focused on the environment.
Um, no: Prosecuting Crimes Against the Earth “IF our laws were broken ... we will bring those responsible to justice,” President Obama pledged on Tuesday, in announcing an investigation of the events leading to the
April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. His words may have been, in part, political damage control; efforts to contain the spill remain dire. But federal
prosecutors have been working behind the scenes for weeks to determine whether BP, Transocean (the owner of the rig) and Halliburton (the company that did the cementing job on
the deep-ocean well) should be charged with crimes.
Hmm... Russia Wants Global Fund After Gulf Oil Spill Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called on the world's leading economic powers on Saturday to consider creating a fund to insure against large-scale environmental disasters
like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The Economy: As if the latest measly numbers on our jobless recovery weren't bad enough, along comes the administration to pile disaster upon disaster by slapping a
six-month ban on deep-water drilling.
With Drilling Stopped, Losses Could Multiply Chett Chiasson, the executive director of Port Fourchon in Louisiana, has a message for President Obama — and any Americans who have applauded the administration’s
decision to halt deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico: You just don’t get it.
Relaxing In Success Can Lead To Failure An intriguing aspect of the BP oil spill is that, before the accident, deep-water drilling seemed to be a technological triumph. About 80% of the Gulf of Mexico's recent oil
production has come from deep-water operations, defined as water depths exceeding 1,000 feet. In 1996, that was 20%. Jack-up rigs, which are oil platforms sitting on stilts in
a few hundred feet of water, have given way to the "mobile offshore drilling unit." It keeps its position through the interaction of global positioning satellites and
on-board engines that activate directional propellers to offset ocean currents and wind.
Oil drilling begins in unexplored Falkland Islands’ south east waters Falkland Oil & Gas (FOGL) in association with BHP Billiton became the third oil company this year to begin exploratory drilling operations in Falkland Islands’ waters according to a Tuesday release from the company. (MercoPress)
Oh boy... Imagining Life Without Oil, and Being Ready As oil continued to pour into the Gulf of Mexico on a recent Saturday, Jennifer Wilkerson spent three hours on the phone talking about life after petroleum.
Positive change in the air: Will the Midwest Turn Its Back on Addressing Climate Change? In 2008, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm proclaimed her state was ready to be the Silicon Valley of clean energy.
The Bursting of the Green Energy Bubble? By Andrew McKillop, ET Guest Columnist Businesses in many parts of the world, and especially recession hit Europe are still spending in ways thought to mitigate climate change even as the economy contracted and any prospect of full, binding, international agreements to cut CO2 emissions are, at best, on hold. [Read More] (Energy Tribune)
IEA counts $550bn energy support bill The world economy spends more than $550bn in energy subsidies a year, about 75 per cent more than previously thought, according to the first exhaustive study of the
financial assistance devoted to oil, natural gas and coal consumption.
NYPA Reviews N.Y. Great Lakes Wind Power Proposals The New York Power Authority on Friday said it has started reviewing five proposals for wind power projects in state waters on Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.
A small plus: Olympics wind turbine is scrapped, threatening green pledges for 2012 A plan to build a massive wind turbine on the Olympic Park is to be scrapped, raising questions about whether the environmental pledges for the 2012 London Games can be met.
Trippy hippie nonsense: Going Solar Is Harder Than It Looks, a Valley Finds ALAMOSA, Colo. — The nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico, as oil spews unchecked from BP’s wrecked well, makes this high mountain valley seem even more idyllic than it is.
Energy here, from the sun, is free, abundant and clean. For generations of farmers, and the hippies in the 1970s who went off the grid with their sun-powered water-heaters, and
most recently the large-scale solar companies that have come looking for a new kind of harvest in one of the nation’s sweet spots for renewable energy, the sun is an anchor
of life.
Idiots! UK Nuclear Needs High CO2 Price Or Market Reform Britain will need to slap stiff penalties on climate-warming plants or radically change the way the power market works if it is to get new nuclear plants to cut carbon
emissions and keep the lights on.
The dream part we believe... Nuclear fusion dream hit by EU's cash dilemma £1bn funding shortfall jeopardises hopes of producing cheap, non-polluting power (Robin McKie, The Observer)
WHO says H1N1 flu pandemic continues GENEVA, June 3 (Reuters) - The H1N1 pandemic is not yet over although its most intense activity has passed in many parts of the world, the World Health Organisation said on
Thursday after a review of the flu outbreak by independent experts.
Nanny still with us and the zealots go marching on If Britons thought that they had seen the back of authoritarian socialism with the change of government, they have another think coming. The almost universally loathed authority that goes by the Orwellian name of NICE has joined in with the campaign of the alcohol zealots. Let it be made quite clear that there is no evidence – scientific, medical or any other sort – to support the “recommended” alcohol limits. It was plucked out of the air by a committee, a fact one of whose members has admitted. It is completely at variance with past research and is less than half of a credible safe limit. (Number Watch)
Early puberty holds few long term dangers for girls NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Contrary to the conventional wisdom, most girls who start developing a year or two before their classmates don't face any more long-term problems
than their peers, according to a new study.
Burger diet linked to higher childhood asthma risk LONDON, June 3 - Children who eat three or more burgers a week may be at a higher risk of asthma and wheezing, but a healthy diet rich in fruit and fish seems to stave off
the risk, according to a large international study.
The Need for Good P.E. Classes (But Don’t Forget Home Ec!) Physical education, the bane of awkward junior high schoolers everywhere, is a hot topic.
Dieting for dollars? More US employees trying it ATLANTA — How much money would it take to get you to lose some serious weight? $100? $500?
Poll finds stiff resistance to obesity tax Opposition to taxing soft drinks and fast food is strongest in the South.
Eye-roller: None Is Best Many food manufacturers and restaurant chains have been reformulating products to significantly reduce or eliminate partially hydrogenated oils, which contain dangerous
artery-clogging trans fat. Concerns that companies searching for alternatives would turn to unhealthy — but not quite as harmful — saturated fat, say from butter or palm
oil, appear to be unfounded.
Kellogg to Restrict Ads to Settle U.S. Inquiry Into Health Claims for Cereal WASHINGTON — Maybe it should have just stuck with Snap, Crackle and Pop.
The never-ending quest for test tube-pure air: US EPA signs rule to cut smokestack sulfur dioxide WASHINGTON, June 3 - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday it had finalized a rule that would protect millions of people from smokestack emissions of
sulfur dioxide, which can lead to asthma and other lung problems.
Ambitious claim of the moment: Air pollution may help trigger cardiac arrest NEW YORK - The dirtier the air, the more likely people are to suffer sudden cardiac arrest, new research from Australia shows.
Is California in a contest? Watching its legislators, I wonder if they compete with other state lawmakers to see who can bankrupt their state first. Felicity Barringer reports that California’ State Assembly has passed a bill that will: “not only ban plastic bags from pharmacies, groceries, convenience stores and liquor stores, but also to make retailers charge at least a nickel for paper bags — which must include recyclable content. … California has gone further toward an overall ban than any other state.” Supermarkets are not fighting the law. When dumb rules apply to all businesses, they just pass the cost on to consumers. But now several California cities passed their own bans, and the confusion annoys store managers. "This multiplicity of local laws prompted the California Grocers’ Association, which counts retailers like Safeway, Trader Joe’s, Costco, Whole Foods and 7-Eleven among its members, to seek the kind of uniformity the Brownley bill offered. The American Chemistry Council, however, remains opposed. “The last thing California consumers need right now is to have what amounts to a $1 billion tax added to their grocery bills,” the group’s senior director, Tim Shestek, said in a statement. He added, “It’s astounding to think the Legislature is seriously considering creating a new $1 million bureaucracy to monitor how people choose to pack their groceries."' David Harsanyi of the Denver Post says that the ban is utterly pointless. “Plastic bags account for under 1 percent of our refuse. So it's not that big a deal to begin with. But more than that, in places where they do ban plastic bags, we find that people start buying more plastic bags. People need some sort of bag.” Right. An Irish garbage bag manufacturer said after a tax on grocery store bags went into effect: “We’ve experienced a growth [in sales] of 300-400%. It’s been phenomenal. You can trace it back to when the bag levy came in.” The Times story says: “Plastic bags are associated with litter, ocean-borne waste and harm to marine mammals that ingest them or become entangled in them…” In fact, the idea that many marine mammals die from plastic bags comes from a misinterpretation of a 23-year-old Canadian study that didn’t even mention plastic bags. The author of a 1997 study on the subject said: “The impact of bags on whales, dolphins, porpoises and seals ranges from nil for most species to very minor for perhaps a few species. For birds, plastic bags are not a problem either." Someday, the world will cite California as a role model for self-destruction. Today, however, environmental correctness is powerful: "China and Bangladesh already have plastic bag bans in place, and the United Nations has called for the bans to go global." (John Stossel)
FP Letters: U.S. foundations fund Canada’s greens Re: Horror Borealis, Peter Foster, May 21 Peter Foster noted recently that foreign funding has become the invisible hand in environmental campaigns to reform our resource-based industries. I have seen this first hand, both as a forester and as an elected official in a resource-dependent area of coastal British Columbia. Forestry, mining, energy and aquaculture have all been targeted by Canadian environmental organizations, but the extent to which some of these campaigns are funded by foreign money has only recently begun to emerge. With about $20-billion in assets, a handful of U.S. foundations give out about $1.2-billion in grants every year. Over the past decade these foundations have pumped over $100-million into the environmental movement in B.C. Canadian environmental organizations justify this arrangement by calling it foreign investment in Canada. Some Canadian environmental groups have become largely dependent on these U.S. donors. The result is that the voices of small rural communities and organizations can be drowned out by paid operatives of Canadian-based organizations that are tapping into the deep pockets of American foundations. The concern that I share with many others is that this foreign investment is not fully transparent.
Activist organizations have long sought to impose European-style regulations based on “the precautionary principle” as the law of the land in the United States. Simply
put, this rule would give regulators carte blanche to use any controversy, no matter how specious, to ban products. Activists especially want to import EU-style bans on
genetically modified crops, pesticides and other technologies that are integral parts of many of today’s farming operations. And they are increasingly finding allies within
Congress and the regulatory agencies who want to follow their lead.
Time to diversify your salmon portfolio: study VANCOUVER, June 2 - Efforts to protect salmon on North America's Pacific coast could take a lesson from investors who hold diversified stock portfolios, according to a study
published on Wednesday.
Aquatic Life Declines at Early Stages of Urban Development The number of native fish and aquatic insects, especially those that are pollution sensitive, declines in urban and suburban streams at low levels of development — levels
often considered protective for stream communities, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey.
FBI Crime Stats Show an Armed Public Is a Safer Public As gun sales have skyrocketed since 2005, violent crime has dropped precipitously during the same period.
Obama pushes Kerry's climate bill WASHINGTON – In an indication that Democrats could renew their push for climate change legislation this year, President Obama this afternoon said he would attempt to round
up votes for legislation filed by Senator John Kerry.
Thank You CBD: Another Reason to Nix EPA Endangerment Finding by Marlo Lewis Twice during the past six months, the eco-litigators at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) have underscored the political necessity for Congress to overturn EPA’s endangerment finding. Yes, that is very far from CBD’s intention. CBD is a fervent defender of the endangerment finding, the December 2009 rulemaking in which EPA concluded that greenhouse emissions endanger public health and welfare. The endangerment finding compels EPA to establish greenhouse gas emission standards for new motor vehicles, which in turn makes carbon dioxide (CO2) a “regulated air pollutant” under the Clean Air Act, which in turn makes ”major” stationary sources of CO2 ”subject to regulation” under the Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program and Title V operating permits program. CBD must be thrilled by the endangerment finding and the regulatory cascade it has… Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
EPW POLICY BEAT: THE FAILURE OF AB 32 Flanked by "national and international dignitaries," Gov. Schwarzenegger signed AB 32, California's landmark
global warming law, in September 2006. He said the law is "something we owe our children and grandchildren." For those who "challenged whether AB 32
is good for businesses," the Governor said: "I say unquestionably it is good for businesses." And not just for "large, well-established
businesses," but "small businesses that will harness their entrepreneurial spirit to help us achieve our climate goals."
As Taylor explained, jobs and businesses will flee the state because of "economic leakage," that is, they will move to states that actually encourage jobs and businesses to grow and expand. That's something AB 32 won't do. As California is too painfully aware, it "directly competes with other states and nations, and economic activity can be fairly mobile over time across borders in today's modern economy." In other words, businesses will be voting with their feet. (Inhofe EPW Press Blog)
Cal Thomas: Sinking 'climate change' Three modern myths have been sold to the American people: the promise of a transparent administration (President Obama); the promise of a more ethical Congress (Speaker
Pelosi); and the myth of "global warming," or climate change.
