"Facts do not cease to exist simply because they are ignored." -- A. Huxley
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." -- Albert Einstein
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“The
Road to Energy
Secular
fundamentalists: The Global Warming Cult [ITEM #2]
Br-r-r!
Where did global warming go? [ITEM #3]
$cience
Mag Jumps on Global Moneywagon [ITEM #4]
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“Don’t Fight, Adapt; We
Should Give Up Futile Attempts to Combat Climate Change”
Key Quote from
Scientists’ Letter to UN – in The National Post, Dec. 13, 2007: “Attempts
to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and
constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on
humanity’s real and pressing problems.”
Complete Letter with
all signatories http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=164002
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Dec
14 briefing at the National Press Club is now live on Energy Policy TV.
Part 1 is at:
http://video.energypolicytv.com/displaypage.php?vkey=0c83c2f1e369a511148f&channel=Climate%20Change
Part 2 is at:
http://video.energypolicytv.com/displaypage.php?vkey=63ee131e1246da0955bd&channel=Climate%20Change
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http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_mar2007/PolarBearParty.htm
1. THE ROAD TO ENERGY
Editorial
by S Fred Singer, 5 January 2007
Summary:
Is current global warming (GW) due to natural or
human causes? This crucial question can
be settled only by examining the evidence, both pro and con. We conclude that GW is mostly natural – hence
unstoppable – and that policies to limit CO2 emissions are pointless and
inimical to rational policies to supply low-cost and secure energy.
=================================================
“If the facts change, I change my
opinion. What do you do, sir?” John Maynard Keynes
Science
facts have indeed changed and the debate over the cause of global warming (GW)
may soon be over: GW is mostly of natural origin, with only a minor human
contribution from greenhouse (GH) gases.
Natural climate changes are unstoppable; hence control of human-caused
CO2 emissions is pointless. Now begins
the more difficult campaign to rectify the political consequences arising from
GW fears and achieve a more rational policy of lower cost and secure energy.
Climate
Change is Natural: Though a GH Gas, CO2 is not a Pollutant
As
Al Gore famously said: “The science is settled.” Indeed it is, but not quite the way he had
imagined it. The facts emerging over the
last few years show no evidence of the expected climate effects of increasing
GH gases. The
There
clearly is no scientific consensus yet about the cause of current warming. On the one hand, we know that the climate has
been warming and cooling on a variety of cycles for as long as observations
have been available; since 1980 we seem to be in the warming phase of a roughly
1,500-year cycle that may continue for a couple more centuries, interrupted by
shorter, decadal-scale cycles corresponding to solar variability. On the other hand, the increasing trend of GH
gases, especially of carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil-fuel burning, should
produce some warming of the atmosphere, according to well-known laws of
physics. The question still remains,
however: how large is the actual value of such GH warming in the real
atmosphere – after various feedbacks, both positive and negative, are
included? GH models calculate climate
sensitivities (from CO2 doubling) that range from about one degC up to as much
as 11 degC, depending mainly on assumed parameters for the formation and
disappearance of clouds. All these
models implicitly use a positive feedback from water vapor (WV), the most
important atmospheric GH gas; but there is growing evidence that WV may
actually cause a negative feedback and reduce the warming effects of
CO2.
The
IPCC cites various kinds of ‘evidence:’
·
A consensus of 2,500 scientists -- which is neither a consensus nor involves many
climate experts. Against this claimed
consensus we now have 400 climate experts [3] who disagree with the IPCC
conclusion and are willing to so state; many of them are IPCC reviewers and
were listed by the IPCC as “consenting scientists.” We also have the Oregon
Petition [4], which will soon have 25,000 signers – an impressive number of
scientists who doubt AGW and are skeptical of the mitigation remedies that have
been proposed.
We all realize that science doesn't work by majority
voting -- ultimately it's a question of whether observations support or falsify
hypotheses. But even if it could be
proved that CO2 drives climate change, modern life revolves around heating/lighting
our homes, economic growth, industry, travel, etc, all of which emit CO2 -- and
we can't stop that until we have alternatives that give us business-as-usual
without CO2 emissions. And then there is
China.
