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Newsletter (September 23, 2009)
Above the FoldIn this, the third in a five-part interview with real people facing real problems because of rising energy prices, a working, single mother describes how the recent increase in her utility bills has effected her family’s budget.
She’s disconnected the hot water in her home in order to conserve money and pay for child care. She’s attempting to cushion her 8-year-old daughter from feeling deprived, in part by making turning off the lights into a game and by eating by candle-light.
In this issue
Featured- Norman Borlaug: Benefactor of Humanity
- I Pledge to Promote Global Warming Propaganda
- Sarkozy Calls for Carbon Tax on Poor Nations
- Leader of None
Debate- Though Now Stalled, Cap-and-Trade Is Alive and Well
- Top Modeller Admits Global Cooling Likely
Science- The Malaria Myths of Climate Change
- Alarmists Abandon Air Temps, but Oceans Also Show Cooling
- Global Warming Stopped and a Cooling Is Beginning
Economics- How Wishful Thinkers Are Forced to Reconnect with Energy Reality
Meet the Critics: Harrison H. Schmitt & Kesten C. Green
Briefly Noted
Featuredby Gregg E. Easterbrook
Senior Editor, New Republic; Author, A Moment on Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism
Atlantic, January, 1997
America [had--when this article was written in 1997] three living winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, two universally renowned and the other so little celebrated that not one person in a hundred would be likely to pick his face out of a police lineup, or even recognize his name. The universally known recipients are Elie Wiesel, who for leading an exemplary life has been justly rewarded with honor and acclaim, and Henry Kissinger, who in the aftermath of his Nobel has realized wealth and prestige. America's third peace-prize winner, in contrast, has been the subject of little public notice, and has passed up every opportunity to parley his award into riches or personal distinction. And the third winner's accomplishments, unlike Kissinger's, are morally unambiguous. Though barely known in the country of his birth, elsewhere in the world Norman Borlaug is widely considered to be among the leading Americans of our age.
Borlaug [was a] plant breeder who for most of the past five decades has lived in developing nations, teaching the techniques of high-yield agriculture. He received the Nobel in 1970, primarily for his work in reversing the food shortages that haunted India and Pakistan in the 1960s. Perhaps more than anyone else, Borlaug is responsible for the fact that throughout the postwar era, except in sub-Saharan Africa, global food production has expanded faster than the human population, averting the mass starvations that were widely predicted -- for example, in the 1967 best seller Famine -- 1975! The form of agriculture that Borlaug preaches may have prevented a billion deaths.
Yet although he has led one of the century's most accomplished lives, and done so in a meritorious cause, Borlaug has never received much public recognition in the United States, where it is often said that the young lack heroes to look up to. One reason is that Borlaug's deeds are done in nations remote from the media spotlight: the Western press covers tragedy and strife in poor countries, but has little to say about progress there. Another reason is that Borlaug's mission -- to cause the environment to produce significantly more food -- has come to be seen, at least by some securely affluent commentators, as perhaps better left undone. More food sustains human population growth, which they see as antithetical to the natural world.
The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the World Bank, once sponsors of his work, have recently given Borlaug the cold shoulder. Funding institutions have also cut support for the International Maize and Wheat Center -- located in Mexico and known by its Spanish acronym, CIMMYT -- where Borlaug helped to develop the high-yield, low-pesticide dwarf wheat upon which a substantial portion of the world's population now depends for sustenance. And though Borlaug's achievements are arguably the greatest that Ford or Rockefeller has ever funded, both foundations have retreated from the last effort of Borlaug's long life: the attempt to bring high-yield agriculture to Africa.
The African continent is the main place where food production has not kept pace with population growth: its potential for a Malthusian catastrophe is great. Borlaug's initial efforts in a few African nations have yielded the same rapid increases in food production as did his initial efforts on the Indian subcontinent in the 1960s. Nevertheless, Western environmental groups have campaigned against introducing high-yield farming techniques to Africa, and have persuaded image-sensitive organizations such as the Ford Foundation and the World Bank to steer clear of Borlaug. . . .
