Global Warming is a Lie

it hurts: a response to Henninger of WSJ

2009-12-04T06:51:00.000-08:00

From: Christopher Essex
To: henninger@wsj.com
Subject: it hurts.
Date: Dec 3, 2009 12:56 PM

Dear Daniel,

My friend Willie Soon passed on your article: Wonderland. It's very good. It is an angle that I have anticipated for a very long time.

Wonderland is certainly where I have been trapped for more than twenty years. But it is not nearly as nice as Alice's version. Thoughts of the inquisition come to mind instead.

Many of we scientists have been ringing the alarm bells from the beginning on this. We have been telling everyone who would listen about who we were dealing with. We have known all along. Climategate is no surprise at all to us. Evidence for this is in my book with Ross McKitrick from 2002, Taken by Storm. It won a $10,000 prize, and is now in a second edition. But few were listening. If my book had a title like "Oh, my God, we are all going to die," I am sure that it would have been on the NYT bestseller list at once.

Even though I understand where you are coming from, but I find it rings flat with me that so many many obstacles were put in our way to get a fair hearing and then now to have to face people asking where the scientists were. The scientists have been tied up and gagged in the back room. I hate that. We were there screaming our lungs out all along. Damn it all, my friends Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre had to have a hearing before US congress to get that ridiculous hockey stick broken! It should have been a simple matter. The thing could hardly hold together under its own weight. Ross and I had a whole chapter on the hockey stick in our book, long before the controversy came to light. We used similar techniques to compute the US GDP with
tree rings back to the year 1000, and we got a lovely hockey stick.

I did not want in on the original hockey stick paper, because of my objections to the merits of the underlying physics, but I did comment on the drafts. In the second edition, there is an account of how the thing got broken by Ross and Steve. That science needed to get settled in congress should have got people's attention right there that there was something seriously wrong.
Science is alive and well in the individual scientists who are not caught up in gaming the system for bigger grants. I call it small science. Many of them are doing very unfashionable things, and happy to get no recognition for it. That is where you can find the real scientists. And that is where the future will be.

A milestone in this mess can be said to be when John Houghton of the IPCC said it was the IPCC's job to "orchestrate" the views of science.

Everything that has happened flows as an inevitable consequence of that. Some important research fields have been "orchestrated" out of existence. Even before climategate, I have been saying that we have set ourselves back a generation by taking the money from governments
with so many strings attached. Governments leaders wanted something where they could absolve themselves of the responsibility for making informed decisions. They would have to read science stuff otherwise.

They ordered up a kind of unnatural scientist that would tell them precisely what they wanted to hear. But they gave the puppeteers clubs to deal with those of us who remained true. And the perps of climategate are what they got. All of my colleagues have had to endure these bullies and criminals for a very long time.

You should understand that (real) scientists have had to pay the heaviest price for the creation of these monsters for decades. And they were not created by us.

Best wishes,

Chris Essex
____________________
Dr. Christopher Essex,
Professor,
and Associate Chair,
Department of Applied Mathematics
the University of Western Ontario
London, Canada N6A 5B7

Climategate: Science Is Dying

2009-12-04T06:35:00.000-08:00

Finally! The whole world now knows what I've been saying for years: that global warming scaremongers are NOT scientists at all - they're nothing but money grabbing charlatans worthy of nothing more than our disdain. They should be rode off the planet on a rail. Or worse.

"Hello, we're from the UN - you must give us all your money - no really, all of the "scientists" said so. Trust us."

Yeh - I was born yesterday.

See: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107104574572091993737848.html

OPINION: WONDER LAND DECEMBER 3, 2009, 12:53 P.M. ET

Climategate: Science Is Dying
Science is on the credibility bubble.
By DANIEL HENNINGER

Surely there must have been serious men and women in the hard sciences who at some point worried that their colleagues in the global warming movement were putting at risk the credibility of everyone in science. The nature of that risk has been twofold: First, that the claims of the climate scientists might buckle beneath the weight of their breathtaking complexity. Second, that the crudeness of modern politics, once in motion, would trample the traditions and culture of science to achieve its own policy goals. With the scandal at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, both have happened at once.

I don't think most scientists appreciate what has hit them. This isn't only about the credibility of global warming. For years, global warming and its advocates have been the public face of hard science. Most people could not name three other subjects they would associate with the work of serious scientists. This was it. The public was told repeatedly that something called "the scientific community" had affirmed the science beneath this inquiry. A Nobel Prize was bestowed (on a politician).
　
Global warming enlisted the collective reputation of science. Because "science" said so, all the world was about to undertake a vast reordering of human behavior at almost unimaginable financial cost. Not every day does the work of scientists lead to galactic events simply called Kyoto or Copenhagen. At least not since the Manhattan Project.

What is happening at East Anglia is an epochal event. As the hard sciences-physics, biology, chemistry, electrical engineering-came to dominate intellectual life in the last century, some academics in the humanities devised the theory of postmodernism, which liberated them from their colleagues in the sciences. Postmodernism, a self-consciously "unprovable" theory, replaced formal structures with subjectivity. With the revelations of East Anglia, this slippery and variable intellectual world has crossed into the hard sciences.
　
This has harsh implications for the credibility of science generally. Hard science, alongside medicine, was one of the few things left accorded automatic stature and respect by most untrained lay persons. But the average person reading accounts of the East Anglia emails will conclude that hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and "messy" as, say, gender studies. The New England Journal of Medicine has turned into a weird weekly amalgam of straight medical-research and propaganda for the Obama redesign of U.S. medicine.

The East Anglians' mistreatment of scientists who challenged global warming's claims-plotting to shut them up and shut down their ability to publish-evokes the attempt to silence Galileo. The exchanges between Penn State's Michael Mann and East Anglia CRU director Phil Jones sound like Father Firenzuola, the Commissary-General of the Inquisition.

For three centuries Galileo has symbolized dissent in science. In our time, most scientists outside this circle have kept silent as their climatologist fellows, helped by the cardinals of the press, mocked and ostracized scientists who questioned this grand theory of global doom. Even a doubter as eminent as Princeton's Freeman Dyson was dismissed as an aging crank.

Beneath this dispute is a relatively new, very postmodern environmental idea known as "the precautionary principle." As defined by one official version: "When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically." The global-warming establishment says we know "enough" to impose new rules on the world's use of carbon fuels. The dissenters say this demotes science's traditional standards of evidence.

What would Galileo do?

The Environmental Protection Agency's dramatic Endangerment Finding in April that greenhouse gas emissions qualify as an air pollutant-with implications for a vast new regulatory regime-used what the agency called a precautionary approach. The EPA admitted "varying degrees of uncertainty across many of these scientific issues." Again, this puts hard science in the new position of saying, close enough is good enough. One hopes civil engineers never build bridges under this theory.

The Obama administration's new head of policy at EPA, Lisa Heinzerling, is an advocate of turning precaution into standard policy. In a law-review article titled "Law and Economics for a Warming World," Ms. Heinzerling wrote, "Policy formation based on prediction and calculation of expected harm is no longer relevant; the only coherent response to a situation of chaotically worsening outcomes is a precautionary policy. . . ."

If the new ethos is that "close-enough" science is now sufficient to achieve political goals, serious scientists should be under no illusion that politicians will press-gang them into service for future agendas. Everyone working in science, no matter their politics, has an stake in cleaning up the mess revealed by the East Anglia emails. Science is on the credibility bubble. If it pops, centuries of what we understand to be the role of science go with it.

Write to henninger@wsj.com

No Unanimous View

2009-07-21T20:33:00.000-07:00

Recently there was a letter to the editor published in one of the local newspapers in which the writer took exception to an article published in that newspaper that didn't pay proper homage to the pop-culture acceptance of AlGore's theories on man-made global warming. In his letter he insulted anyone who insisted on applying actual scientific principles to the discussion (especially those of us who live in Utah) as moon-landing deniers. Anyway, I just loved the response he got from the international scientific community. Since I know that this newspaper's circulation is very limited, I've reprinted both letters below for your enjoyment and edification:

Original letter (see: http://universe.byu.edu/node/1042)
　
Global warming is one-sided
Mon, 07/20/2009 - 20:56

On the front page of The Daily Universe's July 20 issue was an article titled "Farmers reject global warming." I looked with futility for the article's counterpart, "Climatologists virtually unanimous in acceptance of global warming."

I have no problem with journalists informing the public that farmers (or anyone else for that matter) don't believe in global warming. What is frustrating is the article's implication that farmers' opinions somehow carry the same weight as the many scientific studies that have proven the planet is heating up. The denial of global warming seems to be epidemic in Utah. Even among students at BYU, the reality of global warming has been treated with skepticism and even animosity. I can't help but to ask, "Why?" I can only guess the consumers of the aforementioned article fall into the same category of those who maintain the lunar landing was a hoax.

Unfortunately, the issue of global warming has become a war on expertise in which the media still feels the need to tell both sides of the story - the facts according to experts and the facts according to everyone else.

Jeremy Kuhre
Southlake, Texas

And here's the solid gold response from the scientific community:

Jeremy Kuhre recently suggested that BYU students are unreasonably skeptical about global warming, in the face of "virtually unanimous" acceptance among climatologists of the belief that our planet is "heating up." He equates the students with people who maintain the lunar landing was a hoax.

We the undersigned have studied weather, climate and climate change for years -- and we can state with certainty that there is no "unanimous" view among scientists on the matter of manmade catastrophic global warming. By the way, one of the signers of this letter, Dr. Harrison Schmitt, actually stood on the moon, drilled holes, collected moon rocks and has since returned to Earth. He knows the landing was real.

Probably all climate and other scientists do agree that our Earth warmed slowly between 1850 and 1998 and has cooled slightly since. But that is not the issue. The question is whether humans' use of oil, coal, and natural gas can cause a future global warming disaster -- and on that there is tremendous disagreement, just as there is about the forces that are responsible for recent, current and past climate changes. This is the reason why over 31,000 scientists have signed the Global Warming Petition at http://www.petitionproject.org/.

The opposition to the hypothesis of catastrophic climate change from rising atmospheric CO2 is legitimate, and it is the right and duty of all citizens, including American farmers, to ask questions and demand evidence and answers. The news media have contributed to the incorrect and biased view that recent warming was caused by human CO2 emissions, and that future warming will be disastrous for humans, wildlife and our planet. The media and political activists have also promoted policies that attack American liberties and that harm and kill people, by diverting money, attention and energy resources from far more urgent and worthy purposes, like reducing poverty, malaria and malnutrition and raising global as well as American living standards.

The issue of global warming is not a war of "expertise." It is, or should be, an objective study of scientific measurements and data -- which can now confirm that atmospheric CO2 plays at most a minor role in causing weather and climate change.

BYU is an institution of higher learning that should promote the seeking of truth. Similarly, science is an objective assessment of hypotheses, by testing concepts against actual data and observations; it is not a matter of votes, popularity or "virtual unanimity."
We are all harmed, if we allow our universities or our science to be politicized.

Signed

Harrison Schmitt, PhD, Geologist and Astronaut
Craig Idso, PhD, Geographer
David R. Legates, PhD, Climatologist
Art Robinson, PhD, Chemist
Noah Robinson, PhD, Chemist
Willie Soon, PhD, Astrophysicist

21st Century Snake Oil

2008-12-30T16:18:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine asked me the following question. My response follows the question:

BTW what is all this stuff on TV about no such thing as "clean coal"???

Of course there is such a thing as clean coal; my power company happens to be 1/6th owner of the cleanest coal fired plant in the country. Clean coal happens when you filter the noxious gases, like SOx and NOx, which cause bad things like acid rain, out of the emissions.

The only people who argue that there's no such thing as clean coal are those who claim that CO2 is also a pollutant. But the only people who claim that CO2 is anything other than a harmless trace gas are those who are either too lazy to read any of the many scientific studies or they are deliberately trying to scam people out of their hard-earned money. "CO2 pollution" is the snake oil of the 21st Century and we'll all be laughing at those who were gullible enough to buy in to it before very many more years pass.

By the way, it's the fact that all of the scientific information is coming out about how CO2 is NOT causing "Global Warming" and that Al Gore is a great big scam artist that is causing a major panic among the Global Warming alarmists; they're in a huge rush to push through major funding for their projects, while suppressing scientific studies, before they get laughed out of Washington DC.

Sorry to run on so long on this subject, but as a professional power engineer I'm offended to see people have to pay more for their power bill than necessary, and these scam artists (including Obama's new Secretary of Energy) want to double or even quintuple your power bills.

Gore's Scientist Calls Warming Fears ‘Mistaken’

2008-12-28T14:48:00.000-08:00

Scientist Fired by Gore Calls Warming Fears ‘Mistaken’

Princeton University physicist Dr. Will Happer, who says he was fired by Vice President Al Gore for failing to adhere to Gore’s views on global warming, has now declared that man-made warming fears are “mistaken.”

Happer, who served as the director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy from 1990 to 1993, said, “I had the privilege of being fired by Al Gore, since I refused to go along with his alarmism. I did not need the job that badly.”

He said in 1993, “I was told that science was not going to intrude on policy."

Now Happer has asked to join the more than 650 international scientists who have spoken out against man-made global warming fears and are cited in the 2008 U.S. Senate Minority Report from Environmental and Public Works Committee ranking member James Inhofe, R-Okla.

“I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken,” Happer told the committee on Dec. 22.

President-elect Barack Obama’s choice as his top science adviser, Harvard University professor John Holdren, is a staunch believer in the dangers of man-made global warming and advised Gore on his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Dr. Happer has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences.

Sen. Inhofe said that the statements of prominent scientists like Happer who are willing to publicly dissent from climate fears strike a blow to the United Nations, Gore, and the media’s claims about global warming.

“The endless claims of a 'consensus' about man-made global warming grow less and less credible every day," Inhofe said.

Happer declared, “I have spent a long research career studying physics that is closely related to the greenhouse effect — for example, absorption and emission of visible and infrared radiation, and fluid flow. Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science. The earth's climate is changing now, as it always has. There is no evidence that the changes differ in any qualitative way from those of the past . . .

“Computer models used to generate frightening scenarios from increasing levels of carbon dioxide have scant credibility.”

Manmade Global Warming Theory 'Arrogant'

2008-12-23T22:06:00.000-08:00

CNN Meteorologist: Manmade Global Warming Theory 'Arrogant'
Network's second meteorologist to challenge notion man can alter climate.
By Jeff Poor Business & Media Institute12/18/2008 11:02:44 PM http://businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20081218205953.aspx

Unprecedented snow in Las Vegas has some scratching their heads – how can there be global warming with this unusual cold and snowy weather?

CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers had never bought into the notion that man can alter the climate and the Vegas snowstorm didn’t impact his opinion. Myers, an American Meteorological Society certified meteorologist, explained on CNN’s Dec. 18 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that the whole idea is arrogant and mankind was in danger of dying from other natural events more so than global warming.

“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.”

Myers is the second CNN meteorologist to challenge the global warming conventions common in the media. He also said trying to determine patterns occurring in the climate would be difficult based on such a short span.

“But this is like, you know you said – in your career – my career has been 22 years long,” Myers said. “That’s a good career in TV, but talking about climate – it’s like having a car for three days and saying, ‘This is a great car.’ Well, yeah – it was for three days, but maybe in days five, six and seven it won’t be so good. And that’s what we’re doing here.”

“We have 100 years worth of data, not millions of years that the world’s been around,” Myers continued.

Dr. Jay Lehr, an expert on environmental policy, told “Lou Dobbs Tonight” viewers you can detect subtle patterns over recorded history, but that dates back to the 13th Century.

“If we go back really, in recorded human history, in the 13th Century, we were probably 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than we are now and it was a very prosperous time for mankind,” Lehr said. “If go back to the Revolutionary War 300 years ago, it was very, very cold. We’ve been warming out of that cold spell from the Revolutionary War period and now we’re back into a cooling cycle.”

Lehr suggested the earth is presently entering a cooling cycle – a result of nature, not man.

“The last 10 years have been quite cool,” Lehr continued. “And right now, I think we’re going into cooling rather than warming and that should be a much greater concern for humankind. But, all we can do is adapt. It is the sun that does it, not man.”

Lehr is a senior fellow and science director of The Heartland Institute, an organization that will be holding the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York March 8-10.

Another CNN meteorologist attacked the concept that man is somehow responsible for changes in climate last year. Rob Marciano charged Al Gore’s 2006 movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” had some inaccuracies.

“There are definitely some inaccuracies,” Marciano said during the Oct. 4, 2007 broadcast of CNN’s “American Morning.” “The biggest thing I have a problem with is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming.”

Marciano also said that, “global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we’ve seen,” pointing out that “by the end of this century we might get about a 5 percent increase.”

His comments drew a strong response and he recanted the next day saying “the globe is getting warmer and humans are the likely the main cause of it.”

Obama continues anti-American activities

2008-12-16T21:57:00.000-08:00

In typical "newspeak" (ala 1984) the Global Warming alarmists claim that President Bush has suppressed science, when in fact they are the ones who totally ignore the science that contradicts their faith-based belief system.

Obama Announces Energy, Environmental Team.

The New York Times (12/16, A24, Broder, Revkin) reports, "The team President-elect Barack Obama introduced on Monday to carry out his energy and environmental policies faces a host of political, economic, diplomatic and scientific challenges that could impede his plans to address global warming and America's growing dependence on dirty and uncertain sources of energy." Obama "vowed to press ahead despite the faltering economy and suggested that he would invest his political capital in trying to break logjams."

The AP (12/16) adds, "Obama selected Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu as energy secretary and Carol Browner, a confidante of former Vice President Al Gore, to lead a White House council on energy and climate. Browner headed the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration." Obama also "announced his choice of Lisa Jackson, former head of New Jersey's environmental agency, as EPA administrator and Nancy Sutley, a deputy Los Angeles mayor, as chair of the White House Council on Environment Quality."

The Los Angeles Times (12/16, Tankersley, Hamburger) notes, "With this team, some environmentalists and former federal research scientists expect Obama's White House to break from what they view as the Bush administration's record of overlooking science in favor of politics. ... Critics -- including...former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman -- have complained about the influence of industry lobbyists and ideologues on Bush administration decision-making." Rep. Henry A. Waxman (CA) "is among the Democrats who repeatedly have accused top Bush officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and political advisor Karl Rove, with pressing federal agencies to take positions that put them at odds with their own scientists on energy, global warming and stem cell research." The Politico (12/16, Lee, Lovley), the Wall Street Journal (12/16, A5, Power), USA Today (12/16, Watson), The Hill (12/16, Youngman) and AFP (12/16), among other news outlets, also report on Obama's announcement.

Obama declares war on energy

2008-12-12T21:57:00.000-08:00

Just to prove that he hates America, Obama has appointed an academic who knows nothing about real energy to be the next Secretary of Energy:

Obama Expected To Tap Nobel Prize Winner To Head Energy Department.
Fox News' Special Report (12/10, Hume) reported, "Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Chu will be nominated Energy Secretary. Chu is a proponent of using alternative energy sources to replace fossil fuels." CNN's The Situation Room (12/10, Yellin) said Chu is "very well known in energy circles. He runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. He won the Nobel Prize in 1997 in physics. But the big question is going to be: If in fact this goes forward, will he have the political clout? He doesn't have a lot of political experience. Will he have the clout to pass a massive energy reform bill?"

In a front-page story, the Washington Post (12/11, A1, Mufson, Rucker) notes that "Chu, the son of Chinese immigrants, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997 for his work in the 'development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.' But, in an interview last year with The Washington Post, Chu said he began to turn his attention to energy and climate change several years ago." Said Chu, "I was following it just as a citizen and getting increasingly alarmed. ... Many of our best basic scientists [now] realize that this is getting down to a crisis situation." USA Today (12/11, Hall, Schouten), the AP (12/11, Sidoti, Cappiello), Los Angeles Times (12/11, Tankersley) and Financial Times (12/11, Luce), among other media outlets, run similar stories this morning.

In the Wall Street Journal (12/11) Environmental Capital blog, Keith Johnson examined Chu's "ideas about finding new supplies of energy." Johnson noted that "Chu's marquee work at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is the Helios Project," which is "an effort to tackle what Dr. Chu sees as the biggest energy challenge facing the U.S.: transportation. That's because it's a huge drain on US coffers and an environmental albatross, Dr. Chu says." The project "has focused largely on biofuels," particularly research into second-generation biofuels. However, "Big Coal won't be very happy if Dr. Chu gets confirmed as head of the DOE," as Chu has called coal his "worst nightmare," particularly ""given the sheer scope of the challenge of economically storing billions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions underground." Johnson also examined Chu's stance on nuclear power, and the implementation of renewable energy.

The Washington Post (12/12, A9, Mufson) reports on "the next secretary of energy, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu," who argues that "the United States and other countries" need to address the issue of climate change. "He said governments need to 'act quickly' to implement fiscal and regulatory policies to stimulate the deployment of technologies that boost energy efficiency and 'minimize' carbon emissions." According to the Post, "Chu's views on climate change would be among the most forceful ever held by a cabinet member." In the past, Chu has called "the cost of electricity...'anomalously low' in the United States," and said "that a cap-and-trade approach to limiting greenhouse gases 'is an absolutely non-partisan issue,' and that scientists had come to 'realize that the climate is much more sensitive than we thought.'" Chu has also "said that he had confidence in mankind's ability to solve its energy problems," arguing that "the challenge...was to create things from nature that nature cannot make on its own."

ScareWatch: "Wilder and wetter everywhere"

2008-12-10T21:33:00.000-08:00

ScareWatch: "Wilder and wetter everywhere"
by Christopher Monckton, December 10, 2008

The scare: The Guardian, one of the two UK newspapers most prone to write unverified and scientifically-inaccurate stories about the consequences of “global warming”, published an article on 10 December 2008, intended to influence delegates at the UN’s Poznan conference on the climate. The article listed a series of alleged climate catastrophes all round the world, saying that “millions … are feeling the force of a changing climate. … Evidence is emerging of weather patterns in turmoil and the poorest nations disproportionately bearing the brunt of warming”: more and longer droughts, more floods, more heat waves, more rainfall, more frequent and intense cyclones leading to food and water shortages, more illnesses and water-borne diseases, more malnutrition, soil erosion, disruption to water supplies.

In North-Eastern Brazil, temperatures are said to have risen by 1 degree C in 30 years. In “low-lying” Bangladesh, The Guardian says there has been a 10% increase in the intensity and frequency of major cyclones (the period over which this increase is supposed to have occurred is not stated), with too much rain in the rainy season and too little in the dry season. The “balmy” Caribbean is “also being churned up with increasing frequency and ferocity”, with eight hurricanes in 2008, five of which were major, and the hurricane season lasted “a record five months”, leading to “coral bleaching and flooding”.

In Mozambique, there is “a clear increase in temperature”, with more frequent extreme weather events, such as tropical cyclones, and late rains. In Nepal, floods that once happened once a decade “seem to be annual and getting more serious”. Forest pigs farrow earlier; rice and cucumber “will no longer grow where they used to”; days are hotter, trees flower twice a year, and “raindrops are getting bigger”.

Lakes in Nepal and Bhutan fed by “glacial meltwater” are “growing so rapidly that they could burst their banks”. In Tadjikistan, “thousands of small glaciers will have disappeared completely by 2050, causing more water to flow and hence a “disastrous decline in river flow”. The area of Peru’s glaciers fallen by “22% … in the last 35 years”.

The truth: The first of two central falsehoods implicit in The Guardian’s wearisomely characteristic catalogue of real or imagined climate disasters is the attribution of every local change in the weather to manmade “global warming”.

We begin, as we have had to begin so often in the past when examining such articles as this, by reminding readers that there has been no statistically-significant “global warming” for 13 full years since 1995, and that there has been a significant global cooling over seven full years since late 2001 – a cooling that The Guardian has chosen not to highlight to its readers. It is at once apparent, therefore, that every single one of the imagined recent catastrophes described by The Guardian’s breathless reporters cannot possibly have been caused by any kind of warming, whether manmade or natural, for the good and sufficient reason that there has not been any warming.