·
A claimed correlation between a temperature increase and an increase in
GHG levels:
Of course, correlation does not prove causation. Moreover, the correlation was reversed during
much of the 20th century, from 1940 to1975, when climate cooled
while CO2 levels rose. Further, there
has been no significant warming since 2001 in spite of rising CO2 levels. Finally, data from well-maintained US weather
stations show the warmest years of the 20th century in the 1930s
when CO2 levels were much lower than today.
·
The most persuasive argument put forward by leading IPCC scientists is
that 20th century mean global temperatures can be reproduced by
combining both natural and anthropogenic causes, with the warming of the past
30 years dominated by the increase in GH forcing. However, closer examination of their argument
soon reveals that it involves nothing more than an exercise in ‘curve fitting’
with several suitably chosen parameters.
As noted above, there are wide limits on how to choose climate sensitivity
from GH forcing; there is even greater uncertainty about the forcing effects of
aerosols, and especially of their indirect effects [as documented by the
IPCC]. And finally, the IPCC exercise
considers only the tiny changes in solar irradiance and completely ignores the
most important solar influence on climate from changes in the solar wind and
magnetic fields.
·
It goes without saying that much-hyped effects, such as melting of
glaciers, disappearance of Arctic sea ice, and even some of the extreme
predictions of sea level rise, are merely consequences of general warming, but
do not reveal anything about the cause of warming, whether natural or
anthropogenic.
2007
was a good year for peer-reviewed science that exposed inconvenient truths for
the IPCC: e.g., a warm bias in the surface temperature records, troposphere
data in contradiction to GH models, satellite data indicating negative climate
feedback from water vapor leading to low climate sensitivity, factors other
than CO2 involved in Arctic warming, the final demise of the ‘hockeystick’
climate reconstruction, further confirmation of the natural 1500-year climate
cycle, another quiet hurricane season, and so on. In fact, every cornerstone of global-warming
alarmism is now undermined by peer-reviewed science.
It
is perhaps too much to expect that this change in the scientific paradigm will
be readily accepted by the scientific community. There are too many who have invested
considerable effort and reputation in support of AGW. There’s also the mindset of the editors of
leading scientific journals and of the reviewers they choose, to expect a
sudden change in the character of these publications. Finally, there are the granting agencies,
both governmental and private, who have invested much of their prestige in
support of AGW and whose budgets depend on maintaining the AGW myth. It goes without saying that practically all
of the NGOs will continue to support GW fears since their incomes and perks
depend on this. Of course, the media
have a vested interest in stirring up popular fears; after all, calamities
attract attention and sell newspapers.
However, journalistic ethics may produce a gradual change, it is
hoped.
Unfortunately,
there has now developed a group of industrial/business stakeholders that have a
strong financial interest in maintaining GW fears. They include the promoters of alternative
energy sources, wind and solar, the manufacturers of ethanol and other
biofuels, and the companies and researchers that have grown fat on government
grants and subsidies – well over $5 billion a year in the US alone. Many industries are willing to go along with
emission caps, looking for ‘regulatory certainty,’ and are less concerned about
passing the increased cost along to the general public. Finally, we have the financial institutions
and brokers who make money on emission trading and on selling offsets for
‘carbon footprints.’
Desperate
about losing the science debate, many of these groups have instead resorted to smears and personal attacks on
AGW skeptics and ‘deniers,’ accusing them of being paid by oil companies or by
the tobacco(!) lobby. Climate alarmists
don't seem to realize that by claiming that science can be bought with a few
oil dollars, they are actually denigrating all scientists. There is a far bigger pot of government money
available to IPCC consensus scientists; non-scientist Al Gore has made tens of
millions out of climate alarmism.
A
Rational Energy Policy
What
can be done at this stage? Once there is
some acceptance of the fact that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, that CO2
levels are essentially irrelevant to climate change – and that a warmer climate
may even be beneficial compared to a colder one, there is hope for a rational
energy policy. Unjustified fears complicate
energy planning and raise the cost of energy.
