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Newsletter (September 11, 2009)
Above the FoldGovernor George Allen interviews a single mother of four about the rising costs of living. Government policy has already driven up food prices; efforts to encourage the use of corn for fuel (ethanol) have impacted not only the cost of bread and other grain products, but of milk and meat as well. And the pressure on this mom’s budget is multiplied many thousands of times across the country.
In this issue
Featured- Developing World's Energy Needs Set Stage for Fight
- Ice-Sheets and Sea Level
- Cap and Tax Delay
Debate- Greenhouse: The Biggest Rort in Christendom
- The Trials of an Unsettled Science
- EPA Proposes Illegal Rule
Science- Sun Spot Frequency Has Strong Influence on Weather
- Efficient Coal Burning Technology Tested in Australia
Economics- The Cap-and-Trade Bait and Switch
- Video: Ross McKitrick on the Poor's Need for Coal
Meet the Critics: Anthony R. Lupo & William R. Kininmonth
Briefly Noted
Featuredby Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
September 8, 2009
At a wedding ceremony in New Delhi, the power blinked off just as the groom was placing the ring on his bride's finger. A factory in Nigeria was forced to relocate because the cost and scarcity of electricity made it impossible to turn a profit. Street protests over the chronic lack of power in Karachi, the economic hub of Pakistan, turned deadly as mobs chanted anti-government slogans.
Scenes like these unfolded with increasing frequency this summer across the developing world as the demand for energy expanded but governments eager to create more industrialized economies failed to keep up.
Developing nations' urgent need for more energy has become a central issue this year as developed countries -- including the United States -- push for a global reduction in carbon emissions ahead of a climate change conference scheduled for December in Copenhagen. Many African, Latin American and Asian countries want to avoid legally binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions, blamed for global warming. They say that their emissions are well below those of the developed world and that such limits would hinder their efforts to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, even though economic growth would also inevitably expand the nations' carbon footprints as more of the poor gain access to electricity, air conditioners, refrigerators and cars. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by Cliff Ollier
Professor Emeritus and Honorary Research Fellow, School of Earth and Geographical Sciences, University of Western Australia
Quadrant Online, May 31, 2009
As the world has been cooling since 1998 the global warming alarmists have to scare us with other things. A favourite is rising sea level, allegedly caused by rapid melting of the ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland.
For example, a prepared statement by Barrie Pittock and Andrew Glikson claims that “New studies … indicate the Greenland and west Antarctica ice caps would, if atmospheric CO2-equivalent concentrations reached 450 ppm, very likely melt rapidly, raising sea-level on the scale of metres per century”.
Similarly, in a letter of 27 March 2009 to Kevin Rudd, James Hansen wrote “Global climate is near critical tipping points that could lead to loss of all summer sea ice in the Arctic … initiation of ice sheet disintegration in West Antarctica and Greenland with progressive, unstoppable global sea level rise . . ."
A recent Australian scare-story relates to the Wilkins Ice shelf. The Australian of April 29 reported “a 13-month old photograph was published this month to support the view that a catastrophic melting of Antarctic ice was imminent.” Together with the suspect use of an old photo, "Mr Garrett [Minister for the Environment] claimed the break-up of the Wilkins ice shelf in West Antarctica indicated sea level rises of 6m were possible by the end of the century, and that ice was melting across the continent.”
My letter was published by the paper the next day:
Your front-page article states that Peter Garrett claimed the break-up of the Wilkins ice shelf in West Antarctica indicated sea level rises of 6 metres were possible. His claim includes two basic errors. Firstly, shelf ice is floating, because it is less dense than seawater. When floating ice melts, there is no change in sea level. This is a bit of elementary physics known as Archimedes’ Principle.
Secondly, the breakup of ice shelves is normal and inevitable. Ice caps grow by precipitation in the uplands, flow at depth, and at the ice front the ice either melts or breaks off as icebergs. The ice never simply keeps flowing to the equator. Icebergs are produced in both times of climate warming and times of cooling, so they tell us nothing of climate change. . . . Read the rest.