The second central falsehood lies in the fact, repeatedly stated even by the generally-excitable United Nations climate panel, that individual extreme-weather events, particularly on a local scale, cannot – repeat, cannot – be attributed to “global warming”. Why? Because, as the UN’s 2001 climate assessment puts it, the climate of the Earth is “a complex, non-linear, chaotic object” whose long-run evolution, in the words of Lorenz’s famous paper Deterministic Non- Periodic Flow (1963), “cannot be predicted by any method”. It follows that, if even a global phase-transition (a sudden change to what had previously seemed to be a regular pattern) cannot be attributed to a particular cause, then a fortiori a local phase-transition cannot be attributed to that cause.

Given the universal application of these two falsehoods to The Guardian’s alleged catastrophes, it is not strictly necessary to examine each of The Guardian’s specific allegations about the supposed impact of manmade “global warming” on individual regions. The entire article is founded upon sand. However, The Guardian’s latest list of disasters is more than customarily baseless, and betokens some desperation at the failure of “global warming” to do the damage that the newspaper has so often said it would do. We shall look briefly at a few of the supposed climate cataclysms.

“Drought” in north-eastern Brazil: The history of South America, going back to the time of the Inca and Mayan civilizations, has been one of alternate drought and flood. Set in this historical context, which The Guardian is very careful not to mention, a few years of drought in a single Brazilian region are unremarkable. Most of the southern hemisphere has been cooling even more rapidly than the northern hemisphere in recent years.

More and worse “tropical cyclones” in “low-lying” Bangladesh: There is no credible scientific evidence that “global warming”, even if it were occurring (which it is not), would cause any increase in either the frequency or the intensity of tropical cyclones. Dr. Kerry Emanuel, the lead author of a much-cited paper in 2005 suggesting a causative link, has since substantially retracted his finding. The Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index, a running two-year sum of the estimated intensity of all recorded tropical cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons worldwide, was first compiled 30 years ago: in October 2008, its lowest-ever value was recorded, demonstrating conclusively that, in fact rather than in theory, the combined frequency and incidence – in short, the impact – of tropical cyclones worldwide is at an alltime low. This result confirms other findings: for instance, the absence of any trend in the number of landfalling Atlantic cyclones for a century; the 30-year decline in the frequency of intense tropical cyclones; the similar decline in the frequency of intense typhoons; and the population-weighted decline in the incidence of death and in the cost of insured damage arising from tropical cyclones. Outside the tropics, it is settled science that a warmer world would lead to a reduction in both the frequency and the intensity of storms. And “low-lying Bangladesh”, despite repeated warnings from The Guardian and other newspapers about rising sea levels, has seen a growth of some 70,000 square kilometers in its total land area, caused by various factors that have nothing to do with “global warming”.

“Increasing frequency and ferocity” of hurricanes in the Caribbean: As paper after paper has demonstrated, and as Robinson, Robinson & Soon (2007) have confirmed, there has been no trend whatsoever in the number of hurricanes making landfall in the West Atlantic for a century. The Guardian’s statement is simply false. The hurricane season, said by The Guardian to be “a record five months”, is by no means of unprecedented length. It is true that flooding occurs during any sufficiently intense tropical cyclone, including major hurricanes: but, compared with the great Galveston flood of 1900, and with many other flood disasters in the first 60 years of the 20th century, recent flooding arising from hurricanes has been much reduced and far less harmful either to life or to property. Lloyds of London have been making record profits in the past couple of years.

“Coral bleaching” last occurred on a significant scale ten years ago, in 1998, as a result of the exceptional (but not unprecedented) natural alteration in global ocean currents known as the El Nino Southern Oscillation. There had been two previous such strong El Nino events, each lasting only a few months, over the past 300 years. As a result of both these events, bleaching of corals occurred: however, we know that corals evolved at least 175 million years ago, in the Triassic era (though The Guardian is very careful to avoid giving its readers this perspective), and, therefore, they have survived the major global-extinction events of the Triassic and Cretaceous periods, as well as having survived both global temperatures up to 7 degrees C (12.5 F) higher than the present, and atmospheric and oceanic carbon dioxide concentrations up to 10 times today’s. Bleaching does not in fact harm corals: they continue to grow quite successfully after bleaching events.

“Increased extreme-weather events” in Mozambique: The weather records in most African countries – and particularly in those, such as Mozambique, which were wracked by civil wars for decades – are simply not complete enough to allow any such conclusion to be drawn. Even if there had been more frequent and more intense extreme weather in Mozambique, it would not be proper to assume, as The Guardian strongly implies, that the problem is Africa-wide. In central Africa, for instance, in the region around Mount Kilimanjaro, there has been pronounced cooling for 30 years. It is this cooling, and the consequent atmospheric dessication, that has led to the ablation of most of the summit glacier. The glacier is not melting, because in 30 years the summit temperature has never risen above –1.6 degrees C, and its average temperature has been – 7 °C. It is inappropriate to select only those regions of a generally-cooling planet that (if the local records are reliable enough) have shown some recent warming, and to argue from these particular instances to an implicit general conclusion that “global warming” is occurring, or is causing damage.

“Disappearing glaciers” in Nepal: It is in the nature of glaciers that sometimes they advance and sometimes they recede. Professor M.I. Bhat, of the Indian Geological Survey, says that the 200 years of records concerning the 9575 glaciers that debouch from the Himalayas into India, initially maintained by the surveyors of the British Raj, disclose no recent pattern that is cause for concern. Although The Guardian’s article seems to assume that it is glacial meltwater that provides the nations of the region with their water supply, it is in fact Northern-Hemisphere snowmelt that provides almost all of the water supply. There has been no trend in northern-hemisphere snow-cover extent in the 30 years of continuous satellite monitoring. New records for northern-hemisphere snow-cover extent were set in 2001/2 and in 2007/8, and the latter record may well be surpassed in 2008/9.

The purpose of The Guardian in inventing this galloping concatenation of ingenious but baseless fictions was to induce nations such as the United States to part with large sums of taxpayers’ money to subsidize the imagined consequences of their past over-use of wicked fossil fuels for the poorer countries of the world. Whatever may be the intrinsic merits of aid to the Third World, the recent evolution of the climate, which is well within the parameters of normal variability, provides no basis for any additional funding. End of scare.

Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

2008-12-10T20:48:00.000-08:00

This just in from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works:

UN Blowback: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

Study: Half of warming due to Sun! – Sea Levels Fail to Rise? - Warming Fears in 'Dustbin of History'

POZNAN, Poland - The UN global warming conference currently underway in Poland is about to face a serious challenge from over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe who are criticizing the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. Set for release this week, a newly updated U.S. Senate Minority Report features the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN. The report has added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke out in 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.

The U.S. Senate report is the latest evidence of the growing groundswell of scientific opposition rising to challenge the UN and Gore. Scientific meetings are now being dominated by a growing number of skeptical scientists. The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists' equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices and views of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears.

A hint of what the upcoming report contains:

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,” - Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.

“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC "are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” - Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico

“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.

“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” – . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.

“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri's asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it's hard to remain quiet.” - Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.

“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?" - Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.

“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” - Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.

“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” - Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.

“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” - Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.

“CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another….Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so…Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.” - Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan.

“The [global warming] scaremongering has its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds.” - Award-winning Paleontologist Dr. Eduardo Tonni, of the Committee for Scientific Research in Buenos Aires and head of the Paleontology Department at the University of La Plata.

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Meanwhile, while the UN climate conference is in session here in Poznan, the bad scientific news for promoters of man-made climate alarm just keeps rolling in. Below is a very small sampling of very inconvenient developments for Gore, the United Nations, and their promoters in the mainstream media. Peer-reviewed studies, analyses, and prominent scientists continue to speak out to refute climate fears. The data presented below is just from the past week.

Peer-reviewed study: Half of recent warming was solar! - December 10, 2008

Excerpt: In this dose of peer-reviewed skeptical climatological literature, we follow Climate Research News. The blog was intrigued by a new article in Geophysical Research Letters that was accepted on Friday, December 5th. Eichler, A., S. Olivier, K. Henderson, A. Laube, J. Beer, T. Papina, H. W. Gäggeler, and M. Schwikowski:

Temperature response in the Altai region lags solar forcing - Recall that the Siberian Altai Mountains are found at the intersection of Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. The authors
looked at 750 years worth of the local ice core, especially the oxygen isotope. They claim to have found a very strong correlation between the concentration of this isotope (i.e. temperature) on one side and the known solar activity in the epoch 1250-1850. Their data seem to be precise enough to determine the lag, about 10-30 years. It takes some time for the climate to respond to the solar changes. It seems that they also have data to claim that the correlation gets less precise after 1850. They attribute the deviation to CO2 and by comparing the magnitude of the forcings, they conclude that "Our results are in agreement with studies based on NH temperature reconstructions [Scafetta et al., 2007] revealing that only up to approximately 50% of the observed global warming in the last 100 years can be explained by the Sun." Well, the word "only" is somewhat cute in comparison with the "mainstream" fashionable ideology. The IPCC said that they saw a 90% probability that "most" of the recent warming was man-made. The present paper would reduce this figure, 90%, to less than 50% because the Sun itself is responsible for 1/2 of the warming and not the whole 50% of the warming could have been caused by CO2 because there are other effects, too. Note that if 0.3 °C or 0.4 °C of warming in the 20th century was due to the increasing CO2 levels, the climate sensitivity is decisively smaller than 1 °C. At any rate, the expected 21st century warming due to CO2 would be another 0.3-0.4 °C, and this time, if the solar activity contributes with the opposite sign, these two effects could cancel. Even if you try to stretch these numbers a little bit - but not unrealistically - you have to become sure that the participants of the Poznan conference are lunatics.

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Geophysist: ‘It is time to file this theory in the dustbin of history’ – ‘Alarmists are in denial and running for cover'- Washington Times

By Geophysicist Dr. David Deming, associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma who has published numerous peer-reviewed research articles.

Excerpt: Environmental extremists and global warming alarmists are in denial and running for cover. Their rationale for continuing a lost cause is that weather events in the short term are not necessarily related to long-term climatic trends. But these are the same people who screamed at us each year that ordinary weather events such as high temperatures or hurricanes were undeniable evidence of imminent doom. Now that global warming is over, politicians are finally ready to enact dubious solutions to a non-existent problem. […] To the extent global warming was ever valid, it is now officially over. It is time to file this theory in the dustbin of history, next to Aristotelean physics, Neptunism, the geocentric universe, phlogiston, and a plethora of other incorrect scientific theories, all of which had vocal and dogmatic supporters who cited incontrovertible evidence. Weather and climate change are natural processes beyond human control. To argue otherwise is to deny the factual evidence.

The True Costs of EPA Global Warming Regulation

2008-11-24T21:45:00.000-08:00

November 24, 2008
The True Costs of EPA Global Warming Regulation
by Ben Lieberman

Legislation designed to address global warming failed in Congress this year, largely due to concerns about its high costs and adverse impact on an already weakening economy. The congressional debate will likely resume in 2009, as legislators try again to balance the environmental and economic considerations on this complex issue. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), pursuant to a 2007 Supreme Court decision, has initiated steps toward bypassing the legislative process and regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

The EPA's Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) is nothing less than the most costly, complicated, and unworkable regulatory scheme ever proposed. Under ANPR, nearly every product, business, and building that uses fossil fuels could face requirements that border on the impossible. The overall cost of this agenda would likely exceed that of the legislation rejected by Congress, reaching well into the trillions of dollars while destroying millions of jobs in the manufacturing sector.[1] The ANPR is clearly not in the best interests of Americans, and the EPA should not proceed to a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and final rule based upon it.

Climate Legislation

Concern that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are gradually warming the planet has emerged as the major environmental issue of the day, and certainly the most hyped one. Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring component of the air, but is also the ubiquitous and unavoidable by-product of fossil fuel combustion, which currently provides 85 percent of America's energy. Thus, any effort to substantially curtail such emissions would have extremely costly and disruptive impacts on the economy and on living standards.

For this reason, the federal government has been cautious about embarking on mandatory carbon reductions. In 1997, the U.S. Senate unanimously resolved to reject any international climate change treaty that unduly burdened the U.S. economy or failed to engage all major emitting nations, such as China and India. Although the Kyoto Protocol was signed by the U.S. later that year, neither President Bill Clinton nor President George W. Bush ever submitted the treaty to the Senate for the required ratification. This has shown itself to be a wise move: Many, if not most, of the European and other developed nations that ratified the treaty are failing to reduce their emissions due to the prohibitive costs in doing so.

Legislatively, Congress has thus far rejected every attempt to control carbon dioxide emissions. Chief among the legislative proposals in 2008 was S. 2191, the America's Climate Security Act of 2007, originally sponsored by Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA). This was a so-called cap-and-trade bill that would set a limit on the emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide from the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas. Each power plant, factory, refinery, or other regulated entity would have been allocated rights to emit limited amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Those entities that reduced their emissions below their annual allotment could sell their excess allowances to those that did not--the trade part of cap and trade. The bill would start with a mandated emissions freeze at 2005 levels in 2012, and end with a 70 percent reduction by 2050.

In effect, this bill would have acted like a tax on energy, driving up its cost so that businesses and consumers are forced to use less.

Last June, America's Climate Security Act was withdrawn by its Senate supporters after only three days of debate. A Heritage Foundation analysis detailed the costs of the bill, which included a 29 percent increase in the price of gasoline, net job losses well into the hundreds of thousands, and an overall reduction in gross domestic product of $1.7 to $4.8 trillion by 2030.[2] At the time of the debate, gasoline was approaching $4 per gallon for the first time in history, and signs of a slowing economy were beginning to emerge. Economically speaking, the bill was one of the last items on the agenda that Americans wanted, and its Senate sponsors recognized that. Beyond the costs, the bill would have--even assuming the worst case scenarios of future warming-- likely reduced the earth's future temperature by an amount too small to verify.[3]

The debate is sure to resume in 2009, but the economic concerns about such measures remain. Though gasoline prices may be lower next year than the last time climate legislation came to a vote, unemployment will likely be higher as will unease about the overall state of the economy. Thus, the legislative effort to place costly restrictions on energy still faces an economic headwind. Notwithstanding the state of the economy, such measures will always fail any reasonable cost-benefit test given their high costs and environmental benefits that are marginal at best.

Regulation as an Alternative to Legislation

While proponents of greenhouse gas restrictions have lobbied for additional legislation, they have also tried to force the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under existing law. In 1999, an environmental activist group sued the EPA over its refusal to restrict such emissions from motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court, which in April 2007 ruled in a five-to-four decision against the EPA.

The decision did not require the EPA to change its position and begin regulating carbon dioxide from vehicle exhaust; it only required the agency to demonstrate that whatever it chooses to do complies with the requirements of the Clean Air Act. Nonetheless, the agency's detailed ANPR, published on July 30, 2008, appears to treat such regulation as a foregone conclusion. Although the ANPR is preliminary in nature, the level of detail (the ANPR and supporting documentation exceed 18,000 pages) suggests that the EPA has already decided to impose regulations that are unprecedented in their cost, complexity, and reach.

The reasons for Congress's reluctance to enact global warming legislation are every bit as relevant to the debate over whether or not the EPA should achieve the same results through regulations. This is especially true given the many shortcomings of the Clean Air Act as an instrument for regulating carbon dioxide emissions--for which the statute was not intended. In effect, the measures detailed in the ANPR would require action at least as costly as comparable cap-and-trade bills, and likely more so given the added difficulty of doing it in a much more convoluted fashion.

Regulating Vehicles--and Almost Everything Else

Because no technology exists to date that offers the possibility to filter out carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicle exhaust, the only way to reduce emissions is to use less fuel. In the ANPR, the EPA contemplates higher gas mileage standards for motor vehicles beyond those already scheduled to be imposed in accordance with the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. The EPA also discusses strict requirements for everything from airplanes to ships to trains to lawnmowers, all of which could be subject to new design specifications and usage limitations as well as fuel economy standards, as described in painstaking detail in the ANPR.

Beyond regulating anything that is mobile and uses energy, the ANPR also contemplates targeting anything that is immobile and uses energy--commercial and non-commercial buildings, large and small businesses, and farms. Under the Clean Air Act, once carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles are regulated, emissions from stationary sources must also be controlled under the New Source Review (NSR) and other Clean Air Act programs because they apply to all pollutants subject to regulation anywhere else in the statute. Even if the agency tries to rein in the reach of its regulation, it will almost certainly face litigation by environmentalists opposing such restraint.

Given that the existing threshold for regulation under the Clean Air Act--250 tons of emissions per year, and in some cases as little as 100 tons per year--is easily met in the case of carbon dioxide emissions, the agency could impose new and onerous NSR requirements heretofore limited to major industrial facilities. Other Clean Air Act programs, such as the Title V permitting program and the hazardous-air-pollutants program, have even lower thresholds, creating a regulatory maze both restrictive and redundant.

Most pollutants regulated under the Clean Air Act are trace compounds like ozone or mercury that are typically measured in parts per billion, so these threshold levels are sensible to distinguish de minimis contributors from significant ones. But carbon dioxide is not a trace compound, thus, existing Clean Air Act thresholds are ill suited. Background levels alone account for 275 parts per million, and even relatively small usage of fossil fuels could reach these thresholds. Thus, even the kitchen in a restaurant, the heating system in an apartment or office building, or the activities associated with running a farm could cause these and other entities--potentially more than a million buildings, 200,000 manufacturing operations, and 20,000 farms[4]--to face substantial and unprecedented requirements. Churches, hospitals, schools, and government buildings could also be subjected to these requirements.

This type of industrial-strength EPA red tape that imposes an average of $125,000 in costs and takes 866 hours to complete[5] could now be imposed, for the first time, on a million or more entities beyond the large power plants and factories that have traditionally already been regulated in this manner. Even more significant than the administrative costs is that all of these entities would be required to install costly technologies and operate under certain restrictions, as determined by EPA bureaucrats.

In sum, a host of complicated and redundant regulations could be applied to nearly every product, nearly every business, and nearly every building in America that uses fossil fuels. The ANPR, if finalized in anything near its current form, would create an environmental regulatory scheme more costly and intrusive than all the others combined.

The Costs of the ANPR

Either through legislation or regulation, efforts to reduce fossil fuel emissions will impose costs throughout the economy. For purposes of this analysis of the ANPR, the Heritage Foundation ignores the up-front administrative and compliance costs of imposing such an unprecedented crackdown both for regulated entities and for federal and state regulators. Heritage analysts instead assume the unlikely scenario of successful ANPR implementation and focus only on the cost of the rules in the form of higher energy costs.

The impact on the overall economy, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), is substantial. The cumulative GDP losses for 2010 to 2029 approach $7 trillion. Single-year losses exceed $600 billion in 2029, more than $5,000 per household. (See Chart 1.) Job losses are expected to exceed 800,000 in some years, and exceed at least 500,000 from 2015 through 2026. (See Chart 2). Note that these are net job losses, after any jobs created by compliance with the regulations--so-called green jobs--are taken into account. Hardest-hit are manufacturing jobs, with losses approaching 3 million. (See Chart 3). Particularly vulnerable are jobs in durable manufacturing (28 percent job losses), machinery manufacturing (57 percent), textiles (27.6 percent), electrical equipment and appliances (22 percent), paper (36 percent), and plastics and rubber products (54 percent). It should be noted that since the EPA rule is unilateral and few other nations are likely to follow the U.S. lead, many of these manufacturing jobs will be outsourced overseas.

The job losses or shifts to lower paying jobs are substantial, leading to declines in disposable income of $145 billion by 2015--more than $1,000 per household.

Conclusion

Virtually every concern heightened by the economic downturn, especially job losses, would be exacerbated under the ANPR. As with cap-and-trade legislation, the EPA's suggested rulemaking would be poison to an already sick economy. But even in the best of economic times, this policy would likely end them. The estimated costs--close to $7 trillion dollars and 3 million manufacturing jobs lost--are staggering. So is the sweep of regulations that could severely affect nearly every major energy-using product from cars to lawnmowers, and a million or more businesses and buildings of all types. And all of this sacrifice is in order to make, at best, a minuscule contribution to an overstated environmental threat. Congress has wisely resisted implementing anything this costly and impractical. The fact that unelected and unaccountable EPA bureaucrats are trying to do the opposite is all the more objectionable.

Ben Lieberman is Senior Policy Analyst in Energy and the Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

[1]This Backgrounder is a companion to: David W. Kreutzer and Karen A. Campbell, "CO2-Emission Cuts: The Economic Costs of the EPA's ANPR Regulations," Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis Report No. 08-10, October 29, 2008, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/cda08-10.cfm.

[2]William W. Beach et al., "The Economic Costs of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Change Legislation," Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis Report No. 08-02, May 12, 2008, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/cda08-02.cfm.

[3]Ben Lieberman, "The Lieberman-Warner Climate Change Act: A Solution Worse Than the Problem," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2140, June 2, 2008, pp. 6-9, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2140.cfm.

[4]Portia M. E. Mills, Mark P. Mills, "A Regulatory Burden: The Compliance Dimension of Regulation CO2 as a Pollutant," U.S. Chamber of Commerce, September 2008, p. 3.

[5]Carrie Wheeler, "Information Collection Request for Prevention of Significant Deterioration and Nonattainment New Source Review," U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, no date.

see: http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2213.cfm

Waxman Win Exposes Democrats' Leftward Bent

2008-11-23T20:24:00.000-08:00

With Waxman over the House Energy Committee, the Obama/Gore agenda has one more green light:

Democrats’ surprising selection of liberal Rep. Henry Waxman of California as the new chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee signals that the new Congress will take a definite turn further to the left.

By a 137-122 vote on Thursday, the Democratic caucus voted to oust John Dingell of Michigan from a post he has held as chairman or ranking Democrat since 1981.

Some senior Democrats were stunned by Waxman’s victory, which violated the party’s long-held principle of seniority.

Seniority has “just been buried,” said Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, a Dingell supporter.

Moderate to conservative Democrats viewed the vote “as a rebuke by the caucus’ liberal wing, which has accused Dingell of not supporting global warming legislation,” The Washington Post observed.

The powerful committee has broad jurisdiction over a range of issues, from consumer protection and regulation of energy resources to global warming, conservation, telecommunications policy, health, and auto emissions.

Waxman, who represents Beverly Hills and parts of Los Angeles, told reporters after the vote, “Seniority is important, but it should not be a grant of property rights to be chairman for three decades or more.”

He also said, “I am very gratified by the trust put into me,” Reuters reported.

Dingell, a prominent supporter of his state’s auto industry, has clashed with junior committee members over efforts to impose fuel efficiency standards on vehicles.

Waxman argued that Dingell would be a roadblock to legislation the Obama White House will want to push.

“This is a big deal since it rejects the sacred seniority system for chairmen,” a Washington insider told Newsmax.

“It also suggests far-left House Democrats are finished holding their fire like they did over the first two years of Democratic control.

“If they can do this, all kinds of nutty left-wing legislation is possible.”

“I heard one moderate Democrat say, ‘I guess we’re trying to help you guys [House Republicans] get out of the wilderness.'”

Obama Speaks on Carbon Regulation

2008-11-19T20:18:00.000-08:00

For any of you who might be holding out hope that the current economic crisis will derail Obama’s plans for carbon taxes, think again. In his first post-election speech on the topic, Obama underscored the urgent need to address global warming, and seemed to put off suggestions that delay might be prudent in light of the current economic situation. Here’s a report on the speech:

Obama seeks immediate action to curb emissions
David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 19, 2008

In his first speech on global warming since winning the election, President-elect Barack Obama promised Tuesday to set stringent limits on greenhouse gases, saying the need is too urgent for delay.

Many observers had expected Obama to avoid tackling such a complex, contentious issue early in his administration. But in videotaped comments to the Governors' Global Climate Summit in Beverly Hills on Tuesday, he called for immediate action.

"Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all," Obama said. "Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high, the consequences too serious."

He repeated his campaign promise to create a system that limits carbon dioxide emissions and forces companies to pay for the right to emit the gas. Using the money collected from that system, Obama plans to invest $15 billion each year in alternative energy. That investment - in solar, wind and nuclear power, as well as advanced coal technology - will create jobs at a time of economic turmoil, he said.

"It will ... help us transform our industries and steer our country out of this economic crisis by generating 5 million new green jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced," Obama said.
Many people listening to Obama's speech Tuesday had waited years to hear it.

Schwarzenegger 'very happy'

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger convened the Global Climate Summit along with the governors of Florida, Illinois, Kansas and Wisconsin - states that have been developing their own global warming policies rather than waiting for federal action. Schwarzenegger clashed repeatedly with the Bush administration on climate policy and complained that the White House was dragging its feet on a looming crisis. He told the conference Tuesday that he welcomed a new approach from Washington and will work with Obama.

"Of course I am very, very happy," Schwarzenegger said. "This is so important for our country, because we have been the biggest polluters in the world, and it is about time that we as a country recognize that and that we work together with other nations in order to fight global warming."

Obama touted the idea of companies paying to emit greenhouse gases, a system known as "cap and trade," during the campaign. But many people had doubted he would make it an early priority as president.

Under such a system, the government would set an overall limit on greenhouse gas emissions and let companies buy and sell the right to emit specific amounts. The limit would decline over time.

Such systems are complicated to create. They're also controversial. Critics say they amount to a tax on energy use that would hurt businesses and consumers at a time when the economy is floundering.

But one business group threw its support behind Obama on Tuesday. The U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which includes San Francisco's Pacific Gas and Electric Co. as well as several environmental organizations, started calling for government action on global warming two years ago. The group wants a cap and trade system as soon as possible, even though many of its members - such as oil giants BP and ConocoPhillips - emit large amounts of greenhouse gases.

"We stand united behind President-elect Obama's statement earlier today," said James Rogers, chief executive officer of Duke Energy, one of America's largest electric utilities. "Delaying this further doesn't make sense. And using the economy as an excuse is wrong. ... We can solve our economic and environmental crises simultaneously."

Paying for emitting carbons

A cap and trade system forces companies to pay for emitting greenhouse gases, effectively putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions. As a result, alternative energy technologies should become more cost-competitive with fossil fuels.

"At its core, it's very simple - we need a price on carbon," said David Crane, chief executive officer of NRG Energy, another Climate Action Partnership member. "We own coal-fired power plants. That's what we do for a living. We've been developing low- or no-carbon technologies as we look to the future. ... But again, we need a price on carbon, because it's not cheap."

Obama's four-minute, videotaped speech largely repeated elements of his energy plan from the campaign trail, saying the nation must cut greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050.

He repeatedly linked the fight against global warming to reviving the economy, saying the investment in alternative energy would put Americans to work.

Nuclear power, 'clean coal'

Obama also made a point of backing technologies that many environmentalists despise - nuclear power and "clean coal," which involves trapping and storing underground the emissions from coal-burning power plants.

Obama told participants at the governors' climate conference that he would work with any country, state or business that wanted to fight climate change. Brazil, Canada, China, Chile, Mexico, India, Indonesia and the United Kingdom all sent representatives to the two-day conference.

"I promise you this: When I am president, any governor who's willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House," he said. "Any company that's willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that is willing to join the cause of combatting climate change will have an ally in the United States of America."

Freezing Heat

2008-11-17T20:03:00.000-08:00

This article just illustrates how sloppy the "science" behind Global Warming alarmism really is:

The world has never seen such freezing heat
By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 16/11/2008

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

Pickens' wind plan hits a snag

2008-11-12T20:00:00.000-08:00

This is from today’s news:

Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens is delaying his massive Texas wind project, citing a drop in natural gas prices and the tightening credit market. "With natural gas prices where they are, you can't kick off a wind project, you're not economical." Pickens said Tuesday at a news conference in Arizona.

In case the logic is lost (and it’s easy to lose sight of it) the “Pickens” wind plan is, was, and always will be, a “Pickens High Priced Natural Gas” plan. Take away the high priced natural gas, and Pickens won’t build either the wind nor the gas plants to firm it. His “I’m greener than a gourd” attitude appears to be heavily influenced by one particular shade of green more than any other – the green back.

Here’s the link to the story; the story itself is below:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/12/news/economy/pickens/index.htm?postversion=2008111213

Pickens' wind plan hits a snag
Credit crunch and falling natural gas prices delay plans for giant Texas farm.
By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: November 12, 2008: 1:50 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens is delaying his massive Texas wind project, citing a drop in natural gas prices and the tightening credit market.
"With natural gas prices where they are, you can't kick off a wind project, you're not economical." Pickens said Tuesday at a news conference in Arizona.

But Pickens, who has spent millions over the last few months promoting his "Pickens Plan" to wean the United States off foreign oil by switching to wind and natural gas, said natural gas and oil prices will rise again in less than a year, and characterized the setback as temporary.

A spokesman for Mesa Power, Pickens' company that is building the Texas wind farm, laid the blame more on the credit markets.

"The capital markets are problematic for everyone and...may lead us to scale back a bit," Jay Rosser, a spokesman for Mesa, said in a statement. "But we are still going forward with our wind business."

Pickens' wind farm in Texas, known as the Pampa Wind Project, was slated to be the largest wind farm in the world, generating 4,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 1.3 million homes.

A spokesman for Pickens said turbines for the first phase of the project, 1,000 megawatts of power, are still being purchased. The first phase was slated to come online in 2011. Although now it is no longer clear when it will come on line.

The Pickens Plan, which the billionaire has been pushing in TV commercials, media appearances and lobbying efforts since last summer, calls for the country to use wind to generate 20% of its electricity, displacing some of the natural gas that's currently used to generate power. The natural gas, an abundant domestic resource, could then be used to power vehicles, thus reducing oil imports.

But natural gas prices have fallen from over $12 per million British thermal units last summer to current levels of around $6.

The fall in natural gas prices makes switching to wind power a less certain bet, as utilities would be reluctant to replace natural gas with wind now that natural gas prices are so low.

Pickens said Tuesday that natural gas prices need to be about $9/Btu in order for wind power to be competitive.

He remained confident the dip in prices would not effect his overall Pickens Plan.

"We will get the plan," he said.

Pickens, who made his money in oil production and trading, has been saying for years that the United States is too dependent on foreign oil, and that oil prices will continue to rise over the long term as demand outstrips supply.

First Published: November 12, 2008: 11:58 AM ET

McCain Wrong on Global Warming

2008-10-28T19:53:00.000-07:00

This just illustrates the fact that this year's [2008] presidential election isn't between right and wrong, it's between bad and worse. I'm so discouraged.

A British editor and politician prominent in the discussion of climate change has written an open letter to John McCain criticizing statements the Republican candidate has made about global warming.

The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, who was an adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, sought to keep Al Gore’s global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” out of public schools in Britain, and in March 2007 challenged Gore to a debate on climate change.

Now in his letter to McCain, published on the Web site American Thinker, Monckton calls manmade global warming fears “scientifically discredited” and advises, “Not for a single moment longer must you allow yourself to be distracted by the murderous foolishness of the climate alarmists.”

Monckton quotes a McCain statement that “we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures.”

Monckton, saying he bases his assertions on “peer-reviewed scientific literature,” counters, “For most of the past 600 million years, the temperature that most often prevailed globally is thought to have been 12.5 degrees higher than today’s temperature . . .

“From 1700 to 1998, temperature rose at a near-uniform rate of about 1 degree per century. In 1998, ‘global warming’ stopped, and it has not resumed since. Indeed, in the past seven years, temperature has been falling at a rate equivalent to as much as 0.7 degrees per decade.”

Responding to McCain’s statement that greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide, “are heavily implicated as a cause of climate change,” Monckton writes, “Two-thirds of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is naturally present, and carbon dioxide occupies just one ten-thousandth more of the atmosphere today than it did 250 years ago.”

Monckton, who was an editor and writer with Britain’s Evening Standard newspaper, quotes McCain, “We need to deal with the central facts of . . . rising waters.”

He counters, “Sea level has been rising since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago . . . The rate of increase has averaged four feet per century. Yet in the 20th century, when we are told that ‘global warming’ began to have a major impact on global temperature and hence on sea level, sea level rose by just eight inches.”

Then in a swipe at Al Gore, whom he does not mention by name, Monckton observes, “There is not and has never been any scientific basis for the exaggerated projections by a certain politician that sea level might imminently rise by as much as 20 feet.

“That politician, in the year in which he circulated a movie containing that projection, bought a $4 million condominium just feet from the ocean at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.”

Monckton also seeks to refute statements McCain has made on receding glaciers, melting polar ice sheets, extreme weather events, threats to polar bears, and more.

And in reference to the candidate’s stated support for efforts to control climate change by reducing the emission of greenhouse gases, Monckton tells McCain: "With every respect, there is no rational basis for your declared intention that your great nation should inflict upon her own working people and upon the starving masses of the Third World the extravagantly pointless, climatically irrelevant, strategically fatal economic wounds that the arrogant advocates of atmospheric alarmism admit they aim to achieve.”

Straight Talk About Energy Policy

2008-10-10T19:45:00.000-07:00

I promised Kimball that I wouldn't post or editorialize about his paper - he was worried that I'd make him look too radical. So instead I will only reprint what other publications have already said about his paper:

Kimball Rasmussen, president and CEO of Deseret Power Electric Cooperative, the Utah G&T, gave a presentation this week to CFC employees at their Herndon, Va., headquarters based on his recent position paper, “A Rational Look at Climate Change Concerns and the Implications for U.S. Power Consumers.” The 50-page white paper does a skillful job of discussing NRECA’s “Our Energy/Our Future” campaign and explaining the complex science—and its inconsistencies and shortcomings—used to calculate the effects of global warming, referencing the recognized authority on global warming science, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Rasmussen acknowledges that global warming is occurring and that mankind’s activities contribute to it but advocates a thoughtful consideration of what to do about it based on the demand for electricity, the need for technology development, the costs associated with efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and the effect those efforts will have on rising temperatures.

Here are a few of the points presented by Rasmussen:

* The IPCC model is based on an average global temperature increase of 3 degrees Celsius (range of 2 to 4.5 degrees) from a base calculation in the year 1750 to the expected temperature in 2100. This is due to a doubling of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the earth’s atmosphere from 275 parts per million (ppm) to 550 ppm; the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is 385 ppm.

* Climate change legislation is expected to be considered by the U.S. Congress. At a potential $50 per ton of CO2 settling price, a cap-and-trade program would cost the U.S. electric industry a staggering $100 billion per year—enough money to retire the net book value of every coal-fired plant in America within 3.5 years.

* The likely result of a U.S. cap-and-trade program is the exodus of U.S. industry and manufacturing to other parts of the world to reduce costs.

* If the United States were to develop enough renewable energy resources to replace current carbon-based resources within 10 years, as some have called for, we would need to duplicate the current amount of U.S. installed wind energy capacity once every 31 days for the next 10 years or build 1,247 new solar facilities similar to the 140-acre facility at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. (the third largest in the world) every month for the next 10 years. Neither outcome is possible.

* The United States emits about 6 billion tons of CO2 annually; the U.S. power sector emits about 2 billion tons of CO2 annually; and world CO2 emissions are approximately 30 billion tons annually. The U.S. percentage of annual global CO2 emissions is expected to decline over time.

* According to the IPCC formulae, if the United States were to shut down all of its fossil-fueled electricity within the next 10 years, the climate response would be a temperature decrease of just 0.07 degrees Celsius.

“I would hope that we could get past the extremes and apply reason and wisdom as we explore the best energy policy,” Rasmussen concludes in his white paper. “We should be cautious that international pressures do not overcome prudent domestic energy policy. An economically healthy America will have the best opportunity to develop technologies that can efficiently and methodically lead to a prudent transition from carbon resources. A misguided carbon tax, or cap-and-trade program, will grievously damage the U.S. economy, will accelerate the out-migration of heavy industry and will have no beneficial effect on future climate.”

Green fascists given free rein in England

2008-09-13T19:36:00.000-07:00

How far will all of this go? The energy industry and the government in the UK have allowed the environmental groups free rein to delegitimize coal (and oil for that matter). They have invested nothing in defending fossil fuels, legitimizing their product or in advancing strategies to combat global warming that do not involve getting rid of coal. As a result, the jury was, in a literal sense, prejudiced against coal. The benefits of affordable energy for the many must be championed, otherwise we will end up with expensive energy for the few.

Vandalizing the Economy
CEI’s Iain Murray, from Planet Gore

This is very big. In Britain, a group of Greenpeace supporters trespassed on to a coal-fired power station and started vandalizing it, painting a message to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown about global warming. They were arrested and prosecuted. Their defense strategy was to claim a "lawful excuse" on the grounds that their actions could help prevent significant damage to others' property that would result from global warming. Their defense witnesses included James Hansen, Al Gore's adviser and head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and Zac Goldsmith, ultra-wealthy heir of Sir James Goldsmith and a conservative candidate for Parliament. The strategy worked. Yesterday, a jury returned a majority verdict, acquitting the so-called Kingsnorth Six. As The Independent put it, the jury decided the "threat of global warming justifies breaking the law ."

The ramifications are huge. Operators of coal-fired power stations in the UK have just been stripped of legal protection from the criminal actions of the environmental lobby (to call them extremists would be wrong - this is the mainstream). It is perfectly possible that a future jury will find differently, but the chances of that happening have fallen dramatically. Investor confidence in coal energy will therefore be damaged. There will be huge political risk in building a new coal plant. Existing coal plants will come under literal attack.

The same people hate nuclear and will work to delay new nuclear plants. Renewables are marginal, even according to the Renewable Energy Foundation . North Sea Gas is running out, so the only solution to keep the lights on is kowtowing to Vladimir Putin and Gazprom .

Article on the sun's activity and earth climate

2008-08-21T07:06:00.000-07:00

Apparently our solar system is larger than just the United States. Would someone please educate Al Gore...

Scientists disagree over lack of sunspots
Mark Lawson

The current cycle of the sun is taking a long time to start, triggering different explanations, writes Mark Lawson. Despite being dismissed by a number of scientists as of little consequence to the present discussion of climate change, the issue of the sun's activity - or apparent lack of it - has been the subject of considerable debate in recent months. Scientists who concern themselves with the fledgling subject of spaceweather (changes in the sun's emissions) have been wondering where all the sunspots have gone, when they might come back and what effect this will have on climate.

The sun has a well-recognised, 11-year cycle marked by spots, or cool dark regions with strong magnetic fields, that appear on its surface. At the peak of the cycle, when the sun may be giving off lots of flares and solar storms that affect satellites, there are lots of spots. At the low part of the cycle there are few to no spots and the sun is calm. The last solar cycle peaked in 2001 and was pronounced complete by NASA in March 2006. At the same time a team from the National Centre forAtmospheric Research in the US forecast that the next sunspot cycle will be 20 to 50 per cent stronger than the previous one. Since then some spots from the new cycle have appeared, as well as -confusingly - some spots from the old cycle which appeared in March of this year. (Scientists can tell which cycle the spots belong to by their magnetic polarity.) The next cycle is taking a long time to start, and this lack of activity has prompted observers to invoke the possibility of another Maunder Minimum - a period from 1645 to 1715 with very few sunspots, which is associated with a sequence of bitter winters known as the Little Ice Age.

Scientists have offered two different interpretations for this absence of sunspots, both based on statistical research. In early July NASA solar physicist David Hathaway pointed out that the solar minimum is still well within historic norms for the solar cycle. He notes that the average solar cycle lasts 131 months, plus or minus 14 months. By July, cycle 23 (the one just winding up) had lasted 142 months, but it can last much longer, despite NASA's declaration. In the early 20th century, the sun was quiet for periods twice as long as the present spell, Hathaway says. The current cycle has lasted 143 months, with another group saying that although there may be only a few spots, this lack of activity will continue until 2014 when the spots will disappear altogether. William Livingston and Matthew Penn, both at the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, base their forecast on measurements of both the magnetic strength and the temperatures of spots. Livingston tells The Australian Financial Review that in a trend independent of the solar cycle, the magnetic strength of the sunspots had been declining and their temperature increasing. They graphed the magnetic field decline and extrapolated it to reach an end point in 2014. They have forecast that although there may be more sunspots, the present lack of activity will continue until 2014 when there will be no sunspots at all. As this forecast is based just on what they read from the graphs, rather than on a physical theory, they cannot say what will happen after that, Livingston says. The pair submitted a paper to Nature three years ago but it was rejected, Livingston says, because it made a strong statement based solely on statistical trends. Recently, however, the paper has been circulated unofficially as part of the climate debate and also because the sun has been quiet. Livingston says he will wait for the right time before resubmitting it.

The role of sun activity in climate is very hotly debated, with the ruling theories emphasising the role of industrial gases, and assigning only a comparatively minor role to the sun in the short term. But there are dissenters. Willie Soon, a researcher at the Harvard Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says he has identified a clear link between the sun's activity - as indicated by its magnetic activity - and temperature variations in the Arctic and Greenland over 130 years. Soon tells The Australian Financial Review he chose this area for study as it has good temperature records and is an area sensitive to climate change, so that the signal from any one climatic influence should be easier to spot. He also says he can point to a physical mechanism in the circulation of the ocean linking the sun's influence on temperature in the region. Soon was due to present his results at the 33rd International Geological Conference in Oslo this week. He was co-chairing a sun-climate connection session with Bob Carter, a professor at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University and a noted Australian climate sceptic. Another scientist who says he has identified a link between the sun's activity and climate - in particular between rainfall in Australia and sunspots - is Robert Baker, an associate professor at the University of New England's School of Human and Environmental Studies. Baker tells the AFR he has identified a strong correlation between sunspots, the sun's magnetic activity and the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). He says variations in the earth's magnetic field account for about half of the variation in the SOI, and that changes in sunspot activity as an indicator of magnetic activity can be correlated with rainfall patterns in south-east Australia. The Bureau of Meteorology has rejected Baker's reasoning and a paper by him was not accepted by the Australian Meterological Magazine. But Baker says his analysis has been accepted by the peer-reviewed journal Solar Terrestrial Physics for publication in December.

Poll: Few Americans Worried About Global Warming

2008-08-17T19:02:00.000-07:00

This just proves how out of touch our politicians have become while becoming disciples of Al Gore:

Only 1 in 4 Americans believes global warming is the biggest environmental challenge facing the world, a new poll reveals.

The ABC News/Planet Green/Stanford University survey found that public concern over the global warming issue has diminished over the past year.

Fewer than half of the poll’s respondents, 47 percent, think global warming is an important issue to them personally, down from 52 percent in April 2007.

While 80 percent believe the earth is warming, that figure is down four percentage points from last year.

Doubts over the science behind the global warming issue still linger in people's minds, according to the poll results reported by the National Journal. Just 30 percent of respondents said they trust what scientists have to say about the environment "completely" or "a lot," 39 percent said they trust them "a moderate amount," and 30 percent said they do not trust them.

Also, nearly 60 percent of respondents said there is "a lot of disagreement" within the scientific community as to how dangerous climate change is.

According to ABC News' Gary Langer, the diminished concern over global warming coincides with decreased media attention to climate change, in favor of the election and economy. "A database search finds 50 percent fewer news stories on global warming in the month before this poll was conducted, compared with the month before last year's survey," Langer wrote.

In any case, about 7 in 10 respondents said they're attempting to reduce their energy consumption by driving less, using less electricity and recycling.

But 63 percent are in favor of drilling for oil in coastal waters where it is currently not allowed, and 55 percent support drilling in U.S. wilderness areas where it is not allowed.

Waning Warming Debate

2008-08-15T20:37:00.000-07:00

Do you see what happens when the 24/7/365 news channels have something else to talk about besides the myth of man-made global warming?

Waning Warming Debate
AMERICANS AIM TO REDUCE CARBON FOOTPRINTS, DESPITE DROP IN CONCERN FOR CLIMATE CHANGE
Monday, Aug. 11, 2008
by Amy Harder

For all the recent coverage of the pollution surrounding Beijing's Olympic Games, global warming has gotten relatively little attention, whether on the nightly news or on the campaign trail. While the majority of Americans still say they consider climate change a serious issue, a new poll suggests public concern over the issue has ebbed since last year.

According to a survey [PDF] from ABC News, Planet Green and Stanford University, fewer than half -- 47 percent -- of Americans consider global warming an important issue to them personally, down from 52 percent in April 2007. Although a vast majority still think the planet is warming -- 8 in 10 respondents -- that figure is also down from last year, having dropped 4 percentage points. Furthermore, in an open-ended question, the number of respondents who called global warming the biggest environmental challenge facing the world fell 8 points from 2007 and currently hovers at 25 percent.

According to an analysis by ABC News' Gary Langer, the drop in these numbers coincides with decreased media attention to climate change, in favor of the election and economy. "A database search finds 50 percent fewer news stories on global warming in the month before this poll was conducted, compared with the month before last year's survey," Langer wrote.

That dimmer media spotlight could explain respondents' lack of knowledge about how John McCain and Barack Obama measure up on global warming. About 8 in 10 respondents said they knew little or nothing about the candidates' positions on the issue. Nevertheless, the Democratic contender has a clear advantage: Fifty-five percent of respondents said Obama would do a better job of reducing global warming, while only 23 percent said so of the GOP nominee.

Respondents split evenly when pollsters asked whether government-led or market-based solutions would do a better job of reducing global warming, but they did favor government measures such as a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions.

Americans appear to be holding themselves responsible as well for the energy crisis. About 7 in 10 respondents said they're attempting to reduce their carbon footprint, by driving less, using less electricity and recycling. But despite the overwhelming consensus that global warming is indeed occurring, doubt over the science behind the issue is still lingers strongly in people's minds. Only 30 percent of ABC News respondents said they trust what scientists have to say about the environment "completely" or "a lot," with 39 percent saying they trust them "a moderate amount" and 30 percent saying they do not trust them. On top of that, nearly 60 percent of respondents said there is "a lot of disagreement" within the scientific community as to how dangerous climate change is.

Copyright ©2008 by National Journal Group Inc. The Watergate 600 New Hampshire Ave., NW Washington, DC 20037
202-739-8400 • fax 202-833-8069 NationalJournal.com is an Atlantic Media publication.
National Journal - Waning Warming Debate http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/print_friendly.php?ID=pn_200...

Global Warming Movement Turns Cool

2008-07-05T20:31:00.000-07:00

Finally, we're starting to hear some reasonable voices in the media - I'm starting to feel less lonely already:

Global Warming Movement Turns Cool
June 22, 2008, 3:44 pm James Spann Climate

Two years ago, it seemed like nothing could stop the global warming train. Most of the media, those in Hollywood, politicians (many on both sides of the cultural divide), and “enlightened environmentalists” were all telling us that man was causing runaway warming of the earth’s atmosphere, meaning global catastrophe only decades ahead for all of us.

Scary stuff.

The problem is that a majority of those in this almost religious movement have little training in atmospheric science, and little understanding of the issue. They jumped on the bandwagon because it matches their worldview, or pads their pocket. This issue has generated great wealth on both sides of the argument, and I need to say up front I have absolutely no financial interest in climate. I am paid the same regardless of whether man is involved in climate change or not, and I have never taken a dime for a speech on the subject.

The simple truth is that the anthropogenic global warming train has slowed to a crawl, and the riders are jumping off as the facts are discovered.

What is the truth? Lets begin with something we all can agree on. The climate IS changing. It has always changed, it is changing now, and it will always change.