Environment: The Royal Society of Britain is rewriting its official position on global warming. We'd say the consensus that man is causing the planet to heat is cracking, but there never was a consensus in the first place. (IBD)
Pacific islands growing not shrinking, says old study This time, somebody's noticed
Anthony commented yesterday on the question of atolls and sea level rise here, and I had previously written on the subject in my post “Floating Islands“. However, Anthony referenced a paper which was incorrectly linked by New Scientist. So I thought I’d provide some more information on the actual study, entitled “The dynamic response of reef islands to sea level rise: evidence from multi-decadal analysis of island change in the central pacific”, by Arthur Webb and Paul Kench. One of the ironies of the new paper involves the atoll of Amatuku in the island nation of Tuvalu. Amatuku became the first poster child of “drowning atolls” due to an article in the July/August 2003 issue of Sierra Magazine, the magazine of the Sierra Club. The article was entitled “High Tide in Tuvalu”, with the sub-title “In the tropical Pacific, climate change threatens to create a real-life Atlantis.” Here’s a recent photo of “Atlantis”: Figure 1. Photo taken in the South Pacific nation of Tuvalu (8°S, 179°E), showing Amatuku Atoll and the abandoned causeway. PHOTO SOURCE In the Sierra Magazine article the author described the terrifying effects of “global warming” on Amatuku Atoll, site of the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute:
YIKES! Be very afraid. So what is the irony in the new study? Continue reading (WUWT)
Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up, Jun. 3rd 2010 The WWF wants Canadian hippies to pin car keys on their shirts to show support for alternative transport, polar bears need a new press agent and NASA has more problems than Apollo 13 had extra holes. (Daily Bayonet)
George Monbiot has written the most extraordinary review of the book I'm currently reading - Matt Ridley's Rational Optimist. I'm not sure I've ever read such a bilious review of a book before, and certainly few that have been devoted quite so much space to ad hominems. If anything, Monbiot comes over as slightly deranged. Ridley has nevertheless posted a polite and detailed rebuttal here (James Delingpole weighs in here). But despite appearing to be the rantings of a lunatic, Monbiot's is still an interesting piece - mainly for what it leaves out. Click to read more ... (Bishop Hill)
This should be good for a major spat: Monckton takes scientist to brink of madness at climate change talk An angry professor who listened to Monckton's speech at a US university demolishes the wild claims made by the climate denier (The Guardian)
IPCC Obsession With Temperature Distorts Climate Change Science Several factors prove the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and all those pushing global warming or climate change have a political agenda. They include those
items ignored, glossed over, or deliberately misrepresented: projections are consistently wrong: the science has not advanced, a 2007 paper in Science by Roe and Baker
concludes; “The envelope of uncertainty in climate projections has not narrowed appreciably over the past 30 years, despite tremendous increases in computing power, in
observations, and in the number of scientists studying the problem:” and claims of impending disasters that simply do not make scientific sense.
RSS AMSU: May 2010 cooler than May 1998 RSS AMSU (OK, I will be adding "a" for "advanced" before the "microwave sounding unit") has defended the title of the fastest source of the global monthly temperature data and their May figures are out: With +0.588 °C of the global monthly anomaly which matches February 2010 and beats April 2010 but is smaller than January and March 2010, it was the second warmest May in the last 31 years after May 1998 when the anomaly was 0.668 °C, i.e. 0.08 °C warmer than this year. You may often hear that we're living in the hottest days, weeks, and months ever. But the RSS data contradict this claim. The first five months of 1998 and those of 2010 had these anomalies in °C: » Don't Stop Reading » (The Reference Frame)
The Arctic doesn't amplify global temperature swings In the previous posting about the RSS AMSU temperatures from May 2010, I have made one obvious observation explicit. If you look at the you will notice that the month-on-month variations of the temperatures in the first column with temperatures - namely the global mean temperature anomaly - are much smaller than the variations in the other columns, especially the fifth (Northern) and sixth (Southern) polar temperature columns. It is often said that the temperature changes in the polar regions are more pronounced than they are in other regions. But is it true? I made a comment - a guess - that the main reason why the first column is changing much less violently is simply that it describes a larger area of the Earth's surface, namely almost the whole world, and the local fluctuations are therefore averaged out more accurately. » Don't Stop Reading » (The Reference Frame)
Wasted watts: Are we heating the Earth too much – with heat? Guest post by Ron House As readers will know, I have been thinking about the hullabaloo about CO2 and global warming and I quickly concluded that CO2 is no threat, won’t do any significant warming (which would be good anyway), and is in fact 100% good for the planet. But someone said to me, if CO2 is no danger, that doesn’t mean that humans are not causing a danger in some other way. Of course I agreed with this, because there are lots of things humans are doing wrongly and thereby causing terrible damage to our world (and the CO2 storm in a teacup is distracting us all from fixing those real problems). My friend then went on, however, to propose that the danger was still global warming and that the mechanism was, instead of CO2 greenhouse warming, the mere fact that human technology gives off heat. All the power used by all the machines and transport and so on eventually ends up as waste heat. Maybe that is in itself enough to cause us serious warming trouble? So I did some calculations. Continue reading (WUWT)
Bad idea... Ambitious plans see Scottish gas pipes used to pump undersea ALMOST 200 miles of Scotland's gas pipeline network will be converted to transport carbon dioxide from power stations so it can be stored beneath the North Sea under plans
by National Grid.
Uh-oh... Spill panel may look at energy needs The new presidential commission investigating the Gulf oil spill will include two experts who have been active on the subject of global warming, including one who wrote just
last month that the country should redouble efforts to lessen its dependence on oil, The Associated Press has learned.
About as wrongheaded as it gets, see following item: Reckoning in the Gulf The criminal and civil investigations announced by the Justice Department this week into the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are clearly necessary. (NYT)
How Washington Just Worsened the Gulf Oil Spill President Obama made BP’s problem worse, and in so doing has worsened the problems facing not only the administration but also the unfortunate residents of the Gulf of
Mexico.
The Gulf’s well of political woe June 3, 2010 – 6:41 pm This disaster demonstrates how little actual control government has in a complex modern world The BP Gulf blowout is now the greatest show on earth; part ultimate reality TV, part eco-horror movie, part corporate crucifixion. It is being used to feed a plethora of U.S. political agendas, from simple pre-election grandstanding, through the moral crusade for “clean” energy, to the ongoing battle against free-market capitalism. Whatever mistakes BP may have made — and that assessment awaits a thorough inquiry — the company is being served up as a scapegoat for extensive anti-corporate feeling, even though that sentiment is rooted primarily in bank and auto industry bailouts. BP and its chief executive, Tony Hayward, continue to be pilloried and threatened legally even as they struggle to contain a disastrous accident in unprecedentedly challenging circumstances (After its “cut and cap” operation was held up by a jammed saw, BP yesterday sheared off the spewing pipe on the way to installing a lead-weighted cap to collect the oil.)
Under Pressure to Block Oil, A Rush To Dubious Projects In response to the widening disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, government officials have approved a plan to intercept the oil by building a 45-mile sand berm. But scientists fear the project is a costly boondoggle that will inflict further environmental damage and do little to keep oil off the coast. (Rob Young, e360)
Oil Companies Weigh Strategies to Fend Off Tougher Regulations WASHINGTON — When the Obama administration imposed new restrictions last week on offshore drilling in the wake of the BP oil spill, officials carved out an exemption that
received little public attention: Companies working in shallow waters, unlike deep-sea operators like BP, could again begin drilling for oil and gas.
Washington Post Exposes BP ties to Eco-Groups, Other Media Ignore Controversy Nature Conservancy and other left-wing environmental organizations accepted millions from oil giant, broadcast networks silent. ( Julia A. Seymour, Business & Media Institute)
New investments in oil and gas are already taxed more heavily than are other industries By Jack M. Mintz As BP’s well continues to spill oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the anger at the petroleum industry won’t likely be capped any time soon. Not only deep drilling will be questioned, but also many other policies affecting the industry. One does not have to look far. On the chopping block at the G20 level are “fossil fuel subsidies,” which are viewed as promoting excessive development of “old” energy sources. The tax-starved U.S. and EU are already on record as wanting to raise producer levies. Australia has announced new royalties on oil, gas and mining activities, creating an uproar, with promises by the industry to move investments elsewhere. A leaked Finance Canada memo last week raises the possible curtailment of corporate tax write-offs for exploration, development and flow-through shares. Again, the subsidy issue is at the heart. In the new world of clean energy, tax subsidies for wind, solar and bio-diesel seem perfectly acceptable, no matter their size or effectiveness. Fossil fuels are another matter, even if more than 80% of energy comes from these sources. Read More (Financial Post)
Deja Vu: In a Carteresque speech Wednesday, the president said we should tax our way out of despondency and dependence on fossil fuels. The American dream isn't slipping away. It's being stolen by big government. (IBD)
President Obama keeps trying to make our electric bills skyrocket. Now he’s seized on the BP fiasco as an excuse to do it. According to Obama, the Gulf of Mexico gusher proves we need billions more to subsidize green energy. That was the President’s claim in his big Pittsburgh speech. He didn’t tell the audience about his previous admission that electric bills will “skyrocket” under his plan. Or that our government continues to block access to immense onshore oil and gas reserves that don’t require the risks of deep-sea drilling. Obama’s exact words in 2008 were, “under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket”. Converting fossil fuel plants, he said, “will cost money; they will pass that money on to consumers.” Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Impoverished SE Europeans turn to wood for heating Rising electricity prices are increasing the use of wood for heating in South Eastern Europe to alarming levels, posing a serious threat to health and the environment,
experts warned.
Paul Gipe on Wind’s Ecological Problems Circa 1995: Worth Another Look? by Robert Bradley Jr.
What happened to environmental criticism of earth-scaring renewable energy? Such criticism emerged in the 1980s but was squashed by Big Environmentalism, as it turns out. Never mind the growing grassroots opposition to wind on environmental grounds. Never mind that firming intermittent wind removes most or all of its emission reduction, as shown by Kent Hawkins at MasterResource. Never mind the inconvenient facts, such as Enron rescuing the U.S. wind industry or the well-document ‘avian mortality’ issue. And never mind the hard questions that even wind-advocate Paul Gipe posed in his 1995 book, Wind Energy Comes of Age (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995). And so there is the joke:
Think about it: industrial wind parks are noisy, intrusive, cement-and-steel intensive, require service roads in the wilds, and must be shadowed by inefficiently-run fossil-fuel generation. And did we say that wind in more expensive than other forms of electric generation that provide non-intermittent power? Remembering Some Hard Questions At least some mainstream environmentalists were open to the problems of wind back in the mid-1990s. Stated Chris Flavin of World Watch Institute in his foreword to Gipe’s book:
Gipe: ‘Avian Mortality’ Problem Let’s start with the so-called avian mortality problem of windpower: [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Noisy Offshore Wind Park Scares Off Porpoises They might produce renewable energy, but offshore wind farms are a scourge for porpoises. Researchers have found that construction noise at a turbine site off the German
coast has scared away the marine mammals, who depend on their acute hearing. A "bubble curtain" could protect the sensitive cetaceans from future stress.
Driverless Cars — You Heard It Here First Posted by David Boaz Not five months after Randal O’Toole discussed the idea of safe, efficient, driverless cars in his book Gridlock: Why We’re Stuck in Traffic and What to Do about It and in this full-page Wall Street Journal essay — but 71 years after Norman Bel Geddes first imagined the idea at the New York World’s Fair of 1939 — the Washington Post (in an article picked up from the New Scientist) and Scripps-Howard columnist Dale McFeatters (in the New York Post and elsewhere) are writing about the benefits of such advanced technology. As the Post puts it,
Or as O’Toole had put it in the Wall Street Journal,
Stay tuned to the Cato Institute for more ahead-of-the-curve ideas. (Cato at liberty)
Side Effects: Obamacare Creates a Costly Drop in Employer Health Coverage The President repeatedly promised that if you liked your health plan, you would be able to keep it. Nothing would change. Fat chance. In fact, millions of Americans of Americans will lose or be transitioned out of their existing employer based health insurance. The official Actuary at HHS- who doesn’t speak for the Administration- said it would be 14 million. But a new report by former Director of the Congressional Budget Office Douglas Holtz-Eakin predicts it could be as high as 35 million. That kind of disruption comes at a high price: It’ll cost taxpayers nearly $1 trillion more than previously estimated. Why? Because Obamacare calls for lavish subsidies to help low- and middle-income Americans buy health insurance. Indeed, households earning up to four times the federal poverty level are eligible for subsidies. According to 2008 Census data, some 127 million Americans would qualify. Yet the official CBO analysis of Obamacare estimated only 19 million would get subsidies. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Morning Bell: Obamacare’s True Costs Coming to Light Remember how President Barack Obama promised that his health care plan would reduce the deficit and put us on a path towards fiscal responsibility? Remember how Congress kept gaming the system to come up with the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score that could justify those claims? Well, now that Obamacare has become (hopefully only temporarily) the law of the land, the CBO is singing a slightly different tune. Last Friday CBO Director Doug Elmendorf wrote on his blog:
Continue reading... (The Foundry)
Astronomer Royal Martin Rees decries the tendency for debates to be run by 'celebrities and newspaper people,' writes Elisabeth Mahoney (The Guardian)
June 2, 2010 – 7:07 pm Junk-science battle over BPA continues, despite evidence of safety Health Canada just released its latest findings in the never-ending saga of the chemical scare over Bisphenol-A. BPA, as it is known, is used in the production of a material used to coat the interior of food and beverage cans to protect food from contamination from metal. Using the latest technology, Health Canada conducted analyses of 78 canned food products, searching for parts per billion of BPA. Readers will be happy to learn here — since they are unlikely to read it anywhere else — that Health Canada found the minuscule levels of BPA in cans of tuna, soup, tomato paste and other products “do not represent a human health concern.” All of which will do nothing to put the global chemophobia activist community off its junk-science campaign against BPA. Just the other week, two researchers at the University of North Carolina and British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University claimed to have evidence that the daughters of women exposed to BPA were more likely to show aggressive and hyperactive behaviours as two-year-olds. Read More (Financial Post)
Oh no! They're all wearing "toxic" suits to protect themselves from Toxic America We've heard of artistic license, but this is ridiculous. In CNN's promo for its "Toxic
America" special investigation, everyone shown in the video is wearing a HazMat suit, to keep them safe. Presumably, this is to underscore the allegedly toxic nature of
our environment.
Hmm... Caffeine addicts get no real perk from morning cup LONDON - Caffeine addiction is such a downer that regular coffee drinkers may get no real pick-me-up from their morning cup, according to a study by British scientists
released Wednesday.
Study confirms link between migraines and stroke NEW YORK - People who suffer migraines are about twice as likely as people without the painful headaches to suffer a stroke caused by a blood clot, a new research review
finds.
In schizophrenia, MDs should target pot use: study NEW YORK - Smoking pot may be linked to worsening schizophrenia, according to a new study.
The Green Torpedoes That Sank the National Fishing Fleet Walter Starck
African mining may be driving TB epidemic: study LONDON - Poor living and working conditions for miners of gold, diamonds and other precious metals have contributed significantly to tuberculosis (TB) epidemics across
Africa, scientists said on Tuesday.