Related item:
Sea Level in the Southwest Pacific Is Stable
by Cliff Ollier
Professor Emeritus and Honorary Research Fellow, School of Earth and Geographical Sciences, University of Western Australia
New Concepts in Global Tectonics Newsletter, June, 2009
Raw Data Undermine Claims of Dangerous Sea Level Rise
by Cliff Ollier
Professor Emeritus and Honorary Research Fellow, School of Earth and Geographical Sciences, University of Western Australia
Greenie Watch, August 16, 2009Back to top Wall Street Journal, September 2, 2009
Health care isn't the only destructive White House priority running into trouble in the Senate. Yesterday, Barbara Boxer (Marin County) and John Kerry (Nantucket) announced that Democrats won't release their cap-and-trade bill next week as scheduled after all, but will instead postpone it for up to a month. It's far too early to say that carbon tax and cap is dead, but mark this delay down as one more sign that it remains well short of 60 votes.
Ms. Boxer and Mr. Kerry insist that all systems are still go, though it didn't sound that way when the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, Dick Durbin of Illinois, told Bloomberg TV last month that "I have to be honest with you. As a whip, I count the votes and I count the days in the week, and I look at this rule book in the Senate and think this is not an easy lift. I think we can still do it, but it's a question of timing."
Presumably, and we hope, he was talking about the very distant future. Cap and tax will most hurt the rural and Midwest states that most rely on coal-fired power and heavy manufacturing. Middle-American Senators aren't about to rush through a huge new tax on carbon energy—e.g., their constituents—that will largely flow to the wealthier coasts, even if it is done in the name of saving the planet while the here-and-now economy is still sputtering.
The House barely passed the Waxman-Markey climate bill in June, and only after weeks of arm-twisting and outright legislative bribery and at significant political cost to Blue Dog Democrats. The same tactics won't be as effective in the upper chamber. In any case Ms. Boxer, Mr. Kerry and President Obama really have to convince Members of their own party, such as Kent Conrad (North Dakota), Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia) and Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas).
The latest delay is probably a submission to reality, which is a rare thing in the current political environment—and a major victory for the U.S. economy, at least for now.
Related items:
The Democrats' Cap and Traitors
by W. James Antle, III
Associate Editor, American Spectator
September 1, 2009
Climate Bill Would Bloat Federal Agencies
by Amanda DeBard
Journalist, Washington Times
August 17, 2009
House's Global Warming Bill: $8B
by Traci Watson
Reporter, USA TODAY
August 11, 2009
Climate Change Bill to Boost Nuclear Plants
by Amanda DeBard
Journalist, Washington Times
September 1, 2009Back to top Debateby Vincent R. Gray
Founder, New Zealand Climate Science Coalition; Author, The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of 'Climate Change 2001'
NZCLIMATE TRUTH NEWSLETTER, September 4, 2009
I have been reluctant to regard the argument that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions are harming the climate as an outright fraud, hoax, or rort. I originally considered that it was a problem that demanded study and resolution, but I soon found that the scientific procedures that I had been trained to apply were being ignored. Evidence was being selected to suit a preconceived solution. Other evidence was being concealed. Doubtful procedures which helped the cause were not properly scrutinised. Honest attempts to argue were rejected, sometimes with insults.
Then I began to find examples of deliberate distortion, concealment of evidence to avoid checking of results, outright prejudice by journal editors, and manipulation of words and meanings to produce what are essentially unsound conclusions. Many of the people involved are so sure they are right that they consider that the end justifies the means. What started as a straightforward scientific enquiry has become a mass delusion and then a gigantic confidence trick on the public, a scam, a rort. There are many scientists and others who are uneasy about the escalation that has occurred, but are unable to jump off the bandwagon and the gravy train, and lose all its benefits. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by David Solway
Award-Winning Author
FrontPage Magazine, September 4, 2009
Speaking at the Second International Conference on Climate Change in New York in early March 2009, Czech President Vaclav Klaus warned his listeners that [Greens] “. . . are people interested neither in temperature, CO2, competing scientific hypotheses and their testing, nor in freedom or markets. They are interested in their businesses and their profits—made with the help of politicians.” Those who have invested in this destructive fad will reap enormous benefits from trading in carbon licenses and from vast government subsidies for the construction of costly and unproductive “green” installations, driven by a radically unsettled science. Information has recently come to light that powerful corporate giants and traders in energy commodities worked diligently behind the scenes to promote the Kyoto Protocol and to influence the Organization for Economic co-operation and Development (OECD) and government energy policy in order to capitalize on the global warming ferment. Big money exercises significant control over global warming science (financialpost.com, May 30, 2009). . . .