Read the rest.
Related items:
Borlaug's Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech
Remembering the Man Who Fed the World; Dr. Norman Borlaug, R.I.P.
by Curtis Porter
Reprinted from an ASCH Dispatch, September 15, 2009
The Father of the Green Revolution
by Joe Holley and J. Y. Smith
Staff Writers, Washington Post
September 14, 2009
Rockefeller Foundation Statement on the Death of Norman Borlaug
Bihar Chief Minister Condoles Norman Borlaug's DeathBack to top by Paul Chesser
Director, Climate Strategies Watch; Scholar, John Locke Foundation; Correspondent, Heartland Institute
American Spectator, September 8, 2009
Is there anything funnier to most high school kids than farts? Discomfiting noises accompanied by tear-inducing odors -- nothing induces teen hysterics more easily than flatulence.
So you have to admire the simple genius of the recently formed Alliance for Climate Education, which has concocted an appealing formula to reach youth for their cause: 1. School assemblies that get them out of class; 2. Twenty-something educators articulate in teen-speak; 3. Hip, amusing animation; 4. Farts.
How does it work? You can learn a lot by watching ACE's trailer -- steeped in global warming alarmism -- which includes representative segments of their presentation. ACE promises a "high school assembly experience that will activate, educate, inspire, your school to create a future safe from climate change." . . .
Among the propaganda, accompanied by spiffy cartooning:
- "You see, in 2009 we've inherited an America that's all about LIVIN' LARGE!"
- "Do you believe it takes the regular American teenager just like you 23 football fields [presumably the "carbon footprint"] of space just to live?"
- "What nobody can see is living large yanks up that thermostat quickly towards, well, way too high."
- "The heat we're feeling right now is from the carbon that was pretty much produced in the 1950s. And then we changed hairstyles and produced more in the 1960s…(and so on through the 70s, 80s, 90s)…and now it's like a carbon party!" . . .
Last week many parents were upset by the "I Pledge" video shown in a Utah school and by President Obama's planned speech to schoolchildren this week. Add ACE to that indoctrination list.
Read the rest.Back to top by Peggy Hollinger
Correspondent, Financial Times
September 10, 2009
Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, renewed his call for a European carbon tax on imports to the bloc on Thursday as he unveiled details of a new charge on fossil fuel products in France.
“I will not accept a system ... that imports products from countries that don’t respect the rules [on carbon emission reductions],” he said in a speech to factory workers in the eastern Ain region of France.
“We need to impose a carbon tax at [Europe’s] borders. I will lead that battle.” . . .
Read the rest.
Related item:
EU Makes Climate Funds Conditional on Poor Nations' Commitments
by James Kanter
Journalist, New York Times
September 10, 2009Back to top by Paul K. Driessen
Columnist, Townhall; Senior Fellow, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, and Congress of Racial Equality; Author, Eco-Imperialism.com
September 5, 2009
. . . Citizens are livid over yet another attempt to use a purported crisis to justify expanding the government and spending billions of tax dollars for alarmist research, activism and propaganda, just ahead of the Copenhagen climate conference. Global warming continues to rank dead-last in Pew Research and other polls that actually list it as an issue. Rasmussen puts the President’s approval ratings at 46% and falling. Zogby reports that 57% of Americans oppose cap-and-trade bills.
Manufacturing states, which get 60-98% of their electricity from coal, worry that the only thing they’ll export in ten years will be jobs. Democrat senators from those states worry that the energy and climate issue will be “toxic for them during midterm elections,” says Politico magazine.
Even companies that had eagerly sought seats at the negotiating table are now gagging. ConocoPhillips, Caterpillar and others finally realize that cap-and-tax will severely penalize them and their customers.