Military develops multi-purpose 'green' decontaminants for terrorist attack sites Chemists with the United States military have developed a set of ultra-strength cleaners that could be used in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. The new formulas are
tough enough to get rid of nerve gas, mustard gas, radioactive isotopes, and anthrax. But they are also non-toxic, based on ingredients found in foods, cosmetics, and other
consumer products. A detailed evaluation of the cleansers appears in ACS' Industrial Engineering and Chemistry Research, a bi-monthly journal.
Chicxulub Redux: A Lesson In How Science Works Recently this site posted an article about the extinction event 65.5 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period. That extinction coincided with a large asteroid impact at Chicxulub, Mexico, and occurred within the time of Deccan flood basalt volcanism in India. A new review article by 41 scientists, published in the March 5, 2010, edition of Science, was cited that summarized what science thinks it knows about the extinction. That article reinforced the single cause asteroid impact extinction scenario. Now, in an excellent example of how the scientific process works, and why scientific consensus is such a bogus term, the May 21 issue of Science has published a number of letters that take exception to the previous article's conclusions. The controversy over what killed the dinosaurs has raged among paleontologists for three decades. As previously reported, the asteriod impact theory seems to have gained the upper hand recently, though there are compeeting theories constantly arising (see “Chicxulub Resurgent” and “Shiva The Dinosaur Killer,” respectively). In the Science review article “The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary,” Peter Schulte and 40 colleagues from from 33 institutions and universities, put forward a comprehensive review of the evidence surrounding the disappearance of the dinosaurs. Their conclusion: “The correlation between impact-derived ejecta and paleontologically defined extinctions at multiple locations around the globe leads us to conclude that the Chicxulub impact triggered the mass extinction that marks the boundary between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras ~65.5 million years ago.” More succinctly, the asteroid did it. While this may sound like the fabled “scientific consensus” has been reached, the article instead has triggered a firestorm. In a letter, entitled “Cretaceous Extinctions: Multiple Causes,” J. David Archibald and 28 colleagues from 22 different institutions have taken strong exception to the conclusions stated by Schulte et al. Here is the first paragraph of their letter:
The letter signatories clearly come down on the side of the multiple causes theory, or as Douglas Erwin puts it, the “Murder on the Orient Express” model. But what about the asteroid? Archibald et al state, “it is telling that in all other instances of mass extinction in the past 600 million years, no signature of an extraterrestrial impact has ever been reliably detected, despite extensive searches.” Sounds like fighting words to me. But the fun is only getting started. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)
Stop Treating the Ocean Like a Public Bathroom Today the attention of environmentalists is on the oil spill (leak?) in the Gulf. But there is another, less-publicized, yet arguably more cataclysmic potential oceanic disaster: Overfishing threatens to destroy most of the world's fisheries. It’s the Tragedy of the Commons. Because no one owns the ocean, no one had any real incentive to limit the number of fish that they catch. Reason TV has a good take on that, titled: How to Save a Dying Ocean. It's proven difficult to save the gulf or save the whales, but we know how to save the fish: "Stop treating the ocean like a public bathroom," says Christopher Costello, a professor of natural resource economics at UC Santa Barbara. (John Stossel)
Why was a sociologist on the panel to start with? Academic resigns from FSA group over GM A leading academic has resigned from the Government’s food watchdog in protest at the use of taxpayer's money to promote pro-GM 'propaganda'.
Second Amendment: Chicago is deciding whether to prosecute a great-grandfather and Korean War veteran under its handgun ban. He refused to be a victim, and now there's one
less armed thug roaming the streets. What's the problem?
What? Nasa analysis showing record global warming undermines the sceptics The global temperature has risen to a record for a 12-month period, according to Nasa.
Global Temperature Is Warmest on Record, NASA’s Hansen Says: Reality Check Rebuttal by Icecap (.pdf, should open in Google doc viewer).
Thursday, 03 June 2010 02:34 Dr. David Whitehouse Today’s Times says, “Nasa analysis showing record global warming undermines the skeptics.” However, a closer look at the information which the Times bases its headline on shows that a combination of selective memory and scientific spin play a large role in arriving at it. The conclusion is based on a new paper written by James Hansen and submitted to Reviews of Geophysics. The paper released by Hansen has not been peer reviewed, and he admits that some of the newsworthy comments it contains may not make it past the referees. Hansen claims that, according to his Gisstemp database, the year from April 2009 to April 2010 has a temperature anomaly of 0.65 deg C (based on a 1951 – 1980 average) making it the warmest year since modern records began. It is a fractionally warmer than 2005 he says, although an important point to be made is that statistically speaking, taking into account the error of measurement and the scatter of previous datapoints, it is not a significant increase. The Nasa study said: “We conclude that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20 deg C per decade that began in the late 1970s.” This is a selective use of a trend line that joins a datapoint in the late 1970’s with the most recent one ignoring the details in the data inbetween. The fact is that one could have taken a datapoint a decade ago and tied it to the same point in the late 1970’s and deduced an even greater rise in temperature per decade. So another way of describing the data is that the rate of increase has actually declined. Another point to be made is that an increase of 0.2 deg C per decade, if it is real and sustained, is 2.0 deg C per century, an increase not that unprecedented in the climatic record of the past 10,000 years, and substantially less than the widespread predictions of a higher increase. In the Times article, the Met Office in the form of Vicky Pope, said that their data showed that the past year was “just below” the 12-month record achieved in 1998. Remember, 2009 annual temperature was, according to the Met Office, statistically indistinguishable from every year between 2001–2008. Vicky Pope then says that Nasa might be right because the Met Office had underestimated the recent warming detected in the Arctic! There are few weather stations in the Arctic and the Met Office, unlike Nasa, does not extrapolate where there are no actual temperature readings. It is curious to hear this given the criticism that Met Office scientists have expressed in the past about the way the Gisstemp dataset is pieced together this way! Vicky Pope does say however that, “the Met Office continues to predict that 2010 is more likely than not to be the warmest calendar year on record, beating the 1998 record.” This is also a curious statement since she adds that Met Office analysis showed that the four months to the end of April were probably the third warmest for that time of year. In only the past few weeks however the Met Office has been saying something different. In the Sunday Times of May 23rd Vicky Pope says that 2010 could be the hottest year on record due to the current El Nino. She also says that the 2010 January – April temperature was the seventh warmest on record meaning that out of the past ten years (allowing for the 1998 El Nino) most of them have been warmer during the January – April period, though not statistically so. In the Sunday Times article Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, adds what is missing from the article mentioned earlier: “We have seen rapid warming recently, but it is an example of natural variation that is associated with changes in the Pacific rather than climate change.” In the Times article poor journalism is compounded with scientific spin from James Hansen’s article to give a misleading impression about the state of the science and what the data actually shows. It will be interesting to see if 2010 breaks any records in the Gisstemp or Met Office datasets. If it does the next question to ask would be, is it statistically significant as one would expect the occasional high point due to errors of measurements causing measured datapoints being scattered around a constant mean (the case post 2001). It would be highly misleading and scientifically fraudulent to look at one datapoint that is higher than the rest yet within the error bars of the previous years and say, “look, a record.” This will not undermine the skeptics but science itself. (GWPF)
The National Academy Lays a $6-Million Egg June 2nd, 2010 The report of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences [Advancing the Science of Climate Change, May 2010] claims that the climate is warming and that the cause is human. http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/05/three-academy-reports-urge-clima.html?etoc The first claim of this federally funded $6-million exercise is meaningless and trivial, the second claim is almost surely wrong. Their recommendation is that the United States should put a price on carbon to staunch emissions of CO2; it is pointless, counterproductive, and very costly.. The climate certainly has warmed considerably since 10,000 years ago (the end of the last Ice Age) — and much less since 1850, the end of the Little Ice Age. No one disputes these facts. But the climate has not warmed during the past decade — in spite of the steady rise in human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. According to a BBC interview of Dr Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (CRU-UEA, of Climategate fame), there has been no warming trend since 1995. Read the rest of this entry » (SPPI Blog)
Nasa scientist James Hansen condemns attacks from 'politicised' media Climatologist also calls from more openness from researchers because data are 'too useful' to be kept 'under wraps' ... Yes, to a certain degree the messengers have conspired to shoot themselves in the foot of late, but what Hansen and his colleagues are now urgently trying to do is reboot the climate debate and start afresh. The message seems to be: if it means going back to basics and starting from the beginning all over again, then so be it. (Leo Hickman, The Guardian)
Bob Ward is on a roll. Today he has an article in New Scientist in which he gives us his professional opinion as a PR man on how climatology can save itself. This is the bit I found interesting:
I praised Bob yesterday for his call for openness and I'm going to praise him again here for making clear that he doesn't see openness as a limited thing that should apply only to the Royal Society. My one concern here would be the words "for instance". That clearly implies Bob recognises that sceptics have valid criticisms beyond the need for transparency, but the question is, which ones does he think are kosher? Later in the same piece he says this:
...and again, it's hard to disagree. But arguments based on ideology are a problem from a sceptic perspective too. Can those on the other side let go of the Hockey Stick and the absurd argument that its dramatic shape has been replicated by other studies (conveniently overlooking the flawed ingredients that are behind them)? We can only hope. The paleo studies are mostly rotten. We just need someone to admit it. (Bishop Hill)
Infantile professor pronounces debate “infantile” The Age — formerly a decent newspaper — never fails to take an opportunity to parrot PR for Team AGW. Last week they gave a free shot to Will Steffen, Executive Director, ANU Climate Change Institute. Climate debate ‘almost infantile’ (The Age, ADAM MORTON, May 25, 2010)
It takes a tax-payer funded Pro-fessor to equate AGW to gravity. It must have taken years of education to be able to issue pronouncements like this eh? If Australian taxpayers were hoping to get a bit more than just bluster and name-calling from certain public servants, they’re bound to be asking for their money back soon. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the existence of gravity is proven each day you don’t get flung off the planet when you get out of bed. We can measure gravity to 4 significant digits, but our value for climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide varies from 0 to 10. Pick a number. We can’t even get one significant digit fixed. Quantifying gravity involves dropping a rock with a clock and a ruler. Quantifying carbon’s effect on climate change involves understanding cloud-formation, ice sheet changes, evaporation, humidity levels in air 8000 m above Singapore, and ocean currents at the bottom of the endless abyss that we can’t even measure.
Is it political? Heck No. It’s not about managing our economy, assessing risks, choosing between different courses of action… err… it’s pure science. Prof Steffen has modeled our future, there’s no need to involve the economists-consumers-engineers-investors-medical-experts-or those pesky kids we’re supposedly saving-the-planet-for. Managing the country is pure science now; free speech and democracy-babble, who needs it! More » (Jo Nova)
The Death Spiral for Climate Alarmism Continues by Kenneth P. Green
As I have written in a previous post, the trend toward abject panic over climate change seems to have reversed course. For all intents and purposes, climate alarmism – which I define as the reflexive tendency to assume worst-case scenarios generated by climate models are automatically true (and to enact public policy based on that belief) – is locked into a death spiral. The public policy implication is profound: substituting adaptation and wealth creating strategies for tears-in-the-ocean mitigation policies in the U.S. and abroad. On the political front: The IPCC’s reputation as a serious scientific institution continues to hemorrhage as a nearly endless string of errors and/or bad practices relating to the Fourth Assessment Report come to light.
Internationally, things are not much better for the alarmists. The negotiations in Copenhagen were a complete shambles, resulting only in a non-binding, let’s-meet-again memorandum that the various participating countries “recognized” having seen. Greenpeace activist, and Independent Commentator Joss Garman characterized the “Copenhagen Accord” thus:
In the EU, the vaunted European Trading System continues to come apart at the seams. According to James Kanter at the NYT:
And the EU is backing away from previous plans to tighten its carbon reduction targets. According to Greenwire, [Read more →] (MasterResource)
Idiot: Sen. Lugar To Propose Climate Bill Alternative A senior Republican in the Senate next week will propose energy and climate legislation that aims to cut emissions of planet-warming gases, but with far lower goals than
President Barack Obama seeks.
UN climate talks face up to cash flow fears Can stalled climate negotiations get any worse?