But in pursuing their congenial agenda, Global Warmists will not shrink from the most blatant carelessness or even outright chicanery. It is interesting to note that the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies has been caught in an embarrassing error—if error it was. The Institute, on whose statistical data the IPCC depends heavily for its reports, "typed in" the September 2008 temperatures for its October assessment, concluding that global warming had risen vertiginously. The finding was accepted in the major sites and media around the world as confirmation of the global warming thesis. When the error became known, the Institute admitted that it does not conduct independent verification of the data it logs, regrettably rendering some or even many of its prognostications all but useless. Fortunately, the other three major climate institutes, the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the Christy group at the University of Alabama and the Remote Sensing Systems Inc. in California, take up much of the slack.
Or at least until recently. Frank Tipler, professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane University, has some intriguing news for us. The Research Unit at Hadley "has begun to eliminate the daily temperature records from its public websites," taking a page from the Goddard Institute which has been deleting facts and figures unfavorable to the global warming hypothesis for some time now, as well as adding "corrections" to the data "to obtain global warming" (Pajamas Media, August 9, 2009). This is not a little white lie but a big green one, which has reached the point where it must be maintained by the omission of details, the distortion of data and the suspicious liability to error. . . .
Al Gore is among the most prominent of the ever-swelling herd of GW parasites and hypocrites. Fiona Kobusingye, coordinator of the Congress of Racial Equality Uganda, notes that Gore “uses more electricity in a week than 28 million Ugandans together use in a year” (Townhall.com, July 29, 2009. ) Gore is a partner in the venture capital investment firm Klein Perkins Caufield & Byers, which has recently floated a $500 million special fund for “green investments” from which Gore will profit handsomely—this is the same firm, incidentally, that is behind Terralliance, an “oil wildcatter,” which is about as nongreen as one can get (Fortune Magazine, Brainstorm 2008 and VentureBeat Clean Tech, July 16, 2008).
But it doesn’t stop there. According to several news outlets (The Tennessean, March 17, 2000, The Wall Street Journal for June 29, 2000 and March 19, 2007, USAToday, March 18, 2007, and many others), Gore earned $570,000 in royalties from Pasminco Ltd. for a highly toxic zinc mine on his property. Quantities of zinc, barium, arsenic, chromium, lead and trace amounts of cyanide were released into into the adjacent Caney Fork River—which served as a backdrop to his film An Inconvenient Truth. The river and surroundings are plainly not “as pure as they came,” as Gore had insisted in his book Earth in the Balance that “the lakes and rivers [that] sustain us” should be.
There are also trace elements of pure insanity in Gore’s hypotheses. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 2009, Gore suggested that the Earth was heading toward Venus-type CO2 levels. American Congressmen are obviously not aware that the atmosphere of Venus is made up of 97% CO2 while that of the Earth is .038%. But Gore continues to be coddled by the powers of officialdom. . . .
But what is most distressing is the corporate and government resolve to monetize what we might call “climate consciousness” and to impose its radical agenda for increased social control, with all the power and profits that pertain thereto, upon the unsuspecting public. The totalitarian mindset, in whatever form and at whatever stage in its evolution, is a monstrous thing, and Climatocracy is one of its most arresting contemporary manifestations. Global warming, said Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London, “has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices” (Global Warming Politics, May 18, 2009). As Vaclav Klaus brooded in an article for the Financial Times (June 14, 2007), we might one day find ourselves living under a regime that would in many ways resemble the Communist nightmare from which half of Europe has only recently emerged. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by Marlo Lewis
Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
OpenMarket.org, September 2, 2009
Yesterday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent a draft proposed rule to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that would exempt small emitters of carbon dioxide (CO2) from Clean Air Act (CAA) pre-construction permitting requirement, Greenwire reports.
