Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported for the entire 20th century by the United Nations (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows in fact that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.

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21 April, 2007

"Stop everything" does not always help

A PROTECTED rainforest in one of the world's richest biodiversity regions has suffered an alarming collapse in amphibians and reptiles, suggesting such havens may fail to slow the creatures' slide towards global extinction. Conservationists working in a lowland forest reserve at La Selva in Costa Rica compared records from 1970 to show that species of frogs, toads, lizards, snakes and salamanders had plummeted on average 75 per cent in the past 35 years.

Dramatic falls in amphibian and reptile numbers elsewhere in the world have been blamed on habitat destruction and the fungal disease chytridiomycosis. But scientists hoped many species would thrive in dedicated reserves, where building, land clearance and agricultural chemicals are banned.

The findings suggest an unknown ecological effect is behind at least some of the losses and have prompted calls for urgent studies in other protected forest areas. The researchers, led by Maureen Donelly at Florida International University, believe climate change has brought warmer, wetter weather to the refuge, with the knock-on effect of reducing the amount of leaf litter on the forest floor. Nearly all of the species rely on leaf litter to some extent, either using it for shelter, or feeding on insects that eat the leaves.

The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, revealed sharp declines among two species of salamander, whose numbers fell on average 14.52 per cent a year between 1970 and 2005. Frog species fell too, with numbers of the mimicking rain frog falling 13.49 per cent and the common tink frog 6.69 per cent.

Source




Do we need some more of these?

A fossil tree with its roots and leaves still attached has provided a tantalising glimpse of what the Earth's first forests looked like long before dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Wattieza trees covered vast swaths 385 million years ago, before even amphibians managed to clamber on to land, and had such an impact that they helped to change the planet's atmosphere.

They were the monsters of their age and are thought not only to have changed the face of the planet but also to have altered even the chemical composition of the atmosphere. The plant, which grew to at least 26 feet (8m) in height and probably to more than 40 feet, looked similar to a tree fern with a long, bare trunk that was crowned at the top with branches and leaves. Millions of the Wattieza trees would have covered the ground in coastal and other lowland regions of the planet 140 million years before the first dinosaurs.

They lived in an era when the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere was much higher than it is today, but would have absorbed it in huge quantities as they grew. By extracting the carbon dioxide, they helped to reduce the gas to levels similar to those today. By doing so they signed their own extinction warrants because they had made it possible for broad-leafed plants to evolve 20 million years later and take over.

Source




Greenie dictatorship resisted

Most Americans believe that dramatic steps are needed to conserve energy and reduce the threat of global warming, but they are willing to go only so far in changing their lifestyles to "go green." A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds that more Americans than ever - 60%, up from 48% a decade ago - believe that global warming has begun to affect the climate. A slightly larger percentage think it will cause major or extreme changes in climate and weather during the next 50 years.

And in a reflection of the impact the environmental movement has had on Americans' attitudes in the nearly four decades since the first Earth Day celebration, most people now believe that they should take more steps as individuals - such as riding mass transit and making their homes more energy efficient - to help reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

Even so, most people are wary of any government effort to protect the environment by imposing restrictions on how they live, work or get around. A majority of those surveyed in the poll, conducted March 23-25, said they wouldn't want a surcharge added to their utility bill if their homes exceeded certain energy-use levels. And most Americans would oppose any laws requiring cars sold in the USA to dramatically improve their gas mileage or restrictions on development to try to limit suburban sprawl.

Taken together, the poll responses indicate that Americans are going green on their own terms, depending on their interests and their wallets. The survey comes as a barrage of warnings about global warming - most recently in March, from a United Nations science panel - has transformed the climate-change debate. Going green has moved past politics to become a fashion statement, and big business. It's a shift reflected not just in the Academy Award for An Inconvenient Truth, the film on former vice president Al Gore's global-warming lecture. It's also evident in magazines from Vanity Fair to Fortune, whose recent "green" issues included hints about how to get green - or invest in companies that are.

America's move toward going green also can be seen in the ad campaigns and store aisles of the nation's largest retailers. Wal-Mart, the world's largest buyer of organic cotton, aims this year to sell 100 million compact fluorescent bulbs, which last longer and use far less energy than regular bulbs. The fluorescent bulbs typically cost five to seven times more.

In the USA TODAY poll, Americans showed a willingness to spend more money to help the environment. More than two-thirds of those responding said they should use only fluorescent bulbs in their homes. And 62% said they should buy a gas-saving hybrid car such as the popular Toyota Prius. Gas-electric hybrids typically cost thousands of dollars more than cars with gas-only engines, and buyers usually have to keep the cars for several years to break even financially.

Meanwhile, more than eight in 10 said a company's environmental record should be an important factor in deciding whether to buy its products. And 78% thought spending several thousand dollars to make their homes more energy-efficient is a good idea. But like Ari Adler of East Lansing, Mich., most Americans get more uncomfortable with the idea of going green if it were to mean limiting choices in daily life. Adler says his 2003 Jeep Wrangler "has the aerodynamics of a brick, but I enjoy the vehicle I have." As his old light bulbs burn out, "I'll replace them with fluorescents. But I'll resist the idea that we should be required to do that." Adler, 39, who works in public relations, says he is "one of those people (who) tries to do the right thing for the environment and knows there is more I should be doing, but don't necessarily do."

Indeed, only about half of those polled thought they do a good job personally of protecting the environment. Less than 10% rate their efforts as "excellent." Andy McDonald of South Bend, Ind., says he used to recycle his household trash - until the city made it mandatory and doubled his garbage bill to pay for it. "I was doing it anyway," McDonald says. "They were trying to force me to do it. I don't like that." McDonald, 29, who services motor-home diesel engines, says he often sees contradictions in his customers' commitment to going green. "In the shop, people drive in with $500,000, $600,000, $700,000 motor homes with 500-horsepower engines that get, at best, 6 mpg on the highway," he says. "And yet they tow a hybrid around to drive when they get there. It's better than driving a regular vehicle, but maybe not driving the motor home could be a greater impact."

Products that help people use less energy - or leave a smaller "environmental footprint," as green advocates say - often are more costly than their alternatives, causing some to argue that going green is only for those who can afford it. Those in older homes have to pay several thousands of dollars to replace windows with energy-saving, double-paned glass. Organic food, grown without chemicals potentially harmful to land, water, wildlife and people, costs more. So do hybrid vehicles and electricity generated by wind turbines or solar panels.

In a CBS News/New York Times poll last year, fewer than half of the respondents said they had bought a costlier, "eco-friendly" product during the past year. "The fact is, most of these products sold as 'green' cost more than the alternative," says Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank that dismisses climate-change warnings as scare tactics not based on sound science. "You're already pricing people at the lower end out." He cites a study by an automotive research group, CNW Marketing Research in Bandon, Ore., that calculated total energy use for several car models. Ebell says the overall energy outlay for the Prius - from design to the junkyard - is costlier "than for an SUV like my Chevy TrailBlazer. It takes a huge amount of energy just to fabricate those batteries.".....

Some analysts say the green movement is overhyped. "Despite how ubiquitous this whole green message is, a lot of people still don't know what the hell this is about," says energy marketing consultant Suzanne Shelton of Knoxville, Tenn. A survey by her firm last year found 58% of Americans could not identify a source of "green, renewable or sustainable energy," such as solar or wind. Shelton adds that 10% to 20% of those questioned say they participate in "green power" programs to pay a little extra for electricity generated by wind turbines or solar arrays. She says data from power companies show that no more than 4% actually participate. "Their answers aren't consistent with reality," Shelton says. She says she isn't certain if the responses stem from social pressure to say the right thing or if "they're misunderstanding the terminology."

The USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows wide differences over what the government should do about global warming. About two-thirds favor spending many billions more on research into new sources of energy. But just one-third are comfortable with land-use restrictions to curb suburban sprawl, which necessitates more car trips. Only about a third favor imposing tough restrictions on U.S. industries and utilities.

For some, going green isn't about the environment as much as saving on home energy bills. Austin stockbroker Andrew Ma replaced more than 130 light bulbs with compact fluorescents in his 5,800-square-foot house after "doing the math." "It makes a lot of sense," says Ma, 34. But he says he won't give up his "gas hogs" - a Yukon Denali SUV and a Mercedes-Benz SL600 convertible - "that carry us in style and comfort." "I'm not going to get a Prius. The fun factor is not there yet," he adds. "I do treasure the environment. But I'm not one of the tree huggers."

Source




Most mass transit riders in 50 years: Good news or bad?

A few weeks ago I noticed a startling story in the "Money" section of USA TODAY. The main head announced purportedly good news: RIDERS CROWD PUBLIC TRANSIT SYSTEMS, and then came that surprising subhead: HIGHEST USE SINCE THE 1950's AT MORE THAN 10 BILLION TRIPS. Sure enough, the body of the article explained that the American Public Transportation Association reported that ridership rose in 2006 some 2.9%, to reach the highest levels since 1957.

Did you know that there were more people using mass transit during the `40's and early `50's than there are today? I most certainly did not. This is an astonishing revelation when you think about it. First of all, the population of the country was barely half what it is today-and yet more people rode mass transit.

Moreover, during the last 50 years we've poured literally hundreds of billions of dollars into the most expensive, glitzy, ambitious mass transit projects in history--- BART in San Francisco, MARTA in Atlanta, MetroRail in LA, plus impressive new projects in Minneapolis, Portland and Washington DC, and nearly everywhere else. With all these elaborate new systems, with high-tech buses, with propaganda about global warming and government policies designed to force you out of your car, it's astonishing to think that more people used mass transit when America had half the people it has today - and none of the high-tech, new rapid transit systems.

No, we didn't use buses and subways more frequently in the long-ago `50's because the service was better: by most measures, it wasn't as good, the buses weren't as comfortable, and some of the huge systems we enjoy today didn't even exist. There was only one reason that more people used buses and trains in those days ---and that was because they were relatively poor, and couldn't afford to own or operate their own cars. As recently as 1960, Americans owned less than 400 cars per one thousand population: many families had no cars at all, and owning more than one car per household represented a privileged rarity. Today, we possess more than 800 cars per 1000 population - approaching one car for every man, woman and child, with two or three vehicles in a typical family.