ORNL sows seeds with new agricultural carbon accounting tool OAK RIDGE, Tenn., June 2, 2010 — Carbon dioxide emissions from agricultural activity in the United States can now be tracked with unprecedented resolution because of a
method developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Desperately seeking renewed support from the animal nutters: Eat less meat to save the planet - UN The world needs to change to a more vegetarian diet to stand a chance of tackling climate change, according to a major new United Nations report. (TDT)
Global Warming Plaintiffs Hoisted on Their Own Petard Posted by Ilya Shapiro We have reached a denouement of sorts in the “blame XYZ companies for causing global warming which caused Hurricane Katrina which damaged my property” lawsuit that I’ve previously discussed and in which Cato filed an amicus brief. When last I blogged about this, the Fifth Circuit had apparently lost its en banc quorum — a late judicial recusal left only 8 of 16 judges available to hear the appeal — and was figuring out what to do. Well, on Thursday the court issued an order determining that it lacked a quorum, but that the panel opinion — the one that allowed the tendentious causation claims to proceed — remained vacated. The money quote: “In sum, a court without a quorum cannot conduct judicial business. . . . Because neither this en banc court, nor the panel, can conduct further judicial business in this appeal, the Clerk is directed to dismiss the appeal.” This means that the district court opinion dismissing the suit stands, though plaintiffs are free to seek Supreme Court review. Not surprisingly, the three judges on the panel dissented from this order (which means that the order was decided by a 5-3 vote). The upshot of all this is that the plaintiffs ended up botching their strategy of suing companies whose shares are owned by Fifth Circuit judges. This clever legerdemain successfully removed seven judges, but that left a quorum of nine. Of course, had the late-recusing eighth, Jennifer Elrod — who would’ve been expected to rule against the plaintiffs – recused when the first seven did, the court could not have vacated the panel opinion in the first place. We’ll never know what happened after the court’s prior decision to grant rehearing that caused Judge Elrod to recuse, but at least we’re left with the second-best result: no strong decision from an important federal appellate court, but the reinstatment of the correct decision below. (Cato at liberty)
Hmm... Arctic Ice At Low Point Compared To Recent Geologic History COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Less ice covers the Arctic today than at any time in recent geologic history. That’s the conclusion of an international group of researchers, who have compiled the first comprehensive history of Arctic ice. For decades, scientists have strived to collect sediment cores from the difficult-to-access Arctic Ocean floor, to discover what the Arctic was like in the past. Their most recent goal: to bring a long-term perspective to the ice loss we see today. Now, in an upcoming issue of Quarternary Science Reviews, a team led by Ohio State University has re-examined the data from past and ongoing studies -- nearly 300 in all -- and combined them to form a big-picture view of the pole’s climate history stretching back millions of years. “The ice loss that we see today -- the ice loss that started in the early 20th Century and sped up during the last 30 years -- appears to be unmatched over at least the last few thousand years,” said Leonid Polyak, a research scientist at Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University. Polyak is lead author of the paper and a preceding report that he and his coauthors prepared for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. Satellites can provide detailed measures of how much ice is covering the pole right now, but sediment cores are like fossils of the ocean’s history, he explained. (Ohio State)
Nils Axel Morner and Don Easterbrook told them so. So did Willis, who had some very similar ideas. We’ve mentioned several times here on WUWT that the claims about sea level rise and sinking islands are overblown. For example, this idiotic publicity stunt by the Maldivian government, signing a legal declaration underwater, demonstrates just how far some people are willing to prostitute their victimhood for financial gain. The MO: You other countries warmed the earth, raising sea level which threatens our island. Pay up sucka! Yeah, well, that scam is now going the way of Nigerian email. From TV New Zealand: An Auckland University researcher has offered new hope to the myriad small island nations in the Pacific which have loudly complained their low-lying atolls will drown as global warming boosts sea levels. Geographer Associate Professor Paul Kench has measured 27 islands where local sea levels have risen 120mm – an average of 2mm a year – over the past 60 years, and found that just four had diminished in size. Working with Arthur Webb at the Fiji-based South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, Kench used historical aerial photographs and high-resolution satellite images to study changes in the land area of the islands. They found that the remaining 23 had either stayed the same or grown bigger, according to the research published in a scientific journal, Global and Planetary Change. Continue reading (WUWT)
What’s drowning is not Tuvalu but the alarmists Remember this great scare, which turned Tuvalu into the poster island of the global warming faith?
It was a scare whipped up by Al Gore, of course, in his Oscar-winning “documentary” An Inconvenient Truth:
Tuvalu amped up its victim status, which was its best chance of winning not just foreign aid but permission to settle in Western countries. So it’s Prime Minister in 2003 told the United Nations;
Whole institutions were devoted to preaching - especially to children - this scare that poor islanders were being drowned by our emissions:
Foregone conclusion is right. Professor Mohammed Dore, an environmental economist from Dore University, couldn’t wait for warming and declared Tuvalu uninhabited already, much to the surprise of its residents:
All of which culminated in this much-applauded tearful plea at the great warmist gathering at Copenhagen from Tuvalu’s delegate, Ian Fry, who wept for his tiny island country despite actually being an Australian National University student from Queanbeyan, 144km from any beach:
Naturally, Labor bought the scare completely, and in 2006 promised in its “Pacific climate change plan” to take in these “climate change refugees”:
Stop! Hold the scare right there. The farce has gone on long enough. Here’s the latest study, just in:
(Thanks to a dozen readers already.) UPDATE As for that terrible sea rise at Tuvalu, the Bureau of Meteorology can’t detect much to panic about from the South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project: UPDATE 2 Reader Mike D asks:
(Thanks to reader George.) (Andrew Bolt)
The loons will hate this: Organic Agriculture: A Solution to Global Warming? In 2008, the Rodale Institute—an organization dedicated to the promotion of organic agriculture—published a widely noted report entitled “Regenerative Organic Farming:
A Solution to Global Warming.” The takeaway was that organic agriculture, due to its reliance on biological rather than chemical methods, could substantially reduce carbon
emissions generated by the agricultural sector. Rodale predicted that if the world’s 3.5 billion acres of arable land were placed under organic production, 40 percent of
global carbon emissions would be immediately sequestered.
Atmospheric scientists start monthlong air sampling campaign Airplanes, ground instruments, and weather balloons to study effect of airborne particles on climate
Across the southeastern US, the nitrogen-fixing legume Pueraria montana, more commonly known as kudzu, has been an impossible to eradicate invader for decades. While its direct impact on native ecosystems is highly visible—a smothering green blanket that swallows up shrubs, trees and even houses—what is not as apparent is kudzu's effect on the atmosphere. Its spread has the potential to raise ozone levels by increasing nitric oxide (NO) emissions from soils by as much as 100%. Since NO is a potent greenhouse gas, the spread of the pesky vine could be a contributing factor to climate change. That's right: kudzu causes global warming! Kudzu, a member of the pea family, is a climbing, coiling, and trailing vine native to southern Japan and southeast China. Introduced from Japan into the United States in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, it was promoted as a forage crop and an ornamental plant. The green invader is certainly not all bad. It increases nitrogen in the soil via a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria and its deep taproots can transfer valuable minerals from the subsoil to the topsoil. Kudzu can be used as high quality forage for grazing animals. From 1935 to the early 1950s, the Soil Conservation Service encouraged farmers in the southeastern United States to plant kudzu to reduce soil erosion. Hot, humid summers, frequent rainfall, and temperate winters with few hard freezes make the southeastern US a perfect haven for kudzu. With no natural predators things were soon out of control, with the fast growing leafy vine seemingly covering everything in sight. This rapid growth soon earned it such nicknames as the “foot-a-night vine” and “the vine that ate the South.” Over a period of several years, Kudzu will kill trees by blocking the sunlight. For this and other reasons many would like to find ways to get rid of it. Kudzu was named a pest weed by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1953. Abandoned houses in Georgia taken over by kudzu. Photo: Jack Anthony. Now comes news, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), that kudzu may also be contributing to global warming. In their paper “Kudzu (Pueraria montana) invasion doubles emissions of nitric oxide and increases ozone pollution,” Jonathan E. Hickman et al. have identified kudzu as a major contributor to GHG emissions. How the ubiquitous green vine does this is a mater of soil biology:
I have previously commented on nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide (NO and NO2), generically referred to as nitrogen oxides (NOx), both potent destroyers of stratospheric ozone that derive primarily from surface nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. Nitrous oxide (N2O), also known as laughing gas, is emitted from soil fertilization, livestock manure, sewage treatment, combustion and some industrial processes, but NO from kudzu is a new twist. According to the paper, an observed doubling of NO emissions due to kudzu in Georgia suggests that the ongoing kudzu invasion could increase regional ozone concentrations as the plant continues to spread throughout its current range. The increase in NO emissions from soils invaded by kudzu occurs against a background of decreasing NO emissions nationally. Between 1990 and 2007, NOx emissions in the United States decreased by 33% , primarily due to reductions in emissions from highway vehicles and stationary fuel combustion. Kudzu has spread across the southeastern US. In the researchers' most extreme scenario, kudzu produces a 28% increase in soil NO emissions and a subsequent spike in ozone concentrations, relative to the scenario in which kudzu is not included. The areas most vulnerable to the increase in NO fluxes were parts of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee. In these areas, the frequency of high ozone episodes—defined as the number of days for which the daily maximum 8-h ozone levels exceed 70 ppb—increases by up to 7 days during the 3-month period. Instead of worrying about AGW, anthropogenic global warming, we should be concerned about KGW, kudzu global warming. Steps to eradicate the plant pest have been taken by the Agricultural Research service (ARS). It is estimated that kudzu spreads at the rate of 150,000 acres annually, easily outpacing the use of herbicide spraying and mowing, as well increasing the costs of these controls by $6 million annually. The city of Chattanooga, Tennessee has undertaken a trial program using goats and llamas that graze on the plant. As of 2007 the goats are grazing along the Missionary Ridge area in the east of the city. Even so, Kudzu is well established and is nothing if not tenacious. Some have even suggested turning kudzu into bioethanol, though the economics of doing so are questionable. The roots are by far the largest source of carbohydrate in the plant—up to 68 percent carbohydrate by dry weight. By comparison, the leaves and vines only contain a few percent. Researchers estimate that kudzu could produce 2.2 to 5.3 tons of carbohydrate per acre in much of the South, or about 270 gallons per acre of ethanol, which is comparable to the yield for corn of 210 to 320 gallons per acre. Unfortunately, kudzu roots grow deep, often more than six feet and often in hard to access places. According to a report published in Biomass and Bioenergy, about one-third of kudzu plants would be harvestable. If so, they calculate that harvesting kudzu could produce only about 8% of the 2006 US bioethanol supply, around 480 million US gallons per year. That sounds like a lot, but compared to the EIA estimated US gasoline consumption of 378 million gallons per day it is a rather paltry amount. It would seem that, even though NOx emissions have dropped in the US, nature is doing some GHG emitting of its own to compensate. The IPCC may find some solace in the fact that people were responsible for transplanting kudzu, and hence causing increased emission of greenhouse gases. This indirectly puts the blame for global warming back on humanity's shoulders, at least by warmist reckoning. But then, according to the climate change alarmists everything humans do harms the environment. I have a suggestion for all those climate change true believers out there: instead of blaming humanity for global warming, go uproot some kudzu and really fight climate change. Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical. (Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth)
Atlanta Thunderstorms by J. Marshall Shepherd There is a very informative communication by J. Marshall Shepard of the University of Georgia Department of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences with respect to urban effects on thunderstorm activity. He has summarized this finding in the communication below. Guest Post By J. Marshall Shepherd (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)
Millennial Climate Cycles Driven by Random Cloud Variations I’ve been having an e-mail discussion with another researcher who publishes on the subject of climate feedbacks, and who remains unconvinced of my ideas regarding the ability of clouds to cause climate change. Since I am using the simple forcing-feedback model as evidence of my claims, I thought I would show some model results for a 1,000 year integration period. What I want to demonstrate is one of the issues that is almost totally forgotten in the global warming debate: long-term climate changes can be caused by short-term random cloud variations. The main reason this counter-intuitive mechanism is possible is that the large heat capacity of the ocean retains a memory of past temperature change, and so it experiences a “random-walk” like behavior. It is not a true random walk because the temperature excursions from the average climate state are somewhat constrained by the temperature-dependent emission of infrared radiation to space. A 1,000 Year Model Run The temperature variability in this model experiment is entirely driven by a 1,000 year time series of monthly random numbers, which is then smoothed with a 30-year filter to mimic multi-decadal variability in cloud cover. I’ve run the model with a 700 m deep ocean, and strong negative feeedback (6 Watts per sq. meter of extra loss of energy to space per degree of warming, which is equivalent to only 0.5 deg. C of warming for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. This is what we observed in satellite data for month-to-month global average temperature variations.) The first plot below shows the resulting global average radiative imbalance, which is a combination of (1) the random cloud forcing and (2) the radiative feedback upon any temperature change from that forcing. Note that the standard deviation of these variations over the 1,000 year model integration is only one-half of one percent of the average rate at which solar energy is absorbed by the Earth, which is about 240 Watts per sq. meter. I also computed the average 10-year trends for all 10-year periods contained in the 1,000 year time series shown above, and got about the same value as NASA’s best radiation budget instrument (CERES) has observed from the Terra satellite for the ten-year period 2000 – 2010: about 1 Watt per sq. meter per decade. Thus, we have satellite evidence that the radiative imbalances seen above are not unrealistic. The second plot shows the resulting temperature changes over the 1,000 year model run. Note that even though the time scale of the forcing is relatively short — 30 year smoothed monthly random numbers — the 700 m ocean layer can experience much longer time scale temperature changes. In fact, if we think of this as the real temperature history for the last 1,000 years, we might even imagine a “Medieval Warm Period” 600 years before the end of the integration, with rapid global warming commencing in the last century. Hmmm…sounds vaguely familiar. The main point here is that random cloud variations in the climate system can cause climate change. You don’t need a change in solar irradiance, or any other external forcing mechanism. The above plots also illustrate the danger in comparing things like sunspot activity (and its presumed modulation of cloud cover) to long-term temperature changes. As you can see, the temperature variations in the second plot look nothing like the global energy imbalance variations in the first plot. This is for two reasons: (1) forcing (global radiative imbalance) due to cloud variations is related to the time rate of change of temperature….not to the temperature per se; and (2) the ocean’s “memory” of previous forcing leads to much longer time scale temperature behavior than the short-term cloud forcing might have suggested. The fact that climate change can be caused by seemingly random, short-term processes has been totally lost in the climate debate. I’m not sure why. Could it be that, if we were to admit the climate system can vary in unpredictable ways, there would be less room for our egos to cause climate change? (Roy W. Spencer)
The Spill: Since the oil started gushing in the Gulf, the White House response has struck most Americans as off-key at best, incompetent at worst. The reason is simple:
Politics, not reality, motivates this administration.
Obama Slips Up On Oil Spill Panel I dislike President Obama's style and substance. A whiner and left-wing ideologue, he is remarkably slow-witted when out of range of speechwriters and teleprompters. I'll
say one thing for him, though: He brings a sense of irony to government.
BP: A “Serial Environmental Criminal” With Close Ties To The Obama Administration by Hans Bader BP, which is responsible for the terrible oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, has a safety record infinitely worse than other oil companies, which make safety a priority in drilling for oil. ABC News reports that “BP ran up 760 ‘egregious, willful’ safety violations, while Sunoco and Conoco-Phillips each had eight, Citgo had two and Exxon had one comparable citation.” Exxon, the oil company most critical of global warming hysteria, had the best safety record. BP’s record is so bad that it has been described as a “serial environmental criminal.” While other companies have invested money in safety, BP has “invested heavily” in an environmentally-conscious advertising campaign that brands the company as “Beyond Petroleum,” and until recently spent money lobbying for the global-warming bill… Read the full story (Cooler Heads)
Guest Blogger: David Holt on the Costs of a Drilling Moratorium In the wake of the moratorium on offshore drilling projects that President Obama announced late last month, The New Orleans Times-Picayune has attempted to measure the cost of so much disruption to one of Louisiana’s core industries. The result? A conservative estimate – assuming a shutdown of just six months – suggests the moratorium could cost the state $2.97 billion and 7,590 jobs directly related to the oil industry. That is not counting all the other industries indirectly related to oil production and exploration. The story states that each job in the oil industry is believed to support four other non-industry jobs that provide products and services related to drilling. Of course, it’s also not measuring the impact to other Gulf states, namely Texas. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
We see signs that the Obama administration wants to use the disaster to shut down oil production even in the safest areas.