Beyond that, here are some simple facts that make those left on the global warming train very uncomfortable:

*The earth is no warmer now than it was in 1998.
*Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but a gas indispensable to plant life. Plants, in turn, release oxygen, which sustains animal and human life.
*The primary greenhouse gas is water vapor, not carbon dioxide.
*The lack of solar activity in recent months suggests global cooling might be our biggest potential climate change problem in coming years.
*The planet has had weather disasters, extremes, and anomalies since it has been here. We just didn’t have 24 hour news channels and the Internet in prior decades to spread the news.

I have been doing the weather on local television for 30 years, and EVERY YEAR I have had people come up to me and tell me that they can “never remember the weather being this strange”.

Most of those that you see and hear speaking on the subject have little scientific knowledge. Here is a quote from Dr. Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, from an article he penned recently:

“Alarmists like Al Gore will use pseudo-scientific justifications and comparisons in their attempt to make a connection between carbon dioxide and global warming. Even though CO2 is necessary for life on Earth, the alarmists insist on calling it a pollutant, referring to our atmosphere as an “open sewer.” For instance, Gore likes to point out that Venus has far more CO2 in its atmosphere than the Earth does, and its surface is hot enough to melt lead. Therefore, more CO2 causes warming. But we also know that the Martian atmosphere has 15 times as much CO2 as our own atmosphere, and its surface temperature averages about 70 deg. F below zero. So you see, in science a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

Dr. James McClintock (marine biologist at UAB) today, in an op-ed piece published by the Birmingham News, claims that Antarctica is “warming quickly”. Dr. McClintock, I am sure, is an excellent marine biologist, and I would not even make an effort to challenge his knowledge of that science. But, what is his background in atmospheric science? And, where does that claim come from?

Here is what Certified Consulting Meteorologist (CCM) Joe D’Aleo says about this:
“The shattered part of the Wilkins ice sheet was 160 square miles in area, which is just 0.01% of the total current Antarctic ice cover, like an icicle falling from a snow and ice covered roof,” D’Aleo wrote on March 25. “We are very likely going to exceed last year’s record [for Southern Hemisphere ice extent]. Yet the world is left with the false impression Antarctica’s ice sheet is also starting to disappear,” D’Aleo added.

And, from climate scientist Ben Herman, past director of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and former Head of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Arizona: “It is interesting that all of the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) stories concerning Antarctica are always about what’s happening around the [western] peninsula, which seems to be the only place on Antarctica that has shown warming. How about the net ‘no change’ or ‘cooling’ over the rest of the continent, which is probably about 95% of the land mass, not to mention the record sea ice coverage recently.”

I also should note that the mythical UN IPCC “consensus” continues to crumble… Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist who specializes in optical waveguide spectroscopy from the University of Tokyo, and a top UN IPCC Scientist, calls global warming fears: the “worst scientific scandal in history” in the weblog of former Colorado State Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke.

Here is what Canadian climatologist Tim Ball says about the IPCC: “The IPCC is a political organization and yet it is the sole basis of the claim of a scientific consensus on climate change. Consensus is neither a scientific fact nor important in science, but it is very important in politics. There are 2500 members in the IPCC divided between 600 in Working Group I (WGI), who examine the actual climate science, and 1900 in working Groups II and III (WG II and III), who study “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” and “Mitigation of Climate Change” respectively. Of the 600 in WGI, 308 were independent reviewers, but only 32 reviewers commented on more than three chapters and only five reviewers commented on all 11 chapters of the report. They accept without question the findings of WGI and assume warming due to humans is a certainty. In a circular argument typical of so much climate politics the work of the 1900 (less than one percent of the scientific population) is listed as ‘proof’ of human caused global warming. Through this they established the IPCC as the only credible authority thus further isolating those who raised questions.”

I find it interesting that most of the predictions coming from the IPCC are based on computer model output. Those of us in the trench, who deal with the Earth’s atmosphere every day, know that computer model data is often horrible 24 hours in advance… how bad can it be out to 50 or 100 years?

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine this month announced that 31,072 U.S. scientists (9,021 with PhDs) signed a petition stating that “… There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will cause in the future, catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate…”

John Coleman, meteorologist and founder of The Weather Channel, calls the GW movement the greatest scam in history.

I encourage all of you to read material on BOTH sides of the issue and make up your own mind. Mr Gore, the science is “not settled”, and the invitation for a debate remains wide open.

Heaven help us this fall when ABC television tells us that the world, as we know it, is about to end because of “global warming”. Never let facts get in the way of a good story, especially one that scares you to death.

I consider myself an environmentalist. There are some serious environmental issues out there. “Global warming” is not one of them. One of the best ways to become a truly environmentally concerned person is to walk the banks of an Alabama river or stream for a half day and pick up trash and garbage. Anyone want to join me?

See: http://www.alabamawx.com/?p=7509

A Better Way Than Cap and Trade

2008-06-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

Hmm... $800 billion to reduce inevitable temperature increases by just 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit... that sounds like a good deal... at least it does to the U.S. politicians:

A Better Way Than Cap and Trade
By Bjorn LomborgThursday, June 26, 2008; A19

The bitter arguments in the Senate this month over the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill, which would have required major emitters to pay for the right to discharge greenhouse gases, proved that climate change caused by humans has come to the fore of U.S. policy debates. This fact may comfort those who believe that future generations will judge us on the zeal with which we face the challenge. It may even assuage the fears of those who believe that warming will end life as we know it. But political rhetoric is unlikely to put us on a path toward solving the problem of climate change in the best possible way.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a co-sponsor of the bill, has called it "the world's most far-reaching program to fight global warming." It is indeed policy on a grand scale. It would slow American economic growth by trillions of dollars over the next half-century. But in terms of temperature, the result will be negligible if China and India don't also commit to reducing their emissions, and it will be only slightly more significant if they do. By itself, Lieberman-Warner would postpone the temperature increase projected for 2050 by about two years.

Politicians favor the cap-and-trade system because it is an indirect tax that disguises the true costs of reducing carbon emissions. It also gives lawmakers an opportunity to control the number and distribution of emissions allowances, and the flow of billions of dollars of subsidies and sweeteners.

Many people believe that everyone has a moral obligation to ask how we can best combat climate change. Attempts to curb carbon emissions along the lines of the bill now pending are a poor answer compared with other options.

Consider that today, solar panels are one-tenth as efficient as the cheapest fossil fuels. Only the very wealthy can afford them. Many "green" approaches do little more than make rich people feel they are helping the planet. We can't avoid climate change by forcing a few more inefficient solar panels onto rooftops.

The answer is to dramatically increase research and development so that solar panels become cheaper than fossil fuels sooner rather than later. Imagine if solar panels became cheaper than fossil fuels by 2050: We would have solved the problem of global warming, because switching to the environmentally friendly option wouldn't be the preserve of rich Westerners.

This message was recently backed up by the findings of the Copenhagen Consensus project, which gathered eight of the world's top economists -- including five Nobel laureates -- to examine research on the best ways to tackle 10 global challenges: air pollution, conflict, disease, global warming, hunger and malnutrition, lack of education, gender inequity, lack of water and sanitation, terrorism, and trade barriers.

These experts looked at the costs and benefits of different responses to each challenge. Their goal was to create a prioritized list showing how money could best be spent combating these problems.

The panel concluded that the least effective use of resources in slowing global warming would come from simply cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

Research for the project was done by a lead author of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the group that shared last year's Nobel Peace Prize with former vice president Al Gore -- who noted that spending $800 billion over 100 years solely on mitigating emissions would reduce inevitable temperature increases by just 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century. Even accounting for the key environmental damage from warming, we would lose money, with avoided damage of just $685 billion for our $800 billion investment.

The economists didn't conclude that the world should ignore the effects of climate change. They pointed out that a better response than cutting emissions would be to dramatically increase research and development on low-carbon energy -- such as solar panels and second-generation biofuels.

The United States has an opportunity to lead the world on research and development, which would give it the moral authority to demand that everyone else do the same. The world's sole superpower could finally provide the leadership on climate change that has been lacking in the White House.

Even if every nation spent 0.05 percent of its gross domestic product on research and development of low-carbon energy, this would be only about one-tenth as costly as the Kyoto Protocol and would save dramatically more than any of Kyoto's likely successors.

In the United States, this approach would open up new avenues for the nation's creative, innovative spirit and leave behind the political mess of Kyoto-type negotiations.

A low-carbon energy, high-income future is possible. Unfortunately, the political battles we just witnessed in Washington have done nothing to make it a reality.

The writer is an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Consensus Center, Copenhagen Business School.

See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/25/AR2008062501946.html

Poll: most Britons doubt cause of climate change

2008-06-24T20:15:00.000-07:00

I can see by the following article that our brethren in the UK are better at sifting the truth out of the drivel that spews from the mainstream media than we are here in the U.S.

Poll: most Britons doubt cause of climate change

The majority of the British public is still not convinced that climate change is caused by humans - and many others believe scientists are exaggerating the problem, according to an exclusive poll for The Observer.

The results have shocked campaigners who hoped that doubts would have been silenced by a report last year by more than 2,500 scientists for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which found a 90 per cent chance that humans were the main cause of climate change and warned that drastic action was needed to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The findings come just before the release of the government's long-awaited renewable energy strategy, which aims to cut the UK's greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent over the next 12 years.

The poll, by Ipsos MORI, found widespread contradictions, with some people saying politicians were not doing enough to tackle the problem, even though they were cynical about government attempts to impose regulations or raise taxes. In a sign of the enormous task ahead for those pushing for drastic cuts to carbon emissions, many people said they did not want to restrict their lifestyles and only a small minority believe they need to make 'significant and radical' changes such as driving and flying less.

'It's disappointing and the government will be really worried,' said Jonathon Porritt, chairman of the government's Sustainable Development Commission. 'They [politicians] need the context in which they're developing new policies to be a lot stronger and more positive. Otherwise the potential for backlash and unpopularity is considerable.'

There is growing concern that an economic depression and rising fuel and food prices are denting public interest in environmental issues. Some environmentalists blame the public's doubts on last year's Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, and on recent books, including one by Lord Lawson, the former Chancellor, that question the consensus on climate change.

However Professor Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, said politicians and campaigners were to blame for over-simplifying the problem by only publicising evidence to support the case. 'Things that we do know - like humans do cause climate change - are being put in doubt,' said Lomborg. 'If you're saying, "We're not going to tell you the whole truth, but we're going to ask you to pay up a lot of money," people are going to be unsure.'

In response to the poll's findings, the Department for the Environment issued a statement: 'The IPCC... concluded the scientific evidence for climate change is clear and it is down to human activities. It is already affecting people's lives - and the impact will be much greater if we don't act now.'

Ipsos MORI polled 1,039 adults and found that six out of 10 agreed that 'many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing to climate change', and that four out of 10 'sometimes think climate change might not be as bad as people say'. In both cases, another 20 per cent were not convinced either way. Despite this, three quarters still professed to be concerned about climate change.

Those most worried were more likely to have a degree, be in social classes A or B, have a higher income, said Phil Downing, Ipsos MORI's head of environmental research.

'People are broadly concerned, but not entirely convinced,' said Downing. 'Despite many attempts to broaden the environment movement, it doesn't seem to have become fully embedded as a mainstream concern,' he said.

More than half of those polled did not have confidence in international or British political leaders to tackle climate change, but only just over a quarter think it's too late to stop it. Two thirds want the government to do more but nearly as many said they were cynical about government policies such as green taxes, which they see as 'stealth' taxes.

See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/22/climatechange.carbonemissions

Tax protests paralyze Europe's "green" policies

2008-06-03T19:57:00.000-07:00

Note: Europe is suffering under "green" taxes that are one fifth what the U.S. politicians are proposing for us after this next election.

Fuel protests herald grim times for European green policy
DOUG SAUNDERS
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
May 28, 2008 at 2:06 AM EDT

LONDON — After hundreds of angry drivers shut down highways in England Tuesday in protest against green automobile taxes, and drivers and fishermen in France and Spain paralyzed their ports and roads in a fuel-tax protest, politicians began to signal Europe's ambitious emission-control policies may soon have to be abandoned.

While Europe has led the way in using tax incentives to encourage people to buy low-emission cars and to build carbon-neutral houses in order to meet Kyoto targets, it has become increasingly apparent that inflation-battered voters are no longer willing to go along.

Political leaders in Britain and France are seeking the reversal of tax policies designed to make polluting vehicles more expensive, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and some British ministers calling on their own governments and the European Union to relax ecologically friendly taxes in order to give relief to citizens suffering from fast-rising food and fuel prices.

As Prime Minister Stephen Harper launches a European tour Wednesday to persuade leaders that Canada's greenhouse-gas policies are acceptable, he may find the gaps between their views have narrowed, as formerly ecologically assertive leaders react to rising voter backlash against green policies.

In Britain, drivers Tuesday held a mass traffic stoppage over a new surtax, introduced by Prime Minister Gordon Brown as a way to encourage people to buy more fuel-efficient cars, that would have raised the average family's vehicle taxes by $80, with higher-polluting vehicles paying more and very efficient ones being exempt.

After Tuesday's protest and days of anger in the news media, members of Mr. Brown's Labour Party government began to call for a reversal. Parliamentary Secretary Rob Marris complained in a radio interview that “Millions of people will be affected. … I am in favour of prospective green taxes to change people's decisions when they buy a car, but to tax them heavily on a car when it was bought seven years ago doesn't seem a good way to go and it will discredit green taxes.”

Officials close to Chancellor of the Exchequer Allistair Darling hinted strongly last night that he is considering a complete reversal of the tax and a reconsideration of other tax-led emissions policies.

“The Chancellor is listening to what people are saying about vehicle excise duty, as he has done on a number of occasions recently about tax rises,” said John Hutton, Mr. Brown's business secretary. “We are trying to get the balance right between encouraging choices to go green but not hammering people.”

A survey this month by the British polling firm Opinium showed that more than 70 per cent of voters are not willing to pay any higher taxes in order to combat climate change. There are indications that such opinions are increasingly prevalent across Europe as fuel and food prices rise and consumer-credit crises become widespread, making politicians increasingly out of step with their constituents on climate policy.

Mr. Sarkozy, joined by Spanish ministers yesterday, called on the EU to rescind part of the value-added tax it places on fuel, after fuel-tax strikes caused much of France to grind to a halt last week and resulted in clashes with riot police yesterday. Italian, Greek and Portuguese fishermen have threatened to join the protests later this week.

While the European fuel tax is not specifically tagged as green, environmental groups have praised high fuel taxation as an important part of Europe's emissions-reduction strategy, and warned that tax cuts on fuel will discourage industries and consumers from pursuing low-emission equipment and methods.

But it appears that the EU is already moderating its green stand on fuel in response to consumer pressure. While EU leaders had pledged last year to have 10 per cent of all road transportation fuelled with biofuel sources by 2020, a report from the European Commission yesterday backed away from that pledge, adding a new clause stating that “the target has never been to reach 10-per-cent biofuels at any price. It is 10-per-cent biofuels under strict conditions.”

Such reversals led the chief United Nations climate-change official to criticize Europe for losing its leading position on emission controls.

“The whole world gave a standing ovation when Europe announced last year its willingness to reduce its emissions by 20 per cent, and perhaps by 30 per cent if others [such as Canada] join in,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, according to the Agence France-Press news agency.

“But now this position is under a lot of pressure, especially from European Union industries. … I am not seeing this push yet.”

Mr. Brown had joined other European leaders two years ago in placing targeted taxes on large vehicles, fuel, plastic bags and air travel with the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2050, in accordance with the Kyoto agreement. Experts had said that even with these policies, that target would be difficult to meet.

But European voters have begun to rebel against these measures. For example, a British tax incentive adopted last year to encourage people to build carbon-neutral homes, which would typically allow buyers to waive $20,000 in sales tax if the house is made to low-emissions standards, had been adopted by only three home buyers as of January. Builders said they had spurned the exemption because carbon-neutral practices could add 10 per cent to the cost of a house.

See: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080528.wgreen28/BNStory/International/home

Mounting Costs Slow the Push for Clean Coal

2008-05-30T21:04:00.000-07:00

I see by this New York Times article that our politicians and press are starting to catch a glimpse of the realities of the state of “Carbon Capture and Storage” technology. Now if we could just educate them on the realities of Carbon Dioxide we’d be about there. In the meantime I see that the Times continues to chose inflammatory words like “spew” when they talk about carbon dioxide.

May 30, 2008
The Energy Challenge
Mounting Costs Slow the Push for Clean Coal
By MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON — For years, scientists have had a straightforward idea for taming global warming. They want to take the carbon dioxide that spews from coal-burning power plants and pump it back into the ground.
President Bush is for it, and indeed has spent years talking up the virtues of “clean coal.” All three candidates to succeed him favor the approach. So do many other members of Congress. Coal companies are for it. Many environmentalists favor it. Utility executives are practically begging for the technology.
But it has become clear in recent months that the nation’s effort to develop the technique is lagging badly.
In January, the government canceled its support for what was supposed to be a showcase project, a plant at a carefully chosen site in Illinois where there was coal, access to the power grid, and soil underfoot that backers said could hold the carbon dioxide for eons.
Perhaps worse, in the last few months, utility projects in Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, Minnesota and Washington State that would have made it easier to capture carbon dioxide have all been canceled or thrown into regulatory limbo.
Coal is abundant and cheap, assuring that it will continue to be used. But the failure to start building, testing, tweaking and perfecting carbon capture and storage means that developing the technology may come too late to make coal compatible with limiting global warming.
“It’s a total mess,” said Daniel M. Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.
“Coal’s had a tough year,” said John Lavelle, head of a business at General Electric that makes equipment for processing coal into a form from which carbon can be captured. Many of these projects were derailed by the short-term pressure of rising construction costs. But scientists say the result, unless the situation can be turned around, will be a long-term disaster.
Plans to combat global warming generally assume that continued use of coal for power plants is unavoidable for at least several decades. Therefore, starting as early as 2020, forecasters assume that carbon dioxide emitted by new power plants will have to be captured and stored underground, to cut down on the amount of global-warming gases in the atmosphere.
Yet, simple as the idea may sound, considerable research is still needed to be certain the technique would be safe, effective and affordable.
Scientists need to figure out which kinds of rock and soil formations are best at holding carbon dioxide. They need to be sure the gas will not bubble back to the surface. They need to find optimal designs for new power plants so as to cut costs. And some complex legal questions need to be resolved, such as who would be liable if such a project polluted the groundwater or caused other damage far from the power plant.
Major corporations sense the possibility of a profitable new business, and G.E. signed a partnership on Wednesday with Schlumberger, the oil field services company, to advance the technology of carbon capture and sequestration.
But only a handful of small projects survive, and the recent cancellations mean that most of this work has come to a halt, raising doubts that the technique can be ready any time in the next few decades. And without it, “we’re not going to have much of a chance for stabilizing the climate,” said John Thompson, who oversees work on the issue for the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group.
The fear is that utilities, lacking proven chemical techniques for capturing carbon dioxide and proven methods for storing it underground by the billions of tons per year, will build the next generation of coal plants using existing technology. That would ensure that vast amounts of global warming gases would be pumped into the atmosphere for decades.
The highest-profile failure involved a project known as FutureGen, which President Bush himself announced in 2003: a utility consortium, with subsidies from the government, was going to build a plant in Mattoon, Ill., testing the most advanced techniques for converting coal to a gas, capturing pollutants, and burning the gas for power.
The carbon dioxide would have been compressed and pumped underground into deep soil layers. Monitoring devices would have tested whether any was escaping to the atmosphere.
About $50 million has been spent on FutureGen, about $40 million in federal money and $10 million in private money, to draw up preliminary designs, find a site that had coal, electric transmission and suitable geology, and complete an Environmental Impact Statement, among other steps.
But in January, the government pulled out after projected costs nearly doubled, to $1.8 billion. The government feared the costs would go even higher. A bipartisan effort is afoot on Capitol Hill to save FutureGen, but the project is on life support.
The government had to change its approach, said Clarence Albright Jr., the undersecretary of the Energy Department, to “limit taxpayer exposure to the escalating cost.”
Trying to recover, the Energy Department is trying to cut a deal with a utility that is already planning a new power plant. The government would offer subsidies to add a segment to the plant dedicated to capturing and injecting carbon dioxide, as long as the utility bore much of the risk of cost overruns.
It is unclear whether any utility will agree to such a deal. The power companies, in fact, have been busy pulling back from coal-burning power plants of all types, amid rising costs and political pressure. Utility executives say they do not know of a plant that would qualify for an Energy Department grant as the project is now structured.
Most worrisome to experts on global warming, the utilities have recently been canceling their commitments to a type of plant long seen as a helpful intermediate step toward cleaner coal.
In plants of this type, coal would be gasified and pollutants like mercury, sulfur and soot removed before burning. The plants would be highly efficient, and would therefore emit less carbon dioxide for a given volume of electricity produced, but they would not inject the carbon dioxide into the ground.
But the situation is not hopeless. One new gasification proposal survives in the United States, by Duke Energy for a plant in Edwardsport, Ind.
In Wisconsin, engineers are testing a method that may allow them to bolt machinery for capturing carbon dioxide onto the back of old-style power plants; Sweden, Australia and Denmark are planning similar tests. And German engineers are exploring another approach, one that involves burning coal in pure oxygen, which would produce a clean stream of exhaust gases that could be injected into the ground.
But no project is very far along, and it remains an open question whether techniques for capturing and storing carbon dioxide will be available by the time they are critically needed.
The Electric Power Research Institute, a utility consortium, estimated that it would take as long as 15 years to go from starting a pilot plant to proving the technology will work. The institute has set a goal of having large-scale tests completed by 2020.
“A year ago, that was an aggressive target,” said Steven R. Specker, the president of the institute. “A year has gone by, and now it’s a very aggressive target.”

The U.S. strives to become like Haiti

2008-05-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

Our future looks darker every day as our presidential candidates promise us a future in which we will reduce our Green House Gas (GHG - primarily CO2) emissions by 80% by the year 2050. Ouch! Let's put that into perspective, shall we? The U.S. currently emits around 6 billion tons of CO2. An 80% reduction would take us down to around 1 billion tons. Let's see - when were we last at 1 billion tons of CO2 emissions as a country? In 1910 - the end of the horse and buggy era. BUT - in 1910 we only had 92 million people. In 2050 we're projected to have 420 million people. That means, whereas we emit 19.5MT of CO2 per capita today, in 2050 we'd only have an allowance of 2.5MT per capita. We last saw that level of CO2 emission in the year 1875! Currently, the nations that have emissions that low are Haiti, Somalia, and Botswana. Now there's a goal for U.S. Even France and Switzerland, the developed countries with the lowest per capita CO2 emissions, are presently at 6.5MT - and that's because they generate their electricity with nuclear power plants and have very small, compact countries. For comparison, one Toyota Prius, driven the national average of 10,000 miles per year, would emit 1.8MT of CO2 - nearly all of a person's annual allowance! Further, the EPA estimates that to reach this level of per capita emissions, our economy would have to shrink by 6% per year, which would put us out of business by 2030. That is some worthwhile goal. Think about it.

For further enlightenment, see the following: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seGyLIrH1-4.

Technically...

2008-05-12T19:35:00.000-07:00

Following is my submission for the next company newsletter to go out this next month. I titled the piece “Technically…” since that seems to be how I always preface a technical correction to a common misconception.

Recently there has been an increase in interest among some of the cooperative’s membership in installing alternative energy generation systems on their homes. The greatest level of interest has been in photovoltaic (solar) panel and windmill generators. In discussing this topic with these interested members, it’s clear that the sudden interest in alternative energy stems from a recent spike in media coverage of global warming fears and misinformation on how to mitigate the effects of the alleged global warming.

Since the fear mongers base their justification in an alleged “consensus” among “scientists”, it’s important to note that a consensus among scientists on any theory is neither true nor, even if it were, scientific. Science isn’t based on consensus. Science is defined, and constantly re-defined, by applying “the scientific method,” which means: observation, formulation of a hypothesis, skeptical analysis, documentation, and repeat. Any discussion that brands honest skepticism as heresy and requires blind acceptance is, by definition, not scientific. While science is never based on consensus, politics is. And since the group that is leading the cheer of man-made global warming is the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control – a governmental panel, made up of politicians, and not scientists – it is not surprising that they would naturally seek a “consensus” rather than follow the scientific method.