Of course, many social planners and environmentalists want us give up all those gas guzzlers and get back on the bus like we did fifty years ago. But the change in automobile ownership still gives some indication of the vast distance traveled by ordinary Americans in their journey toward wealth, choices, and personal freedom. Despite the endless whining to the effect that "we've never had it so bad," the number of citizens who own their own homes has soared from barely 50% in 1950 to 70% today, and the typical home itself is more than 50% larger than fifty years ago. In 1950, 24% of homes didn't have flush toilets, and less than 2% had air conditioning. Today, virtually 100% of the places we live enjoy flush toilets (what a relief) and more than 80% of homes boast air conditioning.

It would be easy to continue in this vein, but you surely get the idea: in terms of options, conveniences, comforts, material blessings, opportunities, no generation in the history of the world has lived as lavishly as this generation of Americans.

I recently spent a weekend in Louisville, Kentucky and ended up staying in the same Hyatt hotel as literally hundreds of competitors in a National Indoor Archery Championship. Normal middle class Americans traveled from every corner of the map, carrying their high tech bows in formidable cases - as if they were toting cellos or French horns. Somehow, these ordinary salt-of-the-earth folk could travel to Louisville, stay in a gorgeous hotel, and pursue a sport that they loved with amazingly complicated and ingenious rigs for putting arrows into targets.

I've also recently visited both Las Vegas and Disneyland - neither vacation attraction limited to the rich or the near-rich. Millions of Main Street Americans can save up their money and choose their destinations - enjoying the kind of comfort and elegance and adventure that our grandparents or even our parents could scarcely imagine.

When I grew up, we never stayed in hotels - partially because with four boys my late, long-suffering mother understood her kids might wreck any facility. When we went on vacation together, we invariably went camping - because that was cheap, virtually free. I've spoken to many products of similar families from the 1950's and `60's, where hard-working parents with the Depression mentality couldn't consider wasting money on restaurants of expensive getaways.

There are many other measures of greatness, of course, beyond material well-being --- and the generations that beat Hitler and later Communism certainly deserve gratitude for the achievements, even though they lived far less comfortable, far more circumscribed lives.

Think about the cruise ship industry: hundreds of thousands of Americans can get away in every season of the year and enjoy the sort of treatment, complete with lavish meals and entertainment, which only royalty enjoyed in the past. For a shockingly low price, retirees and young couples and everything in between can pick up an amazing Alaska cruise in downtown Seattle and sail among glaciers and pods of whales. Middle class families that couldn't afford to drive cars to work some fifty years ago, now can afford to ride gleaming luxury liners on vacation.

For many of us, it's worth the effort to try to defend these astonishing, unprecedented opportunities. It isn't necessarily good news that so-called "environmentalists" and various governmental planners have succeeded in driving more Americans onto mass transit than any time in the last fifty years. Giving up your car and getting on the bus may win commendation from Al Gore, but it does represent a lowered standard of living: sacrificing the independence of taking your own wheels to work. Fifty years ago, mom and dad or grandpa and grandma understand that a country that enabled more people to drive their own cars was a country with a rising living standard; today, as liberals try to push people out of those cars, they ought to be honest enough to acknowledge that they're talking about lowering living standards.

The left argues that the threat of global climate change requires precisely such diminished levels of comfort and opportunity, but when people comes to understand these long-term goals they'll hardly see the reduced array of choices for ordinary Americans as a development that's actually worth celebrating.

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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

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20 April, 2007

Another way global warming would be good for you

Global warming could increase a climate phenomenon known as wind shear that inhibits Atlantic hurricanes, a potentially positive result of climate change, according to new research released on Tuesday. The study, to be published on Wednesday in Geophysical Research Letters, found that climate model simulations show a "robust increase" in wind shear in the tropical Atlantic during the 21st century from global warming. Wind shear, a difference in wind speed or direction at different altitudes, tends to tear apart tropical cyclones, preventing nascent ones from growing and already-formed hurricanes from becoming the monster storms that cause the most damage.

The effect of global warming on wind shear is similar to the impact of El Nino, the periodic eastern Pacific warm-water phenomenon that tends to put a damper on Atlantic storms. The sudden development of El Nino was credited for an unexpectedly mild Atlantic season last year, when only 10 storms formed. Debate on the likelihood that human-generated climate change contributes to hurricane development has raged since the 2005 Atlantic season, which produced a record-shattering 28 tropical storms and hurricanes. That season saw some of the most powerful hurricanes in history and produced Katrina, which killed 1,500 people and caused $80 billion damage on the U.S. Gulf Coast. The hurricane threat roiled global oil and gas markets.

Source




Kilimanjaro not melting after all



A fresh assessment suggests the famous ice fields on Africa's tallest mountain will be around for decades yet. Recent concerns that climate warming would rob Mount Kilimanjaro of all its glaciers within 20 years are overly pessimistic, say Austrian scientists. Their weather station data and modelling work indicate the tropical ice should last well beyond 2040.

Precipitation and not temperature is the key to the white peak's future, the University of Innsbruck-led team says. "About five years ago Kilimanjaro was being used as an icon for global warming. We know now that this was far too simplistic a view," said Thomas Moelg. "We have done different kinds of modelling and we expect the plateau glaciers to be gone roughly within 30 or 40 years from now, but we have a certain expectation that the slope glaciers may last longer," added colleague Georg Kaser.

The group's assessment was presented here at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly meeting. It acts as a counterpoint to the most doom-laden projections for the 5,895m-high (19,340ft) peak, which draws thousands of tourists intrigued by the idea of seeing ice just three degrees south of the equator.

The research team has been using three automated instrument stations on the top of the mountain to collect continuous data on temperature, pressure, solar radiation, humidity and wind. The recording effort was in position late last year to witness heavy snowfall, which will have led to a slight increase in Kilimanjaro's overall ice volume. This glacier growth is only temporary, however. The mountain's ice is dependent on the pulses of moist air that sweep across from the Indian Ocean.

Since the late 1800s, these have become less frequent, and the regular snows that would maintain the ice fields are now a rare occurrence in what has become a much drier climate in East Africa. Today, the total ice extent - on the slopes and on the plateau - is about 2.5 sq km, down from more than eight sq km in the early 1900s. Some scientists have drawn a fairly straight-line curve and forecast a rapid final retreat to a totally bare mountain. But the Innsbruck team is more optimistic about the medium term having now put real field measurements into a comprehensive modelling programme. "Glacier recession has been a feature on Kilimanjaro for more than 100 years, but this is the first time we really have a precise understanding of the physical processes that control the glacier-climate interaction on Africa's highest mountain," said Dr Moelg.

This work emphasises the significance of the lack of precipitation (250mm per year on the summit) versus temperature (a mean of -7C). It indicates that glacier mass loss would be about four times higher if precipitation decreased by 20% than if air temperature on the mountain rose by 1C. Furthermore, it suggests that two-thirds of the ice that is lost goes straight into the atmosphere through sublimation (the direct conversion of snow and ice to water vapour). "In recent years many people have talked about 'the melting glaciers of Kilimanjaro'. If one wants to be more precise, I would call it the 'evaporating glaciers of Kilimanjaro'," said Dr Moelg.

This confirms the view that the African peak does not play an important role as a reservoir for water, unlike in the Andes and the Himalayas where some lowland cities and agricultural systems are dependent on summer melt high in the mountains. "This is not a factor at all at Kilimanjaro and it never has been," said Professor Kaser. "If you brought all the remaining ice down to the Amboseli National Park and melted it, the water would only cover the park to a depth of one or one-and-a-half millimetres. There is nothing in terms of water up there."

The Innsbruck research was conducted in collaboration with the University of Otago, New Zealand, and the University of Massachusetts, US. The team stresses that the drying of the East African climate around Kilimanjaro may itself be a regional impact of global climate change.

Source




'Green' rockers lack any cred

FOR all their good intentions, the global Live Earth concerts scheduled for mid-year will still struggle for credibility. The problem: Rock stars. Most are happy enough to preach and tell us how we should live our lives - hitting everything from AIDS to poverty to African adoption and the cancellation of Third World debt - yet, as in this case, their own bona fides often collapse under closer examination.

Already experts are struggling to rationalise the worth of the concerts against the massive amounts of carbon that each will produce; the very enemy the concerts are campaigning against. Britain's University of East Anglia is a world leader in climate change research and there, recently, Dr Keith Tovey said the Wembley concert alone could generate as much as 3000 tonnes of carbon. Considering the average Brit generates just nine tonnes per year, and the average Australian somewhere similar, those are scary numbers.

Sydney, host of one of the seven worldwide concerts, will produce a smaller carbon total but only because the 42,000 seat Aussie Stadium holds less than half the 90,000-strong Wembley. There will be five more concerts around the world - in Tokyo, New Jersey, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro and Shanghai, and each will spew their carbon into the air even as the rock stars climb on stage to tell us to ride pushbikes to work or plant a tree.

Leading the charge in Australia will be Midnight Oil, the John Butler Trio, Wolfmother and maybe even Silverchair. The concerts are the brainchild of the reinvented Al Gore and music promoter Kevin Wall, the man behind the Live 8 concerts two years ago that took up the war on poverty. Like Live 8, Live Earth will be broadcast to an estimated two billion people worldwide, and has already committed the likes of Madonna, Sting, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bon Jovi, Alicia Keys, Duran Duran, Melissa Etheridge and Genesis, along with the Australian stars. Even before the concert kicks off, though, there are some serious assaults taking place on the stars' credibility. For example, before she joined the crusade, Madonna's Confessions tour last year produced 440 tonnes of carbon dioxide in four months. The Red Hot Chili Peppers also staged a six-month, 42-date tour last year and did most of their travelling on board their private jet. The jet alone produced 220 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Perhaps most hypocritical of all is Gore, the self-appointed saviour of the planet who moved on from politics to make the Oscar-winning environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Just last month the Tennessee Centre for Research Policy did a carbon audit of his home, revealing the former US vice-president had been outrageously wasteful in his personal life. Over the past two years his home consumed energy more than 20 times the US average, yet Gore didn't even have the courtesy to blush when he announced the Live Earth concerts last week. "We hope the energy created by Live Earth will jump-start a massive public education effort," he said. "Live Earth will help us reach a tipping point that's needed to move corporations and governments to take decisive action to solve the climate crisis."