China tightens stranglehold on rare earth minerals China is to further tighten its stranglehold on the mining of rare earth metals essential for the manufacture of high-tech products from iPods to wind turbines and military
missiles.
No subsidies: Green car subsidies resisted The first batch of 40 Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric vehicles will arrive in Australia next month, but the Australian government is resisting industry pressure to offer
subsidies to buyers of zero emission vehicles.
Inconvenient Truth Department: Another Green Dream Turns Brown By Steven F. Hayward
Medical Care: Monday's headline from Reuters — "Soaring costs force Canada to reassess health model" — is a warning. In the not-too-distant future, the
headline will be used again, except "U.S." will replace "Canada."
Side Effects: HSAs an Endangered Species under Obamacare Why is there so much excessive—indeed, downright wasteful—spending in health care? One reason is the disconnection between patients’ wallets and their health care bills. Most Americans get health insurance through their employers. They neither witness nor control the flow of their dollars from employer to insurer to health care provider. Yes, those health care dollars are their compensation, just like wages. But with no visible “skin in the game,” they have little incentive to limit spending. Engaging patients in the cost of their own care is one way to motivate them to seek better value for the health-care dollar–good quality health care at a reasonable price. And consumer-driven health plans, such as health savings account (HSA) plans, do just that. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
French government acts to curb drugs bill PARIS - The French government will cut healthcare spending by an extra 600 million euros ($735 million) this year, including reducing drug prices by 100 million euros, to
meet its healthcare spending budget.
Do Liberals Suffer from Arrested Moral Development? What 10-year-olds and liberals have in common.
Gasp! Shock, horror! Cancer will kill 13.2 million a year by 2030: U.N. LONDON - Cancer will kill more than 13.2 million people a year by 2030, almost double the number who died from the disease in 2008, the United Nations' cancer research
agency said on Tuesday.
WHO experts meet to assess if flu pandemic over GENEVA - World Health Organisation expert advisors met on Tuesday to determine whether the H1N1 flu pandemic is fully over, or still circulating in the southern hemisphere
and therefore a global threat.
Sports okay for most kids with high blood pressure NEW YORK - Most children and teenagers with mildly elevated blood pressure can safely participate in sports, but those with more-serious high blood pressure need to get the
condition under control before they can take part in high-intensity sports, according to new recommendations.
Farm kids at lower allergy risk, even in their 70s NEW YORK - The anti-allergy effects of an agricultural upbringing persist well into old age, new research from Sweden shows.
As usual, intruding on society generally because a few dipsticks have no self control... Higher prices can curb binge drinking, says NHS watchdog A minimum price for alcohol, advertising bans and more rigorous screening for problem drinkers must be introduced to curb the nation’s binge culture, the NHS treatment
watchdog recommends today.
Hmm... Why do Environmental Groups Fail? Note:
This is a guest post by David Cherney, an Environmental Studies graduate student at the
University of Colorado. His dissertation is looking at the role of NGOs in the Yellowstone area. He also ran yesterday's Bolder Boulder in an unreasonably fast time. US environmental groups used to be funded largely by their members and wealthy individual supporters. They had only one goal: to prevent environmental destruction. Their funds were small, but they played a crucial role in saving vast tracts of wilderness and in pushing into law strict rules forbidding air and water pollution…. After decades of slowly creeping corporate entanglement, some of the biggest environmental groups have remade themselves in the image of their corporate backers: they are putting profit before planet. They are supporting a system that will lead to ecocide, yet where more revenue will run through their accounts, for a while, as the collapse occurs.His argument essentially rehashes Christine MacDonald’s 2008 book Green, Inc. An environmental insider reveals how a good cause has gone bad. Unfortunately for Hari (and MacDonald), the argument is flawed from the outset. Before we can begin to answer the question “why are many environmental NGOs ineffective?” we must first ask “what are environmental NGOs trying to achieve?” Hari believes environmental NGOs historically "had only one goal: to prevent environmental destruction." This is a patently false expectation. It has never been the case – and never will be the case – that environmental groups only care about preventing environmental destruction. MacDonald’s entire book is her coming to the realization that there are multiple goals and interests at play in environmental NGOs. Rather than rethink that the problem is a romanticized assumption that the environmental movement seeks a uniform goal, Hari and MacDonald place the blame big corporations for corrupting environmental groups. Yes, preventing environmental destruction is one goal of environmental NGOs. However, many environmental NGOs have other equally legitimate pursuits (e.g. social justice, public health, and dare I even suggest economic development for impoverished nations). Valid environmental goals are not constrained to tangible policy outcomes. Symbolic political victories are justifiable pursuits of environmental NGOs, as well as focusing on procedural goals (e.g. democratic principles versus authoritarian rule). It takes little imagination to understand how different legitimate goals might come into conflict with one another, forcing environmental groups to make difficult tradeoffs that may make us unhappy. Even if we were to operate under the false assumption that preventing environmental destruction was the only valid goal, we are still not free from conflict. Last year, the NYT ran an excellent article highlighting the battle between wildlife and climate changes advocates over competing priorities in environmental protection. What happens when a solar farm threatens an endangered species? Whose version of ‘environmental protection’ is more important? It is incredibly naive to think that simply altering the revenue sources will rectify the fact most (dare I say all) environmental groups are interested outcomes beyond preventing environmental destruction. Clearly, environmental NGOs taking money from a big corporation gives the 'true-environmental-believers' an excuse to rant why many groups are ineffective. There are instances where such critiques hold water. However, the reality is there are a multitude of reasons why environmental groups behave in ways we may not expect. Understanding that there are a number of legitimate goals just scratches the surface. The challenge is much more complex that simply following corporate money. (Roger Pielke Jr.)
Scottish national park chief raises prospect of water exports Chairman of Scottish tourism agency says abundant water resources could be sold to England if climate change pushes up cost and supply
After the oil spill: New research sheds light on coral susceptibility to environmental stress New research in the FASEB Journal shows how coral reefs cope with environmental stress such as 'extractive activity': Innate immunity defends the colony
EPA Endangerment Showdown: Should Congress Heed Russell Train’s Advice? by Marlo Lewis On June 10, the U.S. Senate will debate and vote on a resolution of disapproval (S.J.Res.26), sponsored by Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, to stop the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from ‘enacting’ controversial global warming policies through the regulatory back door. S.J.Res.26 would overturn the EPA’s endangerment finding, a December 2009 rulemaking in which the agency concluded that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. The endangerment finding is both trigger and precedent for sweeping policy changes Congress never approved. America could end up with a bundle of greenhouse gas regulations more costly and intrusive than any climate bill or treaty the Senate has declined to pass or ratify, yet without the people’s representatives ever voting on it. At a minimum, as former Virginia Gov. George Allen and I explain elsewhere, unless stopped, the EPA will be in a position to determine the stringency of fuel economy standards for the auto industry, set climate policy for the nation, and even amend the Clean Air Act — powers never delegated to the agency by Congress. S.J.Res.26 puts a simple question squarely before the Senate: Who shall make climate policy — lawmakers who must answer to the people at the ballot box or politically unaccountable bureaucrats, trial lawyers, and activist judges appointed for life? Precisely because S.J.Res.26 would restore constitutional discipline to climate policymaking, regulatory zealots are mounting smear campaigns against it. Climate Progress calls it “polluter crafted” (impossible, because the language and form of the resolution are fixed by the Congressional Review Act). MoveOn.Org claims the resolution will condemn many Americans to “smoke the equivalent of a pack a day just from breathing the air” (utter nonsense – just one cigarette delivers 12-27 times the daily dose of fine particulate matter that non-smokers get in cities with the most polluted air). Environmental Defense Action Fund says the resolution will give corporate polluters a “bailout” (also impossible, because S.J.Res.26 is not a tax or spending bill). Train Weighs In, Ignores Obvious, Knocks Down Straw Man A more sophisticated attack comes from Russell Train, who served as EPA Administrator under the Nixon and Ford Administrations (1973-1977). In a May 24 letter to Senate leaders, Train warns that S.J.Res.26 would “rollback Clean Air Act protections.” Not so! Yes, the resolution would “prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.” But from its inception in 1970 through the present day, EPA has not regulated greenhouse gas emissions, and its recently finalized motor vehicle emission standards do not take effect until 2011. Train confuses “rollback” with containment. The only thing S.J.Res.26 would roll back is EPA’s regulatory overreach. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
by David Archibald Edited extract: "Why did so many scientists get it wrong?" from David Archibald's book - The Past and Future of Climate: If the data and forecasts in this book are correct, then the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, the Royal Society in the United Kingdom, the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO in Australia are all wrong. How can this be? Firstly, there aren’t that many scientists involved in the IPCC deliberations. The inner core is possibly twenty souls. Secondly, they were untroubled by the necessity to concoct fraudulent data to get their desired results. The only unknown question regarding the IPCC scientists is “Did they actually believe in the global warming that they were promoting?” It turns out that they did, and possibly still do. That is shown by the Climategate emails released on 20th November, 2009. The Climategate emails are a selection of emails amongst members of the inner core plus minor characters. The fact that the IPCC scientists believed in the global warming they were promoting means that their morality at that level was better than expected, but it also means that they are a lot more stupid than expected. Nevertheless, their behaviour in promoting the notion of global warming using fraudulent statistics is reprehensible and hopefully they will be duly punished in this world or the next. The history of the global warming fraud has been detailed in a number of books published recently, including a number on the climategate emails alone. A good analysis of the emails can be found in a book entitled The Climategate Emails by John Costella, which can be downloaded from the Lavoisier Group website. (Quadrant)
We should watch the Royal Society very carefully It all started with a report by Roger Harrabin of all people. On Wednesday, under the headline ‘Society to review climate message’, the BBC website broke
the news that the Royal Society was to review its public statements on global warming, and that this had been brought about by what appears to be an uprising within its
ranks.
Bob Ward has an interesting letter in the Times, prompted by the rebellion of Royal Society fellows over the Society's statements on climate change. This is the intriguing bit:
Openness has long been a clarion call for sceptics, so Bob's intervention is most welcome. Let's hope that his enthusiasm for transparency extends to the availability of climatologists' data and code. (Bishop Hill)
Hmm... Al and Tipper Gore separate after 40-year marriage NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Al Gore once claimed his romance with wife Tipper inspired the novel "Love Story" and the couple shared an uncomfortably long kiss before
millions on the stage of the Democratic National Convention.
Harvard Physicist says Global Warming is Hysteria Mike Stopa has a PhD in Physics. He is a republican and is running for Congress against congressman Jim McGovern. Mike currently is a researcher at the Harvard Nano Technology center and teaches there.
by Barry Brill “Are We Feeling Warmer Yet”, a paper published in November 2009, pointed to the official NZ Met Office temperature records as showing that New Zealand experienced no warming during the twentieth century. Yet the NIWA “Seven-station Series” (SSS) – affected by numerous undisclosed adjustments – claimed a warming trend of approximately 1.0°C during the same period. See "Crisis in New Zealand Climatology" for further details. (Quadrant)
High Praise – I’m “insulted” in Parliament Mr OAKESHOTT, Federal Independent Member for Lyne (Port Macquarie NSW), on 27 May in the Australian Parliament, talked about the failure of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. He couldn’t criticize anything we skeptics have said, so he went for the evidence-free ad hominem (copied from the Hansard record of Parliament):
So I’m a smoking gun, a smelly rat, and a paid mercenary of undisclosed groups. Viv Forbes of Carbon Sense is too. I’m bowled over by the compliment. Is he really giving me and Viv the joint credit for the sweeping poll changes? (As if). I’ll just ask my PR department (me) to arrange with my cartoonist (me too) to throw together a parody of parliament, which the web-editor (me) can code into a page. All of us are delighted to be described as well organized. (It’s true we communicate like we are all in one head.) ** More » (Jo Nova)
The Year that Was: R.K.Pachauri’s Himalayan Blunder An account of how a retired geologist took apart the alarmist climate claims of a Nobel Prize winning organisation (Ashish K Mishra, Forbes India)
Southern California's public radio station, KPCC, and its syndicated program "Marketplace" will host a daylong
townhall Webcast next Wednesday to salve the wounded psyches of global warming paranoiacs everywhere. The symposium is entitled "Climate and Sustainability:
Moving By Degrees," and is "aimed at bringing together journalists and the public online and at Southern California Public Radio’s (SCPR) Crawford Family Forum
to decipher fact from fiction, to learn how our scientific understanding has evolved, and to understand where politics, science and business agree and diverge on how to create
a sustainable future."
What? Climate Change To Hurt Egypt Farming, Tourism Egypt's farming and tourism sectors could be hurt as climate change takes its toll on the country, fuelling food security concerns in what is already the world's largest
wheat importer, an environment official said.
Fifth Circuit Dismisses Comer v. Murphy Oil June 1st, 2010Source: Troutman/Sanders Advisory Fifth Circuit Dismisses Comer v. Murphy Oil — A Victory for Industry In Climate Change Tort Litigation? On May 28, 2010, in a startling decision in perhaps the most important and certainly the most topsy-turvy climate change tort case against the utility, chemical, and oil and gas industry, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit handed industry a victory by dismissing the appeal in Comer v. Murphy Oil. The decision follows a complex procedural path: a favorable district court decision for industry dismissing the case, a decision of a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit handing the plaintiffs a victory by reversing that dismissal, and an order of the full court en banc vacating that reversal and ordering further briefing and oral argument before the full court. Read the rest of this entry » (SPPI Blog)
Kind of, a bit, in places: Warmer climate makes Baltic more salty Science has long believed that a warmer climate will increase river runoff to the Baltic Sea, thus making the inland sea less salty. However, a new extensive study from the
University of Gothenburg reveals that the effect will probably be the opposite: climate change will reduce river runoff and increase salinity in the Baltic Sea.