The proposed rule, as described in Greenwire, is blatantly illegal. It is a tacit admission that the Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA set the stage for an economic disaster. It is additional evidence that Mass v. EPA was wrongly decided. It confirms CEI’s warning that the Court’s ruling imperils a core constitutional principle — the separation of powers. . . .
. . . establishing GHG emission standards for new motor vehicles will by definition make CO2 a CAA-regulated air pollutant. As such, CO2 would automatically be ”subject to regulation” under the Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program (CAA Sec. 165). Under the CAA, any firm that plans to build a new “major” stationary source, or modify an existing major source in a way that would significantly increase emissions, must first obtain a PSD permit from EPA or a state environmental agency.
A PSD source is “major” if it is in one of 28 listed categories and has a potential to emit 100 tons per year (TPY) of an air pollutant, or if it is any other type of establishment and has a potential to emit 250 TPY (CAA Sec. 169).
And there’s the rub. Whereas only large industrial facilities have a potential to emit 250 TPY of air contaminants such as sulfur dioxide or particulate matter, an immense number and variety of entities – office buildings, hotels, big box stores, enclosed malls, small manufacturing firms, even commercial kitchens – have a potential to emit 250 TPY of CO2. A September 2008 report commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that 1.2 million buildings and facilities – most of them currently unregulated under the CAA – actually emit 250 TPY of CO2. All would be vulnerable to new PSD regulation, controls, paperwork, penalties, and litigation. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Scienceby S. Fred Singer
Founder and President, Science & Environmental Policy Project; Co-author, NIPCC's Climate Change Reconsidered
Canada Free Press, August 28, 2009
Climate modelers seem puzzled that small fluctuations in total solar irradiance (TSI) appear to have large influence on the climate. They feel it necessary to take recourse to complicated mechanisms.
For example, Gerald Meehl of the US-National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and his team have been able to calculate how the extremely small variations in TSI bring about a comparatively significant change in the system “Atmosphere-Ocean” They try to explain how ‘sunspot frequency’ has an unexpectedly strong influence on cloud formation and precipitation, according to a press release from the GFZ (German Research Centre for Geosciences), the home of Katja Matthes, a co-author of the study. One suggested mechanism is a solar-UV enhancement of stratospheric ozone, leading to circulation changes in the troposphere, a possibility explored earlier by British researcher Joanna Haigh. Another complicated mechanism suggested is increased heating and evaporation from cloud-free regions of the ocean, with the additional moisture transported into the equatorial zone, followed by some kind of positive feedback.
But the answer may really be very simple: the tiny (~0.1%) variation of TSI during the solar cycle is only the 'tip of the iceberg.' The much stronger variability is that of solar activity (solar wind and magnetic fields), which explains the observed modulation of Galactic Cosmic Radiation (GCR); in turn, the GCR affect cloudiness in the lower troposphere (the ‘Svensmark mechanism’). And what makes me so sure about the GCR hypothesis? It is the observational evidence from isotopic data in stalagmites (shown in the NIPCC summary report and used there to challenge the IPCC conclusions). . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by Des Houghton
Assistant Editor, Courier-Mail
August 19, 2009
A University of Queensland scientist said yesterday he had successfully tested technology that delivers twice the power from coal while minimising greenhouse gas emissions. . . .
"The very high-energy efficiency of the new technology will effectively halve the amount of coal required to create electricity," [said Professor John Zhu, of the school of chemical engineering, who created the series of direct carbon fuel cells (DCFC)]. . . .
"The DCFC produces pure carbon dioxide as a byproduct, making it much easier to manage." . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Economicsby David Schoenbrod and Richard B. Stewart
Professor, New York Law School; Visiting Scholar, American Enterprise Institute (Schoenbrod); Professor of Law, New York University (Stewart)
Wall Street Journal, August 24, 2009
As a candidate for president in April 2008, Barack Obama told Fox News that "a cap-and-trade system is a smarter way of controlling pollution" than "top-down" regulation. He was right. With cap and trade the market decides where and how to cut emissions. With top-down regulation, as Mr. Obama explained, regulators dictate "every single rule that a company has to abide by, which creates a lot of bureaucracy and red tape and often-times is less efficient."