If Gore, as evidenced by his private lifestyle, isn't willing to buy what he is preaching then how many stars of the show are also selling a lie? Indeed, how much of their private excess will the rock stars, who always travel with an entourage, be willing to give up to make the sale? If getting to the venue means giving up their private jets to fly commercial, are they prepared to do it? What if it means climbing on a more eco-friendly train instead? Or is saving the planet, when it gets down to it, really somebody else's problem? You know ... I'm all right Jack, I'm doing my bit. It makes you wonder how much of Live Earth is a PR con.

Part of the con is that each star will "earn" carbon credits during the concerts. A tree will be planted, for example, to offset the carbon generated. Yet can anyone really see Madonna planting a tree if there is no news crew around? There will be hybrid vehicles for travel, food and drink will be sold in biodegradable packaging and CFL (compact fluorescent) lightbulbs will be used where possible. Recycling bins will flood the landscape.

Perhaps the true hero to emerge in all this could be environmental expert John Picard. Signed to overlook the greening of Live Earth, Picard's deal runs for a further 12 months after the concerts. His job is to work with the rock stars and make sure they keep their promises well after the glory has faded. He is a reminder that this is a long-term job, not just a feel-good moment.

Source




UN rebuff for Britain on global warming

BRITAIN has run into a wall of reluctance spearheaded by China after telling the United Nations that there are few greater threats to global security than climate change. The British Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, chaired the UN Security Council's first debate on global warming on Tuesday. Fifty-two countries lined up to speak in the debate, which Britain initiated as it holds the rotating presidency of the council. "This is an issue which threatens the peace and security of the whole planet - this has to be the right place to debate it," Mrs Beckett said.

But China's deputy ambassador to the UN, Liu Zhenmin, was blunt in rejecting the session. "The developing countries believe that [the] Security Council does not have the professional competence for handling climate change, nor is it the right decision-making place for extensive participation," Mr Liu said. China and Russia, among others, warned that the council's mandate was limited to peace and security. So did Pakistan, on behalf of 130 developing nations, which argued that the council was encroaching on more representative bodies, such as the 192-member General Assembly.

Inside the forum, Mrs Beckett said that recent scientific evidence reinforced, or even exceeded, the worst fears about climate change. She warned of migration on an unprecedented scale because of flooding, disease and famine. Drought and crop failure would also cause intensified competition for food, water and energy, and result in economic destruction comparable to World War II or the Great Depression. "Climate change is a security issue but it is not a matter of narrow national security - it has a new dimension," she said. "This is about our collective security in a fragile and increasingly interdependent world."

Mrs Beckett quoted a remark made by the President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, that global warming was "an act of aggression by the rich against the poor". She was supported by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon. "Projected changes in the Earth's climate are not only an environmental concern," Mr Ban said. "Issues of energy and climate change can have implications for peace and security."

British diplomats said the intention of Tuesday's session was to lift climate change to the top of the international agenda. Britain has pointed to the violence in the Darfur region of Sudan as an example of conflict partly caused by land degradation. The Maldives, Bangladesh and other low-lying countries more susceptible to flooding and climate change also pleaded with industrialised nations for action.

Last November, the Stern report suggested that 200 million people could be displaced by rising sea levels and drought by 2050. It said the global economy could shrink by one-fifth. Even Osama bin Laden accused the US in 2002 of harming nature "more than any nation in history". China has created artificial snow in Tibet after experts warned of melting glaciers in the Himalayas. The Tibetan meteorological station had created a fall of 2.2 millimetres, which accumulated to one centimetre, last week, about 4000 metres above sea level in northern Tibet, the Xinhua news agency said yesterday.

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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

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19 April, 2007

USHCN Temperature Record of the Week: Lewiston, ID

To bolster our claim that "There Has Been Little Net Global Warming Over the Past 70 Years," each week we highlight the temperature record of one of the 1221 U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) stations from 1930-2000. This issue's temperature record of the week is from Lewiston, ID. During the period of most significant greenhouse gas buildup over the past century, i.e., 1930 and onward, Lewiston's mean annual temperature has cooled by 0.48 degrees Fahrenheit. Not much global warming here!



Source




John Gore Kerry

Post lifted from Don Surber -- which see for links



John Kerry is an Al Gore wannabe. First, he followed him as the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. Then Kerry followed Gore in writing an environmental book. Now Kerry has followed him as an energy hypocrite. Cybercast News Service looked at Kerry's electric bills and found Kerry spends $1,100 a month for electricity for his townhouse in Boston.

That is just under the $1,369 per month that the Gores spent on electricity for their home in Tennessee. CNS also reported:

"Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate committee on environment and public works, paid a high of $675 a month and a low of $225 a month in 2005 to power her home in Greenbrae, Calif., according to the utility company Pacific Gas and Electric. Boxer, a proponent of stronger environmental regulation, moved to Oakland last July, but information on her current electric charges couldn't be obtained.

By contrast, global warming skeptic Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) - the ranking minority member of the House energy and commerce committee - appears to be a relatively light electricity consumer. Barton released his electric bill for February at a March 20 hearing - he paid $79.47 in total for both his Texas Utilities bill in Ennis, Texas, home and his Dominion Electric bill for his Arlington, Va., apartment.

Pontificate globally, waste locally.




The latest excuse for not building dams

This is a pathetic bit of propaganda below. The extra cost and use of resources involved in supplying tank water to every household would be HUGE. And don't Greenies claim we are using too many resources already? Every tank has an associated electric pump to make the water accessible so imagine the extra electicity usage of a million such pumps being turned off and on all the time!

PEOPLE living in Sydney and Brisbane get the best value from their water tanks, a report has found, with the rainfall patterns of those cities favouring individual household collection. But the initial cost of buying a tank remains high, the report's survey of 20 tank suppliers found, with a two-kilolitre tank costing an average of $2788 and a 20-kilolitre tank costing $4909.

The report, by the National Water Commission, said water collected in tanks was more expensive than that provided by utilities but it was becoming more cost-effective. On top of the initial price, people had to budget for repairs and cleaning.

The report found that tanks helped households lower their water bills and there were a number of potential benefits that could not be priced. These included "mitigating the effects of water restrictions on [owners'] lifestyle, amenity and property values; improving the taste of water in areas of poor water quality; and a sense of community mindedness". About 17 per cent of households have rainwater tanks, with many state governments offering rebates and requiring their inclusion in new developments.

The report was critical of water utilities' assessments of water tanks, saying they had not presented them "in such a positive light, concluding that tanks are generally less cost-efficient and energy-efficient than many other water supply solutions". The report was also critical of government advertising campaigns. It said they needed to be "more transparent in evaluating the cost-effectiveness of their own programs to encourage rainwater tanks, and more up-front with taxpayers and consumers about the costs and benefits of the subsidies provided".

Sydney and Brisbane consistently recorded the highest amounts of water captured and used, compared with Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth. The report said tanks in the two cities compared favourably with dams because many households were closer to the coast where rainfall was more frequent. This had resulted in a "green drought", where dam levels continued to drop despite reasonable rain along the coast. The report suggested people should consider the type of rainfall in their area before installing a tank. Timing of rainfall was more important than quantity.

The report, by Marsden Jacob Associates, found the average five-kilolitre tank should provide 71 kilolitres of water during an average year. Roof size was an important factor in rain capture. A separate report by the same consultants found that if rainwater tanks were installed in 5 per cent of households a year the need for a desalination plant in Sydney could be delayed until 2026. That report, commissioned by environment groups, found installing water tanks in 5 per cent of homes in Sydney, Melbourne and south-east Queensland would provide as much additional water as planned desalination plants in Sydney and on the Gold Coast and the first stage of the Traveston Dam on the Mary River.

Source




ECONOMY COMES FIRST: AUSTRALIA REJECTS CARBON EMISSIONS TARGETS

Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Friday reiterated his opposition to targets for cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. Speaking to reporters after meeting with state government leaders in Canberra, Howard said he had rejected a call to set a target of reducing Australia's emissions by 60 per cent. "We were unwilling, for reasons I have stated publicly, to commit to a particular target because of the possible consequences of that on the economy," the prime minister said.

The Howard government has come under pressure to join every other developed country other than the United States and sign the Kyoto Protocol on curbing climate change. Howard maintains that joining any international scheme to abate climate change would disproportionately affect Australia because it's the world's biggest coal exporter and relies on coal for over 80 per cent of electricity generation.

He rejects Kyoto because it doesn't include China, India and other developing countries in the first-round effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Howard said he would fund a Climate Change Adaptation Centre in Canberra to help prepare the country for warmer weather, less rainfall and rising sea levels.

FULL STORY here




INDIA WON'T FOLLOW EUROPE IN CO2 EMISSION CUT

Former Indian environment minister Maneka Gandhi has criticized the US for not joining the Kyoto Protocol and says India will not follow Europe in carbon dioxide gas emission reduction as energy consumption is already very low in the country.

"Per capita energy consumption in India is already among the lowest in the world," Gandhi, an MP from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), told a press conference at the European Parliament here Wednesday. She noted that in 2005, India consumed 520 kgoe (kilogram of oil equivalent) energy per person as compared to the world average of 1,731 kgoe and European average of 4,282 kgoe. "So there is very little to cut back," said Gandhi, who is here to chair the jury of the Energy Globe Award, one of the world's most recognized environmental awards, being hosted by the European Parliament.

The 27-member European Union in March agreed on a 20% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, according to INEP news agency. She said coal-produced electricity consumption will increase in India but if the country at this junction could go to renewables such as solar and wind energy, "I think we could head off the CO2 crisis. Otherwise we are going to go smack-bang into it".

Asked to comment on the US position on the post-Kyoto regime where Washington says it will not cut gas emissions unless India and China do the same, the environmental activist replied: "I am quite certain that America is using us just as an excuse. "If you put all the countries in Asia and Europe they still use less energy and have less CO2 emissions than the US. So for the US to say we will not join the Kyoto protocol unless India and China join is ridiculous."

On nuclear energy, Gandhi said her personal position is not in favor of nuclear energy for India "only because we do not achieve regulatory standards". "It is always shrouded in secrecy...At the moment there is a big debate going on nuclear energy in India. My personal view is that we can't handle it."