The Microbe Factor and Its Role in Our Climate Future Within the planet’s oceans and soils are trillions of bacteria that store and release far more carbon dioxide than all of the Earth’s trees and plants. Now, scientists are attempting to understand how the world’s bacteria will influence — and be influenced by — a warming climate. (Carl Zimmer, e360)
FSU scientists use unique model to predict active 2010 hurricane season TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida State University scientists who have developed a unique computer model with a knack for predicting hurricanes with unprecedented accuracy are
forecasting an unusually active season this year.
Sunspots may predict hurricanes as well as global warming and cooling June 1, 2010 – 9:37 am Sunspots may have a more profound effect on Earth’s climate than previously understood, according to new research published in the scientific journal, Geophysical Research Letters, and presented to the American Meteorological Society. The research, by Robert Hodges and Jim Elsner of Florida State University, looked at the frequency of hurricanes and sunspots from 1851 to 2008 during the Sun’s 11-year cycles. During periods of low sunspot activity, the researchers discovered, the probability of three or more hurricanes hitting the United States increases dramatically. “With fewer sunspots, there’s less energy at the top of the atmosphere,” Elsner explained, making for a cooler atmosphere above the hurricane. This differential fuels atmospheric instability, propelling tropical storms into hurricanes. Sunspots have long been implicated in the global climate: During protracted periods of high sunspot activity, such as occurred in the Medieval Warm Period and the last century, global temperatures rose. During the low points in sunspot activity, such as in the Little Ice Age, temperatures declined. A warming or cooling globe in itself, however, does not seem to be a factor in hurricane activity, according to earlier research conducted at Florida State University by Chris Landsea, a former researcher with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Landsea was one of the first scientists associated with the UN panel to blow the whistle on the IPCC’s fraudulent claims. Financial Post
IPCC Side Ducks Out of Chicago Conference on Climate Change Gore-inspired strategy of hiding and name-calling continues to backfire
Britain’s Met Office warned that cities might become a lot warmer at night, which of course will kill old people:
According to the Met, the cause of hot city nights is a combination of global warming and the urban heat island effect. That would be the same urban heat island effect that the Met tried to disprove in 2004:
The lesson is simple, when skeptics point to the urban heat island effect, they are flawed and wrong. When the urban heat island effect can be used to prop up the global warming hoax, it is sound science. Any questions? (Daily Bayonet)
Tuesday, 01 June 2010 15:05 Dr. David Whitehouse Mineral deposits formed within the generally stable environment of caves are called speleothems (Greek for “cave deposit”). They provide an archive of climate variations from which indications of mean temperature, rainfall and sometimes surface vegetation data can be extracted on timescales from the subannual to the millennial. They can be remarkably well preserved for millions of years. Speleothems have a unique ability to be accurately dated over much of the late Quaternary period using the uranium-thorium dating technique. Stalagmites are particularly good because of their relatively geometry and because they contain several different climate records, such as oxygen and carbon isotopes and trace cations. Prompted by a paper published in the journal Nature looking at speleothem data for China over the past few hundred thousand years Willis Eschenbach looked at the freely available speleothem data from the NOAA Paleoclimatology web site paying attention to the past 10,000 years – the period covering the emergence from the last strong phase of the Ice Age. Eschenbach used data from caves in Borneo, USA, Panama, South Africa, China, Indonesia, Tasmania, Israel, Austria and Costa Rica. Although based on straightforward calibration the graph produced is fascinating and would be unlikely to change with more detailed processing of the data. It shows that speleothem data indicates that it was considerably warmer 7,000 years ago than it is today. Seen on the timescale of thousands of years today’s warm period is unremarkable. Click on image to enlarge. A different analysis by Dr Stein-Erik of the University of Bergen a north Norwegian stalagmite, which grew up through the Holocene, showed rates of change from ‘warm’ to ‘cold’ or vice versa, occurred over only a few hundred years. Typical changes were around 1.2 deg C per century, greater than the global temperature changes we have seen in the past century. Nearer to the present day, speleothem data can also be used to probe the Medieval Warm Period. It is curious to note that there are hardly any reference to speleothem data in the latest IPCC synthesis report of in any of its supporting documents. Given their importance and the data they produce being able to put today’s climatic period into perspective, it would be beneficial to have them in the next IPCC report at greater length. (GWPF)
From CO2 Science Volume 13 Number 22: 2 June 2010 Editorial: Subject Index Summary: Journal Reviews: The "Little" Medieval Warm Period in Southeast Tibet: Was it warmer or cooler than it was in the late 20th-century? Snow-Induced Forest Damage in Finland: Climatic Change actually publishes a study suggesting a positive outcome of global warming. The Spreading of the Bluetongue Virus Throughout Europe: Has it been driven by global warming, as some have claimed? Nitrogen Deposition Boosts U.S. Tree Growth: And it boosts it quite a bit. Plant Growth Database: Medieval
Warm Period Project:
There is a publication dated January 2009 by The University of Oregon Climate Leadership Initiative titled SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT Responses To Common Challenges To Climate Science The text starts with
The information used to write this report (as they list) are
The authors are listed as
I only want to comment in this post on just one aspect of their report; the section titled “The Scientific Method”. In this section they write
I agree with the need to follow the scientific method. However, this scientific method clearly documents that one of their “setting the record straight” fails. This is their claim that
In our paper Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union we presented three hypotheses, only one of which can be true. The three hypotheses are
Hypothesis 2b, which is the view of climate science promoted by The University of Oregon Climate Leadership Initiative , has been shown to be rejected. The statement that the ”primary cause [of global warming, and climate change more generally] is human-induced CO2 emissions” is incorrect. Only hypothesis 2a is not rejected by the scientific method. If the The University of Oregon Climate Leadership Initiative wants to be current in their report on “Setting The Record Straight”, they need to update the information that is being disseminated on climate science. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)
Oh... Carbon Market Players Say Open To Self-Policing Carbon market players said on Tuesday they will consider developing self-policing rules after a call to action by the U.N.'s new climate chief, but warned that more
political will is needed by governments to spur investment.
Environmentalists Also To Blame For Exxon Valdez And Gulf Spills Energy Policy: To save the environment, a senator from Pennsylvania wants to shut off a major source of natural gas. Weren't the roads to the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater
Horizon disasters paved with equally good intentions?
The chasm between Apollo and the Gulf There is no valid analogy between the Gulf spill and Apollo 13 I am honored to present this guest post by H. Harrison Schmitt – Anthony President Obama’s Administration and its supportive media repeatedly say our 1970 Apollo 13 experience is analogous to the effort to contain and cap the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Not hardly! The rescue of Astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, after an oxygen tank explosion on their spacecraft, illustrates how complex technical accidents should be handled, in contrast to the Gulf fiasco. Nothing in the government’s response to the blowout and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon and its aftermath bears any resemblance to the response to the Apollo 13 situation by the National Aeronautic and Space Administration and its Mission Control team at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. Continue reading → (WUWT)
REUTERS/U.S. Coast Guard/Handout
Fire boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon, off Louisiana, on April 21 June 1, 2010 – 7:00 pm The most dangerous outcome would be suicidal green energy legislation According to President Obama, his daughter Malia knocked on his bathroom door last week while he was shaving and asked “Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?” While one can appreciate the simple faith of a daughter, and how she might see her father as the heroic Little Dutch Boy who put his finger in the dyke (if they still teach that sort of thing), the more relevant fable for Daddy just now seems to be that of Brere Rabbit and the tar baby. While a thorough analysis of the causes of the ongoing BP oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico has still to come, its consequences are spreading economically, environmentally and politically. Above all, it seems to be sticking to the Obama administration, even as the Obama administration tries to stick it to BP. So far, the direct costs to BP of trying to contain the well and prevent the spread of oil are up to US$1-billion, but the company has also suffered a stunning drop of some US$69-billion in its market capitalization since the rig drilling on its Macondo well exploded on April 20 with the loss of eleven lives. That’s more than half Europe’s bailout package to Greece. With the failure over the weekend of its attempt to “top kill” the well, BP is now attempting to cut and cap the pipe that is spewing oil at an estimated rate of more than 12,000 barrels a day. The company is also drilling not one but — apparently at the insistence of the Obama regime — two relief wells, although these will not be completed until August. As if all this weren’t enough, what is forecast to be a bad hurricane season started officially Tuesday. Read More
I suppose it was inevitable that we would arrive at the moment in the ongoing oil spill crisis at which the baby would be thrown out with the bath. That moment came at about 7 minutes into President Obama’s press conference on the spill Thursday, May 27. [Read More] (Geoffrey Styles, Energy Tribune)
How green regulations helped create the SUV TORONTO, ON, and WASHINGTON, DC, June 1, 2010/ – In light of the new vehicle fuel efficiency standards set by U.S. President Barack Obama (and matched here in Canada), and
the volatile fuel prices of recent years, some automobile market observers have declared the imminent death of the SUV. “It’s about time,” said a representative of the
Sierra Club back in 2005 when SUV sales first began to decline “you wonder what people were thinking.” For the Sierra Club and like-minded groups, SUV sales can’t decline
quickly enough.
Hard to know whether they are idiots or saboteurs: Exclusive: EU Debt Crisis Boosts Chance Of Energy Tax Overhaul The greenest fuels would become the cheapest under plans for a pan-European energy tax which would also help governments tackle huge debts without raising taxes on workers,
draft documents show.
Solar Panels Can Attract Breeding Water Insects ... but Scientists Propose a Simple Fix Solar power might be nature's most plentiful and benign source of energy, but shiny dark solar cells can lure water insects away from critical breeding areas, a Michigan
State University scientist and colleagues warn.
If we relied on wind power, Australia would have shut down The great green energy scam is exposed. The above chart shows the total electricity produced from May 13 to May 20 by all Australia’s windfarms, on which we’ve spent billions. Terry McCrann:
(No link to McCrann’s column.) (Andrew Bolt)
Microbe power as a green means to hydrogen fuel production Scientists have been hard at work harnessing the power of microbes as an attractive source of clean energy. Now, Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University researcher
Dr. Prathap Parameswaran and his colleagues have investigated a means for enhancing the efficiency of clean energy production by using specialized bacteria.
Cuccinelli on Obamacare Lawsuit: ‘We Are Doing What the Founders Expected’ RICHMOND — Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said he will file a formal response as early as next week to the federal government’s attempt to dismiss Virginia’s legal challenge to Obamacare. In an exclusive interview with Heritage, Cuccinelli said the federal government’s motion to dismiss, released on Monday, was mostly predictable. He said the attorney general’s office had already anticipated the government’s arguments and will have its response ready on or before June 7. “What they filed on Monday was very much what we expected,” Cuccinelli said in an interview at his Richmond office. “You never know exactly how they’re going to present it, but we did expect them to move to dismiss the case.” The legal maneuvering puts Cuccinelli at the center of the Obamacare court battle. In addition to Virginia’s lawsuit, 20 states have joined a legal challenge from Florida. Virginia is pursuing its own strategy because its legislature adopted a law protecting its citizens from the individual mandate. Cuccinelli said the stakes are high and he expects Virginia’s case — and probably Florida’s — to end up before the Supreme Court within the next two years. Continue reading... (The Foundry)
In Their Own Words: CBO Admits Obamacare Unsustainable This Wednesday CBO Director Doug Elmendorf gave a slide presentation on Capitol Hill titled: Health Costs and the Federal Budget. Elemendorf’s very first slide reads:
The presentation concludes:
In other words, our nation’s budget is on an unsustainable path and Obamacare did nothing to change that. (The Foundry)
D'oh! Soaring costs force Canada to reassess health model TORONTO, May 31 - Pressured by an aging population and the need to rein in budget deficits, Canada's provinces are taking tough measures to curb healthcare costs, a trend
that could erode the principles of the popular state-funded system.
Dan Fletcher proving he's a complete moron: The 50 Worst Inventions From the zany to the dangerous to the just plain dumb, here is TIME's list (in no particular order) of some of the world's bright ideas that just didn't work out
Chris Gentilviso's not much better: The 50 Worst Inventions From the zany to the dangerous to the just plain dumb, here is TIME's list (in no particular order) of some of the world's bright ideas that just didn't work out
Dan Fletcher, again: The 50 Worst Inventions From the zany to the dangerous to the just plain dumb, here is TIME's list (in no particular order) of some of the world's bright ideas that just didn't work out
Obesity and asthma are linked: study NEW YORK - A new study confirms a link between obesity and asthma.
With salt under attack for its ill effects on the nation’s health, the food giant Cargill kicked off a campaign last November to spread its own message.
Labor inductions may be boosting rate of earlier births NEW YORK - The rate of induced labor among U.S. pregnant women nearly doubled between 1992 and 2003 -- a trend that seems to have pushed more births to the earlier end of
full-term, a new study finds.