Overcoming the irrational fear of GW can solve most energy problems,
lower cost, and assure security of supply.
It can reduce oil imports and perhaps eliminate additional imports of
liquefied natural gas (LNG).
We
shall briefly outline the main components of such a policy. A rational energy policy needs to consider
three major topics: electric power generation, transportation, and energy
conservation.
·
Electric power: Without the alarm about CO2 emission, it becomes possible to rely on
plentiful domestic coal and nuclear reactors, and phase out the use of natural
gas for supplying base-load electricity.
In the US, natural gas supplies of the order of 20 percent, in the UK it
is of the order of 40 percent! This
phase-out of natural gas greatly reduces demand and will lower the price for
other applications, such as production of fertilizer, plastics, and also
transportation.
·
Transportation: The preferred fuel for buses, trucks, and fleet vehicles, should be
Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). It is
cheaper, cleaner than gasoline or diesel -- and we have a secure domestic
supply, augmented by imports from Canada and Mexico. No new technology is needed -- except perhaps
the development of high-strength light-weight bottles.
It is clear that the future for private cars lies in
electric hybrids, requiring mainly the development of better low-cost
batteries. For true hybrids, the
internal combustion engine (or diesel engine) acts only as an alternator and is
not required to supply automotive power; this lowers the sticker price
considerably. Commuters can use simple
plug-ins, with batteries recharged from the
grid. The demand for gasoline
(and imported oil) will then drop considerably.
No new fuels are needed; only access to domestic oil reserves offshore
and on federal lands. ‘Stranded gas’
(inaccessible by pipeline) can be converted into liquid transportation fuels,
with a preference for dimethyl ether [DME]/methanol.
·
Conservation: A wide variety of techniques are available and have been tested, such
as cogeneration in connection with electricity production, LED lighting (with
efficiencies of up to 90 percent compared to 15 percent for incandescent light
bulbs), and many other schemes that reduce energy use.
Oil
Security and Foreign Policy
Even
30 years after the Arab ‘oil embargo’ it is not generally appreciated that
embargos are ineffective since oil is a fungible commodity. A true interruption in oil supply will simply
raise the world price of oil and affect oil consumers everywhere -- including
those in oil-exporting countries, unless they are subsidized.
By
symmetry, oil fungibility also means that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR)
does not confer special protection on US consumers. Oil released from the SPR will simply lower
the price to consumers everywhere for a short period of time. Of course, if other countries maintain SPRs
and release their oil, these releases might all balance out. But in general, SPRs are not needed and
should be privatized. It is certainly
counterproductive to purchase oil for the SPR because of Congressional
mandates, when the current world price is around $100 a barrel.
Middle-East
oil security is an illusion. The presence
of military forces cannot protect against sabotage of oil wells, pipelines,
terminals, or tankers. There are too
many vulnerable links in the chain of oil supply. In fact, a foreign military presence may well
be counterproductive by stirring up local resentment. In my view, the best guarantee against supply
interruptions is to convey the ownership of oil – and the flow of oil revenues
– from governments directly to their citizens, giving them a financial stake in
maintaining the flow of oil for export.
An example might be the scheme used in Alaska whereby the state government
distributes royalties to its citizens. A
better scheme would be to give citizens ownership of shares in a national oil
company and allow these shares to be traded.
Epilogue
We’ve been on the road to energy independence before – with Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter -- without any notable success. George Bush’ plan is not much better. Yet as outlined above, all it takes is to publicize the scientific facts and rid of the public of irrational fear of Global Warming.
Nixon
invented Project Independence in 1974, following the Arab oil embargo scare,
and gave us the ‘solar power tower’ with hundreds of mirrors focusing solar
energy onto a central collector and fanciful schemes for extracting energy from
the oceans. Some of these projects are
being re-invented today. They are even
hauling out hare-brained schemes of geo-engineering to ‘fight global warming’
and ‘save the climate.’