On environmental and animal rights issues, she said India and other Asian countries would follow suit if the European Parliament makes laws on these matters. "Our bureaucrats, who usually don't know what to do pinch from European laws and it has a very strong trickle down effect. So if you made the right laws, we would too."

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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

*****************************************



18 April, 2007

Willful ignorance in IPCC report (WG2 SPM)

An email below to Benny Peiser from Prof. Aynsley Kellow [Aynsley.Kellow@utas.edu.au], Head of the School of Government, University of Tasmania. Pic below



Thank you for publishing Indur Goklany's insightful critique of the SPM for the WG2 Fourth Assessment Report. I would like to add a couple of comments, if I may be permitted.

I was a referee for Ch 19 in the Report on 'Key Vulnerabilities and Risk Assessment', and made in essence the criticism Indur does that the whole exercise fails to take account of the increases in wealth that give rise to the emissions that drive the climate models, that drive the impact models. It is nonsensical to suggest that vulnerabilities will be as they would be if the projected climates impacted upon present developing countries. The Report persists in this nonsense in the face of at least this reviewer drawing it to their attention, so the persistence is quite willful.

It is, of course, such a fundamental criticism that it virtually renders the whole report invalid, so it was not likely too be well-received. I also added that the chapter exaggerated the hazards of climate change and almost totally ignored any benefits. I put it that the First Order Draft read as if (in a warmer, and therefore wetter, world) no rain would fall in any form that would be in any way useful to anyone: there would be only floods and droughts.

The Second Order Draft included some language to the effect that this was because the Committee had decided that it should be so, to which I responded that they should not then represent their analysis as a risk assessment, since any sensible risk assessment must include benefits as well as costs. I'm not holding my breath for this criticism to be taken on board either, which underscores a fault in the whole peer review process for the IPCC: there is no chance of a Chapter ever being rejected for publication, no mattter how flawed it might be.

But then I'll be counted as one of the 2,500 experts who agree with this nonsense!




DOUBTING DOOMSDAY

By Jeff Jacoby (Jeff seems unaware that the Lindzen article appeared only in overseas and online editions of Newsweek. The magazine's editors were not game to put it in their U.S. edition)

"Why So Gloomy?" asks the headline over Richard Lindzen's guest commentary about global warming in the April 16 issue of Newsweek. The cover of the magazine features a dire warning -- "Save the Planet -- Or Else" -- but Lindzen, a world-class climate scientist who holds an endowed chair in meteoroly at MIT, doesn't buy it.

Yes, he writes, the planet has warmed a bit, and human-generated greenhouse gases may be partly responsible, but that is hardly cause for panic. Alarmism over global warming may be in vogue, but climate change is normal -- "the earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year." The current fearmongering, says Lindzen, "rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week."

Though you'd never know it from Al Gore's movie or the latest National Resources Defense Council press release, most long-range global-warming forecasts rely on computer models that Lindzen describes as "inherently untrustworthy." There is still much about climate dynamics that science cannot explain. One puzzle, for example, is why temperatures climbed for two decades before 1940, yet dropped during the decades of the postwar boom, when carbon-dioxide emissions were so much greater.

But to global-warming True Believers, Lindzen's essay is just one heresy after another. It suggests that "a warmer climate could prove to be more beneficial than the one we have now." That extreme weather events might actually be *less* likely in a warming world. That sea levels have been rising gradually for centuries. That higher levels of CO2 could be a boon to agriculture. And that a warmer planet is preferable to a colder one. ("Exposure to cold," he writes, "is generally found to be both more dangerous and less comfortable.")

Lindzen is not the only climate expert to express skepticism about global-warming doomsaying -- not by a long shot. But so pervasive has the alarmist narrative become that anyone who dissents from it can expect to be smeared as a shill for polluters or compared to a Holocaust denier. So perhaps Newsweek was just trying to do Lindzen a favor when it ran this credit line following his piece: "Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research has always been funded exclusively by the US government. He receives no funding from any energy companies."

The implication is about as subtle as a two-by-four. Apparently Lindzen's scientific and professional credentials aren't sufficient to lend authority to his views; readers must be explicitly reassured that "energy companies" haven't paid him off. Well, if that's what it takes to keep climate-change commentary on the up-and-up, fine. But if scientists who take a non-hysterical approach to global warming are going to be scrutinized for ulterior motives, shouldn't we be just as suspicious about the alarmists? There is no shortage of incentives and inducements, after all, for those who paint global warming as a deadly and growing peril.

To begin with, staggering sums of money are channeled to researchers who emphasize the human role in global warming. The greater the sense of anthropogenic crisis, the greater the flow of research grants to address it. And it isn't only government that ladles out the dollars. Last year, Virgin Atlantic Airways founder Richard Branson pledged $3 billion to fight global warming; more recently he offered another $25 million for the first person who devises a way to annually remove a billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. In 2002, ExxonMobil announced a $100 million grant to establish a Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford University for research into "the potential long-term risk of climate change." Last week, yet another pot of cash was established to deal with global warming. Are experts who raise alarms about global warming being unduly influenced by such funding?

What about the lucrative and prestigious prizes global-warming alarmists have received? NASA's James Hansen, a prominent global-warming Cassandra, won a $250,000 Heinz Award in 2001. Last month he was a co-winner of the Dan David Prize and its $1 million purse. Other awards and other purses have frequently gone to other prophets of doom. And the potential rewards don't stop there. For those who toe the politically correct line on global warming, there have been big book contracts, hefty speaking fees, worshipful magazine profiles, softball TV interviews -- even an Academy award. Should that automatically call their objectivity or sincerity into question?

Our global-warming debate is contentious enough as it is. The last thing we need is to be disparaging the integrity of every scientist who takes a strong stand one way or the other. Tempting though it may be to think otherwise, not all true believers are scoundrels -- and not every heretic is a shill.

Source




A New Kyoto?

Even though the current agreement is predicated more on faith than science, European politicians are anxious to create a new Kyoto-style pact. This is predictable, especially since it opens up new rationalizations for taxation and regulation. It also is no surprise that the Europeans want to target the United States while simultaneously creating easier rules for other nations. The EU Observer reports:

EU environment minister Stavros Dimas wants increased European efforts to help kick-start an international post-Kyoto climate deal aimed at limiting the world's greenhouse gas emissions. ...Environment ministers from across the world are widely expected to agree on a mandate to start negotiations to replace the UN Kyoto Protocol - the international plan to fight global warming by limiting CO2 emissions which runs out in 2012 - at a December meeting in Bali, Indonesia, this year. ...

The EU executive is keen to get rapidly growing economies such as Brazil, China and India on the bandwagon for a global deal albeit with a "differentiated" treatment to the already industrialised countries. He explained that from meetings with China and India, it has become very clear that if the world's number one CO2 polluter - the US - would not sign up to the agreement, then neither will they. "We have to focus on the US. We must be both cooperative and critical and give them the arguments in order to press the decision makers," Mr Dimas said.

Source




California's Continuing Self-Inflicted Economic Suicide

Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks writes in the Wall Street Journal about California's attempt to limit greenhouse gas. Assuming this bill is not repealed, this will accelerate California's economic decline. But as Kibbe warns, this gives California politicians an added incentive to impose bad policy on the entire nation:

"Assembly Bill 32, the "California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006," makes California the first state in the nation to broadly limit CO2 emissions. Cosponsored by radical groups like Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council, AB 32 establishes an overall cap on the production of CO2 and a mandatory new reporting system to track emission levels across the state. This law will force California to ramp CO2 production back to 1990 levels by the year 2020. ...

Less allowable carbon means less energy. Less available energy, coupled with higher expected demand, means higher energy prices. Higher energy prices mean a booming market in "carbon offsets" for wealthy movie stars and their patrons and extremely unaffordable energy for the rest of working, commuting California. ...even if one agrees that global warming is occurring and that human activities are the cause, California's unilateral restrictions are counterproductive and will simply force businesses to leave the state. ...

The first real casualty of all the hype surrounding global warming seems to be simple economic common sense. Just a few years ago, in 1997, a Senate resolution sharply criticized proposed CO2 limits under the Kyoto Protocol, calling on then-President Clinton not to sign it or any other international climate change agreement that ". . . would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States." The Kyoto Protocol would have compelled the U.S. to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 7% below 1990 levels by the years 2008 to 2012. Adopting Kyoto-style restrictions would have cost the economy 4.9 million jobs, something Sen. Boxer and 96 of her Senate colleagues apparently found morally, or at least politically, unacceptable.

Unfortunately, with AB 32, California has adopted its own mini Kyoto, so Sen. Boxer, Rep. Pelosi and Rep. Waxman are "all in" at a high-stakes game of tax, cap and trade. This push from the California delegation stands American federalism on its head. Competition and innovation among the states are the driving force behind federalism, but Sen. Boxer and Speaker Pelosi hope to take an extravagantly expensive idea from their state and force it on the rest of us, even as similarly draconian carbon restrictions are failing miserably in Europe.

Source

NOTE: I have fixed some typos in the above article -- but I WAS rather inclined to let "Califonia" stand!




JEFFREY SACHS IS WRONG ONCE AGAIN

Rising population isn't going to destroy the planet



The BBC's Reith Lectures are not known for their humorous content, but the opening words of the 2007 series had me rocking with laughter. Professor Jeffrey D Sachs [pic above] told his audience that "It is with profound humility that I speak to you". Jeffrey Sachs is a man with many positive attributes, but humility is certainly not one of them. This can be seen in his new book, The End of Poverty, which might well have been subtitled "My plan to save the world". It has an introduction by Bono, which, as one reviewer pointed out, is appropriate: the economist as rock star meets the rock star as economist. Such an alliance must surely have titillated the BBC.

I suppose it will also have been aware of MTV's series The Diary of Angelina Jolie and Dr Jeffrey Sachs in Africa. Alas, Angelina was not among Sachs' audience at the Royal Society, an audience he described (with all humility) as "a unique gathering of leaders of action and thought" - but Geri Halliwell showed up, which was nice. So Professor Sachs is cool.

This is a relatively new phenomenon for the man described by himself as "internationally renowned for his work as an economic advisor to governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia and Africa". He is indeed renowned for all that, but not, it must be said, universally admired for it. In the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe he and a handful of other Harvard economists introduced so-called "shock therapy", characterised chiefly by instant and massive privatisation and the simultaneous removal of all price controls.