It's no wonder that the House advertises its American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (also known as the Waxman-Markey bill) as "cap and trade." And last Thursday a coalition of environmental groups and unions launched a "Made in America Jobs Tour" to sell it as a ticket to "long-term economic prosperity." But the House bill would, if passed by the Senate this autumn, fail the environment and fail the test of economic efficiency.
Waxman-Markey is largely top-down regulation dressed in cap-and-trade clothing. It purports to set a cap on greenhouse gases, but the cap is so loose in the early years that through the use of cheap offsets the U.S. need not significantly reduce its fossil-fuel emissions until about 2025. Then the bill would require a nosedive in fossil-fuel emissions. This balloon mortgage pledge of big cuts later is unlikely to be kept.
The top-down directives come in three forms. First, electric utilities, auto makers and states get free allowances on the condition that they comply with regulations requiring coal sequestration, alternative energy sources, energy conservation, advanced auto technology and more. Second, many other provisions of the 1,428 page bill mandate outright regulation on subjects ranging from how electricity is generated to off-road vehicles and household lighting. Third, still other provisions provide subsidies for government-chosen technology "winners" such as alternate energy sources, plug-in vehicles and weatherization of old buildings. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by Ross McKitrick
Associate Professor of Environmental Economics, University of Guelph; Co-author, Taken by Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy, and Politics of Global Warming
Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, September 2, 2009
. . . It would be a great thing if in [regions like Africa and Southeast Asia] they were to build large coal-fired fireplants and put an electricity grid out and get households on electricity. . . . View the two-minute video at CO2 Science or YouTube.Back to top Meet the CriticsHave you ever been at a loss for words when challenged by the alarmist's claim of scientific "consensus," or that dissenting scientists are unqualified? Not only does consensus prove nothing, but the very idea of "consensus" among scientists on catastrophic manmade climate change is simply unfounded. A 2008 Senate Environment and Public Works Minority Report documents dissension around the world:More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent
Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims Two notable critics are:
Anthony R. Lupo, Ph.D.
IPCC & NIPCC contributor Anthony Lupo is professor and department chair of atmospheric science at the University of Missouri. Lupo reports that "there are abundant studies available in the literature to show there are no general trends toward increases in severe weather occurrences such as hurricanes or tornadoes." Lupo is the author or co-author of Anthropogenic Global Warming: A Skeptical Point of View (PDF), A Climatology of Northern Hemisphere Blocking, (at the 2009 ICCC) Inter-Annual Temperature Variations (MP3), and hundreds more publications, many of which are peer-reviewed.
William R. Kininmonth
Meteorologist William Kininmonth has been a contributor to the NIPCC, the head of Australia's National Climate Centre, coordinator of the scientific and technical review for the UN Task Force on El Niño, and has had much association with the World Meteorological Organization. "There is every reason to believe that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere will have no significant impact on the climate system. The greatest impact of atmospheric CO2 on the earth's radiation budget was the first 20 ppmv," Kininmonth explains. "After this concentration the source of infrared radiation to space from the active CO2 radiation bands was in the stratosphere, where temperature does not change as the emanation goes to higher and higher altitudes with increasing concentration." A few pieces by Kininmonth are Unmasking 'An Inconvenient Truth' (PDF), In Computer Models We Trust, When Politics Engulfs Science, and (at the 2009 ICCC) A Natural Limit to Anthropogenic Global Warming (MP3).Back to top Briefly NotedU.S. Biofuel Boom Running on Empty
Waxman-Markey’s Effect on Gas Prices in Your State
U.S. Chamber of Commerce Seeks Trial on Global Warming
Economist Wished for Disasters to Wake America
Exploding Fridges Caused by 'Environmentally-Friendly Coolant'
Asperatus: Gathering Storm to Force New Cloud Name
E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., National Spokesman
Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, http://www.cornwallalliance.org/
Information in this newsletter is for scholarly and educational use only and may not be copied or reproduced for any other purposes without prior permission of the copyright holders.
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