Jimmy
Carter tried to convert the nation to a costly menu of ‘Synfuels,’ gaseous and
liquid fuels based on coal. He also
managed to stop the development of nuclear energy and robbed the nation of a
reliable, clean, and secure source of
electricity.
George
W. Bush has given us the ‘Hydrogen Economy’ (2006) and ethanol (2007), and
promises of even more ethanol. The 2007
energy bill has the makings of a bipartisan disaster; but it could have been
much worse.
These
are very strange times. The science
underlying the global warming scare is becoming increasingly clear -- with firm
evidence against any appreciable contribution to global warming from
anthropogenic emissions. We have also
good evidence that the climate models have greatly overestimated the greenhouse
contribution by neglecting negative feedbacks in the atmospheric system. Finally the evidence is very persuasive that
solar activity rules climate change on a decadal time scale. Yet the IPCC panel keeps assuring us that
most warming is anthropogenic (without telling us what “most” means). National Academies and others are simply
regurgitating the faulty conclusions of the IPCC -- while scientific
catastrophists complain that the IPCC is too conservative.
Reputable
economists have tried to convince us that a modest warming is beneficial – as
has been known right along from historic evidence. Yet other economists, toeing the political
line, keep insisting that a warmer climate will inflict great damage, and
persist in carrying out meaningless cost-benefit calculations and devising
complex schemes for controlling greenhouse-gas emissions.
It
has become quite obvious that even the puny controls (a 5% reduction) called
for by the Kyoto Protocol – ineffective though they may be in affecting CO2
concentrations – are increasingly unattainable.
Yet assorted statesmen, presidents, governors, and other politicians are
projecting emission cuts many times those of Kyoto – but always far out into
the future – some calling for 80% cuts by 2050!
All
of this cynical grandstanding would be harmless fun and entertainment -- except
for the fact that it does have consequences for energy policy. Increasingly, carbon dioxide is being
condemned as a pollutant instead of a free gift to green plants, crops and
trees, which use it for growth. CO2
controls weigh most heavily against coal, a plentiful and secure fuel,
available globally, that can be burned with minimal pollution to generate
electricity. All sorts of “renewables”
are being pushed, like wind and solar, including some like ethanol and hydrogen
that require large amounts of energy for its manufacture and therefore represent
little or no net gain.
The
most serious problem is that the combination of environmentalists, academics,
and industrialists, who are increasingly supported by government grants and
contracts, will gain the upper hand so that a “tipping point” will be reached
where the situation can no longer be reversed.
Even if the climate should start to cool, it will still be blamed on greenhouse gases.
Once
the global warmers who benefit financially prevail, then the real danger comes
from ideologues who have adopted global warming as a faith. They are all ‘coercive utopians,’ of course,
those who would de-industrialize the United States and other Western nations
and ‘return us to nature’; those who would surrender national and local
decision-making to supranational bodies; and the ‘contraction and conversion’
crowd, who argue that every human being is entitled to emit the same amount of
carbon dioxide (and will therefore have the same standard of living). It is difficult to predict whether this trend
can be reversed. But for the sake of
saving what we call Western Civilization, let’s hope that it will be.
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2. SECULAR FUNDAMENTALISTS
By
Cal Thomas, Tribune Media Services 12/24/2007
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_7800976
You don't have to be religious to qualify as a fundamentalist. You can be Al Gore, the messiah figure for the global warming cult, whose followers truly believe their gospel of imminent extermination in a Noah-like flood, if we don't immediately change our carbon-polluting ways.
One
of the traits of a cult is its refusal to consider any evidence that might
disprove the faith. And so it is doubtful the global warming cultists will be
moved by 400 scientists, many of whom, according to the Washington Times,
"are current or former members of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) that shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore for
publicizing a climate crisis." In a report by Republican staff of the
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, these scientists cast doubt on a
"scientific consensus" that global warming caused by humans endangers
the planet. Like most cultists, the true believers struck back, not by
debating science, but by charging that a small number of the scientists
mentioned in the report have taken money from the petroleum industry. A
spokeswoman for Al Gore said 25 or 30 of the scientists may have received
funding from Exxon Mobile Corp. Exxon Mobile spokesman Gantt H. Walton
dismissed the accusation, saying, "the company is concerned about
climate-change issues and does not pay scientists to bash global-warming
theories."