In Russia this was hardly a great success, and not just because of the traumatic consequences in the short term. Sachs insists that Yeltsin, rather than his American advisors, was responsible for the fact that the privatisation policy amounted in practice to the theft by a handful of favoured apparatchiks of the industries previously ran - in its own inimitably corrupt fashion - by the state. The former World Bank economist David Ellerman counters that it was the rapidity of the privatisation which made such an outcome inevitable, declaring that "Only the mixture of American triumphalism and academic arrogance could have produced such a lethal dose of gall."

Not surprisingly, those on the left with long memories are somewhat cynical about Sachs' new plans to solve poverty in Africa, although they warmly endorse his appeal to America to devote more money to international aid and less to international warfare: "I hope he gets what he wants, but that he doesn't get any credit for it", commented David Ellerman, in a somewhat sour jibe at Sachs' elemental ego.

In one respect there is a consistency between Sachs' Russian debacle and what he now demands for Africa. He wanted the US to provide much more in aid to the new Russia, and was openly critical when it failed to come up with the sums he thought necessary. It seems incredible to me that such an intelligent man couldn't see that the same corrupt elites who stole entire industries would appropriate aid dollars with exactly the same attention to detail.

His main academic critic in the US, Professor William Easterly of New York University, is similarly dismissive of Sachs' view that the solution to Africa's problems lies principally in an enormous expansion of aid budgets. Easterly, a former development economist at the World Bank, is the author of The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, cataloguing the corrupt practices which have ensured that almost two-and-a-half trillion dollars of aid have achieved nothing but economic stagnation in Africa.

Sachs' retort is that the aid had been spent in the wrong way - and, of course, he knows the right way. Even supposing that he does, there is still the matter of transmitting the money. Perhaps because Sachs is now a special advisor to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, he proposes that this task be allocated to various UN agencies. These, I take it, would be the same bureaucratic geniuses who managed the Iraq Oil-for-Food Programme.

This is not an argument for ignoring the wretched of the world: Sachs is obviously right that we have a moral duty to do the best that we can, but that will involve learning from those countries which have transformed their prospects over the past quarter century. In Fighting the Diseases of Poverty (International PolicyPress) Indur Goklany points out that, while Sub-Saharan Africa has a higher food supply per capita than it did 25 years ago, its growth in that most basic measurement of individual well-being has been vastly outstripped by China. The world's most populous nation has achieved this by the same means which brought prosperity to the developed world: industrialisation. Aid had nothing to do with it.

Unfortunately, however, Professor Sachs seems to subscribe to the fashionable view that this is a bad thing because it is killing the planet. In his first Reith lecture, he denounced something called "The anthropocy, in Beijing, which soon will be the country (sic) that is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide on the planet". He linked this to the claim that we - the anthropocy, presumably - are "over-hunting, over-fishing and over-gathering just about anything that grows slowly or moves slowly".

The Malthusian myth is an unconscionable time a-dying. Sachs' first lecture was entitled "Bursting at the seams". Yet humanity has consistently demonstrated that there is no causal link between population growth and increasing poverty. Our numbers are higher than they have ever been - and the average member of our species has never been further from starvation. As Indur Goklany points out, "Since 1950 the global population has increased by 150 per cent, but at the same time the real price of food commodities has declined 75 per cent... average daily food supplies per person in developing countries increased by 38 per cent."

Yet on BBC's Newsnight the same day as Sachs' lecture, the Secretary of State for the Environment, David Miliband, declared that it was impossible for the rest of humanity to aspire to the level of consumption that we currently enjoy: "If the world were to have the same living standards as we have in the UK, then we'd need three planets to support us." In the studio the environment spokesmen of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats nodded sagely.

Possibly Jeffrey Sachs and David Miliband are right that the planet is doomed if we carry on as we are. Yet for 200 years since Thomas Malthus wrote his Essay on the Principle of Population, economists and politicians have continued to make fools of themselves by writing books and delivering lectures prophesying famines and planetary apocalypse, unless we take their advice. It's one way to make a living, I suppose.

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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

*****************************************



17 April, 2007

Global warming roundup

Post below recycled from Gateway Pundit -- which see for links. The post lists some recent Warmist "protests" and the comments made by the Warmist organizers. For warmists, the reality of a prolonged winter is irrelevant



Carbondale, Illinois:

Our event was well organized and ready to go. Terribly cold, rainy weather greatly hindered the turnout. Three live bands played under the pavilion, few folks turned out. But we organizers and volunteers enjoyed the experience!

Saint Paul, MN:

The curious April snow had melted just in time for everyone to enjoy this beautiful spring day, no matter what part of the Capitol lawn you happened to be on.

Osceoal, MO:

These people braved the chilling weather to ask Congress to step it up as the gathered on a bluff top overlooking the place where the Sac River, flowing out of the Ozark highlands, joins the Osage river- coming through wetlands of the Osage plains in eastern Kansas.

Pittsburgh, PA:

It was amazing! About 200 people showed up in chilly (mid-30s) weather to hear speakers including our local city councilman, to write letters to legislators, to listen to music from the band Life in Balance (who added the call to "Step it UP!" to their song lyrics).

Hanover, NH:

Our event was held outside, on a chilly day, at the new Richmond Middle School with many energy saving features.

Kansas City, MO:

We had to move the event to an indoor location because of potential snow and rain during the time of the event. About 500 people attended the event at Community Christian Church.

Evansville, IN:

Despite the cold weather lots of people came out and there were several great speakers including; Biologist, Sam LaBudde.

HoughtonHancock, MI:

We then ended our Pinwheel Parade at the Portage Lake District Library, which, ironically, is situated right on the snowmobile path along the canal through Houghton.

And, of course, the headline in Grand Rapids, MI:

"Snow won't dampen global-warming rallies"

Dress warm.




Green colonialists

THE Tory party donor and environmental philanthropist Johan Eliasch has been accused of "green colonialism" after allegedly consigning 1,000 people to poverty in his attempts to preserve the Amazon jungle. The allegations against Eliasch, who last week was touring South America with his friend the Duke of York, come from the inhabitants of a region of the Brazilian rainforest the size of Greater London.

In 2005 the Swedish-born tycoon, who runs the Head sports goods empire, spent a reported 13.7 million pounds of his estimated 361m fortune buying 400,000 acres - about 625 square miles - of jungle from an American-owned timber company with the aim of protecting it from loggers. Eliasch has described the move as "my little bit towards saving the world". As a result of the deal, a lumber mill that employed as many as 1,000 people closed in the town of Itacoatiara in northwest Brazil, increasing hardship in an already economically depressed region.

The closure has pitched Eliasch into a debate about how rich countries can help preserve tropical rainforests while considering the livelihoods of people who live and work in them. Some local environmentalists have accused him of dabbling in "green colonialism". "What he is doing is valid in terms of preservation but you cannot let people go hungry," said Lelio Moreira, who works at the local radio station, Panorama Itacoatiara. "There has to be some kind of help for locals hurt by this. Now, with the lack of jobs, violence is increasing and because fathers cannot afford to look after their families we also have a growing problem with child prostitution."

Joao Manuel Figueira, a municipal employee, added: "The impact of the plant's closure has been harsh. The local shops are feeling the knock-on effects with a drop in sales. We know the environment is important and deforestation is a problem. But knocking all the forest down is one thing. Taking out mature wood is another." Moreira said most residents had no idea who Eliasch was or what his plans were for his purchase. But Eliasch said relations with local government and the wider population since he bought into the region had been "generally positive". He said all the workers he laid off were fully compensated and he planned to re-hire many of them as guards to protect his new wilderness sanctuary. But he admitted that for him, preserving the jungle was "the only option" and took priority over those living there. "The rainforest is more important to me at the moment," said Eliasch, who is the Tories' deputy treasurer. He has also lent the party 2.6m.

He rejected arguments that first world countries, which chopped down their own forests in the drive for industrialisation, had no right to try to prevent Brazilians doing the same. "I'd like to say a move like my purchase is more learning from our mistakes," he said. "People have made mistakes in the western world and [I am] trying to prevent it happening elsewhere."

Eliasch is not the only one caught up in the paradox that by trying to save the rainforest he is harming the people who earn their living there. The Brazilian government says it is living up to its commitments to preserve the forest and points to a steep drop in the rate of deforestation since a peak in 2002. But that effort has hit the economy of many jungle towns hard. Last year Eliasch came up with the idea of buying the whole rainforest to preserve it. The result was a diplomatic incident between Brazil and Britain when the idea was taken up by David Miliband, the environment secretary, who suggested setting up an international trust as the best way to preserve the Amazon

Source




FUEL CELL UPDATE

Of Wooden Fuel Cell Cars...

I had no idea that people still built cars out of wood, but apparently Morgan in the UK does. It announced in Geneva that it would offer a hydrogen-fueled, zero-emission version that resembles the Aero 8, which features a wooden-framed body. To quote the Pocket-Lint web site, "It will be a very lightweight car with a fuel cell hybrid powerplant, which will give it a 200-mile range."

On reflection, the British have a heritage of doing some pretty remarkable things with wood, including one of my favorite aircraft of World War II, the all-plywood DeHavilland Mosquito, the fastest fighter-bomber of the war. So, it will be interesting to see how such a seemingly low-tech material performs in concert with such a high-tech propulsion system.

...And Germany Submarines

British wooden cars aren't the only thing being powered by a fuel cell; German submarines are as well. Siemens, which recently bought Ballard's electric drive system division, is equipping two more U-212A class submarines with its Air Independent Power Supply, which includes "a Permasyn Motor (permanently excited synchronous propulsion motor), PEM (Polymer Electrolyte Membrane) Fuel Cells as the main part of the Air Independent Power Supply, DC- switchgears and the platform management system." The U-212A submarines are describe thus by Deagel.com:

The U212-class submarines have been designed to be powered by hydrogen fuel cells instead of traditional atmosphere-dependent propulsion systems. The new submarines will be quietest than previous German models and will be able to stay submerged for longer periods of time. The fuel cells will provide to conventional submarines some features only available for nuclear-powered vessels.