Trials of breast cancer prevention vaccine set to begin Researchers say GPs could offer vaccine to healthy women before they reach their mid-40s when risk of disease starts to rise
A bedbug epidemic bites New York An epidemic of bedbugs in the Big Apple has brought panic, revulsion and a nasty little rash to rich and poor alike. Can the city cope
Your tax dollars at work (?) on Chinese drywall On May 25th, the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a news release entitled "CPSC Identifies Manufacturers of Problem Drywall Made in China." Here are the first three paragraphs of the release:
Testing data, representative of 30 different manufacturer/year of manufacture samples, showing emissions rates for hydrogen sulfide, carbonyl sulfide, sulfur dioxide, methyl mercaptan, dimethyl sulfide, ethyl mercaptan, and carbon disulfide are presented in a chart issued on May 27th. In terms of hydrogen sulfide emissions, the first American-made product does not appear until the 13th position on the list. CPSC is careful to label anything significant as "draft," implying that a final report will be issued, although I was unable to get any information on when that might happen. Likewise, the agency uses the craven language "...strong association between hydrogen sulfide and metal corrosion," even though it is beyond any doubt that hydrogen sulfide, along with other compounds, is causing the corrosion problems observed in homes constructed with the tainted drywall. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)
More details on the tainted Chinese drywall matter are starting to emerge Check out this article, done by by Joaquin Sapien of ProPublica and Aaron Kessler of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Sapien and Kessler name names, and let's just say that builder WCI, drywall manufacturer Knauf, and drywall distributor Banner Supply don't look too good at the moment. I'm sure glad that we still have investigative journalism, since it is abundantly clear that government—at all levels—is doing next to nothing about this massive problem. One reason behind the gigantic dissatisfaction with government and incumbents is that most of us are paying big bucks in taxes, but are getting virtually nothing in return. (Shaw's Eco-Logic)
Experts gather as volcanic dust settles Following the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajoekull volcano that spewed huge amounts of ash and grounded numerous flights, more than 50 experts from around the world gathered at a workshop organised by ESA and EUMETSAT to discuss what has been learned and identify future opportunities for volcanic ash monitoring. (ESA)
Wild speculation alert: Mobile phones responsible for disappearance of honey bee The growing use of mobile telephones is behind the disappearance of honey bees and the collapse of their hives, scientists have claimed.
Some people still being conned: Green goods cost nearly 50% more UK consumers are still paying 44% more for green products than the standard alternative, figures show. (TDT)
Government Accountability Office’s Greg Kutz on testing the energy and cost savings of the government's 'Energy Star' program.
Still trying to strangle consumption: Britain to export fuel made from household waste Britain is dumping its rubbish on other European countries as councils struggle to deal with the growing waste mountain.
Environmentalists See One Last Chance to Stop Ilisu Dam Turkey's planned Ilisu dam will submerge priceless archaeological sites for ever, but Ankara is determined to press on with the project despite European opposition. Now
environmentalists are clinging to one last hope to stop the waters.
How to prevent a “dust bowl” Africa CHURCHVILLE, VA—People and wild species are at more risk in Africa than on any other continent. Huge numbers of people are trying to subsist on hunting scarce animals and
unsustainable slash-and-burn farming. If this continues it will undoubtedly trigger a Dust Bowl like that of the American Midwest in the 1930s along with massive famine.
Polar bears not at risk: Nunavut The Nunavut government does not think the polar bear should be classified as a species of special concern under the federal Species at Risk Act, says territorial Environment
Minister Daniel Shewchuk.
Change your cat's bell to save birds The age-old technique of attaching a bell to a cat's collar to warn birds of its approach is losing its effectiveness because cats are learning to walk without ringing them. (TDT)
Vets want ban as influx of terrapins and turtles threatens native habitats Terrapins and turtles that have been dumped in canals, ponds and lakes are threatening native habitats and bringing disease to Britain, according to veterinary experts.
Rebel scientists force Royal Society to accept climate change scepticism Britain’s premier scientific institution is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by members who question mankind’s contribution to
rising temperatures.
Latest climate climbdown: the Royal Society reviews its statements on global warming The latest institutional retreat from uncritical support of the AGW hypothesis is one that will chill warmists to the core: the Royal Society has announced it is to review its public statements on climate change. The Society now believes that its previous communications did not properly distinguish between what was widely agreed on climate science and what is not fully understood. It has appointed a panel to review its statements, assisted by two critical sub-groups, including a number of Fellows who have doubts about the received view on the risks of increasing CO2 levels. (Gerald Warner)
And then there were three: Britain’s Royal Society rejects alarmism May 31, 2010 – 8:40 am Britain’s Royal Society, the UK’s preeminent scientific body, has joined national science bodies in India and France in validating the views of global warming sceptics. The Royal Society’s decision, which follows a revolt by 43 Fellows of the Royal Society, will see it rewrite its position on climate change in a tacit admission that it and in particular its previous president, Lord May, had been acting more as lobbyists for a cause than as agents for scientific reason. Without canvassing his membership, May had famously stated that “The debate on climate change is over” and that “On one hand, you have the entire scientific community and on the other you have a handful of people, half of them crackpots.” Following the revolt over the society’s recent history of alarmism and hyperbole, the current president, Lord Rees, by no means a sceptic, has nevertheless decided to take a more balanced view: ”Climate change is a hugely important issue but the public debate has all too often been clouded by exaggeration and misleading information,” he said. “We aim to provide the public with a clear indication of what is known about the climate system, what we think we know about it and, just as importantly, the aspects we still do not understand very well.” (Financial Post)
The Royal Society: too little, too late The other night I had the great pleasure of dinner with Professor Bob Carter. He told me that when he goes on speaking tours, there’s only one question he ever gets asked
to which he is unable to provide a satisfactory answer. It goes something like this:
Hot on the heels of the news that fellows of the Royal Society are arguing over their public position on climate change comes a report that the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering is engaged in a similar battle over how their views should be represented to the public. (Bishop Hill)
True: Australians losing interest in climate change issue Sydney - Australians are losing interest in global warming, according to an opinion poll released Monday showing less than half of them now consider it a serious problem.
Bickering and defensive, climate researchers have lost the public’s trust.
UVA defies Mann fraud investigation The University of Virginia has decided to protect hockey stick junk scientist Michael Mann from a fraud investigation by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. Academics do not have the right to defraud the public. Universities ought not shield academics from rightful public scrutiny. (Green Hell)
Ken Cuccinelli versus 810 academics Guest Commentary by Paul Driessen
Figure 1. Chart from professional paper analyzing Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graphs that purported to find average global temperatures suddenly
skyrocketing at an exponential – and physically impossible – rate in recent decades. Willie Soon, David Legates and Sallie Baliunas, “Estimation and representation of
long-term (>40 year) trends of Northern-Hemisphere-gridded surface temperature: A note of caution,” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 31, 2004.
“Scientific debates should be played out in the academic arena,” insists University of Virginia environmental sciences professor David Carr. “If Michael Mann’s conclusions are unsupported by his data, his scientific critics will eventually demonstrate this.” Carr and 809 other Virginia scientists and academics signed a petition launched by the activist Union of Concerned Scientists, protesting Commonwealth Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s investigation of former University of Virginia professor Michael Mann. The American Association of University Professors likewise opposes Cuccinelli, who is seeking documents from UVA, to determine whether there are grounds to prosecute Mann for violating the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, by presenting false or misleading information in support of applications for state-funded research. Carr claims Cuccinelli is attempting to “drown out” scientific debate.” Others have accused the AG of conducting a “witch hunt,” engaging in “McCarthyite” tactics, and “restricting academic freedom.” It’s time to clear a few things up. Continue reading
James Hansen and Climate Change; NASA’s Disgrace Christopher Horner requested information from National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) through Freedom of Information (FOI) and now reports, “We have asked
the court to order NASA – which has evaded our Freedom of Information Act requests for three years – to turn over documents related to global warming activities undertaken
by federal employees.”
The BBC: Official Voice of Ecofascism Climate change now represents so urgent a threat to mankind that the only way to deal with it is by suspending democracy. (Hat tip: DR at Bishop Hill)
Dennis Bray on global warming and Stalin Must-read post from Dennis Bray over at Klimazweibel, examining the similarities between Stalin's regime and the conduct of global warming science. He makes ten direct comparisons between the warmism and Stalinism. Here are the first couple to whet your appetite: (Bishop Hill)
Hay festival: 'Climate change is a long struggle' Global warming has always energised Hay audiences – but this year the mood is much more sober (The Guardian)
Our frustrated climate crusader Let's play the man for a moment. Why haven't we listened to Ross Garnaut? The author of the 2008 landmark Garnaut Climate Change Review almost got a standing ovation last week when he joined a panel discussion at the Sydney Writers' Festival. He was on fire, warning the audience that ''powerful vested interests are resisting the policy reform necessary to tackle climate change'' in Australia. (Paddy Manning, SMH)
Rich-Poor Rifts Stall Progress At U.N. Climate Talks U.N. climate talks opened on Monday, exposing familiar rifts between rich and poor countries which delegates said were likely to delay a re-start of formal negotiations.
More from the rubber room: Maldives president calls for direct action over climate change President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives told a Hay festival audience that grassroots 'street action' was needed to change the focus of the debate on climate change in the US (The Guardian)
Are Climate Alarmists losing the Mainstream Media? In the past week, two mainstream media giants have apparently recognized that the debate over manmade global warming is far from over. (Marc Sheppard, American Thinker)
What to Do When the Earth Warms Up? Given humankind's lackadaisical response to climate change, a museum in Hamburg is presenting fanciful visions of how humans might adapt to disaster. "Climate
Capsules," an exhibition starting Friday, imagines people of the future in oceangoing cities and other artificial, self-contained environments.
About three years ago, Christopher Monckton, Third Viscount of Brenchley, issued an open challenge to Al Gore to debate the issue of global-warming. Not surprisingly, Gore has never responded to that challenge. Gore’s personal grasp of the scientific issues involved in so-called climate change varies from “non-existent” to “vague”. Monckton, who has emerged as one of the leading voices, if not the leading voice, advocating sanity in an increasingly skeptical world would mop the floor with the former vice president were that contest to happen. Yet, if we are never to enjoy that particular debate, we do have this one: Monckton joined three skeptical colleagues in a debate against four alarmists held before England’s Oxford Union Society. The motion put forth was: “That this House would put economic growth before combating climate change.” ( Rich Trzupek, Front Page)
Undue Panic Over Global Warming Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist", argues we need to be smart about global warming and not rush into making policies out of panic and fear.
CNN: The most trusted name in green propaganda Ted Turner, founder of CNN, thinks that if we don’t prepare for global warming, mankind will suffer extinction. The most revealing item from his interview on his own network was how ‘the most trusted name in news‘ cable network has been used to promote Turner’s own beliefs about global warming:
A problem for Ted is that no-one watches CNN, which explains why more Americans believe global warming is a natural trend rather than anything caused by man. Turner is, of course, a typical warmist hypocrite. Even as he claims that global warming will wipe mankind out, he raises 50,000 bison on his land and CNN sponsors a Formula One team. Doesn’t he know that F1 is a needless (but immensely fun) waste of Gaia’s resources, or that bison are killing the planet? Ted would be better off worrying about a far more imminent extinction, that of his ‘news’ network. (Daily Bayonet)
Copenhagen climate failure blamed on 'Danish text' The UN's climate change chief blamed a secret draft treaty, leaked to the Guardian, for the summit failure
Presence of world leaders 'paralysed' climate summit, UN letter claims United Nations climate chief says Danish presidency's backing for US also derailed Copenhagen negotiations (The Guardian)
Evermore ridiculous make-believe: Summertime 2100, and the living isn't easy What will London be like a century from now? Seven degrees warmer, with water-absorbent streets and parched public parks. Marek Kohn paints an unnerving picture of metropolitan life in the sweaty grip of a radically changed climate. (The Independent)
Sigh... if only they could forecast next week: Night-time temperatures could rise above 25C because of climate change The number of sweltering nights when the temperature in cities stays above 20C (68F) and the elderly become vulnerable to heat exhaustion will increase fivefold because of
climate change, a Met Office study has found.
Dodgy NASA Pages Undermines Scientific Education The educational troubles at NOAA are well known. Now I have stumbled by accident into one set of misleading NASA-hosted pages allegedly set up in order to help teachers and students understand the greenhouse effect. The starting page of the set “Measuring the Temperature of the Sky and Clouds” by a Forrest M. Mims III and part of teacher-focused “My NASA Data” website, claims to describe a project where “you will learn about the greenhouse effect by measuring the temperature of the sky and clouds far overhead with an infrared thermometer“. The project is described across four pages and it might be easily misinterpreted as showing that clouds are warmer than the cloudless atmosphere because of the greenhouse properties of water vapor (one needs to read the text very carefully). But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that it is claimed that:
The statement above is wrong. Says who? Says mainstream scientific consensus on the behavior of atmospheres. Here’s an excerpt from a University of Texas page explaining it all:
Note that there is not a single mention of any greenhouse property of anything. Later on the UTexas text contains a reference to water vapor but for different reasons than the greenhouse effect:
So if the ground is at whatsoever temperature and you point a thermometer to the sky, you’ll read “the temperature through a cone-shaped column of the troposphere“, as determined by the properties of air and water vapor. The value you will read will be far above absolute zero independently from the greenhouse effect. It is rather worrying to see such a poorly-designed experiment getting NASA approval (well, that might explain a few things…) and who knows how many pupils have now got it all wrong. Hopefully, there’s two or twenty science teachers out there capable to use critical reasoning. (Maurizio Morabito, OmniClimate)
Push to teach "other side" of global warming heats up in Colorado's Mesa County GRAND JUNCTION — A national group that thinks global warming is "junk science" and that teaching it is unnecessarily scaring schoolchildren brought its first
petition effort for "balanced education" to Mesa County Schools on Tuesday night.
Study finds reforestation may lower the climate change mitigation potential of forests Norman, Okla.—Scientists at the University of Oklahoma and the Fudan University in Shanghai, China, have found that reforestation and afforestation -- the creation of new
forests -- may lower the potential of forests for climate change lessening.