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3. BR-R-R! WHERE DID GLOBAL
WARMING GO?
By Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe, January 6, 2008
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/01/06/br_r_r_where_did_global_warming_go/
THE STARK headline appeared just over a year ago. "2007
to be 'warmest on record,' " BBC News reported on Jan. 4, 2007. Citing
experts in the British government's Meteorological Office, the story announced
that "the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in
2007," surpassing the all-time high reached in 1998.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the planetary hot flash: Much of the
planet grew bitterly cold.
In South America, for example, the start of winter last year was one of the
coldest ever observed. According to Eugenio Hackbart, chief meteorologist of
the MetSul Weather Center in Brazil, "a brutal cold wave brought record
low temperatures, widespread frost, snow, and major energy disruption." In
Buenos Aires, it snowed for the first time in 89 years, while in Peru the cold
was so intense that hundreds of people died and the government declared a state
of emergency in 14 of the country's 24 provinces. In August, Chile's
agriculture minister lamented "the toughest winter we have seen in the
past 50 years," which caused losses of at least $200 million in destroyed
crops and livestock.
Latin Americans weren't the only ones shivering.
University of Oklahoma geophysicist David Deming, a specialist in temperature
and heat flow, notes in the Washington Times that "unexpected bitter cold
swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007." Johannesburg experienced
its first significant snowfall in a quarter-century. Australia had its coldest
ever June. New Zealand's vineyards lost much of their 2007 harvest when spring
temperatures dropped to record lows.
Closer to home, 44.5 inches of snow fell in New Hampshire last month, breaking
the previous record of 43 inches, set in 1876. And the Canadian government is
forecasting the coldest winter in 15 years.
Now all of these may be short-lived weather anomalies, mere blips in the path
of the global climatic warming that Al Gore and a host of alarmists proclaim
the deadliest threat we face. But what if the frigid conditions that have
caused so much distress in recent months signal an impending era of global
cooling?
"Stock up on fur coats and felt boots!" advises Oleg Sorokhtin, a
fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and senior scientist at
Moscow's Shirshov Institute of Oceanography. "The latest data . . . say
that earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell
will set in quite soon, by 2012."
Sorokhtin dismisses the conventional global warming theory that greenhouse gases,
especially human-emitted carbon dioxide, is causing the earth to grow hotter.
Like a number of other scientists, he points to solar activity - sunspots and
solar flares, which wax and wane over time - as having the greatest effect on
climate.
"Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change," Sorokhtin
writes in an essay for Novosti. "Solar activity is many times more
powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind." In a recent
paper for the Danish National Space Center, physicists Henrik Svensmark and
Eigil Friis-Christensen concur: "The sun . .. . appears to be the main
forcing agent in global climate change," they write.
Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 didn't
turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007's global temperature was
essentially the same as that in 2006 - and 2005, and 2004, and every year back
to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade
now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric carbon dioxide
continues to accumulate - it's up about 4 percent since 1998 - the global mean
temperature has remained flat. That raises some obvious questions about the
theory that CO2 is the cause of climate change.
Yet so relentlessly has the alarmist scenario been hyped, and so disdainfully
have dissenting views been dismissed, that millions of people assume Gore must
be right when he insists: "The debate in the scientific community is
over."
But it isn't. Just last month, more than 100 scientists signed a strongly
worded open letter [to the
Secretary-General of the UN]
pointing out that climate change is a well-known natural phenomenon, and that
adapting to it is far more sensible than attempting to prevent it. Because
slashing carbon dioxide emissions means retarding economic development, they
warned, "the current US approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase
human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it."
Climate science isn't a religion, and those who dispute its leading theory are
not heretics. Much remains to be learned about how and why climate changes, and
there is neither virtue nor wisdom in an emotional rush to counter global
warming - especially if what's coming is a global Big Chill.
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