The fuel cell propulsion system based on hydrogen allows the boat to cruise submerged for weeks, typically a diesel-powered submarine can remain submerged for only two days. Fuel Cells generates no noise and no exhaust heat. The Portuguese and Greek Navies have ordered the German hydrogen fuel cell propulsion system for three of their U209-class submarines on order or already in service.

The U212-class is an evolution of proven U209 submarines. The new submarine will be armed with the DM2A4 torpedo and will perform shallow water and open sea missions. It will feature six 533mm torpedo tubes and 12 torpedoes or 24 mines.

Source




Australia: Public broadcaster scaremongering on the environment

NEWSFLASH: Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he can't guarantee the Great Barrier Reef will still be here in 20 years. That's how our ABC breathlessly reported Turnbull's response to the recycled report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For the record, Turnbull also refuses to guarantee the world will not be under attack from an intergalactic force or threatened by any asteroids streaking toward it in 2027. But your ABC hasn't got around to reporting his position on those eventualities because intergalactic forces and asteroid attacks are not part of its agenda. Yet.

If our ABC has found anyone to guarantee the security of the Great Barrier Reef, the height of Mt Everest or the snows of Kilamanjaro in 2027, it isn't saying. But the fact that it can lead its news broadcast with a statement of such utter fatuity indicates how deeply its cultural warriors have committed themselves to flaying the Government over claims of human-induced global warming.

It is interesting to note that, when the ABC was broadcasting Turnbull's refusal to guarantee the future of the Great Barrier Reef at 9am on the Saturday of the Easter weekend, he was in Washington where he had just secured the support of the US for the Howard Government's initiative to reverse global deforestation. While the ABC was either replaying an old broadcast of Opposition environment spokesman Peter Garrett demanding Australia sign up to the failed Kyoto Accord, or playing a new interview with Garrett repeating his old demand that Australia sign the dead accord, Turnbull was meeting White House Council on Environmental Quality chairman James Connaughton, the Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs Dr Paula Dobriansky and other senior US officials, and securing their agreement to work together to face the international challenge of global warming.

And, while the ABC was replaying Garrett's new or recycled views, Turnbull had flown halfway around the world to Indonesia to talk to his Indonesian counterpart, Rachmat Witoelar, about Indonesia's support for the projects already under way aimed at preserving old growth forest and stopping illegal logging. According to Turnbull, Indonesia has even agreed to permit the use of satellites to identify areas of illegal logging, a plan critics were quick to claim would be unacceptable to Australia's northern neighbour. Those critics were wrong, but our ABC has yet to broadcast that fact.

"Indonesia is more than willing to accept any technical assistance we can provide," Turnbull said. "If the world could halve the current rate of deforestation, we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by three billion tonnes a year, almost 10 times more than what would be achieved under Kyoto."

Garrett is not Kyoto's only champion. Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd is also trying to push Australia into the joke protocol and last week the European Union's Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas was given ample ABC air time to bash the Howard Government for refusing to sign up and place the Australian economy at risk. The problem for the EU is that Australia is actually on track to meet its Kyoto target but, as Prime Minister John Howard noted last week, at least 12 of the EU's 15 member nations, including Denmark, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy, are unlikely to meet their 2012 Kyoto commitments.

What Al Gore, the EU, the UN, Garrett and Rudd all choose to ignore is the science which shows that the Earth's climate has always been variable and that climate change can be attributed to many things but that among the least likely to have had any influence is human activity. Professor Ian Plimer of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide says the current theory of human-induced global warming is not in accord with history, archaeology, geology or astronomy and must be rejected. Further, he says, the current promotion of this theory as science is fraudulent and the current alarmism on climate change is not science....

While some adults believe they will feel better if they publicly confess to leaving a light on at night and while The Sydney Morning Herald believes we should take a lead from frightened primary school students, most rational people want to understand the science behind the wild claims being made for climate change.

To date, the debate has been led by those seeking political and economic gain through fear. Professor Plimer's view is unpopular because it absolves humans from blame and robs the self-flagellating publicity-seekers of their moment in the spotlight. It does not however mean that his views are not as deserving of equal consideration in this debate. As for Turnbull and Garrett, one is out there walking the walk and the other is just talking through his very necessary hat.

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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

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16 April, 2007

Experts' dim view of green light bulb

Hilarious gap found in Greenie reasoning

THE cover story of this month's edition of Silicon Chip magazine is a comprehensive bagging of the Federal Government's plan to replace incandescent light bulbs with more efficient compact fluorescents (CFLs).

As publisher Leo Simpson points out, most domestic lighting use is at night, which means it is "merely using the 'spinning reserve' of our base-loaded power stations. "You could switch all the lights off ... and the base-load power stations would still be spinning away, using just as much coal," he says.

In a six-page analysis, Silicon Chip , the bible for electrical engineers, identifies drawbacks such as the fact that a CFL light bulb "takes about 10 to 15 minutes to achieve full brilliance"; doesn't last long when used for frequent short periods; can't be used with a dimmer switch; and can cause electrical and infra-red interference to the point where "CFLs can completely obliterate [radio] reception in rural areas" - and if you have a "CFL in the same room as your TV or hi-fi system, the infra-red remote control may not work at all". Heed the geeks.

Source




Global warming, global stifling

The planet has a problem caused by too much hot air -- comment by logician Gary Jason

The debate about global warming has reached a crescendo, and has acquired a deeply unsettling tone. We are witnessing a veritable rush to judgment - a rush that has now been accelerated by a United Nations report that accepts and supports the global warming theory. If there was ever a time for skepticism, it is now. The time has come for people who have reasonable doubts to speak up and offer the reasons for their doubts. In this article I will try to clarify what parts of global warming science give cause for doubt. I will also state the features of the global warming debate that are troublesome to me - and should be troublesome to you.

I'll start by making some distinctions. The first distinction is between the narrow theory of anthropic global warming (hereafter, the "Narrow Theory") and the grand metanarrative of global warming (hereafter, the "Grand Theory"). The Narrow Theory lies exclusively in the domain of climate science, and holds simply that:

* The earth's climate is warming significantly.
* This warming is exacerbated by the generation of CO2 and other anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
* This warming threatens to induce widescale ecological changes.

The Grand Theory - as presented on television and in several recent movies - is vastly more than a theory of climate science. It is a multiple-domain metanarrative or integrated worldview, including both moral assumptions and policy prescriptions. In essence, it posits twelve theses:

* The world is warming dramatically.
* This warming is unlike any other warming or cooling in the history of the planet.
* The warming is caused primarily by humans' burning of fossil fuels.
* If we keep burning fossil fuels at the present rate, warming will accelerate and increase without end.
* The result of warming will be a huge increase in the number of ecological and meteorological disasters, which will be of biblical proportions.
* These disasters will not be counterbalanced by any favorable effects of warming.
* Both warming and disaster will occur with such rapidity that mankind will be unable to adjust.
* The process can be reversed or controlled by drastically curtailing the use of fossil fuels.
* The only way to do this is by drastically curtailing the use of fossil fuels.
* The best plan is to slash the use of fossil fuels in the United States and other countries of the developed world, while leaving the less-developed world (including Brazil, China, and India) alone.
* Use of fossil fuel can best be curtailed by the exploitation of wind and solar power, and by massive "conservation."
* Whatever this will cost, directly and indirectly (and estimates range from trillions of dollars to nothing at all), will be less that the costs of the damage wrought by continued warming.

This Grand Theory is a wide ranging worldview, of which the Narrow Theory is but a minor part. It includes theses that are well beyond the domain of climate science, including theses derived, at least ostensibly, from history, geology, economics, agricultural science, power-plant engineering, and geopolitics, then given a moral cast, i.e., imbued with moral judgments. For example, Theses 6, 10, 11, and 12 are all either completely or in great part economic claims, having little if anything to do with climate science. To cite a specific example, Thesis 10 is a claim that can only be proven by looking at detailed, empirically based projections of emissions figures from industries in developed countries compared to those in the third world, and factoring in projections of efficiency and productivity. Another example: Thesis 11 is a sweeping claim about the economics of power generation, and can only be proven by looking at the economics of all known methods of generating power, including every feasible alteration in those technologies.

Most of the theses in the Grand Theory are packed with morally charged concepts. If an epidemiologist says, "The chance of bird flu becoming epidemic is growing significantly," she is making a narrowly scientific statement. If she says, "Bird flu is about to explode catastrophically! We have to stop it now!", she is going beyond science to make a moral and a policy judgment. That isn't a problem if the economics and morality are obvious - if, say, the cost of inoculation is trivial compared to the costs associated with a disease that has a mortality rate of nearly 50%. But when the economics is complex (with costs and benefits hard to measure, the range of options large, and the chances and scale of an anticipated event hard to estimate), or when the moral case is unclear (say, when the moral values being balanced are incommensurable with one another), such value-laden language is dangerous.

Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, an eminent specialist who is favorable to the Narrow Theory, made this point well in a recent interview with the BBC. He said, "Why is it not just campaigners, but politicians and scientists, too, who are openly confusing the language of fear, terror, and disaster with the careful hedging which surrounds science's predictions? . . . To state that climate change will be 'catastrophic' hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science."

The second distinction I want to make is between general agreement, at least among the scientists in a given field, and a complete convergence of opinion. When the majority of scientists agree that a theory in their domain is true, there is general agreement. But general agreement means that a significant minority of scientists still dissents. When a theory has survived repeated tests (i.e., has predicted with great accuracy phenomena that are then confirmed empirically) and has been tremendously fruitful in guiding research, then virtually all scientists active in its domain agree, and there is complete convergence. Ask physicists whether quantum theory is true, and 99.99% will say it is. You would see the same virtual unanimity if you asked biologists whether all life on this planet evolved from one original form.

There is general agreement about the Narrow Theory - though there are varying degrees of this agreement, depending on the particular thesis being considered. The summary of the UN study just released (the Fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or "IPCC") reports that its panel is over 90% certain that the "observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is . . . due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations." This means that a significant minority of the rele-vant scientists continues to doubt part or all of the Narrow Theory - perhaps a larger minority than is apparent, since the summary is often more "confident" than the actual study, and even more since the report's contributors were selected by politicians whose desire for scientific objectivity may not have been paramount. And although the highest percentage agrees that temperatures have risen (Thesis 1), there are prominent dissenters. Atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer questions Thesis 1. So do eminent climatologist Timothy Ball, and Neil Frank, former director of the National Hurricane Center. Climatologist William Gray of Colorado State University actually predicts global cooling - which, remember, was the dominant climatological prediction of the 1970s.