The reality is that non-government-affiliated scientists disagree whether the Earth is due for a slight warming period or for a slight cooling – weather forecasting, especially in the long-term, is notoriously imprecise. The only two things that can be stated categorically with regard to the weather are that it’s variable and unpredictable. But whether we warm or cool over the next 100 years, it’s not going to matter to mankind, since either average temperature change is projected to be so small (+/-1°F) that it will not affect our environment in any significant way. Nevertheless, in reaction to the panic induced by the UN, our government is proposing legislation that will significantly affect our economy and the ability of each of the cooperative’s members to make a living. But since that topic has already been covered in our General Manger’s column, I’ll focus this discussion on the reality of installing alternative energy generating sources on the cooperative's distribution system.

First, some members have expressed the perception that it’s frequently windy in the cooperative's service territory. And while that may be true to some extent, the amount of wind found in our area is insufficient to generate electricity. A quick reference of the wind resource maps created by the National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL) informs us that there is no location in Southern Utah or Northern Arizona with sufficient wind speed and force to generate electricity. Further, where there is reported to be sufficient wind, such as around Milford, Utah, the availability is at best 20-25% (contrasted with coal or natural gas-fired generation with an availability of 95%.)

Lastly, one natural resource that we have in abundance in the cooperative's area is sunshine, and sunshine can be converted into electricity, but not in great quantities and not cheaply. For example, the average residential customer on the cooperative's system uses 1420 kWh per month. To approach that level of energy consumption, a member would need to install 9,000 watts of solar panels, which would generate about 1225 kWh per month, during the sunny days. Those solar panels would occupy 910 square feet on the roof and yard of the home to which they were attached and would cost at least $90,000 to purchase. If the member received $2000 tax rebates from both the Federal and the State Governments, then they would only need to finance $86,000 to pay for the solar panels. If the member could procure a 30-year loan at a 5% interest rate, the monthly payment on the solar panels would be $462, which would be to offset $46 per month from their power bills (leaving a balance of $36/month), for a net loss of $416 per month for 30 years. Certainly not a financially sound investment.

But, in accordance with State Law, the cooperative offers a Net Metering tariff for any member that still chooses to generate a portion of their electrical needs with an approved alternative energy source. And while the staff of your cooperative has done their best to make this tariff revenue neutral for the rest of the membership, State Law does mandate a certain level of subsidization in this rate. If you have any question on the tariff or interconnection requirements, please don’t hesitate to contact us in the engineering department.

It's getting dark and stupid in here

2008-05-07T18:16:00.000-07:00

The founder of "Utah Moms for Clean Air" who wrote the May 3 article in the Salt Lake Tribune claiming that there is "no such thing as clean coal" rattled off a lot of scary sounding statistics, all of which are exaggerated, erroneous, or misleading. BUT, on top of all that, I know from personal experience that without coal-fired electricity we’ll go dark as a country and especially in Utah. Having spent ten years working on rural electrification in developing countries around the world I can confirm that having the clean coal power that we have in Utah is infinitely preferable to the premature deaths associated with a lack of vaccines (due to no refrigeration), respiratory diseases (due to cook fires in the home), house fires (due to open flames on candles and kerosene lamps), lack of security (due to lack of street lighting), lack of literacy (due lack of adequate lighting at night in the home), lack of information (due to lack of radio or TV news), food insecurity (due to lack of power for irrigation and grain milling), unrestrained population growth (due to lack of entertainment – TV and movies), deforestation (as populations centers forage for firewood as a primary source of energy), and lack of industry and other employment opportunities (due to a lack of power machinery.) Believe it or not, all of the preceding points are documented justifications for funding affordable and sustainable rural electrification in developing nations. And here in the US we’re trying to go backwards. It makes me really sad.

I told you so...

2008-04-29T18:03:00.000-07:00

I hate to say it, but "I told you so." For the past year I've been warning about the high costs and even impossibilities associated with the government mandates trying to fight the fictional man-made global warming. Well now both FERC and S&P have come out and independently verified what I've been saying all along. I have pasted excerts from those two articles below:

Flawed Climate Change Policy Could Lead to “Very Expensive and Unreliable Power,” Warns FERC Chairman

Speaking to reporters following a meeting of the United States Energy Association (USEA), Joseph Kelliher, chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, warned against climate change legislation that might be good environmental policy but bad energy policy.

“I believe FERC as a rates agency has a duty to help policymakers find the right balance between environmental policy and energy policy,” Kelliher said.

Earlier this year, Kelliher abandoned his stance that environmental policy and energy policy exist in “two separate universes,” asserting that “we desperately need” to balance those policies in developing solutions.

“The fiction that they are separate universes and reserved for separate policymakers and separate discussions really has to end,” he asserted during the February 20 keynote session of the National Electricity Delivery Forum. “It is a tenable fiction in most areas, but it utterly fails, it utterly collapses when you look at climate change.”

Kelliher warned that “while the US can take a sound and acceptable path to environmental and energy policy, there is also the possibility that it will take an approach that has recklessly flawed energy policy.”

“If we were to address climate change in a way that is fundamentally unsound energy policy, we will end up with very expensive and unreliable energy supplies...”

S&P Raises Doubts on Renewable Standards

Rapid growth of renewable portfolio standards poses sobering challenges, including cost and feasibility issues that present obstacles to green advocates’ goals, according to a ratings firm’s report.

The standards on the books in 29 states and the District of Columbia direct load-serving entities to acquire a certain percentage of their power from renewable resources. This forces utilities to shift from least-cost sources toward above-market renewables in unprecedented quantities, Standard and Poor’s said in “The Race for the Green: How Renewable Portfolio Standards Could Affect U.S. Utility Credit Quality.”

In many states, the portfolio targets are significant, with more than half calling for renewables to account for 15 percent or more of a utility’s total energy supply at some future date. While some of these dates are a decade or more away, most states also have interim targets.

RPS is often discussed in “unimpeachable terms” that suggest a sizeable shift toward renewable generation can occur quickly, with little rate impact and minimal disruption to the utility sector, S&P noted.

But “while it is possible that RPS will prove to be feasible, economic and successful in every state, there is no compelling evidence that suggests this will be the case,” it said.

Utilities unable to achieve RPS requirements on the mandated schedule could be saddled with penalties. Looking at current renewables levels underscores the challenges that RPS poses for utilities, S&P pointed out. According to the Energy Information Administration, renewables accounted for about 9 percent of U.S. generation in 2006. But this figure includes conventional hydropower, which not all states consider to be “green.” If it is excluded, only about 2.4 percent of U.S. generation came from renewables.

According to S&P, to meet 2015 RPS targets, 6,000 megawatts of new renewables would have to come on-line each year. “We question whether this is attainable,” it said.

“We suspect the green marathon will be a difficult race for utilities to run,” the firm concluded.

False Environmentalists Ruin Earth Day

2008-04-22T18:44:00.000-07:00

Ah Earth Day... I well remember the very first one, back in 1970, when my third grade class in Round Rock (Arizona) went out and planted trees around our little four-room school. But sadly the day been totally ruined for me now by all of those fake environmentalists who are hell-bent on pillaging the national treasury and our wallets for no return on our investments. All pain and no gain, to retool an old phrase that we used to quote while pumping iron in front of posters of Arnold. Now Arnold, one of my teen-year heroes, is numbered among those false environmentalists who are using Al Gore's new faith-based religion of man-made climate change to wreck the environment while they line their pockets.

These eco-Nazis chop down old redwood trees in California so they don't shade solar panels, which (in developed countries) are nothing more than expensive eco-bling. They chop up endangered raptors in California mountain passes with their windmills, that provide nothing but expensive and unreliable electricity. They convince our congress of sheep to burn our food for fuel, creating world-wide food shortages and hunger-fueled riots. They promote bio-fuels which are grown after chopping down and burning out old rain forests, the lungs of our planet. They drive hybrid cars whose battery banks are made from nickel, which comes from a mine that has made a whole section of Canada into a moon-scape. They pull up old railroad tracks and relinquish the established rights-of-way, pushing more trucks out on the highways. They pressure congress, who then pressures the department of fish and wildlife, to designate the polar bear as endangered (even though in reality it's thriving) just because they saw an animated polar bear drown in Al Gore's Hollywood production, while they ignore the real endangered species that are going extinct in far away places in Africa and Asia. They call harmless carbon dioxide gas "carbon" (deliberately evoking images of coal dust and black lung) so that they can vilify it and tax it, thereby taking more money from you and me during this period of economic instability and driving our industries to China (whose carbon footprint is five times our own, per dollar of GDP) or Indonesia (whose carbon footprint is fifteen times our own, per dollar of GDP) or India or Brazil.

These evil imposters claiming to be saviors of the Earth deny access to affordable electricity to the masses in developing nations, thereby propagating poverty, illiteracy, insecurity, deforestation, and all manner of respiratory diseases. These false gods who claim that they can control the natural cycles of the planet by turning off our electricity, and therewith our economy, have yet to acknowledge the truth revealed by simple arithmetic (using their own inflated figures) that completely shutting down all of the coal-fired electricity in America would at most reduce the global temperature by 0.07 degrees F - now that's truly all pain for no gain.

Sigh. So, while 80% of America continues to willingly (or blissfully ignorantly) sacrifice their children's future to these men who claim to be gods, but who in reality are nothing more than modern-day robber barons, I guess I'll continue to honor the original spirit of Earth Day by planting a tree, throwing my trash into bins, recycling my old newspapers and aluminum cans, turning off the lights when I leave the house, conserving water by reducing the lawn around my home, keeping our electrical system as efficient as possible, and lobbying congress to increase development funds for developing nations.

“Global warming” is not a global crisis

2008-04-19T11:37:00.000-07:00

I just endorsed this realist declaration that came out of the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change. If you read this and agree, you can endorse it too by going to: http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/

Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change

“Global warming” is not a global crisis

We, the scientists and researchers in climate and related fields, economists, policymakers, and business leaders, assembled at Times Square, New York City, participating in the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,

Resolving that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method;

Affirming that global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life;

Recognising that the causes and extent of recently-observed climatic change are the subject of intense debates in the climate science community and that oft-repeated assertions of a supposed ‘consensus’ among climate experts are false;

Affirming that attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing human suffering;

Noting that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth than colder:

Hereby declare:

That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity’s real and serious problems.

That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.

That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.

That adaptation as needed is massively more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation, and that a focus on such mitigation will divert the attention and resources of governments away from addressing the real problems of their peoples.

That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.

Now, therefore, we recommend –

That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as “An Inconvenient Truth”.

That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.

Agreed at New York, 4 March 2008.

Our Energy, Our Future

2008-04-16T18:43:00.000-07:00

In early June of this year, 2008, Congress is scheduled to vote on the Lieberman-Warner Climate legislation, which is projected to raise electrical power rates to $0.30/kWh – double the current rates for Californians and 5-6 times for Dixie Escalante customers – for the benefit of lowering the projected average global temperature increase by a maximum of 0.07 degrees F over the next 100 years. (Please let me know if you’d like to see the science behind those figures.) If you feel like that’s not a good investment for your hard-earned dollars, especially during this period of financial insecurity, you can make your voice be heard by joining the “Our Energy, Our Future” campaign at: https://www.ourenergy.coop/. For no charge to you and very little time, this website will send e-mails on your behalf to all of your legislators asking them to answer to us, their constituents, and explain why they think this could possibly be construed as a good idea. It’s very important that we give our elected representatives a reason to pause before they make a colossal mistake for which we’ll be paying for generations to come.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Run the numbers

2008-03-24T18:19:00.000-07:00

Following is a letter I wrote to a friend in local politics, in response to their concerns on the economics (or lack thereof) of solar home systems:

Solar power costs $10/watt, just for the equipment (panels, controllers, batteries, etc.) I have heard of people spending a lot more than that once they get the equipment installed. Any time I hear someone claim that they’ve installed solar power for less, I know that they’ve left some costs out of their figures. For comparison, natural gas generating stations universally cost $1/watt anywhere in the world (I built three 10MW gas generators in Bangladesh in 2000 for about $0.80/watt.) Large coal-fired power plants have historically cost even less; for example, Deseret’s 400MW power plant that serves Dixie Escalante REA cost about $0.65/watt (for power plant, mine, and railroad.)

The example that I mentioned in our last meeting was for a typical customer of our electric cooperative, of which I’m one. My home is all-electric and I use an average of 1500kWh per month. To replace that amount of energy with solar power, and assuming that the co-op's grid remains available for me to use to offset my time of consumption vs. my time of generation (I use electricity in the dark but would only generate when it’s light,) I would need to install at least 9,000W of solar panels (which would generate about 1225kWh/month.) That amount of solar panels would require 910 square feet of my roof or yard, and would cost me at least $90,000 if I installed them myself. Then, if I could get both the federal and state tax credits of $2,000 each, I would only need to finance $86,000. If I could get a second mortgage on my home at 5% for 30 years, I’d have a monthly payment of $462 for the solar panels. OR, I could just buy that much energy from the co-op for $71.54 and save the extra $400 per month.

Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns on this or anything else in the power business.

Note: the photo above is a 100W installation on a relatively upscale home in the jungles of Bolivia, from one of my past projects.

What Puts the “Green” in “Green Power?”

2008-02-28T18:28:00.000-08:00

Question: What puts the "green" in "green power?"
Answer: The "greenbacks" from your wallet!

Our elected representatives have already chosen to break the bank on "man-made global warming" and "carbon capture." The big problem is that nearly everyone who understands the fallacies of both issues has a vested interest in the matter. I break it out as follows:

1. The Investor Owned Utilities (IOU's), like Duke Energy Corp, see this as a big cash cow; now they have an excuse to write-off their existing coal-fired power plants that generate power at $0.03/kWh and have a blank check to replace them with natural gas-fired power plants that generate at $0.06/kWh. If you understand that the IOU’s get a fixed 8% return on all sales, then it doesn't take much math to understand why they'd love to double their wholesale power costs. It's good for their profit margins, good for their investors, and no one cares about the customer. And which IOU thought of this scam first? Enron! And when they went broke, guess to which other IOU they sold their renewables business…

2. The product manufacturers, like General Electric, are also experiencing a huge cash windfall; GE just got congress to outlaw incandescent light bulbs, whose next best replacement is CFL bulbs. Now, if they have a fixed profit margin, call it 15%, you can see why they'd love to sell light bulbs for $2.00 each rather than $0.50 each - they just quadrupled their profit margins! And that's just on the consumer side. On the utility side, in that same law congress decreed that transformer efficiencies increase from 98% to 99%. This 1% increase in efficiency will double the cost of every single transformer that every utility in America buys. So, it's all good for their profit margins and investors, and no one cares about the customer.

3. The large research labs, like Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), are also waiting with baited breath for the huge cash infusion from congress. These scientists know full well that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are not causing global warming, and are very careful not to say anything on that subject. What they are saying, however, is that with a little extra funding EPRI could research ways to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions back to 1990 levels. (They're very clever not to make any claims as to whether or not that will affect global warming - they've let Al Gore make that case for them.) And what is their price tag for the research? $2 trillion! That's just 1/6 of our GDP is all.

4. The press has discovered that headlines featuring natural disasters, real or imagined, sell more than headlines stating that the weather is normal, cyclical, and unpredictable. Plus, they have to generate enough copy to fill their airwaves 24/7, and if you watch the news very frequently (I watch CNN, Fox News, and CBS news simultaneously on three TVs every morning for an hour during my workout at the gym) you will quickly note that there is not that much happening around the globe, so they have to stretch, fill, and generate their own news a significant portion of the time. I'm reminded of the L.A. Times' motto: "Bad news is good news, good news is bad news, and old news is history." So, of course you get the press corps clutching at every opportunity to tout "man-made global warming," making them complicit in the scam however ignorantly.

So now you have the “perfect storm” of well-funded lobbyists from the big IOUs, manufacturers, and research labs, as well as the press, all telling congress that Al Gore is right (even though they know he's not) and that our government needs to throw some serious money their way or there will be dire consequences. The only sector that I see trying to tell it like it is, and protect their consumers' best interests, are the rural electric cooperatives. Being non-profit entities we have no vested interest in seeing our rates increase - we have no profit margins to increase and no dividends to pay to share holders. We answer only to our member/consumers and our only interest is to sell electricity with the best reliability possible at the best possible price. Unfortunately, we’re so small that our lobby in Washington is relatively small, so now our only hope to stem the hemorrhaging is to ignite a grass-roots movement among our members. I was talking to our lobby people in DC last week and they told me that they'd done all they could do with the legislators in Washington and now it was up to our members to get involved. Hopefully you'll be a part of that.

Following are three questions that our lobbyists suggest that we all ask our elected officials:

1. Experts say that our nation’s growing electricity needs will soon go well beyond what renewables, conservation, and efficiency can provide; what is your plan to make sure we have the electricity we’ll need in the future?

2. What are you doing to fully fund the research required to make harmful emissions free electric plants an affordable reality?

3. Balancing electricity needs and environmental goals will be difficult. How much is all this going to increase my electric bill and what will you do to keep it affordable?

On the subject of "carbon capture": while this concept is being bandied about in Washington DC as if it were something we could actually do, it's still very much in the theoretical stage, part of that $2T study that EPRI wants to do, so no one yet understands how it would be done or what it might cost us. This is one of those cases of "if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it."

Wind Power and Bio Fuels?

2008-02-26T22:24:00.000-08:00

I hear all the time from friends and acquaintances who think it's windy enough here in the Southwest/Four Corners states that we should all be powered by windmills. Following is what I wrote to one friend recently:

Sorry, but if you look at DOE's National Renewable Energy Lab's wind resource map (see: http://www.nrel.gov/gis/wind.html) there is very little to no usable wind in the whole Four Corners area in the states of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, or Colorado. You need a "category 5" wind resource (dark purple on the map) to make wind power, however breezy it seems there where you live (I know I always thought of it as windy.) And then... at best you will only have wind power 15% of the time. Plus... you can only have 10% of your power from wind (the rest must come from coal, natural gas, nuclear, etc.) in order to maintain frequency stability (that's what makes your electric clocks and motors run right.) So, for heaven's sake, don't invest any money in a wind farm.

Also, I'd hate to invest any money in bio-fuels, regardless of that Virgin Airlines flight - burning down the rain forest to grow and burn more food is never good for the planet. See: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/02/24/eco.biofuels/index.html

Fighting the Big "Environmental" Industry

2008-02-17T12:38:00.000-08:00

On the political front here in Utah, I spent the past month continually commuting or phone conferencing to/with Salt Lake City for work on three separate but related fronts – a Renewable Portfolio Standard, Net Metering, and Interconnection – all three dealing with “Alternative Energy” sources (but mostly solar.) This has been a particularly busy season since the Utah legislature is currently in session. The problem is that the big “environmental” industry (notably GE and Honeywell) who bought into the existing alternative energy (mostly solar and wind) technology have gotten impatient with their market share (less than 3%) and decided to legislate themselves some more equipment sales. Unfortunately for them, their power prices are about twenty times the going rate here in Utah, which makes them unattractive. Unfortunately for us, Utah’s governor is such a flaming radical (if he weren’t so independently wealthy, thanks to his daddy, I’d say he’d been bought off by the big environmental industry) that he’s willing to betray all of Utah’s rate payers and create our own version of a Soviet-style command economy (like in California) and force us to buy from these snake-oil salesmen (most of whom are lobbying with grant money from the DOE – your and my own tax dollars – talk about being hoisted on your own petard.) But Utah isn’t alone or even the first battle state – these same battles have already been fought and lost in 24 other states, including Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Texas, California, Washington, and Oregon. It’s been nearly a full-time job to try to protect our citizens from this travesty – and for whatever number of battles that we’ve won, I’m not convinced that the war is over; it’s like watching a bad horror movie – every time you think you’ve killed the Boogieman he just gets back up and starts chasing you with a big chainsaw again. It’s good to be involved in the political process a bit, however frustrating. And speaking of frustrating, I’ll save you all my rant about the national political scene – suffice it to say that I’m (literally) having nightmares about the upcoming energy and food shortages as the present and future governments continue to wreck our economy – I’m rapidly becoming an anarchist.

Lake Mead and Lake Powell drying up?

2008-02-14T22:08:00.000-08:00

If you've read the recent studies published by the propaganda machine that we call our "free press" in which they talk about droughts in the near future drying up Lake Mead and Lake Powell, don't let these guys get you too worried. If they're correct, it's just dumb luck and not valid science - odds are that they're 100% wrong. I've studied their global climate models and they're not even accurate enough to "predict" the past, which means to use their models to duplicate past climate conditions that were measured, never mind predict the future. They totally missed predicting this past winter (2007-08) which was the coldest on recent record. This huge disconnect with reality comes from the fact that they don't even attempt to model such things as mountains, sea coasts, or even water vapor (which makes up 97% of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.) Besides, these models aren't even accurate on a global scale, never mind a micro-climate scale. And I know something about computer models - I've spent the last 20 years making and applying computer models to analyze and predict electrical power systems - that's what has taken me around the world for such clients as the US Government and the United Nations. So, while we should all do our part to conserve the natural resources over which we have stewardship, don't lose any sleep over these predictions or any other climate predictions based on global climate models, at least until the day when they figure out how to model how weather works.

Ten Questions and Answers

2008-01-30T17:07:00.000-08:00

Our local county has formed an Energy Committee and are seeking comments on various issues, so I've prepared the following responses to their inquiries.

1. Issues surrounding various proposed carbon taxes:

The deliberate choice to use the word “carbon” (as in carbon taxes) is an intentional attempt to confuse and misdirect the general public into thinking that carbon dioxide (CO2), which is the actual subject of discussion and is a harmless gas and an intentional byproduct of the combustion of coal (carbon) or natural gas, is “dirty,” like handling a chunk of unburnt coal, and might even cause black lung, like coal miners get when breathing in coal dust. The same special interest groups that wish to vilify carbon dioxide are hoping that a frightened public and government might impose an artificial cost, or tax, on the emission of carbon dioxide, which would directly increase the cost of generating electricity with conventional fuels, which would in turn make their products, “alternative energy” sources such as solar and wind power, more economical by comparison. Of course, the reality and science of the issue is that carbon dioxide (not “carbon”) is a harmless gas, does not cause black lung, does not cause “global warming”, and applying an artificial cost to the electrical power generation process would only be a thinly veiled program to transfer resources from the pockets of those who use electricity (hardest hit would be residential consumers living on fixed incomes and the commercial and industrial consumers that add value to our very weak economy) to special interest groups (GE’s stock has shot up over 60% in the past five years, for example.) The entire ideology behind the concept of “Carbon Taxes” is technically flawed and needs to be eliminated from public debate through education.

2. Costs of renewable resources:

Conventional generation sources, such as coal or natural gas, cost a nominal $1 per watt to construct anywhere in the world. Typically, large generation plants (300-3000 megawatts), with economies of scale, can be constructed in the United States for considerably less than the $1 per watt. “Alternative” energy resources cost considerably more, depending on the type. For example, a hydro-power generation plant would cost $1 per watt for the generation facility, before considering the costs of the civil works (dams, penstocks, etc.) which typically drive the total costs up to at least $5 per watt. Solar power (photovoltaic) typically costs $10 per watt for just the equipment, before considering the labor costs to install the equipment, which would tend to increase the cost by 50-100% to about $20 per watt. Another cost of renewable resources is related to the location of the resource. For example, geothermal plants have to be constructed at the location of the geothermal hot springs, which can be far from existing load centers and transmission lines, and therefore have considerable additional costs associated with the transmission of the power. Another cost of renewable resources is the life expectancy related to that resource and the resulting stranded investment; Geothermal pockets are notorious for cooling off in a relatively short time after the construction of the expensive generation facility. And perhaps worst of all is the availability of renewable resources; solar power is only available when the sun is shining, wind power when the wind is blowing, but demand for electricity also occurs when it’s dark and the air is still, which means that expensive duplicate conventional generation capacity would have to be built to back-up the renewable resources. Scale is another serious issue with renewable resources; utility grade generation comes in hundreds or even thousands of megawatts (1 megawatt = 1,000,000 watts) while renewable energy tends to come in packets of hundreds of watts – a tiny fraction of the capacity required by consumers (a typical home will have a demand of 10-20,000 watts.)