Not even the climate is cooperating. Outside of Dallas, 2009 has brought some of coldest summer days on record across the US. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Debateby James Inhofe
Senior U.S. Senator for Oklahoma; Ranking Member, U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works
Clean Skies, September 14, 2009
Now that the debate on cap-and-trade has stalled indefinitely in the Senate, inquiring minds are wondering: what’s next? While there’s no question the Democrats have declared a cease fire on cap-and-trade—many of them want nothing to do with the issue—their allies outside the Beltway are preparing a massive $20 million campaign to push legislation forward.
This effort should serve as a wake-up call to anyone who believes cap-and-trade is dead and buried—it is very much alive. So Republicans remain ever vigilant, preparing to defeat any cap-and-trade energy tax that will drive up unemployment, slow our economic recovery, and make America less competitive in the global marketplace.
A key component of this pressure group campaign will be the so-called “endangerment” finding now under review at the White House. This finding under the Clean Air Act will declare that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, and thus will trigger a cascade of new regulations that will crush small businesses and raise electricity, food, and gasoline prices. . . .
Read the rest.
Related items:
2010? Reid's Comments Add Uncertainty to Climate Vote's Timing
by Darren Samuelsohn
Reporter, ClimateWire
New York Times, September 16, 2009
Climate Bill Drifts into a Patomac Fog
by Jessica Leber and Christa Marshall
Reporters, ClimateWire
New York Times, September 17, 2009Back to top by Fred Pearce
Environmental Consultant, New Scientist
September 4, 2009
Forecasts of climate change are about to go seriously out of kilter. One of the world's top climate modellers said Thursday we could be about to enter one or even two decades during which temperatures cool. . . .
[Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University, Germany] predicted that in the next few years a natural cooling trend would dominate over warming caused by humans. The cooling would be down to cyclical changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).
Breaking with climate-change orthodoxy, he said NAO cycles were probably responsible for some of the strong global warming seen in the past three decades. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Scienceby Paul Reiter
Professor and Chief of Insects and Infectious Disease Unit, Institut Pasteur
Environmental Expert, September 9, 2009
. . . Alarmists have nurtured three common 'myths' that have no grounding in historical or scientific evidence.
The first, which began circulating in the early 1990s, is that 'tropical' infections, particularly malaria, are moving to higher latitudes as global temperatures rise.
Not so: historical records show that malaria has previously been widespread in temperate regions — as far north as Scandinavia — and survived even during the coldest years of the Little Ice Age. . . .
Another myth is that the disease is moving to higher altitudes. Al Gore, former US vice president and a ruthless campaigner on climate change, has repeatedly stated that 'because of global warming, [mosquitoes] are now travelling to places where they've never been before. For instance, in Africa, the city of Nairobi…used to be above the mosquito line (the highest point at which mosquitoes can live)...'.
Not so: Nairobi is at 1680m above sea level, yet until the mid-1950s, epidemic malaria was a serious problem at altitudes up to 2450m. Indeed, in 1927 the colonial government assigned £40,000, equivalent to about US$1.2 million today, for malaria control in Nairobi and the surrounding highlands. . . .
The third myth is that climate change is already causing an increase of malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa, and there are wild predictions that millions, tens of millions, even hundreds of millions more people will contract the disease as temperatures rise.
This is naïve. Across much of the region, the climate is already more than adequate for transmission, the disease is endemic and ubiquitous, and in most cases people are already exposed to numerous infective mosquito bites every year. You can't add water to a glass that is already full. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by David Evans
Director, Science Speak
Heartland Institute, October 1, 2009
. . . The change in focus from air temperature to ocean temperature was predictable given the sustained decline in global air temperature over recent years. The new [Synthesis Report] claims ocean temperatures are rising, and fast. This is rubbish, but it will take time to inform the public and politicians that it is rubbish. . . . Here are some key points to be made:
- Ocean temperatures can be measured adequately only by the Argo buoy network. Argo buoys dive down to 700m, recording temperatures, then come up and radio back the results. There are 3,000 of them floating around all the world’s oceans.