Fewer scientists agree that the rise was caused by human activity (Thesis 2), or that the potential ecological damage will include such threats as increased storm activity (often cited by supporters of Thesis 3). Much of the disagreement about Thesis 2 surrounds the question of whether the global warming posited by Thesis 1 is primarily or only partially caused by human fossil-fuel use. After all, methane is a greenhouse gas, and is emitted by cattle in large quantities, so it is caused by man, but not by the burning of fossil fuel. Then again, volcanoes and other natural processes create copious amounts of CO2.

Some scientists, such as Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, believe that the rise is caused by a rise in solar radiation, a cyclical pattern that they see going far back in geologic history. This explanation has the advantage of providing a reason for periods of global warming (and cooling) before human existence. Other climatologists point out that the geological record shows that some past rises in CO2 were preceded by temperature rises, and thus could not have been causes of those temperature increases. There must have been a different cause (such as increased solar radiation). Another recent theory is that temperature fluctuations may be caused by increased cloud formation resulting from increased cosmic radiation. And prominent Narrow Theory critic Richard Lindzen (a meteorologist at MIT) disputes whether rising temperatures will increase storm activity.

I am not a climate scientist. I do not know if complete convergence among climate scientists will ever occur, or if it does, whether it will be convergence on all three theses, or fewer. But I don't have to be a climate scientist to see that there is at present nothing approaching complete convergence on the Narrow Theory.

Turn to the Grand Theory, and things get very curious. While there seems to be a preponderance (though nowhere near a complete convergence) of opinion on the Narrow Theory, there isn't even anything approaching a consensus on the Grand Theory. For instance, an NREP (National Registry of Environmental Professionals) survey of licensed environmental specialists shows that only 66% consider the rate of global warming a serious problem facing the planet (with roughly the same percentage believing that the U.S. should do more to address the issue), and that only 39% consider regulation of carbon emissions as the most important tool in addressing global warming.

Nevertheless, it appears that many climatologists give evidence for the Narrow Theory - usually by showing that the carbon dioxide building up in the atmosphere has a human stamp - but then essentially assume that all the other theses of the Grand Theory follow automatically.

This doesn't surprise me, because, again, most of the other theses of the Grand Theory are economic or even moral, hence not in the climatologists' domain of expertise. Such things frequently happen with multi-domain metanarratives. Because the experts in one field (say, atmospheric physics) don't know much about another field (say, agricultural economics), they can't agree or disagree with the experts in that field in any meaningful way. This is why these metanarratives are more often put forward by advocacy groups than by groups of scientists reasoning as scientists.

It is easy to see why certain advocacy groups oppose the Grand Theory. Most obviously, opposition is clearly in the self-interest of the fossil fuel industries. But who pushes the theory? Five kinds of people reflexively support it:

The first, and some of the most exuberant, are people with a religious faith that dovetails with the Theory. I have in mind the pagan, neo-Romantic Greens who worship Mother Earth, and believe that She is being ravished by Corrupt Mankind. These folks have been around since at least Rousseau. They are especially common among baby boomers, many of whom were hippies before being compelled by economic reality to acquire a job, and are still in touch with their tree-hugging inner selves. The idea of sinful industrial man being punished for the offense of developing the planet for such filthy purposes as survival excites these folks more than all the Viagra in Vegas. Their political force is a phalanx of well-funded environmental organizations: Greenpeace, the National Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, etc.

The second sort of people who reflexively support the Grand Theory are the open anticapitalists (socialists, Marxists, anarchists, and assorted other aging revolutionaries manqu‚s, pining for the Great Communist Heaven that has heretofore eluded them). They hate capitalism generally, but American industry in particular. American prosperity sticks in their craw. It shows what free enterprise can do. These people love the Kyoto Accord precisely because it proposes to channel industry into China and Brazil, while throwing massive numbers of Americans out of work. If implemented, it would allow them to exclaim, "Can't you see, worker? Can't you see how the evil multinational corporations deliberately send your jobs abroad?" And, as believers in equalizing world incomes, they would have the pleasure of equalizing America downward.

The third group advocating the Grand Theory consists of global redistributionist, Wilsonian liberals and one-world bureaucrats. These people also want to end global income inequality, even if ending it comes at the price of ending global prosperity. It galls them to see America so rich and third-world countries so poor, although they are congenitally unable to see that the blame lies with the bad governments that have afflicted the third world. To admit that would be to "blame the victim."

The fourth group enamored of the Grand Theory is that of the modern statist liberals. Modern liberals love the extensive control of the economy that taxation and regulation bring them. The pork that statist liberals derive from the Grand Theory is not trivial. The yearly spending on "alternative energy" alone is $14 billion, and statist politicians get to hand it out. More, vastly more, can be expected from fuller applications of the Theory.

The fifth group of reflexive advocates is, of course, the individuals and corporations who stand to gain financially from extensive regulation of the energy industries. Groups 4 and 5 often work together. For example, prominent advocates of the "cap and trade" proposal (a proposal to set emission targets, and allow those companies who beat the targets to sell their "savings credits" to companies which fail to meet their targets) are the large brokerage firms Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, who are happy to testify in favor of the Grand Theory in hearings run by Democratic power players such as Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer. Probably the main player here is USCAP - the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which includes energy companies, brokerage firms, and manu-facturers, as well as some big environmentalist organizations (Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense, and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change). All this is classic rent-seeking.

Add to group five the usual gathering of weasels, to wit, parasitic trial lawyers who will rip off uncountable billions by suing productive enterprises because of CO2 emissions. Naturally, California has jumped into the lead here. State Attorney General Jerry Brown (yes, Governor Moonbeam, redivivus) is aggressively pursuing a federal lawsuit directed at the major auto makers, seeking billions of dollars in compensation because cars allegedly constitute a "nuisance" by contributing to global warming. You might well ask why Moonbeam didn't start by suing the utilities firms (which, after all, use fossil fuels to run their power plants). But no: California suffered power shortages a few years back, and the voters tossed out a recently reelected governor because they held him to blame. The attorney general knows this. Also, he has a long-standing hatred of private cars; during his own eight years as governor, he notoriously refused to build any freeways. State by state, industry by industry, such junk lawsuits will proliferate........

Much more here




Live Earth: change the record

The anti-development message of the Al Gore-inspired gig planned for July is nothing to sing and dance about

How do we stop this global disaster? No, not climate change, stoopid - Live Earth! This 24-hour smugfest of seven concerts on six different continents will bring together 150 acts including Madonna, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Kanye West, the Foo Fighters, Bon Jovi, Sheryl Crow...really, lots and lots of pop stars, with probably a squillion more guest appearances to be announced.

If you weren't feeling patronised enough by Live 8, the freebie gig in 2005 that called on G8 politicians to cancel Third World debt (which they were planning to do anyway), Live Earth might really tip you over the edge. It will consist of a rolling series of concerts in China, Australia, South Africa, the UK, Brazil, Japan and the USA on 7 July this year. The aim of the concerts is to raise lots of money so that the concert organisers (former US vice-president Al Gore and Live 8 producer Kevin Wall) can carry on bemoaning what human beings are doing to the planet through a new foundation called Save Our Selves (SOS).

What's SOS all about? `Save Our Selves is designed to trigger a mass-scale movement to combat our climate crisis. Our climate crisis affects everyone, everywhere. That's who SOS is aimed at. The magnitude of the climate crisis makes it so that only a global response can begin to address it. SOS asks all people to Save Our Selves because only we can. SOS is more than a distress call. The most important part is how people respond. As we move forward, SOS will not only issue the call, but will provide the solutions individuals, corporations, governments and the world can use in answering it.'

Decide for yourself whether the dominant tone is bombastic or melodramatic. But ticket-buyers for Live Earth might want to pause to think about their feelings at becoming a stage army for Gore and Wall's international consultancy service. Once SOS can say that `two billion people' watched its concerts and had their `awareness' raised, it can demand that politicians listen to its policy prescriptions. Why worry about winning elections when you can just organise a gig? Right, Al?

One criticism of the concerts is that they're likely to generate as much carbon dioxide as they save. After all, there will be 150 acts with electrically-powered equipment and chemically-powered entourages. They won't be travelling to their venues by bicycle, that's for sure. The organisers have promised to offset all the performers' flights and use carbon-neutral energy sources. (Ironically, when I debated with event spokesman Yusuf Robb on Irish radio station Newstalk this morning, he suggested Irish music fans should go to the London gig on a ferry or `take a Ryanair flight'. He clearly doesn't realise how much the Irish airline is hated by green campaigners on this side of the pond.)

Even if the concerts themselves are carbon-neutral, the organisers and performers quite clearly have lifestyles that are at odds with the message they are preaching to the rest of us. They own big cars, private jets, huge homes and enjoy the best of everything. Yet their advice to everyone else is that we must tighten our belts, rein in our ambitions, make do and mend etc, if we ever hope to Save Our Selves and the planet.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or a climate scientist for that matter) to work out that getting a bit of global exposure won't do any of these acts any harm. The newer performers will be hoping to use Live Earth as a platform to break through outside of their own countries. Some of the older performers need all the credibility they can get. For the more superannuated acts involved - for whom Madonna is rapidly becoming the role model - it won't be Save Our Selves so much as Save Our Sales.

Climate change is certainly the cause du jour for celebrities who want to prove that they aren't shallow prima donnas. Witness this month's Vanity Fair magazine, which features Leonardo Di Caprio, alongside Berlin Zoo's polar bear superstar, Knut, as an `eco-hero'. We can look forward to his own film about global warming, The 11th Hour, which will include such tub-thumping as this: `So, we find ourselves on the brink. It's clear humans have had a devastating impact on our planet's ecological web of life. Because we've waited, because we've turned our backs on nature's warning signs, and because our political and corporate leaders have consistently ignored the overwhelming scientific evidence, the challenges we face are that much more difficult. We are in the environmental age whether we like it or not.'