3. Mandated energy portfolio standards and the potential consequences of such, including higher costs, diminished choices, loss of freedom, etc. Please state costs in easy to understand terms such as monthly or annual rate increases that would result.

Mandated renewable energy portfolio standards (RPS) are a highly effective method for government interference in the energy sector to reach catastrophic proportions in the shortest time possible. A typical RPS might mandate that a state receive 25% of their energy from renewable resources. An oversimplified illustration of the effects of this case would be as follows: the rate payers of that state would see their power costs rise from their present cost (call this 1.0 per unit) to the new cost described as:

75% @ 1.0 p.u. + 25% @ 20.0 p.u. = 4.75 p.u.

which means an increase in average energy rates of 475%! Unfortunately, the more complicated reality would be even worse since you wouldn’t be able to actually replace 25% of the generation capacity, since the backup conventional generation would still be required, but only 25% (at best) of the energy production, so you would still have some additional demand costs in this equation, likely taking the average costs up to 500% or higher. Further, the per-unit costs of the energy (1.0 for conventional and 20.0 for renewable) are the relative costs given today’s market when there is little demand for renewable energy. That ratio of 20:1 is likely to increase significantly as utilities in states with mandated RPS start to compete for limited renewable resources. Additionally, this oversimplified analysis does not include the additional taxes applied to the ratepayers that would be required to continue to subsidize the renewable energy resources. If anything can drive our limited remaining industrial and manufacturing sector to India, China, and Brazil, the 1-2 punch of the implementation of a mandated RPS and the increase in taxes can.

4. Municipal and Utility Company alternatives:

All utilities, private, municipal, or cooperative, should be required to develop and acquire the most economical power supply (electrical generation) possible while maintaining legitimate clean air standards (i.e. within allowable limits on particulates, SOx, and NOx.) Further, all utilities should be required to plan their power supplies beyond the short-term (5-years) and into the long range (20-30 years) to mitigate future power shortages.

5. Off peak usage:

Off-peak usage is one way to significantly improve the utility’s “load factor” – the measure of the utilization of the fixed assets, like generation, transmission, and distribution. All utilities must provide their commodity on-demand, at the instant that the consumer requires. In a system with a preponderance of residential customers, that means early in the morning and late in the evening, often producing load factors in the range of 20-40%. That means that the utility’s fixed plant is only utilized 20-40% of the time. If a utility can coax customers to consume energy during off-peak times, specifically during the day and at night, then the utility can improve its load factor, spread its fixed costs over a broader base, thereby decreasing the average cost of power. To this end, most utilities offer incentives to use power at off-peak times, in the form of off-peak rates. This allows the customer the freedom to choose to either pay more to use power on their own time frame, or to save money by shifting their power usage to off-peak times. This is a legitimate free-market solution to overcoming the problem of a low load factor. Any command-economy type solutions, like government mandating of off-peak usage historically has been proven to fail to achieve the desired results.

6. Efficiency & other conservation measures:

In a market-based economy, the consumer has the freedom to choose either to consume more goods and services for the market price, which tends to make the price increase with demand, or conserve (reduce their consumption), which tends to make the price decrease with the decreased demand. The consumer should always be allowed to make that choice based on the economic benefits or costs associated with each choice. Manufacturers of appliances already produce their products with a range of energy efficiencies with their associated costs, which allows the consumer to choose the best appliance for his application, given his own local energy costs. Governmental agencies that spend public money should always perform a serious cost/benefit analysis prior to adopting any efficiency/conservation measure, to avoid paying for flashy but uneconomical measures.

7. Energy development:

Utilities have the responsibility to meet the demands of the consumers in their designated service territories both today and in the future and as such are under an obligation to carefully plan for both power supply and delivery. And since such electrical infrastructure has a 30-year life (depreciation cycle) utilities should always ensure that all new plant constructed should meet the needs of its consumers for the coming 30 years. Also, since lead times for design, permitting, materials purchase, and construction are measured in years rather than months, utilities are under an equal obligation to start developing new energy projects (generation and delivery) years in advance. Elected leaders have an equal obligation to their constituents to see that permitting for such properly planned and justified energy development projects is facilitated.

8. Pollution comparables:

There is no energy development, energy consumption, or manufacturing process that is entirely emissions-free – not burning coal or natural gas for electricity generation, manufacturing compact florescent light bulbs with mercury, nor mining nickel for making Ni-Cad batteries for electric vehicles – everything contributes some pollution to the environment (nickel mining being the worst of the three cases above.) Fortunately for the environment in the United States, we solved most of the emissions problems in previous decades, with the implementation of unleaded gasoline and catalytic converters on our automobiles, “scrubbers” on our coal-fired power plants, and the whole “Pitch In” public service campaign that helped to raise public awareness and to reduce littering on our streets and highways. In recent decades our air emissions from power generation and gasoline powered automobiles has been largely reduced to harmless CO2 (beneficial to plants) and the attempts by the special interest groups to demonize CO2 in order to artificially create an increased market share for their “alternative energy” products is at the very least dishonest.

9. Capital costs and alternative sources:

As illustrated in point #2 above, the capital costs for energy generation range from conventional coal or natural gas fired generation, which costs an average of $1 per watt globally, up to $20 per watt for solar photovoltaic systems. If governmental agencies wish to encourage expensive and immature renewable energy technologies by subsidizing the capital costs, they should do so with open and honest mechanisms such as rebates or grants, paid for with tax dollars as approved by the voters. Governmental attempts to hide such grants, by passing Renewable Portfolio Standards, as in item #3 above, which force the utilities to purchase energy from (i.e. subsidize) expensive and immature energy sources, are misleading and dishonest.

10. Capacity and transmission – including issues surrounding rights-of-way and permitting:

As the County becomes ever increasingly urban, space to accommodate rights-of-way for transmission and distribution power lines becomes increasingly scarce. Accordingly, even though joint distribution facilities don’t make any sense, because the individual utilities in the county serve in distinct geographical areas, it only makes sense for the utilities to work together to create joint transmission facilities, that span from one area to another. Toward this end, a Technical Task Force was formed in the County in 1988 and currently plans and develops and operates transmission facilities jointly (to the extent practical.) These efforts should continue and should be encouraged when considering issues of rights-of-way and permitting.

Rant to a (patient) friend

2008-01-16T17:53:00.000-08:00

Hey there Amigo,

Good to hear from you again. Here in Utah I’ve been up to my eyeballs with both technical and political work. On the political front my current battle is on the “alternative” energy front – our silly governor, who is making TV commercials with Arnold Schwarzenegger to promote their special interest agenda, is trying to impose a renewable portfolio standard on the utilities in Utah. No kidding. I’ve been driven to distraction with so many meetings up at the state capital in Salt Lake City. The proponents of this proposal keep saying that the electric rates in Utah are too low and that they should be artificially raised so that their solar and wind power projects would appear to be economical in comparison. They don’t care about the poor rate payers who are just trying to make ends meet in this current recession (that GWB is denying.) The muni’s are exempt from State law in Utah, and the IOU’s don’t care what their rates are, as long as they can collect their standard rate-of-return, so it falls to the three little piss-ant co-ops in the state to try to protect our members’ interests. It makes my blood boil every time some rich developer talks about taking money out of my little old grandma’s pockets just so he can peddle his products in a command economy situation rather than the free market that we supposedly espouse in this country.

These project developers, who want to set up alternative energy projects on my (and my Grandma’s) nickel, all point to man-made global warming as their justification. They never try to defend their position beyond adopting the Al Gore and Arnold Schwarzenegger line of “the debate is over.” I know that’s what they’d like, since they can’t point to any scientific evidence to support their claims. I’m convinced that the truth of the matter is that I’m the only one in the room up in SLC that has actually read the scientific studies published on the subject, by the IPCC and the individual scientists that make up that panel. The other side seems to be getting their “science” strictly from Hollywood. During the lunch break at the last meeting, I went to eat with the activists from the mayor’s office and the solar lobbyists (including a professor from the U of U) and attempted to engage them in a friendly scientific discussion of the facts. They acted like I was the first person to attempt such a thing – their only response was that we’d just have to agree to disagree. On the facts?! I pointed out that we weren’t discussing religion or who was the greatest rock-and-roll guitarist, but hard cold scientific facts and that there was no room for disagreement, that the facts are what they are. They had no response.

So yes, the facts clearly show that, according to our measurements, the average global temperature has increased in the past 100 years or so, since the end of the “Little Ice Age” in the 1800’s. The facts also show that CO2 (a byproduct of fossil fuel fired electric generation and vehicle emission) is a green house gas. However, none of the science (discounting the IPCC’s Summary for Policy Makers, which wasn’t written by the scientists themselves and which contradicts the scientists’ actual findings) concludes that man’s emissions of CO2 have been significant enough to account for the global warming. In fact, the only correlation that anyone has been able to show with our increasing temperature (which is only increasing in the winter and in the Northern Hemisphere) is that with solar radiation, which is clearly beyond our control. So, what Utah’s and California’s governors are proposing is all pain for no gain.

The article that I sent you may be weak in ascribing motives to the man-made Global Warming alarmists, but I’m sure that the author is just basing that on his personal experience with his own family and friends; but then, that’s what we all tend to do: filter world events through the lens of our own experiences. As for me, I have a hard time figuring out why so many people are pressuring us to take such drastic and expensive measures to try to affect the weather, when the evidence suggests that we can do no such thing regardless of how much money we throw at it. I do know that NBC news is owned by GE and that GE makes many of the “green” devices being touted on the NBC nightly “news” shows. I also know that EPRI depends on external funding to survive and that the technological “solution” to man-made global warming that they’re touting will cost $2T (their figure = 17% of our GDP), a good percentage of which will certainly flow their way at least in the early R&D years. So, if I were to hazard a guess as to the motives behind this movement it would either be TV ratings (and hence, advertising revenues) and/or increased product sales. I have thus far resisted the urge to ascribe the more sinister motives that I’ve heard bandied about, like the resurgence of socialism after their failure in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

I’m not sure that you’re interested in chasing this topic as far as I have, or spending as much time reading on the subject (it is kind of dry), but if you wanted to read the boring details for yourself, I’ve posted all the links and reading lists on my blog.

As for our buddies overseas, like Bangladesh and Bolivia, which are both near and dear to my heart since living and working there, I agree that they have serious environmental problems that need addressing. However, I think we’re diverting funds from proven solutions into early adoption of expensive technologies based on an artificially induced demand. I am, of course, always open to and desirous of continuing dialog – just because I’ve come to a conclusion on the subject based on my reading to-date doesn’t mean my mind is closed to new information.

Well, I’ve gone on much too long. Sorry for the rant – it’s been that kind of month here sunny Southern Utah. You have a great weekend.

Un abrazo.

Note: I took the attached photo on my family trip to southern Chile in 2005. Watching lava bubble and boil was every bit as entertaining as watching ice (glaciers) melt.

Extreme Weather Alert!

2008-01-14T17:34:00.000-08:00

Just this morning CNN presented a segment titled “Extreme Weather” in which they showed it snowing in New England today! In the middle of January, no less! Can you imagine? There were snow plows out and everything. Plus last week, on Christmas Day, on Anderson Cooper’s show (also on CNN) they showed a glacier in Chile that was shrinking in the summer heat (Chile being in the southern hemisphere and all) – they demonstrated this shrinkage with GPS measurements and everything. They took the measurements and then they said: “See? This proves that man is causing global warming.” I know I was convinced. At least, I was until my daughter pointed out that it might be more convincing if the glaciers were melting in Chile in the winter, or if they were sun bathing in New England in January. Also, they seem to have forgotten to explain how they linked the warm summer weather to something that man had done. Hmm… now I’m just confused.

And speaking of glaciers, the attached photo is one I took on our family Christmas trip to Patagonia back in 2005. It turns out that watching ice melt (glaciers calve) is as fun as watching lava bubble.

Powering our future or wrecking the economy?

2008-01-07T12:06:00.000-08:00

Today (January 7, 2008) the New Zealand Herald printed a story in their business section about the greed and dishonesty currently fueling the push to subsidize "alternative" energy sources, rallied by Global Warming phobia, rather than follow a more reasoned and scientific approach to developing the fuel sources of the future. I'm sorry to see that my power engineer brethren in New Zealand are suffering under the same insane politicians and activists that we are suffering here in Utah. You can find the entire article at the following link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10485514&pnum=0.

Following is an excerpt from the story by Brian Leyland:

The draft New Zealand Energy Strategy is dominated by the Government's conviction that climate change (more properly described as "man-made global warming") is happening and that we must develop renewable energy to save New Zealand from disaster.

The strategy ignores the uncertainties in the evidence claimed to support the belief that man-made global warming is real and dangerous. It cannot explain why, before the days of man-made CO2, the world was warmer during the Middle Ages, Roman and Minoan warm periods. The whole of the Energy Strategy is based on the assumption that the "scenarios" and "projections" of dangerous warming generated by unproven climate models are accurate predictions.

The surface temperature record used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that the world has not warmed since 1998. If cooling continues for a few more years then the hypothesis, the theories and the computer models supporting claims that CO2 causes dangerous man-made global warming, will have to be re-examined.

The strategy ignores the increasingly strong evidence that solar emissions related to the sunspot cycle and cosmic rays have a major influence on our climate. Unlike the carbon dioxide driven hypothesis, this theory explains climate change in the past and predicts that the climate will cool until 2030.

It seems to me that the Government has been badly advised. The primary duty of any scientific adviser is to report on the science objectively and to make sure that the politicians understand the uncertainties in the science.

It is for the politicians to decide how they will handle the uncertainties. Many climate scientists and other advisers have taken it upon themselves to hide the uncertainties from the politicians and to put forward supposition as fact. This is wrong and risky. For them and the nation.

A comprehensive and objective investigation into the credibility of the science underlying the hypothesis that man-made carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming is urgently needed.
The primary aim of the National Energy Strategy should be to ensure that New Zealand has a reliable and economic supply of energy. This we can easily get from our huge reserves of coal. An alternative is nuclear power which has been endorsed by the IPCC.

There is one thing we can be absolutely sure of: no one can predict exactly where our energy resources will come from in 50 years time - any more than they could have done so in 1906 when Henry Ford said: "If I had asked people what they wanted, it would have been faster horses."

History teaches us that human ingenuity and technology have the potential to provide sufficient energy for our needs. All that is needed to make sure that this happens is good science and common sense. The strategy lacks both.

The National Energy Strategy must be developed on a rational basis. It must recognise that meeting our legitimate needs for energy is important; minimising damage to our economy is important; and, most of all, it is important that we know exactly what it might be costing us - or what we are giving up - in order to meet the Government's obsession with dangerous man-made global warming and renewables.

Unless this is done, the strategy will turn out to be yet another expensive, misleading and futile exercise.

The strategy makes much of biofuels even though all the evidence points to the fact that growing crops to make biofuels is bad for the environment, deprives people of much needed food and in most cases does nothing to reduce carbon emissions. The only beneficiaries are those that grow rich on the billions of dollars in subsidies paid for biofuel production.

New Zealand would be better off without a strategy than it would be with the one outlined in "Powering Our Future".

Support for it comes from those who believe that economic development is incompatible with the environment, those who see it as a way of making profits from carbon trading, those (like Al Gore and his Generation Investment Management company) who are pushing heavily subsidised renewable energy projects and those academics that see it as a bottomless source of research money and an excellent way of getting recognition, promotion and income.

The Government sees it as a way of making even higher windfall profits from Meridian and
Mighty River Power and gaining votes and exerting more control over the economy and our lives. And no one shows any concern for domestic and industrial consumers who will pay more and more for an increasingly unreliable power supply.

* Bryan Leyland is a power engineer and consultant.

A cold spell soon to replace global warming

2008-01-03T18:25:00.000-08:00

It's only January 3rd but so far 2008 seems to be a banner year, at least with regard to the truth coming out about the lies of Global Warming. Today a Russian scientist, Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute, wrote a great article on this very subject. You can find the complete text at: http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080103/94768732.html. In case you can't get that, here's what he wrote:

"Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.

"Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.

"The real reasons for climate changes are uneven solar radiation, terrestrial precession (that is, axis gyration), instability of oceanic currents, regular salinity fluctuations of the Arctic Ocean surface waters, etc. There is another, principal reason—solar activity and luminosity. The greater they are the warmer is our climate.

"Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer.

"This is my point, which environmentalists hotly dispute as they cling to the hothouse theory. As we know, hothouse gases, in particular, nitrogen peroxide, warm up the atmosphere by keeping heat close to the ground. Advanced in the late 19th century by Svante A. Arrhenius, a Swedish physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner, this theory is taken for granted to this day and has not undergone any serious check.

"It determines decisions and instruments of major international organizations—in particular, the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Signed by 150 countries, it exemplifies the impact of scientific delusion on big politics and economics. The authors and enthusiasts of the Kyoto Protocol based their assumptions on an erroneous idea. As a result, developed countries waste huge amounts of money to fight industrial pollution of the atmosphere. What if it is a Don Quixote’s duel with the windmill?

"Hothouse gases may not be to blame for global warming. At any rate, there is no scientific evidence to their guilt. The classic hothouse effect scenario is too simple to be true. As things really are, much more sophisticated processes are on in the atmosphere, especially in its dense layer. For instance, heat is not so much radiated in space as carried by air currents—an entirely different mechanism, which cannot cause global warming.

"The temperature of the troposphere, the lowest and densest portion of the atmosphere, does not depend on the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions—a point proved theoretically and empirically. True, probes of Antarctic ice shield, taken with bore specimens in the vicinity of the Russian research station Vostok, show that there are close links between atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and temperature changes. Here, however, we cannot be quite sure which is the cause and which the effect.

"Temperature fluctuations always run somewhat ahead of carbon dioxide concentration changes. This means that warming is primary. The ocean is the greatest carbon dioxide depository, with concentrations 60-90 times larger than in the atmosphere. When the ocean’s surface warms up, it produces the “champagne effect.” Compare a foamy spurt out of a warm bottle with wine pouring smoothly when served properly cold.

"Likewise, warm ocean water exudes greater amounts of carbonic acid, which evaporates to add to industrial pollution—a factor we cannot deny. However, man-caused pollution is negligible here. If industrial pollution with carbon dioxide keeps at its present-day 5-7 billion metric tons a year, it will not change global temperatures up to the year 2100. The change will be too small for humans to feel even if the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions doubles.

"Carbon dioxide cannot be bad for the climate. On the contrary, it is food for plants, and so is beneficial to life on Earth. Bearing out this point was the Green Revolution—the phenomenal global increase in farm yields in the mid-20th century. Numerous experiments also prove a direct proportion between harvest and carbon dioxide concentration in the air.

"Carbon dioxide has quite a different pernicious influence—not on the climate but on synoptic activity. It absorbs infrared radiation. When tropospheric air is warm enough for complete absorption, radiation energy passes into gas fluctuations. Gas expands and dissolves to send warm air up to the stratosphere, where it clashes with cold currents coming down. With no noticeable temperature changes, synoptic activity skyrockets to whip up cyclones and anticyclones. Hence we get hurricanes, storms, tornados and other natural disasters, whose intensity largely depends on carbon dioxide concentration. In this sense, reducing its concentration in the air will have a positive effect.

"Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man’s influence on nature is a drop in the ocean.

"Earth is unlikely to ever face a temperature disaster. Of all the planets in the solar system, only Earth has an atmosphere beneficial to life. There are many factors that account for development of life on Earth: Sun is a calm star, Earth is located an optimum distance from it, it has the Moon as a massive satellite, and many others. Earth owes its friendly climate also to dynamic feedback between biotic and atmospheric evolution.

"The principal among those diverse links is Earth’s reflective power, which regulates its temperature. A warm period, as the present, increases oceanic evaporation to produce a great amount of clouds, which filter solar radiation and so bring heat down. Things take the contrary turn in a cold period.

"What can’t be cured must be endured. It is wise to accept the natural course of things. We have no reason to panic about allegations that ice in the Arctic Ocean is thawing rapidly and will soon vanish altogether. As it really is, scientists say the Arctic and Antarctic ice shields are growing. Physical and mathematical calculations predict a new Ice Age. It will come in 100,000 years, at the earliest, and will be much worse than the previous. Europe will be ice-bound, with glaciers reaching south of Moscow. Meanwhile, Europeans can rest assured. The Gulf Stream will change its course only if some evil magic robs it of power to reach the north—but Mother Nature is unlikely to do that."

And just to round things out, attached is another photo that I took on our family vacation to New York City. This is from the lobby of the American Museum of Natural History which is dedicated to Teddy Roosevelt - it's a great quote from his speech given at the funeral for his son. For more from Teddy, see the March 2, 2006 entry in my other blog at: http://powerletters.blogspot.com/

NT Times Exposes Global Warming Myth

2008-01-01T15:18:00.000-08:00

Today, on January 1, 2008, the New York Times science section printed an expose revealing that man-made Global Warming is a false alarm propagated by "availability entrepreneurs" like Al Gore, activists, journalists, and publicity-savvy scientists. Thia is clear evidence that the climate of opinion on alleged global warming is shifting in favor of skeptics/impartial scientists, especially since it comes from the New York Times, until now a fervent acolyte of climate change guru Al Gore and his doctrine of ongoing and disastrous climate change. You can read the entire article on-line at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/science/01tier.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. In brief, the article by John Tierney states:

"I’d like to wish you a happy New Year, but I’m afraid I have a different sort of prediction.
You’re in for very bad weather. In 2008, your television will bring you image after frightening image of natural havoc linked to global warming. You will be told that such bizarre weather must be a sign of dangerous climate change — and that these images are a mere preview of what’s in store unless we act quickly to cool the planet.

"Unfortunately, I can’t be more specific. I don’t know if disaster will come by flood or drought, hurricane or blizzard, fire or ice. Nor do I have any idea how much the planet will warm this year or what that means for your local forecast. Long-term climate models cannot explain short-term weather.

"But there’s bound to be some weird weather somewhere, and we will react like the sailors in the Book of Jonah. When a storm hit their ship, they didn’t ascribe it to a seasonal weather pattern. They quickly identified the cause (Jonah’s sinfulness) and agreed to an appropriate policy response (throw Jonah overboard).

"Today’s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels.

"A year ago, British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would help make 2007 the hottest year on record. At year’s end, even though the British scientists reported the global temperature average was not a new record — it was actually lower than any year since 2001 — the BBC confidently proclaimed, “2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.”

"When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored. A large part of Antarctica has been cooling recently, but most coverage of that continent has focused on one small part that has warmed.

'When Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans in 2005, it was supposed to be a harbinger of the stormier world predicted by some climate modelers. When the next two hurricane seasons were fairly calm — by some measures, last season in the Northern Hemisphere was the calmest in three decades — the availability entrepreneurs changed the subject. Droughts in California and Australia became the new harbingers of climate change (never mind that a warmer planet is projected to have more, not less, precipitation over all).

"When judging risks, we often go wrong by using what’s called the availability heuristic: we gauge a danger according to how many examples of it are readily available in our minds. Thus we overestimate the odds of dying in a terrorist attack or a plane crash because we’ve seen such dramatic deaths so often on television; we underestimate the risks of dying from a stroke because we don’t have so many vivid images readily available.

"Slow warming doesn’t make for memorable images on television or in people’s minds, so activists, journalists and scientists have looked to hurricanes, wild fires and starving polar bears instead. They have used these images to start an “availability cascade,” a term coined by Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and law at the University of Southern California, and Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago.