Current temperatures are unprecedented? Not so says Matt Ridley:
Read the whole thing. (Bishop Hill)
Scientists Probe Antarctic Ice to Settle Climate Debates
Round Five: Ignore the main point, repeat the irrelevant The debate with Paleoclimatologist Dr Andrew Glikson about the evidence for Climate change has reached a telling point. There is a gaping hole. Through four rounds of to and fro, I’ve been asking for evidence that the predicted (critical) “hot spot” was there above the equator, and we were drilling down to this point. It’s the weak link in the chain of evidence, and if the climate models are wrong on this element, you can kiss goodbye to the catastrophe. Everything else might be right, but there’s no major warming if there’s no strong amplifying (positive) feedback, and and there is no amplifying feedback from water vapor if there is no hot spot. Indeed, I quoted evidence from three peer reviewed studies that show that we’re headed for a half a measly degree of warming rather than a baking 3 – 6 degrees. In Round 2 Glikson didn’t mention Lindzen, Spencer or Douglass (the three independent papers which suggest that predicted feedbacks are missing or negative). Instead he suggested “Sherwood 2008” found the hot-spot. I pointed out that Sherwood used wind-gauges instead of thermometers. To believe he is right we need to throw out thousands of thermometer readings and calculate the temperature indirectly from the wind-speed instead. In Round 3, Glikson didn’t mention Sherwood. But he posted graphs showing the troposphere had warmed. I pointed out that his graphs demonstrated what I had been saying — the upper troposphere had warmed at the same rate as the surface. If the hot spot was there it would have warmed nearly twice as fast. In Round 4 (in comments after round 3), Glikson didn’t mention the graph. But he pointed to Santer 2008. I replied that Santer didn’t find the hot spot, he just found fog in the data and fog in the models and stretched the error bars so wide that finally the models just overlapped with one set of observations. Santer had no new data. Nine years after the data came in, all he did was to increase the error bars and suggest that maybe our equipment wasn’t good enough to find the hot-spot. It’s rather devastating: if we can’t build weather balloons that get a useful temperature reading, how the heck can we create models that estimate the temperature from 10,000 m below based on dozens of factors that are even harder to measure? The hot-spot should have been at least 0.6°C and radiosondes are individually calibrated to 0.1°C. Somehow we’re supposed to believe that hundreds of radiosondes had missed it? In round 5, Glikson didn’t mention Santer. It’s as if this devastating point didn’t exist. Andrew Glikson is genuinely trying to come up with other evidence, and he’s not just ducking out completely (as many would), but he is ducking the point that matters, the weak link in the AGW chain. Really, seriously, everything about the Tower of Global Warming was built on the foundation of an increasing column of water vapor. Does he realize that all the other circumstantial evidence is predicated on a guess that the Earth’s climate had net positive feedbacks, when almost all other long-lived natural systems have net negative feedbacks? All of the other points I’ll briefly sum up here below. I’ve had helpful responses from Michael Hammer with some very original work, and also from William Kinninmonth. I will post these both soon (separately). More » (Jo Nova)
Misinterpreting Natural Climate Change as Manmade NOTE: 2 p.m. May 31, still working on getting comments accepted. I post clarifications at the end of the main text as suggested/needed. The simple climate model I have made publicly available can be used to demonstrate many basic concepts regarding climate change. Here I will use it to demonstrate that the global warming so commonly blamed on humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions can just as easily be explained as largely natural in origin, most likely due to a natural decrease in global cloud cover. In general, there are TWO POTENTIAL EXPLANATIONS OF CLIMATE WARMING: While I will run the model with an assumed ocean mixing depth of 50 meters of water, the same general effects can be demonstrated with very different depths, say, 10 meters or 500 meters. I have also added some weak natural variability on monthly to yearly time scales to better mimic what happens in the real climate system. You can run the model yourself if you are curious. While the model is admittedly simple, it does exactly what the most complex computerized climate models must do to simulate global-average warming: (1) conserve energy by increasing temperature in response to an accumulation of energy, and (2) adjust the magnitude of that temperature change through feedbacks (e.g. cloud changes) in the climate system. CASE 1: Anthropogenic Global Warming in a Sensitive Climate System The following plot shows 50 years of resulting warming (blue trace) from the model, as well as the radiative imbalance at the top of the model atmosphere (red trace). In this plot, when the radiative balance is negative it means there is an accumulation of energy in the climate system which will then cause subsequent warming. These are the two main sources of information used to diagnose the reasons for global climate variability and climate change. In the real climate system, the warming (blue trace) could be measured by either surface thermometers, or from Earth-orbiting satellites. The red trace (radiative imbalance) is what is measured by satellite instruments (e.g. the CERES instruments on the Terra satellite since 2000, and on the Aqua satellite since 2002). CASE 2: Natural Global Warming in an Insensitive Climate System But now I also change the net feedback to correspond to a very IN-sensitive climate system. “Insensitive” in this case is a net feedback parameter of 6.0 Watts per sq. meter per deg. C, which would correspond to just over 0.5 deg. C of warming from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (2XCO2). This amount of warming is well below the 1.5 deg. C lower limit the IPCC projects for the future as a result of 2XCO2. As can be seen in the second plot above, the same rate of warming occurs as in CASE 1, and the radiative imbalance of the Earth remains about the same as in CASE 1 as well. What this demonstrates is that there is no way to distinguish anthropogenic warming of a sensitive climate system from natural warming within an insensitive climate system, based only upon the two main sources of information we rely on for climate change research: (1) temperature change, and (2) radiative imbalance data collected by satellites. THE CRITICAL IMPORTANCE OF THIS AMBIGUITY For instance, a satellite-measured imbalance of -1 unit can be caused by either -2 units of forcing combined with +1 unit of net feedback, OR by -5 units of forcing combined with +4 units of net feedback. There is no way to know for sure which is happening because cause and effect are intermingled. After many months of research examining satellite data and the output from 18 of the IPCC climate models, I have found no way to separate this natural “internal radiative forcing” of temperature change from feedback resulting from that temperature change. So how is it that the “consensus” of climate scientists is that CASE 1 is what is really happening in the climate system? Because when researchers have observed a decrease in cloud cover accompanying warming, they assume that the cloud decrease was CAUSED BY the warming (which would be positive cloud feedback). They do NOT consider the possibility that the cloud decrease was the CAUSE OF the warming. In other words, they assume causation in only one direction (feedback) is occurring. This then gives the illusion of a sensitive climate system. In fact, our new research to appear in Journal of Geophysical Research demonstrates that when natural cloud changes cause temperature changes, the presence of negative cloud feedback cannot even be detected. This is because causation in one direction (clouds forcing temperature) almost completely swamps causation in the opposite direction (temperature forcing clouds, which is by definition feedback). [NOTE: The claims that there are "fingerprints" of anthropogenic warming are not true. The upper-tropospheric "hot spot"; greater warming over land than over the ocean; and greater warming at high latitudes than at low latitudes, are ALL to expected with any source of warming.] WHEN WILL THEY LEARN? When other scientists are asked about our work, they dismiss it without even understanding it. For instance, the last time I testified in congress, Kevin Trenberth countered my testimony with a pronouncement to the effect of “clouds cannot cause climate change“, which is an astoundingly arrogant and uninformed thing for a scientist to say. After all, we find clear evidence of clouds causing year-to-year climate variability in ALL of the IPCC models, so who is to say this cannot occur on decadal — or even centennial — time scales? CLIMATE CHAOS Well, what causes chaos? All of this could simply be the characteristics of a nonlinear dynamical “chaotic” climate system. While a few people have objected to my use of the term “chaotic” in this context, I see no reason why the traditional application of chaos theory to small space and time scales (such as in weather) can not be extended to the larger space and time scales involved in climate. Either way, chaos involves complex nonlinear behavior we do not yet understand, very small changes in which can have profound effects on the system later. It seems to me that such behavior can occur on all kinds of space and time scales. In conclusion…Yes, Virginia, natural climate cycles really can exist. (2) I didn’t include stratospheric cooling as a fingerprint of global warming because, well, it’s cooling. Due to a lack of clouds and moist convection which
provide powerful feedbacks in the troposphere, it is much more certain that the stratosphere will cool as CO2 concentrations increase. (Roy W. Spencer)
Comment On Real Climate’s Post By Gavin Schmidt – “Ocean Heat Content Increases Update” There is a post by Gavin Schmidt on Real Climate on May 21 2010 titled “Ocean heat content increases update” . Gavin, unfortunately, does not comment about and question the odd jump in the warming earlier in the current decade that is seen in the plot of upper ocean heat data, the Lyman et al 2010 paper, and which he presents in his post. Indeed, the greater warming in the Lyman et al 2010 paper that he accepts unquestionably [which he writes is "a greater warming than seen in the NODC data and more than even the models"] is due specifically to a short-term jump. Since this is the time that the Argo Network finally achieved global coverage the reason for this jump needs more exploration. However, this jump is not seen in the sea surface temperature data (see from Bob Tisdale’s weblog). Here is Josh Willis’s response to my query to him on this jump, which is reproduced from my post of December 29 2009 titled Comment From Josh Willis On The Upper Ocean Heat Content Data Posted On Real Climate (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)
How Independent Are Climate Models? There is an excellent guest post by Ryan Meyer on May 27 2010 on my son’s weblog titled The Significance of Climate Model Agreement: A Guest Post by Ryan Meyer The post is based on their paper Zachary Pirtle, Ryan Meyer, , and Andrew Hamilton, 2010: What does it mean when climate models agree? A case for assessing independence among general circulation models . Environmental Science & Policy. doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2010.04.004 The abstract of their paper reads
I want to expand on this issue in this post. (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science)
Gulf of Mexico oil spill: fresh questions raised about chemicals A large undersea cloud of dissolved hydrocarbons discovered this week near the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has raised fresh questions about toxic chemicals used to fight the spill and their environmental impact. (TDT)
Canadian research examines effects of scientific claims on oil A University of Alberta researcher says people generally do not act on information about the effects fossil fuel-based products are having on the environment. And the
reason, says English and film studies researcher Imre Szeman, is because of the way discussions on environmental issues are structured.
BP’s latest failure to plug the leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is one more crushing disappointment to Louisiana’s beleaguered people, one more strike against the
company and one more signal to President Obama to redouble efforts to contain and clean the spill.
Energy: An administration never enthusiastic about offshore drilling is using the Gulf oil spill as an excuse to suspend Arctic exploration. Who could've seen that coming?
Now we'll be more dependent on foreign oil.
Earlier this week, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) dresses down someone (who, I wonder?) for apparently showing a lack of understanding of the realities of oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico: Today's FT Lex Column offers some additional realities:
It speaks to the perverse counter-intuitive nature of energy and climate policies that the best-intentioned actions -- strengthening US drilling regulations, could lead to greater environmental risks and do nothing to address carbon dioxide emissions. Policy design desperately needs to catch up with real-world complexities. (Roger Pielke Jr.)
Reforms Slow to Arrive at Drilling Agency WASHINGTON — As President Obama and his top aides were convening a series of meetings that led to the announcement in March of a major expansion of offshore oil drilling,
the troubled history of the agency that regulates such drilling operations was well known.
Shell Buying an Oil and Gas Firm for $4.7 Billion Royal Dutch Shell, the British-Dutch oil and gas producer, said Friday that it had struck a deal to buy most of the assets of East Resources for $4.7 billion in cash, moving
into the coveted sector of natural gas contained in shale deposits.
The woolly world of Chris Huhne No one can explain how we cut emissions by four fifths without closing down virtually all of our economy, writes Christopher Booker.
Listening to ABC news and current affairs programs can be life-threatening.
Beyond NIMBY: A Grassroots Strategy to Defeat Windpower by Thomas Stacy II
It takes more than anger to fight against the political “green tide” of windpower. It requires courage backed by effective argumentation. Many people throughout history have taken an unpopular stand. Most have been censored, or worse, but some have been responsible for breakthroughs in our grasp of natural science and other realms of human understanding. Galileo, Columbus, Paine, Lincoln, Edison, Wright, and Deming come to mind. One historical figure named Reagan even went so far as to tear the solar panels off of the White House roof when he learned how much they cost and how little they produced. That same week he terminated the Federal Renewable Energy Production Tax Credit. And the walls came tumbling down. But we have no such constitutional leader today who, from the top down, would put a stake through the heart of the marauding beast we know as industrial wind—while simultaneously promoting sound policies that promote a genuinely competitive marketplace where contributors thrive and laggards languish. Wind is a clever parasite, leeching our rural persona, making country people believe that it is one with their way of life, just another wind mill on a wind farm along a wind park—all beloved by peace-loving neighbors. BUT WE KNOW BETTER! We know it’s a sprawling industrial stampede using PR parlor tricks and old-fashioned political bribes to make people think black is white and pigs can fly. We know it’s a greedy tax avoidance scheme for large corporations to increase their bottom lines at our expense. We know it’s engaged in “imagineering,” pretending to be an effective energy solution when it’s not. The truth is, it makes our energy situation worse, and our pocket books much lighter. Had our elected representatives remained neutral toward the limited liability wind companies forcing them to offer sound, scientific proof for their many claims, the wind projects would have never been born. Ohio Senator Bill Seitz wrote the following to one of our ranks opposing the Buckeye wind farm: “I think you all need to continue to be zealous advocates and to realize that your advocacy has been effective and that your community’s prosecutor and his staff are doing a thorough and commendable job.” While I cannot disagree with his kudos, I think our zeal must be exercised more carefully. [Read more →] (MasterResource)
May 28, 2010 – 10:23 pm Residents try to protect their little part of the planet from clean-energy windmills On Wednesday evening, as part of a panel of energy insiders, I spoke in Toronto’s financial district before an audience of some 150, most of them professionals interested in the clean-energy industry. On Thursday evening, I spoke to some 300 of their victims, in a school auditorium in a residential neighbourhood 15 miles away. The elite gathering, held in the Grand Banking Hall of One King West Hotel & Residence, was organized by Corporate Knights, a magazine dedicated to “clean capitalism,” and funded by Enbridge, an $18-billion energy company keen to capture a share of the government-sponsored clean technology business (clean energy is chiefly wind, solar, biomass, and other government-subsidized energy technologies). Geared to making Canada a green-energy superpower, the event was billed as “an evening of constructive dialogue on the economy, energy and the environment,” and that it was. I especially felt constructive in bringing news to the assembly that the prospects for a low-carbon green economy were crumbling. Earlier that day, the EU had announced it was putting further carbon dioxide cuts on hold. Its announcement followed like decisions one day earlier by Germany and France, whose announcements followed blockbuster news from Spain the previous week. Read More (Financial Post)
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