This is at least a bit more honest than Save Our Selves. SOS presents its arguments as being in the interests of people everywhere. But you know that, underneath, SOS has a fairly low opinion of humanity. Di Caprio just comes right out and says it: we must repent for our sins against nature. Leo is a wealthy man whose main claim to fame is pretending to be other people and living a glamorous lifestyle off his superstar salary. Environmentalism is the product of his nagging guilt about that fact.

And he's not alone, as James Heartfield has argued on spiked: `[O]ne could state as a law of politics that the relationship between green thinking and increasing consumption is not contradictory, but complementary. The greater role that consumption plays in our lives, the more we are predisposed to worrying about the planet.. As sure as night follows day, the very people that are most preoccupied with the environment will increase their consumption from one year to the next.'

The real problem with Live Earth, with Vanity Fair and with every other `green special' of one sort or another is that they send out a message which is not simply misplaced but downright reactionary. When human beings were part of `our planet's ecological web of life' our lives were nasty, brutish and short. Only by steadily separating ourselves from that web of life and manipulating it in a host of ways for our own ends have some people been able to enjoy long and relatively comfortable lives.

The pressing political question of our age should be about how we can both improve our lives still further and ensure that everyone in the world enjoys the benefits. The message of SOS seems to be that we've gone too far and we need to call a halt to development. That's nothing to sing and dance about.

Source




Perfect storm for global warming fight

Weather used to be the ultimate safe topic for conversation. That was before climate change came along. Indeed, we've witnessed a sudden shift in Washington's conventional wisdom on this topic. Virtually every major player on and off Capitol Hill has concluded that the global-warming train is leaving the station, and no one dares to be left behind. Comprehensive legislation to mandate reductions in CO2 emissions from power plants, autos, factories, farms and office buildings has line-jumped the congressional agenda.

The perfect storm started last November when Democrats regained control of Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quickly created the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and named as chairman her close ally and rabid environmentalist, Rep. Ed Markey (D.-Mass.). Sen. Barbara Boxer (D.-Calif.), another ardent environmentalist, assumed chairmanship of the Senate Environment Committee.

The storm gathered strength in January when California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreed to a mandatory 25% reduction in statewide CO2 emissions from by 2020 and an even more ambitious goal -- reducing emissions 80% from 1990 levels by 2050.

Category Five status arrived in early February with the release of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest report. Media outlets labeled it "dire" and speculated openly about a "a 21-foot increase in sea level, forcing the relocation of more than 300 million people living in low-lying areas worldwide."

Actually, as my Heritage colleague Ben Lieberman points out, the study "retreated on a number of important assertions," including a downward revision in future sea-level estimates and hedges considerably on whether global warming contributes to powerful hurricanes like Katrina. Nonetheless, industry groups sought shelter -- and purchased tickets on the global-warming train:

* On the day the UN report emerged, Exxon Mobil conceded "it is prudent to develop and implement strategies that address the risks [of global warming]," including "putting policies in place that start us on a path to reduce emissions."

* The utility industry quickly followed. The Edison Electric Institute and the Electric Power Supply Association braced "for expected federal mandates" and announced support for federal caps on CO2 emissions.

* The U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of CEOs from 10 blue-chip companies and four environmental organizations, called for a 10% to 30% reduction in worldwide atmospheric concentrations of CO2 within 15 years, and up to 80% by 2050.

* Meanwhile, other global-warming skeptics, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, find themselves sidelined by splits among their members.

Conspiracy theorists believe those splits aren't accidental and point to efforts by left-leaning foundations such as the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, which has convinced 42 large corporations -- including Intel, Alcoa, Georgia-Pacific, Sunoco, Lockheed Martin, Weyerhaeuser and Toyota -- to embrace ambitious global-warming legislation. Pew's president, Eileen Claussen, has even boasted about this divide-and-conquer strategy: "The whole objective was to split the industry so you could get people who were progressive to begin to do something" to advance global-warming legislation.

But the companies climbing aboard are hardly motivated by altruism. "We also believe," Pew's website states, "that companies taking early action on climate strategies and policy will gain sustained competitive advantage over their peers."

Indeed, some of these companies want to force their competitors to shoulder costs they have already borne. "Since 1991," a DuPont executive recently told Congress, "we've reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 72% globally and avoided $3 billion of energy costs." Having incurred these costs, DuPont now wants its competitors "across the entire U.S. economy" to do likewise. But, it adds, any global-warming legislation must recognize "voluntary actions taken to reduce emissions," thereby exempting DuPont from its economic consequences. Similarly, a BP executive told Congress that "from a business point of view, [this] is the right direction to take."

Sen. Kit Bond (R.-Mo.) has offered us a much-needed historical lesson -- namely, that Enron once trolled these waters. "An internal Enron memo," The Washington Post reported in 2002, "said the Kyoto agreement, if implemented, would do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative" and would be "good for Enron stock."

To Bond, Enron's self-interested advocacy of a global-warming agreement "shows how companies of all stripes sometimes are willing to work for environmental goals because it fits their business model, pads their bottom line" and "maybe or maybe not" furthers noble environmental ends. "That's why," he concluded, "I'm not worried . about what certain companies think about carbon caps," but rather how these companies "would profit off of the pain of other industries and consumers . who are captive to . other sources of energy."

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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

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15 April, 2007

The media and global warming

In a campaign without peacetime precedent, the media-entertainment-environmental complex is warning about global warming. Never, other than during the two world wars, has there been such a concerted effort by opinion-forming institutions to indoctrinate Americans, 83 percent of whom now call global warming a ``serious problem.'' Indoctrination is supposed to be a predicate for action commensurate with professions of seriousness.

For example, Democrats could demand that the president send the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate so they can embrace it. In 1997, the Senate voted 95-0 in opposition to any agreement which would, like the protocol, require significant reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions in America and some other developed nations but would involve no ``specific scheduled commitments'' for 129 ``developing'' countries, including the second, fourth, 10th, 11th, 13th and 15th largest economies (China, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico and Indonesia). Forty-two of the senators serving in 1997 are gone. Let's find out if the new senators disagree with the 1997 vote.

Do they also disagree with Bjorn Lomborg, author of ``The Skeptical Environmentalist''? He says: Compliance with Kyoto would reduce global warming by an amount too small to measure. But the cost of compliance just to the United States would be higher than the cost of providing the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation, which would prevent 2 million deaths (from diseases like infant diarrhea) a year and prevent half a billion people from becoming seriously ill each year.

Nature designed us as carnivores, but what does nature know about nature? Meat has been designated a menace. Among the 51 exhortations in Time magazine's ``global warming survival guide'' (April 9), No. 22 says a BMW is less responsible than a Big Mac for ``climate change,'' that conveniently imprecise name for our peril. This is because the world meat industry produces 18 percent of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions, more than transportation produces. Nitrous oxide in manure (warming effect: 296 times greater than that of carbon) and methane from animal flatulence (23 times greater) mean that ``a 16 ounce T-bone is like a Hummer on a plate.''

Ben & Jerry's ice cream might be even more sinister: A gallon of it requires electricity guzzling refrigeration, and four gallons of milk produced by cows that simultaneously produce eight gallons of manure and flatulence with eight gallons of methane. The cows do this while consuming lots of grain and hay, which are cultivated by using tractor fuel, chemical fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, and transported by fuel-consuming trains and trucks. Newsweek says most food travels at least 1,200 miles to get to Americans' plates, so buying local food will save fuel. Do not order halibut in Omaha.

Speaking of Hummers, perhaps it is environmentally responsible to buy one and squash a Prius with it. The Prius hybrid is, of course, fuel-efficient. There are, however, environmental costs to mining and smelting (in Canada) 1,000 tons a year of zinc for the battery-powered second motor, and the shipping of the zinc 10,000 miles -- trailing a cloud of carbon -- to Wales for refining and then to China for turning it into the component that is then sent to a battery factory in Japan.

Opinions differ as to whether acid rain from the Canadian mining and smelting operation is killing vegetation that once absorbed carbon dioxide. But a report from CNW Marketing Research (``Dust to Dust: The Energy Cost of New Vehicles from Concept to Disposal'') concludes that in ``dollars per lifetime mile,'' a Prius (expected life: 109,000 miles) costs $3.25, compared to $1.95 for a Hummer H3 (expected life: 207,000 miles).

The CNW report states that a hybrid makes economic and environmental sense for a purchaser living in the Los Angeles basin, where fuel costs are high and smog is worrisome. But environmental costs of the hybrid are exported from the basin. We are urged to ``think globally and act locally,'' as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has done with proposals to reduce California's carbon dioxide emissions 25 percent by 2020. If California improbably achieves this, at a cost not yet computed, it will have reduced global greenhouse-gas emissions 0.3 percent. The question is:

Suppose the costs over a decade of trying to achieve a local goal are significant. And suppose the positive impact on the globe's temperature is insignificant -- and much less than, say, the negative impact of one year's increase in the number of vehicles in one country (e.g., India). If so, are people who recommend such things thinking globally but not clearly?

Source




Greenie light-bulb madness: Mercury phobia versus CO2 phobia

There's lots of mercury in the environment naturally. Only prolonged high exposure is dangerous. I am in good health at 63 and I have had mercury amalgam fillings in my teeth since childhood. You can guess how panicked I am

On March 13, Brandy Bridges was installing some of the two dozen CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) bulbs she had purchased in an attempt to save money on her energy bill. One month later, though, Bridges is paying much more than she had ever expected to. On that Tuesday, Bridges was installing one of the spiral-shaped light bulbs in her 7-year-old daughter's bedroom. Suddenly, the bulb plummeted to the floor, breaking on the shag carpet.

Bridges, who was wary of the dangers of cleaning up a fluorescent bulb, called The Home Depot where she purchased them. She was told that the bulbs had mercury in them and that she should not vacuum the area where the bulb had broken. Bridges was directed to call the Poison Control hotline. Poison Control directed her to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Environmental Protection. Upon reaching the DEP the next day, the agency offered to send a specialist out to Bridges' house to test the air levels. The specialist arrived soon after the phone conversation and began testing the downstairs, where he found safe levels of mercury - below the state's limit of 300 ng/m3 (nanograms per cubic meter). In the daughter's bedroom, the levels remained well below the 300 mark, except for near the carpet where the bulb broke. There the mercury levels spiked to 1,939 ng/m3. On a bag of toys that bulb fragments had landed on, the levels of mercury were 556 ng/m3.