"The availability cascade is a self-perpetuating process: the more attention a danger gets, the more worried people become, leading to more news coverage and more fear. Once the images of Sept. 11 made terrorism seem a major threat, the press and the police lavished attention on potential new attacks and supposed plots.

“Many people concerned about climate change,” Dr. Sunstein says, “want to create an availability cascade by fixing an incident in people’s minds. Hurricane Katrina is just an early example; there will be others. I don’t doubt that climate change is real and that it presents a serious threat, but there’s a danger that any ‘consensus’ on particular events or specific findings is, in part, a cascade.”

"Once a cascade is under way, it becomes tough to sort out risks because experts become reluctant to dispute the popular wisdom, and are ignored if they do. Now that the melting Arctic has become the symbol of global warming, there’s not much interest in hearing other explanations of why the ice is melting — or why the globe’s other pole isn’t melting, too.

"Global warming has an impact on both polar regions, but they’re also strongly influenced by regional weather patterns and ocean currents. Two studies by NASA and university scientists last year concluded that much of the recent melting of Arctic sea ice was related to a cyclical change in ocean currents and winds, but those studies got relatively little attention — and were certainly no match for the images of struggling polar bears so popular with availability entrepreneurs.

"Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, recently noted the very different reception received last year by two conflicting papers on the link between hurricanes and global warming. He counted 79 news articles about a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and only 3 news articles about one in a far more prestigious journal, Nature.

"Guess which paper jibed with the theory — and image of Katrina — presented by Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”?

"It was, of course, the paper in the more obscure journal, which suggested that global warming is creating more hurricanes. The paper in Nature concluded that global warming has a minimal effect on hurricanes. It was published in December — by coincidence, the same week that Mr. Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize.

"In his acceptance speech, Mr. Gore didn’t dwell on the complexities of the hurricane debate. Nor, in his roundup of the 2007 weather, did he mention how calm the hurricane season had been. Instead, he alluded somewhat mysteriously to “stronger storms in the Atlantic and Pacific,” and focused on other kinds of disasters, like “massive droughts” and “massive flooding.”

“In the last few months,” Mr. Gore said, “it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter.” But he was being too modest. Thanks to availability entrepreneurs like him, misinterpreting the weather is getting easier and easier."

If you can't access the link to NY Times.com, try this one to Newsmax.com: http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/NY_Times:_Global_Warming_/2008/01/01/60981.html?s=al&promo_code=422C-1

(Note: I took the above photo on our family vacation to New York between 12/25/07 and 1/1/08)

Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007

2007-12-20T20:41:00.000-08:00

Now here is a great way to end 2007 - today, on December 20, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works released a report titled: "Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007" - Merry Christmas! You can find the complete report here: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f80a6386-802a-23ad-40c8-3c63dc2d02cb. It is well worth the time to read. For a brief preview, following is the introduction to their report:

Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.

Even some in the establishment media now appear to be taking notice of the growing number of skeptical scientists. In October, the Washington Post Staff Writer Juliet Eilperin conceded the obvious, writing that climate skeptics "appear to be expanding rather than shrinking." Many scientists from around the world have dubbed 2007 as the year man-made global warming fears "bite the dust." (LINK) In addition, many scientists who are also progressive environmentalists believe climate fear promotion has "co-opted" the green movement. (LINK)

This blockbuster Senate report lists the scientists by name, country of residence, and academic/institutional affiliation. It also features their own words, biographies, and weblinks to their peer reviewed studies and original source materials as gathered from public statements, various news outlets, and websites in 2007. This new "consensus busters" report is poised to redefine the debate.

Many of the scientists featured in this report consistently stated that numerous colleagues shared their views, but they will not speak out publicly for fear of retribution. Atmospheric scientist Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of almost 70 peer-reviewed studies, explains how many of his fellow scientists have been intimidated.

"Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media," Paldor wrote. [Note: See also July 2007 Senate report detailing how skeptical scientists have faced threats and intimidation - LINK ]

Scientists from Around the World Dissent

This new report details how teams of international scientists are dissenting from the UN IPCC's view of climate science. In such nations as Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands, Russia, New Zealand and France, nations, scientists banded together in 2007 to oppose climate alarmism. In addition, over 100 prominent international scientists sent an open letter in December 2007 to the UN stating attempts to control climate were "futile." (LINK)

Paleoclimatologist Dr. Tim Patterson, professor in the department of Earth Sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa, recently converted from a believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. Patterson noted that the notion of a "consensus" of scientists aligned with the UN IPCC or former Vice President Al Gore is false. "I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority."

This new committee report, a first of its kind, comes after the UN IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri implied that there were only “about a dozen" skeptical scientists left in the world. (LINK) Former Vice President Gore has claimed that scientists skeptical of climate change are akin to "flat Earth society members" and similar in number to those who "believe the moon landing was actually staged in a movie lot in Arizona." (LINK) & (LINK)

The distinguished scientists featured in this new report are experts in diverse fields, including: climatology; oceanography; geology; biology; glaciology; biogeography; meteorology; oceanography; economics; chemistry; mathematics; environmental sciences; engineering; physics and paleoclimatology. Some of those profiled have won Nobel Prizes for their outstanding contribution to their field of expertise and many shared a portion of the UN IPCC Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Gore.

Additionally, these scientists hail from prestigious institutions worldwide, including: Harvard University; NASA; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the UN IPCC; the Danish National Space Center; U.S. Department of Energy; Princeton University; the Environmental Protection Agency; University of Pennsylvania; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the International Arctic Research Centre; the Pasteur Institute in Paris; the Belgian Weather Institute; Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute; the University of Helsinki; the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S., France, and Russia; the University of Pretoria; University of Notre Dame; Stockholm University; University of Melbourne; University of Columbia; the World Federation of Scientists; and the University of London.

The voices of many of these hundreds of scientists serve as a direct challenge to the often media-hyped "consensus" that the debate is "settled."

A May 2007 Senate report detailed scientists who had recently converted from believers in man-made global warming to skepticism. [See May 15, 2007 report: Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics: Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research - (LINK) ]

The report counters the claims made by the promoters of man-made global warming fears that the number of skeptical scientists is dwindling.

(The attached photo is of an interesting arch up on Canaan Mountain. See: http://www.powerletters.blogspot.com/)

Pope Criticizes Global Warming Prophets

2007-12-13T07:38:00.000-08:00

The Daily Mail reports that Pope Benedict: “has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.” (See: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=501316.)

His remarks will be made in his annual message for World Peace Day on January 1, but they were released as delegates from all over the world convened on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali for UN climate change talks, the Daily Mail explains. (Aside: By the way, I'm not a Catholic, but the Pope’s right. Proposed Global Warming solutions sometimes cause more harm than good. What’s more, sometimes the proposed ‘solutions’ aren’t solutions at all. For example, Bali is currently deforesting their island in order to create more farmland on which to grow their “green” bio-fuels from castor oil plants.)

Pope Benedict also believes that “fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.”

“Efforts to protect the environment should seek ‘agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances’,” according to the Pope.

In the message entitled “The Human Family, A Community of Peace” the Pope says:

“Humanity today is rightly concerned about the ecological balance of tomorrow. It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances.

“If the protection of the environment involves costs, they should be justly distributed, taking due account of the different levels of development of various countries and the need for solidarity with future generations.

“Prudence does not mean failing to accept responsibilities and postponing decisions; it means being committed to making joint decisions after pondering responsibly the road to be taken.”

The evangelical environmental movement, which is just as dogmatic in its assumptions as any religion, is merely another manifestation of neo-paganism. They worship the earth and demand sacrifice from one and all to sate their greed.

The Pope also said that the world needed to care for the environment but not to the point where the welfare of animals and plants was given a greater priority than that of mankind. And it's certainly very true that current “global warming” policies hurt the very poor, as “sustainable development” often means cutting off any ability for poorer, less developed nations to economically progress, and thus they stay mired in third-world conditions. The Pope could also be concerned for a possible culling of the human population programs as well. Obviously these tenuous global warming theory and its proposed solutions have a definite anti-human slant.

The Pope isn’t the first Catholic leader to take on this new pagan religion. In October, the Australian Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, caused an outcry when he noted that the atmospheric temperature of Mars had risen by 0.5 degrees Celsius. “The industrial-military complex up on Mars can't be blamed for that,” he said in a criticism of Australian scientists who had claimed that carbon emissions would force temperatures on earth to rise by almost five degrees by 2070 unless drastic solutions were enforced.

Letter to the St. George Spectrum

2007-11-30T17:24:00.000-08:00

On November 27 our local newspaper, the St. George Spectrum, ran a column titled: “Let’s get started building alternative energy infrastructure” (see: http://www.thespectrum.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071127/OPINION/711270316/1014/OPINION) which I found to be so naive in its acceptance of the most outrageous alarmist exagerations and simplistic in its approach to solving a complex problem (energy supply and global climate change) that I just had to sit down and write the following response to that column. I was not able to pare my response down to a mere 200 words, so my response didn’t qualify as a “letter to the editor.” But since the column itself ran 501 words, I cut my response down to a comparable bare-bones 500 words. You'll note that there wasn’t space in 500 words to cite all my sources, but I invite you to explore the reading lists, articles, and links found in the previous entries on this very same web log. Plus, I've added a couple of graphics to this entry that I wasn't able to include in my submission to the newspaper (if you click on the graphic, you can see it full-sized.) Anyway, following is my submission to the newspaper, which has not yet been published (and who knows if it ever will be?):

In the November 27 column, Art Porter spoke of the IPCC study as if the results united scientists in consensus that man’s emissions of CO2 were causing catastrophic global warming and natural disasters. The fact is, the study’s results support no such conclusions, something easily verified from reading the studies readily available, rather than accepting sensationalistic headlines.

Read the IPCC study itself (written by scientists,) and not the “Summary for Policy Makers” (written by politicians,) and you will find that scientists agree on only three points: the global mean temperature has probably increased in the past century, CO2 is one of the greenhouse gases, and mankind emits CO2. However, only a minority of the world’s scientists believe that man’s emissions of CO2 have affected the global temperature and that the increase in temperature could cause global problems. The majority understand that:

1. The mean temperature of the whole solar system is increasing due to solar radiation.
2. CO2 is a trace gas in our atmosphere (0.038%,) less than 5% of which is manmade.
3. Water vapor is 97% of the green house gases in our atmosphere and is left out of the global climate models, which is why the weatherman’s predictions are barely valid for today, never mind in 100 years.

4. The Earth isn’t nearly as warm now as it was in medieval times, when Vikings farmed Greenland.

Unfortunately the unfounded fear of global warming has resulted in the propagation of a non-solution: the premature imposition of alternative energy. Alternative energy technologies should be developed – as the market demands. Sadly, alternative energy technology companies are impatient with our market system and are pressuring governments to fund the early adoption of their products.

Politicians realize that outright funding would increase taxes, and cost them their jobs. So their new strategy is to force utilities to adopt expensive technologies and pass these costs on to the public. Alternative energy currently costs twenty times per kilowatt what clean coal power costs.

So, why would much of the electrical industry embrace the myth of man-made Global Warming? Pure self interest. These corporations are allowed a fixed profit on approved expenses. A mandated “renewable energy portfolio” is a huge expense on which to charge their rate of return. In this scenario alternative technology manufacturers win, politicians win, investor owned utilities win, but rate payers (you and me) lose, and we lose big.

Further, diverting funds into alternative energy technology reduces the resources available to solve real environmental problems, such as unfiltered emissions from coal-fired power plants in China, India, and Brazil; deforestation, which causes localized droughts, erosion, and flooding; over pumping of aquifers, resulting in droughts and contamination of water supplies; and unchecked urban sprawl, which increases fossil fuel consumption and vehicular emissions.

Wasting our limited resources and money on a non-solution to a non-problem is not only foolish, it’s immoral. CO2 is not a legitimate threat and we need to get off this bandwagon and deal with the real problems in our world.

Global Warming: "The Greatest Scam in History"

2007-11-16T17:43:00.000-08:00

OK, if you think that a mere electrical engineer such as myself can’t know anything about Global Warming, in spite of all the books, reports, and research that I’ve studied (you can find my reading lists below), how do you feel about the founder of the Weather Channel, a meteorologist with 55 years of experience in the field? Below is what he’s recently written on the subject, reprinted with his permission. You can also find his comments, along with links to his research (copied below for your convenience), posted on his blog at: http://www.kusi.com/home/11131801.html. Enjoy:

COMMENTS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING

By John Coleman

jcoleman@kusi.com

It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM.

Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data back in the late 1990's to create an illusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental wacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.

Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild "scientific" scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda.

Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmental conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minutes documentary segment.

I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party.

However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you "believe in." It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a nonevent, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won't believe me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.

I suspect you might like to say to me, "John, look the research that supports the case for global warming was done by research scientists; people with PH D's in Meteorology. They are employed by major universities and important research institutions. Their work has been reviewed by other scientists with PH D's. They have to know a lot more about it than you do. Come on, John, get with it. The experts say our pollution has created an strong and increasing greenhouse effect and a rapid, out of control global warming is underway that will sky rocket temperatures, destroy agriculture, melt the ice caps, flood the coastlines and end life as we know it. How can you dissent from this crisis? You must be a bit nutty.

Allow me, please, to explain how I think this all came about. Our universities have become somewhat isolated from the rest of us. There is a culture and attitudes and values and pressures on campus that are very different. I know this group well. My father and my older brother were both PHD-University types. I was raised in the university culture. Any person who spends a decade at a university obtaining a PHD in Meteorology and become a research scientist, more likely than not, becomes a part of that single minded culture. They all look askance at the rest of us, certain of their superiority. They respect government and disrespect business, particularly big business. They are environmentalists above all else.

And, there is something else. These scientists know that if they do research and results are in no way alarming, their research will gather dust on the shelf and their research careers will languish. But if they do research that sounds alarms, they will become well known and respected and receive scholarly awards and, very importantly, more research dollars will come flooding their way.

So when these researchers did climate change studies in the late 90's they were eager to produce findings that would be important and be widely noticed and trigger more research funding. It was easy for them to manipulate the data to come up with the results they wanted to make headlines and at the same time drive their environmental agendas. Then their like minded PHD colleagues reviewed their work and hastened to endorse it without question.

There were a few who didn't fit the mold. They did ask questions and raised objections. They did research with contradictory results. The environmental elitists berated them brushed their studies aside.

I have learned since the Ice Age is coming scare in the 1970's to always be a skeptic about research. In the case of global warming, I didn't accept media accounts. Instead I read dozens of the scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct when I assure you there is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. It is all a scam, the result of bad science.

I am not alone in this assessment. There are hundreds of other meteorologists, many of them PH D's, who are as certain as I am that this global warming frenzy is based on bad science and is not valid.

I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.

In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped.

The sky is not falling. And, natural cycles and drifts in climate are as much if not more responsible for any climate changes underway.

I strongly believe that the next twenty years are equally as likely to see a cooling trend as they are to see a warming trend.

Some people may want to see the research behind my dismissive attitude about Global Warming. If you want to wade through scientific jargon, here are some relevant websites:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/NRCreport.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/NAS.M&M.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/MM03.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/Climate_L.pdf

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/MM-W05-background.pdf

http://www.icecap.us/

The Canadian Broadcasting Company's Cable News Network produced an excellent documentary on Global Warming. It is titled "Doomsday Called Off ". Here are the YouTube URLs to watch it in five parts:

Professor Bob Carter delivered a 35 minute lecture on global warming. If you are in an academic mood, it is excellent. It was recorded and posted in four parts on Youtube. Here are the links:

Al “Milli Vanilli” Gore

2007-10-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

When Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October 12, 2007 for his promotion of his new religion of man-made Global Warming, I was reminded of the time when Milli Vanilli was awarded the Grammy for Best New Artist back in 1990. For those of you who don’t remember Milli Vanilli, they were a group who had five insipid songs that were popular back in 1989-1990, and, as it was later revealed, were fronted by two male models from Germany who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket and so had to lip synch to the songs actually being performed in the background by others. Of course, we didn’t know that they were frauds back in 1990, we just knew that the music was terrible. My disappointment when they won the Grammy award was only offset later when it was revealed that they were just pretty faces and that the bad music was someone else’s fault and that they had to return the award. Well! There appeared to be some justice in the universe after all.

But now Al Gore is the pretty face that has hijacked the work of a bunch of homely scientists who worked behind the scenes on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC.) Worse, he’s not only stolen the credit for their work, he’s also distorted the results of their studies to the point of being unrecognizable, causing many of those same scientists to request that their names be removed from the report.

Nearly every single point that Al “Milli Vanilli” Gore makes in his book and movie is contradicted by the science in the report made by the IPCC (NOT in the Summary for Policy Makers, which was written by politicians and NOT the scientists):

1. CO2 is that dirty smoke pouring out of chimneys? Nope – CO2 is an invisible gas that is at worst plant food.
2. Global warming is causing the glaciers to recede? Nope – a drop in ambient moisture is causing some glaciers to recede in the Northern Hemisphere.
3. Global warming will cause drinking water to be in short supply for 40% of the world? Nope – in most of the world, drinking water comes from melting snow and the annual average snowfall has been increasing.
4. Our summer temperatures are higher now than ever before in the history of the world? Nope – our summers are not as warm as they were during the medieval times.
5. An increase of CO2 in our atmosphere is causing the atmosphere to trap more heat? Nope – the relation is the opposite – the increase in global temperatures is causing the oceans to release more CO2 into the atmosphere.
6. Global warming is causing more frequent and more violent hurricanes? Nope – as the average global temperature increases, decreasing the temperature differential between the arctic and the tropic, hurricanes will decrease in frequency and ferocity.
7. Global warming causes more frequent and more violent tornados? Nope – the same goes for tornados as goes for hurricanes. Besides which, the frequency of strong tornados has decreased since 1940.
8. Global warming has caused droughts in Africa and North America? Nope – local consumption of water from local lakes and over pumping of aquifers has, on a localized basis, caused some droughts.
9. Man-made Global Warming has caused the polar ice caps to melt? Nope – natural variations in the earth’s temperature cycle are variously causing the Artic to warm and then cool. Greenland, for example, is cooler today than during the Viking times when they settled there, grew crops, and named it “Greenland.”
10. Polar bears are drowning in significant numbers due to Global Warming? Nope – populations of polar bears are presently increasing, and they didn’t go extinct during the medieval warming period between the Ice Age and the Little Ice Age in the 1800’s.
11. Global warming is harming populations of birds and bugs? Nope – all populations of birds and bugs and crops and people are thriving in a slightly warmer environment.
12. Malaria is migrating north and increasing due to Global Warming? Nope – mosquitoes that carry malaria have no problem in the cold north, as evidenced by the malaria epidemics in Russia and Alaska during the 1800’s; malaria is presently increasing around the world due to the decrease in the application of effective pesticides like DDT.
13. The Antarctic ice shelf is melting? Nope – when studied as a whole, the ice shelf in Antarctica is increasing.
14. Global warming will cause the sea levels to rise 20 feet, wiping out all coastal areas? Nope – the IPCC predicts that the sea could rise a maximum of 4 inches, but probably something less, and that is due to shifting tectonic plates.
15. If the US would adopt the Kyoto Protocol, Global Warming could be averted? Nope – if the US Congress ratified the Kyoto treaty, signed by President Clinton in the late 90’s, world-wide emissions would only increase as the US shut down our power plants and factories and they moved to China, India, and Brazil, which are exempted from the Kyoto treaty, and which emit far worse gases than CO2 (NOx and Sox – the cause of acid rain.)
16. If the European Union can adopt the Kyoto Protocol, why can’t the US? Actually, since ratifying the Kyoto Treaty, the European Union’s emissions have only increased, and more dramatically than those in the US. They have only been able to “meet” their emissions targets by taking retroactive credit for Great Britain’s switch from old coal fired power plants BEFORE signing the treaty.
17. We can switch to non-emitting power sources economically? Nope – the lowest, pie-in-the-sky estimates for the cost of abandoning our clean coal fired power, which include the presumption of new inventions in the future, is $2,000,000,000,000 per year – 17% of our GDP.

And finally, why do these weathermen think they can predict the average Earth’s temperature to within 1° 100 years into the future, when they aren’t that accurate on this week’s predictions? Plus, if this 1° increase were so terrible, why are Americans migrating by the thousands from the Great White North down to the Sun Belts in Florida, California, Arizona, and St. George, Utah? Let’s see Al “Milli Vanilli” Gore tackle that one! The answer is, he can’t. And I’m looking forward to the day that he has to return his Nobel Peace Price in shame and slink off to be ridiculed in the history books.

Governor Huntsman’s Californication with Arnold

2007-09-07T06:43:00.000-07:00

The Utah Governor’s “Blue Ribbon Advisory Committee (BRAC) on Climate Change” wants to enact California-style legislation here in Utah, supposedly to combat “Global Warming,” which has been calculated to cost every household in the state about $32,000, but with no discernable improvement in the air quality what-so-ever. And who wants an electrical power system like California anyway? This very Labor Day the electrical distribution system in Southern California failed them and left them without air conditioning during a heat wave (see: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/weather/09/03/heat.wave.ap/index.html.) Plus I happen to have inside information that the only reason Southern California’s electrical transmission system didn’t melt down was because their distribution system went down first - it was the weakest link.

Further, the average residential rate in California is $0.14/kWh vs. the average in Utah which is $0.08/kWh vs. my co-op, Dixie Escalante, which is $0.05/kWh. So you can see why I’m so against adopting ANYTHING that California is doing in the field of electricity – they obviously don’t know what they’re doing. I am convinced that Governor Arnold is peddling his failed energy policies to Utah so that the whole state of Utah will also become un-competitive, so that California’s industries will stop migrating to Utah. The sad thing is that our naive governor has bought Arnold’s bill of goods, hook line and sinker. Of course no one on the Governor’s hand-picked Blue Ribbon Committee knows anything about the science of the issue – they’ve taken what they’ve been spoon-fed wholly on faith – the group is largely comprised of miscellaneous mayors or special interest group activists. The whole lot have based their fear and panic on a regurgitation of a summary of the UN-funded IPCC study that is terribly flawed and outright wrong (the “summary” was written by anti-American politicians and not by the scientists and does not accurately reflect the findings of the study at all) and so have decided to sacrifice 15% of our economy to this imaginary monster. What a bunch of morons – the politicians, I mean, not the special interest groups’ lobbyists – I’m impressed that these lobbyists seem to have convinced the politicians that man-made CO2 is affecting the climate and so need to buy their products. They must have hired that smooth-talking guy from the movie: Thank You For Smoking.

Anyway, I don’t claim to be an expert in climatology, but I am a licensed professional electrical engineer and have bothered to read a lot of background material on this subject, including the scientific chapters of UN study itself, three books (so far,) and a ton of related scientific studies that are freely available on the internet. Of course, the science is practically superfluous in this case since the BRAC is loaded (17 out of 20) with members who have already decided that their mission in life is to subsidize the solar panel and windmill industry by doubling everyone’s electricity bills, so we definitely have an uphill battle ahead of us. I guess we’ll see what happens.

Stabbing Mother Earth in the Back

2007-09-05T18:17:00.000-07:00

Back in the 70’s when I was a kid growing up in Lukachukai, Arizona, in the very heart of the Navajo Reservation, my Navajo classmates (in their more militant moments) would criticize the white man’s agriculture processes. They would say that to plow the ground was to stab Mother Earth in the back. Even as a kid I knew that that notion was ridiculous – totally lacking in scale. Even back then I knew that a plow in the ground was no more than combing the hair of Mother Earth, and I said as much to my unreceptive classmates. Now that we’re in the 21st century nearly 40 years later, and with the power of the internet, I can put a pencil to this problem: a simple on-line search quickly finds that the earth has a diameter of 7926 miles (at the equator), or 41,849,280 feet; a plow is 8 to 12 inches long, so call it one foot, which means that the plow is only penetrating 0.0000024% of Mother Earth’s back – really just a very light back scratch.