- The Argo buoys have been operational only since the end of 2003. Before that, ocean temperatures were gathered by various methods—usually collected by ships in popular commercial shipping lanes—that lacked uniformity, sufficient geographical coverage, and the ability to measure temperature much beneath the surface. The Argo buoy system has added uniformity and greater reliability to ocean temperature measurements.
- According to Argo temperature measurements, the world’s oceans have shown a slight cooling since Argo became operational in 2003.
- The Argo data contradict claims humans are causing rapid global warming, because ocean temperatures are not rising as fast as predicted by global warming alarmists.
Read the rest.Back to top by Henrik Svensmark
Director, Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Institute; Co-Author, The Chilling Stars
Watts Up With That?, September 10, 2009
. . . Over the past 50 years solar activity has been at its highest since the medieval warmth of 1000 years ago. But now it appears that the Sun has changed again, and is returning towards what solar scientists call a “grand minimum” such as we saw in the Little Ice Age.
The match between solar activity and climate through the ages is sometimes explained away as coincidence. Yet it turns out that, almost no matter when you look and not just in the last 1000 years, there is a link. Solar activity has repeatedly fluctuated between high and low during the past 10,000 years. In fact the Sun spent about 17 per cent of those 10,000 years in a sleeping mode, with a cooling Earth the result. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Economicsby Peter C. Glover and Michael Economides
Freelance Journalist and Writer; Author, PeterCGlover.com (Glover); Editor-in-Chief, Energy Tribune; Professor, University of Houston; Co-Author, The History, the Money, and the Politics of [Oil] (Economides)
Investor's Business Daily, September 10, 2009
One day Energy Secretary Ed Milliband sets out his proposed expansion of the U.K.'s wind power-led alternative energy revolution; the next day, Vestas, the U.K.'s largest wind turbine manufacturer, shuts down a big part of its British operations citing "low demand" and public opposition to onshore wind farms.
Just bad luck or bad PR? Not quite. Simply another blatant example of the ongoing "disconnect" over energy between those suffering from WTS (Wishful Thinker Syndrome) and the hydrocarbon-fueled present and future energy realities.
In 2006, Germany's Angela Merkel was hailed as the "Green Chancellor" for promising to rid her country of coal and nuclear power in its bid to give a clean energy "world lead." Three years on and Merkel's government actively supports the construction of a new generation of 26 coal-fired power plants as well as keeping Germany's nuclear power stations open. . . .
Read the rest.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:
Harrison H. Schmitt, Ph.D.
Former award-winning NASA astronaut and geologist Jack Schmitt is an NIPCC contributor, has taught at Harvard, and has served in the U.S. Senate. "The ‘global warming scare’ is being used as a political tool," writes Schmitt, "to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the Society's activities." "As a geologist," he explains, "but, it is ridiculous to tie this objective to a 'consensus' that humans are causing global warming when human experience, geologic data and history, and current cooling can argue otherwise. ‘Consensus,’ as many have said, merely represents the absence of definitive science." Schmitt was a keynote speaker at the 2009 ICCC, where he gave a lecture entitled Climate Facts that Really Are Facts (MP3).
Kesten C. Green, Ph.D.
Forecasting expert Kesten Green has held teaching and researching positions at Victoria University of Wellington and Monash University and is a contributor to the NIPCC. "GCM's are not scientific forecasting methods," Kesten said (MP3). "The situation is just too complex and uncertain for the kind of complex models that they use to work. The situation could be characterized as one of ignorance. We know so little--or not sufficient anyway, about climate, to construct complex models and make predictions for the next hundred years." A few of Kesten's works that bear on the climate issue are Validity of Climate Change Forecasting for Public Policy Decision Making (PDF), Polar Bear Population Forecasts (PDF), What Is the Appropriate Public-Policy Response to Uncertainty? (PDF), and Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists Versus Scientific Forecasts (PDF).Back to top Briefly NotedNOAA: Summer Temperature Below Average for U.S.
A War on CO2
More Silly Polar Bear Alarm
Easier to Find Oil?
World Celebrities Sing to Stop Global Warming
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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