Now fast forward to 2007: as an adult I see the same ignorance of scale of the earth and its atmosphere among the politicians and media of the developed world, including the United States. These poor uninformed alarmists think that our manmade CO2 emissions are affecting our climate – maybe they’re confused by the thick smog that they can see in their cities, largely emanating from automobiles’ unfiltered exhaust pipes, as opposed to the invisible and harmless breath that we all exhale. Either way, they certainly don’t understand anything about the relative scale involved when discussing CO2 and the atmosphere. The earth’s atmosphere, which by the way is what distinguishes God’s Green Earth from uninhabitable Mars, is primarily made up of Nitrogen (78%), Oxygen (21%), and Argon (1%.) CO2, the next most common gas, makes up only 0.038% of the atmosphere. Of that, man has contributed about 3%. Hmm… 3% of 0.038% - that sounds a lot like your chances of winning the lottery – essentially zero. Anyway, the rest of the CO2 in the atmosphere (97%) comes from natural sources, primarily that big mass of water that we call the ocean, which releases CO2 when it heats up and absorbs it back when it cools. So, even if we were to reduce mankind’s CO2 emissions to zero, which would require the elimination of all electricity production, transportation, and even our collective exhalations, we still would not be able to affect the earth’s temperature that one measly degree over the course of the next century for which the religion of Global Warming is renting their garments.

All of which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be good stewards of Mother Earth – we absolutely should. Genesis 1:26 tells us: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth…” I believe that when God gave Man dominion “over all the earth” he also gave us the obligation to be responsible stewards, and we still have that responsibility today. I believe that we should maximize the use of our natural resources and keep our environment clean. We did the right thing when we eliminated the real pollutants, SO2 (smog) and NOx, from the electric power generation process here in America – good for us. And by the way, producing harmless CO2 rather than SO2 as an output of generating electricity only shows how efficient and clean our generation process has really gotten. I’m also glad we switched to unleaded gasoline and required catalytic converters on our cars here in America – we all breathe easier because of it. During the 70’s we all “pitched in” and picked up the trash along our highways, making them look decent again. It was the right thing to do. You only have to look at horrific quality of the environment in China, India, the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, or Latin America to really appreciate how much we’ve improved the environment in the United States of America since I was a kid the 60’s.

So with all of these huge strides in fixing our environment, why is it that we’re paying any attention to the well funded and very vocal cabal of politicians and media that want to steal our time and money and throw them to the manufacturers of windmills and solar panels under the guise of solving a non-existent problem? How stupid are we? Especially when we have REAL problems that require our time and money. For example, why are NONE of the politicians or media trying to solve our crippling debt problem? How is it possible that in the space of my lifetime we’ve gone from being the world’s biggest creditor to the world’s biggest debtor? How long will it be before China cuts off our allowance and leaves us to stew in the sweltering dark like California on Labor Day? How about we devote a little time and money to our debt problem?! Debt reduction may not be as sexy as Global Warming, but it has real tangible benefits and consequences.

Letter to BRAC

2007-08-26T19:38:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago I worked on a rural electrification project in Bangladesh, funded by USAID, which was called Rural Power for Poverty Reduction (RPPR.) This was a fairly comprehensive project, with several technical components that covered a range of needs in delivering electricity to that developing nation – distribution, generation, and renewable energy – each with its own appropriate place and cost. Now you should understand that I’m an electrical engineer with a specialty in the transmission and distribution of electrical power, on which I’ve largely focused during my twenty-year career; I can model, analyze, plan, and design transmission and distribution lines, and then I can specify the materials and even get those lines built if needed. But, for this broader project in Bangladesh, we also had short-term specialists for the generation (Jim) and for the renewable energy (Andrew) components. The specialists set up the programs in their area of expertise, while briefly in-country, and I learned from them and then carried the projects forward in their absence (being the resident advisor.)

At one point in my 2-1/2 years as the Engineering and Operations Advisor in Bangladesh, Jim and Andrew were in-country at the same time – occupying desks in my office – and somehow the topic of conversation turned to Global Warming. Andrew was for it, Jim was against it. To my uninformed ears, they both sounded very knowledgeable on the subject, both tossing conflicting data and theories back and forth. Their argument was with each other and not aimed at me, so I was as ignorant on the subject at the end of the debate as before – all I knew is that the jury was apparently still out on the matter and that some day I would have to revisit this topic, get informed as to the facts, and decide what was truly correct.

Now, ten years later, Utah Governor Jon Huntsman has formed a Blue Ribbon Advisory Council (BRAC) on Climate Change and has tasked them to study the science of Global Warming and recommend pertinent policies, as needed, to address the issue. What this lame committee has done so far is to ignore the available science and instead lap up the flawed “conventional wisdom” on the subject and then recommend the acceptance of California’s onerous CO2 emission laws and propose to impose what is called a “Renewable Portfolio Standard” (RPS = a law mandating that electric utilities buy a significant percentage of their electricity from expensive but “renewable” power sources, like solar or wind, but NOT hydro.) Given that these policies have already been determined to double everyone’s electricity rates, the Utah Rural Electric Association asked me to comment on the imposition of a Renewable Portfolio Standard in Utah. Following is what I wrote to the BRAC on that subject:

There are several significant points to seriously consider when discussing something as expensive and unnecessary as mandating a Renewable Portfolio Standard:

1. The first ten to twenty points of contention are cost, cost, cost, etc. For example, a solar power system costs a minimum of $10/watt, and probably something more like $14/watt when you consider the cost of installation, while a natural gas generator costs a maximum of $1/watt, which cost goes down considerably as you increase the size to something over 10MW. The members of our cooperative simply can't afford to and won't stand for increasing their power costs by some twenty times more than what they are today and any politician or bureaucrat that thinks otherwise should start looking for a real job.

2. After you get past the mountain of additional costs, then it's no molehill when you start to surmount the issue of what renewable resources are physically available. Here in Sunny Southern Utah we certainly have plenty of sunshine, but that's only during the daytime and sometimes people like to use electricity at night. In fact, fully half of our annual peaks in power consumption happen after dark. And while you can store energy temporarily in batteries, neither lead/acid nor nickel/cadmium are renewable resources. Plus, there is no generation quality wind resource available in Southern Utah – even in Hurricane where the wind seems to be always blowing. Dixie did a study in connection with the State energy office 5 years ago by installing three wind meters at three different sites and found that the wind in the area was not steady enough to produce efficient power. And the very same people who are pushing this renewable energy agenda are undoubtedly the same group who complain about the hydro-electric dams (like Glen Canyon) that we already have, so they're not going to let us build more (even if there were another Glen Canyon to dam.) And certainly they can’t seriously propose that our members, which include a significant amount of retirees on fixed incomes, be forced to pay extra to import our energy from some other state when we have perfectly good clean coal right here in Utah.

3. Each of the co-ops in Utah already has a significant percentage of renewable energy in our portfolios with our hydropower allocations from Colorado River Storage Project. The co-ops as a whole purchase 100 out of 800 MW’s of renewable hydro energy already, which is a significant amount.

4. Dixie, and the other members of Deseret, are already offering “green” power as an option to members who choose to pay a premium to participate. Under our “Green Way” program members can elect to purchase blocks of “green” power and the extra dollars collected go toward the development of renewable resources.

5. Dixie, and the other members of Deseret, is already offering a Net Metering tariff to allow any of our members to install their own renewable energy sources and then net out their own power usage (even allowing them to sell us energy off-peak, when the value is low, and take it back out on-peak, when the value is significantly higher.)

6. If the State of Utah were serious in their promotion of renewable energy, they should put their money where their mouth is and raise income taxes so they can offer some substantial Tax Credits and Rebates that encourage home and business owners to install renewable energy generation sources. Utah has in the past offered a paltry $2000 tax credit toward the installation of a solar home system, which covered about 2-3% of the cost of installation. They should consider something more aggressive, like in the state of New Jersey where they offer up to $4.40/watt (over 30% of the total cost.) Obviously a program like this would cost real money, which would require real tax revenue increases, and would likely cost the sitting governor and legislature their jobs, but at least they'd be promoting the renewable energy program honestly.

7. Another sign that the state government were serious about developing renewable energy would be to devote some significant amount of money to research and development of new, improved, more efficient, and more economical technologies. Of course, research and development are not cheap and would come with the same financial and political costs associated with increasing taxes and spending as in item #6 above.

8. Ultimately, since Dixie and the other members of Deseret are member owned and democratically controlled cooperatives, the membership should be allowed to vote to determine if they really want to pay significantly higher electricity rates in order to pay for some “renewable” component in their energy portfolio in addition to their hydropower purchases. Of course, we already offer that option to the small minority that flunked math class (see #4 above.)

Please let me know if you have any further questions or concerns on this topic.

Sincerely,

Colin W. Jack, P.E.

Global Warming is a Big Fat Lie

2007-08-25T13:31:00.000-07:00

Many specialty manufacturers, special interest groups, politicians, and members of the media are perpetrating the biggest scandalous lie on the people of this earth since Galileo was muzzled by the Inquisition for stating the fact that the Earth orbited the Sun and wasn't really the center of the universe - that man's carbon dioxide emissions are causing catastrophic Global Warming and that we must annihilate mankind or at least return to the stone age to set things right. As a technically oriented individual I'm astounded that we've taken something that should be, on the whole, based in science and removed it to a completely political realm. The more that I study this issue the more angry I get - I can't believe that we're all just going along dumbly like sheep to the abattoir. We've been told that there is a "consensus" among the scientists that man-made Global Warming is a fact and we're just willing to take that at face value, just like the people in Galileo's time. Of course, those with a vested interest in perpetrating this heinous crime are just as potent and dangerous as was the Inquisition in Galileo's time, but that's still no excuse for our laziness. The worst thing about wasting our money and time on this subject is that we're limiting the intellectual and financial resources that we could be spending to solve REAL problems. Anyway, the purpose of this blog is to share digestible bits and pieces of my research as I go along. I've already spent months digesting every book, research paper, movie, and Internet site on this subject that I could find - on BOTH sides, I might add. I've also moved the following two posts over from my other blog in which I tend to write about our family travels around the world - I thought they'd be more at home here.

The High Priests of Doomsday

2007-08-06T21:18:00.000-07:00

Back on December 14, 2001, I was working on a rural electrification project in Guatemala when I got to view a near total solar eclipse - I made a pin hole projector and everything (see the attached photo.) It was amazing to me to hear and see the local news on the radio and TV assuring the people that it was only a natural phenomenon and not the end of the world*. It seemed to me that the modern Mayas weren't that far removed from the ancient Mayas that were portrayed in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, where the poor peasants had their hearts ripped out as they were sacrificed by the decadent power-grabbing priests, right in front of the stoned-out-of-their-minds royalty, playing on the people's and leaders' ignorance of natural phenomena, like solar eclipses, making everyone think that what they were doing was controlling the weather. Of course, we modern Americans are no better - we've crowned Al Gore and the other alarmists of "man-caused Global Warming" as our high priests and are offering up our economy as a sacrifice (they want $2T/yr = 15% of our 2006 GDP!) in an attempt to change the natural phenomenon of global warming. What a bunch of nimrods we are becoming.

And since the scientific community has been marginalized out of the current "debate" on man's contribution to Global Climate Change, and since it is no longer acceptable for anyone to express a viewpoint on the subject that doesn't coincide with our priest's, it is imperative that we all do a little of our own homework on this topic so that we can try to shift the public opinion back to something a little more based on science rather than superstition. Toward that end, following are a few recommended readings on global climate change, for your personal edification:

Shattered Consensus, The True State of Global Warming by Patrick J. Michaels

MYTHS, LIES, AND DOWNRIGHT STUPIDITY: GET OUT THE SHOVEL -- WHY EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG by John Stossel. Note: You can read the pertinent chapter on-line at: http://www.abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3061015&page=1

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism) by Christopher C. Horner

Energy & the Environment: Myths & Facts by Max Schulz

Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Separating Scientific Fact from Personal Opinion prepared by Sherwood B. Idso and Craig D. Idso

The Blue Dog Coalition, Energy Principles, 110th Congress

Petition Project – Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide by Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon and Zachary W. Robinson

Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 Years: A Reappraisal by Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, Craig Idso, Sherwood Idso and David R. Legates

Modeling climatic effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions: unknowns and uncertainties by Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, Sherwood B. Idso, Kirill Ya. Kondratyev and Eric S. Posmentier

Climate change: Conflict of observational science, theory and politics by Lee C. Gerhard

Issues in the Current State of Climate Science, A Guide for Policy Makers and Opinion Leaders

Variations in CO2 Growth Rate Associated with Solar Activity by Dr. Theodor Landscheidt

Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis - Technical Summary, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Hug and Barrett versus IPCC by Heinz Hug and Jack Barrett

Winning the Energy Endgame: Oil, Gas Electricity, and Climate by Amory B. Lovins

Climate Connections: The failure to include many factors in climatology by Dr. Tim Ball

Samuelson: The Dilemma of Global Warming vs. Economic Growth by Robert J. Samuelson

Economic Climate Changes by Marlo Lewis

The gods are laughing by Tom Harris

Hockey Stick, 1999-2005, R.I.P.

Global Warming Bombshell by Richard Muller

Written Testimony of John R. Christy, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, 2 May, 2001

There is No ‘Consensus’ on Global Warming

Decoding Climate Politics by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Get Your Priorities Right, The Weekend Interview with Bjorn Lomborg by Kimberley A. Strassel

Climate of Fear by Richard Lindzen

A Global Warming Worksheet by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Pork, the New Green Meat by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Highly Over-Hyped – Greenland’s and Antarctica’s Impacts on Sea Level by Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso

Carbon Dioxide Emissions from the Generation of Electric Power in the United States report jointly prepared in July 2000 by the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency

* Excerpt from my journal 12/14/01: "Our afternoon was broken up a bit as we went outside to observe the solar eclipse. I showed the guys how to make a pin-hole projector to view the eclipse -- they were impressed. They always attribute technical proficiency to my being a "Gringo" -- like when I showed them how to set the clock in the truck, run the remote control on the air conditioner, etc. Juan Jose tried to improve my eclipse projector and when it didn't work they all laughed at him for trying to be a Gringo. Speaking of laughing, we also watched local TV coverage of the eclipse and just had to chuckle when the local scientists had to reassure the local citizens that this is only a natural phenomenon and not the end of the world. The news said that the best view of this eclipse was in Costa Rica -- Jorge Mario suggested we walk around the block to their embassy to watch it there."

Real Science is Inconvenient to Politicians

2007-07-21T14:14:00.000-07:00

If any of you have seen the pseudo-scientific movie “An Inconvenient Truth” and/or have been made to worry about man’s contribution to “Global Warming,” you should definitely invest some time and effort and read the information from the following links - cooler minds definitely need to prevail at this time. I have to add that, as an engineer who has dedicated his life to the practical application of science to making the world a better place to live via rural electrification, I am shocked and appalled at the lack of rigorous science that has been applied to this issue vs. the incredible quantity of funds (yours and mine) that have been thrown at it. This whole "debate" reminds me of the time a couple of years ago when my 7th grader confidently told me that "scientists" were very interested to see what was going to happen on May 5, 2005 because the date was going to be 5/5/5!? The level of science that the majority of our politicians, celebrities, and media have applied to the subject of Global Warming is of about the same caliber as that 7th graders' friends'. I’m so disillusioned at the fact that our present and past governments have been equally lazy in evaluating and deriving solutions to this issue as they have been to the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea that I'm looking for a whole new political home and am voting "None of the above" until I find one. I guess it’s no wonder that our currency is at a new low on the world market and still falling. Shame on us all for being so lazy.

I. BBC Documentary on Climate Change -- if you only have time to review one thing, you should spend 1 hour and 13 minutes seeing this documentary aired recently in Great Britain by the BBC: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3028847519933351566
II. A Skeptic’s Guide to Debunking Global Warming Alarmism -- compiled by the staff of the U.S. Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, led by U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). Good summary of many scientific points. Full report: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=56dd129d-e40a-4bad-abd9-68c808e8809e
III. Unmasking “An Inconvenient Truth” - Much of Al Gore’s evidence for his claims lacks credibility when examined without the emotive baggage of impending disaster, blame and simplistic political solutions.: http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070330_kininmonth.pdf
IV. A Science-Based Rebuttal to the Testimony of Al Gore before the U.S. EPW Committee -- a longer read but a powerful summary of most of the relevant science that soundly debunks much of what Gore is selling these days. http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070522_isdo.pdf V. EPRI Study on Costs Of California's Climate Change Policies: http://www.westernroundtable.com/air/EPRI_Report_Summary.doc
VI. Memorandum by Professor Richard S Lindzen, MIT, to the British Parliament -- Dr. Lindzen is one of of the world's most preeminent climate experts. He is the Alfred P Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Physics at MIT. If you only read one piece on the science of climate change, this is the one I would read: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/5012506.htm
VII. Op-Ed by Professor Lindzen (Newsweek) -- a shorter version of Professor Lindzen's main scientific points: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17997788/site/newsweek/
VIII. MIT Study On Costs of Cap-and-Trade Proposals -- something you should definitely review. A good summary of the report is here: http://www.westernroundtable.com/air/MIT_ANALYSIS.pdf
The full report is here: http://www.westernroundtable.com/air/MIT_captrade_study.pdf
IX. George Will's Column on Climate Change -- if you like George, you must read this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/11/AR2007041102109.html
X. Quash silencing of global-warming skeptics By Walter Williams -- "Suppression of ideas is far more dangerous to our civilization than man-made global warming — real or imagined. Given the horrible history of brutal attempts to silence people who have different ideas or dissent from the conventional wisdom, those of us in the academic and scientific communities ought to openly repudiate and condemn the efforts to silence global warming skeptics." http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,695198704,00.html
XI. Op-Ed by Czech President Vaclav Klaus -- a very powerful and moving piece. Excerpt: "As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism.... The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment.... The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature." Full story: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/9deb730a-19ca-11dc-99c5-000b5df10621.html
XII. Following is a brief, point by point discussion of the movie, "An Inconvenient Truth", written by an engineering colleague, a must-read for those of you who have actually seen the movie:
1. The film’s portrayal of the temperature for the past few thousand years attempted to make it seem like the medieval warming period was less warm than today. That is not true – it was as warm or warmer then than now according to glacial records. If you freeze frame the film at the point where he shows the temperature plot for the last 1000 years (this is near the beginning of the film) you can see he is pulling a graphical slight-of-hand by plotting two sets of data on top of each other for the very last part of that graph and only one set of data for the rest of the graph. For the movie theater viewer that only gets to quickly see this graph they won’t notice that trick. But look carefully - that last part in red that rises up is really a plot of land based temperature measurements (from actual thermometers). Look under that you see glacial core readings – he’s not telling the audience that – and the two types of readings are very difficult to calibrate together. Look at only the glacial part of the curve and suddenly you see that medieval period was actually warmer than now! How about that!!!!!! In the glacial records he (Al Gore) explains the relationship between CO2 and temperature backwards. CO2 is the dependent variable, not temperature, as he describes– so as the temperature rises the CO2 increases. This is because as the ocean gets warmer CO2 gas that’s dissolved in the ocean comes out of solution and goes into the air. When it cools, CO2 goes back into the water. His relationship between CO2 and temperature and a main pillar of his argument is totally flawed and BACKWARDS!
2. Not once did he mention that CO2 is only a tiny portion of the greenhouse effect on earth and water vapor is 95% of the greenhouse effect. Not once did he mention that humans annual output of CO2 is only about 4-5% of the total produced in the world (if even that) and that natural emissions are the other 95%. Depending on how you do the calculation, man-made CO2 is as little as 0.25% of the total greenhouse effect. Many scientists are now leaning toward the 0.25% figure but nearly all will agree it’s no more than 2%. The rest of the effect is all natural!!!!!!
3. He (Al Gore) did not mention that Mount Kilimanjaro glaciers are receding due to decreasing precipitation - not due to increasing temperatures as he implies. This is verified by NASA satellite data.
4. Not once did he mention that the sun has radiation output cycles that impact the climate and could play by far the dominant role in climate. Climate models often cited don’t even take such solar changes into account. He failed to mention how well temperature data lines up with solar activity proxies.
5. He showed photos of glaciers receding in spots all over the world. But he failed to show corresponding photos of places where glaciers are documented to be increasing in other parts of the world!!!! He also failed to mention that in many areas where he shows receding glaciers, the rate of de-glaciation is slowing down dramatically (not increasing) during the last half of the 20th century.
6. He claimed that the Artic sea ice cover is rapidly receding, but he failed to mention that this has happened before as part of climatic cycles in just the past few hundred years and is nothing unusual and did not lead to runaway temperature effects in the past.
7. He failed to mention that part of the land based temperature data are subject to urban heat island effects and also impacted by recent reductions in smog and aerosols caused by the clean air act and other factors – which means more sun is getting to urban areas heating them up. He failed to mention that in most rural areas the land based readings and satellite data show very little (if any) global warming.
8. When he said the US was the largest emitter of CO2 it was a hugely simplistic calculation based on fossil fuel consumption that did not take into account carbon sequestration effects due to landfills, wood use in houses and furniture, or discarded plastics, food, etc. Calculations also don’t factor the huge amounts of reforestation in the US during the last 50 years of the 20th century. Factoring these effects the US may be a much lower emitter of CO2 than portrayed by him.
9. He talked about ice sheets receding and breaking away in the Antarctic Peninsula but failed to mention that many climatologists have attributed this to localized ocean effects of a cyclical nature and that overall ice cover in and around Antarctica is actually increasing not decreasing! Ice breaking away in the Artic and Antarctic is a normal process. What do you think sank the Titanic 95 years ago?
10. He claimed that people have abandoned “island nations” due to rising sea levels caused by global warming but failed to mention that sea level has been rising steadily for thousands of years. Islands gradually sinking beneath the sea are nothing new. In many areas subsidence or shifts in land elevation due to tectonic activity, water tables, and other geologic factors exceed by a factor of 5 or more the rate of ocean level changes.
11. He made Republicans look stupid by showing an out of context clip of Ronald Reagan claiming that smog was caused by trees and natural processes. But he failed to mention that Reagan said this in the context that trees were responsible for part of our smog levels in the southeast (not all) and that cleaning up emissions of tailpipes beyond a certain point has no further benefit since trees are always creating a “background level” of natural smog pollution. Numerous peer reviewed scientific studies have now conclusively shown his statement to be factually correct (so those people that laughed at him in the 1980’s look like fools now).
12. He talked about how a NASA scientist and others have been censored by the Bush Administration about global warming. The recent published analysis showed that the NASA scientist in question was censored ONLY 1 out of 1400 times. The NASA scientist mentioned was shown to have been allowed 1400 press interviews to spout apocalyptic views without any sort of censorship and only 1 opportunity turned down by his supervisors!!!! This is, of course, the one instance he complains and whines about. It’s even worse than this; that NASA scientist was allowed the 1400 press interviews even though the comments he made were known to be extreme and at the fringe of alarmist scientific thought on the effects of global warming. In my opinion, he probably should have been fired for insubordination!!!!!!!
13. He talked about how essentially all developed foreign countries have better car emission regulations than us. This is simply not true. Perhaps some have better mileage requirements, but for the real pollutants that matter (NOx, SOx, particulates, etc. and not CO2) the US has better regulations for those real pollutants than other countries (including most of Europe which is heavily dependent on diesel cars that would not pass US regulations – did you know that?).
14. He talked about a 928 to 0 score for a study of peer reviewed articles and scientific papers on global warming that supported the contention that global warming was due to anthropogenic causes. That claim made in his film is false! It turns out that only a very small fraction of those 928 papers in that study directly and fully supported the claim of anthropogenic global warming. Just as many of them were against the claim. Many in the study simply were not even of an applicable topic to either support or not support the claim of human global warming. It was just a big distorted trick to make it appear that a huge base of peer reviewed research supported the claim.
I could probably come up with another 50 items. But that is enough!